Monday - Day 2 - 9 May 2021

  Thomas

  Too many potholes were filled in with unbelievable amounts of blood and other viscera. Thank goodness I’m in a helluva hallucination. The devastation scattered across the highway would be too much for any sane person to bare. You could have told me it was fake blood from an overturned party truck at this point and I would’ve believed you. Buckets of the too dark crimson fluid covered smashed and decaying cars, shattered windows, ripped up tires, and what was left of the bombed out pavement.

  Instinct helped me figure out my powers on the fly. Instinct, and a whole crap ton of adrenaline fueled practice combining with the terrorizing flood of woodland animals on crack trying to eat my face off.

  Fear. That’s it, it was the fear. Sheer, absolute terror galvanizing primal and implanted instincts that moved my body better than my conscious self ever could. It almost felt like I was having an out of body experience watching the graphic violence as the flow of battle shifted in and out of my favor. Every spike of fear just poured more adrenalin into my system and I acted without thinking.

  House cats that were no longer house cats but small lions and tigers came out of the woodwork madly yowling for my blood. Stray dogs that put wolves to shame joined in the fun in a concerted effort to bring me down. Their slitted red eyes scared me more than their fangs that were reminiscent of sabertooth tigers.

  Joining in the fun were the squirrels. I’m not even sure how this threat dynamic flipped but clearly the steroidal mini-maniacs were the worst. Each overblown bastard would scream to the heavens and then chuck energy infused acorns at me that exploded in a fireball of splinters and pure energy that shredded through the debris strewn across the interstate like it was wet tissue paper. My new abilities barely kept me alive in the beginning as instinct, that’s the only word for it, instinct projected shields that absorbed and redirected the deadly explosions.

  My status screen rippled on and off as I pulled it up during the short breaks I managed to snag when I took cover inside turned over eighteen wheelers.

  The first pack of dogs I fought helped clue me in to my powers. Beefed up Doggie number one shoulder checked me into a car as he sprinted past me. The roided up bruiser served as a mere distraction but the kinetic force of that blunt hit drained away into my soul while that kinetic energy circled right back out into a different power as Mange number two came at me low to hamstring me. The captured energy drained away as hardened plates of bone grew out from my leg to prevent the four inch long fangs from tearing my flesh while the kinetic force of the bite also drained away right after that.

  Yelling hoarsely with fear, just one punch out of my flurry of punches transmitted all the stored kinetic power of several canine bites directly from my fist down into the skull of a third dog. I didn’t even get to savor the surprise as its furry head exploded, my hand temporarily transmitting the force of a sledgehammer wielded by a man several times my size. The ugly canine’s eyeballs exploded outwards, splatting against the dirty asphalt. One of them bounced off the road and rolled into the woods.

  Each intense contest of survival honed my understanding of my powers, my abilities. Reality itself felt suspect to me but at least I was having a fucking blast. The deadly encounters only took a minute or less but they felt like hours of concentrated terror and pain designed to break me down. My mental energy drained away as my soul instinctively conjured a floating translucent shield allowing me to limit the number of enemies I faced at a time. ‘Projected Will’, the name of my instinctive barrier magic, activated as a reflex, something that required practice or intense circumstances to bring out.

  Each impact against my ‘Projected Will’, while dangerous, served a secondary purpose. The ability had a regenerative effect, the kinetic energy of each impact draining back into wherever it went, restoring the energy that conjured a shield. My abilities seemed to feed off each other, channeling power from one to the other. That kinetic energy storage ability, ‘Pizo-retentive’, gathered ambient and direct kinetic energy for later or instant use. For the leftover energy of the smaller impacts, those went into growing plates or spines of bone armor that give me yet another evolutionary leg up. ‘Fractured Growth’ repaired my bones from when I was thrown from my motorcycle and kept up with my offensive needs. All of my strike points such as my knees, knuckles, elbows, forehead, and feet were sheathed in bone plates sporadically covered in wickedly serrated spikes.

  Oddly enough, the big spikes of energy fueling my powers came from the mutated squirrels. The shockwaves from their bomb-acorns impacting my barriers shattered them but provided me more power than it took to make another shield. It was an increasing feedback loop that ultimately benefited me even if it temporarily removed a conjured shelf from the field. Each woody boom filled my energy tank giving me the power required to enhance my abilities. The more I fought, the more I realized the natural overfilling of my power tank bled into my other abilities. With a change of intent, I discovered that I could funnel the extra energy into growing more bone armor and weapons or I could use it to enhance my body itself.

