Chapter 4: Origin Story

  It wasn’t the great showing of his new magical powers Erik had wanted it to be, but when Erik woke an unknown time later, the boy from earlier was looking at him from above. The boy’s face was filled with wonder and curiosity and when he noticed Erik waking, he shouted for his mother.

  “Mum! He’s awake!”

  A lady in her late thirties rushed towards the pair from outside the tent.

  “Please, stay still. You’ve had your bell rung quite hard. I wasn’t sure you’d survive, but… your wound doesn’t look… quite as bad now,” she said, clearly growing more confused by the end of the sentence.

  Erik was almost as surprised as the lady to find his wounds healing abnormally fast. It was great, if not a bit difficult to explain.

  Erik spent the rest of the day and night with the mother and child, nursing his wounds back in travelling shape whilst being bombarded with questions from the kid.

  They told him that the attacking beast had scampered off the moment it had slapped Erik away, leaving the kid and her mother alone, possibly due to its wounds. Erik also learned a lot more about the situation he had found himself resurrecting in, but the information the two had was quite outdated, to say the least.

  The military had attempted to hold the beasts back, though it had eventually proved futile. There was nothing they could do to even hurt the beasts, as armour-penetrating bullets, bombs, and anything else they could come up with proved ineffective against their grotesque hide. The only thing those weapons did was prove the beasts were also dependent on the laws of physics as they would be blown away in the explosion, staying otherwise unharmed from the blast.

  The last they’d heard, a mix of European military powers were holding their own further south, but that was weeks ago. A lot could have happened between then and now. The pair of them used to be six people from the last town Erik had passed on the road, but some had left in hopes of finding safety and others had died scavenging for food in town.

  Erik asked them both if they wanted to come with him as he was travelling south, but the mother declined. They hadn’t been attacked ever since they left the town behind, except for the one Erik had led right to them.

  She felt they were secure if they avoided the town, and she’d prepared hunting and fishing equipment. Impressively, she had kept both her and her son fed with nothing but hunting and foraging for a week now.

  She only asked that Erik tell the military, if he found them, where they were and that they had to come get them. She was a wise enough woman to know to remain behind rather than risk suffering the same fate as her peers in a hopeless effort to cross the country. Erik understood, though he was still reluctant about leaving the pair behind.

  He eventually did as he couldn’t convince her otherwise. With new information in hand, Erik decided to try to keep away from towns and cities entirely. With his new magical power, still there, though somehow a bit foggy in his own mind, he galloped back to the last town to find a few things he could use his power with, as well as a backpack to keep things in.

  While he still couldn’t quite internalise what his magic did, he at least knew from the start that it wasn’t just making sticks seem perverted. There was more to it. He realised how to use several other things only after touching them.

  The bike he had ridden had a bent rear wheel and Erik wasn’t even sure it would run anymore, so he requisitioned a new one in town as well. It wasn’t unusual to have more off-road-centric bikes in the inland Norwegian region, luckily, though Erik was a bit more than tempted to borrow a much fancier road bike.

  He was still on the lookout for the second Hellhound he’d spotted observing him, though it seemed to have vanished without a trace. That didn’t mean that Erik wasn’t on high alert that entire time, though.

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  Among the things the Titan gathered in his new, stolen backpack were a few children’s frisbees made of a semi-transparent plastic, a few boxes of assorted screws, a single yellow bouncy ball and quite a few pebbles he’d found strewn about everywhere. One of the apparent problems with his power was that he’d figured out that it worked in quite a few different ways, but he didn’t know how it would work, and with what, before he touched the thing.

  Another issue was that it didn’t trigger on just anything. He tried other stuff and his magic somehow wouldn’t react to it. The same applied to the cellphone he’d taken, a bottle opener and nails. He wasn’t sure what made some things, like the screws, work while the nails wouldn’t and that irked him. He would have to run around touching everything to see if it would be helpful to him like a loot-crazed maniac.

  What also worried him was the fact that while he knew what his power would make the objects do, he didn’t know the true effect of it. He considered the stick he had used on the beast the previous day. It gave him feel of what it would do and he just did it. He couldn’t tell how long the glue would last, how fast it would dry, or how brittle it would be when it solidified.

  Against the massive beast, it had only lasted for a quick minute before the creature managed to break it open from within. That meant he would have to test the new things he’d found out before using them to defend himself, lest he might cause himself or anyone else harm from it.

  He had to admit that his Core power was annoying and he could only hope Jessie would have a better one. She should be back in a few days at most. Erik was worried what she might do when she found out that there had been an invasion of beasts unlike anything the world had ever seen during her absence. He hoped he could get to her before she did anything rash. She was always an ‘act first, ask questions later’ kind of gal.

  Some words Nana, their ‘teacher’, had said during one of her explanations, was that magical bodies were quite impervious to mundane things and the most effective way to take down a magical monster, or even another Remnant, was magic. With that, Erik considered the beasts again. If bullets or bombs didn’t even make the dogs flinch, but Erik could harm them with nothing but his fists, they had to be magical.

  That brought about a whole other concern for Erik. After thinking on it for quite a while, he had boiled it down to two theories, neither any better than the other. It could mean that magic was returning. His list of consequences this could bring were likely very incomplete, but he figured one of the things would be a resurgence of magical beings.

  This could even explain how there were two people from the same world appearing in Afterlife at the same time, the place having a cosmic reach. It didn’t explain why no one else from Earth appeared in the following months after them, but that might just be a coincidence, after all.

  What it meant for the monsters was that this wave of ‘Hellbeasts’ was just the beginning. More magical beasts could appear if magic was coming back. For all Erik knew, it could maybe even affect the tides and temperature, but that was pure guesswork.

  His other theory, the one he found more likely, was that another Remnant was the cause of all this havoc. Erik had wondered why he hadn’t heard anything about any Remnants his entire life, thinking it unlikely there were none at all on Earth. That meant most of them, no matter how many there were, were keeping it a secret. Did the governments know? Were the Remnants controlling the world from the shadows?

  Erik understood why they’d kept themselves hidden, though. The world wasn’t ready for magic, nor would they let magical beings live in peace. Erik wasn’t sure whether it would be like in the movies, where the governments of the world would capture and experiment on them, but even if they didn’t, the media would be even worse still.

  Erik had told the mother and son from earlier to keep his ‘superpower’ a secret, as he wasn’t sure if he wanted the world to know just yet. The beast invasion might make it difficult to hide for long, but he wanted to know how the world was dealing with it before showing off.

  If another Remnant was behind this, they would have to be stopped, one way or the other. The militaries of the world would not be capable of that if magic was involved. Based on the strength and numbers of the creatures, who might have been summoned by some magical power, the Remnant responsible was likely much stronger than Erik was. He’d need help if he was to stop them and he feared just Jessie wasn’t enough.

  His power as it was now wouldn’t be enough, that was certain. But this was just the beginning. A lot of things still eluded him about his magical origins, but if it was one thing he knew for certain it was that this power he had awakened wasn’t his limit. His Crest, that black mark on the right of his chest, had four tendrils swirling around the Core, each arm with one large and two smaller hexagonal shapes. Unexpected Arsenal, his Core ability, was just one. The Crest would hold twelve more powers, each hexagonal shape a slot for him to absorb them. Together with Jessie, he’d grow strong.

  In this strange mental state, Erik felt joy at being alive again, even as he feared for his world and worried about his future. The newly reborn Remnant crossed roads, mountains, and rivers on his stolen motorbike. He kept clear of the towns he could, no matter how small, but kept on the road between them to maximise his travelling speed, eager to find civilisation again. He was more eager still to reach Jessie.