As it says in the bit you clicked on: I’m delightful. Read further for a small sample of the many ways in which I am wonderful, and find out how you, yes YOU, can take advantage to the amazing limited time offer. Also, we're social distancing, so I suppose this is a good time for torrid correspondence.
Offer includes:
Wit: I’m funny. Sometimes dry and biting, as when hanging out over drinks and I’m making acerbic sotto-voce comments about the dipshits at the other end of the bar, declaiming upon how Democrats are just as bad as Republicans and anyway Hillary is super corrupt. Sometimes absurdly silly, as when we are in bed, and especially in those awful moments during kink when pushing our emotional boundaries has inadvertently shattered the shared intimacy whereby situations that might otherwise be horrifying turn unbearably hot and sexy and intimate; (because you are firmly bound, suspended from a hook in this door-frame, with a ball gag distending your mouth and a large man is selecting amongst his toys for what to hit you with, now that you’ve been worked over with the crop that he’s still using to caress your clit. For example). Talking about the kink is supposed to be further down, but I’m proud of my ability to notice those moments and pull the gag and start improvising a progressively more absurd re-telling of the constitutional convention as a poorly organized swingers convention, using the contents of my pockets to represent the various founding fathers and their outhouse assignations with Jefferson.
Frightening intellect: I’m really, really bright. I read, constantly and voraciously and indiscriminately, at least as far as subject. I pay attention to news and politics and policy and everything else and I’m always glad to spend time with someone else who is as interested in the world as I am. I adore — really, deeply adore— doing kink with terrifically intelligent women; having the kind conversations where I feel like I must be a genius just because I can kind of keep up with you. Kinky sex is by nature pretty intimate, at least when it is something two people are doing together as opposed to some dude who figures kinky girls are easy and thinks being a dom means not caring if she comes and yelling bitch a lot. But I am not that guy. I fucking hate that guy. I spent years being miserable and basically at war with my sexuality because I thought being male and dom meant I had to be that guy and oh my God I think I’d rather just remove the entire apparatus using a rusty spoon from my Swiss Army knife rather than be like that walking indictment of humanity. So I need to like the person I’m performing misogyny at. She needs to be someone I can talk to before and after and not feel like I’m robbing an intellectual cradle. My capacity to be the most amazing dom you’ve ever invited to cross you boundaries — which I can totally be — is tied directly to how much I respect you as an equal making a choice and my assessment of your respect for me in the same way.
Sexy: There is no one true standard of hotness, and I don’t hold myself forth as the platonic ideal of the male form (for one thing? The Greeks were super into tiny penis. I’m serious. Had to do with their ideals of balance, apparently). I’m a big guy, 5’11, white, with a broad-shouldered sort of frame that leads people to think I’m taller than I am. I have a bit of a gut, but not so much that you’d call me fat, walking down the street; I suspect that the gut is something I notice but mostly no one else does. I get more compliments on my ass than I know what to do with.
I’m fit and active, I have nice eyes, a good smile and a better laugh. I’m currently clean shaven, although I’ve been known to grow a beard from time to time. (It is a small, neat Van Dyke sort of thing - I couldn’t grow a hipster lumberjack beard if I wanted to. Something else the Greeks would have had opinions on). Brown eyes, brown hair, and bespectacled. Nerd, but sexy nerd. And admit it: when a dude is tying you up and saying demeaning, degrading, frantically arousing things to you, wouldn’t you rather, when drops the crop and your world collapses to the feeling of his fingers (HOW many fingers? God, can you even tell any more, you are so wet...) moving inside your pussy and his thumb on your clit, when you suddenly feel his free hand up under your hair, right along the scalp, in that good, firm grab that makes you feel small and helpless and sexy and dirty and nasty and so, so good (and HEY! Did I tell you you could do that? If I wanted you to fuck your filthy hole on my fingers I’d have told you to, wouldn’t I? So stop, or I’ll have to take them away) ... in that moment, I have to believe you’d rather have the person whispering sweet, dirty nothings in your ear be one who can use words like “wanton” and “harlot” as well as “skank” and “hoe” or strangely popular “bitch”. Who can capture your imagination even more thoroughly than he’s bound your hands and ankles. I don’t know. I’m not even just a little bit submissive, and even if I was I’d still be a dude. But I have to believe -and user feedback surveys seem to support - that it is better when the violence of action is matched by wickedness of mind and quickness of wit.
Liberal: I’m not imposing a political litmus test. But because I only screw people I like and who I at least believe like me, and because the politics of the moment are centered around such a toxic person leading an even more toxic movement it matters: If you are on board with the current conservative movement in America, just... no. Because while I might get past the stupid policy, maybe. I mean probably not, but I can forgive well-meaning and ignorant, at least in principle. But I could never accept the cruelty.
Feminist: As much as I enjoy deploying the tropes and language of misogyny in bed with a likeminded partner, my enjoyment of that for that performative misogyny hinges on you being in on the joke (if you’ll allow). It isn’t just about “being good”; virtue has nothing to do with it, at least in this context. It is because as a dominant I get off, in large part, on your desire: controlling it, restraining it, heightening it, sustaining it and ultimately satisfying it (or not, as circumstances dictate). If we don’t start from a place where we both see ourselves as peers, I can never be really sure that desire is authentic or authentically mine. And I am egotistical enough, or maybe just have enough self-respect, to demand that I be certain that your desire is for me, specifically, at least in the time we are in “bed”. (although the bed is only the actually relevant piece of furniture at most half the time. Really, beds are actually terribly designed for good sex. Post coital cuddle and bullshit sessions, while we discussed what worked, what really worked, and what needs work? That is a fine use for the bed. For fucking and fucking related program activities? At best a poor second to a good couch or any of a wide variety of chairs.
Stoned-sex: I love the way it affects my physiology, keeping me aroused and in the moment for hours and hours and the way it drops my refractory period down to only a few minutes or a half an hour before I’m in the mood again. And I love the way it slows down my otherwise sometimes too quickly racing mind, so that I can slide effortlessly into the dominant analog of subspace; that mental space where calling a pretty girl who I like and respect and admire a lazy no good whore, where yanking her up by her hair, slapping her face and telling her to get her greedy little mouth all the way down my cock or I’ll show her what rough really means... Weed helps me be in that space without quite so much second guessing or worry that I’m going to hurt you. It lets me trust my instincts and you and your ability to safeword out, and that is good for both of us.
Kinky: Obviously. And obviously, this is shot through with examples. But: I like power and control. I like, more than anything getting to know you and your mind and being able to figure out how to wrap you around my fingers so thoroughly that I hardly have to lift them to have you dancing my tune. I can be rough, and cruel, and I love causing pain, even to the point of tears and balancing that against urgency and a desire to please and an orgasm that I can hold just out of reach until the moment I don’t and just as your are falling off from that peak ratcheting the sexual energy back up so that even though you just came call over my hands or cock or mouth you’d do anything-Anything-ANYTHING for one more caress, one more thrust, one more slide of my tongue (inside: that specific, delightful acid tang of the inside of a cunt that you only taste when you push your tongue deep inside - it never lasts on a finger, for some reason - then out and up and you can feel her tremble, strong and subtle and if it were a song this bit would be almost subsonic and then under the clit and around and there she goes, she’s starting to beg again and now I kinda have a crush on her because she is learning me back, harlot instead of whore, and an under-undercurrent of mirth beneath it all: the power is real and the desire is real but we also both know it is a joke, a shared secret: we can do this and still be friends and isn’t that fucking awesome?).
I have a few specific fetishes: I like to decide what you wear, when we are together: I love being able to look at you and know, not just that you’ve made yourself into an expression of my ideal of high femme sexuality, but that as you did so, with every little bit, anticipation was building. That I’ve been teasing you, maybe for hours, without doing a thing or saying a thing. (And of course, it plays back into desire and its close cousin, consent. If every stitch you are -and every stitch you are.- wearing was chosen with an eye to my desires, that is an implicit declaration of enthusiastic consent). I have a bit of a twist for deviance. Sitting next to a woman who I know has got nothing on under her panties but the butt plug I told her to wear is hot; hotter still if I handed it too her at the bar and she returns from the bathroom and hands me her panties. Hotter still if I hand it too her and she doesn’t go to the bathroom, but just looks around and then slides it up her ass with a smirk and a “Thank you SiDaddy”. I like being called Daddy, sometimes. There is something inherently provocative when the kind of woman -scary smart, self-confident, and self-aware - that I am drawn to lets a breathy, anxious “Daddy” slip her lips. There is something inherently filthy about hearing that word, with all its baggage, demeaning, infantilizing implications fall from the lips of someone who is alive to those implications and is calling to me in that way not despite them, but on account of them. (It isn’t my revolution if I can’t dance to it. And it isn’t my feminism if we can’t repurpose our cultural baggage in order to have a spectacular sex life in a magnificent relationship).
I have more than a bit of the daddy in me. A bit physically — I’m solid like that. And still more in attitude. As much as I demand of a partner, I cherish knowing I can be a very particular kind of safe place to stand for her. I enjoy, even need, to be protective and caring, supportive and nurturing. Not only in that quiet place after we have hit the climax (or between the first, easy release and starting the next assent — which is very much part of why I like being able to combine weed with my kink. As much as I love giving reign to some of the darker parts of my personality during the rush of kink, I also exulting that aftermath; when your head is on my chest and my arm wraps around you, and my hands explore your body without any urgency or any hesitation. I love that feeling of being a place of safety and feeling you relax into my size and my strength. It is the only feeling that I have that I identify as definitely masculine (in and for myself: I’m not trying to claim that experience as uniquely belonging to those issued a penis and number of testicles at birth).
It extends beyond sex; really, that is only the tip of the iceberg. Vital, and you sure as shit are going to sink if you miss it in the dark. But it runs all through my relationships. Arguable without the sexually charged overtones, it is just a over complicated way of saying “I like being a good boyfriend”. But where would we be without our sexually charged overtones? And it cuts both ways: if you are pulling from that part of me without returning the counterpoint of submission I need (or I feel I’m constantly reminding you that I need it and your compliance thus feels grudging) we are going to crash and burn. If you fail to make certain it is clear to me that you are as happy to give me what I need as I am eager to give you what you need, I’m going to feel really ill-used.
Having said all that, I’m not remotely a good fit for anyone who defines themselves as a little. A Daddy/daughter dynamic without the explicit embrace of childishness has an intense pull because it combines taboo violation with a power exchange dynamic that comports well with my personality — being both protective and demanding, authority and comfort works well for me. But I find that the idea of trying to be sexual with someone locked in to portraying a prepubescent very uncomfortable and suspect that I would still feel that way with someone who’s “little” age was more mature. That is a squick, rather than a value judgment. With me, that sort of age play (or even worse pet play) works strongly against the kind of intimacy that I value in kink. Role play can be a blast, and I love it, but I need it to clearly be play, something that can be stepped into and out of without stepping completely out of the kink dynamic. I bring the entirety of myself to everything I do, and I have enough self-regard to demand the same from my partner. If I like you enough to take you to bed, that necessarily means that I value your mind enough to lust after it — no matter how lovely you may be in repose, if you can’t or won’t turn me on with your intellect you will lose my interest so quickly as to acquire a visible redshift as you exit my life. Accordingly, when I reach for your mind, be it too discuss housing policy or my difficulty with a binding, to check on your well being or learn how your dissertation is progressing, (and I’ve done all of these during a scene) I deserve to be able to find it, and you, there reaching back.
If you’ve gotten this far and if you are at all the target audience: (cis-female, like weed and kink together, comfortable in yourself and your kinks, think you’re sexy) send me a PM. Don’t think yourself out of it or wait and see or anything. For fucks sake don't read the following Just put together a couple of paragraphs of message and fire it off. I don’t know what will happen, but I know for sure you won’t regret having done so. After all, like I said right up top: I’m delightful. I bet you are too.
I used to try and assert that I don’t have a type. That isn’t true, though: I have several even beyond the implicit, willful intellectual type suggested above. And the list keeps growing: I’m forever delighted by the variety of women who've made my hindbrain start barking and trying to do tricks, at one time or another. Granting that, my abiding lust objects resemble 40’s pin ups far more than 00’s porn stars, at least insofar as body type goes; tattoos and piercings can be wonderfully sexy. Likewise, though a wonderful rack can be a wonder to behold a girl in an A-cup who has that warm flare of hip and legs that go all the way down can lead to me walking into traffic. Finally, my experience of myself is sufficient for me to say confidently that race isn’t a factor in my libido, either for or against.
I live in Chicago, love my city, and for all I value the intellectual aspect of all this, I want ultimately to meet one (or more, I suppose;) women with whom I can spend time with both doing sexy things and the kind of things that make us both so terribly sexy. If that means an intense but memorable two days while you are visiting your great aunt Wilma, that is worth doing. If that means ongoing encounters frequent enough to keep us both sated, great. And if those are intermixed with enough non-sexual shared activities that the phrase “friends-with-benefits” is a fact and not just a more polite way of saying fuckbuddies? Even more great. Super, even. And if that last develops into a passion that carries us through the next three or four decades, both of us slightly bemused that we got along so well during the benighted days before first we fell upon one another, carried away on a passion so intense it is visible from orbit? Well. Wouldn’t that be delightful.