  Feeling the burn but also loving the raw exertion, I intentionally absorbed explosion after explosion, funneling the overflow into speeding up my reactions and enhancing my strength to the point where I not only kept up but surpassed my furry horde of insane murderous animals fighting for my blood.

  Four miles of intense fighting down the remains of Interstate 95 left me looking more alien than human as I only added to my bone armor as time went on. Ivory blades covered in gore extended from the sides of my forearms while an entire suit of bone armor protected me. Even with my own punches and kicks, I could use my ‘Pizo-retentive’ ability to store up energy from my own strikes, reducing their power from 100% energy intensive to 95% energy intensive, rerouting and saving 5% of each strike back into storage. Each step as I ran also generated a pulse kinetic energy that traveled from my booted feet striking the hard pavement. The small pulses rattled through my armor and legs, generating enough oomph for me in my suit of bone armor to keep moving with the extra weight.

  Strangely enough, people didn’t let me get within a football field of them to talk. I saw families get torn apart by the wild animals but they still wouldn’t let me save them. I tried. I hurled bone blades and blasted through squealing tangles of furiously rabid creatures desperately trying to fill their stomachs with meat, any kind of meat. I didn’t even want to glance down at the gore dripping off of me.

  That couldn’t be the reason . . . could it?

  The sun began to set and a chill washed over the derelict interstate. Not wanting to be caught with my pants down, I picked up my pace as I saw the sign for Stafford just a mile away. How insane must I be? Could civilization be any worse than out here? What the fuck kind of drug did I take last night?

  ******

  Sandra - Monday - Day 2 - 9 May 2021

  Tendrils of a new tomato vine curled around my hand as I smiled and happily plucked yet another perfectly ripe vegetable for later. The potatoes were already gathered in a pile up on the porch for later. I made sure to let them stay covered in dirt as removing it too early allows them to rot. My powers filled me with joy, allowing what was once a hobby to now be a fulfilling work of passion as my plants just gave up their fruit, their meat, their products to me when I expressed a desire for it. Nothing is cooler than gazing at the ground and wanting a potato and then watching as the plant responded to my magic and unearthed the potato for me! I didn’t even have to get dirty if I didn’t want to.

  And yet, with Grant gone, I could feel an unnatural rage of torrential green poke through me the same way that potato eerily climbed out of the ground without any contact from me. Thoughts not entirely my own ran through my head as I gazed at the sky with peace in my heart and yet streaks of rage flickered through me as I rose through the air and gazed at the suburbs around me.

  Disgusting. Filthy. Unnatural. Sickening.

  My view was unimpeded as my second latest creation lifted me four stories in the air. A magically empowered rose bush with a vine thicker than a telephone pole gently served as a comfortable lounge chair. I was, I am . . . Queen of all I could see. With this view of the manmade, artificial edifices to their own ego, I mused.

  Nothing sucks more on an existential level than civilization. Look at us! Humanity . . . Pathetic. Weak. Fat. Sick. The list of self-induced and environmentally induced maladies stretches longer than a goddamn Walgreens receipt. And it’s all our fault. In the effort to make life better, we succeeded. Too well. We removed the necessary sense of struggle from the striving that makes existence worth it. And we got exactly what we wanted. Then we started to get exactly what we deserved.

  But for some strange reason, we just kept on going.

  Society strains at the edges. The very Earth we walk upon cries out for the scales to be balanced once again. But did we really need it as the punishments we so richly deserved came from the advancements we fought so hard for? Apartments to limit the space we can live in. Cities to take away our fresh air. Grocery stores to remove nutritious home-grown food. Treatment plants to replace natural springs and remove healthy minerals that flow downstream from the bones of the mountains. The sword of Damocles didn’t care about cutting away the filth of our life, but that blade cut in so many more ways. Cars helped us get further and faster but our bodies were designed to move. They needed to move.

  Everything. EVERYTHING.

  You don’t have to be a full on weed smokin’ homeopath hippie to understand that not everything in the modern world is good for you. Even the suburbs are a travesty just waiting to happen.

  From the high rise of my magical vine lifting me up, I could see just about everything. Patches of small fires raged to the west where the disenfranchised part of Fredericksburg met the formerly lively historic streets. The bridge overpass on Route One to the north and west shattered as if a playful giant had kicked it to pieces like a child destroying a town made out of blocks. Unfortunately, the University of Mary Washington campus blocked my southern view as it sat atop the only substantial hill in the area.

  Maybe . . . maybe it should be covered in green . . .

