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Where do we draw the line between trusting ourselves and our own senses versus what someone else tells us? Trickles of somewhat relevant information kept coming to me at times when I wasn’t actively pondering something. Rath’s knowledge broken down by long-gone Gungnir fed into my brain as we flew down the remnant of Interstate 95 South. The road itself, the asphalt and cement, were gone, but it formed a rough valley ridged by hills and mountains on a north to south bent; it was nature’s highway now. The view was great from up here, three giant mutated avians a little smarter than dolphins had agreed this morning to let Johnny and Reeanth and I ride on them in exchange for letting them roost in the high branches of the World Tree. The hardest part of that conversation was the translation issues but Meliad was more than happy to be our mediator. Something about my ‘squawk’ was highly appealing to them, that and the way me and my gear constantly put off ‘squawking’ mana. Birdbrains. I was all for supplying guardians for my wife-tree, but it seemed that too many people or things as of late just wanted to be near her. That’s one mystery I’ll have to table for later.

The simple hamadryad was also confused as to why I made deals with the flock instead of simply enslaving them like I clearly had the power to do to her with my nature sorcery, but the thought of doing that left a bad taste in my mouth. I clearly remembered Kong’s pure hatred for me after he was free, and I know for a fact that a community of some kind is key to long-term survival. My community now isn’t entirely human, but I can make it work, and giant crowlike eagles are excellent air support.

Spot’s whine brought me back to the present as the wind whipped us with almost frozen air. The collar I had made for him included small things that Rath had been able to do, most convenient of which was the ability to change size and constantly generating heat. I know I didn’t put either of those magical effects in there, but the resonance between the materials and the genetics of the part dragon-canine must have triggered it. The tank of a dog wouldn’t fit up on the bird at first, so we planned on leaving him. To which Spot responded by sprinting across the clearing in a frenzy, shrinking until he was the size of a great dane and then bounded up on the bird with me. Unbounded loyalty combined with magic produces the weirdest things.

Passing what used to be Richmond, the capital of Virginia, was a total drag. A bombed out looking giant crater that magically enhanced nature was doing its best to reclaim. Humanoid forms somewhat larger than my golems back home fought around gigantic bonfires while what looked to be dinosaurs paced in humongous pens made from fallen trees and boulders. The somewhat smaller city of Petersburg just a bit further south was in a similar situation, but the crater was ringed with walls at least eight stories high. A very skinny silver spire dominated the center of the crater while a strange inky darkness obfuscated the view of the surrounding area of the spire from view. Thick smoke billowed up from the darkness randomly freaking out our rides who pushed themselves to climb higher than the smoke.

Not having to fight traffic or air control did wonders for our time. We hit right around where South Carolina was before we landed for the night. I studiously ignored the glares from my human companions as they sprinted off to do their business while I conjured and shaped earth to form a temporary shelter roughly the size of a doublewide trailer. Birds one through three took off to find themselves some food as Spot grew to his normal size and followed on foot.

Reeanth stormed towards me as I finished up getting our camp ready.

“Just because you can use flesh sorcery to manage your body does NOT mean the rest of us can ignore HAVING TO PEE!”

Holding one hand in front of my eyes to ward off the glare of light coming from hers, I chuckled. “I’m sorry, seriously, I totally forgot. This ability is too convenient.”

“And water too man? Where the hell do you keep pulling it from?” Johnny asked, joining Reeanth in tearing me a new one. “Kind of a dick move to not share summa’ dat. Little thirsty here!” With a quick pull of his hands, he finished zipping his pants up.

“You do that out there,” Reeanth said to him, rolling her eyes. “No one wants to see what you lack.”

“What I lack?! Bitch! All that height and no titties? Who’s lackin now?” Johnny fired back. “Tall girls aren’t worth climbing unless they got fruit up there, and trust me, I see no fruit.”

One of Reeanth’s long legs whipped out, punting Johnny back into the woods. Reeanth followed his momentarily airborne form, screaming the whole time.

“Guess no one wants water, or to help me set up the fucking camp,” I grumbled, turning back to the camp. I easily dug a firepit and then another but much deeper hole with stone blocks in it. With a flex of will, I conjured enough water to fill it up. “One more step and hot tub, here we come!” I celebrated, dancing a small jig as I finished looking over everything. The sunlight was fading fast, so I gave in just a bit to my hermit instincts. Using my earth sorcery again, I walked around our camp conjuring up a three foot thick, ten foot tall stone wall with a glass-like exterior. Leaving one opening in the direction of where my companions were duking it out, I conjured three piles about the size of a twin mattress each of the softest sand my earth magic could make in three separate rooms. The temporary house had more than enough room for the three of us, and each pile of soft sand went to a respective room.

