They were created in its image; cruel and twisted, left without purpose. They called it their mother, but it was far too unloving to be as such. They couldn’t have cared less.

• The Cursed Multiverse, Volume 3.

**

“Who… are you?” Harry said. His eyes flickered up and met those of the strange man standing a brief distance away.

He was somewhat short, although he was still barely a head taller than Harry himself. Tanned skin was hidden beneath several layers of crusted blood and dirt, and what he thought was once brown hair was matted black with filth.

The ruined remains of a bloodied suit hung around his waist, and he wore a blackened bracer on his arm, looking to be made of something halfway between leather and some sort of carbon fiber.

All in all, to Harry, he looked like his Ma’s description of a kidnapper.

The man raised a brow in his direction, “…Who are you?”

Harry rose to his feet and backed away carefully, glancing over his shoulder and to the vast red desert that awaited him behind. Was this what the Sahara looked like? Was that where he was? It wasn’t supposed to be red, right?

“Ma told me not to give my name to strange people.” If he’d been given a weapon during his Tutorial, he’d have brandished it. At least that way, with his thin arms, he could look somewhat menacing.

The man nodded to himself and shrugged, “…Yeah, that’s fair. I’m Brock. Welcome to hell.”

Hell? While the mention of hell worried him, he also noticed that the man seemed somewhat uncomfortable while conversing. Not in the act of talking itself, but the idea of it. Nervousness looked to be written across his face. At least, Harry thought it was nervousness. He wasn’t very good at distinguishing expressions.

Studying him further, this man had certainly appeared to be here a somewhat decent time before Harry himself, and from the ruthless state he was in, his Tutorial must have been a brutal one. Idly, he wondered if the Tutorial teleportation times were randomised. Glancing around, a simple fact brought him from his thoughts and gave him pause.

“Wait… Ma?” The man – Brock, as he had mentioned earlier - furrowed his brows and joined him in glancing around, “Dude, you haven’t seen a slightly overweight woman with a wooden spoon, have you?”

He raised a brow, “was uh… was she with you?”

Harry didn’t answer, instead bolting around the back of the service station as he called out for his Ma. The man followed behind him at a leisurely pace, at least giving the effort to do a second take for the sake of the boy. After rounding the place twice, Harry slumped his shoulders, the fact that his mother wasn’t here readily apparent to him.

“…Ma…”

The next second, Harry felt a strong hand on his shoulder, and he flinched slightly, but couldn’t find the strength to do anything more, “Hey, it’s ok mate. We’ll find your ‘Ma’ somewhere.”

Harry sighed, “Yeah. Maybe she was teleported somewhere else. No one else is here either.”

That seemed like the most likely case to the boy, and he truly hoped that being alone wasn’t the norm, especially since this man seemed to have been transported alone from his Tutorial too. If his Ma was alone in a place like this, surrounded by things like those monsters…

He shuddered at the thought. No amount of wooden spoons would be able to help her. Though, he supposed that she still had that god awfully loud scream.

“Were you transported here alone too?” Harry asked, almost reluctantly to hear the answer.

Brock helped the kid to his feet, “You seen I Am Legend? That describes it.”

“What?” Harry furrowed his brows, “is that a rock band?”

“…Yeah. Yeah it is. Anyway, I’m alone,” the man quickly replied, seeming oddly deflated as he muttered to himself, “Who the hell doesn’t know that movie?”

Lightly, Harry cracked a smile. He had a feeling his Ma would be ok, and strangely enough, he felt he would too. The man he had found himself with seemed a little weird, and oddly estranged from human presence, marginally off in his tone too, as though he hadn’t spoken to anyone for a long while, but Harry thought he seemed like a good guy.

Although, he knew he wasn’t the best judge of character.

Shielding his eyes from the beating sun overhead, Harry looked out to the red hued horizons, eying the sparse shrubbery and alien cast of critters that roamed the land. With his vague aura senses granted by the possession of his Ascendancy, Harry was happy to note that none of the creatures around seemed to be above level 5, and he’d probably be able to deal with them on his partner's behalf.

