Thursday - Day 5 - 12 May 2021

  The next two days were miserable. I didn’t know if we were about to get forty days and nights of unrelenting rain or if it would cut off any time soon but for the love of all that is holy, it just freaking poured. Half the time that it was supposed to be daytime I could’ve sworn that there was zero sun.

  I gave thanks to any deities that would listen that I did not depend upon sunlight to avoid depression. Me and rain were right as rain. However, not being able to dry off was getting to be an actual pain in my crevices.

  On the bright side of no daytime, whatever insanity had possessed the mutated animals seemed to melt away in the rain. Mike and I argued about the possible causes but it didn’t matter. We weren’t truly trapped, but it certainly felt like it. Any one of us could have just gone out in the rain by ourselves and done whatever but the memories of the first three days were still haunting us. Nobody went anywhere without at least two other people to watch our backs. The only exception was my wife Sandra who faithfully tended her garden by herself although we could easily see her from the windows in the backroom. My big fence and our hungry house would be deterrent enough for now.

  I spent those rainy days alternating between experimenting with my Alchemy and using Terrastria to work on projects like creating stone cisterns for water capture and fixing up my home and others with the clear priority being the roof of my home. I could build outwards, using my home as a starting point, and I definitely needed a place to work. Shaping chunks of stone into usable tiles that took the place of asphalt shingles formed my new roof. I took inspiration from a farming show I used to watch on Amazon prime where they used these odd stone shingles with one side sort of forming a hook so it could anchor to another piece of the roof. The best part was, Paul and Elvis could just toss chunks of stone up to me and I could turn around, shape the rock with my Terrastria and stick it where it needs to go and voila! I could even shape the stone to make large gutters with perfect drains to divert this maddening deluge.

  This choice of mine to grab Earth Magic was almost more genius than the rest of my powers. Nothing construction related is out of reach. I could pull up stone from below the dirt at my feet and shape it into chairs, tables, armor plates, tools, shingles or even entire buildings. Not that it’s a quick process, but keeping my feet in the dirt allowed me to work at an almost tireless but steady pace. I did take the time to experiment with creating bricks in the shape of Lego pieces so I could make batches of ‘bricks’ and have Elvis actually build a stone house in the future in whatever configuration he would want.

  Several large piles of carefully layered bricks created by yours truly decorated the neighborhood. I found that I could easily focus and complete monotonous tasks, like making identical extra-large Lego bricks out of stone while immersing myself in channeling Terrestria. Whenever the rain ran out of steam, I could just let my team members get to crafting basic houses in their own time.

  With all of my experimentation, I did however let out a huge sigh of relief when I completed the repairs on the roof. Working on it wasn’t even that bad. It certainly wasn’t frustrating due to my magic allowing me to shift or smooth away any issues with piecing the stone shingles together. Sandra’s mutant plants covered most of the walls and roof, I actually didn’t get rained on that much while I was up there. I could sit underneath the humongous leaves and stay mostly dry while doing. It wasn’t until I leaned to the side to catch the tossed stones that I actually got wet.

  Paul had turned out to be surprisingly useful. The man was overwhelmingly cheerful. In the last two days, he showed himself to be almost as strong and as durable as Elvis and the man did not complain. He didn’t gripe about the plain food or the long hours of fetching random ass materials for my experiments. He just happily smiled and worked to alleviate everyone else’s issues. Lannie whined about the lack of flavor and Paul would hunt in abandoned run down houses to find forgotten jars of seasonings. One of the church girls complained about wearing the same thing every day and Paul scrounged up piles of clothes made out of cotton. Just about everyone was sick of the rain and refused to go out into it but Paul would keep me and Elvis company while we worked.

  However, one of the unfortunate facts that we discovered during this deluge was that my Alchemy didn’t work in the rain. I needed either clear skies or at least a decent roof to work under.

  “I don’t understand.” Elvis groaned, piling even more material on the leftover space on my massive stone ritual table in the back yard. Getting rained on for well over two hours clearly showed us what could and could not stand up to the rain. “Wouldn’t water just be more material to work with? How is it interfering?”

  Paul carefully placed a few stone bricks next to the ritual table. “You will figure it out eventually. But is it a question of weakness? Or focus?”

  “No, it’s more like the shape of the ritual table, the circle, is what defines and keeps the energy I’m working with contained.” I answered, unsure of exactly how to describe it. “And if I don’t have that, the energy just flies out into the world and nothing constructive happens. I mean, when we cleaned out the basement, I was able to do Alchemy down there. Remember, the cups full of water in the circle didn’t mess with the process but running water certainly does. Because right before that, we pulled water out of stuff but it didn’t have a container for me to put it in and then it ran out of the circle disrupting the whole thing.”

  “This is making my brain hurt.” Elvis complained. “Just give me your best guess and we’ll work with that until we see that it’s not true.”

  “You should know!” I shot back, a bit frustrated. This unending rain was seriously getting on my nerves. “You threw water on my experiment yesterday in the basement and the whole thing almost blew us up!”

