Published at 8th of March 2024 7:45 am

Book 2, Chapter 21

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

It was about a mile down the road, and from my vantage, I could see several helicopters trailing it. The truck had grown. In fact, it was less a truck now and more of a giant monster with… were those treads? It had four arms sticking out of a malformed torso, with more mechanical appendages sticking out of its “back.” I briefly wondered what the purpose of those were, to which I got an answer as they fired something that struck one of the trailing helicopters. I watched as the helicopter began to lose control and fall out of the sky.

I frowned and stuck my head out the window and looked into the air, seeing more than a dozen aircraft circling. Okay, so, we’re probably on national news.

I kicked myself mentally. If I had pulled out all of my equipment as soon as I learned Conner was missing, I could have probably nipped this situation in the bud.

No time like the present.

“Get in the front seat,” I said to Ida. “I need to get into the trunk. You too, boy.”

Bogo shimmied back and then hopped up front, his tail smacking Alice in the face as he passed and caused the car to shudder as she flinched from the unexpected contact. I helped Ida climb forward into the passenger seat and then turned to the seat behind me.

I’ve only ever owned two cars. My first car I got when I was back in college, a 1987 Nissan Sentra that I kept running with hopes, dreams, and duct tape. That car was a piece of shit, but it worked most of the time and was the only transportation inside my friend group. It was such a pain in the ass I immediately looked for a replacement, finding the car I am currently in. I think I only had the Sentra for maybe three months, so I barely consider it the “first” car I owned. The Honda was an improvement in every way, as the previous owner had only put like thirty thousand miles on it before selling it to me for the low price of helping him move.

The Honda had a feature I loved. There was a keyhole above the back seat that allows you to lower the backrest of the seat to grant access to the trunk. I’m not a car guy so I don’t know if this is a common feature cars have, but my next car better have it, as it was incredibly handy in this situation.

I formed my TK and manipulated the latch that held the seat up and awkwardly lowered the seat down into my lap, having to move my legs to the floor and angle myself sideways to get my lanky ass out of the way enough to reach inside. I grabbed the false panel that hid my ordnance and hurled it out of the window.

“Hold on!” Alice screamed.

I dug my fingers into the seat as Alice did some maneuvering. I heard tires screech and an otherworldly roar, followed by a bright red blur as Alice passed the demon truck. There followed a crash that shook the whole car as the door closest to me deformed as something struck it, forcing Alice to spin the wheel and pump the brakes to regain control of the car.

Once the motion of the car calmed down, Alice started to speed up again, but I could tell we weren’t going as fast as before. The engine was making weird noises and the car vibrated worryingly.

“I think one of the tires is flat,” Alice said.

I glanced out the rear window and saw the demon truck slam three of its “hands” into the road and spin on the spot, killing most of its momentum for a nearly perfect 180. It started pulling itself across the road with its arms before the treads began to pick up the slack, speeding up alarmingly fast.

I reached into the trunk and lowered the back wall I had put in. I grabbed the M4A1 rifle with my telekinesis and the extra mags and floated them over to Ida.

“You always know what to get me,” Ida said, grabbing the rifle out of the air and inspecting it briefly before aiming it out the window.

“Hold up,” I yelled over the growing wind. With my magic, I also retrieved the grenade launcher and the bandoleer with the six rounds in it. Ida’s eyes lit up when she saw them float over to her.

“I forgot you had these,” she said as she practically snatched them out of the air, the rifle falling into her lap.

I guess I had shown her my toys during the period I had lost. I shoved aside my frustration with my missing memories and focused my magic on grabbing the case in the trunk. It resisted, and I cursed as I remembered the touch-lock enchantment I had placed on it. I needed to touch it with some part of my body in order to move it. Grumbling about my own paranoia, I awkwardly climbed over the lowered back seat into the trunk and grabbed the handle for the case—

Three spikes that looked to be made from bone punched through the trunk, one scratching the top of the case, one embedded itself into the grenade case and one came dangerously close to pinning my arm to the floor, missing my elbow by less than an inch. Each spike was about a foot long, two inches in diameter at the widest point, and tapered on both ends. They were also slightly slimy, I was distressed to find out as my arm brushed against the one that had nearly hit me.

I lifted myself up a bit and looked through one of the new holes in the trunk, seeing the demon tank((?) Was it a tank now? It had treads and “guns.”) gaining on us, now less than a quarter mile away.

