With the plan agreed, a couple of things had to happen first.

Firstly, some ropes were attached to the steel beam so that people could stabilise it prior to it being dropped. It was hanging horizontally but the theory was that it would act somewhat like a guillotine.

It was already pretty much in position, it just needed a few minor adjustments.Secondly, everyone was encouraged to get a hit in via either throwing a rock at the creature, or stabbing it with one of the long makeshift spears being fashioned.

This was to share the…Experience points.

As expected, this was referring to the shimmer.

It sounds really weird to hear others have already started to match up these leveling slash XP observations, but it kind of makes it all....real.

This was according to Steve anyway, who was really growing on me.

I need to try and find more out from him, he seems the most switched on person here.

There were mixed emotions about this whole somewhat barbaric approach, since people were still human, and wounding a completely tied down defenceless creature rubbed people wrong on a fundamental level.

Many also felt their children should not be exposed to such violence, however a simple argument against that was “sorry but we need to start thinking practically in this irrational new world.”

The fast running young teenage girl, who was called Triya, pressed this and told a story about how her whole family had been slaughtered because they didn’t pay attention to her when she told them they needed to start defending themselves, once she cottoned on to what was happening.

But tragically they ignored her and, one night, they were attacked by a swarm of horrific toddler sized spider like nightmares that had horned mutated animal heads.

Her parents STILL refused to run and said they would be saved by authorities and that's when she realised they weren’t going to protect her and her younger brother, so they fled.

But their baby sister..

She tilted her baseball cap and lowered her face at the end part. It didn't take a genius to fill in the silence she left.

Only one family chose not to let their children partake in the rock throwing after listening.

The rest of the crowd very quickly found a brick or rock to give to the young ones and told them to throw it at the monster before moving back to a safe distance or heading home.

Once one person threw a rock, it didn't take long for everyone to push past any morale conflict and tag some sort of damage.

It was yet another fucking troubling event to witness as small scratches and cuts appeared on its skin. The creature just hissing and snarling but not really seeming to care otherwise.

But it felt awful to see kids doing it, losing their innocence.

With the ropes in position and Anton in the cab of the crane, a line of us nervous souls stood in front of the beast, with makeshift spears and a dozen people with some spare ropes and chains.

The backup 'plan' was that should the beam fail, we would just start stabbing it to death.

And if that fails…?

Syvlie called out to each team of people. “Ready?!”

Shit. This better work.

“READY!” The rope teams responded.

“GOOD TO GO SYL!” Tanner was holding the line with us.

“AYE MA’AM!” Anton called out from the cab window.

“OK. ANTON, GO AHEAD!!” Sylvie gave the order to begin.

We heard a buzzing and whirr, as the crane was brought back to life and started adjusting. It only needed to be pulled back one or two metres and was done after 5 seconds.

The two teams holding ropes to steady the beam, groaned and heaved as the extremely heavy beam swayed with a very scary weight to it.

A few long minutes passed until they managed to steady it. The groups called out ready and Syvlie gave the final call.

“RELEASE!”

I felt my stomach drop to the floor as we heard the buzzing and then silence, before a rusty hinge noise squealed out and then a CLUNK as the latch disengaged.

The beam froze in place as the chains seemed to fall faster, but it was a nail biting few seconds as it all plunged straight down.

..

..

*THUD*

The beam had been aimed fantastically and the sheer force of this multi-ton beam falling was evident when it fell and didn’t slow down a bit, even when it came into contact with the creature's neck.

It smashed right down, the beam didn't even bounce, boasting its terrifying weight.

The monster was killed instantly and didn’t even let out a scream or roar as the head was detached from the body and gore burst out of its ears and mouth. There was an excessive amount of blood flowing from the neck.

The whole scene was hushed except for at least two people vomiting and a kid crying.

Damn not sure if I'd let my kid watch..but then again, this might be the new norm from now on..

We waited 30 seconds.

60 Seconds.

180 Seconds.

We're fucked if the thing can regenerate itself.

Then there was movement…

Rust! There were patches of rust forming!

Someone shouted out “I SEE THE RUST! IT'S DEAD!”

