8 May 2021 - Day 1

  “How did we get talked into this?” I grumbled to my wife as she walked out of the bathroom. After an hour of eating, relaxing, and chatting, Mike and Isabella were outside putting on their armor while I joined Sandra who insisted on going inside to get more water right then.

  “You can’t even let me pee?” She grumbled back, irritated at me for ignoring common courtesy.

  “You couldn’t say no?” I whispered fiercely, even though I was inside my own house. Maybe it wasn’t smart to be right outside the bathroom door while the wife was using the toilet but this conversation wasn’t going to wait. “Bad idea! What do you think a bunch of Christians are going to do when they realize the world didn’t end the way they thought it would? Or maybe this is another ‘end’, another ‘armageddon’, one of many? I don’t care if they’re the peaceful kind, that shit goes right out the window when people get hungry or scared. What about the rest of the religious people? They’ve got to be losing their minds right now!”

  Sandra glared at me as I walked in the bathroom to do my business. I tried to close the door but she held it open a crack with her foot. Her expression told me that she was doing it just because I did it. “Of course I couldn’t say no! Didn’t you say there’s safety in numbers? What if someone has awesome powers that can help us get to our families or get cars working again? What if we need their help in the future? Community, right?”

  “Their community, not ours!” I hissed back. “Those people don’t know us, and I bet my non-existent 401k that half the people there have gone full zealot. We chose powers and what did the neighbors get?” I zipped my pants up and flushed. “They got blessings from ‘Patron Saints’, which means that religion probably just got way more real than we know.”

  Sandra paused. “I didn’t think about that . . . didn’t Isabella get something called an ‘Angel’s Blessing’?”

  “I think that’s close,” I replied, slapping a little Purell hand sanitizer on my hands and rubbing it in. “Somethin’ like that.” Shaking my head, I ran my fingers through my hair. “I do not like this, just saying that now.”

  Sandra gave me a quick hug. “But if they’re good people then maybe we can really help each other out. There are nice churches out there.”

  Sucking up my gut feelings and my general distrust of religion by shoving them as far down as I could, I cracked my neck, walking back outside with bottles of water for everyone. “All right, let’s get everyone fitted,” I said, handing out the water and taking another bite of a new sandwich.

  The process of resizing was so much easier than the initial creation that it was laughable for me in terms of energy. With my Mana-Forged trait, I got back pretty much all of the mana I was infusing into the process to make it work and since the changes at this point were minor, the actual overall cost was very low. I’d put the cost of the easy resizing work at one percent of total energy. Larger working took more but I couldn’t really tell if it was the complexity or density of the items that affected it.

  “Uh, hun?” Sandra said, interrupting my train of thought as I internally gloated over how everyone looked in my armor. “Babe!”

  I turned to look at her. “What?”

  “The rest of us need weapons.” I smacked myself in the head. Thirty minutes of Alchemic macgyvering later, I had the rest of my fledgling team equipped.

  “Sandra, babe, with your telekinetic powers, you’re pretty much a badass on your own,” I said to my wife who was picking at a bag of Cheetos. “But, I know all girls like shiny things.”

  Spread out on a newly raised table of stone in the backyard next to the ritual circle, I had a bunch of different weapons laid out. There was a sledgehammer that was now upgraded into a battle hammer, one side with a wicked ax blade and the other with the classic hammer face. On the tip facing up was a pointy piece of steel in case distance was needed. “Mike, this beauty is for you,” I said, tossing him the battle hammer. “I was actually able to use Alchemy to fuse a core of steel into the fiberglass handle so it should be re-donkulously strong.”

  There were also three boxes out on the table. “Sandra, dearest wife, and Mike, these should play to both of y’alls mind-based power.” I opened up each one and laid out the respective weaponry in them. The mix of unique blades sparkled in the sunlight.

