Elsewhere: Aesir

Origin??

"You are only the monster you think you are."

"That's an important statement...for later.

I wish I could tell you this is a naive, nostalgic, never sad story about a hero coming into his own. But it isn't. This is a story about my life of growth, magic, romance, death, murder, chaos and order.

First off, werewolves, witches, vampires, demons, angels, dragons, gods, demi-gods...all that stuff is real. All universes have them, though in some universes they may be unseen.

I've encountered all of them. So you'll read about all of my encounters IF you get to the end. Oh yeah, and to answer the chapter title, no this isn't an origin at all.

This beautiful mess did start with my birth. I wasn't born as human as some reading this. My mother was a witch and my dad was a shifter werewolf (a type of werewolf that has no half-transformation). That means I can use magic when I'm not in wolf form.

In my home world/universe, my dad was killed by a rival tribe in a war our tribe lost. Immediately after our warriors were defeated, the rival tribe began killing everyone in our village to prevent revenge.

I'm not sure what happened to my mom, all I know is that she saved me by magically sending me away. I'm not sure if it was on purpose but her spell to send me away dropped me in another universe.

Huh...I guess this IS an origin.
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In this world, I truly learned what it means to be alone without my mom and dad. I was ostracized in my world for my dad marrying someone outside the tribes. So I'm grateful that here mixed magical blood isn't rare.

In this world, there are a lot of different types of werewolves, just as there are many different types of vampires and witches. I've also learned there's a difference between witches and wizards! I wonder if it's the same back home. Werewolves there were kind of exclusive so if it was I probably wouldn't have found out until I was older.

All that new knowledge was mind-numbing at first, and in this world, you're classified by your social status, economic status, AND the level of your power.

I was 11 at the time of my arrival and NOT a master of magic by any means, so my status was deemed low class. Even though my being what they call a hybrid here is impressive, without a teacher it really didn't matter since everyone here uses magic as an essential part of life.

Back home magical existences were discriminated and persecuted. My family only really knew enough to survive. Even though we lived in a tribe werewolves were essentially nomads there, so we were always moving. Plus I hadn't shifted for the first time until after I came here.

So in this world, I was uneducated, had no guidance, and was an orphaned child living on the streets. Which I don't fault anyone for. I should've probably be angrier but I was honestly just glad to be alive.

It hasn't been all bad by any stretch of the imagination. The street vendors and shop owners looked after me. Traveling merchant witches in the city would teach me spells, and here werewolves are less nomadic and live in the city too!

After I shifted for the first time they took care of me and showed me what they could. I'm a different type of werewolf from them so not everything matched up. They would be called true werewolves back home as they can half-shift.

After 4 years I was old enough to join the armed guard and strong enough to get promoted to the princess' guard.

The princess' guard's responsibility in and outside of war is to protect the princess obviously, even though she is a fantastic fighter. The princess even took over my training at some point. So she's kicked my ass a thousand times.

I'm happy about it though, so there aren't any hard feelings. More like the opposite...and after 3 years my mind and body have both become sharper. I learned that there's a difference between fighting and just using techniques/magic.

You need strategy and you have to learn yourself. When you know those two things you can learn your opponent and judge which action you need to take, how to react, and how to think.

Everything is so fast that if you aren't at least 3 steps ahead you'll be dead in no time. Not that I've seen any action as a member of the princess' guard.

There's also a vampire (Cameron) who's the captain of Jess's royal guard with higher status than me due to his position and because he's from a line of alpha vampires.

This means that he's able to use magic alongside his vampiric abilities AND that he's my reporting officer. Which is kind of awkward given that we're the same age. But then again so is Jess.

We both predictably have developed feelings for Jess over the years. Not just because we're the same age, she's just that amazing, smart, and beautiful.

Unfortunately for me, Cameron's family is extremely prestigious in Aesir, so his father has already begun negotiating talks with the king about an arranged marriage between them.

"How could she ever love someone she has to protect?"

That's what he always says to me. I've never been open to Jess about how I feel about her, but Cameron knows and gets jealous about how much time we spend together...even though it's mostly training.

I don't let it bother me too much because on some level I agree with him. Though Cameron isn't as strong as Jess either, he's still a good deal stronger than me. I mean he's an alpha vampire descendant, a noble in society.

I'm just a hybrid that used to live on the street. I don't even remember my name (which I think is a side effect of the magical teleport.) 

It may be a testament to my strength that I'm even in the princess' guard but I'm not as strong as either one of them. I mean Jess trains ME, so I don't see why she would be interested either. Plus with his father's influence, they'll probably be getting engaged soon anyway.

At least that's what I used to think. Today changed everything. The day started as any other normal day does. The royal guard had breakfast in the castle, a meeting on what needed to be done around the kingdom, followed by splitting into our individual daily duties.