Terry’s awareness returned, after how long he couldn’t say.

As he lay motionless on the ground, his eyes still closed, something flickered in his abdomen. It felt hot at first, then became a tingling sensation that began to expand outward to the very edges of his skin. The tingling paused, as if stuck against the edges of his being, then broke through, rippling out in all directions as though he were a pebble dropped in a completely still pond.

His senses became excruciatingly heightened. The rustling of leaves felt like sandpaper on his eardrums; the fat boy’s heartbeat sounded like a drum in his skull. He opened his eyes, and the light of the afternoon sun blinded him, and the smell…the smell was actually not as bad as it had been.

“Shit,” the boy hissed. “Are you okay?” The cart groaned under the boy’s attempt to climb down with some semblance of speed. Terry’s hands shot up to protect his ears from this new onslaught of sound. “Hey, man? Can you hear me?” the boy asked.

“Yes, stop shouting!” Terry screamed.

“You stop shouting. You’re gonna get us caught! I’m just talking in my normal…” the boy paused for a moment, then gasped. “It’s happening!” he shouted for real this time then clapped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry, sorry. Listen, I remember this part pretty well,” he whispered. “If your hearing and stuff is suddenly way better, that means we’re on the right track. You just need to focus on whichever sense is not overwhelming you, okay?”

“Smell,” Terry uttered.

“Wow, really? Right here of all places?” The boy glanced at the pile of shit. “Okay, well you just keep your hands on your ears, close your eyes, and breathe through your nose, and I guess focus on that sort of putrid, sulfury smell of pure death.”

The boy audibly gagged.

Terry obeyed and tried not to panic. What was happening? And what had he gotten himself into? Was he really so desperate for money that he was willing to mess with power he couldn’t understand and to help the most wanted person in the country? Why was the fat boy’s stomach growling? How could he possibly be hungry right now?

While his thoughts rambled out of control, Terry focused on the awful smells that were a part of his everyday life, courtesy of his career choice. It wasn’t pleasant by any means, but he’d grown accustomed to working with terrible smells back in Sunset Moon. Sulfur was not particularly pleasant, and neither was shit, but in some strange way it made him feel at peace.

The more he focused on the feeling of peace, the more the assault on his other senses subsided. When he opened his eyes, the naked boy was standing with his head shoved into one of the fragrant bushes nearby, breathing deeply.

Terry stood, feeling lighter and more in control of his body than ever before. He lifted his arms over his head, then he stretched his back. He hadn’t been in bad shape before, but a lifetime of shoveling and swinging pickaxes and pulling heavy carts around left him with a perpetual slight soreness in his lower back. It was gone.

“Huh,” Terry muttered. He squatted down low, then popped up, adding a little jump at the end.

The little jump sent him three feet in the air. He swung his arms and legs wildly trying to correct himself, which only led to him becoming tangled up in the fat boy’s enormous robe. Terry landed on one knee and flopped forward onto his face.

“You’re up!” the fat boy said, sounding chipper. “I thought I’d killed you for a minute there. Would have been quite the day for me. Spend your whole life barely harming a fly then BAM, two people dead in two days.”

“Was death a possibility with…whatever that was?” Terry asked, untangling himself.

“Maybe,” the boy said, his tone far too nonchalant for Terry’s liking. “I’m only going off the stuff I read, and I read it a while ago. I feel like he said you could die, but it wasn’t common…but he did write that you could do something to mess up your foundation, which I took to mean that you’d get so strong so fast that you could accidentally crack the floor of your house.”

“Huh,” Terry rose to his feet. “Seems right enough. I do feel sort of strong.” Terry flexed his arms.

“Good, let’s give it another try then,” said the still naked man as he lumbered toward the cart. The boy climbed in again, the cart giving an even more concerning creak this time, then he sat down.

Terry grabbed the handle of the cart with both hands and pulled hard. The cart shot forward. The brief moment of acceleration was enough to send the fat boy tumbling backwards. He flipped out of the cart entirely, landing so hard on the stone street below it cracked.

“Ah, gods,” he moaned as he lay face down on the ground. With a great effort he pushed himself up on his hands, looking a lot like the seals Terry had seen at the marina that day he filled in for another shit shoveler. “We’ve messed up the foundation for sure. It’s cracked, it is very cracked, ah gods,” he sighed and laid back down on the ground.

Terry couldn’t believe it. He looked over his body once looking for any changes, but he found nothing. He approached the side of the cart, grabbed it with both hands, and lifted it completely off the ground. He couldn’t contain his own giddy laughter. With strength like this he could easily make more money working construction, or even at a mine somewhere; Terry bet he could do the work of three miners all on his own. Seven gold a week would be chump change in comparison.

“At least it worked for you,” the boy said, rolling onto his back to see Terry hoisting the cart like it weighed no more than a feather. “I tried it myself but couldn’t get anywhere.” The fat boy examined his fingernails and adopted a haughty tone, "I’m probably just too complicated, too mysterious, enigmatic some might say. It's a good thing you’re simple, or I’d be stuck here forever.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Terry snorted a laugh at the barb and set the cart down.

“We should get going. We don’t know if the effect will be permanent,” the boy said.

“Not permanent?” Terry asked, fear striking his heart. He’d only had this incredible strength for a few minutes, but he was already in love with it.

