by Harry Nix
On the drive over Alex, Nia and Juno had debated exactly what they would tell Howey and Puzo. Alex had been curious about what would happen if he told them he was a werewolf or showed them some small magic. Despite the fact he'd seen people on the street turn their gaze away from seeing their hybrid forms he felt like it was impossible that his friends would simply ignore him summoning fire to his fingertips.
The girls had explained that they wouldn't believe him. They might get upset that he was playing some kind of trick on them, or suddenly ill or whatever it was to get away from the situation.
They explained that the Great Barrier could seriously screw relationships and if he persisted in trying to explain that he was supernatural or kept trying to show them magic, his friends would turn on him.
As a result, Alex was stuck lying to his friends. He couldn't tell them he was a werewolf mage, the Juno was a witch and that Nia was a werewolf. He couldn't tell them about weredogs or psychotic mages attempting to kill him.
“Are they going to come here to blow us up?” Puzo asked.
“Is there much to blow up?” Juno asked. She’d walked over to the open door that led to the next room (where they worked) and the rest of the office building. Only two rooms were finished. The rest of the office appeared to be under construction.
“The building owner was renovating but he ran out of money after fixing these two rooms. That’s how we managed to get it so cheap. Sometimes he comes in and tries to do a bit more work, but somehow I don't think he’s going to get it completed all on his own,” Alex explained.
Alex turned to Puzo. “Can I get that wooden ball back?,” he asked.
“Follow me,” he said, leading the group into the second large room that was filled with desks and computers.
“Hey Howey, can you show the girls the game while I have a quick talk with Puzo?” Alex said.
“Yes, yes, post-apocalyptic farm game, yes!” Juno said, clapping her hands together.
“If there isn't a mutant bloodthirsty eggplant I don’t want to know,” Nia said.
“We have a mutant telepathic strawberry. Is a good enough?” Howey asked.
“I guess so,” Nia said with a fake sniff of disapproval before breaking into a grin.
“Okay, come take a seat,” Howey said, leading the girls over to the computer that had their beta test model of the game running.
Alex followed Puzo out into the unfinished part of the building where there was a table they usually left their bags and various junk food. Puzo got out the ball and carefully opened it, showing Alex the circuit.
“If you solder where I’ve drawn that line, I think it’ll connect up and be functional.”
Alex saw a fine red line drawn on the circuit.
“Any idea as to the power source?” he asked.
Puzo shook his head. “Nothing I could see. I can't work out why it’s connected to that quartz either or why there’s a feather in there. Was that some joke to take my mind off the fact that you suddenly vanished off the face of the earth and people might be trying to kill you?”
Alex felt a faint tugging pain in his body, the Great Barrier twitching. It must have been working on Puzo, preventing him from realizing what exactly he was looking at. To him it was a joke or something unknown.
“It’s not a joke. I found it after my apartment got blown up and thought it might be a clue. Maybe it would help track down who did it, “ Alex said quickly, putting the ball away into his bag. As soon as he did, the tug of the Great Barrier vanished.
They stood there for a moment, before Puzo looked away at the piles of junk food on the table.
“You know this stuff has really been piling up without you here. Didn’t realize how much of this you were eating pork chop,” he said and poked Alex in the stomach. He quickly withdrew his hand with shocked expression on his face.
“The hell? You been secretly doing sit-ups or something? That's meant to be a fat little belly,” he said
“Decided to get healthy. I guess you guys hadn't noticed I've been doing a lot of exercise and stuff beforehand,” Alex lied.
“No one loses fat that quickly. What are you buying some weird drugs or something?”
“Just healthy living and the love of two good women,” Alex said, it slipping out of his mouth before he could stop it.
“So… they really are both your girlfriends? How the hell did you pull that off?”
Alex ran a hand through his hair. “To tell you the truth, I don't know sometimes myself.”
“Die you son-of-a-bitch tomato. Nia, I need backup!” Juno suddenly squealed from the other room
“The potatoes are about to break the wall, I need you to back me up!” Nia yelled back.
Alex and Puzo gave each other a grin at the sound of the girls having fun playing the game. Puzo clapped a hand on Alex’s shoulder.
“It’s good to see you man. I don't know what any of this stuff with the building getting blown up is, or you vanishing of the face of the earth but I’m very glad you’re not dead, even if it's sad you can’t be working on the game. You sure about that?”
Alex suddenly remembered he had a chunk of cash to hand over. He opened his bag pulled out fifteen hundred dollars. He’d kept five hundred in case they needed to buy more rings or food.
“For now, it’s done. You need to go on like I’m never coming back. I managed to get some money to help pay a chunk of the rent,” he said and dropped it on the table beside the junk food.
“Thanks. Better get back out there before Howey tries to steal your girls.”
“I think he’d be biting off more than he could chew,” Alex said with a chuckle. They went back to their main room to find Nia and Juno frantically pounding away on controllers that were connected to the computer.
On the screen the farm was a disaster. Most of it was on fire and there were mutant fruits marching their way through a breach in the fence. The wall holding the bloodthirsty potatoes back was beginning to crack.
