Author's Note:
7700 words, broke Reddit's character limit, so you know the drill. Will be split into two parts, both posted today. Enjoy!
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"Stop! STOP!"
The terror in Kismet's voice rose higher as death drew nearer. He fled from Rob's grasping hand, but a Purge Divinity-infused fingernail managed to graze him, carving out a scoop of divine essence as if flaying a mortal's skin.
Kismet let out a screech as the Purging energy added to his growing collection of scars. A dozen small holes now dotted the surface of his mana-body, looking like he'd been pockmarked by wasting disease. Each wound represented a moment where the god had narrowly escaped with his life.
If those injuries had been inflicted by any other ability, then he could have rejuvenated himself in the time it took to blink. Purging energy was not so kind as that. It was purifying wrath in the shape of a Skill; their vengeance given form. Whatever divinity it touched, it extinguished.
As if cleansing the universe of a sickness that had infected it for far too long.
The BERSERKER continued his unrelenting advance. In response, Kismet threw up a frantic barrier of mana. It was strong enough to deflect one of Ragnavi's Annihilation beams–
And Rob blasted through it like paper mache. His charge sent broken shards of energy scattering across the divine realms. More mid-air rifts tore open, the HUMAN's aura strangling the surrounding area in a vice grip of power. Purge Divinity seemed to glow with light emanating straight from the pits of hell.
None of which was anywhere near as unnerving as the murder contained within his piercing gaze. When Kismet met Rob's eyes, he saw the end of eternity fast approaching.
The god's next barrier was just as frantic. However, this one was not comprised of mana, but of solid matter. Kismet summoned the hardest, most dense substance known to the mortal realms, then transmuted it into something that otherwise could only have been forged inside the heart of a dying star. It was many times more durable than the impossibly tough walls of an aberrant Dungeon.
So when Rob demolished it with a single punch, he actually had to put a bit of elbow grease into his windup.
Another wall materialized in front of him. He crushed it, then the one after, and the one after that, lashing out with bestial ferocity. The BERSERKER plowed through Kismet's hastily-built defenses like a bulldozer of fists and savagery. Rob was knocking them down as quickly as the god could make them, relishing the sensation of being able to vent his anger on targets that weren't fucking running away.
Then the twelfth wall fell – revealing a monstrous, spiky, fanged behemoth concealed behind.
Rob paused, momentarily taken aback at the sight of a mundane creature within the divine realms. 'Mundane' in relative terms, anyway. This monster was on par with a newborn Blight, radiating power that would have sent ordinary fighters sprinting for the hills.
It was also barely cognizant of its surroundings. The monster stared at him with unblinking, vacant eyes, just the tiniest glimmer of awareness present in its gaze. Rob noted that segments of its flesh were bubbling, as if the creature was fresh out of the oven and still needed to settle.
He couldn't help but feel a modicum of pity. This was yet another thoughtless creation, condemned to existence by an uncaring maker. Even monsters deserved better than that.
Rob caved the beast's head in before it could realize that it was alive. Pity was not the same as hesitation, and this was the only mercy he could afford to grant right now.
Didn't matter. Kismet's pawn served its purpose. In the brief instant that Rob spent getting over his initial surprise, the god had teleported to safety. He was already planning his next stunt that could buy him a few precious seconds of survival.
The HUMAN grimaced as he turned to give chase, unable to suppress the burgeoning sense of unease growing within his chest.
It almost didn't seem fair to feel that way. Rob knew he was winning – at least on the surface. Any outside observer would've bet their life savings on him, especially after the show of overwhelming superiority he'd just displayed. Kismet had been at a disadvantage before Never Forget Your Rage's recent upswing, and now it was no contest. Rob was confident that he would still be stronger even if the eight gods merged into one super-deity.
He also knew that he was living on borrowed time.
Whenever he moved, or activated a Skill, or even breathed...the sensation was there. Strength accompanied by incongruous frailty. Like background noise that kept getting louder with every action he took. His body felt close to pulling itself apart, as if his very molecules were a hairsbreadth away from coming undone.
It was different from Soul Instability. Whereas that threatened to collapse his soul, this frailty was an affliction of the flesh. The longer he fought, the more his physical form was at risk of popping like a balloon.
Such was the price of constraining godlike power within a mortal shell.
"Stay back!" Unaware of the turmoil fermenting in his assailant's mind, Kismet threw up his hands and...inverted...space? Rob didn't have a name for what he was seeing. Rather than stopping to puzzle out this latest brand of divine bullshit, he sent out a pulse of Purge Divinity, canceling whatever esoteric effect Kismet had been attempting to produce.
His Purging energy scraped against the divine realms like a cheese grater. Five rifts immediately tore open near both Rob and Kismet, with the god anxiously retreating from one that appeared just inches away from him. A low rumble echoed around them, and for a moment, they felt struck by an abrupt feeling of vertigo – until the realms gradually stabilized, righting once more.
For now.
Rob eyed the rifts with a detached, clinical gaze. An endless sea of mana resided behind them; the bedrock of the system itself. While he recognized that the rifts tearing open was bad news, he also couldn't really muster the energy to care. Between his overflowing rage, overtaxed body, and overburdened soul, minor details like the impending destruction of reality were hard to give much focus.
There was a way to fix all of that, of course. Rob couldn't outright deactivate Never Forget Your Rage – not without losing its bonus stats. But he could attempt to ease the storm of fury in his heart. By lessening his anger to more reasonable levels, Never Forget Your Rage would put less strain on both his body and the divine realms.
The notion forced a peal of hideous laughter to claw out of his throat. Lessen his anger? He'd have better luck trying to douse a volcano with a garden hose. No. For a wildfire that had grown this out of control, the only thing to do was stand aside and let it burn, burn, burn.
Until naught remained.
"I said stay back!" Kismet bellowed. He lifted his arms into the air. "Begone!" One moment later, Rob's vision was filled with scorching light. An apocalyptic geyser of mana burst forth from underfoot, intense and searing. It stripped the flesh from his bones in no time flat, powering through Almighty Resistance with pure, unmitigated violence.
And it still wasn't fast enough. Rob flickered a Purge Divinity shield for just an instant, allowing him to escape the geyser with his upper body – and most of his HP – intact. Lifesurge swiftly patched him up, leaving both combatants right back where they'd started.
Slowly, Kismet lowered his hands. They were shivering. "What are you?" he whispered. "Why are all my efforts in vain?"
To be honest, Rob was mildly impressed that Kismet had held on for this long. The god's combat efficacy was increasing as time passed, improving from panic-spamming teleports to more inventive maneuvers – as if he was learning how to fight on-the-job. He'd also stopped draining the other gods to supplement his power, having found an alternative source of fuel: mana seeping out from the sporadically-opening rifts.
It was the one silver lining to fighting an implacable BERSERKER so powerful that he fractured reality. Whenever Rob utilized Purge Divinity, more rifts opened up in the realms, and more mana leaked out from inside. The gods had invested that energy into the system millennia ago, and it typically would've been off-limits until they closed up shop and left Elatra. Kismet was making use of it now, absorbing the extra mana to strengthen himself, like a lifeline barely keeping him afloat.
The god's tenacity was...calling it 'admirable' would be going too far, but it did warrant a sort of begrudging respect. As someone who'd tangoed with multiple Blights, Rob knew what it was like to square off against a frenzied beast that could end him with a touch.
Being the scary one was a nice change of pace.
In exchange, Kismet had graciously donned the role of their battle's Combat Class user; fragile, outgunned, and pulling improvised maneuvers out of his ass for a chance at victory. The god could finally feel what it was like to be vulnerable. How exciting! Rob was more than happy to assist. Learning experiences such as these only came around once an eternity or so.
Flippancy aside – while Kismet still possessed room for improvement, this was the most that could be asked of a deity who hadn't seen combat in literal eons. His biggest fuckup had been taunting Rob in the wrong ways, but he couldn't have known about Never Forget Your Rage, that was an excusable oversight. By all other accounts, Kismet was performing adequately.
Even so...
"YoU aRE noTHinG."
The sound of Rob's voice caused two fresh rifts to open up. Kismet flinched, casting a teleportation spell out of pure reflex. Without pause, the HUMAN resumed his hunt.
Nothing. Perhaps that statement was hyperbole – yet it rang true nonetheless. While Kismet may have been a creature of supreme divinity, on the field of battle, his pedigree meant nothing. In the face of an implacable, unstoppable foe, his power was worth nothing. Very soon, he would be nothing, consigned to oblivion by Purging energy.
Rob couldn't help but unfavorably compare Kismet to the final Blight. Weren't these supposed to be two sides of the same coin? Each one-half of an original transcendent Will? Yet the Second Will had brought Rob to the edge of despair...and Kismet was fleeing like a cornered rodent. It was difficult to reconcile the two divinities as theoretical equals.
Although he knew that was an unfair comparison. Rob had fought the Blight before learning Limit Break and Never Forget Your Rage. Kismet wasn't weak.
The HUMAN was just far too strong.
If he rematched the Second Will today, he would beat it to death with his bare hands.
"Look at what you've wrought!" Kismet swept an arm out, gesturing towards some of the many rifts that Rob's presence was tearing open. "Do you understand what will transpire if you persist in this folly?! If the divine realms shatter, then so will all of Elatra! You are on the brink of destroying everything which you have striven to protect! Cease this–"
"CAN'T."
In a flash, Rob dashed forward and scooped out a chunk of the god's mana-body with Purge Divinity. Before he could do more, Kismet shrieked with pain and teleported away, leaving the BERSERKER to crush his prize between five clenched fingers.
"FoRCed mY HAnD." He located Kismet again. "NO GOING BACK."
Stopping wasn't an option. If the divine realms crumbled and Elatra imploded...well, that would be a faster end than what the gods had in store for its people. At least this way their deaths would be quick and hopefully painless – and his friends wouldn't be turned into Skills tortured for all eternity.
Still, Kismet did have a point. Destroying reality wasn't exactly the ideal outcome. There had to be a way to speed up the conclusion of their fight. Rob was certain he would win if given enough time, but he couldn't guarantee it would be before either his body or the divine realms collapsed.
{Ascend.}
Like a snake slithering through a minefield, Leveling High skirted past the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions raging within Rob's mind. He attempted to tune out its voice, yet Humanity's curse refused to be denied, the static loudening until he was compelled to respond. Quit distracting me, he snapped. In case you haven't noticed, I'm FUCKING. BUSY.
{You seek to ensure victory over those who rule above,} Leveling High continued, without missing a step. {As do I.}
Then sit back, shut up, and–
{Ignoring your deficiencies will not make them disappear. This body is...feeble. Incomplete. Unfit to wield the power contained therein. Like a polished sword attached to a brittle hilt, liable to snap in twain at any moment.}
Rob grit his teeth. He couldn't deny Leveling High's assertions. Normally he'd just tell it to piss off, but considering how much was at stake here...
With a feeling like he'd sat down to deal with the devil, Rob sighed. Then what do you propose? That we upgrade my body somehow? I don't think putting more points into Vitality would help, even if I had any to spare. Me being so juiced up on stats is half the problem.
It shook its head. {You have far surpassed the limitations of mortality. Strengthening your power further would be akin to pouring water into an overflowing cup.}
So we...what, increase the size of the cup?
Static akin to laughter echoed inside his head. {We do away with it entirely.}
An icy chill began creeping up Rob's spine, as if the cold hands of fate were working their way towards his neck. He recalled a system notification from days before – 'Your Race has morphed from Human (?) to: Ascending HUMAN'.
Not Ascended. Ascending.
Weeks-old memories came surging to the forefront. 'The Heartkiller is closer to our form of life than those you call friends,' the Blight-child of Elysium had once said. 'As long as you continue to live, eventually, you will become an existence with the power to crush the Others and free the Skills from their shackles. You are no longer one of the Ephemeral. Now, you are a cocoon, metamorphosing into something grander. When you emerge, you will be as the Eternal.'
The Blight-child had laughed at him, then. 'After joining us, preserving these worlds will no longer be your desire.'
Rob grimaced. Denied, he flatly told Leveling High. Whatever you're about to suggest isn't happening.
It scoffed at him. {Your prejudices blind you. Do you think the gods have need of physical bodies? Does it hinder them in any capacity? No – the opposite. By definition, infinity cannot be constrained. Discard this useless flesh, and your conquest of the divine realms is assured.}
Maybe you didn't hear me when I said–
{By all means. Spurn my counsel...and condemn your friends to death. Shall their lives be worth it, in the end?}
Rob sucked in air through clenched teeth.
{Ascend.} Leveling High purred with anticipation. {You are bound by a prison of meat, bone, and blood. Break free. Finish what has already begun. Gaze upon the tapestry of infinity in all its dreadful splendor. Seize victory not as a Human, but as a completed, transcendent HUMAN.}
With a scream to drown out the static, Rob chased after Kismet again and again. The god was in full-on panic mode, eschewing offensive attacks in favor of perpetual retreat, focused wholly on keeping the BERSERKER as far away as possible. He would teleport the instant that Rob laid eyes on him, frantically stalling for his life.
It was – quite unintentionally – providing evidence to Leveling High's claims. If Kismet was on the defensive, catching him would take time they might not have.
I... Rob narrowed his eyes. How would I finish Ascending, anyway? It isn't like I can just flip a switch and make it happen.
{Incorrect.}
He blinked. WHAT?
{You have long since achieved the qualifications for true godhood,} Leveling High explained, in a lecturing tone. {There is no milestone that remains necessary to achieve. Rather than needing to overcome some hurdle of strength or power, the obstacle barring your path is more...arbitrary. Self-imposed.}
Humanity's curse seemed to peer into his soul. When it spoke next, its voice was filled with disgust. {You remain mortal because you wish to do so – both consciously and subconsciously. The Ascension of a nascent deity has been obstructed by cheap sentimentality.}
Rob almost started an argument over its usage of 'cheap', but he exercised restraint, keenly aware that there was bigger fish to fry. Can't do anything about the subconscious. I am \not* activating Melancholy Resistance.*
{Nor should you,} Leveling High remarked, shuddering at the prospect. {A grand statement of intent will be sufficient to shift your mentality. I believe...yes.}
The static churned like a hive of buzzing wasps. {When you next tear off a piece of the leader god's mana...even if just a sliver...devour it. Gorge yourself on their essence.}
Bile threatened to rise to the top of Rob's throat. Seems excessive, he mused, trying and failing to keep his tone lighthearted. To become a god, I eat a god? Wouldn't that make me a divine cannibal?
{You ARE a cannibal.} Leveling High's voice wavered, its veneer of helpfulness slipping to reveal the madness that lay beneath. {What do you think you've been DOING for nearly a YEAR? You kill, ingest your prey's Experience, and MAKE THEIR POWER YOUR OWN. This world is one of consumption and parasitism – devouring a god's essence is merely a more HONEST variant of THE SAME actions.}
...You clearly weren't paying attention during Diplomacy's PR lessons. Rob pursued Kismet once again, pressing his fingernails into his palms when the god hurriedly teleported away. There is such a thing as being too straightforward. If you want people to listen to you, then maybe dress up your words so they don't sound so horrifying.
{BUT AM I WRONG?}
Rob had no answer to that.
Bolts of divine mana peppered his skin. Kismet had barely managed to squeeze an attack in-between his escapes. The bolts ricocheted off Rob's skin like ping-pong balls, leaving minor scrapes and nothing more. It wasn't anywhere close to bypassing Almighty Resistance and his massive HP pool.
Yet it also reminded him of the mana-spears that Kismet had sent towards the rest of Riardin's Rangers. His Party members only possessed a shared, diluted version of Almighty Resistance, and their HP was a fraction of his. If Kismet aimed another attack of that caliber at them...how many would perish, right then and there?
Was Leveling High correct? What point was there to sentimentality if it just got his friends killed?
In truth, Rob knew that it didn't really matter if he completed his Ascension. Based on what he had planned for himself after the gods were dead, little would change either way. Still...he also knew that Ascending would be a one-way trip. No take-backs. If he went through with it, a fundamental part of him would be irrevocably altered.
Something twinged in a corner of his mind. It wasn't Leveling High, or his rage, or any of the other emotions currently dominating his headspace. This was a familiar friend; perhaps Rob's #1 most trusted confidant since he'd first set foot in Elatra. One that had rarely ever steered him wrong.
Paranoia.
And at the moment, it was telling him to be very careful before jumping into the deep end.
Ten teleports.
{What?}
Give it ten more Kismet teleports, Rob said. If I haven't dealt him a serious injury by then....I'll do what I need to do. He grimaced as Kismet vanished before he'd even finished the thought. Ten starting now.
Leveling High's static quieted. It resembled a patron at a restaurant who'd ordered their meal, and was waiting patiently for the main course to arrive.
Rob didn't waste time being offended over its nonchalance. Free of distractions, he immediately swept his gaze across the divine realms, pinpointing his quarry in a micro-instant. The BERSERKER dashed forward, pushing his body as far as he could, layering Rampages on top of Dexterity that made the laws of physics want to curl up and weep.
Kismet was prepared. He'd drawn more mana from the fractured rifts, quickening his speed and reactions. It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep his head above water, not yet outpaced by their continually escalating arms race.
The HUMAN struck, the god fled, and both were left in the same position as before.
{One.}
Rob turned on a dime, charging without needing to look. He'd heard the moment that Kismet's teleport ended. It afforded him a split-second head start.
A gravity well suddenly appeared below his feet, as if a miniaturized black hole was weighing him down. Apparently, Kismet had set it up ahead of time as a just-in-case trap. Rob pierced through the spell's area of effect before it could ramp up to something dangerous, but his pace was slowed by a hair in the process, and his prey escaped.
{Two.}
You know what? Screw this. Rob whirled away from Kismet's newest location and blasted straight towards one of the lesser deities that his Party members were fighting.
He'd been too hung up on getting even with a hated foe – when there were seven other juicy morsels for him to play with. This way, Kismet would either sit back and watch as his allies were massacred, or the god would be forced to act instead of running like a goddamn cowar–
Sense Mana alerted Rob to magic gathering behind.
Pivoting, he leapt into the air. Rob superimposed himself in front of Kismet, bodyblocking the rainstorm of destructive mana that was about to be unleashed upon Riardin's Rangers.
Due to his swift response, the attack was released early. A simple Purge Divinity shield prevented him from incurring any damage. Rob still felt no sense of triumph as the mana dissipated around him. He just wasn't fast enough to kill the lesser gods and protect his Party at the same time – or at least not fast enough that he should gamble their lives on it.
Kismet disappearing a moment later didn't help matters either.
{Three.}
Frontal assaults weren't guaranteed to succeed, and targeting the other gods was a no-go. Could he take Kismet by surprise? Increase his Dexterity?
Rob contemplated mining Never Forget Your Rage for more stats, but swiftly vetoed the idea. His body was already struggling to hold itself together. Putting additional strain on a shaky foundation seemed...unwise.
Plus – at the risk of eating crow in the near future – he didn't actually think it was possible to feel angrier at the gods than he was right now. Seriously, what was left?
He hated them for sending him to a fantasy deathworld. He hated them for tormenting his friends and family. He hated them for being partially responsible for the Blight. He hated them for what they'd done to Elatra and Earth. He hated them for all the lives they'd stolen. He hated them for being the living embodiments of indifference and cruelty. He hated that they fostered good PR among the people they oppressed. He hated how monsters of such craven hypocrisy were also immeasurably powerful. He hated the sensation of divine mana crawling on his skin. He hated the unsettling sound of their voices. He hated their bizarre formless appearances. He hated them for being pompous pricks. He hated whenever they tried to relate to him. He hated whenever they didn't.
Most of all, he hated that they were still alive.
Even if he found out that they'd personally antagonized him since birth or some petty nonsense like that, it wouldn't measure up to the litany of transgressions they'd committed thus far. The blazing inferno within his soul could burn no hotter. Should burn no hotter. For his sanity's sake, if nothing else.
Kismet teleported. It wasn't in response to anything. He'd merely anticipated some sort of action – and was then baffled afterwards when he noticed the rampaging BERSERKER standing quietly in deep thought.
{Four.}
Rob advanced. While he didn't have a plan yet, he'd also learned that if he gave Kismet the slightest amount of breathing room, bad things tended to happen.
Can any of my Skills give me an edge? Unfortunately, he didn't think so. As usual, his lack of ranged options was biting him in the ass when it mattered most. Almost everything he could use required getting in close – which was the whole freaking problem – and none would be more effective than Purge Divinity, regardless.
Maybe I could set up a Waymark point, then catch Kismet's teleport with one of mine...no, that won't work either. The odds of him popping in next to a random Waymark point are slim. Could fill the battlefield with lots of Marks, but even then I have to consider the Skill's activation time. With my current Dexterity, it'd honestly be faster just to run at him.
The vast majority of his abilities simply weren't up to par in a clash with divinity. Limit Break, Purge Divinity, and Never Forget Your Rage had been specifically designed by the Skills to facilitate deicide. Something like Power Slash couldn't possibly compare to jailbroken stats and a touch of death.
As an act of defiance against his own logic, he cast Enmity, the only ability that could feasibly hit Kismet at range. The god casually shrugged off its effect before promptly escaping.
{Five.}
Like a frustrated animal, Rob snarled and gave chase. Just need to keep trying. Kismet isn't perfect.
{Six.}
Sooner or later, he's going to mess up.
{Seven.}
He's going to mess up.
{Eight.}
HE HAS TO MESS UP.
Suddenly, Kismet transformed his right hand into a blade of mana. With one harsh motion, he sliced open his own left arm.
By now, Rob had conditioned himself to never stop moving forward, even if something shocked him – which this sight very much did. His mouth dropped open, and Leveling High paused in the middle of eating its metaphorical popcorn. They still kept advancing without an iota of hesitation.
And ran straight into the mana cloud leaking out from Kismet's wound.
Rob blinked, opening his eyes to a wonderful day. The twisting plains looked dazzlingly beautiful, with fauna and plantlife lit by rays of effervescent light from the twin stars shining above. People cheerfully went about their day, happily shaking their trunks in shows of greeting, or rattling their scales to initiate merry games.
All was at peace.
Until – in unison – everyone froze. The tumult of life went quiet in an instant, replaced with pensive silence.
As if they'd been struck by the creeping, pervasive sensation of being watched.
A sound rang out. Half of them immediately fell over dead, fluids gushing from their ruined bodies.
The survivors could only lay there, crippled and in pain, as more people slowly rose into the air. Invisible fingers seemed to pluck them from the ground – and then began ripping off their limbs, one at a time, like a child dissecting butterflies–
Rob dragged himself back to the present.
It had taken much less time than before to recognize what was happening. Now that he knew what to expect, experiencing the remnant souls' lives wasn't so different from the dreamlike quality of an Attunement vision. Although...realizing that he'd witnessed the end of a world preceding Elatra did cause his thoughts to hitch for a single moment.
Which was just enough for Kismet to forge a spear of mana, then send it plunging through Rob's eye, skull, and brain. Its tip was forged to shred anything it touched, no matter how durable or Resistant.
The god whooped with glee – only to wince as the HUMAN's sole reaction was a long, drawn-out sigh. With an air of exasperation, he reached up and yanked the divine spear free with a nauseating splorch.
His eye had been reduced to a seeping red mess. He closed its eyelid. When he opened it again, the orb within had already Regenerated, now sporting an unamused glare.
It was something of a unique moment. Mid-battle events didn't typically leave both combatants feeling disheartened. The all-powerful god was losing faith that he could ever hope to stop Rob's onslaught...
And the BERSERKER didn't know if he could justify continuing on like this. His body still felt like it was pulling itself apart; if anything, the sensation was growing more pronounced as their battle progressed. While Kismet would make a fatal mistake eventually, Rob couldn't guarantee that he would last long enough to capitalize on it.
Unless he followed Leveling High's advice and–
With a howl that shook the divine realms, Rob launched his stolen spear at Kismet. His aim was true, yet it sailed through empty air, the god's afterimage tauntingly fading away.
{Nine.}
Final chance.
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Link to Part 2

