23F, 160cm, 54Kg, no substances. No known allergies. I am lactose intolerant and have eliminated lactose from my diet. I have been feeling generally 'off' for around a year now, and have been having semi-regular blood tests. I have always had iron levels on the lower side of healthy. I have always eaten a diet high in red meat and other iron-rich foods, and yet I still have low iron.
It began about a year and a half ago, when I suddenly had an episode of feeling very off. I was fatigued, had pain in my arms, a strange rash that didn't go away when pressing (the best way to describe it is unconnected small red and purple blotches, confined to a small area usually appearing on my torso or legs), and experienced an overwhelming feeling of doom. I do have anxiety, however I have never before (or since) experienced that feeling, and there was nothing in my life happening at the time to trigger it.
I had my blood taken and it showed extremely high iron levels all of a sudden (more than 2.5x my previous levels). The only other results of note were low Urea and cholesterol, and high bilirubin. I have never had anything wrong with my liver before. My white blood cell count was normal at this time. The doctor recommended to monitor and have a follow-up test in three month's time.
Three months passes and I remain fatigued, and the joint pain is on and off. The rash mostly just appears after showering. I'm not sure if it's related, but I started coughing up a large volume of tonsil stones. My follow-up blood test showed that my iron had returned to its normal borderline low levels! everything else had returned to normal, except my white blood cell count. The total count had decreased but was still within healthy levels. My neutrophil levels had decreased by 50%. Everything looked pretty normal, so despite still feeling bad I didn't test again for another 8 months. I felt embarassed to talk to doctors as I felt like I was wasting their time.
Over those 8 months my energy levels took a nosedive. I could only last until around 3pm before feeling incredibly tired. I am not a big caffeine drinker, and drinking tea didn't help my energy levels. I get around 8 hours of sleep per night. I started taking iron supplements with vitamin c, but there was no improvement. The strange rash continued after showering, however the joint pain decreased (but still occured). I saw a doctor who confirmed the rash wasn't due to scarlet fever. He told me not to be concerned as it may be due to a skin allergy. I was feeling nauseous every morning, and my abdomen was constantly bloated. I often experienced severe pain just under the ribs. I also got recurring pain in my lower left abdomen and my doctor suggested a possible hernia. At nights I would again feel nauseous. I was still eating like normal. I always felt like there was something caught in the back of my throat, and I had a lot of excess mucus. I was constantly clearing my throat.
I mainly noticed that wounds were bleeding for longer and I had a lot of mouth ulcers. My gums would bleed overnight and are always an inflamed red colour despite regular burshing, flossing, and dental checkups. Also strangely I have had new brown moles appearing even in places not exposed to the sun. Around 5-6 new moles appear per month. I had a skin check by a dermatologist, and he confirmed no skin cancer. He biopsied two moles which came back healthy. I have been getting itchy red sores on my hands and feet which come and go. This is different to the other rash, and happens mainly when exposed to moisture for too long.
Still feeling very off, I went back for the next blood test. My cholestorol had reverted to the previous low levels, and my glucose was very low (borderline hypoglycemic). I have no family history of diabetes. My total white blood cell levels had once again dropped and were now bordeline low. My Neutrophils in particular were clinically low and the report noted mild neutropenia. I had not recenty been sick or had an infection. My iron levels were still borderline low despite taking supplements. The doctor once again said to just do follow-up testing when possible. That was a month ago, and I have since moved somewhere remote with very limited access to healthcare facilities to volunteer.
Since then, my appetite has been steadily decreasing. I have been eating around 1.5 meals a day as I feel very full very quickly. I don't weigh myself regularly, however it looks like I have been losing some weight. My throat is now constantly mildly irritated. A doctor noted that the lymph nodes on the right side of my neck were enlarged, however we chalked this off to me moving to the tropics. Two lymph nodes have remained swollen most of the time, one feels firm and doesn't hurt. The other feels soft and moveable, and is a little sore when pressed. The doctor checked for both ear and throat infections but nothing was found. The doctor recommended an ultrasound of my neck, however there are no ultrasound facilities in the place i'm living.
I had to go to a hospital in a neighbouring location for unrelated reasons after an injury, and they did x-rays of my entire spine. Nothing was noted in the neck area, and no blood tests were taken. I brought up the other symptoms I had been experiencing, but after treating the injury I was discharged.
I am just not entirely sure what to do. I am tired of feeling sick all the time. No changes in diet or supplements have worked, and doctors seem to have no answer for me. I keep being dismissed for a variety of circumstantial reasons like moving to the tropics, being stressed, indigestion, period symptoms. Everyone keeps saying it's because of the tropical climate, but these symptoms have been ongoing since months before, and the blood tests were all taken prior to moving.
At one doctor's appointment he asked if there was a possibility of blood born diseases. I noted that I used to work as a medical sterilisation technician, however I had never had a needlestick injury or other contamination that I knew of. It has been three years since I worked that job.
At this stage I am scared to go back to the doctor as I feel like I am wasting everyone's time. It would take a lot of effort for me to access medical facilities due to my location, and I don't see the point in going in for a follow-up test when I will probably be brushed off again. I would appreciate any advice at all, noting that it is very difficult for me to access medical facilities at the moment.

Starting on Friday, May 17 - Current: My city had a massive storm the previous night and over a million people lost power. I mindlessly eat a gummy bear with my right side and immediately feel pain and the intense, throbbing pain continues for over the next 24+ hours. Desperate because my dentist office, which is normally open on Saturdays, hasn't gotten power back so they're closed. I make a telehealth appointment to just get an antibiotic prescribed (I still had leftover Ibuprofen). Very briefly explain issue to that doc who prescribes me an antibiotic but when I pick it up from store, I realize it's Clindamycin - so not the same as the Amoxicillin that I previously had (see timeline below).
The Clindamycin was prescribed to take it the same way though (3x/day) so I take the first one almost immediately and by that night, I was getting really nervous because it didn't have the almost immediate relief I had gotten previously. I fall asleep watching a movie, and when I wake up like an hour later, I'm shocked that the pain is pretty much gone but my jaw is really tight and hard to fully extend open. Prior to this nap, I was in a lot of pain but had no problem opening my jaw at all.
Since then, the pain has remained little to none with the help of regular store-bought Ibuprofen but I can only open my jaw to where there is maybe a 1inch gap between my top/bottom teeth. I've basically been living off of smoothies and soup. While it's not really visible, I can feel like a swollen ball/mass under my jaw where that right molar is, and it's somewhat sensitive to the touch if I really put any pressure on it.
The dentist office regained electricity yesterday (Tuesday) and I was ready to get the other root canal same day, and they could fit me in, but after going in person to speak to them and show them the issue with opening my jaw, they told me we'd have to reschedule (which I suspected). I told the dentist working that day (not my normal one) about my previous/recent root canal on the left side of my mouth (see timeline below) and she seemed a little perplexed. She said it wouldn't be completely unheard of for the muscle to atrophy but only if it was on the same side as the previous root canal. But the issue is occurring on the right-hand side.
I never in my life thought I'd be begging for a root canal but here I am - and I can't get it done until I figure out why I can't open my jaw, and frankly, I'm freaking out. I'm thankful that the pain isn't return but each morning I wake up hoping there's any improvement on the range of motion and there isn't. We're at 3+ days now. To make matters even more intense, I'm supposed to be leaving for a week long vacation this Saturday that has been scheduled for over a year for a family celebration.
Please help point me in the right direction of questions I should ask, experts I should go to, remedies to attempt, anything. Money is really tight because I lost my job at the start of April, but insight and direction are my main goals here. ___
All of the details of the lead-up that occurred in the 2-months prior to the issue I'm having now (in case this helps in any way in the problem/solution):
Saturday, March 23: I cracked my back bottom molar (left side) which resulted in extreme pain & swelling. I went to the dentist that was open on Saturday, got my scans, and was told it would need a root canal or extraction. I was sent home with prescriptions for Amoxicillin & 600mg Ibuprofen and was feeling so much better within hours. At that same appointment, I was also told then that my second-furthest-back bottom molar (right side) would need a root canal but funds were tight and the issue at hand was the cracked one on the left. I did also get a second opinion from a very highly regarded dentist who agreed with the options given - unfortunately, it just would have cost way too much to get it done at this place.
Saturday, April 20: I put off for almost a month due to a lot of dental anxiety and financial stress, I finally went in to get it done at the same place I had the initial 3/23 appointment. I had I was surprised to be told by the dentist as he was clearly "finishing up" that they actually weren't able to complete it because my canal(s)? was too narrow. He said he did something to hopefully help widen them and I can come back in a week and assuming the canal widened, he would complete. In the meantime, he put a temporary filling (I think is what he called it). This appointment, from the start of administering the numbing, was probably only a little over an hour long.No issues or pain occurred between these appointments this time
Monday, April 29: Go back in to complete the procedure and I guess the canals were able to do what they needed to do so procedure went on as planned ... until putting the round metal thing around my tooth to build up the crown. It must've been over 15 attempts and with the numbness wearing off + my TMJ + the pulling on my lip/cheek to get the better angle, we had to call it quits. Another temporary filling or something and I walked out in tears of frustration.In between these appointments, on Friday, the other side of my mouth began to start hurting. I contacted the dentist, and while my normal one doesn't work Fridays, the one that was suggested the nerves might be inflamed and prescribed a steroid-pack. After taking the first day's dose, the pain completely went and stayed away.
Tuesday, May 7: I go in and things actually get done. I think they put the numbing into a few more areas which helped them access where they needed to easier. As is normal practice at this dentist, a temporary crown was placed.
(I'm a non-smoker and very little alcohol consumption)

I am 27F, 5'7", 115kg & white.
Sorry that this is long I am just trying to be as detailed as possible to hopefully get some insight!
So background relating to the issue:
I hyperextended my left elbow at approx 16yo. The joint clicked in and out of place but didn't feel quite right when it returned and I had ulnar nerve problems from that point on. Turns out my nerve goes in and out of place as it pleases. They told me back then there was nothing they could do.
Fast forward to last year, after finding out that permanent numbness is a sign of something 'wrong' with the nerve - I decided to investigate thinking maybe finally they could fix this issue.
I have permanent numbness in the tips of my middle, ring and pinky finger and down the palm of my left hand below my pinky. I now have the same symptoms in my right arm and hand, although the numbness is much less significant. The numbness has gotten worse over the years also - started with my pinky etc. It has affected my left hand motor function slightly. The numbness does not come and go. It is permanent and does not ever improve. It only at times gets worse/covers a larger area.
I went to an orthapedic surgeon hoping to just get surgery to prevent this getting worse. After a negative nerve conduction test and a clear MRI on my neck she believes that while my ulnar nerve has thickened in both elbows and does freely go in and out of place it is not the main problem or much cause for concern. The permanent numbness is. She believes it's an issue in my brain, like autoimmune or something along those lines. So now I have to see a neurologist.
During my appt with her she asked about my family history, and she believes it's possible my sister has the same problem as me. She also has been experiencing numbness in her hands and her doctor has been investigating possible lupus or rheumatoid arthritis but nothing has confirmed anything as of yet. My sister (34F, 5'7" approx 60kg) does get a rash at times during 'flare ups' of her symptoms but overall it is mostly in remission. She has also recently been diagnosed with asthma. I do not get a rash, but my skin has increased greatly in sensitivity in the last year. I have been suffering/now managing folliculitis and dermatitis as well as weirdly intensely itchy armpits - which has greatly improved after switching to a sensitive deodorant. (Keep in mind I'd been using the same one for 10 years almost) I have also recently been getting mild asthma like symptoms but cannot confirm either way yet.
I would really appreciate if anyone knows anybody that has had similar symptoms that HAS a diagnosis. I am obviously going to see the neurologist, but I am a bit stressed about given my sister has had no luck investigating this, and seeing specialists over and over again is very expensive. Also, when I look at the possible causes of peripheral neuropathy on the mayo clinic site I don't relate to any of it.
Possible relevant info:
I have been diagnosed with hypermobility syndrome (no investigation of EDS) and PCOS. Doctors believe I have Endo (found in ultrasound) but no surgery yet to confirm. I have the implanon and am also on the mini pill to try and control my Endo symptoms/flare ups. It sort of works.
I do not have diabetes. I manage my PCOS with metformin, and I was tested for diabetes 3x and all came back negative. I also have no symptoms of diabetes. A side effect of metformin did make me b12 deficient which I have managed to resolve with regular b12 injections every 3 months. The numbness predates the b12 deficiency.
I have a history of headaches and migraines. (Sensitivity to light, although recently now also I get nauseous, dizzy and sometimes weakness in my arms)
I have a history of being lightheaded/easily faint due to stress or heat. I self-manage and don't really consider this much of a problem.
I rarely drink alcohol (one glass max usually when I do. I avoid bc makes me feel like crap) and I do not do any drugs.
Thank you for reading <3

I am 27F, 5'7", 115kg & white.
Sorry that this is long I am just trying to be as detailed as possible to hopefully get some insight!
So background relating to the issue:
I hyperextended my left elbow at approx 16yo. The joint clicked in and out of place but didn't feel quite right when it returned and I had ulnar nerve problems from that point on. Turns out my nerve goes in and out of place as it pleases. They told me back then there was nothing they could do.
Fast forward to last year, after finding out that permanent numbness is a sign of something 'wrong' with the nerve - I decided to investigate thinking maybe finally they could fix this issue.
I have permanent numbness in the tips of my middle, ring and pinky finger and down the palm of my left hand below my pinky. I now have the same symptoms in my right arm and hand, although the numbness is much less significant. The numbness has gotten worse over the years also - started with my pinky etc. It has affected my left hand motor function slightly. The numbness does not come and go. It is permanent and does not ever improve. It only at times gets worse/covers a larger area.
I went to an orthapedic surgeon hoping to just get surgery to prevent this getting worse. After a negative nerve conduction test and a clear MRI on my neck she believes that while my ulnar nerve has thickened in both elbows and does freely go in and out of place it is not the main problem or much cause for concern. The permanent numbness is. She believes it's an issue in my brain, like autoimmune or something along those lines. So now I have to see a neurologist.
During my appt with her she asked about my family history, and she believes it's possible my sister has the same problem as me. She also has been experiencing numbness in her hands and her doctor has been investigating possible lupus or rheumatoid arthritis but nothing has confirmed anything as of yet. My sister (34F, 5'7" approx 60kg) does get a rash at times during 'flare ups' of her symptoms but overall it is mostly in remission. She has also recently been diagnosed with asthma. I do not get a rash, but my skin has increased greatly in sensitivity in the last year. I have been suffering/now managing folliculitis and dermatitis as well as weirdly intensely itchy armpits - which has greatly improved after switching to a sensitive deodorant. (Keep in mind I'd been using the same one for 10 years almost) I have also recently been getting mild asthma like symptoms but cannot confirm either way yet.
I would really appreciate if anyone knows anybody that has had similar symptoms that HAS a diagnosis. I am obviously going to see the neurologist, but I am a bit stressed about given my sister has had no luck investigating this, and seeing specialists over and over again is very expensive. Also, when I look at the possible causes of peripheral neuropathy on the mayo clinic site I don't relate to any of it.
Possible relevant info:
I have been diagnosed with hypermobility syndrome (no investigation of EDS) and PCOS. Doctors believe I have Endo (found in ultrasound) but no surgery yet to confirm. I have the implanon and am also on the mini pill to try and control my Endo symptoms/flare ups. It sort of works.
I do not have diabetes. I manage my PCOS with metformin, and I was tested for diabetes 3x and all came back negative. I also have no symptoms of diabetes. A side effect of metformin did make me b12 deficient which I have managed to resolve with regular b12 injections every 3 months. The numbness predates the b12 deficiency.
I have a history of headaches and migraines. (Sensitivity to light, although recently now also I get nauseous, dizzy and sometimes weakness in my arms)
I have a history of being lightheaded/easily faint due to stress or heat. I self-manage and don't really consider this much of a problem.
I rarely drink alcohol (one glass max usually when I do. I avoid bc makes me feel like crap) and I do not do any drugs.
Thank you for reading <3

“Bitchin ride. So like, you some big, important dude or something?” Brittany asked, lazing against the exterior of the black limousine that came to pick him up. The pink puffer jacket she wore spreading out, blocking the door. She didn’t fit the typical bodyguard model, having bright blonde hair, a beautiful face decorated in only the most expensive makeup available, and a set of bright clothing that made her stand out, no matter the crowd.
Edward lit his cigar, giving her a look over. This was his top-class security? The president must have been pulling his leg by assigning her to be a part of his guard. Showed how poor relations were going between their countries, he thought. He didn’t answer her right away, taking some time to enjoy the fine taste of the cigar, before finishing it. “You tell me. Do you get assigned to look after nobodies?”
She paused, tapping her glossy pink lips. “Um, like, sometimes? I’m kind of just sent wherever I’m needed. Ya know? Girls gotta serve her country to stay out of jail and stuff.” She flashed a smile that made Edward pause, sensing a hidden danger lurking underneath that ditzy outer persona.
“I see.” That hurt his pride a little. He was being treated like a joke, and he had to take it. What was he supposed to do, complain? Start an international incident over it? Reluctantly, he told her about himself. “I’m an ambassador for England. As you should have been informed, I’m here to meet with your president regarding some recent trade sanctions. He wants more access to our precious metals, which we will only provide if he can show us satisfactory data that proves they have been working towards lowering their weapon pro-“
“LIKE, DIDN’T ASK FOR YOUR LIFE STORY.” She said, flicking her ponytail, hanging it over her left shoulder. “Like, blah, de, blah. If you keep talking like that, your lips are going to be too dry for the ass kissing you’ll be giving each other later.”
Edward clenched his fists, desperate to avoid that incident. He could see the headlines now, Ambassador for England, caught lashing out at an international bodyguard. The morning talk shows would have him crucified before he could even get home and defend himself. So, he made a small wiggle with his hand, telling her to stop blocking the door.
She swayed out of the way, giving a mock bow. “Ah, yes. Sir, your majesty, please humbly take a seat in our vroom box.” She said, putting on a mock posh accent. She even gave a bow, only to bump her head against the limo door, giving her a taste of karma.
“Watch your head.” Edward uttered, giving his first smirk of the day as he took his seat, waiting for her to sit in front. He gasped when she rudely tossed her puffer jacket onto him, climbing over him to get into the seat beside him. She had ten different ways to enter that vehicle, and she chose the one that would frustrate him the most. Intentionally letting her ponytail hit his face before plopping down.
“Watch your head.” She mimicked, throwing her ponytail onto the other shoulder.
He never went for the drinks in a limo, especially this early in the day, yet the cool champagne chilling in the limo’s ice bucket was calling him. He uncorked it and poured a glass, feeling as though he could take a breath now. As he sipped the beverage, she pushed her shoulder into him, watching the bubbles float to the surface of his glass.
“What?”
“You going to like, offer me some?”
“Aren’t you working?” He huffed, protectively pulling the glass towards his suit jacket.
“So, what? You’re on the job, too. I’ll trade you some of my gum if you do. Help you get rid of that stinky old man's breath. You’ll need the gum, anyway. Don’t want them knowing you had a drink before the big meeting, right?” She taunted, digging a long nail into his side, trying to invoke a reaction.
Pressing the glass to his lips, Edward took the longest sip one could take with a glass of champagne, acting as if he were a sommelier who had tasted the greatest beverage known to man. A swirl of the glass and a tentative sniff followed each sip, savoring it.
Brittany only whined in response, tapping at the bottle with her nail, filling the backseat with the clacking sound of nail on glass. “Give me some. I hate how you rich snobs always get the good stuff. I want a taste. Please, If I pour it myself I’ll get in trouble again.”
“In trouble? You mentioned jail, didn’t you? What did you do?” Edward sat the glass down, watching as Brittany’s eyes followed it. She licked her lips before he exhaled, pouring her half a glass of the champagne. “If you tell me, you can have it.”
She snatched the champagne, downing it in a single shot. As the cool drink went down her throat, she shivered, like someone had sent a jolt of lightning through her body. “Didn’t do nothing too bad. Robbed a few stores, tracked down a gang that killed my bestie. Displayed their dead bodies as mannequins in my favorite store to send a message. Just typical girl boss things. They say they're doing me a favor by giving me this job, but I think they’re using me. What gang would be stupid enough to retaliate after what I did to them?” She carried a look of innocence while she admitted to her crimes, not batting an eye. It was clear there were more gruesome details about the incident, yet Edward didn’t have the stomach to ask for them.
The man’s hand shook as it went to connect the glass to his lips. “They said a rival gang committed that crime. One person couldn’t kill that many people. The state they found some of them in too….” Edward had heard the story, everyone had. A story about a gang mysteriously vanishing, only to be propped up on display like some modern art exhibit. It made headlines all over the world.
“That’s the ones they found. Oops, hope they didn’t hear that. Yeah, so they changed my name, gave me a new identity and ta-da, I’m Brittany, the bodyguard lady. Technically, this is my prison duty and stuff.” She rolled down her window, sticking her head out, catching the breeze.
“That was truly you? You’re not lying?”
“Huh? DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?” She shouted, before suddenly pulling her head in. “HEY, BITCH DRIVING THIS THING, DIDN’T YOU SEE THAT CAR TAILING US?” She kicked her heel against the glass separating the driver and passengers, waiting for it to wind down. When the driver was in view, she kicked the side of his head, not enough to knock him out, but enough to leave a nasty print on his cheek. “SLAM THE BRAKES. GET READY TO DRIVE AS SOON AS I GET IN.” she ordered.
With a throbbing pain in his cheek, the driver did as instructed. As the limo slowed, so did the car behind it. She opened her branded white handbag, taking a lip stick stained grenade and pistol out. As soon as she got out of the car, she popped the driver in the head with a well-placed shot. After that, she followed it with two quick shots into the same window before pulling the pin of the grenade. While the hired thugs inside scrambled at the change of plans, she tossed the grenade through the newly created hole in the windshield before diving into the backseat. “NOW.”
The Ambassador hugged his lap as the limo dashed through the streets, with the sound of the explosion following behind them. “You killed those men,” Edward said, shaken.
“Mm-hmm. Don’t worry, no one else got hurt, though. So, it’s as cool as a cucumber.” Brittany said, collecting her empty glass. She wiggled the glass at Edward, who felt compelled to pour her another drink. She slouched back, spreading her legs as she took another swig of the booze. “Ah, good stuff. Like, you can’t get stuff like this in normal stores. It’s tots the best.”
“Yes, the best.”
When the car pulled up to the presidential building, Edwards didn’t move, looking at Brittany, who was swaying in her seat. He had kept refiling her glass the entire trip, not even sure how much she had drunk. She fell towards him, head-butting his shoulder. “Like, this is your stop. Don’t cry or nothin, I’ll probably be assigned to you again. NOW GET.” she screamed, causing Edward to flee like a wild rabbit that had only just escaped the teeth of a fox. “Oh, check ya pocket, too.” She waved, hanging out of the door, getting as far as she could without falling out.
Edward headed into the building, getting greeted by the standard guards that he expected from these types of meetings. As they lead him through the long royal purple halls, he felt his pocket, finding a strip of strawberry flavoured gum. He unwrapped it and tossed it into his mouth, hoping it might clear his breath before the big meeting.

