Monday - Day 2 - 9 May 2021

  The short walk to my house from Elvis’ was more stressful than it should’ve been. My nerves were shot from today. I kept my head on a swivel, expecting attacks from mutated suburban wildlife at any moment. There were just too many avenues of attack. Anything could pop out of anywhere. The spots where the sewer opened up to the road, from underneath a car or a shitty raised wooden deck, or even drop outta the sky by falling off a tree branch.

  So I moved my ass real quick, keeping my shield up and my warhammer at the ready and praying that my armor would be tough enough for a thirty yard jog. I could see the house of horticultural horrors as soon as I got to the edge of the yard I was working in. The bizarreness of my house didn’t slow me down.

  Sheets of lush green vines covered the majority of the house walls and I could only see the wickedly sharp thorns peeking out from behind the leaves if the wind blew. The skinny chimney at the top was still exposed and all of the windows and doors were still exposed.

  I twanged on my mental link to Sandra and let her know that I was here. Without words, she let me know that she was still out in the backyard so I quickly opened the gate and stepped right on through. The smell of something delicious cooking pulled me towards the back deck but the sight of my wife yanked me in her direction.

  Not only was her smile bordering on the euphoric, but the way the setting sun caught her gorgeous blue eyes stole the breath from my lungs. She had replaced all of her armor that I’d made for her with plant-based equivalents and it looked sexy. A wreath of pink roses adorned her brow, tulip and dandelion flowers trailed down her legs, and the rest of her was perfectly covered up with thin, tightly woven vines spotted with even more flowers. Sandra’s boots caught my eye as she lightly hopped down from atop the tree branch she was sitting on. As her feet touched the ground, the vines covering her legs dove into the ground to cover her feet as well and then grass grew up and wove around her ankle. The earth itself combined yard grass and vines to form tough boots in the span of two seconds.

  I had funny quips to say but I couldn’t really get my voice to function there. Instead, I dropped my gear and picked her up, twirling her around and smothering her with a kiss.

  “Well, someone’s happy to see me!” Her eyes twinkled as she leaned in for another kiss. “Is it the food or the outfit, huh? And don’t lie!”

  Using my super strength, I tossed her a good ten feet in the air like a gymnast and caught her as she squealed. “BOTH!” I held her at arms’ length so I could get a good look. “Were you inspired by Poison Ivy from the old Batman movies or what? Nevermind, I know you didn’t watch that movie. Anyways, how did all this-” I gestured up and down at her, “come about?” I gave her a twirl. “Not that I’m complainin’.”

  She looked sheepish. “I mean, it’s kind of stupid.” Looking at me bashfully, my wife pointed at the two pots behind me that were simmering over a small open fire. “I was chopping vegetables up and dropped the knife on my foot. But nothing happened because the grass grew over my foot so fast and so thick that I didn’t get cut. So I started experimenting.”

  Taking another step back, I examined her suit in greater detail, making sure to keep my dirty thoughts to myself. “Is it useful, I mean, that’s a stupid question. But uh, what else does it do?”

  Her hands glowed a soft blue mixed with purple. “More, but that’s not all. I was so startled that when I went to pick up the knife, I accidentally grabbed it by the blade BUUUT, my awesome mind powers made a shield around my palm so I didn’t get cut!”

  Sandra looked sheepishly towards the pile of armor stacked neatly on a nearby lawn chair. I finished the thought for her. “And that means you don’t need the armor I made for you, huh?”

  I wrapped her up in a big hug. “Babe, it’s cool. In fact, having this combo is probably better for you in the long run. You can use it to train your powers and not be weighed down.” With one hand, I lightly knocked on the thin wooden pauldron covering her shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” My wife tried to step back but I kept pace with her, holding a teasing smile as I lightly swatted her hands away and kept thwacking her armor in the same spot.

  “TESTING!” With each successive knock with my knuckle, I applied more and more force until I barely broke through and sap leaked out. Sandra yanked herself back with her mind and then floated just out of my reach, ‘tsking’ at my efforts to get to her.

  Our little playfight had brought me too close to our garden and I didn’t notice the heavy vines wrapping around my feet before they yanked me up so I was upside down, floating in the air. Sandra smirked at me, gesturing until I was eye level with her.

  She folded her arms and had her vines give me a little shake. “How’s this for a test?”

  I pointed at her shoulder. “Better than I expected. Check it out. Not only did your living plant armor heal, but that damaged plate is thicker than it was before I broke through.” I knocked on my own thick iron plating covering my chest. “Might want to even it out though.”

  I looked down at the ground and then back at my wife. “And maybe put me down gently, please.”

  Ten minutes later, we both polished off three bowls of pasta that weren't half bad. Canned chicken, salt and a bottle of alfredo sauce plus being nearly starving made us feel like we were eating grub from a five star restaurant. Oddly enough, we sat in silence the whole time as we were trying out Sandra’s mind meld ability, the offshoot of her Psychokinesis power that allowed us to share memories.