  “The first one is sharpened discs of steel that your minds can control, maybe rotate as fast as a chainsaw, and fling at targets.” I held one of the deadly frisbees up and spun it around, miming it chopping through the air like a flying saw blade. “The second is my take on a lethal football. The inner core is solid cast iron and is designed to take out armored targets as it’ll cause massive blunt trauma.” Last but definitely not least, I call them Killer Nails. They’re a miniaturized version of what the government used to call, ‘Rods of God’. They’re pretty much your basic iron, stone, and steel nails but they are a foot long and an inch thick. I infused them with as much power and material as I could to make them super dense. Those are mainly for you, Mike, as your ‘Shatterpoint’ ability should really let you maximize their potential. Babe, I think the rest of them would fit you well.”

  “So that’s what all these pockets are for,” Mike said, stuffing his armored vest and leg pockets full as Sandra did the same. My wife also grabbed two short spears.

  “Yup,” I said, grinning as I held up one of the mini-footballs. “I can even make them on the go if we need. I can shape dirt into the stone, harden it, and shape it to form into a ritual circle. And since we’re surrounded by dirt, I can do that pretty much anywhere as long as we’re outside, and then with raw materials I can restock our- .”

  “What uh, what weapons are for me?” Isabella asked, looking over the various melee weaponry on the platform. She moved her hair out of her eyes as she took in the pile of craziness. I was proud of my work but I could see how it would be off putting to others. Various tools and random supplies from my shed had been reworked alchemically into long daggers, a few swords, and a couple spears.

  I handed her a short spear with a thick haft and then pushed a couple long knives over. “Anything you want really, but I do recommend the spear. You’re hard to shop for cause you haven’t figured out your powers yet. Your armor also has a bunch of pockets so you can put anything you want in there.”

  Her face went from thoughtful to grim in a split second as she started filling up as much as she could. Knives went on her hips and knees, a sword got strapped to her back, two of the steel nails went in their pouch on chest and then she picked up the first spear I gave her. I then grabbed a first aid backpack and handed it to her as well.

  She gave me a funny look. “What’s this?”

  I pointed at her and then right at the bag, tapping my finger on the big red cross on the side. “Well, frankly, since you have a healing ability, you’re our medic. We need you as safe as possible because you have a baby tattooed to your chest and because you’ll have the first aid kit plus the healing,” I answered. “I mean, as soon as you figure it out, which is part of the reason I don’t think we should go anywhere yet.”

  Sandra looked at me, a hint of eagerness mixed with frustration leaking through. “Honey, we already agreed to go.”

  I glared at her. “I KNOW I said yes, but I still don’t think it’s a good idea. I say we need at least a few days to get our shit together, both in terms of powers and supplies. I frankly don’t care that the church is less than half a mile away. Dinosaurs, massive feral animals, humans with powers, the list of crazy just goes on.”

  “Please!” Isabella started the same time Mike did. “We have to know, we can walk there and back in less than thirty minutes.”

  An almost physical weight settled on my shoulders. This is a bad idea. That’s it, it’s that simple. Their naivety is going to get someone hurt and I don’t like it. I stared at my two neighbors as I kept thinking it over.

  Steeling myself, I looked at Mike dead in the eye and growled. “Pick up your shield, Mike. And your hammer.”

  “What, why?” He asked, as I stepped forward, staring him down. My neighbor flinched as I stalked closer.

  “Look, I know I said ‘yes’ to us going but I’m going to make sure we all know what we’re up against.” I grabbed two one-handed battle hammers off the stone table. “If you want us to go, we are all going to use our powers on each other real quick. I need to see if you can take a hit on your shield and give one back.”

  “That’s insane, you’re crazy!” Mike scoffed, stepping back. “We could kill each other!”

  I crossed my arms in the yard, raising my voice so there was no mistake who I was talking to. “You too Sandra! You’re the most powerful out of all of us, so you first!”

  Isabella stepped in between me and the rest of the group. “That’s your wife! You can’t hit her!”

  Clanking my weapons together, I leaned in to tower over Isabella. Pointing one hammer over my shoulder, I shot back. “Trust me, she’s stronger than all of us put together and she’s only got half her shit worked out, try again.”

