Over the next day I nursed my windbreak into full functionality, then began the rather odd work of teaching my bunnies how to harvest all the various crops and resources and then store them. The truly strange part was when they understood my detailed instructions, nodding vaguely as they got to work. The little buns even started using their teeth to slowly cut down some of the trees I’d planted specifically for wood. I hadn't chosen weak species either, going for a couple of hardwoods, teak and indian rosewood.

I was starting to realise that my buns were made of sturdier stuff than just regular old buns. They also didn’t seem to put the grass they ate anywhere, so to speak. It disappeared into them and never came out. Maybe they were consuming it and turning it back into magic to use on my plants?

They’d been moving earth for my lake at a slowly increasing rate too, and I was starting to think they were multiplying when I wasn’t looking.

Now it was our fifth day back in the grove, and I was laying on the wooden floor of my big balcony room staring up into the shadowed heights of the happy little tree and working on my first combat spell. I was designing the shields first, because they seemed like the most important thing. I could learn to hit back once I could take a hit in the first place.

“Sunbathing without your greenery out huh?” Grace asked as she sat down next to me, looking just as incredible as she had yesterday at the lake site.

“Yeah, just trying to think up combat spells,” I sighed, shelving the magic shield I’d been tinkering with.

I was trying to figure out a way to make it useful beyond simply blocking spells. There had to be some sort of common underlying principle that I could use to block a few different damage sources at once without resorting to three shields overlaid on top of one another.

“It’s so crazy, this whole magic thing,” Grace said, staring out of the window at where the buns were busy at work.

“Yeah,” I said simply, watching her watch the buns.

“Exciting though too!” she continued, turning back to me. “Have you thought about what crazy things you might do with it once everything has calmed down?”

I shook my head. “Not really. Everything’s been moving so fast, I always have so much to think about that I haven’t really gotten to that part yet.”

“I think you’ll get up to all sorts of crazy and wonderful shenanigans,” she grinned.

“Oh?” I asked, wondering why she thought that.

“You just seem like the creative type, I don’t know. Not creative as in painting or any other art, but like… creative of thought,” she said, her brows furrowing cutely as she tried to express her ideas.

Ideas that left me bashful and fighting a blush. “Thanks.”

We sat in silence for a long while after that, but it wasn’t a totally awkward silence, but a happy and companionable one. Grace and I had been spending a hell of a lot of time in each other’s company recently, but rather than getting sick of her, I relished each second of it.

“You know, it’s funny right, considering I was really keen on my health back on Earth, but I actually miss fast food. That once a month trip I’d do to a chain, grab a bunch of yummy food and just enjoy myself,” she said after a few minutes, her voice wistful.

“I think I miss my computer the most. Just, access to information, you know? There have been so many problems I’ve had where I could have just googled it,” I sighed, thinking of all the plants I could engineer if I had access to the internet and all the scientific papers available there.

I missed a lot of things besides google though, from the presumption of safety and a death at an old age to the simple convenience of a supermarket. Hell, even being able to just find a hardware store and buy some tools would have been amazing right now.

“Yeah that makes sense. Funnily enough, back at Avonside that was one thing that didn’t take them very long. Getting our phones and shit hooked up again, creating a public central database for entertainment,” she told me, shifting to lay down like I was. “Of course, my phone is nothing but little incinerated particles of dust now.”

“That was such quick thinking by the way. I thought that when I lost my hold on that thing we were all fucked,” I said gratefully, reaching over to squeeze her calf with my hand, the only part of her I could reach.

“It was pure instinct,” she chuckled. “Robots like tech, right? Shiny unidentified tech thing had to be interesting to the big bastard.”

It made sense in a funny sort of way. Any combat robot would be equipped with scanners that would be able to see the power running through a phone. That plus the fact it was unknown tech, the robot probably thought it was a threat.

“And you call me smart?” I grinned, although she wouldn’t be able to see it from this angle.

Grace was definitely smart, despite her claims otherwise. Like so many people, she viewed ignorance as something negative, to be mocked and frowned at. It was wrong, people were allowed to be ignorant so long as you were willing to learn, or to let others deal with things if they weren’t. No one could reasonably blame a builder for not knowing the maths surrounding the strong nuclear force.

“You are! I’m just like, average,” she complained, her voice taking on such a cute tone as she grumbled.

I sat up and glared at her with friendly menace, “Nope. You try and claim that again and I’ll sic my bunnies on you.”

“Oh no! The horror!” she chuckled, her eyes sparkling with amusement.

She spoke too soon however, because as if it had read my mind, her emotional support bun was on her, hopping up on top of her and making itself comfortable.

“Oh my god,” she gasped as the air was knocked out of her lungs. “You weren’t kidding!”

“Good bun!” I giggled, shuffling across the floor and into patting range.

The bun nuzzled at my hand with its twitching little nose and for the hundredth time my heart melted at the sight. They were so damn cute.

“You’ve gone mad with power!” Grace wheezed as she dumped the bun sideways onto the floor. The bun decided this was the perfect opportunity to flop sideways, so that’s what it did.

“Good bun,” I cooed again, scratching behind its big floppy ears.

