Earthly Powers: The Adventure Begins

by DC Alexander

  “Mag, what happened, did you get anything?”

  She looked at me sadly as she stood up “No. Gone. Must help, too late? Make pay.”

  Carl came to the door bewildered, “What is it? Something happened? What’s going on?” Even in the midst of whatever this was, he took the opportunity to ogle Mag. I had to admit she was magnificent in those tight shorts.

  I looked at Mag and answered “I don’t know, we had a connection with an elemental and it just went away while it was asking for help. It’s gone, it feels dead.”

  Mag worked hard to get her message across, she pretended to slap me, then took my arm to slap her back once, then again. “Pay. Gone. Bad. Stop.”

  We worked out the words for revenge. She wanted whoever had stopped Dirt to pay double. It needed to be quick. I think she was talking about making an example, Carl agreed. I wanted Dirt back.

  I hopefully called on Iron, it answered, it would help and it had a location. We got Mag dressed as quickly as we could, she was working on understanding, I worked on telling her what was going on.

  Carl and I collected our pistols. I offered her my sword and she shook her head no, she gathered up a few of the sticks from the fire and made us understand she wanted a fire. I knew it couldn’t just be a comfort fire, it must be important; “Carl, let’s go with this, help her make a fire.” I rigged the sword over my back, it would get in the way in the car but we needed Iron and the sword might be the connection it needed.

  Impatient, Carl used his lighter to start a fresh handful of straw and sticks and handed it to her, she worked with it a few seconds and suddenly the wet wood from the night before was roaring. She put her hand in the flames and was lost in concentration for a few moments; then she pulled out a twig and spoke to it. The wood on the ground went out, dead, cold, no smoke, no embers, no heat. She shoved the brightly burning twig into her pocket, lit end first.

  Her careless act shocked me, I don’t care where you’re from you don’t put fire in your pants pocket. I moved to grab her, put her out, maybe knock her in the damn head. That was just stupid. Carl had the same idea at the same time. She stepped back in shock and held her hands up at us to ‘stop’.

  She wasn’t showing any signs of pain, I hesitated. She pulled the stick out and it blazed up, she made sure we were watching and stuck it into her long, unruly hair. It sat in her hair burning brightly, after a second I realized her hair wasn’t burning. I wasn’t showing any sign of heat or damage. Now that was a nifty, impressive thing.

  She mimicked listening with her hand to her ear, and then pointed at the ground. I guess my expression gave away the fact that I had no clue, she stepped forward and caught my necklace, with one hand, and held the stick out beside it; she looked me in the face and said “Same!”

  Light dawned! She had a fire elemental, the stick was like the rock was for Dirt, or at least I think that was close enough to work.

  I said “Ok, got it. Carl, it’s all good, she has a fire elemental, let’s go.”

  He didn’t argue, he picked up on our urgency and followed my directions to the bridge over three mile creek. It was a foul, nasty piece of water. The sewage treatment plant upstream put processed sewage into the water routinely. Huge mullet swam in the nasty stuff. I guess it was like some sort of stew for them, they could swim in it and eat it too.

  We parked and walked upstream, a couple hundred yards into the undergrowth it was wild and untamed, nobody came here and the woods had reclaimed it. There was some sort of hut made of weeds sitting there in the other weeds, we passed it and Iron gave me a nudge, this was the focal point where Dirt had drained away.

  I walked up to the shack, trying to be quiet, Carl walked a little apart; we wouldn’t shoot each other, but we could see most of the way around the hut.

  Mag walked straight up to the hut and held out her hand, the entire thing burst into roaring flame, like it had been burning for a half hour. There was no starting and building, it was sitting there not on fire, then it was engulfed. It burned merrily for a moment, I had enough time to think about all the other weeds catching fire, it could get away easily.

  The side of the hut bulged out and a man shoved his way through it, one arm across his face, he must have been sitting inside. He had a satchel in the other hand and used it to push the burning material away in front of himself. He had burning weeds in his hair and really, all over him. He had a short beard that was showing some fire damage. He stopped when he saw us. He ignored the fire and opened his mouth and Mag pointed at him, every bit of the fire left the weeds and hit him in the mouth in a long, continuous stream.