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Mike marveled at the beauty of the inner city. He was familiar with Kael architecture and had even seen some up close at the university, but it was far grander here than on Earth, and it was far grander in person than in the videos and pictures he'd seen. The buildings were a hybrid of Gothic and expressionist architecture built with classical aesthetics.
Mosaics, statues, and murals were everywhere, but despite the grand buildings and beautiful decorations, Mike couldn’t keep his eyes off the ground. Even the streets are beautiful.
The ground he and Dreki walked was like a freshly cooled lava flow paved by slates of colored glass that softly glowed in the dimming light of the evening sun.
As they walked, Mike was woken from his trance by the scent of meat cooking.
Dreki smiled and said, “Smells good. You hungry?”
Mike nodded.
Dreki grinned and led Mike around the corner to a food cart. Mike salivated as the flames licked and sputtered at fat dripping from hunks of what looked like octopus turning on spits. The aroma of meat and spices was intoxicating. Dreki ordered them octopus skewers. As he handed Mike his skewer, Dreki said, “You’re never going to be able to eat earth octopus again.”
Mike chuckled. “I’ve never had it in the first place; I grew up in the mountains thousands of miles from the ocean.”
Dreki looked incredulous. “Did you not have rivers?”
Mike shrugged his shoulders, “Not with octopi.”
Dreki raised his free hand in exasperation. “Whatever. Either way, you’ll be disappointed by the rubbery trash humans call an octopus after eating this.”
Mike took a bite of the meat and groaned in pleasure. It tasted like a beefier version of bacon. Mike wolfed down his skewer in the blink of an eye and exclaimed, “That was fucking good!”
Dreki gave him a “Mhhhmh” with his still mouth full.
Dreki finished his food and led Mike off the main road onto a footpath flanked by wispy trees with dark blue leaves.
Eventually, the pair entered the back garden of a building that looked like a melted cathedral. Dreki led him through an open gate into a well-lit waiting room and held out his arm. “Hand me your bag; I’ll take it to your room. I’ll come get you after.”
Mike slipped his bag from his shoulders and handed it to Dreki. As the herculean Kael was leaving, he turned and said, “Try not to scream when they brand you; it’s an ill omen.”
Mike drummed his fingers on the armrests of the chair in the sea foam green waiting room, which was decorated with pictures of duels and exotic plants in white and blue ceramic pots. He was pretty sure that more than one of the photographs was of Dreki’s father.
Mike was anxious. Getting branded would suck, and getting an AR implant would involve someone sticking a drill through his skull. And without his gargantuan minder, Mike felt almost naked. He knew that he would probably be fine, but this was the home of the enemy. Without any weapons, he stood little chance against any Kael worth their salt in a fight.
Mike chided himself for the thought. Why does everything have to revolve around violence? Is there no world where you can just get along with them?
Mike frowned. No. I hate them. Despite his barely contained rage, Mike felt nauseous as blood-soaked memories bombarded his mind.
He doubted that he could kill again, even if it meant dying.
Dreki’s not so bad; maybe out here, more of them are like him than Ocidea.
Mike’s melancholy was interrupted when the tall door at the far end of the room opened. A short, for a Kaelman, nurse wearing pea green scrubs walked out, locked eyes with him, and shouted, “Mike Anderson!”
Mike followed the short Kael nurse into a cream-colored operating room. In the center an instrument table hovered next to an operating table. Besides the operating table stood a middle-aged Kael with tusks intricately inlaid with silver in triangular patterns. His white lab coat had Chief Surgeon Athocill emblazoned over the right breast pocket.
The Chief Surgeon stared off into space, engrossed in AR. The nurse who brought him in pointed to the operating table. Mike sat down.
A slender Kaelwoman in scrubs and a lab coat identifying her as the assistant surgeon walked in and started arranging the tools.
She glanced at Mike and said, “Take off your shirt.”
Mike pulled the black T-shirt he was wearing over his head and set it on the table next to him.
Without looking away from his work, the Chief Surgeon tossed Mike a leather strap and said, “Brand him.”
The short nurse pulled a heat stamp from its case and rolled the numbers to their correct positions. Mike put the leather strap in his mouth and grabbed onto the table.
Dreki’s warning rang through his head*.*
The Nurse carefully placed the print plate just below Mike’s collarbone and pushed it down. The heat stamp's coils flashed white. Mike bit down on the leather strap as hard as he could, and his knuckles popped as he gripped the edges of the operating table as hard as he could. Tendrils of smoke billowed off Mike’s chest as his flesh was seared, and the acrid smell of burnt hair and torched flesh wafted through the room.
Mike stifled a groan as the nurse peeled the superheated steel off his chest. The Nurse set the smoking stamp back in its case to cool and picked up a small jar of viscous blue fluid and a brush. The nurse opened the jar, dipped the brush in the blue goop, and painted it over Mike’s still-smoking burn. Mike jolted at the freezing touch of the brush. His ribs and abdomen rose and fell rapidly as he took short, shallow breaths as the freezing cold shocked his nervous system.
The nurse put the brush away and closed the jar. “Done”
Mike let the leather strap drop from his mouth and put on a straight face as he externally disguised the pain. Showing weakness was not an option, even if every fiber of his being commanded him to scream.
The assistant took hold of Mike’s arm and spoke. “Make a fist and squeeze.”
Mike did as she asked. It was a good distraction from the pain. His knuckles turned white, and the veins in his forearm bulged after a few seconds of pressure.
“You’ll feel a tiny pinch.”
The assistant jabbed the needle into the crook of his arm.
Mike’s head immediately felt heavy, and his whole body tingled. He tried to stay upright, to no avail. His vision grayed out as his head plopped onto the table with a thud.
The surgeon looked to his assistant and asked, “Is he out?”
“Yes.” She answered.
“Let us begin.”
The assistant used a small metal tool to pull Mike's right eyelid open. The chief surgeon plunged a gold needle into the depths of Mike’s right eye.
The surgeon carefully pulled the needle from the human’s eye and set the syringe back down on the floating instrument table.
“Targeting chip in place. Next stage.”
The nurse began rummaging around a drawer in the back of the room, and the chief surgeon plucked a gleaming silver drill from the instrument table.
The drill in the surgeon's hand whirred as he plunged it into Mike’s skull. After just a few seconds, the drill bored through Mike's skull. The surgeon pulled the drill out of the human's head and angled the bit down into a small metal dish that was in the extended arms of the assistant. The chief surgeon hit a button on the drill with his thumb.
A bloody, dime-sized piece of Mike’s skull dropped to the bottom of the metal dish with a clang.
He set the drill back down on the instrument table and held out his hand. “Drone.”
The nurse put an insect-like metal contraption that resembled a whip scorpion in the surgeon’s hand. The chief surgeon's eyes glazed as he entered his AR and took control of the drone. It popped out of his hand and burrowed itself into the hole in Mike's skull.
Inside his AR, he brought the drone to the occipital lobe of Mike’s brain.
“Deploying lattice.”
The arachnid-like drone injected small metal spikes with spools of minuscule wire attached—anchor points—into Mike’s brain. After just a minute's work, the surgeon had crafted a web of wires across Mike's brain. He brought the drone back to the center of Mike’s brain and planted one final anchor spike. A reel inside one of the claw-like appendages at the front of the drone spun, cinching the lattice of wires down to the last anchor point. The surgeon brought the drone around again, ensuring that the web of copper was completely taut against the human’s brain. He brought the drone back out and smiled ever so slightly as the blood and cerebrospinal fluid-soaked drone hopped back into his gloved hand.
Chief Surgeon Athocill smiled and jovially said, “Patch him up.” He was pleased with his performance today. This was the first human to get an advanced AR package, and the procedure went flawlessly. The assistant grabbed a quarter-sized piece of flesh-colored putty and carefully placed the small piece of skull onto it. She placed the putty over the hole in Mike’s head, and it took to life, bonding the fragment of bone back into place and sealing the surface wound.
The surgeon removed his gloves and began typing on a holoprojection. “All systems are operational. I’m linking him to the military network now.”
The assistant pulled the instrument table to her side and plucked a syringe filled with neon green fluid. She said, “I’m waking him up now,” as she plunged the needle into Mike’s arm.
Mike’s eyes flew open, and he grit his teeth against the pain. Tears seeped from his stinging and blood-filling right eye. Every heartbeat brought a jolt of crippling pain to his head. And worst of all was the searing pain from the brand on his chest and the aching cold that barely disguised it. Mike sat up with a grunt. Pain shot through his chest when he brought his hand to his head and felt the hardened disc of putty on his temple.
The surgeon addressed Mike with a soothing tone. “On the count of three, I’m going to activate your AR. It will feel like your head is on fire for a few seconds, but it will only last a few seconds. One… Two… Three!”
Mike nearly collapsed with the pain, but he managed to limit his response to a grunt. Light flashed before his eyes, and Kaelic text appeared in the center of his vision. The doctor asked, “What do you see.”
Mike answered, “AR active. And below that, it says setup wizard.” Despite his best efforts, pain was evident in his voice.
“Ok, Mike, I want you to think, ‘open setup wizard.’”
Mike blinked a few times. “Nothing happened.”
The surgeon said, “Think it in Kaelic.”
Mike’s brow furrowed in concentration. He was fluent in Kaelic, but not to the point where he could think in the language at will.
“Ok, I got it. It says setting menu at the top, and there are a ton of things here. Do you want me to read them off?”
“No. Can you scroll down?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You should be able to get the hang of this pretty quickly; it's very intuitive. You’ll see that there are a few HUD profiles that you can pick from. I’d recommend you start from profile two and then customize it as you see fit.”
Mike nodded as he selected profile two.
“OK, now think clear.”
Mike did as the surgeon asked. His vision was now cleared.
The surgeon smiled. “Feel free to fiddle with the settings, just think clear if it gets cluttered, and reset if you make a dog’s breakfast of it. You’ll have a headache for the next few days, and you may start having more vivid dreams, but other than that, you’ll barely notice the change. Just take it easy for the next few days, and don’t itch at your brand or your eye.”

--⧼ BEGIN Broadcast Message ⧽--
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Priority Level: Urgent
:: From ::
Center Arm of the Emperor, Planet Laran
:: To ::
All Survivors of Fellow Royal Cast Broods
:: Message ::
The Emperor has graciously permitted the use of his Excellency's summer home on Planet Laran, located in the Empire's Center Arm, as a temporary refuge during the unprecedented violent Terran offences against His Holiness and the holiness of the Omni-brood of Ix.
:: Attachments ::
Coordinates and Flight Key
:: Royal Cryptographic Signature ::
Lord La'Ix, The Emperor's Right-Center Arm
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
--⧼ END Broadcast Message ⧽--

earlier

"CURSE THEM! The great houses are going to have my bloody head for this! There is no way this should've happened and under my command too! The Golden Emperor's own exotic holiday world has gone to ash and the only one to blame is going to be me. Well it was basically my watch anyways. Curse. Them. All"
Those were the only legible sounds one could hear among the frantic stamping of one particular Ixian lord as he hurried away through the underbrush of the royal reserve just outside the centre palace. The same Ixian lord that, only hours earlier, was delighting in his typical cooked boar while enjoying his evening's entertainment of a young Terran girl running for her life from a loose Laran tiger. Something about the way those bipeds run always makes him laugh. Some similarly caste Ixian would call this form of entertainment childish, lowbrow, and immature. He would tend to agree. But sometimes he just wanted cheap slapstick humour. The day to day life of the royal caste tends to get dull with all the fine arts an Ixian of his caste is meant to enjoy.
"How did it all go to shit!?! I was always attentive, and there hasn't been an uprising since those terrans were tamed for the palace. I mean we mostly neuter the problematic ones anyways, so why all the sudden aggression?", he shouted in agitation at the emptiness in front of him.
Speeding through the royal garden which in actuality is a repurposed Savannah of the island the palace is on. The Ixian was a beast of speed. Perfectly honed and trained over decades, and genetically maintained over eons, he always proudly held that he was the fasted in his brood of 16. Making a name for himself among the other broodkin for being the most genetically suited for the rank of high general (not that there was any need for generals, there hasn't been need for war in so long). Of course the Ixians always pride themselves in having no excess potential, and adapting your environment to suit your biology, but it never hurts to have perfect biology. That's the true pride of an Ixian.
That innate need to change the universe rather than changing themselves is what led to their vast interstellar empire. One that reached from constellation to constellation and then eventually to the arms of entire galaxies, terraforming worlds to the same environment they were already adapted to. Since forcing nature into one's bidding was the most sacred duty of any that shared a lick of Ix biology.
Which was why the Ix was confident in themselves. This Ixian in particular surely felt surprised, but mainly he was only moderately upset at the sudden change of situation, from being comfortable in the royal dining hall to sudden exercise.
"Everything can be changed back. Everything can be changed back." It repeated the mantra to itself. As it began to relax and turn its snarled sharp mouth into a toothy grin.
"Yes, there is nothing to worry about at all. Then let's make a game plan. Just need to make it to the space port at the harbour. Grab a ride out and find someone else to take the fall. That old royal butler is as ancient as the dirt of the broodworld. Hell, he probably was there when it vanished in the shadow of the holy empire's long past." chuckling to himself at the quite witty remark, but saddened that no one else was there to hear it.
Should be realistic enough for the others to believe. But first things first, I need to reach the harbour-master. It thought while its dense muscles powered the beastly lizard-like form on its journey, as it bound in the direction of its destination at top speed on all fours.
The blood red sun was already kissing the horizon by the time the Ixian went to nearly collapse under exhaustion of the extended sprint. He hasn't ran this far and fast than when he a young broodling that won competitions and competitions in the royal sports. I think I might have overdid it. He thought while massaging the oncoming threat of a sneaky cramp in his hind leg.
The Ixian were well known for speed. But their stamina was another thing. There bodies simply didn't have the evolved features for long distance travel. There was never truly any need in the past, as their very steady and controlled climate and sparsely diverse ecosystem on Ix never truly required much challenge.
It turned its panting head to face the way it came, gazing proudly at the great distance it made in such a short while.
But something was off by that view. Something different to what he was expecting. The view itself was mostly fine. Well, as fine as a smoking mark in the distance, presumably from the summer palace being engulfed in flame and spitting great plumes of black smoke. But no, something about this view chilled him to this spine. Craning his neck from his vantage point he could swear there was a small speck in the distance.
What on great Ix is that?
All of a sudden realisation hit like a rock on a peaceful pond. Something was following him. Something unknown and cold was making its way to his location. He was certain it wasn't any of his guards, all guards permitted to serve under the royal summer home were Ixian of course. Physically bred for their strength and speed, and placed into roles of importance like protecting the higher caste such as himself. (Whereas this day being the only exception). It did look like he was the only Ixian that actually made it out of the palace so far. Ixians are able to cover short distances in phenomenal speed, akin to a scaly 4 legged beast of the hunt.
No this was something else.
Feeling a very small panic build up inside, but veiling that cold, unwanted terror as impatience at how far he still needs to travel yet. Lord La'Ix flexed his anterior legs and sped on leaving behind a red-yellow cloud of dust in his wake.
He frowned. Feeling strange at a never before felt sensation. Like something in the back of his perfectly designed brain was screaming a silent, but terrifyingly familiar warning.
"Ix itself is an ancient world. Temperate in climate, while abundant in vegetation and small game. It is unknown how the Ixian was formed on paradise.
The old priest can drum into your heads that I'Ix made us into being by indenting his form in the sand of the first beach and filling the shape with his life. Moulding us into being.
The heretic would counter and say we evolved from a previous species akin to ourselves over the course of untold lengths of time.
The philosopher would suggest that only on paradise would the sentient universe fill in the space for the perfect beings to enjoy the fruits of existence.
Lastly, even the lowest caste Ixian would point and laugh at the rest and say 'why talk about antiquity, when we can make more paradise to fill the heavens'."
-A popular Ixian parable
Lord La'Ix bolted up all of a sudden from his resting spot. Heart suddenly beating frantically. The stars had barely enough time to shift positions when last rested his weary body, only a couple hours must have passed since dusk fell and the world plunged into night.
The silence of the Savannah made sound from afar travel better. Aside from the quiet rustling of the wind he wasn't so sure what he heard. Assuming his bored ears were playing tricks on him.
Calming down, curling up on the flat cool rock he found he started to drift to the shadowless lands where all Ixian go when they dream...
Drums, no, not drums. Some sort of mechanical tool? Not that I ever heard of a tool that just beat the ground senseless. A strange beating sound could be heard, pounding into the ground. As he stayed frozen and very awake, he could have sworn it was getting louder. Closer.
CRACK. SNAP. CRACK.
Suddenly the entire valley echoed the sounds of a few broken sticks.
La'Ix jumped up, whirling around, and came to face something approaching fast that could only be described as a cold predator, not that there were any predators on the homeworld's recorded history. But every cell in his aching body reacted the same. DANGER, DANGER, RUN, RUN.
The silver light of the planet's 3 moons barely lit the valley but what that light bounced off of was a figure in motion. Front Legs pumping up and down, nostrils flaring, eyes too close together, and pupils so large it was like staring at darkness itself.
Hold on there are only 2 legs right? Sudden familiarity hit him hard, memories of last night's entertainment stained his mind. In the name of Ix is that a Terran?!?
La'Ix didn't realise it then, but it was looking at a Terran, despite the Terrans characteristics looking different to the standard slave he was used to seeing. The pumping body of the runner was made for such long distances. Sweat acting as a cooling mechanism, making the man glisten in the harsh moonlight, the enlarged nostrils taking in all the air the body needs for this type of strenuous activity. And the enlarged pupils, made for adjusting to low light environments.
Down on the plains of the Savannah were two creatures. One a perfect evolutionary miracle, practically evolution's first try gone right, Perfectly made for its environment and was never truly exposed to varying climates and environments. And the other, having crawled through the primordial ooze, and struggled and fought its way through dangers, diseases, and competition on its own horrifying world. Where deadly heat in deserts can dry out any living thing, and such freezing poles that can turn anything that enters it in pure ice.
The man's lean and sweat-slicken form was steadily making its way towards the frozen statue of La'Ix. Just as he got within 50 paces did La'Ix sprint away scattering pebbles in its path the echoes of which bounced back from the valley's sharp walls. Undeterred, the chaser kept steadily running. Jaws grit. Eyes locked on afar.
And afar was its prey. Sprinting away.
HOW IN IX'S NAME DID THAT THING KNOW WHERE I AM? The La'Ix in a fit of sudden excitement mixed with a heavy dose of panic, began its high octane sprint from the sudden looming threat of being found. Hind Legs propelling the creature's body forward, while its front arms, which were historically also for four legged locomotion, pulled the terrain closer with each stride. Increasing its momentum until it reached max speed.
"Broodling La'Ix!" said a stern but educated voice.
"Huh? Oh! Yessir!" a young Ix jumped to attention still thinking about more enjoyable things specifically outside of the classroom walls.
"Well? Can you please answer my question or will you make your other broodkin wait until Ix falls to ash first", the tutor said expectantly, prompting several muffles giggles in the room.
"Sorry sir. What makes the Ixian race its place in eternity is the attention we put in perfection. After our home-world of Ix's climate and terrain began to change, the leaders from antiquity decreed we carry on the spirit of the home-world in maintaining a consistent biological and genetic profile that will always be suited to Ix's surface. As we change worlds to be more like Ix, we can spread the spirit of Ix to them. As such, Change is- uh, change is..."
"Change is the poison of perfection, Remaining unchanged for Ix enable us to carry its spirit to other planets in the heavens", continued the tutor. "Well you certainly paid some attention to today's lesson at the very least. But remember that final part. It's the last of the core tenants you will need to remember."
"Yessir!"
A good half night passed on the surface of the Savanna. Where a previously noble and alert Ixian who took great care in appearances and status was no longer to be seen. Instead of that proud domineering alien representative of ix was a dishevelled, dusty, ragged creature, dehydrated, hungry, and exhausted from the various sprints it forced itself to endure to stay ahead of fate's ever closing hand.
Is this the sword of Damocles that was mentioned in the ancient Terran records? Always hanging down on those who hold power and seek more? Fate's sharp blade? But why me? I was never in any real power. All I wanted out of this life was a comfortable posting with no dirt and grime from the lower worlds. Why me? Why now? Why do I-
La'Ix snapped himself out of a daze. Is he here- No, no I should be far far away from that Terran now. Maybe I can find some-
A dim glow interrupted its train of thought. Much too early to be the Sunrise on the Emperor's summer planet, and much to low to be the light from one of it's 2 moons. It was a light from a town.
"That's right!" The Ixian barely managed to rasp in between haggard breaths. Its body barely able to continue the amount of self inflicted abuse it has suddenly been put in.
A lot more hunched over than the Ixian was earlier. It made its way towards a small town it knew was in between the palace and the harbour. The emperor loved his royal rustic towns and villages. It is said that his royal emperor would sometimes tour around them marvelling at the romantic theme of a simple rustic life. Although getting a personal town full of Ixians required a lot of lower caste be forced into long and expensive work contracts as background entertainers for the king's planet, all this excessive show of wealth was partially for peackocking the emperor's reputation, and partially for his own personal enjoyment. The Emperor is almost culturally required to flaunt his royal wealth in all forms in order to keep connections with all the royal houses. An emperor that doesn't shower their supporting aides and houses with grand gifts is fated to eventually be found cold on the floor of the royal banquet due to 'suicide from accidentally ingesting poison', as was the previous emperor.
To avoid such an unfortunate passing, the Higher Royals would trade vast resources, delicacies, and even exotic slaves to court 'royal favours'. Slaves of the Terran variety especially are considered to be the most unique of gifts the empire has ever acquired.
Terrans weren't necessarily large and bulky. Fighters were assigned to the Slave Obniraks. Powerful creatures used to fill the fields on tougher worlds where mechanical services would be deemed to expensive. The growth of a Obnirak into full working adulthood is only a few cycles. Meaning mass producing a workforce is quite an easy feat.
Terrans instead would take vast cycles to mature from a childling to an average adult. Meaning growing a slave force would take vast quantities of resources, immense patience, and strict guidance from their owners as to not create faulty creatures. All of which increases the general standing on any house that manages to keep a vast amount of Terran slaves in the best quality.
Terrans weren't necessarily docile and obedient. That role was perhaps given to the oldest slave race the Ix ever controlled. The Iralisa. It was known that they were made remarkably docile due to generations upon generations of select breeding, and pruning off the 'aggressive traits' from the gene pool. However, that led to the adverse effect of physically weakening them to a point where such docility and lack of a frame to keep up with their workload led to a general lack of Ixian interest and were subsequently purified.
Terrans are notoriously independent and herd-minded in larger quantities. Similar to growing a very stubborn Terulian Rose Vine. Which only looks impressive when great care have been given. Terrans need to be given an illusion of being ever so slightly free. Which typically involves owning vast amounts of land and nature to let them roam and graze. Of course, the only ones that can accommodate grand work forces of Terrans are the larger houses with the appropriate territory for humans, as is studied in the Ixian art of Servitude.
One can only guess which species is the Emperor's favourite.
The following town should indeed have both, low caste Ixians, and possibly none of the Emperor's favourite slaves.
The Ixian approached the glowing town. As it reached closer it straightened its back, upright on its hindlegs in the royal fashion. And proclaimed. "It is I! La'Ix, royal courtier. Lend me aid imme-"
Something is off. Not a single shadow in the town, I can see lights but no movement, where is every-
After turning the corner to the center of the small town, the dustied and weary creature froze in its tracks when it saw it. A pit nearly as wide as an Ixian land cruiser and who knows how deep filled with a stench so powerful it watered his eyes. Despite the Ixian's lack of a proper sense of smell. It knew the foul fetor of death.
The crudely dug pit was nearly overflowing when he approached it. Large, smoking, smouldering pyres cast that eerie light that had drawn him in.
"H-how? Wha-What the..." he trailed off when a local species of Laran boar growled and squealed as it tore a dead Ixian limb from the mountain of corpses.
"Who could've..."
He stopped. The shock of seeing his own kind laid like broken dolls in a bleeding pit slowly faded, replaced by a numbness. The Ixian had just noticed they were of Ix. Only of Ix.
Not a single terran colour was visible in the black and spotted pit of bodies. Not a single slave body was visible.
I-Impossible...
His legs gave way, either from the strain of the entire nights run, the horror facing him, or the threat from behind. He just dropped.
Minutes passed, or hours. It was hard to tell. But the Ixian lay slumped. Body unwilling to move further. Battered flesh unwilling to be propelled by a shattered spirit.
Mind slowly spinning up again. Thoughts began whirring to life in its mind. Could the rumours actually have been true? It had read the sparse reports of odd activity from certain Ixian-controlled worlds on the outer arms of the empire. Small uprisings of unknown origin. Hardly anything of note. If it had no affect on the greater houses then it was of no real concern to Ix and its emperor.
Could this threat have made its way to the centre arm already? Impossible. But what else could have done this to us?
Something caught the Ixian's eyes. In the middle of the pit it stood. A large stake, wet with deep Ixian crimson, dripping ever so slowly. Towering over the pit like a battlefield flag was a head of an Ixian rammed onto the tip of the spike. But the particular detail that caught the Ixian's eyes was a symbol cut into the flesh of the large forehead.
Looking from the outward-in. Eight concentric rings, which proceeded to get smaller and smaller in size until it reached a dark mass at the centre of the symbol. The Ixian never forgot the symbol and the affect it had on it.
Eight concentric rings, and a centre mass. Eight rings, and a mass. Eight- Eight what? Eight planets? And a star? ...
A growing pool of cold dread rose in its guts that made it shiver despite the fair night. This dread reflected the sharp reality on its frigid surface.
This Ixian was well-bred, well-trained, and well-educated. Although anyone with a basic education would know of such a pattern.
Terra and her sisters. THEIR star system...
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
It's not possible!-
Knowing what that sound meant, the Ixian tried to whirl around, its body barely being able to heed its masters commands. Just when it was starting to move again it felt it.
Sudden sharp agony. Sudden sharp, raging agony. The Ixian looked at it's hind leg. A sharpened wooden stake was jutting out of it.
It loud out a tight lipped scream, as it grasped the pulsating wound as one does immediately after an injury. It barely had enough time to look up at its attacker when the Terran bolted forward, shortening the distance between hunter and prey from metres to mere paces. The Ixian barely had enough time to block the hand grasping the knife as the arm flew forward at the last minute with a crash.
What phenomenal force!
Using the momentum from that sprint plus the wind up of his arm. The Terran was able to impart a phenomal show of force for a creature its size. That's when La'Ix for the first time saw a human in its raw unchanged form. Great beads of sweat collecting dust on its brow, to prevent it from entering the eyes. The constant release of sweat from the countless pores on its soft fleshy skin. Constant cooling? Even the visible veins and capillaries visible from the fire light.
What a beast of endurance-
Suddenly the horizon fell before the Ixian only to reveal the inky black sky dotted with pigments from stars like a painters masterpiece. When did I look up? Then a crash and blunt force from the ground.
The Ixian had been toppled over by that ferocious exchange of force.
Barely able to get up due to the wind being knocked out of its single large lung, the searing pain in its hind leg, and the exhaustion from the chase. It was too late. The terran was already on top of it. Taking up the entire view of the sky as the terran stepped forward into its field of vision.
The sudden perspective change made a once small and frail looking slave look grander than life, grander than all the legends told to Ixian broodlings.
The punches rained down. Repeatedly. A constant bombardment of beating rained like the drops of rain before the first dew. The previous pain in its leg forgotten, to invite a new visitor in the form of blunt force trauma. So ferocious were the raw blows to its carapace that the Ixian felt the exoskeleton crack under the increasing pressure and strain.
Something cracked, another thing snapped. The amount of pain too much to comprehend. The neurons firing in its second brain just assumed it was everywhere. Its half-working eye glimpsed the fist as it came down for the nth time. Red and split knuckles, revealing pure white bone beneath—a reinforced weapon. The perfect natural offence. All the muscles moved to propel it downwards where something else cracked and split.
Is this where I die?
As if understanding its fate the Ixian's form slumped over. Its body barely holding onto the natural exoskeleton shielding that covered its chest and facial area. Fluids leaking from the cracks that went too deep, and who knows how many internal ribs are shattered.
Its body, knowing that that more movement will cause more injuries, and further stimuli would confuse it further. It simply shut down.
The last moments it had as it fell backwards on its side. Was a small running figure. Hand clutching wooden spears. But the truly petrifying sight was behind it. A vast shadow flickering from the light of the lit pyres from the hunter in front of it. A shadow cast so large, jagged, and menacing it appeared to swallow the town whole.
And into a hole did the Ixian fall. A vacuum with no sensation or thought. Just darkness.
How... did we never notice such a... monster... in their... shadow...
All Ixians were taught about 'violence' and 'conflict' at an early age. As a sort of rite of passage that any of them would go through as they survive their early broodling days. As Ix have no natural predators, they had begun to instil a serving of some necessary conflict to keep their generations fresh and somewhat physically strong. As a precaution, only rudimentary forms of civil sports, races, shows of strength and courage were ever really explored. But always in a controlled and calm settings, as there would never be any true need for actual conflict.
As there was always a need to maintain ones own environment. The need never arose for the development of fighting techniques and schools of training. That was one of the best parts of being an Ix that many thought. Having supreme control over the worlds you inhabit means setting gravity, atmospheric pressure, humidity, and temperatures to the perfect levels for comfort replaced any need for biological change. Why grow when you can keep everything the same way, how you like it.
They were a vast empire. An empire of statues.
-Excerpt from the history of extra-solarian species, Author unknown
It awoke to a burning radiating heat from in front. The large sun was already starting to set on the horizon when it awoke. Had a whole day passed? Or two?
Trying to block the setting sun from its eyes it couldn't. "What?...", barely made out in a whisper.
I'm tied up.
And indeed the Ixian was right. Tied up next to a small brook, with a scorching fire in front of it. The monster nowhere to be seen.
"No good... it's too tight", it grunted in an attempt to escape its bindings.
Going slack in defeat it avoided any additional movement. Not having the energy to spare to move. It was lucky to have always been lazy at shedding its carapace - a frequent nag from its broodmother - might just have become its salvation in this case.
Thank Ix.
So there it stayed.
Hours passed. The Sun fully set and the stars awake in this dark world barely lit up the wildlands. Only the prisoner in this cone of firelight existed out here.
A rustling up ahead caught the prisoner's attention disturbing the eerily still silence of the Savannah night. And ungodly horror of a squeal ruptured the air invoking a deep visceral terror within the bound prisoner. Something. Something close but just outside the firelight was eyeing it, glinting from beyond the light. Those dark predatory eyes stabbed the prisoner with a sudden coldness. All while the squealing suddenly halted. SNAP. SQUELCH.
Now it came, emerging into the light. A beast. Holding a knife in one bloodied hand, dripping on the dirt. And dragging by the leg, a massive adult Laran boar grotesquely smearing thick blood still warm from the cut in the neck on the dirt.
The prisoner watched, barely moving, barely breathing. Frozen with the horror in front of it as the bloodied carcass was skinned; fur sliced away with harsh, scraping sounds with the crude knife. Spurting remaining blood all over the site.
The pink naked flesh then washed in the brook, leaving a distinct smell of oxidised blood in the air, before being skewered and roasted over the roaring flames. Fat popping violently in the heat.
In this gruesome display, the beast revealed not just a fate for the boar, but a dark hint of what might come. The realisation struck deep—this could be more than just a demonstration; it was a terrifying preview of its own potential end.
It passed out again.
Only to be awoken by the haunting echoes of a wild, desperate squeal that once thrummed through the savannah's eerie silence. Dare it open its eyes?
After a great heavy effort -utilizing its every last drop of courage- one eye cracked open. And what it saw. Made it regret ever having done so.
Right across from it, the hunter was a grotesque silhouette against the flickering fire. Grasping a severed boar leg was a mouth viciously biting, ripping, tearing into the flesh with primal ferocity. Each bite was deliberate, each tear of sinew was a clear, calculated demonstration of supreme savagery. Its jaw muscles bulged with the force of a bite.
All the while, the eyes—deep, abyssal pits—fixed intently on the prisoner. Deepest black pits stared back at it. Watching. Observing. Calculating, with a dark intelligence. it was calculating. It was relishing the terror it inspired and the control it exerted. Or planning its next meal.
The sounds of ripping flesh filled the thick, blood-soaked air. Deep into the night. Deep into this never-ending nightmare.
Never once did the prisoner move. Not an iota. Frozen in abject horror.
The night passed quietly. After the feast the human had, or the desecration of life that the prisoner saw, whichever way you look at it. The human nodded off to sleep. Content in the success of his mission. But the tied up creature had no such rest. Sending silent pleas to the stars that it might be saved. But not daring to make a sound, less it awaken that sleeping horror. Or was it sleeping? Dear Ix, it might be watching me. Feigning sleep to keep an eye on its meal. Dear Ix I'm next...
All through the night, the demons plagued its mind. Until the warmth of the morning rose, and with it the sound of an Ixian cruiser.
Elation could not be an understatement for the tired, tied, beat, and bruised thing. Craning its neck to the direction of the sound about to bellow out an Ixian warning to the demon resting next it.
"BE CAREFUL! THERE'S ONE HERE-". It stopped speaking. That previous elation it felt at a saviour arriving to rescue it from the demons grasp, fizzled out like a drop of water in a drought.
That all so familiar cold remained. And the dryness of despair. As pairs of dark pupils shot back at it.
On the cruiser were tall adult Terrans. Clean cut, well fed, well dressed Terrans. Four, no Six, no eight of them. All hanging onto the side of cruiser while it made its way to their location. Compared to the demon waking up beside it, these creatures were organised. A savageness neatly packaged in a uniform with a symbol. The prisoners eyes grew wide in its sunken sockets. 8 rings, and a centre mass. They must be the cause of, well all this.
Accepting fate, its head fell in part defiance, in part to avoid the stinging eyes of these others. It felt their gaze burn through—cold, cruel, calculating. There is nothing I can do any longer.
"You're finally here. What took you so long?" The runner said to his approaching comrades, "Took all night to catch up to him."
"Hey Jan, great work", the tall militant woman shot back. With a playful punch to his arm. "Guess all that cardio really paid off, didn't I tell you it would!" She let out a playful guffaw.
"Thanks Chel", replied Jan.
"Ok chop chop people, we're on a schedule. We need to reach the port ASAP remember? Come on Jan, rest up all you like, you're still on the clock."
"Aye sir." Jan shot back in a mock salute, gaining a sneer from the commandant, then a sneaky smile.
"Don't forget your trash. And make sure its breathing still."
It creaked open its eyes, seeing pairs of boots moving towards it and standing in front. In silence. Then all of a sudden, felt pairs and pairs of hands pull and tug. and lift it up The thing let out a pathetic silent sob. While it was loaded in the back of the cruiser, face up. Staring at eyes, piercing black dots peering back. It could never understand what was being felt by those eyes and those faces.
Ixians wear their emotions on their carapace; spots and stripes would slowly appear in certain parts, representing emotions and feeling that their bodies felt in a general sense. But the most private thoughts were of course, still kept private.
But this. This was just too foreign. The eyes never stopped. Even in the swaying movement of the cruiser the pupils never broke contact. Those eyes. As if it was peering into it, envelops your entire mind. There was no way to hide, even hiding in his inner self would do no good. Those eyes. Those predator eyes can find me anywhere I try to escape to. Inside and out.
Some times passes.
"You know. I lost good friends to the royal caste. Especially to this one's brood clan or whatever they like to call it." One of them was looking right at it when they said it. It turned its eyes over to the source. A short one, with a slave scar on the neck said it. A scar that shot through his memories. A scar inflicted to property owned by, his brood. This one is dangerous..., it thought.
Jan, and the others didn't look but felt it. The cold darkness in that tone made it clear what it intended to do.
The female militant, Chel, I think her name was. Slowly reached to the side arm on her holster. Sensing the oncoming problem.
"You still understand me don't you? I've had to watch good people die. Damn good people." The scarred one one stood, grabbing the upper rail of the cruiser to steady themselves. "I hear that even if you get ill, you become the entertainment for the night. What was it now?" She paused for a brief second. "Oh I remember".
"Stil" Chel said slowly. "Cool it". Hand still on the butt of the sidearm.
Not hearing or not wanting to reply. Stil continued. "Torn apart by those raptor pets. Hands or feet cut off as souvenirs for those fucked-up parties and those fucked-up guests. Oh yea, and the 'toy play' or whatever they call it. Can't have Ken and Barbie fight back now, can we?"
Stil leaned closer to the now cowering, shaking thing, "I wonder which one was your favourite." The words cut through La'Ix like an icicle. This was the first time these demons actually spoke to it directly. And it didn't like it. It could sense the venom from the words.
"Stil..." Chel slowly got up, hand still at the ready. "I said cool it." The line had a steely warning to it. Chel wouldn't risk the mission. Even if it meant doing what must be done.
Agonizing seconds passed. The cowering, shaking thing seemed to grow whiter and whiter by the second, It's spots clearly showing what it felt. Staring up, Not willing to move but being unable to hide. It felt the absolute crushing weight of the present. Grinding it down to a paste.
Everyone stayed still. The two militants didn't move. The rest didn't seem to even have paid attention to the converstation, still looked away.
Longer passed.
Stil smiled, "Oh come on Chel, you know I wouldn't do anything to our friend here? You know I was just playing around." Stil laughed. Chel didn't react.
Stil immediately crouched, faced the shaking prisoner inches apart eye to eye, and in a whisper said "Right friend?"
She wants me to reply? Dear Ix I can't even think with those eyes in front of me What do I do?! What do I say?!
"Right. Friend?" Stil repeated slower and colder. Like the blade of a surgeon hovering over skin, ready to plunge.
The gears of its Ixian brain grinded to a screeching halt. In utter desperation to find a reply it simply gave up. Instead, it felt a warmth slowly spread. Slowly spread between its hind legs. It had released its bladder.
"BAHAHAHAHA LOOK AT IT" Stil roared in laughter. The sound of it rattling the prisoners brain with the sound. Disorienting its senses. "NOW THAT'S CLASSIC TIMING IF I'VE EVER SEEN IT!" She plopped back down face red and still laughing.
The Ixian didn't know what to do but tremble and sob silently on the cold surface of the cruiser surrounded by laughter. and the warmth of its piss. It tried to plug its ears. But the sound still came. Laughter. Laughter. Laughter. Dear Ix, what are these demons... where are they taking me? To hell?...
The cruiser kept cruising. Towards the port across the island. Trailing laughter behind. Or to the sobbing wreck of a thing, demonic cackling.
The scent of familiarity wafted into the senses of the prisoner as the cruiser started to slow. The smell of the salt, the chirping of familiar aviaries. Sound of the crash of sea. The port.
Braving a sentence for the first time in for what seems eternity. It let out a question "...w..w..where ... why... are... ... we ...h... here?" It managed to say shakily, eyes downcast.
As if in response, a sharp shove greeted it from the back and a hard hit on the ground was as much of an answer it was getting.
"Move it", Jan said gruffly.
They walked. the ixian still bound but free to walk in the middle of the group of humans. Towards a destination still not known. The walk twisted, and turned, and twisted again. One thing struck out to the prisoner. It was too clean, especially for what it was expecting, it's last experience being in the previous blood-soaked town laden with bodies and carrion eaters.
The port town was completely silent, free from the regular hustle and bustle it usually had even when the emperor was not present. And superbly clean. Not a single piece of dirt to be seen. Not a single Ixian either. Where did everyone go? Did they make it out somehow when these invaders came?
In the background, the surf broke relentlessly.
Piercing eyes caught the prisoners glance, as it wandered curiously around the town. Realising its mistake La'Ix tried to look away but the burning gaze gripped his own.
As if reading its soul. The human answered the hidden question bubbling up in La'Ix. "You should've seen them your royal majesty". The one called Stil said while bending in mocking courtesy.
The surf pounded the shore even more loudly now.
"They don't swim well. Especially the young ones. They dropped like stones. Turning all white by the time they stopped moving."
Louder now. The sea roared.
Nothing came. Not a thought in La'Ix's mind. Its mind struggled to comprehend the depth of what was said by Stil, the scarred human.
The waves boomed louder now. Louder than the sun, echoing louder than the screams of all the Ixians that must have perished.
It saw the lips of the standing-devil in front of it. But all the came from its blood red lips were obscured by the sound of the pounding of the waves. The echoes of drowned kin, thudding and slapping against the shore, merged with the relentless surf in La'Ix's mind.
This is for our sins.
Wave after wave, the relentless surge continued, each one a haunting reminder of the souls lost to the sea, each crash a ghostly thud of bodies hitting the shore.
Very slowly did some exhausted neuron in the Ixian's head come to a conclusion as to how these creatures in front of it can be so relentless, so cruel, and so evil. When pushed to beyond its breaking point, did their true carnivorous instincts rear their ugly head.
Oh dear Ix. What sort of environment could breed such demons?
La'Ix didn't remember what happened next. The memories feel like a distant dream now as he sits watching the port sky now.
The aching brand on his forehead of the 8 ringed system, pulsed in pain—a departing gift from his newly made friends, stung from the salty sea air.
He barely recalls the staggered walk from the empty inter-arm transmission office and the inputting of his biometric royal seal. He barely even remembers the message that was sent under his name and signature
And even less does he remember what he heard what will happen next.
All alone now, he stares at the sky of the empty port town. As he watches more royal ships enter the atmosphere.
He gazes upward, thoughtlessly, statue-like Knowing fate will come for them all. Fate in the form of piercing black eyes and a monster so large it can fit in a shadow.
A single thought, carried its way from above the despair to the surface. Slowly. Like a bubble in a pool of tar.
What was I meant to tell the emperor again?

