JTMyst

  Leaving Afterlife proved to be bittersweet for Erik and Jessie both. They pnned to see each other again soon, but they would both miss Afterlife. It had been a nearly-three month vacation with good friends. They would also miss Nana a lot. She had helped them quite a bit, and she had prepared them as best she could for the next part of their lives.

  Erik didn’t have much to go back to, as his mother was dead, likely his father as well, and his friends thought him long dead. He would search for his father, if only to tell him he was alive, and that he shouldn’t mourn him any longer.

  While he cared for his old friends, they had likely already grieved him and moved on. Erik didn’t feel right exploding back into their lives with magical powers only to leave them again, and so the first part of his life had ended. Part two was just beginning, and it promised magic.

  A portal had appeared in the centre of the pza where Nana’s shop was located. Hosu couldn’t see the portal, and Nana had said that since she came to Afterlife after the pair of humans, hers wouldn’t open yet. The portal would stay active for one week, after which it would violently suck in Erik or Jessie if they hadn’t gone through it yet.

  Erik and Jessie didn’t actually see the same portal, as Erik’s portal and Jessie’s were two different ones, and they couldn’t interact with the other’s portal at all. Jessie decided to stay a little while longer, so Erik would be the first to leave, pnning to go through the portal the same day it appeared.

  He knew it was because of Hosu. The women had grown to really love each other, and now they likely would never see each other again. If possible, Erik would have left sooner just to let them have more time together. He loved them both, and wanted both to be as happy as possible. He would at least see Jessie again, as they had pnned for Erik to travel to the UB in the following days.

  Hosu, who he had learned so much from, and heard so many stories from, was the most difficult to say his farewells to. He could only hope they would meet again one day. Erik turned back around towards the three women seeing him off, smiled at them and waved. He then fell backwards into the portal and disappeared.

  Memories of fire, smoke and wailing woke Erik from something resembling sleep. It had been so long since he had thought about the day he died, and it had been even longer since he felt anything about it. His body shivered at the thought, until he thought about his mother, burning alive right in front of him.

  Without dey, tears gushed from his eyes. Around him was nothing but burned ruins of the pce he used to call home. Even the firepce was mostly crumbled to ash, with only a few bricks and a small amount of concrete holding its old form. The amount of destruction from the fire was enormous, much more than Erik thought possible. He’d thought at least the foundation was supposed to hold, but everything was gone.

  Erik got up to his feet from the horizontal position he woke from. He awoke right where he remembered dying, though the debris that had fallen on him back then had been moved, probably to recover what was left of his corpse. When considering that, why didn’t he wake up where his remains were? He was happy he didn’t wake up in a grave far beneath the surface, of course, but he wondered why that was.

  Looking at the bckened remains of his house, there probably wasn’t much left of his corpse anyway, and most of it might already be scattered to the wind.

  It was nighttime when he returned from Afterlife, and all he could sense was a slight tingle on his chest and a weak breeze on his skin. There weren’t any lights around, so Erik struggled to walk around the house, where debris littered most of the ground beneath him.

  He had of course woken up completely naked, as the clothes he wore the days of his death weren’t magical and weren't resurrected like he had been. He had already figured as much, so he was only slightly disappointed. He would have to find some clothes somewhere and come back in the morning, as he had to search for his father. If he could find somewhere he could go online to read the newspaper from the day he died, he might not even need to come back.

  The problem was, he didn’t have any money or clothes, and he would be trying to lie low, hoping he wouldn’t get recognised by anyone. He lived in a rather small town in the norwegian region of the Scandinavian Empire, and when the town and the immediate vicinity around it had less than ten thousand inhabitants, a rge percentage of them would be able to recognise him. He didn’t want to have to expin magic and resurrection to anyone.

  As Erik reached where the main entrance of the house used to be, he sighed inwardly at his own stupidity. It wasn’t like there were any walls blocking his exit anywhere, so why had he headed towards the door? Before he could step over the threshold, however, he heard a weird snarling sound, like that from a massive dog in a bad mood.

