Thursday - Day 5 - 12 May 2021

  SMASH! My warhammer blasted through yet another slick black carapace. Goo sprayed far and wide. It cracked like overstressed construction grade plastic. Splinters flew in every direction. The stressed not-plastic chitin shattering was even louder than the howls of the mutated animals running amok now that the rain had receded. A thick haze hung in the air saturating everything. Deep thrumms and high pitched buzzings cut through the humidity, heralding massive disparate swarms of mutated insects that made you feel as if you were grinding your teeth involuntarily.

  No matter where you looked, horrifically oversized mutant bugs were everywhere. They were coming from every direction, boiling out of the trees and around the derelict houses sinking down along the neighborhood.

  What made it worse was that these ugly fuckers were hungry. I saw them fly, wriggle, crawl and dart around still chewing on bloody limbs that hung from their jaws like toothpicks.

  “Just keep swingin’ and killin’!” I screamed, lunging forward to squish a mutated ant-spider hybrid the size of a rottweiler attempting to leap onto Elvis. My barbarian friend stood where the sidewalk used to be in front of the small front yard. The pointed edge of my shield split its skull in two, cutting the high pitched droning noise short. The corpse was dragged away by two other ant-spiders that began eating just as they were out of my reach. Paul laughed like a jolly skinny Santa Claus as he tore through the swarm with his bare hands. He didn’t even need armor. I envied the way he did this with pure innocent joy. That was a genu-wine smile I saw on his face. Insectile gore dripped down his arms and face.

  Part of me wondered at how all this came about but that distant part of my mind was easily distracted by how gung-ho Mike was about this, his single-minded slaughter almost putting Elvis and myself to shame. His ‘Mental Hands’ ability was beyond useful allowing him to wield an extra four Alchemy-reinforced baseball bats larping as medieval maces. No bug stood a chance in front of him, from the horrifying ant-spiders to the beetle-hoppers.

  Every single one of Mike’s deadly swings spelled the end for a slavering beast hungry for our flesh. The strategy he used was simply brilliant for how easy it was. One of the ‘Mental Hands’ holding a bat was dedicated to flipping the bugs over onto their backs while the other went to town on the much softer underbellies. He was killing more bugs than Elvis, a perpetual bugswatter of strategic proportions.

  I could see the strain on his face, juggling all those ‘Mental Hands’ but I needed him to keep working his magic. “Mike!” I yelled. I left my warhammer in a dead ant at my feet, picked up a beetle-hopper by the horn and hurled it into a knot of spider-ants heading towards Lannie. “Help them out!”

  Boris and his much taller wife Lannie stood back to back, wielding maces and shields crafted from Lannie’s abilities. I was glad they were wearing the armor I’d made for them. Neither were strong enough for the heavier, more durable versions I’d crafted but more than a few vicious blows were turned away by the chainmail vests and iron helmets. The medium-fit suits served them perfectly. Each had their own small but no less impressive pile of dead mutant insects scattered around them.

  My call for Mike to help them out was too late. I watched, unable to help without leaving Elvis or Isabella vulnerable, as a scoripede (an unholy amalgamation of a scorpion and a centipede) the size of a horse ran them both over. Its scores of bladelike feet stabbed down and ripped at them like a military tank from hell. They were lucky that the long barbed tail didn’t skewer them.

  Paul slammed down with a Herculean jump, his midnight skin covered with green and red gore. Laughing with exhilaration, he lunged forward, grappling with the beast. He slammed his fists into its face, uncaring that it was biting and snarling at him. The scoripede’s jaws and many bladed front feet sparked as they skidded uselessly off his skin. That man’s very flesh was harder than steel.

  Stepping forward to set his feet, Paul picked it up at one end before yanking down, whipping the beast's body as if it were a slinky before slamming it up and off Boris and Lannie. My eyes almost popped out of my skull as Paul dug his fingers into the chitin armor and ripped its head off before using the long, heavy body as a weighted flail. He held the nightmare fuel of a monster by its seven foot long tail. I almost did but definitely did NOT make the mistake of rubbing my eyes in disbelief as the drops of acid dripping down from the stinger slid right off Paul’s forehead as if it were glass shedding rain.

  If only Paul had super speed to go along with his solar powered super strength. I pushed away the whimsical thought as yet another ant-spider chewed on the bottom of my shield. A quick elbow drop blasted the sharpened bottom of my shield down its throat.

  Isabella dropped her long spear, abandoning her position of guarding the front door of the house, and began to sprint towards Boris before I knocked her back with my elbow.

  “They need my help!” She screamed, trying to duck underneath my arm. I shoved her back again, even harder this time. Mike grabbed her with his real hand and hauled her back towards the door.

