I looked around us for a second. “Frank, got any tactical suggestions to move us to the other side of the car efficiently?”

  “Yeah, not a problem. Joe, Billy, and Dennis. You three with me and stay on overwatch. Shoot any lupin that show themselves. Don’t shoot soldiers or civilians.” It was kinda funny how he felt the need to add that in there.

  I saw nods. Before he continued Nora said, “shield.” I turned to see a translucent green shield spring into place flanking her left side. It was almost four feet tall, and over half as wide. It was nearly a tower shield, yet rounded on the edges. It protected her kneeling form and most of the soldier as well.

  Frank glanced back at her before he went forward, “kids, help Nora and Neal move the soldier and his stuff.” Then he fired off several rounds at a lupin in the distance. “These damn lupin have infiltrated between some of the squads. This is gonna be messy.”

  I picked up and stowed all the items that Dennis laid out on the ground, “Don’t worry Dennis, as soon as there is a break in shooting I will identify one of the wands.” He frowned deeply as I put all his hard looted treasures in my backpack. Brett, Brittney, Nora, and I combined to half carry, half drag the soldier to the other side of the car. Since I did more carry than drag, that little bit of exertion took some energy out of me. I was sweating a lot, and feeling the August heat way more than I did 10 minutes earlier. Eventually the mana levels will stabilize, the dopamine high will wear off, and we are going to feel every degree of this heat. Augusts in Missouri were brutal. 100 degrees Fahrenheit many days, and humidity that threatened the same number a half a dozen times in the month. Every August in my lifetime was the same. I felt myself breathing heavily for more than just a few seconds. Gunfire blazed out from Billy and Dennis simultaneously as towards the south as Lupin had completely flanked us. They were a block down the street from where we had originally come from.

  Frank looked at me and pointed his fingers to his eyes, then to me, and then to the direction Joe was currently pointed. He then stepped back a few times, and tapped Joe on the shoulder. Joe turned his head momentarily to look at Frank, only for Frank to point to the other side of the car. He repeated this for Nora and Billy. Billy had to crawl under Nora gun barrel, as he didn’t see another way to not get shot by her.

  I saw a soldier pop out of a building butting up against main street. He tapped towards us and then towards his earpiece. I made sure Joe was still aiming in that direction and crouch walked over to the downed soldier. I removed the earpiece off his ear and after the briefest of wipe downs, put it in my own. “Hello, this is Neal Cassland over here with First Company. There are four and a half to foot tall wolfmen roving through everyone’s flanks.”

  “Civilian, get off this line. It is for authorized military only.” The man who spoke was straight up pissed off.

  “Hey, another soldier told us to put this in. What I am telling matters regardless of the source. Colonel Kent authorized us to be in the field. We were helping with civilians. We also had to heal up a soldier who was thrown out of third floor of a building.”

  “This is Captain Banning of the Second Company. Get off this line.”

  “Fine. It’s your funeral.” I almost pulled the earpiece out in disgust.

  At this time the car’s back door opened. My heart about stopped and I started lifting my gun to fire. Dennis poked his head out. “I come in peace.” He smiled a goofy grin at me, like it was some sort of special inside joke of his. He then slid the rest of the way through and shut the door behind him. A few seconds later Frank had silently and smoothly repositioned Joe so that both of them could use the car as cover.

  Dennis whined a little bit, “Well come on already and identify one of those wands.”

  I shook my head slightly, until I finally nodded to Dennis in acknowledgement. I pulled the earpiece out of my ear and placed it on the trunk of the car right next to Frank. Once he put it in I took out the two wands and looked at them. Visually they looked different from each other. One was slightly longer with the rune work in metal on sturdy wooden stick. It was thicker than a drumstick, but thinner than a police baton. The other was made of metal entirely. I wasn’t sure which one offered a better option to us in the moment. Finally, I shrugged and activated identify on the all metal one. I sat there with my eyes closed as the magic inherent in the ability reached out from my fingers and through the device. In my mind, I could almost see tendrils of mana reach through each rune and symbol of power, touching each one in a specific order beyond my current comprehension. This was coolest ability ever. While activated I almost had some sort of detect magic. I could see the tendrils tracing runes and writing something in the air that I could see, but not yet decipher. I waited for a minute or more. Gunfire tried to challenge my concentration, but this experience was far cooler than any gunfight that didn’t have monsters charging me immediately. I simply let the spell do its thing and watch. The writing appearing in air above the wand slowly became readable. I waited even longer allowing the mana tendrils to hopefully give me the tiniest bit of extra insight into the flow of mana, the creation of magic items, and how we can hopefully make our own someday. Finally, it finished:

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  Battlemage’s Wand of Force Bolt

  This wand was enchanted by a fully appointed battlemage of the Seimar Republic. The spell it had encased inside it is Force Bolt. This spell does not get cast at a low effect level, rather at that effect level of the battlemage who created it. This will affect its range, number of bolts, damage, and ability to overcome spell resistance. As with all wands, the user must have an affinity of the spell stored in the wand in order to use it. 44 charges remaining.

