Chapter 16: Fear or Excitement (Patreon)

True to his words, Jason didn’t sleep that night. If he did, Zed was not aware. He had been awake before Zed had laid on the hard ground and tucked his upper arms under his head and had been the one to wake him at the rise of dawn.

To Zed’s surprise, they scattered the fire before they left the building. They didn’t just turn it out, they cleared the wood and brushed the place until it was hard to tell it had been used. When Zed asked why the thoroughness, Ash’s response had been solemn but simple.

“Makes it harder to know anyone was there.”

Zed wondered why they’d want to hide signs of their presence that thoroughly. That level of concealment was designed to counter a certain level of intelligence, and he didn’t know of any monsters with intelligence that high. Then again, he didn’t know many monsters at all. There was also another possible option, one he really hoped was not true.

He could understand humans fighting against humans before the second awakening, but with monsters running around, dwindling their population, it was a bit depressing to think they would still go at each other’s throats. Sadly, no level of joviality and optimism sufficed to blind him from that reality.

Zed and the team walked for the entire day as they had done yesterday. This time, conversations were stale and mostly boring. In the end, they settled on conversations surrounding the purpose of their expedition.

Zed garnered little from it.

They were headed towards a monster sighting. As Oliver had told Zed, it was a request from a small town Chris had picked sometime before they’d met him.

“You sure someone hasn’t already cleared it?” Oliver asked, picking up a piece of broken tar as large as his hand as they began venturing out of the destroyed city.

“Most unlikely,” Chris said. “According to the person I got it from, it was pending for months and no one was willing.”

“Then why exactly were you?” Zed asked.

“Because someone has to take care of the monsters,” Ash answered in Chris' stead.

“Then I guess we’re a do good team.”

“What’s that?”

“You know,” Zed made a vague gesture, “heroes for justice?”

She gave him a confused look.

“Justice league? Avengers?” Zed’s jaw dropped at her growing frown. “Nothing?”

Beside him Jason chuckled and Ash groaned.

“Oh, God, no,” she complained. “Not another comic book nerd.”

“It’s not about being a nerd,” Zed protested.

“It actually is, because you can remember Justice League and Marvel and Superman but can’t remember where you’re from.”

Zed paused. “Before we go forward on that, who’s Superman?”

Jason and Oliver clamped a hand on his shoulder, one for each shoulder, halting him.

“You’re joking, right?” Oliver pleaded. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“How can you know Justice League but not superman,” Jason asked. “It’s like knowing Marvel but not Thor.”

Zed thought about it before nodding. “I know Thor,” he said. “God of Thunder and Lightning, rides a chariot drawn by goats. That’s Norse mythology, right?”

Jason’s hand left Zed’s shoulder and he sighed in dejection. Oliver followed after him.

“We really need to find a way to get your memories back, Zed,” Oliver said.

“Or get him something with a functioning internet access,” Jason added.

Zed looked between both of them, then at Ash. “Are they alright?”

“No,” she said. “Having memory loss is having memory loss. But for nerds, having incomplete comic book knowledge is like being incomplete.”

“Well, I think they’re overreacting. It’s really not that bad. And I got the Thor guy, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Just not the right Thor.” Ash paused. “And if you know Justice League and Avengers but you don’t know those heroes, then who do you know from them?”

Zed shrugged. “I just know the names. They sounded appropriate at the time. You know, they fight—”

“No.” Oliver shook his head. “We’re not going any further. I like you, you’re an okay dude, and I don’t want to stop liking you. So, no.”

“Uhh, okay?”

They lulled into an awkward silence after that. In truth, the awkwardness existed between Zed and Oliver and touched Jason only mildly. For Ash and Chris, the silence was entertaining, if the constant sounds of their interspaced chuckles was anything to go by.

The remnants of the broken city emptied onto a path of rocky roads and barren lands on both sides as far as the eyes could see. There were poles hazardously interspaced and further investigation showed they were what was left of the rows of power lines.

Most of Zed’s mind was occupied by the concept of runes as they walked.

His mind fought to draw up the rune he’d struggled so hard to recreate last night and failed each time. It was vague, present but impossible to grasp no matter how hard he tried. He tried thinking of it in lines rather than the drawing he’d seen and it became worse. The entire ordeal was like remembering an uncle you met only as a child.

No, he thought. More like an amazing one-night stand that happened ten years ago.

It was akin to waking up from a dream but being unable to remember it. No matter how hard you tried, it continued to hover at the edge of remembrance, close enough that you believe you can reach it but far enough that you never will. The only remnant of the dream was the emotion it left invoked in you upon waking and the fact that you know you dreamt simply because you’d been asleep.

Zed shook his head, banishing the slowly growing obsession. Explaining it to himself was becoming as complicated as the task itself.

Jason led them off the road and onto the dusty barren lands. Ahead of them, at the end of the barren lands, was a forest.

“Is it odd that I’m not surprised the people you got the request from live in the woods?” Zed asked.

“Yes,” Chris answered, giving him a strange look. “I don’t think anyone’s living in the woods.”

“Even after the second awakening?”

“Even after the second awakening,” Chris confirmed. “A lot of people died in the second awakening, but after the initial natural disasters and all that, there were more than enough places to stay.”

