It took a few minutes of frantic explanation, but his daughter finally accepted that ‘Mr. Tim’ was certainly not their faultless fairy guide mother. Or at least, she now stood between the two of them instead of next to either, which John considered a temporary win.

As they spread out down the road from the parking area which held a couple other cars, John wistfully gazed up at the sliver of sky visible between the canopies. How it was that his daughter managed to inherit both his sarcastic wit and her mother’s strong headed will, he had no idea.

When it became clear that he had lost his potential new ally, Tim eventually sulked his way to a height of twenty feet above them. He had grumbled something about conserving energy and reprocessing strategies, and then shrank considerably.

The once excessively large orb was now vaguely bigger than a softball. Ever since their previous argument, he had remained remarkably silent. John at first began to worry that he had maybe pushed Tim too far.

Then he remembered that Tim had allowed him to leave his daughter inside of a probable car-sized IED, and gave him the finger. Mentally, of course.

His daughter, on the other hand, began peppering him with questions about their current situation. Since Tim seemed to be distracted reviewing his new role in life, John did his best to answer based on his previous conversations with their guide to the multiverse, delivered in a way that non-multiverse residents could easily understand.

He started with the events from last night, explaining that though they were still on Earth, Earth was somewhere else. Or rather, it was now a part of something greater that changed ‘where’ it was relative to everything else that was previously beyond our universe. The darkening of the night sky was exactly this process in motion, while the rumbling that they felt was the Earth shuddering as it was enveloped into its new space.

Additionally, he explained that there were now unseen energies floating around that fundamentally altered how physics worked in the world. These forces were what made modern technologies like cars either dangerous or inert.

He hadn’t thought about it until now, but he was suddenly very glad that his phone had managed to die overnight. Who knew if he would have blown up his own head long before his car even became a threat.

John certainly never thought he would be thankful for woefully short cellphone battery life, but there he was.

Despite the perpetual threat of existential crisis at their doorstep, his daughter handled the knowledge rather well. Perhaps she was young enough to take the changes in stride, or maybe she was just that resilient. After what they had experienced already though, John wondered if it was really all that surprising.

With a literal being composed of pure energy and something that sounded a lot like magical computer programming at their side, anything was possible, if not probable. He was proud of her, nonetheless.

After he wrapped up his impromptu lesson with a warning that all living things— not just humans— would soon be earning superpowers, Luna’s eyes began to sparkle. Of course, he thought, which kid didn’t want to have superpowers?

Unfortunately, John didn’t know much of anything about controlling the new forces of the world and thus they could only shelve the topic for when Tim started to do his job again.

He also ultimately decided that it was for the best if Luna didn’t know about the dubious survival rate of people interacting with these powers. It was a worrying proposition, even to his older and wiser self, and he wanted to keep her away from that horrible truth if possible.

They had survived the watershed moment and that was enough for now.

As for Tim, he wouldn’t force him to speak with them. At least not for now. If they were going to be interacting for a few more days, John didn’t want their relationship to be totally soured. If Tim could come to terms with his new lot in life on his own, he would probably return to normal. As far as ‘normal’ could be applied to the natural state of their guide.

Instead, it was time for some serious planning.

“So we can’t go home?” Luna asked.

“Not unless you’re keen on walking,” he answered ruefully. It was a troublesome predicament.

They were currently located in the more remote woodlands of Pennsylvania, just under two hours away from their home just beyond the suburbs of Philadelphia. Perhaps in LA where traffic could turn a thirty minute walk into a two hour drive, this number wouldn’t be very worrisome.

Here however, that was two hours of solid highway speeds. Speeds that, more often than not, toed the fine line of ‘fast enough to be breaking the law’ and ‘not fast enough to be worth an officer’s time’.

On foot, they had well over a hundred miles of travel ahead of them. It could take weeks to travel that distance, but they lacked the immediate supplies required for the journey.

They were lucky enough to have half a case of water bottles in the back seat of the car, which would probably last them a few days if they rationed it. Food, however, was a major problem.

As much as he had watched those old survival series on TV, he couldn’t remember much more than the more extreme options and scenarios. He grimaced as he thought about what their final option for drinking liquids was.

“Can we ask Tim? Maybe he knows a way we can get back using divine energy or something.” Luna’s question caused her father to slap his knee in sudden revelation. He did so with his bad hand, however, and barely stifled a curse he didn’t want to utter in front of his daughter.

That’s right, he thought finally with a cringing growl. He had been so focused on making plans on how to use old Earth’s resources to overcome the predicament that he had completely forgotten about the all powerful sci-fi magic.

Images of a man drinking his own piss in a desert were forcibly removed from his mind as thoughts of flying swords and teleportation took their place. Tim had certainly made these energies sound all-powerful, so surely something like that was possible eventually.

The process of achieving those things was the real mystery. Unfortunately, Tim had gone from moping in the canopy to full blown MIA sometime during his conversation with Luna.

“You don’t think he ran away do you?” John asked.

“You know him better than I do.” Her response elicited a worrisome groan from John.

Truthfully speaking, John didn’t really know much about Tim. Considering he was born… today, maybe Tim didn’t even know much about Tim. Had their guide left them to find out how to survive on their own while he found himself?