  *******

  Grant - Monday - Day 2 - 9 May 2021

  An hour’s worth of a forced bewildered meet and greet had me sweating like a cracked out whore in church. Too many of my fears were realized in the meeting that stretched out longer than I was comfortable with. Now, church was real. At least real in the real sense of the word, as in magic is real and angels are real and deities are real including theirs! Mr. Old Testament was back and I could see the proof in their holy pudding.

  I just wanted to get the fuck home. Fuck this.

  The thought of ‘fire and brimstone’ made me shudder. A stray thought ran past my quivering hindbrain, what must the other parts of the world be like? Would Mexico be a bloodthirsty hellhole from some Aztecian cultists rearing their warmongering heads? Would China fall due to the second coming of Genghis Khan spurred on by the conquering mindset of his Tengrist ancestors?

  Religion is a scary subject.

  I mean, in my mind, no religion was faultless. We’re basically hairless murder apes that hoot at the stars while we stomp on a pristine rock hurtling through the universe, err, multiverse? I think we’re too dumb to know anything for sure even though my own family would beg to differ. My spine started to tingle . . . the more information I took in from these trusting people the more my own worldview began to crack. Elvis came from a Hellenic-Deific background and now these typical suburbanites just had their own beliefs confirmed in the most unusual way possible.

  What was the truth? What IS the truth? Is there ‘A’ truth?

  These people had no qualms, no hesitation whatsoever in showing me their statuses and I couldn’t help but put the pieces together as I struggled with a capsizing paradigm. This group of holy rollers had everything they needed to straight up conquer the surrounding area. The old women of the church with their pearls and hats and their long gray dresses were magically infused with various abilities to heal and nurture as well as faith-based spells to cleanse and purify food and water. Unearthly music from a ripped model-looking dude that claimed he used to be really fat with a toupee in the corner literally made that part of the sanctuary light up with an aura that came from nowhere but everyone could see it.

  All of the elderly were regaining signs of youth and virility while the young were eagerly testing out their new abilities. A few in that group even had abilities to conjure food or conjure duplicates of existing food. Be it far from me to leave out the fact that there were spells in their statuses that claimed to call down Angels in times of need or ‘grant the strength of Samson’.

  Numerous men that used to be well-aged proudly showed off conjured swords of solid flame harder than steel that they could pull from nowhere at the drop of a hat but what kept grabbing my attention was that the old people were getting younger. Old soldiers and blue collar men regaining the musculature and posture of their youth. Old women regaining beauty seasoned with the maturity of their years.

  As the congregation tried out their ‘God-given’ powers, they were growing younger as if thirty years of aging were just taken off the top. The oldest grandpa who said he was ninety-five couldn’t believe his own eyes as he juggled his own magic blades just like ‘he did when he was a spry fifty year old’!

  I took notes. I literally pulled out my notebook and copied down abilities that I thought would be useful to know in the future, who could do what and how many people could do that thing.

  Big Elvis didn’t catch onto my nervousness, even if the young people in this hundred strong group eyed his hulking frame like they were going to string him up and burn his heretical ass at the stake. Not they could. Elvis was a bull elephant loosely tied to a pole not realizing that if he just flexed, he’d break his chains. I tried not to stare as Elvis treated every dish and piece of silverware as if they were precious glass, delicately picking them up and placing them further away so he wouldn’t accidentally smash the dishes of the people who healed his brain.

  Turning my attention to the more innocent churchgoers, watching these strangers joyfully break the laws of physics, my very soul quivered. Young women sang physical objects into being, crafted clothes from magic, exhibited real faith that affected actual materials, and then the air itself shook when the younger men sang right along, their outfits shifting from Sunday suits to paladin-esque armor as the hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ rang out. The glow of the sourceless light in the church pulsed to the beat.

  Scary.

  Faith. Real bloody faith. I could see it in their eyes, the very beginnings of zealotry. They had the means to make it happen. Just about every single one of them, from what I can recall, had a means of magical healing and an offensive spell or conjured blade. The damn list went on and on. I took notes in my head. At least one in five had a way to enhance any of their brethren’s spells or attributes, and those that still appeared old had spells to grow and maintain the ‘claimed land’ around the church. They had zero qualms openly sharing their status screens. More than a few made them big enough for entire groups of people to see. I had to tamp down on my intrusive thoughts of starting a very profitable business providing Alchemically forged suits of armor and enhanced building materials for the church. I’d have endless healing, food whenever I want, and a mercenary team with built in fervor!