Cue victory fanfare!

Everyone erupted into cheers of joy before people started shushing “keep the fucking noise down are you insane!?”

People chuckled and continued celebrating in hushed voices, patting each other on the back.

It was a huge victory even if it was a simple execution, but it felt like an impossibly amazing results considering not a single person had been killed.

All these people have survived the first few days, that probably says something by itself.

People moved closer and all gathered to watch in awe, as a huge swirl of shimmer started to form into a cloud and rise above the creature.

The large swirling shimmer cloud started rotating faster and tendrils formed like tiny vortex’s, threading out, seeking if their intended target was close.

Some cut off from the main mass and each reacted in different ways.

It was so surreal.

A few people put their hands out to gently cradle their shimmer.

Others mildly started to panic as the mist whipped into their mouth, nose and ears or jumped into a few small wounds people had.

A bunch of people had hacked up some of the black crap which was interesting to note, causing some panic before they recovered and detailed how good they felt.

Some got very clear weapons, some got clothing or jewellery, others got an assortment of tools and then a group of lads started pissing themselves as one of their mates got a literal knight's helmet with a feather sticking out the top.

"Fuck off Dargran, it's still a helmet!"

It was so strange but people just accepted and embraced it and even celebrated it.

Seeing so many people still living, making jokes even! Gives me a good feeling we might just be able to adapt to this.

With a faint smile, I looked up as something glinting caught my eye.

I noticed a few razor thread-like strands, only noticeable due to reflecting the sunset, were flying away, towards the houses. Something I hadn’t seen before, considering all the shimmer I’d seen would only react when you got close to it.

Beautiful, if you ignore the violent source.

I felt a faint pull as my shimmer stream found me so I reached out and held my palm out.

As it got closer, I saw tiny beads of blood form on my skin, as a few wisps of shimmer seeped out to meet the newcomer.

As they connected, they seemed to twirl around each other before tightening and a wave of cyan blue briefly swam along the whole swarm, like a pearlescent black, silver, cyan rainbow.

The mist started to dive onto my arms and then swirling up and around and pooling on the surface.

They travelled up my arms and I felt a cold sensation going over my shoulders and onto my shoulder blades.

The cold turned into pins and needles and then I gasped in agony as the feeling went from cold to a white hot searing pain that lasted a few seconds.

It was enough to make me fall to my knees and Tanner, who had been watching me, came over and offered a hand.

“Hey matey, you alright?” He was grinning as he held out a hand to help me.

“Ha, ugh. Yeah man, it’s just my shoulder blades feel-argh tsss-sore..” I hissed pulling myself up with his help.

“Hold up a sec” He went to the side of me and without hesitation just took a peek down the back of my top. No decency!

“Yooooo. Uhh…I hate to break this to you, but congrats on the new tats bud, I mean I'm guessing they are new? Jeez, they do look sore.”

“Uhhh thanks…WAIT THE WHAT?!” I strained my head to get a glimpse of what he meant, before I experienced a VERY new sensation that felt like there was a huge vacuum sucking on my back shoulder blades, pulling at the skin and I heard a metallic tinkling, like tiny metal pebbles falling down onto a pane of glass.

To my continued complete shock, I felt a new pair of somethings attached to my back and I found that I could move them, as easily as I could move my arms.

“WHAT THE FUCK DID IT DO TO ME!? HOLY SHIT IT’S WEIRD, IT DOESN'T HURT BUT SHIT!!! HOW DO I GET THEM OFF!” I was starting to very obviously panic.

“WOA STAY CALM MAN HOLD STILL DON’T PANIC! WOA WOA!” Tanner was frantically trying to dodge my new found limbs as I spun around and around and they were flapping around.

People instinctively moved back several paces. Large paces.

“CALM?! I NEED….I need…” I stopped and for some reason my brain got completely distracted as I forgot what I wanted to say.

But that pause gave me time to realise what else can I do except calm down.

Whatever just happened, happened.

“I need to…” I sighed and decided to well and truly stop caring about the crazy shit anymore.

From now on, I will not let anything phase me, no matter how mental it appears.

