The Howling Plains lived up to their name.
The paved roads and green forests were gone. In their place was a flat, grey wasteland of cracked earth and jagged rocks. The wind didn't just blow; it screamed, tearing across the open ground at sixty miles per hour.
But the real threat wasn't the wind. It was the sky.
Above the plains, the clouds were a bruised, violent purple. Arcs of raw, unshaped mana—Aetheric Static—danced between the clouds and the ground.
Inside the Pendelton Cruiser, the mood was tense.
"Arthur," Zack's voice trembled. He was staring at his iScroll. "The screen... it's bleeding."
The slate wasn't bleeding blood; it was bleeding light. The map on the screen was distorting, colors melting into static.
> WARNING: EXTERNAL MANA DENSITY CRITICAL.
> RUNE WARE DESTABILIZING.
> CONNECTION TO RELAY LOST.
"Turn it off," Arthur commanded, gripping the steering wheel as a gust of wind slammed the heavy car sideways. "Shut down the slates. Stash them in the lead-lined glove box. Now!"
"But we need the GPS!" Julian argued. "We'll be driving blind!"
"If you leave them on, the Mana Surge will fry the crystals," Arthur explained. "Those slates run on delicate Runeware. Micro-etched quartz. The static out there is like a hammer smashing glass. Turn them off!"
Zack and Julian scrambled to power down the tablets, shoving them into the shielded compartment Arthur had built into the dashboard.
The cabin went dark, illuminated only by the faint orange glow of the steam boiler gauge.
"Great," Vivian muttered, looking out at the swirling purple fog. "Now we are blind and deaf. How do we navigate?"
"We don't navigate," Arthur shifted the car into fourth gear. "We hold the heading. I have a magnetic compass on the dash. Physics still works even if magic is broken."
...
They drove deeper into the storm. The air outside crackled. Sparks danced along the metal hood of the car.
ZZZRT.
Suddenly, the interior lights flickered and died. The Sun-Lance Rifle in Julian's lap sparked painfully.
"Ow!" Julian dropped the gun. "It bit me!"
"The ambient mana is overloading the capacitors!" Arthur shouted over the wind. "Discharge the weapon! Fire a shot into the ground to empty the battery!"
"Are you insane?"
"Do it, or it explodes in your lap!"
Julian pointed the rifle out the window and pulled the trigger. ZAP. The beam cut through the fog, emptying the weapon's charge.
"The car!" Zack screamed. "Arthur, the Mana Turbine!"
The engine note changed. The high-pitched whine of the Thunder Core began to stutter. The blue light under the hood flashed erratically.
[Warning: Core Instability.] [Turbine RPM: Fluctuating.]
"The Surge is interfering with the Core's containment field," Arthur cursed. He slammed a heavy iron lever on the center console.
CLUNK.
The sound of the turbine died. The blue glow faded.
The car slowed down, heavy and sluggish.
"You turned off the engine!" Vivian yelled. "We're stopping!"
"No," Arthur gritted his teeth, downshifting. "I isolated the Mana Drive. We are switching to auxiliary power."
He pointed to the steam pressure gauge. It was steady.
"Steam engines don't have brains," Arthur shouted. "They don't have crystals to fry. They just have fire and water. Clockwork beats Magic in a storm!"
He floored the throttle.
The V4 block chugged. It was louder, rougher, and slower than the Mana Turbine. But it worked. The pistons pumped. The wheels turned. The massive steel tank plowed through the magical storm, powered by nothing but burning coal and boiling water.
...
They were moving at a crawl—30 miles per hour. The wind howled around the armored chassis.
"Arthur," Vivian whispered, pressing her face against the thick glass. "There's something in the fog."
Arthur squinted. Visibility was less than twenty feet.
"Shadows," Vivian said. "Big ones."
Out of the purple mist, shapes began to materialize. They looked like wolves, but they were made of swirling grey dust and static. Their eyes were hollow voids.
[Threat Identified: Mana Wraiths.] [Nature: Elemental.] [Weakness: Disruption.]
"Wraiths," Arthur identified them. "They are attracted to the heat of the boiler."