  “Belle! He’s right!” Mike said, his voice hoarse from combat. “Paul saved them.”

  I could see the two church ladies peeking out through the living room window, their eyes wide as they took in the roiling chaos.

  “Guard the fucking civilians!” I snarled, stomping down on the other ant-spider’s brother before smacking something that was too many insects put together to even guess at what it was. I saw a hornet's thorax, a soldier ant’s head, and long arched scorpion legs with a massive mid-section that reminded me of a horned beetle. Vestigial wings flapped uselessly all down its body but none of that really mattered as I pulverized the beastie with every ounce of strength in my body.

  More than once. I hit it until it was mush.

  That was a mistake. By the time I had turned around, Elvis was covered in a swarm of ant-spiders viciously tearing and biting chunks out of him. His blood wet the ground, mixing in with the dozens of monsters he’d put down already.

  I gathered my legs underneath me preparing to launch myself to his aid but Mike was already there, using his ‘Mental-Hands’ to deftly flick and smash them off as if he were negligently swatting normal flies.

  ”Thanks man!” I huffed, pivoting as Elvis was taken care of for the moment, I grabbed Lannie and Boris and hauled them to the front porch along with Isabella where I opened the door and dropped them in with a quick, “We got wounded!”

  Without waiting for the two church ladies (whose names I never caught) or Isabella to get to work while Mike stood over them, I surveyed the insanity right in front of my house on my very street. There were thirty different fights going on at the same time. It was like something was in the air galvanizing anything that could fight and forcing it to fight, like a rage-inducing chemical laced into the Virginia humidity. I could see a black bear mixed with a red fox down the road tear its way through a pair of mantis-mites that fought for their pound of flesh. Their tussle smashed through the falling rotten remnants of two suburban homes. Copses of trees were guarded by fat brown squirrels with racoonish faces launching glowing acorns at buzzing tick-flies creating minor downpours of red and green blood that splattered everywhere, hissing as it dissolved anything organic.

  Nowhere was safe.

  My small but powerful group of super humans weren’t the only people fighting Nature’s magic insanity, but every time we moved away from my house, the swarms decided we were vulnerable prey and attacked us from all directions. My wife Sandra stayed on top of the house, defending her mostly peaceful carnivorous plants that served as a bulwark for us. Nothing got past the long vines covered in thorns that wrapped around the house or the hungry roots lashing out from the foundation and dragging mutant wildlife into the dirt. Our house alone covered our backs and most of our sides. We only had to worry about what was right in front of us or above us.

  Paul landed in front of us, his solar-empowered super strength allowing him to hop around like a cricket on drugs.

  “What is next, bossman?”

  Remembering his status screen didn’t take attention from repetitively smashing bugs into the dirt.

  This situation was really no big deal for him at this time of day, I just kinda shrugged. More than a few of his characteristics had greatly increased but that made sense. I remember him showing me his status the other day around dusk when it was still pouring down rain and his “Strength” was at ‘9’. Now, it’s sitting at ‘16’ which is higher than Elvis’. The noonday sun was shining at full strength and our knockoff Kryptonian was soaking it all in. It must feel like a drug to him.

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  My inner nerd noted yet again that these magical Status screens simply reported a snapshot of our current selves, a descriptor if you will, allowing us to view a report of what we are and what we can do. That very same inner nerd growled at the fact that there were no ‘Level Up’ buttons or built in ways to automatically increase our characteristics.

  “Boss?”

  Paul’s insistent prodding brought me back to the situation at hand. I shot Paul a look before killing another mastiff-sized insect. I motioned for him to do the same. And another. And another. At some point, I stopped hearing their screams.

  We heard pain filled shrieks a few houses down. These were definitely human.

  With another look, I called out - Paul! - and nodded in that direction. Paul’s smile got bigger.

  “Understood, bossman!”

  It was odd to feel relief and jealousy at the same time but Paul Mulenga was essentially heaven sent at this point. His abilities were absolutely broken. I theorized that at midnight, he could be worn down by forcing him to blow through his stores of sunlight but from dawn to dusk, he could keep on keepin’ on. So much so, that his only weapon was an oversized weapon that no normal human had any business using. I had made for him an oversized and overlong butcher’s cleaver with an extremely enhanced tang so that it could stand up to his ridiculous strength. But luckily, we weren’t facing an enemy that needed that kind of oomph.

  Paul jumped towards the shrieks as if he were shot out of a catapult. Elvis took a few steps back so he could stand next to me and sighed, his gashes closing right in front of my eyes. “That man is built different!” I nodded in resigned agreement. “He’s basically invincible if the sun is out.”