“Well, he’ll probably return but I wouldn’t hold my breath.” John instead began pondering what might be achievable right now. On Earth, magic had been the foundation of many stories, myths, and even cultures around the world. Surely one of them had gotten it right?

Or maybe all of them had gotten it right? If animals and plants could use divine energy then the process probably wasn’t very specific.

John began to formulate some kind of basic process as a test. Did he have to wave around a stick and pronounce spell names in perfect latin? Or maybe condense the ambient energy into a dantian like they do in xianxia novels?

Without proper guidance, John decided to first try a version of the former. It was probably better to not wantonly mess with almighty powers inside his own body.

Instead, he picked up a promisingly straight-looking stick from the ground with his good hand. It lacked phoenix feathers and dragon’s blood but it would have to do.

“You might want to step back.” John walked into the middle of the road and began sweeping away any sticks or leaves around him.

“What are you doing?” His daughter skeptically took a few steps back towards the cars.

“Magic?” Honestly, John was merely hopeful that any real magic would occur. He was vaguely aware that there were some changes in his body, which resulted in his vaguely improved physicality.

How to tap into those changes however was ultimately an unknown.

It was like having a third arm somewhere on your body, only it was invisible and you didn’t know where it branched off of you. Or rather, in John’s case, where it branched into you.

Luckily, John was well experienced with human concepts of magic. In his expansive ‘research’ of fiction, most magic systems operated on some kind of will. Expressions of this will could then shape the forces using your mind or body.

It was fundamentally the same whether you were speaking out loud, channeling energy through meridians, creating spell circles, or just thinking really hard.

However, since he had no knowledge of spell circles, meridians, or words of power, John opted for the arguably most classless style of magic.

He closed his eyes, and in his mind pictured the image of a small candlelight. He overlaid this image with the tactile sense of the stick in his hand, and imagined the candlelight sprouting from its end. A small, yet steady and stable outpouring that produced more light than heat, though very little of either.

When he opened his eyes, he was unsurprised to find the stick no less aflame than when he started. Even still, he was undeterred. Tim had said his body was already reformed by origin energy, more so than most things, and thus he reasoned should be capable of something.

If animals were about to start exhibiting superpowers, why should he wait for a potentially threatening example to show up first? It couldn’t be that hard, he thought to himself.

John grit his teeth and stared harder at the tip of his impromptu wand. This time, instead of layering images, John’s eyes opened wide as he focused not on imagery, but on his body and his ‘wand’.

He mentally tried to reach around inside of every corner of himself and push into the stick, imagining the end alighting in flame as before.

He almost sighed when no light or heat appeared instantly, but he very quickly felt something go horribly right.

His insides lurched as whatever changes had occurred within his body began making themselves known. A feeling of warmth from every fibre of his being converged into his left hand, and then into the stick which began trembling violently.

Suddenly very aware of a feeling of physical drain, he knew something was about to happen. The only question was, how big would the effect be? John threw the stick away from them down the road with a silent curse.

“Luna, get down!” He had no idea what the effect would be, but the shaking of his wooden conduit worried him.

“Wha—” Luna barely had time to respond before a resplendent light forced her head down.

A volatile ball of fire, the staple magic of wizards everywhere, enveloped the stick as it careened end over end above the dirt road. Before it could hit the ground, the flames erupted into a four foot gout that rotated with the stick and burned the air in a spinning wheel of destruction.

Even from a distance, John was worried that he might have been singed by the intense heat.

It tumbled dangerously through the air until finally striking the ground some forty feet away from them. As it did, the charred stick crumbled and bursts of fire exploded from within.

The blasts made John’s clothes flutter, and scattered tiny hot coals that burned fiercely across the road and birthed tiny flash fires in the grasses nearby. Large, radial scorches marked the ground where the more violent reactions took place.

Nice fucking candle, John chastised himself mentally. Thankfully he didn’t attempt something more innately violent like a fireball. He might have lost his other hand.

Or his life.

“Holy shit dad! How did you do that?” Luna, however, had the opposite reaction. Her jaw hung agape as she stared at the scene of magical incompetence.

To the side, John raised a hopefully intact eyebrow. He would let the profanity slide this time all things considered, but he was no less used to hearing his daughter’s swearing.

“I just sort of… did it?” When John scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully, his concerned gaze met with his daughter’s sparkling, irreverent eyes. All of his worries were immediately washed away by a sense of deep-seated fatherly pride.

He had just done MAGIC after all, so couldn’t he let a bit of his daughter’s amazement rub off on him? Besides, how could he disappoint her by saying he didn’t really know?

He coughed lightly before he turned his back to the still burning aftermath of his impromptu explosive. Everyone knew cool guys don’t look at explosions or their aftermath.

“Would you like to try?” he asked.

Lacking the wherewithal to express her excitement, Luna nodded with all the voraciousness of a woodpecker.

“Well, first things first, you need to—”

“Absolutely not!” Tim’s abrupt voice carried with it an incredulousness that needed no facial features to express. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing, you big lumbering flesh-for-brains imbecile? After all that talk of me endangering your daughter you want her to, what do you humans say, play with magical-fucking-fire?”

