Chương 21: Waking Up

Enzo watched as his best friend sat up with a strangled groan. Light from the candles reflected off his dark features. His eyelids fluttered open. Then Kenzo's gaze snapped to him.

"Kenzo…?" Silence met his hesitant query. A long, long silence. He prepared himself. Calculated the distance between where he sat on the armchair and where Kenzo sat on the sofa. The angle of the attack. Weighed Bolt versus Spear, neither perfectly ideal given the range. Then.

"Lorenzo?" Then.

"Enzo?" they echoed each other quietly. Kenzo sounded confused. He reached up and rubbed his bald head, turning to take in the room. Enzo exhaled hard, tension abandoning him as he slumped back into the armchair.

"You stupid, overgrown, bald, giant asshole. Why didn't you answer straight away? I was about to kill you."

"Why? What happened?" Kenzo asked. He sounded sluggish.

"I was listening to you guys tell your story. Sumi was healing me. And then…" He frowned.

"Uh… I don't remember." Enzo sighed.

"You seized. Like people did during the blood rain." He shook his head.

"We think maybe you absorbed enough ambient mana to trigger your… magical awakening. Or something." Kenzo's eyes widened.

"Oh, shit. You thought I was going to become an Eater." Enzo nodded.

"Fuuuuck, bro. Sorry for the scare." Kenzo smiled.

"But thanks for watching over me. And also not killing me." He paused.

"Where's everyone else?"

"I sent Val to stay with your mom. Sumi went with her. She felt responsible for…" He gestured at Kenzo.

"And Mom and Dad went to sleep hours ago." The look Kenzo gave him conveyed everything. He understood what Enzo had left unsaid.

"So, I've got magic now?"

"Yeah. You'll need to read the Guide entries about absorbing mana and figure out what you are." Enzo raised an eyebrow.

"Fifty bucks says you're a cultivator, you big dumb brute." Kenzo laughed.

"I ain't taking that bet." He pushed himself to his feet and stretched, towering overhead and touching the ceiling with his fingertips.

"But I need to head home first, make sure Ma knows I'm okay. Val and Sumi, too. They can stay the night. It's still not safe outside even though we been clearing the area." He nodded.

"Thanks." Kenzo rolled his shoulders and swung his arms.

"Damn, I feel real good. Like I'm in peak form or something." Enzo recalled the feeling after waking up on the floor of his bathroom. Besides where his head must have struck the sink, he felt incredible. He reached up and touched his forehead. Found only smooth skin. That was a little strange. It had only been a few days.

"Everything okay?" Kenzo asked. Enzo nodded.

"It's nothing… I was just remembering my awakening. I felt like you do now." He took a breath.

"Ask Val about cultivating. She can walk you through it and teach you about techniques."

"Oh, great idea. I'll do that." Enzo raised an eyebrow.

"My ideas are always great. That's why I lead our little group of terrors." Kenzo laughed.

"Only because Claire always had her nose in a book and Signe was too busy trying to outdo you." Enzo smiled.

"That too."

"You working on something?" Kenzo motioned toward the side table where the tools rested. Enzo climbed to his feet. His legs were stiff.

"Yeah, but the rest of it can wait. Now that you're lumbering about, I'm going to sleep." Kenzo nodded. He stepped closer and clapped Enzo on the shoulder.

"Alright, bro. Get some rest. I'll catch you in the morning." The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Night." Enzo watched the big man depart, slipping into the night. If it were anyone else, he would have worried. But Kenzo knew the streets around here as well as he did, perhaps even better now, and he hadn't heard a single Eater's cry since arriving. He packed everything away, woke Murph, then led her upstairs to his old room. It had been years since he had last been here. Hadn't returned home since the accident, but the room looked the same.

Photos, posters, medals, and trophies that marked the passage of childhood. He'd been afraid that seeing his history, all the things he'd lost, would be painful. It wasn't. The memories brought warmth, accompanied by a twinge of regret and a beat of frustration for always being so reckless, but it passed as quickly as it arrived. Murph raced about the room, sniffing everything, tail wagging as though she'd found her new most favorite place in the world.