The stone beneath their feet ripped itself off the ground, flying upward to collect into one enormous group. Suddenly, it curved downward towards the Hangman, resembling something between a murder of crows and a hail of arrows–
And had no effect on him.
The mass of cobblestone froze before reaching Valente, as if its time had forever stopped. While it still trembled, almost seeing to travel down an invisible road, that was all.
'This isn't part of his Hangman Talent,' Aspreay noted.
'The gods may yet forgive me, but I shall never forgive myself,' Valente thought. 'And even if it won't undo my crimes…at least I can stop a monster that sneers at death from roaming this earth.'
The Hangman was many things. Overwhelmed. Shocked. Guilty. All of those and more.
But he was still a genius.
'Damaging an opponent of higher Rank using the terrain is an obvious move,' Valente pondered, 'but I doubt he believed it would work. No – his aim was to distract me while narrowing the distance between us. He wants the Realm to be even smaller.'
The Hangman aimed his projectile Spheres at Aspreay, yet this time death was not imbued upon them. They were merely shot forward at incredible speeds, passing cleanly through his arms and legs like the sharpest of arrows.
Aspreay stopped his charge forward. His Noble Guard still protected him from death and healed every injury – it wasn't enough.
'If I kill him before he realizes what happened,' Valente thought, 'then his Realm just brings him back straight away. He'll simply go on like nothing happened, as he never had the time to suffer. But if I instead leave him alive, his pain and injuries will slow his pace. He can't approach me in that state.'
Valente was not raised by tutors like most other Hangmen, and he'd been taught very little of Realms. But he knew this much from his own fights against Lords: Realms were slower to heal injuries than to revive a user from immediate death.
This difference amounted to just a scant few seconds. Yet in this duel of titans…
That could be enough to kill the unkillable.
"You cannot and will not take a single step toward me, Aspreay!" Valente snarled. "Villains do not have the will of a hero! They have no cause noble enough to will their bodies through the worst of pains."
"I need no cause, peasant," Aspreay fired back. "We are inside my Realm now, and so long we stay here, your knees shall bend before me, and your lord shall go wherever he pleases."
His taunt appeared to shake the Hangman's resolve, yet not enough for his attacks to falter. The barrage of spheres continued, drawing out wounds and hindering Aspreay's march. 'Bastard', he thought, with a grimace. 'Even if Emperor Ciro can't detect the use of Lordly Talents, everyone in the city will have noticed the explosion Valente caused earlier. I have to finish this quickly.'
That was easier said than done. He hadn't even managed to progress a single meter since his last advance.
As the Hangman kept up his assault, he contemplated the stage that Aspreay had set. 'He intends to strengthen his Realm by refining it and reducing its size multiple times.'
Aspreay smiled at his enemy's thoughts. Although his opponent could not hear his response, he imagined one nonetheless. 'Considering our difference in rank, I would have to narrow down my Realm to the size of a closet. We would have to be within striking distance of one another's fist for it to have a prayer of working.
Yet this strategy held a massive risk – one that the Hangman was well-aware of. 'He can only use Noble Guard inside his Realm, and last time, he took nearly a full second to use Realm Reconstruction. I am more than capable of killing him in that period. That's why he wants to distract me.'
Even so, the Talent of a Lord could not be ignored. The risk and reward were plain.
'If I manage to narrow my Realm down even more–' Aspreay thought.
'If I manage to reach him before he can use Reconstruction–' Valente thought.
Both steadied their resolve.
'–THEN I CAN KILL HIM!–'
Aspreay made the first move. When his lips started to move, Valente readied himself to react at a moment's notice.
"Kill yourself, Peasant."
There was no way to avoid the order, but neither was there a reason to try doing so. The gut punch sensation it inflicted was uncomfortable, yet nothing Valente could not withstand. A momentary distraction at most; not even long enough for Aspreay to reconstruct his Realm.
"Disperse, sand."
Valente did not anticipate this order, nor could he have done much to stop it, regardless. Compacted sand rose up from underground, obscuring his vision. 'Wait…his previous order, where he lifted the cobblestone…it wasn't meant to harm me – but to expose the sand underneath. How did he know it was there?'
'Do you really think I wouldn't know what lies beneath the streets of the Empire capital I served?' Aspreay thought, almost offended. 'I will have you pay for your insolence.'
He dashed through the blinding dust that his Order had created. While his death command failed to harm Valente, it delayed the Hangman long enough that he wasn't ready to attack before Aspreay had already moved elsewhere.
Upon recovering, Valente launched a number of injuring spheres in every direction. Fast as he was, though, he failed to land a hit. There were simply too many places for Aspreay to hide, and whenever he thought of a place to aim, the Lord knew to avoid that area. 'Where is he? What is he–'
The Realm dissipated.
"NO!" Valente screamed. He shot forth his Orbs like a hailstorm of arrows. "Where are you, villain?! Show yours–"
"–REALM–RECONSTRUCTION–!"
Just as the cloud of sand dissipated, Valente was finally able to make out the vague shape of Aspreay standing arrogant and proud. "8 meters," said the lord, through heavy breaths. "Down from 14."
"You basta–" the Hangman started, then stopped as he examined Aspreay more carefully. The lord hadn't come out of their exchange unscathed. He was now clutching his left shoulder, blood flowing from the left side of his torso. One Orb had gone directly through Aspreay's body, and another had lightly grazed it.
'Why hasn't he healed yet?' the Hangman wondered.
Aspreay outwardly maintained his grin, trying not to let the pain show. 'Noble Guard only heals wounds that take place inside my Realm. You'll figure that out soon enough, won't you, troublesome little shit?'
Had it been just that, it wouldn't have been a problem. The issue came with Valente's second realization. 'He seems exhausted…of course.'
"You're getting weaker," the Hangman noted, a smile creeping across his features. "I did find it strange that a Lord could Reconstruct his Realm as many times as you have. My knowledge of your Talent may be lackluster, but I was still confident that you were only capable of doing that once per day at most."
"Limits only apply to the unblessed commoners that were born without skill," Aspreay coughed out. His breathing had become more ragged, and his vision was starting to blur. "They do not befit someone of my station."
"And yet you are now paying the cost of overusing your Realm," the Hangman said, confidently. "This is where your little game ends. It's taking longer and longer for you to construct it."
That, unfortunately, was correct.
"You have also lost the capacity to impede me with your Orders," Valente pointed out. "The narrower your Realm becomes, the more powerful your Royal Orders are…however, this also means that the recoil from failed Orders hurts far more."
That, too, was correct.
"Lastly – if you try the same trick with the sand again, you'll be pierced to death."
That was likely true as well.
The Hangman adopted a conceited expression of victory. "Surrender now, Aspreay, and face the Emperor's justice rather than–"
"–Kill yourself, peasant."
It didn't matter that his Canvas was bloodied and falling apart; at 8 meters, the Royal Order was stronger than before. If the last had been comparable to a sudden gut punch, this was closer to a disorienting sequence of strikes. Coupled with his surprise at the sudden defiance, Valente was frozen stunned for one fleeting moment.
It was enough for Aspreay.
"Blind him, sand!"
The same game from before took place – but with more lethal consequences. When inside of a Realm only 8 meters long, the Royal Order became increasingly powerful. The sand behaved with active malice, not just blinding the Hangman, but creeping beneath his eyelids like insects hunting for moisture.
'Even a Hangman would need a moment to compose himself after that kind of sensation,' Aspreay thought. He dispersed his Realm, ready to dash forward.
Only for the sand to disperse as well, leaving Valente unharmed.
This came as a stark surprise to the Lord. Even after dispelling his Realm, its Orders should have continued for at least a few seconds. Yet the sand appeared to have left Valente's eyes as if it had never been there in the first place. More came for him immediately after, and he swept it aside with ease.
'How is he dispersing the sand?' Aspreay wondered. 'That's not a Hangman Talent. Does he…have another Talent? But that–'
Valente's gaze shifted. While he hadn't fully discerned Aspreay's location, enough sand was gone that he'd gotten a rough estimate. The Hangman readied more Orbs, preparing to fling them.
SHIT–
"–REALM–RECONSTRUCTION–!"
The Hangman's hypothesis had been correct. Aspreay was taking longer to rebuild his Realm – and this time, it had almost proved fatal. The Orbs had pierced both his legs; mayhap pierced his knee, even. He didn't think he could walk any longer. As soon as his body fell, it would not stand back up again.
Divine Knowledge pushed his thoughts to race faster and faster. 'The moment the last of the sand is gone, I'll be on the ground, defenseless. How can I keep myself from falling?'
The answer came to him almost in synchronicity with his own order. "Street: give me my lord's right!"
Valente's thoughts were those of triumph. Although he was unhappy about using something called Distance on the sand, he believed that as Aspreay was close to death, and that as no onlookers could see through the cloud of dirt, even the Emperor wouldn't have been too upset about him employing it here.
He expected to see the Villain on the ground, writhing in pain, his Realm nearly shattered, and his will gone. 'He will beg for forgiveness–he will admit fault in the death of the commoners–he will confess to his sins!'
Then the dust cleared, and his expectations shattered.
"What in His Imperial Majesty's name…" Valente began, then trailed off. In front of him was the personification of the Realm he found himself constricted within. Cobblestone, sand, metal, dirt – they had all been sucked into a single spot and then forcibly arranged into a single piece of furniture.
A throne.
And sitting upon it, one bloody leg crossed over another, one elbow on the armrest, chin on his hand, was Aspreay. The Lord smiled through his pain, the pleasure of the fragile genius' shocked face empowering him. He gazed down at the Hangman as if looking at a mere petitioner in his court. "How pitiful," Aspreay coldly spat out, "that the Empire's greatest genius is also its worst coward."
'He, he can't even stand. It doesn't matter how grandiose of an entrance he makes – there's nothing he can do!' the Hangman told himself. "No use in bluffing, Aspreay. You can barely talk, let alone fight."
They were 4 meters apart now. Closer than before, but not enough to land any sort of definitive blow.
"Aspreay…be reasonable. Any further Royal Orders might kill you. Just surrender – it's your best chance of survival."
"Survival?" Aspreay threw his head back and laughed. "Do you think me a man so petty as to be concerned with that?" His grin widened. "I seek not life, but victory."
"You dare waste the life the Emperor gave you?" Valented accused. "I name you villain, traitor, and blasphemer!"
"And you disgrace the memory of those you've killed." Aspreay's laugh turned from manic to derisive. "Tell me, Hangman. Do you think yourself blameless for the Puppet massacre? Do you tell yourself that you were just a child? A naive youth who knew not what he did?"
"I…I did not massacre them," Valente fired back. "I only defeated their lord and destroyed the mountain. The…the others handled…"
"What a farce," Aspreay stated, in a mixture of amusement and disgust. "Who would have thought the Empire's sharpest blade to be so soft? You were wielded like a weapon, because you did not want to be a man. Do you truly believe yourself to be innocent? Do you think there were no Puppets hiding in the Mountains after your lot massacred the rest? Do you think yourself blameless for the murder of innocents after you tore away their only protection?'
"I…that's not…"
"And need I remind you, Hangman," Aspreay continued, gesturing wildly from his throne, "that you killed a lord by making him offer his life to protect his people?"
"I didn't know!" Valente screamed, his eyes full of tears. "I had no idea that–"
"It seems like no one ever taught you manners. I suppose that's to be expected. You come not from any noble blood, as I understand? Orbs may buy rank, yet regrettably, they do not and cannot buy class. Dress a pig in riches and power if you wish – he'll still be a filthy commoner who doesn't deserve to lick the mud off my boots."
Valente angrily shook his head. He wanted to fling himself at Aspreay, to come closer and deliver violence upon him, but knew better than to play into the man's hands. "You will show me the respect I deserve, Villain."
"Speaking of respect," Aspreay mocked, "you now stand before a lord and his throne."
He stretched out a hand. "Kneel."
It all happened at once. Valente had earnestly believed that Aspreay wouldn't use another order in his injured state. Combined with his guilty mind wandering to the deaths he'd caused since the Emperor rescued him, he hesitated – and then felt his knees hit the ground.
'Kneel..?' It was the first order Aspreay had given that wasn't a proclamation of death. Valente's eyes widened as he understood why. 'His orders until now…he wasn't just trying to kill me in one move. He wanted me to assume that he couldn't issue less demanding types of orders!'
The Hangman struggled in vain. While he could have rejected an order to die, he couldn't reject one meant to restrain him – not from 4 meters apart. Valente was so focused on attempting to rise that he paid little to the next order that came out of Aspreay's mouth.
"Send me forward."
The throne he had created, the incarnation of his pride, launched him forward at Valente, whose lowered gaze did not immediately notice the incoming lord. Mid-flight, Apsreay called off his Realm. Immediately after, before even reaching the ground, he cried out–
"–REALM–RECONSTRUCTION–!"
It felt like agony, like his very soul was being ripped off from his body – yet he would not yield. Death was acceptable, but not to a brat like this. Aspreay extended his arm, frenzied laughter washing over him as the last of the Wall was reconstructed behind.
The falling Lord and the unsteady Hangman were now less than 1 meter apart.
"KILL YOURSELF, PEASANT!"
'Increase the Distance at the ends of his Realm – keep his hand from touching me!' Valente thought.
Every outcome and reaction unfolded at the same time, his visions of the past mingling with the reality of the present. 'I…I had to do it. He would have killed me!' For a moment, Aspreay appeared not unlike that Puppet Lord from years ago, spurring Valente into a fit of desperate action.
The Hangman used his Talent to increase the distance of Aspreay's Realm ever so slightly. His mind raced with guilt as he pushed against the wall. He'd only had the time to increase it back up to 3 meters.
Although truth be told, it wouldn't have mattered if he failed entirely. Even at less than 1 meter, Aspreay's order wasn't strong enough to seriously injure – let alone kill – a Hangman of Valente's Rank.
And that was fine.
'So you have another Talent…one that the Emperor didn't want you to use. That's why you have the title of Strongest.' Aspreay grinned at the man, letting realization sink in. 'I'll take this gift of knowledge with me. This is my little victory against you, Strongest Man.'
"Like hell I'll let–"
The Order had nonetheless caused the Hangman to stumble and feel a small amount of blood in his throat, his body involuntarily hunching over to cough it out. It was barely a wound, closer to an inconvenience – and Aspreay had nearly died to obtain it.
But the Hangman still feared him.
And this combination of events was the opening he needed to issue his final order. "I BANISH: MYSELF!"
Much like he'd once sent a woman flying through the walls of his castle, he now issued himself the same order – flinging his own body through his Realm. He crashed through the debris of a destroyed building, breaking something inside himself, although he wasn't sure what.
The Hangman started to go after him, but was rebuffed by the Wall. "Consider yourself sealed for now," Aspreay muttered. "You could easily break though…but you think that an attack like that might end up hurting more civilians, don't you? So you'll just have to wait. Wait…for now…."
--
When Aspreay's consciousness returned to him, he was already upright and stumbling forward through the ruins of the destroyed city district. Amidst frantic chaos and injured citizens, the bloodied lord did not stand out among the crowd.
So many people died today, he thought absently, biting his lip to keep from coughing blood. 'I doomed hundreds to save Vasco.' His eyes lingered on the rubble, the many clouds of dust, and desperate waves of people crowding around fallen buildings. And I would have gladly doomed thousands more, he determined, with an odd calmness.
Aspreay didn't mind how far he'd gone, but he knew of less where to go from here. His injuries were numerous, and the Emperor would soon send someone to kill him – not that there was much need for it. He was doomed to die within a few weeks. Days, even.
Such was the price for Reconstructing his Realm so many times in a row. His Canvas was likely stained with blood, if not downright rotten. Twice would have been strenuous; five was a slow suicide.
Albeit a glorious one.
Alas, despite feeling rather content with the coming end, Aspreay found his weary feet treading through rubble nonetheless. He knew not the cause of his restlessness. A beautiful end to an ugly life, one where his honor – against all odds – was kept. This was what men dreamed of. Why balk at death now?
He truly didn't know why his heart refused to accept the notion. Distantly, he considered the possibility that he never would.
Then he spotted his horse, and could no longer conceive of dying.
"Silver?" Aspreay said, dull surprise coloring his tone. "You're still here?" He managed a hollow laugh. "Weird creature. You get spooked by your own shadow, yet you didn't run when Valente exploded entire buildings?" Tenderness entered his voice. "Stupid horse."
He approached slowly. With care, Aspreay brushed his bloodied hand against the horse. Bitterly, he half-expected it to run, yet somehow wasn't surprised when it didn't. Silver was the one thing he'd taken from Penumbria – the only thing he refused to leave behind.
'A gift?' Aspreay had said years ago. 'You're hardly one for big gestures. What curse befell you?'
'One bearing your name,' Vasco grumbled. He held his gaze for a moment too long – a moment not long enough – then shook his head. 'Search far and wide for a better horse. You'll come up short.'
The Lord of Penumbria nodded, studying the horse of white with spots of black. 'Strong. Well-trained. Appearance aside, there are many horses like this one in the Empire.' He turned around to look at the man. 'What makes this one so special?'
Vasco put two fingers beneath Aspreay's chin and lifted it upward until their eyes met once more. 'This one will always bring you back to me,' he whispered, in a low voice.
Aspreay's vision blurred as his life faded, but that one memory remained clear as it had ever been. "Good thing you're here," he told Silver. Injured ribs pressed against his stomach as he forced himself to mount the horse. Heavens, he wished there had been a saddle nearby. In his state, all he could do was collapse onto the animal and wrap his arms around its neck.
"Hey there boy," Aspreay said, softly. "Apologies. This might be uncomfortable. I know we haven't ridden without a saddle in a while, so bear with me. I'm not sure I can stay conscious…but it's not like my lead has ever done much but slow you down, eh?"
A weak laugh crawled out from his throat. Gods, did it hurt. "Take me to Vasco, please."
Silver started to gallop. Aspreay struggled not to fall, swaying dangerously as the city passed him by. Inky blackness gradually crept into the corners of his vision, his mind losing its battle to stay conscious.
Will I live to see him? It would be wonderful if he did, although unlikely – yet not impossible. Thanks to Silver, death was no longer a certainty. Mayhap he could survive this and escape the capital before the Hangmen came.
A miracle that would need another, when my injuries are too great for most to recover from. But now, chasing that miracle within a miracle actually seemed appealing.
"I feel...oddly refreshed," Aspreay said, as darkness befell his eyes.
​
--
​
Thanks for reading!

Author's Note:
This broke the character limit, so it's getting split into two parts.
​
--
​
If before the pouring rain had seemed to avoid Valente, now it chose to avoid the street entirely, like a curtain rising to honor Aspreay's challenge. A set of four near-translucent walls had spawned around the Lord and the Hangman, so elegant that they almost felt as if they did not exist at all.
Until that moment, not a single thing today had shocked Adam. Not Eric's betrayal, nor the Dark Captain's appearance. Even his own death at the hands of the Emperor was something he'd accounted for.
This, however–
"Aspreay…what the hell are you doing?" Adam muttered. The translucent barrier stood tall in front of him like an impenetrable Wall. "You're supposed to be a selfish asshole, this doesn't fucking track!"
He shook his head and grit his teeth. "Damn it! I don't want to see anyone dying because of – damn it!"
Adam wrapped Stained Ink around his hand, then punched at the Walls of Aspreay's Realm. His fist bounced back like a ricocheting bullet, nearly pushing him back with its momentum. A dark, hazy steam began emanating from his hand, its burning ink clashing heavily against the pouring rain.
Too strong, Adam marveled. His gaze shifted from his injured fist over to the translucent barrier. It's far stronger than the barrier he set up around Penumbria. Is it because it's smaller? So…larger Realms are weaker? That's why it's harder to track individual people when a Realm is the size of a city?
There was still far too much that Adam didn't know about Realms and the Lord Talent. He'd only utilized his Lord Talent to its minimal extent – what choice did he have, when doing otherwise would've meant the death of Penumbria? His own ignorance was something that he was keenly aware of.
Even so…
Beholding Aspreay's Walls, he couldn't help but realize just how truly little he knew of Lordship. This mastery was–
"Adam!" a voice called out. "Get in here, quickly!"
Suddenly, a carriage pulled by two dark horses appeared beside him, the sound of its arrival camouflaged by the heavy rain. Adam's first instinct was to reach for his Stained Ink, but he relaxed upon seeing the carriage's driver.
"Inside," Tenver barked. "Hurry and shut the blinds – we're leaving the city now."
"Don't think I've ever been so glad to see you," Adam, with a smile.
Tenver returned the smile, but only briefly. "No time. Hop in before anyone sees you."
Adam nodded; there was ill time for pleasantries. Despite that, he spared one last glance as he climbed into the carriage, looking at the duel taking place inside Aspreay's Realm. Such was his haste that he only allowed himself the luxury of reflection after their carriage had started moving forward, re-entering the storm.
You're a difficult man, Aspreay, he mused. With the same tone you would use to damn an unfortunate wretch, you also declare your intention to save another. I've learned enough of your soul to commit it to ink…
And I still feel like I don't know you at all.
--
Imperial Hangmen are more than just harbingers of death – they are its wielders. To face them in battle is to throw yourself neck-first onto the executioner's axe. Their speed and power are such that Valente could have killed Aspreay long before the former Lord finished reconstructing his Realm around them.
Only one thing kept Valente from doing so; his sincere dedication to the Empire and its laws. Until Aspreay had called upon his Realm, he was not yet guilty of a crime.
But now he was.
"Your punishment needn't be death," Valente said, in a firm tone. "I promise clemency if you call off your realm and surrender. Avoid suffering a villain's fate, Aspreasy."
It was an option. "I rather mislike being told what to do." Aspreay did not take it. "No. One of us shall perish today."
Bold words, he knew, to utter to the Empire's sharpest blade.
Why am I raising my sword against the living incarnation of death? Aspreay wondered. Do I consider the brat to be noble in some way? Or is it simply that loving the fool from Gama has finally become the death of me?
This and many other thoughts fluttered within Aspreay's mind, frustration and confusion welling up inside – but only for a moment. It had all ceased the moment his Realm was summoned.
Nothing else mattered except the opponent standing before him.
Back when the Emperor first granted Aspreay land, some had privately questioned his decision to reward a nameless lord of meager renown. Theories whirled amidst the capital, chief among them the notion that Aspreay harbored some secret Talent that could rival even the Hangmen themselves.
The truth was much more mundane. It was not hidden strength or genius aptitude that drew the Emperor's attention. He'd merely taken note of Aspreay's single-minded focus and ability to calmly analyze his surroundings – then judged it would be easier to reward the idealistic, wide-eyed young man than to fight him.
Because during his time at the Academy, despite possessing a lower Rank than the other Lords…Aspreay had never lost a single duel.
He fixed his gaze on the specter of death that was the Hangman. His motives for helping the Painter, his hatred at the injustice done to him, even his desire to survive – all were burnt to ashes as his Realm spread around them. In his mind, only a single, solitary thought remained:
Victory at all costs.
The Hangman's glare threatened death. "Heed the Emperor's orders, Aspreay. Forget not that we are inside His Realm."
"And yet also inside mine," Aspreay stated. "So heed my order: Kill yourself, Peasant."
Valente's eyes shot open. He did not tremble so much as vibrate, his body locked in near-complete stillness. Then, less than a second later, the Hangman shook himself like a wet half-breed dog coming out of a river. He appalled wholly undamaged, sending the former Lord a feeling of mild whiplash over his failed command.
–And immediately killed Aspreay four times in response.
It took Aspreay until his fourth death to even notice what was transpiring. The Hangman had been clustering his Orbs together into a physical form, then flinging them as one would flip a coin, each projectile faster than an arrow and far deadlier.
The Hangman Talent bestows death upon all of his attacks, Aspreay calmly thought. Anything his violence touches will result in death. However, he cannot permanently kill me inside my Realm – Noble Guard grants me life.
"What a curious exchange that was," Valente remarked. "I don't suppose I could get you to surrender?"
"It was only curious to an uneducated peasant who never anticipated that he'd stand on a stage of this grandeur," Aspreay fired back. "This result was expected."
Aspreay's opening move had been to use the Realm's First Pillar, the Royal Order, to order the Hangman to kill himself. Anyone or anything inside a Lord's Realm was compelled to heed his command upon its declaration. Yet the move failed to produce an effect – which was also as expected.
"A mere Baron such as myself managed to make an Emperor's Hangman tremble? Pathetic." The Lord sounded proud of his own deed, and mocking of his opponent for allowing him to accomplish it. Neither was a lie for the sake of a taunt, both reflected his heart's truth. "Mayhap today I will slay the Incarnation of Death."
"I have fought Lords before," the Hangman declared. "That Noble Order is your only offensive power. If you can't command me," – Valente flicked three Orbs at Aspreay – "you can't kill me, either."
Each Orb collided with Aspreay's body, piercing it and killing him three times over, to no effect. "Then you should already know," he said, "that the Second Pillar of Realms, the Noble Guard, will keep murder from your fingers as well. While we are inside my Realm, I cannot be slain."
Even if you prove immune to my Orders, Noble Guard affects me, not you. This isn't something that can be changed with raw violence alone. "There are many legends of your might, Hangman. Pray tell – does the legend have a way to pierce through the reality of my Realm's unbreakable laws?"
"Watch and behold the legend you speak of," the Captain spat out. "I daren't spoil the surprise. Even a villain such as yourself wouldn't want to violate a duel's sportsmanship to that degree."
He would.
And did.
Inside a Lord's Realm, everything he desired became his belonging.
The final, Third Pillar of Realms, Divine Knowledge gave Aspreay the answer he craved. Much like the Emperor could track one's position, or even speak directly into their mind, a Baron's Realm could trace an opponent's very thoughts…provided his Realm was small enough.
And Aspreay had refined this one to the size of a single, narrow street.
'If his Realm keeps him invulnerable, all I need to do is to destroy it,' the Hangman thought.
'Were the philistine to think in another language,' Aspreay noted, 'I would not be able to read him so accurately. He lacks the necessary preparation. Powerful, but untrained. A pitiful peasant.'
Images of the Dark Captain's plan flooded Aspreay's mind. They were blurry, yet just distinctive enough to make out: Valente's duel against the Puppet Lord, flying atop the Puppet Mountains.
It was right before the massacre that created a fated tunnel. As Aspreay watched, he saw in his mind how the Hangman had attacked the Puppet Lord's barrier from inside, and–
Imbecile! "Don't do it, peasant!" he cried out. "Don't launch an attack–"
Valente let out an eerie laugh. "You think to stop me, Villain? I know thy weakness! Those invisible Walls of yours are weaker from the inside than the outside, are they not?"
He juggled a number of Orbs with one hand, at first with skill, then seeming to move them as if they were forced to orbit around the wrist. "Once I shatter it, you will fall – like the Puppet villain before you!"
This attack felt different than the others. Before, the Spheres had hardly caused much damage to their surroundings, only bringing death upon Aspreay. Now that the Hangman's aim was the Wall itself, his Spheres had taken on an aura of overwhelming violence. Valente intended to have them explode upon impact.
"Stop!" Aspreay shouted. "You don't understand–!"
In a fraction of a second, Divine Knowledge told him everything he needed. His thoughts now raced faster than his own body could move. Information that should have taken nearly a minute to understand instantly formed inside Aspreay's brain.
Valente did not understand how Walls worked – although he thought he did.
The Hangman had been so young during the Assault on Puppet Mountain that there was barely any hair on his face. He'd only been present on account of his unparalleled genius.
His duel against the Puppet Lord had not been unlike this one, with the monster trapping them both inside a small, reconstructed Realm. At one point, the Hangman's attack missed the Puppet Lord and collided with the Wall, causing the Puppet intense pain. Noticing this, Valente struck at the Wall instead of the Lord, bludgeoning it until the man's Realm collapsed…and then killed him without effort.
From this, his youthful immaturity had drawn a conclusion: that Walls were weaker on the inside than outside, and – more importantly – that you could escape a Realm by assaulting it mercilessly.
YOU FOOL! THEY ARE EQUALLY STRONG!
It was true that damaging the Walls would injure the Lord in ways Noble Guard was unable to protect from. Given time and persistence, a concerned onslaught might undo the Realm itself.
What Valente had missed, though, was that Walls didn't inherently stop things from passing through. Aside from Stained creatures, every other restriction needed to be intentionally added by the Lord.
Aspreay himself, after Reconstructing his Realm in this very duel, had added the Realm Law to match his intentions. He'd banished humans and other living beings from entering or exiting his Realm – a common restriction.
In your memory, as you fought atop the mountain…when you launched your attack on the Wall…it would have destroyed the Puppet's home. Killed countless innocents.
Aspreay bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. You don't understand, you idiot! He could have saved himself! It's not that the barrier was weak – it's that the Lord was forced to endure your attack multiple times to keep you from harming his people!
This isn't the perfect counter you think it is!
The Hangman locked eyes with Aspreay's, as if waiting for a meaningful interruption. Yet try as he might, the Lord couldn't find a way to convey what he knew in the scant few seconds that were available to him. While Divine Knowledge sped up his thoughts, it did little for his speech. I have to try. I have to–
"You'll kill those people!" Aspreay shouted, gesturing at the buildings behind him. It was all he could get out.
And it wasn't enough. How could it be? The Hangman had no reason to listen to him.
Valente flicked his hand, speeding up the rotation orbit of the Orbs around his wrist. He grinned confidently with the sinfully naive smile of a young hero. "With this, your cheating of death shall end, Villain." He whipped his arm away from Aspreay and towards the empty air–towards the Wall–towards the streets.
STOP! "The Walls don't work like you–"
"Behold," Valente declared, "this Meteoric Rain of mine."
The Orbs may as well have been a comet tearing through the heavens. They blazed forward at the building, glowing brighter and redder, converting into a single scarlet sphere that built up speed every passing moment.
To Aspreay, the split second when the Orb collided with his barrier might as well have been an eternity. Clashing sparks flew between them. The sphere vibrated, and the fabric of reality around it seemed as if it was threatening to shatter.
His many thoughts, accelerated by Divine Knowledge, raced and competed with each other for dominance.
I can still stop this, he realized. I'm faster than anyone at Reconstruction. There should still be enough time to add a Law to my Wall. If I trap his attack inside my Realm, it won't hurt any of the common people.
It would cost his life, however.
Aspreay had no doubts about that. Either the transferred damage from his Wall would be enough to tear his body asunder…or he would be left defenseless, his Realm shattered. If he cared about his life – about Vasco's, even – then that just wasn't an option.
But…
"Will you truly not lift the barrier in Penumbria, even in the face of death?" Aspreay had asked the brat.
The Painter opened his eyes and glared. "If I wasn't willing to do this much, I would have had no right to take Penumbria from you."
The memory flooded his mind suddenly and without invitation. Had the Painter been the one here, mayhap…mayhap he would have died to protect the innocent.
'Death won't be enough to stop me,' Aspreay had told Vasco a lifetime ago. 'Just you wait! Together, we shall change the world!'
A few years back, he likely would have, too.
But I am not my yesterday. Today's Aspreay yet yearns for a tomorrow.
Just as suddenly as the clash started – his Wall allowed the Orb through.
Since the first Emperor started his conquest, the Capital had been the Imperial Family's crowning achievement. Not once had it seen bloodshed, its citizens living blissfully unaware of the violence spawned from the Lords and Stained outside. For over three hundred years, this record had been maintained with no small amount of pride by both commoners and nobles alike.
It all ended today.
Upon impact, the Orb swallowed up the building – and its neighbors – in a violent eruption of death. The beautiful Imperial architecture was engulfed by a massive explosion, several structures losing nearly all of their outer walls, most of their back, and collapsing the majority of their floors.
Embers briefly ignited here and there, small flames that danced among the debris like malevolent ghosts cackling at death. For a moment, it was only the sound of those villainous flames, and nothing else, that rang throughout the world.
Inside the translucent barrier, behind the Realm's Walls, the two duelists stood in opposite reactions.
Valente gaped at the carnage. First open-mouthed, then covering it in sheer horror, as if to keep himself from emptying his stomach at the terror of his own creation – at the haunting sight of dozens of shattered corpses and splattered blood. Gazing upon that wrought destruction, the Strongest Man in the World trembled with numb shock, paralyzed by the appalling loss of life.
The villainous Lord had not the luxury of sorrow. Without delay, he seized upon his chance to attack.
Whether someone possessed the strongest sword or the fastest reflexes…they meant nothing when a man was frozen by despair.
Shocked at the consequence of your ignorance? Good. Aspreay dashed forward. Choke on the sin of your naivety and die.
Now a prisoner to mixed thoughts of astonishment, confusion, and guilt, the Hangman hesitated. He raised one trembling hand, a single Orb contained within–
Then dropped it.
'What if that hurts more innocent people?' Valente thought. It was essentially impossible – he was too fast and accurate to miss an attack aimed at a single target. Besides, nothing could go wrong if he simply infused his Orb with death rather than destruction. It was a foolish concern.
'And…and there's no point in attacking,' Valente's mind continued, encouraging him to lower his hand. 'He can keep himself healed, and he can't actually harm me.'
This, of course, was the mindset of a loser. Nothing more than weak rationalizations conjured up to allow Valente to enslave himself to his emotions. Deep inside, the Hangman knew that, although he would never admit it. Pain took over his heart, and he thought to himself, 'Just…just two seconds…I just need a mere two seconds to recompose myself. I deserve that much.'
Aspreay did not waste those 'mere' two seconds.
In his dash, he shortened the distance between them from 27 to 14 meters.
'What is he doing?' the Hangman wondered. 'Why is he approaching me? No! I can't – I can't let him kill any more people!'
Even in his state of numbed shock, enough urgency returned to him that Valente readied an attack. In truth, it was to be expected.
The Dark Captain was, above all else, a genius.
He was inexperienced, uneducated, and poorly trained – but a genius nonetheless. Aspreay's warning had been sufficient for him to realize both his mistake and the gravity of his current situation. Beneath the surface, Valente blamed himself…but for now, he needed to blame Aspreay in order to steady his will and keep fighting.
'It's the Villain's fault,' thought the Hangman. 'He chose to kill innocents instead of losing his Realm.'
Divine Knowledge granted Aspreay knowledge of that thought – and he acted upon it. 'Now is my chance.'
Aspreay undid his Realm.
It was an assault on Valente's rationalizations that shocked him to his core. 'He…he killed dozens of innocents to keep his Realm from shattering. Why is he undoing it right now? I could slay him any moment. I could–'
"–REALM–RECONSTRUCTION–!" Aspreay thundered. Jolts of pain burned in his body, and he ignored them.
Immediately after understanding what transpired, the Hangman fired his death-infused Orb – but the delay proved too much. The Realm had already been rebuilt. In irrational fury, he fired another barrage, yet Noble Guard would not allow the Lord to die, reviving him again and again.
'Why did he bother with all that? He could have died!' Valente desperately tried to gather his thoughts, to recover from the chaotic massacre unleashed upon the city. 'And are Lords able to reconstruct their realms as many times as they want? I thought–'
"Kill yourself, peasant," Aspreay snarled.
At first, its impact wasn't any different from the last time. Valente felt his body momentarily shake, but hardly felt any pain at all. He looked up, grinning, and said, "How many times do I–"
Then it set in.
A feeling of being punched in the gut suddenly had the Captain hunched over, nearly dropping to his knees. What…the? Why is this one harder to resist? What–
Aspreay raised his chin, ignored his pain from the blowback, and sneered at the Hangman. "Pathetic. You truly can't do better with your powers?"
The Hangman's assumption that Aspreay had merely undone and redone his Realm was correct. Yet you didn't notice,' the Lord thought, with contempt, 'that my Realm is smaller now, did you?'
At the start of the duel, Aspreay's realm had been 27 meters long. After the Hangman's barrage of death, during those two seconds he'd been able to move freely, he'd shortened the distance to 14 meters. Then, he called off his Realm and Reconstructed it, but smaller.
It was the same principle as to why his Realm could work at all inside the Emperor's City. 'The smaller and more concentrated a Realm is, the more capable it becomes at slaying heavier giants than itself.' This applied not only to Divine Knowledge, but to Royal Order as well.
Aspreay's battle instincts told him that the Hangman would soon understand what had happened. 'I need to attack his mind,' he reasoned, calmly and coldly. 'He is as the bards sing of him – the Strongest Man in the World. But he lacks experience. He lacks resolve. And…'
Aspreay glared at the man. '...he will lose to me.'
"People died," Valente muttered weakly. "How can you just stand there with nary a tear on your face? How can guilt not overflow from your very being?"
Aspreay let out a derisive laugh. "You would have me feel guilt over not jumping in front of an innocent to shield them from your crossbow? Nay, bastard." He laughed again, as if he was addressing a petitioner in his court, rather than the strongest, most dangerous man in the Empire. "I will not share your sins. They are yours to bear."
"It–it isn't my fault!" Valente cried out. His desperate argument was meant more for himself than for his opponent. "I didn't know, I couldn't have–"
"–Do you think lack of ability justifies your crimes?" Memories of Aspreay's time as Lord of Penumbria flowed into his mind. He did not suppress them. There were dozens, hundreds, thousands of people whose death he'd failed to prevent – that mayhap a different lord could have. "They are your sins. Carry them. Take responsibility. This show of cowardice insults your victims twice; first you kill them, then you feign innocence."
He frowned at the cockroach. "Disgusting."
"But I…" The Hangman shook his head and averted his gaze. "I just–"
He looked away! Aspreay thought. Immediately, he shouted, "Cobblestone: I order you to suffocate the man!"
​
--
​
Link to Part 2

