“That was a very satisfying night, I must say,” Carter said the next morning over breakfast. “Where were you, Ward?”

“Didn’t get a lot of sleep the last couple of nights,” I said. “I was pretty tired.” It wasn’t a lie. I was tired the previous night.

“I feel like I won’t need to sleep ever again,” Carter said. She no longer wore her provocative outfit from the previous evening, opting for a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

“I didn’t get the chance to ask,” I said, glancing up at her pony tail. “How did your hair grow back so fast?”

“Oh,” she shrugged. “That was easy. I focused on moving some of the mana from my core into my head, specifically around my scalp. I wasn’t sure it would work, but it grew back to this length in, like, ten minutes.”

“Damn, I’m gonna have to try that,” I muttered into my bowl of oatmeal. It wasn’t the good stuff. No milk. No cinnamon. No sugar. My wife would also add a little vanilla and raw eggs. They would scramble in the oatmeal, and it was so damn good. I’d made oatmeal for my daughter once when my wife was away. After the first taste, her bowl ended up on the floor. It wasn’t actually that bad. I’d finished the rest of it. But it just wasn’t as good as what Penny made. This oatmeal was worse than what I made.

“No more distractions,” I said. “I’m leaving this afternoon. Andy, do you still have the map?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “It’s a simple route though. We follow the 69E north until it turns into the 77. We follow 77 to Corpus Christi. Why don’t we stay here for a bit though?”

“We’ve been over this,” I said. “Besides, weren’t you the one who wanted to push North to a military base, then to D.C.?”

“Yeah, but if we take a little time, we might be able to get one of the many cars working, and that would save us God knows how much time getting anywhere. Using a little time now could save us time later.”

“And if we spend three days working on it, but don’t get it working, how much time would we have lost?”

“It’s a hundred fifty miles to Corpus Christi. You wanna do it all on foot?”

“We could bike it?”

“Fuck that,” Chavez said. “How much did you weigh before you ranked up to Citrine?”

“Two seventy-five. What about it?”

“Dude, you went no holds barred with a cement wall for like an hour.”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“You break any of your fingers?”

“Fractured,” I shrugged.

“I think what Chavez is getting at,” Carter said, “is that the density of your body is much higher. You’re also noticeably taller.”

“What’s the over-under?” Andy said.

“Four hundred,” Chavez said.

“Under,” Andy immediately said. “Ain’t no way.”

“Over,” Carter said with just as much conviction. “He’s not just added weight, but he’s put on that extra height as well.”

“What does this have to do with riding a bike?” I asked, trying to bring us back on point. Not that I was self-conscious of my size. I’d had plenty of time to make my peace with reality. Yeah, of course.

“Because if you weigh anything over four hundred pounds,” Chavez said, “you’ll have an impossible time finding any bike that can carry you.”

“You some kind of expert on this?”

“I used to ride a lot. Looked at the wide range of bikes made out there to find one that would work for me. There’s specifically a “fat bike” for people three hundred to four hundred pounds. That’s the upper limit, though. Anything over that, and bikes just aren’t designed to carry that weight.”

“As interesting as this discussion is,” Andy said, “we should really be taking a look at a car. I’ve heard one of those can carry someone, even if they weigh over four hundred pounds.”

“Don’t you think someone else will be working on that too?” I asked. “Why not just move on foot, then when others figure it out, we get a car from them?”

“Yeah, that might work, unless we’re the ones who have to figure it out…” Andy trailed off as he spoke, clearly implying something I was supposed to pick up on.

I’m not a subtle person though. Sometimes I like to think I’m rather intelligent, but that only applies to learning quickly and creating plans. When I’m supposed to put the pieces together myself, I occasionally lack the discrete thinking of others, like my friend.

“Andy,” I said, “you’re probably hinting at something, but I have no idea what it is.”

“No electricity,” he said. “We’re in one of the hottest states in the nation. It’s fall now, but how many of these people will survive the next summer without Air Conditioning?”

