Smoke Rising: Book III

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

Emery

We will be back in North America in less than three days. After spending two more days looking for survivors and healing anyone and everyone we could, I decided it was time to move on. Yes, me. Because now I'm the leader of this little group Eli somehow pulled together and convinced to come find me.

"I'm Bug," a young girl with dark hair and a bright smile says to me, holding our her hand. I sit on the edge of the boat looking out over the railing at the water as she practically throws her hand in my face. "I'm Eli's... friend."

"The girl who made the bomb that killed my best friend and father." I disregard her hand and gaze right into her eyes.

She's so short. I imagined her taller.

"I didn't make the bomb... not willingly or knowingly. They said if I didn't cooperate they'd burn my friends alive. Not just shot, or injected with poison that would kill them in seconds, but burned alive. I couldn't do that to my friends—"

"I understand," I hold up a hand, trying to get this girl to shut up. "I'm just not in the mood for introductions right now."

She stands there silently, and awkwardly, as I look back over the horizon.

"I'm sorry for what happened. I can't even imagine going through that..."

I close my eyes, forcing her words not to register in my brain. "Do you want something, Bug?" I wonder if her name represents how annoying she is.

"Actually, I do." She sits down beside me, facing the other direction. "I heard you could make new Casters."

"I need to let my energy recharge, but as soon as we get back to land—"

"Oh, no," she shakes her head. "I'm not asking you to change me. I don't want to be a Caster, I just want to try and understand how it's possible."

I can't help but glare at the young woman. From the inventions she's helped create, she has to be some sort of genius. So why isn't that smart brain of hers telling her to go the hell away? I'm all but yelling it in her face.

"It's Magic, what's there to understand?"

"Well, magic isn't exactly magic. There is a biological explanation for the transference and transforming of energy within a persons body. The way the cells generate specific types of elemental manipulation is a lot like photosynthesis in plants. But I don't understand how you can change an already mature human biologically to be able to absorb and transform energy. It's like changing a mammal into a plant, or a rock into a mushroom. It shouldn't be possible."

"It shouldn't be possible I survived a nuclear bomb laced with magic that suppressed magic, but I did. And I can make Casters. Don't ask me how because I don't know any science or physics or whatever behind it."

"Well, I actually have a theory about how you survived the bombings. Jackson said hundreds of Casters sacrificed themselves to form a forcefield to protect you. I'm assuming many of these Casters were Energy Casters, the new ones, and I think that maybe their forcefields combined and synthesized with elemental Casters forcefields, which created a pocket in reality. Jackson said you called their energy materialized ectoplasm, so assuming that's what it actually is, I think the merged magic allowed you to jump into some other plane of existence. The Shadowlands, maybe, or maybe a new field; one where this ectoplasm comes from."