First things first. Putting my mind back on track yet again, I had to figure out how much mana I could store inside of myself and then use that for reference of enchantments to come. Sticking to Edison’s philosophy is the only way for a non-genius to get shit done. Aka, try everything in every variation till it works.
Sitting on the couch with a focused scowl and pushing aside my annoyance at the absence of typical 21st century suburban background noise, I conjured a small river rock suited for skipping stones and banished it. Yup, that was easy. In fact, I barely felt like I used any kind of power. I did it again but with a bigger rock. The fist sized stone didn’t really cost much either. I then did the same for a fist sized piece of pure white marble. Also easy.
Ok, time to try something a bit more challenging. I conjured a piece of bone, living bone. I mean, if my blood could spear a cat, then maybe I could do stuff with bones? Again, easy. I was able to conjure bone outside of my body and shape it to cover any surface like horror-movie armor. I mean, I did some of this before in the heat of the moment but doing it consciously felt very different. It’s like a young singer whose voice cracks at an audition but can rock the same song in the shower. The pressure makes a big difference.
Switching focus, I palmed my energy talisman noting the decent outflow as the soothing mana sank into my hand. Not more than I can handle but definitely more over time than I need for easy tasks. Clasping my hands together, I concentrated on the excess mana being generated, and held it in. A few minutes went by and my body started to shake. I was full. It felt like a full stomach with a tired brain after a long day of long-division math problems but strangely energizing.
Riding the feeling of power and slight euphoria, I conjured a 6 inch hexagonal chunk of slate in my left hand, shaped a bare bones diagram of a battery on one side of it and channeled the mana slowly into it to release the pressure. The stone battery prototype barely allowed mana to enter it before it seeped out. I tried with iron, marble, and basalt but nothing worked until I tried quartz. The quartz battery acted like a greedy sponge, it was almost like pouring a cup of water down a well. That extra bulk of energy I was storing inside of me that was certainly uncomfortable at this point didn’t even make a dent in this crystal. Perfect.
I laughed as my thoughtless guess resulted in me discovering that quartz can store magical energy. Disconnecting myself from the new energy talisman, I pushed my mind into the crystal. The stored energy was still there and I could easily pull it out. Figuring I’d give the Mana Sorcery another go, I concentrated on making up a couple runes that could potentially store the excess power or reinforce my new crystal battery. Putting a childish picture of a sun on top of a square (my rendition of a solar panel) and then swirly lines around that to mimic the suction of a whirlpool, I put that next to the original energy storage rune and linked them together with some mathematical symbols. My intent was for this to function as an ambient mana collection enchantment allowing any and all free mana in the general area to be absorbed into it.
Within five minutes, I had a fluid system going. The principles of my MacGyvering style of enchantment were outlined in an easy to understand way in my brain and I had high hopes this would allow me to scale my abilities later. The structure of the setup meant that while I’m not doing anything this battery would soak up the extra mana I generate but don’t use and also the extra from the mana generator talisman itself. And since the mana generator or energy tap or power talisman, whatever I wanna call it, can produce for an incredibly long time without dying, I don’t have to worry about running low on mana.
With that figured out, I noticed that the angle of the light streaming into the living room shifted even as the brightness lowered. Night was coming. I really didn’t want to think about things prowling in the dark let alone magical things prowling in the dark. But how to fix this problem now? My first thought was that I need another power source, a bigger one but one that could physically reinforce my house and keep me safe tonight.
Taking a minute, I ran to the kitchen and tried the usual assortment of flashlights. With dull clicks, they let me down even though I was expecting jack shit. And I was right.
Now, being an adult in America, I’m not afraid of the dark. Nightlights became a thing of the past after three years of age when dad handed me a wooden sword and a flashlight. ‘Real men take care of monsters, son.’ He would laugh as he left the room, calling back to me. ‘And eat them for breakfast!’