  Through our link, I felt her travel down in my direction and tap into the memories I brought to the fore. Deeper memories or things I wasn’t actively thinking about, I could feel her touch rebound off of those as if I had a vault door in front of them. Laughing at the unintended invasion of privacy, I focused, replaying the events of the day, making sure to keep my mind as clear as possible so she could get the details but Sandra kept rewinding and going over them.

  It felt like I was being stretched thin and then the active part of my brain was being put through a strainer. And it wasn’t the memories I was expecting her to review, like the ideas about what my Alchemy could do with CVS supplies or the possible bargaining ideas with the neighborhood church. Each memory of the day was dissected and broken down, scanned and reviewed until I finally broke the connection. It hurt but I had to pinch the door to my mind shut.

  “The fuck are you looking for?” I asked, squinting through the dull pain. “Today wasn’t that complicated. Shit woman, my thoughts aren’t that hard to understand.”

  She looked hurt. “I’m looking for emotions! What was your day like?”

  I just raised an eyebrow. “What? What does that have to do with anything? You can literally see my day from my point of view and I can’t even shade the truth or lie at all because you’re looking at memories.”

  “But that can’t be right.” Her hopeful gaze turned into a glare. “Did you not feel anything? Did you whitewash your memories? Where was your joy when you saw me? Where was your horror when you watched people die in front of you? What kind of robot are you?”

  My jaw clenched. The spoon bent in my hand. “You don’t get to tell me how to feel. I have feelings. You’re telling me you didn’t feel the absolute relief of mine when I got home for the day and saw you alive and well?”

  Sandra started. “I, uh-”

  “No, no!” I said, leaning forward with a glare of my own. “You’re telling me you didn’t feel the cold chill of me realizing the church could very well be on the first steps to the Spanish Inquisition? What about the empty coldness I felt in my gut when I saw an entire crowd of people smashed to bits and I had to pick through their body parts and wipe the blood off to save a goddamn cop? Or the satisfaction of being able to manipulate the very building blocks of reality through my powers?”

  I hated how hurt my wife looked. I mean, anytime we argued, it always felt and looked like I kicked a puppy.

  Her sad whisper cut me deep. “I just wanted to feel closer to you.”

  I paused, taking a minute to chew my food instead of wolfing it down. “It sounded like you were accusing me of not having any feelings, of being a cold psychopath. Jesus, you even called me a robot!” Leaning back and taking a sip of water, I pushed my empty bowl away from myself. “I mean, it’s even more insulting because you just literally got to relive my memories.”

  “But your memories were so clear, so matter-of-fact that even your thoughts were dulled unless you were specifically reviewing different courses of action.” Sandra pushed her own bowl away, her living plant armor retracting until she was wearing only her jeans and a white t-shirt. She reached forward, grabbing my hand with her own. “Here, let me show you my day.”

  Before I could say anything, our mental connection snapped wide open and then buzzed like a livewire. My consciousness was yanked forward and shoved into a recent memory humming with power.

  The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming sense of peace undergirded with the righteous weight of purpose. Even though I could see out of Sandra’s eyes, I felt more than saw her sitting atop a massive vine that carried her around according to her will. She used that very vine as a living cable to connect to the landscape, the roots acting as nerves connecting her to the carpets of grass and the places where the trees and bushes interrupted the expanse of greenery. Her own emotions reverberated in the front of her mind coloring everything she did.

  Meditating and sinking within the flow of ever present mana that now acted as a secondary atmosphere provided a solid sense of contentment. Connecting to the land steadied the depths of her soul. Even the plants, now experiencing greater health and accelerated growth due to the presence of mana, contributed to her overall mental health. Peace was the dominant emotion, peace and contentness.

  The flow of time within the memory sped forward a bit to Sandra experimenting with lightly altering the flow of mana in the area and directing the excess towards the vegetables in her garden. Intense feelings of accomplishment almost seemed to color her memories so that they were brighter than they actually were. Each achievement or joy brightened the memory burning it deep into her mind while each failure, as rare as they were, just felt darker as if an actual gloom presided over the ten minutes that was the bad experience.

  My stomach rebelled against not being in my own body and my will asserted itself. Shutting my eyes and yanking my hands away, I scooted my chair back, sweating and breathing through my nose.

  “Don’t, do, that, again.” I said, almost snarling. Thick nausea threatened to overtake me at any moment as my brain tried to reestablish the proper seat of authority within my body. For that slice of time, I hadn’t really been present in my own physical shell. “Please, for the love of God.”

  I looked up and forced my vision to stabilize. “First, that hurts. Second, it is awesome but don’t get me wrong. That’s fucking dangerous. And beyond unsettling.”