Thinking of security, I formed the doorways to be skinnier than anyone would think to do. Most doorways in a house are at least three feet and change wide to allow a normal person to walk through comfortably, but I formed mine to be as tall as Reeanth but only about a foot wide. This way, I wouldn’t have to go through the problems of making hinges or sealing people in so that I would have to get out. Also, large predators wouldn’t be able to squeeze through the slender opening, and if the smaller ones were able to take care of my companions, then I chose poorly for this trip. Walking out the entrance to the camp wall, I held up a stone I enchanted to give off a ridiculous amount of light and looked around.

“Bring back firewood when you’re done!” I yelled, scanning the woods. Not hearing any sounds of acknowledgement, only yells and screams and booms, I dropped the light stone I was holding and quickly made another. Holding that in my fist, I summoned Gungnir and started walking towards the woods. “You better be fighting each other and not something stupidly big and dangerous ya hear!”

With a flash of light, Johnny sprinted out of the darkness and slammed into me, bouncing off my magical shield.

“Get outta my way fool!” Johnny’s yell accompanied his mad scramble to get back to his feet. Dirt sprayed from where his feet kicked off as he tore off in the direction of camp. Using earth sorcery, I turned the ground to quicksand and watched him epically flop into it.

“Where the fuck are you going? She’s not that scary man.”

“Yeah, but the bear is! And it ain’t fuckin normal!”

Using the quicksand as a giant hand, I pushed Johnny back towards me. “What did you do?” I asked intensely, the light from the pebble pulsing and making my face look like a creepy mask.

“It didn’t look like a bear! I thought it was a rock, so I peed on it, ya know, doin what dudes do in the woods, and holy shit did that rock get angry. So we need haul ass, like now!”

I turned back towards the woods just in time to see Reeanth get blasted out of the woods. Landing at my feet, I saw long bloody claw marks healing before my eyes as she grasped her mana-maul. Between the torn links in her nano-armor, I saw her regen runes glowing, my mana-sight revealing to me that my experiment worked. A loud crack interrupted my thoughts as her ribs rearranged themselves just a bit.

“What kind of bear did you piss off, or on?” I asked incredulously, frantically scanning the deepening darkness of the edge of the woods. A load roar quickly boomed, almost as if answering me. “Fuck, that’s definitely way too close for comfort” I muttered, dropping the light stone to my feet as I activated Svalinn. The gauntlets came alive as metal on both arms grew out to form mini shields, the smaller-twins of the giant magical shields that snapped into existence five feet out from me. The swirling blue light with streaks of red captured the overpowered shields from my gauntlets. “Yeah baby!” I yelled, stabbing Gungnir’s base into the dirt between my feet. “Don’t get to take you out for a spin too often!”

Using my consciousness sorcery, I activated a runic subroutine that I had duplicated on the inside crystalline strata of Gungnir and on the inner side of the two parts of Svalinn, the energy resonance diagram. This was my most ambitious project to date as it began to combine some of the lessons that had bruised my pride in the past. The gravity compactor I made for Johnny incorporated using multiples of runes at the correct location to create a more powerful, more focused effect, while my consciousness sorceries showed me more clearly how to link magical objects together.

Also, my consciousness sorcery also showed me a memory from a while ago that I hadn’t gone over in too much detail. When fighting those teenage idiot paladins, I hadn’t noticed at the time, but all of their magical gear was somehow in sync. It’s weird how smart our brains are separate from our conscious minds. My brain had held on to that memory with far more detail than I ever dreamed possible. Using my mental talents, I was able to go back and take another look, and actually see that their armor was combined with many little runic effects that came together to form a more powerful whole. The copies of the diagram I carved into my tools allowed them to easily share their more individual characteristics. Their split stores of energy could now flow back and forth and the fire nature in Svalinn that came from Rath’s soul could now be channeled by Gungnir while Svalinn could tap into the projection nature of Gungnir to not only make shields but push them out, simulating someone getting hit by a truck of magical force.

My excitement somehow got the better of me, clearly ignoring the valid danger that kicked the crap out of a baby cultivator and a Centauri battle wizard. I took an old hunter’s trick and sang at the top of my lungs. “Come on, shake your body baby, do the conga, I know you can't control yourself any longer!” I let the words of the probably dead singer Gloria Estefan ring out as I waggled my hips just a tiny bit. Couldn’t help myself. If you hear that song, somethins’ gotta move.