  Erik moved his foot back from the doorway, and retreated back to the firepce, hiding behind what little material there was left. As the snarls closed in, he also started hearing massive footsteps, and it sounded like there were a lot of them, unless they just walked very short steps quickly. As the dark figures walked past his house, he could make out two absolutely massive dogs, walking around and sniffing the air.

  The two dogs didn’t seem to notice him, and continued on their way towards the town proper. Those weren’t normal dogs at all, they were way too big and massive, and when they got closer, the sounds they made sounded… wrong, somehow. Erik had other things to do than being eaten alive by these dog-like things, so he decided to leave a few minutes ter, when he couldn’t hear anything. He just had to keep alert.

  All the neighbours’ houses were completely dark, and even the streetlights were down for the count, it seemed. It wasn’t too unusual, but the timing was bad. He snuck through the gardens of four houses, hoping they had left some clothes out to air, like people did in the movies. No luck. Everyone would certainly have dryers.

  The fifth house he snuck around, belonging to some of his parent’s friends, Erik noticed something odd. He had gone around the back of the house, not seeing anything out of the ordinary while looking for clothes, but when he got back to the front of the house, he noticed the door into the house was shattered in pieces.

  In the dark, that was all he could see, but as he ventured closer, he also noticed a broken window, and massive cw marks along the outer wall.

  He bent down underneath the window, holding his breath and focused intently. He couldn’t hear anything, so it probably wasn’t from those dog-things he saw earlier. If it had happened a few days ago, maybe the house would be empty for now?

  Erik took a chance, and walked into the house. More rge cw marks filled the walls and furniture, and the whole pce was a mess. There were certainly not anyone here anymore, and Erik hoped they weren’t home whenever this happened.

  He walked around the ground floor, looking for a bedroom or closets, but didn’t find any. He saw two sets of shoes in the entrance hall, neatly pced on a shoe rack. Back at the entrance was a staircase he climbed, finding three bedrooms on the second floor. He knew the couple had a kid in his pre-teens, so when the first door he opened looked to belong to a young boy, he closed the door again and went into the next one across the hallway.

  This looked more like a master bedroom, as it was both rger than the kid’s room, and much more simplistic. It had a wide wardrobe, a rge bed and one night stand with a small mp on it, and that was it. Erik tried turning the lights on, but it seemed the power was out, or a circuit had triggered its failsafe.

  Erik opened the wardrobe and found a man’s shirt, some underwear, socks and jeans. He wasn’t happy about wearing another man’s boxers, but it was an emergency. If his life depended on it, he would use someone else’s toothbrush if he had to, though the circumstances where he had to brush his teeth to survive would likely be more complicated than the situation he was currently in.

  Immediately dressing himself in whatever he found, he was suddenly much more comfortable, and now just needed to borrow some of the shoes he had noticed from downstairs.

  Back into the second floor hallway, he looked around and found no trace of cw marks or other kind of damage, until he felt a hole in the floor as he stepped on it. It was deep, but not rge in circumference. Erik felt around it, and noticed several more in the immediate vicinity. Judging by the distance between the holes, it was likely from the cws of a rge paw. If those things had been up here, all they did was walk normally, not like downstairs where they seemed to have mauled everything around them.

  Erik got on his knees, feeling around after more holes, and quickly found more leading deeper into the hallway, where Erik hadn’t been yet. He followed the tracks until the floor felt… oddly soft. And sticky. Without any windows around, this area was pitch bck. He couldn’t even see the outline of his own arms, so he felt around, wondering what he stepped on.

  As his right hand touched a cold, rigid object, Erik couldn’t constrain a panicked gasp as he pulled himself back. It had only been a short moment he touched it, but deep inside, he knew what it was he had touched. He just hoped it wasn’t the young kid.

  Several minutes ter, Erik had found a fshlight from a kitchen drawer hanging loosely from the remains of the counter. At least the fshlight worked. He had brought the fshlight upstairs, and saw that it was indeed the kid’s body that y there, all the way at the end of the corridor, right in front of a dresser. What was most worrisome was the fact that the corpse looked far decayed already, and he wondered why he hadn’t smelled anything.