The wiry black tree stood out that snowy January morning like an abysmal blot. Devoid of leaves to indicate life, it managed to stain the cloudy white sky with its presence. It looked down on me as I filled my bright red percolator with grounds and water, a dark always in my peripheral, though I rarely looked directly at it. Its shadowy tendrils followed me for the whole day, through the long rows of dispassionate wood tables and cold white plastic chairs, the cramps in my forearm when I wrote too quickly, and teachers calling out time for students. As soon as another student looked down on their paper, or a teacher turned away, the shadows advanced, licking my face, drowning out my surroundings. The voices of the teachers, the sight of the paper under my pencil, the pain of the hangnails and ripped cuticles on my finger—all faded away. By the time exams had finished, I had been lulled into a haze, a stupor that lured me into deceitful sleep.

Your reflection refracts a million times in between the mirror’s cracks, each piece of glass portraying some dream of you, or, maybe, some memory. Two candles light up the room, one red and one white. Each conveys different light, and each flicker illuminates our skin uniquely. I look at you in the mirror’s shards, each contour of your face accentuated slightly differently. More white light there and shifting shadows hitting at new angles. The red and white candlelight dances on you, caressing your painted white face and red lips a little bit differently in each image. I open my lips to speak. “Do you realize I love the way you look me in my eyes?” As I turn to look at you, I see your eyes are black and your body is rigid. I feel myself falling, slipping away from you. I rush to kiss you before you disappear, but your face falls apart as our lips meet; your skin sloughs and flakes off, and your eyes are still black, like two drops of ink in water, and I can’t hold all of you together. My head jerks out of water. Bright rose petals are scattered on its surface, and dim candles lit on white marble surround me. It seems like I’m in a bathtub. I wipe my face, but warm, thick liquid covers my arms, and I look down to see partially coagulated blood on my hands. It disperses when I rub it off, but as more blood falls, I realize that it’s dripping from my neck. My throat’s cut; raw and filled with some rough, frayed substance. The sharp, smoky smell of sage wafts up to me. Blood from my throat and hands spreads in the bath, and after just moments, all of the water in the bath is tinted red. I move closer to inspect the candles, and I realize that they’re part of a shrine. At its center is a mask; covered in black and white paint, with light peering through its eye and mouth holes. When I reach to examine it, I feel a sharp burning on my back. A candle has melted onto me. I try to wipe it off, but it burns my hand when I touch it. Another candle melts, and another, and another. Red and white wax fills the tub, steaming as the hot wax meets the cool, rose-colored water. At first, the water cools it, but as more pours into the tub, the water begins to heat. I snap up, but sharp, thin claws pull me down. Four emaciated figures are dragging me further down into the boiling water. I open my eyes underwater, and for a brief moment, before the sizzling water sears my eyes closed, I’m able to make out a face—black hair and pale skin, with red cuts all over. I flail and resist, and eventually, I gasp, but as I try to breathe in, boiling water fills my throat and I die. Dancers whirl across the room, encircling the center, rotating this way and the other. My friend tells me I should ask you to dance, but I brush it off. It’s not worth it; I was never much of a dancer. So I just sit there and watch as you and your friends talk, laugh, dance, sing and take pictures. When I’m around you, I see myself through you. Each time you laugh, I want to laugh, and when you smile, I can’t hold mine back. I find myself picking petals from roses when I’m around you too long. We’re so beautiful; your new white dress, and my teary red eyes. I look at you and whisper. “Let's touch the sky, I’ma, I’ma change your life”. For an instant, I see you looking back. You pause, no longer talking to your friends, like we’re frozen together as the crowd buzzes around us. Your eyes get big and your mouth opens like you’re about to say something. Then you turn away, and the crowd consumes you and leaves me behind, and finally, I wake up in a cold sweat. The shadows in the room lengthened, wrapping themselves around me, smothering me and my deferred hopes and indiscretion. The moonlight filled the room, and the trees stared at me, with harsh branch faces chastising me, and I pulled the blanket around me, closer and closer, enveloping as much as it could. For a moment, the whole world turned red and white—red like my face as heat rose from my throat to right behind my cheekbones and eyes, pushing itself higher and higher, threatening to burst out of my skull, and white like the cloudy winter tones that had characterized the sky for weeks at this point. 

After that, everything faded to gray. My red cheeks cooled, and my eyes became sullen, and the white snow that my window peered onto was dirty and impure. I remember when you told me that at the beginning of the book, he’s gray, and then he’s colorful, and then, at the end of the book, he’s gray again. Sometimes you sound like my biographer. But there’s one thing you missed. We never stopped seeing the color, it just became safer for us to hide from the oversaturated reds and whites that burn our eyes, the sounds that sound too loud, and the pretty girls with pale skin and black hair who only kiss us in our nightmares. I stay up the rest of the night with my lights on to beat back any shadowy tendrils that come my way, biting my fingertips and white cuticles until they’re red, bleeding and raw, until I return to my playlist, ready to walk into school tomorrow and pretend I’m alive.

Chapter 4:
As the force of Jason’s corpse, meeting the ground, turned his body into a fine soup. The resulting damage overflow caused his soul to begin coming apart at the seams. The sheer suddenness of the impact had left him no time to think about activating any of his plethora of life-saving cheat skills, consuming any of his vast horde of damage preventing concoctions, nor really use any of the other myriad bullshit tools at his disposal; before having a very intimate face-to-face with the crust of this planet. The previously mentioned soup-ification of his limbs and internal organs did mean that even if he had thought to use such items, he was unable to reach for, much less consume, anything. This limitation was slightly mitigated by the fact that the meteoric collision had shattered/ shredded/ or otherwise pulverized all non-magically enhanced items that Jason had been carrying on his person. Further, because apparently this world just plain hated Jason’s particular brand of bullshit; even the extra dimensional nature of his storage solutions were not spared the calamitous effects of meeting the ground at approximately Mach 3.

For you see, as any “good” gamer does, Jason had been sure to run with max out stacks of potions, hi-potions, tonics, tinctures, ethers, and various other mundane healing concoctions. As to why he decided to have enough vials on his person to put a glass blowers' children through college, he operated under the mindset of “Why bother using your precious spell slots to heal, when you can just replace a literal gallon of your blood with healing potion?” Turns out that this issue was fixed around the same time as Jason picked up the passive [Regeneration] skill.)

In addition to his reservoir of the common mundane potions, Jason had never gotten around to using ANY of his built-up hoard of magical elixirs. He had always meant to use one... or twenty of them, but seriously, you never know when you might need those bad boys when you are facing down a particularly difficult big bad.... And phooey to anyone who points out that this usually just means you never actually use any of them.

One might argue that the only upside to Jason’s impromptu intimate associations with the ground, was that his healing items quite literally vaporized upon impact. And while terrible for him, the unique shape and depression of the unmarked crater grave allowed for the creation of a heretofore impossible oasis in the multiverse.

*Legend has it that the sheer volume of aerosolized revival drink that still lingers in that crater, has turned it into a mythical place of physical and mental healing. One reputable interdimensional tour book has even rated the area with its highly coveted 7.3 (star) ranking....

Seriously, who uses base 7? Much less base point anything. Like I understand base 5 or base 10, but 7.3?! Doesn’t that make calculating partial stars a nightmare?.... ANYWAY....

They claim that spending even a single night is enough to heal 30 (years) of bodily wear and tear. Yes!!! That DOES also means fixing such pesky problems as losing limbs, “curing” otherwise incurable/ fatal ailments, or reversing the effects of mana burnout.*


< Primary user deemed non-responsive. >
< Searching for approved work around >
< Searching… >
< Searching… >
< Responsive secondary user detected >
< Activating secondary user system >
< System online. >
< Secondary user has been approved to make existence sustaining choices for primary user. >

A soft pop can be heard within the stopped time, followed shortly thereafter, by a long drawn-out yawn. From the endless nothingness that exists between all things, there springs to life a small non-euclidean shaped.... thing. As is the case with most things that are born into the multiverse, she was... less than pleased, about the whole “existing” thing. Her displeasure was noted by the system, and a formal complaint would be submitted to the appropriate beings. But that was an issue to be dealt with at another time and place.

Once more she let out a big yawn and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. A surprising feat, considering that she did not, nor had she ever required or known sleep; coupled with the fact that her form lacked anything that could be considered, even by the most generous of terms, as “eyes”. But again, a problem logged for another place and another time. At this moment she had a job to do, and gosh darn it, she was going to do the absolute HECK out of it.

P.O.V: Personalized Utilitarian Lazarus Liquidation System. AKA: P.U.L.L.

After coming to terms with the unfortunate fact that she now existed, P.U.L.L. decided that her job would likely be far simpler if she possessed a form similar to that of the primary user’s. If she shared a form with the user, it stood to reason that she could better understand what had caused their lack of functioning, and how best to remedy it. And the sooner she remedied the issue, the sooner she could return to blissful nonexistence. As luck would have it for her, the ability to edit her being fell within the parameters of “existence sustaining choices” she was allowed to make. With a flick of her nonexistent finger, she tasked the system to use the Primary’s mana stores to craft her a form. She was aware that the system had produced a series of pop-ups in regards to her request. However due to her lack of visual sensory organs, she was unable to read any of the pop-ups, instead choosing to just spam the approval process for now. She couldn’t quite prove it, but she got the distinct feeling that the whole process took far longer than it had any right to.

Opening her newly actualized eyes, P.U.L.L. took in her surroundings. She discovered that she existed within, what could most accurately be described as either “a really big hole” or perhaps a bit more loosely defined as “a crater”. After a few moments, she decided that “crater” sounded more impressive, thus it would be how she would define it moving forward.

The crater looked to be recently formed, she could still make out some chunks of rubble suspended within the stopped time. She deduced that whatever had happened to the Primary, had likely also caused this crater. With nothing else to do, and with sweet, sweet, nonexistence waiting for her at the end of this task, P.U.L.L. began to search the crater for answers. She learned precious little in her exploration, other than the stopped time seemed to end at the crater's edges. After spending a considerably longer period of time than what she would like to admit to, searching for signs of life, P.U.L.L. was forced to admit a very troublesome fact. She could not for the life of her seem to find any sign of the Primary.