  “Just cause you were in the Army doesn’t mean you’re in charge!” Mike said, standing beside his wife and gripping his hammer and shield. “You never even deployed!”

  “True, very true,” I said, not letting it phase me. “I don’t know the horrors of death, of combat, of having my buddies blown up in front of me. I wasn’t there and I don’t know about it firsthand. True. I know I was a damn desk jockey but I still had years of training, training that y’all never received. I went through basic and a few warrior courses. They put us in a lot of training so we could know something about being in combat, and it sucked, which means real combat is even worse. I had friends die overseas and some of them came back incredibly screwed up.” I waved my hammers all around pointing up at the sky and where the hole used to be in my fence. “This isn’t a game, this is sadly our new reality. Now we’re going to test some of this out right now or you can walk your happy asses to church on your own and my butt can relax.”

  “I’ll do it.” Sandra stepped out in the clear part of the yard. Turning to face us, she looked down at her hands. “How ya wanna do this? What exactly do I need to do?”

  I picked up a clod of dirt. “We’ll start simple. I’m going to throw this chunk of dirt at you and you’re going to block it with your telekinetic shield. Or, you can smack it aside. The idea here is that we’ll ramp up to a point where I know you can take a hit because I’m going to eventually swing for real. For you babe, you’ve got mind powers and plant magic and other stuff, so defend yourself.” I turned to Mike. “You don’t have mind powers like my wife, you have super strength and ‘Mental Hands’ which seem to be very different in scope. You also have a shield that I made for you which means you’re next.”

  Without warning, I turned and lightly threw the dirt clod at Sandra. A blue shimmer blocked it. “See! That easy!” I sarcastically praised, using my earth magic to throw a few more at her. The blue shimmer solidified a bit more as more clods of dirt exploded against her shield.

  “And now . . . rock!” I yelled, chucking a few pebbles at her. They also clinked off her glowing blue shield. “And for the real test, see if you can shield something else, like that target,” I said, pointing at the wooden target I set up earlier for Mike. Turning to the neighbors, I grinned. “See, she’s not in danger. I’m not trying to kill my wife.”

  Mike rolled his eyes while Isabella glared at me. Sandra shook her head at me as she walked over and concentrated, covering the target in a casing of blue light. “Do it!” She called out. Dropping my other hammer on the ground, I grinned and called on my earth magic. I didn’t see a reason for me to not practice with my powers as well. A stone axe fit for Goliath rose out of the ground. Grabbing the thick haft with two hands, I walked over, hefting the magnificent stone ax up before bringing it down into the center of the target. My axe rebounded.

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  “Ok, that’s enough!” Mike’s eyes got huge as he yelled. “You’ve proven your point!”

  I answered with several more swings, each one not even touching the target. My wife’s telekinetic shield held up surprisingly well against the mammoth blows I was landing. Sandra’s face had sweat dripping down as her clawed hands were in front of her facing the target.

  “Dude! Enough!” Four more progressively harder swings and the shield broke, the stone axe embedding deeply in the wood.

  I laughed. “Well, she’s ready. She can probably take a hit better than we can.” Sandra smiled back at me as she took a few deep breaths.

  “Were you swinging as hard as you could?” She asked quietly, wiping the sweat off. She pulled herself to her feet and examined the massive axe. “It looked like it but didn’t feel like it. And how heavy is this thing?”

  Grabbing it with both hands, I put my foot on the target and gave a solid yank. “The first two times I definitely held back but I kept swinging harder with each swing. Felt like I was hitting rubber coated steel. Not sure on the weight, but I’d guess around fifty, sixty pounds? It is made out of solid rock. I had to keep infusing the handle with more magic so it didn’t break.”

  “Your turn Mike.” I hefted the axe and approached him. “Come on,” I teased a bit. “You have super strength, I have to know if you can carry your weight out there.”

  “I’m not doing this!” He said, backing up, his shield at the ready as he easily hefted the battle hammer meant for two hands.

