Chương 69: The Pull

Enzo leaned against the doorframe, cane in one hand, and watched the five members of the Watch gear up at the center table. They were pulling kevlar vests over shirts. Slipping on reinforced cargo pants. Hooking sheathed blades onto their belts. Checking crossbows. The armor and weapons were scavenged, mismatched, and worn, but the people getting ready had clearly done it before. Enough that the process was routine.. He wasn't gearing up. Neither were Kenzo, Val, or Robert.

The mages were all dressed comfortably, but they were each armed with their own arsenals of spells and techniques. Murph sat at his feet, watching the activity with obvious interest. She'd returned with Kenzo from a successful hunt, just in time for both of them to be part of his crazy test. Enzo reached down and scratched behind her ears. Frank's living room had been turned into the Watch's armory within the first few weeks.

He'd caged the entire space off from the rest of his house, wire mesh and bars bolted across the windows, the archway, even the wall separating it from the hallway. A locked gate was the only way in or out. Inside, racks lined the walls. Axes. Swords. Knives. Bows and bundles of arrows. Spears of varying length and quality, most clearly improvised. Cases of ammunition and firearms were stacked without care at the far end of the room, almost shoved into the corners like an afterthought.

But beside the pile, a workbench had been set up with a collection of tools, loose gunpowder in jars and disassembled cartridges, along with a notebook filled with Frank's handwriting. Robert was leaning over the workbench with Frank, examining something.

"So combustion still works," Robert said.

"Just weaker?" Frank nodded.

"Things are harder to ignite and they burn slower. You can still get a reaction, but it takes more powder to match what the standard amount used to do." He picked up a cartridge casing and turned it in his fingers.

"Problem is, just adding more powder doesn't work the way you'd expect, because the powder burns progressively, not all at once. You can get a better effect through multiple simultaneous ignitions, but even then, because the burn rate is slower, the bullet's already left the barrel before the full charge has gone off."

"And if you pack it tighter?"

"It works like you'd expect, just with the same reduced effect everything else has." Frank set the casing down.

"I ain't no firearm expert, but I figured seeing as we were collecting anything useful and storing it, that I'd take some time to experiment. For example, if you take a. 308 rifle and saw the barrel off, you basically have an unreliable pistol." He shrugged.

"I'm working on it, but right now a crossbow is better."

"Are you close to a solution?" Enzo asked Frank. Frank glanced over.

"Not yet. Honestly, gunpowder is more useful for explosives or starting a burn. We've been using it for the bonfires. Somebody needs to reformulate the powder from scratch, and that's assuming mana interference stays constant." He crossed his arms.

"Could be a dead end. Could just need someone with more understandin' than me." The front door opened, and Sumi stepped inside. Val straightened, turning from the preparations to study Sumi as she approached the armory. Enzo turned to Sumi.

"You don't have to be here for this." She smiled at them both.

"I'm fine. And you'll need me to diagnose any differences before and after exposure to the rift."

"You think Diagnose can pick up ambient mana levels in a target?"

"It can now." Kenzo looked at her from across the room.

"What about the first part?" he asked gently.

"You going in?" Sumi took a deep breath and held it for a second.

"It won't be like last time." The room was quiet for a moment. Frank broke it.

"You all set?" Murmurs came from the Watch members as they performed final gear checks and secured their weapons. Everyone filed outside. The settlement took notice of them immediately. People on porches stopped what they were doing. A woman carrying a basket of laundry paused at her front door. Two kids playing in a yard across the street stood and stared. Enzo couldn't blame them.

Five mages along with six armed and armored Watch members including Frank, and a Beast-sized border collie marching down the street in loose formation weren't exactly a subtle sight. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. He turned to Val, who was deep in conversation with Sumi a few steps behind him.

"Think you should say something?" Val looked up, then glanced around at the faces watching them. She shook her head.

"It's fine. Rumors move fast here. They'll know in a minute or two that we're up to some magic stuff." She paused.

"Maybe even that there's a rift being kept in the basement of one of the buildings." Frank glanced over his shoulder at them.

"Nah, the boys I have guarding that place don't even know what's in there. I made it clear that it's mage business, and that any attempt to go inside would be punished." He raised an eyebrow at the five members of the Watch walking with them.

"And these lot know better."

"I'm not sure it's something we can keep a secret long term anyway," Enzo said.

"It might be better if people learn what it is from us, so that they know it's under control." He paused.

"Assuming it is."

"It is, bro," Kenzo said from beside him.