NICANDER, 'ALEXIPHARMACA' The Greek text of the 'Alexipharmaca' can be found on the Poesia Latina website.
Even though the peoples from whom you and I, Protagoras, have derived our births did not set up the walls of their strong towers side by side in Asia, and a great space separates us, yet I can easily instruct you in the remedies for those draughts of poison which attack men and bring them low. You indeed have made your home by the tempestuous sea beneath bossy Arctus, where are the caverns of Lobrinian Rhea and the place of the secret rites of Attes; while I dwell where the sons of the far-famed 10 Creusa divided among themselves the richest portion of the mainland, settling by the tripods of Apollo in Clarus.
You must, to be sure, learn of the aconite, bitter as gall, deadly in the mouth, which the banks of Acheron put forth. There is the abyss of the Wise Counsellor {Hades} whence few escape, and there the towns of Priolas fell crashing in ruins.
All the drinker's jaws and the roof of his mouth and his gums are constricted by the bitter draught, as it wraps itself about the top of the chest, crushing with evil choking the man in the throes of heartburn. The top of the belly is gripped with pain - 20 the swelling, open mouth of the lower stomach, which some call the 'heart' of the digestive vessel, others the 'receiver' of the stomach - and the gate is closed immediately upon the beginning of the intestines where a man's food in all its abundance is carried in. And all the while from his streaming eyes drips the moisture; and his belly sore shaken vainly throws up wind, and much of it settles below about his mid-navel; and in his head is a grievous weight, and there ensues a rapid throbbing beneath his temples, and with his eyes he sees things double, like a man at night overcome with unmixed wine. 30 And as when the Silens, the nurses of the horned Dionysus, crushed the wild grapes, and having for the first time fortified their spirits with the foaming drink, were confused in their sight and on reeling feet rushed madly about the hill of Nysa, even so is the sight of these men darkened beneath the weight of evil doom. This plant men call also Mouse-bane, for it utterly destroys troublesome, nibbling mice ; but some call it Leopard's-choke, since cowherds and goatherds with it contrive the death of those great beasts 40 amid the glades of Ida in the vale of Phalacra. Again they name it Woman-killer and Crayfish. And the deadly aconite flourishes amid the Aconaean mountains.
For one so poisoned gypsum to the weight of a handful will perhaps be a protection, if you draw thereto tawny wine in due measure with the gypsum reduced to fine powder - let it be a full cotyle of wine - and add stalks of wormwood, cutting them from the shrub, or of bright green horehound which they call Honeyleaf; administer also a shoot of the herbaceous, evergreen spurge-olive and rue, quenching in vinegar and honey 50 a red-hot lump of metal between the jaws of the fire-tongs, or dross of iron which the flame of the fire has separated within the melting-pot in the furnace; or sometimes just after warming in the fire a lump of gold or silver you should plunge it in the turbid draught. Or again you should take leaves, half a handful's weight, of the ground pine; or a dry sprig of pot marjoram from the hills, or cut a fresh spray of field basil, and cover them in four cyathi of honey-sweet wine. Or you may take some broth, still meaty and undiluted, made from a domestic fowl 60 when the forcible glow of the fire beneath the pot reduces the body to pieces. Also you should render down the fresh meat of an ox abounding in fat and satisfy the stomach to its full capacity with the soup. Again, sometimes you should pour the juice of balsam into some drops of milk from a young girl, or else into water, until the patient discharges from his throat the undigested food. Sometimes too you should cut out the curd from the stomach of the nimble beast that sleeps open-eyed {hare}, or of a fawn, and give it mixed in wine; at other times cast the roots of the purple mulberry into the hollow of a mortar, 70 bray them mingled with wine, and give them boiled in the labours of the bee. Thus may you ward off loathsome sickness though it threaten to master a man, and he may once again walk on unfaltering feet.
In the second place consider the hateful brew compounded with gleaming, deadly white lead whose fresh colour is like milk which foams all over when you milk it rich in the springtime into the deep pails. Over the victim's jaws and in the grooves of the gums is plastered an astringent froth, and the furrow of the tongue turns rough on either side, 80 and the depth of the throat grows somewhat dry, and from the pernicious venom follows a dry retching and hawking, for this is severe; meanwhile his spirit sickens and he is worn out with mortal suffering. His body too grows chill, while sometimes his eyes behold strange illusions or else he drowses; nor can he bestir his limbs as heretofore, and he succumbs to the overmastering fatigue.
Give the patient at once a cupful of oil of the Premadia- or Orchis- or Myrtle- olive, so that the stomach being lubricated may void the evil drug; 90 or else you may readily milk the udder's swelling teat and give it him; but skim the oily surface from the draught. And you may infuse sprigs or leaves of the mallow in fresh sap and dose the sufferer with as much as he can take. Or again pound sesame seeds and administer them also in wine; or else heat and cleanse in water the ashes of vine twigs, and strain the lye through the interstices of a newly woven basket, for this will retain the sediment. Moreover if you rub down the hard stones of the persea in gleaming olive oil, they will ward off injury - 100 the persea which once on a time Perseus, when his feet bore him from the land of Cepheus and he had cut off the teeming head of Medusa with his falchion, readily made to grow in the fields of Mycenae (it was a recent gift of Cepheus) on the spot where the scabbard-chape of his falchion fell, beneath the topmost summit of Melanthis, where a Nymph revealed to the son of Zeus the famed spring of Langeia. Or else you should break up in roasted barley the sap which congeals upon the frankincense bushes of Gerrha; also as helpful you should dissolve in warm water the tears from the walnut-tree or from the plum or those which ever drip in plenty on the elm-twigs, 110 and drops of gum, so that he may vomit up part of the poison, and part render wholesome as he yields to the hot water when the sweat moistens his body. And again he might sate himself with a meal which he has taken or with strong wine and so escape an inglorious death.
When a liquid smells of the corn-eating blister-beetle, that is to say, like liquid pitch, refuse it, for on the nostrils it weighs like pitch and in the mouth like freshly eaten berries of the juniper. Sometimes in a weak infusion these creatures produce a biting sensation upon the lips, 120 or again deep down about the mouth of the stomach; at other times the middle of the belly or the bladder is gnawed and seized with griping pains, while discomfort attacks men where the cartilage of the chest rests over the hollow of the stomach. And the victims are distressed in themselves: swooning delusions hold in bondage what is human in them, and the victim is brought down unexpectedly by pain, like the freshly scattered thistledown which roams the air and is fluttered by every breeze.
At times administer to the patient doses of pennyroyal mixed with river water, making a posset of them in a mug. 130 This was the rich draught of the fasting Deo; once with this did Deo moisten her throat in the city of Hippothoōn by reason of the unchecked speech of Thracian Iambe. At other times take from your pot and mix with the round seeds of flax a rich draught brewed from the head of a hog or of a lamb or from the horned head of a goat which you have but lately cut off, or even, maybe, from a goose, and give it until the man is sick; and let him by tickling his throat stir up in the gullet below the entire mass of polluted food still undigested. At times you should draw the fresh milk of a sheep in a clyster-pipe, 140 administer a clyster and so empty the useless faeces from the bowel. At another time a draught of creamy milk will help the sufferer; or you should lop the green tendrils of the vine when they are fresh-burdened with leaves and chop them up in grape-syrup; or take from crumbling soil the ever sting-shaped roots of scorpius and steep in the bees' produce. The plant grows high like asphodel but sheds its stalks when withered. Also you should take four drachmas' weight of Parthenian earth which Phyllis brings forth under her mountain-spurs, 150 the snow-white earth of the Imbrasus which a horned lamb first revealed to the Chesiad Nymphs beneath the rush-grown river-banks of snowcapped Cercetes. Or brew a drink of boiled-down must of twice that quantity, and into it shred some sprigs of rue, kneading the herbs with rose-oil, or sometimes soak it in iris-oil, which has often cured an illness.
If however a man thoughtlessly taste from loathsome cups a draught, deadly and hard to remedy, of coriander, the victims are struck with madness 160 and utter wild and vulgar words like lunatics, and like crazy Bacchanals bawl shrill songs in frenzy of the mind unabashed. To such a case you should administer a cupful of hedanian wine, 'Pramnian', unmixed, just as it gushed from the vat. Or cast a cupful of salt into water and let it dissolve. Or else you should empty the fragile egg of a chicken and mix with it the sea-foam upon which the swift petrel feeds. It is with this that it sustains life, and also meets its doom, when the fishermen's destructive children assail with their tricks the swimming fowl; and it falls into the boys' hands as it chases the fresh and whitening surge of foam. 170 Do you also draw from the bitter, violet-hued sea - the sea, which, with fire too, the Earth-Shaker has enslaved to the winds. For fire is vanquished by hostile blasts: the undying fire and the expanse of waters tremble before the north-west winds; though the unruly sea, swift to anger, lords it over ships and over the men who perish in it, while to the rule of the abhorred fire the forest is obedient. Again, common oil mingled with wine or a drink of grape-syrup mixed with snow will stay the pain, 180 what time the reapers with their pruning-hooks lop the heavy, wrinkled vintage of the hedanian and the psithian vine and crush it, while with a humming sound bees and the tree-wasp, wasps and buzzers from the hills fall upon the grapes and feast their fill of sweetness, and the mischievous fox ravages the richer clusters.
Take note too of the noxious draught which is hemlock, for this drink assuredly looses disaster upon the head bringing the darkness of night: the eyes roll, and men roam the streets with tottering steps and crawling upon their hands; 190 a terrible choking blocks the lower throat and the narrow passage of the windpipe; the extremities grow cold; and in the limbs the stout arteries are contracted; for a short while the victim draws breath like one swooning, and his spirit beholds Hades.
Give the patient his fill of oil or of unmixed wine until he vomit up the evil, painful poison ; or prepare and insert a clyster ; or else give him draughts of unmixed wine, or cut and bring him twigs of sweet bay or bay of Tempe 200 (this was the first plant to crown the Delphian locks of Phoebus) ; or else pound some pepper with nettle seeds and administer them, or again infuse wine with the bitter juice of silphium. Sometimes you may offer him a measure of scented iris-oil and silphium shredded in with gleaming oil. Also give him a draught of honey-sweet grape-syrup, and a foaming vessel of milk which you have slightly warmed over the fire.
There are even means of promptly averting the oppression caused by deadly arrow-poison, when a man is overcome with anguish from drinking it. First, his tongue begins to thicken from the root 210 and weighs upon the lips which are heavy and swollen about the mouth; he suffers from a dry expectoration, and his gums break open from the base. Often too his heart is smitten with palpitations, and it is his fate that all his wits are stunned and overthrown by the evil poison; and he makes bleating noises, babbling endlessly in his frenzy; often too in his distress he cries aloud even as one whose head, the body's master, has just been cut off with the sword; or as the acolyte with her tray of offerings, Rhea's priestess, appearing in the public highways on the ninth day of the month, raises a great shout with her voice, while the people tremble 220 as they hearken to the horrible yelling of the votary of Ida. Even so the man in his frenzy of mind bellows and howls incoherently, and as he glances sidelong like a bull, he whets his white teeth and foams at the jaws.
You must even bind him fast with twisted ropes and make him drunk with wine, with gentle force filling him to satiety even against his will; then force his gnashing teeth apart in order that under your mastering hand he may vomit up the deadly stuff. Or divide up and boil till soft over a bright fire the young gosling of a free-feeding goose; 230 you should also give him the wild fruit of the rough-barked apple-tree grown upon the hills after cutting off the inedible parts; or even those kinds that pertain to the fields, such as the spring seasons bring forth for girls to sport with; or again pear-quinces, or else the famed fruit of the grim Cydon, which Cretan torrents have fostered. Or sometimes, after sufficiently pounding all these with a mallet, you should soak them in water and then throw in some fresh and fragrant pennyroyal and stir in together with apple-pips. Also you may soak up some fragrant rose-oil or iris-oil into wool 240 and let it drip into his parted lips. Yet hardly may a man after countless sufferings at the end of many days launch with safety his unsteady steps, while his startled gaze roams this way and that. This is the poison with which the nomads of Gerrha and they who plough their fields by the river Euphrates smear their brazen arrow-heads. And the wounds, quite past healing, blacken the flesh, for the stinging poison of the Hydra eats its way in, while the skin, turning putrid with the infection, breaks into open sores.
But if a man taste the loathsome fire of Colchian Medea, 250 the notorious meadow-saffron, an incurable itching assails : his lips all over as he moistens them, such as comes upon those whose skin is defiled with the snow-white juice of the fig-tree or by the stinging nettle or by the many-coated head of the squill, which fearfully inflames the flesh of children. But if he retain the poison, there settles in his gullet a pain which at first eats into it and presently lacerates it from below with desperate retching as he disgorges the poison from his throat; and at the same time the belly also voids the polluted scourings, even as a carver pours off the turbid water in which the meat was washed.
260 Now sometimes you should cut and administer the crinkled leaves of the oak, or else those of the Valonia oak together with the acorns; or you should draw fresh milk in a pail and then let the man swallow his fill of the milk after retaining it in his mouth. At times to be sure shoots of knot-grass will help, or else the roots boiled in milk. You should also infuse vine-tendrils in water, or equally well shoots of bramble which you have chopped. Further, you should strip the green hulls of a well-grown chestnut-tree that cover the thin-skinned nut 270 where the dry husk encloses the inner flesh of the nut so hard to peel which the land of Castanea brings forth. You may suitably extract the inmost pith of the giant fennel which received the spoils of Prometheus's thieving, and at the same time throw in a quantity of leaves of the evergreen tufted thyme and of the berries of the styptic myrtle; or you might perhaps soak the rind of the chamaeleon-thistle, 280 which has a smell like that of basil . The furrow of the victim's tongue grows rough at the base and inflamed from below, and his heart wanders within him. In his frenzy he gnaws his tongue with his dog-teeth, for at times his madness overmasters his wits, while the stomach blinds with wanton obstruction the two channels of liquid and solid food, and rumbles with the wind it has penned within, which circulating in a confined track often seems like the thunder of stormy Olympus, or again like the wicked roaring of the sea 290 as it booms beneath rocky cliffs. Distressed though he is, despite his efforts scarce can the wind escape upward; yet medicinal draughts can at once make him void egg-shaped stools, like the shell-less lumps which the free-feeding fowl, when brooding her warlike chicks, sometimes under stress of recent blows drops from her belly in their membranes ; sometimes under stress of sickness she will cast out her ill-fated offspring upon the earth.
The familiar astringent draught of wormwood steeped in freshly pressed grape-syrup will check his pain; 300 sometimes too you may cut up the resin of the terebinth-tree, or else the tears of the Corsican pine, or again of the Aleppo pine which makes moan on the spot where Phoebus stripped the skin from the limbs of Marsyas; and the tree, lamenting in the glens his far-famed fate, alone utters her passionate plaint unceasingly. Give him also plenty of the flowers of the bright hulwort, fatal to mice, or strip the low-growing shoots of rue, and spikenard, and take also the testicle of the beaver that dwells in the lake; or rub down an obol of silphium with a toothed scraper, or else cut off the same quantity of its gum. 310 Sometimes too he may be given his fill of the wild goat's marjoram, or of milk just curdling in the pail after milking.
But if a man in his folly taste the fresh blood of a bull he falls heavily to the ground in distress, overmastered by pain, when, as it reaches the chest, the blood congeals easily, and, in the hollow of his stomach, clots; the passages are stopped, the breath is straitened within his clogged throat, while, often struggling in convulsions on the ground, he gasps bespattered with foam.
You should cut off for him some juicy wild figs, 320 soak in vinegar, and then mingle the whole with water, stirring together the water and the astringent draught of vinegar; or drain away the burden of his surcharged belly. Also you should strain through a porous bag of fine linen some stirred curd either from a fawn of roe or red deer or from a kid; or again if you take some from the nimble hare you will bring healing and help to the sufferer. Or give him three obols' weight of well-powdered soda, and mix it in a sweet draught of wine; mix too a pound weight with equal parts of silphium and of its gum, 330 and seed of cabbage soaked thoroughly in vinegar. And give him a sprig of flea-bane with its ill-coloured leaves. Or you should bruise some pepper and buds of the bramble-bush; then you will easily dissipate a mass of congealing blood, or break it up if it has lodged in the vessels.
Do not let the agonising drink of the hateful buprestis escape your knowledge; and you should recognise a man overcome by it. In truth, when bitten, its contact with the jaws seems that of soda; it has an evil smell; and all about the mouths of the stomach arise shifting pains; 340 the urine is stopped and the lowest : part of the bladder throbs, while the whole belly is inflated, as when a tympanitic dropsy settles in abundance about the mid navel, and all over the man's limbs the skin is visibly taut. This creature too, I fancy, causes swelling in plump-bellied heifers or calves, whenever they bite it as they graze. For this reason herdsmen name...

The Whole Thing

4/14/94

I stepped back from the guy in disbelief. He held his bandaged hand up to his chest, hugging it and turning away from me like he was ashamed of it.
"Oh my god! You're bitten, aren't you?" I gasped.
He nodded sheepishly. "It burns," he whimpered.
"Wha... When did it happen?" I asked.
"I dunno. A week ago, I think. I… I just wanna be like them already," he said as tears filled his eyes.
"But you're not sick, right?" I said.
He shook his head and started to sob, "I... I just want this to be over," he cried. “I hate how they all look at me.”
I stepped forward to comfort him as he balled.
"Hey, hey, hey. What's your name, dude?" I asked sincerely, gently putting the back of my hand on his forehead.

He wasn’t lying. He was cool to the touch, and I couldn’t feel any fever. 

"Daniel," he sniffled.
"Daniel, huh? I'm Mel. Can I... Can I see the bite?" I asked.
"Are you a doctor?" Daniel asked.
"No, but I'm the closest thing to one you have right now," I pointed out.
Daniel tentatively gave me his wounded hand. I took it and gently unwrapped the bandages. The wound looked well-dressed, but he hadn't changed the dressing in a while, or ever. The bandages had yellowed, and it stank as I peeled them off.
"Who wrapped this up for you?" I asked, trying to take his mind away from any pain.
"My friend, Elise," he sobbed.
"Did she turn? Is she one of them now?"
Daniel nodded.
I unwrapped the last few turns and saw the wound. It had started to heal and scab, just like mine had all those months ago. My eyes grew wide, and I gasped in shock.
"What? What is it? What's wrong?" Daniel asked frantically.
"Err... Nothing. You said it burns, right?" I inquired.
Daniel nodded.
"But you're not sick, right?" I continued.
"Yeah, everyone got sick but me," he pointed out.
"Daniel, I think you're gonna be ok. I think you're immune," I said with a hopeful smile.
"What do you mean? How do you know?" He asked.
"Look," I said, turning my head to the left and pulling back the collar of my Dad's bomber, revealing the ugly bite scar on my neck. "One of them got me right around the time this whole thing started, and I'm still here. Still breathing."
"You... You think I'll be ok?" He sniffed.
"Well, why don't we find out, huh?" I said, giving him a pat on the arm. "Here. Let me dress that up for you."
I dropped my Go Bag and pulled out my first aid kit. I grabbed a bottle of disinfectant and a bandage. I opened the bottle, offered my hand, and he gave me his. I took it and pulled it towards me to inspect the wound. I poured the bottle on it without warning, and Daniel screamed, leaping back and pulling his hand away from me. He cried and yelped loudly, clutching at his wrist and contorting his hand in agony.
"Dude! I'm sorry, but you gotta keep the fuck down!" I growled through gritted teeth, apologising for the pain I'd just inflicted.
I checked left and right for any dead ones who might have heard this six-foot, farm-boy-looking guy screaming his lungs out over a little splash of disinfectant. I knew it hurt; I'd done it to myself on the bites I'd received, but Daniel couldn't take it.
"Calm down! You'll attract them!" I yelled over his cries.
The fear of the dead ones showing up made him gulp it in and stand up, whimpering and holding his wounded paw. I reached out, and he pulled his hand back.
"Please! No more of that stuff," he pleaded.
"Don't worry. I'm not trying that again," I said, rolling my eyes as I started to bind the wound with a bandage. "You can get gangrene for all I care if that's how you're gonna take it. You gotta keep it down, dude. How else did you guys survive this long?"
"We had Father Jim," Daniel sniffled.
"Yeah? I heard about him. He sounds like a real stand-up guy," I said, trying to make conversation while I finished dressing his hand.
"Did you know him?" Daniel asked.
"Only through what I found. I ran into your little expedition about a month ago. They were looking for medication, right? Did Father Jim get better?" I asked.
"No. He died. They all died," Daniel said, tears returning to his eyes.

I gave him a second. He wasn’t even looking at me, just looking through me, lost in shock and wherever his mind was taking him to protect him from confronting all he’d lost. “Hey,” I spoke softly, “You’re gonna be ok. It’s gonna be ok. You’re not alone,” I guided him back to the RV. He lumbered slowly behind me and struggled to keep pace, but I gave him time. For the next few days, we cruised around rural Kentucky. We didn’t even see a single dead one. Daniel took the back bed my Dad used to sleep in, and I slept above the cab, my Beretta under my pillow, just in case. 

Daniel took his time recovering. Physically, the guy was OK. The bite wound recovered well. I told him it would turn into a gnarly scar like mine, smiling and trying to cheer him up, but he didn’t react. The poor guy was like a lost, lonely child. He spent most of his days catatonically staring, and at night, he would cry quietly. I just gave him his time. I had no idea how to handle this. I was barely able to understand it myself. I had been alone, living in my own fiction with Dad and Madeline, hoping that I might find another living person. And here that person was a crying, broken young guy I now had to care for.

Daniel had been too shocked or scared to leave the RV. He hardly ate and barely got up from the back bed, but I'd had enough by the time the fourteenth rolled around. I didn’t care if he wanted to stink up the place; I wanted to get showered and changed. “Look, dude. We’re both getting a little ripe in here, and I’m not getting changed in front of you,” I reasoned, but poor Daniel was timidly sitting on the back bed. “There aren’t any out there, man. Trust me, it’s ok,” I said. 

I tried my best to understand his fear of the dead ones. It was crippling him and trapping him here in my RV. Whatever trauma he'd been through, he was lugging around inside him. No matter what I did or said, I couldn't coax much out of him besides simple answers. I knew his name. I knew he'd been with a group of survivors at that complex in March Ridge. I knew they had their pastor leading them until he died, along with the rest of them, and that had turned poor six-foot Daniel into a lost little boy.
“Hey, Daniel. You can come back in now,” I said when I was all cleaned up, opening the door and letting him back into the RV.
Daniel climbed slowly up the steps with his head down, walked to the back bed and sat back down. I put a jay in my mouth and stood by the door.
“I'm gonna go for a smoke, dude. The bathroom’s all yours,” I said, trying to hint him towards getting washed up, but he wasn't listening.
It was like he wasn't even there. Like a lost, stray dog that didn’t trust humans anymore, he timidly lumbered around, reeking of mange and b.o. I shook my head, stepped, and lit my jay, closing the door behind me.
I'd parked us by large open fields of farmland on the edge of some woods. I could see for miles around in the warm spring of the late Kentucky morning. With nothing better to do, I took a stroll along the woods until I was far enough away from the RV to talk out loud without being heard. Despite being around another living person for the first time in almost a year, I felt so alone. While Daniel struggled to adjust to his new reality, I was adjusting to mine and having no one to talk to. So, hoping to find solace, I slumped against a tree at the edge of the woods, smoked my jay, and closed my eyes.
“Hell of a find, huh, Songbird?” Dad said, leaning in next to me against the tree.
I beamed out a relieved smile, opened my eyes and turned to see him smile back.
“He didn't turn. He's immune, like me,” I said.
“He ain't doing much else, either,” Dad scoffed.
“It must have been traumatic,” I reasoned.
“You got over it, Mel. The end of the world passed you by, and you rolled with it,” Dad pointed out.
“Did I, or did I go just as insane as he did?” I asked rhetorically, looking my dead Dad in the eye with a raised eyebrow. He paused for a moment, curled his lip and shrugged.
“Touche,” he admitted.
I leaned back against the tree, took a drag and held the smoke in my lungs a little longer than I would normally. I let it all out in a sigh through my nose and closed my eyes.
“What the fuck am I gonna do with this guy, Dad?” I asked.
Dad took a few seconds to consider, then said, “Well, you could start by finding him some fresh clothes.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “I didn't think about that.”
“Maybe you have been alone too long,” Dad pointed out.
He wasn't wrong, but I hadn't realised how out of touch I'd been. It was a sudden realisation of how much I'd forgotten what real human contact was supposed to be. I hadn't had to think of anyone but myself up until this point. Dad and Madeline had just been along for the ride.
“I have an idea,” I said aloud, hauling myself to my feet and walking back to the RV.
I climbed into the driver's seat and told Daniel we were hitting the road and that he should buckle up. Daniel didn't even ask where we were going. He had yet to ask since I found him. I had no idea if his head was so full of trauma that his thought process wasn’t functioning or if his mind was completely empty. Neither would have surprised me.
I drove the RV to the intersection south of West Point. We were gonna kill two birds with one stone; I needed fuel, he needed clothes. I didn’t know how long he'd been wearing the rags hanging off him, but I felt guilty that it had taken me this long and a conversation with my Dad to notice. It also worried me slightly that he hadn't even mentioned it himself.
“Hey, Daniel,” I called out to him as we hopped out of the RV after I pulled it up to the gas pump and killed the engine.
He craned his neck and looked at me, waiting for me to respond.
“Can you give me a hand with something?” I asked.
“Uhh… yeah… ok,” he nodded.
He followed me around to the side of the RV, where I opened one of the cargo hatches. Inside was a generator I'd been keeping for power on the move and most of my tools. Being used to doing this alone, I grabbed the generator with both hands and lugged it towards the gas station.
“Can you grab my tools, dude?” I asked, and he obliged.
“Do you… can you handle that?” He asked as I hauled the genny and lowered it down about a foot from the gas station power box
“Nah. I got it. I've been doing this kinda shit for a while now,” I said, gesturing that it was no big deal. “Thanks,” I said as he placed my toolbox beside it.
“Do you need to fix it or something?” Daniel drawled.
“Nope. I need to hook it up to the gas station to power it up so I can fill up the RV and a couple of gas cans. I have something for you, though,” I explained.
I returned to the RV, reached into the storage and pulled out a folded-up duffle bag. Carrying it in one hand, I strolled towards the Barg'n'clothes at the north side of the intersection.
“Come on!” I shouted cheerily as I turned around and gestured at Daniel to follow with a smile.
He followed me across the parking lot and through the double doors of the huge outlet. The place was dark and dusty, but enough of the midday sun beamed through the windows to see the racks of clothing—all shapes, sizes, and styles of cheap, off-brands.
“Here,” I said, thrusting the folded duffle bag against his chest and letting him take it from me. “I'll get the RV gassed up. You do some shopping,” I said with a wink.
“What? I just take stuff?” Daniel gawked.
“Of course, dude. Take whatever you want,” I shrugged.
“But, like, isn't it stealing?” He asked.
That question visibly struck me because how I looked at him made his face drop slightly in shock. My confused frown must have made me look angry.
“Daniel, there's… there's no one left to steal from. The world ended, man. Whatever you don't take is gonna rot here, dude,” I explained.
“You're sure no one will care?” He asked sincerely.
“Where do you think I got my winter clothes from? Trust me, no one's alive to care,” I said, waving my hand and heading for the door. “I’ll be by the gas station if you need me. Take your time. Try stuff on. Get cleaned up.”
I left Daniel on his shopping spree while I hooked up the genny to the gas station. With the afternoon heating up, I peeled off my plaid shirt, tied it around my waist and got to work. I was filling up some gas cans when Daniel finally emerged from the store in fresh clothes and a stuffed duffle bag. He wore a plaid pattern similar to mine, only yellow instead of red, some baggy jeans and a green and white Kentucky ball cap. He looked less like the rag-clad shell of a person I'd pulled out of March Ridge and more like someone who was, at least outwardly, looking better.
“Looking good,” I said with a smile.
“Thanks,” Daniel said, returning it. “I didn't know that covered your whole arm,” he said, gesturing at my snake tattoo.
“Yeah, cool, huh?” I said, giving him a good view of my right arm. “You got any?” I asked.
“Nah. My Mama never liked 'em,” he said.
“She probably wouldn't have liked me then, huh?” I asked.
“Well, you seem like a good person, Mel,” he said, smiling but not looking at me.
Daniel turned to look inside the gas station, now powered up with the lights on inside. His eyes grew wide as he stared down towards the ground inside.
“That's the fucker that gave me this,” I said, pointing at the bite scar on my neck.
He took his eyes off the skeleton with a missing skull that I'd left on the floor that day in late July and turned to see me craning my neck.
“He wasn't the only one either,” I stated.
“You've been bitten more than once?” Daniel exclaimed.
“Sure, the other one was a high school kid. Got me right here,” I said, pointing at the bite scar below my collarbone. “Almost bit my fucking tit off,” I said with a wry smile.
Daniel winced at me. I didn't know if it was due to seeing the scar or if me using the word “tit” made him uncomfortable. In either case, I quickly changed the subject.
“So, it's pretty hot, and I'm pretty hungry. I’m gonna get the grill out and cook us some fish. How about it?” I suggested.
I grilled, we ate, and I brought out some beers and lit a small fire in the middle of the intersection, tossing wood and whatever crap was lying around that would burn. I offered Daniel a beer, but he refused.
“Mama used to tell me that my Dad was a drinker, so I never wanted to,” he explained.
“That's fair,” I said. “Was it just you and your Mom?” I asked.
“She uh… she was the only one who got me, you know?” He said. “She was all I had until, you know, then I had Father Jim, Elise, Beth, Derrick, all the others,” he listed before going silent. “They're all… them now,” he said as he curled in on himself, teled in his eyes.
It took me a while to come up with something to say, but I jumped in before his quiet sobs turned into whole cries.
“I know that feeling, dude. Believe me, I do. You can't let them get to you, though. They're just part of the world now, and we can beat them. I've done it,” I claimed.
“Huh?” Daniel said, looking at me with glossy eyes.
“See that over there,” I said, nodding towards the burned-down dealership and blackened burnt-out cars. “Not long after the whole end of the world, when people outside Kentucky stopped broadcasting, I cleared this place out—learned my lesson, though. They can creep up on you, but they're slow and stupid. Now, the only bunch around for miles are up North in West Point.”
“How many have you killed?” Daniel asked.
“Fuck if I know, dude. I don't exactly keep count when they're all burning in a pile,” I scoffed, sipping my beer.
“Are they still, you know, them?” He asked.
“I… I don't even know if it was just me going crazy or if I really did hear it, but I've heard a few of them talking. Just a word here and there, nothing more than that. If whoever they were is still in there, it isn't coming back. Putting them down for good is, well, it's mercy. Madeline taught me that,” I said quietly over my beer.
“Who's Madeline?” Daniel asked.
“She was my girlfr… my wife,” I corrected myself.
Daniel looked at me confused, gawking with that slack-jawed look under the brim of his cap.
“I know, I know, girls can't get married to other girls, but Maddy was raised Catholic, and she always wanted to be married,” I started. “One day, before all this end-of-the-world crap, she put this ring on my finger,” I said, fiddling with the silver wedding band. “She died a few weeks after,” I went on, as tears started to fill my eyes and reality started to dawn on me. “And for those last few weeks, she didn't call me anything but her wife,” I said, choking on the last word and trying to hold down the sobs, but everything hit me all at once.
The fabricated world I'd built out of frosted glass in my head suddenly shattered in Daniel's presence as I told him about Madeline. I had spent almost a year surviving the apocalypse when any average person would have been grieving. And now I grieved for Madeline, out loud and in the open, in front of the first living person I'd seen in what felt like a lifetime. I balled up my hand and held it against my mouth as my body shook with quiet, subdued sobs. My aching heart punctured the lump in my throat as the real world poured into me like cold, icy water and the fact that Maddy was dead, buried, and gone slapped me in the face once more after almost a year of refusing to see it. I turned away from Daniel as the tears rolled down my cheeks. He said nothing as I kept my eyes tightly shut, trying to compose myself. I sniffed, wiped the tears from my cheeks and took a deep breath.
“Yeah, Maddy was my wife. It might not have been real to anyone else, but it was real to her,” I paused. “It was real to me,” I added, looking back at the ring on my hand. “I haven't talked about it to anyone. I haven’t been able to talk about it to anyone,” I admitted. “She died right before all this went down, and I've been alone ever since.”
The two of us sat silently as the fire cracked at our feet and the sun fell below the treeline.
“Sorry for unloading on you there,” I sighed aloud, trying to chuckle awkwardly to lighten the mood.
“It's ok. You've really been alone this whole time?” He asked.
“Yeah. I guess it wasn't all bad, but yeah, just me,” I answered.
“I… I was trying to get help for my Mama when it happened,” Daniel started. “She was getting sick. She got really hot, and then she stopped breathing. I went to get help, but they… they were everywhere. Derrick from the store where I work grabbed me. A bunch of people were running for the army barracks.”
Daniel paused there. It was his turn to get choked up. I let the tears fill his eyes without judgment.
“I tried to get them to help my Mama, but they said it was too dangerous. I didn't leave until… until there was no one left but them,” he gasped before crying.
I let him ball it out as the memories of the trauma he'd suffered came bubbling back up to the surface.
“I just wanted to be like them. I hate how they look at me. They look so mad, like they hate me,” Daniel sobbed.
“I don't think they hate you. I don't think they can hate anything, Daniel. They're dead,” I stated.
“But they can't be. They're walking around,” he retorted.
“I don't know what kind of disease caused it, but some of the shit I've seen happen to them. Some of the shit I've done to them, you can't survive that. They're dead, dude, and nothing is bringing them back,” I said.
Daniel took a long pause as he composed himself.
“What do you think caused it?” He asked.
“Fuck if I know, man. There was this one guy, though. I saw him with his family right at the beginning of it all. He worked at the military base, and I’ve been trying to find it since. I found his home in Ekron and some dead special forces dudes. They seemed to know more than anyone else did. Not that it even matters anymore,” I sighed.
“Derrick said it was something in the Spiffo burgers. He said they had human meat in them, and it made people go crazy or something,” Daniel said, looking over at the Spiffos on the other side of the intersection.
“For real?” I laughed. “Dude, when I thought I would turn into one of them, I ate everything in that place. I wanted to be the last person alive to enjoy a Spiffo burger.” I said, gesturing at the same Spiffos
“Mama never let me eat fast food. She said it was full of junk. Maybe Derrick was right?” Daniel sighed, staring into the fire.
“Maybe,” I sighed as well.
For a while, we sat there staring in silence. Daniel was lost in his thoughts while my slightly buzzed brain was half baking a plan.
“I have an idea,” I said, smiling.
I got up, walked over to the Barg'n’ Clothes and grabbed the first t-shirt closest to the entrance. Then, I marched back to the RV and pulled out one of the gas cans I'd filled earlier. I took them to Daniel by the fire and carefully filled my empty beer bottles with gasoline.
“What are you doing?” Daniel asked curiously.
I filled the last empty bottle and started ripping the t-shirt into rags.
“We're gonna take our revenge on Spiffo Burger on behalf of all mankind,” I said with a wicked laugh.
As I jammed the t-shirt strips into the tops of the bottles and the gas inside, we were left with four Molotovs ready to go.
“Here,” I said, handing two of them to Daniel. “Let's have some fun,”
With my two in hand, I marched towards the Spiffo Burger and stopped when I was within my throwing distance. I put one down at my feet and turned the other upside down to soak the rag while I lit it with my lighter.
“Fuck you, Spiffo! You killed the human race!” I shouted as I hurled my Molotov right through the window.
The glass smashed, and fire lit up the inside. Flames danced through the window, and an orange glow shone against the waning light of the evening in the large, empty intersection.
“Woo!” I cheered, laughing with delight. “Come on, try it,” I said to Daniel, offering my lit lighter.
He carefully held out one of his Molotovs and pulled away timidly as the rag caught fire. He readied himself, smiled and hurled it.
“Fuck you, Spiffo!” He yelled as he did.
Daniel, as it turned out, didn't have the best throwing arm, and his Molotov landed a few feet in front of the doorway to the old-world fast food chain.
“Dude,” I said, giggling, which made Daniel look away from me, embarrassed.
I picked up my second Molotov, lit it and cocked my arm back.
“This is for discontinuing the Fluffyfoot Ribs!” I yelled as I hurled my second Molotov, laughing hysterically as it landed on the roof.
Daniel held his second Molotov towards me. I lit it, and he walked a few paces closer to the burning building. He said nothing this time and hurled it at the door, which shattered the glass and added to the flaming interior.
“Woo! Fuck yeah!” I cheered, clapping.
I jogged over to the RV, opened the driver door and leaned in. I grabbed the first tape my hand could find and looked at it. “Mel's”, it read simply. I smiled, put it in the tape deck, turned the ignition on and cranked the volume as high as possible. The opening notes to Heroes started to play and put a big beaming smile on my face. I walked back to Daniel and the fire pit. David Bowie began to sing, and I half drunkenly danced as the Spiffo Burger burnt down.
“Can you smell that?” Daniel asked, sitting by the fire and staring at the conflagration we'd caused.
“Yeah, it's fry oil. Smells like french fries, huh?” I explained.
I finished a fifth beer and smashed the bottle on the ground. I spun around, dancing to the music, before I tripped and almost fell over. Daniel and I both laughed. I sat down next to him and lit a cigarette. We let our smiles subside, and the moment passed as the sun set and the building continued to burn.
“Do you think everyone is gone?” Daniel asked shyly.
“No, just most of us,” I sighed. “But I found you, didn't I?” I said cheerily, nudging his shoulder with mine.
When I looked at him, my words didn't seem to comfort him. He looked into the fire and got lost in its licking and crackling. I stood up to get another beer but stopped and looked down at him.
“Hey, Daniel, I'm gonna make you a pact,” I stated.
He turned to look up at me with puppy dog eyes.
“You and I are gonna find some more people, living people. I promise. And we'll do it together,” I said, offering my hand.
Daniel took my hand gently; his soft hands felt like they didn't have a single callous. I grasped it firmly and shook it once with a smile. Daniel smiled hopefully back at me, and we celebrated while Spiffo's burnt down in front of us.