Internally, I snapped off a piece of my old mind and tossed it away.

Won’t be needing this anymore.

“Alright. Yeah sure. You’re right, man. Take a look and I’ll try and hold still.” I rubbed my face with both hands, wanting to get this over with.

Thank fuck Marri went back to the house with Lyra and Sylvie.

As I held still, Tanner inspected them in the most reassuring way possible.

“Ohhhh shittt man that is mental!”

“Woaaaaa how does that even work?!”

“Yoo that doesn't look normal, are you supposed to have that sticking out there??”

“...Tanner Mate please!” My new appendages shuddered and made a slight grating noise at my anxiety, making him flinch back.

“Ahhhh sorry man sorry…let me explain what I see”

And that, he did.

I had a pair of structures that came directly out of my new ‘tats’ as he so fondly referred to them. The structures came straight out from my skin and Tanner gently tried to move the base of it around to see if it was attached to skin or to bone and to my hidden horror, it looked to be anchored to bone.

But the spooky thing was that it was passing through my clothes and I don't think it had made a hole..

The whole structure was smooth and impossibly matte black, with the surface constantly shifting and slightly changing.

But it essentially was two flexible pipes sticking out of my back that had a half shield attached on each side. When moved together, they formed a complete spearhead-shaped shield that was separated into 6 different plated big scales that were in the exact shape of the tattoo.

He drew a bunch of lines in the sand to show me their shape.:

________________

\______//\\______/

\_____//\\_____/

\____//\\____/

\___//\\___/

\__//\\__/

\_//\\_/

“It is that kinda’ shape mate…and it splits neatly in half at the middle. There’s a bit more to it but I can’t be fucked to draw the rest soz. I ain’t no picasso.”

I gave him an unimpressed look.

Okay, what is their purpose, can I detach them as shields? Or are they wings?

I tried flapping them fast, but that did absolutely nothing except make them ache with over exertion.

I’m not a half pigeon that is for sure.

People had started to get bored watching and drifted off, I didn't pay attention either way whilst I continued my tests.

I stretched them as far as I could. They could be extended all the way to cover my sides.

I could even position them in front of me.

The pipes connecting them to my back didn't seem to have joints, but were more like a snake, being able to twist or bend in any direction.

The shield halves could also rotate and spin indefinitely! Which made me look closer at where the pipe connected to the shield portion, but the whole thing's surface was crawling and shifting, so you couldn’t really see seams or joins which was a bit gross to look at knowing it was connected to me..

Damn, that is sorta cool though! I have tattoo shields!

“Hey uhhhh, Godu, right?” I heard a voice coming closer to me and when I turned to face them, I saw it was Steve.

He looked a bit scrawny and short, with light stubble and trimmed hair. He wore typical preppers camo gear that looked well worn.

“Ah ‘alright Steve! Yes mate, that's me.” I said.

He grinned before showing me a brick in his hand and saying..

“Well I saw you have received some Majiglyphics and wanted to show you how mine work as well.”

“Some Majelly-rickets what now?” I replied in a half baffled, half joking tone.

He pinched his nose and sighed..

“Yes. I know the name isn’t the greatest but I haven’t had much time to think of what else to call it. ‘Majik-Tats’ seems a bit crude considering how powerful they are.”

I paused for a moment, processing.

“Majitek?” I suggest. Hoping that I wasn’t breaching some kind of copyright law somewhere..

“Hmmm. That is a good one…they are reminiscent of technology and majik…” Steve looked thoughtful.

I know this is absolutely not a priority right now, but it feels good to be having just a somewhat normal conversation..must enjoy it while it lasts…oh! What about..

“Majigram? Hmm actually no scratch that…Majirune? Naw doesn’t sound right…Perhaps, Majiglyph to keep it short?”

Steve's eyes lit up and he nodded fervently “That’s it! Perfect!”

And thus, the Majiglyph was named.

“Okay so I wanted to show you what mine does, watch carefully..”

My shield arms shuddered nervously, almost like they had a mind of their own, as I watched with anticipation.