  Her blue eyes watered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

  “It’s okay.” I said, trying to make sure that I didn’t burn this new bridge. Maybe I had overreacted, not fully understanding what she was trying to do or what she was trying to communicate. Honestly, the fact that it hurt made it so much worse. It’s like part of my brain was at war with itself. With that, I reached forward and took both of her hands in my own. “I’m sorry too. We’re still learning . . . both of us. Again, it was really cool, looking back. Two things though, one, you really do feel differently than I do.”

  Sandra nodded, gripping my hands just a bit tighter. “Obviously.” She replied. Her face fought to hide the worry behind her eyes.

  I rolled my eyes, obviously not getting my point across. “I mean, you have a completely different view, as in your emotions are the point of the memory instead of the commentary around the memory.” I ignored her squint and kept going. “Like, when I fought the mutated neighbor’s dog, I had to kill it because it was trying to kill me. The fact that I was angry about it was a reaction describing my state of mind but it didn’t affect the actions really. But for you, you think of the sense of peace from meditating or the joy of testing your new magic but how it made you feel is the point of the entire experience. It is the foundation of the memory. You remember the feelings more and match those feelings against other experiences which is how it’s all tied together. For me, the facts are the foundation of the memory.”

  I ignored the trap of the obvious joke that I could’ve done, the ‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus’ quip, but in the interest of reconciliation, I held my tongue and just smiled at my wife.

  Moving forward with my thought, I squeezed her hands back. “And thing number two, maybe tomorrow, we try this again but in a different way. Instead of pulling me into the memory in your brain, let’s see if you can either show it to me on my end of the connection or if that doesn’t work, package it up and send it to me.”

  I waited for a tentative nod before helping her clear the table and packing up one pot’s worth of pasta for Elvis. With a bit of Alchemy, I broke down the plastic clothes basket and turned it into two large plastic pitchers so I could give him plenty of clean water in easy to use containers. The WaterBob in my tub had more than enough water for the two pitchers and I made a mental note to give Elvis one of my two spare rain barrels that I hadn’t installed yet. With Alchemy, MacGyvering up a nigh magical water filter device would be a breeze so my filled up rain barrel in the backyard would go a long way towards our water needs for the foreseeable future.

  Even though Sandra hadn’t met Elvis, she knew a few details about ‘my minion’ from the memories I’d shown her. And when I got my food and water supplies together for Elvis, she went ahead and got extra things together for him because she just couldn’t help herself. Soap and shampoo, a spare kettle, a large quilt, a few lighters and a pack of socks that I would have to resize, all of it went into a wheelbarrow.

  I wanted my trip to be as fast and as safe as possible, so I used my Terrastria to cover my body almost completely with two layers of solid cast iron. My helmet’s visor still allowed me to see out and the mouth grill let me breathe. With my magic being fully engaged in letting the metal suit stay plastic enough for me to move in it while being genuinely impenetrable from the outside, I had to hustle. Turns out, my preparations weren’t necessary as nothing bothered me for the twenty seconds I spent hauling Elvis’ stuff to his house. Like a man on a mission, I banged on his front door and hightailed it back home.

  ******

  Tuesday - Day 3 - 10 May 2021

  Virginia’s early morning light from the east peeked through the slits in the window directly into my eyes forcing me to greet the day to an empty bed. Shivering as I pulled my covers off, I rolled over to put my armor on and almost panicked at Sandra’s absence. That is, until I felt her peaceful happiness through our diminished mental link. Her sexy butt was most likely out in the garden meditating or doing some yoga.

  She always got up before me. Part of the package if you grow up on a farm, I guess. What that mental check did for me was slow me down. She wasn’t in any danger and that’s what really mattered.

  Making sure to carefully modulate the amount of force I used, I delicately opened my bedroom door and gently closed the door behind me. One moment of carelessness with super strength is all I need to accidentally break something that would be difficult to fix, Alchemy or no.

  The most delectable scent hit me when I walked into the kitchen and there on the counter sat a mug with a hint of steam coming out of the top. Sandra must not have been gone long as the coffee was still hot. The paper towel it sat on had a second wet ring where her mug was just a few minutes before. How in the world did she get out of bed without me noticing? I usually notice something when she wakes up, the bed being colder or me having greater access to blankets than normal.

  Peeking through the eastern window, using my magic to peel back the metal covered shutters, I tried to use that old survivor trick of holding up your fingers horizontally underneath the sun so I could guess at how many hours it had been since the sunrise. Then I laughed to myself because I couldn’t actually remember how it worked. All I knew was that the sun hadn’t been up in the sky for very long as it was barely above the trees in the direction of William street that directly led to the historic part of town.

  “Mornin!” I called out as I walked out onto the back porch, making sure to not jostle my coffee. My beautiful wife’s smile almost made me forget the crazy circumstances of the day and I quickly molded a piece of metal into an orb just to reassure myself that magic is real and the world basically ended two days ago.

  Sandra smiled back and called out, “Hey babe! Check it out!” She waved in front of her and a small thornless vine copied her movements. Sitting on three old towels were piles of different fruits and vegetables. I saw potatoes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, gala apples, and a very small pile of apples that didn’t look quite right.