Apologies for my weird way of writing and speaking. Every time I go to actually write out what's going on in my head, everything I want to say seems to back away from my tongue. I should feel happy you know, I might have an answer to a lifelong issue, at least one of them. A simple test to request my doctor order, from yet another specialist in a long line of negative results. And it isn't the seemingly worldwide consensus that I'm being a malarky filled drama queen.
But for some reason I just want to go back to being four, after a long day at Disney land, terrified of Ursula as she takes siege of the castle, except that I wasn't scared of her. It was the only way I could see that would get me off my feet, to have my dad pick me up, hold me tight, and relieve the pain of standing. I was too young to feel it after all, been told that my whole life. So, I let myself cry, and said the light show was scary, when really my legs, feet, head, EVERYTHING, felt heavy and painful and hurt and I wanted to go home and lay down. I barely remember Tinkerbell saving the day in a flash of lights, I was crying.
Or maybe I could go back to that day where my own pain didn't feel as bad because we were lowering my dead cousin into the ground. She wasn't too young to be in pain, she was eleven, almost an adult to my six year old mind. But I was six, too young to be in that much pain. I wondered, every time my head felt foggy and under water, and I felt heavy and floaty at the same time, if that meant I was going to get what she had. Did it always kill? Was it really like the bible said, that we would go to sleep. there she was, asleep, after all.
When I was eleven, and lost yet another friend in the long line of failures I'm sure were somewhat my own, because there was ALWAYS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME. But somehow, unless it was cancer, I was still too young to be in that much pain, regardless of the fact that going up the stairs was getting harder by the day, writing was painful no matter how lightly I pressed that stupid graphite onto that dumb paper, if I shake it in just the right way, my entire arm, from my palm to my shoulder pops. My head always felt heavy, my limbs always felt like they were filled with thumb tacks.
When my parents stood and watched me try to go up and down the stairs, twice. Then a third time. Before finally believing me and taking me to the doctor but oh no there's no way its been painful that long it must be a dance injury it's obviously from dance. She has to quit dance. I was actually starting to like tap. It felt good on my knees. Lets throw some physical therapy at the issue, something about your knee caps, I say "no it's gotta be more, my knee caps can't be responsible for my wrists-" Who honestly listens to a twelve year old. Throw some knee braces and physical therapy at her, she's fine.
She only gets stuck on the ground and unable to stand up at fifteen, it must be faking, that's why they all walked away. Left me in places more times than I can count. Only for a stranger to help me up, or to pull myself up using a fence, or a bench, or a wall, or even an open door handle- I must've looked inane shimmying over to them to yank myself up like an elderly women (no offense, I agree with my grandma, the ground is definitely too far away.). That's why I often stayed in that spot. Sometimes for hours. Pro-tip, keep a book on you for those times. Those friends were Christian like me, but I don't understand how you can recognize Jesus, a now technically physically disabled (try saying that one aloud) man with FUCKING HOLES IN HIS HANDS as the son of God- but I'm not praying for healing hard enough. Is Jesus!? No that's not an issue for him, that's for a reason; and I'm too young to be in pain.
At eighteen when I'd just resolved with myself to ignore the pain, and actually get some good memories, because by now I've realized, if I do my best to ignore it, I won't remember how much it hurt. I enjoyed Disneyland on that visit. I don't remember much of it. just the entrance and dinner really. I see pictures of myself when I was a kid a lot. I remember almost none of those experiences. I've found if you give a barebones description of what it looks like is happening in the photo, people will assume you actually remember. I don't. It's my own fault, after all, I'm too young for memory issues.
I'm too young to be passing out.
To always be tired.
To have migraines. (that I was told weren't that because those come with light sensitivity.)
To. Be. In. That. Much. Fucking. Pain. All. The. Time.
​
You said you were gonna listen. But none of them ever did.
Neither did you.
I'm twenty-four, and still too young to be in this much pain, aren't I?
Fuck off.

Synopsis:
An engineer in another world—blending science and magic to achieve greatness in a world where skills and levels reign supreme.
—
Ethan was just a plain old engineer, but everything changed when he was reborn into a world of skills, levels, and magic. With his advanced knowledge far ahead of the time period he finds himself in, this new reincarnated life will be much different than his last, especially because he can construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct runes—something no one else can do.
But with royal politics, looming tax collectors, a mountain of debt, dungeon incursions, cults, and hostile fantasy races mixing together into a cocktail of bullshit that threatens to bury his dreams; Ethan must bridge the gap between steel and sorcery to grow stronger. — Runecrafting is slow burn. — What to Expect: - Weak to very strong progression - Hardcore wish fulfillment - A balance of action, kingdom building, and runecrafting. - MC will trigger an industrial revolution, revolutionize magic, modernize agriculture, communication, commerce, textile production, education, transportation, sanitation, weapons manufacturing, leisure & entertainment, and medicine.
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Chapter 06

• 1 -

There were fifteen wolves in total, their white fur stained with dried blood as well as ash from the forest itself as their maws opened to reveal sharp teeth. There were several gashes on their body and one of them seemed to be in a really bad state.
Roland had a tight grip on his sword. Roland spotted Ethan’s head poking out. “Lord Theodore, please hide inside!” Roland yelled. Ethan didn’t respond, however. Is it dumb that I want to fight?
The guards were surrounding the beasts and held their swords ready. However, the wolves weren’t attacking. Instead, they snarled and bared their fangs, but didn’t lunge.
They weren’t attacking. They were protecting. And that changed Ethan’s thoughts almost instantaneously. At the center, a female wolf, bigger than the rest, growled in pain. Blood trailed down her fur and a gash ran across her body. It was a wound that seemed to be bleeding a lot, but she kept it covered with her paw, snarling whenever anyone got near. Ethan stared from his carriage. The situation seemed to have taken a turn, but not a bad one, at least, not yet. The guards were ready to attack, but the wolves didn’t. And Ethan was certain that the guards would kill the creatures unless he ordered otherwise.
Ethan stepped outside. Roland and the rest of the guards were alert as they glanced at him.
“Wait,” Ethan said, his voice calm. “Don’t attack.”
The wolves immediately relaxed, albeit only slightly. Interesting. They understand me?
He stepped forward and walked to them. “Can you understand me?” He said.
“Lord Theodore!” Roland yelled, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him back. “Please step back.”
“Wait,” Ethan replied, holding up a hand, his eyes focused on the wolves. The guards didn’t move. The wolves snarled at him and bared their fangs, but didn’t make a move. “I’m not going to harm you.” Ethan raised his hand. “Calm down. You’re hurt, right? I can help you.”
The wolf’s snarl faltered. She looked at Ethan with a confused gaze, then growled again. Ethan, too, was confused now. Could she really understand him?
“You can understand me, right?” He said. “I need to know.”
“Lord Theodore, what is happening?” Roland asked.
“Shh. Be quiet, Roland. I’m trying to communicate,” Ethan replied, raising a finger, and silencing Roland.
The female wolf snarled, looking at the guards and baring her teeth. Then, her gaze landed on Ethan, and her snarl was gone.
“She can understand me. I think.”
“How?” Roland asked.
“That’s not important,” Ethan replied. [Myriad Tongue]... I didn’t know it stretched to animals—no, beasts as well...
Ethan stepped forward; his hand extended towards the beast. “I won’t hurt you.”
The wolves growled and bared their fangs at him. The female growled, then they stopped. Ethan neared, then knelt a couple feet from the biggest wolf. The gash on her chest stained her white fur, the blood flowing and dropping to the ground. The creature was panting.
“What happened?” Ethan asked.
The beast looked at him. Her eyes held strange intelligence. It’s a magic beast, obviously she’s intelligent.
“Can I look at your wound?”
She growled and bared her fangs, causing Roland to slash his sword at the ground in a line. The intention was clear, neither side could pass, or a confrontation was inevitable.
Ethan held up a hand. “Stop, Roland.”
“But Lord Theodore—”
“Stop.”
Roland didn’t respond.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Ethan frowned. “If you want me to help, let me have a look.”
The wolf stared, her red eyes piercing, her ears folded and tail stiff.
The tension was thick, and everyone waited. Then, she removed her paw from her wound. The cut was deep, and the fur around the gash was charred. It seemed that it wasn’t a natural wound. Ethan could guess it was the result of magic. The cut’s too deep, and we don’t have a [Healer]...
Suddenly, the wolf spoke, “{I don’t want healing, human.}”
Ethan blinked, surprised. Her voice was deep, yet feminine. It wasn’t the type to scare children, but it wasn’t soft, either. More surprisingly, he could indeed understand her.
“What happened to you?” He asked, glancing at her, wondering how [Myriad Tongue] worked. He knew he was still speaking the common tongue of Nur—Leineh—and that the wolf was still growling, but he could understand that growl.
She looked at him, “{That is none of your concern.}” Then, she looked below and moved her muzzle to the ground, and moved something. In a few seconds, a small pup appeared from beneath.
Ethan widened his eyes, “A baby!”
“{You are to take care of him,}” she said—no, she ordered him.
“What?” Ethan said, taken aback.
“{You will take care of him},” she repeated.
Ethan was flabbergasted.
“{You’re touched by the light, and the light has guided me to you,}” she said, then growled. “{I trust the light. However, if anything happens to my Wynd, know that your death will not be painless.}” Saying so, she looked down at her pup, and nudged it forward.
Ethan was still flabbergasted.
The female wolf looked at him, her red eyes piercing, and the snarl in her voice gone, replaced with a soft tone, “{Please.}”
The pup was still far too young to know what was happening so it curiously tilted its head toward Ethan. Its red eyes stared into his, and it yapped.
“I...” Ethan blinked, about to deny.
The [Quest], Guardian of the Wild, has arrived.
“I...” He repeated, and then stopped to look at the [Quest].
~Guardian of the Wild (Uncommon)~
You have encountered a pack of magical wolves led by a gravely injured female. Through a surprising twist of fate, you understand their language through [Myriad Tongue] and learn of their plight. The female, gravely wounded by a magical attack, entrusts you with her newborn pup, Wynd. She believes you, touched by the “light” (the nature of which remains unclear), are the best hope for Wynd’s survival. Why and how, and many other questions, however, remain unclear.
Objective:
● Take care for the young wolf pup, Wynd. (Uncertain Duration)
Rewards:
● The eternal gratitude of a magical wolf pack. (Potential Ally)
● Unlocking the secrets of the “light” may grant unknown benefits. (Uncertain)
● Levels
● Skill Tokens
● A chance to get an invitation to [???]
Failure:
● Should Wynd come to harm, the wrath of these magical wolves will be swift and merciless.
● You may lose the trust of the pack, and of [???], potentially putting yourself and others at risk.
● You may lose the interest of the “light”
Would you like to accept the quest?
YES NO
So, this is what’s been coming since I arrived in this world? Are these wolves related to my arrival? Or whoever this “light” is? Why’re they injured in the first place. Does it have anything to do with that humanoid creature? I do recall Roland saying that the humanoid creature was fighting wolves. It seems likely, given these wolves’ injuries, but what happened after? Is that humanoid creature dead? If not, where did it go? Should I be worried? What if it attacks Holden?
His mind churning with multiple questions, Ethan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll take care of him.” He said, and mentally selected ‘YES’.
She stared at him for a second, then turned to the pup and licked his forehead. “{Thank you},” she said to Ethan. “{And now, I have to go.}”
Ethan’s lips parted, but she didn’t let him say it. Black tendrils of shadows enveloped her and the other wolves, then they all disappeared.
...
After Ethan entrusted the pup to Roland, who was also surprised and confused. Regardless, they all set back on their journey. The pup slept most of the way, curled up in Roland’s arm.
“What a strange encounter,” Ethan murmured.
He glanced at the wolf. It had a white coat and a black streak on his head. He was cute, though he still drooled a lot, and that was gross. However, it wasn’t hard to accept.
“Lord Theodore,” Roland said. “How were you able to have a conversation with the beasts?”
“I’m not sure,” he lied.
Roland looked at him. Ethan shrugged.

• 2 -

Back in Holden Town. The gates opened, and Ethan could see people move aside as they drove their carriages to the estate. They all looked at him with respect and bowed—more out of fear than respect, really. Theo hadn’t been a respectable fellow, but he’d certainly been one to be afraid of. This kind of reaction had taken Ethan off guard for the first time, but now, he didn’t quite care. When he entered his manor, he immediately wanted to head for the one thing he was craving—a bath.
Before that, however.
“Lord Theodore, what of the pup? Where should I put it?”
“The pup?” Ethan paused for a second, then walked and extended his arms out, “Give it to me.”
Roland was surprised but obliged and gave Ethan the young wolf, “If I may ask, why are we keeping the beast?”
Ethan made a thoughtful noise, his gaze focused on the baby wolf as the pup yelped at being given up to the stranger, but after a little while, he sniffed a little before settling in Ethan’s hold, his head finding itself a comfy. It was strange to think how quickly the creature had accepted his place there. Ethan chuckled a little, his voice becoming gentler than Roland had ever heard it as he took care to keep the wolf upright against himself.
“This is no ordinary pup.” His gaze shifted from the animal onto Roland. “That wolf, she could talk with me. I do not know how, but the fact is that she could.” Ethan gave Roland the lie he’d concocted. “She was intelligent, not a beast. And she entrusted her son to me.”
“A Beastkin?” Roland made a surprised noise. “On this part of the world?”
“Beats me,” Ethan said. “Regardless, she could talk. And I...” Ethan sighed. If he wanted to have a good life here, he needed someone he could trust in, and Roland had proved to be capable enough as well as trustworthy enough. Roland had taken care of Theo, even though the bastard was a worthless scum of a human being.
“Yes, my lord?” Roland asked.
“I got a [Quest].”
Roland’s eyes widened, his voice louder, “A [Quest]!?”
“Hush, be quiet, now, be quiet, Roland,” he said and patted the pup gently on his back, murmuring to soothe the waking animal. [Quests] were a rare phenomenon and the rewards were always worth the trouble, or so he’d gathered from Theo’s memories. He just hoped his decision wouldn’t come back to bite him in the future. “So, I will keep him, at least until she comes to claim him. Which she will.”
“My lord, you would require specialists... [Beast Trainers], I don’t believe we have many in town, only a few. Or else, a [Druid] perhaps? But finding one is not easy—”
“A [Beast Tamer] is fine. We don’t need much, just someone to take care of him.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Ethan spent the next hour in a bath.

• 3 -

The pungent smell of wood ash filled Ethan’s nostrils as he peered into the large cask. Lye, a strong alkali traditionally made from wood ash and crucial for soap-making, needed to be extracted from the ash. With a grunt, he grabbed a thick wooden paddle and plunged it into the gray mixture, stirring it vigorously. This was the beginning of the leaching process—a crucial first step in his soap-making endeavor, where lye is coaxed out of the ashes by boiling them in soft water and then allowing the water to seep through the ash.
Thus, this wasn’t just about mixing; it was about coaxing that exact lye out.
Across the room, Roland watched with a furrowed brow. “My lord,” he finally spoke, “what precisely are we engaged in here?”
Ethan straightened; wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Patience, Roland,” he chuckled. “This is the art of soap-making. We’re separating the good stuff—the lye—from the leftover ash, like sifting gold from sand.”
Roland’s expression remained dubious, his gaze lingering on the murky concoction in the cask. “Ah, I see.”
“Yeah, once we’ve extracted it properly, it will be the foundation for our very own soap. It’ll be my very first masterpiece—gentle on the skin, fragrant, and oh-so-satisfying to use. Blight-repellent properties would be a bonus, though that still depends on Jack. He hasn’t graced us with his findings yet.”
“Indeed, my lord,” Roland replied, a hint of worry creeping into his voice. “Master Jack has been... unresponsive lately. He insists we leave him to his work and promises to report back when he has something concrete.”
“I see.”
With the leaching process nearing completion, they left the cask to settle, its contents swirling like a slow, gray storm. The next step awaited.
“Did you manage to save the fat from the recent butchering?”
“Yes, my lord, I took the liberty of asking the cook to—”
“Excellent. No time for formalities, bring it here!”
Roland scurried away, returning moments later with a large, heavy wooden tub. Inside, a mound of white fat, glistening faintly. “My lord,” Roland said. “Got all the rendered beef fat you requested,” he said, holding up the tub. “But are you certain it’s for…” he trailed off, gesturing vaguely towards the tub.
“Absolutely, Roland,” Ethan replied with a smile. “The fat needs to be rendered first, which means melting it to remove impurities. Then, we can boil it to separate the tallow, the perfect white fat for soapmaking, from the glycerin, a byproduct with its own uses. I need the white, creamy layer that forms on top, and the clear liquid underneath.”
Roland appeared to be confused regarding the terms he used, so he spent the next few minutes explaining the boiling process to Roland.
...
The next day dawned, and the routine began anew. It needed to be repeated after all. The charade of noble life continued as usual, and as the day waned, Ethan returned, Roland in tow.
“This should suffice,” Ethan declared. “The impurities have settled at the cask’s bottom. Now, we only need to collect the lye water, combine it with fat, and voila—soap!” Noticing Roland’s confusion, he offered a brief scientific explanation. “The interaction creates saponification, a chemical reaction that transforms fat into a solid surfactant.”
Roland raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”
“Precisely,” Ethan confirmed with a grin.
The following morning, Ethan followed his usual routine, attempting to maintain focus. Yet, his steps carried him back to their quarters with a scale, a bag of oatmeal, and a water jug in tow.
Soap-making time had arrived.
For a superior tallow soap, the fat and lye mixture needed a specific ratio—which took some experimentation—to the combined weight of tallow and glycerin. Ethan meticulously measured and combined the ingredients, allowing the mixture time to undergo saponification, gradually forming a solid bar of soap.
Once the reaction finished, he introduced the scentless oatmeal. Its purpose was threefold: to provide a gentle scrub, enhance the lather, and leave the skin feeling soft—pure luxury. Finally, a few drops of a floral scent, along with the vibrant red dye extracted from a flower’s petals, were incorporated. With a final stir, the mixture was poured into a cake pan lined with wax paper.
Given the limitations of their tools, Ethan had essentially performed a rudimentary form of alchemy to create this supposed pinnacle of soap. He had never really been much interested in learning soap-making, but he thanked his science teacher sincerely. Had it not been for her enthusiasm, Ethan wouldn’t have been able to make soap today.
A few hours later, Ethan admired the beautiful pink soap atop his hand.
“Finally,” he said with a smile.
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Waking up in the middle of the night I find myself restless
So much has come into focus in the last few days. The station, my first steps on another world. It is all a bit overwhelming. Relaxing my thoughts drift off thinking about how I got here. A young girl on Europa, being selected for training after my aptitude tests, the Academy on Ganymede. Then as always my thoughts drift back to… her…
Lucy…
We started at rivals at the academy, we were from different worlds. Literally, me from Europa a wet ocean world remote and isolated, her an inner worlder from the hot dusty plains of Venus. We were water and fire.
The professors pitted us against each other from day one, based on our aptitude tests we were the top of the class. They split the class into teams and gave us challenges. I like to say I got the better of her, I was fast out the gate winning a few challenges. But Lucy turned back on me in a vengeance, she had a magnetism to her that caused our classmates to almost be addicted to her. People from my team would defect over to Lucy. Soon I found myself vastly outnumbered.
One day after Lucy and her team thrashed me again in a simulated strategy challenge. I left and I needed to be alone. I showered, went into the sauna. Replaying the moves again and again. How was I going to get the upper hand. She outnumbered me so much.
Everyone knew to leave me alone in the sauna. It was where I thought, relaxed, my place of peace. I was frustrated, I lean back against the wall and let me hands wander. Gently down my body, letting my stress evaporate as I tease myself…Then the door opened…. And it was Lucy. A cocky grin in her face.
We had been thinking about nothing but each other and we had both become obsessed. When that tension broke. Let me just say in a sauna fire and water combine to make something beautiful. Lucy and I did as well.
She moved towards me quickly, letting her towel drop, she was direct with a purpose. Grabbing the back of my head and kissing me deeply. I was shocked.. surprised... Excited..
I grabbed the back of her head and kissed her back. A deep need inside of me welling up, our lips slid across each other's as our tongue intertwined. I poured my life water of passion into her. She flared up and accepted my passion. Her hands exploring my body as I moved my knees between her legs.
Fuuuccckkk…. When she arched her back… so beautiful… MMM nnngghhhh an orgasm washed over me in my bed while I thought of Lucy.
Panting… even after all this time, separated by a waygate and unfathomable distance my body still yearned for her, I still yearned for her. Rolling onto my side I stare out my window into the vastness of space and the void. My fingers still ryhmically dancing on my pussy. Fingers sliding in and out
Your taught at the academy not to develop attachments, especially since the top prize, the highest honor of our training, to one day fly a deep space exploration through a waygate. Which would put us alone, in a different system. Like I am now.
Even if I power up my waygate in record time and rush home. Lucy is most likely gone. She was my alternate, meaning had I been unable to go this time she would have. It also means she most likely the deployed to her own system and would be gone before I returned. Likely I would never see her again.
Biting my lips and pressing a hand out onto the glass…yes…yes.. there
Fuck again….Fuucckkkkk LLLLuuucccCC
EeeeeeeeeerrrrrreeeemmmmmAAAAAA, a beautiful black haired woman orgasms in a bed identical to Emeras save the ambient lighting is blue inside of pink.
Fuck…. That was good. I find myself panting as I step out into the hallway of my ship. 2 days since the waygate, 6 months since I last saw Emera. Since she departed through her gate. Stars know if she still lives.
It was a rare happening, another gate coming online shortly after Emera’s departure. I thought I would be flying routine patrols around the system. Now I'm alone. Alone with my thoughts of her, and my AI Julia. Fuck. Why couldn't we have gone together. Why only one pilot to a ship. Who knows maybe she's thinking of me. Technically the systems we are in are closer together than home. That's something…
You're probably wondering if I was outnumbered and Lucy normally had my number in competition then how did I get to leave first. Yes, I did sleep with high command. That was only my closing argument though. You see Lucy had her magnetism that caused people to be addicted to her, she drew people in. But I was better at strategy and nuanced maneuvers.
The rules weren't strict on the teams, people defected all the time. Keeping your people together was part of the challenge. I decided to break that challenge.
No Battleplan survives first contact with the enemy afterall. Why not break the competition itself
My enemy wasn't Lucy, trust me we had been together enough at this point my heart swelled when I saw her. My enemy was the rules, and proctors.
There had to be two team in the academy for the lessons to work. But the rules only set a minimum not a maximum.
Lucy and her best 4 left her team, and me and my best 4 left my team. We formed a new team with Lucy and I at the head. The proctors were fuming. I was called into their offices again and again. Which is what led to me sleeping with a few of them to get ahead. It is always good to solicit a meeting with superiors, you can always be turned to your advantage.
In the Academy, there were 50 of us girls. The proctors let us keep our 3rd team, but declared no one else could join us. It was the ten of us vs double our number on both the other teams. Not ideal… but we had Lucy and I together. My how we shined
We out maneuvered, out paced, and out thought the other teams again and again and again..
Entering into the final the proctors split everyone up, eliminating the team. Just to try and stop us from sweeping the competition. Instead there would be 25 teams of 2 members each of our own selection. Lucy and I naturally selected each other.
We set down on a terraformed valley on Mars, all the other duos were around. The mission was complex. Gather knowledge, survive in the wilderness, there were simulator villages where we had to set up relations, and if possible eliminate other teams.
The gravity is different from what I'm used to, my body feels heavy. Sluggish, they train us on this and soon I'll adapt. But first landing it hits me like a weight. Ffuuuccckkk I murmur as I land my account ship on the surface.
Lucy always compares a new celestial body to a lover. Well for me Mars just grabbed my hair, slapped my ass and pushed in
Fuck I can't imagine landing on Earth. Triple this, fuck that give me my moon mother's oceans anyday.
I suck deep and hard on the control in my mouth and all three extract from me. I am about to get up from the control seat when I feel a palm in the small of my back
“Lucy not funny, let me up” I say
She giggles, and rubs my ass cheeks before her fingers rub against my lips
I moan biting my lip as I push myself against her hand
“I knew the gravity here would give a Moonie like you a good fucking, you're so wet my love”
Rolling my head back and forth..”quickly we have to debrief and set up camp” I moan
She smacks my ass again and her fingers deftly slide to work, one hand pinning me to the chair while she teases my sex, her thumb rubbing in perfect circles on my clit and her fingers pulling on my g-spot
“Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes uuuhhhhh my love it feel so good” shaking my hips back and forth I feel it building as I rock my hips on her hand
Squeezing….my leg….quivering… my voice squeaking… “uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh ffuuuccckkk” I moan as I feel the orgasm wash over me…
Lucy slaps my ass playfully and licks her fingers… “let's go my love, stop playing around we have to set up camp” she giggles
“Oh!! You!!” I get up and rush after her slapping her ass when I catch up
Carryalls follow us out of the ship.. I immediately sent out the scout drones and assessed our landing spot. Allocating tasks and running diagnostics.
Lucy set about converting the ship to a shelter and arranging power arrays, and deciding on perimeter defenses
We were a perfect power duo. Our carryalls and scouts were soon all at work, and Lucy was finishing up the shelter
I needed to repay her, so I slowly walked up behind her. She heard my heavy steps in the gravity. Turning to look at me she beamed at me. My heart melted and grabbing both sides of her face I pinned her to the side of the ship. Our bodies intertwined and our lips locked.
She moaned at me giggling, pushing my knee between her legs, and we quickly undressed each other. Her mouth on my breast, as my hand glided down to her slick vagina.
Grabbing her chin roughly and up turning her head exposing her neck I sink my teeth into it as I push forward with my knee back and forth pressing my fingers in and out of her.
A deep moan emanates from her, licking my bite mark I kiss up her neck until my forehead is resting hers. Eye to eye, I watch the pleasure build in her. Thrust after thrust of my knee. My fingers pressing into her g-spot every time, my palms pressing and grinding onto her clit
“Cum for me my love, give me your sweetness, I want your water, the first drink I have on this planet” I breath
I feel her pussy tighten and grip my fingers. Her legs twisting around me… she goes silent… a flush rises in her flesh… we kiss deep, and long, and passionately as I feel her gush onto my hand as orgasm rapts her body..
I watch her eyes dilate and relax I kiss her gently again before kissing down, my lips brushing through her pubic hair tickling my lips. Opening my mouth and pressing my tongue in I drink of her orgasm
My fingers inside pressing to work again, she cries out as she rocks her hips grinding her lips to mine. As she gushes another orgasm into my mouth..
I can even taste and feel it now on my tongue…
Releasing her, and helping her up I grin
Walking away the top of my leotard open my tits out in the sun
“I'm up by one my love, and you taste so GGGGOOOOoooOOooddddDD” I giggle setting back to work.
Days and weeks pass Lucy and I set up our camp. Wefind nearby teams before they find us. We quickly fall on them in the night, clearing our immediate area, eliminating them from the contest. We bathe in a nearby stream, sun ourselves on the rocks, make love on the soft moss of the forest.
I don't know if I've ever been happier, ever been more at peace l than I was then with Lucy. Her and I… her and I against the world.
We make good progress setting up relations with 12 of the 15 villages. Our camp is well stocked. We receive updates from the proctors from dead drops. Seems out of the 25 teams only 8 remain. Lucy and I have eliminated 7 ourselves.
We need to be the last standing, triumphant together.. so that maybe.. maybe we can convince them to send two of us on a ship. Imagine the wonders, this wouldn't be temporary, but would become our life.
Lucy and I talk about it often. We can convince them. We'll defeat the others then refuse to turn on each other.
It was our dream.. explore the stars together.. hand in hand..
I remember one evening as if it was yesterday. It is clear in my mind's eye. Lucy sitting in a tree eating stonefruit from a tree. I was swimming in a waterfall pool. We had just picked up the dead drop. We were far ahead of the other teams. Victory seemed in our grasp.
Breaking the surface, turning floating on my back. My torso from my breasts to my pubic mound above the water. The faint glow of Phoebus over head. The serenity…
Lucy dropped from the tree and sat on a rock at the pools edge. The waterfall cascading down the rocks behind. Dipping her foot into the water a light kick splashing me. An intoxicating giggle… the tension.. I felt it urge inside me.. the desire to have her, she felt it too
Swimming to her rock, taking her foot in my hand I raise it to my lips kissing it gently. My hands rubbing her foot, and up her taunt legs kneading the stress from her.. one.. then the other..
Lucy leans back onto her elbows lavishing in the attention her flesh bare, form lithe, look sultry…
She loves when I worship her body, I emerge from the water my grip, skin, and kisses cooling to the touch. Her body heated, taunt, and wanting…
The desire is killing me, as I kiss my way up her body. Her head rolls back and forth. Lucy grabs the back of my head as I reach out and grab hers.
The look in her eyes I'll remember forever. Rarely is so much said with no words. I pull her head up as she pulls my head down. Our lips lock, passion explodes in my chest as an electric charge jolts into my veins. Soft moans onto her lips. Lucy's knee spreads my legs and presses against my vagina. She pushes on my shoulders, grinding her knee into my. My slick pussy aches for her touch, as I rock my hips against her leg. Moaning into her mouth with every subtle change of pace.
She turns us to the side, I slot my knee between her legs as we writhe together intertwined urging and moaning as we devour each other.
Hands gliding and sliding, pinching and pulling. My cool slick body, smashed into her hot taunt form. She bites my lip and I roll my head back and moan as she snacks my ass
“Fuuuuccckkkkk yyyyyeeessss Luuucccyyyy, Fuuuccckkk Mmmeeeeee darling” from my lips
“I thought you'd never ask, darling” she coos
She grips my ass hard and uses it to flip me under her. Her hand down my body dancing down my body. As I writhe, rock, and hump her knee between my legs.
She grips my jaw tightly staring down at me.. dominant and in control, her finger pushing inside me and pressing against my button, pulling up steady and persistent. Her thumb deftly circling my clit. She plays my body like a master violinist. Slow beautiful notes building and building. The pleasure grows inside me. My muscles grow taunt. Her eyes locked on mine as my toes curl, my leg squeeze her knee and hand. Quickly her pace quickens building into a crescendo, my muscles burning I feel the flush coming, a squeak escapes my mouth, I feel my eyes dilate, my body tight like a string…on her instrument
Lucy plunges her face and kisses me deep and passionately and I explode
My body quivering and shaking, as orgasm crashes into my like a rouge wave. I can't contain myself as I scream and moan into Lucy's mouth my life breath leaving my body as my pussy spasms around her fingers. Overstimulated I shake side to side my hand digging into her skull.
Primal lust surges inside me, face to face my forehead pressed into hers. I grab her inside leg and arm and turn us. Lucy land son her back as I bite hard into her leg. A snarl of lust escaping my lips as I need to feed on her body. I press my hands into her body. Feeling the soft flesh, filling me.. driving me
My own legs still suffering aftershocks. I kiss down her body, biting, pinching , and sucking Lucy's nipples, ribs, stomach and my lips slip down her smooth pubic mound… to her pussy
Pushing Lucy's legs apart I dive in with my tongue. The taste of her sex becoming my everything. My fingers spreading and entering
Taunt vaginal walls greet my tips with a velvet soft grip. As my tongue flicks onto her clit. Lips enveloping and sucking I hear Lucy's breath sharply pull in, her hand land lands on the back of my head as I grab her other hand in mine. The grip tight.
Pushing upwards again and again and again with my hand and fingers inside her pussy I feel it spasm. Gripping and milking my fingers tighter and tighter as the dance in the soft ridges of her. Up and down head bobs as I suck on her kxit my tongue swirling around it, moaning and humming. Vibrations from my soul spreading across her enraptured body.
Her grip tightens on mine, nails digging in…
“Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesssssssssssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” she moans sharply
Leg squeeze down in me . Her whole body go still tight…..
A gutteral deep moan erupts from her mouth as he roussy gushes onto my fingers, I move my lips to taste her. Our hands gripped tight together as wave after wave of orgasm wash over her as I keep my my pace and tenacity.
“FUUUUCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!?” Lucy screams her back arched pussy driven into my mouth…
Her body collapses, as I roll to the side panting managing to crawl up. Holding each other close. Soft gentle kisses, like rain drops in storm.
“Mi amor” we whisper to each other foreheads pressed together
Time passes.. we clean ourselves in the pool. Giggling and laughing like lovers do. Helping each other back to camp. Walking through the forest hand in hand back to our bed
Our dream died that night…
We were naked, curled up in each others arms when the alarm sounded..all the alarms
Proximity alert for 14 signals… they had teamed up on us. 14 on 2 they were going to eliminate the front runners while they still could.
Fuck
Lucy and I turned and quickly downed our emergency biotic vials just as a concussive blast hit our ship shelter.
“Fuck! They aren't supposed to attack equipment!” I yell
“The proctors must have sent them, they should be intervening with that!” Lucy says
“You're better in a fight, charge them and I'll flank” I yell
We nod at each other and we are off naked as the day we were born
Lucy bursts from our ship her shield bursting out in front of her
I dart out the side and task our scouts and drones to make dive bomb attacks on the intruders
I leap over a blast, grab a tree branch and swing. I land my legs on either side of the head. Of one the attackers, twisting my flip her over and knock her out. Back on the run, I see Lucy take out another one as drones dive in and out of the chaos.
Lucy blocks to her right and charges blasting herself high into the air, twirling before blasting herself downward tackling her target to the ground and eliminating her.
She's about to get blasted from behind when I take the attackers in the flank, knee to the solarplex. My hand on the side of her neck I thrust up hard with my knee. In the low gravity she turns and flies off into the trees as I raise my hands and blast another in the side.
She turns just in time to block my attack, when Lucy rockets into her side with her elbow. Her lithe form is lit in by the light from Phobos in the night. Gleaming with the slightest amount of sweat.
Without looking Lucy backflips and bounds over a concussive blast in the low gravity. The blast takes the other girl in the side, eliminating her. Lucy rights herself as she gracefully glides to the ground. The moonlight catches her nude form perfectly. The girl who fired before at her takes aim. Lucy rockets behind herself and strikes downward with wicked speed, dive bombing her opponent.
The girl FIRES, Lucy does as well two shots!
The blasts collide and send shockwaves out, nearly knocking me from my feet. Lucy's second attack smashes into the girl eliminating her, Lucy flips through the air almost as if she was flying. I've never seen another person with the same amount of control in low gravity as her.
She lands one knee and hand on the ground head up and charges the next enemy
Amazed at Lucy's tenacity I start up again picking off another girl as Lucy charges at a group of four her shield tall and strong in front of her at running at full tilt.
I sweep to the side to take the group in the flank
I launch my assault firing concussive blasts again and again. I hear Lucy scream.. I look over and see her taken in the back from a cheap shot hiding in the trees above.
They all turn on me 8 on 1
Despair flows into me… then is burned away replaced
RAGE… RAGE OVERWHELMS ME
MY LUNGS light with fire
NOOOOOOOOONNNOOOOOOOONNNOOOOO YOU COCKSUCKING PUTAS!! ME CAGO EN TU PUTA MADRES!!! I WILL RIP YOUR ARMS OFF AND BEAT YOU WITH THEM!!! I WILL NOT BE STOPPED BY YOU!!!
I start moving faster than ever before, the passion and bloodlust over taking me. Gone are the strategic calculations. Only battle remains! Only the Rage! Seething up inside me!
They all fire on me, and in the air above me expecting me to leap.
I fire 2 blasts behind me then 3 more in front of me concussive impacts quake the air as it seems to heave. The kinetic impacts bringing the air to broiling. It sears my flesh as I rocket through the small opening.
Their faces are slack jawed. Dumbfounded as I unleash pandemonium and chaos. I blast not them but the trees around them
Sending trees and debris crashing in the wake of the concussive blasts.
Leaping I land on a falling tree running up the trunk
Firing again and again and again.. one of their shield breaks and I dive at her my knee taking her straight in the jaw, I hear the crack as she hits the ground. Not a moment sparred I grab a log and fire it at another two girls caught off guard by me behind their shield wall.
Somersaulting through the air, I hook a girl's neck behind my knee just as she is about to fire. Swinging around her body I grab her arms as she fires and aim them at her allies. Just before I fire directly into her back
Her concussed body goes flying at her allies they drop their shield so as to not hurt her, only to find me blasting through behind her. My feet hit a still standing tree and with both my arms out I fire again… and again… and again..
Both go down hard screaming in pain
Pain that is nowhere near my emotional pain
I hit the ground and scream
STAND AND FIGHT YOU CUNTS!!! FACE ME!!! I AM EMERA TRIUMPHANT!!! DAUGHTER OF EUROPA!! UNBENT, UNBOWED, UNBROKEN!!!
I scan around me.. all I hear is groans and whimpers and cries in pain.
My chest heaving up and down, my body dripping a primal sweat running down my nude form.
I hear a crackle of a speaker
All combatants defeated!
Victory to Emera of Europa!
I fall to my knees exhausted, crying, overextended, Lucy comes over to me rubbing my back and takes me into her arms. Rocking me back and forth
“They ruined it! They ruined everything! They'll separate us now!!” I yell my head buried into her chest shaking back and forth. My whole body overwhelmed and quivering with emotion.
“Every little thing is going to be alright mi amor” Lucy says as she cradles me…
I jolt awake on Lupis IV alone.... Lucy's smile filling my mind…