  “Shut up!” I snarled back with a laugh. “You’re a fucking berserker demi-god running around with no armor and your strength is through the roof!” I shoved forward with my shield knocking back a scoripede that thought I looked tasty before caving in its head a well placed swing of my warhammer. “Didn’t I make a nice suit of armor just your size? Ungrateful bitch.”

  “Sorry.” He said, hunching behind his shield as more ant-spiders launched themselves at him. Their bladelike toes dug at the massive shield crafted from a picnic table. “I saw Paul get attacked by big bugs and didn’t have time to put it on.” Elvis used his beast of a warhammer to swipe the four ant-spiders clinging to his massive shield to the ground and then smooshed them. “And not my fault you went with mystic woowoo bullshit instead of maxing out the powers that keep you alive.”

  I didn’t have a good answer for that one. Something about dripping mutant blood just cut my brain off from any kind of wit.

  Elvis pulled off another bug chewing on his boot and squished it. “How long have we been fighting? I’m actually getting hungry.”

  I shrugged, throwing a handful of stones that blew through more of the unending tide. A handful of stones hurled with superstrength is basically more powerful than a shotgun. The closer individual insects died while the ones further out were just knocked out of the sky. The shot spread was far less concentrated than an actual shotgun.

  “I mean, it’s probably been less than twenty minutes man.” I looked around wearily during the quick lull in combat. “The rain stopped, the sun came out, and hell broke loose. Thank God we all wear our armor all the damn time.” I said that last part pointedly, tapping my heavily armored boot on a rock.

  Elvis rolled his eyes before wiping a chunk of ant-spider guts off his forehead. The cloying humidity only made it worse. Not only did we have to contend with the unending amounts of slick gore, but our own sweat trickled into the cuts and bite wounds just adding another layer of irritating exacerbation.

  “How ya doin’ up there babe?” I called out, looking behind to see my wife floating underneath several cleverly placed leaves that would put banana leaves to shame. Her butt sat on a light blue platform above our roof and a few mini Rods of God orbited her just in case she needed them. I doubted that though. More and more vines thicker than baseball bats and covered in wicked barbed thorns grew out of the two main bunches of mutated vegetation under her control. Not only did a large tree grow up the side of the house, but a symbiotic vine with a supernatural hunger coiled around the newly laid layers of stone covering the shell of our home.

  She just gave me a thumbs up physically and mentally through our psionic link. I could feel her fascination as she experienced her pet plants snatch more and more ravenous insects out of the air and off our property. Even the ones that burrowed were crushed by questing roots that were becoming as strong as metal.

  “Well, holler if ya need me!”

  I could feel an odd musing of hers drift through our mental link. I’m pretty that that thought wasn’t meant for me. “I really feel like I should be playing music right now. Some Vivaldi would really fit the mood.” A fleeting picture of her deciding between her violin and her banjo melted away.

  Elvis gulped as I laughed at our incredulous situation, turning to carve a bloody swatch through yet another swarm.

  “You were right. Your wife is scary.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see another venus flytrap mouth on the end of a vine snatch an earwig with dragonfly wings out of the air. I grinned. “True, but wait till you see this. Keep the bugs off me for just a minute, I got an idea.”

  Taking a few steps back, I quickly dropped my warhammer and shield right next to me before shucking my boots. My toes gripped the dirt and I could feel the Earth hum through me. I pulled with my Terrastria, letting my magic course through me and down into the dirt and stone before arcing back up into me. I had already done this once before but not really to the extent that I had wanted to. Within twenty seconds, I was covered in a complete suit of dirt and stone.

  “Dude, you just look like a man made outta dirt.” Elvis scoffed, swinging a ten foot centipede around like a lasso before launching into a brawling mess of ant-spiders tearing into another mutant black bear.

  “True, but I’m getting a bit tired of them just tearing through all the stuff I made.”

  Closing my eyes, I continued to pour my magic into my suit of Terrastria armor until it became more complete, with inch thick plates of stone covering my chest and back and the flat parts of my arms and legs. Gravel mixed with clay formed the parts of my armor that required more flexibility. I consciously added a half-inch thick layer of dirt and clay and gravel to cover all of the armor just to add in a padding to absorb kinetic force. For the final touch, my eyes were covered in the clearest visor of quartz I could manage.

  Elvis nearly jumped out of his skin when he glanced over his shoulder. “Holy shit!”

  I couldn’t answer as I hadn’t left open a large enough grill for my mouth to breathe through. Instead, I basked in the greatly increased stability and energy absorption that this tactic brought me.