  Almost hit him in the mouth! As it made contact with his lips it peeled off and ran all over him. His clothes, a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans, caught fire, and fire tried to get in his ears, eyes, every orifice, but it looked like he had a body glove on that repelled the fire from his skin. I was hesitant to shoot. I had my pistol out, but he hadn’t done anything to warrant shooting, I didn’t know that he had anything to do with Dirt’s problem, I was too civilized.

  He dropped the satchel and put both hands out, made a motion like he was holding a ball, then gestured toward Mag with his imaginary ball and released it.

  I couldn’t see the ball but it was obvious when it hit her mostly in the chest. She flew backwards and slid down the bank to the water of the creek. She lay there motionless after one attempt to lift a hand, it quivered and fell back.

  The man turned to Carl and started with another ball and Carl shot him.

  The weeds around the shack, the shack, the man’s clothes, it was all on fire by now. The man fell on his back on top of the burning shack, and then he got back up and restarted his interrupted ball. A ring on his hand drew my attention. It bothered him, maybe it was getting hot. There was no sign of where Carl’s shot had hit him, but when he fell he had torn the skin on his head, it was some sort of covering. Carl shot him again and he staggered a step back. I had the sword on my back, bullets weren’t doing anything, but maybe the sword would. I pulled the sword loose and ran in at him, dropping the pistol on the ground. Carl was ready to shoot again but pointed the pistol up and stepped to the side instead of shooting to make sure he missed me.

  The man turned to me with his ball making and I swung the ungainly sword at the imaginary ball to cut it in two, the damn sword was heavy and moved slow. He pushed his ball at me and the sword contacted it before he turned it loose. I felt a burst of heat and light and that was it for me.

  It was dark. Not just a little, it was dark enough that if I could have felt anything, I could have felt the dark. But I couldn’t feel anything. No sound. No heat or cold, hard or soft. Nothing at all, I tried to move my head and nothing happened. I couldn’t move my tongue or lips.

  An overwhelming wave of terror broke over me. There was nothing to differentiate me from anything else, there was nothing else. I could have been moving at the speed of sound or stopped, I couldn’t tell. I would have puked but I didn’t have a stomach insofar as I could tell.

  I think I could deal with death; I should be able to see but people couldn’t see me, I would be a wispy thing, like a cloud, and float around, it might be fun to make noises and scare people. That was the deal.

  This just wasn’t right. Where was the light? There was supposed to be a light I would travel towards, wasn’t there? Some disembodied voices, singing, winged creatures? Or in the worse case, fire and some bad stuff happening, but I shouldn’t warrant that. I didn’t think I did, anyway. I didn’t seem to have hands, feet a body, head, no tongue, nothing.

  It had probably been a couple hours, maybe a day, maybe a half second but I thought it was longer than that. I was thinking, so there was something of me. I could remember. I could see things in memory so clearly, it was fascinating, talk about focused on meditation, I was letting nothing distract me. And let me tell you, nothing is pretty distracting, it sucks at you, it has weight and gravity and it pulled me toward…nothing.

  Damn
. I thought it was going on there for a second. I would say I got dizzy but I had no frame of reference. Was there anything at all, any inkling of sensation, of light? Maybe if I concentrated I could fake myself out and see something. I strained, hard, if I had anything to strain with it would have been standing out clearly with tension, sweat beading up on it, I was putting everything into it, then I put a little more. Frustration built. This could be hell, and endless nothing where I could never sleep because I was never awake, where nothing ever changed.

  I heard a high pitched whining noise just at the threshold of what I could hear, high pitched, tiny, it might be my imagination. No, it was definitely there. It didn’t seem to be related to my straining, I had eased up to listen. It was imaginary straining anyway. What the…I mean, what was that? Better not cuss, I might be at some point of balance.

