by D. Levesque
“Well, yes? I mean, it might have been six minutes, but I don’t have a way to tell what time it is,” I tell her, unsure what is wrong.
Leeha lays her head back against the boulder behind us and laughs, but I can tell it’s not an ‘oh that’s a funny joke’ kind of laugh. This was more of a ‘what the fuck just happened’ sort of laugh.
“Alex,” she begins but shakes her head. “Alex, what you just built would have taken ten Earth mages at the very least four hours to make,” she says, waving her arm around at my handiwork.
“What?” I ask her, confused. “But I saw you shooting water dagger after dagger at me. I mean, that was a lot of power, wasn’t it?
With a sigh, she nods. “Yes, and if you had not forced me to sleep, I would have fallen asleep within the hour, forcibly. I was so scared, Alex, that I thought I was fighting for my life. So when it came time, I reached down and grabbed all the magic I had stored in me and threw it at you.”
“Oh,” I say, stunned. So there isn’t limitless power here. But how can one tell how much power they have?
“How can one tell? I mean, how can someone tell how much power they have inside them?” I ask her.
“Most mages, when they learn magic for the first time and get attuned to their Elemental magic, they learn to look inside themselves, and they get a feel for it. Then, as they create an ability with their Elemental magic, they know how much power it takes.”
“So, I should just look inside myself?” I ask her hesitantly, unsure what I should even be looking for.
Leeha turns so that she is facing me and slaps the side of my leg so that I turn around and face her. “Let me show you,” she says, all business-like. “Close your eyes.”
Nodding, I do as she says, and I hear her voice. “Now, imagine the power inside you. For me, it’s Water, so for you, I am not sure as you have all five. Look for those powers inside you. Once you find them, imagine a pool of power underneath them that is attached to them with a cord of power.”
Nodding again, I try to understand what she means. I am not sure what I am looking for. Suddenly, appearing with more clarity than I imagined, I see them. Five floating balls of power. Earth, Fire, Water, Air, and Mind. I know it’s not my imagination since I have never seen or felt anything so vivid, even in dreams. I nod my head.
“Now, do you see that cord going from the Elementals to a pool of power underneath them?” she asks in a soft voice.
I look at my Elementals and search for that cord. At first I don’t see it, but then instead of focusing on all of them, I focus on one. Earth. As I watch, somehow the ball gets bigger than the other five. Continuing to focus on it, I see the power cord Leeha was talking about. It looks like a light red liquid in a flexible tube that goes straight down. I follow it and see a large pool of the liquid underneath, just as she said. I try to move my view downwards, but it doesn’t budge.
“I found it,” I tell her softly, trying not to break the image I see. “But I can’t go down to the liquid.”
“No one can. We have never understood why,” Leeha says, and I can hear the smile in her tone. “Now, I want you to hold out one hand and call up the Elemental, or any Elemental,” she says with a chuckle.
Following her instructions, I lift my right hand, palm up and think, Earth.
“Good,” she says. “Now, imagine turning that into a dagger of stone, and while you do that, I want you to look at the amount of power it uses.
Hmm. All right, not sure how I am supposed to do that, but I’ll try. I think Stone Dagger, and I can feel the magic in my palm changing. Suddenly, I see something that shocks me so much I lose both the image I had in my head and the dagger in my hand.
Stone Dagger
Power: 10
Power Remaining: 99,990
I open my eyes and stare at Leeha in astonishment before blurting out, “What the fuck was that!”
Chapter Nine
“What? What happened?” Leeha asks me, concern in her voice.
“Leeha,” I say, licking my lips nervously.
What the fuck is going on? That looked exactly like a game prompt. I mean, it’s not a visual prompt. It’s more that I know exactly the amount of power I have, and I know that the spell Rock Dagger uses ten points of power from a pool of one million.
“Leeha,” I say again. “When you look at your power pool, how can you tell how much you have?”
“Oh,” she says, thinking about it. “When I imagine my pool, I get the numbers in my head.”
“So when you look at, say, the spell for that dagger of yours, the water one? Does it show you how much power it takes to use it and how much you have left?”
“Yes!” she says excitedly. “That’s exactly how I know.”
“But does it show it to you in words?” I ask her.
“Words? What? No, not everyone can read. I mean, I know my numbers. Almost everyone does. Especially if you end up being a mage. Ever since I became a Water mage, numbers have come easily to me. But I am told that is normal for all mages, as numbers are important.”
“Then how do you know the name of your spells?” I ask her, pushing for more info.
“Oh, the spell shows up as a small dagger for me,” she states, as if I should see the same.
“So you don’t see the words of the spell’s name? Like the words for your Water Dagger spell?” I say, now getting excited.
“No. Though I understand those that read do get it in written form. And it somehow makes their power stronger,” she asks me, confused with my line of questioning, I am sure.
“So, can you read this?” I ask, as I brush away the leaves and twigs next to me and write Water Dagger in the dirt with one of the small sticks that is near me.
Leeha looks down, confused at first, and tilts her head back and forth. I glance at it as well and notice something I hadn’t noticed when I was writing it. Shit, it’s in English letters! They’re not some flowing letters that might have been Elvish, if they even have a written language.