  “See!” I said, pointing at his right arm. “Your strength activates when you need it, try me first. Gimme a swing.” I ran to the side of the stone platform where I put the massive tower shield I made for myself. The behemoth of a shield was made out of layered condensed stone and cast iron so that my earth magic would have complete control over it, which meant that it could be whatever I needed in the middle of combat without using a ritual circle. Hefting my shield with two hands, I called on the earth to brace me. Dirt and stone rose up from the ground, gripping my feet and calves making it look as if I grew out of earth.

  “Look, either do it or go home!” I ordered.

  Mike looked at his wife who shrugged, and then he looked at my wife. “I just, I can’t hit you. This is stupid and you know it.”

  I snarled in frustration. “Hit me damnit!” I molded my massive tower shield and the stone axe together into a giant suit of stone armor along with dirt pulled from the ground that coated me, turning me into Iron Man’s elemental cousin. Reaching down, I pulled up a chunk of loose dirt the size of a basketball and hurled it at him. Jumping closer to me to be more in front of Isabella, Mike caught the projectile on his shield.

  “You almost hit my wife!” He screamed at me as dirt sprayed around him, to which I answered with another big ass dirt clod.

  “Hit me coward!” I yelled back. “Do you think a magic rabid dog is going to care if it’s your wife?! My calf still freaking hurts from tangoing with the mutated mutt from earlier!” This time, I pulled up a big stone from the dirt and Mike's eyes went wide. As I reared back to throw it, Mike charged. Showing a bit of tactical instinct, he took off his shield and hurled it at the elbow of my cocked arm as he went low with his hammer.

  “That’s more like it!” I laughed, dropping the stone as I launched myself forward, smacking his shield up and away. Mike’s war hammer swung for my knee like a meteor that I barely avoided in my massive golem suit. I molded the suit back into a tower shield again as the extra dirt and stone fell back to the ground. Swinging for the trees, I awkwardly whipped my shield like Tiger Woods driving a golf ball but missed as he dove forward. Mike dove again, grabbing his shield as he simultaneously launched a few iron footballs at me mentally. I dodged one and blocked the other.

  Two blasts of telekinetic power lanced out, each one knocking Mike and I on our asses. “Now that's enough!” Sandra interrupted, her eyes glowing as she floated above us. She looked at me. “Can we go now?”

  “Do you feel safe?” I asked her, not willing to relinquish my point even though I was laying on my back. I coughed a few times to ease the slight pain in my chest. “Does Isabella feel safe? If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right. I’m in charge out in the field.”

  “Shouldn’t I be in charge?” She smirked, blue light shimmering in her lowered hands. “I am the most powerful. You do keep saying it.”

  I grinned. “The biggest gun is never in charge babe. Besides, even though some of my training encompassed fire team squads along with attack and retreat maneuvers, those depended on firearms.” I got up and dusted myself off, grabbing my gear. “I’m pretty sure none of you thought of how we’re going to conduct ourselves out there.”

  Both my wife and my neighbors looked at me like I was speaking another language. “What formation are we going to use? What are our protocols for conflict? What’s the chain of command, and what happens to it if one of us is injured or dies? Do war crimes exist anymore? Are any of you willing to kill to help the team survive?”

  All three of them looked at me blankly. “I’m the only one here with a modicum of training that’s even slightly related to combat. I’m not an expert by any means but I know enough to get us started.”

  I walked right past them as I went up to the deck, opened the door to the house and grabbed a backpack from right inside. “Here, did y’all think of this either?” I asked, shaking the backpack as I pulled out several Camelbaks. “I patterned these off the ones Sandra and I bought when we went hiking. Superpowers or not, we still need water.” I put on one. “And I see none of y’all put on helmets either. What’s going to protect your brain pan?”

  “I get it! You’ve made your point,” Mike snapped, putting one arm around Isabella.

  Sandra and Isabella sighed. “So then what?” Isabella asked. “How are we going to do this?”