“You gotta stop those potatoes,” Alex said and then the wall broke, letting a flood of them wash across the farm.
“Quick to the corner,” Juno said as she and Nia went to the final defensive position but were quickly overwhelmed. Soon they were dead, the fruit and vegetables marching around the farm, followed by the robots who orchestrated the whole thing stomping in.
“That was fun. I like having a kick-ass gun,” Juno said.
“So you three staying a bit longer? Maybe we can get lunch?” Howey asked.
Alex shook his head. “Sorry, but we need to go. I left some rent money out there. As soon as it’s safe, we’ll be back in touch,” he said.
Howey stood up and hugged Alex.
“Anything we can do to help. Seriously, whatever this is, we can help you if you need help,” he said.
“Aww,” Juno and Nia said together, melting.
“He's faking it just so you like him. Sometimes in college he’d put a fake cast on his arm to catch all those girls who like to attend wounded birds,” Alex said with a grin.
“I don't recall you complaining, Captain I-hurt-my-wrist-donating-boxes-of-toys-to-orphans-so-I-have-to-wear-this-cast,” Howey said.
“I definitely want to hear that story,” Juno said.
“Some other time!” Alex said, hustling the two girls out of there after saying goodbye to his friends. They headed back to Boris.
“Wearing a fake cast on your wrist and claiming to be helping orphans, huh?” Juno said.
“I was nineteen. It was the best idea we had,” Alex said.
“The best idea you had. Pulling all the tricks on the girls were you?” Juno said.
“Like you’re any better, Miss my-heel-has-broken-off-can-you-help-me?” Nia said, mimicking a damsel in distress.
“Shut up,” Juno said, pinching her on the arm.
“Oh please sir, I need to get to an important appointment but my heel has completely broken away from my shoe. What can I do?” Nia teased, dancing out of the way of Juno's
swipes.
“Oh really Miss my-it-looks-like-my-top-buttons-have-come-undone-and-I-hadn’t-noticed,” Juno said.
The three of them got back into Boris laughing before they set off for home.
25
Alex sat back against the lemon tree in Juno's backyard and signed in contentment. The sun was shining, the day warm and he'd finally done something practical, which felt good.
He looked over at the garden bed where he’d planted the cuttings taken from his old house. Each of them were tiny but with enough watering and attention they would soon grow. In the garage there was a large plastic plate with various other leaves taken from the succulents waiting for roots to sprout so they could to be planted in the soil.
It was just after two in the afternoon. Upon returning from visiting Howey and Puzo, Juno had immediately insisted they change some of the shield rings from three shots to thirty.
Altering a single ring had drained Alex's mana entirely and also taken some of Juno's. They’d waited until the mana refilled and then changed another ring, repeating this pattern until they had four of them.
Nia and Juno had gone to sell the rings and collect supplies for the traps they were planning to set. Alex had been given extremely strict warnings not to do any experimental magic while they were gone.
So now Alex was sitting outside, his screen up, scrolling through various spells and studying them. Although he now had ten spells he could cast it still wasn't enough of a sample size for him to fully understand the magical code. It was like only having a few sentences when what you really needed was the dictionary.
He flipped over to studying the long pages of code from the stolen spell he'd acquired. He’d discovered recently there seemed there was a limit to how many pages of unfinished spells he could hold.
Juno had explained that as he grew better and stronger, the spells he knew would take up less space, allowing him to learn new or more powerful ones.
In effect the extra space meant he had ten spells stored plus room for another one or two, depending on what code he dropped into the screen.
Alex read through the code again, taking guesses as to what it meant but he was lost and soon closed it.
He was casting Flame Finger repeatedly, lighting up multiple fingers when he suddenly wondered if he could combine two distinct spells into one. After all, he could layer Analyze on top of itself and make it stronger.
But what spells could he combine? He brought up the list.
Know Thyself
Analyze
Shield
Purify
Flame Finger
Haste
Unlock
Find food
Conceal
Know Thyself and Analyze would be no use combined. Purify removed poisons and toxins from himself, water or food. Again, no clear way to combine that with anything. Telekinesis, although sounding incredibly cool, was virtually useless. He could throw a pebble across a room. He’d cast it on a fallen lemon and moved it about a foot. Unlock would open physical and digital locks. Find food produced a small ball of light that moved to the nearest edible food. It was an interesting spell – it required the caster to concentrate upon casting. If cast with no intention it would simply fly to the nearest edible food, even if that was a crumb on the floor or a bug. You had to focus on finding enough food to eat for it to be useful. Alex considered it a virtually useless spell but Juno had assured him that later he’d be able to adapt it to find things other than food.
Shield was a shield... combined with Purify maybe? Make a toxin removing shield?
The final two spells he had were Conceal and Haste.
Haste was another of spell that was near useless in his opinion. It gave just five seconds where he could move far faster than usual. But as a werewolf, he was already faster than he'd ever been in his life. Adding extra speed via a spell seemed ridiculous given he was still having trouble controlling what he was doing already.
Conceal was very useful, if incredibly draining. It hid the caster, the spell pushing away the gaze of anyone who might see them.
