Chapter 27: Chapter 27

Chapter 27 

Tom entered the shelter. There was a stark contrast. The world outside was rapidly descending into a disaster movie. Towering black clouds imparting the perception of restrained violence far beyond the cutting wind and massive rain drop that had begun to fall. It was like reality was going to break. Within the tent, that existence was broken. The air felt warm and still the magic over the tent flap effectively denying both the probing gale and the wasps. While the day had been turned to twilight inside the structure, dozens of lights of a variety of shades filled the space.

Despite the crowded space, it was sort of beautiful, except for the fact that everyone was looking at him.

He lay down. Very conscious of dozens of sets of eyes watching him. Not judging, but after that first day followed by his effectiveness with the wasps he was a fascination to everyone else. He poked his legs outside the tent and the flap shut, cutting off his vision. It was easy enough to imagine what an outside watcher would see. Two legs poking out like they were.

Ridiculous but necessary.

His face burnt, and he knew he looked absurd.

Everlyn giggled and flopped down on her stomach and side at almost a right angle with him. Her head rested on his chest with her body angled so that her feet, if she stretched out would hit the edge of the shelter.

“Ignore them,” she advised, confirming that he was not paranoid.

It was weird.

Being half in and half out of the shelter.

The air in the tent was not even what he would describe as heavy. Instead, it was light and comfortable. It was clear that as a collective group must have purchased spells to moderate the internal environment. The force fields on the doors had been obvious, but there was a lot more at play than that. Air pressure, smell, noise from outside, even the steadiness of the fabric sections had been enchanted. If he was still alive after the competition, it might be nice to spend some time specialising in these quality of life improvements.

The pattern of the rain on his legs changed. The heavy fat drops changed, becoming smaller, colder, faster.

He shifted uncomfortably.

“What?” Everly asked, glancing curiously toward the outside.

Tom had forgotten just how perceptive she was. Almost unnaturally so, then he laughed internally at his thoughts. Versus earth, everything was unnatural.

“Tom?”

“The rain’s become sleet.”

She cocked her head, listening and despite the dampening effects in play you could hear the frequency of the rain striking the tent above increasing. Silenced but not fully, if you listened it was like you could feel the increased intensity even if you couldn’t point to a specific change. While they might be able to sense it, he could feel it… his legs.

Everlyn vibrated.

“Are you laughing?”

“What, it’s funny. If anyone deserves this, it’s Sven.”

The entire sheltered wobbled alarmingly as it was hit with a gust of wind. The spells which excluding the doorway shields were only designed for convenience. They could do nothing against that sort of power. Small gusts were hundred percent impeded, letting you feel like most of the time you were in a solid building, but the large ones completely ignored the defensive magic. The walls shook and ripples went through them the large sections of cloth. The entire west wall swayed inwards.

There were tearing sounds.

Over ten people leapt to their feet. He assumed they were tailors or leatherworkers or at least experienced with the shelter construction because they reacted without hesitation. There was a spray of cold air and a splash of water before multiple hands grabbed chunks of leather and cloth and pulled them together, sealing the vent. There were shouted instructions, sharp, concise but not panicked.

The violence of the storm revealed by that brief split in the fabric was without exaggeration biblical. Yet a calmness prevailed and none of those gathered thought that the forces would cause a catastrophic failure. Yes, they needed to actively address and fix the damage, but there was an unshakable confidence they would be successful. It was faith. It was that simple because according to physics at least the Earth based type the collapse of the flimsy walls would have been guaranteed. The roof was not a proper house with straight lines to allow the water to drain off. It was poorly strung fabric. Water instead pooled in slight depressions and then the extra weight bent and stretched the fabric more. That would create more room and increase the mass further, resulting in further stretching in a positive feed-back loop that should have been calamitous. It should have been a certainty, given the amount of rain that was smacking into his leg.

A leg that was going numb Tom realised. He wiggled his toes, and they responded lethargically. His mind stretched out to diagnosis his exposed extremities, and he frowned. Mana drained out of him as he healed the beginning stage of frostbite. 

If he was suffering the effects of the rain so quickly, it meant Tom was uncertain whether to curse Sven or pity him.

Nope. Fuck him.

This was on him and his self-indulgent cursing when he should have known better.

That numbness followed by intense pain when he forced his toes to wiggle was on Sven. It was his fault. The decision to stick his leg out was justified, but that didn’t mean he needed to do it with a smile and unicorns dancing around him. Along with the rain, he felt the prick of stingers striking and his magic lashed out. Destroying each and everyone of the annoying wasps, which were stupid enough to attack him. Without his nearby presence, they would have gone for Sven instead, and that was something he could not have survived.

The heavens raged for only half an hour of the shockingly powerful storm and then they stilled. That first rent had been the most significant and after that the shelter had endured almost untouched.

