The next morning started early for the people at Max’s. The rooms were pitch black and the beds gave them all a good night's sleep. As a result, everyone was up yawning and drinking coffee in the dining room by five o’clock.
No TV, no internet left most everyone reset back to the colonial days. Most people hadn’t wanted to use their time available while gathering up their stuff to pack up books, so except for a few board games, they had no choice but to talk to each other.
After breakfast was served, Billy took over the cube and looked out at his young audience.
“I don’t know how many of you are orphans. Most of us are. Some of us don’t know. Others have just lost one or the other of your folks. I’m sorry that happened to you all. If I could, I’d go back and fix it, but I can’t. No one can.”
He paused and looked around again. In the back rows of the dining room, a lot of the adults were sitting and watching, including the man who’d said yesterday that he might not want his kids to learn magic.
‘No pressure there,’ he thought and then began training the kids.
Fern and Will and Dianna and Rex were busy chatting in the first conversation nook by the kitchen.
“We need to rescue more people,” Fern said.
“I know,” said Will. “Tell us where we can put them and I’ll be happy to do so. We’ve got breathing space with these folks. Everyone is busy trying to figure out their classes, whether or not they want to join the Sect and/or join the Adventurer’s Guild. Other’s are busy gawking at the garden’s wondering what the fuck is going on there? Speaking of which Jake, what in the fuck is going on there? Fully grown cacao and coffee bushes, tea, avocado, banana trees overnight. Not to mention watermelons, cantaloupes, corn, tomatoes. Heck, even the asparagus is fully grown and that’s supposed to take seven years. What in the shit is going on?”
“It’s like I told you last night when you were planting. Mana. It’s the universal fertilizer. When you planted those seeds inside this big room, they started growing and baby seeds seem to really be receptive to it. They absorbed it and, boom took off. That’s why the whole garden looks like it’s eight months old instead of one day.”
“It’s not natural,” said one of the onlookers. Meetings in Max’s were rapidly becoming a combination of government and entertainment. If you didn’t have anything to do, you watched and critiqued those that did.
“No,” said Jake. “It’s as natural as it gets. Things absorb mana, things change. If you want unnatural, I suspect that you just need to let the plants keep growing.”
“No,” said Fern to the onlooker. “Mana is part of our world now. It is part of nature. Things just grow faster in a mana rich environment.”
And then to Jake, quietly, “What do you mean ‘let them keep growing’?”
“Right now the plants are doing what they are designed to do, watermelons grow watermelons, tomatoes grow tomatoes,” Jake said to all his family member’s present. “All that extra zing that mana provides is used in doing what their genetics tell them to do. But give them some space and let that mana pool up in the plant, I’m pretty sure you’ll start getting some weird stuff happening.”
“Like?” said Fern.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe muskmelons of doom, exploding strawberries, heck it could be anything or something as innocuous as a watermelon with a tougher rind. That’s the thing about mana, it’s magic.”
“I guess that makes sense. Maybe not the time scale, but I can see that,” said Fern. “So gardener just became a high danger occupation. Good to know.”
“Not really, but maybe,” said Jake. “Just use or pick the fruit and everything's golden. Look it over before you eat it and make sure it hasn’t mutated. It’s bad inside here because the mana level is so high. I’m producing a lot of mana and it all comes through here.”
“Look it over?” asked Rex.
‘Use your identify ability or skill or spell on it. It should be capable of telling you what is safe and what is, well different. Maybe not safe, maybe safe but not the same. Use your identify,” said Jake.
“Ok, I’ll make a note of that. And get with the kitchen staff. And gardeners. Make sure they know what and how to look at the plants,” she said.
“By the way,” asked Fern. “How do you know all this?”
“I watched the plants grow all night. I even planted some grass outside. It was interesting. I can see mana, see Qi, heck, I can even see souls. It was fun watching things grow. Plus I was trying to see if having the plants growing inside me gave me access to more mana.”
“Did it?” she asked.
“Don’t know yet. I haven’t got a mana meter or even mana units to measure mana in. All I’ve got is what you’ve got, a status sheet with mana points on it. I’m trying to figure out a way to measure it though. Billy and I have been talking about it.”
“Does Hildi know about that,” asked Fern.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “We had a talk about that. We have to include her or give her the option of being included whenever we talk,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “A good relationship is about compromise. Those that last, learn early. Those that don’t learn, don’t last.”
“Ok,” said one of the onlookers. “How about you all talk out loud? It looks freaky when you all start talking to each other without words. How’s that work anyway? Is it like telepathy?”
