I’ve got a 2004 Toyota Tacoma manual transmission with 94K miles on it. Recently it started having a hard time getting into 1st or reverse from a stop. Now I can’t get it in gear at all while the engine is on. When the engine is off it will get in gear. I have no leaks from master or slave cylinder, and the clutch is not slipping at all so I don’t think it’s a clutch problem. I adjusted the free play in the clutch Pedal to try and make sure it was properly engaging but they didn’t help. I’m thinking hydraulic fluid might need replacing? It looks pretty old. Or maybe a bushing in the shifter? Let me know what you think

warriors Dubs Draft Primer

This will be the primer for warriors on everything draft related. Once the draft is done, another version focusing more on the offseason will come out. Until then, here is the aggregated version of a mostly draft-focused primer (with a few other stuff added).

2023 NBA Draft Date: Thursday June 22, 2023

Confirmed Draft Workouts (Last Updated: 6/3)

Reminder: These workouts aren't just for the 19th pick. It's for the possible undrafted players to recruit for the Summer League, Training Camp, Two-way spots, and/or Santa Cruz Warriors (Warriors' G-league). In case you forget and came to complain about working out guards or the fact they are working out prospects at all.

Prospect	Age	Height - Position	School/Team/Org	Date of Source
Leaky Black	23	6'9 - Fowrad	UNC	5/3 - Jeremiah Holloway
Tristen Newton	22	6'5 - Guard	UConn	5/4 - Colin Deaver
Coleman Hawkins*	21	6'10 - Big,F/C	Illinois	5/26 - Anthony Slater
Trayce Jackson-Davis	23	6'9 - Big,C	Indiana	5/26 - Anthony Slater
Craig Porter Jr	23	6'0 - Guard	Wichita State	5/26 - Anthony Slater
Julian Strawther	21	6'7 - Wing	Gonzaga	5/26 - Anthony Slater
Kendric Davis	24	6'0 - Guard	Memphis	5/26 - Anthony Slater
Caleb Daniels	24	6'4 - Guard	Villanova	5/26 - Anthony Slater
Khalil Shabazz	24	6'0 - Guard	University of San Francisco	5/30 - Jason Dumas
Brandin Podziemski	20	Guard/Wing	Santa Clara	5/30 - CJ Holmes
Colby Jones	21	6'6 - Wing	Xavier	5/30 - CJ Holmes
Terquavion Smith	20	6'4 - Guard	NC State	5/30 - CJ Holmes
Jake Stephens	23	6'11 - Big	Chattanooga	5/30 - CJ Holmes
Patrick Gardner	23	6'11 - Big	Marist	5/30 - CJ Holmes
Omari Moore	22	6'5 - Wing	SJSU	5/30 - CJ Holmes
Jamie Jaquez Jr	22	6'7 - Guard	UCLA	5/31 - Anthony Slater
Dereck Lively II	19	7'1 - Big	Duke	6/2 - Anthony Slater
Jalen Wilson	22	6'8 - Wing	Kansas	6/2 - Anthony Slater
Colin Castleton	23	6'11 - Big	Florida	6/2 - Anthony Slater
Keyontae Johnson	23	6'6 - Wing	Kansas State	6/2 - Anthony Slater
Arthur Kaluma	21	6'7 - Wing	Creighton	6/2 - Anthony Slater
Gabe Kalscheur	23	6'4 - Guard	TCU	6/2 - Darren Wolfson
Ben Sheppard	21	6-6 - Wing	Belmont	6/3 - Jonathan Wasserman

Mock Drafts for 19th (Last Updated: 6/3)

Publication/Individual Source	Date of Mock Draft		Age	Height - Position	School/Team/Org	Brief Summary of Reason	Add'l Notes
The Athletic (Sam Vecenie) [PAYWALL]	5/16	Jalen Hood-Schifino	20	6'6 - Wing	Indiana	1. Warriors like well-rounded propsects 2. Team tends to draft younger recently 3. Ballhandling depth (esp if Poole is traded)	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced. Due to paywall here is the 3 picks ahead + 3 picks behind 19th: 16)Kris Murray; 17)Jordan Hawkins; 18)Keyonte George; 20)Dariq Whitehead; 21)Brice Sensabaugh; 22)Jett Howard
ESPN/Draft Express (Jonathan Givony & Jeremy Woo) [PAYWALL]	5/31	Rayan Rupert	19	6'7 - Wing	New Zeland Breakers	Rupert targeting playoff contenders > draft positions. Defensive-minded prospect w 7'2 wingspan+high intensity could help the Warriors who needed stops during the playoffs	Post-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced. Due to paywall here is the 3 picks ahead + 3 picks behind 19th: 16)Kobe Bufkin; 17)Cason Wallace; 18)Jett Howard; 20)Noah Clownley; 21)Bilal Coulibaly; 22)Leonard Miller
The Ringer (Kevin O'Connor)	5/16	Dereck Lively II	19	7'1- Big	Duke	2nd try at drafting a young big * Defense, Rebounding shown * Steph could unlock the offensive side	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
Bleacher Report (Jonathan Wasserman)	6/2	Jett Howard	19	6'8 - Wing	Michigan	Wing depth w shooting versatility + occasional self-creation. Questions about athleticism + defense	Post-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
Yahoo! Sports (Krysten Peek)	5/16	Dereck Lively II	19	7'1- Big	Duke	Nothing Dubs specific - Shot blocker + Rebounder that can contribute right away	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
SB Nation (Ricky O'Donnell)	5/16	Leonard Miller	19	6'10 - Forward	G League Ignite	Nothing Dubs specific - Upside. Good touch around basket. Defensive versatility (when locked in).	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
Sports Illustrated (Matt Babcock)	5/23	Kris Murray	22	6'8 - Wing	Iowa	Nothing Dubs specific - Scorer. Offensive board getter. Stretch 4. Solid and safe.	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
NBC Sports( Chas Hughes & Tyler Byrum)	5/27	Jalen Hood-Schifino	20	6'6 - Wing	Indiana	Nothing Warriors specific - Big guard that penetrate paint and facilitate.	Post-combine/pro days + Pre-NCAA returners announced.
CBS Sports (Gary Parrish)	5/22	Dereck Lively II	19	7'1- Big	Duke	Nothing Dubs specific - Rim protecting big	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
CBS Sports (Kyle Boone)	5/26	Trey Alexander*	20	6'3 - Guard/Wing	Creighton	Nothing Dubs specific - Improved stock after combine. Evolved from athletic wing => playmaking guard. Two-way potential	*Has returned to college since
Fox Sports (John Fanta)	5/18	Kobe Bufkin	19	6'4 - Guard	Michigan	Adds depth and athleticism. 2-way talent. Describes a better Jordan Poole.	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
USA Today (Lindsay Schnel, Cydney Henderson, Jeff Zillgitt)	5/17	Rayan Rupert	19	6'7 - Wing	New Zeland Breakers	Nothing Dubs specific - Solid year in the pro league + 7'3 wingspan	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
USA Today FTW (Bryan Kalbrosky)	5/16	Dereck Lively II	19	7'1- Big	Duke	Nothing Dubs specific	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
Rookie Wire FTW (Cody Taylor)	6/2	Jett Howard	19	6'8 - Wing	Michigan	Warriors could use more shooting + shown he can do more than just shoot	Post-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
Yardbarker (Pat Heery)	5/31	Dereck Lively II	19	7'1- Big	Duke	2nd try at drafting a young big. Trade asset.	Post-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
The Sporting News (Kyle Irving)	5/17	Brice Sensabaugh	19	6'6 - Wing	Ohio State	More perimeter shooting around Steph & Klay. Excel as a floor spacer. Might not be an immediate contributor, but can be a scoring depth for the 2nd unit	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
Box and One (Adam Spinella/Coach Spins)	6/2	Dariq Whitehead	18	6'6 - Wing	Duke	Warriors need more wings who can play offball. Notes Whitehead has high school pedigree which is something Warriors have valued (Nico Mannion, PBJ, etc)	Post-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
No Ceilings	5/17	Gradey Dick	19	6'8 - Wing	Kansas	Really good system fit + Adds another theoretically reliable shooter. Also only mock draft that has Gradey Dick falling down this far so doubt this one.	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
@MavsDraft (Richard Stayman)	5/19	Brice Sensabaugh	19	6'6 - Wing	Ohio State	-	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
Tankathon	6/1	Dereck Lively II	19	7'1- Big	Duke	-	Post-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
NBAdraft.net	5/31	Dereck Lively II	19	7'1- Big	Duke	-	Post-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
NBA Draft Room	6/3	Brice Sensabaugh	19	6'6 - Wing	Ohio State	Nothing Dubs specific - Powerful wing with an advanced offensive game	Post-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.
u/nghbrhd_slackr87's Optimistic Pick	5/18	Jaime Jaquez Jr	22	6'7 - Guard	UCLA	Read it Here	Pre-combine/pro days + NCAA returners announced.

Draft Picks (Source)

Year	Round	Owns	Owed
2023	1	✔	-
2023	2	❌	CLE
2024	1	❔ (If Top 4)	MEM (If 5-30)
2024	2	❌	HOU or CLE
2025	1	❔ (If 2024 conveys OR keeps 2024 + Top 1)	MEM (If 2024 is Top 4 AND 2-30)
2025	2	❌	DET or WAS
2025	2	❔ (From CHA If 56-60)	-
2026	1	❔ (If 2025 conveys)	MEM (If 2024 ends up Top 4 AND 2025 ends up Top 1)
2026	2	✔	ATL
2027	1	✔	-
2027	2	✔	-
2028	1	✔	-
2028	2	❌	POR
2029	1	✔	-
2029	2	✔	-
2030	1	✔	-
2030	2	✔	-

News Reporting

Changing of the GM:

• Wojnarowski - 5/30: "Golden State's GM Bob Myers is stepping down as the franchise's president and general manager. With Myers' departure, Warriors owner Joe Lacob is expected to seek more prominent roles for his son, Kirk, an executive vice president of basketball operations, and VP of basketball operations Mike Dunleavy Jr."
• Slater - 5/31: "Warriors actually had a pre-draft workout while Myers and Lacob were doing their Tuesday afternoon press conference. It included Jaime Jaquez Jr., the UCLA wing who is an option for them with the 19th pick. Larry Harris, their long-time leader of college scouting, and Mike Dunleavy Jr., the presumed successor to Myers, ran it."
• Steinmetz - 6/2: "According to my sources, Mike Dunleavy Jr. is going to be the next General Manager of the Golden State Warriors. If the money is right, Dunleavy is going to be the guy."

Kenny Atkinson:

• Stein 6/3: "Kenny Atkinson recently interviewed in Toronto for the Raptors' coaching vacancy, league sources say."

Players

Guaranteed to be on Next Year's Roster & Salary (Source):

Player	2023-24 Salary	Notes	Contract End Date(s)
Steph Curry	$51.9 mil	Vet Ext (Supermax)/Bird	2026 (UFA)
Klay Thompson	$43.2 mil	FA (Max)/Bird	2024 (UFA)
Jordan Poole	$27.4 mil	Rookie Ext/Bird	2027 (UFA)
Andrew Wiggins	$24.3 mil	Vet Ext/Bird	2026 (PO) / 2027 (UFA)
Gary Payton II	$8.7 mil	Acquired via Trade	2025(PO) / 2025(UFA)
Kevon Looney	$7.5 mil	FA/Bird	2024(Part-Gtd) / 2025(UFA)
Jonathan Kuminga	$6 mil	Drafted/Rookie Scale	2024(TO) / 2025(RFA)
Moses Moody	$3.9 mil	Drafted/Rookie Scale	2024(TO) / 2025(RFA)
Patrick Baldwin Jr	$2.3 mil	Drafted/Rookie Scale	2025(TO) / 2026(TO) / 2027(RFA)
Ryan Rollins	$1.7 mil	Drafted/TPMLE	2025(Part-Gtd) / 2025(RFA)
19th Pick	$2.75 mil (est)	Drafted/Rookie Scale	2027(RFA)

Player Options:

• Draymond Green: $27.5 mil PO
• Donte DiVincenzo: $4.725 mil PO

Upcoming Free Agents:

• Andre Igoudala (UFA; Could Retire)
• JaMychal Green (UFA)
• Anthony Lamb (RFA/Non-Bird - 2-Way Eligible)
• Ty Jerome (UFA - Not 2-Way Eligible)
• Lester Quinones (RFA - 2-Way)

CBA Stuff

Brief version to keep in mind. More detailed one will come once the draft is done
2nd Apron: $17.5+ mil above the luxry tax
Confirmed to Start 2023-24 Season (for 2nd Tax Apron teams like Warriors, Clippers, etc):

• No more TPMLE
  • 2022-23: Signed Donte DiVicenzo + Signed Ryan Rollins to a 3rd partial-gtd year
  • 2021-22: Didn't use TPMLE
  • 2020-21: Signed Brad Wanamaker, Signed Juan Toscano-Anderson (2-way conversion)
• Limits on signing buyout candidates: No one making > Non-Taxpayer MLE of the season ($12.2 mil)
• Only paths to add talent now is through
  • Minimum contracts
  • Draft picks
  • Trades

Other stories of mine can be found in my wiki
For those who want to go back to the beginning, here's a link to book 1 chapter 1.
An image of Lon'thul
Of Men and Dragons, Book 3, Chapter 45
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The order had finally been given. A bellow arose from thousands of argu'n before everyone surged forward. Dak'ton felt his blood thirst rise as he launched himself ahead, albeit a little more slowly encombered as he was by the new tool Lord B'arthon had insisted they bring with them. Then there was a shout from the enemy lines that preceded the first volley of small spears launched toward them.
Dak'ton hadn't believed they could be thrown this far, but judging by the path they were arching in his general direction, the warrior was suddenly grateful for the large thick wooden planks Lord B'arthon had insisted they carry with them. Raising it over his head, he could hear impacts all around him and a few screams as the wooden planks proved insufficient for some in the face of such a barrage. Dak'ton himself felt a jarring impact as one small spear hit his shield and a second impact as it pierced through the wood and hit his chest plate.
The warrior froze momentarily, wondering if he was dead, before realizing the combination of wood and his bone plates must have saved his life. However, Dak'ton was further delayed by trying to wrench the spear from his chest and planks as more warriors ran past. Finally, there was a sharp jolt of pain as he pulled the spear free. He was dismayed to see a trail of blood leaking out of a wound in his chest, but it wasn't deep enough to be a serious concern, so with a grunt, he threw the spear to the ground and resumed his charge.
Looking around, it was clear others weren't as lucky as him. Several were down when the spears impaled their legs where the wood hadn't protected them. Others had spears piercing through their wood like Dak'ton had, but the spear had gone on to hit them in more lightly armored areas like their arms or sides. One unlucky warrior had his wood now pinned to his arm as he screamed and grasped the small spear in an attempt to pull it out.
As Dak'ton gained more ground, another shout went out, and he raised his wood planks again, this time bracing in place, feeling his blood rush in fear as he waited again for impact. However, he didn't have to wait as long this time and again felt a jarring impact. This time the spear pierced through his planks higher up, punching all the way through and continuing to the ground beside him, narrowly missing his head. Around him, others fared worse a second time. A few had dropped their planks after the first barrage, having been unable to wrench the spears free, and were now paying the price.
Dak'ton blinked stupidly a few times before dropping his planks as instructed and running toward the enemy lines again. Lord B'arthon had told them the enemy would only have time for two barrages before they closed the distance, and rushing there after the second would eliminate the risk of a third, and all Dak'ton wanted was to never experience something like that again. Those small spears traveled so much further and faster than normally thrown spears, and they hit much harder despite their small size.
That was when he looked at the enemy and realized Lord B'arthon had made a mistake. Only half the enemy had fired the second round. The other half was still waiting with those odd spear throwers ready to unleash their second round. Dak'ton had a moment of grudging respect for those workers' discipline before a third shout was followed by more spears launched in their direction. Without the protection of his wooden planks, a spear hit Dak'ton clean in the shoulder, and he felt himself being pulled back as if some large creature had ahold of him and was pulling him bodily to the ground. That was when the searing pain came, as though his shoulder was on fire, and Dak'ton's screams joined the chorus of those screaming around him.
-
Lack'nul had no idea how Jack had foreseen the enemy would have those wooden planks, shields he'd called them, but the guard captain was glad he had. Perhaps the human had even more magic than he let on? He'd even been right about the enemy dropping the shields before engaging in melee, saying they would likely be too crude to wield while fighting due to rushed production. Because of that, the second half of the second volley devastated the enemy's front line in the section in front of his workers.
Further down the line, the warriors of the hill people were hurling more traditional throwing spears to lesser effect, but thankfully the enemy didn't seem to have enough shields to arm their entire front line with, so the spears were still effective.
The spears and belly bows had thinned the enemy front lines, but they were still drastically outnumbered. Lack'nul shouted for the workers to discard their belly bows and take up their spears. The workers threw the bows to the ground a few feet in front of them, hoping to trip up the enemy, then raised their spears and braced for impact.
-
A'ngles frowned from his position overseeing the battlefield. The second half-and-half volley had been unexpected. Not that it had cost them too much in the way of manpower, he estimated in total they'd lost maybe a hundred warriors between all three volleys and perhaps a hundred more across the rest of the front lines to the more traditional spears, only a fraction of the two thousand warriors charging in at the moment. Still, it definitely had an impact on the morale of that all-important center formation. Moreover, they'd slowed enough that the front line had bowed back slightly in the middle. Between that, the enemy's armor, and the obstacle the bulky weapons presented on the ground, the eventual charge had much less impact than he'd expected, with more of his own men going down in the initial exchange than the enemy.
Even all this wasn't nearly enough to change the battle's outcome, but it was just a few reminders that this wasn't their usual opponent, and only the gods knew how many more surprises they had in store.
-
The fighting was starting to get desperate. Lack'nul parried blow after blow with his sword, trying to create openings for the workers next to him to take advantage of with their spears. Occasionally an enemy would go down, taking the spear with him, but then the hill people behind them would hand the worker a new spear, and the fighting continued. Then there were the longer spears being thrust from further behind by the hill people. They didn't account for much in the way of killing blows, but they were one more complication the attackers had to beware of, preventing them from striking with total confidence.
It was strange for the guard captain to be fighting on the side of the hill people against what were likely guards from other villages, but he shoved that thought out of his mind as he parried another couple of spear thrusts around him. He wondered if any of the workers he was now familiar with had already died, but again shoved the thought from his mind as he took advantage of an opening and shoved his sword through an enemy warrior's midsection.
His victim grabbed hold of the blade as he fell, and rather than fight for the weapon and leave himself open for others to take advantage of, Lack'nul let go of the weapon and shouted behind him. "Spear!" Soon enough, the shaft of a spear was pressed into his waiting hands, and the guard captain resumed the fight, spinning the end of his spear in a way meant to shake loose his opponent's grip on their own weapon before thrusting forward and scoring a grazing attack his across the warrior's throat. It wasn't deep enough to kill but more than enough to spook his opponent, who drew back for a moment in shock.
That created enough of an opening that Lack'nul should have been able to get another kill, but then he noticed a spearhead flying toward him from the side, forcing the guard captain to step back and bring up his own spear, spinning the shaft in a way to deflect the strike and allow him to bring his own spearhead around to strike, driving his second foe back before turning his attention to the first, swiping with the butt of his spear before bringing the head around for another strike more designed to buy a moment than land a killing blow.
The guard captain was breathing heavily, wondering how much longer he should try to hold this spot.
-
A'ngles watched intently as the fighting continued, focusing most of his attention on that all-important center line. He could see individual fighters moving back and forth on both sides. Occasionally some fell and were replaced, but the armor on the workers kept them alive longer. But, of course, that also meant they were constantly fighting for extended periods, unable or unwilling to switch out with the less well-armed and armored allies behind them. In a massive battle like this, endurance was the key to victory, and it was just a matter of time before his greater numbers took their toll. Perhaps it was simply his imagination, but it seemed like the enemy line was starting to bow just the slightest amount in the middle. He just had to keep the pressure on...
Turning to two of his aide, the Village Lord issued his orders. "Send a runner to either flank and order fifty warriors from each to peel off and reinforce the center."
The aide nodded and repeated his orders to two runners as the old Lord continued to observe the battle.
-
Lon'thul traveled through the forest with an arrow knocked but not drawn as he crept ahead of the rest. Aside from Jack, Angela, Em'brel, and the wolgen all at the rear, the rest in their group were all hunters, used to moving quickly and silently through the underbrush, but even compared with the proud hunters of the hill people, Lon'thul was the undisputed master of his trade. So he walked ahead of the rest to look for ambushes.
It could have been just another day on the hunt if it weren't for the sounds of battle a little to his right. The hunter was glad non of his friends could see him at the moment, or else they'd notice his characteristic grin was absent in favor of a more stern expression. Something felt off about the forest, and he couldn't quite place a talon on what it was. He felt as if a presence had passed through not long ago, but the only person who could move this subtly was...
That was when the hunter noticed another scout ahead of his position. By Lon'thul's standard, he was moving loudly and clumsily. Looking around to ensure there wasn't anyone else present, Lon'thul took aim while inhaling silently. Once he had his target, he began exhaling while drawing back on the string, letting loose the arrow when he was about halfway out of air. After long hours of practice and countless hunts, he knew the arrow would fly true. However, he couldn't help but momentarily hold his remaining breath as he waited anxiously for a fraction of a second it took the arrow to clear the distance to its target.
As expected, the arrow embedded itself into his target's throat, pinning him to the tree behind him as the scout struggled briefly before falling limp. After ensuring there was no other movement to indicate another watcher, Lon'thul crept up and silently removed the arrow. Jack had once again been proven correct. It looked like B'arthon had sent an ambush to cut off their flanking maneuver. However, if the hunter could get enough of their scouts quickly enough, they might be able to ambush their ambushers. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he mimicked a kovaack's grunt to signal a halt. To his ears, it sounded nothing like an actual kovaack, but other hunters had told him it had an uncanny similarity from a small distance away.
Assuming one to two hundred warriors, they probably had ten to fifteen scouts. As the hunter snuck through the brush, he kept his ears open for any minor disturbances. A shadow out of place, or the sound of a twig cracking where he knew no animal would be. After an agonizingly long minute during which he tried to not think about what was happening in the main battle, he found another hunter, but this one was dangerously close to a second.
Lon'thul frowned, sliding sideways to get a shot from their flank with his back to the position of the one he'd already taken out so he could sneak closer to take his shot. Finally, after a few more agonizingly long seconds, he was in position, and the hunter knocked another arrow.
Standing and drawing in one smooth motion, Lon'thul took quick aim at the further of the two hunters before either knew what happened and loosed his arrow. However, rather than wait for his arrow to hit the target this time, Lon'thul dropped his bow while drawing a knife in one smooth action and flung the blade at the second scout, who was already starting to move at the appearance of the enemy from his supposedly protected flank.
Once again, rather than wait, Lon'thul leaped at his target, who was starting to fall, opening his mouth to shout out, but the hunter wrapped his arm around his victim's throat, slamming his mouth shut on his tongue, turning the scout's shout into a loud whimper as the hunter finished the job.
Lon'thul grabbed his knife and slunk back into the shadows, waiting for more scouts to come to check on the sounds of the scuffle. It was only after none appeared for over a minute that the hunter retrieved his arrow and returned to his bow with a frown. He was confident he'd been quiet enough to avoid detection by the main force, but the next scout over should have heard the twigs snapping as the two combatants struggled. Had he simply run back to report the disturbance without checking on the source of it? Given Lon'thul's reputation, it might have been a good move, but then the whole group would be "ambushing" every medium-sized animal in the forest, giving away their position! It didn't make sense...
The hunter calmed himself. Rather than jumping to conclusions, the only thing for him to do was precisely what he thought they should have done, go and check it out. He'd simply have to trust Angela to inform the rest if he walked into some ambush since she was silently watching everything from his headset.
As he rounded another tree, he found some disturbed underbrush roughly where he expected the next scout to be. As he crept closer, he realized there was a body there. The scout was already dead!
Lon'thul froze, holding his bow and ready to draw in the blink of an eye if any threat presented itself and thought rapidly. He knew he was the only one of his people's scouts out this far, so it couldn't have been any of his men. But what purpose could they have for placing this body here? He'd suspect a trap, but it made no sense. Still, it wouldn't help anyone if he stayed here any longer than he had to, so Lon'thul resumed movement, redoubling his efforts to remain silent and hidden as he moved.
After another moment, he came to another likely location and, after a moment of observation, found another dead scout. This time the hunter crept closer, inspecting the body. The sout's throat had been slit, likely from behind. He could even imagine someone's hand wrapping around the poor scout's mouth to silence any shout before the knife had done its work. That meant someone had walked right up behind the scout as he'd been searching for his own prey. Lon'thul might have been able to pull that off on a good day, but he'd never have risked it with so much on the line. Remembering the presence he'd felt earlier, he realized only one other hunter could pull something this brazen off...
Now Lon'thul was fully alert, scanning every shadow and listening for even the slightest disturbances while waiting with an arrow ready. This time he didn't have the luxury of waiting for his opponent to act first. He had to take the initiative and do it now! But beating his father in a duel wasn't his objective. Outmaneuvering the enemy force was. Putting a hand on the headset, the hunter activated the com and broke silence for the first time. "My position may be compromised, but if you move fast, you can still take the enemy unaware. Tell Jack to charge now!"
Putting his hand down, Lon'thul settled into position and readied another arrow. He knew his father wouldn't kill him like the other scouts, but that didn't mean the old hunter wouldn't try to pull him out of the battle now that he'd given away his location. The younger hunter would just have to be even faster this time...
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wiki

