Man adrenaline has one hell of a comedown. I was limping by the time I neared my Grandad’s flat on the North East corner of the Mulberry Estate. My side ached, I’d bitten my tongue at some point and now my mouth tasted of blood, but the worst was my arm. Taking that blow from the bat had jarred it at the time but I hadn’t realised how bad. I was hugging the useless limb to my chest, my hand throbbing and searing after taking a fistful of Bang Rocks. I wasn’t even sure why I was limping, but my knee hurt something fierce. Maybe when I wrestled with Pumpkin I had twisted it. Or maybe I had jarred it during my desperate escape.

  Thankfully, the estate was quiet and dark. The residents of the Mulberry knew better than to come out after dark. I skirted around the edges of the labyrinthine estate, knowing that I could get back to Grandad’s flat without ever going into the estate proper. The less time you had to spend navigating the dark alleys and walkways, the healthier you generally remained.

  I trudged my way up a rusted fire escape and then slunk across several rooftops until I reached my building. I was soaking wet and miserable with the pain by the time I got there. I clambered down my fire escape, Mrs Tenenbaum’s net curtains twitched as I went past her window, but other than that, no one paid any attention to my late night return. The Mulberry Estate taught people many lessons, one of which was to mind your own business and never be caught looking.

  I pressed two fingers of my good hand against my flat’s window and waited.

  “Damn it!” I grunted.

  The stupid locking spell wasn’t working again. I pressed my fingers against the window at a different angle, then upside down, then with enough force to make my fingers click. The last time this had happened, I had to spend the night outside so Grandad wouldn’t catch me sneaking in through the front door.

  “Come on!” I whispered, stabbing my finger against the spot on the window.

  Finally, there was a reluctant click and the window opened. I sighed with relief, and dragged my wounded body through the window, dropping into my bedroom. I quickly pulled the window shut behind me and sank down onto my bed, letting out a long breath. I clicked the lamp and looked around. My bedroom, as usual, was a cluttered mess. Piles of discarded clothes littered the floor, making the small box room feel even more cramped. There were posters everywhere, most from when I was little and big into ElectroBall. I had a single, narrow bed that was barely big enough for me when I was 12 and was certainly too small now. The only other furniture in the room was a small desk. The desk was covered in precarious mountains of papers and old comics. In the middle was my ancient lasertop computer, surrounded by empty pots of instant noodles. Looking at the decaying pots made my stomach growl and then my arm and hand throbbed painfully.

  “Right, priorities,” I muttered to myself. “First stow away the gear. Then painkillers. Then food. But first I write.”

  Reluctantly, I hauled myself up and pulled off my wet jacket, wincing as I peeled away my sodden jumper and t-shirt. I looked down and saw a livid bruise already coming up on my side. I poked it, because that’s what you do, and then regretted it as I felt pain spasm across my midsection. I unfurled the Grapple Cord and rolled it up before laying it on my bed. Gently, I unbuckled my forearm plate and pulled my gloves off. The arm was bruised and my hand was swollen. I inspected it by lamplight. I hadn’t lost any skin at least, but two of my fingernails had turned black. I gritted my teeth and then rolled my wrist around. It ached and clicked but it could move. That was good. I couldn’t afford to go to the hospital for a broken wrist. I laid the gloves and forearm plate down on the bed and then kicked off my heavy boots and pulled off my black combat trousers. I inspected my knee, by poking it again, of course. It felt tender but it could move so I assumed it wasn’t that bad.

  Now that I was fully undressed, I pulled a box out from under my bed and opened it. Inside was the sum total of 2 years of magical exploration, creation, and learning. It was pretty empty right now as I had taken most of my supplies with me. I folded my protective jacket and put it in the centre of the box. Next to it went the Grapple Cord, my see-in-the-dark goggles, forearm plate, and enchanted gloves. I fished around in my trouser pockets and found three remaining Bang Rocks. I gently placed these in the box and then looked at the empty space where my Chalk Bombs used to be. I sighed and then placed the lid back on the box and slid it back under my bed.

  I got dressed and thought about foraging for supplies in the kitchen but I knew I had to journal first. I sighed and sank down at my desk, turning on another lamp. I reached underneath the desk and tapped on a brick in the wall.

  “Please work,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

  Thankfully, the protective charm played ball and the brick slid out a few inches. I gripped it with my good hand, while hugging my bad arm against my chest, and pulled it out. I reached in and withdrew two books. One was military green and dogeared. This was my journal. Or to be precise, Journal number 18. The second book I withdrew with far more care. This book was torn, slightly singed, with no back cover, and was barely held together still.

  Reverently, I withdrew the book and placed it gently down on my desk. I felt that same tingle of power and excitement I had when I first found the book. This was it. This was the source of all my power and knowledge. The Codex of Everything. That’s what I called it. I had no idea what the book was called as the front cover was faded purple with no writing on it. It had taken me almost 6 months to even figure out what the book was about. It was written using English letters but none of the words were English. It had taken me months of trial and error to figure out that it was actually a form of ancient Scandinavian transliterated using English letters. I then had to use four different free AI servers to piece together meaning.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  It was only after arduous months of frustration and dead ends did I realise what the book even was: it was a spell book. Or something like that. It was perhaps a journal of a wizard and contained all of his, or her, knowledge about the Craft. Yeah I know Magic isn't real, right? At least that's what I thought when I found it. But there was something that kept drawing me back to the book, some fervor that ignited within me, making me want to uncover its secrets. As I delved further into it and realized what it was, the next logical step was to try it, right? Of course, I was trying it with the cynical mind of a bored teenager, but there was something about the book, some power it emitted, that made me feel like there was something more going on beneath its layers. That's when I discovered the power within it.