I spend all of my daylight hours scared and alone in this musty old cellar.
It’s woeful, and I bet it smelled this bad even before everything around here turned to crap. Great. My second sentence and I’ve already resorted to swearing. When I decided I’d start this diary (five minutes ago when I got a tiny sliver of signal) I thought it would be my poetic and deeply-moving goodbye to the world. Maybe I’d write about love and loss, or maybe the splendour of nature. Then, when all is done and dusted, I’d have left something to be remembered by. As well as my corpse, of course.
This was a bad idea.
*
Okay, I’m an idiot. There’s nothing else I can do down here. I’ve rooted through every cardboard box a hundred times, organised and reorganised my supplies, I’ve even built a fort. So, I’m back. Hello. Again. God, this diary is going badly.
But there’s just enough light coming through the boards I nailed over the cellar’s tiny window to type by. So I may as well type. Stops me staring up at the window just waiting for a shadow to pass by.
Maybe I'll just write and not hit Submit. Right, where to start? Well, my name is – actually, I think I’m going to refer to myself as ‘X’. That sounds mysterious. If you’re reading this and want to know my real name, I still carry my purse. My railcard is in there and, if you really want to know who I am, go find me and fish it out. I won’t bite...
So, my name is X. I live in a little English village in the middle of nowhere. Before all this happened, I had a mum, a dad, a sister and there was a boy I liked, his name was Jonah.
*
I couldn’t think of anything else to write so I waited until I came back from my rounds. That’s the stupid name I have for when I go outside at night scrounging for stuff. Drinks are the hardest. I only trust bottles or cans, or did, and I was running out of places to search for them. But I guess that doesn’t matter now.
My leg is doing alright actually; didn’t hold me up at all. I saw Jonah too. He’s looked better, I have to say. It’s strange because this is only the second time I’ve seen him since we came here. Maybe his ears were burning.
Anyway, I found some tinned pineapple in a creepy old caravan I hadn’t searched yet. Had to bust the door open with Old Trusty – which I thought might attract some unwanted attention – but it was fine. I’m actually eating the pineapple right now, tastes good. I also found a radio in there. I already have three down here, but none of them work. Not that the caravan radio works either, all you get is static. It’s just nice to collect something. You know, to have a hobby.
*
I can tell the sun is rising. I managed to sleep for a couple of hours, but I woke up after a bad dream. I know some people can remember their dreams, but I never do. I wake up and grasp at them, but I never manage a hold before they fade away. It’s like trying to pinch the corner of a wisp of smoke; the harder you try, the quicker it fades to nothing. I’m just left with a sensation, a kind of imprint which sums up the most intense part of the dream.
And a cold sweat. That’s new.
*
I’ve been through the box of photo albums I found at the back of the cellar again. I’ve looked through them a few times now, but I always notice something new.
There’s a photo of this little girl playing with a pretend guitar. I can tell it’s pretend because it doesn’t have strings, only brightly-coloured plastic dials. Kind of like My First Guitar Hero or something. The girl has dark hair and she looks a tiny bit like my sister did a million years ago. I don’t have a picture of my sister. I suppose I could go and get one from my old house, but it’s right in the middle of the village. I’m lucky I wasn’t torn to shreds the last time I went back. So, what I’ve done is put this girl’s photo in my back pocket as a substitute.
I guess I should probably write something about my real sister now. But I don’t think that’s a good idea just yet.
*
Daylight is starting to fade and I’m getting ready to go out on my rounds. I always take my satchel with me, packed with useful objects. I have Old Trusty (a crowbar) which sticks out of the top for easy access, a small toolbox, a pair of heavy-duty gloves (there’s a good story about how I got those, I might write that one down later) and a hammer. I carry a penknife I found down here in my pocket, my purse and phone, and a torch in my hand.
I don’t like to use the torch because its battery is running out and there’s always the chance it might attract them. I probably shouldn’t have used it last night when I got back. Maybe I’m starting to enjoy this writing malarkey? I need to be careful with luxuries.
*
Okay, that could have gone better.
Picture the scene: I’m using Old Trusty to try and lever a kitchen window open, when one of them just walks right through the garden hedge. Seriously, straight through it. It’s not the mightiest of hedges but, still, it just appeared like it was walking through one of those Japanese paper walls. My satchel was on the ground, but I legged it anyway. I’m not stupid. I know I can go back for it tomorrow. I felt strangely naked without it on the way back here though.
Like I said before, I need to be careful with the torch so I think I’ll try and get some sleep now.
*
I slept pretty well last night; no nightmares or cold sweats. Maybe a midnight chase was just what I needed to blow away the cobwebs.
I actually woke up wondering about you. If you’re reading this, who are you? If you’re like me, living through this village nightmare, how have you managed to go this long without being killed or whatever? Maybe you’re Army or some such. Maybe you’re just some kid who’s played so many videogames that surviving all of this was already second nature to you. Or maybe you’re like me; living on borrowed time and searching for a good place to die. Maybe Future Me was brave enough to tap Submit on my diary and you're currently reading this on your phone or computer.
Here’s an idea. Maybe you can carry on this diary from wherever I left it at. God, I really hope this isn’t my last entry, although I suppose any entry might be. If you do carry the diary forwards, and I'm a corpse, maybe it will become cursed. Spooky.
*
I’ve been preparing for my next excursion.
If I know I’m going somewhere I’ll likely run into an ugly, I like to take extra precautions. And I want my satchel back. It was a present from my dad, and I know it cost him a lot of money.
So, I’m taking a pair of shears from the shelf of old tools down here. That way, if I lose Old Trusty, I’ll have a backup weapon.
If you are local, I wonder how you like to kill them? Pretty morbid question I know, but everyone around here seems to have their preferred method. The last villager I saw alive carried a pair of mini cricket bats and seemed to have bludgeoning down to an art form. He never saw me though, I was watching from a grove of trees as he killed his way along the main road near the village.
That was before I decided to stay inside during the daylight hours. We can at least see a little bit at night; ambient light and everything. They can’t though. I’ve seen them, they bump into things. It’s pretty funny to be honest. If they hear a noise, they walk in the direction of the sound, never trying to avoid any object in their path. They either bash said object out of the way, or, like that hedge, blunder right through it. Obviously bigger things stop them dead (ha!) though. If that happens, they sort of shuffle backwards and then try again a few times. Eventually – and I’ve seen this too – they just give up and stand there, waiting for something else to attract their attention.
That’s not how it works in the daytime though.
*
I think it’s about an hour before the sun sets so it’s nearly time to head out. I’m going to change my bandage. One minute.
Okay, it didn’t look that bad really. The original scratch wasn’t too deep and now the wound seems to be doing that scabbing thing I remember from normal injuries. It just doesn’t smell very good. A bit like when you walk past a bin that needs emptying.
Anyway, I’ve applied more antiseptic and redressed it. Time to go.
*
That was fun. I’m glad I had those shears with me.
I got my satchel back you’ll be happy to know. And I got inside that house I’d been trying to break into as well. More through necessity than choice in the end, but I’m pleased I did. I found more batteries! That means I can justify writing at night a bit more. In fact, the people who used to live there (I think the husband owned the local garage) were pretty well kitted out. There were a lot of tins in their cupboards, and they’d even left a shotgun. It wasn’t loaded though.
Not that I need a shotgun. I didn’t tell you this before, but I have my grandpa’s old service revolver. He always told me and my sister that it was decommissioned, but my dad apparently knew otherwise. I keep it tucked into the back of my jeans at all times. It had three bullets, one of them is gone, so only two left.
I’ll only be needing the one of course.
*
Morning. I’m feeling pretty low today. I think concentrating on getting my satchel back took my mind off things, but now I feel pretty deflated.
Surely that’s understandable? The village I knew and loved has been replaced with this sodding hell. I miss my family, my friends, TV and hot dinners and Instagram. Before all of this I was a pretty positive person. Sure, I had a bit of trouble getting up in the morning, but, once I was up, that was it. I’d meet the day’s challenges head on, try to enjoy myself as much as I could. Not today though.
Maybe if I write about Jonah I’ll cheer up. Not Jonah as he is now of course, Jonah when he was all smooth-skinned, curly-haired and bright-eyed. Now he’s like the anti-Jonah or something. His face looks like it lost a fight with an angry lobster. No, wait, I’m supposed to be writing about Jonah version one here.
He’s one of those people that I can’t remember meeting. My family has always lived around here and so there are lots of people who have just always been, if you get me. I always thought we would drunkenly get it together at a party – that’s what I’d usually do if there was a boy I liked. Classy.
*
I’ve perked up a bit. Out of sheer frustration I went upstairs (naughty, I know) and looked out of a window. Sure, I saw an ugly, wandering aimlessly as they always do, but I saw that the trees are starting to turn too. That means it’s nearly autumn, and I love autumn!
My sister and I always used to go out and kick leaves at each other in the autumn. I don’t know if it was because of her low centre of gravity, but my sister was amazing at it. She could somehow whip up a blazing whirlwind of golden-yellow and fire-red, surrounding us both in a leaf storm that I couldn’t help but flail my arms madly at. Then we’d both fall backwards into the leaves laughing, me wondering how on earth what had happened was possible. She was that good.
God, I let her down in the end.
*
I think I’ll stay away from the house with the shotgun tonight. It usually takes a day or two for a group of uglies to disperse once they’re all riled up. I could use the rest of that tinned food I suppose, but I’ve got plenty to be getting on with for now.
Instead, I think I’ll swing by another farmhouse I was scoping out before I decided to turn nocturnal. I never met the people who used to live there, but I remember Mum telling me they liked their privacy. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind me visiting now though.
Also, there’s a woodland between here and there and I might be able to find some leaves to kick about a bit. I think that would make me feel close to my sister again.
I’ll check back in later.
*
I’m still alive, but only just.
I made it through the woods just fine (only the odd leaf on the forest floor at the moment though, sadly), the trouble started at the farmhouse. I couldn’t get in – the doors and windows were barricaded – so I tried one of the outbuildings. Locked. It had a cat flap though.
My first instinct was to leave it, but then I wondered if there might be something useful inside. Lord knows what thinking about it now. I lifted the cat flap with one hand and shone the torch beam through with my other. That’s when an ugly dived at my pinkies. Luckily, it misjudged its leap and got a mouthful of plastic cat flap instead. As for me, I fell backwards onto my bum.
Next, the damn thing started bashing on the door from the inside. I don’t think it could ever have got out, but the noise attracted more uglies from out of nowhere. I only just managed to outmanoeuvre them and hightail it back into the woods.
That’s not the worst of it though. On the way back my leg started to hurt. A lot.
*
I woke up this morning and I’m walking with a limp. It’s funny, Dad had a limp when he and Mum died. He was nailing planks of wood across our windows and doors because there was no signal (as per bloody usual) and we thought that what was happening here was probably happening everywhere. It's only recently that I realised this was an isolated, local outbreak. Anyway, Dad dropped the hammer onto his toe, he always was useless at DIY. I think it was only a couple of hours after that when he and Mum were taken.
It was like a wave of death. No, not like, that’s exactly what it was. A hoard of uglies swept through the village, probably originating from the secret research facility in the woods we're not supposed to know about. My sister and I wouldn’t have had a prayer if Mum and Dad hadn’t charged down the first few that got into our house. They gave us just enough time to escape, to run away and leave them to die. My sister was screaming all the way and I had to drag her like she was four again.
She wouldn’t speak to me for a few days after that. I didn’t blame her, I hated myself too. But I would have hated myself even more if I hadn’t done what I did next. On my own, I snuck back into our house with the crowbar I found here. Then I dispatched my parents. I can’t bring myself to type it any other way. It wasn’t like in the movies, I didn’t pound their skulls into mush whilst sobbing, ‘Why?’ over and over again. I just found them, or what was left of them, forced the crowbar through each of their eye sockets, and came straight back here.
Then came the crying.
*
I haven’t told you about the heavy-duty gloves yet, have I?
After I got back from our old house, my sister started speaking to me again. A shared, day-long cry will do that for sisters. Once we felt up to it, we decided to explore the parts of the farmhouse we hadn’t searched yet. All the bedrooms were empty, only a few belongings flung about the place (I suspect the previous tenants left in a hurry). The problem came when we investigated the attic. Once we’d opened the ceiling panel in the upstairs hallway, once we’d pulled the compact staircase down, I went up. My sister stood at the top of the hatchway shining the torch beam over my shoulder. And that’s when it touched me. Terrified, I fell to my left, screaming as the thing came crashing down on top of me. I was yelling things like, ‘Shoot it!’ and, ‘Run!’ but my sister was just laughing her head off. I soon realised that my attacker was in fact a shop-window mannequin.
I think the people who previously lived here must have been arty (or into some seriously freaky stuff) because the mannequin was dressed in scarves, bandannas, ties, watches – loads of things. The rest of the attic was pretty empty but at least we got the mannequin’s gloves.
*
I’m not feeling good at the moment. I’ve got a sore throat and I’ve coughed up blood a couple of times. My leg pain is getting worse too.
I don’t think I’ll go out tonight. I have enough tins left and one of them is a Full English In A Can. Sounds pretty disgusting, but intriguing at the same time. I’ve been saving it for near the end. A sort of consolation prize.
*
There are two mattresses down here. Obviously one is mine, and the other one was my sister’s. After she died, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. I don’t have a photo of her, only Guitar Girl’s. Her bed is the only thing of hers I have left. And she didn’t even sleep in it that many times.
*
The tinned Full English was vile! You’ve got to laugh though, what else can you do?
*
I’m crying as I write this. Tears of sorrow, shame and regret.
It happened as we were searching a cottage just off of the main road. We’d used Old Trusty to get inside, and I’d rushed straight into the kitchen to find the food. We’d run out more than a day before and I was famished. My sister followed me into the kitchen, a wide grin on her pretty little face because I was sitting there with an open can of beans. Then one of them came at her from behind. I must have walked right past it on my stupid way to the cupboards. It bit into her neck and blood gushed over the tiles in a torrent. As she yelled out in agony, I leapt up and implanted the crowbar right into the thing’s skull. It crumpled to the floor, but the damage was done.
‘Don’t let me lose myself.’ That was the last thing my sister whispered to me before she passed out. Her wound was much more severe than mine is, and much closer to the brain. That seems to make it quicker. I took grandpa’s revolver from behind my back and blew her brains out.
I buried her in the back garden.
*
After my sister died I went kind of crazy. I took Old Trusty out across the fields and pulverised every ugly I could find. I don’t even remember it that well, it was just, find, kill, find, kill…
We’d only been going out in daylight before then but, in my anger, I carried on through the nights. That’s how I learned about their inability to evade in darkness. Eventually, though, one got me. I found three munching on a dead cow and ran straight at them. Took out the first two easily enough, but the third managed to scratch my leg with a bloody fingernail just before I clobbered it into oblivion. Once I realised its nail had broken the skin, it was like a switch had been flicked inside me. That’s it, I’m dead too. I lost my bloodlust and came back here.
*
If none of this had happened, I think my sister would have eventually gone into medicine. I was doing okay at College but she was top of her class at school. And she had a really kind nature too. She’d never squish any bugs that got trapped in our house; she’d get a glass, scoop the little critter up and seal it inside with a book. Then she’d take it outside and release it, even if it was a wasp.
*
I’ve decided that here’s not the place. I'll hit Submit and then I’m going to do it in those woods I wrote about; consider this diary as my Note. I’ll be able to find a nice spot to sit and look at the trees, some place that's calm and peaceful. I’m going to leave the picture of Guitar Girl in this cellar, she belongs in this house. The tree leaves will remind me of my sister more than any photo ever could anyway.
I guess all that’s left to say is thank you for listening.
I know it’s possible that no one will ever read this, but that’s not really the point is it?
Love,
X

PART III of our Character Study of Gorou Amamiya is an intermezzo chapter. We'll rehash some content from the previous parts and try to understand them on a basic structural level . This is more of an extra edition I allowed myself to write down since this was impossible to fit into the main study without unnecessary distractions . Last but not least some conversations that followed from the previous releases had been ever so fruitful for the creation of either new or advancing preexisted ideas .
This is an Analysis of the Good and the Evil, the Heroe's Journey, the Problem and the Solution.

For thosee who are new here and haven't read the previous parts: You still can just enjoy MYTHOLOGICAL LORE! Scroll down until you see all the Hyperlinks or better start a bit earlier at "3. Entertainment"

SANATORIUM - DISEASES - TREATMENTS
In Part I we discussed Gorou's loner existence in a rural city that would mainly revolve around the mountain hospital he works at. Due to low patients frequency Gorou had lots of free time to hang around mostly in patient rooms. Besides of highlighting a selfish reason for his behaviour, the general assumption was that his arrangement was convenient. Just a doctor hanging around at his workplace, right?
Now I'd like to flesh this picture out for you. This previous one was actually pretty dull, it allows too many variables in a story that is actually very intentional. Since Aka Akasaka - as well known - had figured out the beginning and the ending of the story he wants to tell before the manga even started, it's obvious that the beginning scenery is thrilled with symbols, metaphors and meanings for both the Heroes but also the meta plot itself and is interconnected with the story's ending in which all those pre-established elements will meet a final resolution to its opposite: In principle this is what you all know as the "Hero's journey".
First lets talk about location location location, as real estate agents love to say. And indeed the location is essential to the plot. Our story begins in a rural hospital. Stop. Actually "hospital" is already too arbitrary of a word and misses the significance of the location. A more accurate word for a rural hospital on a mountain is the Sanatorium. A Sanatorium is an antiquated name for specialised hospitals, for the treatment of specific diseases, related ailments and convalescence. Sanatoriums are tradionally located in healthy climate, usually in the countryside. In the 19th and 20th century these were popular centers for tuberculosis suffers. Some of you might be familiar with Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" (german: Der Zauberberg) which is the most prominent novel revolving around such an institution. Magic Mountain, huh? So we have our Sanatorium, we have our countryside Mountain and certainly we have our magic through the sanctuary of Ame-No-Uzume Goddess of Entertainment and the reincarnation on top of that mountain.
Now that we have established the location lets look at our most prominent patients. What's so special about their condition that they would need treatment in a specialised hospital? How are they all connected to each other? Our most prominent patients are Sarina Tendoji, Ai Hoshino and ... well ... Gorou Amamiya.

Gorou Amamiya

The alert reader immediately knows why I include Gorou Amamiya in that list. I know, including Ai is actually the hot take here. But be patient, we'll get o her later.
Since we established Aqua's trauma to be inherited from Gorou and explored the tragic nature of his birth and the abuse he suffered during his childhood, his inclusion is reasonable. But this - only way later in C75 unvealed background - is already visible right from the beginning with intentional symbols, metaphors and hidden meanings. There are two levels for the representation of his illness.

The general representation of his life in this rural area and his habitual lurking around patient's rooms, like when Sarina was around and so on. Just sitting their while looking out the window at the beautiful landscapes. On the surface this is of course just a Doc with a qurik and a lot of free time. But no, the actual meaning is here that he's seeking a cure too. That he is sick. Patients are naturally bored in hospitals, they have a lot of free time because they are sick. They also enjoy the countryside's view. It's one of the main healing attractionto Sanatoriums and made them so popular in the 19th and 20th century. In this specific case the countryside he observes is sacret and related to entertainment. Keep this in the back of your head for now.

Thus we transformed the surface explanation that his free time as a doctor comes from low frequency to the meaningful symbolic depths that it's actually reflecting his status as a chronically ill patient. Moreso even his decision to move out of Tokyo to the countryside - what I called in part 1 the "self-imposed isolation" - turns out to be a meaningful representation of his trouble. We'll later explore another underlaying structure which is the very reason for his "existencial boredom". It's not directly trauma, but for now lets just say it's so fundamentally burned into him that as a consequence his stay at the Sanatorium is as permanently as befits his disease and eventually only ends with his death and reincarnation, or perhaps only then it actually is challenged. Stay tuned.

The second, now tangible representation of his diseases is what we already established in Part 1: his obsession with Ai, the inner void he tries to cure with his active measures of "medicine" in a patient's room. While technically he could've watched her literally elsewhere, he decided to hide away in a patient's room. This is a symbol. His first scene in the Manga ever starts exactly in such a room. The sister came in to check - metaphorically speaking - on the patient Gorou Amamiya. This illustration is completely intentional and meaningful to flesh out the double-sided irony of his employment at this particular hospital as a doctor and admission to the Sanatorium as a chronically ill patient.

It's the very first scene that exactly establishes that split personality. We witness a hard cut between the body language of the patient and the body language of the competent cross legged Doctor who explains to us the nature and reason he consumes this "medicine". In this scene he switches back to the doctor's role and while it's a funny cope towards the sister it's at the same time sounds like a serious prescription for himself. Absurdity meets underlaying seriousness and a real problem of the highest importance possible. A problem which is the very reason this story exsists, a problem that will embark our heroes on their journey and a problem that will ultimately be solved.

https://preview.redd.it/ewasnfmvnd3b1.jpg?width=2571&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3fed46b24063b90c79df20a7a1231eaca9208bc2
What actually shocked me was that EP 1 of the ANIME basically might have proven my Theory especially from PART II. The moment Gorou dies we get to see exactly two flashback frames. The Ai-Keychain Sarina gave him and a picture of his Grandmother and him... With the missing Grandfather. I feel pretty vindicated about the importance of this photo and as you know in my theory actually his Grandfather is on that photo kinda too... That irony!
https://preview.redd.it/fo97javmgg3b1.jpg?width=2575&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2031410c5ab4e10faad18f4cb87ae9d52a48568d

Sarina Tendoji

In contrast to Gorou's more subtle immaterial deciption of his disease, Sarina's situation is basically the exterior as the utmost visible form of it. She is the embodiment of the classic Sanatorium inhabit with the typicel physical characteristics: chronic disease, handicapped existence, very care-dependent*.* But these 3 characteristics will show themselves also for Sarina as mental barriers after she reincarnated in Ruby. Care-dependets in her seek for Ai's, a mother's and a father's love, the handicapped existence in her troulbe to move and dance how she''d like to and ultimately the expression of a chronic disease in form of the trauma she inherited from Sarina's soul. From the point of view of "plot related meaning" Ruby's inheritance of those 3 characteristics are more important then the physical showcase in Sarina's body, although we will later also unveal another layer of particulary Sarina Tendoji not Ruby Hoshino in this story. You see, I'm really bulding up here.
She has a symbolic double function as both a sick dying child but also as physical representation of Ruby's, Aqua's and Gorou's mental situation. To quote PART II for that matter:

In a sense the image of the handicapped Sarina living in the hospital is the quintessential metaphorical representation of Gorou himself. She shows upfront what was the psychological state of Gorou's soul. When he realized in C119 that Sarina's life must've been like hell he reflected his own experience too.

But in order to apply these 3 characteristics to Gorou we first have to explore another symbolic layer to why all of our proganists revolve around this particular hospital. For this we have to step back and look at the most dominent theme of the story: Entertainment...

3. Entertainment

... is our PATIENT ZERO. Entertainment itself in this Story is chronically ill. It's existence - the very nature of art - is handicapped and crippled by cold hearted and ultimately in opposition to the essence of entertainment standing particular business interests. Their practice of entertainment harms both artists and art enjoyers and thus the meaning of entertainment itself. Entertainment as a mass-produced industry is a disease to entertainment as the realm of the truth-seeking, philanthopic and graceful expression of the uttermost passionate creative minds who enjoy the blessing of the goddess and share her blessing with the community.
The true meaning of Entertainment is joyfull fullfillment and the exploration of new uplifting expressions of cultural life. It's a healing power in the most innocent and human-loving way, it's first and foremost an enrichtment of the soul, not of the pocket. The industry however inverted this relation: Now the money dictates the art. As a consequence talent get's blocked, content is cheap and underwhelming, instead of uplifting humanity, the mere consumer gets just as much exploited as the performer. The consumer is conditioned to waste his limited precious lifespawn with the consumption of the most primitive motives of entertainment. This is a form of exploitation through the industry and it has rotten everyone to the bone. The artist gets either drained or he himself corrupts and uses the same sort of schemes, trickes and deceptions to climb to the top. But the higher they climb the further they uproot from the essence of true entertainment ... And those who oppose and try tu succeed with honest and uplifting ideals will literally killed on the way.

🚬
We have diagnozed the problem, the chronical disease. A disease which is the very reason for this story to exsist, a disease that will embark our heroes on their journey and a disease that will ultimately be cured. And indeed the location has proven to be essential to this plot. Our story begins with a Mountain Sanatorium in the heart and on top of the Goddesses of Entertainment's realm. A symbol for The Cure of Entertainment.

Ai Hoshino

To understand why Ai seeks cure exactly at that hospital we have to expose the location she's fleeing from: Tokyo. Tokyo is the center of this plot's Entertainment industry. A metropolis is the absolute opposition to the countryside, this tension between Tokyo as the center of Business and Commerce and Takachiho as the center of the Goddess of Entertainment's true and opposing expressions of Art sets the dialectic. I was purposely holding back the name of Ame-No-Uzume's town until now because it only has a concrete meaning in this tight relation to the plot-stretching antagonist, which culminates in Tokyo. Ame-No-Uzume occupies the domain of Takachiho, but who occupies Tokyo the? It's a mix between the Japanese Mythology of the Seven Lucky Gods who are basically characterized as Gods of Business and Commerce and the Seven Deadly Demons from Christian Demonology.