In case you missed it and are interested, book 1 is available to purchase in digital or physical form.
If you want to support my work or help me cover the costs of publishing, you can find my Patreon here. Though it's not necessary, I'm really just glad you took the time to read my stories.

1. Will this be your first dog? If not, what experience do you have owning/training dogs?
   1. Yes, to my first dog. I grew up with small breed dogs only (dachshunds/ aussie mix).
2. Do you have a preference for rescuing a dog vs. going through a reputable breeder?
   1. Rescuing a dog!
3. Describe your ideal dog.
   1. Small/ Medium sized ideally under 30-40 pounds. Trainable. Moderate Energy. No or very rare shedding. Grooming needs weekly. I will be moving every 12-16 weeks, living in AirBNB's so barking some or infrequently.
4. What breeds or types of dogs are you interested in and why?
   
   1. I’ve looked into various breeds (greyhounds, aussies, dachshunds, Bedlington Terrier, etc)
5. What sorts of things would you like to train your dog to do?
   
   1. Basic obedience.
6. Do you want to compete with your dog in a sport (e.g. agility, obedience, rally) or use your dog for a form of work (e.g. hunting, herding, livestock guarding)? If so, how much experience do you have with this work/sport?
   
7. No.
   

• Care Commitments

1. How long do you want to devote to training, playing with, or otherwise interacting with your dog each day?
   1. My work schedule is usually 8-4 (I work in the schools); Training would be after work. Interacting before and after work!
2. How long can you exercise your dog each day, on average? What sorts of exercise are you planning to give your dog regularly and does that include using a dog park?
   1. Walk in the morning before work (~30), after work (~30) and evening (~10). Playing before work and after work.
3. How much regular brushing are you willing to do? Are you open to trimming hair, cleaning ears, or doing other grooming at home? If not, would you be willing to pay a professional to do it regularly?
   1. I'm willing to do brushing. Not comfortable with trimming hair or other grooming at home. I would be willing to pay a professional.

​

• Personal Preferences

1. What size dog are you looking for?
   1. Small/ Medium sized ideally under 30-40 pounds.
2. How much shedding, barking, and slobber can you handle? I would prefer a dog who doesn't shed, but I don't mind a dog that leaves hair. I can do drool (very mild droll). I will be living in AirBNB's so barking some or infrequently (traveling via car)
3. How important is being able to let your dog off-leash in an unfenced area?
   1. I've never had a dog that could go off-leash, so it's not a dealbreaker.

​

• Dog Personality and Behavior

1. Do you want a snuggly dog or one that prefers some personal space?
   1. I don't mind either, the dogs I grew up with preferred some personal space.
2. Would you prefer a dog that wants to do its own thing or one that’s more eager-to-please?
   1. Do its own thing, I've never had a dog thats eager-to-please lol
3. How would you prefer your dog to respond to someone knocking on the door or entering your yard? How would you prefer your dog to greet strangers or visitors?
   1. Alert barking is fine. I have only had dogs that weren't fans of strangers or visitors so I would want a dog that is okay with both.
4. Are you willing to manage a dog that is aggressive to other dogs?
   1. I'd be willing, not preferred.
5. Are there any other behaviors you can’t deal with or want to avoid?
   1. I don't want a dog that doesn't like interacting with strangers or interacting with other pets. A (over) protective dog.

​

• Lifestyle

1. How often and how long will the dog be left alone?
   1. I work typically in the school setting, so 6-9 hours a day.
2. What are the dog-related preferences of other people in the house and what will be their involvement in caring for the dog?
   1. N/A
3. Do you have other pets or are you planning on having other pets? What breed or type of animal are they?
   1. N/A
4. Will the dog be interacting with children regularly?
   1. Not in the home
5. Do you rent or plan to rent in the future? If applicable, what breed or weight restrictions are on your current lease?
   1. I will be a traveling professional, what I've seen on AirBnB is "Each Airbnb comes with its own set of rules". Many would prefer a smaller breed.
6. What city or country do you live in and are you aware of any laws banning certain breeds?
   
   1. I live in USA. I know some cities have bans on pitbulls, other 'agressive' breeds.
7. What is the average temperature of a typical summer and winter day where you live?
   
   1. This depends on where I will be, but I want somewhere sunny with temperatures in the summer 80-70; depends as well but I want 20-50 degrees F Additional Information and Questions Please provide any additional information you feel may be relevant. I will begin my career as a traveling professional and plan on moving around for the next 3 years. Staying in a state or city for ~4-5 months at a time. Feel free to ask any questions below

My sister and I were always close. There was only a year difference in age, her being the eldest one. We liked similar things, had similar interests, and protected one another. We went through things together, like getting over a first boyfriend or realizing how bad period cramps actually are. I was grateful for this, to have someone that understood me so deeply. Of course there were fights too. A lot of “you stole my shirt” and “is that my lip gloss?” But what sisterly relationship doesn’t have a bit of bickering scattered in the mix.
But then… the bickering got worse.
I don't mean to complain, especially on the internet to strangers I’ll likely never know. But lately, my sister has been… extra hostile. It started simple enough. I’d bump into her in the narrow hallway that separated our two bedrooms. She’d groan like normal, but there was a sharpness to the “fake” insults she would sling at me. “Jesus, take up enough space?” There was an underlying venom in her tone. I was used to our average bickering, but this put a crater in my chest. “Sorry, sheesh.” I brushed her off and kept moving.
The day after, I asked her if I could borrow something from her closet. “You’re so fucking annoying, Alice.” She didn’t say it with a tone nor did she yell at me. She said it like it was simply a fact. Her words were flat and she didn’t even spare a glance at me. “What the hell?” I retorted, but she just ignored me.
I started trying to avoid her after that. I figured, maybe she was going through something that she wasn’t ready to talk about yet. It happens, right? Whatever it was, I didn’t want to be in the middle of it. More and more, my sister started shutting everyone out. She would go to school, come home, lock herself in her room and… that was it. We barely saw her around the house. Later in the night I would hear her door unlatch and the sound of her feet scurrying down the hallway. Probably to the kitchen, since she never came down for dinner.
When mom would ask what was wrong, she would shrug her off and call her annoying. Always buried in her cell phone, always with an attitude. I started taking notice of her appearance. Now my sister is pretty, I won't deny it. I was always jealous of how perfectly her hair laid in comparison to my cow-licked part. Her teeth were straight and shiny, and she was a swimmer so it was rare for her to be out of shape. But she started to look… sickly? Her face was always pale, with big black bags under her eyes. Her lips were cracked and dry, even her fingernails started to look brittle. She was chewing on them and ripping the skin along the side of her nail bed. She always looked nervous and her eyes would dart around the room like she was constantly looking for a threat.
Months went by, I started my sophomore year and she was a junior. She wouldn’t acknowledge me in the hall, and even her friends started to avoid her. They said she was gloomy and weird. A drastic change in comparison to the previous summer. She was vibrant, full of life, and usually lit up any room she walked into.
But now she was miserable to be around. She would hurl insults at us, and berate us every chance she got. She would walk by me and pinch me hard enough to bruise the skin. When I'd yell at her for it, I was simply met with a wide grin and a shrill laugh. She made me nervous, like I had to be on guard any time she was around.
This wasn't Gemma. Something was wrong. As her sister, I needed to do something. So, one day, I decided to go into her room and do some snooping.
Now hear me out, I know snooping is wrong. I would never normally invade someone’s privacy like that. But I knew just asking her wasn’t going to get me anywhere. So snooping it was. I started by combing through her closet. I figured if she were to walk in on me, I could just say I was looking for something to wear. I brushed my fingers gently over the hanging clothes. Vibrant colors of pinks, purples, and yellows swirled together as I shoved them to either side. Her clothes would tell me nothing. Especially since she didn’t wear vibrant stuff anymore.
Her closet was pretty empty, just shoes and hanging clothes. A few random pieces of paper but nothing of value. I emptied out some of her spare handbags to find empty tubes of lip gloss and tissues. Useless, I thought.
I moved on to her vanity. I searched each drawer carefully. Vials of lip gloss, palettes of blush and eyeshadow, but nothing to indicate something was wrong. I shut one in frustration and sighed. This is stupid, I thought. She’s a moody teenager. I turned towards the bedroom door when something under her bed caught my eye.
A little piece of paper jutting out from underneath. I moved to the bedside and dropped to my knees. The paper had nothing but numbers scribbled across it, but behind it lay a small… journal? Diary? I picked it up and felt it over. It was damaged, the binding was loose and the cover was worn down. The edges of the paper inside looked… burnt? I stared at the small book for a minute. For some reason I felt a lump of nausea climbing up my throat. This small, seemingly harmless journal felt like a rock in my palm. Sweat broke out down the back of my neck.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I murmured to myself. With a sigh I pulled the front cover back. My hands shook as I skimmed the pages. I swallowed hard. I guess I had every reason to be nervous.
On almost every single page, there was one message.
He is coming.
What the fuck does that mean? I blinked hard as I shifted through the pages. The handwriting on each page got worse and worse. It looked less like an average teenager’s handwriting and more like scribbles from a toddler as the pages went on. The writing started to look desperate the further into it I got.
He is coming
He is COMIIing!!!
HEe IS COMINg!!!
HE IS COMING!!!!!!!!!!!
More of the same as I scanned the pages. I was almost to the end when I heard a thump in the hallway. My heart fell out of my ass as I scrambled to shove the tiny book back under her bed. I flew to the closet and yanked the door open, shifting through her clothes. When her bedroom door swung open, for some reason, I felt uneasy.
“What are you doing in my room?” She snapped.
“Hey, Gemma. I was looking for something to wear.. I was going to a friend’s tonight.” I lied as calmly as I could. I could feel her moving behind me. I was scared she was going to get closer. This is ridiculous, I thought. She’s your sister. Still, I felt like a helpless gazelle being taunted by a lion.
I turned to look at her and was met with a gaze I have never witnessed before.
Her face was twisted into a snarled grimace. Anger seethed from every pore on her face. Her mouth fell open as she stared at me. “I-I’m sorry, Gem. You never used to care..” I suddenly felt very trapped and claustrophobic. Her bedroom door was closed and she stood between me and my one way out. Her head fell to the side as she blinked at me. “You’re useless.” She murmured faintly. “What?” I blinked at her. That was cruel, even for how Gemma was now. “You’re useless.” She shrugged as her head lay to the side in observance of me. It was like she was surveying how I was going to react. Her mouth started to fall open into a wide grin. “You’re useless and one day, Alice, I’m going to rip your tongue from your mouth.” She made a horrible gurgling noise from the back of her throat, followed by her usual shrill laugh. I stared at her in shock. Tears poured over my cheek as I shoved past her to the door. I had nothing to say, I just wanted to get away from her.
After that, we didn’t talk. If she walked into a room, I walked out of it. I didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I knew it had to have something to do with that weird little book. Her moods got worse, and it was making everyone in the house miserable. She started screaming at our parents, throwing glass plates on the ground. She would slam doors so hard the hinges would break. My dad had to replace her bedroom door twice. She would corner me or my mom, getting in our faces and taunting us. My mom tried taking her to therapy, but Gemma refused to go. She would sit in the car and scream until my mom let her out at the house.
And then one night.. Everything changed.
It was late, well past 11 pm. I was laying in my bed reading a manga I’d bought recently when I heard the familiar creak of her door opening. This was a usual routine for her now. She didn’t eat dinner with us, she would wait until we all went to bed and sneak down to the kitchen. I heard her soft footsteps walking up to my bedroom door when they suddenly stopped. I knew she was standing outside my door. My heart thumped in my chest. I stood up from my bed and hovered at the edge. I wanted to walk to my door, to open it, to just.. see her standing there. Hopefully apologetic and asking for forgiveness.
The thought made me laugh. And tear up, if I’m honest.
But instead I slowly approached my door. My heart was beating a mile a minute. There was no reason for me to be so nervous. She was just my sister. Her behavior had been weird, cruel even, but she hadn’t done anything too crazy for me to be fearful of her like this. My palms started to sweat and I felt a lump in my throat. I stood in front of the door and placed my hand on it gently. I stared at the doorknob, and I don’t know what possessed me to do it but… I locked it.
“Alice?”
Her voice startled me. I jolted in position. My mouth was dry and I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. “Alice?” She tried again. It was her voice, definitely. But something about it seemed so unlike her. It felt almost… sinister. “Alice.” This time it came as a statement rather than checking to see if I was actually there. “Are you gonna let me in?” I felt her tap against the door. I still couldn’t bring myself to say anything. My hand hovered above the doorknob, but I wasn’t trying to let her in. I was prepared to grab it if she tried to open it.
Suddenly, she began knocking on my door. Relentlessly. It started as a few light taps, then turned into banging. She was banging on my door. The whole thing vibrated and shook as she smacked and pounded on the other side. “Alice!” She screeched. The doorknob started shaking violently. I grabbed hold of it with as much strength as I could. Tears brimmed my eyes and my heart felt like it was going to seize up. ”ALICE!!!” She was screaming now and my bedroom door was hanging on by a thread. The lock had already busted, and it was just me versus her holding it. I could hear my parents start to shuffle around, and I heard my mom’s voice down the hall. “Gemma? What’s going on?” She sounded half asleep and dazed.
Everything got sickeningly quiet. I took several quick breaths and tried to steady my body weight against the door. “Gemma?” My moms voice traveled down the hallway. I took a breath and pried my door open, just a crack, to try and see what was going on. I was met with an image that is seared into my brain.
Gemma was staring at me. But not just staring. Her mouth was hanging open in a twisted grin. It was an elongated smile, her lips were cracking and bleeding from how wide she had stretched her lips. Her eyes were like saucers. The white spaces of her eyes were filled with black that bore into me. She was making this awful… clicking sound? Like it was coming from the back of her throat. Every time she clicked her head would twitch and bob. Her face was nearly pressed against my door. Very slowly, she reached a hand up to touch her jawline. Her fingers were bloody, and I quickly realized it was because she had ripped her nails off. When I say ripped them off... I mean it looked like she had just peeled them from her nail bed. Quicker than I could react, she shot a hand out into the crack of the door. She snatched a fistful of my hair and with a sharp tug, she ripped a chunk from my scalp. I screamed as my hands flew to my head. She giggled like an excited little kid at how horrified I was. I slammed the door in her face. “Gemma what the fuck!” I smacked my door and let out a sob. What was happening to my sister?
I heard my dad from the end of the hall. “Gemma.. Are you okay? Can we take you to the hospital?” He sounded so desperate to help her. Sadness welled up in my chest for my parents. How could they fix her?
Without warning, I heard her take off down the stairs. Her feet smacked the ground and I heard her jump off the last few steps. I flung my door open and ran to my mom. She threw her arms around me and cradled me. My dad stood there for a minute, like he was weighing his options. Gemma was downstairs throwing glass around in the kitchen. Every few minutes we could hear her shrill laughter followed by those sick clicking noises. “You two, in the bedroom. Now.” My dad ushered us into my parents’ room. My mom and I sat on their bed while my dad paced back and forth. He decided to call 911, to ask for a mental health check. My mom sobbed quietly on the bed beside me. We could hear the loud crashing of glass and things being knocked over downstairs. I couldn’t get that horrible gaunt look out of my head. That wasn’t Gemma, I wouldn’t accept it.
Suddenly, everything stopped. The shattering of glass, the shrill laughter and the awful clicking sounds. Our house became deadly quiet. My dad stared at the bedroom door, his hands balled into fists. My mom kept an arm around me. There was a thump at the door that jolted all of us.
“Mommy?” It was Gemma. She spoke so softly she almost sounded like her old self. I went to call out to her but my dad motioned for me to stay quiet. Small, faint sobs traveled from the other side of the door. I could feel my mom tense beside me. There was a scratching sound, like she was scraping her nails down the side of the door.
Except it couldn’t be her nails… she had ripped them all off. I seized up at the idea of her dragging a knife up and down the door.
Gemma began to laugh. She wasn't just laughing, though. She was sobbing, and cackling, at the same time. It sounded like two different voices bubbling up from her throat. One would wail like it was in pain, and the other would laugh maniacally. I chose to believe the maniacal one was the voice dragging the knife across the bedroom door. She began knocking, or rather banging, on the door. "LET ME IN!" She shrieked, still heaving a mixture of laughter and sobs. The banging increased and I thought for sure the door would bust. My mom was pale and trembling beside me. My dad stared at the door, in disbelief or fear, I couldn't tell.
"You can't hide from me forever, Alice." She spoke so quietly I thought I made it up. I glanced at my mom who put a finger over her mouth, a sign for me to stay quiet.
Suddenly, an echo of footsteps bounded up the stairs from the end of the hall. “Police!” We heard someone shout. I felt my mom shift beside me as my dad approached the door. “Put it down!” We assumed he was talking to Gemma. We heard her giggle maniacally, and what I’m still assuming was a knife dragging back down the door. But following the shrill laughter was a plea that reverberates in my mind. "Please.. help me." She choked out a sob, but as soon as softness came it went. Her feet pounded against the hardwood floor of the hallway. “Stay put! I said don’t move!” But faster than I think anyone could react, we heard a sickening cackle followed by a heavy thud.
Silence.
My dad waited about 10 minutes before pulling the door open. Gemma was gone, but there was a trail of blood streaking down the hallway. It reeked and made my stomach turn in knots. I was panting, both from the smell and the fear. There was a man laying at the end of the hallway, an officer, and it was clear he had been stabbed. We followed my dad down the hall, carefully trying to avoid stepping in blood. The officer groaned and my mom heaved a sigh of relief that he was alive. Backup was called, and an ambulance. They said he was stabbed 11 times, and miraculously survived. I don’t think that was an accident, though. I think if Gemma wanted him dead, he would be dead. I think that softness... that small sign of weakness was actually Gemma trying to save him. From whatever she had become.
There was no sign of her, though police followed a trail of blood through our front yard and onto the street. Strangely enough, it ended there. There was blood on our front door and, I guess, when police arrived the door was already open. That warranted them to search inside, where they found busted glass and shattered windows. Blood was pooled in the kitchen, and handprints stained the wall from floor to ceiling like… like she had been crawling on it. Even the police were at a loss about what happened. They’re still looking for her but, I don’t think she wants to be found. Not by them anyway.
The next day we packed as much as we could to leave. I was stuffing things into my suitcase, snagging a few books from my shelf to bring along, when a familiar sense of dread washed over me. My hands began to sweat and my fingers trembled as I brushed over the tiny diary. My mouth felt like cotton as I skimmed through the pages. I hadn’t seen Gemma, but somehow, I knew she had put this diary in my room. I’m not sure when… but judging by the blood on the pages, it was sometime during the previous night. The pages all looked familiar, except the very last one. This is why I’m reaching out for help, advice… anything. Because I’m pretty sure she’s coming back for me. I’m scared… and I feel like no matter how far away we go, Gemma is going to know exactly where I am.
Hel. He's. he lp here me…. Alice. Alice. Alice. ALICE. ALICE!!!!!!!