  While part of me chafed at the obvious dig at my stubborn belly fat remnant, not that it was much at this point, I saw that nothing had truly changed except for how I felt. I felt stronger, I felt more full of energy, that I had more power at my fingertips than usual. Every part of my body hummed with a deep, steady beat. This must be my Traits working together with my Terrastria supporting them. Grounded increased my strength and stability and Mana-Forged increased my energy absorption, and with my Earth Magic covering my entire body with dirt and stone while also serving as a link to the ground beneath me, I felt like an unstoppable magical golem.

  At that moment, I heard an odd, soft ping deep within the earth. Ignoring it for the moment in favor of far more immediate concerns such as the voracious mutant insects swarming around me, my magic hummed within me just waiting for my will to be manifest.

  Grinning, I looked down at my stony hands that were larger than open baseball gloves. With a concentrated effort, I pulled on my strengthening connection to the earth. With that final boost, my dirt covered feet detached from the ground and I moved like a rumbling bulldozer. First, I tackled the closet bug, an unholy fusion of a praying mantis and a termite. The beastie didn’t see me coming as it was consuming the head of an unlucky beetle. I could see the mantis-mite strategically spraying the beetle’s corpse with acid and then using its vice-like claws to crack open the juicy insides.

  My triple-layer booted feet smashed through the mantis-mite’s thorax like a bowling ball filled with concrete. It made a shplooosh sound right before the mouth full of beetle brains let out a hideous shriek. I didn’t give it time or space to turn around. Lunging forward and letting my weight do the work, my golem shell weighed over two hundred pounds and powered by super strength and Earth Magic almost flattened its armored upper back.

  The spines of its arms scrabbled against my back and helmet but I could ignore it. Serrated limbs skittered against the underlying stone plates. The clay and dirt mixture gave the sharp spines no purchase but allowed me a moment to crawl forward and wrap one hand around its neck. I pulled forward, my right hand morphing into a stony hammer reminiscent of a meat tenderizer. One swing and the mutant collapsed beneath me.

  “That was AMAZING!” Elvis hollered, stomping through his own mantis-mite. I could feel my strength waning, my connection to the Earth non-existent as I wasn’t actually touching it. Using the dregs of my magic, I pulled myself to my feet and shoved my boots down into the dirt. Almost immediately, I could feel mana surge from the earth into my golem form.

  “Note to self,” I muttered, taking a few deep breaths, “have to keep my feet on the ground.”

  The beginnings of a headache faded away as I moved slowly, walking towards different swarms of chimeric insects. They couldn’t truly touch me. With my connection to the Earth being as strong as it is, they couldn’t pluck me off the ground or knock me back. Each swing of my arm crushed, flattened or smashed, the dirt and stone covering me changing according to my will. The ends of my hands became stone hammers, obsidian axes, gravel clubs, and even tendrils of clay that I could flick about as whips.

  Elvis landed next to me, his blood and never-ending cycle of cuts and wounds made him look like some kind of barbarian deity. “Well you certainly aren’t fast.”

  The tears and divots in my golem form filled in as I pulled more mana through the earth. “I traded speed for strength and durability.” A wasp the size of a buzzard landed on my shoulder, slamming its barbed tail over and over into my back. I could feel a dull pressure as the layer of clay absorbed most of the force and the stone underneath solidly rejected the stinger. “I’d say that’s a smart move right now.”

  Clay whips with obsidian tips rose out of my other arm and shoulder, spearing through the wasp and hurling it down at my feet. I stepped on it twice, just to make sure it stayed there.

  While my body felt young and energetic, I noticed a growing weariness in two places, my head and in my chest. Instinct told me that while my ability to draw upon the earth in this way was almost infinite, my ability to channel and control this flow of power was not. “Elvis! Watch my back!” Turning my attention inward, I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The center of my chest grew heavier and my headache grew as I kept a deathgrip on my Terrestria, forcing it to keep me armored for just a bit longer. I turned and slowly but steadily plodded back the twenty feet until I had my back up against my house.

  Finally releasing my hold, the full weight of the dirt, gravel, clay and stone hit me. My super strength kept me upright but just barely. I had to flex my Earth Magic just a bit more to shed my golem suit. I kept my feet firmly planted in the ground though. I felt like a balloon that had been filled to the brim and was just about to burst. Luckily, I let my hold on my magic go in time. It was seriously draining to do that, to work that kind of magic with that much intensity.

  With Alchemy, it made me hungry and drained my core of power, leaving me empty until I had time to rest. Being connected to the ground allowed me to replenish faster but this Earth Magic had a different cost. It was hard on my body. My muscles hurt, my head was throbbing, and my chest was heaving like I had been forced to sprint at gunpoint until I dropped.

  “Take a breather.”

  Mike moved me over to guard the front door of my house and took my place in the yard to Elvis’ left. I didn’t want to say it but I was grateful for the rest. I got to watch an odd synergy fall into place.