He pulled back the sleeve on the arm holding the brick, revealing familiar tattoos to mine, his were a dark metallic brown colour.

I watched as streams burst from the Majiglyph and jumped into the brick. The red brick started to break down as if being melted, and then started to take shape into the form of a little golem with glowing brown joints and a pair of glowing brown eyes!

Steve then simply tilted his hand and the golem started to fall.

Right before it hit the ground, it tucked itself and, with robotic precision, landed on its feet.

Steve grinned without saying anything but then crouched down and held out his hand.

The golem came back up to his hand and then put a small hand onto Steve’s. The glowing faded as streams of shiny metallic brown returned to Steve's Majiglyph and the golem collapsed into a pile of rubble.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhh wow.” I said dumbfounded.

“I know right? On the first day this all happened, I flew out my DJIM2 Drone to check what was going on, and when I saw the mobs and people getting eaten and all kinds of horrible things…so I uhh, modified the drone to be more lethal and managed to take out a bunch of Notpidgy's.”

I gave him a puzzled look.

“Oh uh, a Notpidgy is what people call the oversized ex-pigeons. They can’t fly anymore because their wings have mutated into giant claws. They are horrible nasty cretins.” Steve grimaced.

I sighed looking into the horizon and gave a nod “A lot of nasty cretins out there now.” I said.

“Heh yeah definitely…but anyway. I wanted to show you this because the Majik that comes out of the glyphs..can also go back in!” Steve said.

Majik seems to be the popular term. But hell yeah it would be nice if these shields can go back in on command!

I breathed a sigh of relief “NICE…"

I waited for him to continue with a grin, but an awkward moment of silence ensued.

"Uhh. How do you do it? Is it some sort of mental command or what?” I broke the silence.

“Not really a command per se, if you mentally commanded ‘arm, I want you to bend at the elbow’ you wouldn’t get a response….right?” he paused, then looked at the pile and squinted in concentration.

“Nope. I get nothing at all when doing mental commands. What I do however, is treat it as just another extension to my body. I got the hang of it best, when I realised it’s a bit like blinking, breathing or trying to tense a specific muscle. You usually do it automatically, but when you focus on that area…you can sort of just feel how to control it.”

I nodded thoughtfully, and started to stare at the ground, focusing on my back. I could feel the two new joints and I carefully moved them around. I pulled them in as close to my body as possible until they were pushed right up against my skin. I pushed them in a bit more and felt a strange resistance..

Suddenly with a metallic tinkling sound, the entire structure started to rush back in, making me gasp, and after a few seconds they were completely gone.

I touched the area and the skin was ever so slightly raised but was otherwise smooth.

There was no hole in my clothes either..

“Wow, that is….ugh my head..” my vision started to spin and I fell on my hands.

“Whoa there, you okay?” Tanner supported me via one of my arms.

“Ugh yeah…just need to lie down I think…” I winced and shakily got up to my feet.

My stomach made a huge growling noise.

“Oh..or that heh.” I weakly chuckled, there was a pause before Steve burst out laughing which prompted Tanner to join in as well.

“Come gentlemen, let's go grab some provisions at my place. You'll need to fill me in in on your adventure Tanner and I suspect we have much more to discuss.” Steve waved for us to follow as he led the way.

Invited to my first post apocalyptic dinner, nice!

Before I went to join Steve and Tanner, I’d gone back to the house to check up with Marri and keep her updated. UNsurprisingly, she found it hysterical that I’d gotten a nonconsensual tattoo. I think she was just relieved that we’d managed to survive another day in this crazy new world.

I sat holding Lone and cuddling her in blissful silence before Sylvie came to chat.

Sylvie reiterated that we were welcome to stay with them indefinitely and she once again thanked me with great sincerity for coming back to get her home.

She said she now knew why she had a strong intuition that we were good people that first night. The key reason she felt compelled to stay and make sure we were ok.

I did ask her what happened after we first parted ways on the first night, but she paled, shook her head and said she didn’t want to go into it right now and I understood that.

I really understood that.

She must have seen some really bad things.

Finally, I got to the subject about where on earth everyone had been hiding and how everyone had come out to mine and Tanner's rescue.