Fern looked up and saw that the crowd surrounding them was all nodding their heads. She thought she’d better answer the man. It wasn’t that long ago that people were getting lit up for being witches.
“It’s more like a cell phone than telepathy. You don’t get a lot of emotions or whatnot. You just get a voice. In this case, it’s my son, Jake,” she answered.
“How much range has it got?” another man asked.
“Don’t know,” she said. “I’ve only had the ability since I’ve got here inside of Max’s last night. And I haven’t done any experiments with range or what blocks it or anything like that. I can just hear my boy and that’s enough for right now.”
She didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. The range or other limitations of the ability could be lifesaving information for her or the sect someday and these men were not members. At least not yet.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s get back on track. Where were we before we started talking about vegetables. Rescuing people. What do we need to do?”
“First off, are there any watchers outside from Wade’s crew?” asked Will.
“Yes,” said Jake. “There’s a couple. They think they’re hidden, but I can see them.”
“Ok, there’s two men watching,” said Will. There was a quiet rumble in the surrounding folks at this news.
“Any arrows this morning,” asked Will.
“Yep, Matchbox and his two guys came by not long after sunup. They only shot one today. I guess they started worrying about the numbers of arrows that they have” Jake responded.
“Ok,” said Will. “Only one arrow. Hopefully, that means they are getting low on arrows. What can we do? We could go out the front door or Jake could make us another door too, I suppose.”
“The guys aren’t together, they are watching all sides of this place. They are up in a couple of trees about fifty meters from here,” Jake reported. “If I had to guess, I’d say they are just there to report if someone leaves.”
“Well, so we can’t leave without them seeing us. They’re in a tree and probably going to run tell their crew if we leave. Is that what you're telling me?” asked Will.
“Yep,” said Jake. “It’s too bad I can’t talk out loud.”
Jake felt a flash of amused agreement from his dad then.
“Any ideas?” Will asked the group sitting at the meeting. And, of course, by default, the people surrounding them.
It was quiet for a minute and then one of the onlookers said, “I know we want to do right by our neighbors, but have you all thought about where we’re gonna put those folks? I’m not trying to be difficult, just practical.” There was a hum of agreement from the folks surrounding the meeting.
Another man spoke up and said, “I may have a partial solution to that.”
Fern said, “Speak up then. We need all the solutions that we can get.”
“My name is Calvin Hornsby,” he began. “I usually go by Cal. Anyway, I was a builder. ‘Homes by Cal’, you might have seen the signs around town. Sorry, just setting the stage. Anyway, when we had our meeting about classes and mana and Qi and all that, I opened my classes afterward and I got offered a bunch just like most folks. The boy, Billy, mentioned that there were different levels or whatnot of classes, like fighter and knight. I got offered all those base classes, I think he called them, like Fighter and Mage but I also got offered a class that well, I took. It seems to change names a bit. It goes between Earth Mage and Builder Mage. I’m not quite sure what to call it.”
He stopped then and looked around.
Fern gestured for him to continue.
“Well,” he said. “I got three spells instead of the one that most folks get. They are, ‘Create Block, Create Earthen Wall, and Pallet.”
“And what do these spells do?” asked Will.
“The block one,” he said, starting to obviously read something only he could see, ‘Creates a mass of stone. Unless otherwise specified by the caster’s direction, the mass will be shaped as a block about the size of a cinder block.”
“The wall one,” he continued, “Creates a 3 meter stretch of wall that is ⅓ of a meter in depth. Each of the square wall sections is somehow anchored to the ground if cast on the ground.”
And finally, for the pallet one, he read, “Creates a two-meter square pallet that is capable of moving at a speed of up to 12 kph. It is capable of lifting ((100 * level)*rank) kg.”
There was a quiet hum from the surrounding folks.
“I didn’t get a good look at those huts outside when we came in a couple of nights ago,” he said, “but I suspect that they were made using the 'Create Wall' spell. They looked around the right dimensions.”
“Interesting,” said Will.
“Yeah,” said Jake. “There was a group of people that lived here for the first week. They came in a couple of times and fought the rats that used to be in this building. They left though about a week in. Right before I met Hildi. Baxter used to have to be careful not to be seen by them. Baxter also killed most of the monsters around here so they didn’t have to worry as much. At least the ones that came out at night.”
“I think you’re right,” said Will. “There was a group that lived here right after the apocalypse. They probably made those houses. And probably made them using the same spell. I wonder who they were? Not that it matters, I suppose. They left and haven’t come back.”