I am 17 and male, 5'5 and roughly 259 lbs. I have an extremely bad diet and rarely exercise, so I'm concerned these symptoms may be related to diabetes. I have diet fluctuations because sometimes I attempt to fix my bad habits, but usually succumb to food addiction and using it as a coping mechanism once again Anyway, here are some symptoms I've been experiencing for a few months: Sharp pain in my left side and left lower abdomen that feels hollow Chest pains and shortness of breath Frequent thirst at times and frequent urination Very frequent muscle spasms and twitching, especially in my left eye lid Coin sized bumps in my armpits that are underneath the skin and are painful. They come and go Occasional numbness and tingling in my arms and legs, especially when I strain the limb in question Dizziness
Does anyone know what this may be related to?

Well it's done, took me awhile as I was finishing the outline(I'm stupid that I didn't finish it first, was a bit excited too write this idea to you all)
And also I have to mention a fanfic called Smoke and mirror as the guy mentioned my fanfic I might aswell mention another fanfic crossover about statsector that is being created at the same time. Quite a coincidence.
Well anyway feedback is always appreciated as I'm quite new to this writing thing.
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Memory Transcript Subject: Cenci, The Great Explorer of the Forest
Date: [standard human time] September 27, 2136
As the gentle water brushed against my legs, I gradually regained consciousness, like waking up from a good rest during a school day but wanting to sleep some more. Suddenly, a warm, coarse sensation hit me, like hot sand scattering across my fur.
Opening my eyes, I was greeted by a sight both mesmerizing and heart-wrenching: the Wirtwood forest across the river was ablaze in vibrant hues of orange and red, its towering trees engulfed in flames that danced and flickered in the night sky. It reminded me of an ancient painting I once saw, capturing the fiery beauty of the northern hemisphere's forests.
Tears welled in my eyes as I lay on the muddy ground, the distant crackling of fire and the gentle flow of the river forming a haunting melody in the background. I stayed there what felt like hours, but it was propobly only a few minutes, I wanted to cry but I forced myself to rise, holding it in, I turn away unable to bear witness to the devastation unfolding before me.
Wiping my eyes with my left mud-covered arm, a sharp pain shot through it as my face touched the area. I quickly foundy arm is bruised but is relieved to find it wasn't an open wound, I took a moment to soothe the spot.
After soothing the pain, I surveyed my surroundings. I spotted the brightened, darkened greens of the forest mingling with the fiery glow of the inferno. A towering river wall had swaying shadows, and nearby, a slope cuts through the river wall like a deep scar. But my attention was drawn to the riverbank, where many beached trees lay lifeless and rotting on the muddy shore. On the ground was the unmistakable sight of the white, fire-resistant exterminator suit—Big Brother—laying among the wooded debris. Rushing to my brother's side, I found him lying on his side, his suit torn and damaged.
With difficulty, I removed his backpack from its strap and carefully dragged him onto the drier ground near the river wall, mud clinging to his suit as I dragged him there. After ensuring his comfort, I scrounged through the backpack for something to drink as I felt a bit parched. I found the bag dry inside, probably just waterproof—nothing too surprising as exterminators usually use this brand of bag for long expeditions. After finding a bottle, I took a swig of water, put the bottle back, and leaned the backpack against Kalip before climbing up the slope and venturing out into the darkened forest in search of shelter and aid.
Navigating through the dimly lit trees, I soon came across a rusty fence with gaping holes, a sign of neglect and decay. Finding an entrance large enough for me to pass through, I ventured deeper into the forest, guided by the faint glow of the moon above as the flames cant pierce through the forest.
I can't stop worrying about Big Brother as I walk. Will he be almighty? I didn't look properly. Why didn't I look properly? I stop myself from thinking about Kalip by looking around the forest as I walk, naming every tree and plant. Oh, is that palicintino? Oh, that's rare. Oh, is that...
I walk through the forest, trying to remember the names of plants and animals on the trees. I wish I had my book on animals and nature. It's probably burnt and turned to ash, all its knowledge, my knowledge, all gone. Now I've made myself sad by remembering my book diary.
I eventually emerge from the forest, wiping some tears from my eyes, and see something quite disappointing, yet also, I hope, my salvation: an open-pit mine. Its effect on the surrounding environment makes my heart wrench, but thankfully it has only been in operation for [6 years], so its destruction has not been widespread. I can still see trees within the fenced-in parameters that the company has created, and even from the top of the big hill, there are still some trees standing defiantly. The company calls itself "The Mud Diggers," if I remember correctly. It's mainly a mining company, sometimes doing burrow construction.
I walked to the edge, looked around, and saw abandoned, enormous vehicles that carried unrefined dirt containing tiny ores, probably titanium, as their netsite says. These ores could be harvested and made into usable materials. I noticed one wrecked and destroyed vehicle at the bottom of the mine, near a large stack of industrial boxes and some inactive floodlights. The floodlights seemed to be pointing at a metallic dome in the middle of the mine.
Wait, is that a white metallic dome? I had to rub my eyes to see if I'm imagining things, but lo and behold, the metallic dome is still there—ancient and majestic, well, I think it is, but there seems to be no rust on it from what I can see. It has some blue discoloration in some spots. Are those rust? No, it's more like some kind of scars. High temperature? Did it crash from space? It also is not reflecting the moonlight as I would expect. I'm surprised I didn't notice it before because it's the most conspicuous thing in the mine, even more so than the abandoned mining vehicles.
The metallic dome is has some big blacked windows like its burnt to a crisps, some are cracked, some are broken showing it's inside but I can't see much from where I am at this distance.
There are many boxes and tents near the big dome, and some kind of trailer that has many solar panels and antenna, probably a mobile research station.
I look elsewhere, like at the other side of the mine. There is a building that has a large refinery outside of it. That refinery would refine the titanium the mine harvest, which is then transported to the city of Flatville on the plain east of here, where it's then mixed with chromium and,or vanadium for use in ships' hulls or armor and engines, respectively.
I shake my head and laugh at myself for remembering such things from lessons in school. Well, I've always been a curious prey, trying and learning everything at least once, even if my brother would scold me for it as it was "un-prey-like" behavior. Bah! I would usually ignore his chastisements and advice on that kind of topic.
I compose myself by rubbing my face. I look around some more for something to put a roof over our heads. I turn my gaze to the left and see a tall metal tower with a trailer right beside it. It is quite close, so I feel like I made an idiot of myself for not finding it before the metallic bluish dome below the mine.
Although it is quite more intriguing than something that could put a roof over my head tonight.
I walk toward the trailer, dismissing the signal tower looming over it. In front of it is a tent with some metal industrial boxes like the one's near the white dome. I look inside one, but its contents seem to be missing. There is also a plastic table with plastic chairs, some toppled over, and there are half-empty alcohol bottles strewn across it and on the ground. I guess they were in a hurry or just had a party, or both. As water starts sprinkling the ground and hitting my spiky head, I look up and see dark clouds encroaching on the bright moon. I hurriedly run to the trailer, pull open the door, and enter it, taking refuge from the impending rainstorm.
Inside, there was a messy room with many boxes sprawled around. I guess this is the stuff the boxes have. The dark room was only lit up by the moonlight shining through the windows, though it was getting dimmer and dimmer. There was a lot of equipment I couldn't identify in such darkness. Luckily for me, an open box was right in front of me, highlighted by the moonlight from the window-door. Inside were some industrial flashlights. I picked one up and turned it on, lighting up a portion of the room and revealing some things I couldn't see before.
Like the many communication equipments and consoles, and would be beeping and booking if the power is on.
There was something else that also piqued my interest: a door with a bed symbol on it, unlike the others, on the other side of the room. There was also a standard industrial light switch right next to it instead of the more common touch-sensitive switches—quite low-tech but reliable and simple. I approached it and tried to flick it upward, hoping it would turn the lights on, but sadly it didn't. So I flicked it back to its original position and opened the door.
It leads to a dark room with a single window. I flooded the room with light, revealing a bare-bones barrack with four beds, each with its own footlocker. Nothing personal can be seen anywhere, and it is quite clean—quite the opposite of the room behind me. I noticed another light switch right beside me and tried to turn it on, but like the light switch behind it, it did not turn on the light in the barrack as expected.
I wanted to look around some more, but as the moonlight disappeared and the droplets hit the window pane, I remembered that I had left Big Brother outside where a rainstorm was brewing. I scrambled out of the trailer, the rain becoming stronger with each step, which made me run faster toward the river where Kalip lay unconscious. Using the flashlight to guide me through the dark forest where the forest canopy blocked most of the falling droplets, I retraced my steps, but I had to rest when I reached the fence, calming my burning lungs and pounding heart. A gojid is not made for running fast or long those are predatory traits, or so my teachers told me. After a short rest, I continued jogging the rest of the way and reached the river but got lost for a bit as the slope was not where I expected it to be. I quickly found it, though. The rain was now pouring its even more powerful torrent down on me, hitting my spines like tiny pebbles.
As I walk toward the slope, I see the rain dousing the raging flames of the forest fire from the other side of the river, extinguishing the flames and making the area look like a wasteland—a wet, black, desolate wasteland.
I reached the slope and pointed the flashlight down it, where rainwater was running down and turning it muddy and slippery. I carefully climbed down slowly and, thankfully, I was able to descend the slope without any problems. Going back up would be a problem, though, but I'll ignore that for now. I need to find Kalip.
I quickly found Kalip where I left him but he is awake, sitting and hugging the backpack while the rain made him wet, and its droplets seeping through his exterminator suit.
Slowly approach him, pointing the flashlight away from him so as not to startle him. However, he didn't even see or notice me as I got closer, even when I knelt beside him with the flashlight shining in his field of vision.
I tried to tap his shoulder to get his attention, and my movement this close to him seemed to make him notice me. A gasp came from his mouth as he looked at me as if he were seeing a ghost. His spikes bristled in fear, and his face showed loss and disbelief, but joy came afterward. In an instant, he wrapped his arms around me, hugging me and not caring about the possibility that he would injure himself on my spikes.
The rain poured down, hitting us. No sound came from either of us. It was silent except for the pitter-patter of droplets splashing on the muddy ground.
I just sat there, surprised and immobile, my paw up, the flashlight pointing up, held by Kalip's strong and firm arms. His body was shivering. I didn't know what to do in this situation. I had never seen him like this. I would always be the first to hug him when something bad happened, not the other way around.
His hug became tighter and tighter, before he let go of me as fast as he hugged me, he look at me and touch my rain soaked cheeks and rubbing it affectionately.
"Im glad y-your alright" he said, his voice wavering but firm, his body shivered from the cold, his green eyes lock into my abnormal ones, his ears dropping a bit.
"I-I'm... I'm alright, brother, but we need to get out of the rain now. You're cold. I found somewhere with a roof over our heads," I said, conveying that I didn't want to smell like a wet Gojid with my ears. I stood up and extended my arm to pick him off the dirty ground.
"Good, because I feel pain everywhere" he said, regaining some of himself as he grins a bit. Even though his tiredness, he grabbed my paws, which I pulled him up after, he stood up though a bit wobbly.
"Give me the backpack, Big Brother. You can't walk properly with such a burden, especially with your injuries," I said, extending my paw as he tried to balance himself.
He was going to say something before grunting in reply as he balanced himself. Then, without much fuss, he willingly gave me the backpack, which I grabbed.
I tried to help Kalip walk, but he waved me off and used his ears to say, "Lead the way." I was a bit worried about his ability to walk properly, even with the backpack on my paws, "You sure, brother?" I asked.
"Yes, I'm sure now. Lead me to where we'll find shelter," he said, waving me off again. Despite the pain he was enduring, he started to walk to the slope.
"It's in the mine that harvests titanium. There's a trailer near where I entered it," I shouted as I caught up to my limping brother, who had stopped at the base of the slope.
"The titanium mine?" he said as he waited for me.
"Yes, the mine that Aunty hates," I said as I caught up with him.
"Ah, that mine, I saw it before the..." He fell silent and still, his face showing pain, sorrow, anguish, and misery in a single moment. But he shook his head; his eyes showed determination replacing the previous emotions, he looks back at me nodding his head and went to climb the slippery slope as if he is not injured.
Just now, knowing how much pain his heart is in right now from losing so much after the devastation, I made sure he didn’t fall and roll down the slope, as that’s all I can do at this moment.
Even with the flashlight’s light, I slipped multiple times before we reached the top. We entered the forest, where its dense canopy gave us some reprieve from the rain.
He rested his shoulders against a tree, rubbing his left shoulder as he looked around the dark forest. I suppose that burst of energy tired him out. He looked at me with worry, likely wondering if there were night-stalking predators prowling about. I saw an opportunity to raise my brother's spirits, albeit at his expense.
"There is no predator at this season brother, the big ones that want to eat us that is, as the greatest explorer and discoverer of the forest, I should know" I proclaimed with pride, pointing the flashlight into the forest, and sweeping it around, to prove my point.
He rolled his eyes with irritation at my proclamation but had a slight smile. I guess that works. Good job, me, for being a bit of a narcissist, but he was still worried as his spikes bristled as he looked around for anything out of the ordinary.
"There are still probably predators stalking around, even if they are small. Cenci or not, we still must be careful; they eat meat." He said as he unclipped his holster and took out his modified laser pistol with his right paw.
I just rolled my eyes at his cautious behavior and walked deeper into the forest. I looked behind me and saw Kalip walking, his left arm hanging in the air, while being alert and ready to shoot any poor thing that would come out of the many bushes near our path.
Thankfully, nothing happened when we reached the rusting chain-link fence, which I entered through the hole I exited, but Kalip had to duck through.
"Is your left arm okay, brother?" I ask with concern.
"It's fine, Cenci. It's just painful to move too much," he replied without much worry. It probably wasn't the first time he'd broken one of his arms, as one time he'd come home immobile for a month after an intense cleanup expedition on the other side of the planet.
we walk a bit more and finally reached the open-pit mine where the forest opens up.
I tugged on his right shoulder and pointed to the trailer with the blinking tower. "There's the trailer!"
We dashed toward the trailer. As we entered the open, the rain hit us again. Its door was still wide open when I burst out of it. We entered the trailer, safe from the rain and cold. Kalip was the last one to enter, and he slammed the door shut behind us.
Kalip sat down with his back to the door, resting himself from the short sprint. A sudden light came from the windows, lighting up the entire trailer. I quickly covered my ears with my paws, barely muffling the boom that soon reached my covered ears. But big brother wasn't fast enough and got startled, and the most unexpected, cutest yelp came from his mouth.
I just looked at him before I had to cover my mouth, suppressing the laughter that was ready to burst out at any moment. He glared at me and pointed his claw, but his mouth formed a smirk. I guess he found it funny that he made that unexpected noise too.
"Don't laugh at me," he said with irritation as he stood up. "I'm tired, wet, and in pain."
He explored the comm room. A wet, squelching sound is heard with each step he took as he made a trail of water because of the damaged exterminator suit sagging some of the cardboard boxes. He stood over a nearby inactive comm console and tinkered with it.
I calmed myself by rubbing my cheeks and steadied my breathing. Composed and no longer on the verge of laughing my tail off, I picked up another flashlight where I had found the first one, inspected it to see if it had a battery, which it did, and approached Kalip with a fully charged flashlight.
I placed the flashlight on the console he was inspecting. He thanked me before asking if there was anywhere for him to lie down, as his injuries were causing him pain. I directed him to the barracks, telling him to rest but not to sleep, as I was going to find something to treat his wounds. With a roll of his eyes and a flick of his ear in agreement, I handed him the backpack before he walked off and disappeared into the other room. His limp seemed to have lessened in effect from his walking.
With him in the barracks, I explored the other two rooms. One was a bathroom where the operators would usually clean themselves or relieve themselves. It had everything a bathroom would have: a toilet, a sink with a mirror, and a shower. However, there was a compartment on the wall that would usually contain a medical kit. This meant there should be one in one of the many boxes on the floor.
The other room was probably going to be used for storage, as there were many shelves for containers and boxes to be placed on. However, it is empty except for the shelves themselves, a mop, and a mobile bucket.
I return to the comms room, closing the door behind me. I look around the room once more, looking at boxes for labels or markings that say they contain some kind of medical supplies. After a while, I find a pile of boxes with the iconic green paw symbol introduced by the medically inclined Zerulians when they entered the Federation, a symbol of health and healing. I cut the tape that holds the top cover of the cardboard box with my claw. As the symbol suggested, there are many pill bottles, most of them painkillers. I open and eat one, putting the opened one aside for Kalip. I set the box aside and open the other one beneath it.
This one has what I was looking for: gauze and bandages. I inspected one of the gauze pads and decided they were what I was looking for. I returned the gauze and put the painkiller in it. I took the entire box and walked toward the barrack room where Kalips is. I nearly tripped on another cardboard box in the middle of the floor but was able to steady myself. I threw a few silent curses at it before continuing on.
I entered the barracks and saw Kalip, out of his exterminator suit, standing near the window. His eyes were closed, his laser pistol was disassembled and sprawled over the windowsill, his flashlight was extinguished, and his body was still. Rain and thunder flashed in the distance. His paws were on his chest, and he was praying, though his left paw was shaking, likely from the pain. I was a bit worried and angry because he wasn't resting as I had told him to, more worried than angry. I put the box down on a nearby bed where the backpack was also lying and silently snuck toward him.
I turned the flashlight off so as not to disturb him as I got closer until I was at a sufficient distance, and I waited patiently.
He finished his prayer, whispering his last words before looking out the window, to which I pounced by saying what I wanted to say. "Didn't I tell you to rest?"
He flinched as his spikes bristled before he turned around slowly, like someone caught eating the last strayu at night.
"Why are you just standing there and not resting as I told you to?" I repeated, my ear flicking with irritation.
"I was praying, Cenci, so don't scare me like that. Those are predatory traits," he replied quickly, calming himself by rubbing his ears.
I just sighed before motioning for him to follow, to which he obliged, still rubbing his ears.
I sat down on the bed where I had put the box full of bandages. Its soft sheets bent to my weight. I’m eating too much of the mushroom strauyu.
Opening the box, I took out the bottle of painkillers and offered it to Kalip. "What is it?" he asked as he took the bottle from me and inspected it. "Painkillers for the pain you're currently feeling."
He popped it open and took a bit more than I would recommend, but remember how tall he is. He thanked me before he sat down, waiting for the drug to take effect and soothing his shoulder.
At this distance, I can now see the full extent of his injuries outside his exterminator suit. Thankfully, it's not as bad as I thought, although there are still many small cuts, bumps, and bruises all over his body, his left arm having the most of them. "Can I see your arm, Brother?"
He gave me his clotting, injured arm without a word. He was silent as I looked for a way to bandage it properly, trusting me as I had done it before. I looked him over; his left arm seemed to have taken the brunt of the damage when we fell into the raging river. All seemed okay, meaning he would be fine, but I had to sling his left arm if I found something to sling it with until his wounds fully healed.
I took out a water bottle from the backpack and poured its contents onto his wounds. He hissed in pain, and I smirked. "Painful?"
He suddenly and temporarily stopped feeling the pain and gave me the most deadpan stare I have ever seen from him. "Of course it is, Cenci, why wouldn't it be?!?"
"Just asking," I said with mirth. I then used a bandage as a rag to rub the dirt, grime, and mud off his arm.
"It's a shame there's no ice here or even a freezer," I said as I started to bandage his arm without constricting it too much.
"Yeah what an absolute shame" he said with a bit of a sarcastic tone.
He returns to stare silently as I work as I shush him. I look into his eyes, which he didn't notice, which have this unfocused look on them, like he is thinking hard with a hint of being lost, usually about bad stuff. I don't know what he's thinking, and that worries me, especially after what happened on that riverbed. He can't stop me from questioning him about it.
As I finished bandaging him, I tightened it hard, making him yelp—now with a sound that I would expect from an exterminator.
"Why in the holy Cradle did you do this, Cenci?" he shouted as he frantically tried to loosen the knot in the bandage I'd made.
I slap his paw as it tries to untie my knot, and I loosen it myself. He glares angrily and tries to shout again, but I talk over him. "Are you alright, Big Brother?"
He was taken aback by my question "wha-what yes I'm alright. but what in the predators fang on my neck did you do that?" He said shimmering his anger.
"Your doing the THAT stare again and it's quite bad this time" I said putting a point on that, as I remembered the first time he had that stare, the time he got that long scar from his left eye to his right cheeks.
He was a bit speechless that I notice the unnoticeable, he scratch his face scar and whispered "I'm doing it again."
I waited as he reoriented himself, worried.
"I'm fine, Cenci. I'm just thinking about how we could get out of this somehow," he said, whispering the last bit. I highly doubt that's what he's thinking.
"Brother, what is actually going on in that mind of yours? I can't ignore what happened on the riverbed," I said, my eyes fixed on his.
He wavered, thinking of a retort, but relinquished what his true feelings were right now, he held and gripped my paw, closing his eyes "I- I'm just glad that your alright, I don't want to lose what is truly important to me"
It was silent in the room except for the droplets hitting the windowpane. I smiled and hugged him, careful not to pierce myself on his spines. It would usually be a shouting match for him to say what was on his mind, so he didn’t truly reveal all of it, but he did at least unburden himself somewhat. And he needed a hug—a hug from his sister.
He hug back this time not piercing himself on my spikes, "Thanks Cenci I needed that"
We exit out of our embrace feeling a bit better, "what do we do now? You said you have a plan."
"No, I was just making excuses. Do you have one?" he said, a bit embarrassed, his face a bit blue. Oh, is he blushing? That's rare. I would have taken a photo if I had my padlet.
I shake my head as I was not focusing on what he said, getting a weird look from Kalip, I think a bit on what he said, tilting my head side to side, either we could exit the mine first thing by daylight or explore the weird dome down in the mine, now I know where my minds is going, but I need to make an excuse for Kalip. There was many industrial boxes that could contain supplies and food, and the weird mobile lab.
With a plan and an excuse to convince Kalip to go on with the plan, I told Kalip about it, telling him the vast amount of food and supplies we could find from those unopened boxes.
"Hmm, I was thinking of leaving the mine, but your plan is quite sound. However, I know you're leaving something out of it. What is it?" he said, suspicious of my true intentions. Well, he caught me. I might as well tell him now rather than later.
"Well... I want to explore the dome," I said, fidgeting a bit. Kalip had this unsurprised look on his face, as if he had been expecting me to want to explore every nook and cranny of the mine to discover its secrets. Well, he was mistaken. I only explore old mines that have been built since before I was born.
He sighed and stood up. I was afraid he would not let me go near it. "Where is this thing?"
That caught me off guard, removing me from my thoughts. "Y-you mean the dome?" He nods. "Oh, at the bottom of the mine."
He stood there, thinking, I suppose, for a while before he spoke to me again. "Very well, then. We'll go explore it tomorrow, after we scavenge whats on those box you told me."
That made me shiver with excitement. Before I could shout with joy, he tempered my excitement by telling me to go to sleep. I countered that he should also go to sleep, but he said he wanted to clean his pistol before going to bed. He went to the windowsill, carefully taking the disassembled parts to the nearby bed, and started cleaning it with a rag probably torn from the bedsheets.
While he does that, I prepare my bed for sleep. The bed is rectangular, as is standard for the Federation so all species can sleep in it comfortably. However, the Gojids and Farsuls have circular beds because they like to curl themselves up. So, it took me a while to get comfortable enough to close my eyes and fall asleep. I am excited about the interesting dome, even if the world is falling apart. At least I have my brother; he will protect me. But I'll have to make sure he doesn't go crazy from the madness those murderous lizards created...
———————————
Is it too long? You tell me.
First
Previous
[Next]

