“Speaking of time, it’s now about 5:00. I say we call it a night as far as killing rats and try to get our spells up a couple of levels. I’d like to get my shield spell a lot higher and my Force Bolt spell a couple more ranks or so. I know I can’t yet split it between targets, but I’d like it to put down whatever I hit.

“I’d like to get my Light Heal and Party Heal spells up to at least Copper rank,” said Janet.

“Force Bolt to Copper, at least,” said Tanya. “I’d also like to get my Illusion spell up a couple of ranks.”

“I’m going to keep practicing Force Bolt. Mama?” Big Mike said.

“I’ll do that too,” Consuelo nodded.

And then Big Mike continued, “Girl’s we need to get you your next spells. I’m thinking Baila you need Shield and then what? Light? Create Water? Grease?”

“I want Light,” said Amada. “I’m tired of sitting in the dark or having to ask for someone to cast the spell.”

“Me too!” said Baila. “I want Shield and then Light.”

“Ok,” said Big Mike. And he shared a screen with the two spells on it with the little girls. Amada, of course, already had the Shield spell.

“Ok,” I said. “How about we share our spells with the adults now?”

Tanya spoke up then. “I think it’s great, but once you started talking about Charm, I decided that I hated that spell. Can you say Date Rape? I don’t like the fact that I’ve got it, I don’t like the fact that anybody else does either. Imagine my stepdad with that spell? My life would have been broken into four-hour blocks.”

eGirl said, “I hear you, but I don’t know what we can do to keep it from spreading. Maybe set a rule in place that outlaws the use of the spell on people, maybe we can train ourselves to resist that kind of spell, I don’t know. Or maybe we can just watch the people that know the spell. Does it show up on people’s badges, like a debuff would in a game?”

“I hear you,” said Big Mike. “There were, probably still are, a lot of people that are just wrong. I wouldn’t want one of them to have that spell around my little girls, hell, my wife.”

I called my imu using my inner voice, “Hey, Miles, can we tell if someone is operating under a spell?”

The little guy appeared and said, “Yes, it is possible.”

“So it automatically shows up? On their badge?” I asked.

“No, you must ask to display all debuffs that a person, object or entity is operating under, and then you have a chance to recognize that the person, object or entity is operating under a debuff.”

“You mean like a 10% chance per debuff or per level or something like that?” I asked.

“No, it is a percentage chance tied to your level, intelligence, wisdom, and perception attributes. The higher any one of these is, the greater chance you have of noticing the debuff. Also, the greater the level, intelligence, wisdom and perceptions attributes of the person casting the debuff are, the less likely you are to notice it.”

“Can we tell after the fact that the person or entity was operating under a debuff?” "I asked.

“No,” it said and then vanished.

I passed on the information that I’d just received. And, of course, then everybody had questions that they wanted to be answered. So we spent the next while trying to get them answered.

It turned out that spells that didn’t allow Spell Resistance were basically inescapable, well within the range that is. No saving throw allowed, not that we got to roll dice but who knows, maybe They were. However, spells that had a ‘Spell Resistance’ did allow a chance to dodge or have the spell fail to take effect. It also turned out that spells that failed were felt, spells that didn’t fail weren’t. Well, if you got targeted with an Earth Bolt you’d see it either way, hard to miss a large earthen dart flying at you, but on something sneaky like a Charm spell, only if you succeeded would you know you were targeted. However, other people could see. Well, as long as you were still under the spell. And they made their ‘Spell Resistance’ check.

And, They were being plenty cagy with the metrics. Nobody was able to get their imues to tell them what the formula was that would calculate a spell being resisted. Oh, and to view debuffs you just had to ask to see debuffs on badges. Which, of course, I and everybody else immediately asked to do so.

“eGirl,” I said, not able to hold out anymore, “is there something different about your hair?”

Janet elbowed me while Tanya just shook her head.

“No,” I said. “That’s a legitimate question. I like it, it just looks different than it did.”

“Yeah,” she said. “The blue goes all the way down. My hair is now this color blue. I guess they made our latest styling choices permanent. Miranda’s hair, the same.” Miranda’s hair was a mix of brown and white, layered somehow. Both of them had short hair cuts. eGirl’s looked a little like Pee-wee Herman’s, while Miranda’s just looked short and stylishly tousled.

“Huh,” I said. “I noticed that your eyebrows were blue now too. So blue all the way down, huh?”

“Oh my god,” said Tanya. “Monsoon!”

eGirl just rolled her eyes, “I’m used to it. In the month that I’ve known him, he’s asked questions about basically everything and I mean everything. On the plus side, he doesn’t get mad if you tell him to fuck off, but … everything!” The little girls laughed when they heard this.

Big Mike started laughing then, and said, “well, I guess I don’t have to worry about HR anymore, so at least one good thing happened with the apocalypse.”