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“Can you share spells?” asked Rex. “Those seem mighty handy. I could see people using those. Has anybody figured out a way to share or pass on magic?”
He looked around but none of the people leading the table or surrounding it had any comments to make other than a general agreement that sharing spells was a good idea.
“How much mana does the wall spell cost?” asked Will.
“10 mp it says. I guess that means mana points?” Cal answered.
“We need a wall and you can make it for us. Plus you can make houses too. That’s good. ‘Homes by Cal’ may not be dead yet,” Fern said. “But we also need more people to be able to make walls, to make houses. If we keep adding people to our settlement, we are going to need a lot of homes and a big wall.”
“Is the wall really necessary?” asked John, one of the men surrounding the meeting.
“What do you mean,” said Fern.
“Well, the same damn thing with that wall Trump was so fired up about building down between us and Mexico,” the man said. “People went around it, over it, through it, underneath it. Hell, it even fell down once when the wind blew. We aren’t trying to keep out poor people looking for a better life anymore. We’re trying to keep out monsters. Those squirrels we saw could probably climb a stone wall without slowing down, big hawks, owls whatever could fly right over it. You mentioned the giant earthworms. A wall ain’t gonna slow them down. Poor protection’s worse than no protection.”
Riley, one of the men standing next to him, slapped his shoulder and said, “Ain’t that that the truth. That’s how I got girls one and three. Rhythm method my ass!”
After the laughter died out, Fern said, “You have a point. I guess I was thinking about castles and walls and forts and stuff.”
“Yeah,” said Will. “The cannon and guns put the end to fixed defenses like that. I don’t see spells as being much less effective than a matchlock. Heck, with what Billy and his kids can do, I sure as sh..” he stopped and looked at Fern sitting beside him, “anything wouldn’t want to be depending on a wall when they were on the other side.”
“So what are we gonna do?” said Fern. “What can we do?”
“Well, if Jake can give us advanced warning and we can clear the monsters out of our area, I think we can be reasonably safe,” said Will. “Get people strong houses with good foundations and a crew of people that could watch out and fight off the occasional wandering or relocating monster.”
“I don’t know,” said a man from the back, changing the topic back to the men watching. “I ain’t got invisibility or anything like that, besides they’d probably see the doors open. What about a tunnel? Jake’s a dungeon. Ain’t they all about digging tunnels? Couldn’t he open us up another exit?”
“Good thought,” said Will. “Jake?”
Jake looked at his remaining mana. Then he thought about how he could do it. One way was by creating rooms one after the other, the other was just digging. His room creation cost was down to about 40 mana per 4x4 cubic meter room. The digging was way less than that. He could create a 2x2x2 cubic meter section of tunnel for three mana points.
He had enough mana to dig a pretty long tunnel so he said, “I could do that. I could make a two by two by two cubic meter tunnel. How far do you want it to go?”
Fern looked at Will who said, “He can do it. How far do you think we’d need to go? The watchers are about 50 meters away, up in a tree.”
“I think we could sneak out just fine,” said Rex. “Heck, all of us on the teams have been hunting for years. It’s the coming back that’s going to be a problem. Bringing a bunch of folks into a tunnel that’s 2x2 cubic meters isn’t going to be easy. People will freak. And upset folks make noise.”
“Good point,” Will said. “So the tunnel needs to be at least a couple of hundred meters. Anyone think that is enough? Too short? What do you folks think?”
“I think Rex had a good point,” said the man who first brought up the idea. “Some people are crazy scared of small spaces. And you’d be asking them to go into one. In the dark.”
“We’d have flashlights, so it wouldn’t be that dark,” said Rex. “Wait ‘til we’re inside the tunnel and turn them on. Nobody should be the wiser.”
“I think you're gonna need to prep the folks pretty well,” said Will. “If you leave it until you get to the tunnel, they are not going to make it. You’ll have to make sure they are Ok with it.”
“What about just not telling them at all? Just walking up to the tunnel, passing out light sticks and saying, ‘keep moving, keep moving’,” asked Dianna. “Maybe that might be the way to go? Less chance for people to get worked up. Tell them before they get close that there are watchers in the woods, they have to be quiet.”
“It’d only take one person to freak out and start yelling to cause a disaster,” said Fern. “I can see it working, but what if that one person won’t go?”
“Maybe we need a sleep spell or something to knock out people?” said Rex. “I can see some stupid ass blowing it for us. I’d hate to be out in the woods with a bunch of folks that didn’t have any weapons or anything against those guys.”