Killer Grips: Anne Maria, Brick, Jasmine, Justin, Millie
Screaming Gaffers: Chase, Izzy, MK, Ripper, Scott
Episode 9: The Sand Witch Project
"Last time, on Total! Drama! Action! A girl with vision. Vision that took her past everyday thinking. But when the chips were down, and even when the chips came back up again, she was the only one who could rescue them."
"Searching for a cure to the disease that was afflicting her dearest friends, a challenge was won. A cure found."
"But will-" Chris began to munch and crunch on something, though, so the rest of his sentence was completely muddled and unintelligible. The recap footage ended and the shot cut to Chris sitting on the amphitheater bleachers with popcorn at his side.
"Hey, what can I say? Gross disease movies make me crave a little corn!" He picked up his snack and smiled. "But, it's time to put the snacks away, kiddies," he tossed the bag over his shoulder, "because after this totally terrifying episode," the scene cut to a nighttime shot of him walking past a portable toilet near the cast trailers, "there won't be a stomach left unturned!" A horrible growling noise came from inside the toilet that made the host flinch, but he recovered his composure quickly and walked over to a nearby campfire. "Hold on to your buckets. It's time for some Total! Drama! Action!"
(Theme Song)
The episode began with a shot of a soccer ball rolling across the shot and the camera zoomed out to show Jasmine and Justin kicking it back and forth to each other. Brick was also in the background sleeping on a lounge chair.
The camera panned to the right to show Anne Maria, Izzy, MK, Ripper, and Scott playing cards at a picnic table. "Sorry, wimps," Ripper said with a triumphant grin, "but I won this round!" The bully put his cards on the table. "Whose turn is it to deal?"
"Mine," Izzy said, grabbing the cards. “Watch this!” She then did a number of intricate moves to shuffle them, much to her competitors’ amazement.
Confessional: Scott
"Izzy's such a showboat," Scott told the confessional camera. "She's always there to demonstrate how “cool” she is, but can she smash twenty kitchen rats in under a minute? No.”
“I just wish that my team loses the next challenge so we can vote her off, and I know how to handle that if it comes down to the wire,” the farmer said sneakily.
Confessional Ends
The footage cut back with Millie and Chase sitting on the steps of the boys’ trailer, Millie holding a small basket of sandwich wedges.
"I can't believe how many of these were leftover after lunch!" Millie said before tossing one of the sandwiches into her mouth.
“I can't believe you managed to steal these in the first place!” Chase chuckled.
"I can't help it," Millie said giddily. "Egg salad sandwiches are super tasty, and it's not like Chef will notice."
“I clearly taught you well,” Chase said. “You know, it's great to hang out with each other given all the times we've been separated.”
“We still have to manage until the merge, Chase,” Millie reminded her boyfriend. “Things have been crazy though with Trent's jealousy over you and Sky and his challenge throwing.”
“I didn't even know about all that until you told me a few days ago,” Chase said.
“Sky told me all about it, and I didn't have the time to inform you,” Millie admitted.
“I'm still cool with Trent, but if anybody thinks that I'll drop you for another chick, then they don't know a thing about me,” Chase declared. “I'd rather get poison ivy then cheat on you.”
“Your loyalty is one of the reasons why I'm in love with you,” Millie admired before giving Chase a peck on his cheek.
"I wouldn't be Chase without that, Millie!" Chase smiled. "Now watch this!" A fast-paced and hectic tune began as he did a front handspring, landed, then jumped into the air, twirled a few times, and landed in splits. "This is how you speed eat, folks," he said as he did his routine. He stood up from his splits, took out a few sandwiches from his pockets, and tossed his snacks into the air, catching them all with his open mouth. He took a bow after he finished swallowing.
The contestants applauded politely. "Nice one," Anne Maria said. “I've seen monkeys swallow less bananas than we do with these sandwiches."
"Chef's food has gotten so good," Justin said with a mouthful. The sound of loud snoring filled the air and everyone looked over at Brick, the camera zooming in on him as a ripple effect transitioned the scene.
It was a dark and stormy night on the film lot, and a rat scurried by past the craft services tent before lightning flashed and the camera zoomed in on the light coming from the kitchen window. A few jarringly tense notes played as the shot focused on a kitchen knife in Brick's hand before the music softened out and the knife was used to spread egg salad on a slice of bread. Cheese and lettuce were added next, followed by another slice of bread, and Brick was shown looking at the sandwich with a smile on his face – a stack of similar sandwiches was on the counter nearby.
Just then, Chef made his presence known in the background after another flash of lightning and shouted "Lunch!".
Brick squeaked and held his knife out in front of him in an attempt to protect himself, and Chef began to slowly clap his hands in a deadpan manner.
"We need to stop all this cheating," Brick begged. "Being in this alliance is seriously going against everything I stand for as a cadet."
"This is not about right or wrong, son," Chef declared remorselessly. "It's about you and me winning that cool mil."
The footage rippled back to the present.
Brick was still snoring peacefully as the camera panned away from him and back to the picnic table where Millie and Chase had joined most of the others.
"So, what're you guys doing?" Chase asked the card players.
"We don't think there's gonna be a challenge today," Ripper explained, "so we've just been playing cards against each other."
“And it's kinda getting borin’ with Big and Blue winning a majority of our games,” Anne Maria shot a grim look at Ripper.
“It's not my fault I'm better than you all at Go Fish, Rimmy, and the sort,” Ripper scoffed.
“Now I wish there is a challenge,” Izzy grumbled.
“I second that,” Scott nodded.
The background music became tense as the loudspeakers squealed on. "Attention Total Drama victims!" Chris announced dramatically. "Please meet me in the northeast corner of the studio-palooza! Bring lozenges!" he added over a shot of Chase chewing and swallowing one of his sandwiches while looking up. "The screaming is gonna hurt!"
"Wishes do come true," Izzy laughed humorously as she looked at the others around her.
The footage cut to a view of MK and Izzy through a small monitor looking unamused. "We walk all the way out here," the techno girl said, "yet Chris hasn't arrived yet!" The camera pulled out to show that the monitor was part of a larger recording device pointed at the Gaffers, who along with the Grips had assembled at an open-air set in what looked to be the middle of nowhere.
"Maybe he's racked up too much overtime figuring out new ways to torture us," Justin suggested, leaning against a light in the middle of the shot.
As if on cue, a familiar shout came from above that startled the handsome boy. He and the other castmates looked up in time to see none other than the host falling back-first from above, a small square of red just barely visible on the bottom of his shirt. He landed just below the screen with appropriately dramatic music and a burst of something thick and red that splattered the horrified contestants.
The camera cut to a tilted shot of Chris McLean impaled on the same light which Justin had just been leaning up against. All of the castmates screamed.
"Huh. Guess the producers don't like paying overtime," Justin commented.
"I'm worth every dime!" Chris said, suddenly sitting up with a grin and a shrug.
"I was just about to go out looking for your car and hightail it out of here," Chase spoke up in disappointment.
"It's the magic of cinema, boys and girls!" Chris declared, ignoring the comment. "I'm absolutely, perfectly, Chris-ily fine!" He took the top of the light off his body, revealing that, in fact, he hadn't been impaled at all. "Wanna see how it's done?"
"NO!" every contestant shouted and scowled angrily at the host.
Chris explained anyway, and blood appeared to pour down over the camera turning the whole screen red before the shot zoomed out to show the red was all inside a small square packet similar to what had been on the host's shirt. "Our cracker-jack effects team seals fake blood into a thin membrane of plastic," Chris said before the shot of him falling was shown again, "called a 'squib'." A top-down view of the fall appeared on the top half of the screen that showed the host smiling, while a yellow-and-black silhouette scene on the bottom depicted two interns carrying a mattress to the landing sight.
"This baby bursts on impact," the host said as the screen was splattered red again, which dripped away to show footage of the mattress being lowered into a hole in the ground behind the light, Chris falling down into it with a burst of blood before the ground the light was on descended into the ground and a platform with Chris on the fake light rose to take its place. "An old-fashioned optical illusion helps sell that I get impaled!" the host said as another silhouetted scene slid in from the right showing the fall from a side-view, with the quick change of platforms and lights.
"Can you not make like a sloth right now?" Jasmine groaned. “Get on with it.”
"Time for today's totally terrifying, blood-curdling, Horror Movie Challenge!" Chris announced before starting to walk around in front of the castmates. “To figure out which team gets which challenge, a scream-off! Think of every great horror movie you've ever seen.”
Izzy gasped in excitement. “Oh my gosh, you guys. Did you see that one with the possessed rug that learns to walk and smother cats? Or did I make that up?”
"All horror movies have one thing in common: fantastic screaming from actors. And," Chris added as he walked back past the Grips and lingered in front of Justin, "the killers that snuff them." The pretty boy looked nervously shocked, but Chris paid him no heed. "Each team, pick a serial killer," he told the castmates. "The rest of you will be the screamers. If your serial killer can make you scream the loudest, your team wins!"
A roaring chainsaw swiped down across the screen, accompanied by a sudden but dramatic twist to the background music as the screen was splattered red again.
The 'blood' effect drained away, transitioning the scene to Jasmine talking to the Killer Grips outside the numbered studios while holding the mask and bottle of ketchup. "We have to go with Anne Maria. I'd do it, but my height would be a dead giveaway."
“She scares me on a daily basis,” Millie agreed with the plan.
“And though the mask offers good protection for my beautiful face, I already performed a role in the third challenge,” Justin added.
Jasmine was about to give the mask to Anne Maria until Chef came in and grabbed the object. "Brick's gotta do it!" he claimed furiously.
"But we already agreed to a plan," Jasmine argued.
"Brick… is doing it." Chef said again.
"I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to tell us what to do in the challenges," Anne Maria talked back.
Chef grabbed her hair and held her off the ground. "Do you like having your hair shaved off of your head? Cause I can make that happen," the large man said to Anne Maria threateningly.
Confessional: Anne Maria
"I love my pouf," Anne Maria said. "Not only do I get to style it into whatever the heck I want, but I can also stash things in like spray cans, phones, food. Anything goes as long as it's not overly big. And the last thing I want right now is to lose my hair because of a dumb decision."
Confessional Ends
Chef dropped Anne Maria onto the floor, grabbed Brick by his collar, and shoved the mask onto his chest before stomping off in a satisfied manner.
"Since when does Chef buzz into challenges?" Jasmine asked. "This smells fishy to me."
"Oh, my bad," Anne Maria pulled a sandwich out of her pouf. "I was saving this for later."
“You guys have to let me be the killer!” Chase told his four teammates. “I have a lot of experience with scaring people on Halloween.”
“Okay, I am such the better scarer,” Izzy interjected. “My own dog is terrified of me, okay?”
“Most of my classmates are terrified of me, so I think that triumphs more over that,” Ripper argued.
“I wanna be the killer,” Scott grunted. “This is a role I was born to play.”
MK cleared up her throat. “Can everyone just-”
“But I was the one who scared my teammates last season with the bear costume,” Izzy pouted.
“I was one of them, and I won't be fooled by you again,” Ripper huffed.
MK gritted her teeth before shouting “I'm going to be our serial killer and that's final!!” Everybody stopped arguing and looked at the shortest member of the team. “You guys being the killer would be predictable and boring, and I'm just as worthy of being scary as you all.”
Confessional: MK
“I haven't done much lately other than puke my guts out and sweat uncontrollably,” MK admitted. “If we were to lose this challenge, no way would they consider voting me off if I do my best as the killer.”
Confessional Ends
The footage skipped ahead to night, showing a close-up of Chase walking somewhere around a wooded part of the film lot.
“Looks like we've been lumped into this together,” Jasmine said as the shot pulled back to show the Australian woman wandering around the woods as well.
"Who would've thought?" Chase asked rhetorically.
"Alright, Jasmine and Chase," Chris announced as the shot pulled out yet again to show the host sitting in a director's chair just off what was revealed to be an indoor forest set. "Prepare yourselves for your killers to enter!" The viewpoint shifted in front as he continued excitedly. "And then, I want huge, massive, ginormous screams! We'll be measuring the volume on our Scream-o-Meter!" He pointed above him as a bright green volume icon appeared; a stock screaming sound effect was played that caused the volume meter to rise from left to right, green to yellow to red.
"Lights!" Chris commanded, a dramatic note playing as a stage light was shown turning on. "Camera!" a camera was shown popping up and turning on to another dramatic note. "Action!" A film slate was held in front of the camera filming Chris and clapped.
Chase was shown in the distance with his back towards the camera just before a hockey mask was put 'on' over the shot. The camera moved forward a few steps towards some bushes as tense music built in the background, and the viewpoint shifted to show what was obviously a masked MK watching her teammate from hiding.
The music peaked as she jumped into the open with a roar, prompting Chase to scream… for a few seconds before stopping himself.
"Seriously?" MK asked in annoyance.
“I told myself that you'd be coming any time, so I had to prepare my scream,” Chase told his teammate.
The Scream-o-Meter only registered a few bars.
The camera cut to Brick peeking out of a tree. "I would've preferred if Anne Maria was performing this rather than me," the cadet said, making Chef pop up and scare Brick away with a roar.
Brick bumped into Jasmine while running away. "Oh, hello Brick," Jasmine greeted after turning around.
Brick looked at Chef one last time before putting the mask on and growing, leading Jasmine to scream and make the Scream-o-Meter register all the way to the first red tick.
"With a solid 55 on the Scream-o-Meter, let's notch one up for Brick, Jasmine, and the Killer Grips!" Chris announced.
The scene changed to a portable toilet set up in a smaller indoor forest set. “They cannot be serious," Anne Maria said as the camera cut inside to her filing her nails. "Who do these people think they are filming us in here?" The shot zoomed out slightly, showing that she was, indeed, sitting on the toilet. "I'm not giving them the satisfaction of using the toilet."
A flash took the scene to Scott's turn alone in the portable toilet. "Why don't we just give up now?" Scott scoffed. "There ain't nothing that can scare the Scottmeister much, and MK is no exception."
As if on cue, the techno burst into the toilet and growled loudly, causing Scott to let out a blood-curdling scream.
The camera cut back to Anne Maria, and Brick came into the toilet. "Were you in the middle of…."
"Wasn't even thinkin’ about it. Now do the scene," Anne Maria encouraged Brick, who let out a simple roar.
Scott was still screaming as the camera cut back to him and MK to the point where the Scream-o-Meter topped out.
Suddenly, the sound of peeing was heard, and Scott became quiet in his moment of embarrassment.
"I bet you never made anybody wet themselves like I did to you," MK took her mask off while snorting.
"Sorry, Brickhouse," Anne Maria said as the shot cut back to her and Brick. "You just don't scare me at all. You're kinda a marshmallow."
"I am large and in charge," Brick pointed out. “You're too tough to frighten.”
"And that's round two to MK, Scott, and the Screaming Gaffers!" Chris announced as the camera cut to him in the director's chair. "With a pee-fueled 85 on the Scream-o-Meter!"
After Chris left, Chef snuck out from behind the potty. "If Brick won't step up, the other half of the alliance has to."
The footage flashed ahead to another set, this time a couch in what appeared to be a small cottage in the woods. Ripper and Izzy were sitting on it together with scripts in their hands, while Chris stood a few feet away. "Alright guys," he told the two, "this is the tiebreaker scene. You're gonna have to act your faces off!"
Ripper read the script and his eyes went wide in excitement. "We get to make out! Brilliant!" he grinned.
"Those are one of my favorite parts of any horror movie," Izzy added.
"I love movie life!" Ripper smiled as Izzy sat on his lap and they began to kiss.
As the sounds of their make out session got louder, the camera panned over to Chris standing there with an awkward look on his face. "Awkward," he told the camera.
Millie and Justin were on the couch for the Grips, the camera focusing on the writer as she scanned the papers in her hand. Her eyebrows shot up and she dropped the papers. "No," she said. "Not this. Especially when I'm already dating Chase."
"I'll let you know that I'm a pretty good kisser," Justin told her.
Chris poked the top of his head up from behind the couch, looked between the two teens, and raised himself even further with a grin on his face. "Don't forget, kiddies," he told them, "it's a million bucks!" He ducked back behind the couch again.
With no other choice, the two leaned towards each other with their eyes clenched shut and puckered up. Their lips only barely touched before they recoiled.
“Glad I got that over with," Millie said frantically.
“It was a millisecond kiss, not a kiss of death,” Justin stated as Brick popped up from behind the couch and growled, but the two ignored the killer.
The camera cut to Izzy still making out with Ripper. MK crept up from behind them, brandished her knife, and said, "Ready to be chopped into sushi?!" She was ignored. "Uh, hello?!" she asked in irritation.
The duo looked over at her and gave half-hearted screams that barely stayed green on the Scream-o-Meter, making MK facepalm.
The shot panned over to the three sulking Grips until they looked up and saw a hockey mask wearing Chef brandish a revved up chainsaw and they all screamed. It was enough to put the Scream-o-Meter all the way in the red, and Brick managed to pass out and fall forward onto the couch.
"Well, looks to me like Brick and the Killer Grips have won this one," Chris announced as he walked onto the set, "seeing as they buried the needle. Join us after the break to see if Brick is still alive," he said as Justin and Millie looked over at Brick with concern. "Brick!" Chris called lightly. "Come in, Brick!"
(Commercial Break)
The footage came back with a bottom-up shot of the other nine campers looking down in a circle; counterclockwise from a gap at the top of the screen were Scott, Jasmine, Izzy, Millie, Ripper at the bottom, Anne Maria, Chase, MK, and Justin.
"Is he still breathing?" Anne Maria asked.
"I think he's saying something," Jasmine said before the viewpoint moved to a close-up of the unconscious cadet.
"I'm sorry. I can't take this anymore…" Brick murmured before his face turned scared and he shouted "NO NO NO NO NO!" while turning around.
“Okay, time to wake this doof up,” Ripper said before grabbing Brick's body and sitting him on the couch. The moment he did so, the bully smacked Brick hard on the face.
This act woke Brick up, and he looked around in confusion. "What happened? Why am I here? And where's Chef?"
"Chef's in a meeting with the producers," Chris explained. "A disciplinary meeting. He's in trouble! Not allowed to mess with the challenges."
"I had a feeling something smelled fishy, and not the sandwiches," Jasmine said suspiciously.
"Moving right along," Chris interrupted as the camera pulled out to show the full cast. "It's time to pack up those overnight bags, loser Gaffers!" The camera focused on the five in question. "You and your sleeping bags are spending the night in the dining hall!" All five of them slumped in disappointment. "Grip winners, back to the comfort of the trailers for a little R&R! I'll see you there in half an hour."
The scene flashed over to the craft services tent, the lights within already on. “The craft services tent isn't a bad place to spend the night,” Chase was heard saying before the camera cut inside. "We still have some good memories of the food we ate in here."
Izzy popped out from under a nearby table. "More than memories. I just found half a piece of cheesecake under here," she demonstrated the food.
“Could you split that into one-fourth so I could at least take a piece?” Chase suggested as he looked over the cheesecake.
"Guys!" Chris called from off-camera. "You mind joining us here?" A creepy tune began as the shot moved onto the host on a stool in the middle of the tent, the other three Gaffers seated on the floor around him as Izzy and Chase walked up.
"I'm about to tell you why this film lot was abandoned and closed!" he told the teens in a low voice.
"Because it's a death trap?" MK deadpanned.
"Hush, my child," Chris told her. "This film lot is perfectly safe! On this plane. But in the other dimension...," he trailed off, picking up a flashlight and shining it dramatically up from under his chin, making Izzy, Chase, and MK's eyes widen as they gasped.
"Juanita Rentacop, a dedicated security guard who worked here for twenty-five loyal years, until her mysterious death," he told them slowly. "Right here...," the music built quickly and sharply as the camera pulled back and he stood up and pointed at the ground. "ON THIS VERY SPOT!" Even Ripper and Scott flinched slightly from his sudden exclamation.
"Now," Chris continued as he looked from Gaffer to Gaffer, "her desperate and uneasy spirit walks the lot." He tilted his flashlight towards the wall and doorway, shadows of the bare tree branches falling on the outside of the tent. "No one has ever managed to spend a whole night in this craft service tent!"
"Because the falling sets killed them?" MK asked in a dry tone.
"'Cause," Chris told her as he returned the light to under his chin and the background music rose again, "of the HAUNTING!" he leaned away from her and turned off his flashlight. "Your task," he said with a grin in the center of the group, "spend the whole night here, without leaving this tent. If all or one of you manage to do so," he began to walk off to a table near the kitchen, "your team gets invincibility, and nobody goes home."
"Track any psychic phenomenon using these ghost meters," the host said as the camera zoomed in on a trio of handheld electronic devices resting on the table along with a ouija board. "And just in case," he added as Scott walked over to him, holding out his flashlight before clutching it to his chest and handing the boy a tiny keychain flashlight instead.
"Gee, thanks," Scott said as he held up the light and turned it on, completely unimpressed.
A flash took the scene to the campfire in front of the cast trailers, where the five Grips awaited an approaching Chris McLean. "The Screaming Gaffers are sitting in the craft services tent like sitting ducks," he told them as the camera panned from his close-up to eager Brick and confident Justin, then excited Millie and smirking Jasmine. "Your task is to make like special effects gurus, and frighten the pants off them!" He laughed, then told a skeptical Anne Maria "Or at least scare them enough to get them out of the tent before sunrise."
"How are we supposed to scare them?" Anne Maria asked.
"It's your call," Chris answered. "But if you get them out, your team wins invincibility and nobody goes home. Oh," he added as an afterthought, "just so you know, I told them some cockamamie story about a security guard who died on set." He chuckled, then walked away.
"How are we going to pull this off?" Brick asked his teammates.
"Chase is probably going to get mad at me for this, but I say we turn out the lights," Millie suggested. “Me and him experienced a blackout when we hung out at his house and he couldn't handle it.”
"I've got it!" Jasmine declared with a snap of her fingers. "Let's go. We have work to do." The others shrugged and followed the Outback girl away from the trailers.
The footage skipped ahead to the Grips outside of the tent watching Jasmine hold a white sheet, pillow stuffing, and a red bird in her arms. “Now that we have our things required, allow me to tell you the plan.”
“Why is a bird even on a film lot?” Justin asked.
“This bird just tends to fly around and rest on my branch,” Jasmine explained. “More importantly, I'm going to place the bird in-between the stuffing in order to give it some space to flap its wings, and with the sheet covering both the bird and the stuffing…”
“...the Screaming Gaffers will think that a ghost is haunting them!” Millie realized.
“You hit the nail right on the head,” Jasmine said while ripping some of the stuffing off before placing the bird inside.
“Let's get down to business then,” Brick agreed.
Inside the tent, Ripper, Izzy, Scott, and Chase were shown playing cards at the table nearest the closed-up meal counter while MK sat in front of them feeling bored.
“Do either of you have a seven?” Ripper asked attentively.
"Augh! How did you even know I had that?" Scott groaned as he put a card from his hand down on the table. “I hate to say it, but you really are good at cards, Rip Van Winkle."
Chase noticed something behind him and began to scream, and his teammates looked at him oddly. "Is something wrong?" Izzy asked as her teammate pointed to the air behind him. A few deep notes played as the shot cut to the flapping ghost moving left and right by itself.
Scott, Izzy, and Ripper joined Chase in screaming before they dashed towards the exit.
"Hold on!" MK cried out, but they didn't listen. "I said HOLD ON!!!" This made the team come to a dead stop just as they were about to exit outside. "The ghost meter's aren't reading a thing." She held the ghost detector up.
“Then how do you explain that thing hovering over us?” Chase raised an eyebrow in annoyance.
“Something has to be inside that sheet, and it has to be…” MK said before she took the stack of cards and chucked it at the stuffed sheet, making it drop to the ground.
MK approached the “ghost”, and her teammates gasped in horror as she grabbed hold of the sheet and threw it off, revealing the stuffing inside it and the bird escaped from the stuffing and flew away.
"Great Scott!" Scott declared while the bird flew past him. "It was just a hoodwink!"
Confessional: Chase
"If the Grips are trying to scare us so bad, then they must be doing a great job doing so," Chase told the confessional camera. "Putting a bird inside a sheet was genius."
Confessional Ends
The scene cut back outside, where the Grips turned away from the window they'd been watching from.
"Well, that didn't work," Brick sighed. "Sorry about your bird, Jasmine."
"It's no big deal. I'm not the bird's mother," Jasmine said.
“Does anybody else have any better ideas that don't involve stuffing animals into sheets?” Anne Maria asked impatiently.
“Leave that to me,” Brick spoke up.
"Don't you tend to get scared easily?" Jasmine wondered.
“Admittedly, I do, but I want to provide cooperation for this team,” Brick said. “And I will not take no for an answer.”
The team looked at each other for a brief while before giving in. “You are a Grip after all. What's our plan?” Jasmine asked.
Back in the craft services tent, the Gaffers had resumed their card game. "Give me all your two's!" Chase said.
The lights in the tent then shut off. "Uh, I'll give my two's later," Izzy said frightfully as she and the other Gaffers were shown looking around in confusion.
The scene moved outside, to where Brick was standing by a power box. He had already pulled the main switch down and took out a walkie talkie. "The power has been cut," he whispered into it.
As the Gaffers looked around their tent, the camera panned to Justin watching them just outside a window. "Nice work, Crew Cut," he whispered into a walkie talkie of his own. "Speed Writer, are you there?"
"At the ready, Dashing Devil," Millie replied from outside the tent.
"Remember, this is just Chris or the Killer Grips trying to scare us," MK warned her team.
“Yeah, you may be right,” Chase said optimistically. “This team doesn't give up.”
“Or die trying,” Scott added.
An odd, scratchy moaning began around them. The camera cut back to Millie, the author holding a megaphone and producing the moans.
Inside the tent, the viewpoint shifted to reveal Jasmine dressed in a security guard's uniform swaying in the air above them, her hat conveniently lowered over her eyes. She was obviously in a makeshift harness, and the camera followed the rope attached to her up to the rafters of the tent where Anne Maria was shown clinging to a beam with the other end of the line in one hand and a walkie talkie in the other.
"That's a go from Metal Hair and Long Legs," Anne Maria whispered.
The Gaffers all watched the supposed ghost sway about. “Now THAT is a ghost!” Ripper freaked out.
"I'm too hot to die!" Chase shouted before the team started to run off screaming.
"Are you serious?!" MK hissed. "The ghost meters are not going off!"
From his position, Justin threw a fork intending to aim for the detector, and just when the fork was about to hit its target, MK quickly saw the silverware hit the button on her detector, and despite it going off, the AV girl simply stood still and did not move.
“Yeah, nice try!” she laughed with a smirk after picking up the fork. "I know you're not a ghost, Jasmine!" MK pointed at the 'ghost'. “You can come back now, team!”
Jasmine lifted her hat and revealed her surprised face. "Abort now! We failed!" she said above her.
Up in the rafters, Anne Maria's eyes went wide as she began to pull up. At ground level, MK's teammates returned to the tent and watched in bewilderment as the 'ghost' began to ascend.
“How are you so good at not being scared?” Scott asked MK.
“To make it short, sweet, and to the point, I'm not a dummy,” MK said smugly.
An air horn was sounded off as Chris entered the tent with one in his possession. "The Screaming Gaffers win the challenge. And the Killer Grips are heading to the elimination ceremony!"
The Gaffers all cheered for their victory.
The scene cut to the communal bathroom where Brick was in the middle of washing his hands. After finishing, the cadet was about to step out until he saw Justin enter.
“Hey man. I want to talk to you,” Justin said.
“What could it be about, Justin?” Brick wondered.
“Earlier today, you were mumbling something while you were unconscious,” Justin mentioned. “You even sounded frightened like a bear was coming to kill you.”
“You still remember that?” Brick felt embarrassed.
“I do, but I feel like now is the perfect time to bring it up,” Justin continued. “You've been avoiding us lately and it's confusing us.”
“That is true,” Brick sighed, “but it's not…”
“Jasmine's really concerned about you,” Justin cut him off. “You and her have a bond going, Brick, and is hiding whatever you're doing worth ruining it?”
This caused Brick to fall silent for a bit as he reconsidered his actions before he opened his mouth. “I think I know what I have to do,” he said with a stern look on his face.
The footage faded straight into the opening sequence of the Gilded Chris Awards, followed by a flash to a long-distance shot of the amphitheater as the host approached his podium. The five losing teens were shown voting, with the trio of Millie, Justin, and Anne Maria in the upper row while Brick and Jasmine sat in front.
"And now, fraidy cat Grips," Chris said as the Gaffers were all standing on the stage alongside him, "it's time to announce who will not win a Gilded Chris this week. Who deserves to go home bitterly disappointed, tears in their eyes?"
“I hope someone takes a picture if that happens,” Ripper whispered to his team with a snicker.
“Watching the elimination ceremony is already our reward, but that would be sweeter,” Scott said.
Chef arrived in his usual dress with several golden awards. He bitterly took out an envelope, to which Chris quickly snatched up.
"And! The Gilded Chrises go to...," he announced as the Grips were seen sitting anxiously. "Anne Maria, Millie, Jasmine!" One by one, the three caught the awards that were tossed to them. "Still on the chopping block, Justin and Brick!" The camera panned from one boy to the other, the former looking calm and the latter feeling settled.
"Chris, I'll have to stop you there!" Brick stood up and walked onto the stage, much to everyone's confusion. "I volunteer for elimination. I do not deserve to stay. I did not follow my own code."
"Brick!" Chef yelled in frustration, but quickly chuckled nervously and walked over to the guilty boy. "Why don't you and I have a chat before you do anything stupid!" he whispered menacingly.
"I'm done listening to whatever you tell me to do!" Brick declared to the taken back man and then turned to the others. "Ever since the third challenge, me and Chef were in a secret and illegal alliance."
Everyone gasped at the dropped bombshell as Chef smiled nervously. "He's been attempting to build me up and coach me through the challenges just so we could split the money, and I do not want any part in this." As Brick spoke, Chris could be shown sending an outraged look at his assistant.
"Wait a minute!" Chase cried out. "All the food we've been eating. The pizza, the cheesecake, the sandwiches. That was you?"
"Why leave when you've been making our stay here better?" MK questioned with genuine sadness.
"Yeah!" Justin said in agreement while he and the Grips got on stage with the others. "Can't we just vote Chef off instead?" The model ignored the glare he was receiving from Chef.
"I'm sorry, but I have to make my conscience clean again," Brick responded. He then noticed Jasmine looking at the ground with disappointment. “Jasmine, are you feeling-”
“Like you said, it's best that you stay away from the film lot,” Jasmine said with an upset glare. “And more importantly from me. You lied to me, and a long distance apart is what's best right now.”
Brick hung his head in shame. “Understood!” he obeyed dejectedly.
The scene flashed to Brick stepping into the waiting limo with a sad wave. Chris walked up to it just as the door slammed shut and it drove off, leaving the host standing at the end of the red carpet with a vague smile on his face.
"Well folks," he told the camera. "Looks like everyone just lost their best chef and most moraled man. Now that they've survived this week's fright fest, they'll be forced to bear the most horrific, stomach-churning, gut-wrenching challenge ever! Chef's cooking!” The man laughed gleefully. “I love this game.”
(Roll the Credits)
(Bonus Clip)
“I know I did the right thing, and I don't regret admitting to my wrongdoings, but that doesn't mean that I can ignore the consequences,” Brick said inside the limo. “My fellow competitors will have to go back to eating Chef's less than quality food, and cooking is something I've taken passion in doing now, and my friendship with Jasmine is more or less strained.” He frowned sadly. “I never meant to hurt her at all. I could've told her the truth earlier on, and she still would've been disappointed, but at least she'd see that I was the noble man I told her I am. Now all that's left for me to do is hope that she wins the season.”
Eva - 14th
Geoff - 14th
Izzy - RETURNED
Trent - 12th
Sky - 11th
Brick - 10th
Killer Grips: Anne Maria, Jasmine, Justin, Millie
Screaming Gaffers: Chase, Izzy, MK, Ripper, Scott