Trigger warning: this story has a distasteful element ('Coprophilia') which may bother some readers.
The Earth bore little resemblance to its former self. At least not from the standpoint of what humanity had achieved previously. First the global economy collapsed. As a result, the intimately-connected world we knew was no more. Cities were abandoned. Interpersonal relationships devolved into clan-style family units working together for the basic goal of mutual survival. Sometimes brutally. In just a few years, the priceless wealth of technological knowledge which has been accumulated since the dawn of time, almost completely disappeared.
Predictably, without six millennia of scientific advancement and evolving civility, came revolving waves of disease and premature death. The world’s population dwindled to just a fraction of its former numbers. Our potential for understanding remained, but the desire to flex the intellectual muscles for higher-learning, took a back seat to the daily imperative of simply surviving. There was no time to pursue education when a neighboring clan might try to kill you or seize your food stores at any moment. In only a few generations, 80% of the ’common knowledge’ from the pinnacle of civilization, was unknown to the average person.
Consuming ignorance dutifully filled the void left behind by the collapse. Hunger and the ugliest of primal emotions drove human behavior far more than it had prior to the fall. Rampant starvation and unsanitary conditions were a potent one-two punch in the spiraling descent back to the dark ages. It led to a contemptible practice which would’ve been unthinkable only a half century earlier. The inability to distinguish between justifiable food choices, and ‘things which should never be ingested’.
No, I’m not referring to the abject inhumanity of cannibalism. The unapologetic consumption of human flesh wasn’t surprising in those stark times of desperation. I’m speaking of something far, far worse. The instinct to find feces distasteful was lost in the spiraling downfall of mankind. Those who were old enough to remember the golden era of civilization simply called those who partook in this practice: ‘SE’s. In plainer words, ‘Shiteaters’.
It wasn’t a particularly clever slur but the descriptive euphemism fit well enough. Being labeled that didn’t even qualify as an insult any longer for an entire class of depraved souls who saw no problem with the distasteful practice in the first place. They enthusiastically partook in the disgusting act of coprophilia, out of misguided necessity. Noting went… ahem, to ‘waste’.
Extreme hunger is a highly effective motivator for sure. It pushed them to work past the unpleasant stench and natural gag reflexes which would normally dissuade such abhorrent behavior. In certain unsophisticated circles, the excrement from well-fed scavenger individuals became a ‘delicacy’. Afterward, they were literally ‘full of shit’, if you can forgive the reoccurring string of foul puns.
Understandably, those who held onto some level of prior civility avoided the SE’s at all costs, lest the disgusting practice ahem… ‘rub off’ on them. Distasteful consumption details aside, As with any recycled substance, the level of vitamins, proteins and other nutrients deteriorate with each cycle. That is the law of diminishing returns. Eventually, regardless of portion size, the empty calories contained in their favorite ‘dish’ was no longer enough to sustain regular development.
With the serious level of nutritional deficiency in their daily diet came the side effects of severe physiological and psychological issues. Their intellectual capacity diminished rapidly. In just a short time they lost the ability to speak. For all intents and purposes, they devolved into a lower life form of violent, sub-primates. If a scientific community still existed in academia to label them, they might’ve named this transitory species, ‘Homo coprophilis’.
Despite their diminished cerebral capabilities, they bred in voracious numbers and made up the majority of hominids scavenging the world. Because of their sheer prevalence in numbers, it didn’t matter if they could be individually outwitted. There were too many of them in the wild to completely avoid. If non SE’s were captured by them, they were lucky if they were only held in cages for feces harvesting or forced breeding stock. There were far worse fates possible in the SE dens.
Our community remained lucky for many years. I educated my people the best I could from what remained of books and educational materials. The few brushes we had with the cave dwelling troglodytes were thankfully rare, and led to fortunate outcomes. Sadly, that was all about to change. While we tried to be self-sufficient, we had to go outside our security zone on occasions to get necessary supplies which we couldn’t produce internally. The more frequently we left the relative safely of our compound, the higher risk level we brought upon ourselves.
Their numbers had exploded. They were everywhere and it was only a matter of time before they discovered our tiny little ‘oasis of progress’ and attacked us. My scouts knew better than to retreat back to the compound if they realized they’d been observed. Like a trail of ants, the SE’s would follow them here and find our idyllic home and destroy everything. I believed at the time that the best outcome of any battle was to avoid it completely.
We ‘booby-trapped’ a few pseudo entrances to discourage accidental discoveries, but our biggest danger was to be observed and followed back home. I guess we just took the risk of going outside the compound too many times, or simple ‘dumb luck’ occurred. Either way, they found our home while I was away with my team. We’d spent too much effort in avoiding detection, and not enough planning a defense. Our community was unprepared for an on-site conflict; and with half our most able-bodied warriors on the mission, we took heavy losses. Both in terms of loss of life, and having our remaining people taken prisoner.
My wife was eaten alive right on the spot; while two of my younger children were taken away. Presumably for later consumption, but infinitely worse fates were possible. I shuddered at the thought of what she went through, and what horrors awaited my little ones. The SE’s take immense pleasure in seizing non SE’s and torturing them for being more evolved. They pride themselves in being ignorant and primitive. Furious vengeance boiled in my heart. I wanted to act immediately but I was well aware that raw passion clouds judgement. No matter how anxious I was to save my children and wipe the disgusting scum from the Earth, I had to do it in a meticulous, organized way. The survivors of our village needed a solid plan to strike back.
I gathered every weapon we had at our disposal and assembled our weary band of survivors. Others present in the meeting lost family members too. I had to stop them from rushing to the shiteater cave on a suicide mission. I cooled their rage and tempered my own until we were all better prepared for battle. How do you fight an enemy with no honor? How can you approach a conflict where there is no reason to be had? To suggest it would be a war with ‘apes’ would be an insult to those primates.
Previously I thought the SE’s were a product of the collapse of civilization. Obviously I feared their enthusiastic embrace of primal ignorance but mostly, I just pitied them. If there was one reoccurring theme of universal failure in the remaining history books it was how war is pointless. I hoped to avoid them. As a fellow survivor in the collapse, I tried to coexist. To live and let live but it became glaringly clear they could not be left alive. None of them, or there would never be peace or prosperity for the thinking population. They were a wretched branch of homo sapien species that needed to be permanently snuffed out.
I rallied our reluctant fighters, both men and woman, young and old, able bodied and infirm, to boldly seize the moment. It was our time! It was the human race’s moment to reverse the spiraling collapse. We had to snuff-out the willfully ignorant, sub-human slime holding us back permanently, or there would never be a return to hope and enlightenment. Everyone present accepted the calling. We were going to stop being frightened little sheep. We were committed to fight to the death, but we were also going to do so with technical wisdom and science.
Almost like a grain silo, SE’s were known to keep their fecal ‘food’ stores in a central storage bin. They guarded them almost like bank currency. Their entire community revolved around the supply of manure, so strategically it would be in the center of their caves and living space. More than once, these methane-laden storage areas had been known explode from natural gas build-up and wipe out clans. As a previous pacifist in my worldview and outlook, I’d never considered destroying them with their own storehouse of shit before, but the idea was more than novel in its charm. It was almost poetic in scope.
The only problem lied in the collateral damage to our survivors. How could we get our beloved family members back before annihilating their cave and destroying the sub human vermin? I researched non-lethal means of incapacitating every soul inside so we could rescue our loved ones first. In a medical textbook I’d saved from being burned as fireplace fodder, was a detailed article on anesthesia. Not only did it explain how it worked, but it also offered the chemical compounds necessary to produce it.
As the ‘minister of science’ of our progressive community, I had always tried to keep knowledge alive and maintain a base level of education for our citizens. I taught the children basic chemistry and math, among other things. We had amassed a decent supply of chemicals taken from the crumbling warehouses of the once-great cities near our settlement. It was finally time to put them to use. From those supplies I filled up two canisters of nitrous oxide. My scouts located their lair, and we cautiously amassed there for the extraction and extermination.
Under the cover of darkness we blew the ‘knock-out’ gas into the entrance and waited until they were hopefully incapacitated. Into the lion’s den we crept. The stench of body odor and decay was nearly unbearable. The plan unfolded perfectly. Those we encountered were either unconscious or unresponsive to ordinary stimuli. One by one we dispatched the sub human monsters. There was very little resistance until we reached portions of the cave which our ‘sleeping potion’ didn’t reach. There we experienced some desperate fighting but in the end, we were victorious.
At the center of the dark labyrinth we located the cages and ‘food storage’ area. Thankfully, many of our people and my youngest children were still alive. Sadly not all were physically unharmed and there was no undoing the SE’s carnage and unspeakable acts. I wanted to scream when I witnessed the inhuman atrocities perpetrated on our most innocent but I had to maintain my composure and complete the mission. We carried all the survivors to safety and rigged a time-delayed fuse for explosion at the entrance.
I wasn’t sure how many of the clan were left further back within the cave, but when the methane finally ignited, it was the most powerful man-made explosion in nearly fifty years. Of that I’m sure. The mouth of the cave was permanently closed. Nothing could’ve survived the blast. That was highly reassuring but the vindication I felt was only for the eradication of a single shiteater clan. Globally, there were probably hundreds of others. More importantly though, our little operation to take back humanity was finally underway.
It was day one in the march to rebuild civilization. I discovered other pockets of learning and progress along the way as we explored the larger world. Our small community and the others banded together with the universal goal of wiping out primal clans and rebuilding the infrastructure of the Earth. With a unified group of people worldwide endeavoring to return to a brighter future, we collectively left behind the darkness and despair. Hope has finally returned. It’s a great time to be alive again.

Trigger warning: this story has a distasteful element (Coprophilia') which may bother some readers.
The Earth bore little resemblance to its former self. At least not from the standpoint of what humanity had achieved previously. First the global economy collapsed. As a result, the intimately-connected world we knew was no more. Cities were abandoned. Interpersonal relationships devolved into clan-style family units working together for the basic goal of mutual survival. Sometimes brutally. In just a few years, the priceless wealth of technological knowledge which has been accumulated since the dawn of time, almost completely disappeared.
Predictably, without six millennia of scientific advancement and evolving civility, came revolving waves of disease and premature death. The world’s population dwindled to just a fraction of its former numbers. Our potential for understanding remained, but the desire to flex the intellectual muscles for higher-learning, took a back seat to the daily imperative of simply surviving. There was no time to pursue education when a neighboring clan might try to kill you or seize your food stores at any moment. In only a few generations, 80% of the ’common knowledge’ from the pinnacle of civilization, was unknown to the average person.
Consuming ignorance dutifully filled the void left behind by the collapse. Hunger and the ugliest of primal emotions drove human behavior far more than it had prior to the fall. Rampant starvation and unsanitary conditions were a potent one-two punch in the spiraling descent back to the dark ages. It led to a contemptible practice which would’ve been unthinkable only a half century earlier. The inability to distinguish between justifiable food choices, and ‘things which should never be ingested’.
No, I’m not referring to the abject inhumanity of cannibalism. The unapologetic consumption of human flesh wasn’t surprising in those stark times of desperation. I’m speaking of something far, far worse. The instinct to find feces distasteful was lost in the spiraling downfall of mankind. Those who were old enough to remember the golden era of civilization simply called those who partook in this practice: ‘SE’s. In plainer words, ‘Shiteaters’.
It wasn’t a particularly clever slur but the descriptive euphemism fit well enough. Being labeled that didn’t even qualify as an insult any longer for an entire class of depraved souls who saw no problem with the distasteful practice in the first place. They enthusiastically partook in the disgusting act of coprophilia, out of misguided necessity. Noting went… ahem, to ‘waste’.
Extreme hunger is a highly effective motivator for sure. It pushed them to work past the unpleasant stench and natural gag reflexes which would normally dissuade such abhorrent behavior. In certain unsophisticated circles, the excrement from well-fed scavenger individuals became a ‘delicacy’. Afterward, they were literally ‘full of shit’, if you can forgive the reoccurring string of foul puns.
Understandably, those who held onto some level of prior civility avoided the SE’s at all costs, lest the disgusting practice ahem… ‘rub off’ on them. Distasteful consumption details aside, As with any recycled substance, the level of vitamins, proteins and other nutrients deteriorate with each cycle. That is the law of diminishing returns. Eventually, regardless of portion size, the empty calories contained in their favorite ‘dish’ was no longer enough to sustain regular development.
With the serious level of nutritional deficiency in their daily diet came the side effects of severe physiological and psychological issues. Their intellectual capacity diminished rapidly. In just a short time they lost the ability to speak. For all intents and purposes, they devolved into a lower life form of violent, sub-primates. If a scientific community still existed in academia to label them, they might’ve named this transitory species, ‘Homo coprophilis’.
Despite their diminished cerebral capabilities, they bred in voracious numbers and made up the majority of hominids scavenging the world. Because of their sheer prevalence in numbers, it didn’t matter if they could be individually outwitted. There were too many of them in the wild to completely avoid. If non SE’s were captured by them, they were lucky if they were only held in cages for feces harvesting or forced breeding stock. There were far worse fates possible in the SE dens.
Our community remained lucky for many years. I educated my people the best I could from what remained of books and educational materials. The few brushes we had with the cave dwelling troglodytes were thankfully rare, and led to fortunate outcomes. Sadly, that was all about to change. While we tried to be self-sufficient, we had to go outside our security zone on occasions to get necessary supplies which we couldn’t produce internally. The more frequently we left the relative safely of our compound, the higher risk level we brought upon ourselves.
Their numbers had exploded. They were everywhere and it was only a matter of time before they discovered our tiny little ‘oasis of progress’ and attacked us. My scouts knew better than to retreat back to the compound if they realized they’d been observed. Like a trail of ants, the SE’s would follow them here and find our idyllic home and destroy everything. I believed at the time that the best outcome of any battle was to avoid it completely.
We ‘booby-trapped’ a few pseudo entrances to discourage accidental discoveries, but our biggest danger was to be observed and followed back home. I guess we just took the risk of going outside the compound too many times, or simple ‘dumb luck’ occurred. Either way, they found our home while I was away with my team. We’d spent too much effort in avoiding detection, and not enough planning a defense. Our community was unprepared for an on-site conflict; and with half our most able-bodied warriors on the mission, we took heavy losses. Both in terms of loss of life, and having our remaining people taken prisoner.
My wife was eaten alive right on the spot; while two of my younger children were taken away. Presumably for later consumption, but infinitely worse fates were possible. I shuddered at the thought of what she went through, and what horrors awaited my little ones. The SE’s take immense pleasure in seizing non SE’s and torturing them for being more evolved. They pride themselves in being ignorant and primitive. Furious vengeance boiled in my heart. I wanted to act immediately but I was well aware that raw passion clouds judgement. No matter how anxious I was to save my children and wipe the disgusting scum from the Earth, I had to do it in a meticulous, organized way. The survivors of our village needed a solid plan to strike back.
I gathered every weapon we had at our disposal and assembled our weary band of survivors. Others present in the meeting lost family members too. I had to stop them from rushing to the shiteater cave on a suicide mission. I cooled their rage and tempered my own until we were all better prepared for battle. How do you fight an enemy with no honor? How can you approach a conflict where there is no reason to be had? To suggest it would be a war with ‘apes’ would be an insult to those primates.
Previously I thought the SE’s were a product of the collapse of civilization. Obviously I feared their enthusiastic embrace of primal ignorance but mostly, I just pitied them. If there was one reoccurring theme of universal failure in the remaining history books it was how war is pointless. I hoped to avoid them. As a fellow survivor in the collapse, I tried to coexist. To live and let live but it became glaringly clear they could not be left alive. None of them, or there would never be peace or prosperity for the thinking population. They were a wretched branch of homo sapien species that needed to be permanently snuffed out.
I rallied our reluctant fighters, both men and woman, young and old, able bodied and infirm, to boldly seize the moment. It was our time! It was the human race’s moment to reverse the spiraling collapse. We had to snuff-out the willfully ignorant, sub-human slime holding us back permanently, or there would never be a return to hope and enlightenment. Everyone present accepted the calling. We were going to stop being frightened little sheep. We were committed to fight to the death, but we were also going to do so with technical wisdom and science.
Almost like a grain silo, SE’s were known to keep their fecal ‘food’ stores in a central storage bin. They guarded them almost like bank currency. Their entire community revolved around the supply of manure, so strategically it would be in the center of their caves and living space. More than once, these methane-laden storage areas had been known explode from natural gas build-up and wipe out clans. As a previous pacifist in my worldview and outlook, I’d never considered destroying them with their own storehouse of shit before, but the idea was more than novel in its charm. It was almost poetic in scope.
The only problem lied in the collateral damage to our survivors. How could we get our beloved family members back before annihilating their cave and destroying the sub human vermin? I researched non-lethal means of incapacitating every soul inside so we could rescue our loved ones first. In a medical textbook I’d saved from being burned as fireplace fodder, was a detailed article on anesthesia. Not only did it explain how it worked, but it also offered the chemical compounds necessary to produce it.
As the ‘minister of science’ of our progressive community, I had always tried to keep knowledge alive and maintain a base level of education for our citizens. I taught the children basic chemistry and math, among other things. We had amassed a decent supply of chemicals taken from the crumbling warehouses of the once-great cities near our settlement. It was finally time to put them to use. From those supplies I filled up two canisters of nitrous oxide. My scouts located their lair, and we cautiously amassed there for the extraction and extermination.
Under the cover of darkness we blew the ‘knock-out’ gas into the entrance and waited until they were hopefully incapacitated. Into the lion’s den we crept. The stench of body odor and decay was nearly unbearable. The plan unfolded perfectly. Those we encountered were either unconscious or unresponsive to ordinary stimuli. One by one we dispatched the sub human monsters. There was very little resistance until we reached portions of the cave which our ‘sleeping potion’ didn’t reach. There we experienced some desperate fighting but in the end, we were victorious.
At the center of the dark labyrinth we located the cages and ‘food storage’ area. Thankfully, many of our people and my youngest children were still alive. Sadly not all were physically unharmed and there was no undoing the SE’s carnage and unspeakable acts. I wanted to scream when I witnessed the inhuman atrocities perpetrated on our most innocent but I had to maintain my composure and complete the mission. We carried all the survivors to safety and rigged a time-delayed fuse for explosion at the entrance.
I wasn’t sure how many of the clan were left further back within the cave, but when the methane finally ignited, it was the most powerful man-made explosion in nearly fifty years. Of that I’m sure. The mouth of the cave was permanently closed. Nothing could’ve survived the blast. That was highly reassuring but the vindication I felt was only for the eradication of a single shiteater clan. Globally, there were probably hundreds of others. More importantly though, our little operation to take back humanity was finally underway.
It was day one in the march to rebuild civilization. I discovered other pockets of learning and progress along the way as we explored the larger world. Our small community and the others banded together with the universal goal of wiping out primal clans and rebuilding the infrastructure of the Earth. With a unified group of people worldwide endeavoring to return to a brighter future, we collectively left behind the darkness and despair. Hope has finally returned. It’s a great time to be alive again.

Hello, I'm fairly recent to this group but about 12 weeks ago we ordered a Toyota Tacoma TRD Sport 2023 in gray metallic. We were originally told that the vehicle would arrive within 6-8 weeks. With this in mind we decided not to trade in our RAV4 and instead sell it elsewhere for a higher price- contingent on the fact that we would receive our new car soon. Anyways, we've been calling and our car reps just keep telling us that it'll be a couple more weeks every single time, this is super disappointing especially since we've been loyal customers since 2020. Additionally, I called under a different name and the car dealership and the manager supposedly said it arrives in two weeks. Though they've given us no clear timeline after their original 6-8 weeks timeline. Anyways, we've filed several reports to the dealership themselves and recently went to kind of the customer head of Toyota to complain as well. We really don't mind the wait- but if we hadn't been lied to initially we would have kept our RAV4 until now. Our transportation has become increasingly difficult and our relationship has taken a noticeable toll. Any advice for us? Also- we've received our VIN number four weeks ago and still no car, we're just really tired of waiting when we should have already had our car more than a month ago.