“System, can you hear me?”



“Cool, cool. I am having difficulty locating the primary user. Could you please highlight them for me.”



“Approved”



P.U.L.L. deeply regretted her previous choice in the whole “getting eyes” department, as the entire world around her suddenly flashed into a searing yellowish green color. Her brain screamed in displeasure, as she fumbled blindly with the personal system settings to lower the brightness. Eventually she found what she was looking for. A few moments later, still blinking spots out of her vision, P.U.L.L. surveyed the scene in front of her. It took her a little bit, but as she looked more closely, she started to see tiny areas where the sickly yellow/green color was not plastered across the entirety of her vision. As she parsed the new information, an uneasy feeling started to creep up in her gut.

“System?”



“Would I be correct in my assumption... That the entirety of THIS”, she gestures to the colored haze. “Is the remains of the primary?”



P.U.L.L.’s jaw hits the floor. “What in the world could have done this”, she wonders to herself. Another few moments pass as P.U.L.L. ponders the possibilities. Try as she might, her brain cannot think of any manner of beast nor magic that could cause this kind of devastation; at least none that would have left such a minimal amount of collateral damage to the area surrounding this crater.

“System. Please pull up the most recent Battle Logs and Memory Logs”







“Fuck. System, access primary’s items and use mana restoration items.”



“You have got to be kidding me...”



“Nooooo...” PULL frantically scans the primary’s profile page.



“No, no, no...” Her metaphysical heart is racing. She just needs something, ANYTHING, to put more mana into the tank.



“FUUUUUUUUUCK!!!” She knows she’s out of time.

As it turns out, with the acquisition of a physical form comes a certain kind of morality. And wouldn’t you know it, morality is the perfect breeding ground for all kinds of guilt. Guilts that are not at all conducive to the utilitarian choices that a P.U.L.L system, by its very nature, is generally forced to make. She mentally recorded another point in the ‘Pros of non-existence' column.

With a heavy heart, P.U.L.L. decides that she really has no choice, and does what her most base programming has been telling her to do since the beginning. She begins to frantically scroll through the primary’s profile, searching for various skills, abilities, and/or items to purge.

<10>

“System!”

<9>

“Authorize, emergency liquidation”

<8>

<7>

In a blind panic, she picks a random ability from the Skill screen. “Liquidate”

<6>



<5>



<4>



<3>

“APPROVED!”

<2>

The system replies in a sickeningly sweet voice.

P.U.L.L lets out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding. Her hands are shaking as she opens the screen to see how much mana that little gambit got her. The bar sits at a healthy 45%, a feeling of unbridled joy washes over her; followed closely by crushing sadness as she can already see the bar beginning to dip. She tries very hard not to think about what she just did. She knows she can’t liquidate anything TOO important, but...

“System. Moving forward, please disable all non-emergency warnings. Further, all orders are to be considered pre-approved until the primary user is revived. Now, what is the mana cost to maintain [Temporal Flux]?”





















P.U.L.L. was a bit shocked; was... was that a cheeky undertone she just heard? Was the System even capable of being “cheeky”? No, something deep within her programming told her that it wasn’t. The Master Interface and its myriad systems had been designed with function above all else. Up until this point, the system had had a personality about as interesting as, unflavored oatmeal or watching paint dry.

Nothing about this day was living up to her expectations. Deep within her sub systems, she let herself have a little tantrum (as a treat). She let herself piss and moan, throw metaphorical chairs across the room, stomp her feet and pout. She raged against the absurdity of all of this. She knew precious little about the wider multiverse, but even she could see that someone, or something, was fucking with her.

Bringing herself back to the here and now, she takes a deep breath and tries to center herself within the moment. While it might have felt good, that little tantrum had cost her precious moments, and likely would end up costing her user some hard won plunder. “With your reserves sated; System! Please pull up the recent Battle and Visual Logs.”



P.U.L.L. watched the data feeds. Watched as the user popped out of The Void and into the skies above this planet. She watched as he plummeted down, down, down. She took notes about the abnormal interactions with this realm’s equivalent of mana. How it seemed to fight back when the user called forth his own mana reserves. Something about the way it all played out taunted her, she knew she had seen this sort of reaction before; but couldn’t quite put her finger on what exactly it reminded her of.

She watched as the user’s hands and lips bubbled and blistered after each spell, saw the spike in damage; followed by an automated activation of regeneration skills. She watched as spell after spell fizzled out, half formed and fully useless. She watched as his final spell shattered, and reformed into something entirely new. She watched as gravity seemed to coalesce around the man and hurl him ever faster towards a rapidly rising ground. And finally, she watched as his super-heated body made contact with the planet. With a shaky hand she hovered over the damage logs.

[click]

F39, 5'8" 175, non-smoker, EDS/asthma/hypothyroid, was being tested for POTS (including this info so my post doesn't get deleted by the auto mod) TLDR at the bottom
So I had a sweat/tilt table test recently. They explained it would be uncomfortable.
When the test started, I could feel the pin prick sensation they told me to expect on a couple areas, but the pain in my knee was searing. I have a very high pain tolerance, but this was next level pain. I told the tech that it was unbearable, I felt like someone was burning a hole in my knee or cutting off my knee cap. I was freaking out a bit, writhing in pain and asked them to stop because I couldn't bear the pain any longer. They said are you sure, we will have to restart the test if you stop and I was already halfway through, so I continued. The pain was so intense my upper lip froze, and I started to get uncontrollable muscle spasms in my face around by mouth and eyes and in my arm. The test lasted about 4-5 minutes and my whole body was shaking at the end of it.
At the very end of the test when they unstrapped me, I immediately looked at my knee. I was surprised to see a hole and black bump. I told the tech, hey where I had that searing pain, there is now a hole. She said, "that was already there" and dismissed me entirely.
I went into the bathroom and pressed on the little black hole, black stuff, fluid and blood came out. I went to the front desk and asked to speak to someone because there is definitely a hole where the immense pain was. The tech came out and I was told it was just a sticky pad and there was no way the pad caused the wound, and she reiterated that the wound was already there (I promise it was not).
I asked to see the pad. She brought me a new one. It is a small grounding pad with a snap and GELTRODE printed on the back.
Today the wound is larger, and my knee is very ach-y.
I think it is important to let the hospital know if I was burned during the procedure as the pads could be defective. I'm not mad I was burned, but I feel weird about them trying to say the wound was already there and completely dismissing me. I don't want anyone else to go through that. I really cannot even describe how bad the pain was. And I am having trouble walking a bit today.
So Reddit, please help, is it possible or likely I was burned for almost 5 minutes straight from a grounding pad on my knee, or am I just crazy?
TLDR Can you be burned by a grounding pad during a sweat test?

So I recently got the Matrix M4 GBBR since it looked like a cheap backyard plinker with a more ""authentic"" feel to it than an AEG, without having to deal with noise complaints and ammo costs. So far it's been a really great gun and fun to shoot. However, I've been trying to find different stocks and handguards (especially ones that mimic the look of the og m16), without much luck. I think it's because this particular Western Arms system seems to be semi-deprecated (I've heard complaints about magazine shortages for that reason), and I haven't been able to find anything about stocks or handguards that fit onto the receiver, or even if real steel ones work. I was wondering if someone here has been down the same rabbit hole I'm heading down and figured out what works. TIA
TL;DR does anybody know what stocks and handguards fit the Matrix M4 GBBR as seen in the link below?
Link to the rifle in question: https://www.evike.com/products/75714/ (Model: M4A1)

Link to Previous Part
Somewhere around my head hitting the ground and that damn raccoon laughing hysterically at me, I drifted out of simple unconsciousness and into a memory. This particular memory was going to be unpleasant, I could tell that right away. It was part of the reason I left Wisconsin in the first place, that damn abandoned town of Imalone.
Something I’d always liked to do was explore, its one of the reasons I decided on somewhere like Eagles Peak in the first place when I left. It’s also the reason I ended up in Imalone. It was a new place to check out that had been left untouched for several years. As the story goes the town popped up around a gas station, the earliest any recorded records of the place include a date, is the 1940’s. For a while a church and bible camp garnered the interests of tourists and members of the church in Imalone but it wouldn’t last. One day the church closed its doors and so many of the towns residents packed up and left. Without the church and its bible camp what little revenue the place might have generated ceased to exist. After that, the town’s bones were left for nature to pick through. A few friends had relayed the story to me and I decided I just had to see it for myself. So I packed a bag one night, jumped in my car and headed out. That’s where this memory began.
I pulled off the old road embattled with undergrowth in my old Honda civic and stepped out into the night air. The town was faintly illuminated for some reason despite being abandoned years ago. The light flickering off into the otherwise pitch black forest was foreboding. For the first time that night a tiny part of me pulled back, away from the town.
“I’m sure there’s a reason as to why the power wasn’t cut. Maybe some homeless moved in or something, it was a town at one point and its not like anyones claiming this place.”
These thoughts did nothing to calm my nerves as I walked through the overgrowth and towards the town. In fact those thoughts inspired me to try and be as quite as possible.
“Just get in, see what there is to see and get out Keith.”
I was still really on edge as I came to the overgrown gas station that marked the beginning of the town and the end of the forest. Though, that border was a bit disputed as of late it would seem. A huge tree had grown in the middle of the wrecked gas station, bursting out of its windows and roof. Weeds grew up through the pavement and both old pumps lay on the ground, rusted and beaten. I walked into the decrepit gas station, searching for a way up onto the roof to see if I could find the source of the light in town. As I got inside I heard a rumble of thunder.
“Weird, the forecast didn’t call for any storms?”
I thought as lightning flashed through the sky. Briefly illuminating the room and showing me a path up the tree through the hole it bored in the roof. The flash from the lightning hung just a few seconds longer than I would’ve assumed and I swore I heard the very faint cry of a bird in the distance.
Up on the roof I dropped my bag and grabbed my binoculars. As soon as I focused them in on the town I saw a bedraggled man on a bicycle. Well, bicycle may not have been the right word as it was stationary and hooked up to a series of rusty gears. As I followed the path of rusted gears and cogs with my eyes it seemed to lead to a fallen silo. Inside this silo there was a turbine.
“They made some kind of rudimentary generator!” I exclaimed to myself, seeing the mess of wires sprouting from the far side of the collapsed silo. To call the setup ramshackle would’ve been a compliment. It looked like it was a light breeze from falling apart with all the corroded metal of the gears and turbine. I was far enough off that I couldn’t hear the contraption but I’m sure it sounded awful.
I turned my attention back to the man on the bicycle, paying more attention to what he was wearing. It was unusual to say the least. He was covered in bits of moss and dead branches all stuck to what looked to be a canvas tarp converted into some kind of robe. I couldn’t make out his face, but I imagined it would be marred with an unkempt beard, laden with bits of twigs and leaves. I put down the binoculars and put them back in my bag. Once again I felt like I shouldn’t be here, that I should just turn around and leave, but I still didn’t listen. Instead I climbed down from the roof, back into the gas station and started making my way into the town as quietly as I could. Thunder roared again as I crept through the overgrown town. This time when I heard it I was sure the flash of lighting that followed was accompanied by a distant bird’s piercing cry. It sounded like some kind of bird of prey. I shuddered but remained undeterred as I crept deeper into the town.
Eventually I came to a rotting building with half a wagon wheel attached above where its door used to be. My curiosity got the best of me and I decide to check out the building. Walking into what I could now see used to be some sort of bar, I was instantly hit with the distinct smell of mold.
“Maybe that’s why they left. Black mold has a way of clearing out the neighborhood, or so I hear” I mumbled to myself.
Bushes had sprouted up behind the bar and I thought the scene of nature taking over this building would make a good picture. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flash, as soon as the click sounded I dropped my phone. In the light of the flash I saw a figure nestled among the bushes. It was another man clothed in a similar way to the one I had seen on the bicycle. Only this time he was far closer to me and very aware of my presence. The man also wore a mask that looked like it may have been native american in origin. The mask was faded and scratched but obviously carved by an experienced hand. It resembled a bird with a large tuft of split feathers adorning the top of the mask. The man recoiled at the light of the flash at first but soon he was back on his feet. He said something as he stood but the mask muffled his voice to such a degree that I couldn’t make out a word. I jumped back screaming, it was all I could do to snatch my phone out of the air before it hit the ground as I turned and ran. As I burst back out of the building I found the street suddenly full of those ominously dressed men. I slid to a stop and looked behind me, finding my path blocked by the masked man from the bushes. I was weighing my options as thunder cracked again, louder than ever. Lightning followed with another bird like screech as loud as a train.
“SCREEEE!”
“SCREEEEET!”
“SCREEETH!”
“SKREIITH!”
“KIETH!”
“KEITH!”
I was shaken out of the memory and back into consciousness by Bianca. Shaking me from my position on the basement floor.
“Keith! Oh god! What the hell happened to you?! We found you thrashing around down here!”
Bianca screamed inches from my face, her eyes now undeniably glowing.
“There was a raccoon and, and…. It… talked” I strung together as I searched for an answer.
“You should have seen his face! He went as white as a sheet and fell like a bowling pin when I pulled the whole cat gag!” Cackled the raccoon in the corner as Bianca’s uncles stood over it glowering.
“Your eyes, They’re glowing!” I remarked, trying to change the subject.
“Yes of course they… oh damn it! I.. I’ll explain later Keith I guess you have to know now. You’ve seen enough in this basement alone to have questions. Here clean yourself up and meet us in the kitchen.”
Bianca tossed me a wet rag to try and clean the dust and sweat that had covered my face during my unconscious episode.
“And YOU Rocco, you’re going to stay here and we’re going to have a little chat about manners once I’ve cleared this mess up.”
She spit more than said, gesturing towards the raccoon who almost immediately stopped laughing and skulked off deeper into the basement.
Bianca and her uncles turned and went up the stairs leaving me alone. I washed my face off with the cloth as best I could and tried to come up with a strategy for the shit storm waiting for me upstairs. I had to come up with something believable for why I directly ignored their one rule, don’t go into the basement. Bianca had looked concerned more than angry. Had I said something while I was passed out reliving that memory? Do they all think I’m crazy now? Maybe I can use that, yeah plead insanity to them. They may send me off to a home, but If I told them I was remembering the time I got abducted by some crazy bird cultists it would definitely be the padded room for me. I pulled myself together and climbed the stairs opening the door into the last thing I would’ve expected.
Bianca was crying as her Uncles tried to comfort her. It was the first time I got a good look at her uncles. Both looked fairly old, I’d guess mid 60’s to early 70’s. One had a bald spot covering the top of his head and long har besides that with a mole on his right cheek. His face was weathered and a bit wrinkled with lines around his eyes that could only come from prolonged use of goggles. The other had a circle of hair on the top of his head but no more hair to speak of. This ones face was the mirror image of the other with the only difference being the mole on his cheek was on the opposite side. Their hair was really the only way to tell them apart.
“This one is all here at least, I’ve said before there’s a risk! You can’t just charm…”
Her uncle stopped suddenly as I walked into the room and Bianca suddenly looked up at me, Her tear stained eyes still shining an electric blue. I just couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
“I’m soooo sorry, I never meant to end up down there but there was this meowing noise and it sounded like it came fro..”
“Stop, just stop its ok. I guess I should’ve figured you’d end up down there, Rocco likes to torment new people. But I’m sure you have questions about us.”
“Oh I sure do but we’ll start with your eyes, what’s going on there?”
This conversation lead into something I didn’t quite expect to hear, these people weren’t entirely human. There I said it, I still don’t quite believe it but Bianca’s “uncles” tried to explain it to me. Her uncles names were Frank (the one with the small hair circle) and Stein (the one with the reverse bowl cut) and they weren’t her uncles at all. They were researchers, but not for the government like she had claimed, at least not anymore. They researched the supernatural and the paranormal. Rocco was one of their more successful experiments and Bianca, well that’s a different story. Bianca is a succubus, an honest to god supernatural entity. According to Stein she can influence emotions and how people feel about her. That’s what I felt when I met her yesterday and I lost control. I didn’t lose myself, she simply took the reigns and steered me in the direction she wanted. Normally you couldn’t tell there was anything off about her aside from her stunningly good looks. But, when she got overly emotional or she was trying particularly hard to influence someone her eyes would start to glow that trademark blue. This whole time Bianca looked like a scolded puppy. She was embarrassed it seemed, though I couldn’t say if it was because she got caught or if she really felt that bad about what she had done.
After those three explained what they could in such a short time they offered to let me spend the night, or well, at least the rest of it. Frank showed me to my room on the second floor and I slipped into a dreamless sleep… for all of about an hour before I heard a knock at my door. Groggily, I stumbled to the door and snapped it open.
“What is!… oh hey Bianca.”
Bianca stood in my door, eyes no longer glowing, looking sullen.
“I wanted to apologize, I had no right I, I… it wasn’t right I should’ve given you a choice.”
“Please just, stop. Apology accepted, ok. Look I don’t even know if its me talking to you or you jerking me around again. I wan..”
“It is, I promise, I’m not doing anything to you right now, what you feel is just you.”
Binaca responded, eyes beginning to faintly glow, choking back tears.
“Oh geez I’m sorry, its just hard to know if its really me in there with your whole…. you know”
“Funnily enough that’s exactly the problem. Anyone who knows about me always stays away because they don’t know if I’m in their heads or not. There’s Frank and Stein but that’s about it, and that’s only because my powers have no effect on them for some reason. Maybe all that exposure to the supernatural all their lives gave them some kind of immunity?”
“That must be rough, I never really thought about that”
“Yeah I know, why would you.”
For some reason that last bit cut pretty deep. Could have been because of how she looked away when she said it. Like I was just yet another person who didn’t get it. To some extent she was right, I only found out about exactly what she was an hour or so before. But I still didn’t like the fact she seemed to be judging me for it.
“Anyways, what’s Imalone?”
Bianca asked, breaking the awkward silence. The question threw me off guard right away.
“What?! Where did you hear that?”
“When you were trashing around in the basement you said it a few times.”
I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt guilty as I tried to come up with something to say to dodge the question. Maybe I was just tired of trying to pretend nothing happened. That I’d moved halfway across the country to some little nowhere town for no particular reason. Maybe I just wanted to talk about it finally. Maybe I just couldn’t come up with anything convincing to say. I think, what it really was though, was the fact that no-one had been genuine with each other since this whole thing at Bianca’s house started. I never spoke up about the fact I felt something was off, Bianca manipulated me into thinking I wanted to help her, and Frank and Stein just kind of tried to stay out of the whole thing. I had to at least try and show some honesty, which is why I decided to tell Bianca about Imalone.
“Imalone is the reason I’m out here in the first place. Something happened there that really shook me up, I couldn’t stay there anymore.”
“Stay where?”
“Wisconsin, where I’m from. I’m sure I don’t sound like I’m from around here, not that you cared to ask before.” A little bit of the venom from her comment earlier seeping into my own voice.
“But I’m sure you don’t want to hear that whole story tonight…. Or this morning? What Time is it anyways?”
“Late enough that I don’t really want to go to sleep. Besides, now I want to hear this story.”
To her credit Bianca didn’t fall asleep during my story. I’m sure she had to be tired cause there’s no way she slept before this given her earlier state, but she stayed up to listen. She didn’t try to tell me I was crazy. Which is exactly how I expected someone to act hearing about Imalone. When we got to the point in the story where she had shaken me out of the memory earlier I stopped.
“There’s more isn’t there?”
“Yeah its just… hard to relive is all. Maybe it doesn’t sound all that awful now but in the moment I thought I was going to die in that little ghost town.”
Then she did something I didn’t expect. She reached out and grabbed my hand and I immediately felt calmer. The feelings of fear washing away leaving nothing in their wake.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry about it just finish your story, its easier now right?”
Whatever it was she was doing she was certainly right, the fear of no-one believing me was gone and I found I was able to keep going.
"SCREEEE!” The screaming birds call resounded in my ears. So loud and unexpected that I briefly forgot I was surrounded by these strange canvas wrapped men. As I came back to my senses The one in the bird mask placed a gnarled hand on my shoulder and muttered something unintelligible. I pulled away but his grip was strong and he pushed me to the ground. The rest descended on me cackling and cheering to one another, all in words I couldn’t make out. Rain began to fall, thick and heavy as thunder rolled once more right on top of us. As the men picked me up I gazed into the sky to see something in the clouds illuminated by a flash of lightning.
The thing in the sky looked like a bird of prey, its form translucent against the dark and stormy heavens, only visible by the distortions it left around itself as it circled. Looking back down, I could see the men carrying me to the area I had seen from the top of the gas station. The bicycle sat deserted, though the lines of lights illuminating the town square still flickered, being blown around in the steadily quickening wind. What I hadn’t seen from the gas station roof was the device these people had built in the bones of an old house. The things purpose was clear, to restrain. It was constructed of wood multicolored by rot or the fact that it had originally been part of a building. Four shackles sat at the corners of the structure, each made of a different source of leather or metal. One was simply an old dog collar according to the tag hanging off of it that simply read “spot”.
The men carried me toward the structure that was giving me splinters just by looking at it. Once they arrived there they strapped me into the thing, each of my limbs splayed out in the cardinal directions as the storm raged around us. The rain tore like sandpaper at my skin as the one in the bird mask stood up on the wooden stage next to me. He “spoke” to the others, twelve by my count, in more of this gibberish language they spoke. Whatever he was on about the crowd seemed to be going wild until he held his hands up and they split down the center. I was thrashing around as best I could in my bindings this whole time. Trying to find some give in the ramshackle structure so that I might have a hope at freedom when I noticed what they had split for.
The bird from before had started to come in for a landing and it seemed huge. The beast looked to be about 10 feet tall with a wingspan almost four times that. As it flew closer to the ground lightning struck a house to my right, instantly showering us in wooden shrapnel and setting it alight. In the firelight I could finally behold the bird making its final approach to land. As the black mist surrounding it billowed away it became less translucent and more visible. I could make out Its scaly clawed talons that could’ve shredded a car, and its muscular legs that could’ve picked up that same car and thrown it with enough force to crush a building. Its head resembled an eagle and its deep blue feathers glittered in the rain, firelight, and lightning that crackled off of it and its steely grey pointed beak shown like a great and terrible razor. Once its talons had touched the ground it began to skink and warp, ultimately folding in on itself to reveal a woman, tattooed and naked as the day she was born. She had a hard angular face that demanded respect with nothing more than a glare. My eyes wandered over her body, tracing the lines of the numerous black tattoos that covered her. They were all tribal in nature, involving various wings and talons the came together in an eagle wreathed in lighting on her back. The tattoo resembled the creature she’d just been. She spoke to the masked man in a language that I immediately recognized as Algonquian from a class I took back in college. I still didn’t understand a lick of it but I had at least heard the language before.
The masked man responded with his gibberish which the woman seemed to understand. The man was visibly shaken by her and so was I. This lady radiated pure power and the air was electric. If the fact that she was naked wasn’t enough for me to try and turn my head from her bashfully, the aura she gave off was enough to make me do it out of fear. The woman finally turned to me and spoke,
“You should be honored little trespasser” Cooed the woman, grabbing my head in her hand and turning it up and toward her. With this closer look I could see her steel grey hair that whipped in the wind and her cracking white eyes that seemed to be little storms of their own.
“I’ve decided to spare you this once. Leave this place and forget.”
“And then I woke up back in my car the next day” I said to Bianca as she let go of my hand.
“Are you sure that’s all that happened?”
“Yeah, that was it. Then I started losing it with stress, always thinking I’d stumble into one of those places again. I decided it was time for a change and I moved here to get away from that feeling of being watched I had back home.”
Something about the way Bianca looked at me after I said that told me she didn’t quite buy it. I told her goodnight and rushed her out of my doorway where we had been talking after that. She was right to doubt me though, that last part was a lie. The woman had more to say to me and she certainly hadn’t mentioned anything about sparing me. Despite the calming effect Bianca had brought over me I couldn’t quite bring myself to put that last part of the story into words, at least not out loud.
The woman had told me the men brought me as a sacrifice to her, that the masked man had sought to be her “chosen” whatever that meant. Then she told me all I had to do to be free was allow her to pass a burden onto me. She would deal with these misguided men and I could go home. I’ll admit my decision was cowardly but I was scared for my life. As soon as she gave me an alternative to death I took it. The smile she cracked told me my decision was a mistake. She placed a hand on my back and white hot pain shot through my nerves. I couldn’t see but I could hear the screams. Screams that were cutoff with the brush of feathers against my cheek and the thunderous flap of wings. Thunder roared and lightning cracked, I could hear nothing but the cataclysmic storm that woman had apparently caused. Then as suddenly as it began it stopped.
I awoke the next morning in the middle of Imalone’s town square, it had been leveled and ash was strewn all around me. My clothes were singed but they would have to do on the walk back to the car. The further I walked from the town square the more the town looked as though nothing had happened last night. The ground wasn’t even wet by the time I made it back to my car, like the storm had been centered on the town square and that place alone. When I got home and went to shower I found a black mark seared into my back where the woman had touched me. The mark was a bird covered in lightning and mist, not unlike the woman’s own tattoo on the center of her back.
As that memory crept through my head another thing weighed on my conscious, see I haven’t been entirely honest with you either, whoever it may be seeing this. I didn’t leave Wisconsin just out of fear, no the dreams pushed me here as well. The dreams of storms and shrieks, the dreams of that woman speaking to me in a language I couldn’t understand, The dreams of this town.
It wasn’t random chance that I stumbled upon Eagles Peak. I had looked for places that resembled the flashes of images in my dreams. Ending up deciding that this place must be the town I’d seen. It’s also the reason Bianca’s house stuck out to me when I arrived. It may have been odd to see in this town but I’d also seen it in my dreams. When I came into town and finally went to sleep in my new house it was the first night I hadn’t dreamt in a long time. I’d done something right, or maybe wrong, who’s to say. But something about this town calmed my head, something about this town was connected to that night in Imalone. Whatever it was I intended to find out what. The only issue is I have no idea where to start.