  Erik hadn’t worked in medicine or the police, and he had no experience with the decay of human bodies, but he figured it was at least a month old, maybe more. The troubling part of that was that no one had retrieved the bodies. There was no police tape around. With the front door in ruins, someone had to have noticed that… unless there weren’t anyone around anymore.

  The hour he was there, he also found the boy’s parents. His father was on the ground floor, under the remains of the kitchen table, which was why Erik hadn’t found him the first time around. The mother was in the bathroom adjacent to the master bedroom. Both the kid and the mother seemed to have been running from something, so the father had likely tried to protect them when whatever had done this attacked.

  He was the first to get killed, as his loved ones tried to escape upstairs. Why the mother and the kid had split up, he didn’t understand. He had to admit that he didn’t know what he was doing, and had to leave it at that.

  He did take the father’s phone from his pocket and a charger from their bedroom, in case he found somewhere with power he could charge it, hoping it wasn’t too protected, so he could go online.

  Erik left the house mentally exhausted, pnning to head towards the town proper. Normally it was thirty minutes away, but considering the beasts walking around, he had to keep his eyes and ears open, and walk carefully.

  When Erik reached the hill overlooking his hometown, the sky was already a few shades brighter, and the sun would rise in an hour or so. With the additional light from the sky, it wasn’t hard to see the ruins that were his hometown.

  He had suspected as much when he saw several houses simir to where he found the dead family on his walk here, along with several power poles knocked over, the power lines ripped apart. He’d also seen several cars mauled and rolled over.

  All of that was nothing compared to the town proper. There was barely anything left standing. Everything he had known was gone. Not just his family, but his home. The destruction was unlike anything he had seen, and suddenly, finally, his return from Afterlife was all too real.

  He wept for the first time since the fire three months ago, where he and his mother had died. All that was left to do here was figure out if his father had died, either in the fire or whatever camity had struck his hometown.

  From the hilltop, Erik could also see at least three of the monstrous hounds in the ruins, but more was likely to be obstructed from his view. He couldn’t go to the town proper, but he decided to skirt around the edge, hopefully finding the most recent newspaper or something that would help him understand what was happening.

  He also needed to meditate, as that would allow him to understand his core power, and help him use it, but that was something he could only do when he knew it was safe around. He didn’t dare sit down and meditate with massive, hungry dogs around. He hadn’t even meditated before, and wasn’t sure if he even could, as the number of things racing through his mind would definitely take most of his focus.

  He had yet to look at his Crest since he returned, so he hadn’t even looked at the symbol in the core of the Crest, not that that was what mattered. The symbol would be there for the rest of his life, so he was in no rush just to look at it. He’d felt the tingle of his skin changing on his chest when he returned, but that was long over, so it should be finalised by now.

  His thoughts went on to Jessie, as he hoped her return to life would be met with happier circumstances than his. He soon went down the hill towards the town.

  As night fell once more ter that day, Erik had skirted around the edge of the town for hours, sneaking into houses and hiding from the dogs roaming the entire area. Erik wasn’t sure why they remained here, as there was nothing around to hunt. Everyone was gone. Unless they were guarding their territory?

  The different newspapers Erik had found mentioned little of them, except the st two he could find, dated the 22nd and 23rd of February. It had been te January when Erik had died, meaning it was mid-April when he returned, since he returned a week earlier than he absolutely needed to. That meant his home had been gone for about two whole months.

  The oldest of the two newspapers mentioned a ‘monstrous dog sighting’, but didn’t even print the article on the front page. The next newspaper was something else entirely, as it was a lot thinner, and featured the monstrous dogs on the entire front page, naming them ‘Hellbeasts of Side Valley’, Side Valley being the next town over, half an hour or so by car towards the east.

  That had been the first town they attacked, and by the look of things, it wasn’t the st. If his own town was attacked that same day, or the day after the st newspaper, he wondered how many towns, how many cities and countries they had ravaged by now. The articles about them in the st newspaper mentioned that the dogs had ‘proved resistant to military weapons’, but also that they didn’t seem to kill for food.