  It took me weeks of transliteration, AI support, more transliteration, and poring over Scandinavian dictionaries, until I finally found the instructions for creating light. It took me four more weeks of constant practice, not knowing what I was doing or even why, but finally, I figured out the pattern of movement, incantation, and concentration needed to be able to create light. I felt like the caveman who first discovered fire when the very tip of my finger glowed just gently enough to awaken something inside of me.

  From then on, I had been exploring, learning, and trying to unpack the mysteries of the book. It had been a slow, arduous progress, fraught with much danger and clumsiness. At first, I was only doing it out of sheer curiosity. I always wondered to myself: did the greatest adventurers and inventors in history start just like me? Were they sad people without friends or hobbies, living in a place where it wasn't exactly safe to go outside too often, and therefore became lost in some obsession?

  Well, regardless of the reason, suddenly I was able to do things, and that led me down the path to start creating actual magic.

  I rubbed my tired eyes and pulled my journal towards me. I flipped open to the next available page, wrote the date in my scratchy handwriting, and then blinked a few times.

  Today had been a sucsess, I wrote, and then scratched it out Sighing, I wrote: attemp number 15. Then on a new line, I wrote: I didnt get kiled, and I think I saved a womin, but the crimnals got away like they always do.

  I then began to detail that night's adventure: how many attackers there were, their weapons, how they had fought, what I had done, what had been successful, and what had been unsuccessful. I emptied my brain of as many details and facts as I could before I forgot.

  I then listed the inventory that I had used: three Chalk Bombs, a whole pocket full of Bang Rocks, and the Grapple Cord had all been deployed just to keep them at bay for a couple of minutes, so the young woman could escape. I noted down how the construction of the Chalk Bombs had a major flaw in a city that rains 75% of the year as water completely destroyed them. I would have to do something about that.

  I also noted down the excessive failure rate of the Bang Rocks. If I had to guess, more than half of them hadn't gone off when I'd thrown them. I scribbled a note in the margin to myself:

  Dont use BG in hands! My hand herts so much!

  I wrote another note to myself, like I'd done a couple of times previously, about needing better defences and stronger enchantments around my protective jacket and gloves.

  Then I scribbled: I sereosly need to start coming up with some reel wepons."

  I sighed and sat back; that was always easier said than done. It wasn't a lack of imagination or creativity that stopped me from having better equipment. It was like my spelling and reading in school, just a fundamental lack of skill and resources. Most of the stuff that I could glean from the book required products and resources from the ancient world: bones of certain animals that didn't even exist in England, and then just ridiculous things like gold powders, silver bullions, things that a broke 18-year-old could not hope to afford. I'd found some clever workarounds, and I found that generally a handful of salt did the same job as quite a few of the required items. But it was also the reason why my gadgets and gear had such high failure rates. It was all done through blind exploration, with the wrong tools and equipment, and no one to tell me whether what I was doing was actually the correct thing or not.

  I leaned back and stretched my neck, closing my journal for the night, knowing that anything else I would remember by morning. My stomach was growling, and my head, shoulder, arm, wrist, and hand were throbbing badly now. I needed to get some painkillers and food in me.

  I stumbled into the kitchen and rifled through the almost empty cabinets until I found a few packets of half empty painkillers. I read the labels carefully. They were only out of date by a few months, but that should be fine. I took twice the recommended dose just to be sure. I scrounged up some gauze and fashioned myself a wrist brace with it. I wound the rest over my neck and made a makeshift sling to support my damaged arm.

  “Food,” I muttered to myself.

  Again, I pilfered through the bare cupboards until I found my last pot of instant noodles. I held it in my hands for a few seconds, my stomach growling intensely.

  “No,” I said finally. “I’ll save it for breakfast.”

  I wouldn’t be getting paid for a few more days so eating more than once every 24 hours was a luxury I couldn’t afford. It was okay, I was used to being hungry. Instead, I poured a glass of water and found some Government issued multivitamin powders from the last benefits drop. I tore these open, poured them into the glass, stirred it with my finger and drank deeply. I poured another glass of water and downed that, then I did it again. Pro tip: if you’re ever hungry and don’t have food, drink water until you feel slightly sick. I guzzled down three more glasses of water before my stomach felt uncomfortably full.

  I waddled back into the living room and then looked at Grandad's big comfy chair. Slowly, I eased my wounded body down onto the chair. It was so big it felt like it would swallow me. I remembered being just a little boy sitting on this chair in my Grandad’s lap; nowhere had ever felt so safe since. I sighed and nestled deeper into the soft armchair. It still smelled like Grandad, or at least I told myself it did.

  I then looked up at the fireplace at the little urn that sat there under a picture of Grandad. The old man had big hairy ears and a bright smile. Even in the photo he looked sickly but I had never noticed. He was a giant of a man to me. Always kind, always there, until he wasn’t. I smiled weakly up at the picture.

  "I did it, Grandad. I actually saved someone this time. You'd be so proud."

  And then the tears came. I don't know when I fell asleep, but I was grateful for the oblivion. The last thing I remembered was wondering, would he be proud? Would he…