  “I’m assuming I'm about to get an explanation on those weirdo apples, right?” I asked, taking a sip of coffee and then giving her a drawn out hug. “Everything else looks damn good though, big potatoes, thick tomatoes with that homegrown smell, and even the apples look like they’re about to pop with juiciness. It’s almost too clean.”

  Sandra lightly pinched me. “Couldn’t you have done that the other way around, start with the positivity and then mention the oddball fruit?”

  I laughed before pushing her coffee closer to her. “You’re the morning person, not me.”

  “They were an experiment.” She said, picking up the lumpy apple. “I was trying to Willy Wonka the apples and potatoes, you know, the way he made entire meals in a single hard candy. But it didn’t exactly work out well.”

  I tossed one in the air before taking a bite. “Ha! Tastes like a sweet potato!” I turned around to look over at Mike’s house peeking out from over the top of our fence. “Didn’t Mike grow sweet potatoes last year and not do a garden this year? I’m betting he’s got a few forgotten ones underground that you can find.”

  Hard scrabbling on the other side of the tall stone fence pulled me up short. I grabbed at my waist where my ax was supposed to be and cursed. I was only half ready for battle. My shield and helmet were sitting in the dining room but at least I had the rest of my armor on.

  The stone wall shuddered two more times before a terrifying reptilian scream rang out. Mike and Isabella’s house was barely visible over the top of the fence and Sandra and I watched in horror as the backside crumbled down. It was like an invisible wrecking ball just took out the foundation and supports bearing the inner domain of the small two story home.

  Sandra flew to the top of the wall, screamed, and then grabbed me telekinetically, hurling me up and over the wall.

  “Kill it! Kill it dead!”

  I let out my own very manly shriek of terror before my rage-inducing fear could cripple me. I barely had time to process the horror in front of me. Our neighbors house was clearly empty of human inhabitants but something else had moved in over night. I had to believe that Mike and Isabella stayed the night with their church group. Thinking otherwise would be too much right now. I balked at the thick spider webs almost completely filling the house holding more than ten big screen TV sized bundles. The big, well-wrapped blobs were securely anchored to the walls or hanging from the webs.

  Four spiders half the size of a Harley Davidson motorcycle shrieked bloody murder from inside the house while spitting out sticky ropes of silk to nap and trip up their reptilian attackers. To my right, between the backyard and the alley that ran behind all of our suburban houses where Dominion put their power lines was a veritable army of mutated chameleons and geckos. To my horror, they all had too-long teeth and bony frills and forward facing horns reminiscent of a triceratops. Some of them even stood on two legs. Under the morning sun, their skin vacillated between translucent clarity and perfect camouflage.

  My landing was at least strategic, however horrifying that my wife just fucking flung me next to a den of the beasts. I landed to the left of this madness by fifteen feet, out of the immediate area of concern. I praised everything in the Universe that I didn’t land between the hungry animals warring over the silk-wrapped bundles.

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  I took a few slow steps back until my back was against my very own solid stone wall where the side of my house turned into the front of my house. I gripped where my missing ax should be even harder and pulled on my Terrastria, yanking on the stone behind me so that it flowed over me to fill in the gaps of my missing helmet and shield. My wife’s hysterical yelling didn’t distract me as I could see she was flying high enough to not be a target.

  Yes, she is just that afraid of spiders.

  Going just fast enough that the rapid stone molding didn’t drain my mana too badly, I gave myself an extra layer of armor all over my body, a wickedly spiked helmet, and then my left arm became a long spiked club that I could mold at will into any weapon I’d need. My right hand became a caricature of a massively oversized hand the size of a trash can lid as more stone flowed over my flesh. At least the damn thing didn’t betray me. My hands were shaking like a leaf.

  That. Well, that pissed me off.

  Letting myself feel the anger spurred on by my fear allowed me to command the tremors to cease. Humans shouldn’t have to face anything this horrifying. But if and when we do, rage lets us handle it.

  It is now my firmest belief that spiders aren’t meant to be this big. It is my second firmest belief that nice bug eating chameleons shouldn’t look like starving demons the size of men. I wonder what hellish deity decided that this shit was a good idea.

  The fighting continued as if I wasn’t even there and I made the strategic decision to keep the fuck out of it. If Jurassic Park versus Tarantulas wanted to kill each other then who was I to disagree? I glanced at the wall to my right about thirty feet ahead of me. There was a large chunk dug out of the wall six inches off the ground where one of the reptiles must have charged into it trying to escape. I did good making the walls extra smooth and super thick.

  Higher pitched screaming pulled my attention back to where it should be. The spiders were relentless and tactical which solidified my decision to stay out and but also cemented a future endeavor to burn that freaking house to the ground. I figured that I could build Mike and Isabella a new one if I have to. It was immediately obvious that having dangerous predators ten feet away from my own home was absolutely unacceptable.