  Was that a mosquito? That’s what it sounded like, it would get a little closer, and then it would move away, and come back. It was regular. It was irritating. But wait, I wanted something irritating, at least it was something. It was constant. I listened to see if there was anything else. I guess it was human nature. I already took the mosquito for granted and relegated it to the background. If it was one of the mosquitoes that bred in three mile creek and it bit me, I’d get rabies or maybe pregnant. I apologized to the phantom mosquito for taking it for granted, I appreciated the company. I wondered, has anybody else ever been here? ‘Is there anyone here? Hello! Is there anyone here, wherever here is?’

  ‘ Noisy.What?’

  That had to be an elemental.

  ‘I am in the dark, I don’t know where I am.’ I gave the details of my last moments.

  ‘Location?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Here.’

  I got aggravated, then I realized I had a packet of information attached, I wasn’t using a buffer. I went through the information package.

  I remembered: ‘moving fast down the tiny back road into the parking lot at the hospital, the siren squalling.’ That wasn’t a mosquito. It was the siren. I wasn’t dead, maybe I was in a coma, and they were taking me to the hospital. What had happened to Carl? Were they taking Mag as well? Oh, that last sight of Mag hadn’t looked good at all, she had been crushed.

  I remembered: ‘People pushing a gurney down a bright white hall, mostly covered by a sheet, a bag hanging, other people running alongside the gurney poking and prodding, terrible burns exposing bone on the face of the person lying there so still. The eye sockets.’ Oh my god, was that me? My eyes were gone? Oh. Wow. There was no way I could survive that. I didn’t think I wanted to know what the burns felt like.

  Relentlessly I remembered: ‘A voice shouted “CLEAR” and everyone stepped back except for the person with the paddles pressed to the raw hamburger meat that was all that was left of my chest, a harsh buzz’

  I choked, I couldn’t breathe, I had an enormous weight on my chest and my stomach ached in a way I had never felt.

  A disembodied voice said “Hold on honey, we got you now, just put up with this, a little discomfort” Something hard and huge and cold forced down my throat “There. Now you can breathe.” I had no choice, air pumped in and my lungs inflated. An intercom blared senseless, garbled words loudly, a strange taste and feel coated my throat and inside my mouth. My face was numb.

  A male voice “Get the sheet up, its gonna stick to her, get a cage over here, come on.”

  A female “Let’s try this – watch the BP, it’s down, gimme that bag”

  Other voices in the background, jumbled, all busy, determined, assured. They worked on me. I was mostly numb except for some aches and pains in odd places.

  I distanced myself ‘Dirt? Iron? Fire? Anyone? Anything?’

  There was a presence, or several presences, but they were way off. If I could get to some power I could heal just about anything. If I couldn’t, I might die right here. Or spend months recuperating. I had to get out of here.

  I checked to see if I could move anything, I had a little sensation in my right arm, both legs hurt but might be mobile. My left arm seemed to be strapped down. My eyes didn’t work right but I seemed to be able to see through a dim red filter, and I could see all the way around me, not just in front.

  I couldn’t move. I was trapped. I gave a surge that almost caused something on me to move, but not quite. Panic wasn’t working for me. I lay there forever, drifting in and out, maybe sleeping. I didn’t feel right, I had tubes stuck in me, sensors all over me, a wire cage kept the bedclothes off me and it was chilly, damn near cold. I was thirsty. As soon as I thought about it I realized I was composed of thirst. It was overwhelming, I desperately needed water.

  A tube in my arm leaked drops of water into a vein, it had salt in it, no nutrients, it was very pure water. I was barely dripping, a drop and a pause. I pulled at it but it was constricted.

  Then I felt something, someone was there, and the constriction was gone. I pulled and rushed the water it to my internal organs, they needed it the worse, I got some of the need satisfied and the water was gone.

  There was something in the water that attempted to numb me, I shunted it off to my kidneys as soon as I noticed it, but it was in my system and active and I went out again.

  My hand, my right hand was hurting but looking from the inside there was no hand there. Bones were attached, the skin was burned away, some muscle had burned or been blown off. When I replicated cells they had to be forced to replace the burned tissue. I looked at the other hand and copied and bullied and pushed and forced cells to behave, I ran out of energy and went away.

