Chapter 37: Magic and Grit (Patreon)

***AWAKE***

Tom’s eyes snapped open. The first thing he noticed was that it was cold! An involuntary shiver swept through his entire body as he gasped.

The second thing he noticed was a throbbing pain in his elbow. The back of his arm had gotten pressed up against exposed metal in his sleep, and judging by the sheen of frost on the metal, it was below freezing.

Tom gasped and tried to rub the back of his arm, worried about frostbite.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t reach past the awkward thing on his chest. It was soft and warm.

What the heck?

Tom poked it in the dark a couple times before he realized what he was touching. Suzie wasn’t slimy like an actual frog. Her skin felt more like a person’s, if that person were filled with soft rubber.

The familiar was radiating heat into Tom’s chest, and for a brief moment, Tom wondered if he would have died without her sleeping on his chest.

Another involuntary shiver wracked his body as he pried his elbow away from the freezing metal with a distressing tug.

Groaning, Tom sat up, carefully removing Suzie from her spot on his chest and relocating her to a nearby cushion. Shivering violently, Tom rolled over and reached for his damaged arm, spooking a bit when a pointy something rolled off his knee and jabbed him in the leg.

It felt like a book.

It smelled like a book.

But the sun was still an hour or two away from rising, so Tom couldn’t confirm if it was hisbook.

Still, odds are pretty good, Tom thought, feeling the back of his arm, where a bit of his skin had frozen to the metal frame of the truck.

They never tell you about the cold, Tom thought, wincing as the flesh warmed, regaining a bit of its feeling.

Tom was parched. He’d spent the entire day before sweating his nuts off, and now he felt like his mouth was made of sandpaper.

Tom reached into his pocket and grabbed the scrap of Jacob’s shirt and wiped the windows with it, mopping up a rather generous amount of condensate, mostly from his own breath. Once the rag was sodden, he sucked the moisture out of it like some kind of advanced carpet cleaning machine.

Tom repeated this process about six times, making sure to get every inch of every window as the horizon slowly began to brighten. By the end, he estimated he’d gotten maybe…half a little girl’s teacup.

Not much, but goddamn did it feel good.

Tom took deep breath and hopped out of the cab into the freezing morning air. He wiped down the large panel of plastic that used to be the truck bed, shivering all the while. Once the rag felt moist again, he sucked the water out of it with a grateful groan.

Tom moved the sheet of plastic until it was between the cab and the sun rising to the east. If he could keep the truck’s cab in the shade as long as possible, it would delay the onset of sweltering heat which would cause him to lose even more moisture.

Once that was done, it was light enough outside to read, as the sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon.

The rays of sunlight increased in intensity in a matter of minutes as the glowing red ball of death rose above the horizon.

Tom grabbed the toolbox out of the back of the truck and retreated back into the cab, scrunched up like a hermit crab as he pulled the door shut after himself.

The cab was still standing straight up in the air: He’d slept on the back of the bench seat last night.

While Tom would love to set the truck right and not have such an awkward shelter, he had to prioritize what he spent his energy on.

In this case, he had to find out if he could make water. There was a used oil-can he could store some piss in to last an extra day…but Tom wasn’t that desperate yet.

Thanks to his research, he had a step-by step recipe for a pee filter made out of nothing but a couple bottles, cloth and charcoal.

Tom shuddered.

Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.

Okay, today’s goals: Water and the prevention of crippling sunburn/heatstroke. Against heatstroke, Tom was somewhat protected by being young and relatively fit. But his skin would last about five minutes under direct sunlight before he got burnt. If he got burnt bad enough it would make surviving harder.

Which was basically death.

Tom climbed down and snagged the book-smelling rectangular object that had fallen down behind the gas pedal, drawing it into the red-tinted morning light with trembling fingers.

Crypt Vocabulary, and Material Spell Synthesis

A tingle of excitement shot through Tom’s spine and spread to his fingers.

He opened the book and went to the dog-eared page where he’d highlighted the runes he needed and written the phrases in the margins.

Sure enough, there were cramped notes written in Tom’s handwriting scrawled along the margins and several runes circled with notes beside them, along with a few ‘looks like’ warnings.

“I’m GONNA LIVE!” Tom’s shout would have echoed across the desert if his window had been down.

***Later***

“Man, I could use a montage right now,” Tom muttered to himself as he carefully scratched the spell phrase into the plastic cupholder with a flathead screwdriver. The thing had a ‘cup’ shape, and Tom didn’t have anything else to store water in aside from the old oil can, which Tom had other plans for.

Thee spell phrase for the most efficient water creation spell was fairly simple.

Create water container-bound limit reserve energy feedback.

The Divine-to-English translation was a bit rough.

Sweat actually dripped off Tom’s nose as he worked. He’d never had that happen before.

Stay in my body, water! I command you! Heedless, the sweat dripped off his nose again.

Bastard.

Difficulty focusing, check. Definitely got some dehydration going on, here.