  In fact, they proved somewhat ignorant of the life around them, as they mainly seemed to target buildings, cars and infrastructure. They seemed more intent on destruction other than survival, but the fact they were resistant to bullets was worrisome. Erik knew beforehand that the dogs did hunt humans as well, but hopefully it wasn’t that often.

  The family he had found dead in their house hadn’t been eaten whole, but they had lost a few parts which Erik hadn’t found around where their bodies were, so he figured the monsters hunted humans to feed when they were hungry, and otherwise went for destruction, maybe killing those that were in their way.

  Their behaviour was something completely unfamiliar to Erik, and he longed for an online connection to find out what else had been written about the hellbeasts the st month. He also had to find a newspaper from the time of his death.

  If his father had died along with him and his mother, it would be mentioned, along with what had caused the fire. Erik hadn’t thought about that, since most fires were accidental, but seeing the state of his house, he was unsure. The fire must’ve burnt a lot hotter than normal, if it practically disintegrated bricks and concrete. It also spread too fast, he realised.

  Everything had happened so fast, but he’d thought that was the panic, adrenaline and pain. It wasn’t, it couldn’t be. It had been at most a minute between the fire started, and he had died, and before that nothing was wrong. Considering the destruction of his town a retively short time after the fire, Erik couldn’t help but feel both were connected, and he had to admit that his father immediately became his prime suspect.

  Erik had left the town ruins a few hours ago by now, and when he figured he was far enough away from the hellbeasts, he started looking for a car. Considering the state of the electric grid, he didn’t even consider an electric car, and seeing that gasoline or diesel cars were much louder, he had to be sure he was far enough away from any and all hellbeasts. He couldn’t be sure if they would chase him down or not, but better safe than sorry.

  The problem was, the further away he got, the fewer cars were around. Luckily, there are always some houses around almost no matter where you go, and it didn’t take him long to find one with a working car outside, and keys to the car inside the house. The entrance to the house was shut, but unlocked, so he didn’t even have to break in. Still, he did steal a car, so that point was probably moot.

  With a car in his arsenal, he was ready to get moving, as he wasn’t feeling tired at all. His destination was set; he was going to the UB. Jessie lived in an apartment outside Leicester, where she grew up, so he was going to Engnd, more specifically. He hoped he’d find a way to cross the sea, probably from Cais or maybe near Bruges in the West Coalition, possibly Amsterdam or Rotterdam in the States.

  He had to admit he had never considered travelling to the UB without an aeropne, so he had no idea where he could catch a ship from. He’d check to see if he could find any road sign pointing towards a harbour with a ferry crossing to the UB all along the way to Cais, the only pce he knew he could cross using the Channel Tunnel.

  That meant travelling south, into the swedish and further across the danish regions of the Scandi Empire, then west through the German States and into the West Coalition.

  By car, the journey was through almost half of Europe, so he could only hope the situation wasn’t as dire the further he got from his home. Hopefully, he’d find an end to the hellbeast influence somewhere, hopefully while still in the Empire, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Erik stopped the car a short while ter, as he had a decision to make; he could either travel towards, and eventually through, a city, or he could avoid bigger popution centres and travel the longer way through small towns instead. The hellbeasts would likely target the bigger towns and cities rather than smaller ones, but the same could be said about the military - they would focus on defending the cities, especially if those were targeted by more hellbeasts.

  That meant the cities involved higher risk, but potentially higher rewards as well, as the military could tell him more about the invasion, and possibly even help him get to the UB. Erik decided against it. He wanted to get further away from the hellbeasts’ starting point, which seemed to be really close by, before daring to venture into a city. He hadn’t seen any other people yet, so best case there was a rge area closed off for civilians.

  Erik had barely driven by the next small town when the car was violently pushed off the road by a hellbeast charging into its side. Erik had luckily noticed the rge beast charging towards him hundreds of metres away, and had tossed himself out of the driver’s door, letting the car continue on. The beast didn’t seem to notice this, but if it did, it was more interested in destroying the car rather than killing Erik.

  His body rolled several times after he hit the asphalt, eventually coming to a stop right as the car was attacked. Erik felt bruised, but only lightly. He had been told his body would be stronger now, but he still felt the pain.