  My green goblin of envy focused in on the idea of a dedicated group that would buy my future wares. I took down notes about those ideas as well, what I could make and what they might find useful.

  Getting back to the matter at hand, I used my powers of deduction along with many questions to wide-eyed believers with no sense of informational security, to find out that the ‘claimed land’ around the church was a sort of holy domain blessed with supernatural auras that could grow based on the length of time the church building stood. Not only would time enhance the holy auras, but it could also grow based on how many followers they could gain or allies they could persuade.

  On some level, the idea itself was brilliant. Think about the awe that the great cathedrals of Old Europe would inspire, that was being done here. Within that area, the believers were at the center of their power and could call upon even greater power in a time of need. The church itself functioned as an altar of power. Faith itself congregated at this location. With enough time and only within that area, it would become impregnable and every defender would be a bastion of power. It was a system of tangible power designed to grow the claimed area and give benefits to all who join.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Who knows what they could accomplish if they had a genuine leader . . . and that realization made me look around with eyes that were truly opened. Most of the parish looked on this event, these powers, the surrounding circumstances with absolute wonder but only a few of their number carried themselves with a hard-bitten air. These were the ones to watch out for. More than one barrel chested construction worker stood in front of his petite wife bawling as she clutched at her tattoos where her children now resided. A few more of the capable ones of the flock made themselves known indirectly as they intently patrolled the hallways and grounds of the building, looking high and low for anything out of place.

  It was easy to see that the church structure itself wasn’t designed with defense in mind. The tall windows of thin glass covered most of the front and even the front doors were double doors of mostly glass. From there, you could clearly follow anyone as they walked through the big wide corridors and multiple entrances complete with glass doors allowed easy ingress to any enemy at any time. Without the current infusion of Holy Aura surrounding the place, I’d place a serious bet that I would have no trouble slipping in without notice even with my over-armored self. Too many damn doors.

  A slight nudge from Elvis snapped me out of my displaced reverie.

  “They don’t seem to like you very much.” His furtive glances around the well lit room almost made me laugh. I wanted to snort and say ‘duh’ but these people weren’t really warming up to us, even with the reluctant sign off from their leaders.

  I nudged Elvis back. “Think it’s you, man. Gotta be your size or your stink. Not sure which one.”

  Granny Wick smacked my armored shoulder with her hand. Definitely not the frail hand of an aged lady, but the meaty hand of a farm woman who came from thick stock and lived off of hard work and plenty of cornbread. A ripple of translucent white something pulsed from her hand and through me soothing the accumulated aches and pains.

  Quick as a flash, ol’ Granny Wick small talked us out of the church and right back onto the street with a reassurance that if we ever needed anything to ‘come on by agaeen’. She didn’t smack my butt like she did Elvis’ but I wasn’t jealous. That big man scooted faster down the road yelling for me to wait up.

  *******

  I was grateful for the healing, not just for Elvis, but for me too. We might have even died without it. What should have been a five minute walk turned into a thirty minute free-for-all. Who would have guessed that squirrels would figure out energy-based artillery??? Without that hit of holy rejuvenation, Elvis and I might not have made it back alive.

  “LOOK OUT!”

  Elvis’s massive picnic table shield covered in roadsign steel shuddered under the weight of multiple tiny explosions. I took shelter underneath, my own armor flaring out to catch the dynamite infused acorns landing all around us.

  I hadn’t been this pissed in a long time. “I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO BE AFRAID OF SQUIRRELS!”

  Elvis laughed. I hadn’t seen him do that before. He answered my shout with his own. “I CAN THINK AGAIN!” A brutal downward golf swing of his warhammer gouged into the earth sending a deadly spray of rock and dirt in the direction of the squirrels. Screaming chitters heralded their ends as Elvis’ overpowered scoops sent blasts of asphalt in their direction like claymores.

  “I’M NOT STUPID NO MO’!” SHKKKKRRRRKK! A rushing tomcat the size of a wolf flashed by me in two pieces as Elvis swung his warhammer again, its massive bearded blade effortlessly powering through the soft tissue. The blow was more akin to a sharp cow catcher on the front of a train blasting the creature to pieces than a scalpel delicately cutting through delicate flesh. “THE FOG IS LIFTED!”

  I watched with pure, unadulterated awe as this veritable giant of a boy with his eyes wide open, heralding the doom of all mutated furry creatures that opposed him with a childish grin on his face . The church had set his mind free, and what a bloody journey he had embarked on.

  “I CAN THINK AGAIN!”