“Places with monsters,” Zed said. “You can’t tell me there were no monsters hiding under the beds after that.”

Everyone paused, silent.

“You kinda fell flat on that one,” Oliver told Zed, breaking the silence.

“Really? I thought I nailed it quite well.”

Ash shook her head. “Nope. You didn’t. It was too easy so its already overused.”

Chris patted Zed on the back. “You’ll get them next time, Bloodbath. Or better yet, the world will be a better place if there’s no next time. Think about it.”

“Alright, alright,” Zed shrugged her off. “I get it, mean girl. You don’t like me very much. But more importantly, if they don’t live in the woods, why are we heading there?”

“Because that’s where the monsters were spotted,” Jason said. “The town is on the other side of it.”

“You’re telling me we’re going to the site first and not to the town to confirm if there’s still a monster at the site?”

“It’s right there, Zed,” Jason said, gesturing at the forest ahead of them. “Just between us and the village. You can’t expect us to ignore it and go all the way to the village, do you?”

Zed smiled shiftily. “If I say I do, will we?”

“No.”

………………………………………………

The forest reminded Zed of the one he’d woken up in. It was full with tall, leafy trees, fat with nutrition and riddled with bugs. It wasn’t as colorful, and he wasn’t surprised to find out. From what he could remember so far, a forest as colorful as the one he’d woken up in was abnormally odd.

It was evening when they got to the forest, and while there was still enough light in the sky to see with, the forest was dark with the canopy of trees. They were walking quietly, Oliver’s gaze oddly blank like someone trying to listen for something when a thought came to Zed’s mind.

“Apart from when we went to bed,” he said, “we’ve been walking for two days straight and I’m not tired. Is that normal?”

“That’s not what two days straight means,” Ash corrected. “The fact that we rested already nullifies that phrase.”

“And I get the feeling you’re an English nerd,” Zed said. “But my question is more important to me than telling you to stop being picky, so… Anybody willing to help me out here?”

“Oliver already explained to you that we don’t need much sleep, right?” Jason asked.

“Right,” Zed answered.

“That’s because we don’t just run on only food anymore, we run on mana mostly now. It keeps our stamina high and we don’t really experience fatigue unless we use up our mana reserves. That’s the mana we store inside us.”

“Cool.”

“It is,” Jason agreed, ducking under a very low hanging branch. “But it has a downside. If we get into a really serious fight and burn our core dry, it becomes a problem. Running your core empty is like running a marathon. After that, everything we do is taken from the nutrients in our body, just like any normal person.”

“So I’m running on mana right now,” Zed noted.

“Not really. If Heimdall’s research on attribute mages is correct, you’re running on both mana and whatever’s in your system right now.”

“Then his research is wrong,” Zed said. “I haven’t eaten anything since I found you guys.”

“Despite the rubbish you cooked?” Chris chuckled. “I guess you had enough sense not to eat it. What even led you to it?”

“Was checking something,” Zed muttered softly.

In truth, he was checking something because he wasn’t sure whether to be terrified or not. He had lived The Berserker’s anger. In the memory he had killed a man by decimating his face, and it had left a strong impact on him. It had been so bad he’d woken up with the pain of The Berserker’s wounds, vivid in his mind, the feeling of crushed bones and blood on his fists, and a strong need to activate his pain resistance rune only to realize he didn’t have it.

When he’d outlived the pain and his head was clearer, Zed had gotten the overwhelming urge to cook. Apparently, a part of him was under the impression that it would help calm him. And it did. So while he had no patch of memory involving him in the kitchen, he knew he could cook, just as The Berserker knew he could kill.

So he went to test the theory. It was one thing to have the memory in his head but another to know he could do it. When he entered the kitchen, it had been familiar, instinctual. The touch of the pots, the burners, the utensils. The knife in his hand was so familiar, and the thoughts of recipes came unencumbered.

So he’d gone to work.

He’d gone for something simple. He pulled the knowledge from his mind actively, broke the eggs and gathered the ingredients for the sauce. But despite the knowledge being there and his body moving accurately, something simply wasn’t connecting. Something was missing. It was like cooking with pictures instead of a written recipe.

His mind knew the works, knew the moves, but the little aspects his body could follow, like cracking the eggs and dicing the ingredients, were things it could not string together. If cooking was supposed to be a jug with a liter of water, what Zed had were four cups of water, each a quarter of a liter worth. It was too broken and it had taken his mind a moment too late to realize that egg sauce was a vastly different recipe from eggs and sauce. It had taken him a simple taste to realize that simply chucking ingredients into a pot was different from actually cooking, no matter how good it felt doing it.

On the bright side, cooking had served to calm his mind and restore some form of control just as he had felt it would. On another side, he wondered if he should be worried. He might’ve proven he couldn’t necessarily do what the lives in his memories could do but he’d also proven he had a potential to be able to. He didn’t know how to feel about it when interpreted to The Berserker’s violence.

Was it a good thing that he had the potential towards brutal cruelty towards humans; the potential to kill and destroy another human being, or was it not?

And what was the proper reaction to that?

Fear or excitement?