“I could make the entrance smaller and have a larger room right past it? Plus they are going to need to go down some too,” said Jake.
“Jake mentioned that the entrance is going to have to have some stairs or a ramp downward too,” Fern said. “He said that he could make a room at the bottom of the stairs though.”
“All that stuff adds mana points to the cost though,” Jake added. “I really don’t want to spend my whole day's allowance on this.”
“But,” she continued, “he also mentioned that doing all that would cost mana.”
Again there was a lull in the conversation. People still murmured questions and answers back and forth but nobody had any new information to add.
“Where are we going?” asked Rex. The rest of the group looked relieved that somebody asked that.
“How about the turnpike back through to our old neighborhood?” she asked.
“What about those squirrels?” he asked. “There were a lot of them. Is Baxter coming with us?”
“Nope,” said Jake. “He said he’s done with leaving. He got a class that makes him a guardian.”
“Well crap,” said Fern. “I don’t know what to tell you. Coming back you’ll have a lot of folks. Even if you get past on the way there, I don’t think those squirrels will be happy on the way back.”
“And what about the rickshaws? We just going to leave them on the side of the turnpike?” asked Joseph.
“Lord!” said Fern. “You wait ‘til now to bring all this up? So on one side, we’ve got monsters and on the other, we’ve got another kind of monster.”
“And let’s not forget, where are we going to put all these folks?” asked the guy who'd asked about that issue before.
“Well damn!” said Fern. “Alright, I was jumping the gun a little. But those people are probably pretty close to starving and if the survivors leave their houses, they are going to be bait for one kind of monster or the other. Let’s figure this out, people.”
“How many men does that Wade guy have?” asked another man standing on the outskirts of the meeting.
“Well, when he showed up the other night, he had about twenty-eight with him,” said Will.
“That was most of his crew,” said Jake. “My hawk couldn’t get a great look since it couldn’t fly over his camp, but I’d guess he probably had no more then five to ten left-back at his camp.”
“Figure he had five to ten left in the camp, so thirty-eight tops. Call it forty just to be safe,” said Will. “We figured his camp when he met us only had about five to ten left behind.”
“So we take out the two that are watching, we’ve taken out about 5% of his force. That keeps happening, he’s not gonna be their leader for much longer, is he?” said Rex.
“Jake, can you dig a tunnel right behind their tree blind?” asked Will.
“Yeah,” said Jake. “That’d be much easier.”
“Are we gonna do this?” asked Rex. “I’ve never killed somebody before. Are we sure they deserve it?”
Again there was a silence in the alcove.
“I’ll take this on,” said Fern. “Yes, they deserve it. Five arrows in our door, chasing Hildi, what they’ve got those women doing, yes. They are not part of the world I want to leave my children. They are a disease that needs to be cured and I’m asking you all to be the penicillin. I’m not going to ask someone to do something I wouldn’t. I’ll go and I help with taking out one. Who is going to help rid me of the other?”
“I’m with you hun,” said Will. “We’ll take one. Who’s going to take the other?”
“I’ll do it,” said Rex.
“I’ll be the other one,” said Joseph. “It won’t be the first time. I fought in the Gulf War and did a tour in Afghanistan. I thought that all was behind me. But I guess not. This new world seems like it’s pulling hard on the worst parts of the old one.”
“Thank you Joseph, Rex, Will,” said Fern. “What’s that old quote, ‘the tree of liberty needs to be watered with blood’ or something. This is where we start watering.”
Jake wondered if his mom knew that the quote wasn't talking about killing bad guys, but good guys dying, but figured he shouldn't bring it up. Oration interruptus.
Jake had his owls watching the men even as the group spoke. The two men couldn’t see each other. Both of their blinds were on opposite corners of Max’s. They would randomly do a bird call and the other one would answer it. It worked out to be about every 20 to 30 minutes. They had been there since this morning. Matchstick had brought them when he and his buds had shot their arrow into the door.
They’d made the blinds yesterday morning and they’d occupied them all day. Matchstick had come by around sunset and gathered them up, so they didn’t spend the night in the tree. Calling them blinds was a little bit of a stretch. Both of the men were essentially in a fork of the tree trunks. High enough to see over the trees between them and Max’s, but not high enough to expose themself to the aerial predators such as the giant hawks.
Jake went ahead and dug the tunnels behind where the men were hiding in the trees. He didn’t open the tunnels to the surface though. He just created the tunnels.