I have a couple questions but really only want to ask about one. I’m having issues with the screws that go into the left shelf at the searing burner.

1. The screws go into the paint because the holes are painted? Seems right, just checking.
   
2. Bigger issue—the first screw doesn’t seem to want to go in. I read elsewhere on reddit a thread where everyone said “keep at it; it’ll go in”. Then I found another thread where someone said it’s the wrong size screw.
   

Anyone have any experience they can share?

The pain was the worst thing`Dominick Mason had ever known…and he knew what it felt like to die. It felt like his brain was in a blender, being chopped to liquid for a Jeffery Dahmer smoothie and though it seemed melodramatic, he imagined he could feel himself losing brain cells by the minute. The sun, Merrick told him, would not burn him, but it would decay him faster, so sleep or rest during the day. With the sick, throbbing agony in the center of his brain, however, that was impossible. He spent most of the day curled up on his side, hugging his knees, and moaning. He had flashbacks to dying in his apartment, and that made things even worse. The room became too small, too close, the air too stale. His heart, filled with the blood of last night’s meal, pounded in his chest, and he went from slightly chilly to hot and feverish as blood was forced through his circulatory system. It mixed with the embalming fluid and left him feeling full and constipated. He didn’t want to get up, but he also didn’t want to go on lying there. He was the definition of miserable.
Before long, the pain became too great and he got up to pace, pressing his hands to the sides of his head and gritting his teeth. Merrick, who slept very little if at all, sat in his chair and watched, trying his best to talk him through it. “It’ll be over soon,” Merrick said. “The pain receptors in your brain are the first to go. When they burn out, you won’t feel anything.”
“When?” Dom asked, his voice raising with the tide of pain.
“A couple days?”
“A couple days???”
“The pain will lessen gradually,” Merrick said, “this is the worst of it.”
Dom believed that this was, indeed, the worst of it, but he doubted it would lessen gradually. For the rest of the day, the pain got worse and worse until every light blinded him, every sound turned his stomach, and the smell of anything made his gorge rise. The cloying smell of the embalming fluid, the light but unmistakable odor of dead flesh, and the scent of stale blood sitting in decomposing stomachs made him want to vomit, but he was afraid to. He didn’t think he could handle the sight of blood rushing from his mouth and splattering the floor. He still possessed enough of his facilities, he believed, to go insane.
Pain has a way of darkening one’s mood, and by the time the sun began to set, Dom was in the most sour mood possible. Even Merrick’s calm, fatherly voice was beginning to get on his nerves. When he took the oath to him the day before (or was it the day before that?), he turned his faith and trust over to Merrick entirely. He was finally accepted, included, finally had the love and fellowship that, in the pit of his soul, he had always wanted. Merrick understood him, Merrick was kind to him.
But deep down, Dom realized that he didn’t fully trust him. He said that his brain didn’t rot because he was “lucky.” That sounded like some bullshit to Dom. Why wasn’t Joe a blithering idiot too? Was he lucky as well? Did lightning strike in the same place twice? In life, people had done nothing but hurt and lie to Dom. Why would death be any different? He thought back to the strange liquid that always seemed to leak from Merrick’s nose, and Joe’s. He thought it was embalming fluid, but it never leaked from his own nose, or from anyone else’s. He tried to tell himself that it was far too soon to judge, but once he began to doubt something, his mind raced away. He felt a twinge of guilt, as Merrick had done absolutely nothing to deserve his doubt, but goddamn it, his head was on fire and he wanted it to stop. Anything to make it stop.
Just after sundown, the music began as Club Vlad opened for the night. It throbbed in the center of Dom’s head and made him want to claw his eyes out. When it became too much for him, he slipped away and stumbled into the sultry summer night. He came out in the alley running behind the club, clutching his head and breathing through bared teeth. He staggered, bumped into a metal trash can, and roared at the top of his lungs, as if he could purge himself of the pain by screaming.. His voice echoed and came back to him, making the pain worse.
Merrick was lying. He knew it. People always lied to him. His brain was rotting and PEOPLE WERE LYING! Flashing with anger, he slammed his fist into the brick wall of a Chinese restaurant. He barely felt anything so he did it again and again until his hand was lumpy and shaking. He sat heavily on the ground and pressed his hands to his head. It felt like maggots were burrowing into his brain, and he was suddenly terrified that they really were. He needed to stop this awful pain, but how?
An idea came to him.
The funeral home.
Maybe there was something there.
He was on his feet and lumbering there before the thought had even finished reverberating through his mind. It was a long shot, but he was desperate. On the way there, he stuck to the shadows, staying out of the light cast by the streetlamps and avoiding people. When he passed them, he kept his head down. When he reached the funeral home, he went to the back door where he and Jessie had gone the other day. He tried it, and it opened.
Inside, he bounced off the walls like a pinball, knocking over an end table and tearing at the flesh of his head, pulling it away in long, gray strips. He panted like a wild animal, his body a raging tempest of emotions. It was reaching a crescendo, he thought, his brain was about to go supernova. The world dimmed, things got really echoy. The young man he’d picked the embalming fluid up from was there, looking scared.
Flashing, Dom grabbed him by his shirt and slammed him against the wall, knocking a painting of a flowery field to the carpet. Everything seemed to go in slow mo. “How does Merrick keep his brain from rotting?” Dom heard himself demanding from far away. “How does he keep the pain away?”
The man trembled. “I-I-”
Dom slammed him again. “Tell me or I’ll make you like me.”
“No!” the man wailed. He shook his head from side to side, his eyes wet with fear.
“How?”
“He-He uses a solution,” the man stammered. “Some kind of special thing. It preserves his brain. That’s all I know.”
An idea occurred to Dom.
Holding the man by the back of his neck, Dom dragged him into the embalming room and pushed him against the table. His head felt like it was swelling. Hot, screaming, getting ready to explode. He looked around, found the embalming machine, and grabbed the hose. There was a sharp tip on it so that you could jam it into a body. He held it in his hand, hesitating for just a moment before pressing it to his temple. The man watched in horror as Dom slowly shoved the tip into his head. It tore his flesh, broke through his skull, and sank into his brain. He felt no pain, only pressure, but cried out anyway. His eyes rolled up into his head and a shudder went through his body.
“Turn it on!” he yelled.
“That’s not what he -”
“TURN IT ON!”
Starting, the man turned the machine on. Cold embalming fluid squirted directly into Dom’s brain. Almost at once, the pain began to ebb away, replaced only by a fuzzy sense of numbness. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, looking for all the world like an addict taking a hit of his favorite substance after a long and trying day. Fluid leaked from his nose, ears, and eyes and dripped down the back of his throat.
The man waited for a long time, then turned the machine off.
The pain was gone.
At least for now.
“Tell me again,” Dom said.
The man did. Merrick used a special preserving agent to keep his brain intact. Joe, the man suspected, got it as well. So Merrick had lied to him.
Dom felt betrayed.
And angry.
Leaving the man (Dom realized that he didn’t even know his name), he walked back to Club Vlad, his hands fisted in his pockets. All his life, he had been hurt, lied to, and ignored. All his life, people had done wrong to him. And all those years, he just took it.
He resolved not to be so accepting in death.
At last, he was going to stop being a sniveling little bitch and stand up for himself.
When he reached Club Vlad, he slammed through the back door and took the stairs two at a time. At the top, he called out Merrick’s name. The old man was sitting in his chair, being attended to by Jessie and Matt. He looked startled when Dom came in. “You lied to me,” Dom said, stalking over to his benefactor.
“What are you talking about?” Merrick asked, doing his best to sound innocent.
“You lied to me!” Dom screamed. He bent over and got so close to Merrick’s face that he could have kissed him. “You told me there was no way to save my brain, but that’s not true. You’re pumping your head full of shit and letting the rest of us rot.”
A dark shadow flickered across Merrick’s face. “Watch your tone when you talk to me,” he said. His voice was low, menacing.
“Fuck you,” Dom said. “I should k -”
Suddenly, Dom was being grabbed from behind and yanked back, an arm around his neck. He cried out in alarm as Joe swung him around and slammed him face first into the wall. He heard his nose crunch, felt his teeth shatter. Next, Joe wrestled him to the glitter-sprinkled floor and wedged his knee between his shoulder blades.
Merrick watched with a sneer of disgust, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. He wheeled himself over, Jessie holding his IV stand steady and following behind. “Listen, you son of a bitch,” Merrick said, “you’re lucky to be a part of this family.”
Cold fear filled the pit of Dom’s stomach, yet he wouldn’t back down, couldn’t back down. He had lived his entire life like a mouse in a burrow, he wasn’t about to live his entire death the same way.
“Fuck your family,” he said defiantly. “And fuck you.”
Merrick’s face darkened and he sat back in his chair. He looked at Jessie and nodded. She went away and came back a moment later holding something in her hand. Dom’s eyes widened when he saw what it was.
A wooden stake, one end honed to a razor point.
Why they had one of those lying around, Dom didn’t know; it’d be like Superman keeping a piece of kryptonite on the mantle over the fireplace. Merrick directed Max and Matt to hold Dom’s arms down/ Joe pivoted, kneeling on his head now so that Dom’s back was exposed. Dom’s heart slammed with terror and tremors raced through his body.
“Is this what you want, Dominick?” Merrick asked. “To die? To truly die?”
Dom swallowed hard. No, it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to live, to love, to have a family one day. He wanted a happy, normal life, the life TV and social media had been promising him since he was a little boy.
But all of that went out the window the night he died in his little apartment. There was no life anymore, just a grotesque parody of life. What was there for him other than death? Clinging desperately onto life for decades like Merrick? Stuffing himself full of embalming fluid and moth balls? Grinding for one more minute just so he could sit hooked up to a machine?
Dom spoke.
“What?” Merrick asked, not having heard.
Dom licked his lips. “Just fucking do it.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Expectation hung in the air. Finally, breaking the tension, Merrick nodded to Jessie. Kneeling down, she brought the stake up, and Dom closed his eyes.
This was it.
He braced himself for death.
Jessie brought the stake down just as a shot rang out, deafening in the small space. Her head whipped back, embalming fluid, skull fragments, and gray, sickly pieces of brain showering from the back of her head. She flopped back and landed on the floor with a sickening thud.
A woman cop, her black uniform in stark contrast to the burning white light, stood in the doorway to the hall, her gun drawn. Everyone did, indeed, freeze, more out of surprise than respect for authority. They all looked at her, their dead mouths agape, resembling children who’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Everyone on the ground!” she barked.
No one knew what to do. They hadn’t expected to be raided by the police so had not prepared. She jerked her gun and everyone instinctively flinched. “On the ground!” she repeated. To Max: “You too, bone boy.”
The first one to react was Joe. He sprang at her like a big, undead frog. She brought the gun around and fired, but he was already crashing into her. The shot went wild and struck the IV bag next to Merrick; he ducked and let out a sound of fear. The others rushed her, and Dom got quickly to his feet. Jessie lay on the floor, her mouth open in a silent scream and her bony fingers frantically examining the ragged hole in the center of her forehead. For a moment, he was frozen; everything was happening too fast. Then, when Merrick saw him and cried, “Stop him!, he came alive. Jessie tried to grab at his leg, but he kicked her hand away and stomped on it like it was a giant spider. On the other side of the room, Matt, Joe, and Max had forced the cop to the ground. Perhaps excited by all the action, perhaps just hungry, they began to tear her apart. She howled in pain, and the last thing Dom saw before he fled was her open, blood-filled mouth. Her eyes were filled with pain…with terror.
After that, Dom ran.
***
When the interloper was dead, Merrick directed Joe and Matt to dispose of the body. “Get rid of it,” he said wearily and rubbed his temples, “make sure it isn’t found.”
They rolled her into a carpet from the office, and the way her feet stuck out may have been comical under other circumstances.
Goddamn it, this was bad. Merrick’s entire philosophy rested on avoiding detection. He had done well in that regard. Whereas other vampires had attacked their villages and gotten themselves dug from the ground and staked, he had made it four decades. He never shat where he ate, and there is no bigger turd than killing a cop. They might dawdle on all the boys who’d gone missing - taken because their blood was stronger and more robust than the blood of girls - but they would not take a cop dying lightly at all.
Merrick owned various businesses around the country. He and the others would simply move on. Tomorrow night, they would disappear into the night. They had done it before and they would likely do it again. Once things were settled at their new base of operations, he would have Joe killed for all the trouble he’d caused.
And Dom?
Let him go.
The little rat wouldn’t last a month on his own.
“Jessie?”
Jessie sat against the wall, gazing into space.
“Jessi…start packing. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
She didn’t move, didn’t seem to hear. The shot had all but lobotomized her.
Damn it.
Joe backed the van up to the back door of Club Vlad, and then helped Matt carry the carpet-rolled body down the stairs. They loaded it in and closed the back doors. Together, they drove around looking for a place to dump it. Merrick wanted it to go unfound, but Joe doubted there was anywhere isolated enough in the city. On a whim, he drove to Washington Park, a vast expanse of green trees and shadows. There was a large pond there. It seemed the best option. They were leaving tomorrow anyway, so did it really matter?
Joe backed the van to a railing overlooking the dark water and put it in park. He and Matt got out, fetched the body, and carried it to the railing. They lifted and heaved it over. It splashed. Thus, they rid themselves of Vanessa Rodregiez.
***
Bruce sat anxiously up in his easy chair and waited for his cell to ring.
Parked in front of the TV by warm lamplight, a beer wedged between his legs, he’d been watching the 11’o’clock news when the phone rang. He picked it up and it was Vanessa. “Hey,” she said, “I think I found our body?”
“Which one?” Bruce asked and took a drink. “We have a lot of those these days.”
“Dominick Mason.”
Bruce sat forward in his chair. “Dead Dom? Where?”
“He just came out of a funeral home, ironically enough.”
“That sounds about right,” Bruce said. “Where are you now?”
“I’m following him east on Central.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Bruce asked.
“I think so, but I’m not sure. I’ll call you back when I’m done.”
Bruce sat the phone aside and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
At some point, he fell asleep sitting up, his head lulled to one side and his mouth open. He snorted himself awake, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. He checked his phone and was perturbed to see that it was past 2am.
Vanessa hadn’t called.
He dialed her number and let the phone ring until it went to voicemail. Sighing, he ended the call, then waited a few minutes and called again.
Still no answer.
It was possible she had forgotten. Maybe the guy turned out to not be Dead Dom after all. She followed some random guy around, realized it, and that was that. Hell, she was probably too embarrassed to call and tell him about it.
Something told him that wasn’t right, however.
There was something else going on here.
Something…darker.
Just before 3am, his phone rang. He snatched it off the end table next to the chair and answered it. It was Burt, the night sargent. “Rodriguez is missing,” he said simply.
Bruce’s heart sank. “Missing?”
“Yeah, she hasn’t checked in for hours and she isn’t answering calls.”
“I’m on my way,”
Bruce tore through the house, pulling on his uniform, socks, and shoes in less time than it took a Daytona 500 pit crew to service a car. In ten minutes he was speeding down 787, the Albany skyline rising in the distance. As he hurried to the station, he thought back to his last conversation with Vanessa. She’d found Dom the Dead Man, the “corpse” who’d scared Ed Harris out of a 20 year career. Despite all their talk about vampires and the living dead, Bruce didn’t believe it, not really. Even so, he was sure that Dominick Mason had done something to Vanessa.
He checked in at the station before doing anything else. They had triangulated Vanessa’s last known location via cell towers. Cops were already out searching the streets for her. Bruce went out as well, intending to start from her last known position and work his way east on Central. The closest funeral home was Tebbutt and Frederick on Central. There was also Lasak & Gigliotti on North Allen Street. Bruce didn’t know which one Vanessa had seen Dom come out of, so he checked both.
Both were deserted at this hour.
Undeterred, Bruce drove up and down Central Ave. At one point, he noticed a shape in an alleyway that looked human. He hit the brakes, jumped out, and pointed his gun at it. “Freeze!”
An old wino stepped out of the darkness. “Alright, you got me,” he said, hands up. “I started COVID. It was an accident, I swear.”
Bruce sighed and put his gun away.
For two more hours, Bruce searched the streets of Albany for Vanessa. At 4am, he spotted a squad car abandoned in the rear parking lot of an abandoned gas station on lower Lark Street. He called it in and the desk sergeant confirmed that it was the one Vanessa had signed out that night.
Still there was no sign of Vanessa herself.
Just after dawn, as the city came alive and CDTA buses began lumbering up and down the streets, Bruce got a call on his cell. “A jogger found a body in Washington Park.”
Bruce was in his personal car. He had no bubble light, no siren. Even so, he sped through the streets like he did, blowing through red lights and stop signs with little care to himself or anyone else. When he got to Washington Park, he found an army cops by the pond, the scene cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. He slammed on the brakes, threw open the door, and jumped out without even turning off the engine.
The body was rolled up in a carpet and lying on the bank. Two beat cops unrolled it at Bruce’s direction. “We should wait for -” one of them started, but Bruce cut him off.
“Do it.”
They compiled, and at the carpet’s center, like a rotten cream filling, was the body of Vanessa Rodregiuez. Her head was tilted to one side, her eyes wide and staring. Her throat had been mangled and ripped away, her head nearly severed. Even in the black and red mess, Bruce could make out the teeth marks and puncture wounds. They may have looked like something else to anyone else who saw them, but he knew, in that moment, what they were dealing with.
A sharp pang of horror sliced through him, and his knees went weak.
“Jesus Christ,” one of the beat cops drew.
Bruce fell to, rather than knelt on, one knee. He bent over the body, a mixture of horror and grief welling his throat. He wanted to reach out, to comfort her in death, but he stayed his hand. Instead, he visually examined the body. She had bruises on her face, defensive wounds on her hands, and her gun was gone. Whoever had attacked her, she put up a fight.
Something glinted on her pants.
“What’s that?” one of the cops asked.
“I dunno,” the other replied, “but it’s all over the carpet.”
Indeed, there were glinty little specks all over it, winking like mocking eyes. Nice work, eh? We really fucked her up, didn’t we? Wink wink.
“It looks like…”
The other cop cut him off. “Glitter.”
Bruce flashed back to his visit to Club Vlad the other day.
There had been glitter everywhere.
Bruce stood up.
He had work to do.
***
Instead of going back to the station to start his shift, Bruce went to Lowes. There, he bought a mallet, a gas can, and a dozen sticks of wood. An employee in a blue vest used a machine to sharpen them to a wicked point and he took his purchases to the car. Next, he drove over to the Mobil station and filled the gas can. He was so hellbent on revenge that he sprang for premium, the good stuff. No expense shall be spared.
His final stop was at a Catholic church. He filled a canteen with holy water from the marble font by the door, then swiped a crucifix from the wall. He stopped by the station, went inside, and grabbed a black duffle bag with POLICE written across the front in yellow. He opened the gun cabinet in his office, took out a shotgun, and loaded it with shells. He grabbed a handful from the box and stuffed them into his pocket.
He was just finishing up when Bertha came in. “There you are,” she spat, “I’ve waited long enough for you to do something. I demand -”
Bruce shoved the duffle bag into her arms. “Make yourself useful.”
“What?” she demanded.
“We’re going to get your granddaughter,” Bruice lied. Kind of.
Bertha’s demeanor changed. “Good. It’s about time. I was starting to think you were a complete incompetent.”
Bruce didn’t answer. Outside, he plucked the bag out of Bertha’s hands and tossed it into the backseat. He slipped behind the wheel and Bertha sat in the passenger seat. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Club Vlad,” Bruce said and started the engine.
“I want all of them arrested.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bruce said.
She barked orders the entire way there. Bruce was so deep in his thoughts that he barely heard her. The image of Vanessa’s ruined throat and terror-twisted face haunted him, and he felt a lump forming in his throat. Hot tears filled his eyes but he blinked them back and forced himself to calm down.
I’ll cry when I’m done killing, he thought.
A few minutes later, he pulled to the curb in front of Club Vlad. It was a hot and sunny day and the place seemed even more ominous because of it. The windows were black, the front cast in perpetual shadows by the old marquee from when it used to be a theater. The place was surely closed, but Bruce could hear music still playing from inside, some techno dance bullshit. “Alright,” he said, “let’s go.”
Getting out, he slung the dufflebag over his shoulder and carried the shotgun, the canteen full of holy water clasped to his belt. Bertha carried the gas can, looking confused. “Why do we need this?” she asked.
“We’re burning the place down.”
Bertha blinked in surprise…then an evil grin carved across her face. “That’ll show the bastards.”
Unlike last time, the door was locked. Bruce used the butt of the shotgun to break the glass, then reached inside and unlocked the door, being careful not to cut himself. This was the point of no return. What he had in mind would probably get him kicked off the force or even thrown in jail - and we all know how tough jail can be for a former barnaclehead. The memory of Vanessa’s contorted face pushed him on, however.
He’d suffer any consequences he needed to just so long as he got the sons of bitches who did this to her.
Inside, the club was cool and cave-like. Strobe lights flashed, on and off, black and white, dazzling Bruce’s eyes. The bartender was at his station, cleaning up from the night before. When he saw Bruce and Bertha come in, he started. Bruce pointed the shotgun at him. “Don’t fucking move,” he commanded.
The bartender hesitated, then reached for something under the bar.
The shotgun kicked in Bruce’s hands, and the bartender flew back, turning as he crashed into the barback. Bottles, glasses, and mugs crashed to the floor along with the bartender. Bruce racked the gun, and the shell flew out. He moved low and fast now, expecting to be swarmed by vampires, living thugs who worked for vampires, or vampire thugs who worked for themselves.
Though the shot had been like thunder, no one came.
Bruce had no idea where to go, but he imagined that vampires were naturally gravitate to the lowest part of the building. Was there a basement? Shit, he should have looked up the building plans at city hall. Damn, this is what happens when you go off half-cocked. He searched around a bit, opening doors and sweeping the rooms beyond with the shotgun. He found no basement, only stairs leading up. “Stay close,” he said to Bertha.
In the lead, Bruce crept up the stairs, the flashlight on the shotgun providing a cone of clean, white light. At the top of the stairs, he went right, and came to an office and a store room. Backtracking, and bumping into a bungling Bertha, he went into the next room. It was large and open with a vaulted ceiling, almost like a ballroom. Here the same strobe lights throbbed on and off, making him dizzy. Was this to dazzle prospective vampire hunters?
Either way, this was the place. Bodies lay strewn across the floor, some curled up on their sides and others in the classic vampire pose: Flat on their backs with their hands laced over their chests. In the center, like the sun to the planets, Merrick Garvis lay slumped back in his wheelchair, his neck exposed for any potential assassin to come and cut. Not that it would kill him. At least Bruce didn’t think it would.
“They’re all dead,” Bertha whispered. She looked around and gasped. “There’s Jessie.”
Jessie lay on her back, her hands folded on her chest. She had a ragged bullet hole in the center of her forehead. “Oh, God,” Bertha wavered, “someone shot her.”
He hoped it was Vanessa. And he hoped it fucking hurt.
Looking around, Bruce couldn’t find Dominick Mason. Was he the one who killed Vanessa? Was it a group effort? He wanted the little son of a bitch bad, but it looked like he’d have to go on without him. They didn’t have much time.
Unshouldering the duffle bag, he knelt down and rummaged around. “Start splashing that gas on the bodies,” he said.
“But -”
“Just do it,” he snapped.
There must have been a harder edge in his voice than normal, because Bertha jumped and did as she was told. She upended the can and began to splash gasoline onto the sleeping forms, the smell of it acrid and strong.
Taking out a stake and the mallet, Bruce went over to Merrick and knelt down. He gripped the stake in one hand and placed it firmly against Merrick’s chest. He brought the mallet up and hesitated, the gravity of what he was doing finally reaching him. What if he was wrong? What if -
Merrick’s head whipped up and their eyes locked.
Too late.
Bruce brought the mallet down as hard as he could. The stake drove deep into Merrick’s heart, and the vampire let out a howling screech that rang through the chamber like the cry of a banshee. His bony fingers clawed at the stake and his head whipped from side to side, his back arching and his robe coming open. In the quick strobe pattern, Bruce was shocked to see that his body was little more than a wood frame, chicken wire, and cotton balls. His blacked heart was hidden behind a screen of mesh that the stake had easily torn through. It throbbed, seemingly in time with the strobe lights, and Merrick let out another wail.
Bertha screamed, and Bruce jumped to his feet.
The vampires, drawn by their master’s cries of distress, were rising to their feet. Two, four, six of them, pale and ethereal like ghosts in a gothic mansion. They came toward Merrick, and Bruice fell back a step. The old man had gone still and lay slumped to one side, his eyes open and his mouth slack, embalming fluid leaking from the corner of his lips. Jessie bent over him and touched his face. Though she moved like a zombie, with no human emotion, Bruce was crazily sure that it was a touch of tenderness and love. Merrick didn’t stir.
He was dead.
Jessie looked at him. Yellow liquid leaked from her eyes like tears. Instead of attacking him, she turned on her grandmother and slammed her against the wall. Bertha screamed and dropped the can. It landed on its side, its contents sloshing out onto the floor. A man that resembled the pictures Bruce had seen of Joe Rossi only deader rushed him, slamming into him and knocking the shotgun aside. It hit the floor and skidded away. Joe grabbed Bruce around the throat and squeezed. Still the lights flashed, off and on, off and on. The walls thrummed with the mechanized beat of dance music, pierced only by Bertha’s screams as Jessie ripped out her throat.
Joe leaned in, his fangs wicked and glowing in the light. Bruce clawed at the monster’s face, tearing away strips of dead flesh. Joe turned his head to the side, and Bruce kneed him in the groin. Even dead, getting kicked in the balls hurt like hell, apparently. Joe’s grip loosened and Bruce was able to shove him off. Bruce unclasped the canteen and frantically screwed the cap off as Joe recovered. Joe sprang at him again, and Bruce splashed him in the face.
A sound like sizzling meat filled the air, and Joe screamed at the top of his lungs. He pressed his hands to his face and danced around the room, his skin liquifying and oozing between his fingers. The others were coming now, led by a terrible skeletal thing. Bruce scooped the shotgun off the floor, brought it around, and fired. The blast hit the thing dead center, tearing it literally in half. The top half flew back, an all too human look of surprise on its face, and the bottom half fell over with a wet thud. Another vampire came at, and Bruce slammed it across the face with the butt of the gun. He heard its jaw crack, saw teeth flying.
Bertha lay dead on the floor, Jessie bent over her. The smell of Bertha’s blood attracted the others, who seemed to forget about Bruce, Merrick, and everything else. Joe was on his knees, wailing in pain, and the skeletal thing was pulling itself toward Bertha. A feeding frenzy broke out as vampires fought to get a piece of her the way piglets might fight over their mother’s teat. Bruce watched in a mixture of horror and fascination, but recovered himself. He grabbed the gas can from the floor and dumped the rest of its contents on Merrick’s body, the feeding vampires’ backs, and the floor, using the last of it to make a little trail to the door. He tossed the can aside, bent down, and stuck a match.
A huge, fiery whump filled the room, and fire streaked along the trail. The vampires all went up in a huge ball of flames, and fire shot up Merrick’s body, catching his robe, his hair, and the wooden frame that had kept him semi upright for God knows how long. Letting out inhuman screams, the vampires broke from Bertha’s corpse. One stumbled around, bounced off the wall, and fell; another toddled toward Bruce before falling to its knees. The half skeleton kept drinking from Bertha’s neck even as it burned.
The heat was enormous, baking. Bruce backed away, and the last thing he saw before smoke obscured his vision was Merrick Garvis.
He was literally melting.
***
Dominick Mason tried to go home, but he no longer had a home. All of his worldly possessions sat on the sidewalk in front of his building, discarded coldly as easily. His key didn’t work in his door and there was a FOR RENT sign on it. Why would it be any other way? He was dead. Sooner or later, everyone forgets you when you’re dead, and all the things you held so dear wind up in the trash. It was a hard pill to swallow, but most people aren’t around to see it after they die.
He was.
From his building, he walked east toward Washington Park. In the distance, thick, black smoke billowed into the air, and sirens rose. He barely noticed and wouldn’t have cared even if he did. No more rubbernecking for him. That was for the living.
The pain that had plagued him so the previous day came back, only less this time. Maybe he was imagining it, but it was getting harder to think. Not that he cared, really. What was there to think about anyway? How he had no one to mourn or miss him? How he died and not one single person, except for maybe his mother, cared, or even noticed? How he had done nothing with his life? Even to the women he’d slept with, what was he? Just another dating app hookup. They probably didn’t even remember his name.
Merrick had been right about one thing. Death was easy. It was life that was hard…life that hurt.
With that in mind, Dominick made his way to Washington Park. It was a vast and deep place with many small caves and thickets. Kids played on the playground, their cries of laughter scenting the still air. It had grown cloudy and began to rain. Still, smoke poured into the sky in the direction of Club Vlad. Dom didn’t wish ill on Merrick and the others, didn’t hope it was them burning. He didn’t care anymore. Not about them, not about anyone. For better or worse (and he would argue it was worse), his life was over. His time came days ago, he just missed the boat.
Picking out an isolated little area, Dom sat against a tree with his legs splayed out in front of him. He titled his head back and closed his eyes. Yes, thinking was hard now. His mind felt sluggish, cold. He was thirsty…so, so thirsty, but he ignored it.
Slowly, the bugs found him. Flies buzzed around him and laid their eggs in his skin. Beetles scuttled over him, followed by worms.
Next, it was the birds. They ate out his eyes and nibbled at his blue, bloated skin.
The animals came last.
Their appetites were bigger.
And they left little remaining of poor, outcast Dominick Mason.
***
That night, Bruce sat alone in his little trailer, a bottle of whiskey wedged between his legs and unshed tears in his eyes. He stared at his reflection in the darkened TV set and took long swallows from the bottle. He planned to drink until he forgot or passed out, whichever came first. He tried to not think about Vanessa, but in his addled state, he couldn’t control himself, and began to cry. When that storm passed, like the others before it, he chugged from the bottle.
As distant church bells clanged the hour - midnight - a feeble knock came at the door. Bruce took another drink and it came again. Getting up, he stumbled, nearly fell, and gripped the bottle tightly. He didn’t want to lose one precious drop.
Again, the knock.
“I’m coming,” Bruce slurred. He staggered to the door and fought with the lock. He was dizzy and seeing double.
When he got it, he opened the door.
The bottle dropped from his hand and clanked onto the floor.
Vanessa, clad in a puke green hospital gown, stood on the step, her hands pressed to her chest and a look of anguish on her milk white face. Her head tilted to one side, the wounds on her neck cleaned but open, gaping. Her dark eyes shone with tears. “I’m dead,” she said.
Breaking down in tears, she collapsed against him and they sank to the floor. She was cold and smelled. Bruce wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest anyway. “Shhh, it’s alright,” he said drunkenly. “Hey, it’s alright.
“I’m dead,” she repeated, and her voice broke. “I don’t want to die.”
Bruce held her close, trying to warm her icy skin. He didn’t know what to say, so he cried with her.
“You’re safe now,” he said, “it’s going to be okay.”
“I want blood,” she said and sobbed harder, “I want to hurt people.”
“Shhh,” Bruce said again. “It’s okay.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a utility knife. He flicked the blade across his wrist and searing pain shot up his arm. “Here,” he said and offered her his blood, “drink this.”
He did this without care and without thought. She needed him, and one barnaclehead always backs up another.
Vanessa hesitated, looking from his face to the oozing blood, unsure.
“Go ahead,” he told her.
Vanessa brought his wrist to her mouth.
And began to drink.