Somehow that scary feeling came back, crawling down my spine with icy fingers. My gut told me that the dark tonight may be a bit different. The fading light certainly felt more ominous as if it had a weight all its own. I mean, if a nerd/desk jockey like myself could get this powerful, it really made me wonder how epic some other real D&D nerd could get. Or forget them, I bet prisons aren’t a great place to be either right now. Really don’t want to think about a bunch of hulked out, wish-fulfilled prisoners with a new taste of freedom.
And just think of all the damn stray neighborhood cats. Or dogs. Or fucking squirrels!
Oh, I wonder what happened to professional athletes. I would bet my non-existent money that they didn’t go the magical nerd route. But back to the problem at hand; I need a serious power source, a big one and the best place for it would be the basement. I gulped as I hadn’t even cleared that space out yet. Only the main floor of the house was fully secured. I had started out this weird journey upstairs but I hadn’t taken the time to fortify it yet.
Fuck. Hopefully, nothing weird is up or down there.
I gathered my weapons again and this time I took a minute to gather as much mana as I could until it was uncomfortable. With my .45 in my right hand, my knife in my left, and hastily conjured bone armor covering everywhere else, I figured I was ready. I spanked my wooden lady on the thigh with the back of my hand for good luck.
“Now, don’t go anywhere!” I joked, my dark humor sticking its head out at the wrong time. “I’m just gonna go kill some mutated spiders and crickets that are probably chillin’ down there. Don’t worry about me. If Mr. Psycho Cat didn’t take me out then they don’t have a prayer.”
And I can’t believe I just fucking said that. Now that I opened my fucking mouth, I had to re-bulk out my armor. It would be just my luck for crazy shit to be living down there now, like telling Fate ‘it can’t get any worse’. Looking down on each flat surface of my armor, I flexed my power and forced my interpretation of a toughness enchantment to be shaped into the bone.
For me, that rune was a crudely shaped kite shield similar to what a medieval knight would use. Channeling extra mana into each of the pieces, I forced the outer layer to grow a bit thicker and harder as well. My boots, jacket, and jeans were even covered in bone armor. Rounding out the ensemble, I conjured a bone helmet with the extra part that lays down on the back of the neck so that it’s protected. For the final bit of awesomeness, I worked in some see-through quartz lenses for my eyes.
“Aight Ben, you got this.” I muttered, psyching myself up. “Party time.”
The door to my extremely old basement resides in my kitchen. Winding stairs built a hundred years ago go down and then swerve to the right at a hard and steep angle making it a cautionary tale for idiots not paying attention. This is an old house built for smaller people over a hundred years ago. The half of the basement that the stairs open up to is the finished part, and then the other half was what Elizabeth used to call the ‘yucky storage place’. It’s where laundry machines lived next to the storage shelves for dried/boxed food and random knick knacks and all sorts of old crap and boxes.
Running through the proper steps in my head, I could tell that I wasn’t planning this right. I know enough to know that I don’t really know much. I may never have deployed with my time in the military, but all of my idiot meathead friends did and I did remember some of the exercises my command put me through. Their advice for clearing an area was simple. If you could, use grenades. If not, then brutal entry combined with violence of action. But then again, magic. So I figured, what the hell?
Shock and awe levels the playing field. But as a civilian now in the suburbs, I didn’t have shock and awe on hand. I reasoned that maybe I could make some. Stepping back into the kitchen, I conjured a small gray pebble and finagled a light enchantment on it with a conditional trigger, which meant my childish brain used a crude picture of a lightbulb on it for the light-emitting part and the bulb had a little carved string coming out of the bottom so it could be turned on and off.
Keeping my immature chuckle inside my head, I wove my envisioned enchantment into the shaped runes and filled the rudimentary enchantment with as much power as it could hold. Hopefully, when I drop it, it’ll flare ridiculously bright like a coked out strobelight. Too eager to test them out, I made five more, shoved them in my pocket, kicked open the door and threw two light pebbles down the stairs. As soon as they left my hand, I rotated and put my back to the wall next to the stairwell to avoid blindness. The pebbles flared on and off, beams of light lancing in every direction. The black of my closed eyes flared red letting me know that some sort of success was happening. After five seconds, the strobe lights cut off.