Trigger warning: this story has a distasteful element ('Coprophilia') which may bother some readers.
The Earth bore little resemblance to its former self. At least not from the standpoint of what humanity had achieved previously. First the global economy collapsed. As a result, the intimately-connected world we knew was no more. Cities were abandoned. Interpersonal relationships devolved into clan-style family units working together for the basic goal of mutual survival. Sometimes brutally. In just a few years, the priceless wealth of technological knowledge which has been accumulated since the dawn of time, almost completely disappeared.
Predictably, without six millennia of scientific advancement and evolving civility, came revolving waves of disease and premature death. The world’s population dwindled to just a fraction of its former numbers. Our potential for understanding remained, but the desire to flex the intellectual muscles for higher-learning, took a back seat to the daily imperative of simply surviving. There was no time to pursue education when a neighboring clan might try to kill you or seize your food stores at any moment. In only a few generations, 80% of the ’common knowledge’ from the pinnacle of civilization, was unknown to the average person.
Consuming ignorance dutifully filled the void left behind by the collapse. Hunger and the ugliest of primal emotions drove human behavior far more than it had prior to the fall. Rampant starvation and unsanitary conditions were a potent one-two punch in the spiraling descent back to the dark ages. It led to a contemptible practice which would’ve been unthinkable only a half century earlier. The inability to distinguish between justifiable food choices, and ‘things which should never be ingested’.
No, I’m not referring to the abject inhumanity of cannibalism. The unapologetic consumption of human flesh wasn’t surprising in those stark times of desperation. I’m speaking of something far, far worse. The instinct to find feces distasteful was lost in the spiraling downfall of mankind. Those who were old enough to remember the golden era of civilization simply called those who partook in this practice: ‘SE’s. In plainer words, ‘Shiteaters’.
It wasn’t a particularly clever slur but the descriptive euphemism fit well enough. Being labeled that didn’t even qualify as an insult any longer for an entire class of depraved souls who saw no problem with the distasteful practice in the first place. They enthusiastically partook in the disgusting act of coprophilia, out of misguided necessity. Noting went… ahem, to ‘waste’.
Extreme hunger is a highly effective motivator for sure. It pushed them to work past the unpleasant stench and natural gag reflexes which would normally dissuade such abhorrent behavior. In certain unsophisticated circles, the excrement from well-fed scavenger individuals became a ‘delicacy’. Afterward, they were literally ‘full of shit’, if you can forgive the reoccurring string of foul puns.
Understandably, those who held onto some level of prior civility avoided the SE’s at all costs, lest the disgusting practice ahem… ‘rub off’ on them. Distasteful consumption details aside, As with any recycled substance, the level of vitamins, proteins and other nutrients deteriorate with each cycle. That is the law of diminishing returns. Eventually, regardless of portion size, the empty calories contained in their favorite ‘dish’ was no longer enough to sustain regular development.
With the serious level of nutritional deficiency in their daily diet came the side effects of severe physiological and psychological issues. Their intellectual capacity diminished rapidly. In just a short time they lost the ability to speak. For all intents and purposes, they devolved into a lower life form of violent, sub-primates. If a scientific community still existed in academia to label them, they might’ve named this transitory species, ‘Homo coprophilis’.
Despite their diminished cerebral capabilities, they bred in voracious numbers and made up the majority of hominids scavenging the world. Because of their sheer prevalence in numbers, it didn’t matter if they could be individually outwitted. There were too many of them in the wild to completely avoid. If non SE’s were captured by them, they were lucky if they were only held in cages for feces harvesting or forced breeding stock. There were far worse fates possible in the SE dens.
Our community remained lucky for many years. I educated my people the best I could from what remained of books and educational materials. The few brushes we had with the cave dwelling troglodytes were thankfully rare, and led to fortunate outcomes. Sadly, that was all about to change. While we tried to be self-sufficient, we had to go outside our security zone on occasions to get necessary supplies which we couldn’t produce internally. The more frequently we left the relative safely of our compound, the higher risk level we brought upon ourselves.
Their numbers had exploded. They were everywhere and it was only a matter of time before they discovered our tiny little ‘oasis of progress’ and attacked us. My scouts knew better than to retreat back to the compound if they realized they’d been observed. Like a trail of ants, the SE’s would follow them here and find our idyllic home and destroy everything. I believed at the time that the best outcome of any battle was to avoid it completely.
We ‘booby-trapped’ a few pseudo entrances to discourage accidental discoveries, but our biggest danger was to be observed and followed back home. I guess we just took the risk of going outside the compound too many times, or simple ‘dumb luck’ occurred. Either way, they found our home while I was away with my team. We’d spent too much effort in avoiding detection, and not enough planning a defense. Our community was unprepared for an on-site conflict; and with half our most able-bodied warriors on the mission, we took heavy losses. Both in terms of loss of life, and having our remaining people taken prisoner.
My wife was eaten alive right on the spot; while two of my younger children were taken away. Presumably for later consumption, but infinitely worse fates were possible. I shuddered at the thought of what she went through, and what horrors awaited my little ones. The SE’s take immense pleasure in seizing non SE’s and torturing them for being more evolved. They pride themselves in being ignorant and primitive. Furious vengeance boiled in my heart. I wanted to act immediately but I was well aware that raw passion clouds judgement. No matter how anxious I was to save my children and wipe the disgusting scum from the Earth, I had to do it in a meticulous, organized way. The survivors of our village needed a solid plan to strike back.
I gathered every weapon we had at our disposal and assembled our weary band of survivors. Others present in the meeting lost family members too. I had to stop them from rushing to the shiteater cave on a suicide mission. I cooled their rage and tempered my own until we were all better prepared for battle. How do you fight an enemy with no honor? How can you approach a conflict where there is no reason to be had? To suggest it would be a war with ‘apes’ would be an insult to those primates.
Previously I thought the SE’s were a product of the collapse of civilization. Obviously I feared their enthusiastic embrace of primal ignorance but mostly, I just pitied them. If there was one reoccurring theme of universal failure in the remaining history books it was how war is pointless. I hoped to avoid them. As a fellow survivor in the collapse, I tried to coexist. To live and let live but it became glaringly clear they could not be left alive. None of them, or there would never be peace or prosperity for the thinking population. They were a wretched branch of homo sapien species that needed to be permanently snuffed out.
I rallied our reluctant fighters, both men and woman, young and old, able bodied and infirm, to boldly seize the moment. It was our time! It was the human race’s moment to reverse the spiraling collapse. We had to snuff-out the willfully ignorant, sub-human slime holding us back permanently, or there would never be a return to hope and enlightenment. Everyone present accepted the calling. We were going to stop being frightened little sheep. We were committed to fight to the death, but we were also going to do so with technical wisdom and science.
Almost like a grain silo, SE’s were known to keep their fecal ‘food’ stores in a central storage bin. They guarded them almost like bank currency. Their entire community revolved around the supply of manure, so strategically it would be in the center of their caves and living space. More than once, these methane-laden storage areas had been known explode from natural gas build-up and wipe out clans. As a previous pacifist in my worldview and outlook, I’d never considered destroying them with their own storehouse of shit before, but the idea was more than novel in its charm. It was almost poetic in scope.
The only problem lied in the collateral damage to our survivors. How could we get our beloved family members back before annihilating their cave and destroying the sub human vermin? I researched non-lethal means of incapacitating every soul inside so we could rescue our loved ones first. In a medical textbook I’d saved from being burned as fireplace fodder, was a detailed article on anesthesia. Not only did it explain how it worked, but it also offered the chemical compounds necessary to produce it.
As the ‘minister of science’ of our progressive community, I had always tried to keep knowledge alive and maintain a base level of education for our citizens. I taught the children basic chemistry and math, among other things. We had amassed a decent supply of chemicals taken from the crumbling warehouses of the once-great cities near our settlement. It was finally time to put them to use. From those supplies I filled up two canisters of nitrous oxide. My scouts located their lair, and we cautiously amassed there for the extraction and extermination.
Under the cover of darkness we blew the ‘knock-out’ gas into the entrance and waited until they were hopefully incapacitated. Into the lion’s den we crept. The stench of body odor and decay was nearly unbearable. The plan unfolded perfectly. Those we encountered were either unconscious or unresponsive to ordinary stimuli. One by one we dispatched the sub human monsters. There was very little resistance until we reached portions of the cave which our ‘sleeping potion’ didn’t reach. There we experienced some desperate fighting but in the end, we were victorious.
At the center of the dark labyrinth we located the cages and ‘food storage’ area. Thankfully, many of our people and my youngest children were still alive. Sadly not all were physically unharmed and there was no undoing the SE’s carnage and unspeakable acts. I wanted to scream when I witnessed the inhuman atrocities perpetrated on our most innocent but I had to maintain my composure and complete the mission. We carried all the survivors to safety and rigged a time-delayed fuse for explosion at the entrance.
I wasn’t sure how many of the clan were left further back within the cave, but when the methane finally ignited, it was the most powerful man-made explosion in nearly fifty years. Of that I’m sure. The mouth of the cave was permanently closed. Nothing could’ve survived the blast. That was highly reassuring but the vindication I felt was only for the eradication of a single shiteater clan. Globally, there were probably hundreds of others. More importantly though, our little operation to take back humanity was finally underway.
It was day one in the march to rebuild civilization. I discovered other pockets of learning and progress along the way as we explored the larger world. Our small community and the others banded together with the universal goal of wiping out primal clans and rebuilding the infrastructure of the Earth. With a unified group of people worldwide endeavoring to return to a brighter future, we collectively left behind the darkness and despair. Hope has finally returned. It’s a great time to be alive again.

First, Next
​
Chun shuffled in her chair, she was only a mortal boar-kin, why did she have the misfortune of taking the hidden master up to his room. Now this Mei of the Iron Paw sect had cornered her in the Inn when she arrived for the morning shift.
Mei shoveled rice into her mouth from an oversized bowl as she spoke, “Tell me exactly what happened last night when you led the hidden master to his room. I want to know everything you know about him.”
Again Chun shuffled, “I actually met him before that, he was alone at the table near the exit. It was odd because everyone tries to move to the kang to keep warm, but this man simply sat at his table as though the cold meant nothing to him.”
Mei stopped eating, “He was here while we were eating? What was he doing?” She demanded.Chun recoiled a bit, “He just seemed to be watching everyone, including your table. When I brought him his food and drink I warned him to stop staring or he would draw someone’s wrath upon him.”
Mei nodded, if she couldn’t sense him, she obviously couldn’t expect a mere mortal to know what they were dealing with. “What did he do after that?”
Chun took a deep breath, “He seemed to just sit there and eat his meal until the warning bell sounded. When you and your sisters left he asked me how much he owed, dropped coins on the table and left the inn. I didn’t see him again until after the battle.”
Mei sat back and thought, “He paid for his meal you say?”
Chun nodded, “He didn’t even complain or haggle, he simply dropped the coins as if they were nothing and walked out. Huang has told me not to accept payment if he asks when he comes down this morning.”
Mei nodded, “A wise choice, now that he is no longer hidden he may decide to toy with you, it is best for you to play along.”
Chun looked around the inn as customers started to come in for breakfast, it was still early, the sun had barely breached the horizon.
Mei sighed, “Bring me another bowl of porridge, I will await the hidden master, his name was Cain, correct.”
Chun stood quickly before bowing, “He stated his name was Victor Cane, Mistress Mei.”
Mei sat back in her chair and shoo’ed the boar-kin mortal away. Her sisters had taken shifts to ensure from a distance the hidden master had not left. More information on this male was needed, and she expected to gather it for her sect.
She would already be renown for the twenty two instinctual cultivators slain here yesterday, particularly as she had only lost 7 sisters. Three to one was not a feat to be trifled with when it came to instinctuals. The problem was, at least ten of those were from this hidden master that she knew next to nothing about.
She would await him here, and eat her fill to replace her spent energies.
_________________________
DAILY MAINTENANCE COMPLETE
ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONAL
SUBSPACE LINK : NO CONNECTION
RADIO LINK : NO CONNECTION
POWER CORE : 100%
CAPACITOR CORE : 100%
TIME 0700
ACTIVATE WAKE UP ALARM
​
Victor slowly regained consciousness after sleeping like the dead. New gene-mod updates, transmat accident, small firefight with ware-wolves and one cute tiger lady had really kicked his ass. “Computer, turn off that damn alarm.”
He opened his helmet as he sat up from the horrible bed. He had never seen a mirror as poorly made as the one in front of him, maybe it was tarnished bronze? He recalled his scout drones and sent them to storage before reaching in and pulling out his overnight bag.
After washing his face in the not-too-clean sink and brushing his teeth he made his way to the chamber pot by the bed. After relieving himself he decided breakfast was in order. He put his overnight bag into dimensional storage and made his way downstairs to the inn proper.
As he slowly walked down the stairs, hoping the wood could hold his three hundred kilo weight a second time he noticed Mei sitting at the same table as the night before. As usual, the patrons around them gave her a wide berth. Well, judging by the way Mei’s eyes never left him he assumed she wanted to talk to him.
“Hello Mei, how are you doing this morning? He asked innocently enough.
She looked at him stone faced, “I spent most of the night burying my sect sisters, then caught a few hours sleep while we waited for you to wake up.” She stated as she crossed her arms.
Well, this was more new information, evidently there was some camaraderie within the sects. He wasn’t sure of that until now. Evidently cultivators do care for each other, if they care little or nothing for the average peasant.
Victor decided it was best to seem the aloof master rather than the bumbling fool he obviously was and change course, “Chun, could you bring me whatever you have for breakfast, oh, and some more of that wine!”
Mei’s eyes flared at Victor, if looks could kill he’d be scorched right now, “Who are you? I just reminded you that 7 of my sect sisters were buried last night and you call to a mortal for food?”
Victor turned back to her, his officer face was back on again, “Is this your first war Mei?”
Mei sat back and batted her cup back and forth in her hands as she looked down at the table, “Yes, while I’m older than some of my sisters, war hasn’t visited the Celestial Empire in decades, if not centuries.”
Victor reached out a hand and placed it over one of Mei’s. She froze at his touch, a male cultivator touched her, a lowly cultivator of the second tier. “This is not mine, I have lost count of the small fire-fights and battles I’ve been a part of of my last twenty years. Or the soldiers I have lost.”
Mei blinked, fire-fights, like what he did last night was considered small, she had never seen creatures burn like that, wait, did he say the last twenty years. She cleared her throat, “Um, please excuse this lower cultivators curiosity, but you have been in battles for the last twenty years? You look no older than I at twenty eight seasons, how is that possible?”
Victor removed his hand as Chun brought him a huge portion of porridge, rice, pork sausage, eggs and wine. He looked up to her as she bowed down, “Thank you Chun, you are dismissed. Yeah, I don’t age like other people. Actually, I don’t age at all.”
Chun turned on her heels and nearly sprinted back to the kitchen. She had gotten a small taste of Mei’s killing intent when she glared at the hidden master, while she nearly dropped to her knees, the master didn’t even seem to notice.
Victor popped one of the sausages into his mouth as he watched Mei nearly drop her jaw in astonishment. Victor pointed to his plate, “Would you like one? They are quite good.”
Mei shook her head, “You’re an immortal and you thanked that peasant? Do you care nothing for face?”
Victor looked back as he chewed, “Chun? Yeah, she works hard, least I can do is thank her for her efforts. Someone should do something about the turnips though, they are horrible.”
Mei crossed her arms, “I cannot tell if you are toying with me or not. You have an Imperial accent, one that requires training from birth, you fight as if you are a divinity, and you show appreciation to mortals?”
Victor shrugged, “I’m not a complicated man, I’m just passing through the Empire looking for a way home. Speaking of which, you mentioned the Eternal Empress, would you say she is the most powerful person in the land?”
Mei uncrossed her arms before leaning in, “You mean to tell me you don’t know about the Eternal Empress yet you are hundreds of li into her Empire?”
Victor mixed his eggs and sausage into his rice bowl and then looked despairingly down at the chop sticks. He reached into his dimensional storage and produced a spoon, which to Mei seemed to appear from nowhere and scooped out a portion before taking a bite and pointing at Mei with his spoon. “Well, it’s not grits, but it will do in a pinch. No, I don’t know about the Empress, that’s why I’m asking you, if anyone knows how to get me home it might be your Eternal Empress, so how do I get an audience with her?”
Mei sat back in her chair once more, holding the hand Victor had recently touched under the table, “That might be easier than you think, but you may not like the outcome. I sent ahead to my sect leader one town over and she will be using a calling stone to reach the Imperial Palace, I’m sure they will have questions about the foreigner who is also a hidden master.”
Victor stopped eating and sat back in his own chair, “Ah, you say I may not like the outcome, why is that?”
Mei shrugged, if he didn’t know how things worked she didn’t see the harm in telling him. “The Eternal Empress has been said to be a bit temperamental, particularly to foreigners entering her lands. Yes, she is said to be the wisest in the land, and many millennia old. Her magic defends this land and its people.”
Victor took another slow bite with his spoon, “So she may know how to get me home, or she may try to have me killed. No way to know until I meet her eh?”
Mei nodded before stopping, “Wait, you said she may try to have you killed, not that she would have you killed or kill you.”
Victor grinned at her, “Well, I’m not about to make it easy on her if she tries. Listen, I’ve got some things to get done, so in the mean time, here.” He then presented her with a silver bauble with a red gem in the center that dropped from nothingness into his hand. “Take this with you, and give it to the Empress, it will allow her to communicate with me no matter where I go.”
Mei stared at the piece of exquisite jewelry, it would be worth many fortunes over in the Celestial city, and he just handed it to her? “Wait, I can’t just let you leave, you are a foreigner in our lands, it is my duty to keep a watchful eye on you.”
Victor walked over to the bar where Huang looked nervous and dropped a large pile of copper coins before walking to the door.
Mei stood, kicking the chair behind her and stomped towards the exit only to see the hidden master take flight again on wings of fire. This time he did not stop at the bell tower, but continued to fly towards the mountains. “Damn that man to the divinities she shouted as even she lost sight of him in the clouds.”
______________________
“Activate camouflage mode.” Victor spoke into his helmet as his armor took on the the colors surrounding him. It wouldn’t fool anyone close up, but from the distance he was from the village now he doubted even the cultivators could make him out from the sky.
With any luck, Mei would get that communicator back to the Empress, who might know how to get him home. In the mean time though, he reached into his dimensional storage and brought out a satellite probe. He had used the full capacitor load on his jump jets and was still eighteen thousand meters up, more than enough for the probe to reach geosynchronous orbit.
After launching it he looked for a good patch of ground to land. He found one at the base of a mountain range, it even came with a mountain stream. Firing his retro-rockets he landed soft enough and sat on a particularly smooth boulder.
His heads up display showed him his probe had reached geosynchronous orbit and was gathering data. “Well, this is going to take some time.” He thought to himself as he ordered his AI to split his armor. To anyone else watching this would have probably been horrifying as the scout armor appeared to break apart and separate into two halves joined together by a hinge.
Victor took a sniff of himself and groaned, “Good thing the suit is sealed, being in that thing for almost two days and I am ripe!” He thought as he found a nice place in the woods to relieve himself in a way he couldn’t with his armor on.
After that he removed the boxers he wore in his scout armor and placed them on the boulder and stepped across the pebbled beach into the stream. He instantly regretted it, gene-mods or not, a mountain stream in the fall is still cold! After washing as best he could he walked back to his armor, reached into his dimensional storage, produced a towel and fresh boxers and dried off while sunning himself on his rock.
His AI sounded in his inner ear. IMMEDIATE AREA SURVEY COMPLETE.
He kicked off his boulder and climbed back into his now somewhat aired out armor and checked out the results. A mountain in this range was nearly perfect for his needs, abundant metal and mineral deposits, and a valley with a small but very useful petroleum reserve, as well as some natural gas deposits, although those were less than 6% on the scan.
Victor checked that his jump jets capacitor were sufficiently charged and set his jump vector for a somewhat flat ridge three quarters of the way up the mountain, just below the snow caps. Four minutes later, he landed, staring at a nearly sheer cliff face that raised up the mountain another 20 meters above him.
He reached into dimensional storage and retrieved a mining laser. These were a bit expensive, but necessary to start any good mining operation. Mining drones were not good at starting a mining shaft. Oh, it could be done, but it was usually done slowly and crudely. Best to set the aperture to four meters square and crank up the power.
The laser had a magazine of some miracle crystal that put out about ten seconds of power before it was exhausted and was then discarded. He squeezed the trigger and watched as the sheer rock face before him seemed to literally disintegrate as the shaft began to deepen to a depth of about four meters in.
The laser chimed and ejected the magazine as the barrel smoked from the immense heat it had just endured. Victor carefully sat down the mining laser and opened his dimensional storage once more to bring out four mining drones, two forge spiders, and four scout drones.
He set the mining drones to work digging into the mine shaft with gusto the seven dwarfs could never match. Then turned his attention to the scout drones, he sent them off in a patrol pattern to watch over the mountain for any sign of trespassers. Then he remembered the satellite and set it to watch over his piece of paradise as well.
He also thought about retracing his helmet but the temperature outside was just above freezing and decided it best to have a seat and wait a bit for the mining drones to get some work done. On a whim he checked his database, yup, there were 86 different versions of Snow White, might as well pick the Disney one from antiquity, he’d never seen it anyways.
One hour and twenty three minutes later the film was over, and his mining drones and forge spiders had deepened the shaft another five meters. A small pile of ingots had been dropped off by the spiders, the air around them giving off a small mirage effect from the heat they radiated.
Computer, have the nano-forge produce proper steel doors, tracts, motors, and security to cover the dimensions of this shaft. The AI took measurements, produced the adjusted prints, sent them to Victor for approval, then started crafting the necessary materials. Then Victor’s stomach growled.
Sighing, he went over to the pile of fresh ingots, some iron, some copper, others tin and silver.
Retracing his helm he found that although the temperature hovered around 2 degrees celsius, near the ingots it was quite a bit warmer, if you didn’t mind the metallic smell, which it didn’t. Reaching into dimensional storage he found his ration stash, while he had hoped this would be what he would use to fashion himself a life after he left the Imperial Guard, there was a chance he would never get home.
“Resources are there to be used.” He quoted to himself as he took a bite from a bar he hoped wasn’t made from corpo-starch, but as it had no ingredient list he had no way of knowing. Finishing his ration bar, the densely caloric and extremely nutrient bar would play havoc with his bowels later. He noted getting living quarters up soon would be a really good idea.
He slid his helm back into place, “Computer, have the mining drones level off and begin to dig a cavern to fit the small hab module in dimensional storage, have them oversize it by a meter on all sides, I want some clearance when I bring this out of storage.”
The AI complied and he watched his mini-map on his hud as the drones turned ninety degrees and started opening up a new cavern. A few minutes later, the computer chimed to let him know the doors were complete and ready for installation.
A good thing he had his scout armor, these doors were five centimeters thick and three meters high and wide. They weighed almost four tons a piece, which was right at the limit of what his power armor was capable of. Pulling out the necessary tools he installed the tracts above and below, then setup the motor controls before pulling the doors out of storage and setting them into the tracks.
After testing and adjustment he was satisfied that not only were they very secure, they even seemed to blend in well with the sheer cliff wall. “Not a bad job if I do say so myself.” Victor said as he began setting up production orders for ventilation, water drainage, and lighting with his AI to start construction while he waited for the chamber to be completed.
A full six hours later and several movies of varying degrees of watchfulness, his computer chimed letting him know the new cavern was complete and the mining drones were continuing their downward path towards the more dense metal reserves deeper in the mountain.
He stood, stretched his back, and ordered the massive steel doors to open, walking the gently sloping shaft down the ten meters to the new cavern. The walls were smooth and the entrance seemed just about right for the habitats air lock door to fit flush with the mining shaft.
A few minutes later and a loud bang as the habitat module appeared from dimensional space and then found that gravity existed again, slamming it the few centimeters to the floor of the cavern. “Oops!” Victor said to himself hoping he didn’t break anything.
Nothing appeared to be damaged, after all, these habs were basically mini-bunkers designed for anything from death worlds to deep space mining. Fifteen meters on each side and four meters high, it gave him an excellent respite from the world around him. Indoor plumbing, central heating and air, entertainment center, kitchen, bath, and a bed.
He entered the habitat and sealed the airlock to the mine shaft. The internal temperature of the hab read twenty one degrees celsius, so he shed his armor, placed it in the airlock rack and connected it to the habitat’s power and computer system before opening the inner airlock.
“Home sweet home, at least until I find a way back." Then he thought about it, would the Guard blame him for the transmat accident? Sure he lied about having anything on him in dimensional storage but he knew guys who smuggled things around all the time and something like this never happened to them. "Hope I don’t look at a court martial if I ever to get back home for going AWOL or some such bullshit.” He muttered as he headed for the shower. That mountain stream was freezing!
______________________
“What to you mean he flew away?” Shihan looked at Mei from across her desk.
Mei shifted uncomfortably in the rickety chair that sat across from the elder cultivator in front of her. The room was also cold, and Shihan had set the desk low so that she could sit on the kang and keep warm while others had to endure. “He said he had important matters to attend to and flew away on wings of fire.”
Shihan shook her head, “Lazy eggs, all of you. We lost seven Iron Paw warriors in your battle three days ago, and probably would have lost you all if not for this hidden master. I have reached out to the the sect mistress who will be informing the royal court at this weeks meeting with the Empress. Do you have anything else to report?”
Mei nodded and set the jeweled bauble on the desk in front of the elder sect leader, “The hidden master, Victor Cane presented me with this. He stated to give it to the Empress and they would be able to communicate no matter the distance.”
The older lady stared at the priceless looking item before slowly looking back up to Mei, “I feel no chi coming from this item, how could it possibly do what he says. Even our best calling stones can barely reach three hundred li, how could this tiny broach communicate anywhere?”
Mei had thought long on this, “I do not know mistress, however, I do know that not once did I feel any chi from this hidden master either. I believe it is his cultivation technique, as he must use near perfect yang energy to power his creations. Can you detect pure yang, head mistress?”
Shihan shook her head, “I cannot my student, for that is only in the realm of the highest levels of male cultivation, and to my knowledge, no male alive can use pure yang energy, hence why they are inherently weaker as they cultivate some yang and some yin, their meridians are out of balance.”
Mei nodded, this was the same conclusion she had reached as well, “I watched him create multiple items from thin air, some for weapons, one was a simple soup spoon, we know most men use their cultivation for crafting, perhaps this hidden master is so adept at it he uses pure yang energy that we simply cannot sense.”
Shihan’s eyes widened with the implications, “That means he would appear as just a normal mortal until he decided to act, just as he did in your report.” She then looked down at the silver jeweled broach that sat on the desk. “The craftsmanship of this object is superb, its gem is absolutely flawless, I have never seen silversmithing so pure. Were this not to be sent to the Empress its sale would keep the Iron Paw clans coffers full for seasons on end.”
She sighed, “No, we cannot abandon our duty, I will send this item to the Empress herself, and as this Victor Cane had entrusted you with it, I feel that you should be the one to deliver it to her yourself.”
Mei gasped before bowing, “I will not fail you head mistress.”
Shihan sat back on her cushions enjoying the warmth of the kang under her, “See to it that you do not, for the Empress does not take kindly to fools who waste her time.”