Lucifer: pride
Beelzebub: envy
Satan: wrath
Abaddon: sloth
Mammon: greed
Belphegor: gluttony
Asmodeus: lust

It all leads to Hikaru Kamiki as our personified antagonist: If you write "Hikaru" in kanji, it will be like 光る or just 光, which literally means "to shine, to glitter, to be bright", which make a lot of sense being the name of man who got starry eyes. But, if we look a bit deeper, such name can be translated as "The Shining One" or "One who brings the Light"... In christian mythology this is - Lucifer the Morning Star himself. Double irony there in the fact that Ai often nicknamed and referenced as VENUS, Evening Star Reborn, as u/Raeliic4 pointed out to me. On top I also found a suitable association with Beelzebub which is another name for the Devil. Beelzebub is also called "The King of Flies" and in the Dictionnaire Infernal (1863) a Book on Demonology he's depicted as a Fly! So maybe he wasn't wearing only crow feathers but actually also Fly-hair?... Beelzebub is known in demonology as one of the seven deadly demons or seven princes of Hell, Beelzebub representing gluttony and envy. Gluttony = He appears as the best drinking buddy of Yura (and maybe Frill). Envy = He's envious towards the white-glooming Star-People.
Thus the antagonist is created: It's a demonic force of industrialized Entertainment that has rotten down Art to the bone and occupies Tokyo as it's center. Kamiki however is for now the most malicious and excessive release of this evilness. While the industry tries to just drain, corrupt and exploit stars, he literally kills stars out of personal envy. In order to cure Entertainment our protagonists have to be embarked on a journey to Tokyo. In this antagonistic relation Aqua and Ruby are ultimately Heroes blessed by the God of Entertainment to cast out the Devil that holds "Entertainment" in his death grip.

Ai Hoshino's story begins with her escape from the Devil. She flees Tokyo and tries to find protection and cure in Takachiho in at least 3 meanings.

AS AN IDOL : On the surface level it's because an Idol can't justify promiscurity towards her fans and because the Agency can't justify pregnancy of a Teenager, so she has to flee where nobody knows her. This is besides also a metaphor that indeed the Town of God is where nobody knows the filth of the rotten Tokyo-World. But this is just again the convenient explanation the characters verbalize towards us, as proven many times there is also a hidden symbolic dialectic to it. The IDOL as the Evening Star VENUS is an object of LUST (Asmodeus, one of the seven deadly demons). You might be familiar with the VENUSBERG) from european folklore. "In German folklore of the 16th century, the narrative becomes associated with the minnesinger Tannhäuser who becomes obsessed with worshipping the goddess Venus**.**" But what AI seeks is real love, somethinf that can be loved. And thus she steps down from the Venusberg ("Venus Mountain") in other words steps down as an Idol of Lust to become a Mother, It's a purification - "I am Maria" she sings in the OP song. There is a metaphorically similar transformation which starts Richard Wagner's "Tannhäuser" Opera. Tannhäuser: The world of Venus is dedicated exclusively to LUST. Tannhäuser found his way here as a mortal, but is increasingly weary of the enjoyment (“If a god can always enjoy, I am subject to change”). Trying to persuade her knights to stay, Venus prophesied that the people would never forgive Tannhäuser for dwelling with the pagan goddess of love: he would never find salvation there. However, Tannhäuser sticks to his decision: “My salvation rests in Maria!” When Mary is invoked, the world of Venus disappears and Tannhäuser sees himself transported to a lovely forest valley in Thuringia at the foot of the Wartburg. The Beginning of Wagner's Tannhäuser basically sums up AI'S ESCAPE from her VENUS-TRAMMEL to her MATERNAL HAPPINESS. Even that this purification situates Tannhäuser in a lovely forest valley at the foot of a mountain-castle fits the narrative. Our Sanatorium in the lovely rural japanese backwaters is a powerful castle which gives her ultimate protection to bear her children. Just like that Ai "spawns" into the our plot. A minute before that she was the worshipped VENUS obsessed over by Gorou on his TV, but became the MOTHER when she entered the Castle. Gorou became her KNIGHT. Gorou had a Tannhäuser-Transformation himself, when he realized that the IDOL Ai needs him as the future MOTHER Ai and therefore overcame his lewd interest and served her as the protector of her maternity.
AS A BRIDE: Lucifer's wife is also associated with the she-demon LILITH, the child murderer. Ai flees her relationship with Kamiki and therefore flees from the fate of a child murderer. She was pregnant with "soulless Children" which means: Stillbirths. In german we also say "Sternenkind" (Star Child) for stillbirth. So she metaphorically flees the "marriage" between Evening Star and Morning Star and eventually opposes her fate as the child murderer LILITH who carries Sternenkinder with the help of the Knight and Hero Tannhäuser-Gorou. As Takachibo is the realm of our blessing Goddess of Art and the Sanatorium her Castle on the Magic Mountain it's fair to assume that also soul migration is only possible there in the center of her purifying power. The Devil Kamiki maybe can't even enter the Castle himself because it shields itself from Evilness...
AS A SAVIOUR: Just as RUBY and AQUA our AI gets send back with a Mission: To Cure Art and Entertainment. There is a lot we can say about her involvement in this but I want to cut it down to one essential plot-line: Her association with Gotanda and the following shoots for a documentary with him. Gotanda for that matter is a very, very important figure. He is the man who only wants to hear the TRUTH, a man who is capable to see through LIES instantaneous, he who CAN'T BE DECEIVED. As long as he doesn't stop the recording it is a proof for the verisimilitude of the content. He is the "NOTARY" who witnessed her TESTIMONY but also her TESTAMENT (in german we also say "LETZTER WILLE" instead of Testament, which means LAST WILL or LAST WISH... Ai's Wish). She was killed but she archived everything she needed to archive: Found true Love and passed down her LEGACY through the recordings with Gotanda. Ruby and Aqua received everything they need to fight the Evil. Ai's KARMA as a result led for her soul to enter NIRVANA and break out of the cycle of rebirth which in Buddism is called "SAMSARA" - Thus "her soul collapsed and returned to the stars and the sea. It will never be reformed again. Death is Death. Ai Hoshino doesn't think of anything anymore, nothing is on her mind" -> NIRVANA. But as far as the content of the movie goes it's obviously a big exposure of the corruption and wrong doing that is happening in the Industry. She, Goatanda but als Aqua want to archive a social phenomenom with the movie. They want CHANGE. Thus she came to Takachiho to heal and left as a HEALER and MOTHER MARIA with her Twins as the SAVIOURS of ART. In PART I and PART II we identified in full extent her role as a saviour for Ruby and Aqua in the form of Ruby's muse and mother-figure and Aqua's unconditonally loving mother that reenacted his innocence in the tragic death of Gorou's mother.

I promised to talk about another connecting layer, the very reason why it must be exactly SARINA and GOROU who are chosen to wield the sword against the devil. But we will delay this topic for another time. PART IV will get us to the THAT CORE. They are not chosen because they have Trauma, this would be absurdly dull. The Trauma or chronical disease they suffer are the result of a "crime" against the blessings of the Goddess of Arts. That's a small hint from my side.
Thank to the faithful readers and brave souls who dived back again into another of my essays and also thanks to every new face here as well.. Hopefully I'll see you all again for the next Part!

***

I worked as a park ranger in Northern Alaska for years, from when I was in my early twenties until my mid-thirties. At first, when I took the job, I was trying to escape, but over time, I learned to love it- the endless wilderness, the snow-capped mountains, the muffled way everything sounded during blizzards. With no light pollution, the stars up there look like tiny chips of diamond. And during the winter, the Northern Lights roll in, twisting and shimmering in strange, alien colors.
But a few years ago, things got much worse. People up here have started to go missing at an alarming rate. And I started having strange experiences around the park and the nature preserve.
One of the strangest parts of my story started on a freezing, dark night in 2018. I was on a snowmobile out in a terrible blizzard. The conditions were nearly to the point of being impassable. The snow was falling so thick and fast that it looked like a moving, shimmering wall of white on all sides of me.
Another ranger, a huge, lumbering man named ‘Ace’ Acosta, pulled up behind me on a second snowmobile. I looked at him, standing six foot six with majestic peaks stretching up into the night sky, and thought about what a great picture this would make. As I was looking around, I saw the faint tracks in the snow. Ace’s snowmobile lights were pointed in their direction, and I had been standing almost on top of them without realizing it- which is fairly easy to do when a few inches of snow are falling every hour.
At first, I thought it was the frozen tracks of an injured animal. I saw the drops of blood soaked into the superficial ice first. Following their direction with my eyes, I realized there were footprints pressed into the frozen crust leading away from me and towards the flat stretch of the tundra. I squinted, getting down on my knees and leaning inwards. I didn’t want to trample the tracks.
I quickly realized I was looking at human footprints- naked human footprints. But who would be out here in December in -40 degree winds without shoes? They would die rapidly out here. Just for me to drive across the tundra on a snowmobile required me to wear three jackets, long-johns, snow pants, thick jeans, a ski mask and multiple layers of socks and gloves with hand-warmers. I wore special water-proof boots with composite toes that wouldn’t freeze like steel toes. And despite all of this, I was still cold.
I moved forward, and saw handprints mixed in with the footprints, all of them bloody. The ice was thick enough to slice open human hands and feet, undoubtedly. The logical conclusion was unshakable- someone had crawled through here, maybe naked, on all fours, and their frozen body would be somewhere up ahead. I sighed, turning to Acosta. He still stood in the same position, his face covered in a red scarf with only his eyes showing. I saw one ice-covered eyebrow raise questioningly.
“I think we got us a body somewhere nearby,” I said, getting back on my snowmobile and starting it. He did the same.
“What kind of freaked-out tweaker would be walking around here without clothes on?” Ace asked in his deep baritone. “Man, I need a hit of whatever that guy’s on. I’ve got two sweaters and two winter jackets on, and I’m still cold. Eh, Kelton? Eh? What do you say?” He started elbowing me jokingly. I frowned, not responding.
Ace always had a smart aleck remark. He was next to me when I was interviewed for this job originally, down at the recruitment center in Washington state. The old lady doing the interviewing was a bloodless, angry-looking specimen of a woman with huge glasses that magnified her eyes twice over. She spat out each of the questions like a drill sergeant talking to fresh meat in the Army.
“Are you a member of any organized religion?” she had asked brusquely. Ace shook his head.
“No, ma’am, but I am a member of a disorganized religion,” he said. “We call ourselves ‘the Servants of the Old Ones’. We’re waiting for the ancient reptilian gods at the bottom of the ocean to awaken. So far, however, they haven’t responded to any of our texts.” I thought about this as I revved the engine twice, a sign that I was about to pull off and that he should stay close.
We took off, going slow and following the tracks as close as possible without destroying them. But the tracks just kept going, the bloodstains seeming to grow fainter as we moved forward- and strangely enough, the distance between the hand and footprints also started to get longer, as if someone were running on all fours and speeding up. We were nearing the beginning of the forest of evergreens when I saw a white flash just up ahead.
The thing that ran from us was humanoid, but I knew at once that it was no person. It ran on hands and feet, totally naked, its skin a pale, lifeless white color. It turned its head towards the lights of the snowmobiles briefly. I saw a hairless creature with skin that clung tightly to its simian body, its lips permanently pulled back from its mouth as if they were eaten away. Underneath it showed mottled black and red gums covered in thick, clotted blood. Its nose appeared as little more than two irregular holes, and its eyes- they reflected the light of the snowmobiles, like the eyes of a raccoon or opossum. They were huge and sunken in its starving, monstrous face.
And I saw what was leaving the bloody trails. The creature was, as far as I could tell, totally uninjured. In its permanently grinning mouth, between rows of crooked, sharp, blood-stained teeth, it held the body of an infant. The baby’s head lolled from side to side, the neck seemingly broken, and blood dripped constantly from its mouth and nose. It had deep puncture marks in its tiny parka, half-rings of teeth marks that must have broken its ribs. The bloodstains on the snow were becoming fainter, because the heart was no longer pumping in the body of the one leaving them.
I had a loaded rifle inside my snowmobile, and kept a 12-gauge shotgun slung around my back, mostly in case of bear or moose attack. I always kept the shotgun loaded with slugs, which were, in my experience, the most versatile ammunition for stopping any large animal. The .308 might take down a polar bear, at least with a good headshot, or it might just piss it off on a bad day. But a shotgun slug to the head or heart will stop any bear or moose in its tracks.
Of course, this was no polar bear ahead of me. For all I knew, it was something far worse. I looked down at the speedometer to see I was going twenty miles an hour, in the dark, in a blizzard. And yet this strange humanoid creature was still losing us, its seemingly never-ending store of energy still sending it forward at a superhuman speed. Its pale, bony legs and arms pumped back and forth so fast that they were just a blur. It kept its sharp teeth around the nape of the dead infant’s neck, like a mother cat carrying its young.
I kept one hand on the steering wheel while trying to free the strap of my shotgun over my head. I slowed down below twenty, and the creature responded by going even faster. It was making a break for the mountain forests that started only a few hundred feet away. I got the gun free and quickly stopped the snowmobile and raised it. I centered the sights, taking a deep breath to steady myself, and fired.
I missed, though I don’t know by how much. Shotguns had the drawback of being significantly less accurate at further distances than the rifle. But by the time I got the .308 out, I knew the creature would have long since disappeared in the thick brush and trees. By this point, Ace had also stopped and opened fire, but the creature had already gone.
“God damn!” Ace screamed. “That was one fast motherfucker. I can’t believe he got away after all that.” I heaved a deep sigh.
“I think we better go find out where he got that baby from,” I said. “We might have a lot more corpses on our hands than we realize.”
***
We found a radio in the snowmobile and messaged in what had happened, or at least the basic gist of it. I left out the part about naked, half-human abominations, and said that it was an unknown animal. There wasn’t much law enforcement up in these parts, because, hell, there were barely any people. The rangers as well as fish and wildlife agents regularly worked with the police officers in small towns, at least those that had police officers. Dozens of the local tribal villages had no police at all. These people would come to forest rangers and fish and wildlife agents most of all, and were always some of the county’s friendliest and most helpful residents.
By the time we got back to the original blood-stained footprints, the snow had covered up the tracks completely. However, based on the direction that the creature had been going and where the tracks had come from, I thought I knew where it might have started. Following the path in a nearly straight line led to the Lutna Peak Trailer Park. Ace and I drove off at max speed across the rolling hills and flat plains, the snow coming faster and heavier now. They say eskimos have dozens of words for snow, and after being a ranger up here, I can say I’ve seen every variation of it a thousand times. This was turning into the kind that was wet with huge flakes and tended to stick to everything. We would probably have to find refuge soon, especially if it got any heavier.
I heard the screaming before I saw the commotion. As we came around the sharp right turn where the dirt road turned into the trailer park, I saw dozens of people out, flitting like gnats around one of the trailers at the back corner of the park. All of the lights were on in that particular trailer, and I saw one woman comforting another who was bent over and crying.
Even though almost everyone knew us here, I pulled out my badge identifying me as a federal law enforcement officer. Up here, all the rangers were technically federal agents, allowed to carry guns and make arrests like typical police, except we were licensed under the Department of the Interior rather than under state law enforcement agencies.
I ran into the trailer, and after one long glance around the place, I knew there was no need to call for any ambulances. Ace followed close behind me, his heavy, thudding footsteps shaking the trailer slightly as he ascended the steps. We said nothing for a long moment. The entire family was dead.
There was blood everywhere, even spotting the ceilings. Most of it had frozen in the cold, and I wondered how long the door had been left open. Body parts were scattered across the floor, an arm in the corner of the room, a head standing up on the kitchen counter, even a random tooth embedded into the sheetrock. The savagery was brutal, and the amount of strength required to carry out such an attack must have been extraordinary.
“I think we’re going to need a lot more people on this than just me and you,” Ace said. I nodded, already bone-tired, and with so much more work to do tonight before I could go to sleep.
We phoned both state and federal authorities in the area. Since much of the land was tribally owned, we had to deal with multiple branches. Eventually we got CSI out there in the middle of a snowstorm, though they had to come from over three hours away. We just secured the scene while we waited, constantly being brought into neighboring trailers where townsfolk would tell us the latest gossip. They also brought us hot coffee and tried to milk us for any information we might have, as they usually did in such situations.
“No, Maggie, honest,” Ace was saying to one old lady wrapped up in an ancient fur coat, “I don’t know any more about it than you do. You can be sure that you’d know if I did.” By that point, police cars were slowly pulling in, one by one. Ace and I told them a simplified version of the night’s events, said goodnight and left the scene to them. I went home and took a scalding hot shower, trying to force the night’s coldness out of my bones. Then I slept deeply, though I had nightmares of that creature’s face turning to me, holding a dead baby in its mouth and marking me with its emotionless, reflective eyes. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time I would sleep in a bed for many days.
***
The state police assigned us an officer the next day, stating they wanted an official representative of their interests involved in the case. It was, by this point, a fairly high-priority case. We didn’t even have many assaults or robberies up here, less likely murders, and the murder of an entire family really stirred up the locals. The fact that the CSI techs couldn’t make heads or tails of it made it even worse. They hadn’t even agreed on whether it was done by humans or animals or a combination of the two, like men with fighting dogs who went berserk. With no leads, they wanted us to go back to where we had seen the creature the previous night and see what we could find.
The police officer who would be tagging us, a woman named Officer Melinda Jansen, had the look of someone who just started a new job, and doesn’t realize how terrible it is yet. She was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and when she shook my hand, she nearly crushed the bones together under her iron grip. I saw Ace wince slightly when he shook her hand too. When she turned her back, he looked at me with one eyebrow raised, as if he were saying, “What can you do?”
It didn’t take us long to find the spot from the previous night. When we got close to the forest where the creature disappeared, I saw a branch that had been hit by a shotgun blast, and knew we were right on the money. In the daytime, I saw that there was a slight, curving trail through the trees here, maybe an old deer trail. It was just wide enough for us to take our snowmobiles through if we went slow. Occasionally, I would have to get off, being in the lead, and move large branches that lay across the path, but overall it was faster going than I had expected.
The trail followed across the top of a rolling hill, went down and then spiraled up around a mountain. We were high now, at least 7,000 feet above sea level, and the view went for hundreds of miles. It was breath-taking, seeing the frozen white landscape below us, mountains lining one horizon and the Arctic Ocean on another. A couple hundred feet ahead of us, however, the trail just stopped. I saw an opening in the mountain. Slowly bringing my snowmobile up, I looked into it and saw what looked like naturally-formed stone hallways.
The halls sloped down at a steep angle without stairs. An eerie silence radiated from the gradually thickening darkness. The other two snowmobiles cut out right behind mine, and Officer Jansen came walking up, flicking on her LED headlamp. Immediately, I saw a strip of light blue cloth. I walked forward, bending down to confirm what I had already suspected: that this was a piece of the missing infant’s clothing.
“That looks like more than enough cause to me. Let’s do this,” Jansen said. “I’d like to be back before sundown.” She kept walking without waiting for confirmation. Ace and I slung on our packs and turned on our headlamps. I tried using the radios and sat-phone to share our location, but neither was working. The bright, artificial lights showed that the natural stone walls of the hall just kept on descending into the mountain. A warm breeze blew past me, an acrid, sulfuric smell following in its wake.
“This is just a body recovery mission at this point,” I whispered to Ace, giving Officer Jansen a wide space so I could talk. “So why are we potentially risking our lives here? We should be waiting for back-up. We both know that the infant is dead, and has been for a while.”
“You know what I think…” Ace whispered conspiratorially, before a low shriek stopped us all in our tracks and ended conversation. I never did get to hear what he thought. By this point, it was much warmer than it had been outside, and I had the urge to start stripping off jackets. The shrieking had intensified, and was now being answered by dozens of others that surrounded further away in the stone halls.
Officer Jansen had pulled out her gun, which I saw with some astonishment was a .454 Ruger, a large caliber gun with good stopping power. I saw enough magazines strapped around her hips to decimate an entire herd of buffalo. I also pulled off my shotgun, making sure it was filled with lead slugs.
“Do you have any idea what we’re up against?” I asked her. Ace was right behind us, his shotgun already cocked and loaded, the muzzle pointed downwards. I was sweating heavily by this point. The air in the tunnel just kept getting warmer. It felt like I was walking into a sauna. Thin clouds of mist and droplets of hot condensation clung to the smooth granite ceilings. The hall continued to descend at the same steep rate, but now I could see something at the bottom: light.
“Not much more than you, really,” Officer Jansen said with a slight sneer. “My only advice is to shoot first and ask questions later. Kill anything that moves. This place has taken a lot of people already, people who were too fat and slow to watch their own backs…” I squinted as I examined the lights. They seemed to emanate from some sort of organism growing on the stone’s surface.
It wasn’t electrical lights, and it certainly wasn’t natural sunlight. It glowed like the lights of millions of fireflies, a purplish-blue color that painted the granite floors and walls in a totally different light. We were walking as quietly as possible by this point, but I still hadn’t seen anyone. We reached the bottom of the stone halls, where strange mushrooms glowed in the darkness, their mycelium giving off that black-light color everywhere as it stretched across the threshold of the opening. I turned off my LED, seeing my comrades do the same, then poked my head through, looking back and forth.
I saw more of those creatures from before, their lips missing, their skin pale, their eyes huge and rabid. They constantly twisted and snapped their heads to the left or right, as if hearing something only they could perceive. Two were dragging an elk that had been mutilated and torn down the middle. Another was dragging an old man’s dead body forward by the upraised legs. I saw the old man’s head was missing, his wrinkled hands trailing behind the body. I watched where all this activity was headed, then I gasped.
A huge, insectile monster sat lazily against the stone wall as these creatures brought it meat. The monster was so fat that I wasn’t even sure it could stand up. It had a blood-red, chitinous exterior with a hood like a rattlesnake’s that extended around its head. Its teeth trembled together constantly as it shoved more gory offerings into its mouth, sending blood gushing forwards in thick clotted rivulets that dripped down its chin. Its long, thin arms had sharp knife-like digits, and its six legs branched like those of a praying mantis, splayed out on each side of its body, shining a dark red color in the strange light of the chamber. Its belly stretched far in front of its body, and with horror, I saw it drop a cluster of eggs, each as big as a dog. Their surfaces writhed and trembled, looking tight and ready to burst at any moment.
The creatures that fed and cared for this monster rushed over, dragging the eggs to the corner of the warm chamber. I saw that there were dozens more of them over there, and that some had already hatched.
Whatever that monster was, it had already given birth, and now those things were walking around, totally free to kill anything, or anyone, they wanted.

