NOVEL NEXT Book 2 Chapter 16
"Doesn't that hurt?" Faith asked.
"Oh, it's excruciating," I said casually. "Right now, though, I'm using some autohypnosis to ignore the pain, because it's just not going away until we get Emily back and she can actually heal me."
"...Do you want some healing?"
"You should save your strength," I said. "I'm a cleric myself now, and my patron is the God of Death. As long as I don't do anything egregiously stupid... well, I'll live."
"Hang on, you're a cleric now?!" Faith demanded. "Why don't you just heal yourself?!"
"Because of divine burnout, duh," I said.
"...What?"
"You know how, when you cast too many divine spells at a time, it starts to hurt?" I asked. "Yeah, that's burnout. Raw divine magic is corrosive to mortals like you and I, and there's only so much you can use before it starts causing damage. If you keep practicing, of course, then you can build up a tolerance for it, but guess what I don't have time to do!"
"Huh, so that's what it's called," Faith murmured.
"You really got shafted by the Guild when they decided to just not bother training you," I said.
"Anyhow, I thought Talia said that whole 'building up a tolerance' thing was bullshit," Faith added.
"She was talking specifically about certain kinds of poisons," I said. "Stuff like alcohol, cocaine, opium- you can totally build up a tolerance to those. It's stuff like lead and arsenic and the like where you cannot, in fact, build up a tolerance to those- there is no healthy way for your body to metabolize those that simply needs to be conditioned for higher capacity, and also, those tend to accumulate in your body in ways that are hard to purge."
"Ahhhh," Faith said, nodding in understanding.
"So, organic poisons, generally you can build up a tolerance for them, but inorganic poisons don't usually have that kind of option."
Talia, still a rat in my pocket, chittered loudly and incoherently.
"What's she trying to say?" Faith asked as though I spoke Rat or something. I mean, yeah, I had told her about Arthur, the pet rat I had as a kid, but Arthur wasn't a magical rat or anything.
But, well, I was an Occultist, so I could pick up on what Talia was trying to communicate, which was "shut the fuck up for once in your goddamn life while I try to fix your left lung so you don't suffocate." Frankly, that was downright diplomatic; if I was in her position, I would've expressed my displeasure with an uncooperative patient using my teeth.
Fortunately for the skin I had that wasn't broken, Talia was nicer than me, and kept healing me, bit by bit, as we slowly caught up to the dust cloud of the van. I was immediately grateful I was wearing goggles, and Faith was very grateful to have looted a pair of her own, along with a lightning wand.
"Dammit," Faith muttered, as the lightning wand failed to have any meaningful impact on the van. "It's made of metal, how is it resistant to lightning?"
"Electricity follows the path of least resistance, and the metal frame just conducts the electricity straight into the ground," I said. "I know everyone thinks it's enchantments that do it, but metal armor makes you effectively immune to low-power lightning attacks."
"What about high power lightning attacks?" Faith asked.
"You might as well just make them explode with your mind," I said dryly. "And while I'd love to do that, I'm not in the mood to spend magicka frivolously, so..."
I drew my gun from my pocket, and as a cultist leaned out the passenger side door to take a shot at me, I shot him first, right between the eyes, and he fell out and onto the sands with a satisfying thump, leaving the door invitingly open behind him.
"Volex, now," I ordered, patting the pocket where I kept her reliquary. She appeared in a flash, one of my spare lightning wands already in her hand, as she lept through the air towards the open door.
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Unfortunately, there were other cultists in the cabin, and Volex was almost immediately blasted back out by a burst of hellfire, dissolving her back into smoke and sending her back to her reliquary. I winced; she'd be fine, eventually, but this was probably the end of her usefulness today.
"Shit," I muttered, trying to catch up to the point I could actually see through the door. Once I could, though, I found myself regretting it, as the cultist who'd blasted Volex had readied a crossbow, and fired as soon as I could see them.
I threw up a quick and dirty shield to protect myself and Faith, but the cultist's aim was off, and the bolt never hit my shield, which-
Ah. Shit.