Earlier this week, Microsoft released a patch to fix a Secure Boot bypass bug used by the BlackLotus bootkit we reported on in March. The original vulnerability, CVE-2022-21894, was patched in January, but the new patch for CVE-2023-24932 addresses another actively exploited workaround for systems running Windows 10 and 11 and Windows Server versions going back to Windows Server 2008.
The BlackLotus bootkit is the first-known real-world malware that can bypass Secure Boot protections, allowing for the execution of malicious code before your PC begins loading Windows and its many security protections. Secure Boot has been enabled by default for over a decade on most Windows PCs sold by companies like Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, and others. PCs running Windows 11 must have it enabled to meet the software's system requirements.
An attacker who successfully deployed BlackLotus on a targeted system could obtain complete control over the OS boot process—giving them “almost the same capabilities as firmware implants, but without having to overcome the multilevel SPI flash defenses…or the protections provided by hardware (like Intel Boot Guard),”
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/microsoft-patches-secure-boot-flaw-but-wont-enable-fix-by-default-until-early-2024/
https://www.itbrew.com/stories/2023/05/26/the-first-ever-zero-day-to-fully-bypass-secure-boot-on-windows-may-take-until-2024-to-fix

2005 ECF - Dwane Wade gets hurt and we lose in a heartbreaking fashion. Shaq was 2nd in MVP votings and had a big chance to win a championship
2014 Finals - Lebron gets cramps and therefore can't play, if he did play I think we could've won the championship
2015- I don't think we actually could have made a run but still was extremely sad what happened to Bosh
2020 - Okay we would've won that one 100% literally our 2nd and 3rd best players were injured. Bam who was crucial for his defense and our 2nd leading scorer in Goran Dragic who was also our main facilitator and point guard
2022- Most of our guys were injured and we defeat Celtics and give a battle to the Warriors.
2023- Jimmy, Tyler, Caleb, Victor are all injured, not saying we're not going to win but still a disadvantage
Should've had 2 definante championships and 2 more "what if's"

(Please check the pinned comment for additional info, thanks!)
Humans were never at the top of the foodchain. There were things that hid in the dark and preyed on our false confidence. Predators that rarely let their victims live to tell the tale, because their strength lay in their unknowable nature. Pride, the first sin, would always be men's downfall. Our carelessness would ensure that these predators shall never run out of prey.
Almost fourty years ago, I fell victim to one of their kind. I am one of the few who made it out, and lived to tell my story.
But let me start this in the only apropriete way.
My name is Billie, and I was a passenger of the Midnight Train.
In the early eighties, on a cool day in April, I stood at the train station at midnight, a heavy backpack on my shoulders and the earphones of my walkman blasting Metallica at high volume. I was the only person at the station, which wasn't surprising, considering that it was late at night on a weekday. For a second, I stood still in front of the open door and looked at the golden interior. I had made it. Nobody could stop me now.
With a smile on my lips, I stepped over the threshold.
It was a relief to hear the doors close behind me immediately. I wasn't sure where this train was going, but my main priority was to get away from my hometown. As soon as I reached the next big city, I could get on a train towards me real destination.
The train I had boarded was beautiful though. Bathed in golden light, almost painfully bright against the black night outside, was luxurious furniture made of polished wood and gilded metal. A bordeaux red carpet covered the floor and it looked barely used, as if this train was still brand new. This was far from what I had imagined from a random train in the middle of the night.
I took my earphones off and slowly walked down the corridor in an attempt to find a seat for myself. The train was driving already and was rapidly accelerating, so much that the outside was a blur. Good, I thought, because that would get me to the next city quicker.
"Excuse me, Ma'am?"
I flinched and spun around, only to see a man in an old-fashioned uniform, with a face that was so terribly unremarkable it was impossible to describe. He smiled politely, or at least I thought he did because my brain refused to recognize any of his facial features. "Welcome aboard the Midnight Train, Ma'am", he greeted me. "Please, allow me to lead you to your compartment."
"Uhm... yeah, sure", I agreed, more confused than anything. Compartment? Sure, this place was obviously fancy, but this seemed like overkill. I'd only stay here for an hour or so, only until we reached the next bigger train station. I'd be fine with sitting on the floor, honestly.
Still, I followed the Conductor to a compartment, thanked him for leading me here and eventually sat down on the bed and breathed a sigh of relief when he disappeared without asking for my ticket. Maybe he pitied me. Did I look like a runaway? Well, of course I did, what else would a seventeen year old girl with a huge backpack do at a train station at night. I smiled tiredly. The Conductor seemed like a nice person.
I sat the backpack down, put my earphones back on and lay down on the bed. Soon I would be in a train to California and I'd never have to see my parents again.
The problem was, this train didn't stop. Hours later, when I replayed the album in my walkman for the third time, we hadn't reached a single station and the outside was ist an indistinguishable blur. The darkness was slowly getting brighter, the watch on my wrist told me that daybreak wasn't far away, and the train didn't seem to slow down any time soon.
Maybe that was when I realized something was wrong.
I jumped from the bed and grabbed my backpack again. This probably meant nothing, I thought, all I had to do was ask the friendly Conductor and that would clear everything up.
With shaking hands, I opened the compartment door and stepped outside. The Conductor was nowhere to be seen, so I just picked a direction and wandered off. This wagon solely consisted of compartments and I walked past them without paying much attention, when suddenly a bloodcurling scream made me jump.
I screamed and took a step back, while the screeching from behind one of the compartment doors continued. Two children's voices screamed bloody murder behind the door with the number eighteen as I stood with my back agaist the wall, breathing heavily and eyeing said door in horror. "What the hell?", I whispered to myself. "What the actual fucking hell?"
Shaking my head, I hurried quickly past the door, towards the next wagon. This was something I wouldn't mess with. Whatever was happening in there, I'd just inform the Conductor and he would take care of this. It sounded like someone was getting murdered in there, and I wasn't going to put myself in harms way.
Even more unsettled, I entered the next wagon and found myself in a more populated area. Just as luxurious as the rest of the train, but the mood was more casual. Several seats were placed like the would be in a normal train, a few vending machines were placed on the wall, and people were sitting around. What was weird though, was that all these people seemed to keep distance between each other. Although there should have been chatter, the wagon was weirdly quiet.
I took a few tentative steps into the wagon, but nobody paid any attention to me. My eyes wandered over the passengers I walked past. A woman with blonde curly hair was quietly crying; there were bloody bandages wrapped around her lower arm. A man with a long beard was coughing pathetically, the dark beard was covered in grey dust for some reason. A black haired, obviously pregnant woman was reading a children's book to herself.
I stood in the middle of the wagon, looking at the strange passengers and wondering what was going on here when my eyes fell on a man. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about him and that was the thing that stood out to be, between all these weird people. He was bald, wore a fancy suit and simply sat next to a window, looking down at some paper in his hands. For a moment, I stared at him like an idiot.
The silence was broken when the people suddenly started to move. I looked around in confusion as they walked past me, some rather unsteady on their feet. What was going on?
The bald man was the last to stand up, our eyes met and he raised an eyebrow curiously. He walked straight towards me, his briefcase in one hand, the paper in the other.
"Hey!" A hand touched my shoulder.
I spun around and found myself face to face with a young man with dark blonde hair. "What the fuck?!", I snapped at him. "You scared the shit out of me!"
"Really? I'm the one who scares you? In this place?" He chuckled. "You're new, aren't you?"
"Uhm... yeah, I guess? Arrived a few hours ago."
He nodded. "Okay, thought so. Come on, we have to go, I'll explain everything when we're safe." With that, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me along, back out of the wagon.
"Safe from what? Who the hell are you? What's going on?"
"Just give me a minute, will you?", he replied harshly. We passed compartment eighteen again and once more I heard the children scream behind closed doors, but the man paid no attention to that. We hurried down the hall, past my own compartment, and at the very end of the wagon, we entered the last compartment, where he threw the door shut behind us.
I did not get the chance to say anything before I was tackled to the ground by something large and black.
I screamed and tried to free myself from the heavy thing that held my body down. All I saw was pitch black and there was something wet against my face. The man yelled something and then the black thing was yanked off of me and I gasped for air, trying desperately to comprehend what had just happened.
When I sat up again, I saw what had attacked me. A giant black dog, a very fluffy one in fact, stood next to the man, looking up at him with tired eyes while he was scolding it. Okay then. Nothing bad, just a cute dog.
The man turned to me. "Sorry, she tends to get a bit... excited", he said with an apologetic smile.
"Yeah, I noticed." I got back up and crossed my arms in front of my chest. "So... why am I here?"
"First things first, yeah? I'm Derek and this cutie next to me is Kira."
"I'm Billie. Now get to the point!"
He nodded. "Short version, this train is fucked and you need to know some things or you'll be dead by tomorrow."
I felt my stomach drop. For a moment there was absolute silence and my mind was racing until I realized what was going on. "That's not funny!", I hissed. "Honestly, pull your stupid jokes on someone else. I'm gonna go to my compartment now and wait until we reach the next stop, where I will get off this train. Okay?" I turned around and went to open the door when he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back.
"Fuck, don't go out there now! Just sit down and listen, okay? I'm not joking", he said urgently.
"You're annoying, you know that?" Still, I sat down on the bed and Kira wandered over to me immediately and rested her head in my lap. At least I got to pet a cute dog, I thought as I brushed over her dark fur.
Derek sat down next to me. "Okay... this will sound completely unbelievable, but please keep in mind that this train hasn't stopped in several hours and you agree that this is weird, right?"
I shrugged, but nodded. It was weird, he had a point there.
"Listen, the Midnight Train... it's cursed or something. There are inhuman things here and you have to be careful around them because they will kill you if you do something wrong. You have to follow certain rules to survive here."
Another moment of silence, then I shook my head. "Still not funny, asshole."
"Oh for fuck's sake..." He stood up, walked over to his cabinet and took something out. It took a second for me to understand what the black thing he showed me was. A dead raven. "A child whose mouth is sewn shut gave me this thing yesterday. This isn't a prank, Billie, I'm serious. This place is fucked."
I looked at the dead bird in his hands. He did have a point, nobody would go that far for a prank. Well, and all the people had started to leave that wagon at the same time, which was also very weird. The screaming kids in compartment eighteen, the fact that I couldn't for the life of me recall the Conductor's face, and that the train hadn't stopped once in the past seven hours...
This was bad.
"Let's say I believe all of this...", I said slowly. "How can we get off this train?"
He put the dead animal away again. "Depends... you've got a ticket?"
"Nope. Left in a bit of a hurry. I just hoped nobody would check." I shrugged.
"Fuck!", he cursed. Defeated, he dropped down on the bed again. "That means we're both stuck, girlie. No leaving without a ticket."
My blood ran cold. "You can't be serious."
"I wish I was joking. If you don't have a ticket, you don't get to leave."
I buried my face in my hands, mumbling no over and over again. This couldn't be real. I couldn't be stuck in a cursed train for the rest of my life. I was only seventeen. All I had wanted was to get away from my parents and now... no, there had to be a way out. All I had to do was survive until I found it. I could do that. I would survive and get out of here.
"Hey, are you alright?", Derek asked, sounding slightly worried. Kira made a small noise.
"Yes." I took a deep breath, wiped any tears from my eyes and looked straight at him. "Okay, tell me the rules. What are we hiding from right now?"
"The Fog. Every day at seven a.m. you have to be in your compartment for half an hour because the entire train fills with cold white fog. I saw a corpse once, of a person who didn't hide away... that shit's not harmless. Tears you apart from the inside." He shivered. "The guy was empty, Billie. I swear to god, all that was left of him was skin and bones."
Okay. Okay. That sounded absolutely horrifying, but easy enough to avoid. "Okay. Be in your compartment at seven. Got it. What else?"
He raised an eyebrow. "You're awfully calm."
I was actually freaking out, but running up and down like a headless chicken wouldn't get me anywhere. The most important thing right now was information, and I'd take everything he had to offer in this regard. "I'll cry later. Go on, what else is running around here? Who gave you the bird?"
"I call him the Distributor. Creepy kid with pitch black eyes and a mouth that's sewn shut. That little fucker is just weird. He walkes up to you, hands you some shit and runs off again. Not dangerous, as far as I can tell."
"And what's the dead raven all about?"
"No idea." He shrugged.
Well, that was moderately concerning, but alright. Better than the murder fog. "Okay. The screaming kids?"
"Compartment eighteen. Completely off limits. Just don't open the door and you're fine."
He went on to tell me that the Conductor was a neutral presence in the train, neither friend nor enemy of the passengers. The food sources were either the vending machines or the dining wagon, though the latter was apparently a bit problematic. He didn't know all the details about this, only that people tended to flee when their waiter had no face and that he had once seen a man cut his palm open when a white-haired woman had brought him a plate.
"Sounds like something I want to stay away from", I commented.
"Sure, the vending machines are safer, but trust me, you can only live off chips and candy for so long."
"Are you challenging me?" I grinned. "I'll see how long I can last. By the way, I'm hungry."
He shook his head. "You're really calm", he stated and he was right. I was calm. Right now, this sounded bad, but managable. I would be able to stick to a few rules. I would survive. I would find a way out of this mess.
On the bright side, I was as far away from my parents as humanly possible.
"We can't leave yet", he continued. "Five more minutes before the Fog's gone." He pointed at the door and I saw hints of white fog creep inside the compartment.
"Okay. I'll just cuddle with your dog." With that, I got off the bed and lay down on the floor. Kira seemed happy, because she cuddled against me immediately. That dog was almost as big as I was, with an unreasonable amout of fur. I loved her already.
When the Fog was gone, we decided to head out and get some food from the vending machines. Derek was nice enough, I thought. I was glad he had approached me, not only because he had saved my life and given me neccessary information, but also because it figured it was good to have a friend in here. Two idiots without a ticket and a dog, trying to find their way out. That was the stuff they made movies about.
Derek told me how he had stumbled into the train after finding his girlfriend with another man. He had simply taken Kira and ran off, entering the Midnight Train on accident, just like I had. I didn't tell him my reason to be here though. Like I said, I could use a friend in here and I didn't want to scare him off. He didn't need to know anyways.
"What do you want?" I turned my head to look at Derek, who only shrugged. As I looked back at the vending machine display, I blinked in confusion. The food, which had been brand new a minute ago, was now greyish and covered in dust. "What the...?", I started and turned to Derek again, who had gone pale like a ghost. Kira was growling lowly.
Everything in the wagon was turning grey. The light dimmed, a thick layer of dust covered the floor and furniture, the air was so dry it scratched my throat. "Shit", Derek whispered. "The Cinder Queen. Listen, do not run! Her minions are predators, you don't want to set off their hunting instinct."
"The fuck is going on??"
He didn't answer, just reached out and grabbed my wrist in a bruising grip. His eyes were focused on the other side of the wagon and I followed his look. What was approaching was the most beautiful and horrific thing I had ever seen.
The Cinder Queen was breathtaking. A tall woman with long black hair and ashen skin. Her dress was fitting for a queen, wide and flowing and detailed with intricate patterns, all grey in grey. She was thin, all skin and bones, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, and she moved with the grace of a cat as she walked down the hall.
And behind her followed a crowd of monsters of ash and soot. Grey, hulking bodies that only vaguely resembled a human, walking on all fours while almost staying upright due to their grotesquely long arms. They had no eyes in their misshapen heads, only a wide mouth that almost reached around the skull, baring long, thin teeth and a snake-like tongue.
The world around us was silent as the Cinder Queen and her followers approached; all I could hear was my heartbeat echoing in my ears. I didn't dare to move an inch. She came closer and for a moment I dared to hope she would walk right past us, but of course the entity didn't have mercy. She stopped in front of us and now that I saw her up close, I realized that what I had thought to be sunken eyes were actually hollow voids.
Her hand reached out and long, boney fingers touched my face. From this proximity I could trace the cobweb of cracks in her dry skin. She opened her mouth and a thin, split tongue slithered out and flickered over my face. I shivered, frozen in place from fear. This was it, I thought. I was going to die.
And then she smiled and let go off me, only to turn her attention to Derek. I didn't relax in the slightest as I had to watch her grab his face like she had done to me before. Again, her lips twisted into a cruel smile and with that she grabbed him tighter and pressed her lips against his.
I bit down on my lip to keep myself from making a noise.
It was only a moment before she let go off him, turned away and continued to walk down the hallway, her ashen monsters always right behind her.
As she left the wagon, I got to watch the ashes fade away and the world regain its colour. My heart was racing, I could hear the blood rushing in my ears, but there was no time for me calm down. Derek had let go off my wrist and had fallen to his knees, coughing violently.
"Hey! Hey, are you okay? What did that bitch do?", I asked urgently.
He looked up to me, a pained smile on his face. "Nothing fatal. I'm okay, don't worry." His voice was hoarse.
"Are you sure?" I was not convinced at all, mostly because he looked pale as a ghost and had started to cough again.
"Yup." He got back up and brushed some dust off his clothes. "Come on, you were hungry, weren't you?"
"Are you going to explain what just happened?"
"Back in the compartment, okay?"
So we purchased some food at the nearby vending machines and walked back to the compartment. The way wasn't interrupted by anything, thankfully. We passed the pregnant woman again and I thought how terrible it must be for her to be stuck in place like this with an unborn child, and we walked past the bald man too, who held some chocolate in his hand. He looked up for just a moment, his bright blue eyes focused on my coughing companion, before he turned his attention back to the chocolate bar.
Back in the compartment, we were instantly tackled by Kira, who was overjoyed to have us back. After a very enthusiastic greeting, the giant dog settled on the floor at our feet, though her big brown eyes rested on her owner the entire time. Derek and I sat on the bed again, our food between us, but I was the only one that was eating.
"The Cinder Queen...", he began to explain. "She's the one thing the rules won't save you from. Nobody really knows how to counter her, she just shows up sometimes and turns the world around her into this dusty mess." He shrugged. "She unpredictable. Just stay still and wait... and maybe pray a bit."
"I'm not religious."
He chuckled. "Now would be a good time to reconsider."
Derek continued to cough and I asked him several more times wether he was sure he was alright, but he promised me that it was nothing and eventually I let it go. I ended up going back to my compartment after a while, because after all that had happened I wanted to rest for a bit. Earphones back on, I laid on my admittedly very comfortable bed and stared at the ceiling, contemplating the events of the day.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared. Although I had stayed calm when talking to my new friend, I was absolutely terrified to be in a place like this. A place that, by all accounts, should not even exist. I had lived my entire life not believing in the paranormal, only to end up in a place filled with inhuman creatures that would kill me as soon as I made a single mistake. And worst of all, with one of them it was entirely up to chance wether or not I would survive an encounter. A terrifying prospect.
I fell asleep eventually and was plagued with nightmares of ash and soot. In my dreams I hurried through monochrome corridors, the Cinder Queen's ashen monsters at my heels, and when I woke up my heart was racing and I was drenched in sweat.
"Still better than home", I muttered bitterly to myself as I changed my clothes. The cabinet was filled with clothes in my size, which was weird, but far from the weirdest thing in this place. They were a bit to girly for my taste, but they would suffice. I chose something that didn't look completely atrocious and made my way back to Derek's compartment a few doors down.
My fears from yesterday were confirmed when I walked through the door.
Derek was lying on his bad and for a moment I thought he was dead. His skin was ashen, his mouth stained with dust, his breath shallow and interrupted with coughs. Kira sat on the floor next to her owner and whined.
"For fuck's sake", I cursed. "I thought you were okay?"
"Billie! Oh thank god you're here." He sounded weak, as if speaking demanded all his strength. "Listen, there's another... entity I haven't mentioned. The Blind Beggar Woman. She... she can help me. Just make sure..." He coughed. "Make sure to ask for her price first. She makes deals, she can... save me."
"Okay. Okay, Blind Beggar Lady. Got it." I nodded quickly. "Where is she?"
"She'll be there if you look for her. She always is. Please, Billie, please hurry."
"I'll be right back!", I promised, turned around and hurried out of the compartment.
I ran down the hall, not entirely sure what I was looking for. All I knew was that I had to find that entity quickly, because my friend had looked like he was about to drop dead at any given moment. Interally I cursed the man for lying to me, for claiming he was fine when the exact opposite was the case. Now it was my job to save his life and under normal circumstances that would be okay, but now that I had to deal with one of the train's entities, I wasn't so sure.
I left the wagon with the compartments behind and entered one of the common ones, only to find the person I was looking for sitting right in front of me. A woman in her thirties maybe, with dark skin and long dark hair, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a small bowl in front of her. Her eyes were completely white and she wore wrinkled, ill-fitted clothes.
"Hi", I greeted her, my voice shaking more than I had expected. "I want to make a deal."
"Yes, I am aware", she replied calmly. "Why don't you sit down and we discuss this?"
I decided to humour her and knelt down on the floor, so that we were at eye-level now. The Blind Beggar Woman looked so nice and painfully human that I had a hard time believing I was dealing with an inhuman thing. I wanted to trust her and it was a conscious effort to keep my guard up. "A friend of mine is dying. He says you can save him."
"He is right, I am able to save him, as long as you are willing to pay the price, Sybille."
So this lady just knew my name. That was certainly among the more freaky things that had happened up until this point. "Billie", I corrected automatically. "Why am I supposed to pay? It's his life you're saving."
"You came to me. This deal is between you and I, so you will pay the price", she explained. "Are you interested?"
I didn't like this in the slightest. "Tell me the price!"
She closed her blind eyes and smiled. "Your friend is on the verge of death, Billie. What you're asking from me is no small favour. Are you willing to give up one of your arms for his life?"
"What?" My blood ran cold. "You want one of my limbs?"
"This is the price."
Confused, I looked down at my hands. An arm. An entire fucking arm. I was supposed to become an amputee for a man I'd only known for a day. My only friend in this cursed place. A stranger.
It was probably a small price to pay for a life.
"So?", the Beggar Woman asked. "Will you pay?"
There was a lump in my throat. I took a shaking breath and swallowed hard, unable to speak at first. "I can't", I finally admitted. "I'm sorry."
"I'm not the person you should be apologizing to." The Blind Woman stood up. "If you hurry, you might get the chance to say goodbye to him."
"Already? Fuck!" Now I, too, jumped to my feet and without a goodbye to her, I ran back to the compartment. I had no idea how to explain this to Derek, but maybe I wouldn't even have to.
The way back was short, but I was out of breath when I arrived. I threw the door open and stopped at the treshold, frozen in place.
He looked like he was suffering a seizure. His body was convulsing, he screamed in pain as his skin turned grey, his form was changing and growing in the strangest proportions. Kira was barking in distress. Derek's arms were growing, his skull deforming. He looked at me and choked out my name in between agonized screams and then his eyes disappeared. It was the most horrible thing I had ever seen.
Before I knew what was happening, an ash monster lay where Derek had been just a minute ago and the creature moved, clumsily but fast. It staggered around the room, bumped into the walls, hissing and baring his teeth, and I couldn't do anything but watch as it stumbled around in its confused state before turning towards me and running. I threw myself to the side, out of the way, and the creature ran straight past me, out of the door. It ran into the wall before hurrying down the hallway, out of sight.
I collapsed to the floor, trying to calm down my racing heart.
Kira walked over to me and put her head into my lap. To hear her whine was heartbreaking, but I couldn't do anything but pet her. "I'm so sorry, baby. I couldn't save him", I told the dog. "Don't worry, you just stay with me, okay? I won't leave you. You and I, we're gonna make it out of here. That stupid Cinder Queen won't get us."
Kira just looked up at me with her big eyes.
We stayed like this for quite a while. Derek, or rather the thing that had once been Derek, didn't return and I took the time to mourn his loss. Eventually though, I knew that waiting wouldn't do any good. I wanted to get out and I had to work for it. Derek was gone and since I didn't think I could do this alone, I needed a new friend.
And so I wandered into a common wagon hours later, Kira walking next to me. And there he was again, sitting next to a window and studying some piece of paper he held in his hands. My newly acquired dog in tow, I simply walked up to him and smiled. "Hi", I greeted the bald man with the bright blue eyes. "So, are you human?"
This is where I end this for now. The next part will be about new friends and deadly nightmares. But until then, don't lay your life into the hands of a stranger.
They might not value it quite enough.
- To Be Continued -