  “Let me have a goddamn turn!” I yelled, darting to the side and accurately throwing magically shaped chunks of stone that I pulled from the ground. As the stones left my grip flying towards more squirrels chittering at each other for more ammo, I could feel my magical influence over the stone hanging on for just a split second. Each thrown projectile morphed into a deadly orb covered in spikes, definitely more spike than stone by the time they obliterated the deadly furry cannoneers. Even though my aim was pretty good, my job was easier due to the fact that squirrely bombardiers were now the size of well fed tomcats.

  A dull pain radiated through my leg as I toppled over, a neighborhood dog taking advantage of my blind side to shoulder charge the back of my knee. His fangs skittered over my leg armor and I flopped over as my legs gave out for just a moment in surprise. “FACK!”

  Desperately trying to stay alive, I instinctively grasped at my Terrastria, forcing the very landscape around me to come to me. Loose chunks of stone impacted me, molding like clay to completely cover my vulnerable spots. Long fangs tore at the rough stone, scoring thin marks down my sides and neck.

  “Gerroff’a him!” Elvis growled. He swung a massive leg, booting the two headed australian shepherd with six legs into the dirt. I felt the tug as the dog clung to me with all of its might, its paws having longer than usual nails. They were even more hooked than canine toenails should be . . . these were almost catlike. Elvis pancaked its unusually wide head against the pavement. “They all LOOK weird! What’s wrong with them?”

  I gasped, pulling myself back to my feet just in time to catch yet another tomcat on my shield. “Mutations! Mana!” I coughed, spitting out the yowling creature’s blood as I grabbed its right lower jaw and yanked it clean off. “They’ve gone feral and gotten upgrades, like us but meaner!”

  With a swing of my shield, I bashed in the other head that went even crazier the more damage it took. The dead mutant canine fell to the ground in a wet thump. I pointed around at the pulverized bodies of our former canine friends. “”Look, some have horns that shouldn’t be there and I swear that dog’s shoulder that took me out for a minute there felt like damn rebar. We’re not the only ones getting upgrades.” Taking the time to toss the biggest pieces of gore into somebody’s yard took just a minute and Elvis watched as I unceremoniously used my magic to sink the mess deep into the earth.

  The brief respite didn’t last long as another round of twisted suburban mammal freaks sprinted from their cover in random directions. A nasty raccoon barreled out from the inside of a burned out car and three identical felines tied together by ethereal umbilical cords sprang from a pair of willow trees next to the sidewalk.

  Elvis roared, grabbing the attention of our furry assailants as I hefted my weapon. We were one street corner and a short jog away from home, just far enough away for this to be tragic. “Do you think they have screens too?” Elvis asked, unleashing his inner barbarian, raging against the retreating tide of nature’s hellions. “Maybe they got powers just like us or something?”

  I swung my own warhammer in front of me, warding off more mammalian mutants that seemed to learn from their pack’s mistakes. I didn’t let up, holding both my shield and warhammer with my left hand. When the warhammer got stuck in a particularly beefy cat, I pivoted to calling up pointy chunks of stone and hurling twenty plus pounds of death with superstrength. I might as well have been using cannonballs. Each irregular block of stone was the equivalent weight of sixty baseballs and moving at a speed comparable to a subsonic missile. The kinetic energy alone, ignoring the spiky parts of the stone boulders, caused incredible damage equivalent to a ballista at close range. Each hit might as well have been a mini-meteor capable of removing legs, compacting chest cavities, tearing off heads and cutting spines in two.

  Elvis stopped for a few moments as the animals pulled back out of range. One or two more perished under my pitches of death. “You’re pretty fucking scary.” He stomped forward and examined the closest victim of my thrown doom rocks. “It looks just like one of my hammer hits. How strong are you?”

  I looked him in the eye. “I mean, strong enough to do that.” We both looked down at the bloody mess at our feet and all around us. I saw the glint of respect in his eye. Unconsciously, the big brute flexed his arm and then stared at his own muscle as if unable to believe that he’d grown massively in the past day or so. I’d bet all the money in my non-existent retirement that he was still growing.

  “Yup.” Elvis nodded sagely. “That’s definitely strong.” He looked down again, curling his hand tightly around his shield before looking back at me. “You think I can do that?”

  I laughed so hard that I bent over. “Whew! Okay dude, come on.” Picking up my hammer out of the corpse with a squelch, I swung down and smashed the pavement until some sizable chunks were visible. “Here, just grab one of these and chuck it at anything.”

  Elvis stared at the crumbling concrete that was shaped like two mushed volleyballs stuck together.