“Uh, hey, Tim. Welcome back?” He was surprised by the return of their wayward guide, who seemed to have found his lost ego and then some. He had that red tinge to his normally blueish coloration that indicated he was very mad as far as John could tell.

He couldn’t remember the ball of light ever swearing, so he took Tim’s words with a bit more gravitas. Was what he did really that dangerous? Surely with some fine tuning, he could bring the reaction down to a manageable level.

“Welcome back? Oh yeah, welcome back Tim! Don’t mind us, just playing around with the primordial forces of the multiverse! What’s that? There’s a reason why you didn’t teach us how to use divine energy yet? How utterly surprising!” Tim’s mocking voice blared right into John’s face. How would he know if there was a reason if he never told him the reason?

“There’s no need for—”

“Aren’t you Mr. Safety? I thought you would want to wait for your GUIDE to the MULTIVERSE before you started playing with powers you barely even remotely understand!” Tim’s voice rose several octaves, and John was almost certain he could feel spittle flying from the flying orb of rage.

“We’re— I’m sorry?” He wasn’t happy with the sudden return of their errant guide, who had apparently come only to berate them. Nonetheless, he tried to suppress his growing agitation.

“As you should be! Maybe you can wield fire like a lunatic, but do you really think that’s normal? If all animals could do that immediately, the whole forest would be on fire and not just the part you decided to sear with your ignorance.”

“We didn’t know, Mr. Tim. Please don’t be so hard on us. And look, my dad is okay isn’t he?” Luna attempted the same supplicant bearing John originally took with Tim before he grew far too frustrated to care. It was a good thing, too, because John already felt his frustration building as the fairy refused to let him get more than a few words in.

In response to her question, Tim scoffed. “He’s lucky, that’s what he is. I guess I should have expected this from your father, but you seemed to have your head on the right way around. Why do you think Archaeon left guides for you, hm? If your daughter tried that trick, she could have been crippled or worse! If humanity could just conjure explosives out of thin air, would you even need me?”

When the potential ramifications of their actions were finally revealed, John felt his frustration begin to fade away. Fighting words on the tip of his tongue failed to make their appearance, until he finally released a bated breath and gave his honest answer.

“I guess not.”

“You guess correctly.” Tim floated over to the pair, the red sheen of anger fading from his body of light with a violent huff. Once near enough, a palm sized sheet of stone materialized in the air before him and drifted into Luna’s hands

“This, Luna, is for you. Call it the first chapter of a cultivation manual or whatever. It took me the last thirty-three minutes and twenty-five seconds to write it based on your biometrics and records left to me by my creator— and that’s a long time for me! Follow it closely. Don’t let me have wasted my time by doing stupid things like your father.”

John wanted to refute, but found that Tim was absolutely right. As he cooled off, he realized it was pretty stupid of him to attempt something so dangerous, let alone teach his daughter how.

He was just a normal guy, so of course he had been riding the high of his semi-successful magic venture. Who wouldn’t be? But it was clear to him now that he wasn’t thinking clearly.

John was reminded that Tim gave sound advice when it was given. It was the absence of advice that caused their issues last time.

And this time, he realized with a frown.

It wasn’t worth pursuing though, not if he wanted any chance at mending their relationship. Clearly, their guide was still willing to work with them even if he was upset with his new circumstances.

John figured he might as well do the same as he gazed at the stone slate now held in his daughter’s hands. It was made of a material John couldn’t recognize, and was densely covered in mysterious runes. They seemed to draw his gaze into them, but only left him with a minor headache due to the odd angle.

His daughter seemed to be fully immersed in reading them, however. Or maybe drawn into them? She had a glazed look to her eyes that John found disconcerting, but didn’t think Tim would start hurting them now.

“Do I get one?” He asked hopefully. His first foray into magic left him more worried than excited at the prospect of future practice. If he really messed something up, suicide by fire wasn’t out of the question.

“You,” Tim began pointedly, “truly are special.” John frowned in annoyance at his choice of words as the space fairy continued exasperatedly. “Honestly, I would have no idea what to give you. As I said before, there’s nothing in my database on individuals who survive a blast of concentrated origin energy, let alone mortals.

“That you’re capable of this mess,” John imagined him gesturing to the still burning chunks of red-hot charcoals before he continued, “means that the changes are positive— at least for now.”

“Then what should I do? Do I just keep making messes everywhere and hope I don’t push things too far one day?” He was glad to have a preliminary explanation for the changes to his body, but said explanation ultimately left a sword of damocles hanging above his head.

With his focus now on it, John’s origin blasted hand throbbed beneath it’s bandaged exterior. The pain was much better than before at least.

“Yes and no. There are some things you can do to counterbalance potential future problems, which I can teach you. But it is clear now that your very form has been altered.” When Tim once again used the word ‘form’ to describe something about him, John was about to ask for clarification.

However, before he could, Tim sighed for the upteenth time today. “Strictly speaking, I’m not even sure if you could be considered human anymore.”

Oh.

John wasn’t sure how to respond to that.