Hello Reddit!
This is — for a change of pace — Cuzi from Team BethelFrankel, here to tell you that the ratings for Leo, Yingel, and Anatoli are now live on the Community Tier List! I’m sorry this took as long as it did. Fourmana was busy, the website was getting updated, and I was playing Honkai Star Rail. No excuses, just a sorry. As always, a “should you pull” section, followed by some big updates in preparation for the upcoming anniversary.

Should You Pull…

Leo - S-/S+ - Leo’s ceiling is nuts. In terms of raw damage, his damage potential is one of — if not the — highest in Forest. This is an impressive feat, considering that Forest is an element with beasts such as Jeriah, Paloma and Areia. His main issue is a large portion of this damage is gated behind requiring both Refinements and team support. This makes him a weird unit to rate; his R0 baseline performance undercuts Forest’s contested S-tier, with his damage scaling up to SS-tier levels the more e-tiles you feed him. The Goldie teams that could let him reach this potential, however, have hotly contested team slots. Jeriah, Naroxel, and Paloma all provide utility alongside their damage that makes them much more indispensable, leaving Leo and Gabriel to duke it out for the last slot in meta e-tile teams. Still, the fact he’s a top contender for that slot at all as a raw damage dealer speaks to his potential. He also fits decently well on other e-tile teams, such as those featuring Minos, Hiiro and Siobhan.
With Leo, you’ll usually want to use his second Active once per Burst turn before dumping all his stacks into it on the final Burst turn. The gimmicks on his first Active are largely flavor text: the second and third effects are difficult to use outside longer stages, while the first effect is only useful in mobbing. All this said, there are a lot of minor optimizations you can do with him. Firstly, his second active is only useful if you can ensure around at least 3-4 Normals including diagonals; saving the stacks to benefit from his Equipment’s Chain Combo buffs may be worthwhile if this is not the case. Second, the CD reduction on his first Active from getting 19 stacks only applies on cast; if you have enough enhanced tiles, saving his first Active to cast during his AT can let you gain maximum value from it. This room for minmaxing offers Leo some appreciated flexibility, cementing him as an excellent option on teams that can feed his appetite for e-tiles.
TL;DR: Pull if you want him and can offer the appropriate support, otherwise probably skip. Meta e-tile Forest has stiff competition for slots, but he’s as good an option as any to round it out after you have the core setup. Outside of e-tile teams, he’s usable but not great.
Yingel - A-/S at BT3 - Yingel is another addition to the “weird converters” we’ve been seeing over the past few patches, but this time placing heavy emphasis on 1x1 content. We did the math on her damage output and her damage leaves much to be desired, even for a sniper. Yingel’s kit is based around using special high-power Normals to stack a powerful defense ignoring buff. This sounds great in theory, but Yingel’s inability to normal attack in between her special Normals severely neuters her; it more or less means her Normal attack damage is the same as most other units, and makes her defense ignore stacking is too slow for it to ever realize its full potential.
Her conversion is similarly restrictive. 5 select tiles on a 2 CD is actually pretty incredible; the issue is her cross-shaped conversion pattern makes it incredibly janky to properly use and get contact tiles with outside of 1x1 content. Her conversion can be cloned by Axelia, but the high cloning cost and Axelia's other cloning synergies with units like Irridon limit its value.
Ultimately, Yingel is a combination of almost all the most powerful effects in all of Alchemy Stars nerfed in every way. This has its place — she’s a pretty good captain for 1x1 content, and better than most of Thunder’s bog-standard snipers even at BT0. You just won’t feel good using her over Luke, Reinhardt or R3 Wrath.
TL;DR: Probably Avoid. While Yingel certainly isn’t bad at BT3, there are significantly better options to go for at this level of investment. With the 2nd Anniversary being the next event, you don’t want to regret pulling on someone that may potentially collect dust on your account.
Anatoli - A - Anatoli is the welfare character for this patch and more or less a Forest Brock, offering niche but potentially valuable Aggro support and decent personal damage for mobbing. His active can also be used as a janky TP and gap closer if only selecting one target, which is… interesting, at the very least, and occasionally useful. However, his EQ is noticeably worse and the element he’s in has much less synergies for him. Forest also is home to some of the best mobbers in the game in Lenore, Migard, and Barton:DB, who are also just overall better units whose value doesn’t nosedive outside their niche. For a welfare, though, Anatoli is admirably effective at what he does — he’s a good investment if you don’t have one of Forest’s myriad mobbers, and will still see use in secondary or tertiary teams in content like Pandora’s even once you do.
Finally, his art and animations are top-tier — he’ll be a staple for those invested in the aesthetics metagame.
TL;DR: Build if you want. He’s very niche, but excellent at it — whether that’s important to you depends on your own account.

Tier List Updates

We’ve made some pretty big changes to the tier list, but none of them should be much of a surprise — it’s more or less just following through on things we had announced in the last update. The most important of these is we have new ratings now! The (N) rating has been added to units whose value dramatically improves in niche situations, while the (T) rating denotes units whose potential is locked behind requiring specific team setups.
Some background on this — the team is forever mentally scarred by Goldie, and I could honestly end the explanation here, refuse to elaborate, and leave. While that is partly a joke, Goldie is the unit that prompted us to think about how we tier things. Goldie is honestly pretty terrible outside dedicated e-tile teams that need very specific units, but said e-tile teams offer some of the best damage in the game. This unit design is a consequence of how the game has evolved — since the game has covered its bases for generalist units like Sinsa and Azure, characters’ roles have become much more specific. The tier list, formulated in the days of yore, couldn’t really account for that. We’re hoping these new ratings fix that.
This isn’t a perfect solution; the most glaring problem is how much it increases clutter in a tier list which already suffered from it. This forces us to be rather conservative about how we give these ratings, and we’ve tried to limit it as much as possible to units where the improvement is fairly drastic or units who are the linchpin of entire strategies. That said, if you feel we’ve missed someone we’re happy to get feedback about it! We’re far from perfect, and constructive criticism is how we can improve.
Finally, we’ve gotten rid of class ratings and nothing of value was really lost. They did more harm than good, and we’ve replaced them with extremely brief descriptions of what the unit actually does. So all that said… let’s delve into the units that got changed!
Goldie - SS(T) (is S-) – Behold, the woman behind the slaughter. Dedicated e-tile teams are incredible, and we’re letting Goldie eat the SS rating for almost all the units that dramatically improve due to it given the setup revolves around her.
Lilica - SS(T) (is S+) – Similar to Goldie, Lilica is taking the SS tiering for all shield synergies because they’re ultimately centered around her. Lilica shield teams offer some of the highest damage in Fire and are surprisingly strong in Water too.
Minos - SS(T) (is S) — Minos already had a note marking him as SS in specific teams, so we’re just adjusting that to fit into the new system. Unlike a lot of other e-tile units he doesn’t depend on Goldie to get the number of e-tiles he needs to shine, so we’re marking him separately.
Tessa - S+(T) (is S-) – Tessa’s interaction with low-CD units is pretty potent. The most notable of these is Axelia + MBT Roy and to a lesser extent Leyn, who push her damage above a good chunk of Thunder’s long list of detonators.
Lucoa - S(T) (is A) — Lucoa’s buff is one of a kind and instrumental in making a lot of Active-based teams work.
May - A(T) (is C+) — May is pretty important for certain Giles nuke setups and serves as the only other good defensive option on Lenore+Jeno setups. That said, neither setup entirely revolves around her which limits her overall tiering.
Axelia - S+(T) (is S) — Axelia’s ability to copy summons gives a lot of notable synergies even outside the aforementioned MBT Roy and Tessa. Of particular note is Reinhardt and Irridon, and her presence on whale Thunder teams is a testament of how much she improves its playability.
Brock - S(N) (is A-) — Brock is absolutely incredible in mobbing; his ability to aggro mob can trivialize waves and his Attack buff in these stages is very potent. The cherry on top is his importance on Giles nuke setups.
Nails - S(N) (is A-) — Nails’ Bleed application is only really contested by Pasolo, and he’s almost required on certain Elysium floors while also being strong on DoT weak enemies outside of that.
Chandra - A-(N) (is C+) — Chandra is amazing for Nightium farming, and the long-term value this provides is actually quite notable.
Giles - SS(N) (is S+) — Updated calcs show that Giles’ damage on shorter fights actually outdoes most of Fire’s S-tier even on 2x2; his ability to trivialize some stages by nuking them combined with his almost unrivaled 1x1 performance puts him at SS in the right situations.
Odi - S+(N) (is S-) — Odi has unrivaled Poison application, allowing her to clear some stages that even meta teams can struggle on.
Noah BT2 - S-(N) (is A-) — Noah’s Lilica synergies paired with the importance of her shield against certain specific damage checks gives her some valuable use cases, even if she usually is outdone by Philyshy.
Raphael - A(N) at BT0 (is B-), S+(N) at BT3 (is S-) — Raphael’s oddball mix of resets, conversion, damage and healing lets her function in a way no other unit really can, and makes certain endgame content like BoredomShatterblast significantly easier.
Erica - A(N) (is B) — Erica is the only decent reset option in Thunder, so your hands are often tied on certain stages. Still, her Detonator chain and team buff means she’s not deadweight.
Vivian MBT - A+(N) (is B-) — MBT Vivian’s raw conversion value makes her pretty powerful on the right stages. There is nothing quite like letting her paint boards yellow.
Keating - B+(N) (is C+) — Brock and Anatoli have shown that aggro is actually extremely valuable when the situation calls for it. However, Keating is hampered by their brutal cooldown combined with a lack of pre-emptive.
Zhong Xu - S(N) (is A+) — Zhong Xu was extremely disappointing for a unit that was meant to be Fire’s long-awaited select tile converter. That said, his push-pull synergies do make him worth using on some stages, especially alongside Charon and Brock.
Jane - A(N) (is C) — Jane’s ranking is almost entirely based on her ability to reliably auto-farm the penultimate Nightium stage with a specific setup. Outside of this, she’s still pretty bad.
MBT Tina - SS(N) — MBT Tina can be incredible — 4 pseudo-select tiles on 2CD alongside a very janky TP is nothing to scoff at. The issue is all this is contingent on being able to predict enemy movements and plan ahead with her tile placement; this isn’t easy nor reliable, but MBT Tina can even outdo Bethlehem in situations where it’s feasible.

Some Other Tier Shifts

Philishy - S (was S-) – Philyshy was initially downshifted during an era of content involving very high DPR checks. Abyss and Pandora’s Box did a lot to change this, and both game modes seem tailored to reward Philyshy’s absurd healing output and additional utility through her global teleport. She’s more than worth the $1 you may pay for her; while you still aren’t going to use her in most content that has a DPS check, her value is nigh-unparalleled outside of it.
MBT Frostfire - S- (was A+) – Like Philyshy, the higher importance of mobbing makes Frostfire much more valuable — especially given her mobbing capabilities in Fire are only really rivaled by R3 Regina. She’s still extremely reliant on her MBT and is entirely eclipsed by Giles in bossing, but the gap between her and her Old Seal brethren is now far closer than it used to be.
Leona - S- (was A) – Leona is probably the unit that was the most underrated in the tier list for quite some time: her 1x1 and 2x2 numbers are competitive on both fronts with other S tier units. She’s still too reliant on Burn and good conversion to truly be S-tier, but a well-supported Leona can carry you a surprisingly long way.
Barbara A- – Despite her overall numbers being better with the buff and the refinements, Barbara is still a unit that really doesn’t have much in terms of what she brings to the table. You could even argue her equipment buff being element-locked now makes her arguably worse! While that isn’t exactly true, it does go to show how decidedly underwhelming her improvements have been.
Vice R3 - S- (Was A) — R3 Vice’s performance is actually pretty incredible — her 1x1 performance outdoes most of Water’s other snipers, and her mobbing is potent. Her main issue is the competition she faces in both cases. Vice: KS is your go-to option in 1x1 content, and base Vice can’t be used alongside her; meanwhile, Water mobbing is a tightly contested spot between Azure, Fia, Mu Yuebai, Fleur, and Connolly. Still, she is pretty good on her own merits, especially considering she’s completely free.
Vic — While his overall ranking hasn’t changed, Vic’s description has been touched up. As it turns out, he’s one of if not the best option for the 5th slot in Water against purely 1x1 content. His performance tanks with summons, he’s a miserable captain, and his 2x2 performance is laughable — but it was pertinent to mention he does have a pretty well-defined use case for those who like him enough to invest in him. In a way it’s fairly in-character for him: even though he’s good at what he does, he’ll probably spend most of his time in your roster on the bench.

New and Future Content

I'd talked a bit about how tier lists are a pretty inherently flawed format earlier. We're doing our best to circumvent this — for all its failings, it is both straightforward and intuitive. Still, especially as we get closer to Anniversary, the team has found that it might help to branch out in the content we make to help both new and returning players. Recently, you probably saw Eclogia's beginner and advanced guides. If you haven't, you probably should! They're really well written and you can find them in the reddit post here.
We also have a lot more in the works. Trakan is working on an Ultimate Checklist — a super handy tool featuring an Aurorian Tracker, team building customization and even some Cloud Garden tools. Meanwhile, Ivory is working on a polished Lilica guide — a handy walkthrough to help explain one of Alchemy Stars' most unique and nuanced units. This is just the start, too — hopefully there's a lot more to come in the future.

Event CG Archive

Mechhydra here!
I apologize for not showing up for the last event–I got busy, and as a consequence didn't update the Archive for a while. Regardless, both of the past two events are now live for viewing. Stay tuned for the 2nd anniversary, where I'll be making my own standalone archive post for the first time in a long while!
Event Album Doc
Drive Folder

Community News

Sometimes I wonder if Fourmana has a secret vendetta against me. Maybe I wronged him in another life to have been stuck with writing this monster of an update. Perhaps my sins have caught up to me, and the gods commanded him to make me write this post in their displeasure. We’ll never know.
Jokes aside, it’s been an amazing time working with the team to push this update out, and I’m glad Four doesn’t have to deal with it when he already has a lot on his plate — he’s already put overtime into this project. As always, our rankings are tentative and we both appreciate and rely on feedback, especially considering this is my first time making a write-up of this length for Alchemy Stars. The tier list is written for the community, and it’s helpful to hear what you want from it!
And with that, I shall lay my metaphorical pen down to rest. Until next time.
Best regards,
Cuzimori
Team BethelFrankel