  “Preferably at something that doesn’t matter!” I added, trying to stifle the aftershocks of my laughter. The amount of devastation that Elvis could casually output is not something I want to witness just yet. Not this close to my house.

  I did have to be fair. We were standing in a target rich environment, if we were callous psychopaths. And as I had no desire to tell Elvis to chuck large stones at the ridiculous number of houses around us, even though the magic rich environment was rapidly turning them into dilapidated shacks, there could still be survivors in there.

  Seeing Elvis’ confusion as he came to the same conclusion, I pointed out the molding street sign on the corner and then the crappy fixer upper five houses down that I hated. It’s not that I hated a man having a project, cause my wife knows that I have a ton, but I suspected that this particular old fart actually had dementia so he’s just been taking apart and putting the same carburetor back together for three years.

  “Right there.” I said, tossing a small stone at the orange Ford Pinto. It pinged off the rusty exterior. The defunct car sat lopsided in the driveway on three half filled tires. “It’s old, beyond rusty, and now no cars work thanks to magic. That’s the ticket.”

  Elvis shrugged. Tossing the awkward boulder up a few times to gauge its weight, he reared back and sent the uneven concrete chunk straight through the damn car and into the tree twenty yards away. The scarred windows exploded and the metal frame of the car folded inward like cheap plastic.

  Elvis whistled. “I can honestly say that I don’t know my own strength.”

  I could feel the laughter trying to return but when Elvis turned a bit too quick, droplets of the smelly gore on his shoulder got flung into my face. My mood began to sour but then I took a deep breath and started walking back towards home, eager for the day to be over so I could clean up.

  “Come on, you mammoth of a human!” I yelled over my shoulder. “I promised to help you claim a house, didn’t I?”

  Oddly enough, Elvis chose the smallest house but after a moment I saw that his choice actually did make sense. The small house had an unusually large set of front double doors so he wouldn’t have to stoop to walk into his own house. Working together, we explored the house and emptied it of anything that didn’t matter. The silence filled the room as I respectfully swept up the disintegrated remains of the former occupants. The three pairs of jeans on the floor of the kitchen lay crumpled on the floor and I held back a few tears that threatened to fall.

  Guilt chewed on my conscience, worrying away tightly bolted doors holding back my emotions that wouldn’t help me in this moment. I buried the dust in a stone box out back.

  In the last few years, I hadn’t taken the time to get to know my neighbors. Being a happy hermit and spending time with my wife was good enough for me but it just felt too damn callous. Here I was, quickly sweeping up the remains of perfect strangers who had lived within eyesight of my front porch. Why in the world did I not know anything about these people?

  They had hopes and dreams too. They lived, fought, struggled, survived . . . until now.

  “You okay?” Elvis’ question pulled me up short causing me to shake my head and get back to cleaning up.

  I coughed to cover up my delay in answering. “Yeah, I’m good. Just got a few details to take care of.”

  With the kitchen finally decluttered, which consisted of hauling everything out into the front yard, I got started with the real magic. Elvis, due to his ridiculous size, required special accommodations. After using Terrastria to pull up large chunks of stone from underneath the lawn, I strategically joined them all together to shape a large circular stone platform a few yards in front of the house.

  After a few minutes of deliberation, I then formed an inner border of raised stone just inside the edge so my platform could support my Alchemy. I reviewed my implanted memories and instincts trying to find the reason for the circle formation being required. All I could verify is that it contained the energy, defined the materials being used and the Alchemy process wouldn’t work without. Something niggled at my brain telling me there was more but I just couldn’t get to that stuff yet. It hurt my brain when I tried to pull it out.

  Elvis paused his hauling activities to raise an eyebrow in my direction.

  Sighing as I never really fully explained my intentions or my Alchemy power to him, I gestured at the odd looking setup in front of us. “It’s what I used to make my weapons and everybody else’s armor,” I said, knocking my armored knuckles against the Alchemy table. “From what I’ve gathered, I can basically rebuild, fix, mold, or enhance anything within the circle. It costs me energy and I have to make sure that I have all of the required ingredients. A good example is, if I break the handle on a hammer, I need to make sure that all of the hammer is here within the circle. And if I’m missing pieces, I can put extra lumber in the ritual circle and the base ingredients will go towards filling in for the missing pieces.”

  Shrugging at his puzzled face, I laughed. “Another example is, if I put two basic hammers in the center, I can fuse them together to make a hammer that’s twice as big or that’s still the same size but far more dense. I’ve covered boots with tire rubber, reshaped street signs and park benches to make your gear, and even more. It’s basically turned me into a Demi-god of material manipulation.”