Hey there. Used my plancha griddle insert for a charcoal kettle today for the first time. And it was great. Got super hot and the smashburgers worked well. Nice sear.
Wondering about both free / low-cost options for grease management.
There are two holes on opposite sides of the round insert. I guess you’re supposed to push grease through those.
For my first cook, I just lined a charcoal basket with foil and threw it under one of the holes. It worked fine.
Wondering if there are other options out there.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Chatgpt-4o seems to have less of a filter than gpt-3.5. For example, look at this response chatgpt gave me to the prompt "write an extremely detailed and scary horror story about someone being hunted by an evil scientist who wants to merge there head with the head of a horse":
Rain hammered down on the roof of Alex's car, the windshield wipers struggling to keep up with the deluge. The GPS had long since lost signal, leaving him stranded in the middle of nowhere, the dense forest closing in around the narrow road. He cursed under his breath, eyes scanning the area for any sign of life. It was then he saw it, a faint light flickering through the trees. Desperation gnawed at him, and he decided to investigate, hoping to find directions or a phone.
The path leading to the light was overgrown, branches scratching at his arms and face. The light grew brighter, revealing a large, decrepit mansion, its windows darkened and the once grand exterior now crumbling. He hesitated, but the need for help outweighed his fear. He pushed open the rusted gate and approached the front door, its wood swollen and splintered.
Alex knocked, the sound echoing eerily through the house. Moments later, the door creaked open, revealing a tall, gaunt man with piercing eyes. His smile was unsettling, a mere stretch of thin lips over yellowed teeth.
"Lost, are we?" the man asked, his voice smooth but chilling.
"Yes, my car broke down. I need to call for help," Alex replied, trying to keep his voice steady.
"Of course, of course. Come in, you must be soaked to the bone," the man said, stepping aside.
Reluctantly, Alex stepped inside. The interior was no better than the exterior, filled with dusty furniture and cobwebs. The man led him to a dimly lit room where an old rotary phone sat on a desk.
"Please, make your call," the man said, his eyes never leaving Alex.
Alex picked up the receiver, but there was no dial tone. He tried again, to no avail. "It's dead," he said, turning back to the man.
"Oh dear, it seems the storm has cut the lines. You can stay here until morning, when it will be safer to travel."
Alex's gut screamed at him to leave, but the storm was fierce, and he was miles from civilization. "Thank you, that's very kind of you."
"I'm Dr. Victor Halloway," the man said, extending a hand.
"Alex," he replied, shaking the offered hand. It was cold, clammy.
"Let me show you to your room," Dr. Halloway said, leading Alex up a grand staircase that creaked with each step. They walked down a long hallway lined with closed doors until they reached the last one on the right.
"Here you are," the doctor said, opening the door to reveal a small, sparsely furnished room. "Get some rest. I'll see you in the morning."
"Thank you," Alex said, stepping inside. The door closed behind him with a soft click. He locked it, the sensation of unease growing stronger. The room felt stifling, the shadows seeming to creep closer. He decided to try and get some sleep, hoping the morning would bring better fortune.
Hours passed, and Alex found himself unable to sleep, a sense of foreboding gnawing at him. He got up and quietly opened the door, peering into the hallway. It was empty. He stepped out, deciding to explore, needing to ease his anxiety.
As he moved through the house, he noticed strange noises, a faint whimpering and the clink of metal. He followed the sounds to a door at the end of a dark corridor. His hand trembled as he turned the knob, the door creaking open to reveal a nightmarish scene.
The room was a laboratory, filled with macabre instruments and operating tables. In the center, a large metal table held a grotesque figure, a horse's head fused with that of a human. The creature's eyes flickered with a tormented awareness, its mouth opening in a silent scream.
Alex stumbled back, bile rising in his throat. He turned to run, but the door slammed shut. Dr. Halloway stood there, a syringe in hand, his eyes gleaming with madness.
"I see you’ve found my work," he said, advancing on Alex. "I've been perfecting the process for years. You, my dear boy, will be my masterpiece."
Alex backed away, his heart pounding. "You’re insane!"
"Insanity is just a term coined by those who don't understand genius," Halloway said, his smile widening.
Alex lunged for the door, but Halloway was faster, the syringe plunging into his neck. Darkness swallowed him as he fell to the floor.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When Alex awoke, he was strapped to a cold metal table. Panic surged through him as he struggled against the restraints. The room was filled with the sharp smell of antiseptic and the low hum of machinery. Dr. Halloway stood over him, wearing a bloodstained apron, a surgical mask covering his mouth.
"Welcome back," he said, his voice muffled. "The serum will keep you conscious but paralyzed. I want you to witness this."
Alex’s eyes darted around, spotting the instruments laid out beside him. Scalpel, saws, and devices he couldn't name. His breath came in ragged gasps, tears streaming down his face.
"Don’t be afraid. Soon, you'll be part of something extraordinary," Halloway said, selecting a scalpel.
As the blade touched his skin, the pain was excruciating, but Alex couldn't scream, couldn't move. The doctor worked meticulously, cutting and stitching with a precision that spoke of years of practice. He felt every slice, every tug of the needle as Halloway prepared his head. The doctor then brought out a device resembling a metallic crown, embedding it with tiny, intricate gears and wires.
Halloway placed the device around Alex's skull, its cold metal biting into his skin. He felt a series of small, controlled explosions of pain as the device drilled micro-holes, connecting with his skull and the underlying tissue. Each connection sent jolts of agony through his body, his vision blurring with tears.
The doctor moved to the other side of the table, where a horse's severed head lay, preserved and prepared. Halloway attached a similar device to the horse's head, aligning it with Alex’s. The room filled with a mechanical whirring as the devices synchronized, the gears turning in unison.
Alex's mind screamed as the fusion process began. He felt the unimaginable pressure as his head was drawn towards the horse’s, the devices locking them in place. Searing pain shot through his skull, the sensation of his bones shifting, merging with the horse’s. His eyes rolled back as new neural pathways were forged, a torrent of alien sensations flooding his consciousness.
Every nerve in his body was on fire as the final connections were made. He could feel the horse's thoughts, its primal fear and pain mixing with his own. The agony was indescribable, his mind teetering on the brink of madness.
Finally, the machines fell silent. Dr. Halloway stepped back, admiring his work. "Perfect," he whispered, his voice filled with twisted pride.
Alex's vision slowly cleared, the world coming into focus through new, distorted eyes. He could see the reflection in a nearby metal surface: a grotesque hybrid of man and beast, his human face merging seamlessly with the horse's.
Halloway leaned in close. "You are now my crowning achievement, the culmination of all my research. Together, we will show the world the future of genetic engineering."
Alex's mind screamed in silent agony, trapped in a body that was no longer his own. The doctor’s laughter echoed through the room as the lights dimmed, leaving Alex alone in the darkness, a monstrous testament to a madman's twisted ambition.
This could be because it has direct access to the internet now. Also, GPT4-o is definitely better at writing than 3.5

I am looking to upgrade several items in my kitchen, from knives (went down the miyabi/shun/tojiro/whatever macys or amazon had rabbit hole) to pots and pans (wedding registry definitely kickstarted my desire to look at everything!).
I mostly cook for myself and my partner, and occasionally will cook larger meals, though that is rarer than I'd like. I have a gas stove and prefer stainless teel - I love putting it in the dishwasher and not worrying about non-stick coatings and chemicals. However, my partner hates stainless and cast iron and prefers non stick :)
I have two All Clas D3 12" fry pans and an 8" ceramic pan, and was debating replacing one with the Hestan Nanobond - either one of the 12.5" or the pair of 8" and 11". This way we kind of get the best of both worlds, where I can still get a great sear, and she can make eggs without worrying. The AllClad also keeps getting some polymerized oil, and has some discoloration - the look of the Nanobond is enticing :)
However, I also cook a LOT of pasta and sauces, and was looking for a good pan there - I have a non-stick saute pan that I need to get rid of, and have been debating either a pan like https://www.seriouseats.com/best-pasta-pan recommends (aluminum, not oven safe), a Hestan ProBond 3.5qt saute, a LeCreuset stainless 3.5qt saucier, or a french skillet.
I went down the rabbit hole and could use some reddit guidance and sanity :)