Alex went through his list of spells trying to work out which ones he could combine in a useful way. Finally he focused on Flame Finger and Shield, thinking the he could create a fiery shield. Offensive and defensive all in one.
Despite the fact Juno are now told him not to engage in any experimental magic he was too curious to stop.
He opened up a new window and dragged across the Shield spell and Flame Finger, placing them beside each other. They just barely fit. He was close to his limit, given he was still holding pages of the stolen spell elsewhere.
“Please don’t die,” he whispered to himself as he pushed on the two spells. They resisted for a moment before merging. The code altered entirely, looking nothing like the origin code of either spell.
Normally, spells had a title above them. This one had a blinking cursor awaiting his input.
Flame Shield appeared as Alex thought the name.
Alex had Know Thyself running already. He quickly checked it – everything good so far.
Alex shuffled himself away from the lemon tree in case there was an accident with the fire and then he cast the spell, hitting the execute button. If it was useful he’d have to tie it to a physical movement later. The pull on his magic was high, taking three quarters of his mana.
All at once, a faint flame burst out from all over his body, covering him entirely. On his screen Flame Shield appeared in the active spell list. The small image of him was surrounded in flame.
Realizing the need to test it before he ran out of power, he grabbed a fallen lemon and tossed it straight up in the air so it fell down on his head. It hit the shield with a sizzle and then landed on the ground, burned. Then the shield collapsed. The code still apparently held the limiter the original Shield spell contained.
“Yes!” Alex cheered, and carefully picked up the burnt lemon. It was charred on one side and still warm to the touch.
Alex sat down and waited for his mana to regenerate before doing it again, this time throwing two lemons above him. Both hit and sizzled, charring black before falling to the grass. He spent the next hour throwing lemons at himself and burning them. Just as he was about to stop he saw a new slot open up in his spell list. Practicing Fire Shield had increased his knowledge and abilities.
He quickly dropped the Flame Shield spell into the slot. He wasn't intending to keep it there – he’d talk with Juno when she returned and tell her he could learn another spell. Maybe she had something more useful. Perhaps an offensive spell better than telekinesis.
Now that Flame Shield was stored, the pages he’d used were empty again, a blinking cursor waiting. For a moment Alex was tempted to combine Flame Shield and Purify just to see what might happen but then decided against it. Besides, all the practice was tiring. He sat back against the tree and let his mind drift to the plan they’d hatched.
The plan. They’d decided to go to the same abandoned factory where they'd crashed Boris and Alex had accidentally incinerated the mages and their car. It was remote and they knew the area. It also only had one gate in.
Juno was going to set up a variety of magical traps but they also would use the physical layout to their advantage.
The plan thus far was to use the soldering kit they’d bought to repair the circuit. Alex would find a cafe bathroom, somewhere with a power point, and fix the circuit. Juno’s hypothesis was it fed on magic and would either work on its own or require a jolt of Alex’s magic.
Then he’d drive around in Boris, hopefully attracting some mages he could lead to the factory. Their intention wasn't to kill all the mages but rather capture one and get the hell out of there, driving to April’s.
Alex felt himself relax as he leaned against the tree. It was good to be outside. His wolf definitely needed to run, and to see the sky and the trees.
He idly cast Know Thyself, looking at his stats page. Across the board they were improving. His strength had
gone up while his body fat percentage had gone down. He was getting stronger and faster still. It appeared he’d stopped growing, topping out at just below eight feet in his hybrid form.
Alex wiped it away and went back to studying his eleven spells. Although the main reason to capture a mage was to discover who was trying to kill him, Alex hoped he’d be able to talk to them about how they used their magic. So far he only had Juno to compare with and her methods for making new magic were alien to him.
He needed to find a way to limit the use of mana or to contain spells so he could experiment with writing and creating his own spells without killing himself. At the moment he had no idea how to do that. As Alex pondered, his mind slipped back to computer programming. When testing a new build, you often do so in a virtual environment rather than a live system in case something went wrong.
But it could there be a virtual environment for magic? As Alex flipped through various spells and wondered if such a thing was possible he saw a new icon shimmer into existence – a picture of a box within a box.
“Oh c’mon,” he said aloud. Could it be that simple?
He tapped on the symbol and a screen opened that was sitting inside a large box. Virtual Spell System appeared at the top. Down the side screen his eleven spells were listed. Inside the box was a blinking cursor plus a small image of himself.
Not believing it could be this simple, Alex dragged across Flame Shield and then tapped execute.
Immediately the small figure of himself was shrouded in a fiery shield.
He had the barest of moments to look at it though before his mana zeroed out, and pain roared through his body. Casting the spell in virtual cost far more than it did in real life.
Alex could barely concentrate on the screen due to the sheer agony running through his muscles. He swiped his hand trying to find some way to close the tab or to shut it down but there was nothing obvious to do so.
Alex grimaced as he searched the screens for some way to stop the virtual spell.
“Time limit, stop, halt, pause,” Alex groaned. He could feel small wounds opening on his arms and legs. The taste of blood was in his mouth.
