Chapter 16: Collectors Of Fine Rocks

  After a long day and an even longer night, Erik woke to the sound of Emma’s voice. Emma had had a few drinks herself and gone to bed around 1am. The rest had been up until past 3am, enjoying a small afterparty in the siblings’ room. Their room had been the furthest away from Emma and Angela’s room.

  During a monster invasion, hotel visits were scarce. Not many were travelling at this time, and most of the hotels around the world were catering for government officials and military personnel.

  “Morning!” Erik said, having slept like a rock for at least a few hours. He felt fine despite the alcoholic intake the previous night. All the tiredness in his muscles and bones had already gone, and his mind was clear. He did feel like the alcohol he’d drunk that night didn’t impact him as much as it normally would, though, and he figured that was because of his magical constitution. If he was stronger, faster and healed quicker, it was practically a given that alcohol wouldn’t be as bad for him anymore.

  As Emma left to wake Jessie and Sophie, Erik got dressed, brushed his teeth and headed straight down to the lobby. Angela arrived shortly after along with Emma, Angela looking the worse for wear out of the two by a mile. When Jessie and Sophie joined them, Sophie’s tangled hair and baggy, reddened eyes indicated she needed more rest.

  “I just realised I don’t have to join you guys,” Sophie said in a yawning voice.

  “That’s… true,” Emma realised. “Alright, you can go back to sleep.”

  Without further ado, the ragged girl turned around in an instant, and marched back to her room.

  Jessie looked as well-rested as Erik did, so the magical constitution-theory was holding its ground for now.

  After planning the morning out, the four left the hotel in order for the two Remnants to gain more strength. Emma and Angela entered a taxi they had summoned from the hotel lobby, while Erik and Jessie entered another.

  As there was a war raging, they had to use their resources as effectively as they could. Splitting up made more sense as they could visit more places in the same amount of time. That said, Erik and Jessie were to visit the closest places they could find crystals, gemstones, and minerals, while Angela and Emma were tasked with places further away.

  The idea was that Angela and Emma didn’t have to bring back a haul that same day. The Remnants had been told that they would get a sense of what gemstone would fit them well, so they had decided to gather up a large amount of them, see which ones were the best fit for either, then absorb them.

  As they weren’t able to do this at Afterlife, this had only been described to them and they didn’t yet know what that feeling was like.

  Erik and Jessie visited their second rock shop of the day. The elderly man who owned the store gladly helped them look around, though the abstract nature of what they could tell him they were looking for didn’t make it easy for him.

  Jessie did discover a part of her Core power she hadn’t understood until the first shop they visited.

  Along with the four spells, nature could talk to her. She’d thought it to be a description more like a flavour text than anything else considering she’s never heard the wind whisper, but as she gazed upon an amethyst geode in wonder, it talked to her. It wasn’t like a voice she heard or a sense of the amethyst’s will, but she got a sense of what it was. It described its own nature to her. ‘Nightglow Harmony’ it said.

  Erik and Jessie didn’t understand what that meant, but a lot of other minerals and crystals gave a similar description to her. A few didn’t, so the Remnants figured those were either fake or just not powerful enough, for lack of a better word.

  The same ones that didn’t talk to Jessie, didn’t give either of the Remnants any sense of power either. The rest felt either like a small trickle running back and forth between the Remnant and the mineral, a small river, or waves from the sea.

  They instinctively knew that the greater the strength in the push and pull between them, the greater the match. They bought the ones with the greatest bond between them, leaving the weaker ones behind. Luckily, Major MacLeod had given them a credit card they could use, meaning everything was bought and paid for by the United Britain Air Force. Even so, they had no reason to buy the ones with a weak link to either of them.

  At the second store, Erik found a gem with the most powerful link he’d sensed yet, Jessie naming it ‘Sovereign Faith’. The owner of the store called it an imperial gold quartz—a quartz crystal coated with iron and titanium. It had an almost rainbow-like sheen of gold, orange and pink.

  The push and pull he felt from the quartz was that of a massive waterfall pushing down on his entire body, quickly retreating back to the crystal before once more pushing him down.

  It was an intense feeling unlike anything he’d felt before, with the possible exception of the first time he reached out to his magic to save the young boy in the forest. He knew he had to have that crystal, and so the owner collected it for them. Jessie didn’t sense more than a slight trickle from the thing, meaning it was his for the taking. He wanted it now.

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  Jessie didn’t get a similar sense before their fourth and final stop that day. They had already spent hours and hours travelling from shop to shop as these stores weren’t to be found just around the corner.

  Hers was a diamond, rough and uncut, but quite large. It cost a small fortune, but she felt the same as Erik had with the quartz from earlier, though she likened it to being strapped to the front of a submarine as it dolphined under and above the surface of the sea at massive speeds.

  Since the difference in their perceived links varied, Erik’s trickle was similar to Jessie’s chilly breeze. Still, with the UB military getting the eventual tab, they bought that as well. The diamond gave her the name ‘Brightless Bond’.

  Excluding the two they felt the strongest bond with, they had gathered twelve additional crystals or gems with what they called high affinity to either of them. As the pair had a total of nine major slots to fill, it was barely enough for just those, but seeing that there were even higher affinities out there made them doubt whether to fill them all out at once.