I growled as I took a firm grip on the case and heaved, not being able to get a lot of leverage because of the awkward angle, the cramped space, and the bone spike pushing on it from above. I shoved the spike out of the trunk with my magic and tried again, this time lifting the heavy case and mostly dragging it into the backseat. I awkwardly lifted the back of the seat while pulling the case into my lap.

So, a little preface on enchanting that I’ve mostly learned via trial and error; it is possible to put multiple enchantments on something. Because of this, I thought about making a magical item just—just PACKED with magic so I could whip it out in emergencies and basically blow away any problem with overwhelming magical might. I know how to make spacially-adjacent storage (another word for interdimensional cubbies), so I thought it’d be dope just to reach into nothing and pull out the magical equivalent of an m320 rotary grenade launcher. (I also experimented with just having an actual grenade launcher, but the cold environs of the cubbies create problems with the primers and powder, creating a lot of misfires, so they got tossed into the trunk.)

Sadly, when attempting to make the item, I learned that there was a limit on how many enchantments an item can have, almost exactly the same as how many instructions a ward can have. Put too many enchantments on something, the energies may destroy the item, destroy each other, or—in one case that happened in my back yard—blow up.

I should have known this would be the case, otherwise, the pirates I fought would have had ace-in-the-hole items they would have pulled out at the last minute, instead of weird superpowers that turned them into Final Fantasy bosses.

There are ways to mitigate this, of course. A stronger basis item being enchanted, for example. Complimentary enchantments, as well. If you enchanted a tennis ball with fire and ice magic as well some kinetic properties, it’d probably just burst during the inscribing process (Or whatever process you use. I happen to like inscription.). But if you put the same enchantments on a bowling ball, it’d probably last a lot longer.

Creating a magical boomstick was out of the question, (at least with the method I was trying), so I had to figure out a new force multiplier. I hounded Alice for more magical manuals, trying to think of something and you know what?

I used to play a lot of video games. I used to watch videos of people making optimal builds, used to talk Dungeons and Dragons theory with my fellow nerds online. And one thing that always came up, again and again, is; when something is overpowered, it’s usually due to one factor.

One thing the game designers didn’t count on. One interaction. Or a specialized skill taken to the extreme. There were outliers to this, especially as games became more complicated. But it remains more true than not, in my experience. So, I thought, if I’m making telekinesis my first spell with Circe’s method, why not make sure it was a fucking banger? I got to work.

I had to source a lot of weird materials for my new toy. This last year I spent most of my time on the phone, it felt like, talking to the girls and the various people around the world drop-shipping my weird material requests, which I then received and did my own treatments with the help of some out-of-towners (ie: things I summoned).

This new project of mine was also another reason I kept pushing back my visit with Alice, as I didn’t want to leave my house and all of its wonderfully dangerous protections without some insurance. Yeah, guns were great, and the Webley was monstrous, but sometimes you wanted something a little more versatile.

I cut my chin with my thumbnail and smeared the blood on the clasps on the case, keeping a pattern in my mind's eye as it made contact with the case. There was a hiss followed by the restrictive enchantment breaking. A magical aura nearly as strong as my own when I was pissed billowed out of it.

Alice craned her head back to look at me. “You fucking made it?”

My reply was cut off as Ida unloaded the M4 at the demon truck, but cut off abruptly to yell at Alice as we almost drifted into the divider. Alice turned around and brought the car back under control. I tried to meet her eyes in the rear-view mirror, only to discover it was gone. Goddamnit, I really liked this car.

I opened the case and inside was six months of some of the most sophisticated magic I’ve ever done, aside from my summoning circle.

It was hard to describe, as it wasn’t really wholly any one thing. The top part of it was similar to a mantle of a cloak or perhaps a tabard, but it would only cover the shoulders and maybe the upper chest. Under that were thick metal plates, similar to football pads or armor. Each plate was connected to the next with a metal connector similar to those used in plate armor. The metal went down the length of an arm, where it terminated in gloves made out of a metallic-looking leather covered in my magical script (mostly Elder Futhark runes with some geometric shapes). The whole thing was various shades of deep black.

“How did you bring down the resonance?” Alice asked as I began putting it on with the help of my magic.

“Combined the control enchantments with the efficiency ones,” I grunted as my head poked through the top.

“What?!” The car swerved, and I can’t be sure if it was because she was dodging something or from her outburst. “You can’t fucking do that!”

“I did it with my summoning circle, with the computational model and the alignment control parts,” I said. “You just gotta figure out where they fit together and arrange them so they get the power they need without interfering with one another, like a circuit board.”