  True to their tiny brains, the reptiles charged independently, trying to get their jaws around a juicy spider but the webbed wall crawlers responded with globs of sticky web nailing the lizards to the ground. The rearmost spider approached the situation differently, picking off the most out of position lizard by covering it with webbing and reeling it in to form another cocoon. Spiders one, two and three ran interference, spraying out sticky carpets to foul their footing and using tripwires and traps to make the approach almost impossible. The level of teamwork floored me.

  My moment approached so fast that I almost missed it. The last four triceratop-chameleons were being bundled by each of the four large spiders and that was my moment to strike. Using my super strength tactically, I straight hopped up onto the top of my stone fence wall and then crouched planning on launching myself straight at the spiders. My stone armor flowed down to concentrate the bulk of the weight in my boots and my weapons were held for maximum damage.

  I only had one opportunity to make this work. With the proper positioning, I could take out three spiders in one go and then only have one to worry about. It was to my great misfortune that my beautiful wife decided to intervene.

  At the wrong moment.

  I was planning on launching off and landing on the furthest spider with fifty pounds of stone covered boots, squishing it but also using its smashed body as a place to slam my weapons down to kill two more spiders. And then, within the next second, hurl myself at the last spider with an ax and stone club dripping with spider guts to finish the final monster.

  However, Sandra screams of terror reached a new peak as the spiders used their mandibles dripping with thick green poison to bite into their latest prey and her powers activated unconsciously. The uptick in pitch was the only warning I had. The super thick layers of stone covering my boots almost instantly molded to cover my body as much as possible to add extra layers of magically reinforced armor. As I launched myself off to start my attack, the wall behind me blew up as if a claymore had been detonated on the other side. Not only was I launched even faster, but I was caught up in a storm of telekinetically launched stone chunks.

  I watched as time stood still for a split second. The kinetic shockwave blasted me so hard that I lost my extra big stone hand. The stone club only stayed because it was molded to my left arm and directly in front of me out of the way of the blast.

  Miniature boulders blasted through Mike’s house as if it were tissue paper and the spiders themselves exploded into halos of blood and viscera. All of the work they put into wrapping up their bundles of reptiles went to waste and Mike’s beautifully finished deck was ripped to pieces.

  My own journey turned me into a human missile that shot me through one spider and out the other side of Mike’s house, thankfully missing support pillars. I flipped and rolled into the next neighbor’s yard like a badly skipped stone.

  “Geeeaaahh . . .” I groaned, barely having the wherewithal to pull up stone from underneath me to replace all the extra armor that got blown off. “Shoot me now,” I cursed, moving my body one small bit at a time. Everything hurt but nothing worse than anything else. My body was one massive bruise. I wouldn't be surprised if my skin was a lovely carpet of blue and purple. I was just blown up by my wife and then put through the world’s worst tumble cycle through an actual house. Slowly, I stood up, vomiting as the queasiness smacked me like a college hangover.

  “You ok?” Elvis yelled, running over from his side of the street. “I don’t want to see what monster hit you.” He hefted his battleaxe up and looked around before seeing my wife flying over my house. Her blonde hair floated around her head, crackling with blue telekinetic static. Elvis’ face paled. “Oh shit. Did you piss your wife off? You warned me about her but I thought you were kidding.”

  Finally getting control over my stomach, I levered myself up using magically shaped stone. “She was aiming at the spiders.” I wiped some blood off my lips and spat. “I just happened to be in the way.”

  Elvis’ face was whiter than a sheet of paper. Cautiously, he looked around before picking me up like a damn puppy with three broken legs.

  I tried to fight him but the pain was too much. Feebly wrenching away, I growled at the big lug. “At least let me try to walk.”

  I’d never felt so humiliated in all my life but that feeling quickly went away. The pain reverberating through easily allowed me to push that to the side. Elvis and I almost stopped in the middle of the street as we both watched my telekinetically empowered wife continue to pick up refrigerator sized chunks of stone and bash in more of the neighbor’s house all the while screaming that this was ‘hell on earth’ and ‘fuck spiders’. The splattering sounds almost made me more sick than the concussion.

  Gobs of brownish green blood landed against nearby trees with a wet smack.

  My overgrown minion helped me hobble to my own house where my wife flew over and down to wait for me at the front porch with an expression of sheer horror on her face. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t upset, but I was hurting. And gods above and below, I was scared.

  Between Elvis acting like a deer facing down a lion and my small wife on the verge of tears, I had to fight through the pain and provide some semblance of leadership. No matter how much I just wanted to pass out on the couch with a handful of painkillers.

  “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” Sandra sputtered, frantically wiping away tears from both her fear of spiders and her horror at almost killing me.