  If they only got one or two of them filled out, they could start training with their new abilities, getting a sense of what their eventual style of fighting would be like while getting used to their powers. Jessie had only fired her spell at one actual target, which was caged.

  Erik had been up close and personal with several beasts by now but had already stuck to his protective shield and tesla bomb-combo most of those fights. It worked in certain conditions, sure, but he would someday end up in a situation where sticking to that one tactic would be the end of him.

  They also had to learn how to fight. While Erik wished he would get a magic sword, he still didn’t know how to use one. Jessie, based on nothing but her Core ability, could develop into a mage-type Remnant; one where she had to stand back and throw spells at the enemy from afar. Even so, remaining still at all times wasn’t safe.

  They were just starting out and needed to train in actual combat situations. Hopefully, the UBAF could help with that as well.

  Things were different with the second group. Angela and Emma had visited only their second place for the day when they were wrapping up, ending up in a hotel room for the night.

  Emma was lounging around in her pyjamas, sorting their haul on the corner table in their room. Having no idea which mineral was which, she sorted them based on nothing but looks first, then size. She struggled with the ones that looked similar but had vaguely different hues.

  Were they different types or not? This was a tremendous problem, as the pair had bought over two hundred different gems and crystals, some of them costing more than Emma had ever had in her bank account at one time.

  She hummed to herself as she sorted through the gems. She looked over at Angela occasionally, got annoyed at the sight, then turned back to sort some more gems.

  Why did that woman have everything? Angela lay on the bed in only a buttoned-down shirt and her underwear, listening to music or audiobooks or whatever from her phone and in-ear earbuds.

  Her legs were long and beautiful as she stretched one of them into the air occasionally. Angela was relatively tall, not too skinny, and was nicely toned all over. Emma wasn’t interested in women in any way, but if she had been, she would’ve been all over Angela long ago.

  They were about the same age, Angela being a year or two older. Emma didn’t know Angela’s orientation either. Why would she assume a girl like her even would’ve had a chance? She was short, skinny and without those beautiful curves.

  She’d been told she had an attractive face, but that sounded more like a thinly veiled negative comment about the rest of her. ‘At least your face is okay’. She had never even had a proper boyfriend, only a few flings that didn’t work out. As soon as she gave them what they wanted, they grew bored with her.

  Emma shook her head in an attempt to shake the thoughts out of her head. She took a quick look over at Angela before refocusing her efforts on getting the gems in order. She had to keep playing to her strengths, and if there was one thing she excelled at, it was establishing and maintaining order. Maybe she’d find someone after the war was over. Her military career might crash after that, but the boys she’d grown up with were all military boys, anyway. Maybe she needed something else.

  Angela noticed Emma’s red face looking over at her now and then, or more specifically, her legs whenever Angela stretched. Emma’s face grew red, and when she turned away again to sort all the stuff they’d bought, the redness would dissipate. Angela wasn’t sure what it was about. Maybe she was mad Angela wasn’t helping out? She had asked before she jumped into bed, but Emma said she wanted to do it alone, after all.

  Emma had always been a very orderly girl. She was super independent and always cleaned up the messes of everyone around her, literal messes and otherwise. She was by far the strongest person Angela had ever met, which included her superior officers over the years.

  That didn’t mean the girl didn’t have problems. Her independence was a double-edged sword. Some of the men at Bridgefort were interested in her, but they weren’t brave enough to approach her as her strict personality and blatant ignorance of all things romance made her unapproachable.

  If anyone did approach her, their flirting and wooing would fly straight over Emma’s head. Some thought she might not be interested in men at all, but Angela personally knew one of the girl’s exes. He said the problem was mainly that Emma was too focused on her military career and didn’t show any interest in him, even in private and off duty.

  Maybe when this war was over, if they couldn’t return to the military, Emma would get her priorities straight. Angela was just as involved in her own military career, but it didn’t eclipse her life. Personal relationships were just as important for your own future, whether that was just as friends or something more.

  That said, she hadn’t felt very lucky in love for the past while herself. She was sick of military dogs, everyone wanting to be an alpha. She wanted something else, though she didn’t know what. Still, this wasn’t the time. She was still young, and this war would have to end for other stuff to start mattering. Angela pulled out one of her earbuds as Emma looked over at her once more.

  “You need help, Emma?” she asked with a genuine smile.

  “I got it; don’t worry,” Emma responded, facing back towards the table.

  “Why don’t you take a break? We can see if we find something on the telly to watch?”

  “The TV is on that wall, and my bed is there,” Emma said, pointing to the objects in question. “I wouldn’t be able to see anything.”

  Why the TV was hung on the wall to the side of one bed instead of facing both from the front didn’t make any sense in a two-bed hotel room. Emma huffed and went back to sorting.

  “Come on, we can both watch from here. We’ll cuddle!” Angela tried, patting her hand on her bed, gesturing to the younger girl to come over.

  Emma’s face flushed a little, but eventually, after a few more times back and forth, she gave in.

  Twenty minutes into the boring TV-programme they had started watching, both had fallen asleep, Angela the big spoon in the narrow bed.