I rushed down the stairs looking left and right, scanning for anything and everything. The open area to the left was Elizabeth’s painting section and the right was the bar hangout area. No spiders. No crickets. Whew. One last section to go. I grabbed the last three pebbles and repeated my strategy with the ugly side of the basement. Five more seconds of flashing lights as my nerves pounded from the stress. I whipped around the door frame with my pistol pointed out and down. Nothing skittered at me. Whew. Thank the Ripple.
A sudden heavy weight landed on top of my head knocking me forward a few steps.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“What the FUCKING FUCK!” I freaked as I swiped at whatever took a crack at my skull. A leathery smack sounded behind me just after the weight left my head. It sounded like a pile of tightly bound clothes being drop kicked. “Better not be a goddamn big ass spider!” I will openly admit to the fact that my voice might have competed against a three year old girl’s voice and won.
It was exactly that. I lifted my foot, extra-covered it with conjured stone to make it a big ass boot and introduced it to the spider. Multiple times and with great prejudice. It was not the only one down there, but the experience was blotted out due to its traumatic nature and my over-panicked yet incredibly violent response. Over-armored spiders are not a good idea. I’m just glad that modern weaponry prevailed, and boots. And guns.
********
2,374 A.R (After the Ripple) - (4,394 A.D) - Distant Future (Again)
“Sire?” Illium smoothly interrupted my reverie with a frozen mug filled with chilled water. “Still can’t remember that even after all these years?”
I angrily snatched the mug as I grunted. “No, and I don’t want to damnit. Spiders were never meant to be that big.” Throwing the cold water over my face to shock the trauma away, I dove back into my memories with a shudder.
********
0 A.R (2020 A.D)
Cleaning up my mess wasn’t fun. The only comfort that this experience brought is the fact that the spiders were so aggressive. I was sure that I got them all which hopefully meant that no more of the fuckers would be down here. My bone armor sprouted spikes and my boots and bullets found targets while I freaked out at anything that moved with more than the usual number of legs. Not a bad strategy. The screaming was just for effect, I promise.
Grabbing a squeegee from where it leaned against the wall next to the rest of the cleaning supplies, I conjured sand on the smooshed corpses to soak up the blood and scraped them all into a pile. Conjuring a stone box gave me a place to shovel all that crap in and I happily sealed it off. The oversized wolf spiders were about the size of a small household cat, and 11 corpses made for a decent size box. It was too damn heavy to carry, so I shoved it to the wall with my earth magic, and conjured more stone all around it to make it part of the wall, like a nice box chair. I’ll deal with that spider casket later.
Shivers ran down my spine as I took in the ‘cleaned-up’ battlefield. Bullet holes marked the concrete and blood that wasn’t my own still left streaks on the floor and walls. My own blood was mixed in there as well. My flesh sorcery was already proving its worth as my most useful power. It would have been way worse without my trusty bone armor.
Shaking off the heebie jeebies, it was past time to continue with my fortification strategy. The overgrown arachnids served their purpose, properly frightening some sense into me and justifying my paranoia. If anything, going overboard with this shit is the only justifiable strategy.
I went to the six small basement windows and sealed them off with quartz, making sure to conjure granite around the edges to extra-fortify them. Taking my time, I sealed up every bullet hole and crack I could find. Then, I conjured a stone block in the center of the ugly side of the basement, growing and shaping it to be about 6 feet long and 3 feet high. On top of this block, I conjured three granite cylinders, two feet tall and eight inches thick. These were going to be my big power generators.
Inscribing my improved Einstein magical formula on each one didn’t take long, but the gradual soaking of the mana into the enchantment did as I kept constantly looking around for more spiders. My paranoia interrupted my concentration and I’d have to go check every corner and seal up any hint of a crack with conjured stone.
An hour later, the whole process was done. I wasn’t sure how long it would take for an enchantment to degrade so I put all three on the lowest power setting I could contrive, but each generator had a different yet very specific purpose. My plan was to check them every day to get a better idea how enchantments work over time. Stone, when it breaks down, gives off plenty of energy, but I made a note for the future to definitely experiment making a generator with different materials.
