The Legend of Erick, Chapter 2

"Shhhh! It's ok Lucien!" He throws his arms around her in an effort to comfort her. She's shaking and she's not calming down but at least she stopped screaming. "We have to go."

She shoves him away. "WHAT IS GOING ON?"

What's he to tell her? What's there even to tell her? He has no idea what is going on any more than she does if he's honest about it. The voice didn't tell him anything – it didn't explain anything. So he stands there, kind of gaping at her, mouth opening and closing with nowhere to begin. He created that lightning strike, that much he knows. "I will tell you everything that just happened as soon as we get away from here."

Lucien is looking at him like she has no idea who is his and all he wants is to wipe that look off her face. She's his best friend and he needs her now more than ever.

"Lucien. Kayla. Please."

The use of her first name visibly startles her. He hasn't called her Kayla since that first day they met.

"Ok." She takes his outstretched hand and they run.

-

Erick lays down in his bed. When they made it back to their houses, Lucien ripped away from him. She seemed so scared of him. He tried to talk to her but she turned her back and walked away. He watched her retreat into her house. Maybe she just needed time to process.

He heard the fire trucks not long after.

As he lays there, he thinks about the female voice from the darkness. The thing is as freaked out as he is and despite how terribly afraid he is to bring his hands into contact with each other in massive fear he might accidentally burn down his house – his instinct is to trust the voice.

He wants to talk to Lucien.

He turns his light on and grabs the walkie-talkie that he keeps on his dresser. "All hail her holiness, come in, over." The walkie beeps out. He looks at his clock and waits until the numbers flip to the next number. "All hail her holiness, come in, over." The walkie beeps out again.

A couple of seconds later she beeps in. "Her holiness coming in, over." He lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"Can we talk?"

"We are talking Erick."

As he sits there on the edge of the bed, walkie in hand, he realizes he has no idea how to even start this conversation. The walkie beeps, he hears her breath over the walkie. "Warrior prince of Hillside," he smiles at the walkie at the use of his childhood alter ego, "today, I thought today was the day." The fear is still leaking out of her voice even now hours later, "over."

She means death. "Me too. I am sorry to scare you. Can you get out? Over."

"Yeah. I'll be in the garden in 5 minutes. Over and out."

Erick throws on a pair of sweatpants and the first shirt he sees. They have done this so many times he knows the path through the darkness to the backdoor by heart. He slips outside without any creaks. He meets Lucien in her mother's garden and she throws her arms around him in a quick but hard hug. He definitely prefers this to the cold silence of earlier. They sit and he tells her everything that happened while he was unconscious. She sits there, hugging her knees to her chest.

"So she said there's no magic in the world? That it's you who has to bring it?"

"I guess." He tilts his head back to rest against the house; he could see the stars. The small pleasures of living in a small town.

"Erick." Without looking Erick can see the doubt on her face. "This sounds insane."

"Yeah." He looks at her, "but you saw the lightning strike."

"Have you ever thought about it before?" He blinks at her. "You know if magic was actually real or not?"

He shrugs. "I guess I just assumed that some type of force or energy that was beyond us was real but magic like Harry Potter magic, no. I don't think there's a secret world of people running around with sticks making things float."

She lets out a snort of laughter.

"What are you going to do?" And that's the question right. What's next? "Can you do it again? The light in the palm thing."

Snap.

They could see it before he even opened his hand. "Dude," Lucien whispers in awe. "You're an actual freaking wizard."

-

Erick settles in his bed for the second time that night but feeling much better about things. Well, as good as he could feel. The magic and the events of the day finally catching up to him and he is asleep before he knows it.

Same field. Same barn. Same smell. Same sense of being overwhelmed.

Then he sees her.

She's dressed in sleek black pants and a tucked-in black button-down. Her sleeves folded up to expose gold cuffs on both her wrists. She's barefoot. Her black hair slicked back and her dark skin sparklingly. It's so undeniably flawless. She coming from out of the barn and walking towards him. It's her; he already knows it. He doesn't move but the tingling in his hands is as alive as it was the last time he was around her.

As she stops in front of him, she beckons him to sit down. She crosses her legs as she sits; he follows her lead.

"Hello, Erick." Her voice is just as he remembers: gentle and soothing but clearly powerful.