  First, I looked at Sandra with a pained smile. “Babe, are they all smushed? Every spiders’ dead?” I coughed as she weakly nodded. Blinking a few times, I took a labored breath and said, “I’m okay, I think. I know that’s not very reassuring but nothing’s actually broken as far as I can tell.” Before she could respond, I held up one shaky hand. “Gather any and all medical supplies please and bring them out back. Alchemy might be able to fix all this.” I gestured down at my bruised self.

  At my direction, Elvis carried me around my house, to the gate on the other side, and half walked-half carried me to my circular stone platform.

  I coughed into my hand before sitting down heavily close enough to my Alchemy platform so that I could use it. “Elvis, carefully pluck two seed pods on the messed up silver apple tree in my backyard. You can’t miss it.”

  All of me hurt. At this point, I was using my Terrastria to magically push the stone covering my body to help me move. Each bend and turn of a limb almost made an eye squeeze out a tear but that just wouldn’t do. With a flip of my hand, I hit the latch and the gate swung open.

  “WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR HOUSE?!”

  Elvis whipped around, taking me with him. His massive arm was wrapped around my waist and when he turned to his left, I was hauled back like a sack of grain. I groaned while forcing my eyes to refocus on the shocked faces of my neighbors in the morning sun. Mike and Isabella were standing in front of a group of people, half of whom were shivering in fear and all of them were covered in blood.

  Mike had the look of a man who had been repeatedly messed up and put back together. His shield was nearly torn in three pieces and his hammer was crusted over with gore. A small web of a few thin white lines crossed his face, scars that weren’t there yesterday. Imperfectly healed. Isabella stood right behind him and a little to his right, her own body rapidly healing from numerous wounds that she must’ve taken on from her group with her healing gift.

  I wasn’t jealous of that ability. It was almost masochistic. She could heal just about anything on another person through one of her powers and then she herself would rapidly heal the wound on her own body. At least six people were behind her and five of them looked like they really didn’t belong. One thin man with glasses and three slender women in dresses clutched each other for comfort. A hard-bitten middle-aged woman with a sawed-off shotgun and a medieval mace conjured from light stood in the back. Next to her paced a wide bald man tightly holding a small fire safety ax and a much larger splitting maul.

  Elvis straightened up and helped me to do the same.

  I opened my mouth to speak but Isabella cut me off, reiterating her husband. “WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HOUSE?!” She yelled before whispering, “where’s the rest of it?”

  I turned my head just enough to confirm that I could actually see their house from where I was standing. I was on the other side of my house about to go into my backyard. Still, that didn’t stop a tingle of fear run through me as flashbacks from the horrific encounter ran through my head. The gloom of thick cobwebs hiding the innards of the house from the sun. The dangling well wrapped living snacks for later. The fact that even though some walls were broken down and should have been on the floor but they weren’t because of all the webbing tying everything together.

  I gulped. “Dinosaurs and spiders and Sandra, oh my!”

  Mike stepped forward. “This isn’t funny, Grant! We were coming here to get food and supplies. It looks like a freaking bomb went off.”

  Even though she was also in shock, Isabella squinted at her husband. “Language!”

  I laughed and then hacked up some thick bloody spit. “I could use some healing please, Isabella, and then I’ll tell you how we saved your lives without knowing it. You have no idea how lucky you are.”

  Elvis guided all of us into my backyard and five minutes later, Isabella removed the lion’s share of the damage to my body. I purposely asked her to leave the outer bruising and muscle damage. Apparently, I was more injured than I knew, the shock keeping it from my conscious mind. I had a minor concussion, a deeply bruised liver and one lung was on the verge of collapse. Several bones were cracked and I’m betting the reason they weren’t completely broken was that my bones had to be strong enough to handle my super-strength.

  I was fine with spreading the healing out. I didn’t know how much damage Isabella could take at once. Never overstrain your healer. That's a good way to end up dead.

  Sandra did her best to welcome the impromptu guests by getting everyone water and gathering enough seats so we could all sit outside. The church group, including Mike and Isabella, kept glancing at Sandra’s garden that was full and bursting with life. Some of the vines quietly moved on their own and that more than anything was freaking out the guests.

  Given the level of pain I was just in and the newfound relief from the healing, I felt good enough to just jump into what happened to my neighbor’s house. Sandra stood right next to me with a small camping propane cooker whipping up some oatmeal for everyone.

  I drained my cup of water and set the glass down gently for a refill. “First, I’ll help you fix your house,” I said, drumming my fingers on the table top. “Second, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole house needs to be burnt to the ground.” The two youngest ladies I didn’t recognize gasped. I pointed a finger at them. “I don’t want to hear anything out of y’all you dress wearing nobodies. It’s the apocalypse. A dress might get you killed. How are you gonna run or fight in that?”

  Shaking my head, I waved off any rebuttal and pointed at the big hole in the wall of my stone fence. Limply hanging over the crumbled base of the whole sat a long hairy spider limb dripping green juice. With a gesture, Sandra snatched it and brought it so everyone could see.