  Elvis stared at me with wonder. “DOES THAT MEAN I CAN HAVE ME-SIZED STUFF?!”

  “I don’t see why not?”

  “I can’t tell you how difficult it is to find stuff in my size. Mama had to stitch clothes together from the thrift store to make stuff I could wear.”

  Shaking my head to dissuade myself from spouting off the obligatory fat jokes, I got my mind right and focused on the task at hand. The work required to fix up the house and get it fitted with Elvis-sized furniture flew by. Not only did I no longer have to do the lifting or organizing for cleaning the house out, but Elvis gathered anything and everything that he thought I might need. He went over and beyond when he saw what I could do. Soon, the yard was filled up with piles of couches both new and old balanced with stacks of chairs so that nothing would fall. Six beds of varying sizes were stacked up near the road and the small maple tree in the corner of the overgrown yard was almost hidden by the piles of dismantled cars. Two columns of tires leaned against each other next to the road.

  A separate pile of old wooden and solid wooden furniture sat off to the far side blocking the crumbling sidewalk.

  “I’m going to have to make a bigger ritual circle.” I complained, wishing for a plate full of sandwiches to quiet the grumbling in my stomach.

  In passing, with arms full of cracked televisions and computers, Elvis shouted out, “I’m going to use other empty houses as storage. There’s enough of them to fill with shit.”

  “IF IT’S METAL . . . BRING IT TO ME!” I yelled back. Even though I kept all of my armor on and weapons right next to me, I wasn’t really worried about getting attacked by the random swarms of bloodthirsty, mana-twisted animals. Elvis’s happy rushing around carrying all kinds of unorganized household stuff combined with the lingering scent of blood served as a deterrent.

  With my brutish minion supplying my material needs, I got busy using Alchemy to craft basic items that were reinforced enough to handle his prodigious size and strength. Hopefully, random careless movements won’t shatter my additions to his house.

  First, I created the most important mainstay of any household, the bed. Three normal wooden bed frames of differing sizes along with two car chassis. Over six hundred pounds of metal and one hundred pounds of wood went into crafting an extra long king size bed for Elvis. A moderate amount of energy poured out of my hands and into the crafting circle, swirling around until all of the material within was soaked with my power. I wanted all of the material used so it all had to be touched with my mana.

  As my Alchemy got to work, every bit of wood and metal within the circle soaked up the power rushing out of me before glowing a soft white to the point that I could no longer see silver or brown. I held my breath as I watched the picture of what I wanted in my head coalesce into reality right in front of me. Thick support beams of steel with extra braces and triple the thickness formed the basis for the bed while the wood was shaped around the metal so that it looked like a normal bed, if triple the size to accommodate Elvis.

  “Holy fucking bananas, that’s big!” Laughing at being able to wield the primal forces of creation, I used my super-strength to shift the reinforced bed frame up and off the Alchemy circle. It slipped off and rolled down and flipped heavily into the lawn. It didn’t make a creak or any noise other than a dull thud as the feet of the frame slammed a few inches into the soil.

  “Your turn, big man!” I called out. Elvis whooped with joy and hoisted it above his head with ease.

  “Hold up!” He said, frowning at the house in front of him. “This won’t fit through the doorway!”

  “Set it down,” I said, pointing at the grass in front of me. “There’s an easy trick here. Do you see the fifth support leg in the very center?”

  As Elvis gingerly put his newest possession down, I stepped over the side of the bedframe and then grabbed the center pillar, giving it a solid twist. The thick square leg rotated ninety degrees, fitting into a perfectly shaped mold. “Now pick it up,” I ordered with a sly smile, “Just make sure to pull the two halves apart carefully.”

  Like a chinese puzzle, the bed frame’s central support in the very center was divided into two reinforced discs that sat on top of one another and were held together by the square leg providing perfect tension.

  I smirked, proud of my forethought. “Yes, I did account for Elvis sized things fitting into normal people houses. All of your stuff is basically going to have to be jury rigged in a similar manner, except for tubs because I’m going to have to reverse engineer plumbing with Alchemic equivalents.”

  Before too long, I had a reinforced dresser, a blank mannequin made out of wood that was reinforced with extra metal so Elvis could put his future suits of armor on them, basic cutlery, and even blankets and pillows that were resized to fit him.

  That amazed my teammate the most.