Erza jumped up to tell the story there.

She explained that after I ‘delivered’ Sylvie whilst grinning - I chuckled nervously at the pun

It was more of a ‘dumping’ but also she was a maternity nurse - delivered, delivering babies? Ah the dad jokes just come straight away don't they.

Anyway, she had dragged her inside and Marri had woken up at the shouting and then saw Sylvie.

She’d then come over to help Erza get Sylvie off the sled, and she’d touched Sylvie on her wounded arm. Once she had placed her hands, they said a purple silvery mist began to seep out of her hands and repair the wounds right in front of their eyes.

After getting over the shock, Sylvie had bolted up, extremely confused but obviously extremely happy, hugs all round whilst getting the story about us saving her and she stormed into action.

Sylvie was the community chair for the estate so she rushed around the houses and started hammering doors, gathering people.

She mentioned with a sad expression that she'd witnessed firsthand the effectiveness of strength in numbers all too well.

Interestingly enough, people had witnessed our arrival and were already heading out, timid but wanting to help the stranger who had saved one of their own, thrice already including Sylvie Erza and Lyra, and who'd help bring back Tanner in one piece.

Tanner being the main reason they had been keeping an eye out due to his 'gracefulness'.

But they gathered everyone that had been hiding out and came rushing over.

And just in time!

“No requirement to perform any safety tests for my Violet DEW Majik!” Erza grinned and gave a gun finger motion and then blew fake smoke off the end.

“That was you that shot those violet blasts? I owe you my life, thank you so much Erza, seriously.”

She preened “No need to thank me! Just returning the favour.”

We chatted a bit longer about the mundane, and baby stuff, which was great as it sounded like Lone was doing really well.

I was about to exit the front door to go meet Tanner and Steve, before I stopped to pause and listen.

Marri, Erza, Sylvie and Lyra all got on like a house on fire and they were laughing and chatting about themselves.

I got the sense that Sylvie was a natural leader and motivator.

I mean you have to have some serious skills to encourage a woman to keep on going after hours and hours of labour right?!..

It was getting very dark as I made my way to Steve's house and once I arrived, I could see a small Golem standing guard on the porch.

As I stopped to inspect it closer, I could make out that it was holding two wooden spoons with razor blades screwed into the spoon part.

I swear I heard a faint echo of someones voice…”fucking Steve…goddam pyscho..”

The door opened before I even knocked and I was invited in by Steve's grinning face lit up by the candle he was holding.

For the next few hours we ate some hearty tinned stew and chatted about our experiences, stories, observations and hypotheses.

Surprisingly, I had a lot more to give than to receive, so to speak.

The dreams about the garden were universal, on the scale of anyone we'd spoken to but people needed to kill something first.

Steve had no shadow of a doubt that the garden was where we levelled up after a days worth of experience gathering.

They really loved my name for the place. Maybe I should start a career naming all these new phenomena.

He was convinced that there must be a way to do certain things out in the 'open world', his term, such as allocate stats, skills or check vitals and statuses.

There had been no luck figuring it out yet however.

But it seemed that fundamental growth was only viable during cycles of sleep or even unconsciousness and Steve guessed this was maybe due to delicate processes involved as our bodies adjusted to permanent structural changes.

The tablets were options for skills or powers, and Steve was fairly confident in the other 4 icons roles.

Sword was attack focused.

Shield was defense focused.

Feather focused on speed, figured out thanks to a discussion he’d had with Triya and because hers was boosted by skills she had.

Circle Glyph was Majik focused, mainly on potency.

Steve gave an example he’d discovered after finding out that someone else could create golems just like him.

They both had the same golem create skill but Steve could create 3 brick golems, whilst his friend could only do 2.

The only difference between them both was that Steve had higher Majik.

"Bear in mind, it appears to be based on mass as well as a control limit. I can do 5 maximum, but they can't be more than 3 bricks worth of mass currently."

The MAGN value was currently inconclusive, but was suspected to be a total score of how strong you were or in other words, some representation of what level you were or how close you were to the next.