“No, what does it mean?” she asks me, looking back up.
Should I tell her? I mean, I can’t know until I test this out. If, as I suspect, that God made it so that English is the trigger for my magic, can I teach it to others? Maybe I am the exception? I look at Leeha, and I am torn. I just met her, but she did say that now that she knows I am the Elemental Summoner, she wants to be with me. If people are going to fear me, I will need someone to help protect me. Right?
“Alex?” Leeha says nervously after I stare at her for a good minute without saying anything.
“That is my language,” I tell her, deciding to say fuck it. “I’ve written Water Dagger. This first word here? It’s Water. When I call up my power, that’s the word I think in my head or say out loud. So in my language, Water is Water,” I tell her.
She reaches down and touches the letters I wrote. “So each of these letters together spells out a word? I understand the concept. I know a few letters of the human language. Though, not many. Mostly I know what a word for a certain thing looks like. Such as a shop, or Inn.”
“Do the Elves have a written language?” I ask her.
“Once we did. But now, most of our history is oral,” Leeha sighs sadly. “So, this second word is dagger? How do you say it in your language?” she continues.
I touch the word as well and say, “Dagger.”
“Dagger,” she says, with a thick accent, but even I can feel the power in that uttering of that word. She looks up at me in shock. Excitedly, she points to the first word again. “How do you say this one again!”
“Wa-ter. Water,” I say slowly, speaking each section of the word separately.
“Water,” she says, and again, I feel the power in that word. Fuck me. This will work!
“Now, say first the word Water,” I tell her, holding up my palm, and I get the Elemental water globe in my hand. “Then say, Water Dagger.”
Water Dagger spell used. 10 points of power used.
What the fuck! Am I going to get that prompt whenever I use a spell now, so that I can track how much power I used?
Once I utter that phrase in English, I get a water dagger in my palm. I point to a tree in the distance, and I imagine it sticking into it. The blade quickly leaves my hand and slams into the tree trunk, about thirty feet away.
Leeha takes a deep breath, focuses on the palm of her hand, and says, “Water.” Like I did, she ends up with a globe in her hand. “Water Dagger,” she says, and then squeals in laughter as her globe changes into a dagger. She points the dagger at the same tree I had and her dagger speeds off, landing right next to mine, as I had not canceled my spell yet. I think Water, and my blade disperses.
“It worked!” Leeha shouts and jumps into my arms.
I fall backwards with her on top of me, and she says, “How is that possible! It felt more powerful and it says I used more power than my older spell!”
“I am not sure,” I tell her with a smile. “I would say it’s my world’s language. I think my God made it so that it’s powerful here. Though I’m not sure why I can teach it to you. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I would be able to.”
“I don’t care why your God did that! I want to learn your language,” she says, moving up my chest to be closer to my face and rubbing her body, including her breasts, against me in the process. It doesn’t help that as she moves, her lower body rubs against my now hardening cock.
“Hmm,” I say awkwardly, “I am sure we can look into that, but you might want to get off me, Leeha.”
“Why?” she asks me quizzically, pushing herself away from my face so that she can look in my eyes, and pushing herself into my crotch in the process. I guess she finally feels the hard-on I am getting since her eyes widen and she blushes, before scrambling off me quickly and sitting down.
I sit back up and look at her with a smile of embarrassment. “Sorry, it’s been a long time for me, so please excuse that. My body just reacted.”
“You truly do not find me repulsive?” Leeha asks me, with some doubt again in her voice.
“Leeha, I am not sure how many times I need to say it, but you are the sexiest woman I have ever met, in this world, or in mine. Trust me. I do not find you repulsive,” I declare.
“Then why have you not taken me?” she asks with a lascivious smile.
“What?” I blurt out. “I don’t even know you!”
“And? Do you not find me attractive, even though I do not repulse you? I find you very handsome, and I am drawn to you,” she tells me with a frown.
“Leeha, didn’t I just say I found you the sexiest woman I have ever met?” I ask her with a raised eyebrow.
“Then why won’t you bed me?” she says.
“Because I just met you,” I tell her hesitantly. What the hell? Do people fuck right after meeting in this world? Or is this something that God is doing? What the fuck is his plan here? He has given me powers which, according to Leeha, come about once every thousand years. And I am pretty sure I am, or will be, even more powerful because of my English and the words I can use. Is he also making it so women fall for me?
“God!” I scream in English at the top of my lungs.
Suddenly Leeha falls forward next to me, completely passed out. “What the fuck!” I shout, grabbing her dead weight in my hands.
“Sorry, can’t have her seeing me,” says a voice in English.
I look over and see God sitting in front of the dying fire. He’s sitting in an Adirondack chair, and I get a whiff of tobacco from his pipe. I gawk at him in astonishment, and then I look back down at Leeha worriedly.
“She is fine. As I said, I can’t have her see me, so I put her to sleep. I can’t freeze time; just like I can’t go back in time. Playing at all with time is impossible,” God says with a grin. He takes the pipe out of his mouth points at the ground with it, and says, “Just put her down gently and come have a chat with me.” Suddenly a second Adirondack chair appears in front of the fire, on the opposite side of him.