GODs had a power that the human mind could not possibly comprehend.

“Is it over?” Everlyn asked.

“Seems that way.” Tom sat up and then open the flap to witness what had been unleashed.

The sight that greeted him stunk of the divine. 

The land was flooded around them for about three hundred metres, then beyond that everything looked untouched. At face value, they had been lucky someone had the foresight to have set up their camp on the crest of a small hill or else they would have been swamped like what happened to create the mini lake which surrounded them. Directly outside their raised area there was a new lake that fully covered the scraggly grass. That put the depth of the water at least three inches. 

Definitely an area touched by a goddess Tom thought as his eidetic memory kicked in. This land had been completely flat. There had been no convenient rise for them to set up upon.

This hill, their survival, the artificial demarcation between where the storm had hit and where it hadn’t.

Goddess touched.

That was the only explanation.  

The storm had been monstrous, but it had been intended for only a single man and the divine retribution was only supposed to curse him.

So she had acted to have it be so.

The very landscape they stood upon had been altered to protect them. Without them feeling a thing, the land had been lifted so the excess water would not flood them where they stood, sat or laid within their supposable safe construction. Of course she had gone further. She had adjusted the swirls of wind to avoid tearing the shelter apart. His legs had felt the wind, DEUS including him in Sven’s punishment with a subtle slap because he had volunteered to help reduce its impact. The wind had tugged on his leg so if he had been outside with his full surface area exposed it would have lifted him up and thrown him. That much apparent power and their solid but not magical glorified tent had survived. It was constructed to survive normal weather on a relatively peaceful plain. There was no way it was strong enough to withstand a divine storm unless said the goddess had wanted them too.  

“Fu–Far out.” Everlyn corrected herself for having followed him out. She, too, looked strangely at the unlikely positioning of the shelter. As they stood there, wasps kept dive bombing him. “Should we do anything about him?”

Tom tore his eyes away from the proof of humanity’s sponsor and her incredible might to the reason her power had been unleashed. 

Sven and his stupidity. 

The spell sword stood only five metres clear of the tent. His face was blue, and his body shivered uncontrollably. His eyes were open, but he looked like he had been pushed beyond the point of exhaustion and the only thing that kept him standing was the foresight he had showed in building up earth around himself to hold himself in place. A mound that reached up to his waist, that had been converted into hardened clay if not rock to have withstood the storm.

Sven’s concentration to build that when the storm was pummelling him commendable. An example of the genius that existed under his joking exterior. Tom knew he was not the only competitor that would possess those qualities. Mostly only genius and the exceptionally talented could have reached this far.

Tom made a mental note to remember that. Sven wasn’t the only one here who possessed hidden depths. The concentration Sven’s would have had to apply given his low level of earth control to have created the structure that saved his life deserved respect. Even more when it was not done in sterile laboratory conditions but while getting pelted with sleet and wind almost sharp enough to cut.

Incredibly impressive. 

Tom wasn’t sure why he was so surprised given that Sven too had earned his spot in this top million, but he would have expected this effort to have been well beyond him. Tom doubted he could have constructed something like that under duress with Sven’s level of earth magic control.

“Please help.” Sven’s teeth clattered hard enough that they could hear it from where they stood. 

“Anyone good with cold exposure healing?” Everlyn called back into the tent. 

“No,” Michael answered, immediately. He hadn’t consulted anyone but knowing his capabilities Michael probably knew everyone’s skill set intimately by now. “You might as well do it.”

Everlyn crinkled her nose. “I was sort of hoping not to get my feet wet and I’m not technically a healer.”

With a grin, Tom lifted her up. She yelped and then with a grimace he stepped forward his feet splashing into the cold water and then the soft mud underneath.

“I’m not a healer. Put me down.”

He went to comply.

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She squealed.

“Not here! There.” She pointed.

“Help.”

Tom looked over toward Sven. While he deserved it for his thoughtlessness, he was clearly distressed. He had only taken a single step, so he dropped Everlyn back onto the dry land and then quickly walked over to Sven. The moment he touched the other man he initialised Healing Tranquillity.

He winced.

The details of what was ailing Sven were unveiled.

It went beyond the effects of exposure. Every fingertip was on the edge of developing frost bite despite Sven’s vitality. The wind had scoured his skin and while it had not been apparent from a distance up close specs of blood were visible. Sven might have been rank 8 in vitality, but it had not helped against the unnatural weather that he had been subjected to.

Absently, Tom fixed the critical issues. The cuts around the waist were scabbed over and he reversed the frostbite, replacing the dead cells in his fingertips with live ones.

Mana flooded out of him.

With the immediate issue addressed, Tom focused on the man’s hips and back.

The mound Sven had created had prevented him from being tossed by the gale force winds, but it had not been cost free. The pressure that the constricting rock and divine winds had placed on his hips and lower back was incredible and there were long cuts on all sides were the rock had cut into Sven’s skin when the wind tried to push the upper body in a direction it was not available to move to. 