One shocking revelation was that electricity had stopped being supplied almost instantly as well as a vast majority of electronic devices had been 'removed'.

Anything with a CPU had pretty much been taken, with Steve showing us where his computer rig had been. ONLY the chassis and a few internal components remained, with parts eerily removed as if they never existed.

He mentioned he had a registered rifle, but it had been reduced to slag in its secure container, with the bullets gone, how the gunpowder remained.

Something removed specific materials..

Tanner found everything ‘made sense really when you think about it’.

Me and Steve just did a double take when he said that.

“Sorry, uhh what…makes…sense?”

“Well ya’know, look at it from a simple perspective. Monsters start appearing. People get given powers to fight them. They get stronger after winning. Anything that could give certain people a huge advantage, is removed. That’s it.” Tanner said.

“Yes, it is a massive shitter, but piss aside how you feel about it and that’s the crux of it all. I don't reckon this is a natural thing, the garden can't be natural..right? I mean YES we must have been having dreams since..well fuck if I know but..well, shit. It just can't be normal. Something or someone introduced this crap and it or they, wanted to make sure we didn't have our tech giving us the edge.."

Tanner paused and scratched his stubble thoughtfully.

“Huh. Can’t really argue with that.” I confessed.

"I mean, it must be extremely unlikely that this is some natural cosmic event, bringing mutations and restitching timelines or opening wormholes or something crazy to different dimensions..ha crazy right?"

Steve just shrugged at me and Tanner gave the worst fake smile and thumbs up I'd ever seen.

I wasn't sure what would be more terrifying.

That some entity made all this possible or if it was just a typical event of the universe.

Humanity has only been around for a fraction of time so what do we know?

Maybe all those stories about magic and god's in history were based on previous instances of.. whatever this is.

Thinking about it, the act of killing and absorbing another organism to boost one's self in strength is pretty much everywhere in nature..but the powers and items? There's no links I can think of, the glimmer would have to be some kind of sentient organism with the capacity to manipulate matter. But perhaps that's what Majik has always been.

We chatted a bit more, mainly Steve discussing what we should start doing for longer term survival before we decided to say our goodbyes and headed off, back to….well I guess I’ll call it home for now, in the dark for some rest.

The night-time sounds were very different now.

No cars at all, just distant screams, faint shouts and unnatural far away roars.

The sky was still light polluted, faintly orange from the various campfires of humanity.

But worst of all, there were alien screeches and demonic growls and snuffling coming from the woods that lined the ditch further down below.

I stopped before entering the house and wondered how the other countries were doing, if it was impacting the world or just us.

I wondered if it was just temporary or if we’d go back to normal…

I really wish I could take a hot shower…Huh. That is a good point.

I cautiously sniffed under my black shirt, expecting the worst.

Nothing. I don’t smell bad at…all? I’ll need to check that with Marri tomorrow. Maybe I have some nasty virus killing my sense of smell..

Some bushes rustling close by nearly made me shit myself and I felt a tug on my back for a brief moment before my panic died down. I didn't tempt fate as I hurried inside.

Everyone at home was already asleep, evident by the lack of giggling or talking and I had agreed to sleep on the landing again.

After barricading the front door and heading up, there was a jug of water and a plate of buttered crackers with some jam and chocolate waiting for me. The rest of the house had been secured or barricaded already and so my job was straightforward.

Grinning with appreciation, I tucked in to my midnight snack and then snuggled down on the heavenly cloud of comfort.

I stared at the ceiling in silence as I munched away.

Smiling, I breathed a sigh of relief as my aching body started to wind down and I could feel the familiar feeling of bodily repairs underway after a busy physically active day.

The sounds of crunching disrupting the tinnitus that was seemingly getting louder and louder.

*crunch crunch crunch*

The crunching.

Tanner's leg.

I nearly died.

I nearly was eaten alive.

Tears streamed down my face and my throat started closing up. I curled up into a ball, hugging myself.

I'm getting good at surpressing my sobbing.

Nobody had died, but the experience had been deeply traumatising and my cup was overflowing.

I don't know how much more of this can I take.

…

..

.

***