While the man looked to be some sort of barbaric warrior having walked through the savage crucible known as combat, Harry’s sixth sense read blank when he looked to the man. His Ascendancy was clearly flat level 1. Although, while the aura it emitted was beyond weak, it seemed to possess a horrifying sort of depth to it, as though it was a boundless void. And when he pushed a little deeper, he felt something terrifying look right back at him.

He wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it made both him and the very core of his power shudder in primal dread. Darkness threatened to cloud his mind, and he swore a cackle, quiet like the wind, drifted past his ears.

Brushing the strange phenomenon aside, Harry turned to his companion who was munching on a half-melted protein bar, guilt apparent in his eyes. A smear of vomit dripped from his lower lip, “So… uh… where the hell are we?”

He quickly finished off the protein bar and gestured to the desert around them. Brock seemed… rather unenthusiastic, “Hell mate, I told you. We’re in the outback.”

“Like… Australia?!” Harry panicked. His eyes shot up his forehead. That couldn’t be right.

“Yep.” Brock shrugged.

Harry placed a hand on the back of his neck and breathed out slowly. Australia was a long way from Boston. Like overseas a long way. And the fact he was in the outback only made it worse.

Snakes, kangaroos, scorpions, and those horrifying frilled neck lizards. He already hated the creature enough, and chances were, it was now an even more terrible mutant as all the other creatures around appeared to be to one degree or another.

“Like the place where you put beers on the ‘barbie’?!” He had to be sure. He didn’t like being away from home for too long. His Ma certainly didn’t like it either. He hoped she was safe.

The man deadpanned, “I think we have very different ideas about how Australia works.”

Harry slowly sunk to his knees, muttering to himself frantically. He knew only a few things about the country, although it wasn’t much, as he just idiotically proved. Putting all that aside, the teen had almost been convinced it didn’t even exist a short while before the System came.

He gave himself a light slap on his face. He had wanted to be that powerful hero surviving against all odds and this was that moment. It was just another obstacle in his path to infinite power. Just like the stories.

Yeah, that was right.

“…you okay mate?” Brock leaned over and asked him, before recoiling back as the boy shot to his feet, a shaky smile plastered across his face.

Harry walked a handful of steps away and faced the expanse, placing his hands on his hips heroically and puffing out his chest with faux pride, “Okay? I’m more than okay. I’m great. This… this is just the beginning of the legends they’ll tell about me for ages to come.”

The sand shifted a little ahead of where he was standing, but Harry didn’t notice. His sights were set on the vast horizons and the countless adventures it held. He was also desperately trying to keep it together. He was a boy that got homesick real easy. He’d never left Boston before, and it was slowly taking its toll.

Brock did notice, however, and his blade snaked down into his hand within the second, “Hey mate… you might wanna step back a bit.”

He looked over his shoulder with confusion and opened his mouth to ask why, but he wasn’t even given the chance as the area in front of him exploded in a shower of sand. Stumbling back and landing in the sand, Harry was bathed in the cooling shadow of a monstrously large scorpion as it rose up high above him and shook off the remaining grains.

Horrified, he watched as a name flickered to life above its head, and instantly, he knew it wanted a fight.

[F] Sand Wraith (LVL 27)

He also knew that they were going to die.

Harry doubted even Calvin, wherever the man was, could deal with something of this level, let alone him, who not only had next to no combat experience but was also more than half its level.

He cursed loudly and scrambled back, all but certain his life was forfeit. He called out in terror to his shaggy companion, but he didn’t hold out hope for the unlevelled guy, nor did he expect him to have stayed around long enough after it appeared to even hear him.

His eyes shook as he watched the all-black scorpion loom over him, the stinger tail he was only somewhat familiar with rearing back ominously. Still skittering back but finding himself going only a small distance in the loose sand, Harry screamed out as the pointed tail shot downward, a vibrant yellow venom dripping from the end.