"Umm, hi." A smile tugs at her lips. He finds himself leaning in to look closer at her eyes. They are, well, there's a white ring around her pupils and it's like watching static come to life. There's no other way to describe it besides saying that the ring is literally sparking. He hears her chuckle.

He pulls himself back immediately with a mumbled sorry.

"Let's talk Erick. I'm sure you have a lot of questions."

He nods.

"My name is Adrasi and you, Erick, are my son."

He blinks at her. She claps her hands together and mutters something in some kind of language. Then, as she separates her hands a scene starts unfolding right in front of him.

"Your world, Earth, was born of magic. As more life is created on Earth, the more energy is fed into the source of magic." The things that were walking and flying in the scenes unfolding in front of him are something out of myths and stories. The Earth seemed to be nothing but desert but there were critters with what looks like 20 legs scurrying around then diving into the sand to burrow from attack from a bird that looks like the head of an anteater but with scales. Then it changed to a water scene where his skin literally crawled, too many legs, too many fluorescent bodies, too many things that looked slimy with searching antennas. His nausea was slowly starting to become apparent.

"Yes. The early animals of Earth aren't pleasant to look at, to say the least." The scene starts to become brighter. "Early Earth was going to survive with or without magic but it thrived because of magic. Soon, much sooner than we expected, the source of magic became overburden and exploded." As the scene became brighter, the picture zoomed out to see Earth as a whole as it was engulfed in green light. It whipped through the dullness of the gray and blue, visibly cracking the landforms, causing waves so high that you could see them from space, or what he assumed was space, they were reaching so far inland those entire areas of broken off land was sunken underwater.

"How long did this last?"

"It went on for 15,000 years," Adrasi answers, "wreaking destruction and then Earth went about creating life again." The scene this time showed Earth with less land, bigger oceans, and areas where climate seems to become a thing. "Air, Erick, the Earth created air from the explosion and from there new life forms began to form including simple things like grass." He watched as animals began to grow fur and have fewer legs. "Then it happened again." Just as before, green light exploded through the Earth – creating destruction so widespread that everything, and he means EVERYTHING went underwater. "But with every apocalyptic magical disaster comes new life." The water froze over in certain areas causing ponds, rivers and oceans to be frozen, while in other areas it receded or fell into crevices. It was incredible. The new life formed this time was more like he expected – the dinosaurs. Real life Jurassic Park.

"Then one more time, except this time was different." As the picture zoomed back out to get Earth as a whole, Adrasi continued, "it seemed that Earth had created a sort of self-defense system. When the explosion happened so did many other natural disasters around Earth. What happened was that it simultaneously wiped out huge chunks of life forms exactly when the explosion occured. Between the two, almost all life form was wiped out but Earth itself was relatively left unharmed." What came next were humans – large groups of humans in multiple southern sections of the world.

"How?" He asked, awestruck but still slightly nauseous.

"We think it was the magic. It intermingled with the species that weren't wiped out by the natural disasters. The Earth was able to balance the source of magic so quickly that when magic did reach certain species, it kind of turned off in the midst of its destructive course. So everything being touched by magic at that moment was transformed into something new. The human's theory of evolution is right but it was more instantaneous and with considerably more magic." Erick sat there in the middle of the field of daisies, dumbstruck.

"These days the Earth always corrects itself. There hasn't been a magical release since the dinosaurs but that doesn't mean magic has left. It just needs to be released."

"Why? If everything is balanced then why release it?"

"Because my son, Earth is dying. Humans are killing it and it's killing itself with every overcorrection. At this rate, Earth will die by over-correcting itself within the next 50 years. The overcorrection will be so dire that we don't think Earth will survive a rebirth." The scene unfolding in front of him were the ones he had seen on tv. Ice melting, animals dying, gases being released, huge machines drilling into the ocean and into mountains – and beside it, a number in blue that decreases more and more with each scene.

"This says 10 years."

"Yes, that's how long we have to fix it before humanity is wiped out. Hence your birth. You are the savior of this world. You were born able to wield magic because I transferred some of my energy, my power, into you. Now that you are of age, it is time."

"Nope. Not me." Erick firmly says. He has to wake up now.

"Erick..."

"No!" Snap.

Erick shoots up in his bed, sweating, breathing hard. His fingers tingling. He leans over the side of his bed and throws up.

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Chapter 1