“You want us to get vehicles working, so we can bring them with us?” I asked, non-plussed. Yes, we could theoretically make it happen. If we got a vehicle working, we probably could repeat the process with another car. But I also didn’t want to be slowed down by a caravan of civilians, not to mention children who would have to stop every thirty minutes to use the bathroom. I’d been on a road trip with a pregnant wife, then again with my daughter while she was potty training. What should have been a four-hour drive to grandma’s house ended up being six hours. Six! And that was just with one kid in the car. I didn’t want to think what would happen in a caravan of them.

“No, not bring them with us,” Andy said. “But we could at least give them the means to make it to the coast where the temperatures will be more moderate.”

“You really want to take the time to do this?” I asked Andy. “You were the one anxious to get to D.C.”

“I will get to Washington a lot faster if I have a car or truck,” Andy said. “And, we’ll be able to help a lot more people on the way.”

I didn’t say anything else, still mulling over what the delay would mean and the possible implications. It was two days. It was a hundred fifty miles to Corpus Christi. I could do that in fifty hours, but that would mean days of walking. If I walked five miles an hour, and even interspersed it with light jogging, I could increase my average to pretty close to seven or eight miles an hour. So, pretty close to twenty hours of interspersing walking and jogging. I could likely keep up a pace like that for ten hours each day with the improved strength from my Citrine rank. That would mean twenty or so hours of travel. Maybe more. Maybe less. And that was if there were no delays, nothing attacked me on the road, or killed me. A car, however, could possibly get me there in a day, likely without significant delays.

“Two days,” I said.

“What?” Andy asked.

“I’ll wait two days,” I said with finality. ”That includes today. I’ll leave after breakfast on the third day here.”

“What if we can’t solve it in two days?”

“Then these people will need to start walking toward the ocean for a more moderate climate. There’s enough time. Temperatures are probably mid-eighties right now, and it will be even cooler until April, probably. That’s six months to make it – what? Twenty? Twenty-five miles? That will be plenty of time. There’s no guarantee we will be able to get a vehicle working, regardless. I could probably make it to Corpus Christi in a two-day forced march. I’m willing to wait those two days.”

“It won’t be two days to get there,” Andy said. “We just did eight miles in a week. You’re not about to make fifty miles in a couple of days.”

“We can move faster without the civvies following us,” I insisted.

“Yeah, but how long before we pick up more people?” Andy asked. “Or are we supposed to let people just fend for themselves?”

“It’ll be slow going at the beginning, sure,” I said. I was holding to my waning conviction. “But, the longer it goes, people are more likely to have found a situation that works for them. Not like they’ll want to change anything that works.”

“How long will that take?” Chavez jumped in again. “A week? A month? After everything that’s happened, we’ll be lucky if we settle into a sense of normalcy in the next year, man.”

“I don’t know!” I shouted. “I don’t know how long it will take, but I do know that every day I spend not heading north is another day that my family doesn’t have me around to protect them.”

“They have people there,” Andy said. “They will be safe long before you can get there.”

“That’s not the same thing, and you know it,” I growled. I paced over to Prius on the side of the road. The windows had all been smashed, and glass littered the ground around the vehicle, but with one hand, I reached under the bumper and lifted. I felt part of the metal bend in my hand under the pressure, but the two tires left the ground regardless. “I’m not even breaking a sweat. There could be others out there like me, but none of them are going to want to protect my family the way I will.”

“Well, let’s see what we can come up with in two days,” Andy said. “What will you be doing, Forrest?”

“The best thing I can be doing,” I said with a grin. “Getting stronger.”

*****

My first plan was using the core I’d received from the angel in the graveyard. The house Dominic had claimed had a nice set of wood chairs. I settled into one, which creaked under my weight. Four hundred pounds? There was no way.

I placed my hand on the core in front of me and extended my mana through my hand and into the core.

Nothing happened.