The out of tune answering roar heralded a bear bigger who at the shoulder was as tall as Kong, but it’s almost an insult to call it a simple bear. The flickering light from my light stone revealed long fangs that looked like speckled granite, shoulders that boulders were jealous off, and even its fur had a gritty quality to it. My earth sorcery and mana-sight showed me that this bear was as in touch with the earth itself as me. Marble shards were in its bones, obsidian covered its claws and there was a kind of flesh-stone amalgamation of body armor just under its fur, as if it were wearing a sort of natural kevlar.

My singing died in my throat as the second verse caught at the sight of this behemoth. Bravado forced my fear to unclench my asshole just a bit as my natural sarcasm screamed for me to joke in the face of danger. “How do you ‘bear’ all that weight you overgrown twat?! How come you get to walk around in ‘bear-feet’ but I get yelled at when I do it? This story will be ‘bear-ly’ believable! I can “bear-ly’ stand cause I’m so FUCKIN SCARED!”

“Fuck the puns man!” Johnny yelled from somewhere behind me. “Just run!”

The dark part of me wishes that I had tripped Johnny, letting the bear do the dirty work that Rath’s memories begged me to do. I hadn’t forgotten what the dragon’s memories had shown me, but doing that to some innocent kid, I’m not sure that I would have been able to live with myself after. And as far as I can tell, he’s got more than enough missing up top to not be a serious threat to me. The other thing keeping him alive is that I honestly like him. He’s dumb and strong and has the potential to live as long as me without my interference, and immortals don’t come by every day. Big bear’s deafening roar brought me back to the present.

My knees were almost knocking together. The sheer presence of this primal creature was terrifyingly frightening, not just in its size, but in the concept of the absolute truth that this animal was the king of the forest and I was an ant that normally was tolerated simply because I didn’t matter. But now, somehow, this ant and its ant companions had to go and prod something that could literally step on us with a thought and end us. And I knew that, instinctively, until my flesh and mind sorcery hailed from the back of my mind to remind me that I had magic. This was a bear, yes, a big one, but I wasn’t just a human, I am a mother fuckin sorcerer.

Reaching down with one hand, I grabbed Reeanth and dragged her behind me and reset myself, deeply drawing upon my stored energy and infusing that into my brain. Reaching out with condensed nuke’s worth of mana, I infused it with the fear that my body had felt, and spiked it directly into Big Bear’s brain. The giant animal’s eyes rolled into the back of its head as it collapsed. The earth bucked with its weight, almost making a tiny localized earthquake.

“Did you kill it, did I miss it, how’d you do it?”

Johnny’s chatter irritated Reeanth more than it did me. Dusting herself off, she rounded on him and growled, “Magic.”

“I mean, duh, but,” he sputtered, “I didn’t see shit.”

Taking a few deep breaths to come to grips with the fact that I had fear-factored a mountain of a bear, I turned my suddenly achy body towards Johnny and formed a small sphere of mental energy empowering a rune above my hand. The wispy mental energy softly glowed to my sight as the figure for mental defense pulsed. “You don’t see this?” I asked, staring at the space above my outstretched hand. “I made a rune and empowered it.” A whole minute of him squinting at my hand goes by.

“Nope. Nothin there dude.”

“What about this?” I dispelled the condensed energy and then conjured a bit of pure magic at the point right before it would have conjured earth and held it towards him.

“Dude, there’s nothin there.”

I let the potential energy flare in its normal process that usually is a million times faster. The soft earth popped into existence and fell into my hand.

“Now ya got some dirt there. I see that.”

“My lord, we have bigger concerns than his inability to see magic in its purest form.”

Dropping my hand, I looked over at the bear. “Yeah, sooo,” I said slowly, “I’m not actually sure about this. I know what I did, but, I’m not sure what that means exactly . . .”

“My lord?”

Scratching at my chin, I examined the bear in the magical spectrum. “It’s definitely still alive, I just don’t know in what context. I took a huge spike of mental magic, infused it with the fear I felt when the damn thing roared at me and hurled it into its head. It’s obviously not dead, but is it a vegetable? Did it faint with fright, or did I burn out some neurons, and now we have a literal retarded bear that’s halfway made out of stone? I’m not sure which of these is the worst option.”

“Can I keep it?” Johnny quipped. His hands were in the classic begging position that any three year old knows.

“You certainly may not!”

“Sure.”