If the mere force of the strike didn’t obliterate him, then he knew that the potent venom would finish the job.

What he didn’t expect, however, was to see a blazing orange shortsword attached to an ethereal chain as it streaked horizontally across the sky. Promptly, it severed the chitinous tail with ease and let the remnant force carry it off into the distance. Which only really meant it impacted the ground heavily a few meters from Harry, making him roll away in panic.

The blade quickly retreated, and Harry lifted his head to see the form of the man from before as the chain-sword slithered up into his hand. He gripped it tightly. Noticing the kid was looking at him, Brock desperately signalled for him to fall back, but Harry was too dumbstruck to respond.

He watched the man curse and rush forward at speeds that would put most Olympic sprinters to shame, let alone Calvin.

Closely, Harry observed as he jumped and soared through the sky, a ball of seething fire bursting to life on the palm of his free hand and quickly being loosed toward the monster chittering with rage. It smashed into one of its pincers, and Harry gagged as the chitin bubbled and melted, the smoke seeping up his nostrils and smelling like charred ass.

…Gross.

Without missing the opening left by the beast’s sudden pain, the man landed on the very same pincer and severed it without effort, stepping onto the main body and resisting its thrashing as it furiously tried to murder the human atop it.

Only now, as the Sand Wraith’s many sharp legs tore into the ground and inched closer to him, Harry regained his bearings and rose to his feet, sprinting all the way back to the shaded safety of the gas station.

Panting and fearful, he turned around and grimaced as Brock was smacked aside by the freely bleeding remains of the monster’s tail, sending him a handful of meters away and rolling across the sand. The creature hastily gave chase, storming over to him as he began to stand.

Before he could react, it smashed him to the ground once more with its remaining pincer. His pinned down form was revealed to Harry through a veil of falling sand.

Looming over him, it plunged its face downward, several sets of spiked mandibles reaching out and attempting to grasp onto the beast’s prey and drag him into its waiting maws. Harry inched closer with panic but found himself unable to think of even a single way he could help his companion.

Luckily, the man didn’t even seem to need his help, and he grasped two of the roaming mandibles with his bare hands, the chitin cracking sickeningly underneath the raw power of his grip. Orange blood dribbled down his arms.

Though what he did next overwhelmed Harry with shock as he tore one of the mandibles off and reached his hand into the gap it had left behind. In the air, while it had only been a slight presence before, Harry felt the density of a strange type of energy – one similar yet entirely different to the powers he’d seen from Ascendancies - ramp up significantly in the surrounding area.

The next second, Harry’s eyes widened, and he fell on his ass as an explosion of radiant fire roared through the mouth of the beast, briefly illuminating its insides through the chitin plates of armour before the rampant energies finally exploded out the back of the beast. The area was immediately showered in a spray of charred flesh, bubbling chitin, and sizzling sunset blood.

Left dumbstruck, the boy stared on as the creature gave one final shudder and fell limp atop his saviour. He sucked in a breath and continued to watch as the man dug himself out from under the hulking body of the beast and stood, brushing the sand and scorpion spittle from his already filthy frame.

At least he tried to maintain cleanliness, even if he was doing an utterly terrible job at it.

Sighing aloud, the man wandered over to Harry, and almost idly, the kid noticed that despite the raving mandibles he had stuck his arm into, it was only littered with a slew of light cuts. He looked down to the boy and offered an overly warm hand, which Harry happily took.

“You okay mate?” Brock asked, checking over the kid with his eyes for any wounds.

Harry didn’t reply for a short while, just opting to stare intensely at the man with pure wonder and amazement in his eyes. Then, he finally did, “DUDE! You blew that thing’s back out!”

After a brief moment where nothing happened, the man opposite him began to rub the bridge of his nose in disappointment, “You know, I was feeling good about saving you, but now you just went and made it weird.”