Possibly, some precious metals might hold the enchantment better, like having a gold cap on top of the stone cylinder with a handprint keyed to me for access control. Maybe metal would be a better base as the material for the matter-to-mana enchantment to ‘eat’. Anyways, these will do for now as I don’t have time to practice and fine tune everything.
Night is coming.
The generator on the left I designated as the de facto battery charger. I conjured and shaped ten more versions of the smaller crystal battery that I had made earlier, and placed them around the generator. If I can’t hold a hundredth of what my crystal batteries can hold, but I can easily carry ten of them around, I’d be a fool to walk about unprepared. Taking a few more minutes, I conjured stone slots at the bottom of the generator for easy charging. I then linked each battery to the generator and turned it on, thinking it would charge them overnight for me. Now, for the carrying part.
Back in my meathead days, I had purchased a weight vest which had ten compartments for cylindrical sandbags to make bodyweight exercises that much harder. This was going to be my first attempt at dual purpose body armor. It would also serve in carrying around extra on-hand power. My personal energy talisman, for now, is rather small and weak but its main focus is to keep me healthy and to enhance my own mana regeneration. The batteries would be for when I truly needed oomph.
The middle generator, that one would be the main generator, the serious powerhouse for my home, which in turn would make my dwelling an actual ‘powerhouse’, hahaha. I turned it on, and then gave the energy a direction; down. This outflow of power would fortify my house starting with the foundation. I mentally made a list of things to do in my head and put ‘enchant house to be more durable’ at the top.
“To be crazy like ‘innovative’ crazy or is this ‘funny farm’ crazy?” I muttered, puttering my way around my own new instincts. “God, I hope this works.”
I spent thirty minutes coming up with a complex enchantment whose whole purpose was to cover every surface area of the house and every wall and the foundations in stone. I used magic to shape shields, plus signs, and drawings of batteries around a lovely picture of a house and wrapped it all up inside of a circle, which was inside of another circle meant to keep it all together. I was really putting my belief in my magic that my intent really mattered. As the enchantment itself was shaped into the stone generator, I held the details of what I wanted perfectly crystal clear in my head.
The secondary enchantments I designed went in between the borders of the two circles around the center generator, and that had a picture of a hand and a minus sign which I intended to be for banishing, in case I needed to alter something. This would allow me to shape the enchantment later. The next key component of this setup was a power bank or capacitor, so the walls could take a hit from whatever the hell decided that it wanted to eat me. The generator would keep that stored capacitor full and my house a freaking fortress if I did it right. Now, to see if I could get fancy.
The stone actively being created on the inside of the house would stop there at the borders of the doorways, but I wanted stone on the outside of the house as well. No such thing as overkill since I was working with practically unlimited energy. The quartz windows would serve as the energy conduit and enchantment extender to the outside of the house, which after the inside was finished, would then get its own stone layer. I put this intent of a plan into the enchantment, and after feeling it settle, I began to think about the third generator. This plan would be a bit of a stretch.
I do realize three generators might be a bit much, but I honestly don’t know how long enchantments last, or if the whole thing will explode because I did something dumb, or if I can even make enchantments with the kind of detail that my mind can plan. I’m a smart guy, but the just above average kind of smart. I’m not that in-shape or particularly muscular. Nothing particularly great about me right now that would help me survive. Which means my best chance of survival is reliance on complete paranoia and utter overkill in every possible scenario until I get a handle on things. I only have the first right now. My fight with the spiders served to remind my dumbass that I didn’t grab much offensive power during each stab of the Primordial Chaos crystals and I only had one left.
My last plan involved me going outside. Not a huge fan of that particular idea. I had a a loose concept and am not completely sure that it will work, but if it does, then fuck yes because I’m awesome.
I had a general picture in my brain of what I wanted. I want a tree, or four of them really. The grand idea I envisioned came from me trawling through my Nature Sorcery instincts and running various crazy plans against them. Most of them were simply not possible, like growing a massive living tree with legs and wood-spike arms to serve as my mobile-tank-treehouse.
