Chapter 38: The Scientific Method

  The next day, Erik and Jessie stood facing each other on the beach a few hundred metres from camp. Erik had read Sophie’s notes about Jessie’s powers and had found the blank one a mystery. Jessie was incredibly stubborn, and if she wanted something kept secret for a short while, she’d keep her lips sealed.

  Unlike her sister, she was fiercely independent, having no need to share details about herself or her own business with anyone she didn’t feel like sharing them with. Besides, it was temporary. She’d said she was keeping it a secret just until she could show it off. She was more melodramatic than her younger sister, Erik had found.

  Her other abilities were quite interesting. Erik and the rest had finally understood the difference between her Core ability’s Water and Wind spells. Her fire and Earth spells did exactly what was expected of them. Erik had to admit that all the Core spells Jessie had sounded a bit… basic.

  Seeing ‘Scorch’ in action was no less awesome now than when she’d called it ‘Inferno’, but the new name—the true name—seemed lacking. A spell called ‘Scorch’ made him expect a small fire on the ground, turning the surface black and hot but everything around it warm, at worst. ‘Inferno’. Now that was a name fit for the blindingly furious fire he’d seen when Jessie killed that caged Hellbeast.

  They had all discussed several key words and phrases regarding their unique abilities during breakfast. Jessie’s ‘Enter The Storm’ mentioned a field, but she had to admit she didn’t know what that entailed. It was just like Erik experienced; he knew what the power was, but its effects were something they had to test out.

  Other than that, they talked about targets, which were mentioned by several of their powers. They didn’t know who counted as targets. Would Jessie’s field shoot lightning at everyone in proximity? In that case, they would have to fight spaced out, ruining any chance of teaming up unless Erik was ready to get fried from above.

  Jessie also had ‘cost over time’ spells that were all channelled. She had used the ‘Restore’ quite a bit, and while its cost was ‘middling’—whatever that meant—she could keep it up for about an hour.

  Jessie invited Erik to a mock fight with a grin, but both decided to experiment with their own abilities for a while first, so unforeseen effects wouldn’t harm anyone or worse. With only a select few secrets hidden between them, they would of course show off their abilities in front of each other, as the primary goal wasn’t to win against each other, but to fight together.

  They both had to know everything about each other’s abilities, flaws, and strengths alike. The first thing Jessie checked was her ‘Scorch’, ‘Spike’ and ‘Elemental Scythe’ spells. They were all active spells, meaning she cast one and was done with it, unlike the channelled spells she had. What she wanted to know was how the cost worked.

  The ‘low’ cost of ‘Elemental Scythe’ was the cheapest of the three by some margin, followed by ‘Scorch’s’ ‘Middling’ cost. ‘Medium’ was the highest cost of the three, belonging to ‘Spike’.

  Intrigued by the idea, Erik tried his own activated spell, ‘Flash’. The light spell had a ‘meagre’ cost. His ‘Entropy’ spell was more like a toggled passive effect, and while it had the higher ranked ‘middling’ cost, it didn’t seem to cost more than ‘Flash’ at all.

  They placed ‘meagre’ as the lowest cost, followed by ‘low’, ‘middling’, and ‘medium’. Jessie’s ‘Familiar’ had a ‘moderate’ cost for summoning Grace, but mentioned an ‘excessive’ cost for summoning her back after death. ‘Moderate’ felt higher than ‘medium’, and they placed ‘excessive’ even higher on the list, as it sounded more based on the context.

  Erik’s ‘Earthkeep’ ability was also of ‘moderate’ cost, but he just had ‘Flash’ to compare it to as an activated spell.

  While getting a sense of the costs, they of course also tested the effects of the spells. Jessie’s Core spells were basic enough, and the effects were simple, yet still very effective.

  Target could also mean target location, as she didn’t need to fire ‘Scorch’ and ‘Spike’ at a certain thing other than the ground. Even without anything flammable where she cast the fire spell, it still burned for a few seconds, just like when she used it at the hound earlier.

  The scythes from her ‘Reap The Harvest’ ability—that is, from the ‘Elemental Scythe’ spell that ability gave her—could be modulated into any of the four elements her Core spells had.

  The flaming scythe had a short range, as the fire died from its lack of fuel. While it burned, though, it was almost as hot as the Core fire spell.

  The water scythe was pure cutting power, like a high-pressure waterjet cutter. It also had the longest reach, though the further away, the less cutting power it had. It seemed to be an exponential decrease, the cutting power decreasing towards the end of its travel.