Lobo #20 - John Constantine
<< l < l > l >>
Author: trumpetcrash
Book: Lobo
Arc: John Constantine [#1 of 1]
Set: 85
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PREVIOUSLY ON LOBO: After a galactic goose chase to find a man with a bounty on his head for his stolen time travel technology, Lobo discovered that the time travelling technology was a hoax and that he had no way to travel into the past and erase his despicable self. To make matters worse, Scapegoat – demon and his best friend – told him that he’d manipulated Lobo at birth to turn him into an unstoppable brutalization machine in order to help destroy the Divine – and Heaven – in the coming Revolution. Scapegoat, in an attempt to pry Lobo away from emotional and Earthly misgivings, instructs one of his demonic underlings to kill Lobo’s daughter, Crush. She’s bene on her homeworld of Earth for several weeks, scrounging around the streets of Gotham, but if she’s going to have a chance at surviving this demon attack, she’ll need some help…
Most people would expect a renowned demon-slayer’s breakfast to contain eyeballs or tentacles or something else that would make your average Earthling peel away in disgust, but these people overestimate the strength of John Constantine’s culinary palette; at the time that this tale took place, he started every day with a quarter of a box of Captain Crunch.
His demonic consort, Ellie, mentioned it every morning that she ate with him. “The mighty Constantine, eating cereal made for children.”
John, usually not completely dressed by breakfast-time (or lunchtime, for that matter), would shrug and flaccidly insult her own choice of calamari-kabobs.
One morning, though, there were no insults. John’s Captain Crunch went unsullied and Ellie just nibbled at her squid without committing to any particular bite. The air was heavy – not with sulfur as in Hell, but with the shadows of secrets – for several minutes.
Eventually, John spoke. “You haven’t been quite the same since I took ol’ Swampy and that alien to kill Negral,” he said. “Is his death still bothering you?”
Her red irises flashed up to John. “Of course not. I said I wanted to turn over a new leaf, and I meant it. I’m not sick of do-gooding yet, John. After all, variety is the spice of life.”
John nodded as if he hadn’t heard it a hundred times before. He returned his gaze to his breakfast bowl, but not before saying, “Anything interesting happening in the ol’ demon world today?”
“You’ve said “ol’” without the “d” twice now, Johnny boy. You feeling okay over there?”
“No misdirection, please. I just want to stay up to date in the demon world. That’s all. No fights.”
“You want to stay up to date, so you keep using the word ‘old’…”
John knew Ellie was hiding something but didn’t think he could get it out of there, so he just sighed and started to chew with his mouth open.
Smacking, his mother had called it.
It affected Ellie almost as much as it affected John’s mother. Her spine clenched, her eyes widened, and her nostrils flared.
“John–” she began. “You know I don’t like it when you chew with your mouth open.”
“I think I remember that.” John twisted his face in mock concentration while Ellie fumed. “But I also recall that I get pissy when people who I work with keep secrets from–”
“John, don’t be such a ba–”
She would’ve called him a “baby” and moved onto progressively worse insults if it wasn’t for the shriek of John’s cell phone. It wasn’t the phone in his pajama pants pocket that he would’ve happily ignored a call on, but the phone that was ceremoniously hung on the motel basement’s dingy wall with glorious Command Strip technology.
It was the emergency phone.
John left his Captain Crunch behind as he leapt out of his seat and towards the wall. He opened the phone, expecting it to be a costumed superhero or his friend Chas or maybe even his sister; instead, it was the voice of a burly alcoholic.
“Constantine.”
“Lobo,” John realized aloud. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“A demon named Scapegoat is orchestrating the final battle between Heaven and Hell,” he said simply. “And he wants to kill my daughter, who’s on Earth. You need to stop him.”
John cast a glance backwards at Ellie, who just smoldered.
“Where, Lobo?”
Gotham seemed more alien to Crush than outer space could ever hope to be.
Outer space was more colorful and more obnoxious than Gotham, but it didn’t seem as dangerous. Sure, there were entities of unbelievable power lurking on that forbidden moon or right behind that nebula, but they were too big to have the effect of a rusty shiv pecking at your ribcage. Space lacked the stench that Gotham entrepreneurs could bottle up and sell on the interstellar black market as a tool in any amateur torturer’s toolkit.
Despite it all, though, Crush couldn’t quite pull herself away.
She came to Gotham first to help fight the vampire hordes. She did her part and saved some people despite seeing terrible things. After getting her parents back to their land she should’ve gone back to L.E.G.I.O.N., back to her surrogate family, but she was too morbidly intrigued by Gotham to return. It felt like something that her father would’ve loved – the kind of thing that was in her blood. The kind of thing that was evil, demonic to the most extreme vector. The kind of thing she shouldn’t have gotten herself mixed up in.
She never did, really. She stayed out of the local vigilantes’ sights and did a little do-gooding work on the side. A few drug dealers had been locked up because of her. She tried to try booze – sure, she’d had a can of beer here and there back home, but she didn’t really want to even do that again now that she’d seen her father – and couldn’t bring herself to drink it.
That’s when she knew she was ready, when she was sitting at the bar and felt with absolute certainty that she’d never sit at one again off the clock. She stood up and turned away from her untouched drink, her chest slightly more swollen with self-confidence than before.
That’s also when she saw the demon.
At first, she thought that there was a tall, straight-backed man in a heavy black cloak coming to take her just-vacated seat. She shuffled slightly to the left to make way, but the man didn’t follow through the channel. That’s when she realized that his face wasn’t just dark-skinned, but fuzzy and humming too.
His face was moving, as if it was made of a hundred little–
Crush yelped a bit when the first centipede shot out of the cloak and onto her uncovered left bicep. The little thing squealed and tried to sink its pinchers into her muscle until her right arm came up to swat it. It burst with a small pop, but by the time it was dead there were three more skittering on her and more spraying everywhere else in the bar.
The crowd around her started to scream and rush for the exits. Crush heard one or two people holler, “It bit me!”, and saw at least three fall to the floor, but she couldn’t tell if it was because they were bit or because other people toppled them over and trampled over them in the rush to escape. Crush just knew she had to get the bugs on off her; she ran her hands over her arms and neck and she leapt into the air and landed behind the bar counter, momentarily out of sight of the centipede-man.
Crush had no idea what the centipedes’ bites would do to a Czarian, but she wasn’t hankering to find out.
The gap between the bar counter and the wall was lined with bottles of booze and sinks and drinkware and everything else that normal bar operations required. Crush was trying to figure out if she could use any of it when the shifting face appeared over her. A buzzing, claw-ended hand reached over the counter for her, coming for her face. It dropped insects that she hit away in mid-air with one hand as the other reached for her gun. Before she could grab it something else reached over the counter and yanked the demon away from her. She puzzled as she checked the cartridge in her gun and raised it.
Someone was dueling with the creature now, someone with oily gray skin and with the head of… a fish? This confused Crush more than anything else. Why was a walking fish trying to save her? She shook the questions from her head and shifted the gun to the right, aimed firmly at the bug man. Then something insidious flashed in her right ankle, and with a scream the gun fired and shot a blast of energy into her attacker. She couldn’t see the effect, though, since the sudden pain in her leg sent her rolling over the bar counter and onto the ground neck-first.
When she was next awake her vision of the bar, with the fish (no, shark) man bound to a bar-stool by a rope of skittering centipedes, was tinted red. Something in her leg was jerking back and forth, moving her flesh and muscle and bone and drinking her blood. It felt as if it had been happening for hours, but perhaps it was only seconds.
The man – no, the thing – in the cloak stood a few feet away, ominous and silent except for the chittering bugs that made up his form. She wanted to ask it why it had done this, why it was hurting her, who the shark-man was, but she was too busy screaming in pain.
The pain started to travel up her leg, and she thought that she might die.
Then there was a flash of light and there was a fourth person – being, at least – in the room. This one was a human man and a shaggy caramel-colored beard that matched the tousle of hair atop his head. He looked like a detective in the dingy trench coat he donned, and he held something in front of him that Crush couldn’t make out due to her pain-induced convulsions.
“Beelzey, Beelzey,” the man tittered. “Working with crawly critters now, are you?”
“My name is Beelzebub.” Its voice was like a hum that came from nowhere in particular. “Johnny.”
“John Constantine,” the man sighed. He raised what had been in his hand to his mouth, and Crush’s stomach sunk when she saw it was just a cigarette and not some weapon.
“Connie.”
“Whatever. I’m here to stop you from killing her –” he waved a finger towards Crush. “And… whatever the Hell that shark thing is.”
“I don’t have the charm to kill that thing,” hummed Beelzebub. “It was just a nuisance.”
“Who gave you the charm to kill the girl?”
Crush thought she might’ve seen a centipede curl into a smile on Beelzebub’s face, but a fork of shooting pain ripped her attention away from it.
“That is not of your concern, mortal.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m concerning myself with it.” Constantine pulled something else out of the pockets of the trench coat. “I think that you were given your charm by someone who shouldn’t’ve been giving it to you. I think that if I crush this rock–” he flashed a ruby pinched by his pointer finger and thumb – “that you and your buddies are screwed out of luck for the time being. Shall we try it?”
The buzzing got louder and something deep and evil started to howl in denial, but before the centipedes suddenly flying through the air could reach Constantine, he crushed the little gem between the folds of his palm. Suddenly the cloaked figure and all the centipedes – including the one in Crush’s leg – were gone.
After an indefinite period of time, Crush awoke with a little splash of water on her face. Constantine had laid her out on the pool table. Her mouth started to form into a question, but Constantine interrupted.
“Beelzebub tried leading a rebellion a couple millennia ago, and now he’s chained to the will of his hellish superiors. Apparently there’s a bit of a shakeup going on, though, since a low-ranking demon named Scapegoat was able to get him onto our plane of existence.”
“Scapegoat?” Her leg still burned.
“Apparently one of your dad’s old drinking buddies. Don’t give me that look, I’ll explain when we get back to the compound. You’ll be safe there, at least for a time.”
Crush was too weak to argue, so she just nodded and tilted her head to the other figure over the pool table. “Who’s that?”
The aquatic beast chuffed a few words.
“According to police databases, his name – designation, really – is King Shark. He’s a mutant that says a man who smells just like you broke him out of jail a few months ago. Says he’s in your debt.”
“That’s… that’s…”
“I know.” Constantine reached down and grabbed her shoulder. “Deep breath, now, okay? This’ll only take a minute.”
Crush found the motel – or whatever they called these things in Britain – unsanitary; she didn’t believe in staying overnight at a place where you have to check for cockroaches before you commit to each step.
The room they materialized in was sparsely decorated. There was a folding table, a few chairs to go with it, and some rudimentary appliances (coffee maker, microwave, etc) which sat atop a counter on one side of the room. Sitting at the table was a slender, evil-eyed woman with billowing red-and-black hair. When Constantine and his tagalongs first appeared, she looked pissed, but after seeing both Crush and King Shark, her expression turned to one of confusion.
“What have you gotten yourself into this time?” she tittered. “Is this the girl you’re supposed to return to her father?”
“Actually, Ellie, he wanted me to hold onto her and keep her safe until the war’s blown over.” John sauntered over to the table and took a seat, not bothering to guide Crush or her aquatic guardian. “So we’re gonna build a little compound right here.”
The woman – Ellie – rolled her eyes. “You think we can hide out from a cosmic war in the basement of this shitty place?”
“The battle will take place in some part of space far, far away, and you know how these battles go. No one will really win, nothing will really change. Let them measure their dicks for all I care. Besides, I used up quite a few favors getting the girl – Crush – out of a bind with Beelzebub. Best to lay low for a couple weeks.” He finally turned towards Crush and King Shark. “Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. There’s a room for each of you over there.” He pointed towards a hallway that sprouted out of the eastern wall.
“Well… thank you.” Despite her timid timbre, Crush really meant it. King Shark echoed with his own thick and rubbery “Thank you.”
“Are either of you hungry? It’s still breakfast-time here in England, but Ellie makes a mean grilled cheese, and if you don’t like those we might be able to find–”
“No thank you.” Crush put her hand up. “I’m just going to go lay down for a few. Thank you, again.”
“Be sure to shake the bedsheets!” John called as she sulked down the hallway. King Shark followed, but had the good sense to enter a separate room from hers. “There might still be bugs in them!”
Crush sighed a heavy sigh, for she was starting to think that this place was going to make Gotham look luxurious.
That night, John ignored Ellie’s soft, nimble hands and her puckered lips.
“We have guests, Ellie,” he groaned softly into her ear, for they were still tangled up in each other under the bedsheets. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’ll have to wait.”
“When did you become so prudish?” She twisted herself out of their twist and sat up on her knees. “It’s just an overgrown fish and a moody alien.”
“That moody alien is a moody teenage girl, Ellie. I don’t give a damn about the shark, but I feel weird–”
“John, you have sex with a demon every night. I think you’ve passed weird.”
John took a big breath of a sigh and brought himself up to look Ellie in the eyes. “Ellie, you’ve treated me like an annoyance all day. Why should I go out of my way to please you right now?”
“Because I’ll make you feel good too.” The invisible tongue of her pleasure started upon John’s neck, but he mentally swatted it away.
“The truth, Ellie. Something’s been bothering you.”
Her arms folded across her chest (not just to display annoyance, but also to accentuate her bosom), and she huffed and puffed in a way that the average mortal would incorrectly assume was improper for a demon.
“Ellie…”
“Fine.” Her face twisted up into something… crooked. “The other night, I was visited by a demon. Don’t get that look, we didn’t do anything. He summoned me to take part in the Revolution; apparently that Scapegoat guy really is amassing an unholy army to defeat the growing Divine army. And they want me in it, John. The want me in it.”
John tried not to draw back, tried not to show her he was scared. “What did you say, Ellie?”
Her face pinched. “That I’d think about it.”
“So you haven’t been on the outs with me because you’ve been regretting sending me to kill Negral?”
Hesitation betrayed her. “John, I –”
“Ellie… you’ve been doing so good, you’ve been acting like a real –”
“A real what, John?” she snapped. “What is it that you want me to be?”
His hands found hers, brought them closer to his chest. “The best possible version of yourself, Ellie. And how can you be that if you participate in the battle that might end the universe?”
“I’m a demon, John. Maybe it’s about time you get that through your skull.” Her voice was hard; she took her hands away, rolled off the bed, stood up. “I’m not chained to your mortal universe like you are.”
John followed her off the bed. “Are you sure about that, Ellie? Can you really mean that, now?”
When Ellie finally did speak, it was accompanied by a single drop of brimstone rolling from her eye.
Crush had spent her first day in the motel basement falling in and out of sleep before allowing the tides of drowsiness to submerge her until the British sun rose the next morning. She readied herself in her room and sauntered into the storage-area-turned-living-quarters – she still had to ask John and Ellie why they were staying at the bottom of a motel – and found it deserted. No matter; she took out her phone (the Terran one she could only use on Earth) and caught up on all the trends that she’d missed while with L.E.G.I.O.N. or fighting crime in Gotham. She expected that social media would feed her relief, but really, it just made her feel useless.
She was ready to find a way out of the basement when a figure emerged from the east-bound hallway: John Constantine. He looked as shaggy as always, but there was something about him – maybe the gauntness of his face and twitch of his fingers – that made him seem even less put-together than usual. Crush attempted a smile at him, but his eyes passed over it vacantly.
“Where’s Ellie?” she found herself asking, thinking the name of his lover would brighten him up. “You said she makes a mean grilled cheese.”
John, who’d found the coffee pot, let his hands fall away from the machine and turned towards her, knife-marks in his eyes. “She’s not going to be here for the foreseeable future.”
“Oh.” Crush cursed herself for bringing her up and cursed herself doubly when she realized that her mouth was asking, without her permission, “Why?”
“She had… other matters to attend to. A war to wage that I cannot be a part of.”
“Okay.” Crush vaguely wondered if this had to do with Beelzebub and the fact that her father had pissed someone off enough to try and kill his daughter. The idea of her father getting wrapped up with religious factions should’ve been comical, but she just couldn’t bring herself to laugh. “When am I –”
“You’re not getting out,” John said shortly, throatily. “Not until the Revolution’s been fought.”
“The Revolution?”
John, who had turned his back towards Crush and his trunk towards the coffee pot, now whirled around and barred his teeth. “The cataclysmic battle between Heaven and Hell that your father’s old friend has been planning for longer than you can fathom, the battle that, if the demons win, could spell subjugation for everything born for the rest of eternity! So, yes, we are staying inside my bubble!”
Crush had not been prepared for such a brutish, outright, emotional assault. It was more of a shrapnel-stuffed grenade than a tactical missile, in all honesty, but it was still frightening. She had the fortitude not to twitch, but on the inside, she squirmed.
“Sounds like the type of thing that we fight, then. Save the universe and all.”
Crush saw fire in John’s eyes; the fact that fire, so symbolically red, turns blue when hot enough explained why Crush could not make out the sheen over his irises and coronas.
“I have the place locked down with magic,” John said tightly. “Here we stay.” He snatched the coffee machine, unplugged it from the wall, and tore off to his room amid his billowing trench coat. Crush looked after him, wistful for something unknown, and sighed.
Eventually King Shark came out, helped himself to some of the popsicles in the freezer, lamented the lack of fish in the fridge to the best of his limited vocabulary’s ability, and sat next to Crush. She was bored of social media and sought to teach King Shark cards instead. The cribbage board proved too complex, as did any form of trick-taking game or even solitaire, but he was able to learn Go Fish quite well – as soon as he realized that one wasn’t supposed to eat the cards, despite the game’s name.
John darted in and out of the general living quarters for several days. Crush could never establish a conversation with him. She looked for any sign of spiritual warfare, but besides the tame terrorism and do-gooding of everyday life, couldn’t find anything.
One time, when he was grabbing a beer, King Shark asked about Ellie too. John gave him the same scarred look he’d showed Crush – although not as cutting as that one – and said, “That’s up to her, now. We can simply wish her the best.”
It wasn’t until the fifth or sixth day – Crush was losing track of time with only Go Fish to mark its passage by – that Crush was able to start a real conversation with him.
“Can you let me use my interstellar phone?” she repeated several times when he was grabbing a bottle of beer from the fridge. “I need to tell the team at L.E.G.I.O.N. that I’m okay.”
“You’ll tell them where you are, or that the Revolution is coming. That isn’t okay.”
Crush moved her hulking frame in between him and the hall to his room. “Why not? Don’t you want something to do something about it?”
John shrugged. “I’ve been doing things for a lotta years, sister.” He was mildly intoxicated. “Time to take myself out of the mix.”
“Ellie’s up there, isn’t she?” It was a bold assertion on Crush’s part. “And she’s on the other side. And you don’t want to fight her.” Nothing on his face, just alcohol-carved stone. “You don’t have to, Mr. Constantine, but you have to let me out.”
“And me,” grunted King Shark from somewhere behind them.
“And the King,” amended Crush.
For a moment she thought John would break, but then she found herself flying ass-over-teakettle and saw John stepping over her and into his room.
She and King Shark numbly discussed breakout plans, but she didn’t know the first thing about magical charms, and even if he did, he probably wouldn’t have been able to communicate it.
It was a surprise when, on the seventh morning, she woke up blinking the sun’s rays away.
“I didn’t think I had a window…” she grumbled sleepily before she pulled herself up and pulled herself into consciousness. “We’re outside!” She and King Shark really were deposited on the lawn of the motel.
John stood over them, neither smiling nor glowering. “I’m guessing you have a ship somewhere?” Crush nodded. “Safe travels. I won’t be able to transport you again. It’s a rather limited power, but it’s also a long story.”
Crush kept nodding as if she understood. “My ship seats three.”
“Then you two will have room to pick someone up along the way.” Now he smiled, but it was a sad one.
“Why are you doing this, John?” asked Crush, now standing and staring into his eyes. “Refusing the battle, I mean.”
“Because… I might love her, Crush,” he said. “And frankly, I don’t know how to deal with it. I’ve loved people before, but no one else is like her. I… it’s easier this way. I’m more of a screw-up than I let on, Crush, and you don’t want me screwing you and your father and whoever else you freaks accumulate up. No feelings.”
Once again, Crush nodded as if she meant it. “No hard feelings. Goodbye, John.”
“Bye, Crush. Tell your father I said hi.”
“I will.” Crush started walking then, not letting herself look back. King Shark followed obediently, although he did look back. He looked all over. Crush found his curiosity somewhat amusing, and idly wondered how he’d do in space, and how he’d do when fighting the hordes of demons that surely laid in their path…
NEXT TIME: The epic four-part “Lobo the Czarian” begins. We shift our perspective back to our favorite damned bounty hunter as he prepares himself for the battle of a lifetime and grapples with the realization that his lifelong friend and mentor Scapegoat had groomed him to be a tool of demonic destruction for his whole life. The next five months will be wild ride, folks, so buckle up! Thank you all for making it this far into not only this issue but this series, and if you only started reading Lobo midway through its run, I’d recommend going back through all of the earlier issues before reading “Lobo the Czarian” because it’s going to be a bit of a victory lap over all of this bounty hunter’s lore and what-have-you. See you all next month, and till then, stay safe and keep on readin’.

Hi all! I am training for the Lake Placid Ironman and am getting nervous about my preparation. I have been following a TrainingPeaks plan but have experienced several setbacks, including scrapping 10 days of exercise to COVID in April and a few missed workouts due to scheduling issues.
I'm 30F and very fit in general. My background is primarily in endurance running (I've completed many marathons comfortably in the sub-4 hour range). I have experience with biking outdoors and did a century ride awhile back. Swimming is newer to me. I'm slow but enjoy it!
My training volume has averaged 10-11 hours per week, and my highest week has been 13.5 hours.
My longest workouts so far are a 4 hour outdoor ride (~60 miles; there was a lot of stop and go in the area I was riding), a 2 hour outdoor run (~15 miles), and a 1h20m indoor swim (3500yd - I'm not the fastest and it's a 25yd length pool). Last weekend, I did a practice workout where I swam 3000yd, biked 60 miles, and ran 10 miles (this was ~6 hours of movement in total). It was hot out but felt good and my hydration/nutrition were solid.
I anticipate being able to execute the remainder of my training plan. I'm just concerned that I have not reached the volume that I should have at 8 weeks out. Your thoughts would be appreciated!