  The doglike beast shook its head after the head-to-car collision it had caused, but seemed otherwise unharmed after the major crash. It turned to look at Erik before it snarled deeply, lowered its upper body slightly, and charged at him.

  “Fuck.”

  Erik ran into the woods by the roadside, stepping into a small puddle. He heard the rge beast following him, but since it was so rge, it would have more trouble than him in the forest. Erik didn’t look back as the charging beast was kind enough to growl loud enough to let him know it was still there, but luckily it didn’t seem to get any closer to him.

  It didn’t fall behind either, and Erik could only thank his new magical body for that, as he felt himself running just a bit faster than he’d ever done before. If it weren’t for the forest obstacles to avoid, he felt he could go faster still. He ran for several minutes, until he realised he’d made a terrible, terrible mistake.

  A young boy, maybe eight or nine years old, was about fifty metres in front of the sprinting Erik. The boy was covered in dirt and tired clothes, and further behind him was a couple of pitched tents, one blue and one in a camo pattern. There might be more people around, and Erik was leading the beast right towards them.

  As soon as Erik noticed this, he stopped, his feet sliding half a metre on the mossy ground before completely stopping. He turned to face the beast, which was much closer than he had thought, and it rammed into him before he could do anything. Erik flew right into a tree, crashing through several smaller branches as he did. The air vacated his lungs with a heavy gasp, and the world started spinning.

  After this, the hound didn’t seem as interested in Erik as it was the boy and the tents behind him. The beast lurked away from Erik and towards its next target. Erik couldn’t let this happen. He was supposed to have magic - he could do something about this… if only he had tried meditating, connecting with his power. He had no chance against this beast otherwise.

  He closed his eyes, his head still spinning. He tried holding it together, but it proved more difficult than he initially thought it would be. He inhaled and exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled.

  Eventually, he felt it. Something was tugging at his mind. It was more a gravitational pull than a string or rope, as it pulled his entire being. He gave in to the pull, not sure if he was falling or flying towards it. Suddenly he crashed against a rge pool of something, smashing hard into it, but then gently being enveloped by it, sinking deeper.

  He didn’t know this, but if he could see his Crest right then, its core was filling with colour, washing away the dark grey of the symbol that had appeared in the swirling centre. He was deep in magical energy, and he was absorbing it. He had thought his body already magical, but that was just a drop of what it could’ve been.

  It was more like residual magic from his time in Afterlife than anything else - it was nothing. He couldn’t absorb all of this at once, and he was out of time. He also felt that most of the pool was somehow out of reach. He had to grow stronger to get at it. Unsure when he became conscious of what he was doing, the moment he realised it, he willingly snapped out of his meditation.

  The beast had barely moved ten metres from earlier. If Erik had known how fast it would go to connect with his power, his magic, he would’ve done it right from the beginning, but Nana had said it could take mucthe beast inching ever closer to the kid and the tents.

  “Hey!” he yelled, getting the hellbeast’s attention, at least for a second or two. “We’re not finished yet.”

  Erik felt his own magic pour into the stick. When it was released, a greyish-white substance shot from the end of the stick with a horrid ‘plff’. The icky substance flew at the beast, slowly coating it.

  The beast roared in anger, and charged at Erik, or at least attempted to. Its movement grew heavy and slow, and it wasn’t long before it stopped its movement entirely. All it could do was growl at Erik, as its body was stuck in the glue the stick had shot out. Erik rushed in close to the beast and started pounding it with closed fists.

  While his body was strengthened by magic, it was by no means hitting the beast harder than bullets, and yet the doglike creature’s skin started splitting apart and its teeth loosening from its mouth. Erik’s hands bruised as well, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t taking the beast down before it could hurt anyone else.

  The now hardened glue covering the hellbeast slowly cracked from the hound’s strength, and the beast gained more room to move, further increasing the decay of substance hindering it. The creature’s eyes glistened with rage and fear both as Erik was slowly beating it to death, until it finally broke free.

  The beast raised its massive paw and struck Erik’s head with unbelievable speed and power, and the man was sent flying once more, this time unconscious before he even hit the ground.