The seven brothers of sin shifted uncomfortably behind me, their eager eyes watching me form a plan outside of a raging night club. The ruby lights flashed with the music, the boys looking rather uncomfortable in their designer black suits. Lowering a pair of sunglasses over my eyes, the club Blood Moon was getting a call. Flipping my dagger in between my fingers, my scarlet Jessica Rabbit dress had slits on both sides to allow me to move. Tucking my dagger into my cleavage, the boys had their weapons spinning in their palms. Sneaking in wasn't going to happen, the boys proving to be too eager to cause serious damage.
“We need to raid the tower to find Moonvanya. Your task is to fight off her bodyguards.” I commanded with a sad smile, all of them missing Croak as much as me. “I miss Croak as well but I have a feeling she will reincarnate as something close to us.” Lust cleared his throat, his hand running through his navy waves. What was this guy going to say? Nothing could make me feel better about my current situation.
“She will reincarnate as your first baby between Morte and you.” He spoke simply, smiling to himself. “She spoke as much to me a couple of weeks before she departed. I thought it was the sweetest thing that she wants you to be her mother.” Scarlet as bright as my dress painted my cheeks, my eyes refusing to meet his. The others attempted to comfort me, the words falling on deaf ears. My last mission taught me something and that help was always around me, Morte begging for me to begin to ask for it. That didn't mean that I had to listen to him all the time.
“Color me happy for the honor of raising her in the future.” I chirped cheerfully, their nerves easing a bit. “Time to destroy the party.” Plucking a bomb from my pocket, a devilish smile twisted across my face the moment I ripped out the top of my smoke bomb. Tossing it over my head, the miniature ball rolled into the club. Popping antidote pills into our mouth, the sleeping gas wouldn’t have an effect on us. Leaping over the bushes, a cloud of onyx smoke filled the entire building. Running in through the chaos, the stairs caught my eyes. Leaping over the chaos, the female representation of the seven sins blocked our path to the top. Raising their weapons, devilish grins illuminated their features. Weapons of all types whistled by my head, Lust shouting for me to go ahead. Watching the demons battle for me, guilt had hesitation holding me back. Motioning for me to go, my shimmering scarlet boots clicking up the stairs. Sounds echoed down the hall, I hid in the shadows. Two bodyguards twice my height and three times as muscular were seconds from coming down the flight of stairs I was on, the full moon masks obscuring their faces. Shadow snakes slithered down my arms, shadowy energy building round the heel of my boots. Hovering around the corner, the timing had to be perfect. Seconds from rounding the corner, my muscles groaned in protest the moment I lifted my foot over my head. Slamming my heel into the landing, pure energy shattered the stairs beneath them. Spinning on my toes with my other leg straight in the air, another ball of energy built around my boots. Swinging my feet towards their heads, the snaps of their necks breaking had nausea wracking my stomach. Hissing echoed in the air as my snakes devoured their bodies in seconds. Climbing what remained of the stairs, a low growl had the hairs standing on the back of my head. A scaled dragon creature charged at me, the monster belonging to Stormana. Assessing its energy, the monster smelled of her. Putting the pieces together, it was merely a piece of her. Digging at the concrete underneath, the inky black scales shimmered as it scurried towards me. Pushing off the concrete, the monster snarled the moment I landed on its head. Running along its long body, this would be an opportune time for me to figure out what damaged our newest enemy Stormy. Pushing off its swinging tail, my dagger expanded to its full form. Slamming the tip towards the scales, sparks flew back with me. Smashing into the wall, plaster rained down on me. The scales were impenetrable, my shadow snakes howling in pain. Clutching my side, their pain was mine. Silent tears danced down my cheeks, the monster tearing them to pieces. Struggling to my feet, my guardians needed me. Horror rounded my eyes at a ball of flames crackling to life in its mouth. Calling them back, they slithered back into my palm. My blade shrank down to a dagger, most of my powers fading while my snakes worked to heal themselves. Croak would bound in about now, my heart aching for her. Struggling to my feet, the fight wasn’t over. Cuts appeared on my skin, several organs bursting. Sinking to my knees, a flash of wild scarlet curls caught my eyes. Watching my blood pool around me, an invisible weapon had been used on me. The creature bounding towards me tripled, a groan oozing of agony pouring from my lips. Falling forward, the feeling of hot air lashing at my cheeks had me frantically feeling around for my emergency bomb. Rolling it to my trembling hand, a tear of the trigger had it ticking. Using the rest of my strength had it flying into its stomach. Bracing myself for impact, a slender but muscular arm scooped me up. Hel smiled down at me, her blade spinning in her palm. Covering me with her body, blood and guts rained down onto her crimson leather jacket. Checking me over for my wounds, a low growl rumbled in her throat. Don't die for me too, you freaking idiot.
“Let me take this one, my dear friend.” She pleaded while mixing a healing potion, pure rage burning in her eyes. “Drink this like a good friend.” Forcing the vial into my mouth, a thick liquid coated my throat on the way down. Crashing up the stairs, nothing came into focus. Neon green smoke curled around me, Eris slapping my cheeks to wake me up.
“Come on, girl. We need you.” She begged with neon tears in my eyes, her hand hovering over my heart. “Stormana is heading our way and we don’t stand a chance.” Helping me to my feet, our target’s head hit the tip of my boot. Praying for the gods to heal me to fight their enemy, a golden glittering ray encompassed me. Reversing any damage, a dark energy had swallowed the area. Extending my dagger to its full length, Eris and Hel protested as I climbed onto the nearest ledge. Turning back to face them, a quiet smile lingered on my lips. Jumping off, smoke scented air nipped at my cheeks. Landing on a tree branch, the wood groaned the moment I lowered myself onto the pavement. Kicking off my boots, an eerie female voice called for me. Sprinting towards the source, the branches clawed at my cheeks. Pushing through the pain, my team caught up to me. Remembering how Croak ended, the others paled at my words. No one was dying by her hands under my watch.
“Don’t follow me and help the victims get out of the building safely. The very thing is about to buckle.” I ordered tersely, Eris and Hel begging to come along. “I can’t have you guys come either. That is how Croak died. If I were to lose any of you, I don’t know how sane I would be after that.” Crunching back towards the screaming people, Stormy was my problem and mine alone. Continuing to dart in between the trees, the branches dug their fingers into my flesh once more. Catching sight of her, I hid behind a tree. Resting for a second, her dragon eyes scanned the surrounding trees. Couldn't she leave us alone!
“Back to play, my little rat.” She teased with a maniacal giggle, her Cheshire Cat grin growing wider. “No backup this time. Did I scar you?” Chills ran up my spine at the last statement, mixed emotions flashing in my eyes. The color drained from my cheeks, the image of her cutting down Croak paralyzing me. No enemy had scared me to this point, discreet weeps pouring from my lips. Croak, I needed Croak. Bowing my head in shame, Lust’s words had a smile curling on my lips. Yes, I could go home and bring her back into my life. Storm clouds rumbled to life, a heavy rain washing the blood off of my skin. Using the storm to cover my movements, my breath hitching with each step. Coming up behind her, sparks danced in the air the moment our blades met. Her golden flame sword glowed in the deepening darkness, determination showing in my defiant smile.
“Not today! You will never scare me!” I shouted through a wall of tears, raw fury doubling my powers. “Your head on my wall will be your payment for taking her away. Croak had no business dying that day, you fucking monster!” Swinging her blade towards me, frustration grew in her face at how easily I dodged it. Slamming the tip of my blade into the dirt, a blast of shadowy energy shot her into the dark clouds. Tracking where she would land, golden flames had me ducking behind a rock. Burying my head into my arms, flames torched the rock protecting me. Strength was on her side, my wit would have to make up the difference. Today wasn’t a battle to decide the winner but how she fought. Sure, the blows would sting but more information would be gathered. Poking my head up, Stormy was nowhere to be seen. Trusting my intuition, an annoyed great flowed from my lips at her popping up over me. Rolling out of the way, sparks fluttered with ash upon her claw’s contact with the rock. Jumping to my feet, her way wasn’t going to flourish under my retaliation. Summoning a few of my snakes, terror rounded my eyes at the golden flame dragon roaring behind her. Cocking her head to the left with a crazed grin, a bead of sweat dripped off of her brow. Scanning her for a vulnerable spot, her horns glittered at the right moment. Ordering my snakes to keep the dragon busy, bark groaned as I leapt onto the nearest branch. Jumping from branch to branch, the angle of my strike had to be deadly accurate. My shadow snakes twirled around the dragon, something preventing them from burning. Picking up on the change in my own scent, the slight scent of a cloud reminded me of how gods smelled. The opportunity presented itself, a kick off the branch giving enough speed to propel myself at her. Swinging my blade over my head, the sound of her horns snapping off had us both stunned. Hitting the dirt with her horns, dark blood poured down her face. Golden flames whisked her away, the surplus of energy had me too paralyzed to move. Reaching for her horns, my fingers curled around the smallest parts. Hugging them close to my chest, something had been gained from this pointless fight. Thousands of voices whispered in my ears, Hel scooping me up. Wishing that the chaos would die down, no such luck would be granted. Carrying me into the clouds, pride shimmered in her eyes. Not grasping what was going on, her slender hands set me down in front of the lead god in his flowing robes and golden mask. Resting on my haunches, the horns hit my lap. Scrambling to catch them, those darn things were my prize. Panic twisted my features at the sight of an empty chair, my anxious mind wondering what divine punishment was coming my way. Wasting no time, his big hand slid on a jet black snake mask over my face. Draping a matching cloak over me, nothing was getting pieced together in my mind. What the hell was he thinking!
“Goddess of Shadows, you may now rise.” He announced with pride, the others clapping out of necessity as he leaned in to whisper into my ears. “Rise and take your throne among the gods. Don’t worry, you can go home after.” Embarrassment colored my cheeks, my muscles were too weak to move. Not proud of the state of my body, the other gods didn't need to see this side of me.
“I can’t.” I returned in a quiet whisper, his eyes flitting about the room. “When you gave me that boost, I might have used it too fast and long. The willpower doesn’t exist anymore.” Averting my gaze to the clouds, his finger lifted up my chin. Tears dripped off of my chin, every cell in me wanting Croak to be alive.
“That chair is yours. Sacrifices are a part of a hero’s journey.” He continued soft enough for only me to hear, the years of service paying off in the worst way. “What if I told you that I made you a goddess myself?” Time slowed down, our eyes locking with the utmost respect passing between us. Struggling to my feet, Hel helped me over to my throne in a way that didn't show my current weakness. Darkening to a midnight black, the lead god took his throne. Hel stood behind me, true bliss relaxing her features. Glancing up at her, her hand cupped mine. Depising the abruptness of it all, my eyes scanned the room.
“We have a new goddess of the shadows and Hel is her first worshiper. Respect her as much as you respect me. Many years have been sacrificed on her behalf and a broken life.” He proclaimed while accepting a golden goblet overflowing with wine, jealous glares snapping in my direction. “Judging by your reactions, my decision is final. She is my second in command. Not one of you has been considerate or half as great as a leader she could be. Today she will go back home and do her damn job because she wants to, not has to. Those horns are from our enemy. Have any of you gotten close to harming Stormana? No, sit down and shut up!” Getting onto the tasks at hand, Hel plopped onto the armrest of my chair. Summoning a pad and pen, the tip never stopped moving. Drowning in the sea of hatred and bitterness, Hel’s fingers intertwined with mine. Leaning down close to my ear, her words did little to ease my decaying mental health.
"I pleaded with him to make you a goddess.” She whispered kindly in my ear, her other hand playing tucking a piece of hair behind my ears. “All you needed was one worshiper and here I am. Bask in what you earned.” Returning to taking notes, the horns glittering on my lap had my full attention. Drooling over cutting them open and testing the tissues had me wishing that this meeting was over. A bell rang, the others rising. Popping to my feet, Hel stabilized me long enough to prepare me for my descent. Embracing me from behind as I clung to the horns, our bodies sinking back down towards our home. Feeling well enough to walk on my own, a pang jolted my side. A fever burned on my cheeks, the thin layer of sweat glistening on my skin. Limping down to the basement, my blade shrank back down to its dagger form. Tucking it into the case, Morte looking up from his current monster didn’t slow my steps. Slamming her horns onto the next examination table, Morte cleared his throat as I began to set up my tools. Spinning on his heels, blood stains dotted his white lab coat. Cupping my mouth, the sight of it had me fighting the urge to toss up my lunch.
“A zombie looks better than you. Maybe you should get some r-” He commented with a mixture of playfulness and the usual concern. Wiping the sweat off of my brow, his palms slamming on my table snapped me back to reality. Blushing hard at how close his face was to mine, an impatient scowl dimmed his features. Sliding over a new pair of gloves while changing his own, one touch on both horns had them decaying into several thick circles. Hating that I didn't get to cut them myself, my brow twitched with obvious annoyance.
“Talk to me. Why do you smell so delectable? I can’t seem to resist you.” He demanded with an apologetic smile, my gloved fingers tracing the pieces of the horn. “Another thing bothers me, you smell like you are entering a h-” Covering his mouth, the task at hand needed to be dealt with. Too feeble to speak for a second, the room began to spin. Time, time wasn’t on my hands.
“Don’t worry about it. I am a goddess, a legit goddess.” I choked out through gritted teeth, another jolt announcing my heat. “Get back to w-” Cupping my cheek, his lips smashed into mine desperately. Sinking into the moment, my heart rate matched his. Releasing me from his spell, the stool hissed the moment I crashed onto the hard top. Lowering my hand to the table, a strange paleness came over my skin.
“Nice. That makes you more impressive in my eyes. What you need to confirm is what state of your goddamn heat you are in. If I am going to make a potion to repress it, a few more facts are required.” He complimented me lovingly, the room spinning again. “I can wait for all of eternity.” Shaking my head, the repression wouldn’t be necessary.
“Let’s go through with it.” I wept with a sad smile, wanting to feel the warmth of bearing a child. “Croak wants to come back and I can’t deny a friend.” Taking a second to register to what I said, his genuine smile had life flickering in his eyes. Pressing his palms together, uncontrollable sobs wracked his body. Judging by Stormy’s reaction, her horns would need to grow back before we battled again. Demons with horns were as strong as the size of their horns, my little victory buying me time to figure out what destroyed my enemy.
“You can’t be serious with that request.” He spoke in disbelief, his ears flicking about. “My dreams are about to come true!” Dancing over to me, he spun me around. Spinning me underneath him, his lips kissed mine tenderly. Swinging me back up to my feet, his hands rested on my shoulders. There's the Morte I loved back then, everything about him oozing life.
“Calm down and get your work done. I will tell you when I am ready.” I chuckled lightly, placing the biggest pieces into an evidence bag. Returning to his monster with a fresh pair of gloves, my shaking fingers picked up the scraping tool. Digging at the center of the horn, my fingers traced the rings in her horn. Counting the rings, these horns were thousands of years old. Hel popped up behind me, her cheery hello sending me ten feet into the air. Catching me before I hit the floor, her gloved hand laid down several evidence bags. Plopping down next to me, her pensive expression had my tired smile falling.
“Several more gods defected today.” She informed me while rubbing her palms together, shame dimming my eyes. “Don’t be so glum. They are nothing for us to destroy. People like us don’t get second chances but look at you. Second in command is impressive. Hell, he hasn’t had one for years. Are you going to quench your cycle or are you going to ignore it?” Flashing her a sad smile, my shaking fingers dropped the pieces into the bags.
“Not this time. Morte and I lost everything that night. Croak wants to come back. She is entrusting me with her happy ending.” I answered simply, her face brightening at my reply. “Why so happy? Part of me is giving in to my dreams. Do you want to learn how to catalog items?” Nodding her head vigorously, the way she focused on my lesson had me happy to be like her sister. Finishing up the last item, Hel popped to her feet. Beginning to bow in my direction, my palm caught her forehead. Can people quit acting like they need to bow!
“We are friends not a master and a servant.” I teased blithely, remembering how the twins kept trying to bow. “I suppose I can count on you to be my bodyguard.” Remaining in the awkward position, her arms dangled limply. Mumbling a series of gracious thank yous, she buried me into a bear hug. Basking in her warmth, both of us had something to live for. How long has it been since I felt this jovial? The flames of hope burned in my heart, Hel helping me to see a way out.

Table of Contents
Chapter 35 l Chapter 36 l Chapter 37 l Chapter 38 l Chapter 39
Chapter 40 l Chapter 41 l Chapter 42

Ragna
I didn’t feel any wind. I held Gabriel’s hand as we ascended, I could certainly tell we were moving upwards.

“My mother said time worked differently in Sheol, have we met on the mortal plane yet?” I asked Gabriel.

“Yes,” they said curtly.

I looked away, “...So, you know St. Michael chose poorly, then?”

“If you think St. Michael chose poorly, then I suppose he did,” Gabriel spoke, their words soft and demure, “Had you said nothing on the matter, I would not agree with you.”

I furrowed my brow, “But I failed.”

“You were defeated,” Gabriel clarified, “Whether you failed or not has yet to be determined.”

I felt hopeful, for a moment. Maybe in Timothy’s hands the Sanctified Blade of the Guardians would find better use? Maybe that’s why Michael gave it to me? Because Michael knew I could lead the Archangels with it symbolically, knowing that I would give it to the right person?

“Your intuitive mind takes little to reach its conclusions,” Gabriel noted.

“...Oh,” I paused, “You can hear my thoughts?”

“I can see your emotions,” Gabriel explained, “It’s why I am unable to tell you why you have been called upon. If I gave you even the slightest clue, you’d likely already have deduced the nature of your meeting with Our Father,” Gabriel sighed. “You share that trait with your father: Far too wise for your own good.”

I was unsure how to take such an assessment of myself, but decided I had best remain quiet going forward.

As the scene around me changed. Towering over us was a massive silver wall of light. At almost 10 meters high, was a huge golden gate with white alabaster accents glimmering in surreal white light.

Standing before the gate, with a massive bronze staff in one hand and an oversized tome in the other, was a Cherubim Angel, clad head to toe in bronze armor. Over the armor were long white robes, covering them from the shoulders to their knees, tied to their armor with a large silvery belt.

The helm of the Bronze Angel turned to me, “... Melinoë Walters, also known as Sellenia Misho, the Ragnarök.” As the Angel spoke, its massive book opened, pages turning on their own as it did.

I paused, “Walters?” I turned to Gabriel, “Wait, Persephone had a last name on Dei?”

“Her first name was Cleopatra,” Gabriel’s voices echoed through the nearly endless space we stood in.

“Cleopatra? But Teryn called her… oooh… Pat, okay, yeah, that makes sense for Teryn, yeah,” I sighed, “...Guess she did that to everyone she met.”

“Only her friends,” Gabriel said, one head smiling, “...She calls me ‘Reia’.”

“...Huh,” I said, unsure how else to react.

Teryn would know Seraphim, wouldn’t she? Especially if Gabriel and other angels ferried souls to and from Sheol.

I wondered what she called the Angel Duma?

“...Your sins are so numerous, I am unsure, even with Gabriel ferrying your feted soul, how you do not sink into the depths of Hell,” the Bronze angel spoke, the gates opening, “I would carry that knowledge with you. For should Gabriel release you for but a moment behind these gates, the weight of your sins would drag you downward to eternal damnation.”

**“**Thank you, Brother Cephas,” Gabriel whispered, as we passed by, “For educating Ragna on her current predicament,” Gabriel looked down to me, “Come along, Ragna. We should not keep Our Father waiting.”

I turned to Cephas, looking at their visor, “Who did I hurt the most, in my life?”

Cephas did not hesitate in the least, “Our Father.”

My brow furrowed, “I don’t-”

“All sinners harm Our Father the most, above all!” His mighty voice boomed through the air. “For He sees all and He loves most. For Our Father loves His children more than any. To see them falter, to see them suffer and to bring others suffering, pains Him more than any other being on this or the next plane!” Cerphas declared.

I flinched as I felt Gabriel tugging me.

“Come,” Gabriel’s voice called. The large gates began to open before me. “...I should warn, those whom you vanquished that were found to be worthy are likely to be here. Your coming was, indeed, heralded.”

“And what does that mean?” I asked.

“It means keep your anger in check,” Gabriel chided.

I heaved a sigh as we walked through the gates.

As we passed through the towering gates, the scene changed entirely.

We were not standing near a gateway at all, but rather we were surrounded by towering white marble structures that defied all logic and physics.

Huge marble spires floated, upside down, on the horizon. Some were not even angled, but smoothed out hive-like structures with many windows and doors.

A yellow light filled the air, with both a flawless sunset on the far eastern side and a beautiful sunrise on the west.

I looked straight up and saw the shimmering twinkle of a night sky. Depending upon where I looked, the entire landscape took on the time of day I had last glanced upon.

My voice was caught in my throat as Gabriel began to lead me through the vast and almost infinite reaches of this place.

The horizon stretched out in every direction. The ground my feet treaded on was both yielding and firm. Looking down showed me the material looked like clouds, but felt like a sort of padded floor.

I noticed angels flying in the air. They began to land nearby.

It wasn’t long before I felt a chill running down my spine as I realized I recognized some of their faces.

Some gazed at me with somber eyes.

Others fixed me with glares full of anger and in this place I could see they felt a mixture of aversion to my presence but a satisfaction of justice. A sense of retribution filled the air.

“...These are the angles of the Guardian Temple I slew, aren’t they?” I asked Gabriel quietly.

“Yes,” Gabriel spoke succinctly.

One walked before us, the angel’s white wings opened. He had long blonde hair and his gray eyes fixed me with a look of disdain.

“Hastapher, clear a path,” Gabriel instructed.

Hastapher. Oh.

I frowned.

The old leader of the Guardian Temple’s defenses.

I gritted my teeth.

Hastapher pointed to me, his eyes narrowed on me, “Did you taste love but for less than 5 years, wicked one? Spawn of the Morning Star?”

I paused, narrowing my eyes on him, “...What?”

“Hastapher,” Gabriel growled, “Not now. Father has requested her presence.”

“Answer me, Cursed Daughter of Lucifer!” Hastapher shouted.

“No,” I quipped.

I recalled the words Hastapher spoke before I slew him: “May any happiness you ever have be tainted by greater sorrow. May the feat of victory always turn to ash in your mouth.”

Hastapher’s angry face changed and he moved, “Good.”

I gritted my teeth.

That curse upon me was real?! I nearly leapt at him until I spotted someone out of the corner of my eye.

Standing next to a mighty black-skinned Niten Dragon was Rachel.

Her red hair was down and her eyes were once again a soft blue. She looked so pure, so serene, but so heartbroken watching me.

My eyes filled with tears and I pulled away from Gabriel.

I heard Gabriel call out as my hand left their’s.

I watched Hastapher’s armor appear on him as he moved to stop me.

I jumped into the air and I soared towards Rachel.

Rachel pushed the Black Niten Dragon away from her and flew towards me.

“Rachel!” I shouted as I flew towards her.

Rachel smiled and shouted to me, “Ragna!”

We embraced.

I held her tight. The scent of her hair was the same. As we latched onto each other and landed on the ground, I could feel the memories we shared.

It was as if I was reliving every moment I had with her, however brief.

Memories of us on our little Eden. Visions of her pregnant with Lucilia.

I pulled back just enough to kiss her and she kissed me back.

At this moment, nothing else existed. Just her.

Just my Rachel and I.

My Dream. My Amaranthe.

When the kiss broke, her forehead pressed to mine and I couldn’t help but laugh through my tears of joy, “My Amaranthe…” I whispered, barely able to speak.

Rachel sniffled, “...Ragna. I missed you. I’m so sorry… I… I didn’t mean to leave you.”

My lip trembled as I heard footsteps behind me.

“...An enigma you both remain,” Gabriel’s voices spoke softly.

All around us, angels had cleared a circle, as if we were toxic or could somehow harm them.

Hastapher was closer than others, but held back many, “Do not touch them…” He spoke softly “...Ragna hangs here but by a thread.”

I looked at Rachel and I felt my knees sinking into the floor.

Rachel held me tight, “Don’t leave me again!”
Gabriel’s hand seized my shoulder, my knees no longer sinking. “Even with pure love, you nearly fell. It is a miracle you did not, Ragna. That was reckless of you,” Gabriel warned.

I turned to Gabriel, glaring, “I thought you lived for reunions.”

Gabriel’s three heads all raised their eyebrows.

I turned back to Rachel, looking at her beautiful tear filled eyes. I kissed her forehead and dried her tears, holding her face in my hands, “I will come back for you. I swear to you. Nothing here can keep me from you.”

Rachel just pursed her lips and nodded. She kissed me once more and I returned it.

“...That is enough, Ragna,” Gabriel whispered.

I broke the kiss and stood, my hand lingering on Rachel’s face as she looked up to me longingly.

“I promise,” I shouted as Gabriel led me onward, “I will come back for you!”

Rachel reached out to me, the Black Niten Dragon holding her back by the shoulder, Hastapher standing between us as Gabriel led me onward.

“Ragna!” Rachel cried, “I love you!”

“I love you too!” I answered back before I was taken far from her.

“...You should not make promises you cannot keep, Ragna,” Gabriel explained once we were out of earshot.

I took one of Gabriel’s hands as they led me onward, glaring ahead, “If anyone here… and I mean anyone thinks they can keep me from my Rachel, they’ll be sorely mistaken.”

Gabriel scoffed as they led me onward and I noticed less and less structures around us, “You are indeed, your father’s child.”

I glared at Gabriel as we continued forward.

Eventually, I saw a golden staircase looming out of the horizon.

It was narrow, but towering. Reaching high into the sky, where it ended I couldn’t see, outside of a pin-hole of white light where the stairs top could no longer be seen.

The base of the stairs had black obsidian-like flooring.

Gabriel stood there and turned to me, “Here you may release me. You will not fall from here onward.”

I let go, looking around, “So… where is ‘Our Father’?” I asked.

Gabriel pointed up the stairs, “They are there,” Gabriel turned to the steps, “Upon the top of these steps is the Throne of Heaven, where Our Father sits and waits.”

I looked up the dizzying steps.

No railings, no structure holding the steps together.

Each step floated on its own accord, suspended by nothing, connected to the other steps by nothing. All only half a meter wide.

“And I’m climbing to meet Them?” I asked.

“You will attempt to climb,” Gabriel said as they turned from me, “Only Angels have survived the journey. Fall from the steps and you will burn in Hellfire. But that is the least of your concerns,” Gabriel explained.

“The least of my concerns?” I scoffed, “What do you mean?”

“To climb upon these steps is to face the Creator of our universe. The raw power of The Almighty is so grand that even to stand near Their Radiance is to stand before a burning star. Those souls who lack the constitution to weather such power will burn away, until nothing remains,” Gabriel spoke firmly to me.

I shrugged, “So, I need to climb up the stairs, not fall and face the power of a star unprotected?” I spread my wings.

“You’ll find your wings will not help you here, Ragna,” Gabriel chuckled, “The power of The Almighty would cast you down immediately.”

I narrowed my eyes, “...Thanks for the warning. Are you hoping I will fail?”

Gabriel nodded, “As I said, you should not make promises you cannot keep. I suspect this will be the last time we see one another.”

I turned to Gabriel, “If I don’t make it… What happens?” I asked.

“God shall enact His final act and His children shall be with him,” Gabriel sighed, “The mortal realm will be left to those immortals who would call themselves Gods and the damned left at their mercy.”

I frowned, “So… Eris… Xyphiel…” I winced, “...And every demon in Hell.”