“I can’t tell what’s cuter,” Grace smiled, watching me dote on the bun. “The bunnies, or how much you love them.” That comment received a frown from me, which only caused her smile to widen. “Aw, now she pouts!” my friend continued, her tone playful and teasing.

“Don’t you have punching practice or something?” I grumbled, feeling my cheeks heating again. I was just a regular ol’ blush factory over here now.

“Nope! I’ve been allowed to rest for the afternoon,” she laughed triumphantly.

“Well… I have work to do!” I grouched, definitely not pouting.

“That’s fine, I’ll be right here,” she chuckled, and I couldn’t help it when a smile broke ranks and bloomed across my face. Damn it, she made me too happy. Why was this so difficult? I wished I could just go over there and… well I don’t know. Cuddle her or something.

It took me several minutes to rein my cuddle obsessed brain back into line, but once I had my concentration back, I realised something. I’d need a shield that could potentially be expanded to protect my friends too. I also realised that efficiency might not really need to be a concern of mine. Why bother whittling down power usage percentages when I apparently had so much more magic at my disposal than other mages? Why not abuse that fact and have incredibly strong shields instead?

So that’s what I did, taking the design that Eilian had told me about and adapting it somewhat. Unlike my other spells, the shield spell was a tree which used its leaves to produce the final end result. I set up the roots as normal, taking in energy and then funneling it up into the trunk, which would convert it into the necessary energies needed to create the shield.

The shield was made up of three parts. There was a kinetic shield for stopping mundane projectiles moving at high speed, and an energy shield for stopping the steel one’s lasers and spells that produced energy attacks like it. Finally there was a shield that stopped direct magical attacks and interference. Each would be produced by the same spell, although Eilian had warned me that if I had low energy reserves I should instead separate the three into their own individual spells.

Since I was putting them all into the same spell, the tree would have a sort of twisted trunk, three different colours all mixed up like stirred neapolitan ice cream. White for kinetic, blue for energy and purple for magic. The leaves were the same, although the colours were instead assigned between the stalk, veins and leaf material instead. The whole thing had very obviously been designed and refined by generations of mages and it was quite complex.

There was one final cherry on top however, something that Eilian had whispered with a rather evil expression on her face. Her own personal touch to the shield, something we had seen displayed during the battle. With the flowers free to still have a use, I was able to add the reflection capabilities to my spell. It was going to be one mean spell when I used it, that was for sure.

The next spell I worked through was a basic knockback spell that would allow me to throw anything and everything away from me. It was a fairly simple shrub, roots to take in magic, stem to convert it to kinetic energy and then flowers to store it for use. It was kinda pretty though, normal green leaves and gently glowing white flowers.

After that was another spell that wasn’t particularly lethal. Initially, Eilian had been giving me all sorts of deadly and destructive spell ideas, but I’d quickly told her that it wasn’t really my style. I’d make some like that and keep them in reserve, but I’d rather not burn holes in people if I could help it.

Rather than burning or slicing people, this spell fired orbs of goop that would stick to people like the strongest adhesive in the world and stay like that until the internal magic of each blob dissipated. The flower to create this spell was like an oversized yellow rose with a very small stem that had it drooping over towards the ground. I thought it was kinda cute.

Of course, I did still make the burning spell for if I had to fight some inhuman eldritch horror again. This one was fairly standard, but with a little twist. It required both hands held out in front and it produced a huge amount of boiling flame. The trick was that the closer my hands were together, the less flamethrower-like it became and the more laser-like it became. Essentially it was just a hose of flame with a variable nozzle. I hoped it would allow me to burn a hole through the hull of a steel one.

I was almost ready to leave it at that, but the idea of turning my telekinesis into blades had gotten me thinking. This was going to be my most complicated spell yet, but I felt like I needed something like this. I needed a spell that would allow me to be useful in a variety of scenarios.

The spell was entirely my own design, using several elements I’d learned of by observing the plants outside. The spell needed to be robust, so I used a tree as the template, then created its roots with the typical energy absorption. After that it was onto the trunk, which would be forging the energy the roots fed it into a variety of different flavours of magic, the main ones being potential motion and a sort of hard light.

The leaves would combine these energies into something that was going to be deadly or defensive, depending on what I intended to do with it. I had to predefine the shape that the hard light would take, but I was going for simple here, nothing complex. Deciding to add a little flair like Eilian had done with her spells, I changed the colour of the leaves to be the same dark magenta as my hair, which in turn would cause the spell to take that colour when it was used.

Throughout every one of these plants I made sure that they were capable of producing seeds that might grow into more of their kind. I wanted my grove to be an ecosystem after all, not just a curated garden.

Templates held firmly in my mind, I went outside with Grace trailing behind. I walked about the area, planting the spells randomly in an attempt to spread out the power of my spells, rather than keeping them in neat beds as Esra had done. The idea was that the whole forest I planned to plant would have to be destroyed before I lost access to any one spell.

I concentrated most of my growth energy on the shield trees this time around, growing a few to full height, as surviving would be a priority. My offensive spells could wait for the buns and growth plants to bring them up.

That night as we ate dinner, I mentioned to Troy that I’d gotten some combat spells completed and planted. With that in mind he asked everyone how they felt about continuing our journey and received a positive response from us all. It was time to continue onwards to Millowhall.