  I grabbed it out of the air and stretched it out. “This here is a leg. Hairy, juicy, and at least four feet long.” Tossing it to the most disbelieving member of the group, the middle-aged lady with the shotgun and glowing mace, she gracefully holstered her gun and dispersed her mace into sparkles of pure light. She stretched out the spider leg and sniffed the bloody end. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, she nodded and handed it off so the others could see.

  I looked Mike dead in the eye. “Your house had at least four of these bad boys and just to make this shit worse, the man-sized spiders were fighting an actual horde of chameleon looking triceratops this morning. Then Sandra lost her shit because she’s scared of spiders, flung me over to deal with this, and then blew me and part of your house away.” I held up a finger to forestall the incoming indignation. “We didn’t start it though, the reptiles were the ones to charge and break your house wide open. A third of it was ripped open and exposed to the air before I got involved. Last but certainly not least, pretty sure we killed everything”

  The wide bald man stood up and came over to shake my hand. “Name’s Boris.” His hand could’ve crushed concrete wrapped in steel. I smiled at him and he smiled back missing several teeth. “Bang up job ya did over there. We took ooot more thanna’ few beasties onner’ way ova’. This’un here’s me old girl, Lannie.”

  Lannie reconjured her glowing mace in her lap but quietly shook my hand.

  “Don’t mind’er,” Boris laughed, slapping the table with a quick glare. “We jumped cross the pond to see our grandkids and got stuck on account of the world endin’. She’s in a bit of a twist right’ere.”

  Lannie openly glared at her husband and angrily drank her water. Her other hand couldn’t decide if it was going to grip the mace or stroke the shotgun.

  My beautiful wife popped over balancing a big pot of oatmeal and a teetering stack of bowls to distribute. “There’s plenty to go around!” She said, purposefully disrupting the tension. “Please, Izzy, the house is my fault. I saw the spiders and freaked and my powers aren’t fully under control yet.”

  Mike’s wife found it harder to be mad at my wife than me but something didn’t sit right with me. Sandra took the bowls and began passing out filled ones, making sure to make eye contact and get hellos from the group.

  “We also deserve at least half of a ‘you’re welcome’!” I interjected, letting my fingers drum even harder against the table. My super strength left little cracks in the top. “Now you ain’t gotta deal with massive spiders or a horde of freaking dinosaurs.” Mike angrily slammed his spoon on the table and I pointed my own at him. “ALSO! Also, all of you are at least somewhat covered in blood, so Isabella and Mike, my armor and weapons kept y’all alive, right?”

  “They did at that!” Boris chimed in, slapping his belly. “Mr. Timid an’ his hammer mooshed wolf-cats, vulture demons, and all kinds of evil raccoon things!”

  Sandra furiously refilled bowls, making sure to hip check me on her way past. “We have plenty! Eat up!”

  Isabella delicately finished her first portion and held her bowl out for more. “And where would you be without my healing?” She asked pointedly.

  I smiled so wide my face hurt. “AND that! That is an excellent segway! I have an experiment in mind that you and I can use to help out so many with healing. Just need a lot of time and zero interruptions.”

  Elvis looked up from his fourth bowl. “Do you need me today, boss?” The entire time we’d been talking, he’d put away plenty of food while innocently eyeing one of the more timid ladies from Mike’s group, the prettier one of course.

  “One thing for me specifically. Need any and all medical supplies you can find. Bring them here. Ransack empty houses for that, check kitchens, bedside tables and bathroom mirrors. The usual.” I gulped down another bite of thick oatmeal and washed it down with water. “The rest of the day, work on scavenging useful materials. Cars that haven’t rusted away, any large chunks of stone, crystals of any sort. You’ve seen my Alchemy work and what it can do.”

  Lannie squinted at me. “I haven’t.”

  “What’s-is all about, now?” Boris asked, leaning forward.

  Like an angel, Sandra whooshed in and used her telekinesis to whisk away the dirty dishes. Before she went inside, she blew me a kiss and pointed out in the backyard. “You can talk shop off the deck. I’ll get everyone else straightened out.”

  “Love you babe!” I yelled.

  After a minute, I was standing next to my large circular stone platform where I used to be able to do large-ish scale Alchemy work. Around the table stood Isabella, Boris, Lannie, and Elvis.

  After getting another round of healing from Isabella, I quickly fixed the dent in my backyard stone wall before showing the newcomers what my real plan was. Grumbling at the tree taking up my big ritual circle, I went ahead and made a newer, smaller version. I really needed to expand the ways of my backyard when I get the chance. Using Mike’s messed up shield as an example, I set it in the middle of the new ritual circle and gestured for Elvis to put some of his scavenged material next to it. A solid oak door from someone’s abandoned house and a metal lamppost sat next to the shield.