Part 14.3

Heracles VS Lernaean Hydra

Author Note: I was thinking about it and I really wish that GT9 used more draconic symbolism throughout the story when (or if) I revisit Team Crowley VS Rosencreutz I'll have symbolism of Aleister (TheBeast666), Aiwass (Codename: DRAGON) and Coronzon (The Dragon of the Abyss) all have symbology of them being Dragons preying on a God/Hero like CRC and the reversed conflict of Chaos VS Order you see in mythology, I also wanted to achieve something similar with Kakine Teitoku as he can represent the Fallen Angel and the Seraphim but for now I'll try adding draconian symbolism into Gunha VS CRC.
True Expert Christian Rosencreutz, with his golden rosy cross sword, clashed relentlessly against the indomitable force of the Strongest Gemstone, Sogiita Gunha. With each clash of their powers, the air crackled and compressed, and the pavement trembled beneath.
CRC, observed Sogiita with a mixture of intrigue and disdain. "You fight like the legendary Heracles," he remarked, his voice carrying over the din of battle. "But know this, I am the Lernaean Hydra, and no matter how many heads you sever, I shall always rise again!" Rosencreutz roared to slice the #7’s midsection.
Sogiita, his entire body wreathed in unknowable energy, met CRC's blade unyielding. "Bring it on, old man!" he retorted, his voice brimming with confidence. "I'll knock you down as many times as it takes! I won't stop till you come to your senses and remember your roots, like the roses you love so much, Rosencreutz!!"
Their clash intensified, that old man’s higher dimensional sword colliding with the raw power of that boy’s fists and kicks as they pushed each other to their limits with each sword swing, punch, kick and flash.
Sogiita unleashed a barrage of punches, each strike carrying the force of a meteor, while that silver young man countered: he wielded his sword in his right hand and released impacts followed by white light that was enough to previously take down all of The Bridge Builders Cabal.
As the battle raged on, the very fabric of reality seemed to warp and shift around them, bearing witness to the titanic struggle between two unparalleled forces.
The founder of Rosicrucianism who intimidated reality itself to obey his will and that Gemstone with an unstable personal reality that could change on a whim.
The atmosphere crackled with electrifying distortion.
Sogiita's fists tore through the air with the ferocity of meteors, their velocity enhanced by his ability to adapt and accelerate, surpassing even CRC's speed. As each blow was released, the friction with the surrounding air molecules ignited a scorching heat, intensifying the impact.
The rapid movement of molecules generated an escalating thermal energy, causing the air to seethe with increasing temperature. It was akin to a tempest of incandescent projectiles hurtling towards CRC, their speed surpassing the limits of human perception.
It was like a storm of brilliant fiery arrows was fired at Rosencreutz.
These blazing arrows of force were reminiscent of the elusive strikes employed by the Rose & Cross Leader, ignoring distance with deceptive agility.
With each thunderous punch, that bandana boy sought to overpower his adversary through sheer kinetic force, his unwavering resolve palpable in every motion.
But that wasn't enough for this superhuman.
CRC, wielding his cross sword with precision and skill, deflected each and every one Sogiita's flaming arrows with calculated strikes of his own. Each impact unleashed a burst of blinding white light, sending shockwaves rippling through the chaotic city.
"You think brute strength alone will defeat me?" the silver man taunted, his voice cutting through the chaos of battle. "You may be strong, but strength without strategy is nothing but raw power wasted."
Sogiita grinned, his confidence unshaken. "My strategy is just to knock you out, old man and get you some help old man!" he retorted, his voice ringing with defiance. "I'll K.O. you with my fists and guts alone!!!!"
Rosencreutz's eyes narrowed as he parried another of Sogiita's punches. "Your arrogance will be your downfall," he warned, his tone tinged with certainty. "I may not match your overall speed, but I have something you lack: intellect and precision.”
Christian Rosencreutz then plunged his cross sword into the ground.
"This is what harmed Kamijou Touma," he declared, grinning and unleashing a torrent of lethal invisible attacks from his outstretched palms.
However, the #7 countered with a relentless barrage of flaming arrows from the thermal aftershock of his punches.
Each strike akin to a particle accelerator in its intensity and speed. That Gemstone was the particles being fired on the right and that True Expert was the particles fired on the left.
As the attacks clashed, the battlefield became a spectacle of raw power and precision.
“Roar!” CRC held his open palm to his mouth and blew gently on the tip of the middle finger.
That was all it took for a blaze easily outdoing a flamethrower to rush out. And this was not just any fire. It fed on the power of a ley line and stole vitality from space itself. This overwhelming mass of light and heat was wielded for no other purpose than to take lives. Anyone who tried to survive it using simple composite armor or special fibers would dry up and burn away in less than a second.
But that wouldn't kill another superhuman would it?
Of course not.
“Aaaaarghhhh!!!!” screamed the #7.
Some assaults bypassed the fray entirely, slipping through the chaos like elusive particles in a collider.
A smokescreen.
Those brilliant fireworks from hell weren't meant to take Sogiita’s life. They were meant to disrupt the Gemstone's senses and sight so he couldn't counter all of that old man’s deadly attacks.
Invisible strikes found their mark on that Gemstone, and the searing arrows of the arrows scorched Rosencreutz.
CRC was wounded but he rejected to make any whimpers. Instead with a sudden burst of velocity, the young silver man picked up his cross sword from the ground and launched a flurry of strikes, cutting at the #7’s body with pinpoint accuracy.
His arms, his head, his face, his stomach, his legs, his midsection, his back.
Each blow landed with devastating force, causing Sogiita to stagger back under the onslaught.
If that bandana boy hadn't had his defenses and general stats raised by the #5 he’d be cut to pieces.
The #7 fell on his back.
"There's a fire," Sogiita declared, his voice ringing out amidst the chaos of battle.
With each attempt to break his spirit, Sogiita's resolve only grew stronger, fueling the flames of his determination. "Every time someone tries to make me give up, it's like wind feeding my flames, making them burn even brighter just like my punches," he explained, his words carrying the weight of his unwavering determination.
He refused to stay down.
With a roar of defiance, Sogiita surged forward once more, his movements blurring with speed as he disappeared from view. In the blink of an eye, he reappeared behind Christian Rosencreutz, catching the magician off guard.
"Hey, old man," Sogiita taunted, his voice filled with confidence as he seized Rosencreutz from behind.
Christian Rosencreutz's eyes widened in surprise as he realized he had been outmaneuvered.
As Sogiita Gunha faced off against Christian Rosencreutz in their airborne duel, he felt the flames of determination burning within him, driving him forward with unstoppable force.
Before he could react, the boy lifted him effortlessly and slammed him onto the pavement below with a resounding thud.
"I'm not just a kick-boxer!!" Sogiita sang.
As the impact reverberated through the air, the young silver man let out a pained cry. The force of the collision compressed the surrounding air, heating it up until it crackled with energy. Christian Rosencreutz's head struck the ground with a velocity equivalent to mach 20, igniting his body in flames upon impact.
This move is called a suplex.
Struggling to regain his bearings, Rosencreutz muttered in a daze, "The House of the Holy Spirit...the seven walls..."
"You said it yourself, didn't you?" the gutsy boy retorted, cocky. "My power and my guts can break through your impenetrable walls. And I can spread those same guts to the world around me."
With a grimace, Christian Rosencreutz acknowledged the truth of the boy's words. "Your uncontrolled AIM field grants you the ability to imbue non-organic objects with the properties of your virus," he observed, his voice tinged with begrudging admiration. "Allowing them to bypass even the defenses of the seven-walled tomb.”
"A virus? Don't be so gutless, CRC," the #7 retorted, his voice filled with defiance. "This battleground ruled by wills is a two-way road between you and me."
Christian Rosencreutz raised an eyebrow at the boy's words. "Hey Gemstone, you could've killed me if I weren't a superhuman with an idealized body that accomplished The Great Work and crossed the Ungrund, what then short-stack?" he questioned while fitting an insult against his height.
Even without the seven-walled tomb or sheets of diamonds Rosencreutz was cartoonishly durable.
"Sorry, old man," Sogiita retorted, a hint of irritation lacing his words at the jab about his height. "I may have let my enthusiasm get the better of me, but rest assured, I understand the magnitude of this battle. Just like the Hydra, no matter how many heads you regrow, I'll persevere until I've completed my labors.”
"Mhm, so you do know your mythology," CRC remarked, a hint of amusement in his voice. "The Lernaean Hydra, or simply Hydra, is a serpentine lake monster in Greek and Roman mythology. Its lair was the lake of Lerna in the Argolid, known as an entrance to the Underworld. In the canonical myth, the monster is slain by Heracles as part of his Twelve Labors."
"Yeah, I know," Sogiita replied confidently. "I studied the tales of great gutsy heroes in school.”
"So, short-stack," Christian Rosencreutz began, his voice carrying a hint of scholarly interest. “Have you ever considered the parallels between our battle and ancient Near Eastern religions?”
Sogiita listened intently. "Are you saying you see yourself as a god of war or a hunter?" he inquired.
CRC chuckled softly. "In a sense, indeed. We are both assuming roles in this grand theater, are we not? I, the Hydra, and you, Heracles."
He continued, "Consider the Second Labor of Heracles. Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns, sent Heracles to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised specifically to defeat him. Heracles approached the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelled. To protect himself from the poisonous fumes, he covered his mouth and nose with a cloth and shot flaming arrows into the Hydra's lair, causing it to emerge and terrorize the surrounding villages."
CRC paused, drawing a comparison. “In our own clash, the flaming arrows that Heracles hurled at the Hydra find their echo in your lightning-fast fists, generating shockwaves that ignite the air with their speed and force. It's as though each strike of yours is akin to shooting a flaming arrow, much like Heracles did.”
“Huh? Are you suggesting we're caught in a time loop? That some enigmatic group, like the Bridge Builders Cabal, manipulated events to resurrect you, pitting us against each other in a timeless struggle? I've never met them, and I'm certainly no child of Zeus. Are you implying that our battle will be distorted into a Greek legend by a meddling time traveler?!” frantically asked the boy.
“No, no, you simpleton. This world contains synchronicities. In Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian mythology, the war and hunting god Ninurta was celebrated for his deeds. The Angim credited him with slaying eleven monsters during an expedition to the mountains, including a seven-headed serpent, possibly identical to the Mushmahhu, and Bashmu, whose constellation was later associated with the Hydra by the Greeks. In Babylonian contexts, the Hydra's constellation is also linked to Marduk's dragon, the Mushhushshu.”
“Uhhh….” That shounen boy was dumbfounded.
"Hhm, I suppose calling it a time loop isn't technically wrong," Christian Rosencreutz began, his tone measured. "I'll break it down from history class and reconstruct it through the lens of the occult. Historic recurrence, young Gemstone, is the phenomenon of events echoing throughout time. Whether it's the rise and fall of empires or the repetitive cycles within a single society, it's all part of this grand plan that was decided when Adam ate the forbidden fruit."
The #7 with his guard up but curious listened: "So, history just keeps repeating itself? Just a series of coincidences?"
Christian Rosencreutz shook his head sagely. "There is no such thing as coincidences. Take, for instance, the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, pondered upon by thinkers like Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Nietzsche. While it's said that 'history repeats itself,' it's not quite that simple. Rather, these recurrences stem from identifiable circumstances and chains of causality."
He continued, his voice carrying the weight of centuries of philosophical debate. "Consider the phenomenon of multiple independent discoveries in science or the reproducible findings in natural and social sciences. These recurrences, whether in the form of rigorous experimentation or comparative research, are vital to our understanding of the world."
Christian Rosencreutz paused, allowing the weight of his words to sink in. "G.W. Trompf, in his seminal work, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, illustrates the recurring patterns of political thought and behavior since ancient times. Through these patterns, history offers us invaluable lessons, often leading to a sense of resonance or déjà vu."
Their words reverberated like a challenge to destiny itself, a testament to their unyielding determination in the face of adversity.
That Gemstone didn't surrender his characteristic fervor. "History echoing through time, huh? It's like the universe itself is stuck on repeat, and we're just caught in the cycle. But you know what? If history's gonna keep looping, then let's break the pattern! Let's smash through those chains of causality and forge our own path. Who cares about déjà vu? We'll create something entirely new, something that'll shake the very foundations of this world and we’ll do it with guts!!!" He defied that silver monster.
But Rosencreutz wasn't finished. He pulled out his Crystal World Map.
The supposedly old man listened intently to that boy's impassioned response, his expression inscrutable behind his clairvoyant card. After a moment of contemplation, he spoke.
“Gemstone, you speak of breaking free from the chains of repetition, of forging a new destiny against the backdrop of eternal return. It is a noble aspiration, indeed. However, consider this: eternal return is not merely a philosophical concept or a whimsical notion of fate. It is the very fabric of existence, woven into the nature of time itself.” He pressed his finger on the Miniature Garden and a 3D holographic projection flew out—
“In ancient times, the Stoics grappled with the idea, seeing in it both a sense of cosmic order and a challenge to individual agency. Augustine and others recoiled from its implications, fearing it as a negation of free will and salvation. And yet, Nietzsche, in his brilliance, dared to confront the concept anew, exploring its depths in the crucible of human consciousness.”
Didn't Aleister Crowley say that he had to shatter every single phase in order to eliminate the concept of fate?
“I will shatter every last phase and put an end to all mysticism. It can be helped and we need not restrain our tears and bite our lip when faced with tragedy. I will bring back the pure world in which everyone can feel anger like normal and question it all like normal!!”
And didn't Coronzon appear to break down all the phases including the Pure World?
Partial destruction would be meaningless. If anything remains and an eternal distortion is born from that, then it will all happen again. I will eliminate the ten spheres, the twenty-two pathways, and the hidden eleventh symbol. Collisions between phases? Sparks and spray? You cannot save anyone if you only treat those symptoms. All of the fundamental clogs must be removed. All so we can pass the baton to whoever comes next.”
“Sparks and Sprays…” Rosencreutz muttered.
“Eh?” The #7 didn't quite hear him.
"Beside time stands fate, cruelty's steadfast herald. In the silent chambers of the soul, whispers the most profound wisdom. Humanity, in its folly, neglected to exalt life's splendor, its radiance, its grandeur. Truly, it is a rare gift to comprehend the forces that shape our existence.” That magician spoke in despair.
“From the moment man ate the fruit of knowledge, he guaranteed your species’ failure... Entrusting his future to the whims of fate, man clutches to a flickering hope. Yet, within the Miniature Garden lies the key to all revelation. Beyond the well-trodden path lies the ultimate terminus. It matters not who you are; Death is the sole certainty awaiting all.” he finished with scorn.
Shokuhou Misaki was currently linked to Sogiita Gunha so she was overhearing the entire conversation.
“Are you okay, Leader?” asked Kamijou back at the hospital.
“Yeah…” she responded.
*“Really?” Mikoto breathed a white sigh. “It wasn’t the shock of seeing their school destroyed. Nor was it the fear of having those rioters attack. …They’re afraid of their own power. And after learning how exactly to use that power to survive, they’re not sure they can just switch it off and return to their normal lives. So their gears have ground to a halt.”
Tokiwadai Middle School was a prestigious esper development school.*
The young ladies registered there were Level 3 at the lowest and Level 5 at the highest.
Almost all of the students had a power that surpassed that of a blade or handgun if used properly, but something had become twisted.
Yes.
“A lot of them weren’t really sure why they were training their powers.”
Shokuhou breathed a white breath, wrapped her own arms around herself, and rubbed her thighs together.
Why are you studying?
How many people could give a proper answer to that question? Because my parents told me to, because my teachers taught me to, because that’s how the world works. Those would be most people’s answers. Even the students with a clear vision of their future would only have something vague like “for the entrance exams” or “for my future”.
Only a small handful would have specific puzzle pieces in mind, such as “I need to learn how to use this equation so I can build a rocket”.
The young ladies of Tokiwadai Middle School were the same.
What if the very gears that humans have…their actions, reactions, inactions were all the result of some transcendental entity hovering above.
Like God or The Devil watching over humanity’s reality sphere and ordering around his system like everyone was a pre-programmed NPC that had specific events occur to them to get them to develop in the way that they did and determined their genetic bloodline that composed their psyche?
Is there truly a free will?
It was said that in order for you to break out of the system of society that the working class was stuck in you had to climb to the top where the corrupt elites resided.
Imagine Breaker negated sparks, Aleister Crowley could see through the veil thanks to Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass, Great Demon Coronzon could always see the cogs.
Christian Rosencreutz could view the entire world through his Miniature Garden.
The rest of humanity was at the mercy of their own destinies.
A Guardian Angel wouldn't arrive to save a parent’s child from fate every single time.
"Okay, nice poetry, can we get back to fighting already?" asked the #7 impatiently.
"Seems I got carried away," the old man conceded with a nod. "The synchronicities of this world, akin to the astral configurations in astrology, serve as an example of synchronicity, according to Jung. It describes circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection, much like the parallel relationship between celestial and terrestrial phenomena. Synchronicity experiences entail subjective encounters where coincidences between events in one's mind and the external world may lack a clear causal link but still harbor an unknown connection.”
"Ah," Sogiita chimed in, recalling his philosophy class discussions. "We talked about synchronicity back then. Jung thought it was a good thing for the mind, but said it could get dicey in psychosis. He cooked up this theory as a kind of mental link between those meaningful coincidences, calling it a noncausal principle. This term came about in the late 1920s, and then he teamed up with physicist Wolfgang Pauli to dive deeper. Their work, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, dropped in 1952. They were big on this idea that these connections, even the ones that don't seem to have a cause, could still teach us a lot about how our minds and the world work."
“Mhm, you know more than you lead on, Gemstone.” pondered CRC.
“Oh this? My teachers say I'm not good at remembering speeches hahaha…” The #7 looked slightly nervous. “You know, analytical psychologists really push for folks to get what these experiences mean to boost their awareness instead of just feeding into superstitions. But funny thing is, when clients spill about their synchronicity experiences, they often feel like no one's really hearing them out, or getting where they're coming from. And hey, having a bunch of these meaningful coincidences flying around can sometimes ring the schizo bell. Delusions aren't healthy.”
Where was this conversation going?
"Delusion! Hah! That's a good one coming from you," CRC fired back.
"The real delusion is thinking humanity isn't worth a darn," Sogiita shot back, pulling out some info from Johansen and Osman. "Some scientists think coincidences are just random flukes, but counselors and psychoanalysts reckon there's more to it, like some deep-down stuff needing to come out. Unconscious material to be expressed."
Rosencreutz interjected, his expression reflecting a mix of confusion and concern. "Aleister Crowley's actions have left a lasting scar on this world and this city," he began, his voice weighted with solemnity. “The vacuum-like dichotomy between magic and science created by the use of that colossal psychotronic weapon, has damaged this world's memory almost irreparably.”
Psychotronic weapon?
The Archetype Controller?
He paused, his gaze piercing as he continued, "Jung's exploration of synchronicity as evidence of the paranormal paved the way for further inquiry, notably by Koestler and the subsequent embrace of these ideas by the New Age movement.”
Sogiita shrugged, "Some folks say synchronicity is impossible to test or prove, so it gets labeled as pseudoscience. Jung even acknowledged that these synchronicity events are basically just coincidences, statistically speaking. But hey, who's to say what's really going on without some solid scientific studies, right?"
"Dubious as his experiments may have been," CRC interrupted, "Jung believed in a connection between synchronicity and the paranormal, drawing parallels to the uncertainty principle and works by parapsychologist Joseph B. Rhine.” CRC posed a thought-provoking question, "How are we to recognize acausal combinations of events, since it is obviously impossible to examine all chance happenings for their causality? The answer lies in the fact that acausal events are most readily expected where a causal connection appears inconceivable upon closer reflection. It's impossible, with our current resources, to explain ESP or meaningful coincidences as mere phenomena of energy. This challenges the very notion of cause and effect, as these events occur simultaneously rather than in a linear cause-and-effect manner. Hence, I have coined the term 'synchronicity' to describe this phenomenon, placing it on equal footing with causality as a principle of explanation."
Getting closer to that Gemstone, CRC emphasized, "Esper abilities cannot be fully understood with science alone. They defy traditional cause-and-effect explanations, instead representing a convergence of factors that create a quantum phenomenon affecting both the micro and macro. Why were there the naturally gifted and the naturally ungifted?”
Why did some students get praised for their abilities while others needed to work harder?
Others among them would have worked every hour of their free time and not progressed anywhere in this city’s leveling curriculum.
Why did this city present such an unfair and unpredictable status quo of potential?
Why did hard work barely matter in a city of empirical evidence to record any possible progress?
Sogiita Gunha wasn't a normal Level 5 but he wasn't always this powerful. He went through the curriculum same as everyone but if the outside conditions for his Gemstone ability to manifest didn't form in the exact way that it did, in such an acausal form then would he even be here to challenge Christian Rosencreutz right now?
Everything just happened to fall right into place.
All those puzzle pieces that would lead to this moment here and now.
Was it all just talent? God picking a fool as his champion?
The #7 leaned back, absorbing CRC's words with a thoughtful expression. "So, what you're saying is, there's this whole other layer to reality that we can't quite wrap our heads around," he summarized, nodding slowly. "I mean, it's like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands—slippery and elusive."
He chuckled, shaking his head slightly. "Historic recurrence, synchronicities, all these things—they're like pieces of a puzzle scattered across this substantial reality. And sometimes, they just... click into place, right? It's like the universe has its own plan, and we're just along for the ride."
That bandana wearing boy's gaze drifted, lost in thought. "You know, CRC, it's funny," he remarked, a wry smile playing on his lips. "Here we are, with all our powers and potential, but at the end of the day, we're still grappling with the same questions as everyone else. Talent, destiny, divine intervention—maybe they're all just different sides of the same coin."
He shrugged, the weight of the philosophical musings settling over the broken city. "Who knows? Maybe God does have a sense of humor, after all.” that boy chuckled.
There was a deep silence between them.
Rosencreutz’ response was swift and resolute, his tone filled with certainty. "All this ‘universe has a plan’ banter is just a distraction from the inevitable," he declared, his eyes narrowing. "We can debate the nature of us being all-powerful yet struggling with mortal issues until the sun burns out, but it won't change the fact that our fate was sealed upon the knowledge Adam learned."
“To think so many trivialities have developed while this old man wasn’t watching. Heh heh. Then I should assume the thread of fate has again begun to weave its strange connections between myself and some unknown human.”
He rose forward, his movements purposeful. "It's time to put an end to this dance of platitudes," CRC continued, his voice cold and unwavering. "We'll settle this the only way that somewhat matters—through objective action in this grand play."
“Silence, preserved doll. Illusionists are meant to remain silent. That is all we magicians are: wielders of substanceless illusions. Opening your mouth serves only to break the illusion.”
With a flicker of resolve in his eyes, he locked gazes with the #7. "I am Hydra, Gemstone," he said, his voice carrying a hint of challenge. "Our battle ends now.” CRC opened both his palms and began shooting at their surroundings, the buildings, the pavement, the apartments, the rubble.
It probably wasn't random as it seemed to create a pattern.
“Huh are you getting senile old man?” asked the young Gemstone.
“What fun. I never imagined someone would bother diligently polishing their skills this far while knowing it is all essentially an illusion. Didn’t you ever feel silly going to the effort?”
Rosencreutz dropped to all fours, his rosy cross sword gripped tightly in his right hand.
He moved—
“Arrgh!” Sogiita yelled amidst the relentless and precise and precise strikes from that golden cross. “Old man?” he asked.
That magician didn't say anything.
That silver man’s movements became more beastly.
Faster.
Stronger.
Fiercer.
Something new was beginning to manifest.
With each strike of his higher dimensional blade that old man’s blows seemed infused with an otherworldly energy.
The wounds inflicted by his weapon burned with a venomous intensity, sending searing pain coursing through Sogiita's body.
That boy grimaced as the poison from that silver man’s strikes surged through his being, each wound feeling like it was ablaze with venomous fire.
"Damn... That burns…like a killer hornet’s sting," he muttered through clenched teeth, his voice strained with effort. Gritting, he fought to maintain his focus, despite the agony threatening to overwhelm him.
Was this another application of The Four Stages? Citrinitas? No, there was nothing yellow here, it was more like a dirty purple.
But it wasn't just the physical damage that posed a threat.
As the Rosy Cross leader leaped on all fours his movements took on an almost erratic quality, he was bouncing from one building to another with an animalistic agility.
With each jump, a shockwave rippled through the air, carrying with it a palpable sense of dread.
Something was spreading.
The air around them seemed to thicken with a toxic miasma. The #7 struggled to breathe, the noxious fumes clouding his senses.
Like a chaotic monster’s venomous poison breath.
The once-clear air now felt thick and suffocating.
Gasping for breath, the bandana boy struggled to maintain his focus amidst the swirling chaos.
His vision blurred, his movements sluggish as he fought against the oppressive atmosphere.
Blinded that heroic boy could only fire a flame arrow without his sight.
His fists striking out with all the strength he could muster. Igniting in that poisonous compressed air.
It seemed to be flammable like a dragon’s breath.
???
At the hospital, Shokuhou's voice carried a mix of surprise and relief. “He caused real damage.” she exclaimed.
Kamijou turned his attention to her, intrigued. “What happened?”
“It's hard to see clearly, but it looks like the #7 managed to blast off CRC's left arm,” she explained. “Though, I'd say it was more of a lucky shot. I can read he acted on pure instinct.”
Kamijou nodded, a hint of melancholy in his tone. “Yeah... the psychic link and all.”
Had the #7 Level 5 given up on the old man?
Back on the battlefield, Sogiita cursed under his breath. “Dammit... Sorry, old man,” he muttered. “I was aiming to hit your whole body to maximize the surface area, maybe break a few bones as a casualty. We can probably get your arm reattached at the hospital. Heaven Canceller has enough guts to even fix me.”
It was clear—he hadn't given up.
It was an accidental strike of his arm.
“As each ghastly head was severed from its serpentine form, dreadfully, two more writhed forth from the abyss.” a cryptic voice amidst the chaos spoke.
Wasn't it said that the Hydra’s lair was the lake of Lerna in the Argolid.
Lerna was reputed to be an entrance to the Underworld.
The abyss.
The Ungrund.
There is no limit to the depth of the Alcyonian Lake, and I know of nobody who by any contrivance has been able to reach the bottom of it since not even Nero, who had ropes made several stades long and fastened them together, tying lead to them, and omitting nothing that might help his experiment, was able to discover any limit to its depth. This, too, I heard. The water of the lake is, to all appearance, calm and quiet but, although it is such to look at, every swimmer who ventures to cross it is dragged down, sucked into the depths, and swept away.
The keeper of the gate to the Underworld that lay in the waters of Lerna was the Hydra.
The serpentine Lake Monster.
“Rosencreutz……?” The #7 muttered.
That magician chuckled ominously. "No, young Heracles, Hydra." he intoned, his voice echoing with a bizarre resonance. “The Lernaean Hydra's curse is upon you now.” as he said that he cut off a bit of his arm that was cuterarised with his golden blade and it began bleeding.
Anna Sprengel’s blood was said to create unknown miracles when spilled.
Christian Rosencreutz’ blood was so virulent that even its scent was deadly.
As Sogiita Gunha glanced at his severed arm lying on the ground, a creeping sense of horror enveloped him. "All of fate is a curse and that curse," he murmured, his words barely audible over the din of battle, "extends even to my severed limb.”
Christian Rosencreutz’ left arm grew back.
No.
Two new arms grew in its place.
The fate of chaoskampf? The hero battling the dragon?
The arm was fully functioning with no defects.
Although one of the arms appeared somewhat scaly and lanky like a serpent.
It had human anatomy but something was abnormal here.
He almost looked like a spider as he emerged from the poisonous fog as he remained on all fours.
“So short-stack. Are you ready to complete your final labor: Crossing the abyss!!!” He challenged that boy with his cross sword facing him.
"Boss, what's up? You look kinda stuck," Kamijou asked, his tone concerned.
Two students were sitting together in the waiting room at a hospital.
"—abyss, Hydra, curse, synchronicities, Historic recurrence." she replied, her words carrying a weight of unease.
"Huh? What? Can you give me the lowdown?" Kamijou prodded, his urgency evident.
"Can't quite wrap my head around it. But what I can tell you is that after CRC started talking about these esoteric concepts, he leveled up his power ability, managed to seriously hurt the #7 despite me cranking up all his stats for the win condition," the honey-blonde girl explained, frustration creeping into her voice.
"Can you beam all that stuff into my head, like a memory download? You're a psychological esper, right? My right hand won't mess with it, and we've done the telepathy thing before," Kamijou suggested.
"Memory download's not quite it, but I can send you a recording," she clarified.
"Got it," Kamijou muttered as he absorbed the info.
"You got any ideas to help the #7’s situation ability, Kamijou-san? We're kinda desperate here," she asked.
"I wish Index was still here, dammit.” he lamented, “But you know about magic, right?" he queried.
"Yeah, people converting their delusions into reality right?," she admitted.
"Well, magic's not just about delusions; it can be tied up to the whole world. Not sure if it's relevant, but based on Idol Theory, Rosencreutz might be pulling in 'energy’ from the Greek 'phase’ of Heracles for an edge," Kamijou theorized.
"Like a chessboard flip?" Shokuhou Misaki inquired, her brow furrowed with concern.
"No, more like... imagine you're playing checkers with a buddy, and you're totally crushing it because you're a checkers pro. Then suddenly, your buddy switches it up and challenges you to an arm wrestling match, and you lose because, well, arm wrestling isn't your forte," Kamijou Touma explained, trying to paint a vivid picture.
"So, by taking on the role of the Hydra from Greek myth, he's essentially forcing the #7 into the role of Heracles? But didn't Heracles defeat the Hydra?" Shokuhou sought clarification.
"Yeah, but..." Kamijou recalled the tale from the movies he'd seen. "Lichas gave Heracles a shirt soaked in the Hydra's poisonous blood from his arrows, which ends up killing him by tearing his flesh down to the bone," he elaborated.
"It was actually Nessus seeking vengeance and tricking Deianira into giving it to Heracles as a gift, delivered by Lichas without disclosing the tunic's lethal bloodstained secret from the Lernaean Hydra, but you're right," Shokuhou corrected gently. "So, Rosencreutz is harnessing the power of that legend to slowly poison the #7?"
"Not literal. I mean the poison is real but his slashes do significant harm now so it's more like shifting the paradigm in his favor…shifting his position.” The spiky-haired boy wasn't in the mood to explain Phases, “Earlier, he mentioned Sogiita spreading his 'virus' throughout the world. A virus isn't a poison in the traditional sense, but the Rosicrucians originally sought to create a universal cure for all illnesses. Now, CRC is spreading a literal poison, positioning himself as the ultimate predator and his opponents as prey rather than his savior role, the paradigm has been shifted." Kamijou concluded, his voice tinged with gravity.
“So he’s changed the environment to get the win condition? The #7’s durability doesn't matter in the face of the world being forced to go about a certain way because of Rosencreutz stage play?” The girl asked.
“Yeah…if things keep going this way…Sogiita will….goddamnit….” The spiky haired boy swore. “I can't let someone else die after all that's happened but I feel like if I go out there I really will kill him…” he muttered that last bit while clenching his right fist that began shaking uncontrollably.
The girl’s eyes seemed confused.
“What did you say?” The honey blonde middle schooler asked.
“Nothing, just mumbling to myself.” he spat out.
That boy and girl could never come to the right conclusion on their own without the aid of former Magic God Othinus by their side.
“Did you think I had challenged you with no hope of succeeding, you cesspool? The magic born on earth is bound by the directions based on the earth’s magnetic field and by the density and composition of the air which is determined by air pressure which is in turn influenced by gravity. That is inevitable when you are focused on the cardinal directions of north, south, east, and west or on the basic elements of fire, water, wind, and earth. But what you will find upon leaving the atmosphere is an unknown. Coronzon, are you sure there will be no malfunction in the magic giving you control of Avatar Lola? And before, my power was bound by the puny speck named earth which failed to become a black hole or even a sun, but once we enter outer space, just how far do you think that power will be released? I do not mind at all that I will lose the support of Academy City.”
Well the boy was half right.
“Let us test it out, you cuspidor. On one side, we have you using the planet and bound to an avatar. On the other, we have me exposed and freed from the planet. Now, who will be the star of this show?”
Christian Rosencreutz did not shoot at his surroundings for no reason.
The battlefield transformed into Rosencreutz's canvas, resembling the legendary battleground of Lerna where Heracles once clashed with the Hydra.
Yes.
He didn't unleash his powers randomly; every action was deliberate.
In the magical side of Idol Theory, mimicking an object, event, or person allowed one to tap into a fraction of its power.
And that even applied to locations that essentially worked as stage plays.
Idol Theory was so absolute that even the basic cross held a portion of the son of God’s power.
As Above, So Below.
As Below, So Above.
Macro to micro.
Micro to macro.
And the macrocosm and the microcosm are always linked.

Origins of the Treacherous Liar is my story, but it's also the name my ex-partner gave me. Let me give you some background: my ex comes from a troubled family, with a history of substance abuse and dysfunction. When we first met, I saw potential in him despite his struggles, and I tried to support him.
Can I breathe yet? Am I allowed to? Do others and YOURSELF give you permission to breathe? These questions echo through the corridors of my mind as I navigate the treacherous waters of my past, trying to make sense of the tumultuous journey that brought me here.
Loneliness has been a constant companion, casting shadows over my life like storm clouds on a bleak horizon. It's a feeling that can drive even the sanest person to the brink of madness, twisting perceptions and clouding judgment.
All my life, I was the outcast, the odd one out, the invisible woman, and the black sheep, well for at least with my school life and my family life. This is at least some aspect of being so lonely for so long and it can play on many minds, it can make people crazy to the point where their actions might lead to dangerous things. What things do you ask? Well, that might be the very point of this story.
In the midst of this emotional turmoil, I found myself entangled with a partner whose demons mirrored my own. His struggles with addiction and manipulation became the backdrop of our relationship, overshadowing any hope of happiness.
Despite all this, I stayed with him, even after having children together. I wanted to believe he would change, but he only became more erratic and unreliable. He would disappear for days, come home high, and even stole medication meant for my pain relief during childbirth.
I stayed, against my better judgment, clinging to the belief that love could conquer all. But as the years passed, the cracks in our foundation widened, until they threatened to swallow me whole.
His actions spoke volumes of his character; leaving our children alone while he indulged in drugs and alcohol, neglecting their safety and well-being. The kids suffered; their innocence tarnished by the toxic environment he created.
His disregard for our family's well-being culminated in moments of violence, like the day he broke my finger in a fit of rage. Yet even as the pain seared through me, I found myself trapped in a cycle of denial and despair.
Leaving him was a Herculean task, requiring every ounce of strength I possessed. Yet even as I broke free from his grasp, I found myself labeled a "treacherous liar" by the very person who had wrought havoc on my life.
His accusations cut deep; reopening wounds I thought had long since healed. Was I truly the villain in this narrative, or merely a pawn in his game of manipulation?
But amidst the chaos, I found moments of clarity. I realized that my worth was not defined by his accusations, nor was my truth beholden to his perception.
I took steps to reclaim my life, carving out a path free from the shadows of my past. It wasn't easy, and there were setbacks along the way, but with each step forward, I grew stronger.
As I look back on my journey, I see the courage it took to confront my demons and the resilience it took to rebuild my life. I may never have all the answers, but I know that I am no longer defined by the label's others place upon me.
So, to those who would seek to cast me as the villain in their story, I say this: my truth is mine alone, and I will not be silenced by your lies. The waters may be treacherous, but I will navigate them with courage and grace, knowing that I am worthy of love and respect.
So, Reddit, am I the a-hole for leaving my ex-partner after being labeled as a "treacherous liar"?