  “Make it make sense!” Elvis’ gigantic man paws carefully pulled on the pillow I had made for him. It was Alchemically made from five pillows, two blankets, and a pile of silk shirts from a dead rich dude. “You can just break it all down and form it into a bigger, better version of whatever it was?!”

  I clapped my hands together. “Yup. The pillows provided extra material, the blankets were for extra denseness in the stuffing as well as material for the covering, and the silk shirts went into weaving a whole bunch of extra layers so that it would be durable. I read somewhere a while ago that silk is pound for pound, stronger than steel. It’s used in parachutes, suture kits, and a bunch of other crazy stuff.”

  Just as I opened my mouth to keep going, nattering on about having more projects and planning more Alchemy-based experiments, I felt the weirdest ring in my head. Like I had an old school landline phone vibrating on the wall.

  I held up a finger and Elvis shrugged, before hauling his new stuff inside his house. “Babe, that you?” I asked, poking the mental connection that I’d forgotten about in the craziness of the day.

  The mental picture of my wife meditating on some massive flower appeared in my head, her pretty face scrunched up as she concentrated. [YES! Are you coming back anytime soon? It’s getting dark!]

  Her concern only made me love her more even though I really wanted to keep working with my Alchemy. But she did have perfect timing. I was a few fixes away from being exhausted. My Alchemy power used a ton of energy, demanding a lot more for bigger projects. The redeeming aspect of the whole thing, oddly enough, was the ritual circle. It captured the excess energy and allowed me to partially replenish my reserves from the leftover power. That, and I could slowly absorb latent mana through the Earth from my Terrastria power and the Mana-Forged trait.

  [Be there in a few!] I sent back through our mental link. [Gotta finish this real quick.] A general feeling of love mixed with impatience came through the link just before it faded to the background noise of my mind.

  As I didn’t plan on being Elvis’ keeper all night long, part of me felt bad that I hadn’t made his armor yet. My teammate had performed admirably all day, laboring without complaint and watching my back. His work ethic and lack of complaining impressed me most of all. There were a few close calls that he’d just powered right on through like a runaway train with a steroid problem.

  With this in mind, I grabbed a bunch of car parts including five doors, one chassis, three leather seats and two truck tires, putting them all into the ritual circle. “Elvis!” I barked. “Come’ere!”

  My mana slowly poured out of me as the miniature junkyard began to glow and break down before reforming into a full set of armor that wouldn’t be out of place in a Mad Max movie. The new helmet itself sported a line of short, wicked spikes going from the front all the way to the back. Next to it sat an elongated metal bat with a thicker end covered in a whole bunch of knobs. It looked like a big wiffle bat from hell. All of the rest of the gear sat in a pile but I didn’t care if it looked real nice.

  I was freaking wiped.

  Elvis didn’t hold back. Bounding up on top of the table and then picking up the gear with one swipe of his arms, he looked at me with unshed tears in his eyes. “HOLY SHIT! MAN! THIS IS AWESOME!”

  Laughing weakly, I wiped the sweat off my face and sat down in the grass. For a moment there, I felt like puking my guts out but there was nothing in my stomach to hurl.

  “It’s all for you. If it needs to be resized, I’ll do that tomorrow but this pile of stuff is for you, man. Suit of armor that’s extra thick and dense but that shouldn’t be an issue for someone with your strength. Each piece is fitted with leather so it won’t chafe and a layer of rubber from the tires to help absorb kinetic energy. The bat is basically a super-reinforced mace that’s hyperdense and should be able to be used by you without shattering right off the bat, hahaha.”

  Elvis rolled his eyes but didn’t stop hugging his near gear. “That was lame. You can do better than that.”

  Even with my limbs shaking, I pulled myself to my feet. “And after I went to bat for you today at the church? Really?”

  Elvis snickered, scratching at a non-existent beard. “Okay, that was a bit better. You do realize that puns are the lowest form of humor, right? That’s what mom used to tell me.”

  I waved him off and picked up my gear. “I’m gonna head home and take a rest. I’ll be back later with some food. If you have the time, keep gathering cars, any weapons you can find, medicinal supplies, basically anything that might help us survive. Even if it doesn’t work right now, like guns or electronics, put those in separate piles because I might be able to do something with them. There’s a serious possibility that my Alchemy power might be able to work some crazy magic with those things when I get enough practice in.”

  Elvis grinned. “For what it’s worth, I’d like to put plumbing, hot water, and motorcycles at the top of the list.”

  “Speaking of conveniences,’ I said as I was walking away, “Don’t forget to gather wood so you can start a fire. Nights are still cold in May.”