Gently, I put Leeha down and slowly make my way to the chair. I sit down and look at God in silence for a couple of minutes before finally asking him, “Meaning no disrespect, God, but what the fuck is going on! How come I can see things like spells and power, in my head? And how come I can use all five Elemental magics here? And why is Leeha literally throwing herself at me!” I say, slamming my hand down on the chair at each question.
“You’re an experiment,” God tells me. He is still in the clothes he was in when I first saw him, looking like an old lumberjack.
“What do you mean, an ‘experiment’,” I ask him, doing air quotes as I speak.
“Let’s just say that Hell is getting full. And I have nowhere to put all those damn souls. So I need to figure out a way to weed folks out so that they can get into the lower worlds of Heaven. I might be powerful, but even I can run out of room. Right now, Heaven, or as they call it in this world, Lahala, Paradise, Afterlife, as each planet has a different name for it, is sitting empty. Or the Heaven Worlds are, while the Hell Worlds are choking on the number of souls on them.”
“And how is me seeing numbers and spells supposed to help with that?” I interrupt him.
“Easy. Actually, I got the idea from your Earth, truth be told. I will say one thing about you Earthlings,” God says, chuckling, “you come up with some amazing shit. Like this.” He holds up his pipe. “Best damn tobacco anywhere in the universe. I have been watching your TV and browsing the internet. Most of it means your world is all going to Hell, but I did see one idea that I really liked. A person in a game world who could see stats and crap like that. Well, neat idea, but I never saw a use for it until I thought about it some more.”
“Wait, you want to turn this world into a game world?” I ask him, confused.
“What? No,” he says with a laugh. “Well, not completely. This Elemental Summoner, as you called yourself, is something we introduced into this world about, hmm, I would say 100,000 years ago? It destabilizes the world but at the same time, increases the overall level of worship and piety of the people. When that happens, more people get into Heaven, which is good. As I stated, Hell is getting full. But even that practice is starting to stagnate,” he complains.
“So,” he continues, knocking his pipe against the wall behind him-the wall that I had created-and removing the ashes from the bowl. He refills it from the pouch in his pocket and lights it before he goes on. “I wanted to add this ability to other worlds, so that they can see what it will take them to get into Heaven. I am using it on you so that I can test and tweak the system I want to create later on. Now, it won’t be as invasive as it is in some of the stories I have read. You won’t see the information unless you want to. But I will be adding the spell's power usage and the power left in your pool- and I might add that it showing you the amount was a distinct surprise or byproduct of me giving you all five Elemental magics-and one other thing,” he says with a grin.
“One more thing?” I ask him cautiously. What the hell? Is he turning me into a guinea pig for his experiment on how to get more people into Heaven? Or Heaven worlds, because Hell worlds are getting full?
“The most important reason why I am giving this feature to people. Right now, on most worlds, no one knows if they are getting into Heaven or not. Well, I am introducing what I am calling,” he pauses and moves his hands from left to right as if displaying a sign, “Heavenly Tokens.” He finishes and simply stares at me with a big proud smile.
“Heavenly Tokens?” I say, baffled. Then suddenly I see, or hear, I am not sure which to be honest, words.
Heavenly Tokens: 1 of 200
“Yup,” he says, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth, “Heavenly Tokens. Reach that magical number 200, and you are guaranteed a spot on a Heavenly world. Like it?”
“So I have one point? From what?” I ask him, trying to take all of this in.
“Oh, that was for your death on Earth and not taking the choice of removing your old boss’ sou
l from his body. Heavenly Tokens are received for doing good deeds. You can gain them, or you can lose them,” God says.
“And this Heavenly world stuff?” I ask him.
“Think of it as your version of Heaven from Earth. Live the rest of your life happily, until Armageddon. Otherwise, you will spend your life in pain on a Hell world, which is just a really hot, desert-like world with almost no water, and lots of monsters and such. But if you die on there, your soul dies as well, so you don’t go anywhere. Easier on me, to be honest, but I am getting so many souls going to Hell worlds lately that even the deaths of the souls aren’t leaving enough room,” he says with a sigh.
Shit, so if I had truly died and gone to Hell, it would have been to a Hell world like that? Fucking hell. Yeah, nope. I don’t want that.
“Now, I need to get going. Things to do, people to see,” he says, getting up, his chair disappearing as he does. I get up as well, and my chair also disappears.
“Wait, I have one more question before you go! Why is English a magical language here? I mean, I mean that’s going to make me pretty powerful,” I remark quickly.
“Ah, that is my test for you. I’m going to need someone to watch over a world of mine one day, and I want to see what you do with this power of yours. What you do with it is up to you. I won’t give you choices, options, or even a guideline—just this. Enjoy your life, but be good to others. And Alex?” he says to me, looking at me intently, and that powerful gaze is back, causing my knees to almost buckle under the power of it.
“Yes?” I ask him, feeling the need to shit my pants.
Suddenly the power from that gaze is removed, and he smiles at me softly and says, “Self-defense is allowed,” and then he is gone.
I just stand there and stare at the spot he had been standing in and wonder to myself, what the fuck just happened?
Chapter Ten