Chapter 38. Boom

  Jeremiah supposed he ought to feel some sense of relief for having completed all of Pete’s tasks and freed himself from future expectation. Heck, he even earned himself a favor from Pete out of the deal. However, all he felt was exhaustion, bone-deep, and pain from the burns and beatings he had suffered. He trudged towards home.

  No sooner had he reached the dwelling of Cell Four than the door opened and Melissa and Dronkal trooped out. “There you are!” said Sweet Melissa, hurrying towards him. “We were wondering. Come on, you and I have a job today.”

  “Please,” said Jeremiah, “in the name of all that is good and holy in the world, let me rest. Pete has been kicking my ass all night with his nonsense and–”

  Dronkal pushed Melissa aside and grabbed Jeremiah by the collar, pulling him up on his toes. “You listen to me,” he growled. “You owe the Stonefists everything. Everything . If you’ve messed up bad enough that Pete rakes you over the coals, that’s your problem. But you’re a part of this cell, that means you do the cell’s work. You understand?”

  Jeremiah held up his hands defensively. “Okay! Okay, Dronk, relax. I’m just tired. If it’s that important, I’ll do it. I was just asking.”

  Dronkal snorted and released Jeremiah. “Trying to get out of work. That’ll teach you not to fool around with Pete.”

  “Sorry, Jay, family comes first,” said Sweet Melissa, not sounding sorry at all. “But you can go home right after this and rest, I promise.”

  It took every ounce of strength Jeremiah had to turn away from home to follow Sweet Melissa back towards the city, but he did. They made their way through the slums towards the nicer part of town, where morning traffic was just picking up.

  “It’s my own fault. I threw in with Pete and that’s my fault, and I tried to use that to get out of duties to my gang,” thought Jeremiah.

  “Your what?” said Delilah

  “You’re worthy of respect Jay, even when you can justify when you’re not,” said Allison.

  Sweet Melissa was in high spirits. “I hope your grip strength is intact, cause you’re really going to need it!”

  “Do you ever say, like, normal stuff?” asked Jeremiah. His limbs felt like lead. He wished he could absorb some of her bubbly energy.

  She giggled. “I can tell the difference between human tendon and elf tendon by the sound it makes when you strum it. I gave up on normal a long time ago.”.

  BOOM.

  The explosion started innocuously enough, with a murmur of confusion among the pedestrians. Feet stopping, hands pointing and, as Jeremiah looked up to see what they were looking at, a tall column of earth climbing into the sky, miles away.

  Like a gray flower, the column blossomed up and outward towards the apex of its trajectory. It rose, dwarfing the tallest buildings and rivaling the height of the central palace of Elminia itself. There was a granularity to it, and the gray whole slowly spread in every direction.

  “It’s beautiful…” gasped Sweet Melissa.

  The dust reached them first, carried on a warm wind. Then smaller fragments moving impossibly fast, pocking the earth with little puffs.

  There was a hum, and something zipped through the middle of the street, whining like a mosquito in Jeremiah’s ear. Those unfortunate enough to be in its path were reduced to a red mist as their bodies disintegrated from the sheer force of whatever it was.

  People began screaming. Rooftops exploded. Stones the size of oxen began to rain down, smashing buildings to smithereens. The streams of traffic were suddenly thrown to the winds of chaos as people began to scatter haphazardly, blind fear whipping them into a frenzy.

  “Come on!” Jeremiah grabbed Sweet Melissa and hauled her out of the street with him. People were either running indoors or away from the source of the explosion. Jeremiah chose the former. The stores and buildings were packed to bursting within moments as more debris cut through the crowd outside.

  It was a lottery. There was no decision that would spare you from the rocks and boulders if it was your time to take one. People hidden beneath stalwart roofs and thick beams were crushed by the entire building. People frozen in the street were untouched as pebbles that could puncture steel missed them by a hair’s breadth.

  Jeremiah pulled Sweet Melissa behind an upturned market stall. He raked his inscription tools across the wood and slapped his hands against it in a matter of moments.

  Strengthen.

  No sooner had he finished then a stone as big as a melon slammed into the wood and bounced away at an obtuse angle. Another man drew the short straw and caught it. A sequence of three more impacts cracked the magically reinforced wood. Jeremiah threw himself over Sweet Melissa, holding onto her tight as if his body could actually protect her.

  For an eternity, they waited through the rain of death and pain. The screaming never ceased, and was only periodically drowned out by a larger impact. Jeremiah stayed where he was, eyes squeezed shut, certain each moment would be his last.

  Gradually, the rain lessened. No whizzing pebbles of death. No massive stones crashing through the sky. The screams of terror reduced to cries of pain, whimpers and moans.

  Jeremiah lifted his head. The air was colored with a sepia mist of dust raised from the ground. His ears rang in the relative quiet.