  Erik woke an unknown time ter, the boy from earlier 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 dy in her te 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 sat up with a groan, massive pain ringing all throughout his head. It felt like a thunderstorm inside him. The rest of his body felt fine, except his hands which were still bruised.

  “Are you a superhero?” the boy enthusiastically burst out with a wide-eyed grin on his face.

  “I sure am,” Erik said jokingly, and looked at the two with a smile.

  “Well, you’re not the best since you lost, but even bombs don’t work against those monsters,” the boy responded, a little less fervour this time. The boy’s mother looked at her son nervously, as if scared Erik would react poorly to the kid’s unfiltered words.

  “Well, this is just my origin story, you know. I’ll get better at it, I promise,” Erik said, the mother visibly letting go of some of her tension.

  “That fight was so cool! What’s your power? I mean, you must be super strong since you could even hurt that monster, and what was that gooey stuff you stopped it with? Was it webbing?” the boy continued.

  Erik spent the rest of the day and night with the mother and child. He learned a lot more about the situation he had found himself resurrecting in, but the information the two had was outdated, to say the least.

  The military had attempted to hold the beasts back, but it had 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. The only thing these things did was prove the beasts were also dependent on the ws of physics, as they would be blown away, but otherwise unharmed from the bst.

  The st they had heard, the European military was 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 st town Erik had passed on the road, but some had left and others had died finding food in the town.

  Erik asked them both if they wanted to come with him, as he was travelling south, but the mother said no. They hadn’t been attacked ever since they had left the town behind, with the exception of the one Erik had led right to them.

  As far as she was concerned, they were safe so long as they kept away from the town, and she had already managed to make some fishing and hunting gear, and had kept both her and her son fed with nothing but hunting and foraging for a week.

  She only asked that Erik tell the military, if he found them, where they were and that they could come get them with a helicopter or something. Erik understood, but was still reluctant about leaving the pair behind.

  Erik eventually left them, as he couldn’t convince her otherwise. With new information in hand, Erik decided to try to keep away from towns and cities entirely. He quickly went back to the st town to find a few things he could use his power with, and a bag or backpack to keep the things in.

  He had also asked the woman if she knew where he could find a motorbike, preferably an off-road one in her hometown, and had been given directions, though she couldn’t promise it would be there, or if it worked at all.

  Among the things Erik had collected in his new, stolen backpack were a few children’s frisbees in a semi-transparent purple colour, a few boxes of assorted screws, a yellow bouncy ball and quite a few pebbles. The problem with his power was that he knew 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.

  He’d tried his fshlight, 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 but the nails wouldn’t, and it irked him. He would have to run around touching everything to see if it would be helpful to him.

  What also worried him was the fact, while he knew what his power would make the stuff do, he didn’t know the effect of it. He considered the stick he had used on the beast the previous day. He had gotten a feeling of what it would do, and he just did it. He hadn’t known how long the glue would st, how fast it would dry, or how brittle it would be when solidified.

  Against the massive beast, it had only sted 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 doing it in a fight, where his life or that of others was on the line.

  Therein y another problem; since he didn’t know how effective the thing would be, it wasn’t exactly safe to test them just wherever. It should be an open area, where he could potentially be attacked by the beasts lurking around, and even then he wouldn’t know the effect of the power in close quarters.

  He had really gotten an annoying power, 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 finds out there’s 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.

  Some words Nana had said during one of her expnations, was that magical bodies were quite impervious to mundane things, and the most effective way to take down a magical monster or a Remnant was magic. Erik considered the beasts again. If bullets or bombs barely made the dogs flinch, but Erik could harm them with nothing but his fists… They had to be magical in nature.

  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 having a renaissance. 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 expin how there suddenly were two people from the same pnet appearing in Afterlife at the exact same time. It didn’t expin why no one else from Earth appeared in the following months after that, however. It might just be a coincidence, after all.

  What it meant for the beasts, was that this wave of hellbeasts was just the beginning, however. More magical beasts could appear if the magic was coming back. For all Erik knew, it could maybe even affect the tides and temperature, but he couldn’t know.

  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, as it was unlikely there were none at all on Earth. That meant most of them, however many there were, were keeping it secret.