The boy pushed himself to his feet and brushed the dirt off his body. “Yeah I remember something about whatever this is needing to settle, or stabilize or something like that.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what that means, so it’s safe to assume we’re going to botch it, and you’ll have to keep starting over until you figure out how to make it stick.”

Terry would give anything to keep this power permanently, even the three thousand gold. He wouldn’t even need gold, if he was this strong all the time. He imagined how easily he could make that money back. Who needs something heavy moved for five gold? Need your field plowed in half the time it takes your ox? Just gimme ten gold.

“Is there a way you could find out how to make it permanent?” Terry asked, trying hard to keep the eagerness from his voice.

“My grandfather kept a lot of journals and books and these things called ‘manuals’ in his study. Answer is probably in one of them,” the boy said as he climbed back into the cart again.

“Could we get them?” Terry asked, taking the cart handle with one hand and pulling it closer to the pile of shit he’d come here for in the first place.

“Not anymore, obviously. If I go back to the palace, I’m dead.”

“What if I go?” Terry set the cart down and grabbed his shovel.

“You wouldn’t make it past the front door,” the boy said. “The guards would stop you.”

“What if I’m not seen?” Terry tossed the first shovel full of shit onto the boy's legs.

“What, you mean sneak in and steal them?” the boy’s voice was nasally from holding his nose shut with his fingers.

Terry nodded. The boy’s face was dismissive at first, but his mind still seemed to be churning anyway.

“An interesting thought exercise. With my grandfather dead, it might be doable. If you’ve got this strength available, you can scale the walls at night, find a balcony with an open window near the study, pop in, grab the stuff, then pop out. Could be done fairly quickly, as long as you know where the study is.”

“Which you do,” Terry pointed out. He let himself a hopeful glance up at the towers tall enough to be seen over the top of the ten foot tall wall of hedges surrounding them. His shoveling quickened as his excitement began to boil over.

“I do, and if you can get me all the way out of the city, I’ll tell you where to look.”

“Done,” Terry said. His plan to steal the boy’s money and leave him for dead was now on hold. With all this power, and potentially even more coming his way, if he found some good stuff in the palace he wouldn’t need this boy’s money. He could make his own money, and he’d gain a very wealthy ally, if the boy managed to keep himself alive long enough to get to some place where he wasn’t a wanted criminal.

“So, I don’t want to be too intrusive or forward,” began the naked boy who’d just asked Terry to bury him in shit only an hour ago, “but, where’s the black stuff? Did it taste gross?”

“The ‘what’ now?” Terry asked, screwing up his face in confusion.

“The black stuff. I remember reading that once someone starts messing around with this stuff, they spit up stinky black stuff like that looks like tar.”

Terry looked around the area where he’d passed out earlier, but he found nothing. “I don’t think I spit up anything.”

“Really? Huh. Maybe you did it wrong then.”

“Me? I was just doing what you said,” Terry defended.

“Right, and I’m just sort of piecing things together from old memories. I don’t know what I’m doing,” the boy said matter-of-factly. “Hence, you probably did it wrong.”

Terry tossed a load of shit at the boy’s face.

“Hey!” the boy said just before he gagged. “I wasn’t blaming you, merely saying you don’t know how to do it right. This is one of those times it’s acceptable to be ignorant and work with what you have.”

Terry tossed another load at his chest.

“Oh, gods.” The boy heaved, much to Terry’s amusement.

The boy continued talking while Terry steadily buried him. Terry’s muscles didn’t tire, and he got to throw shit on some annoyingly talkative noble born boy who was about to give him more gold than he’d ever seen in his life and potentially the key to making his newfound strength permanent. It really was turning into a great day.

==================================

Her plan was unfolding as she’d hoped. The toxic boy found the fat boy, and not a moment too soon. The boys did not see how close they’d come to being discovered as she had. She was forced to powerlessly watch as the guards sent to search the waste pile area approached the fat boy’s hiding spot. One of the guards spotted the toxic boy with his shovel and cart making his way toward them, mere moments before it would have been too late.

They quickly decided to check again a little later when the boy was gone, agreeing between themselves that the stench became much more foul when the pile of waste was disturbed by a shovel. Crisis averted. If the boys were discovered before they escaped the city, her plan could take a very dramatic turn for the worse.

For now, she could do nothing more to help. So she watched as the two boys prepared their daring escape, all while having a very stimulating conversation about the nature of the force that was seeping into their world little by little.

It went by many names over the many eons she'd observed: Qi, mana, magic, and power were the most common. Sometimes very religious humans rose to power early in the cycle, and they'd call it things like Inner Light or Holy Spirit.

These names were all fine, but she was hoping someone would come up with something new to shake things up a bit. A powerful name, one that truly captured its essence.

It lifted her heart to see them contemplating the mysteries of their new reality. Truly, she had chosen well, and these two boys were on the path to great things.

============================

“Juice!” said the boy who was almost entirely covered in shit.

“We're not calling it 'Juice.'”

“Oh, and you think Qi is better? It sounds like you got too tired halfway through saying cheese.”

“It's what you said the Emperor called it, and I think he'd know.”

“That’s a dumb name, and I’m not using the same dumb name my grandfather used for it because that guy was a prick. I'm calling it Juice. You can call it Qi if you want, but you’ll look ridiculous once Juice takes the world by storm,” the boy asserted in a grand voice. Terry tossed a load of shit directly on his face.

“You're an idiot.”