Montana was a beautiful place. Or at least, there was someone out there who thought that. The various mountain ranges that dotted the state, the abundance of forests and hiking trails, there was surely at least one person in the world who adored the green nature and pine-scented air. Cain was not that person.

He didn’t particularly dislike the landscape, but hours of driving past the same scenery tends to disillusion the viewer from the majesty of the many trees lining the I-90. Not that the scenery inside of his red 2002 Toyota Sienna was any better, but drive for long enough and it becomes easy to criticize any little thing.

The light of the setting sun was barely visible in the sky, twilight giving way to the night. The expanse of stars gazing down at him was a sight that Cain would never grow tired of during his cross-country trips, unlike a certain state’s terrain. He just preferred the dirt and dust of Arizona, even though he hadn’t been there in years. He had enough vacation days left over, so perhaps that small grievance could be rectified soon.

Flipping on his high beams and slowing down marginally, Cain sighed. He had to drive through the night and most of the next day to make it to Minneapolis and hopefully get a few hours of sleep before going back to work on Monday. The foreman was mercifully lenient on letting his workers take vacation days, but made up for it by cracking down on anyone who took a sick day and messed with his schedule. Frank was a good guy, but he just liked keeping things a bit too orderly and didn’t appreciate surprises.

Without warning, a sudden bout of nausea overcame Cain, and he slammed on the brakes, trying to pull over to the side of the two lane road. Barely keeping his eyes open while a headache was forming in his head, and dizziness threatened to make him fall over in his seat, he just barely managed to keep the minivan from toppling over or crashing. At a full stop, with the headache, dizziness, and nausea quickly alleviating, Cain realized that the brake was jammed and he wasn’t even pressing down on it. He had no idea how he wasn’t dead, or how the car stopped.

Unbuckling his seatbelt, Cain feebly opened the driver side door and oozed out of his seat, falling in a heap on the asphalt with a grunt. He knew this was extremely dangerous, especially on an interstate, but he was still recovering from whatever just happened to his body, and didn’t even want to consider having to move a single finger for the next minute. Night was quickly approaching, with some of the brighter stars of the sky already peeking out, twinkling as if taking joy at Cain’s plight. He knew it was an irrational thought, but it didn’t help ease his nerves or heart rate.

Standing up with some effort, Cain leaned on his car for support, the cool metal a comfort against the past couple minutes. His head still felt slightly fuzzy, but Cain could walk unsupported after a few more breaths. He went to the hood of the car, peering at the passenger side and it was not a pretty sight. Half the car was scraped off, having rubbed against the Jersey barrier in order to slow down. At a first glance it looked like some ripped off paint was all the damage, and since no smoke was coming out from under the hood of the car, Cain could rest his mind for a moment.

Taking a second glance at the front of his car, he noticed that the headlights were turned off, and the engine as well. And yet he was able to see the car in perfect clarity, even able to see through the nearby trees into the forest. The acute sickness was worrying but made sense, the brakes not working was alarming but the tension of the moment didn’t allow Cain to think about it too hard, but the full night vision he was currently experiencing was a drop too many in the strange bucket.

He spun around, searching for a sign of something being done to him, to this being planned, for anything. No signs were found, but he saw a white pickup truck had crashed into the opposite side of the interstate. It also didn’t have any smoke coming out of its hood, although the bumper was in shambles. Able to put his fears and doubts temporarily to rest, he crossed the interstate, hopped over the Jersey barrier and took a look inside the driver side of the truck. There was a single, balding man in overalls with a gash on his head that was bleeding heavily. Cain tried the door handle and surprisingly found it unlocked. Not stopping to question it, he opened the door, reached over to unbuckle the man, and dragged him out of the truck, propping him against the front tire. Cain ripped a long portion of cloth off of the sleeve of his flannel and wrapped it tight around the man’s head.

This was a situation he had never expected to find himself in. Frank lectured all of his workers on safety at a frighteningly regular basis, but only on preventative measures, never on first aid. The man didn’t look like he would stir anytime soon, but Cain couldn’t just leave him out in the middle of a road like a piece of trash. He returned to his car and twisted his keys in the ignition to try and start the engine, but nothing happened. Not a single sputter or rumble from the hood. Cain propped it open to take a look, but nothing seemed wrong at a glance. Engine, transmission, battery, everything looked exactly the way it should be. But out of nowhere the engine and brakes ceased to work, leading him to believe something must be wrong.

Cain never had a need to learn how to repair his car, with his own being strangely reliable despite its age. Aside from the occasional oil and tire check, he hadn’t fiddled with his Toyota at all. Not currently feeling eager about his chances to get the engine to start, he closed the hood and took his water bottle out of the back seat to drink. Downing the whole thing in seconds, he didn’t realize he was that thirsty until he finished the bottle. Hungry too. Now that his life wasn’t in immediate danger, his body could shout at him to take care of other important things.