  “Basically,” I said, clearing my throat. “Basically, Alchemy is just rearranging stuff that’s already there.” I took my boots off and let my toes dig into the dirt beneath the grass. With a slow breath, I pulled energy up from the earth through my legs and into my core where I let it mix with my own mana before pushing out of my hands. I held the perfect visual in my head as I worked, lecturing all the while. “I made Mike’s shield out of spare lumber and car parts, doing my best to make something that would last but clearly he’s had less than a stellar day.”

  The door, the shield, and the lamppost slowly began to glow until they were covered in soft white light. I watched as the white energy almost seemed to liquefy and coalesce before flowing to the center where Mike’s shield lay.

  I nodded towards the center. “See! Look!” I said, staring at the base of the lamppost shrank just a bit and the door lost a few inches off the top. “The materials are being repurposed and reused so I can fix the shield better than new!”

  Elvis and Mike leaned in eagerly as Boris and Lannie took a cautious step back. As the white glow dimmed and then finally went out, I made sure to pull back all of the extra energy still contained by the ritual circle. I had a lot of work planned for the day and had zero intentions on being wasteful with my mana.

  I hefted the shield up and tossed it to Mike. “It is actually better than new,” I said with a smirk. “One large, super-charged medieval shield heavy enough that it’ll be deadly with your extra strength. It’s bigger, has more alternating layers of cross-sectioned wood and even has thin layers of steel between the wood. And just to make it seriously durable, the front has a double layer of steel.” I motioned for him to turn the shield around. “Look at the back. The lip going around the back edge of the shield should give your telekinetic hands easy grip for extra leverage if you need it.”

  “Me next! Me next!” Elvis said, dancing from one foot to the other like a dog seeing his owner pick up the treat bag. “Oh come one! That was awesome! Can I have a giant-ass sword? Or two huge shields with blades on them?”

  My partner already looked absolutely fearsome in the gear I made for him last night. Part of me wanted to deck him out so that he looked like the Juggernaut from Marvel’s X-Men but Elvis didn’t have that set of powers to include invulnerability. He needed something more practical.

  Mike eagerly picked up the shield, giving a solid grunt as he did so. “Schnikeys! This is heavy!” Getting his two feet set, Mike hefted it but couldn’t seem to get it to balance just right without using two hands. Just then, a lightbulb went off. Mike closed his eyes for a second to focus and when he opened them, they glowed with an inner light. “But Mental Hands can pick up the slack!”

  I glared at him. “That’s literally what I said.”

  Ignoring me, he laughed with joyous success, Mike suddenly began to move the shield around as if it weighed nothing. He even went so far as to hop around and shadow-box with the shield on his left arm. “Three Mental Hands, one at the bottom tip and two holding on at the top corners makes this real easy!”

  I was glad for him, and better yet, I was happy that using his powers was becoming something to be enjoyed rather than feared.

  Boris pulled me out of my thoughts with a cough. “Can you make anythin’?” He asked, looking down at his axes.

  “I mean, maybe?” I said, tapping my foot. “Doesn’t mean that the thing will work. I could make a gun and ammo but bullets don’t seem to work anymore. I could fix a computer but electricity isn’t working right now. And I got a tip from your pastor’s spook on how to level up my use of my Alchemy.”

  Boris just looked plain amazed but I didn’t like the look on Lannie’s face, something between greed, lust, and righteous fury. Almost the way a priest from the Dark Ages would look at a hot woman accused of being a witch, torn between secret desire and putting her in the flames. Casually, I walked over and tore a beach ball sized chunk rock from my stone fence and tossed it up a few times before letting it fall to the ground with an intimidating thunk.

  With magic, I crumbled the stone to dust and reconstituted it into a solid stone cube. Then I pushed it back into the small hole I had made. “And think what you want, but this house is not full of pushovers. Elvis is almost three times the size of a normal person, works for me, and my wife is a walking nuke.”

  Boris looked back and forth between me and his wife, furrowing his eyebrows at the look of fear and shame that Lannie had.

  “You’ll get no trouble from us,” he promised. He said that, glaring at his prickly wife to get his point across.

  “Works for me,” I said, turning around and tossing the stone cube up onto the Alchemy circle. “I gave Elvis the same spiel and he saw me get blown through a house this morning. Anyways, what were you thinking of asking for?”

  Boris and Lannie gave each other an uneasy look. Straightening herself up and looking me in the eye, Boris’ wife casually put her hand on her holstered shotgun before speaking. “We would like you to give us armor similar to the kind that you gave Mike and Isabella.” I raised one eye-brow. “In exchange, we will give you their services for free.”

  Mike looked sheepish as I let out a sharp bark of a laugh. “HA!” I snickered for a few moments before a devilish thought hit me.

  “Wait,” I said, turning to Mike. “You agreed to this?”

  Mike shrugged.

  I turned my hard gaze on both Boris and Lannie. “First, how many sets of armor and for how long do they work for me?”

  The husband and wife team spoke at the same time.

  “Twenty full suits of armor.” “Till this craziness is over.”

  I stepped forward as fast as I could. “DEAL!”