  The wind scythe was underwhelming. It wasn’t even visible to those who couldn’t see wind, and while it did impact with some force and cutting power, it took three of them to cut through a standing tree.

  She had stood four metres away, less than half of the water scythe’s first attempt, which had cut clean through the closest tree even despite having lost most of its cutting power by that distance. Still, it was wider, though the edges were hard to pinpoint because of the invisibility. Only Jessie, who could see the air, could see its exact position.

  The earth scythe was… interesting. Jessie didn’t know if she used it the right way, but she did just as she had with the others. As she cast the spell, the scythe took form just as it should. The difference was in the state of matter.

  Fire was, well, high-energy particles generating heat. Water was liquid, and wind was gaseous. The earth scythe was solid matter, taking on the characteristics of simple grey rock. It was much heavier than the rest of them, and she struggled to fling the thing forward with the same motion as she fired the rest of them.

  It was looking to be a great melee-range spell, though, as the large, crescent mass moved just as fast as it had appeared and featured sharp, jagged edges to boot.

  Her ‘Storm’ spell from ‘Enter The Storm’ seemed underwhelming at first. Erik and the rest had stood far clear of Jessie as she cast it. Nothing happened. Even with Jessie’s new senses, it was hard to spot the difference, although she did sense something change, both around her, and on her.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  On her own person, she felt an ever so slight tingling as a static charge built. After a few minutes of this, she also found that after a quick buildup, it even had a slight revitalising effect on her, rebuilding her spent stamina for every second it remained active. It wasn’t enough to stop the drain it had on her energy, but it was easing it.

  She also found this spell to be an activated passive spell. It wasn’t channelled like some of her other spells, but when activated, she felt a constant drain of her energy. Unlike her other active spells, the promised bolts of lightning at her target never appeared.

  She tried focusing her intent on a tree, the ground over here and over there, but nothing. Erik braved the field while it was active, at first just volunteering parts of him. He, too, felt a slight tingle as the static buildup buzzed around him. Soon, his entire body was inside, just a few metres from Jessie.

  The field had a radius of 7 metres, and it was always centred on Jessie. If she moved, so did the field. When Erik had stood inside for a few minutes—not being hit by bolts of promised lightning—he started experimenting with his own spells.

  He activated his ‘Earthkeep’ for the first time, to get a clear sense of its cost, and how it would affect him. Rock and sand beneath him rumbled, and a cloud of dust and debris soon covered Erik with a burst of sounds and sand.

  When the cloud dissipated in the slight breeze, a bulky mass of rock and compressed sand stood in his place. The humanoid figure looked at its hands and arms, then down the entirety of its body.

  “Awesome!” it said in Erik’s echoing voice.

  At first resembling just a jumbled gathering of rock and stone, when he moved, the rest could see the outline of a body, just covered in thick, blocky, heavy armour. It was a poor-man’s plate, though it should still have some magical properties, seeing as it was a magical and defensive enhancement.

  Erik, seeing his current circumstances, standing in a field of static, he couldn’t help himself.

  “Jessie, look! I’m… grounded!”

  A flash of lightning, its brightness equalling ‘Scorch’, shot forth from somewhere above the field, smashing into Erik’s rocky body with a boom. The plasma melted some of the surrounding rock, and even pushed him back, but otherwise he was fine.

  “Oh, I see!” started Jessie, having little to no care about what just happened to her supposed best friend. “It’s enemy-specific targeting. It won’t hit those I consider allies or friends,” she continued.

  “That could’ve killed me!” Erik shouted from inside his stone palace.

  “Yeah, you should stop it with those jokes. They’re bad for your health,” Jessie replied with a grin.

  The melted rock protecting Erik was replaced by new stone from the earth moments later, and Erik felt a slight pull of his energy, sensing the renewal of his ‘Earthkeep’ being somewhat like Jessie’s ‘Storm’ field; It had a cost of investment to activate, then pulled a lower amount to have some effect.

  Jessie’s field had a constant cost as it kept building up static, while ‘Earthkeep’ cost energy only to repair itself. A small crater had formed beneath him as increasing amounts of rock burst from the ground as the lightning bolts kept hitting him for the next few minutes.

  “The bolts don’t cost anything extra,” Jessie stated after the hundredth bolt hit Erik. He might be exaggerating.