Laughing off the super crazy plans, I went with the one that had a much better chance of success. The general idea was pretty simple. Gather some acorns, plant them at the 4 corners of my house, somehow link them to the life-giving generator in my basement and connect them to each other due to the slapped on wards of my house. Then, the trees will sprout in the shape that I want due to my Nature Sorcery and my house will be covered and protected by four big ass magically reinforced oak trees that know me and love me as their own. My house would then be an epic double-layered stone shell with a magical oak serving as living armor.
Fortress, druid style.
But my enthusiasm was dampened by the fact that I still had to go outside. The afternoon light was swiftly fading and the trees up along the elevated ridge where the college sat always made it get dark sooner than expected. Besides, I just really didn’t want to do it. There’s an old oak tree just across my street where the neighborhood squirrels love to gossip and throw nuts at both people and cats that can’t catch them. I know that I can sprint there and back pretty fast.
I don’t know why I was so apprehensive about going outside in the fading light. Every instinct I had was pricking the back of my neck making every hair on my body stand up. I could almost hear sibilant horror movie music in the background.
Running my brain through the train of logic that I would obviously be fine because I’ve walked these neighborhood streets for years, I made sure I had my enhanced getup on but with my weapons in my pockets. I peeked out my front window, using my earth Sorcery to turn the quartz in the door window perfectly clear in order to see through it. Didn’t really see much out there. Was really hoping there wasn’t much out there. I don’t even want to think about what my new neighbors are thinking right now, or the small town drug dealer across the street either.
[Acorns. That’s my focus. All I need, just a few acorns.]
Throwing caution to the winds, I sprang out of the house dashing towards the old oak and began scrambling around the gnarled roots for acorns. “One, two, three… come on! Where are ya you little bastard. Just one more . . . , gotcha!” My Nature Sorcery confirmed that the acorns were alive, not dead and rotting on the inside.
Acorns in hand after 20 seconds of searching, not bad. Shoving them in my pocket, I turned to make my way back to safety when I heard a low moan. Nope. I do not have time for this. The guttural moan didn’t sound human; it sounded hungry.
I hurtled back to my living room in record time. The door locked and I sealed it with stone. Once I caught my breath and slowed my heartrate down some, I looked out the window. The moaning thing stumbling down the street looked like a freaking zombie and not a fresh one. Most of the clothing was old and rotten, pretty much just ragged strips hanging off desiccated limbs.
[How the . . . cemeteries! SHIT! Just my freaking luck.] I cursed mentally over and over trying to not run into anything in the house. I didn’t need to draw more attention than I already had. Carefully leafing through the cluttered bookshelf in my bedroom, I pulled out a local map of the area. [This damn house is 80 yards away from a cemetery, and 500 yards away from another one. Why in the goddamn world do I live in a historic town during an apocalypse where apparently the dead come back to life?]
What luck. Fuck this town.
The ugly bastard stumbled towards my house which was partially covered in magically reinforced stone at this point, and began to bang on my front door. I ran downstairs to my middle generator to check the house enchantment. Almost done. The main portions left were the roof and parts of the outside. The inside of the house had a nice granite layer two inches thick and all the windows were either 100% quartz or reinforced with it. To hell with it. I have to get rid of the zombie without attracting more attention from the other ones that I could see stumbling around outside. But these precautions come first.
I took a deep breath. [At least I’m safe for the moment.]
I turned on the generator on the right and then set it to emit a small bit of power which I split into four small feeds. Cupping the acorns, I soaked them with what I want to call an ‘intent enchantment’ or maybe a ‘seed enchantment’, heh. The focus was for the seeds to soak up energy without growing, and crystallize the concepts of protection, strength, and hardiness. This way, when I plant them tomorrow and open up the energy tap to the generator, I can remove the stasis part of the enchantment and have fully grown oak trees in a month. I placed the acorns on top of the generator and went back upstairs. Now that the semblance of the future plan is underway, it’s time to get rid of my immediate problem. Mr. Moan was still there, mindlessly banging away.