There was no rush of power, no sudden knowledge or memories, like Corey implied. Just. Nothing.

I used more of the mana from my core, pushing more power into the core in my lap. The energy flowed into the core, then flowed back into my hand, like a river, but the core shone with the same bright color it had before.

I tried increasing the amount of mana again and again, to the point that sweat soaked through my clothes, as if I was no longer immune to the mild Texas weather.

I stopped using my mana, as that clearly wasn’t working. Instead, I sat there and thought about the problem. I could use my sword. If I cut into the core, I didn’t know if that would change anything. I was able to absorb the mana, just like before, but the weapon had always taken its price before I received the energy after that. What would be lost from the core if the sword again took its price?

The core was a function of memory, which would feed into a Will. So, I had to absorb the memory somehow. Using my Will?

When I manipulated my mana, I knew that was a function of my Will, but I’d only ever used my Will to move my mana around in my body. I would have to extend my Will without mana. Was that right?

I closed my eyes, no longer needing to look down at the mana coming out of the core in my chest. Hell, I could see the flow of energy through my own eyelids, so it wasn’t like I couldn’t have done it with my eyes closed anyways. But the film of red, blue, and gray mana over my mana sight seemed to help me focus.

Paying close attention to the feeling in my chest, I extended a thin stream of mana from my core again. Usually, I paid attention to the mana and how it moved. It was like when I would throw a football. My focus was always on the ball. I never had to think about the position of my arm, or when I would let it slip out of my grip. After years of practice, that all came naturally. I was only ever focused on the feeling of the ball in my hand. Now, it was like I was a child again, and I had to think about my hand. And my arm. And the timing of releasing the ball. I was reminded of my daughter as a three-year-old trying to throw me a football. Her hands were too small for the full-size ball, and she would always release the ball too late, causing it to sail straight into the floor. I put myself in her shoes at that moment. I focused, not on the ball, but on the hand and arm that held the ball. I paid attention, not to the mana, but to what was guiding the mana. I reached out with that feeling, extending it into my arm, so that it would take the same shape of my hand and fingers, my Will almost combining with my hand. The moment my Will reached my fingertips, I could feel the connection to the core in my hand. I could feel the memories and the promise that they held. I beckoned to the memories with my Will, welcoming the swirling essence into my body.

The shade of the porch was replaced by a bright light overhead. I looked up at the new source of light. The small light beating down on me was no longer the familiar yellow I’d grown up with. The blue sun was also much smaller than my sun.

I stood in the center of the Roman Coliseum. At least, that’s the only comparison I had. It wasn’t exactly like what I remembered from Gladiator and Spartacus, but the sand of the floor and the distant architecture conveyed that I was in a Romanesque arena.

“I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore.”

“No, indeed.”

I spun around at the unfamiliar voice. Standing in front of me was an angel, a sword in its hand. Its skin was bronze, reflecting a rainbow of green, blue, and purple. There was no single feature that stood out as masculine or feminine as I examined the face. Eyes close together over a long, thin nose. High cheekbones over scowling lips. White eyebrows matched the mane of white hair that flowed from the head of the creature.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Your trainer,” the angel said. The rich tone sang from the angel, and the high octave additionally gave no hint of how to address my “trainer”. “Show me what you can do.”

The angel stepped toward me, its sword raised. I lifted the sword in my own hand, readying myself.

The blade of the weapon came in with a quick slash. I brought the blade of my own weapon around to parry the strike, but at the last second, the weapon dropped to swipe across my thigh.

“Oh, shit.” Is that even something appropriate to say in front of an angel? I couldn’t bring myself to care at that moment, however. My leg gave out under me, and I knew my femoral artery had been severed. I groaned in pain on the ground, staring in surprise up at the shining being above me.

“An apt description of your skills, yes. It appears this will take some time.”

It felt like an hour, but I knew it must have only been a minute before I stood in the center of the arena yet again.

“This is going to be quite the unpleasant experience for you,” the angel in front of me said.