  Erik understood why. The world wasn’t ready for magic, nor would they simply 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 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, and the militaries of the world would likely not be capable of that if magic was involved. Based on the strength and numbers of the creatures that might have been summoned by some magical power, the Remnant was likely much stronger than Erik, and he’d need help if he was to stop them and he feared just Jessie wasn’t enough.

  In this weird mental state, where Erik was happy to be alive again, 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 those towns he could, no matter how small, but kept on the road between them, to maximise his travelling speed.

  When a nearby town was marked by road signs, Erik rather went into the forests, circling the towns from afar before getting back on the road somewhere further away from the towns. This wasn’t always as easy, as the norwegian ndscape was a whole lot of mountains and cliffs, forcing him to backtrack more than a couple of times and find another route. He didn’t want to stray too far from the roads as he feared he’d get lost in the unknown environment.

  He wasn’t surprised that he didn’t find any other people roaming around the often dense forests, but he was worried how far south he would have to go to find some kind of trace for any military defence attempts.

  He didn’t search the towns, but he should have spotted at least something along the roads, whether that be military vehicles smashed by the roadside or anything else. There were quite a few cars along the road, some even with dead people in them, though those were few and far between.

  Many seemed to have managed to escape their cars, but didn’t make it far, as there were quite a few corpses along the road as well. Erik felt cold inside as he looked at all the dead he drove past. If he was angry or sad, he wasn’t sure, but it made him think of his father.

  He hoped he lived, that he got away. He sure as hell hoped he wasn’t behind all this. If Erik was a Remnant, the bloodline was from either his father or his mother’s side.

  Since he saw his mother die, and didn’t see her in the Afterlife, she couldn’t be doing this. If it was his father, then he would have died sometime earlier, but he had never been gone or missing for three months as far as Erik could remember.

  Supposedly, magical beings like Remnants also aged slower, especially as their magical powers increased, but he knew his father had visibly aged in the twenty years Erik could remember back to. It could’ve been a trick, but Erik wasn’t so sure.

  At night, Erik camped out in the woods to decrease the chance of being attacked by the hounds. He cursed himself for not even thinking about camping gear when leaving either his hometown, or the town he had stolen the bike from. He had several pebbles and frisbees, but not even a single bnket.

  He had also forgotten clothes and food, though he didn’t feel hungry even after more than two days since he resurrected. It might be because of his magic, but also everything else that was happening.

  Sleep came slowly that night, and he dreamed of magic and wonder, trials and challenges, monsters, blood and death. He woke before the sun the next morning, and didn’t go back to sleep. He was mentally exhausted. His body was practically fully healed, as the damage done to him was practically only a concussion from the paw strike. He still felt sore where he was struck, but that was it.

  Maybe it was too much to hope for that his mind would still be as low-maintenance as in Afterlife. He missed whatever magic made everything seem so okay. He got ready to continue on.

  Late the previous night he had passed Oslo, barely escaping a few hounds that seemed to be patrolling the highway. After slowly falling behind for a few minutes, they had given up and stopped chasing him. Were they ordered in some way to stay in a certain area?

  Right now, Erik was close to the Swedish region of the Empire, and in just an hour or so, he would be crossing the divide. He was even less certain where to ride from there, as he wasn’t as familiar with the roads and towns.

  As he crossed the border, he was ambushed by two hounds coming from out of nowhere. He barely had time to react, but managed to throw himself off the bike, barely avoiding a pouncing hellbeast. The dog-like animal nded in a roll, and was quickly back on its four feet.

  The second hound charged at Erik a moment after, and Erik dodged to the side, trying to reach into his backpack at the same time. The beast grazed his side, and the force was enough to throw him in a spin, likely with a broken rib or two.

  Luckily, the beasts weren’t used to their prey fighting back, so when he was down they were in no rush to strike at him again. Both inched closer to the Remnant with a hungry growl. For their part, that was a mistake.

  Erik had the time to reach into his backpack, finding just what he was searching for, and pulled the things out. With a box of screws in one hand, and pebbles in the other, he was ready to fight back.