Okay this may be a bit disjointed, but I will do my best.
Campbell’s chunky soups; these have some solid food in there to keep you full. The jambalaya one is yummy and filling, especially if you like spicy food. Most of these are high sodium, but also 20-30% of your daily iron need, which is hard enough to get for housed people. Iron massively effects cognition so try to get some in. In my area you can regularly get 2/3.50 on these. Absolute lifesaver.
Unfortunate tasting but Walmart has canned veggies for 50c. I would eat these outta cans to supplement nutrition.
For anyone else with blood sugar issues: I would keep hard caramels with me in case of a crash. Replace with any hard candy. Hot chocolate mixes work well too, if you have a thermos. They are small and lightweight if you are using a backpack.
Most of my protein came from plain tinned tuna or flavored packs from the dollar store. 15 grams of protein in a pack, 30 in a tin. This is help prevent muscle wasting and pain from protein deficiency.
Peanut butter crackers. But really just any cracker. Again; lightweight and portable and lasts forever. Can get a 6 pack at the dollar tree.
If you can keep them in shade; bananas and apples are the cheapest fruits and these did me good.
Peanuts!!!!! 2.50 for a biggish jar! Usually 14-16 servings in one of these, a decent source of fat.
I hacked dairy by buying shelf stable single serve plant milk; these stayed unspoiled in the heat (I live somewhere hot) and were my splurge food.
If you can store a Tupperware:
I used to go to 7/11 to cook these things in the microwave.
6 pack of ramen from dollar tree
Instant mashed potatoes (I hated doing this one but VERY filling)
Heated up beans (baked, pinto, black, kidney, did em all)

“I’m sorry; we’re going to astral travel to a flea market?” Charlotte asked incredulously as she watched Genevieve and I set up a meditation circle under the shade of a towering old willow tree in my cemetery. “What if we want to buy something? How will we bring it back?”
“We’re not going there to shop, Lottie. Samantha’s finally had a vision about Emrys,” Genevieve explained.
The Veil between the Physical and Astral Planes is exceptionally weak in my cemetery, especially at night and on hallowed days. When I sleep there, my subconscious mind is highly receptive to all manner of revelations from the Spirit World. When I saw a Blood Moon rise on the night of May fifth, the same night as a penumbral eclipse, I knew that my dreams would be prophetic.
“I had a dream about him last Friday,” I expounded. “He’s at some sort of otherworldly marketplace, one that’s not connected to the Crypto Chthonic Cuniculi, so it’s mostly inaccessible to the Ophion Occult Order. In my dream, Emrys invited us to come and speak with him while we were lucid. He drew a sigil for me, the same one I’ve drawn in the middle of the mediation circle. He said that all I’d have to do is toss an Undying Rose – the earthly effigy of the rose Persephone used to steal a drop of his blood – into the sigil and it will become an astral portal to where he is.”
I held up the deep purple rose that I had cut from its bush earlier that day. I don’t know for certain where the roses came from, but my best guess is that they were made by the same Occultist who hallowed my cemetery to Persephone; Artaxerxes Crow. They have some connection to Emrys as well, since the only other time I saw someone else use one was when his avatar was summoned into the Physical Plane on Halloween 2020.
Knowing that Emrys wouldn’t dare to set foot in a place that was sacred to the Goddess who was ultimately responsible for his cosmic defeat, I gently tossed the rose into the middle of the sigil.
“He invited all of us?” Charlotte asked with an incredulous raising of her eyebrow.
“He said me and my coven. If he had just meant me or me and Genevieve he would have said that,” I replied. “You and Elam are coming too. I want as many eyes on this place as possible so that we don’t miss anything. We may not get an opportunity like this again.”
“And this is safe? Visiting some random flea market between worlds?” Charlotte asked.
“Samantha and I have visited the Underworld and come back no problem,” Genevieve reminded her. “So long as we’re bound to our bodies and Elam is bound to Samantha, we can come back anytime. Don’t worry; this is going to be a blast! Adventures like these are the best part of being a Witch.”
“The only reason you were able to go to the Underworld is because Samantha’s cemetery came with an astral portal in the back,” Charlotte countered, gesticulating in the general direction of the archway that was still partially visible behind the light spring foliage. “Other than that, when have any of us ever done anything useful with our astral projection? This is still a physical place, right? We don’t have any of our physical senses available to us when we astral project, and I get extremely disoriented trying to navigate the mortal plane with clairvoyance alone.”
“It is a physical place, but one saturated with astral energy and full of occultists and occult artifacts. It will be extremely illuminated to our clairvoyance,” I assured her. “Elam will also be there to guide us. As a ghost, he’s much more practiced at traversing the mortal plane in an astral form.”
Charlotte folded her arms over her chest and turned to look at Elam, who was leaning up against the willow tree as he waited for us.
“I don’t suppose you could go and scout the place out for us ahead of time?” she asked.
“I can’t go too far from Samantha, and definitely not across planes,” he said with a shake of his head. “But Eve’s right. Your astral bodies will be in no danger, and you can return here in an instant whenever you want.”
“But what about Emrys? Didn’t that book Leon gave you say that he’s some sort of soul-flayer?” Charlotte asked me.
“It did,” I admitted. “Keep in mind though, that book was written by his enemies. I want to hear his side of things before this conflict of theirs spirals out of control.”
“Any update from Chamberlin about that?” Elam asked.
“Yeah, he said that after he failed to purify the Sigil Sand, Ivy’s onboard with negotiating some kind of truce with Emrys,” I replied. “The Grand Adderman’s still reticent, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s running out of options. I need to find out if Emrys will agree to peace talks.”
“Um, I get that, but I’m still kind of hung up on him potentially flaying our souls,” Charlotte reiterated.
“If Emrys and the Ophion Occult Order go to all-out war, there’ll be a lot of collateral damage and innocent souls caught in the crossfire,” Genevieve told her, gently grabbing hold of her and looking her straight in the eye. “Samantha, Elam, and I are doing this because if there’s any chance we can put an end to this before it starts, then it’s our responsibility to try. You don’t have to come with us, Lottie, but you’re still a member of our coven. Samantha and I would both feel a lot better with you there to help us.”
“Arghhh! All right, fine! I’ll come with you,” Charlotte gave in, plopping her butt down on the edge of the meditation circle. “If we’re holding hands, that will help keep our astral bodies together too, right?”
“I believe it should, yes,” I smiled at her, sitting down and reaching out for her hand.
Genevieve lit the incense and her bong filled with the entheogenic Delphi Dream, before sitting down to join us. She took a hit from the bong before passing it to me, and then to Charlotte before setting it aside out of the circle.
“Start with taking a deep breath, completely filling the lungs, and holding it for five heartbeats,” she guided us as she took hold of each of our hands. “Exhale completely, and wait five more heartbeats before breathing in again. Eyes closed, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus on the astral energies flowing through you with each breath, gently aligning each chakra until those energies are enough to lift you up and out of your body.”
In unison with one another, the three of us slowly breathed in and out, ignoring the material world around us and focusing upon the task at hand. Eve was first, as usual, and because we were all holding hands, Charlotte and I felt her eagerly tugging us up to speed us along.
I opened my eyes, and beheld the dull and muted Physical Plane through my clairvoyance, everything outshined by the radiant forms of my coven mates. I noted that Genevieve had eschewed her normal skyclad form when astral projecting and instead wore a cloak like Charlotte and I.
“Are you worried this place might have a no shirt, no shoes, no souls, no service policy?” I teased her.
“I just don’t want to risk a confrontation over it. I realize how important this is,” she answered. “Though I’m not actually wearing shoes, now that you mention it.”
“Christ, look at the sigil Samantha drew!” Charlotte said, pointing down at the meditation circle beneath us. The sigil wasn’t just glowing but flowing as well, churning the Aether around it in a misty, spectral vortex. “It’s an astral portal, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah. It’s not stable, though. Good for one trip only,” Genevieve said with a delighted smile. “And Lottie, since we’re Neopagan Witches, try not to swear by Christ, okay?”
“Jesus!” she swore, both in defiance and in genuine annoyance.
“Elam! Elam, come join the circle! I don’t want to take any chances of severing our bond,” I instructed, letting go of Charlotte’s hand and waving him in between us.
Faithful Familiar that he was, he obeyed without hesitation. Despite my concerns, I think that he probably could have stayed behind if he had wanted. The fact that he was willing to follow me to an unknown otherworld without complaint really made me appreciate how devoted he was to me.
“We step in together on the count of three, got it?” I instructed, each of them nodding clearly in response. “One. Two. Three!”
We all extended our right feet into the vortex together, and the instant we did we were swept away, falling out of our own world and tumbling between the cracks of countless others. They weren’t real, I don’t think. At least, not as real as our world. They were potential realities, or realities that could have been once but now can never be, or fantasies that are so persistent in the minds of real people that in some sense or another, they become real themselves. I only saw glimmers of them, glimmers in nebulas made of primeval chaos and uttermost void.
It was outside of time, that place we travelled through, or at least we had no sense of it there. Our souls were haphazardly spat out upon a surreal landscape of earth, sea, and fire. Hilly plains of volcanic ash, incandescent calderas of lava and bubbling hot springs all intermeshed in a chaotic mosaic that didn’t seem to abide by any laws of geology or geography that I was familiar with. A strong but slow wind pushed fractal formations of dark silver clouds through a pale silver sky, illuminated by a single white orb which could have been either a bright moon or a faint sun.
While our spectral feet left no trace upon the ash we now stood upon, our presence nonetheless elicited a response from some of the local fauna. We were just able to catch a glimpse of some kind of shimmering scarabs burrowing themselves into the ash to escape the four otherworldly ghosts that had invaded their territory.
“Holy shit,” Charlotte murmured as we all gazed out upon the strange world we had found ourselves on. “This really isn’t on the Astral Plane. This is a real planet. This a real, alien planet! This is unbelievable!”
Genevieve glided over to one of the bubbling pools and peered into it, looking for any more signs of life.
“There’s some kind of bluish-grey algae growing on the rocks down there, and I think I can make out some small arthropods too. This planet’s alive!” she announced with glee, smiling and looking up at the alien sky.
Conjuring an astral approximation of my staff, I plunged it into a small mound of ash beside me. I watched curiously as the scarabs shot out in all directions, moving too quickly for me to get a good look at them, before scurrying back into the surrounding ash.
“These bugs can sense our presence,” I remarked. “How and why would clairvoyance evolve in insects on this world, and why would their first instinct be to flee?”
“Samantha!” Elam called out. “I think I found the Flea Market.”
We all gathered around him and looked where he was pointing. On a distant dune, we beheld the moulted carapace of a colossal insect, gleaming a brilliant, lustrous gold in the broken white light.
“That’s impossible!” Charlotte claimed. “That thing must be hundreds of meters long! No insect, no animal period could ever get that big on the Physical Plane!”
“It could be the Incarnation of some kind of Titan,” Genevieve suggested. “But… it’s dead. I can tell that even from here. It’s dead. It’s the corpse of a dead god, and now it’s being used as a swap meet with a punny name. Either whatever killed it just abandoned it, or…”
“Or is running the place,” I finished for her. “Well, we should see if we can find Emrys.”
In an instant, the world moved around us until we were at the entrance to the Flea Market. The colossal carapace was hollow inside, of course, and had been filled with a bustling city that looked like it had been created in the most ad hoc manner possible. There wasn’t a single straight street to be seen, and they converged with one another at random intervals. Stalls and buildings varied wildly in both design and materials, all imported from a plethora of different cultures across the planes.
Enormous shards of luminous glass levitated above the throng like a thousand Swords of Damocles, any or all of them seeming capable of succumbing to gravity at any moment. In the very center of the moulted husk dangled a great spiralling chrysalis or hive woven of iridescent silk, its function not being immediately apparent to me.
There must have been thousands of people there, and hundreds of merchants hawking their wares. Most of those who looked human still seemed a little off, like they were members of ethnicities that didn’t exist in our world. Some of the beings were near-human in appearance, many seemingly some kind of Fey or Seelie folk. There was even a small handful of people that weren’t remotely human at all.
The only thing they all had in common was that none were native to this world.
“Most of these people are here in person, aren’t they?” Charlotte asked.
“It would’ve been quite a feat for them to have built all of this while astral projecting,” Genevieve agreed.
“But if this place isn’t connected to the Cuniculi, then how did they get here?” Charlotte asked. “We’re on another planet, maybe even in another dimension. If getting here is beyond the Ooo’s abilities, then what sort of ungodly reality benders decided to turn it into a Flea Market?”
“Ladies, gentlemen, and any beings either too ancient and alien or too modern and alienated to settle on one or the other, come bear witness to one of the most astounding and atrocious abominations on this or any other world!” a fast-paced male voice rang out over the din of the crowd.
We turned to see a short, skinny, old-timey sort of carnival barker standing on a literal soap box, placed next to a large object draped in a black tarp.
“For the paltry price of a single three-headed coin, you can peer beneath the veil and behold with your own unbelieving eyes the mangled and mutilated monstrosity that lurks beneath!” the carnival barker continued. “But I must warn you, it is not possible to truly understand what dwells underneath without seeing it first! I cannot guarantee that you will still retain your sanity or will to live after witnessing the proverbial Mountains of Madness, for this low creature is truly like no other and serves only as a grim testament to the cruel sadism of the Lord Above! Anyone plagued by even the faintest lingering doubt as to their spiritual fortitude should not dare to even contemplate what might lie before me! But, for those brave, noble few who are truly dauntless of heart and incorrigible of spirit, I am proud to share with you this rare, unfathomable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness sublime –”
The carnival barker was interrupted by a man yanking the sheet off the object beside him, revealing it to be a mirror.
“Whelp, that was a hell of an Im14andthisisdeep post, eh?” Charlotte mused.
Genevieve and I, however, were far too stunned to be amused; not by the mirror, but by the man who had unveiled it.
“It’s him, Lottie. That’s Emrys,” Genevieve whispered.
We had only seen him briefly once before, more than two-and-a-half years ago, but he was far from what anyone would call forgettable. He was tall and gaunt, with literal blue blood flowing beneath translucent skin. His long, receding hair and regal beard were pitch black, and dark miasma wafted from his eyes, nose, and mouth. He was dressed in dark sable robes with three overlapping Ouroboros’s tattooed on his forehead, with a pair of ophidian pupils lying in the spaces between them.
What stood out the most to us were the six silver Ouroboros chains bound around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. These were the chains the Ophion Occult Order had made to limit the power of his physical avatar, and it seemed he had not yet found a way to free himself from them.
“Are you still here?” Emrys asked in exasperation, tossing the veil back at the carnival barker in disdain.
“…Possibly,” the strange man replied evasively. “But not definitively, for purely legalistic reasons.”
“I believe Mathom-meister was quite clear when he said that your rather pitiful chicanery wasn’t welcomed here,” Emrys reminded him.
“And who is he to judge chicanery from cutthroat, capitalistic competition? Should not the Flea Market be a free market?” the charlatan demanded. “And while we’re on the topic of commerce, I don’t suppose you have enough three-headed coins to pay for all the poor souls you have so discourteously exposed to my exhibit against their will? I’d hate to have to start shaking people down to get my due.”
“Hard to believe your own circus threw you out,” Emrys said with a sardonic eye roll as he tossed him a small medallion. “You get one coin. Take it and get out of my sight.”
The charlatan flipped the coin in the air thrice, presumably to confirm it actually had three heads. Satisfied with its impossible dimensions, he shoved it into his pocket.
“It will cover the trolley ride home, at least,” he acquiesced, stepping off his soap box and turning to face his looking glass. “A shame though you can’t see the genius in my little avant-garde performance piece here, Emmy. Even I know that the monster in the mirror is often the hardest to recognize.”
As the man reached to pick up his mirror, his reflection’s arms shot through the glass and grabbed him by the wrists, pulling him in. Emrys immediately tried to chase after him, but bounced off the glass as if there was nothing supernatural about it at all.
“Bastard!” he cursed under his breath, before turning towards us and giving us a small apologetic smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that rather pathetic display. Unfortunately, the few meeting places I know of that are relatively safe from any Ophionic incursion also attract their fair share of other annoying miscreants.”
“If it didn’t attract a little bit of everything, it wouldn’t be a Flea Market, would it?” I asked rhetorically. “Thank you, Emrys, for inviting us. I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
“And thank you for accepting. Samantha, Genevieve, it’s a pleasure to see you again, and a relief that you have not fallen under the auspices of the Ophion Occult Order,” he said with a gentle bow. “Elam, I remember you as well. Valiant but not reckless, you remained atop Pendragon Hill during my battle with the Darlings until your mistress was well out of harm’s way, and then you got the hell out of dodge yourself. Samantha couldn’t hope for a better Familiar. And Charlotte, any Witch that Samantha deemed worthy to induct into her coven is obviously someone whose acquaintance I am pleased to make. Welcome, all of you, to Mathom-meister’s Flea Market!”
“So this is where you’ve been hiding out the past two years?” Genevieve asked.
“Oh no. Far too Cosmopolitan for my tastes,” Emrys replied. “No, this is just a friendly place to meet those I consider friends – or potential friends, at least. I’d offer to show you around, but I know it’s difficult for you to astral travel for prolonged periods. Come with me to Mathom-meister’s house where we can talk freely, and we’ll discuss the situation with the Order.”
I gave him a small, single nod in response, and gestured with my staff that he should lead the way. He responded by pointing upwards, then vanished into his shadow form. When we looked up, we saw him waving at us from a balcony atop the great silken chrysalis.
We exchanged hesitant glances with one another, but ultimately followed him into the strange structure, moving from the ground to the balcony in an instant by will alone.
“How would an incarnate being get up here if they couldn’t fly or teleport?” Charlotte asked as she peered over the balcony’s teetering edge.
As though answering a summons, a humanoid creature apparated beside her in a flash of dark vapours. The hunched-back entity stood over six-and-a-half feet tall, and was clad in golden-brown erudite robes. Its squid-like skin was of a similar colour, and its entire face was a single gaping orifice that held a wispy, glowing orb in the center of its skull which I immediately recognized as its soul. A pair of long, fanged tentacles lined with pores and tendrils hung down from its head like a long, forked beard, and the seven digits shared by its two hands all bore wicked-looking talons, as did its two-toed, digitigrade feet.
“Not fly or teleport? What sort of pedestrian house guests do you think I entertain here?” the being asked wryly, its voice seeming to come from nowhere in particular.
Charlotte instinctively backed away from the creature and into the protective fold of our coven, but Emrys was quick to hold up his hand to plead for calm.
“Please, there’s no need for alarm. This is our host, Mathom-meister. He’s the only reason any of this is here in the first place,” Emrys informed us. “A year or two ago a companion of his unfortunately became one of the Darling Twin’s victims, and when he heard of my vendetta with them, he tracked me down; which is no small feat, I assure you.”
“It is for us. My people are a race of Planeswalkers. Traversing the many worlds of Creation is second nature to us,” Mathom-meister explained.
“I’ve… I’ve heard of your people, I think,” I said, softly and unsurely. “A friend of mine had an encounter with an artifact that gave her a vision of a race of strange and powerful sorcerers slaying their own god. I take it you’re the ones who slayed this Scarab Titan as well? That’s, that’s…”
“Horrifying, yes. That’s the idea,” he nodded. “You have nothing to worry about, young Witch. My people have no special interest in your world. This is purely personal. My friend is dead, and I want his murderers brought to justice; a goal which Emrys and I happen to have in common.”
“Feel free to share this information with the Ophion Occult Order, Samantha,” Emrys said. “I’d very much like for the Darling Twins to know what’s hunting them. Mathom-meister, please excuse me while I take my guests inside. We do have pressing business to discuss and their time is limited.”
The squid-cyclopes bowed gracefully, and my coven and I quickly scurried after Emrys as he led us inside through a towering hallway and into a large chamber that had been appointed as a living space.
I had thought that Emrys would want to speak with us alone, which was why I was surprised to see a young woman sitting cross-legged on a spongey yet chitinous object that I will for the sake of my sanity call a bean bag chair. Like Emrys, she was pale and blue-blooded, her choppy hair as black as coal. She wore a black robe and heavy black eyeliner, but these could not conceal the fact that she too had thin wisps of miasma emanating from her eyes.
“Is that your… daughter?” Charlotte asked, as baffled by her presence as any of us. The woman smiled warmly at the question.
“In a way. I was dead, and Emrys gave me new life. Now a part of the Outer Primordial Darkness he represents lives in me too,” she said serenely.
Hovering above her left palm were three small bluish-green orbs, lazily going around in a circle. They were translucent and held something inside them that I couldn’t make out, but the orbs themselves appeared to be melting and solidifying by the woman’s will.
“You’re Petra, aren’t you?” I asked as I cautiously approached her. “Chamberlin had mentioned that Emrys had taken an acolyte. I’m Samantha, and this is Genevieve, Elam, and Charlotte.”
“I know. The whole reason we’re here is to speak with you,” she nodded.
“The Ophion Occult Order calls me a soul-flayer, and I’m sure you were all wondering exactly what that meant before you came here,” Emrys said, standing proudly behind his acolyte. “Well, this is it. The Darkness Beyond is now a part of her, and a part of her now lives within the Darkness Beyond. She is not unchanged from what she was before, but neither has what she was been lost.”
“My interpretation of the term ‘soul-flaying’ was the complete removal of a person’s consciousness from their astral and physical bodies to be subsumed by your Darkness,” I countered. “They told me that what you’ve done with Petra here is just the limit of your power while you’re bound in their chains. Are you telling me that if your chains were broken, you wouldn’t be able to do any worse than this?”
“On my physical avatar? No. So long as my astral form remains chained and bound with the World Serpent, I cannot cleave a conscious mind from its astral substrate,” Emrys assured me.
“But that is your ultimate goal, isn’t it? Breaking the chains the Ophion Occult Order put on you is just a stepping stone to breaking the ones the gods bound you with?” Genevieve asked. “You’ve allied yourself with a literal god slayer. Do you expect us to believe that his people’s abilities aren’t something you intend to put to your own ends?”
“I don’t have an ultimate goal so much as I have a fundamental principle of opposing tyranny,” he claimed. “When I was a mere man, thousands of years ago, I was a tyrant. I believed that might made right so unquestionably that when my might began to fail me, the only thing I could think to do was to try everything in my power to restore it. This quest eventually led to me becoming one with the Darkness Beyond, which gave me not only the might I coveted but the wisdom I didn’t know I needed. It gave me perspective. It made me stronger than any human alive at that point but still let me realize how insignificant I was. It was humbling, and enlightening, and filled me both with remorse over my past actions and an impetus to use my newfound gifts to rectify them. I tried to overthrow the gods themselves which, in hindsight, was overly ambitious. I not only failed but had my soul devoured by the World Serpent, where it still resides to this day.
“I am not eager to bring the wrath of the gods down upon me once again. No, for now, I will be content to end the tyranny of the Ophion Occult Order. This is the message I’d like you to relay to them. If the Grand Adderman agrees to unbind my chains and step down from his post, I will spare his life. If he declines, I want the rest of the Order to know that I will show mercy to any who sides with me over him. I am willing to allow the Order to exist so long as it agrees to become more decentralized, democratic, and accountable. They will have to forfeit certain artifacts and individuals in their possession over to me, chief among them the Darling Twins, but I am willing to negotiate. If they aren’t, then I will overthrow the Grand Adderman by whatever means necessary and see the Order scattered to the four winds. It is entirely up to them whether or not the conflict between us escalates to full-on war. Have I made myself clear, Samantha?”
“I think so,” I said as I pensively considered everything he had said. “Why should they trust you to keep your word once your chains are broken? For that matter, why should we?”
He took a moment to consider his response, eyeing me over as though he was trying to divine something that would win over my trust.
“Samantha, you made a pact with Persephone to get your Spirit Familiar there; one where she swore by the River Styx. Is that correct?” he asked.
“It is,” I nodded.
“And in the years since, has Persephone ever broken that pact she swore to?” he asked.
“No, she hasn’t,” I replied.
“I may not be an Old God, but so long as my astral form remains bound by their chains, they have power over me,” he said. “Samantha Sumner, Hedge Witch of Harrowick Woods, I swear on the River Styx that I have spoken no lies to you today. I swear by the River Styx that I will abide by any Covenant that I and the Ophion Occult Order agree to in good faith and fair dealing that they do not break first. I swear by the River Styx that when my chains are broken, I will give you no cause to fear me or regret your trust in me.”
I gave a questioning glance to Genevieve, and then Elam, both of whom nodded in the affirmative.
“All right. An oath sworn on the River Styx is good enough for me. I’ll deliver your terms to Seneca Chamberlin,” I agreed. “I’m very grateful for the trust and respect you’ve shown for me and my coven, Emrys, though I can’t say I quite understand it. Out of all the guests that were there on the Hallow’s Eve you were summoned, why did Evie and I stand out to you?”
“The Ophion Occult Order deemed you worthy of inclusion in their cult, an offer you rejected on principle. You cheated Persephone, but you did it not to gain immortality for yourself but to save your friend from hell. You came here, thinking I could very well tear your souls asunder, but did so because you believed it was your duty to prevent needless suffering,” Emrys answered. “You are extraordinary in your craft, courage, and conscience, the latter of which especially stood out among the degenerates at that party. I do apologize if I frightened you at that event. I was a bit… irritable, given the circumstances. I’m glad we were able to meet again under more pleasant conditions.”
“So am I, Emrys,” I nodded. “I’m not sure exactly what this means or how relevant it is, but Seneca wanted me to tell you that he’s able to offer you the Dream Demon Red Ruck as a sacrifice.”
“Pffft. Tell him it’s hardly a sacrifice if I’m getting rid of a boogie man for him,” he scoffed. “In fact, now that you mention it, Ruck’s one egregore that might be of more use to me alive.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but we were suddenly interrupted by the rapid pounding of a gong somewhere down below. It seemed to be an alarm of some kind, as we could hear the panicked shouting and frantic racing of people either battening down or forsaking the Flea Market altogether.
Mathom-meister apparated into the middle of the room, his facial tentacles reflexively raised in a defensive position.
“Were you outside the market?” he demanded of us.
“The portal we came through deposited us a few miles outside of the market, yes,” I admitted.
“Damn,” Emrys cursed softly, though he sounded more frustrated than angry. “Meister, it’s not their fault. I knew they weren’t experienced Planeswalkers, I could have – ”
“It doesn’t matter!” Mathom-meister interjected. “They need to leave, now!”
“Why, what’s going on?” Genevieve demanded.
“The scarabs are swarming,” Petra explained. “Don’t feel bad; it happens often enough that they’re prepared for it.”
I wanted to press for more details, but I could hear the humming of a vast winged swarm steadily encroaching upon us.
“Don’t worry. Once you leave the swarm will disperse… eventually,” Emrys told us. “We’ve said all that need be said for now. Return home, and I’ll reach out to you again shortly, Samantha.”
Again, I wanted to object, but the swarm outside was growing louder and louder, and it occurred to me that we might not be completely safe from a biblical swarm of insects that could not only sense but evidently sought out souls.
This occurred to Charlotte as well, as she was the first of us to vanish and awaken back in her body. We could all feel the weight of her reembodied soul tugging on us to return with her. Genevieve immediately grabbed hold of my right hand and Elam my left, both of them refusing to leave before I did.
I spared one final glance at Emrys, lamenting that we couldn’t have had more time.
“I’ll relay everything you said to the Order. I’ll make sure they know you’re willing to negotiate a truce,” I vowed.
He gave me a gracious nod, and just as we heard the swarm start to pelt the exterior of the market, I forced my physical eyes open and was back in my body, still safely under a willow tree in my cemetery.
I immediately looked beside me to Genevieve, and saw that she was awake as well, and then around me for Elam, who seemed to be suffering a bit of spectral whiplash from being pulled back with me so suddenly, but was otherwise all right. Sighing with relief, I turned lastly to Charlotte, and saw that she was looking down at the mediation circle in dreaded horror.
Following her gaze, I saw that the Undying Rose was gone – spent, perhaps, in exchange for our passage – and in its place was the inert, and hopefully dead, body of one of the shimmering scarabs.