  They ventured out together, hand in quivering hand at the devastation that had overwhelmed the city in a single grisly, bloody moment. Jeremiah’s mind struggled to comprehend the bodies, the dismemberment, the pain, the destruction. A distant part of him screamed at him to help, to do something—anything!

  But it was all too much. Far too much.

  Then he saw Pete.

  Pete was sitting at a table outside of a cafe which longer existed. He sipped a cup of tea, unblemished by the universal fog of dust settling over them.

  “Pete! What the hell are you—” He stopped as Pete regarded him with the usual casual smile. Jeremiah looked to the cloud of dust still rising in the distance, now mingling with the black smoke of an active fire. “Pete…did you do this?”

  “I don’t do anything, lad. I just set pieces where they need be and let nature take its course.”

  “Pete…” Even Jeremiah’s numbness couldn’t protect him from the trickle of horror and realization. “Did I do this?”

  Pete chuckled and sipped the tea. “You’re as guilty as I am, lad. That is to say, not at all. Best you divest your inquisitive nature from this moment in time. You’re far more suited to be an extra set of hands for these poor people, don’t you think?”

  Jeremiah, his skin and clothes sticky with the dusty blood of those killed around him, grabbed Pete’s unblemished collar and yanked him out of the chair. “You sonnova bitch! What the hell did you do? What the hell did I do?!”

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  “Calm yourself lad,” said Pete. “A very powerful woman with a very short temper encountered a string of bad luck and disrespect at a time when tempers in this city are already exceptionally short. Granted, I could never have predicted she would have such an…apocalyptic reaction. But, to my knowledge, you cannot control the will of others. Now, if you don’t mind,” Pete pried Jeremiah’s fingers open, “there are people that need your help. Off you go now.”

  “Hey!” said Sweet Melissa, appearing beside Jeremiah. “Come on, we’ve still got a job to do,”

  “Sweet Melissa,” said Pete with a nod. Jeremiah had never heard anyone call her that to her face.

  “Hi Pete,” said Sweet Melissa.

  “You’re right,” said Jeremiah. “Can you tie tourniquets? There’s some people bleeding and I can—”

  “What? Jay, we have work to do,” said Sweet Melissa. “Let someone else take care of all this.”

  Jeremiah was confused. “We need to help these people. Whatever you’re doing can wait.”

  “Umm, no Jay, it can’t. We’re on a schedule here.” She seemed completely oblivious to what was happening around them.

  “Go on without me then, I need to stay here and help,” said Jeremiah. He had enough biology knowledge to at least enact some first aid.

  “Hey!” Melissa whipped a lasso around Jeremiah’s neck and yanked, pulling him down to a knee. “Family. Comes. First. Do you understand me? Now get your shit together, un-trauma yourself, and move out.”

  Jeremiah grabbed the lasso cord in one hand and sliced it with a dagger blade from the other. He stood up, free from Melissa’s control, “No. People need help, I’m going to help them. Go on without me.”

  Melissa’s hand reflexively flicked and had another lasso loop tied and prepared, but she didn’t use it. “See you at home,” she said darkly, and disappeared into the mist of destruction.

  Jeremiah helped those he could see as best he could, but there were always more. Voices begging him, or anyone, to save them. He had precious little, but was able to tear clothes for bandages, tie tourniquets, fetch water. There were others like him, trying to help, and they worked together to move rubble and search for survivors.

  The city guard was soon dispatched to start moving the dead, but precious little effort seemed to go towards saving those still living.

  He saw no sign of Allison among the guards. There was no way to know what had happened to his friends, if they were safe or not. He pushed them from his mind and returned to work.

  Jeremiah saved dozens, but all he could see were the hundreds, the thousands beyond his reach.

  Darkness fell again. When Jeremiah had returned home, his already stressed body was nearing its breaking point. He had spent hours pressing on wounds and dragging bodies into piles. The response from Elminia had been slow, and woefully ineffective, not that there was much to be done about many of the injured. He walked into his room and collapsed face down on the bed, a puff of dust roiling out from him.

  “Hey Jay,” said Dronkal from his door.

  “Uh?” Jeremiah mumbled into the pillow.

  “Rough day?”

  “Yeah. Something exploded. Killed a lot of people. Pete had me running around all night too.”

  “Mmhm. Melissa says you skipped out on the job. That true?” Dronkal was closer, beside the bed.

  “Had to. People were hurt.”

  “I gotcha, I gotcha,” said Dronkal softly, “you saw people hurting and you had to act. Didn’t sit right with you to walk away from that.”

  “Exactly,” said Jeremiah, “it was the right thing to do.”

  Dronkal sat on the side of Jeremiah’s bed, “I feel that. Some real shit went down today, lot of people hurt, and a lot of people dead. Sometimes a man needs to do what’s right, I understand that. Melissa doesn’t, she has a hard time with stuff like that."