But not being able to catch a single break, Cain suddenly tensed when he heard a nearby growling sound. Clenching his metal bottle tightly in his left hand, he slowly turned around and spotted a wolf a few meters ahead of his car. It was cautiously moving towards him when it suddenly leaped at him, jaws wide. Panicking, Cain brought his left arm in front of his face a moment before the wolf crashed into him, bringing them both into the ground. It was furiously biting the metal as one of its paws was digging into his right forearm. With a scream, Cain kicked the wolf from underneath, pushing it off of him. Before it could right itself, he slammed the bottle onto its head with a sickening crack. Bashing its head in again and again, he only stopped when its head began to squelch.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

For the second time tonight, Cain dropped to the asphalt of the road in a messy heap, but this time covered in blood. Some of it his, most of it not. Constant jolts of pain from his arm wouldn’t let him rest for long though, and with no small amount of effort he managed to get to his feet once more. Ignoring the corpse of what used to be a wolf, Cain trudged to his car, opened his trunk, and rummaged through his belongings until he found what he was looking for. He sat down on the driver’s seat, held his right arm out, and poured hydrogen peroxide over it. It stung, but he bit his tongue and held in any moans of pain. He didn’t know if there were any other carnivorous surprises waiting for him beyond the treeline after all.

Ripping another strip of cloth off the other sleeve of his flannel, he tied it tightly around his right arm, momentarily glad his clothes were easy to break apart. Taking a proper seat, Cain let himself slouch into the fabric of his car, appreciating it more than ever before in his life. And for the first time since that afternoon, he spoke aloud, although to nobody in particular.

“What the hell is going on,” he whispered to the night sky.

Brightening ever so slightly to Cain’s eyes, the stars above glowed in satisfaction at his continued existence and almost as if rewarding him, a thin, black book dropped into Cain’s lap. Startled, Cain jumped up and hit his head on the roof, sitting back down in pain and annoyance. Taking a look at the newest cause of suffering in the past few minutes, Cain was initially impressed at the craftsmanship of the book, with the black leather cover, and gilded pages. A pristine white ‘Numeral’ was imprinted on the center, but disturbance finally following after admiration and pain cut the observation short.

A book fell into his lap from thin air, as if it were some kind of magic trick. And it looked as if it was...but that wasn’t possible. The night just kept getting weirder, and Cain had a suspicious feeling the oddness wasn’t ending anytime soon. Keeping himself moving and preventing any actual introspection of the mess he had found himself in quite yet, Cain opened the book, and the contents sort of lived up to its name. Printed in gold on white paper was the following:

Origin - 11

Elements

Edge - 1 (0/1)

Arc - 1 (0/1)

Vertex - 1 (0/1)

Purpose - 1 (0/1)

Form - 1 (0/1)

Dimension - 1 (0/1)

Primary Ordinal

First Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Second Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Secondary Ordinal

First Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Second Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Third Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Fourth Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Tertiary Ordinal

First Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Second Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Third Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Fourth Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Fifth Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Sixth Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Seventh Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

Eighth Cardinal - 1 (0/1)

The contents of the book were only a page long, with the few dozen other pages being completely blank. Cain had no idea what this Numeral was listing, and there was no one nearby to give him any hints either. Thumbing over the word ‘Arc,’ he tried to feel if the gilded letters were printed or pasted on. Interestingly enough, they were printed, but even more interestingly, touching the word changed the characters of the book. Unable to initially comprehend that he just changed printed letters and numbers on paper, Cain noted the differences.

Origin - 10

Edge - 2 (0/2)

Blinking a couple times and rubbing his eyes did nothing to change the result. Closing the book, Cain set it down on the seat next to him and watched it blink out of existence the moment he took his hand away. Keeping a decidedly straight face, he took a look at the wolf’s corpse and idly wondered if it’s claws had been in contact with any strange mushrooms recently. Either that or a stroke was the only logical conclusion Cain could reach in order to explain his night so far. Non-logical conclusions would have to be considered at a later time to prevent any possible descent into madness.

Shaking his head to clear it, Cain was slightly distraught to notice that the fuzziness hadn’t gone away, and yet he didn’t feel tired or sluggish. Just in pain. The pain which made him realize he had forgotten something very important, that there was an unconscious man in the middle of the road. A road that was apparently the hunting ground of wolves. Cain went over to check on the man, but he was unharmed except for the wound on his head. It had stopped bleeding, but Cain didn’t hold out hope for the man to wake within the next few hours. Being a two seater, there wasn’t any space in the front of his truck for the man to lie down and the bed was full of tools.

Cain cleared out the mess of clothes and fast food wrappers in his back seats before hauling the man into his car where he would be safe. Well, at least safer than out in the open. Carrying him had felt easy, even with his hurt arm, and even though working construction built some muscle, it wasn’t to the point of allowing him to lug around a grown man like a sack of potatoes. Grabbing a wrench and flashlight from the back of the truck, Cain wanted to be prepared for anything else that might come out of those woods. Clicking the flashlight did nothing however, and although there were batteries, they weren’t working. Seeing in the dark was nice, but seeing in the light would have been even better.

Once again, growling came from behind Cain, an ominous sound that whispered of violence. He saw a dark shape moving closer towards him and he fell into a semblance of a defensive stance, knees bent and arms in front of him, ready for whatever decided to come out of the shadows to try and kill him.