  We didn’t look great. We looked like rank amateurs. None of us had real combat training and I only had simulated drills and a few infantry manuals to pull from. What made it worse is that the bastards who wrote that manual included nothing about medieval weaponry and magic apocalypses so I had to improvise. Out in the street in front of the house, I was physically moving people where they should belong. So I did my best, pulling from urban fire team squad drills and as much bullshit that video games, movies, and book reading could give.

  At least I gave it to them straight.

  “We don’t have enough people to make this work properly but we have enough for the bare bones,” I explained, standing in the middle of the street. I kept my head on a swivel to make sure nothing charged out of the neighborhood to attack us. Sandra and Mike had already killed a few crazed dogs and squirrels with their ranged weaponry while we spoke. The houses around us were either empty or strangers milled about checking their broken phones and talking to each other. There were surprisingly a lot fewer people out and about than I expected.

  Turning my attention back to my reticent group, I straightened my shoulders. “Let me know if y’all see any more crazy ass pets coming out of the woodwork.” After they nodded, I launched into my impromptu solution. “Okay, I’m the biggest tank with the most physical strength and my abilities tend toward defense. I’ll be serving as the forward point. My job isn’t just to serve as a thorny wall, but it’s also to keep a lookout for threats. My assigned area of watching is front and up with a bit of side to side.”

  Walking up to the women, I put them next to each other within arm’s reach and ten feet behind where I was standing. “Isabella, until you get your stuff figured out, you’re the weakest member of the team. Your main job is to patch us up after a fight and keep your eyes and ears open. And Sandra,” I explained as I pulled my wife closer. “ My wife, who is our big gun with the greatest utility, is going to keep you safe as the last line of defense. Isabella, your spear is to keep things away from you, period. Also, good job on grabbing an extra sword and shield, always be prepared.” Isabella nodded numbly, fixing her helmet as Mike started yelling.

  I whipped around. “No! I’m in charge, we’re doing this my way. Wait till I’m done and then we can talk about it. If you see an issue after then speak up.” I turned back to the ladies. “Sandra, you have the most important job here. You are the big gun but you’re also the one who keeps the medic alive. When she figures out how to heal, she will be the reason any and all of us survive. But the reason your job is the hardest is because you have to multi-task. You are going to be using your mental senses to scout in all directions AND you will provide ancillary support to whoever needs it. By the way, same goes for you, good job on grabbing extra gear. Never know when you’ll need more.”

  “What am I doing?” Mike interrupted, thumping his chest with his weapon. “And why are we doing this out here?” He warily looked around. “Didn’t you get attacked not too long ago?”

  I grimaced, holding up a finger to shut him up for a second. “As I was saying, most perfect wife, you assist whoever needs it. That’s what all the projectiles are for. If I’m getting overwhelmed then you either provide a shield or take out a bad guy. If Mike gets ambushed as he’ll be serving as rear guard, you shield him and help him out. You’re basically the command center, keeping us all organized and focused wherever an enemy pops up.”

  Mike cleared his throat loudly. I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath before forcing myself to smile. “Your job, Mike, is just as important if not more so than mine. You take care of the rear. You watch the sides and protect the backs of our ‘command center’.” I pointed at the ladies as I said the last bit. “Your job is to keep them safe from threats that come from the sides, above us, and the rear. Every minute or so you need to spin around and watch behind. Predators attack the rear and the weak, so you need to be watchful. Got it? Eyes on a swivel.” I looked at everyone, forcing them to acknowledge me.

  “Is this all really necessary?” Isabella unconsciously tried to rub her chest tattoo but her hand didn’t get past the steel breastplate I made for her. All of us got a breastplate made out of spring steel just to cover the big vitals.

  I gave the teeniest shrug. “God, I hope not.” I did note that Mike had an extra shield strapped to his back. His attitude needed work but he was coming around in other ways that I definitely approved of.

  ********

  Deep within the Labyrinth

  “Come on then! Are we dwarves or are we prey?! I for one will NOT be food for the Abhorrent!”

