Thunder sounded a second time, and this time there was a brief flash of light that cut through the blinds of my office window. It was in the distance, but I could hear the patter of rain on the roof and glass. Storms move west to east or northeast where I live, and this was no exception. I went back to work on the math book.

  This was the first, what I’d call, real storm we’d had since the Game started. It had sprinkled a few times, but nothing much. This was the start of summer rain. I checked the weather on my computer…it said rain for the next eight to ten hours, maybe longer. The temperature was dropping through the night. Tomorrow showed a forty percent chance of more rain.

  A little more than a half hour later, my watch chimed at me. The spawn notification flashed on the upper right corner of my computer screen. The alert closed itself just after thunder hit again. I’d been tuning out the thunder while I worked, but this one sounded closer than before.

  “Shit. Spawn time. It’s pouring out there and the fighters are in metal armor. And weapons.” My trained response to thunderstorms during outdoor SCA events was to get everyone inside somewhere safe. A little rain was one thing…but not lightning while wearing metal. Nobody wanted another Pennsic Puddle, as Pennsic War 4 was called in the song commemorating it. I saved my work and headed for the front door.

  Stepping onto the porch, I stayed just out of the rain. It was coming down in a steady drizzle. Watching the Whitfords’ door open, it looked like Yoshi had stuck his head out, checking the storm. This was the first serious thunderstorm since the Game started. I bet almost everyone was going to stay inside and wait it out. “This is bad.”

  [William of Brinsford:] [IRREGULARS] [It’s spawn time and thunderstorming. Metal armor, weapons, and lightning are not a good combination, but we need to stop at least the town spawns.]

  [William of Brinsford:] [IRREGULARS] [If you know people in other guilds, we all need to get wet and stop them. We’re looking at hours of rain.]

  [Yoshimori Takeda:] [William of Brinsford] [Rain’s one thing. Lightning is something else. I know what my dad would say about going out in it wearing metal.]

  [William of Brinsford:] [Yoshimori Takeda] [I was just thinking about that. I’d say the same thing.]

  Thunder punctuated the message. It sounded closer again.

  [William of Brinsford:] [Yoshimori Takeda] [The old sign out front might take the hit before a person. Higher and more metal. Casters only this time?]

  [Yoshimori Takeda:] [William of Brinsford] [Can you help? We have three and Meg.]

  [William of Brinsford:] [Yoshimori Takeda] [Stay put. Heading over now. We still have six minutes.]

  [William of Brinsford:] [IRREGULARS] [Use casters and healers only if you can. People without metal armor. Andy, your armor’s too pretty to have it used as a lightning rod.]

  Ducking back in, I shifted what I could from my INVENTORY and put on the rest. I tried to remember if I had a working umbrella and where it was, but my memory came up blank. "Garage? Hall closet?" Inspiration sometimes hits at strange moments…I grabbed my cane instead of looking further and headed back outside.

  My idea was to see how much control I had over MANA shaping at this point. It had been improving with modifiers and practice, though it was still crude. First, I cast MANA ARMOR, figuring it would keep the rain off me.

  Before leaving the porch, I held my cane up and cast a minimum-size, minimum-defense MANA SHIELD. I shaped it not just into a circle, which I’d done before, but into a circular cone anchored on the end of my cane, wide enough to cover me by about a foot on either side. Surprisingly, it worked. Stepping out into the rain, I proudly held up my abomination, or MANA-brella if you dare. I did. The rain dripped off to all sides of me.

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  It worked. Mostly. Laughing as I headed next door, I called it my MANA-Brella. Maybe someday I could shape MANA finely enough to make a real one. The look on Yoshi’s face as I crossed the yards was, as they say, priceless. His eyes were wide and his jaw dropped.

  “Close your mouth,” I said. “Unless you’re trying to get a drink.”

  I heard laughter from behind him.

  “How did you do that?” Yoshi asked. “I’ve seen curves but not that.”