Meanwhile, Suzie was sitting next to him. The familiar’s mouth was gaping, tongue hanging out like a dog trying to cool off.

Nearly an hour of painstaking, sweaty work later, Tom was satisfied that his spell phrase was a carbon copy of the phrase scratched in the book. Better, actually, because in his haste to take notes, one of the symbols was a bit off. Tom consulted the encyclopedia on each symbol, and corrected the error.

Now all I gotta do is charge it up.

Tom picked up the cupholder and inspected it one last time for leaks, noting the sticky soda spills that covered the plastic. It wasn’t Tom’s first choice to drink off of them, but dried sugar was probably less damaging than second-hand oil.

Plastic. I wonder where plastic rates on the durability scale. Just under gold, maybe? Since it takes a bazillion years to degrade it?

I guess we’re gonna find out.

Tom turned his attention to the crypts. He had sacrificed the charge on the Shield crypt the night before to bring the book into the waking world.

As far as Tom was concerned, the shield crypt was among the least likely to help him survive a desert. He could use the ghostwalk spell to pull lizards out of their dens, and the healing crypt he’d already used to repair his frostbite and a few minor nicks and scratches from the fight that he hadn’t noticed until things had settled down.

Tom connected to the ghostwalk crypt and siphoned a dollop of soul pulses out of the engine and into his chest. His control was a lot better since Mr. Fluffybottom, and he only took about a fifth of what was available.

The soul pulses settled easily into his chest, fluttering there anxiously like a couple shots of espresso.

Tom touched the cup-holder and channeled the sensation down into the chintzy plastic.

The cup-holder radiated invisible energy for just a second, before clear water began to fill the cup-shaped depression in the plastic sheet, manifesting from seemingly nowhere at all.

Tom didn’t have enough energy to shout for joy anymore. It was almost noon, and the car had long since stopped being a cool refugee from the blazing sun.

In another hour or two I’ll be able to sit outside under the shade.

Tom held the pried-off cupholder to his face and drank, sighing in pure relief as he downed gulp after gulp of water.

After about fifteen swallows, Tom forced himself to stop drinking. Water toxicity was a real thing, apparently. The cup-holder refilled itself with water until it reached the edge of spilling over, then stopped.

And that’s why it’s the most efficient water spell.

There were simpler ones, like just writing create water, but that just made an uncontrolled explosion of water. This particular phrase filled a container, then held any excess energy in reserve, feeding that energy back through the loop as soon as there was more space in the container.

I wonder how long that thing’s gonna last, Tom thought, eyeballing the lukewarm water.

In order to stop too much of it from evaporating out, Tom placed a scrap of plastic from the truck bed overtop of it, then turned to project number two: Appropriate attire.

Tom grabbed Jacob’s white T-shirt and  cut it open with a box-cutter from the toolbox.

White fabric was valuable, in that it could reflect a large portion of the heat directed at it, so Tom needed to supplement his own wardrobe as best he could, designing it specifically to avoid heatstroke and sunburn.

With the box-cutter, Tom removed a large portion of the upholstery from the seats as well, enough to create a rather large, bulky poncho that covered his entire body.

Problem areas, like his head, were covered by a homemade hat, made of seat cushion covered with white t-shirt fabric.

From what he’d read, a thick layer of insulation works both ways. If your body is cooler than the outside, a big bundle of clothes can actually keep you cooler than standing in the hundred plus degree weather.

And visa versa.

By the time he was done with his seat-fabric poncho and hat, the sun was already going down again.

This time, instead of retreating into the cab to preserve the last of the day’s warmth, Tom decided to explore a bit. In his entire life, he’d been kept well fed by his grandparents, by his school, by himself. This was the first time he’d gone longer than a day without eating. He was hungry.

The only thing he’d seen had been those tiny lizards.

What do those even eat, anyway? While Tom had done a lot of research over the night, he hadn’t thought to cover desert food chains and how he might co-opt one.

He briefly imagined those ants in Australia with honey in their swollen butts.

Tom knew he was getting insanely hungry when he started drooling for ant-butt.

Tom did a wide circle around the truck, looking for anything that might be tasty. Hell, he’d go for ant-butt.

All he saw was flat, cracked earth and a few scrubs.

Well, shit.Tom grabbed one of the bushes and broke off a few of the bone-dry branches, then used them to mark spots that looked like they’d had lizard activity.

Give me your fat, Tom thought, swallowing his drool as he headed back to the cab. The ground and the cab were still radiating heat, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long, and Tom wanted to get settled before it all disappeared.

Tom used a bit of scrap padding to cover the exposed piece of metal in the corner of the cab and curled into a ball around Suzie. He tucked his poncho around himself like a blanket, and closed his eyes.

“Oh, wait!” Tom’s eyes snapped open and he grabbed the shield crypt out of his pocket. With an effort of will, Tom moved his natural magic from himself into the crypt. Once that was done, he closed his eyes and relaxed into the nest of shredded upholstery.

Tom didn’t dream.