One of the Wraiths lunged at the car. It passed straight through the steel door like a ghost.
"It's inside!" Zack shrieked, scrambling onto his seat.
The Wraith floated in the middle of the cabin, a cloud of freezing cold smoke. It reached a claw toward Arthur's head.
"Vivian! Steel doesn't work!" Arthur yelled, swatting at the ghost. His hand passed right through it. "It's intangible!"
"Julian! Magic!" Vivian shouted.
"I can't!" Julian panicked. "If I cast a spell in this storm, the static will cause a backlash! I'll blow up the car!"
The Wraith's claw touched Arthur's shoulder. The cold was agonizing. Frost spread across his engineer's coat. Arthur's vision blurred.
"It's draining his life force!" Zack cried.
"Think!" Arthur gasped, his teeth chattering. "It's a construct of loose mana! It's held together by a magnetic field!"
Arthur looked at the dashboard. The magnetic compass was spinning wildly because of the Wraith's presence.
"Zack!" Arthur's voice was fading. "The Defibrillator!"
"The what?"
"The jumper cables!" Arthur yelled. "Under the seat! Connect them to the chassis!"
Zack dove under the seat. He pulled out two thick copper cables with heavy clamps. He clamped the black one to the metal frame of the door.
"Give me the red one!" Arthur commanded.
Zack handed him the positive clamp.
Arthur held the clamp. The car's chassis was grounded. The clamp was live, connected to the 12-volt battery system used for the headlights (which were currently off).
Arthur didn't attack the Wraith. He attacked the air inside the Wraith.
He slammed the clamp against the metal dashboard.
SPARK.
It wasn't a lethal shock. It was a static discharge.
The spark disrupted the magnetic cohesion of the ghost. The Wraith shrieked—a sound like tearing fabric—and exploded into a puff of harmless grey dust.
Arthur gasped, the color returning to his face. "Grounding... completed."
"There are more outside!" Vivian pointed. "Dozens of them!"
"We can't fight them one by one," Arthur said, rubbing his frozen shoulder. "We need a barrier. A Faraday Cage."
"Speak common!" Julian yelled.
"We need to electrify the skin of the car!" Arthur explained. "If we run a current through the armor plating, the Wraiths can't phase through it!"
"But the battery is dead!" Zack checked the gauge.
"Then we make our own juice!" Arthur pointed to the back seat. "Julian! Use the Manual Crank!"
"The what?"
"The emergency generator!" Arthur pointed to a small brass handle sticking out of the floorboard. "Turn it! Fast!"
Julian grabbed the handle. He started cranking. Whir-whir-whir.
"Faster!" Arthur shouted. "I'm diverting power to the hull!"
He flipped a switch labeled [Hull Polarization].
Outside, the car's metal skin began to hum with a low-voltage static charge.
A second Wraith tried to phase through the door.
ZAP.
It bounced off the electrified metal with a hiss, dissolving into mist.
"It works!" Vivian cheered. "It's a bug zapper!"
"Keep cranking, Julian!" Arthur ordered, steering the car through a rocky ravine. "If you stop, the shield drops, and the ghosts eat our souls!"
"I... hate... camping!" Julian wheezed, spinning the crank like a madman.
They drove like that for three hours—Julian providing the power, the car glowing with static, plowing through the sea of ghosts.
Finally, the purple fog began to lift. The lightning stopped. The grey wasteland gave way to green grass.
The storm broke.
Arthur stopped the car. He flipped the switch off.
"All clear," Arthur announced.
Julian collapsed on the back seat, his arm trembling uncontrollably. "I can't feel my fingers."
"You saved us, Battery," Arthur said, a rare note of genuine respect in his voice. "Good work."
Arthur turned on the iScrolls. They rebooted safely.
"Navigation restored," Zack reported. "We are through the Howling Plains. And look."
He pointed out the windshield.
In the distance, rising from the mist, was a massive, dark silhouette. It wasn't a mountain. It was a forest. But the trees were black, twisted, and grew as tall as towers.
The Ironwood Forest.
"The next biome," Arthur shifted gears. "We need to find shelter before nightfall. The Wraiths were just the appetizer."
End of Chapter 41