  “Right, but was it the water or was it because something crossed the circle boundary?”

  I almost flipped the ritual table over. “It doesn’t matter in the RAIN! It both MOVES and is WET!”

  Elvis held his hands up in front of his chest. “Okay! Okay! I get it. I’m sorry about almost blowing us up.”

  I heard Paul hum the words to ‘Tomorrow’ sung by that little orphan Annie before snickering behind me. He got to the part, ‘the sun will come out . . . tomorrow!’ and I just shook my head before looking straight up in the dark clouds unleashing their payload in sheets.

  “At least we don’t really have to shower.”

  Paul nodded in agreement with Elvis. “We are truly blessed. For we have our own sun.”

  True. What a strange turn of events. With the sodden landscape dampening our spirits and highly discouraging anyone or anything from going outside, that miraculous sunstone Paul brought us served as light and heat. We barely had to use any candles during the day.

  Figuring that we’d done enough work, we three walked up onto the porch where I had jury-rigged a rough wooden structure with a small privacy screen that served to keep the rain off of us so we wring our clothes out. I had a small ritual table that used to be the picnic table. This is how I knew that just water itself didn’t mess with Alchemy. I could use my Alchemy power to clean and dry our clothes. As long as I had a container to put the unwanted water into, I could just ‘alter’ the clothes to be dry. Each person would remove basically all of their clothes, use the nearby towels to dry off while I used Alchemy to be a glorified washer and dryer, and then they’d put their clothes back on.

  Rinse and repeat for us soaked individuals.

  “Can we leave now?”

  Lannie’s complaints over the last two days were really starting to get on my nerves. I ignored the two church girls whose names I literally couldn’t remember. They might as well have been freaking wallpaper. Prayer seemed to be their main activity, that and doing small things around the house at the behest of my wife and Isabella. At least Boris and Isabella had the good grace to make themselves useful. Isabella stayed out with my wife in the garden, sheltered from the rain by leaves that were magically altered to be humongous. Boris experimented with household items and anything he could find to see what could touch the rain without melting into useless goop. But his lady just had some fucking nerve.

  “You certainly can.” I said with a decisive nod, stepping inside after putting the privacy screen back. “Go on, kinda tired of you. You could use the exercise.” Isabella gasped and my wife shot me a disapproving look but I kept right on. “Get out there with Paul and Elvis and haul back useful material. There’s plenty of lumber and metal and glass out there that’ll be useful when this rain decides to get its act together and leave.”

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

  Boris stood up. “That’s it! Glass! Eureka!”

  I picked up a glass cup full of water. “What about it?

  “Glass didn’t melt either!” Boris shook the cup, spilling a few drops. He paced the small living room like a scientist gone mad. “I think my gut feeling is right. Glass didn’t melt, neither did the iron or the metal or the plain wood, it’s not about the material, mostly, it’s about the water.”

  My wife looked up from her work of pruning a small onion plant in a pot. “What does that mean? Are you saying water is dangerous now? My plants certainly aren’t suffering.”

  “No, no.” Boris pulled a plastic bottle of Dasani water out and set it on the table next to the onion plant and then put his glass of water on the other side of it. “This bottle was from your pantry. Look, it is different types of water, or the water is carrying something different. See? Look!”

  Sure enough, Sandra’s little onion plant with its thin shoots was leaning towards the water in the glass. My wife frowned at the plant and pulled it back just a bit. The green onion shoots leaned forward to the left, clearly leaning in the direction of the water in the glass.

  “Okay, we can figure this out.” I said, grabbing another glass from the cupboard. Picking up the plastic bottle, I poured that water into the new glass and set it down. The plant did nothing. I then grabbed another cup out of the cupboard, opened the kitchen window and stuck my hand out there until the glass filled up which did not take long at all. Once it was set in front of the little onion plant, the green shoots leaned over as if they were trying to reach the rainwater.

  “Try the WaterBob!”

  I nodded. “Good idea babe, technically that water is a few days old.” I picked up the onion plant, walked through the tiny hallway into the small first floor bathroom and kneeled next to the bathtub where the large plastic bag filled with water sat. “Good thing the roof didn’t leak in here.” I turned to see that Mike and his wife along with my wife and Boris were crowding in with me this room that absolutely could not fit the number of people trying to squeeze in.

  “Gimme some fucking room!” I groaned, trying not to smash my hip into the sink or the toilet.

  Boris leaned over Mike. “Look! See! It’s leaning towards the window, not the old water!”

  Sure enough, that little plant was desperately leaning towards the window streaked with rain and not the hundred gallon bag of water sitting in front of us. “Okay, y’all get movin’!” I said, hustling everyone out of the bathroom so I could think for a moment without interference. I don’t mind people but that was too many people in too small a space.

  I held that little plant up with both hands and stared at it. I gave a deliberate huff, blowing out a slow breath that rustled through the four shoots. Not really knowing what to think, I sat down on the closed toilet seat only to hear a rough grinding sound. I sprang to my feet right as a tiny crack reached my ears.

  “Oh shit.” I turned to look at my porcelain throne. “Oh shit.”