I (29f) am currently dealing with a physical condition that has been very triggering of past traumas. I've spent the majority of this last year either disassociating and devoid of emotion, or reliving painful flashbacks of abuse when the condition flairs up. My mom has actually been helpful for a while through some of this- helping me get around after my latest surgery, making me soup when I could only keep down broth (even glossing over the fact that she didn't help me with dishes as promised, I'm not even upset about that one). So I started to open up a little more with her, ask for advice or just have an ear to vent to when I'm feeling so overwhelmed that I want to end it all. During one of these moments, alone in my apartment less than a week after returning from the surgery, I'm dealing with a crisis in the after math of that. More venting and panicking, I text her explaining what's going on in hopes of a little bit of sympathy. Guess I overstayed my welcome in her good graces; "F*ck off and figure it out yourself" was all I read of the text before I shut down and deleted the message history from her. Had my bf delete the 20 minute long voice-mail she sent 5 minutes later with her sobbing about how she's not feeling well and-- well, there wasn't really an apology so I'm glad I didn't listen to it or it probably would have made me feel even worse.
It's hit me really hard this time around. I feel like a moron for thinking I could actually open up and talk to her about anything, because this is always what happens. She's nice and agreeable when she thinks it'll get her something, but as soon as she's tired of the charade or gets whatever payout she's seeking, it snaps like a feeble twig. Then she comes back like she did nothing wrong when she wants more, texting me and calling me constantly; I've ignored most of her communication since then but she always pulls me in with "something important" or offering "gifts" (like bringing me weed and then asking for the $40 after dropping it off, so not really even gifts just delivering shit and seeking praise. And I'm a monster if I don't tell her to be safe while she's taking a trip to see my brother, right?). I want to go nc after this, but I loathe the thought of putting too much on my boyfriend and sending him running for the hills. I'm working on seeing a therapist but even my doctors can't seem to find an opening for me anywhere in the area. I'm currently unemployed and don't have the funds for those crappy online therapists like betterhelp (my bf has talked about this as an option, but I'm making so little in comparison to him right now that I feel like that's just a huge waste of his money and I cannot bring myself to become a bigger burden than I already am for him). I miss being almost mentally stable while on medication, but my last psychiatric got all buddy-buddy with my mom and dropped me like a hot potato about 3 years ago; my mom still texts him on a weekly basis, but guess my issues aren't important enough to get me in or on any medication again.
Then, one shitty thing after another. I decided to get rid of my 2 cats of 3 years; had them almost as long as I've been with the current bf. All of the hair has been hell on my recovery and I can't even bend over for simple tasks like feeding or cleaning litter. The bf understood and reassured me my health was more important, so... We rehomed them, and I made sure they were going to a good home so I have that peace of mind that they'll be loved and taken care of. I just watched my bf mourn the loss of our cats more than I mourned the loss of both my grandparents (who raised me over half of my childhood). I feel like a monster after witnessing him break down like that; I have no idea how to comfort anyone and it felt like he was shutting me out anyway. I am the reason he's crying so why would he want my comfort? We had to get rid of the cats because of me and it made him cry. I suppose it'll make the decision easier for him when he finally gets fed up with my shit as well and leaves me, but I just feel so... lost. I know it's not healthy to live only because of one person, but I can't go back to my abusive family if he decides to leave. I'm better off dead in the street than suffering like that again. Even if I could physically handle working full time, it isn't enough money to sustain a person living by themselves; not with any job I'm able to get in this shitty economy. I'm just a pathetic sack that's failed as an adult and just wants the pain to stop for five fucking seconds; to feel like I have some value even when I know that's bullshit and anyone who tells me I do is just lying out of fear that I'll off myself and they'll be stuck cleaning it up. A part of my mind is telling me I should do everything in my power to be happy and healthy for my bf after causing him such anguish, but I'm so sick of lying and saying I'm okay. I'm sick of smiling when I just want to ugly cry. Everyone is telling me that I need to be more positive about life but literally the only thing I've wanted since I was 5 was to not be forced to live in this awful world and I'm just so tired of all this bullshit... I think I've ranted enough, not expecting anyone to read through this crap anyway;; Just needed some outlet while I'm stuck alone with my shitty thoughts...