  Dronkal put one hand on Jeremiah’s back, a gentle and reassuring pressure, then grabbed Jeremiah’s arm and yanked. There was a sickening pop as the bone popped free of the socket. Jeremiah screamed into the pillow and tried to pull away from Dronkal, but he couldn’t move.

  “You’re alright, you’re alright,” said Dronkal, patting him on the back. “That’s a dislocation, very clean. You know who's good at fixing dislocations? Melissa. Go say you’re sorry for ditching her and she’ll fix that right up. Remember Jay, we are what’s right. Family comes first.”

  A cheer of greeting went up when he staggered into the Stonefists headquarters. Jeremiah ignored it. He wasn’t even sure where he was going until he ended up outside Monty’s office. Without even bothering to knock, he opened the door.

  It was dark. Empty. Jeremiah supposed Monty must be busy on a day like this. Maybe that was for the best. He curled up on the floor and slept.

  A peep from Gus alerted Jeremiah a moment before the door opened. He raised his head and whimpered at the pain radiating through his body.

  “Good evening, Jay,” said Monty, as though this were a perfectly reasonable way to run into each other. “Tough day?”

  “I did it. It was me.” The words were out before Jeremiah even realized what he was saying, and then the tears choked him. His head dropped to his chest and he wept, sobbing silently in the dark.

  Monty rested a hand on Jeremiah’s back and simply held it there while he cried. The kind touch made him hate himself even more, for his lies, for his treachery, for his wretched power. He didn’t deserve kindness. He wished Monty would strike him, throw him out of the office and even out of the gang. Let him succumb to whatever horrors were infecting Elminia.

  But Monty was patient. As Jeremiah’s tears exhausted themselves, he lit the candle on his desk and waited.

  Finally, Jeremiah spoke. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “I want out.”

  “Out?” asked Monty.

  “Out. Out of the Stonefists. Out of this life.”

  “You just got here,” said Monty. “I realize you’ve come to enjoy certain privileges, but you still have a lot to learn.”

  Jeremiah shook his head. It hurt. “What you said last time, that chance to escape. Give it to me. I’m the one. I need it.”

  “You are talented and resourceful,” said Monty, “and shockingly naive. You may someday prove to me that you are exceptional enough to deserve that chance, in which case I will happily grant it. But not today. Not yet.”

  Jeremiah swayed as he stood. “You want exceptional?”

  “Abort!” said Allison.

  “Don’t!” said Bruno.

  He drew his dagger as he approached the desk, and Monty raised an eyebrow. But Jeremiah simply set the tip of the knife against the surface and began to carve.

  Strengthen And Heat.

  He muttered the incantation and set the runes aglow. The blue of the charge gave way to the red hot of burning wood, but only within the etched lines of the diagram. Jeremiah stepped back, letting his work speak for itself.

  Monty was silent as he contemplated the glowing design. They burned brightly for several minutes, then faded.

  “Pete knew, didn’t he?” asked Monty, running a finger over the lines.

  “Yes.” Curse Pete for knowing. Curse Pete for forcing Jeremiah’s power to hurt people. Again.

  “Tell me, plainly, what this magic does,” said Monty.

  “It changes things,” said Jeremiah. “Alters materials to be different.”

  “You’ve got this in your pocket, and you’re looking for more?” Monty said. “Go live in a tower and hoard wealth with your magic scribbles.”

  “Not rich,” said Jeremiah. “Free.” He was playing the part, yes, but he was also not lying. Being beholden to others, forced to their will. He longed for freedom from servitude.

  Monty thought for a long time. Jeremiah let him. He was in no hurry.

  At last Monty spoke again. “This explains a lot.” He sat down heavily behind the desk. “But it changes nothing. Being able to cast magic doesn’t make you exceptional.”

  It was Jeremiah’s turn to think. There was only one possibility his mind kept returning to, no matter how forcefully he tried to push it away. “What if I bring you the treasure of Cassidy Korrvas?”

  Monty laughed. The sound of it made Jeremiah’s head ring. “No one could fault you with a lack of ambition! Sense, maybe. What makes you think you can conquer the Golden House, oh master thief?”

  “I can do it,” said Jeremiah.

  “I don’t want to lose a good man to foolhardiness,” said Monty. “Be patient. I promise good things will come to you.”

  “I can do it.”

  Monty sighed. “Humans are all the same. You’re not the first to tell me this, you know.”

  “I am not the same,” said Jeremiah.

  Monty leaned forward, the candle throwing his lined face in sharp relief. “Jay of Shabad. If you bring me the treasure of Cassidy Korrvas, the chance is yours. But don’t. I’ve seen better men than you walk into that tomb. You’ll die prideful just like the others.”

  “I won’t.” Jeremiah drew himself to look Monty straight in the eye. “Don’t worry. I can do it.”