  We had been using the toilets like normal for the last couple days except we were flushing by pouring pots of rainwater down the toilet. And toilets aren’t exactly natural material. Most modern toilets are porcelain but have a synthetic glaze on them. I remember my dad a long time ago waxing on about getting a sturdy toilet and porcelain ones were the best because they could take the weight and also were far easier to clean due to how they were finished.

  He didn’t take a magic apocalypse into account though.

  Then it hit me.

  “Hold on!” I raced back into the living room and set the onion plant back in the middle of the table. “Hey, did anyone move these cups at all?”

  Everybody shook their heads no.

  My hands shook for a split second as I set the onion plant back down. This time, it still leaned towards the rainwater in the glass cup but it didn’t lean as much. A grin broke out on my face. “Boris!” I called out. “I think you might be right. Where’s that pot of toilet water?”

  That’s what we called the steel pot that held what we would use to flush the toilet. Every time someone would go, they would flush using that pot and have to refill it out in the rain before the next person could use the toilet. But between uses, it would just sit on the stove with a lid on it.

  “Where it should be.” Boris answered excitedly. “I think we’re on the same page!”

  “Let’s prove it first.” I said, carrying that little plant to the kitchen. I set it down right next to the toilet water pot and stepped back.

  “Only the tips bend!”

  Paul smiled at me. “That pot has not been there long, maybe twenty minutes.”

  “You know, that would make sense.”

  I whipped around to see Sandra standing in the doorway of the kitchen with a basket.

  “What would make sense, babe?”

  She handed me the basket with a raised eyebrow. “Remember when you bought that bulk deal of LifeStraws, the water purifying tubes? Well, I’ve been using them on water from the WaterBob for this entire time just to make sure our water is clean.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well, I tried to purify the rainwater two days ago and the entire thing melted in my hand and I haven’t tried since. The last parts to melt were the rubber seals inside of it.”

  I sighed and tried not to be too irritated. “Any other obvious things about this rain we missed in the insanity that is now our life?”

  Both my wife and Isabella let out a pained chuckle. “Well, it’s obvious in hindsight but-”

  Isabella cut in over Sandra. “The pots! The potted plants outside . . .” She pointed out the kitchen window where we could see the remains of her house. “The stone pots are still there and the plastic and rubber pots melted away.”

  Boris snatched up two LifeStraws and peeked out the window. “This confirms it. I can see where the lined up pots dissolved. There is something in the water that melts synthetic materials but not natural ones or refined natural materials.

  I cracked my knuckles before putting one of my boots up on the table. “This is odd. These boots have a lot of synthetic material in them and they didn’t melt, same with the material in my Army camo jacket or the rubber infusing the handles of our weapons.” Taking a breath to order my thoughts, I drummed my fingers before tapping a plastic cup. “I’ll have to test it, but maybe infusing mana via my Alchemy into synthetic material allows it to resist the mana in the rain that’s breaking everything down.”

  Sandra playfully glared at me. “Honey, get there faster.”

  “And that would mean that I could . . . .” I drew out the word until my wife acted like she was going to pop me good. “Haha, it would mean that I could reconstitute plastic or rubber or any synthetic material with my ability. Or, I could use Alchemy to recreate more durable versions of stuff that we need, like these LifeStraws or plastic cups or anything really.”

  It was right then that beams of sunlight broke through the clouds and lit up all the rooms of the house, especially the living and dining room.

  Boris paled as the sunshine was heralded by the accompanying howls and shrieks of mutated wildlife.

  ********

  Something black and pure drifted on the winds between worlds. Eaves of the Labyrinth scraped the endless void allowing even the most hideous of the Eldritch to attempt its winding challenges. Tunnels that flickered to allow in glimpses of endless tapestries of stars or the even deeper blackness of the Void. Only the truly Mad could exist in these corridors without falling into the Primordial soup. It was here that long claws dripping with sickening ichor caressed the motes of filth untainted by the horde. It was delicious. Those same claws tore the delicate fabric of the Labyrinth making up its walls, the furthest branches being the weakest.

  The most thin.

  With too many hands to fit in the category of humanoid, the claw tipped appendages reached out snagging the motes one by one breathing them in with great anticipation and an even greater hunger.

  The word sprang forth unbidden from the Labyrinth.

  DEEPER.

  More meaning lay bound up in that word. A world, untouched by Eternal Hunger, but so full of its food, so ripe for the picking. All may challenge Labyrinth. All may travel through the Labyrinth.

  Even the Shepherd of Decay.

  Time held no meaning this far from the center of the cosmos. It could have been millenia or a few scant seconds but the Shepherd found one of the Endless Doors. Yes another place where the tip of a root or branch connected to a plane of Reality. It knew that the Labyrinth functioned as the circulatory system for Yggdrasil, its roots and branches breathing in the constantly recycling energy of creation and sending its waste back to be processed yet again. All has its place.

  Sickness and Death. Decay and Filth. Rot and Rust.

  But to the Shepherd. It had found its home.

  ********