First Previous Next
---
Big thanks to u/Killsode-slugcat and u/cliche_-_bartender for helping me with proofreading and editing.
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SUBJECT-DESIGNATION: Admiral Marcus Miller
LOCATION: Earthen Orbit, Atlantic Citadel
DATE: EARTH-TIME [Wednesday, August 23, 2186]
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I stood above Earth, gazing down upon her bright blue brilliance from the comfort of my personal quarters.
It was odd to think that just five hundred years ago, humanity had been scared of the darkness that lingered at the forest’s edge. I couldn’t imagine that those born during that time could have ever imagined the heights which we would rise to. My only hope was that our vast distance from the ground of primitivity wouldn’t lead to a devastating fall.
Already it felt like a lifetime ago that my crew and I had braved our own dark forest—the endless expanse of space beyond our system’s heliopause. Now we knew of the devils that rested at the edge of those shadows. The fires of Sol and the shield of our Oort cloud were all that now stood between us and them. At least in the process of our journey, we had met another group of weary travelers. We now knew that we were not alone.
The reaction to our discovery of the Khimrox—or perhaps their discovery of us—had actually gone over quite well with the global population, though some fringe groups chose to remain skeptical for reasons I couldn’t fathom.
Following the acceptance of the Khimroxian people as refugees, I was rather quickly promoted to the position of admiral. Despite it being an honorary title for the time-being, it was one that I wore with pride. Besides, considering how things were currently going among the leadership of the UEN, it was my guess that we would soon need all of the fleet commanders we could get.
Being separated from my crew though, it was certainly an ordeal. For over a year, we had trained and prepared for our journey aboard the Challenger, all the while forming a strong bond—the bond of a crew. It was them who had kept my mind from plunging into the hopeless darkness that threatened to envelop my mind back aboard the ruined wreck of our exploratory vessel.
Liz and Garth had been reassigned to finally fulfill their true calling as biologists. Together, they dove head-first into in-depth studies of Khimroxian anatomy and physiology. Sid had opted to assist in the deconstruction of the Ignis, allowing its analysis by a team of scientists that included Lee. As far as I was aware, they had so far produced staggeringly impressive results in regards to potential military applications. Jake was probably the wisest among us, choosing to enter an early retirement, which I quite honestly considered the smartest move. Each member of the Challenger had essentially become an influential celebrity overnight. If any of us chose to, we wouldn’t need to work another day in our lives.
Nia had taken an extended leave of absence following our return and chose to take up temporary residence within the Khimrox colony. Darius was perhaps the only one that had stuck with me. Due to my request, he was to be the chief navigational officer of a brand new fleet that had been promised to me—an experimental UEN fleet by the name of Vengeant Dawn.
Though word hadn’t yet officially been released, some part of me could sense the storm approaching on the horizon. War was coming. The only questions that remained were when and how it would be waged, one of which we were currently working to answer.
Some remained skeptical, but me, I had been waiting since the day I first heard of that wretched name, the one which hid behind a thin and lustrous coat. They would pay in blood for what they had done to our Khimroxian friends and to all of the scion species that they considered beneath them.
Speaking of those pricks… I turned from the window to look back at the objects of interest.
We had already begun to install improvements and replacements for our own technology from what we had researched so far. The holo-table of my room was one such improvement.
Atop it, hovered three ire-inspiring figures—the bastards of the Orion Arm.
One was what looked to be a molluscoid. Twelve long and winding tentacles stretched from its body. The creature’s skin could possess a wide variety of colors, but this one took on a dark shade of blue. Atop its head—or back, I still wasn’t entirely sure—was a large circular shell that spiraled backwards. The shell itself was fairly reminiscent of an ammonite, with the notable exception of its golden sheen. A green pair of eyes with slitted black pupils could be found at either side of its face. At the end of each of its limbs were a strange bunch of contraptions that were barely recognizable as the manipulators they were. To support its spineless body—and perhaps its brazen cowardice—was an exoskeleton which covered the length of its tentacles, allowing it to rise to an ironically respectable height. The Dodektopi.
The second was a shape that made no sense according to what little we apparently knew regarding the formation of life. The figure of flames was somewhat humanoid in shape, but distinct enough to separate it from ourselves. A frenzy of dancing plasma licked across the surface of its shape, occasionally whipping out from its body in flares of solar activity. Centered within the fiery specter’s face was an unfamiliar symbol forged out of a sleek black metal that did not burn with the being’s body. Its hands and feet that connected the body were made of similar steel and seemed to hold the shape together with the help of the head. The Novari.
Last but most certainly not least was a chillingly familiar shape. It was an ancient and terrible legend made manifest. The draconic figure before me bore ebony-black scales. A wicked pair of gold curling horns rose from the tyrant’s skull, covered in rings of that black metal that wrapped around them. Cryptic runes—whose mere existence denoted their ancient nature—were etched into the bone of these very same horns. Surrounding its head were countless quills that reached back behind the skull. From its oddly placed back pair of shoulders sprouted leathery wings that curled around the body, nearly encircling it in a hug. A long tail whose spiked end was covered in yet more of those sleek black rings fell behind them. The creature wore nothing more than a red ornamented kilt, bearing the same symbols as those etched upon its body across the sashes which held it in place. Its imposing physique was proudly put on display and an amber pair of greedy eyes rested behind its black maw of terrible teeth.
At the second and frontward pair of stubby shoulders, a shimmering pair of auric arms, engraved with yet more of those runes. I could have recognized their design anywhere. They bore an uncanny similarity with those utilized by our Khimrox friends. The three primary differences between those of them and those that belong to our friends were the sheer quality of the design, the notable exception of their shimmering sheen and their lethal talons that had been sharpened to a shining point. The Aeryvyn.
The terrible triumvirate mocked me with their mere presence, but I couldn’t tear them away from my sight. It’s fortunate that something else did it for me.
A ping that rained from the speakers in my ceiling heralded the incoming message. “All UEN personnel with alpha clearance please report to the briefing room.” Two more times, the soft and purposefully inoffensive voice repeated itself.
With a sigh, I shut off the display and marched to don the new garb that matched my position. When my door slid open, I saw several others stride through the long hall of yet more doors that matched my own.
The familiar scent of ozone had been a relief following the unnaturally clean air of the Ignis. That ship was no longer the home of the Khimroxian refugees, so I had little care for its continued existence. By now, it was a skeleton of alien alloys.
Our straight, gray walls and steel-vented floors were showered in warm light. Compared to the Ignis where the too-white surface where wall and floor blended together, the scenic viewing ports and recognizable craftsmanship felt like the warm embrace of a long-lost friend.
Speaking of friends, I wonder if I’ll see Saffan. Weeks had passed now since I last saw the captain-ambassador. His new position ensured this was so.
A stream of gray-coated senior staff flowed through the doors to the briefing room. At the entrance, a full complement of soldiers outfitted with Styx suits stood guard. That generation of armor would soon be outdated in comparison to the schematics I had seen prepared.
My heart warmed involuntarily as I entered the room. Saffan’s bright eyes of perpetual wideness stared back at me. I shouldered my way through the convening crowds of admirals. Each spoke with a weight of self-importance that I couldn’t have cared less for.
When I finally reached him he called my name. “Marcus!” The captain extended a hand. Wait, what? I wasn’t sure whether to be more confused by his use of the gesture or his new set of arms. They were admittedly simple compared to the prior pair and they were coated with a blue shine that matched his eyes. The digits no longer took the shape of those reptilian claws, instead forming an approximation of human fingers.
The hands locked perfectly with my own. “Saffan, good to see you again. How are things going?”
“Wonderfully. Though I must say, you humans seem to have more countries than you know what to do with.” Saffan folded his arms. “I’ve visited thirteen nations already and I still have over a hundred that have sent me visitation invitations.”
A scoff escaped my throat. “Yeah, that’s us for you. Needlessly overcomplicated.”
I took a step forward and placed a hand on a brilliant blue arm. “And these! When did you get these?” Saffan practically beamed at my inquiry.
“Elizabeth and Garth actually helped design them! They’re exceptionally lightweight compared to my last pair and they can fold to not hinder flight.” As he said this, the two artificial limbs pressed up against his body as he fully folded his wings in a similar manner. With both arms and wings folded, he would have looked like a great horned owl if not for the obvious discrepancies of his size, his horned head and the swirling patterns that covered his wings.
“That’s enough about me though, how have you been? What have you been up to?”
“Ah, not much,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. “Paid the family a visit a week back for the first time since the Challenger. For the most part though, I've been training on the battle sims these last few weeks. If I’m to be an admiral, may as well try to play the part.” Saffan slowly nodded. I got the feeling that he too sensed the approaching storm.
“This family of yours, I’d love to meet them some time.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’d love to meet you I…”
“Attention!” The stern sound cut me off. The rippling chorus of speech died down almost immediately as the call demanded our undivided focus. I could’ve recognized that voice anywhere.
“Thank you for joining me, my friends.”
“You’re a smart bunch of people, so I’m sure you’ve gotten the sense for what’s been going on by now.” Redd took a deep sigh and looked around the room at the entirety of the UEN navy’s command structure.
“Ever since the Khimroxians arrived, we’ve been faced with a choice—a choice that must not be taken lightly.” The captain turned our way and gave Saffan a nod.
“When the brave souls aboard the Ignis saved the crew of the Challenger, they showed the true character of their people. They were faced with hard decisions—for our people and theirs—but they chose to push forward and in so doing, saved not only the lives of those aboard the Challenger, but all of Earth from falling subject to their lords. After due deliberation with the council-members of the United Earthen Nations, we have decided to follow in the footsteps of our friends and take such a risk.”
“As of right now, we are at war with the Alliance of the Aurum Arm.” The room fell into deafening silence.
“Each member-state of the UEN will alert their people in due time, but for the moment, not a single word heard within this meeting must be uttered outside of this room.”
Admiral Sturm, the very man who had been my commander not all that long ago, spoke up. “With all due respect, Director, we don’t have the means to wage such a conflict.”
“That's why we’ll create the means. For once, I’m glad to say something good came out of the Kuiper War.” This derived a few nervous laughs from the audience. “With the production facilities appropriated from the (x corporation), and with a few adjustments, we have the potential to create the most powerful fleet of human-made ships to ever enter space.”
“Unfortunately however, we do not have the means to reproduce the white hole drives utilized by the Aurum vessels, or even the dark matter used to stabilize the damned things.”
“Saffan, this is where you and your people will come in. If we are to stand a chance of waging war on such a scale, we will need intelligence and lots of it.”
“As difficult as it may be, we need information; without it, we’re dead in the vacuum of space. We will need volunteers to go behind enemy lines and retrieve plans, schematics, layouts, anything that we can get a hold of that may provide us an advantage both strategically and technologically. Would your people be willing to go to such lengths?”
All eyes in the room turned to the ambassador-captain. “I—I don’t know. I will consult with them, but do I have your permission to speak freely about what you have told me?”
The aging man rubbed his orange-brown beard. “Yes. Yes that would probably be for the best wouldn’t it. Very well, just do your best not to allow it to reach other ears.”
“Yes sir.”
“As for the rest of you, allow me to detail the plan we have so far.”
“Though most of the security council members are not tacticians, they have agreed to the plan that I and a few of my most trusted consultants have prepared. Right now, the nearest sector with a habitable planet is known as Mortamis. This was the last jump point for the Ignis before it intercepted our distress signal. The tentative plan is to begin our expansion across their territory with the capture of this world to act as the staging grounds of our forces. However, until we receive more information regarding the exact layout of their defenses, we cannot commit to such an invasion.”
“From there, we will split up the UEN fleets into separate groups across the Orion arm and take out these tyrants by bleeding them of their most precious resource. Scions. Every world we take is an addition to our numbers, our production capacity, and our ability to fight.”
“Our end-goal is to capture the planet-capital of the alliance, Petris, and demand liberation of all species under control of the Aurum Alliance.“
“We do have a few major concerns however. According to the information provided to us by the Khimrox, a majority of Aurum vessels contain some form of scionic crew complement. Under no circumstances unless express consent is given by the command admiral of the fleet are we to attack a vessel with the intent of destroying it. We must first weaken and disable the ship’s defensive systems before boarding and liberating the captives.”
“I know that this flies in the face of all conventional battle tactics, but this is no conventional enemy that we’re fighting here. If we do not adapt, we will fail and all of humanity will be forced into scionship.”
“Keep in mind, this is a very brief version of our prepared plan. Each and every aspect of it is subject to change. We will discuss this in further detail later, but for now, that is all. Any further questions?” Once again, silence. “Very well then. This council session is now adjourned.”
Other than the shuffling of feet exiting, all was silent. We had known it was coming, but to hear it confirmed…
“Marcus.” The director approached, placing a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Go ahead and join Ambassador Aeax, why don’t you? Might help some of those Khimrox to see a human face that they’re familiar with.”
With a snappy salute, I responded with, “Yes sir.” His words were certainly a surprise, but a chance to join the Khimrox that had saved us was not one I would pass up easily. He may as well have just given me a week of leave considering the excitement that bubbled up within me.
Together, I and Saffan made our way to a nearby shuttle bay headed directly to the Khimroxian colony. Surprisingly, I hadn’t yet paid a visit to the settlement placed within the province of Hunan, but I had seen some images on several media platforms.
The trip was a quick one. Our transport plunged into the atmosphere, kicking up flames all around the outside of the cabin. Soon enough though, the flames of our descent died out and were replaced by the darkness of night.
Even with the slight turbulence, Saffan seemed deep in thought as his eyes stared at nothing in particular.
“Hey, you good?”
That seemed to snap him out of it. “Wha—oh yes, sorry.” A look of focus still remained on his face. For a moment, he continued in his silence before posing a question. “What if my people decide not to volunteer? This entire plan could fall through in an instant.”
“You don’t give your people enough credit, my feathered friend.” Saffan gave me a narrow-eyed look before letting out a cluck of a chuckle. “Redd was right in what he said. I’m sure your people will make the best choice for all of us.”
“For both our sakes, I can only hope that you’re right.”
Our Harpy gently sailed over mountains and treetops, slowly sinking to a stop within a secluded area of trees that were foreign to me.
Only I and Saffan left from the Harpy’s bay and stepped off onto the tarmac. Behind us, the cargo-door closed with a hiss. As we stepped out from underneath our cover, light droplets of water pattered against my skin.
Seconds later, the Harpy’s thrusters kicked in and the ship took flight. The heavy hum and glow of burning hydrogen accompanied the bird as it flew away. In mere moments, it was gone, though the distant boom of it breaking the sound barrier was audible enough.
Looking around, I saw a few of my fellow men and women unloading supplies from a parked Harpy onto a militarily designed transport truck. Dimly lit orange lamps shone down and around us, illuminating nearby hangar bays with their closed doors and rounded ceilings of corrugated metal.
“Let’s get going. I’m sure you don’t want to stay in the rain long.” The rain was enough to notice, but it wasn’t unpleasant. I gave a brief nod and we set off on the nearby road.
Though clouds of rain covered us, the light of the moon joined us as we walked to the village. The setup looked pretty standard from what I knew of modular UEN architecture. It was clear however that great care had been put into its construction. The rain kept most of the residents indoors for the time being, but through the windows of nearby buildings, I saw the illuminated interiors of cozy hostels where families and friends gathered together.
We passed another Khimrox while wading through the rain—one who held its head and horns high, walking with a cheery gait despite the gloomy weather. Compared to the stale and oppressive atmosphere aboard the Ignis, the settlement brimmed with life, even amidst the darkness of both night and storms.
Saffan led me forward to a quaint home with a metal awning that covered the railed porch. We walked up the steps and Saffan rapped on the door with his cobalt colored knuckles.
I hoped for Nia’s sake that her time away from the military had treated her well. Lord knows she deserved some respite. The door opened and Nia's face peeked out to greet us. “Saffan! Marcus! What are you two doing here?”
Saffan answered as I silently sat by. “Oh we were just passing through. Thought it might be a good idea to stop and pay you a visit.”
“Well don’t make yourself strangers. Come on in!” Saffan sat behind as I walked forward and gave his whole body a shake. Droplets flew from his body and slid off his slick feathers.
The home was a simple one, consisting of a main living room joined together with a kitchen. In the back of the home was a short hall leading to a middle door that stood between a pair of two others. In the living room, perched Tokieran, the same physician who had plunged into my mind to extract our language.
Immediately, he rose from where he rested and turned to face Saffan, “Captain!”
“Can’t be a captain without a ship, Toki.” The former captain waved away the words with a hand. “Saffan will do.”
“Oh. Uh, well, it's good to see you again, Saffan.”
“Likewise my friend. I’m certain you haven’t seen much of me considering your position during our time on the Ignis. It’s a shame we didn’t brush wings more often. You seem like a fine fellow.”
As the two avians got to talking, Nia gave me a light punch on the shoulder. “So, how’ve things been going for you admiral?” It was at this moment that I realized I was still in full military dress. Rather sheepishly, I pulled the hat from my head.
“Fine.” I muttered “You?”
A smile met her face. “Best I’ve felt since I enlisted.” She gave a look towards the two conversing Khimroxians. “It's still hard to believe any of this is real sometimes, ya know?”
I nodded. “Yeah. The Challenger, the Ignis, all of it. Feels like a dream now.”
Nia’s eyes stayed upon the owl-folk. “One of those dreams you don’t really want to wake up from.”
I gave a grunt of agreement. “I only wish all of the Khimroxians could share it with us.” This turned her towards me. Her smile curved down somewhat and she gave a slight nod.
What the hell. She’s going to learn it soon enough anyways. Rubbing the rim of my hat, I spoke softly. “Maybe soon, that will be possible.”
“What?”
“The council’s declared war.”
Her eyes snapped to mine, the smile fully gone. The room fell silent. I hadn’t hoped the others would hear me, but those Khimrox had an impeccable sense of hearing. I shouldn’t have expected any less from them.
All eyes turned to me. “The Aurum Alliance is a threat to humanity, the Khimrox, and all of the other scions that we haven’t even met yet. I think we both know this was inevitable”
“No, I get it, it's just… Wow.” The woman ran a hand through her black, tied-back hair as she heaved a sigh.
This facade dropped almost immediately and Nia’s mouth turned into a wonderfully devilish grin. After a few light chuckles, she said, “Better late than never I suppose. Those spineless sons-of-alien-bitches’ll never know what hit ‘em!”
The expressions on the faces of both Saffan and Tokieran showed no less resolve. Even the formerly jumpy physician proudly displayed a newfound sense of will. “The triumvirate operates under the expectation that we won’t fight back,” said Toki. “They see us as little more than animals and It's time we took full advantage of that fact.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” remarked Saffan.
If these willing warriors were in any way representative of the entire Human-Khimroxian collective, the battle against these golden tyrants would be over before we knew it.
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First Previous Next