Then we passed out potions which lead to our explaining them and also our classes. Which lead to our sharing the spells. We went ahead and shared all of our spells, even Charm because better safe than sorry, but we decided that we’d need to talk about what to do to someone that ‘fired’ that spell at someone unwilling. We kept the same watch schedule with only the four of us old-timers taking a shift. However, that lead to a question of where Jake and Miranda and eGirl were going to stay. I was OK outside, but there wasn’t room in the little tent or the teepee for them.

Surprisingly, Jake came up with a solution. It turns out that he’d received a lot different spells than we had. Force Bolt, of course, everybody so far had received that one, but also two other spells and then he’d purchased the bonus spells also, and then he’d even created a spell as well, so he had six spells total. eGirl and Miranda both had done the same so eGirl had three spells while Miranda had five spells.

Jake had received or purchased or created the following spells:

Create Block Create Earthen Wall Lumber Force Bolt Pallet

Lumber dried wood and turned it into lumber which you could shape with the spell, although each separate wood piece required an additional mana expense. Pallet was just this spell that created a two-meter square that could be used to hold stuff and move it, relatively slowly, around. Earthen Wall just created a three-meter square wall that was somehow anchored to the ground if cast on the ground. Otherwise, it anchored to whatever it could, failing to anchor to anything, meant it fell down. It was about ⅓ of a meter in depth. Later ranks became stone and then harder stone and more sections of wall were created. Create Block would create a mass of stone. This was the spell that he’d invented? Researched? Discovered? Originally, he’d only used it to create blocks, but in the fight with the skink, he’d used it to create the little stalagmites. It turned out that the mass was important, the shape, not so much. On later ranks the stone that was created would get denser or harder, the mass would increase.

eGirl just got Force Bolt, but then had bought her bonus spells using skill points. She’d received the following two spells:

Force Bolt Scribe Cut

Scribe created patterns in light on a surface. It allowed you to draw pictures or diagrams or, I suppose if you got good enough, the Mona Lisa on a wall or the ground. Eventually, the art or design would fade away. Cut did just that. It would create a force blade and follow a cutting pattern. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the spells were designed to go together. The blade extended with greater ranks and cut harder materials. I guess the idea of the spells was you would make a pattern, adjust it, get it right, and then cut it in permanently. I’m pretty sure that these spells were going to be useful for higher-level magic, things that needed formations or runes.

While Miranda had received the following spells:

Force Bolt Fall Lightly Light Create Water Silence

Fall Lightly was an instantaneous spell that caused the object it was cast upon to fall like a feather. It didn’t matter how much the object or person weighed, it fell lightly. However, the spell was good for only two seconds at the first stage, then added another two seconds for every stage after that. It didn’t negate mass, it just made things fall slowly. A 2000 kg block was still going to crush you if you were beneath it. Silence was just that, it silenced either another person or the caster. If cast on the caster, it just hid the noise they were making from others, if cast on another person, it made them silent. It lasted two seconds per rank and they got a chance to resist it.

But anyway, the way that Jake came up with to house everyone was to cast Earthen Wall four times creating a cube, then he had eGirl create a pattern of a door and then cut it out. Then he had her come with him (and the rest of us) to the edge of the lot where he selected a couple of trees and told her to cut them down. She did using Scribe and Cut again, after which he cast lumber twice and came up with two big beams. Tossed them on Pallet, pulled them to the cube he’d created, got everyone to lift the beams up to rest on top of the walls and then cast another Earthen Wall spell over the top to act as a roof. Not bad. In about 30 minutes he’d created a sturdy dwelling for him and eGirl and Miranda.

We were all in awe of his kind of matter-of-fact creation skills. He looked at us, and then said, “Architect remember? This was what I was doing when...” and then he stopped, but he said enough that we knew what he meant. eGirl and Miranda just quietly hugged him.

I cast Light inside the cube and said, “There we go, someplace to stay tonight. Clean, dry and lit. You might want to fix the door gap, but really, I’d guess you’re probably safer than in the teepee or little tent.” I could see that statement going over like a lead balloon.

“You know what,” I said. “I’m thinking that we may want to build some more of these little houses, better safe than sorry. Three more and we have a compound that’s relatively safe. And so we did. Four little houses all under one of the big new trees by the teepee. All arranged in a big cube with their door gaps pointing toward each other. The fire in the center of the little compound with a gap of about two feet in the corner closest to Maxes to create an exit. The arrangement looked a little like a greek cross only the top had been shoved to the side a bit to create the exit. I liked it. I liked the little house, I liked our little compound. For the first time, I felt a little safer, a little bit in control.

“Thank you, Jake. You’ve done good. I feel a little bit safer. A little bit more in control,” I said.

“Yes,” said Big Mike. “Thank you! It feels good to have walls again.”