“Oh!” Alice said, venom in her voice. “Simple! Ida, take the wheel.”

I frowned and looked to the front of the car. Ida, confused but willing, leaned over and grabbed the wheel. There were no cars in front of us for a good while, likely due to the police closing off this section of the freeway, but I could see a mile or two down the road that would swiftly change.

“We need to get off the freeway!” I said, strapping on the left arm. Jesus, this thing is heavy.

“One moment,” Alice said as she leaned out the window, her belt chain in her hands. “You guys have been having all the fun.”

She didn’t sound like she was having fun as I felt her magic begin to gather in the chain. She sounded pissed. I glanced at Ida. “Why didn’t you use the grenade?”

“Too far,” she said, shrugging one of her shoulders. “I think it only has a range of around 400 meters. I’ve never actually used one.”

“That’s a sha—“

My words were cut off as sound rocked the car and a flash of light nearly blinded me. Ida got it worse as she was forced to face an awkward angle, holding the wheel. I blinked a few times and when I could see again, Alice was taking the wheel back from a cursing Ida. I turned to look behind me and grinned cruelly.

The truck had a huge gash in its side, like someone had fired a red-hot ice cream scoop at it and caved a trench into it. My grin faltered, however, when I saw the wound bubble and begin to heal, with several more limbs bursting from the wound. Luckily, they weren’t as large as the arms on the back and front, but it wasn’t a great sign.

“Fuck, it’s healing,” I said. “Growing a bunch of small arms.” Ida made a face and Alice swore.

I turned around and pointed at an off-ramp, shoving my arm in front so Alice could see where I was pointing. We couldn’t see the street name because, you know, going the wrong way on the freeway. “There! I think that goes to the hills.”

Alice nodded and tried to do the maneuver she did before, but there was a shredding sound and we nearly spun out. There was a terrible scraping noise and I could see sparks fly from my peripheral vision as I was bounced around the car. I knocked my head against the door behind Ida and grabbed her hand in reflex as I saw her bounce toward the open window. We should really put our seat belts back on.

Alice gunned the engine and sawed on the wheel, getting us moving again, but I could tell the old Honda was on its last legs. Luckily the pop was on one of the rear wheels, as the car was a front-drive and I doubt we’d make much headway with one of the front wheels gone.

The spin-out allowed the truck to catch up, now within a couple of hundred yards, and was gaining fast. We had seen that this thing could corner well by using its arms, and I was afraid of what would happen if we got within reach. And I hadn’t gotten the other glove on yet, goddamnit.

The enhancing power of the Mantle (what I decided to call my new toy) didn’t work unless the whole thing was in contact with me, which was one of the drawbacks of the enchantment-saving measures I took. I panicked and began to flop around in the back for the other glove, with my hand and my magic both, but the bump to the noggin was affecting me more than I thought.

Thoomp.

A moment after the noise, the section of the demon truck covered in eyes exploded. The truck swerved back and forth in apparent pain and confusion before suddenly accelerating. Luckily it slammed into the rail on the side of the road, diverting it and making it lose a good portion of its speed. The only problem was, we were heading for the opening that rail ended at.

“Gogogogo!” I said as I finally got a grip on the glove and began to hammer my hand into it.

You ever see Pacific Rim? Or any giant robot anime? There’s a part in most of them when they connect to their giant mech and a HUD comes up and a voice says something along the lines of “Systems Online.” None of that happened with me when the mantle finally connected with me, but it definitely had the same vibe.

It wasn’t like my senses improved, or that I had new information. It was more like… like my arms grew several feet. But they weren’t awkward. They remained just as usable, just as efficient. They could just reach more. But it was more than that. It was like I had several pairs.

Now, there was a demon truck barreling towards us. I didn’t know what kinda tonnage a demon truck had, so I didn’t want to try to repeat the kind of trick I did before. Inside, I focused on the back of the car and shoved up the popped wheel, putting more pressure on the front wheels. Suddenly they had more traction as well as a good push and we zipped down the off-ramp just as the demon truck roared by, one of the smaller hands grasping the frame that used to house the window before it was dragged away.

“Colm!”

I turned at Alice’s yell and saw that the end of the off-ramp was blocked by a couple of police cruisers. My first thought was to use my new expanded capabilities to help us push through, but then had another idea.

“Can you knock out those cops?” I asked.

“When we get closer, yeah. Why?”

“We need a new ride."

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