  Those willing to argue with the Tunnel Sergeant in his Minexo suit had long fallen prey to the swarms bearing down on them. Yeldin MacStone, foreman of the Shattered Mountain clan pitched forward, the left arm of his mining exo-skeleton suit emptying with a massive spew of their clan’s proprietary aerosolized electrum solution. His right arm hurled a clay urn with sparking strings spinning around its top.

  Yeldin’s second in command, Gemson MacStone, erected a massive stonewall cutting them off from the horde charged at their front. Night flayers, phlegmlins, and vermhoggs shrieked as the napalm-like fluid caught when the urn shattered. The stone wall barely held but two more Earth Sages reinforced the stone barrier keeping them all alive.

  “We must press on!” A scream rang out from the rear of the dwarven column. “I can hear more of them!”

  Yeldin grimaced. Their Earth Sages were past spent, erecting walls in the Labyrinth to cut off the Abhorrent from finding them yet again. But the Endless Maze was truly endless. There was always another path, another door. For every safe spot that could house a company their size, hundreds of tunnels and Doors could be reached. This is why not even the brave traveled the Labyrinth.

  Only fools and the truly desperate.

  “Do you really think our salvation is through the Labyrinth?”

  Maelyin MacStone, Yeldin’s wife, gripped her pack full of medicinal supplies. Her left hand held a cavern cannon, an unholy combination between a black powder rifle and a slingshot. Esoteric energies made all but the most stable of explosive powders an absolute danger to be around but these circumstances more than warranted all forms of self-defense.

  Yeldin took a shallow breath, making sure to not to breathe in the spores from the dead Abhorrent. “My dearest wife. We have no choice. Only through the Labyrinth can we find an untainted world, a virgin plane, where this relentless plague has not been. Look, our diviner. It hums ever deeper as we get closer to our destination!”

  His dirt covered hand let go of the controls inside the Minexo suit to pull out the compass looking device from underneath his soot stained shirt. “It will not lead us astray. Though it may run on the souls of the condemned, it has led generations of MacStones to wealth and glory under the mountains. Here is no different!”

  As his wife was about to answer, Gemson removed his ear from the erected stone wall. “It is safe. Their screams have been cut off. We can proceed.”

  The stone wall crumbled to dust and like clockwork, the Dwarves covered their faces with mining rebreather masks and an extra layer of cloth soaked in an anti-septic solution. They knew better than to take a chance with the Abhorrent. The Eldritch plague did not need much to propagate. A cut, too deep of an inhale, not cleaning up their gore off their gear, and of course, filth. The cleanest place in any Dwarf’s life is their latrine, magically purified and buried in stone through the hard work of the Sages.

  “Look! That wasn’t there before!” Gemson chucked a small rock down the tunnel and laughed as it plinked off a new corridor to the right. “We must have blown open a passage!”

  Maelyin squinted through the settling cloud of dust and ash. “That door, it’s not golden. It’s wooden.” Taking a few steps forward, she stifled a gasp. “This tunnel is FILLED with doors!?”

  Her husband took a moment to replace an armor scale on his Minexo suit before pulling out his diviner. It buzzed in his hand like a blood drunk mole-wasp. “And it looks like our exit is through one of them.”

  Lines of dwarves carrying large packs followed fewer dwarves in Minexo suits towing overburdened metal carriages with dead engines strapped to the front. Every one of them was armed though most wielded mining hammers and war axes with unusually dense picks on the opposite side of the ax head. Fewer still carried stout maces with crystalline heads that glowed. These were spaced evenly throughout the caravan to illuminate the dim corridors but here in this tunnels where there were more Doors than wall, they weren’t needed.

  Doors of every color and material glimmered bringing the dwarves to an almost grinding halt except for Yeldin who picked up the pace as his diviner buzzed ever louder, until it suddenly froze as he brushed his hand on a massive door of plain wood. It was so brown and old that it almost blended in with the dirt walls of the tunnel. He looked down at the bare keyhole and rusty doorknob.

  “Yerth.” Turning back to his wife with a relieved grin, he raised his voice. “Our new home is Yerth!”