  “Great! You done?” Erik said while grinding his teeth. If her field hadn’t also been beneficial to him, restoring his energy as well, he would’ve left the field a while ago. As it was, he found he spent very little of his energy to keep his earthen armour whole and repaired, as he just got it right back in time for the next bolt—which didn’t seem to shoot at him more than every 40 seconds.

  He had been shot at enough times, always from random locations, that they had enough data points to make that a fact, not a theory.

  “One sec,” Jessie said, walking over to a nearby tree that had been otherwise safe from lightning even while inside the field. She touched it for a few seconds, then stepped back from it while still facing it. “Hmm… alright!” she said, turning to Erik.

  The rest were standing several metres behind the protected man, well outside the field. As she walked closer to him, a devilish grin on her face, she dismissed the active field as it would’ve been close to everyone else when reaching Erik. “Want to know the secret now?” she asked. “Then you have to dismiss ‘Earthkeep’”

  Erik did, though reluctantly. He recognised the face. It was the same face she had when she finally discovered a new way to cheat during games. He’d seen it a lot while learning elven games with Hosu.

  Jessie laid her hand on her best friend, sending small jolts through his arm where their skin touched. She removed her hand after just a second, feeling a small current remaining inside him, coursing through his entire body.

  “Is this…” Erik started, then realised his mistake in trusting the wildcard he thought was his friend. “Oh, you…!” he started, right as his muscles clenched. He found he couldn’t move his body the way he wanted for a quick second before it listened again.

  “Iszz thiszz… Szzurge?” he managed as his body convulsed more and more, feeling the current inside him build.

  Just then, an explosion sounded from behind the tree closest to them. Sand burst up into the air, covering a wide area in a thick cloud before another explosion—this time right in front of the tree—occurred.

  Angela and Emma were on the ball in a flash, Angela grabbing the shocked Sophie in front of her and pulling her back and down onto the ground behind some luggage. Emma was crouching behind a tent for lack of a better obstacle. Both had their rifles out, safety off.

  Dunham, arguably the most intelligent of the group, rushed towards Erik and used him as a shield. After a few tense seconds, the trunk of the tree exploded as well, pushing away the previous clouds of sand with a new one, this one also filled with wooden debris.

  “Sorry!” Jessie shouted, getting everyone’s attention. “It was me. We’re not under attack.”

  Erik still couldn’t move, and only his expression changed as he understood what she had done to the tree. It was the same as she did to him.

  “Szz..top!” he said, feeling the current still building. He was sure the ever-increasing current inside him was enough to kill anyone else. Just then, it stopped. It went away in the involuntary blink of an eye.

  “Sorry. Here,” Jessie apologised, then touched him again. Erik was just slow enough to react, as not all his muscles had shaken the effect it had on them yet as Jessie put her hands on him again. When feeling the soothing effect of her ‘Restore’, he calmed down again.

  “That’szz-” he started, then cleared his throat. “That’s… awesome! Holy shit, your powers are cool,” he said.

  “Thanks! I’m sorry, though. I thought it would stop at some point. It does say ever-increasing, but I thought it was just flavour text, you know?” she said, seeing everyone else just now getting up from behind cover, having realised they weren’t under attack.

  “No it… it was growing slower by the end. Or I was just too numb to tell the difference,” Erik complained with a slight smile. “I think it was bottoming out, though. Though at first it grew faster and faster. Maybe it grows like a bell curve or something?”

  “Maybe. It didn’t seem to help the tree, though. It exploded thrice, first its roots!” she said, enthused by the events.

  “Maybe it’s my magical resistance?”

  “I’m thinking that’s it. If nothing else, at least it lowered the potency enough. I had to check the tree first though, so I could see if I could just deactivate it. I could, so I tested it on you. Sorry, again.”

  Already feeling fresh again, Erik told Jessie she could stop healing him. She had just been about to, her senses telling her he was fine, and wouldn’t get much of a benefit from her healing spell anymore. Just in case, she pushed her wind spell into him for a minute or so, more of an apology than anything else.

  Then, she summoned Grace, her trusty triceratops familiar. She was just as they’d seen her on the hotel roof. She looked adorable and had a child-like gaze at everything around her. She recognised the surrounding people, and after hugging and rubbing up against Jessie, she did the same to Erik, then Sophie. As Grace reached Sophie, Angela, and Emma were already there, ready to greet their dino friend.

  “That’s… a dinosaur,” Dunham gasped.