The Teacher

Flamethrowers

Finn woke slowly. It had been a week since she had located the cult and put Elizabeth into a cell. A week of slow wake ups and painfully long days. Not for the first time Finn considered asking for the deadline date, mulling it over while she got dressed. She seriously considered it as she made her way slowly down the stairs, and shrugged it off when she smelled breakfast cooking in the kitchen. She slid into the chair where Gloria had set her a place.

"Morning." Finn said.

"You're sounding better." Gloria said, and put a plate of toast and poached eggs in front of Finn.

"Working on it." Finn muttered and nibbled a piece of toast.

"Run it by me again? I swear I'll understand this time." Gloria sat down with her own meal and played with her toast while she stared intently at Finn.

Finn sighed and set her toast down. "How have we done this now?" She ticked on her fingers as she spoke. "I tried using being sick, being tired, and being hungry, right?"

"And being a car." Gloria added around a mouthful of food.

Finn nodded. "I'm out of analogies. I'm drained. I have no energy to spend on more than being alive. I eat, I sleep, I stay hydrated. Eventually that will be enough that I'll start to regain my energy, but until then I'm drained."

"You can't redirect some of the magic lines you mentioned to fuel you? The lines laid by someone?"

Finn blinked and then shook her head with a chuckle. "Ley lines, you've been reading about them? It's the way I see magic, but it takes magic to manipulate them. So yes, I could, and I will when I have the energy to do so, but at the moment I haven't got the energy for it."

"Could I fuel you?"

"In theory, but with your level of control you're more likely to immolate me than share energy, and it would cost you too. So I'll pass on trying that." Finn smooshed her egg onto a piece of toast and lifted it to her mouth.

"What protects us while you can't do magic?" Gloria asked quietly and Finn grunted as she realized that had been Gloria's real issue for the last week. She swallowed her food.

"I am still perfectly capable of defending us, especially in the house. That's what the shotguns and flamethrowers are for."

"How do you even get those?" Gloria asked.

"Shotguns are easy enough. Just tell the vendor that you're going after the largest land mammal legal to hunt and you'll be set. In North America that would be a moose." Finn tilted her head and thought a moment. "And make sure you aren't talking to an illegal arms dealer. Although that's who you tend to need to talk to for the flamethrowers."

"And a shotgun is enough?"

"For about three quarters of what I could have to deal with while I'm drained? Yes. For the rest that's what the flamethrowers are for." Finn took another bite, noticing that her appetite had finally come back and the food was delicious.

"What about the gods?" Gloria asked tentatively.

"What about them?"

"What if they want to come in? I don't think a flamethrower or a shotgun will have an effect on them."

Finn shrugged. "Depends which one. They won't though, because they know that would almost certainly start a war and most of them only barely survived the last one."

Gloria made a note in the notebook she had started carrying around with her. She wrote down anything Finn said that seemed like it would be worth later follow up, sometimes with Finn, but more and more often with the Chronicles.