  The man threw one of the small rocks at one beast as hard as he could while still being mostly accurate, and another at the second. As the rocks hit their targets, a deep boom sounded in the vicinity. The dogs fell limply over on their sides.

  It wasn’t over yet, and Erik knew it. The pebbles made a concussive bst, and Erik was intrigued at how powerful it had really been. It proved quite effective against the hounds, but he didn’t know for how long.

  The problem with the stick he had used previously, was that he couldn’t attack the parts of their bodies that were covered, as that might reduce the structural integrity of the solidified mass keeping the creatures at bay, as well as not harm them in any meaningful way.

  That meant he had no choice but to attack whatever part of them was sticking out.

  It was likely a good way to keep one out of the fight while focusing on the other, but he would have to see how long the concussive bst would st on them.

  As soon as they hit the ground, Erik grabbed a small handful of screws from the box, and threw them at the closest hound. Unlike the stick and pebbles, he had to use more of the screws at the same time, the reason for which was made apparent the moment they nded on and around the target beast.

  As Erik felt his magic in them activate, each of them shone blue and lifted off the ground, hovering there for just a second after which they released a blue-ish psma between two or three other screws.

  The result resembled a bird-cage of lightning, and Erik could soon smell the grilled meat of the dog. Its body started to smoke as it convulsed.

  The second dog rose to the ground quickly, just when Erik was picking out more screws to throw at it, and by now it clearly regarded him as a threat.It charged at the man without even a thought, but Erik had prepared for that as well.

  Throwing the screws back into the box, he picked up the frisbee he had prepared at the same time, and threw it straight at the monster. As Erik activated it, the frisbee turned itself from its horizontal flight to a full stop with its top side now facing the beast instead of towards the sky.

  The beast paid it no mind as it rushed its target. The sound like that of a bird hitting a window reached Erik, now with a new batch of screws in his hand. Hoping the frisbee-shield was one-directional, he threw the screws at the confused beast.

  It was bleeding from its mouth, and had visibly lost a few of its rge brown-ish white fangs. The force it must’ve had when hitting the invisible magic wall must’ve been enough to push a rge truck out of the road. Had it actually rammed into a truck though, it would probably come out from that completely unharmed.

  Did the fact that the shield was magic completely nullify the beast’s resistance, or could the entire creature have crushed itself in the impact if Erik’s magic had been stronger? How much of the force it impacted dissipated in magical ways before the monster was affected by the remainder? Was the third w of physics wrong when magic was involved?

  The screws flew past the invisible shield without a problem, and Erik activated them right as most of them hit the creature. As it had a slight wind-up time, Erik was gd the beast had hit the wall with such force, as it was likely concussed and did nothing but shake its head sideways.The second beast was quickly taken down, filling the air with more smoke and smells.

  The lightning-emitting screws sted for about five seconds, which Erik hadn’t noticed from the earlier tes bomb, seeing as he was attacked before it had died out. It seemed that was the maximum time for the concussive rocks and the high-voltage screws both. A short while ter, the frisbee fell to the ground, the magic in it vanished without a trace.

  Erik picked it back up, but it didn’t feel right in his hands. It was the same instinct he felt when he grabbed it and knew what it could do, but it was more hollow now. Erik charged it with magic again, feeling nothing unusual. He then tossed it and activated the shield once more.

  It had sted ten seconds the st time, and did so the second time as well. When it had fallen to the ground the second time, Erik reached down to grab it, but it unceremoniously cracked and broke apart in several pieces. The pieces didn’t give Erik any feeling at all as he lifted them from the ground. It seemed these were too poor quality to survive the magic coursing through them.

  Unsure whether the monsters were dead or just incapacitated, Erik moved closer to the st one taken down, and he felt more than heard it still breathing, weak as it was. He checked the other one, and it was just as the first.

  They would likely survive, and he didn’t know when they would wake up, so the Remnant considered checking his bike to see the damage and leave. That wouldn’t help in the long run, however. He couldn’t be the anime hero who always left his enemies alive, only for them to turn to the good side because he had said something that resonated with them.

  These creatures had to die, because the less of them there were, the better for everyone. He could use this chance to experiment a little.