As he had started to create openings he got his strange feeling. As if he was about to do something that was irrevocable. And sure enough, he got a blue window:
Careful what you do. Everything has consequences.
Would you like to open a dungeon entrance here?
Yes
No
He stopped then. “Com’on Bobs! Give me a break. What do you mean by that?” he said.
Of course, there was no answer. He wondered what that window meant. He hadn’t received one when he created his first opening, nor his second or even when Baxter dug his tunnel? Did that mean that he couldn’t remove any of those openings? Could he move them? Leave them open but rearrange them? Kind of like he did with his core? Dropping it?
“Mom, Dad,” he said. “We might have a problem.”
“Hang on,” said Fern. “We might have a problem.” The group of people waiting stirred a bit and then settled down.
“What problem?” Will asked.
“I’ve made the tunnels, they are ready to be used. But, and this is a big one, I got a blue window.”
“What’s it say?” asked Fern.
“It says more cryptic bullshit. ‘Careful what you do. Everything has consequences.’ and then asked me if I’d like to open a dungeon entrance here.”
“What do you think that means?” asked Fern.
“I’m afraid that it means if I open them up, I can’t close them,” he answered. “I think I might have just bumped up against another rule or limitation on well, dungeons,” he answered.
“What other ones have you bumped up against?” asked his dad.
“Well, the biggest one is that I have to have an opening to the surface. Period. If I don’t I, well, will explode, I guess,” Jake said.
“Ok, that’s pretty major,” said his dad. “What else?”
“My monsters can’t leave the dungeon,” he said. “You might want to keep that one under your hats.”
“You’ve got that hawk and didn’t you say you made some grass and some owls last night?” asked his mom.
“Yeah,” he said. “But those are a special kind of monster called a scout. They can’t attack. Only defend. If they attack first, well, whoosh! They’d probably go up in flames in a hurry. Just like my regular monsters do if they come outside the dungeon.”
“So you can’t open up the tunnels, is what you're saying?” asked his dad.
“I can, but I’m afraid that those openings would be permanent. If Wade and crew find them, they’d have two more openings to get inside me." He paused for a second and then said. "That just sounds wrong when I say it!” Jake said.
“Are you all going to share?” asked the guy who’d said it looked freaky when they started talking to each other.
“It looks like Jake doesn’t have the mana to open the tunnels right now,” Fern said. “He just discovered that and was letting us know.”
She felt bad for a minute about lying but then thought that this was her son she was talking about. The less people knew about his capabilities, the safer he’d probably be.
“Mom,” said Rex. “You just lied.”
“Yes,” she said. “And you will too. Or you will keep your mouth shut! Every bit of knowledge about Jake is now family only, top secret. Do you hear me? This is your brother and I don’t want stuff about what he can and, maybe, more importantly, can’t do getting out. Lie, be silent, misdirect or confuse. That is now family policy toward Jake.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
Evidently she had been broadcasting on a wider frequency because every member of the family bond echoed their approval.
“Hildi, you will talk to Billy about this?” asked Fern.
“Yes,” Hildi said. “It sounds like a good plan to me.”
“Ok,” said Fern. “New plan. Jake will make another exit from Max’s in the wall by the dining room. When I give the signal, we’ll open it and the front door at the same time and we all us shoot. Maybe we won’t even have to hit the guys. Maybe they do us a favor and fall out of the tree.”
“And then what?” asked Will.
“There’s another neighborhood back behind the QT, down Bird street. It’s got some houses left in it I suspect. Then if there’s time, you guys can duck across the turnpike and start helping the folks there. Start with North Main. I wouldn’t go any further than 10th street though. I imagine that the gang has been through those houses.”
“How we getting back?” asked Joseph.
“Jake, did those men spend the night there last night?” Will asked.
“No, Matchstick came by around sunset and gathered them up and they all went back to their camp together,” he answered.
“If you wait until dark, those guys have been reluctant to be out that late. Matchbox or whatever his name is came by last night at sunset and they all went back to their camp. So, we just wait until they leave and bring the folks inside,” she added.
“Ok,” asked the lawyer guy again, “I hate to keep banging a drum, but where are we going to put these folks?”
“I realize that a wall won’t be our final defense, and it may not keep monsters out, but it will hopefully keep out Wade’s crew. At least until they get spells of their own. I suggest we get Cal building a wall. Who knows it might even cause a monster to think twice about coming inside. And see if Jake or some of those folks who took mage as a class can help.”