  “I didn’t know I could until I tried. Even an angled plane would’ve worked. I didn’t know the cone would, but it did. If anyone has MAGE ARMOR, you can protect yourself or someone else from the rain…and maybe lightning too. Or I can cast it on you when you come out.”

  Yoshi came first, followed by Ryan, Jo-mic, and Meg who brought an umbrella anyway. It was pink.

  “I’ll create the box…just down the spawns as fast as you can,” I said.

  This spawn wave was something I hadn’t seen before…it was all Goblins. That included a Shaman who got hit with my MANA BLAST, Ryan’s LIGHTNING BALL, and Jo-mic’s FIRE BALL as he came through the door. Our spells damaged all five Goblins. Yoshi pulled the remaining injured ones toward himself with TAUNT. Our second round of spells killed all but the fastest two, both Warrior types.

  Yoshi managed a sword hit on each before our combined BOLTs finished them off. I wished I’d checked the time…it might’ve been a little more than half a minute. We ducked inside the old pizza place to divide the loot. I just took my share of coins. The best item was a +1 Ring of Strength that went to Yoshi. The rest were standard drops. I let the four of them divide those up.

  “Let me know if you need me next spawn time,” I said. “I’ll help again…or at least keep the rain off. Forecast says we’re looking at a day or more of rain. Hopefully not continuous, but plan for it. We’ve been lucky with the weather so far.”

  Heading home, I collected my “umbrella,” which I’d left leaning against the Whitfords’ barely-a-porch. Our houses had almost the same floor plan Their porch was just a small roof over the door to keep the rain off. I’d call it a front step. The spell had ended, and it was just my cane again. I’d spent that much time with the spawning.

  Casting the same shape again, I rested it on my shoulder and took the long way down their sidewalk, out to the street edge, then followed that sidewalk to my driveway and headed home.

  Paid work was still waiting. I’ve got a little sidewalk from the edge of my porch to the driveway, and another from the front door to the main sidewalk that I almost never use. I think I’ve used it more crossing the street for spawns since this started than in the last year.

  Sometime later…around two Kenny G albums and partway through a Steve Oliver…I heard the front door open.

  “Thanks for the idea,” Blaze called out. She was loud enough to be heard over the music and the rain still coming down outside.

  After closing the door, she said, “I got my FIRE SHIELD long and wide enough to get from the car to the door without more than a few drops on me. That rain’s hard enough my shield took damage.”

  “Good,” I called out, hearing her drop her bag on the kitchen table. “How much damage?”

  She waited until she got to the office and sat down before answering. “Not much. It was only up maybe two minutes. That trick won’t work as well for Fire Mages. The SHIELD won’t last as long.”

  “I can see why. Water’s antagonistic to fire. Water Mages would have trouble with volcanic eruptions. I wonder what rain will do to Ryan’s LIGHTNING SHIELD?”

  “No clue. Maybe if something grounds it? Metal, maybe?” she guessed.

  “Yeah. We’ll have to get Pat Flannagan and Ryan to test it out sometime. Shoot a big bolt into the ground and see if it acts like a lightning rod for Lightning Bolts. Give the geeks downtown something to work on.”

  We both laughed at the thought. We knew they’d do it.

  We talked about other things…and SandB’s pizza offer. We had fun guessing what she’d put on it. A bit more than a half hour later, the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Blaze said, taking her coffee cup with her. She went to answer the door. I followed at a slower pace.

  SandB was on my porch, a large pizza box in hand. She was wearing a light blue hooded raincoat. The top of the box was wet from the rain bringing it from Bailey’s car. Her car was parked in my driveway.

  After thanking SandB for the pizza, I took the box from her and headed to the kitchen. Before I got there, I heard, “Will. We’ve got a problem,” Blaze said.

  “There’s a guy sitting on your front lawn meditating,” SandB added. “In the rain.”

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