  Force Bolt-Tier 1-Arcane, Force, Battle Magic

  This ability causes five missiles to fire forth from the user’s hand up to 85 meters away. Effective Caster Level for overcoming Spell Resistance is 25. These missiles have been reinforced to deal extra damage equal to half of the caster’s(creators) Intelligence.

  “It is a souped up wand of force bolt. The only one of us that has arcane is Nora, so It looks like it goes to her at this point.” Dennis looked visibly upset at this bit of news. “Did I miss anything while I was distracted casting that. FYI, Identify is visually the coolest ability so far.”

  Nora pulled a notebook out of her backpack and placed both it and a pencil in my hands. “Write it all out for us.” She had given me the same notebook that had the potion details in it. “make sure to leave plenty of space for me to draw a detailed copy of the wand. I am going to detail all that we can. There is more to work with than we had with the potions.” She was serious that she wanted me to copy the info even while Frank, Joe, Billy, Dennis, Britney, and Brett all occasionally fired off into the distance. “To your question, People yelled at Frank, but frank has the actual rank of cadet in the army. It is the equivalent of a private, so we hope that they will start listening to us.”

  Billy couldn’t help himself, “Don’t count on it. No one has completely adapted to our new reality. It may feel like we are living in a video game, but it is more like reality set at hell difficulty.”

  We didn’t want to admit it, but Billy was right. People were scared and not adapting. People out here aren’t having to deal with massive portals, so random rampaging creatures still feels surreal. We need to give people the opportunity to adapt. To help us with that I checked on our injured soldier who was starting to come to. “Soldier, how was you nap?”

  He looked up at me. “Who the Fuck are you?”

  Billy chimed in, “Well she’s N, N, N, N, Nora.”

  “Billy shut the fuck up. Don’t make me use this wand on you.” Billy picked a weird time to tease Nora. She just got a wand that probably did as much damage as 50 caliber rifle.

  “I’m Neal. We healed you and pulled you behind cover after your little trip from the third floor.” We both looked up towards the third floor from our spot to see some freaky lightning blast out the close to where the window was. “Well, at least you didn’t have to deal with the lightning.”

  He touched his ear, only to realize that his earpiece was gone. I tapped frank, who turned to look at the soldier touching his own ear. Frank got the idea and handed the comms to the soldier. Once he had the earpiece back in he spoke up, “Sgt. Hastings This is Pvt. Gorman. I’m headed back in.” He got up and went right back inside the building he had been physically thrown out of.

  I pulled the potions back out and checked their symbols against what we already had in the notebook in my lap. They both looked the exact same. “Nora, got 2 healing potions here.” I handed the notebook and the healing potions over to her care.

  She quickly read the notebook and then looked up at me. “This wand is stupidly powerful. We’re talking about a lot of potential damage. Each missile is adding half of the creator’s intelligence to the damage. To reach a class like battle mage has to be something fairly impressive. It also let us know there is a class called battle mage. Chris would’ve been happy to hear of such a class.”

  “Yeah, I realized that wand is really powerful, but only 44 charges. I have no idea if or how we recharge it. I seriously doubt that we or really anyone on earth is going to get to that type of class in the next several years, if ever. I’d say use it sparingly, but living is more important than preserving its uses.”

  “I hadn’t planned on conserving it. This should tear through an orc in one hit.” Dennis’s facial expressions grew more envious and jealous with each statement.

  Dennis finally spoke, “What do I need to be able to use that?” He almost pleaded with each of those words.

  “You need arcane or force in your affinities. We found one person with the force affinity, a stunt coordinator that had been on vacation.” Nora replied almost robotically. She knew which classes had which affinities without looking at the master list. To be fair, Billy probably did as well.

  I added in, “We also don’t know what it takes to go up from your current class to another class. I imagine going from basic tier common to another basic tier common requires nothing beyond the class token, but I suspect going to an uncommon or rare will require something. For the moment we don’t really know.” This information momentarily mollified Dennis.

  “By the way Nora, where did you get that particular box of girl scout cookies?”

  She smiled, “I was wondering when you were finally going to ask me. The other girl scout, she had enchanted her only box earlier in the day: thin mints. I told her that when we came back through, and if her family was still there, that they could come with us back to the cabin.”

  “Way to bargain with what isn’t yours.” Initially I wasn’t sure if I should be mad, annoyed, or impressed. After a moment I settled on impressed. “Never mind, it was probably a good move.”

  Dennis asked, “How long until the ring?” He was a bit of a broken record.

  “Two hours,” I shot back. I decided to pop my head up and scan the immediate areas to see how many Lupin we downed; I counted eight so far. We could pick off lupin all day, but it would get us no closer to Fenton.

  I would have said more, but Pvt. Gorman poked his head of the doorway. “We have folks in here needing healing.”

  “Dennis, Billy, Joe, and Frank stay here. Nora and the twins you’re with me.”