I used some more magic to throw myself and Faith off of the bike, and onto the sands, as the bike tumbled beneath us. As much as I was trying to kill the cultists, they didn't really need me dead in return, and as such, this one had been smart enough to aim for a soft target: the tires of my motorcycle.
As Faith and I tumbled across the sand, my bike landing perilously close to our legs, the van sped off away from us, the passenger side door closing without a parting shot.
Or was it Parthian shot? I know that the Parthian horse-archers were credited with inventing the tactic, all those years ago, but-
"Joseph?" Faith asked, patting my face. "Stay with me, man. Don't die on me again."
"I'm alive," I said. "Just..." I closed my eyes, and sighed deeply. "Just... FUCK!"
"There we go," Faith said. "C'mon man, keep that fire going. Get mad."
I levered myself up, stalking over to my bike, already pulling tools and replacement parts out of my pockets. When I'd first built my motorbike, I'd just used standard bicycle wheels, but quickly realized I wanted something thicker and wider for this thing. Luckily for me, though, while I was (apparently) the first person to come up with the idea of "steam engine but explosions instead of hot water," I was not the first person to want a bicycle with a magical, self-propelled drive-train, and those also wanted bigger tires.
So, since I knew I was gonna be gone for a while, once I headed off to Mount Fate, I'd stocked up on replacement inner tubes, tires, and even a few spare wheels. A worthwhile use for fifty dollars, which I fully expected to last me my entire academic career.
There was just one slight problem, though:
"God dammit," I muttered, as I unfastened the nut holding the axle in place. "Fuck! Ow. Ow. Fuck."
Inner tubes were the only part that folded up small enough to fit inside a pocket. Now, if this was just a puncture, that'd be fine- the tire having a hole in it wasn't ideal, and I'd want to patch or replace it at earliest convenience, but it would still work as long as there was a good inner tube inside it.
Unfortunately, when someone shoots your wheel with a crossbow while you're up to speed, that tends to also fuck up the wheel rim, and it was not running straight anymore.
And the spare rims were in the fucking van.
"You need help?" Faith asked.
"Yeah," I said, nodding. "Turn that wrench, please. I'll hold the other one, just... We need to get the wheel off, so I can fix the rim. Talia, you can stay as a rat for now, don't burn the magicka you'd need to turn back into a rat once we have to get going again."
Talia squeaked a few times- "If you're sure about that..."- and remained inside my pocket.
---
"We are really lucky you carry all this random crap in your pockets," Faith said, as I stood the repaired bike back up.
"Thank you, Mom, for insisting that I get really, really good at pocket dimensions and Bags of Holding," I said. Otherwise, I might not have been carrying a foldable wheel-truing stand in my pocket next to the spare inner tubes.
"Are those different things?" Faith asked.
"Short version, yes," I said, nodding. "Slightly longer version, a pocket dimension is just a container that's bigger on the inside, like the back of my van. A Bag of Holding can hold a lot more stuff for the same cost of enchantment, but it's only good for holding inanimate objects- living creatures tend to suffocate in them after a few minutes. Anyway, hop on."
A searing lance of pain shot through my chest as I put weight on exactly the wrong muscle, but I managed to not scream, and instead just lurched forward, making a strangled 'hnnngh!' noise.
"I'm- I'm fine!" I insisted, as Faith put a hand on me. "We just need to get our Healer back now, is all. C'mon."
This time, I did manage to get back onto the bike without further drama or trauma, and kicked the engine back to life. We had a lot of lost time to make up for- unfucking the wheel and getting the bike back in working order had taken us forty three minutes and twenty seven seconds, according to The Father's "gift" of perfect timekeeping- but fortunately for us, we already knew the bike was faster than the van, and could catch up, given enough time.
Considering how close we were to the Ziggurat, though, I could only pray we'd make it there before they did.
"You think you got enough practice with that gun I gave you?" I asked, once we were underway.
"It's gonna have to be enough," Faith said grimly.
Unfortunately... she was right.