It was…

Tom glanced back at the shelter. “I need an Earth mage to break the mound.”
Everlyn disappeared toward the sanctuary, and he tapped the rock. Sven must have been desperate when he had constructed it. The space was so tight that Tom could not physically heal the skin because it would immediately cut him again.

While he waited, he fixed the other issue, his mana expertly repairing the three cracked vertebrae and rebuilt the hip joint from scratch.

If he didn’t think it had the potential to cause a problem, he would have whistled, impressed at what DEUS had done. It was a childish reaction because of course a GOD could do the inconceivable. That had been wind pushing on half Sven’s body that had crushed his hip joint and that was someone who was twice as resistant as anyone on earth… Wind strong enough to literally crush bone. The power of the storm was so far beyond what his twenty-year-old mind could have imagined. Yet it had occurred. Indisputably. Right here, freely observable by anyone who had been willing to get their feet wet.

It was extraordinary. Wind crushing bone, Tom repeated those words in his head… And they had a cloth shelter ten metres away that had survived untouched. 

The bones finished mending, and all that was left was the cuts and of course, correcting Sven’s body temperature. That second was not something his magic was able to help.

He looked back. Number two from the first day emerged from the shelter with Everlyn next to him. The man might have been friendly with Clare and Sven when they first arrived, but since then Tom had hardly seen him.

The earth mage looked down at the muddy water and frowned. He lifted his hand. “Are you ready?”

Tom nodded and then the earth mage clicked his fingers and the construction that had probably taken Sven every bit of his skill and strength to create disintegrated to dust like it was nothing int eh presence of a true magic user.

The abrupt release of pressure caused the scabs to split open, and Sven collapsed. Tom barely caught him, but got his arms into position. Then Sven’s full weight slumped upon him, and Tom staggered. He repositioned his feet desperately and muddy water splashed all up his leg. 

“Help.” Tom called as he struggled with his foot work and gaining the grip to pop up the heavier man. With a bit more strength, this would be a different outcome, but he wasn’t there yet. 

Everlyn and the earth mage looked at each other neither willing to move and get their feet wet.

“It’s just water.” Tom ground out.

She took her head. “Nope muddy water.” She placed the emphasis on muddy.

“Everlyn.”

She ignored him and turned around. “Thor you’re needed.”

A moment later the big man emerged his heavy hammer held casually in one hand.

“Help.” Tom repeated.

“What’s that Useless?” Thor said, pushing his long blond hair to the side. 

“Sven needs help.”

“Bring him over then.”

“He needs warmth.”

“Well, come on.” Thor was grinning broadly, but to Tom’s relief he leant down and took off his shoes and rolled up his pants. “Do you need a real man to help you Tom?”

Tom rolled his eyes. “No, I need someone who has invested in strength rather than intelligence. You’ll do perfectly Thor.”

There was no laughter, but Everlyn smiled when Thor wasn’t looking, which was the only thing that mattered to Tom.

“Intelligence isn’t an attribute.” Thor pointed out, taking a cautious step into the water. “But we can’t expect Useless to know that.”

“Oh it is,” Tom joked. “You just need a natural level over fifty to unlock.”

Thor stopped dead. “What?”

Sven shifted and Tom was almost forced to let him go and only Sven taking a tentative half step prevented disaster.

“Joking,” Tom assured him. “Hurry.”

“What do you mean is an attribute or not?”

Tom groaned under Sven’s weight and the other man tried to help, but he was too fatigued to stand properly, and dumping him into the water would be mean. “Thor.”

“Stop teasing him.” Everlyn yelled.

The big man laughed, and with three steps crossed the remaining distance. Chuckling, he effortlessly lifted Sven and carried him over to safety. Tom followed and then looked down at his muddy legs in more than a little annoyance.

“It was very brave of you.” Everlyn said completely seriously. She looked up at the sun pointedly. “Are you going to clear some hives?”

“It’s all about getting the maximum amount of work out of me.”

“On the contrary, I’m happy to have a picnic with you but you’re a workaholic and…” she looked over him. “I’m sure you won’t agree to have a picnic with me.” She mock pouted.

“No picnic baskets, or appropriate nibbles, or blanket or champagne.”

“I’m sure that’s the only reason.” She put her hand on her hip. “Are you going to choose to go smash or…” She licked her lips.

“That’s unfair.”

“Everything’s fair in…” once more she left the sentence unfinished, and his stomach did little loops of joy. “Well?” Her eyes were twinkling.

“Yeah. I was thinking I can work till a couple of hours after dark.”

She laughed, and then spontaneously hugged him. “You’re an amazing man.”

It was… the corner of his mouth hurt and he hoped no one was watching them.

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