  I became aware. I had a new supply of water, a very slow drip into a vein. I pulled at it to satisfy the craving for nourishment, my cells were screaming. Again, the flow was constricted, then suddenly it wasn’t. I needed massive energy for the repairs, there was sugar in this, perfect for what I needed, I sucked the bag dry. I shunted the sleepy drugs and the pain meds off to a kidney, a tube kept the kidney empty, it worked great. I pushed at the hand, but my lungs needed some help, they weren’t working very efficiently. Fortunately the air coming in contained a lot of oxygen.

  A presence approached the bed “What the hell is goin on with the drip, that thing’s metered, I know there isn’t a leak in it.” Movements, metal rattled other noises. “I aint gonna let it go dry, I’ll watch this time and see what’s happening.” Muttered, she was exasperated, someone would pay if they had messed with her stuff. Movement, tugs, a satisfied grunt and the flow resumed. At this rate it would take forever to rebuild, I needed to concentrate on the necessaries. With that in mind I concentrated on muscles and skin and blood supply. I didn’t have any broken bones. I had massive burns on the front of my body, mainly on my arms, chest and face. I had a mostly missing hand; the good news there was I knew how to fix it now. The back and palm were mostly there, I just needed stuff to work with, energy.

  I pushed healing to the max. I told myself I needed to get the face done so I could get out with nobody freaking out. I wanted my face back.

  Two voices were there this time. An authoritative voice in command; “Reduce the morphine, double the drip. Pull the tube, put two bags on her. If she can use it, let her. Let me know instantly if she worsens.” He left the room, the person left was female. She said “Oh, I would have never known, I sure am glad you’re here to save the day. What an ass.” She continued to mutter as she worked efficiently, it wasn’t heated, just passing time.

  With a faster drip in each arm I had enough juice to do some good. The irritation of the ventilator tube went away, I was breathing when I wanted to. I patched up the damage to the alveoli. I fixed the irritation to my throat – there was a little cracked cartilage and the inner lining had tears. The muscles in my face and hand needed time and exercise to grow, I tried to accelerate the process and it worked to a degree. I needed a lot of energy and I wasn’t getting enough. I left off fatty tissue on my chest and concentrated on muscle, I had to get out of there. They’d removed my neckl
aces, the disc wasn’t there. That would have helped. I remembered how it felt when it worked, and resolved to try to duplicate the feel of the disguise so I could get away.

  I had given up on contacting Dirt or Iron. I was surrounded by stone, concrete, steel, in a sterile environment. I got a little sensation of extra thought occasionally but nothing I could use.

  At some point they moved me to a room. I gathered I had been in the ICU. They brought me Jello and fed it to me. They didn’t give me the chance to feed myself. I got a little clear broth and some water by mouth. My stomach rebelled. I quieted it and made use of the nutrients.

  I settled into a pattern. Eat, heal, sleep, and try to exercise. I finally realized they thought I was blind, duh, maybe because of the missing eyeballs. I’d rebuilt my eyes but they were covered by bandages, the bandages were changed frequently but I guess it looked pretty bad and nobody expected a miracle. I just hoped the eyes worked. I had to get out before they tried to clean the eye sockets.

  I didn’t have any time frame. I couldn’t tell how long I had been there. I couldn’t get any information from the nurses, doctors and aides who tended me. I’d tried when I realized I could speak again, I got put off repeatedly; a nurse told me the next day the police wanted to speak to me and had forbidden any of them to tell me anything. Damn. The staff was keeping the police out because I was in bad shape.

  The next morning I got off my ass as soon as breakfast was over and tied my paper gown shut behind me. They’d let me get up to go to the bathroom, holding me so I wouldn’t get lost and fall down, and hovering over me while I did my business. The aide was impressed at how I found everything and took care of it; I told her I used to do this all the time, she thought that was funny.

  There was a ready room down the hall, they slept in it sometimes, there were bound to be clothes in there. I went down the hall looking for indications as to which door it was and saw a doctor going in, I followed before the door closed and tried hard as I could to cast invisible/don’t see me. He didn’t notice me. He changed to his street clothes, put his used clothes in a hamper, hit the shower briefly and left.