If I’d only followed my instincts, I’d never have boarded that doomed ship. When the Azure Seastar left port, its passengers were all alive, each with smart phones and watches and tablets, as well as the cruise ship’s own communications… yet not a single message was sent before it went missing! No distress call.
The fates of over a thousand passengers and crew remain unknown, with only a handful recovered from a lifeboat, days after the Seastar herself vanished. But the coast guard’s only statement on the lifeboat’s recovery was that “the passengers did not survive.” Rumors circulated about a “thermos full of eyeballs” and a “passenger whose mouth was stuffed full of severed fingers”—but these details have been denounced as lies, sensationalizing and capitalizing on a tragedy.
The official cause of the Seastar’s disappearance is a rogue wave. No survivors. No witnesses.
Well… one witness…
… but perhaps I shouldn’t tell. Better for the world if that ship stay lost forever!
The families of the missing, however, deserve the truth… which is why I am posting.
But first, a warning—the gruesome snippets I recounted above barely scratch the surface of the horror I am about to share, some of which I took part in. I wake screaming every night. I sleep with the lights on. I never enter darkened hallways or stairwells. And I do not ever shake hands. Although I’ve always had some quirks (the handshake one is an old habit), most of these are fresh, a consequence of my time aboard that doomed cruise ship. I do not intend to gloss over any details, but rather to give a complete accounting, including of my own involvement… so be forewarned.
And understand that my story is one of unimaginable horror.
***
To explain what really happened aboard the Seastar, I need to first tell a little about myself. Sorry, I know I’m like a bit of decorative wallpaper—just sort of there. But I see things.
It all started when I was very young (I do promise this is relevant). I didn’t want to swim in the community pool with my brother because the water was cloudy, hiding a shadowy figure in the deep end. I distinctly remember standing at the pool’s edge, crying inconsolably while my father urged, “Go on, jump in!”
My brother set the example, diving down to the bottom of the foggy water. When he came up, a silver dollar glinted in his fingers, which he dropped back into the pool before I could snatch it. “Oops! Guess you gotta dive for it!” He laughed, the sun shimmering off his sunburned shoulders. “Come on, there’s quarters down here, too!”
Diving for coins was a game we often played, so I plunged in after him, kicking my way down with my eyes squeezed shut. When my hands grazed the rough cement bottom, I patted around.
Silky hair tangled around my fingers like seaweed.
I forced my eyes open against the stinging chlorine—and shrieked.
Wide, empty eyes stared back at me from a bloated face.
When I shot to the surface, wailing about a dead woman in the water, other swimmers looked on, perplexed. My older brother tried to console me and swore there were nothing but coins.
He was correct—not until a week later would a woman drown in that pool, and sink to the bottom of the foggy water while swimmers unwittingly raced laps above her.
***
The next time I saw was when I threw a tantrum over my grandmother’s armchair. It smelled so bad I grabbed my nose and exclaimed, “Ewwww!”
My parents scolded me for my rudeness. Grandma occasionally struggled with incontinence, so for her chair to stink was, they assumed, the result of an accident. They thought I was exaggerating to make fun of her, but in the sweltering summer, the smell was truly unbearable—like rotting meat and diarrhea and cheap perfume all churned together. I threw such a fit we left, though Grandma insisted on hugging me despite my being an “awful brat.” Her skin was wrinkled, papery-thin and soft as silk, but despite the uncomfortable warmth of her apartment, her embrace was ice cold.
Less than a week later the call came. My grandmother had been found after a neighbor’s complaint about the smell…
She’d died in her chair.
***
But when the seeing really clicked was in my tween years, two separate incidents. The first was after a classmate of my brother’s pulled up in a car reeking of burnt meat, the interior charred and black. He stepped out of the car seeming not to notice that behind him, another version of him remained belted into the front seat, unrecognizable through the char beyond the glint of a gold chain melted into his neck. I burst into hysterical tears and screamed at my brother not to let him drive. The classmate laughed and called me a weirdo.
He crashed later that week.
The second incident began at a school function, where my brother chaperoned me. A man pulled up in the school drop-off zone—he was one of the more popular teachers, famous for his yearly pizza parties. In the car with him were two young kids. I can’t remember their names, just that the littlest boy was giggling and clinging to a toy T-rex when he hopped out. My brother and I were asked to help carry the party supplies and drinks from the teacher’s car. But the moment I opened the passenger door to grab a box, the reek of fetid pond water made my stomach lurch. I staggered back, clapping a hand to my nose and mouth.
“Hey! Everything all right?” the teacher asked.
My brother, no doubt remembering what happened to his classmate weeks earlier, took me aside.
“C-c-c-c-cold!” I burst to him. “D-dark! The smell! Like the rot in the bottom of a lake…”
While I wrung my hands and sniffled, my brother watched the two young kids follow the teacher into the school. He shook my shoulder and said, “Hey—hey, we’re going to save them.”
“How? No one ever believes me!”
“I believe you, Hope. Hey…” He gave me a squeeze and looked in my eyes. “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers…”
What a dork. That line was from Emily Dickinson—my brother’s favorite quote for me for when I was upset. It was corny, but encouraged me.
A few minutes later, we were careening along backwoods roads in the teacher’s car. To this day, I don’t know how my brother got the keys. His plan was we’d stow the car in a garage for a couple weeks, long enough to outlast the vision, since my predictions always came true within about six days. But it hadn’t occurred to either of us how being inside the car would affect me. The damp and rot washed over my skin. COLD. Every hair on my body stood erect, floating as if underwater. I couldn’t breathe… gagging on the fetid water, I rolled down my window. Raindrops from outside pelted my face, and something… something clicked. A sudden terrible question. When I’d peered into the darkened interior, I hadn’t been able to see… who was inside the car?
“Hey,” my brother said, apparently struck by the same thought. “You’re not foreseeing our deaths, are you?”
I don’t know if it was fate that caused us to fishtail just as he spoke. But also he might have hit something, because there was a bump. All I know is suddenly we were flying, off the road and over the side toward a lake, and then plunging, and I snatched for his hand as the impact slammed us forward into the dashboard. Then the water wasn’t just in my mind. It was real. It was pouring in through the car window.
I fought, flailing. Unbuckled. Floundered through the half-open window. Luckily I was still small enough to get through, swimming up and breaking the surface.
“Cory!” I screamed. “CORY!!!”
But I knew already that my brother wasn’t coming up—his hand had been cold when I’d touched it.
***
Naturally, his death feels like my fault. Oh, in kinder moments I remember that I was a child, and try to forgive myself for letting him get behind that wheel. But for a time, I was driven by the fierce need to atone. I sought desperately to save even one life… ANY life. I’d see a body swaying from a beam in a construction site. Legs dangling from a trunk in the car on the highway ahead of me. A suitcase on sale in a luggage store, dripping blood. Every time I tried to prevent the death… only to fail or worse, cause it. Each loss drove home more deeply my shame, my failure… until eventually…
I gave up.
I don’t try to prevent the deaths anymore. These days I catch a whiff of that familiar sickly putrid scent, and I leave. I avoid human touch, especially handshakes.
I’ve truly become wallpaper. Able to see. Powerless to prevent.
My name, incidentally, is Cassandra… I changed it because I could no longer bear my birth name. If “Hope” is the thing with feathers, I was an angel of death, harbinger of doom to my brother and others. So instead I call myself after the Greek priestess doomed to foresee the future but never to be believed… unable to prevent even one single tragedy.
***
But let’s get back to the cruise. The missing passengers. The eyeballs in the thermos—oh, those grisly details! Mind you, once you know you can’t un-know, no matter how much you drink, or smoke, or however you drown your despair. Speaking of drowning, a month ago today, I hit the big 4-O. I celebrated my four decades of life by doing the one thing I’ve done consistently since I was old enough—drinking away my failures. Every icy grip. Every unheeded warning. And especially the times I’ve well and truly fucked up. Oh yes. Those are the ones that call for some hard forgetting.
I was on my second or seventh drink at my favorite bar when a voice exclaimed, “’Evening, friend!”
A woman with shimmering purple eyeliner and matching purple hair approached. It was the musician who often played there, Lily Tsuki. To be honest, she was the primary reason I frequented that bar, though we’d hardly spoken beyond my occasional compliments about her playing. She slid into the seat next to mine and clinked my glass.
“Roy at the bar told me it’s your fortieth. I see you in here once a week, always tipping well and drinking like you’re trying to drown yourself. Someone did something kind for me recently, so I’m trying to pass it on…” She fished a hand into her pocket, and to my surprise produced a gift card for a cruise. I didn’t catch all of her story in the noisy bar, but apparently, one of her admirers was very rich, always offering her gifts verging on inappropriate. After finding out she’d be playing on the Azure Seastar, said admirer sent her the card so she could spoil herself on the cruise. She didn’t feel comfortable accepting, so she gifted it to me. “… There’s enough on there to cover your fare. Don’t thank me—thank you, I needed to get rid of it. Enjoy your fortieth, friend!”
As she handed me the card, her fingers brushed mine.
Warm. Alive.
I mumbled my thanks, cheeks warm. Why? Because she chose me? Blushes! I’m an idiot.
Still, I was glowing, and not just because I was tipsy. Why not? I thought. Why not treat myself, this once? The Azure Seastar… it sounded like a dream. I’d go see Lily Tsuki play at the piano bar against the backdrop of a glimmering ocean. I’d drink under the stars. Get a tan. Get my sea legs! And every hand would be warm and every breath would taste of the summer breeze!
***
Nine decks (eleven including the crew-only levels). Over a thousand people. Pool, bars, restaurants, lounges, cafés, spa, cabaret—the Seastar truly was the Ritz Carlton on the water! I was absolutely giddy! Of course before the luxury came the wait—just like the airport, parking, luggage, ticketing, security. It was as I neared the entrance for ticketing, enjoying the summer breeze, that I caught traces of a sour odor… a whiff of decay… so faint beneath the car exhaust and the smell of the saltwater that I might have missed it, were I not so attuned to death. At port, it was likely some unfortunate animal packed into a shipping crate and decomposing. I’d even read horror stories of people, trafficked in sealed shipping containers and asphyxiating. That faint whiff made my insides curdle.
Then I was inside the air conditioned terminal, packed with passengers—and inhaling nothing but the blessed AC.
The check in was surprisingly quick. I followed the embarkation signs up the escalator to the terminal’s upper level, through the double glass doors, greeted on my right by printed images of pool decks and steaks and wine glasses. On my left, through the enormous paned wall of glass, the Seastar herself loomed. My God, she was enormous!
So many decks! So many balconies!
Then I squinted a little closer. What was that speck? A tiny figure, draped on a railing?
My heart dropped to my toes.
Something was horribly wrong.
The figure, small against the massive width of the ship… had no face. Only a torso and most of its arms. It had been decapitated, and dried blood spattered the rail.
My footsteps slowed. I pressed against the glass, eyes rapidly roving the rest of the ship. Was it just one…? One incidence of violence, or…
Perhaps I wasn’t seeing correctly. It was a stunt. A practical joke. A mannequin. I needed to get closer. I hurried along the terminal, joining the line out to the gangplank.
The bowl of the sky had turned deep purple, the sun lowering toward the horizon, and in the Seastar’s deep shadow, the temperature dropped. A sudden chill gripped me as I trotted out onto the gangplank. I sniffed. Sniffed again, more deeply.
Rot.
The same putrid odor I’d caught outside. A passenger ahead of me noticed me grabbing my nose, and remarked, “Not used to that ocean smell?” I did not respond, because now that I was close enough to see the ship more clearly, I noticed… cracked glass… broken panes in the sliding glass doors of the cabins… no! I gasped, sinking to my knees, and the passenger kindly leaned to help me up. As her hand seized mine—it was cold.
I jerked back so fast I actually collapsed into the passengers behind us—a mother and her daughter.
“Oh!” exclaimed the mother.
My hand brushed the daughter’s bare arm. Cold.
“Are you okay?” asked the daughter, a child of about twelve.
I crawled back from her, and another person, an elderly gentleman, leaned down to help me up, his hand on my elbow. Cold!
“Miss?” he asked. “Miss—” But I bolted, barely hearing their cries as I launched myself back toward the terminal. No no no no no no no no—my eyes watered and my belly bunched into knots and my heart lurched into my throat and oh God oh God—the ship! The whole. Entire. Ship. It was… dark… windows broken… Not a single light shining in the interior, and spatters of blood here and there visible on its decks and balconies… But worst of all was the smell. I hadn’t even entered the ship yet and already I knew, knew, in the way only I can know, that the smell wasn’t just one body or two. Not if I could detect it all the way out on the gangplank. All the way at the entrance to the terminal. For the whiff of putrefaction to have spread so far, the source was something massive. A colossal pile of decomposing bodies like a herd of dead elephants.
That ship… no one on that ship was going to make it back…
As I entered the terminal with its blessed filtered air and the windows between me and the ship, I turned and looked at the line stretching behind me. Passengers laughing. Chatting. Dressed in their finest. Flirting. Teasing. Buzzing with excitement. Old and young couples. Children.
Everyone on this ship is going to die…
... and I’m the only one who knows…