Enzo tossed the bag onto the floor, then dropped onto his bed with a sigh. The journey from San Francisco and the long vigil had left him exhausted, but there was one thing he needed to do first. He pulled up the notifications. — Mana Sense (Level 7) → Mana Sense (Level 8) Mana Absorption (Level 8) → Mana Absorption (Level 9) Enchanting (Level 1) → Enchanting (Level 3) — Enchantment Codified: Gather Mana Description: Draws ambient mana into the enchanted medium, increasing retention beyond passive equilibrium.

— Enzo dismissed the notifications and got comfortable. He yawned, eyes sliding closed, and just before he drifted off, felt Murph jump onto the foot of the bed and curl up.

"Night, Murph."

An explosion sounded somewhere in the distance. Enzo snapped awake, throwing himself out of bed and startling Murph in the process. Looking around the room, everything was exactly where it should be. Sunlight streamed through the third-floor bedroom window, casting everything in warm gold. He held steady, listening. Murph had also frozen in place, keeping herself low, watching him, alert. Then Val's voice cut through the silence, cheering, followed by Kenzo, whooping.

He moved to the window and shoved the curtains open further, enough to see the street. Down the road, closer to Kenzo's house, he spotted the pair. Sumi sat nearby, back pressed against one of the redwoods, working in her notebook. Kenzo and Val were celebrating. Then they separated, and Kenzo threw a straight right punch at the air. A flash of purple, then an explosion followed. Enzo sighed. Typical. He walked to the closet and dug out some comfortable clothes. While he dressed, he considered what came next.

There were still many problems to be addressed. Food would be an issue soon. Water, too, once the gravity-assisted pressure reserves ran out. They'd be okay for a while after that, thanks to the water tanks in the backyard. Then there was also the creek, assuming nobody started shitting in it. Knowing some of their neighbors, he wasn't confident about that at all. But, apart from the mild heart attack that started his day, he was optimistic for the first time since the blood rain.

He shook his head, clearing the recurring images of people seizing and dying. Then he grabbed his cane and spellbook.

"Come on, Murph. Let's get you outside for a bit." He made his way downstairs. Murph followed, still curious about every corner and shadow of a house that was completely new to her. At the bottom of the stairs, his father's voice echoed from the living room.

"Morning, son." Enzo changed direction and found his father on the sofa with a book, half-moon spectacles balanced precariously at the tip of his nose.

"Pops." He glanced into the kitchen.

"Where's mom?"

"Still in bed. Yesterday took a lot out of her." Enzo nodded.

"I wanted to ask you about the food and water situation. How are we doing?" His father looked up at him from over the glasses.

"We've got enough to last two to three weeks. Four, if we were to ration starting today."

"Kenzo and his mother?"

"Hm. Including them." Good. His father had always been the sort to ensure they were prepared for anything. The cellar had shelves of canned food and a couple of boxes of MREs. There was also the chest freezer, which he assumed the old man had already emptied, cooking and smoking what could be salvaged with the power gone. The rainwater tanks were part of his father's paranoid prepping habits. One for him, and one for mom's garden.

Though whether the water would be safe to drink given the blood rain was a question he didn't have an answer to, though it also wasn't an immediate concern. The municipal water coming down from Mount Tamalpais still worked for the moment.

"We need a plan," Enzo said a few moments later. His father slid a bookmark between the pages and put down his book. He slid the glasses off with both hands, folded them, then placed them on top of the book.

"We do." He gave Enzo a serious look.

"Not just for the food and water, either. We're going to have to think about the bigger picture. There are going to be some hard decisions that need to be made." Enzo nodded. He was already worrying about how to help Signe's family. Claire and Matt's, too. They weren't exactly drowning in solutions, though hunting and fishing were both viable options given the region. Farming would be slow, and he knew nothing about it, not even if they had suitable ground for it, but they needed to consider everything.

For now, he tried not to think about what would need to be done to protect whatever resources they secured. That bridge could be crossed another day.

"I'm letting the others relax today. Work on some magic things." Enzo sided.

"We'll figure out the rest later tonight." His father offered him a small smile.

"Alright, son." Then returned to his book. Enzo whistled low, summoning Murph from wherever she'd disappeared to, and headed for the door. Breakfast crossed his mind, but he wasn't very hungry. What he wanted was to work on the adjustments to the Bolt spell. And not just one of them, either. He'd always been a bit of an overachiever, and while a broken leg had altered his trajectory, it hadn't changed his fundamental nature. There was no way he'd let the apocalypse and all of its problems get in his way either.