"We'll find out soon enough." The street looked the same as the day he and Kenzo had discovered the rift, other than the palisade wall now extending to include the handful of buildings that wrapped around the cul-de-sac. A member of the Watch sat on a chair under a tree, reading a book, and looked up at their approach. He rose when they got close.

"Everything good, Frank?"

"Nothing to worry about," Frank said.

"We're heading out back. Mage business. Make sure nobody comes poking around."

"Will do." The group went around the side of the house with the sagging porch, pushed open the tall gate, and stepped into the overgrown backyard. Weeds now covered the fences entirely, and they'd even begun to swallow the rusted barbecue. But someone had hammered plywood over the damaged corner of the cellar entrance and bolted scrap metal over the small window looking into it.

"Took the liberty of making sure people had nothin' to be curious about," Frank said. Enzo nodded.

"Good idea." The cellar doors sat closed, with the same heavy chain and padlock. Val stood beside Sumi near the back of the group, arms crossed. She met Enzo's eyes.

"Are you sure about this?" Sumi was pale, but her jaw was set and her hands were still.

"We need to confirm there's nothing inside first. Assuming it's clear, we can begin harvesting mana crystals from the rift." He looked around the group.

"On top of that, I want to test whether the rift can drain mana from people. If it works, it's a way to delay activation in anyone we suspect might carry the gene." Frank scratched his chin.

"Been meaning to ask why you wanted so many of us here." Enzo turned to face everyone.

"Rifts have rules. One of them is a limit on how many people can enter, but the limit varies between rifts." He continued, explaining what they knew about rift ownership, how they were destroyed, what made them valuable, what they were like inside, and perhaps most importantly, what made them dangerous. Everyone listened intently. When he was done, one of the Watch raised a hand.

"So you mages are going in first, and then we're going in afterwards, one at a time, to test the rift's capacity?"

"Right," Enzo said.

"The reason Frank asked for volunteers is because if there's something in there already, and it's claimed the rift, we can't leave until it's dead or the core crystal is destroyed." Frank clicked his tongue.

"And I'm assuming you don't want to destroy the rift?"

"Exactly." The members of the Watch exchanged looks, but nobody voiced any issue with the plan. Enzo gave them a moment, then gestured at Sumi to begin gathering the information she needed from everyone. Sumi took a couple minutes to cast Diagnose on everyone and take notes.

"I'm done," she said. Enzo nodded. Then he turned to the cellar door.

"Lock." The lock clicked open. Kenzo dragged the chain clear, then he and Frank grabbed the metal doors and hauled them open, revealing the stairs leading into the cellar. Kenzo stepped forward.

"Not this time, Kenzo," Enzo said, holding out a hand.

"I'll be entering the rift first this time." Kenzo turned to him with a frown.

"Bro—" Enzo shook his head.

"I've given this a lot of thought. The Guide entry said that the interiors are shaped by the dominant presence. It explains why the other rift looked the way it did. It was dark, and the trees towered over us. The noises turned out to be coyotes, which prey on snakes. Some of them weren't even real." Sumi and Kenzo exchanged a look.

"That kinda makes sense," Kenzo said.

"Doesn't answer why you need to go first, though." Enzo offered him a half-smile.

"Because there's a chance rifts are shaped by what we fear. I know what I'm afraid of." He paused.

"And I also know what you're afraid of." Kenzo's mouth opened. His eyes widened a fraction.

"Ohhh. Oh, fuck. You really think so?"

"I'm just guessing. And I'd rather it be caves than…"

"Yeah. Yeah, bro. Nah, that's a good point." Behind Kenzo, people were glancing at each other, clearly not following along. That was fine. He wasn't going to out his best friend's fear.

"The Guide said it's our subconscious associations, though," Sumi said.

"That doesn't necessarily mean what we're afraid of."

"I know," Enzo said.

"But I'd rather have some control over it than none." He took in the group.

"I'll go first. When the rift swallows me, mark on the ground where I went in so we know the boundary. Give me thirty seconds inside before the next person enters. Then everyone enters one at a time, mages first, until everyone is inside or no more can enter. Understood?" Once everyone had indicated their understanding, Enzo made his way down the stairs, ducking as he went.

"Light Orb." Pale light pushed back the darkness, revealing the concrete floor. It was still layered in red dust from the blood that had seeped inside during the rain that changed the world. Enzo studied the ground carefully. The only tracks he could see were from when he and Kenzo had entered the first time. That was good. It increased the odds that the rift remained empty. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the rift finally came into view.

It hung in the air near the back wall, between wine racks and shelves. The rift looked the same size. And the mana density in the area was still as high as he remembered. More importantly, he felt the pull immediately as the rift began tugging on his reserves.