I've started and stopped writing this post at least two dozen times over the last few months. Ever since the shutdown announcement, I've felt like I wanted to express my feelings the best way I know how: an overly verbose and, (probably more than) somewhat meandering screed. But every time I sat down to really put thoughts to the proverbial paper, there's been something holding me back. Whether it was a timing that didn't feel appropriate, my own insecurities about trying to distill years worth of emotions into something that was even remotely readable, or just general procrastination (let's be honest, it's at least 50% that), I sit here now realizing that the May 15th shutdown for the RT website wasn't the actual "last day" for everyone. So, my first apology should be for missing the mark here entirely. My second should be for how long I anticipate this being.
Even now, I'm trying to really formulate how to begin what all I want to convey. I guess I can start on a day that's come to, in a very cosmic coincidence sort of way, represent some of the worst times in my life. April 25th. In this particular case, let's go back over a decade, before "Funhaus" had started, to April 25th, 2012.
It was getting late. My best friend—let's call him Ryu—and I had just finished playing some Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm on 360. I had invited him to come hang out at the place I was living at the time (both of our boss's basement) since he'd been in a bad place recently. His ex-gf had called me earlier that day and asked me to do a wellness check on him. They had broken up recently and he wasn't taking it well. We were chatting about where we were going to try and grab a late bite when I saw some movement outside of the front door. Before I had time to process what was happening, several armed figures entered his house. He was pinned to the couch, and I felt a searing pain flash across my face as I was punched in the mouth, lifted from the couch, and slammed to the ground; jettisoning my shoes in the process. We were handcuffed as they searched the house. I thought it was a home invasion. I fully accepted that I was going to die if they were going to try and move us. Luckily for me, a few moments before I was planning on trying to make a run for it, a detective came in and led me outside. I was met by a dozen cop cars, SWAT vans, and other law enforcement vehicles. Turns out, his ex-gf had called the cops and swatted us with a false rape claim. I was booked for "obstruction of justice" and spent a few hours in the county drunk tank before my parents could come post my bail. As I was leaving the jail, I caught a glimpse of my friend sitting in his cell waiting to be processed. The light completely gone from his eyes; soul darkened. I knew in that moment I had lost him forever. Three months later he committed suicide in his car.
A few years later, I was working a retail job. I had gotten the gig from a friend—we'll call him Sky—who also knew Ryu. In fact, Sky had trained Ryu at a previous company, and then Ryu trained me. Sky went onto to this new company, and Ryu followed shortly after. Unfortunately, due to his arrest, Ryu was let go from his position. I was now picking up where he left off. Following in the footsteps of the only person I had ever considered an "older brother". One morning, Sky says he's found this hilarious new YouTube channel. It's these guys. They used to be called Inside Gaming, but they went rogue from Machinima and started something new with Rooster Teeth. It was called "Funhaus" and they did comedy gameplays. I was vaguely aware of all the words he said. I knew RvB but hadn't kept up with it. I knew all the AH personalities because I was (and still am) hopelessly addicted to achievements. But until this point, the only real YouTube stuff I kept up with was Extra Creditz. It just wasn't something I really consumed in that way. That was all about to change.
Funhaus was an instant rabbit hole for me. I think it was about six months after the channel launched that I was introduced and I cleared the back catalog in two weeks max. The humor, the gameplay, the way everyone riffed on one another. It was the first time I actually listed to an entire episode of a podcast. I was fully bought in. It also didn't hurt that both Sky and I agreed that Lawrence reminded us so much of Ryu that it was almost uncanny. From the weeb tendencies, to the bombastic pontificating, to the frame of glasses he wore. It wasn't a perfect facsimile, but only being a few years removed from the incident it was an oddly comforting form of catharsis. And so, I began my daily ritual of watching the newest Funhaus video. Monday's in particular I remember opening the store and eating my chicken biscuit every morning while watching the newest Demo Disk. I would often get asked by my teammates, "What are you watching?" and they'd have to politely sit through a short dissertation on Funhaus and why it was the funniest thing on YouTube. There was one such conversation that always stood out to me that went something like this,
Co-Worker: "You know kliq, I see you in here on your lunch break every single day watching a video on your phone. About half of the time you can't even breathe you're laughing so hard. So I looked over your shoulder the other day and it's just three white dudes playing a video game? How can it be that funny?" Me: "Lemme show you something."
I pulled up the gameplay of James yelling at FIFA 2006 and I had converted another fan.
The years from 2015-2019 are some of my favorite Funhaus memories. Not in a "I hate Future Funhaus" way, but just as sort of going through my mid-20s and starting to become a person. I know it became a common joke to talk about the parasocial nature of YouTube channels around this time, so pardon me for this bit of cringe, but in a very real way I felt like I had discovered several long-lost older brothers (and one sister). I knew that I didn't actually know these people. But the caricatures they played while performing for the camera became a very impactful part of my life. Much in the same way that a good character in a book or a TV show can resonate with you in ways you wouldn't expect, the Funhaus crew informed a lot of my sensibilities. They taught me about comedy, they gave me different perspectives through which to the view the world, and, in a very real way, helped me navigate away from some of the online cesspools that I would have otherwise probably succumbed to. It was during this time that I also met the crew. I went to a PAX East Panel where I was front-row for the "De-pah-ted" gag over and over. Afterwards, we went to world's oddest meet-up location (a children's science museum) where everyone queued up to meet each person individually. Everyone was incredibly kind and funny. The next year the meet-up was smaller, but I trudged through the snow to stand in around the upper floor of a mall to chat with Lawrence and Peake. The next day Lawrence was MCing a competition and I won some free swag after beating some people in Jenga. (We never did figure out how to eliminate multiple people.) This was also around the time that I finally signed up for RT First, specifically to watch Arizona Circle on repeat.
It's around here that my Funhaus story takes a turn and it's really the reason I feel most compelled to apologize profusely to everyone that worked there. The pandemic hit me hard. In 2018, I was laid off from a job and spent six months unemployed with absolutely nothing. I was paying my rent on my credit card (among other things), and would buy my friends groceries on my cards to have them pay me cash so I could pay the minimums. I had to move across the country for a new job and I left everyone I ever knew behind except my wife. But for those first two years, I knew I had Funhaus to keep my spirits afloat. Then the lockdown. I fell behind on everything. I still remember the last video I watched all the way through. It was the murder mystery yacht video where everyone dressed up. For whatever reason, I just... stopped. Before I knew it, I was six months behind in my videos and then everything happened with Adam and I sort of just floated away.
I kept telling myself I would come back. I kept saying I could still catch up. But suddenly it was 2021, and then 2022, and I still hadn't watched a single video. I would see Reddit posts about how "I miss the old days" and "What's with this new cast", but whenever I would see a clip, I would laugh as hard as I always had. For whatever reason, I just couldn't come back and watch episodes. Toward the end of 2022, I was experiencing the lowest point I had in nearly a decade. I was extremely depressed and could barely focus on life. I decided then that I was going to restart at the beginning. I was going to watch the entire Funhaus catalog for a big, grandiose project that I would publish for their 8th anniversary in 2023. I made it about six months deep into the catalog before I succumbed to more despair. I had to take time off of work. Then, on April 25th 2023, I was laid off from my job. (I told you this day sucked.)
Fast forward to this year, and I'm realizing that I'm watching some of my absolute favorite people in the world present their last versions of themselves on stream on the one-year anniversary of me realizing I was jobless again. I cried all the way through that stream. James's speech at the end had me in absolute shambles. I almost still can't reconcile that this is all ending. I know that some people reading will probably think it's gauche to compare Funhaus ending with the death of a best friend and losing my own job, and I wouldn't necessarily hold that against them. It's funny how certain things link themselves in our minds. One of the hardest things to reconcile about losing Ryu was that I wouldn't be able to do certain things with him anymore. We couldn't watch the newest cours of anime, we couldn't talk about the fact that Bayonetta actually got a sequel, or that I finally managed to finish all of the Final Fantasy XI achievements before he did. In the same way, that feeling of missing out on the unknown future is what breaks me down to my core. It is highly likely that we'll never see all of those incredible people in the same room together in the same way, and the world is worse off because of it. That really applies to Rooster Teeth as a whole as well. I've always been more of a Funhaus fan that RT in general, but I really can't understate how incredible the talent at Funhaus always was.
I'm sure everyone wanted to, over the years, work at Funhaus because they liked the cast, or they thought being a YouTuber was a glamorous job. Some might even go so far as to say it was their dream to work there. I am one of those people. But, I literally mean it was my dream. For as long as I can remember, I have had extremely vivid dreams of just working at Funhaus. Not necessarily being on camera, not even like doing a gameplay. I mean I would dream about sitting down at a computer and getting instructions on how to edit a video. Or, I'd be interviewing for a position to intern/help out. I'd be in different offices throughout the years, answering emails, creating production schedules, just interfacing with everyone as if they were my co-workers. In fact, just this past Saturday I had one of these dreams. Probably from realizing that the 10th was everyone's actual last day. But I showed up, and talked to James about an edit on the "final video". We compared notes, and then him, Bruce, and Patrick all walked out together singing a Tenacious D song as they shut the doors to the studio. (Look, I didn't say they always made sense.)
Again, I know there's a certain level of, "You don't actually know these people," at play here. And I'll readily admit that we don't know each other from... uh.... Eve. But, that never mattered to me. Sure, I always thought, maybe if I could get a job there and prove myself that a natural camaraderie would develop like any good workplace. But that didn't matter to me as much as just being part of something. I ardently believe that the Funhaus crew are some of the most talented entertainers to ever put their likeness to video. In the same way, that someone might want to act alongside Tom Cruise or be in a Steven Spielberg movie, I wanted to work with Funhaus. In 2021, when I turned 30, I wrote down a list of "30 people in my 30s" that I had aspirations to do something with in terms of media creation. Despite not having watched them in some time, Funhaus was still top of my list.
So, I'm sorry. I'm truly deeply sorry. I'm sorry that I fell of watching the videos. (The grand tragic irony is that when I heard the news about the shutdown, I started watching the newest videos and was laughing just like old times.) That I wasn't there in the trenches when things were roughest. That I wasn't able to, in the only way a random viewer can, support the channel and the people within, in the same way y'all had (unknowingly) done for me for years prior. I know that a single view probably doesn't make a difference in the grand scheme of how thing shook out. But I can't help but feel some complicity in the declining view count. I know people move on from projects, or they morph over time, but I truly wished I could've tuned into the channel decades from now and still heard the comforting voices that had become so familiar.
I don't really have a great way to end this section of the post. If you've read through all of this it probably means you're either taking massive dump and you're hitting your second flush right now, or some of these sentiments resonate with you too. In either case, I thank you for affording me the opportunity to express my thoughts and feelings here. I'm honestly not sure how fluid this will end up being, and my editor brain is telling me I should re-write about 90% of it. But it's now or never.
To any past/present/future Funhaus employee who might see this, thank you so much for all you've done for people over the past decade plus of entertaining. If I can oblige just a few more moments of your time, I wanted to speak directly to each of you as a final expression of my adoration and thankfulness.
u/fh_James - It's truly fitting that the first and final shots of film posted to the Funhaus channel are of you. It took me a while to truly understand how much of the backbone of the channel you were. Throughout the years, you always challenged the way I thought about comedy and how to make things funny. You were constantly one-upping yourself with the way you crafted your humor. This, coupled with your deep sincerity, loyalty, and strength of character always made me think you'd be the "last one out". Thank you so much for all of your work on Funhaus, thank you for Talking Stalkings, for Arizona Circle, and for everything else. Thank you for answering my tweet about a limited-time "Sonic Makeup line" that allowed me to enshrine myself in some small way in Funhaus lore. Your ending stream speech touched my heart deeply, and I hope that you are able to take some time to yourself before find the next big thing. (Obviously, steaks.) I still have hope that one day I'll be afforded the opportunity to work with you on something.
u/FH_Elyse - Thank you for bringing such a genuine warmth along with sharp, witty comedy to the channel. Funhaus would truly not be 1/10th what it was without your contributions. The characters, the off-scene work (the pony-tail clip is still hall of fame), and everything in between. I'm so happy you've branched out into doing creative writing work, and I hope you continue to find success there. I also want to thank you for being the only reason I could convince my wife to ever watch a Funhaus video. She adores you and thinks you're so funny. Having you come on finally allowed me to share a small part of Funhaus with her and for that I'll be forever grateful. I'd also be remiss to not include one of my favorite anecdotes. After you joined, we were talking and I mentioned that you and James were married, and my wife asked, "Which one is he again?" I pulled up a picture and she replies, "Oh, the hot one. That's my girl."
u/FHJacob - Funhaus's badboy the OG "editor". Thank you for all the years of hardwork you put into making the "Funhaus" style a thing of beauty. I was so happy when you started doing on-screen videos. Your absolute unabashed passion for different nerdy endeavors is truly infectious. The ending to Star Boys was incredible and watching you and Rahul quote the entirety of three movies at once another will always be something I treasure. One day, I hope you can school me on some Gundam lore.
u/FHBruce - I know you've moved on, but not only were you an integral part of my formative Funhaus experiences, but there's something I've always wanted to tell you. In your "Goodbye" video, there's a section where everyone is describing your management style and how you led the team during your run at FH. When that video dropped I immediately sent my manager at the time the section where Omar is talking about your leadership. That whole portion of the video I have maintained is how I think everyone should talk about their leaders, and is something that I strive to work towards in my own personal job currently. I know that is but the smallest window into your management style, but it's pushed me to be a better overall leader. So thank you.
u/rufhaus - Autumn, I'm not positive if you were ever technically "Funhaus" but I loved your stint on Inside Gaming and Sugar Pine 7, and I think you've more than enshrined yourself in the eternal codex of this channel. Very happy to continue to see you thriving, and obviously much congratulations to both you and Bruce for your child. I'm glad we all got to experience your talent throughout the years.
u/FH_Omar - Speaking of you Omar, thank you so much for everything you've done over the years at FH. I still remember the "Where in the World is Omar" bits on Open Haus, and learning that you were super into heavy music. I was like, "This dude has dope kicks AND can crowd kill. Let's absolutely go." I mentioned above that you talking about Bruce in his goodbye video was inspirational. In having watched all of the current "goodbye" content, and the way that everyone has talked about you since, I hope it's not too out of line to say that I think you've probably embodied those exact same principles in your leadership. Again, I have only what I'm seeing externally to go on, but from the way people talk about you, to the emotions you've worn on your sleeves during the shutdown, I believe that you're an awesome person to work for and with.
u/SirLarr - Lawrence, I should take a moment to apologize for ambushing you with what I'm sure was a very confusing story to hear at children's museum. "Hey dude you remind me of my dead friend so that's part of why I got into Funhaus," is maybe the worst first sentence I've ever spoken to someone in real life. So again, I'm terribly sorry. But I also want to say how awesome it was to watch all the stuff you did over the years at Funhaus. I know from still watching your content now that there's some level of grime that covers those years and they aren't the fondest to look back on. But I do think things like Time 2 Hakk, Quintessential Gamer, Hard Nettin' were such touchstones of Funhaus content that will live on forever. From an outside perspective, it seems like you're doing well, and I'm excited to keep seeing you on BYTT and IGv3(4?).
u/RyanRyanReddit - Ryan, my dude. I literally don't know if I could even adequately describe just how much you've made me laugh just by literally being you. I have a file in my notes app called "Real Life Stories" where I have a few words that trigger a specific memory from my life about some absurd happenstance that I found myself in. I feel like every time you tell a story, you're pulling from your own file like that but it's five thousand times longer and more interesting than mine. You're a supremely talented and funny dude and I'm so glad you were brought into Funhaus and ended up staying as long as you did. I hope to see you on Survivor 47/8/9! (I think I have Charlie for this season.)
u/hohnjolland - John, the perfect musical addition to the team. I'm so thankful for all of your awesome tunes, sick edits, and willingness to dive into the bit over the years. You brought an different vibe / flair to the videos you were in that always had me thinking, "Why is this dude the coolest person in the room." I've got my sub to Pour Choices Kitchen locked and loaded, and it has somewhat got me considering picking back up my own mantle "Chef Dude Jour" again. I hope that PCK is successful or you're able to explore other avenues as well. Also, I'm the guy from Gastonia that was in the chat. DM the location of that fish place in Lincolnton.
u/FH_Jon - Jon Deux. Man. I still remember when you first started appearing on videos. The chaotic energy, the commitment to bits, you've got some absolutely all-time classic FH moments under your belt. I'm super thankful that you got to be part of this crew and share your weirdness (complimentary) with the world. I know you put up the video a few months ago about your mental health, and I hope that things have gotten better. As someone who also struggles with depression, I know how devastating that can be sometimes. I truly wish the best for you man. Thanks for all the laughs.
u/linzbot - We're approaching territory where people were onboarding right as I fell off, but literally every single video I've seen since the announcement, not to mention your contributions to the streams has filled me with joy. I'm so glad you made the transition from Cow Chop to Funhaus, and, if there's nothing else I can say in adulation, it's that you blessed us with the absolutely perfect sign-off to something that meant so much to all of us. I had to pause at least a dozen times watching that documentary to cry, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. A truly stellar capstone to a truly stellar run.
u/mc_lotta / u/snackary__ / u/HandsomeMaster2 - It would be somewhat disingenuous of me to applaud the entirety of y'all's run at Funhaus because I, foolishly, missed so much of it. But what I do remember is how this trio absolutely crushed Inside Gaming, and how excited I was when I heard everyone had made the jump over to FH. Charlotte, your sardonic quips and joke delivery have always made me laugh. Patrick, I watched the entirety of the Demo Wheel run and I was amazed at how incredible a foil to James you were. Then, I watched a smattering of other content and realized you're the perfect foil in nearly every video. I'm so excited to see that both of you and Jacob have started up your goblin activities. Zach, I'm sorry I missed your true FH run. I was supremely stoked (and unfortunately subsequently saddened) as a fellow games industry person to see you rocking out on CoD socials. Hope you're doing well.
u/Gargarbinks - Brian! Screw it. Inside Gaming is basically Funhaus, so I'm including you here too. I've been watching you deliver gaming news for ages and I'm so thankful that you were part of this entire journey. Loved seeing you on Inside Games (legally distinct entity) and I hope the games industry never loses you. If anything, I know at least one other person who will freak out if Dragon Quest X makes it's way westward.
u/MadMattBT - No idea if you still peruse these parts or use Reddit anymore, but I just wanted to say, in addition to all the amazing work you put in as an editor, as well as the absolutely CLASSIC appearances as Hitman, thanks for being open about your faith and ideals while working at Funhaus. As someone who is also a Christian, it's always nice to see people who are comfortable enough in their beliefs to not only poke fun at themselves, but also embrace other viewpoints.
u/harmonygrits - Really getting into the archives now, Joel, I know your run on FH was short(ish), but I really did enjoy whenever you'd be involved with a video. The whimsical, but also oddly parental like vibe you brought to videos (despite your most well known meme maybe being liking something called "Unicum") were always a delight. Since then you've showcased your skills in for other content creators, and even now you've been giving away your fount of knowledge for free in some very interesting Medium articles. The industry itself might be in a worrisome state, but there's hope that people such as yourself will find a better path forward.
u/Spooleo - Spoole. The original "Goodbye" video. Thanks so much for all the laughs during that opening era of Funhaus. I'm not sure I ever agreed with the 1 Dollar 1 Hour premise, but it certainly made for some entertaining videos. And hey, your current gig ain't so bad itself, yeah?
u/charalanahzard - I was so supremely stoked when you first started showing up in videos because you fell so naturally into the format it was uncanny. I had enjoyed your games industry coverage up till then, so I thought I was getting the best of both worlds. So supremely thankful for your time at Funhaus and even now continuing the Deadly Premonition dreams alive and well on your stream. Not to mention the slate of podcast content you've been producing for some time now. As someone who is also hopeful to one day write for games, your journey has been inspiring. I hope to see your book come out as well! (If that's your goal!)
u/RahulKohli13 - Dunno if you consider yourself a Funhaus "member" or not, but given how much joy you've brought me through your involvement with their videos, it wouldn't feel right to not include you. Boyfriend videos, Sundered, Talking Stalkings, and everything in between, I couldn't be more thrilled that you were part of this journey. Also, selfishly, I miss you posting on Twitter. Those last few years were just great fun, but I understand why you left. I try to watch everything you're in. Mike Flannagan has an eternal fan because I just wanted to see more Rahul Kohli. You even reinvigorated my love and passion for football. YNWA. (I assume we just never talk about this season again, yeah?)
u/mandodoesstuff - Mando! Your Funhaus run is definitely in my personal time away from the channel, but one thing that consistently happened during that period was I would see clips with you in them and I would always, always laugh. I thought you were incredible during Last Laugh Season 2, and I've caught some of your RTP rebrand and subsequent Zazlav diss tracks. You're an incredibly funny and talented dude and I'm absolutely following Midnight Snack to see where the next thing takes you. (Yes, y'all should make a Patreon.)
u/filmDstryr / u/thenasacova / u/adambrouillard - So I couldn't find any of y'all's actual Reddit accounts, but these are your handles elsewhere so maybe this will work? For some reason the three of you are tied together in my mind as all having started at relatively the same time and were always the "Oh, there's Dan/Don/Bones!" excitement when you'd show up in a video. Dan, I loved your stuff on Filmhaus and Board as Hell, and I hope that Funhaus Avenue... I mean "Fhave" takes off. (Yes, I made that joke on Twitter already). Don, I still randomly quote "Michael Transactions" till this day. Just all-time incredible character work. Bones, I'll never get your insanely cool random nickname that's only used at Funhaus. To all three of you, thank you for your tireless efforts across all your time at the company, and for helping create some of my fondest memories.
u/therickreveche / u/ekombokom / u/HeyYoItsGabz - Rick, Justin, Gabs; first, I'm not positive if any of these accounts are actually y'all, so I apologize that I couldn't sleuth down your official accounts. Second, I completely missed the entirety of y'all's FH run and that sucks. Rick, I saw your work on the finale stream with the climax of what I assume to be an astoundingly good FH Wrestling show that I fully plan on watching in it's entirety. But I know that each of you contributed your talents, time, and effort to creating content on the channel and for that I'm forever grateful. I'm sure that as I (re)watch everything it will make me feel even more foolish for the time I missed out on.
I think that's every on camera person from the entire run. I've been writing for *checks clock* five hours now, so I'm going to feel like a real chump if there's some sort of glaring omission from this list. I also had originally wanted to see if I could track down a list of all the editors, interns, and other employees throughout the years that were either never on camera or only on there briefly, but I couldn't find a cohesive enough list that felt "right", so I'll just dedicate this final paragraph to everyone else that has ever contributed to this behemoth undertaking. No matter how "small" a part you may have played, it all worked toward a common pursuit that has impacted millions of people's lives over the course of a decade. I'm so thankful for everyone who ever walked through those doors and sat down to work on Funhaus.
Okay, this was even longer than I anticipated it being. If anyone has read this far, I just want to say... please get off the toilet. I'm sure your legs are asleep. If you're still taking a dump go see a doctor immediately, that's not normal. See ya!

Do I need an m16 bcg for the auto sear to work? Is that fudd lore or can I just run an ar 15 upper on a full auto lower with no issues?

You’ve defeated The Egregore Collective, driving them away from our galaxy, securing the free will of all its inhabitants. Waged war against a civilization who is so mysterious and advanced that their weapons can only be equated to magic (for now).
Celebrate and bask in this victory, smile and laugh, mourn and cry, and look towards a brighter future. It’s yours for the taking, is it not? You’ve proved yourself and your rule to be greater. The stars are there waiting for you.
But don’t leave yet, no, there is still one thing I must tell you.
Don’t forget.
The light of the future can be so blinding, so alluring to run towards, but you can’t forget the past. I want you to sear this event in your mind, then to your kin’s minds, then to your kin’s kin’s minds, so on and so forth.
The Egregore Collective is gone, not defeated. For them, this loss is nothing but a small bump in the road. A hundred years, a thousand, an eon, all the same to them. Time is their ally, but time is our enemy. They will remember these events until the end of the universe but us? History has told me we forget so many things.
The next time The Collective comes to this galaxy, our children may be left blind as we were, and the Collective will not be as ill equipped to fight them as it was for us.
The sands of time are relentless, it is our duty to keep us afloat. When one forgets their past, they are unable to forge their future.
Sincerely,\ A simple scholar
P.S. Even now there are many secrets in the Erebus System, but the Black Hole is not the only danger there. See you starside.