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A staredown soon ensued.
One that neither of us seemed to be willing to let up on.
But as far as staredowns went, this one was pretty evenly matched as neither of us really had the ability to ‘blink’, or at least as far as an outside observer could see.
My whole schtick was pretty obvious, the tinted lenses were more or less just doing the job for me, taking blinking out of the equation entirely and adding a solid plus ten to my intimidation base stats.
The shadowy cloaked figure’s approach was just downright bizarre though, as instead of eyes, there were just these two trapezoidal ‘lights’ that I assumed were supposed to be a placeholder for his actual eyes hidden somewhere underneath the shadowy void casted by his hood.
A void which was downright pitchblack, and completely impenetrable to the naked eye.
The figure gave off a surreal vibe as his rogue-like attire, coupled with the hood and the impenetrable shadow it casted, looked like it’d been ripped straight out of a Castles and Wyverns art book or a high-fantasy comic. The pitch-black void that obscured his face, and those two trapezoidal eyes that hovered and shifted with increasing scrutiny, just didn’t look real.
While most would leave it at that, I wasn’t one to leave a mystery hanging, I was a human with an entire visual sensor suite to work with for crying out loud. So before I even knew it, I reflexively went to activate my night-vision cameras. Only to see that the shadowy effect covering up his face was still there.
This led me to only one solid conclusion.
ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 140% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS
A quick localized environmental scan made it clear to me that this was yet another one of the Nexus’ weird mana-fueled acts of tomfoolery.
“What say you, first years? Are you here for healing, or are you here for a visit? For as I have stated, the healing wing is not accepting visits at this point in time.” The hooded figure answered with this strange mix between a sing-song voice and an attempt at sounding gruff and gravely.
“We have an unfulfilled point of personal privilege that requires addressment.” Thacea stepped up to the plate, promptly placing herself by my side, then taking several steps forward. “Along with an unresolved conflict which requires immediate resolution by the party with which the aforementioned point of personal privilege was evoked but was halted due to unforeseen circumstances.” The princess began flexing her courtly-talk with the hooded figure, which clearly seemed to have some effect as he reached up a single gloved hand up to where his chin should be, only to have his fingers disappear as soon as they entered the dark shadowy effect currently covering up his face.
“And with whom is this unresolved matter incurred?” The figure inquired plainly, though the way he spoke shifted to something a bit more accommodating, perhaps even a little bit more hospitable than the gruffer tone he’d initially directed towards me.
“An apprentice, good sir. Apprentice Larial to be precise.” Thacea clarified politely, using what I could only describe as this flighty, chirpy, almost haughty tone of voice that was an exaggerated version of the cadence she used during our first interactions together.
“Hmm…” The hooded figure replied with a concerned grumble. “I was going to waive this particular matter, allowing the fair lady-” He paused, before making a point to stare at both me and Thalmin. “-and her two knights to pass on through, under the points of exceptional circumstances.” He continued in a less restrained, more flighty cadence. “However, you must excuse my inability to do so, my lady. My hands are currently tied via the powers that be, and I simply cannot grant your request.” The man began weaving a string of apologetics, giving Thacea a genuine and polite bow in response. “I must apologize for this discrepancy in expectant decorum.”
This didn’t make things any better for our circumstances though.
And it was clear Thacea understood this as she continued pressing forward.
“May I have your name and title, my good sir?” Thacea chirped lightly.
“Appointed-Deputy Magistrate Sir Arlan Ostoy, Senior Apprentice of the Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts. May I have the honor and the privilege of requesting your name, my fair lady?”
“Princess Thacea Dilani, of the Aetheronrealm, First Year and Scholastic Peer of the Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts.” Thacea replied with a full bow, and a half-curtsy of her own.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” The shadowy figure bowed yet again.
“The pleasure is all mine, Sir-Magistrate.” Followed by yet another bow by Thacea.
There was some serious song and dance going on here, and one that I was observing with bated breath.
“Might I inquire further as to the particular reasoning behind this unfortunate and unseemly inability to respect the rights of expectant decorum?” Thacea quickly shot back.
“As I have alluded to, your highness, the powers that be prevent me from furthering the natural solution to your particular grievances. If this were any other instance in time, at any other location or place, I am sure this matter would have been resolved in an expedient and timely fashion. This situation, as you have alluded to yourself, results from a very particular set of unforeseen circumstances. Circumstances which currently dictate my actions in a manner which just so happens to be in conflict with your points of personal privilege, your highness.” The man’s posture, the way he stood, even the way he talked seemed very particular when addressing Thacea.
It was at that point that something changed. I didn’t know what, and I wasn’t sure why, but Thacea seemed to be shifting towards a tactical retreat, as she clacked her beak several times before addressing the both of us. “This is absolutely preposterous, I will need a moment to clear my mind but when I do return…” Thacea turned towards the magistrate/guard/apprentice person yet again. “There will be words exchanged.”
At Thacea’s prompting, we all left the room, but not before slamming the door behind us shut in a similar manner to Ilunor’s drama-filled exits.
We continued walking away from the medical wing at a steady pace, until another privacy screen was suddenly brought up.
ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 275% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS
“I have a plan.” Thacea began. “And this is entirely relying on you two having the physical prowess to back up your military backgrounds.” She continued ominously.
“Oh princess, you sully the Havenbrock name if you believe my mercenary heritage is in any way, shape, or form a mere decorative mantlepiece.” Thalmin responded with a sarcastic, yet excitable tone.
“I assure you, Thacea, I think my training has almost every eventuality accounted for.” I added with an affirmative nod.
“So what’s the plan?” Thalmin barked out excitedly as we stopped right in the middle of this long, wide hallway connecting the main castle with the medical wing. Thacea was quick to answer this question by wordlessly gesturing to a lone door on the right side of the hallway.
Windows lining either side of the hallway made it clear that this entire structure was just an elevated bridge connecting the main castle to an entirely separate compound.
This made the presence of a door smack-dab in the middle of its length sort of bizarre.
Upon entering it though, we were treated to an open-air rooftop terrace with a few seats and benches. The whole outcropping gave us an unparalleled view of the roaring waterfall beneath the Academy, and a direct line of sight to the medical wing and its five distinct towers.
The princess continued walking silently as we reached the edge of the terrace’s balcony, overlooking the sheer cliff face at a height that more or less put me in mind of your typical open-air rooftops on your typical Acela Corridor skyscraper.
“I’ve observed that the medical wing seems to consist of a large tower-atrium, with several more towers connected to it via additional corridors. Similar to spokes on a wheel. As you can see from this vantage point, it seems as if most rooms have private balconies. If we cannot make our way to the apprentice via conventional channels, then I plan to reach her via more unconventional means.” Thacea turned towards me with a hardened look in her gaze. “Emma, is your… insect artifice ready for use?”
My eyes widened at that, as I nodded affirmatively. “Just for the record, we call it a drone.” I quickly corrected Thacea. “But, yes, I can designate individuals and targets for it to track down or follow. However, I can’t just have it poking around in every room since there’s no guarantee that the drone will be able to get a lock on them. There’s too many variables involved that would get in the way of the drone actually being able to zero in on a person’s face. From the beds facing the right way, to bandages possibly covering up her face, to-”
“I don’t want your artifice to observe every balcony and window, Emma. That will most certainly take too much time, and as you’ve stated, there’s no guarantee of actually identifying a face considering the multitudes of factors involved.” Thacea interjected. “What I plan to do is to return to the Deputy-Magistrate, and to attempt to reach a compromise that he will abide by. I plan for him to take us, or rather, your drone straight to the apprentice.”
“And how will you accomplish this?” Thalmin whined,his head tilted in curiosity.
“I will draft a letter, addressed directly to the apprentice, and request that it be taken straight to her room. This way, the Deputy-Magistrate will in a sense be able to accomplish his obligations to the Expectant Decorum, and in doing so he will lead your insec-, drone, straight to the apprentice’s room.”
I stared at Thacea with wide eyes, as her back and forths with the deputy-magistrate began taking on a completely different meaning in this new light.
“That way, we can find out exactly which room the apprentice is in.” I replied bluntly.
“Correct. However, from there, I cannot say my plans are in any way foolproof.” Thacea replied with a sullen coo.
“Well go on, princess, it sounds pretty good so far!” Thalmin urged.
“Ascertaining the apprentice’s room is only half of the stated objective. Actually getting there is another matter entirely. Because depending on where the apprentice is located… my idea for the latter half of this quest involves you two scaling your way towards her room.” The princess spoke with an immense level of trepidation. “On the exterior aspect of the castle, if that needed to be said.”
My heart skipped a beat as the princess laid out her plans. I looked across the absurdly spindly hallway-bridge that this little terrace was somehow attached to, and towards the five towers that made up the medical wing.
Thalmin did the same, although his face seemed to indicate that he was at the very least, considering the plan at least somewhat seriously.
“Alright.” I muttered out loud, instinctively trying to place a palm on my forehead, only for the glove to bonk straight off. “I have several ideas. First, we might be able to do this remotely. I’m thinking once we find out which room she’s in, we fly in a larger drone, one carrying with it a deployable holographic projector or some other two-way communications device so that we can talk to her remotely.” As soon as I spoke that idea out loud however, things started to fall apart. “But because of how thick the walls are, and considering the distance between the tower and our dorm, I might have to deploy repeaters in order to daisy-chain the connection all the way back to the dorms. I mean, we can’t just set up shop out here in the open after all. At which point we’d have a continuous chain of signal-repeater drones flying all across the Academy… which wouldn’t be ideal. No, scratch that, that won’t work.”
The pair stared at me with varying degrees of confusion, but seemed to have collectively decided to ignore the idea after I’d scrapped it.
“I say we just climb it!” Thalmin yelped out, but not before another idea hit me. One that could work, but that required me consulting Thacea first.
“I mean, we could, but…” I turned to face Thacea. “What’s the Academy’s policy on noise? Or rather, do you think we could get away with something really really loud, buzzing outside of the towers?”
Thacea once more stared at me with a look of just utter confusion, but shrugged it off and went with it anyways. “I would highly recommend against generating too much noise for this particular quest, Emma. It would most certainly garner a lot of unwanted attention.” Thacea spoke plain and simple.
I couldn’t help but to groan internally in frustration at that.
That makes flying over there a no-go… it would’ve made things so much easier though…
“Alright, well, that more or less places us in a very awkward situation with not a lot of options available to us, huh?” I thought to myself outloud again, as I craned my head over to an excitable Thalmin.
“I guess I have to climb on over.” I stated in no uncertain terms.
“Wait, I?!” Thalmin responded with a shocked and incredulous bark. “There’s no way I’m allowing you to climb over there yourself without assistance or-”
“Thalmin, there’s no need for you to climb on over with me.” I interjected. “This whole mission is hedged on me talking to the apprentice one-on-one. Remember the gardens? The apprentice wouldn’t allow you anywhere near us when we started talking. It’d be a waste of time, energy, and more importantly… a huge risk to your safety. I don’t want to risk your life needlessly, Thalmin. Not especially for a fight that isn’t your own.”
“Well you’re part of our peer group, so it’s my fight as well.” Thalmin replied with a dejected growl, but eventually relented. “But you’re right, Emma. I hate to admit it, but you’re right.”
I nodded at Thalmin’s slowly. “Besides, there’s an important job I need you to do.” I began scrounging through one of my pouches, and began palming for my spare in-ear earpieces. “I need you on lookout, to keep me aware of anything fishy developing in case I need to pull out.”
Thalmin looked over the side of the terrace, towards the raging waters beneath this side of the Academy as he let out a sigh. “That shouldn’t be too hard. Hardly anyone will be passing by this terrace, and beyond that there’s no way anyone can spot you from below, given there’s nothing but the cascading rapids below us. There’s no one that can spot you from here, save for perhaps the foxes in the library. We’re most certainly on the right side of the Academy for this quest, that’s for certain.” Thalmin pointed at the library in the far distance.
“Oh, I’m not too worried about anyone seeing me. I’m more concerned about someone compromising my extraction point, i.e. this little terrace here.” I acknowledged.
“But, surely you must be worried about someone seeing you scaling the walls…” Thalmin scanned me up and down, as if wanting to comment about my size but- “You’re massive.”
“Okay, first off, rude.” I spoke sarcastically, and raised both hands up for added effect. “But in all seriousness, I have another device that can mask my visual presence.” I pulled out a plastic-like poncho from one of my pouches, activating it, and revealing its active-camo properties as it projected whatever was behind it, albeit with some imperfections. “It isn’t perfect, but from afar it should actually work pretty well.”
Both Thalmin and Thacea stared at each other in utter shock as they saw this.
“A mana-less-”
“I think… this is a matter worth discussing another time, Princess.” Thalmin interjected with a polite exasperated breath. “But I expect a good explanation for this one, Emma.” Thalmin pointed a finger right at me.
“In any case, I will be diverting the Deputy-Magistrate’s attention by preoccupying him with needless and vapid chatter. This should take attention away from the apprentice and your intrusion, Emma.” Thacea quickly added, and promptly tied this whole impromptu operation up nicely.
“Alright, let’s get this show on the road then. We’ll head back to the dorms and get that letter drafted so-”
“Already done.” Thacea interjected, bringing up a parchment that she promptly began sealing into an envelope.
“Wait, when did you-”
“Whilst we were talking, I used a dictation spell. The letter is written and signed.” Thacea spoke nonchalantly, as she held a neatly sealed envelope in one of her talons.
“Wait, what, when did you, how did you-?”
“I carry a quill and extra parchment in my bag of holding. This is to account for any eventuality where a statement in writing, a legal affidavit, or a notarized letter may be required.” Thacea responded a-matter-of-factly.
“Alright then.” I tapped the pouch with the INFIL-DRONE, the small little thing peeking its head out much to the visible disgust of the pair. “So we’re ready for phase one of the operation. Misdirection and information gathering. We’ll go in, drop the letter, and have the drone do its thing. After that, we wait for the drone to return, and we’ll take it from there on whether or not we can continue with Phase Two: penetrating the enemy lines.”
“What would be stopping us from continuing with phase two?” Thalmin quickly asked.
“Well, simple. If the apprentice is still conked out from her injuries, there wouldn’t be any point in attempting to meet her. So hopefully, she’s going to be in a good enough state to talk to. We’ll know when we get the drone footage back.”
“Fair point.” Thalmin nodded.
“So, is everyone ready to begin?” Thacea asked.
A series of affirmative nods later, we began our quick walk back over to the atrium.

The Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts, Extraction Point Alpha (Open Air Terrace Overlooking the Medical Wing). Local Time: 1420 Hours.
That took way more time than I’d initially thought.
In fact, it took so long that I was beginning to wonder how two people could have an unending conversation where nothing of value was spoken and nothing of value was gained.
It was basically elevator small talk, but written by the same writers who wrote Bridgerwesson Lane, and adapted to a theatrical release with a trilogy that ended with a movie arbitrarily cut up into a two-parter.
I honestly zoned out for a few moments during those hours, as I decided to use the spare time to review the grappling hook and mountaineering gear I’d be using on this little quest.
Eventually however, the Deputy-Magistrate relented, at which point I let loose the INFIL-DRONE to do its thing.
It’d been twenty minutes since we left and made our way back to this open-air terrace, and all of us were waiting with bated breath for the results the drone had in store.
“So, how fast can that drone of yours fly anyways Emma-”
Thalmin was immediately cut off as the drone in question buzzed right by his ears, causing them to flick this way and that, before flattening out entirely.
“Speak of him and he will come.” I chuckled, as I outstretched a gloved hand over for the little drone to perch atop of.
Once again, the pair stared at it with a look of mild disgust, and then panic as it crawled all the way back into its docking port, and began uploading the data we needed.
“Alright, let’s see what we have here.” I spoke to no one in particular before shifting my attention to the EVI. “EVI, isolate and replay relevant footage, and calculate the target’s location.”
“Acknowledged, parsing…”
“Location Parsing. Footage isolated. Play Footage?”
“Affirmative.”
I immediately pulled out my data-tab for the gang to be able to watch as well, as the footage began just as the Deputy-Magistrate, and by extension the drone, arrived at the apprentice’s room.
The door, and all details posted in the front were all captured, and so too was the state of the apprentice revealed to us in short order as I braced myself for a mangled and bandaged-up mass of broken bones.
What I instead saw, was… still a heavily bandaged up figure. However, the most important thing was that they were awake.
And what was remarkable, was the fact that they were able to move without assistance. As the apprentice reached over to receive the letter wordlessly, shifting a bit in bed as she did so.
“This is a letter addressed from a Princess Thacea Dilani of the Aetheronrealm. I have fulfilled my duties and obligations as per the Expectant Decorum. I will now take my leave, Apprentice Larial.” The deputy-magistrate spoke with the same air of overbearing properness, seriously making me consider whether or not this was how he was all the time.
Whatever the case may be, the apprentice seemed to be healed enough to move her arms at the very least, as she grabbed the letter and spoke hoarsely back in response. “Thank you Senior Apprentice.”
There wasn’t much to the footage beyond those interactions, but it was good enough for the purposes of this mission.
“Alright.” I spoke, as I pocketed the tablet. “We have our answer. The apprentice seems healed up enough to speak to, so phase two of this operation is a-go.”
The pair nodded in response, just in time for the EVI to be done with whatever calculations were needed to determine the apprentice’s precise location.
I turned to the tower, as the room and its balcony was highlighted.
It was just about five stories above from where we were.
Meaning it’d be a hell of a climb.
“The room’s about five floors up.” I announced with a sigh.
“Are you sure you can make that journey, Emma?” Thacea responded worryingly. “I… I will be honest, Emma, I am having some second doubts about this whole idea. The concept just came to me as flying between tall structures and towers is just second nature to us Aetheronrealmers. Considering the heights involved, and your inability to fly, I’m wondering if this whole quest was a folly of my own shortsighted-”
“It’s fine, Thacea.” I cut the avinor off. “I can do this, trust me.” I placed a single hand on the princess’ shoulder, and squeezed it once for effect.
Meanwhile, the EVI began doing what it did best: attempting to minimize the risk associated with my hairbrained schemes, as it deployed the suit’s primary lookout drone in order to start mapping out the best possible route forward.
This spooked the pair yet again, as they both jolted backwards.
Thankfully, the drone was deathly silent, so it shouldn’t bring too much attention to it.
It was at this point that I brought out a pair of earpieces I was scrounging my pouches for earlier, one for Thacea, and another for Thalmin.
“These will help you stay in contact with me throughout the climb.” I stated plainly, as I attempted to latch it onto my own ear for demonstrative purposes, only to realize that I could not, given the suit was in the way.
I sighed, as I turned towards Thalmin. “Do you mind if I put it on for you?” I asked sheepishly.
“Erm, what is it, Emma?”
“It’s…” I paused, as I attempted to find the best way to describe this without taking up too much time. “It’s a communication artifice, Thalmin. It’ll allow us to talk to each other remotely, relying on that drone there-” I pointed at the lookout drone still flying away from us. “-to relay our voices to each other.”
Thalmin, as expected, looked at me with an expression of partial dumbfoundedness whilst Thacea seemed completely transfixed by the earpieces I held in my hands.
“So it’s like a hearing-sense?” Thalmin responded with a questioning bark.
“Look, I’ll just demonstrate.” I managed out with a sigh as Thalmin reluctantly nodded and allowed me to begin hooking in the earpiece, looping it around his fluffy triangular ears.
This inevitably resulted in my hand brushing over the lupinor’s fluffy head a few times, which seemed to elicit some large tail-wags and a dulcet rumble.
I tried to ignore that, as I pulled back and began demonstrating. “I’ve turned off my speakers, can you still hear me, Thalmin?”
“Yes, I can.” The lupinor spoke after clearing his throat.
I turned my speakers back on immediately after. “Alright, I’ll get into the specifics of how it works later, but as for now, just know that I can hear whatever you say.”
“I’m afraid I don’t think that artifice will be compatible with my… anatomy, Emma.” Thacea spoke calmly, as she pointed at several aspects of the earpiece that required an actual ear canal to fit into, and an earlobe to loop around.
“This complicates things a bit, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. How long do you think you can keep up the distracting conversation with the deputy-magistrate for, Thacea?”
“We just went through several hours discussing nothing in particular, I can most certainly continue that trend from dusk till dawn.” The avinor spoke confidently, and frankly, rather proudly. “The issue lies not in how long I can manage to maintain the conversation, but in how long it will take you to accomplish this quest, Emma.” Thacea shot back.
“An hour.” I nodded confidently. “Twenty minutes to scoot my way over there, twenty to talk to the apprentice, and twenty to get back.”
“I’ll make that two hours then.” Thacea responded without a second thought. “We need to account for potential complications, and an extra hour of senseless dialogue will most certainly not be an issue for me.”
With an affirmative nod from me, and an approving glance from Thalmin, I now turned towards the exterior of the two hundred foot corridor leading to the concourse, and the extra five hundred feet it would take to get from the atrium to the tower in question.
It was at that last minute that the EVI brought out another suggestion, one that was formulated with the aid of the new datasets provided by the FEBNPMS lookout drone that had been busy mapping out the best route forward.
It was… an inherently riskier approach, one that my aunt would definitely not approve of, but it definitely beat scaling a wall and wedging spikes into it.
“Actually… I have a better idea than simply scaling the walls.”

The Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts, En Route to Medical Wing Tower C, Room 705. Local Time: 1430 Hours.
“Grapple secure.”
I will never forget the feeling of falling.
The very wrong feeling that came with leaping off of solid ground into empty sky, of suddenly seeing and feeling the world whizzing by me.
It was a visceral feeling, a gut-churning sensation, dominated by an overbearing sense of impending doom that takes over your terrestrial brain that wasn’t designed to feel the ‘freeing’ sensation of being unbound to the ground beneath you.
Leaping over from the edge of the terrace was the worst part of it. But after that tentative jump, things started to become just a little bit easier.
The Academy’s proclivity for over-aggrandized architectural design would finally serve a purpose beyond just decorative aesthetics.
Because it was clear that the walls weren’t really designed to ward off anyone daring to scale them. As there existed several, if not hundreds of these little greebles and outcroppings that served no purpose but to act as decorative pieces on the side of the castle. Some held stone flowers, whilst others had lamps or other light pieces of varying designs.
No matter what they were, or what meaning they held, all were equal and valid targets in the eyes of my grappling hook.
As I dangled there from the first outcropping, held in place by a single high-tensile cable, I looked up to see Thalmin looming over the edge “EMMA?!” I heard him shout in a panic. It was clear that he was unable to see anything, as my light-refraction cloak was currently doing its job well.
“I’m still here, Thalmin. You can’t see me but I’m dangling from this weird outcropping that looks like an overinflated vase.”
“NEXT TIME, BE SURE TO INFORM ME AS TO THE NATURE OF YOUR IMPOSSIBLE ARTIFICES BEFORE USE, UNDERSTOOD?!”
“Of course. You’ll know if I’ve fallen if you hear a long scream followed by a large splat.”
“That’s not funny!”
I chuckled nervously in response, before turning to face the grueling, gut-churning journey ahead of me. “Humor’s my way of dealing with stress, and trust me, I have a lot of stress to work through right about now.”
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(Author’s Note: Hey guys! Time for some unconventional solutions courtesy of Emma and the gang! We're going to meet the apprentice one way or another! I hope you guys enjoy! :D The next Chapter is already up on Patreon if you guys are interested in getting early access to future chapters!)
[If you guys want to help support me and these stories, here's my ko-fi ! And my Patreon for early chapter releases (Chapter 34 of this story is already out on there!)]