Gabriel nodded, “Yes. But worry not, your love will be safe. I can promise that much.”

I looked to the steps and then back to Gabriel, “Thank you for that.”

“This may come as a shock, but I know what it is like to lose a loved one, only to find them on the other side,” Gabriel explained, “This is something I only discovered recently… after I suffered a remediation from my Father.”

I scoffed, “And what did you do that angered your father?”

Gabriel paused, the eyes on two of their heads closing as the eyes on one faced me sternly, “I loved a mortal and kept him on the mortal plane without an edict or any other logical reason. For this, I was punished.”

“Well, even the pious can err, huh?” I mocked.

Gabriel’s eyes opened, all fixed upon me with wrath, “If you fall now, none would know if it were by my hand or by your own failing.”

“I think someone would know, since They know everything,” I chuckled as I shook my head, “But I will not fall. Not to you and not as I climb” I declared as I made my way to the steps, moving to the first and already feeling a potent heat hitting me in the face.

I moved to the second step and nearly stumbled back as a powerful wind pushed against me.

“It starts with one~” Gabriel’s voices began to sing.

I growled and started slowly up the next step.

“All I know,” Gabriel’s voices called out, “It’s so unreal.”

I walked further, at the fifth step at least, I found the heat was nearly unbearable, like facing into the exhaust of a powerful engine.

Gabriel’s voices rang out in song, both mourning and joyful, “Just to watch you go~”

I grunted, pushing myself up to my feet and moving up farther. I pushed past several more steps before I fell forward, gripping the hot golden metal before me.

I felt my hands searing from the heat and turned back to see only a dozen or so steps had been cleared.

Gabriel remained below, their voices ringing out, almost taunting as they sang. “I tried so hard, and got so far. But in the end, it doesn’t even matter. I had to fall, to lose it all, but in the end, it doesn’t even matter.”

I growled and pushed myself higher, feeling the heat through the soles of my feet as I climbed.

The hot wind blew my hair wildly and the heat penetrated my clothing as I climbed, keeping my eyes fixed on the next step before me.

“I try so hard,” Gabriel’s voices sang, “Got so far.”

I gritted my teeth and started a mad sprint upwards, trying to ignore the heat, the pain and every bit of chaos around me.

I focused on one step before the other.

I moved up at least another dozen steps before I had to fall to my knees, the heat overwhelming me as I felt my clothing start to burn.

“In the end~” Gabriel’s voices rang out, the final word holding for what seemed like eternity as I knelt.

I tossed my jacket off, watching it ignite in the air as I pulled my belt off. The soles of my boots had already burned away, my bare feet sizzled on scorching gilded steps.

“Pain is temporary,” I tried to encourage myself, as I pressed onward.

Gabriel finally changed from their long note, their voices somehow still reaching me, “I tried so hard, and got so far! But in the end, it doesn’t even matter. I had to fall, to lose it all! But in the end, it doesn’t even matter!”

I grunted and pushed onwards, the song Gabriel’s voices sang now seemed far more personal. As if they hadn’t been personal enough, I now set myself to a slow, steady and grueling pace of setting one bare foot before the other on burning step after burning step.

“I’ve put my trust in you. Pushed as far as I could go. For all this, there’s only one thing you should know-” Gabriel’s voices called out as a potent wind made me pause for a moment, their voice taking on a venom I didn’t expect. “I’ve put my trust in you! Pushed as far as I can go! For all this, there’s only one thing you should know! I tried so hard and got so far. In the end, it doesn’t even matter! You had to fall to lose it all - but in the end, it doesn’t even matter!”

I pulled myself up, gritting my teeth as I continued, the wind growing in strength both in intensity and heat.

My hair ignited and despite this I pushed on. Gabriel’s last words that I could hear were ringing in my mind.

I wasn’t going to fall as they wanted. I would see Rachel again. I’d see Zepherina again. My Lucilia. I would see my family once more!

As I pushed onwards, a blast of heat nearly knocked me off the edge of one step.

I could barely see as my eyes felt like they were burning.

I paused, grabbing the step ahead of me with one hand as I knelt on the other.

I screamed in pain as what little clothing remained ignited and burned away.

Now, I was completely and utterly exposed. I held my wings tight to my back, pushed myself up and kept walking.

The searing heat from each step only grew more intense as I climbed.

I glanced down to my hand, seeing my very flesh bubbling and charring.

I turned away from the sight, trying not to focus on what was happening to me.

I glanced upwards and it seemed I had made almost no real progress. The pin-point of light was still so far away.

I pushed onwards, the heat only growing, my pain only intensifying.

Still, I pushed onward.

A shot of light shocked me, a soft violet hue filled my vision.

I glanced down at my hand, noticing no flesh remained, but now a glowing essence of sorts.

A violet light, faintly glowing around me. Steam seeping from my hand in the powerful hot wind.

“Oh Guardians… My soul’s being stripped bare…” I thought as I watched violet mana slip away in the monstrously brutal wind.

I shook my head and carried on with my climb.

By no means did it get easier.

If anything my flesh was a buffer against the pain. Now every blast of hot wind felt like pins being slammed into my body. My soul?

I think all of my physical form had been eradicated at this point as I made my arduous climb skyward.

Even though my wings lacked feathers, a dangerous glance backwards showed they were bare wings. Even the flesh on them was stripped away, all that remained were glowing violet wing bones with wisps of mana between them.

Even turning nearly made me fall as the dizzying height I had reached showed I was so far away from where I started that it looked like nothing but a pin-prick of a black dot.

I began to panic slightly as I looked up at the sky above.

There, the pin-prick had changed.

Now, a fiery ball of light shimmered in the distance and gazing upon it burned my eyes.

I cast my eyes down, looking at the burning golden steps I was currently frying on.

I crawled up the steps now, one hand ahead of the other, one knee at a time.

The only relief came from when I would lift a limb up and while the pain stopped for a moment, it came back when I made contact with the golden step.

It was here that I realized my hands were withering away.

Each moment they remained on the step more and more of my hand burned away.

Now, I climbed with the stumps of my forearms, unable to grasp the step before me.

I couldn’t feel my feet as well.

I wondered what I looked like now. An unfinished model of a figure, perhaps?

Lacking all definitions that made me what I was.

My hair, my skin, my feathers.

Was I even myself?

What was driving me? Why was I subjecting myself to this horrific experience?

Rachel.

With renewed vigor, I pushed myself further.

Rachel, Timothy, Lucilia, Zepherina and even Maddy.

My family, my friends, everyone who would call me nothing more than the product of my parents.

I wouldn’t fall.

I would pass this trial, no matter how excruciating it was.

No matter how much of myself was burned away.

I wasn’t going to fail.

I couldn’t fail, not now.

I chuckled, it was just as Gabriel said, “I had come so far…”
The wind stopped abruptly. As did the burning in my limbs.

Though I still felt the heat.

I looked up and was immediately blinded by an unyielding white light.

I recoiled, trying to guard my face with my arm but still the light burned my eyes. All I could do was cast my eyes away from the source.

A cacophony of voices of all ages, genders and accents filled my ears.

It felt as if someone was stabbing my ears with a thousand needles. It was so loud.

“Ah, I see you have finally made it.”

I gasped in pain, “Please… Not so loud!” I begged.

The volume didn’t change, nor did the pain of every word, “I am sorry. These words shall pain you. I will attempt to be brief.”

I grunted as I heard the words, “Fine! Then… Speak! Why have you brought me here?! What do you want with me?!”

“Want? No.” The cacophony called out, “Need.”

I panted as I heard that the Father, Guardians or whatever, was doing Their best to be brief. But it seemed that being brief meant They were being vague. “Just… Please tell me everything you need from me. I’ll just… Bare it…” I shivered in pain.

“Very well. I do not wish to harm you, Daughter of Lucifer. But, I will tell you all now, since you are before Me.” The Guardian’s began, “No God rules forever, though all Gods are Eternal. How does this strike you, Ragna?”

I winced, taking a moment to collect myself, “Gods… Come and go with worship, right? Some rise, some fall… Eris was weak and then she started to get some praise, she got stronger when Chaos took hold of the world.”

“Yes. The Spirit of Chaos is but a trifling thing. Though the power she wields, it is very specific for one. For even she cannot peer past this moment,” The Guardians explained.

“And, I know this will hurt to hear but, what is the significance of this moment?” I asked.

“The moment when Ragna Misho comes before Us. Not every path led you here. In fact, but one path did. It was not the cleanest path, nor the one I desired, but such is free will. We know all choices made, We know all paths forward. We see the beginning and the end, for We are the Alpha and the Omega.” The Guardians declared.

“So free will is bullshit?!” I shouted, still reeling from the pain of the Guardians' words.

“Far from it,” the Guardians bellowed, “Free will is why I am, both Omnipotent and Omni-absent.”

I caught my breath, the Guardians allowing me time to understand.

“We see all choices of all people. As such, We cannot know what true path the world will take. There are endless destinies and We have seen every one of them. We cannot choose the outcome. We plan and We wish for one, but the Free Will of Mortals is a constant challenge. A blessing and a curse.”

I panted, “So, you know the outcome of every decision I could have ever made?”

“And the outcomes of those decisions you could not make. Those of your mother and father, your brother and even those whom you did not realize altered your path.” The Guardians explained.

“So,” I took a deep breath, which only served to steel myself, “What is it you want from me? Why have you asked me here?”

“We want to offer you a path to redemption. For you, Ragna, have found Love. You understand, for once, what Love is. That is how you climbed. If you did not know Love, you would fail. Either fallen or vanished. Your faith remained with your heart. But still, you have done so much wrong, your soul is unclean, unfit to rise. It will either sit in Sheol or burn in Hellfire.”

I looked up, trying to stare at the blinding light once more, but I had to turn away, “So… What are the terms? What must I do? Will you send me back to finish it? To vanquish Xyphiel?!”

“No. We will leave this plane. We shall take our children and retire. But someone must shepard the damned souls and give them a chance at redemption,” The Guardian’s voices all appeared to change tone, they were happier, for a moment, “Who better to guide a flock of those needing redemption than one who, herself, seeks a second chance?”

I paused to consider and I slowly got to my feet, “So, I cannot go back… You want me to watch over the souls of the damned and help them become redeemed?”

“Yes. For We love Our children. Even you, Ragna, who slew so many. We love you and We wish for all those who suffer to attain one final chance to join Us in Heaven. So I will ask: "Will you shepard my lost flock, Ragna?”

I let out a slow breath, lifting my face to try to gaze at the bright light again. I got as far as looking at the base of a mighty throne. “...Under one condition.”

The voices of the Guardians all grew angry with me and I staggered back from a powerful burst of heat, “Doth thou think We are bartering?! Doth thou think you can disrespect Us, Your Spiritual Father?!”

Trembling, I slowly answered, “You know what I want. You know what I’m thinking,” I said softly, “...You know all I want is Love, right?”

The voices seemed to calm, “There were two choices you could have made, Ragna.”

The voices didn’t hurt my ears now as I felt a rush of cool air surrounding me.

“We are pleased that you have made the best choice,” The Guardian's voices called to me.

I felt calm, the pain in my body vanishing as my heart felt, for once, at ease, “...Thank You. I won’t let you down. But… What about Xyphiel?”

“That is for the mortals to resolve,” The Guardians called out, “We have given them all they need. Now, the task is upon them. The most difficult part of my task, as always, is to extend to my children my most powerful gift.”

I shivered as I felt my flesh and clothing restoring, “What gift is that?”

“My Eternal Faith.”

I'm almost finished with the game, and I tell ya, some of the lists of injuries these townsfolk show up with are almost hilariously suspicious. The amount of bruises in particular is enough to make me go hmmm sometimes. So I was inspired to write a little story about it, with my chemist Calvin.
.
"I have just what you need for this," Calvin said, lowering his magnifying glass. Even in the dim light of the monastery, the bruises on Victor's neck were obvious, standing out darkly against the man's pale skin. The purplish marks were spread across his throat, almost encircling it completely.
Calvin reached into his bag, rummaging through the contents. He always carried a few ready-made potions with him, mainly wound cleanser and sun drops with the occasional twirl potion, to treat the most typical afflictions in Moonbury.
Bruises were a common complaint, but he had never seen anything quite like this.
He poured a dollop of potion onto his fingers and began to massage it onto Victor's skin. Victor winced but didn't pull away.
"Victor, how exactly did this happen?" Calvin kept his voice light, using his best "curious but non-confrontational" doctor voice.
"Umm," Victor said, "I, uh, fell. I fell and hit my neck on a...a tree branch. I was chasing a moth and just fell right into the shrubs, silly me, ha ha." He was trying to sound casual, but failing at it completely. He winced again as the chemist's hands brushed over a particularly dark bruise.
Shadows danced against the wall as the light of the nearby candles flickered. The pinboards of dead insects and taxidermied bat on the wall looked particularly ominous in the darkness.
Victor was obviously lying. Bruises like this didn't happen from a random fall. But who could have done this? Socellia didn't have the temperament to attack anyone, and Russo didn't have the size or strength to overpower a grown man. Derrek or Ottmar could do so easily, Runeheart probably could as well, but Calvin couldn't imagine why any of them might do such a thing. Victor was seen around town as a bit of a kook, but as far as he knew, no one hated Victor or wished him harm.
"This will keep the medicine against your skin," Calvin said, wrapping a strip of gauze lightly around Victor's neck. "The bruises should be lighter and less painful by morning."
Victor pulled the collar of his shirt up over the bandage. He hunched over a bit, as if he was trying to make himself small. A candle popped, making him jump slightly and glance around the room.
"Victor," Calvin said softly, "who did this to you?"
"What? N-no one. I don't know what you're talking about," Victor said, his voice shaky. "Just me...it was just silly clumsy me." Again he glanced around the room, as if looking for someone or something.
Calvin suddenly remembered Victor's "special friends." Caenus and...what was the other one? Amas? Adamas? Oh yes, Amadeus. That was it. Had Victor done this to himself, imagining that he was being attacked by some unseen force?
"It's okay," Calvin said soothingly. "You can tell me. I want to help you."
"NO! No, no," Victor said quickly. "You don't need to get involved. I don't want it coming after you - I mean, uh, no. No, I don't need any help."
"Did Caenus do this?"
"What? No!" Victor said, straightening up. "Caenus and Amadeus would never hurt me."
"Then, who?"
"I-I think you should leave," Victor said, standing up. He picked up Calvin's satchel, pushing it into the chemist's arms. "Thank you for the potion, I'll be fine." He rushed to the door, opening it and standing there expectantly.
Calvin sighed. He pulled the strap of the satchel over his shoulder and reluctantly headed for the door.
"Come see me in the clinic tomorrow," Calvin said. "I'll reapply the medicine for you." He could have left an extra vial for Victor to do it himself, but it seemed like a good idea to get the man away from this creepy environment for a while.
He stepped out into the hallway. Victor quickly shut the door most of the way, leaving only a crack to peek out of.
"Victor," Calvin said. "Let me know if you need any help, ok?" He didn't want to push too hard, but he wanted to make sure Victor knew that there was someone he could turn to.
"It's ok, really," Victor replied. "Caenus took care of it. I don't think it will come back." And with that, he shut and locked the door.
Calvin wasn't sure what to think. Did Victor have an enemy in town? Had he hurt himself in some delusion, or perhaps a ritual that went wrong? Or was it really something else. Something...not of this world.
Caenus took care of it. Could it be that Victor's friends were real? Nonsense. It couldn't be...could it?
With a confused sigh, the chemist headed home.

I watched the minutes wind down. It’s almost 7:00 pm and the sun will be setting soon. I wait for you at the gate's small parking lot for visitors, when I see an Uber pull up behind me. I realized you’re in the Uber. Not wasting time I decided to turn on my car. You must move fast because I noticed you were already approaching my car.
My back right door opens. I look up at my rear view mirror observing you quickly get in and shut the door. Through the mirror I glanced at your face. You avoid eye contact. Not soon after you break the silence “Drive.” I don’t know if it’s the mystery behind your seriousness, or your deep assertive voice, I become aroused. Your demeanor was different from your lively personality when speaking to you over text.
You’re a southern cowboy newly stationed in El Paso. Stuck in the barracks with no car to get you around. You were okay with me picking you up but you didn’t want to go too far. My home is a 30 minute drive. The only way we could have fun was in my car.
I knew of a few places where we could go. I wanted to ask what distance you’d be open to traveling to. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I want this to be a pleasant experience.
We approach the lights near Buffalo Soldier gate. I look back to ask how far you’re willing to go when I notice your head is tilted back, your eyes are closed, and you’re biting on your bottom lip. In your hand is a long, thick, and bright pink dick. It’s a warm evening and my AC is keeping the temperature cool in the car but watching you travel up and down your 9 inch dick makes me feel hot. My mouth waters watching the pee slit glisten with the accumulating cum. The light turns green, and I make a turn to the left.
You must have felt a shift in the car because your eyes were closed but somehow you knew I took a peek. “Tell me what you would do with it.” You quietly request in a calm tone. My mind swirled with dirty thoughts. For a second there I forgot I was driving. Then, the bright red warning lights snap me back into reality.
We approached another set of lights. Next to us was a car with a couple. I look at them wondering if they can see you, then look back at you. You didn’t care. You lubed up your cock releasing a long string of clear saliva on your dick, and kept stroking. I wanted so badly to pull over and taste you.
The light turns green again. “Well…. what would you do with it?” I was in such a trance I forgot to answer your question!!!
I began to describe a perfect scenario where I could have you lay back and you can enjoy a good cock worshipping. I’d want to begin with sliding every inch deep down my throat till my soft bottom lips touched your balls. I’d want to edge you till you could no longer take it. I would hold your stomach down as my lips vacuum up all the cum, leaving your balls emptied.
I was so focused on describing my desire and ideas for pleasing you, I didn’t realize I had driven on to the highway heading east.
My words turned you on. You express arousal with loud moans. A contrast from your quiet demeanor. “Please don’t stop, keep going…”
I let you know how I badly want to pull over and take you in me. You’d feel my warm lips at the tip and then descend downwards till you completely fill my mouth. My hands would grab your balls before placing them in my mouth. My skills would make your blood rush from all over your body. The sensation would travel to the base of your cock, up to your throbbing head, creating a pressure and a need to explode with the thickest cum.
That’s when you warned me, “if you want my cum, you need to pull over now because I’m about to.” I had no choice. I wanted to taste you at the first sight of watching you play with your dick. I quickly pulled over on the side of the spur and jumped back to join you in the backseat. With no hesitation you grab my head and pull me down towards your cock. Your cock slides in my mouth easily from all the saliva that was gathering. You push up towards my face and hold me down with both hands when I feel your cock jerk and unleash cum down my throat. You don’t let me go and I have no choice but to swallow every drop.
Your body collapses and I release your dick from my mouth. Your head is tilted back and you continue to avoid eye contact. I look down and your cock is solid hard with no signs of it getting soft. Then I hear you lick your lips followed by your stern voice asking, “why did you stop sucking?” I was surprised! The load I had just consumed was one of the largest I had ever swallowed. I thought for sure you were done, but I did as you asked.
In our messaging you told me you like a sloppy blow job. My mouth had watered so much watching your dick, I knew I wouldn’t have a problem. I slide your cock deep down my throat and release your cock drenched in saliva. I'm not done though, I go back down and like a monsoon my saliva comes down strong covering your pink head. It's so much you feel the hot liquid reach your balls.
I begin to pump. I suck you fast. I suck you slow. I pay attention and lick your inner thighs. I lick your wet balls and continue pumping your throbbing cock with my mouth. My slobber is all over. You feel the drip of my saliva reach your ass.
I’m focused on pleasing your dick when I hear you ask, “why do you like eating ass so much?” I popped your dick out of my mouth and answered, “because it makes men cum hard.” I return your dick to my mouth when you calmly ask, “then what are you waiting for?”
The sun had finally set. We were surrounded by mostly desert, and fast passing cars on the highway.
You pull off your shoes and pants. You turn towards me and place one leg up on the backseat. At the angle you’re sitting at I can see your curvy cheeks and a split where I would find your hole. I bend down pressing my face against your cheeks. My tongue slithered around looking for your hole. The moment my tongue graced your hole, your body collapsed. You slid down towards me and whisper “fuck…”
I tried my best to penetrate you with my tongue. Unfortunately, the position we were in made it difficult. I could not drive my tongue in your hole. You tapped my shoulder and asked me to hold on. I sat up wondering if you weren’t enjoying it.
You get up and place your body in between the front seats. Then you bend over, balancing and holding yourself up by placing a hand on each seat. From where I’m sitting, your legs are in a wide stance and your ass is right at my face. Your balls hang and the tip of your dick rubs on my car's middle console. “Try and get deeper with your tongue” you tell me.
The lights of passing cars reflect off your smooth and round ass. I grab each cheek massaging and spreading your ass. “Mmm…” you let me know it feels good. My mouth watered, playing “peek-a-boo” with your pink and hairless hole.
I stand up as much as I can, starting from the top of your crack, I release a stream of warm saliva. I watch as it travels down slowly past your hole and then down to your perfect balls. I notice you reach your balls and grab onto some of my saliva before stroking your cock. The clear stream of precum all over my console.
My face travels down to suck on your balls. Just in case you needed more saliva. I drag my tongue making my way up to your hole. Twirling it and pushing my face deep inside your ass. My hands spread out your soft cheeks to make sure I’m getting in there, just as you requested. You begin to moan louder.
I teased your hole with my fingers. I massaged the outside of your hole, placing some pressure. My tongue and finger took turns making gentle dips. The combination must have felt good. I noticed you were stroking harder.
I grab your dick from your hand and pull it back towards your ass and my face. I hold your cock like a hot dog with my left hand, stroking it while I sucked on your head. With my right hand I used my thumb to massage your hole in a circular motion. Your face buried somewhere in front I hear you exclaim, “fuck this feels good!!!”
I return my mouth and tongue to your hole, and I continue to stroke your cock. My tongue swirls all over your backside. I rub your lower back with my right hand as I make out with your ass. You can tell you’re enjoying the rim job because you keep pushing your ass towards my face.
Moments later I hear muffled noises coming out of your mouth.
“I think I’m going to cum”
I couldn’t make out what you were saying.
“What did you say?”
“I think I’m going to cum!!!”
You quickly turned around and sat in the middle console holding on to each seat when I noticed your cock was twitching. “Oh fuck! Oh fuck!” you shout. I was about to lean over to suck you off when something warm landed on my arm, then my face. I assumed it was cum but I wasn’t sure. That’s when the bright lights of a passing truck illuminated your dick. It was pulsating, shooting ropes of cum all over! I quickly try to capture whatever is left over and clean up whatever cum spilled on you.
You sit there trying to catch your breath. Your head is leaned back and your legs are no longer holding you up. You move over to my backseat. I quietly sit there waiting for you to say something. You put on your pants and then your shoes. Avoiding contact and saying nothing. I wondered if you even had fun. Once you’re dressed, you sit back and wipe your face with your hand. Then there’s a change in your demeanor. I notice you smile. You look around and laugh before looking at me,“there’s cum everywhere. That was fucken hot.”

First / Previous / Royal Road / Patreon (Read 12 Chapters Ahead)

By Alain's best estimate, it was just after midnight by the time the four of them left town, searching for the old man. They were all on foot, the town's horses having been mauled and killed by the undead hordes already. Alain could only hope that they'd reach the old man before another wave of corpses washed over the town.
"Do we know where we're going?" Felix asked.
"There were directions in the book," Az specified. "It said to head straight west through the desert until we see a covered wagon set up next to a tent."
"That's it?" Alain questioned. "That's all it said?"
Az nodded. "Yes. Let's hope the old man hasn't changed positions since it was written, otherwise we're going to have a problem."
"Understatement of the century…" Alain muttered. "Sable, is there a way to speed this up?"
Sable hesitated. "...I suppose so."
"What does that mean? Why do you sound so uncertain?"
"You know some of the old folklore about vampires, yes?"
Alain blinked, recognition crossing his mind. "...I recall that you confirmed some of it. That means you can turn into a bat, right?"
Sable nodded. "The transformation is not pleasant, but in the interests of time…"
The four of them stopped. Az, Felix, and Alain stared at Sable as she took a breath, then looked up at the moon. She said something in her native language, and then as Alain watched, her body began to shift and contort. Her joints and bones popped and cracked as they were forcibly compacted down to size, and her skin ruptured as her body was reshaped, black blood leaking from her skin. A scream wrenched its way from her throat, and Alain went to step forward, but Az stopped him by holding out a hand.
"Wait," he commanded without looking back to him. "Let her transform."
"She's in pain-" Alain began.
"She is used to it, believe me. You interfering would just make things worse." Az glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Leave it alone, Alain. Trust her."
Alain reluctantly nodded, then took a step back. He looked over towards Sable again, and as he watched, her body seemed to suddenly collapse in on itself as she was re-shaped. It only took a second or two, and when it was done, there was a small black bat standing there, staring at them with red eyes. Alain took a tentative step towards it.
"Sable…?"
The bat, predictably, didn't respond. Instead, it spread its wings and took flight, its silhouette backlit against the full moon and the stars. It soon disappeared into the night, the only thing marking its presence being the flapping of its wings.
"Do we follow after her?" Felix asked.
Az shook his head. "She will scout the way for us. Stay here and wait for her, no matter how agonizing doing nothing may be at the moment. Trust me, my lady knows what she's doing."
Alain let out a tired sigh, then took a seat on the desert floor. Felix sat down next to him and retrieved a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, then offered him one. Alain stared at it in surprise.
"You had cigarettes this entire time?"
"Yeah," Felix confirmed. "Why do you ask?"
Alain didn't respond. He scowled, but accepted the smoke, then lit it and took a drag. Him and Felix sat there for several minutes, smoking, while Az watched the skies for any indication of Sable's return. Eventually, the flapping of wings greeted them, and Sable landed between them. Alain took a step back to give her some space as she transformed again, trying his best not to retch at the sight of it.
"What happened?" he asked Sable as she stood up straight, having finished her transformation. "Did you find it?"
"I did," Sable confirmed. "Right where the book said it'd be. Come on, I'll lead the way."
Sable took off on foot, going slowly enough that Alain and Felix were just barely able to keep up with her. After several minutes of running, Alain saw it – the covered wagon and the tent, out in the middle of nowhere. Curiously, there was a robed figure sitting out in front of the tent, warming themselves by a small fire. Cautiously, the four of them approached, Felix and Alain keeping their hands on their revolvers the entire time. As they drew closer, Alain opened his mouth to call to the figure, but the man beat him to the punch.
"I was wondering when the vampire and her companions would come to me directly," he said, his voice heavy with age and fatigue. "Come. Sit. Warm yourselves by the fire. I will do you no harm."
Felix and Alain exchanged a glance, but did as the man asked, tentatively taking a seat next to the fire. Az and Sable stood behind them, both still guarded.
"You need not fear me," the man said to them. "I am but an old man."
"You're an old man who gave a madman the power to raise the dead," Sable growled. "Why should we trust you?"
The man shook his head. "A mistake, one I intend to rectify now."
He reached up and lowered his hood, showing them his face for the first time. He was olive-skinned, with dull green eyes and a shaved head. Bizarre tattoos covered his face – Alain couldn't make sense of any of them; they looked to be in a foreign language of some kind, though he couldn't place which one it was. Still, the sight of it all gave him pause for a moment before he finally found himself able to speak again.
"You knew Sable was a vampire," he said. "How?"
"How many species of bat do you know that have red eyes?" the man answered. "Once you know what to look for, identifying creatures hidden by the Veil becomes as natural as breathing. Every creature has a tell, even though some may disguise themselves. It is almost impossible for one to completely pass as a human for very long."
"Let's cut to the chase," Felix said gruffly. "You gave Ansley the knowledge of those rituals."
He nodded. "I did. It was a mistake."
"Mistake or not, we need to know what he intends to do with them, and how to stop him," Alain emphasized. "Which is why we came to you. You're the only one we can rely on."
He shook his head. "You cannot hope to fight him, even with a vampire on your side."
"We have no choice," Az remarked. "It will likely be hours before the Army or the Tribunal can send a force to assist. To our knowledge, nobody has yet given them warning. By the time they get there to render aid, Ansley will have completed the ritual, and the town will be no more."
The old man was silent for a moment before a soft sigh escaped him.
"...I am Xavier, son of Sakis and Sofia," he said. "My ancestors were fascinated by the Veil, as was I. I grew up exposed to it. And yet, I am old now, with no heirs to pass my knowledge onto. When someone came by expressing interest in it, I found myself enraptured." He shook his head. "It was a mistake to believe he had benevolent intentions. I should have known better."
"That's not important," Alain insisted.
"I am aware. You wish to know what he intends to do with those rituals?" Xavier looked to Sable and Az. "Tell them, vampire and companion. I am sure you both know already."
Alain and Felix looked back towards them. Sable hesitated, then let out a sigh.
"...I was hoping to avoid telling you both," she said. "But from what I've been able to gather so far, Ansley and his men intend to make themselves immortal."
Alain's heart skipped a beat. "Immortal…?"
Sable nodded. "Yes. His men – the sheriff, mainly – are already closer to it than, say, you and Felix are, but a wight's immortality is imperfect. They can still be killed, though it is much harder than killing a normal mortal. I can only assume Ansley turned them into wights as a test. He likely intends to cast the correct ritual on himself later tonight."
"Why wait?" Alain asked.
"The immortality ritual requires a sacrifice and much preparation," Xavier explained. "The steps must be completed in a specific order and in specific intervals in order for it to work. Completing it properly requires the complete sacrifice of another person's soul – not an easy task. And the penalty for completing the ritual improperly is severe, to say the least."
"Why not tell us this right away?" Felix demanded. "Why wait this long?"
"What good would telling you earlier have done?" Az countered, crossing his arms. "And besides, if mortals have proven anything over the years, it's that the idea of immortality is appealing to them. The idea spreads like wildfire from mortal to mortal. The ritual has been attempted again and again throughout history."
"And… has it ever worked successfully?" Alain asked.
"We have no way of knowing," Sable said quietly.
Alain blinked, then looked back to Xavier. "How do we stop him? He has some kind of barrier up, protecting himself from anyone who would want to breach and take him out."
"The barriers are created by human sacrifices," Xavier informed them. "The solution is simple – find what remains of those sacrifices and place them at the base of the barrier. Do this, and the barrier will dissipate."
"And what about dealing with Ansley?" Alain asked. "If he manages to complete this ritual before we can get to him, how do we stop him then?"
Xavier turned towards Alain. "If he manages to complete the ritual… you will not be able to stop him, at least not with any methods known to me."
"Fuck…" Felix breathed. "Hell of a time limit you've put us on, old man."
"Then we'll just have to cut this short," Alain announced, rising to his feet. "Thank you for the help, Xavier."
"Wait," Xavier announced as they all turned to leave. The four of them looked back to him, and he motioned for them to stay for a moment as he disappeared into the back of his covered wagon. After a bit of searching, he came back with a large chest, which he placed on the ground and then opened.
"That outfit is unbecoming of a true vampire such as yourself," he announced to Sable. "I think you will find something from the old country to be much more appropriate for what you are about to do."
Sable moved to him and looked inside the chest. As Alain watched, a smirk crossed her face.
"Yes," she said as she pulled several new articles of clothing out of the chest. "These will do nicely."

Special thanks to my good friend and co-writer, Ickbard for the help with writing this story.