“I’m sorry; we’re going to astral travel to a flea market?” Charlotte asked incredulously as she watched Genevieve and I set up a meditation circle under the shade of a towering old willow tree in my cemetery. “What if we want to buy something? How will we bring it back?”
“We’re not going there to shop, Lottie. Samantha’s finally had a vision about Emrys,” Genevieve explained.
The Veil between the Physical and Astral Planes is exceptionally weak in my cemetery, especially at night and on hallowed days. When I sleep there, my subconscious mind is highly receptive to all manner of revelations from the Spirit World. When I saw a Blood Moon rise on the night of May fifth, the same night as a penumbral eclipse, I knew that my dreams would be prophetic.
“I had a dream about him last Friday,” I expounded. “He’s at some sort of otherworldly marketplace, one that’s not connected to the Crypto Chthonic Cuniculi, so it’s mostly inaccessible to the Ophion Occult Order. In my dream, Emrys invited us to come and speak with him while we were lucid. He drew a sigil for me, the same one I’ve drawn in the middle of the mediation circle. He said that all I’d have to do is toss an Undying Rose – the earthly effigy of the rose Persephone used to steal a drop of his blood – into the sigil and it will become an astral portal to where he is.”
I held up the deep purple rose that I had cut from its bush earlier that day. I don’t know for certain where the roses came from, but my best guess is that they were made by the same Occultist who hallowed my cemetery to Persephone; Artaxerxes Crow. They have some connection to Emrys as well, since the only other time I saw someone else use one was when his avatar was summoned into the Physical Plane on Halloween 2020.
Knowing that Emrys wouldn’t dare to set foot in a place that was sacred to the Goddess who was ultimately responsible for his cosmic defeat, I gently tossed the rose into the middle of the sigil.
“He invited all of us?” Charlotte asked with an incredulous raising of her eyebrow.
“He said me and my coven. If he had just meant me or me and Genevieve he would have said that,” I replied. “You and Elam are coming too. I want as many eyes on this place as possible so that we don’t miss anything. We may not get an opportunity like this again.”
“And this is safe? Visiting some random flea market between worlds?” Charlotte asked.
“Samantha and I have visited the Underworld and come back no problem,” Genevieve reminded her. “So long as we’re bound to our bodies and Elam is bound to Samantha, we can come back anytime. Don’t worry; this is going to be a blast! Adventures like these are the best part of being a Witch.”
“The only reason you were able to go to the Underworld is because Samantha’s cemetery came with an astral portal in the back,” Charlotte countered, gesticulating in the general direction of the archway that was still partially visible behind the light spring foliage. “Other than that, when have any of us ever done anything useful with our astral projection? This is still a physical place, right? We don’t have any of our physical senses available to us when we astral project, and I get extremely disoriented trying to navigate the mortal plane with clairvoyance alone.”
“It is a physical place, but one saturated with astral energy and full of occultists and occult artifacts. It will be extremely illuminated to our clairvoyance,” I assured her. “Elam will also be there to guide us. As a ghost, he’s much more practiced at traversing the mortal plane in an astral form.”
Charlotte folded her arms over her chest and turned to look at Elam, who was leaning up against the willow tree as he waited for us.
“I don’t suppose you could go and scout the place out for us ahead of time?” she asked.
“I can’t go too far from Samantha, and definitely not across planes,” he said with a shake of his head. “But Eve’s right. Your astral bodies will be in no danger, and you can return here in an instant whenever you want.”
“But what about Emrys? Didn’t that book Leon gave you say that he’s some sort of soul-flayer?” Charlotte asked me.
“It did,” I admitted. “Keep in mind though, that book was written by his enemies. I want to hear his side of things before this conflict of theirs spirals out of control.”
“Any update from Chamberlin about that?” Elam asked.
“Yeah, he said that after he failed to purify the Sigil Sand, Ivy’s onboard with negotiating some kind of truce with Emrys,” I replied. “The Grand Adderman’s still reticent, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s running out of options. I need to find out if Emrys will agree to peace talks.”
“Um, I get that, but I’m still kind of hung up on him potentially flaying our souls,” Charlotte reiterated.
“If Emrys and the Ophion Occult Order go to all-out war, there’ll be a lot of collateral damage and innocent souls caught in the crossfire,” Genevieve told her, gently grabbing hold of her and looking her straight in the eye. “Samantha, Elam, and I are doing this because if there’s any chance we can put an end to this before it starts, then it’s our responsibility to try. You don’t have to come with us, Lottie, but you’re still a member of our coven. Samantha and I would both feel a lot better with you there to help us.”
“Arghhh! All right, fine! I’ll come with you,” Charlotte gave in, plopping her butt down on the edge of the meditation circle. “If we’re holding hands, that will help keep our astral bodies together too, right?”
“I believe it should, yes,” I smiled at her, sitting down and reaching out for her hand.
Genevieve lit the incense and her bong filled with the entheogenic Delphi Dream, before sitting down to join us. She took a hit from the bong before passing it to me, and then to Charlotte before setting it aside out of the circle.
“Start with taking a deep breath, completely filling the lungs, and holding it for five heartbeats,” she guided us as she took hold of each of our hands. “Exhale completely, and wait five more heartbeats before breathing in again. Eyes closed, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus on the astral energies flowing through you with each breath, gently aligning each chakra until those energies are enough to lift you up and out of your body.”
In unison with one another, the three of us slowly breathed in and out, ignoring the material world around us and focusing upon the task at hand. Eve was first, as usual, and because we were all holding hands, Charlotte and I felt her eagerly tugging us up to speed us along.
I opened my eyes, and beheld the dull and muted Physical Plane through my clairvoyance, everything outshined by the radiant forms of my coven mates. I noted that Genevieve had eschewed her normal skyclad form when astral projecting and instead wore a cloak like Charlotte and I.
“Are you worried this place might have a no shirt, no shoes, no souls, no service policy?” I teased her.
“I just don’t want to risk a confrontation over it. I realize how important this is,” she answered. “Though I’m not actually wearing shoes, now that you mention it.”
“Christ, look at the sigil Samantha drew!” Charlotte said, pointing down at the meditation circle beneath us. The sigil wasn’t just glowing but flowing as well, churning the Aether around it in a misty, spectral vortex. “It’s an astral portal, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah. It’s not stable, though. Good for one trip only,” Genevieve said with a delighted smile. “And Lottie, since we’re Neopagan Witches, try not to swear by Christ, okay?”
“Jesus!” she swore, both in defiance and in genuine annoyance.
“Elam! Elam, come join the circle! I don’t want to take any chances of severing our bond,” I instructed, letting go of Charlotte’s hand and waving him in between us.
Faithful Familiar that he was, he obeyed without hesitation. Despite my concerns, I think that he probably could have stayed behind if he had wanted. The fact that he was willing to follow me to an unknown otherworld without complaint really made me appreciate how devoted he was to me.
“We step in together on the count of three, got it?” I instructed, each of them nodding clearly in response. “One. Two. Three!”
We all extended our right feet into the vortex together, and the instant we did we were swept away, falling out of our own world and tumbling between the cracks of countless others. They weren’t real, I don’t think. At least, not as real as our world. They were potential realities, or realities that could have been once but now can never be, or fantasies that are so persistent in the minds of real people that in some sense or another, they become real themselves. I only saw glimmers of them, glimmers in nebulas made of primeval chaos and uttermost void.
It was outside of time, that place we travelled through, or at least we had no sense of it there. Our souls were haphazardly spat out upon a surreal landscape of earth, sea, and fire. Hilly plains of volcanic ash, incandescent calderas of lava and bubbling hot springs all intermeshed in a chaotic mosaic that didn’t seem to abide by any laws of geology or geography that I was familiar with. A strong but slow wind pushed fractal formations of dark silver clouds through a pale silver sky, illuminated by a single white orb which could have been either a bright moon or a faint sun.
While our spectral feet left no trace upon the ash we now stood upon, our presence nonetheless elicited a response from some of the local fauna. We were just able to catch a glimpse of some kind of shimmering scarabs burrowing themselves into the ash to escape the four otherworldly ghosts that had invaded their territory.
“Holy shit,” Charlotte murmured as we all gazed out upon the strange world we had found ourselves on. “This really isn’t on the Astral Plane. This is a real planet. This a real, alien planet! This is unbelievable!”
Genevieve glided over to one of the bubbling pools and peered into it, looking for any more signs of life.
“There’s some kind of bluish-grey algae growing on the rocks down there, and I think I can make out some small arthropods too. This planet’s alive!” she announced with glee, smiling and looking up at the alien sky.
Conjuring an astral approximation of my staff, I plunged it into a small mound of ash beside me. I watched curiously as the scarabs shot out in all directions, moving too quickly for me to get a good look at them, before scurrying back into the surrounding ash.
“These bugs can sense our presence,” I remarked. “How and why would clairvoyance evolve in insects on this world, and why would their first instinct be to flee?”
“Samantha!” Elam called out. “I think I found the Flea Market.”
We all gathered around him and looked where he was pointing. On a distant dune, we beheld the moulted carapace of a colossal insect, gleaming a brilliant, lustrous gold in the broken white light.
“That’s impossible!” Charlotte claimed. “That thing must be hundreds of meters long! No insect, no animal period could ever get that big on the Physical Plane!”
“It could be the Incarnation of some kind of Titan,” Genevieve suggested. “But… it’s dead. I can tell that even from here. It’s dead. It’s the corpse of a dead god, and now it’s being used as a swap meet with a punny name. Either whatever killed it just abandoned it, or…”
“Or is running the place,” I finished for her. “Well, we should see if we can find Emrys.”
In an instant, the world moved around us until we were at the entrance to the Flea Market. The colossal carapace was hollow inside, of course, and had been filled with a bustling city that looked like it had been created in the most ad hoc manner possible. There wasn’t a single straight street to be seen, and they converged with one another at random intervals. Stalls and buildings varied wildly in both design and materials, all imported from a plethora of different cultures across the planes.
Enormous shards of luminous glass levitated above the throng like a thousand Swords of Damocles, any or all of them seeming capable of succumbing to gravity at any moment. In the very center of the moulted husk dangled a great spiralling chrysalis or hive woven of iridescent silk, its function not being immediately apparent to me.
There must have been thousands of people there, and hundreds of merchants hawking their wares. Most of those who looked human still seemed a little off, like they were members of ethnicities that didn’t exist in our world. Some of the beings were near-human in appearance, many seemingly some kind of Fey or Seelie folk. There was even a small handful of people that weren’t remotely human at all.
The only thing they all had in common was that none were native to this world.
“Most of these people are here in person, aren’t they?” Charlotte asked.
“It would’ve been quite a feat for them to have built all of this while astral projecting,” Genevieve agreed.
“But if this place isn’t connected to the Cuniculi, then how did they get here?” Charlotte asked. “We’re on another planet, maybe even in another dimension. If getting here is beyond the Ooo’s abilities, then what sort of ungodly reality benders decided to turn it into a Flea Market?”
“Ladies, gentlemen, and any beings either too ancient and alien or too modern and alienated to settle on one or the other, come bear witness to one of the most astounding and atrocious abominations on this or any other world!” a fast-paced male voice rang out over the din of the crowd.
We turned to see a short, skinny, old-timey sort of carnival barker standing on a literal soap box, placed next to a large object draped in a black tarp.
“For the paltry price of a single three-headed coin, you can peer beneath the veil and behold with your own unbelieving eyes the mangled and mutilated monstrosity that lurks beneath!” the carnival barker continued. “But I must warn you, it is not possible to truly understand what dwells underneath without seeing it first! I cannot guarantee that you will still retain your sanity or will to live after witnessing the proverbial Mountains of Madness, for this low creature is truly like no other and serves only as a grim testament to the cruel sadism of the Lord Above! Anyone plagued by even the faintest lingering doubt as to their spiritual fortitude should not dare to even contemplate what might lie before me! But, for those brave, noble few who are truly dauntless of heart and incorrigible of spirit, I am proud to share with you this rare, unfathomable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness sublime –”
The carnival barker was interrupted by a man yanking the sheet off the object beside him, revealing it to be a mirror.
“Whelp, that was a hell of an Im14andthisisdeep post, eh?” Charlotte mused.
Genevieve and I, however, were far too stunned to be amused; not by the mirror, but by the man who had unveiled it.
“It’s him, Lottie. That’s Emrys,” Genevieve whispered.
We had only seen him briefly once before, more than two-and-a-half years ago, but he was far from what anyone would call forgettable. He was tall and gaunt, with literal blue blood flowing beneath translucent skin. His long, receding hair and regal beard were pitch black, and dark miasma wafted from his eyes, nose, and mouth. He was dressed in dark sable robes with three overlapping Ouroboros’s tattooed on his forehead, with a pair of ophidian pupils lying in the spaces between them.
What stood out the most to us were the six silver Ouroboros chains bound around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. These were the chains the Ophion Occult Order had made to limit the power of his physical avatar, and it seemed he had not yet found a way to free himself from them.
“Are you still here?” Emrys asked in exasperation, tossing the veil back at the carnival barker in disdain.
“…Possibly,” the strange man replied evasively. “But not definitively, for purely legalistic reasons.”
“I believe Mathom-meister was quite clear when he said that your rather pitiful chicanery wasn’t welcomed here,” Emrys reminded him.
“And who is he to judge chicanery from cutthroat, capitalistic competition? Should not the Flea Market be a free market?” the charlatan demanded. “And while we’re on the topic of commerce, I don’t suppose you have enough three-headed coins to pay for all the poor souls you have so discourteously exposed to my exhibit against their will? I’d hate to have to start shaking people down to get my due.”
“Hard to believe your own circus threw you out,” Emrys said with a sardonic eye roll as he tossed him a small medallion. “You get one coin. Take it and get out of my sight.”
The charlatan flipped the coin in the air thrice, presumably to confirm it actually had three heads. Satisfied with its impossible dimensions, he shoved it into his pocket.
“It will cover the trolley ride home, at least,” he acquiesced, stepping off his soap box and turning to face his looking glass. “A shame though you can’t see the genius in my little avant-garde performance piece here, Emmy. Even I know that the monster in the mirror is often the hardest to recognize.”
As the man reached to pick up his mirror, his reflection’s arms shot through the glass and grabbed him by the wrists, pulling him in. Emrys immediately tried to chase after him, but bounced off the glass as if there was nothing supernatural about it at all.
“Bastard!” he cursed under his breath, before turning towards us and giving us a small apologetic smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that rather pathetic display. Unfortunately, the few meeting places I know of that are relatively safe from any Ophionic incursion also attract their fair share of other annoying miscreants.”
“If it didn’t attract a little bit of everything, it wouldn’t be a Flea Market, would it?” I asked rhetorically. “Thank you, Emrys, for inviting us. I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
“And thank you for accepting. Samantha, Genevieve, it’s a pleasure to see you again, and a relief that you have not fallen under the auspices of the Ophion Occult Order,” he said with a gentle bow. “Elam, I remember you as well. Valiant but not reckless, you remained atop Pendragon Hill during my battle with the Darlings until your mistress was well out of harm’s way, and then you got the hell out of dodge yourself. Samantha couldn’t hope for a better Familiar. And Charlotte, any Witch that Samantha deemed worthy to induct into her coven is obviously someone whose acquaintance I am pleased to make. Welcome, all of you, to Mathom-meister’s Flea Market!”
“So this is where you’ve been hiding out the past two years?” Genevieve asked.
“Oh no. Far too Cosmopolitan for my tastes,” Emrys replied. “No, this is just a friendly place to meet those I consider friends – or potential friends, at least. I’d offer to show you around, but I know it’s difficult for you to astral travel for prolonged periods. Come with me to Mathom-meister’s house where we can talk freely, and we’ll discuss the situation with the Order.”
I gave him a small, single nod in response, and gestured with my staff that he should lead the way. He responded by pointing upwards, then vanished into his shadow form. When we looked up, we saw him waving at us from a balcony atop the great silken chrysalis.
We exchanged hesitant glances with one another, but ultimately followed him into the strange structure, moving from the ground to the balcony in an instant by will alone.
“How would an incarnate being get up here if they couldn’t fly or teleport?” Charlotte asked as she peered over the balcony’s teetering edge.
As though answering a summons, a humanoid creature apparated beside her in a flash of dark vapours. The hunched-back entity stood over six-and-a-half feet tall, and was clad in golden-brown erudite robes. Its squid-like skin was of a similar colour, and its entire face was a single gaping orifice that held a wispy, glowing orb in the center of its skull which I immediately recognized as its soul. A pair of long, fanged tentacles lined with pores and tendrils hung down from its head like a long, forked beard, and the seven digits shared by its two hands all bore wicked-looking talons, as did its two-toed, digitigrade feet.
“Not fly or teleport? What sort of pedestrian house guests do you think I entertain here?” the being asked wryly, its voice seeming to come from nowhere in particular.
Charlotte instinctively backed away from the creature and into the protective fold of our coven, but Emrys was quick to hold up his hand to plead for calm.
“Please, there’s no need for alarm. This is our host, Mathom-meister. He’s the only reason any of this is here in the first place,” Emrys informed us. “A year or two ago a companion of his unfortunately became one of the Darling Twin’s victims, and when he heard of my vendetta with them, he tracked me down; which is no small feat, I assure you.”
“It is for us. My people are a race of Planeswalkers. Traversing the many worlds of Creation is second nature to us,” Mathom-meister explained.
“I’ve… I’ve heard of your people, I think,” I said, softly and unsurely. “A friend of mine had an encounter with an artifact that gave her a vision of a race of strange and powerful sorcerers slaying their own god. I take it you’re the ones who slayed this Scarab Titan as well? That’s, that’s…”
“Horrifying, yes. That’s the idea,” he nodded. “You have nothing to worry about, young Witch. My people have no special interest in your world. This is purely personal. My friend is dead, and I want his murderers brought to justice; a goal which Emrys and I happen to have in common.”
“Feel free to share this information with the Ophion Occult Order, Samantha,” Emrys said. “I’d very much like for the Darling Twins to know what’s hunting them. Mathom-meister, please excuse me while I take my guests inside. We do have pressing business to discuss and their time is limited.”
The squid-cyclopes bowed gracefully, and my coven and I quickly scurried after Emrys as he led us inside through a towering hallway and into a large chamber that had been appointed as a living space.
I had thought that Emrys would want to speak with us alone, which was why I was surprised to see a young woman sitting cross-legged on a spongey yet chitinous object that I will for the sake of my sanity call a bean bag chair. Like Emrys, she was pale and blue-blooded, her choppy hair as black as coal. She wore a black robe and heavy black eyeliner, but these could not conceal the fact that she too had thin wisps of miasma emanating from her eyes.
“Is that your… daughter?” Charlotte asked, as baffled by her presence as any of us. The woman smiled warmly at the question.
“In a way. I was dead, and Emrys gave me new life. Now a part of the Outer Primordial Darkness he represents lives in me too,” she said serenely.
Hovering above her left palm were three small bluish-green orbs, lazily going around in a circle. They were translucent and held something inside them that I couldn’t make out, but the orbs themselves appeared to be melting and solidifying by the woman’s will.
“You’re Petra, aren’t you?” I asked as I cautiously approached her. “Chamberlin had mentioned that Emrys had taken an acolyte. I’m Samantha, and this is Genevieve, Elam, and Charlotte.”
“I know. The whole reason we’re here is to speak with you,” she nodded.
“The Ophion Occult Order calls me a soul-flayer, and I’m sure you were all wondering exactly what that meant before you came here,” Emrys said, standing proudly behind his acolyte. “Well, this is it. The Darkness Beyond is now a part of her, and a part of her now lives within the Darkness Beyond. She is not unchanged from what she was before, but neither has what she was been lost.”
“My interpretation of the term ‘soul-flaying’ was the complete removal of a person’s consciousness from their astral and physical bodies to be subsumed by your Darkness,” I countered. “They told me that what you’ve done with Petra here is just the limit of your power while you’re bound in their chains. Are you telling me that if your chains were broken, you wouldn’t be able to do any worse than this?”
“On my physical avatar? No. So long as my astral form remains chained and bound with the World Serpent, I cannot cleave a conscious mind from its astral substrate,” Emrys assured me.
“But that is your ultimate goal, isn’t it? Breaking the chains the Ophion Occult Order put on you is just a stepping stone to breaking the ones the gods bound you with?” Genevieve asked. “You’ve allied yourself with a literal god slayer. Do you expect us to believe that his people’s abilities aren’t something you intend to put to your own ends?”
“I don’t have an ultimate goal so much as I have a fundamental principle of opposing tyranny,” he claimed. “When I was a mere man, thousands of years ago, I was a tyrant. I believed that might made right so unquestionably that when my might began to fail me, the only thing I could think to do was to try everything in my power to restore it. This quest eventually led to me becoming one with the Darkness Beyond, which gave me not only the might I coveted but the wisdom I didn’t know I needed. It gave me perspective. It made me stronger than any human alive at that point but still let me realize how insignificant I was. It was humbling, and enlightening, and filled me both with remorse over my past actions and an impetus to use my newfound gifts to rectify them. I tried to overthrow the gods themselves which, in hindsight, was overly ambitious. I not only failed but had my soul devoured by the World Serpent, where it still resides to this day.
“I am not eager to bring the wrath of the gods down upon me once again. No, for now, I will be content to end the tyranny of the Ophion Occult Order. This is the message I’d like you to relay to them. If the Grand Adderman agrees to unbind my chains and step down from his post, I will spare his life. If he declines, I want the rest of the Order to know that I will show mercy to any who sides with me over him. I am willing to allow the Order to exist so long as it agrees to become more decentralized, democratic, and accountable. They will have to forfeit certain artifacts and individuals in their possession over to me, chief among them the Darling Twins, but I am willing to negotiate. If they aren’t, then I will overthrow the Grand Adderman by whatever means necessary and see the Order scattered to the four winds. It is entirely up to them whether or not the conflict between us escalates to full-on war. Have I made myself clear, Samantha?”
“I think so,” I said as I pensively considered everything he had said. “Why should they trust you to keep your word once your chains are broken? For that matter, why should we?”
He took a moment to consider his response, eyeing me over as though he was trying to divine something that would win over my trust.
“Samantha, you made a pact with Persephone to get your Spirit Familiar there; one where she swore by the River Styx. Is that correct?” he asked.
“It is,” I nodded.
“And in the years since, has Persephone ever broken that pact she swore to?” he asked.
“No, she hasn’t,” I replied.
“I may not be an Old God, but so long as my astral form remains bound by their chains, they have power over me,” he said. “Samantha Sumner, Hedge Witch of Harrowick Woods, I swear on the River Styx that I have spoken no lies to you today. I swear by the River Styx that I will abide by any Covenant that I and the Ophion Occult Order agree to in good faith and fair dealing that they do not break first. I swear by the River Styx that when my chains are broken, I will give you no cause to fear me or regret your trust in me.”
I gave a questioning glance to Genevieve, and then Elam, both of whom nodded in the affirmative.
“All right. An oath sworn on the River Styx is good enough for me. I’ll deliver your terms to Seneca Chamberlin,” I agreed. “I’m very grateful for the trust and respect you’ve shown for me and my coven, Emrys, though I can’t say I quite understand it. Out of all the guests that were there on the Hallow’s Eve you were summoned, why did Evie and I stand out to you?”
“The Ophion Occult Order deemed you worthy of inclusion in their cult, an offer you rejected on principle. You cheated Persephone, but you did it not to gain immortality for yourself but to save your friend from hell. You came here, thinking I could very well tear your souls asunder, but did so because you believed it was your duty to prevent needless suffering,” Emrys answered. “You are extraordinary in your craft, courage, and conscience, the latter of which especially stood out among the degenerates at that party. I do apologize if I frightened you at that event. I was a bit… irritable, given the circumstances. I’m glad we were able to meet again under more pleasant conditions.”
“So am I, Emrys,” I nodded. “I’m not sure exactly what this means or how relevant it is, but Seneca wanted me to tell you that he’s able to offer you the Dream Demon Red Ruck as a sacrifice.”
“Pffft. Tell him it’s hardly a sacrifice if I’m getting rid of a boogie man for him,” he scoffed. “In fact, now that you mention it, Ruck’s one egregore that might be of more use to me alive.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but we were suddenly interrupted by the rapid pounding of a gong somewhere down below. It seemed to be an alarm of some kind, as we could hear the panicked shouting and frantic racing of people either battening down or forsaking the Flea Market altogether.
Mathom-meister apparated into the middle of the room, his facial tentacles reflexively raised in a defensive position.
“Were you outside the market?” he demanded of us.
“The portal we came through deposited us a few miles outside of the market, yes,” I admitted.
“Damn,” Emrys cursed softly, though he sounded more frustrated than angry. “Meister, it’s not their fault. I knew they weren’t experienced Planeswalkers, I could have – ”
“It doesn’t matter!” Mathom-meister interjected. “They need to leave, now!”
“Why, what’s going on?” Genevieve demanded.
“The scarabs are swarming,” Petra explained. “Don’t feel bad; it happens often enough that they’re prepared for it.”
I wanted to press for more details, but I could hear the humming of a vast winged swarm steadily encroaching upon us.
“Don’t worry. Once you leave the swarm will disperse… eventually,” Emrys told us. “We’ve said all that need be said for now. Return home, and I’ll reach out to you again shortly, Samantha.”
Again, I wanted to object, but the swarm outside was growing louder and louder, and it occurred to me that we might not be completely safe from a biblical swarm of insects that could not only sense but evidently sought out souls.
This occurred to Charlotte as well, as she was the first of us to vanish and awaken back in her body. We could all feel the weight of her reembodied soul tugging on us to return with her. Genevieve immediately grabbed hold of my right hand and Elam my left, both of them refusing to leave before I did.
I spared one final glance at Emrys, lamenting that we couldn’t have had more time.
“I’ll relay everything you said to the Order. I’ll make sure they know you’re willing to negotiate a truce,” I vowed.
He gave me a gracious nod, and just as we heard the swarm start to pelt the exterior of the market, I forced my physical eyes open and was back in my body, still safely under a willow tree in my cemetery.
I immediately looked beside me to Genevieve, and saw that she was awake as well, and then around me for Elam, who seemed to be suffering a bit of spectral whiplash from being pulled back with me so suddenly, but was otherwise all right. Sighing with relief, I turned lastly to Charlotte, and saw that she was looking down at the mediation circle in dreaded horror.
Following her gaze, I saw that the Undying Rose was gone – spent, perhaps, in exchange for our passage – and in its place was the inert, and hopefully dead, body of one of the shimmering scarabs.

Doctor Hiestand crouched down on the rough floor of the cavern. The air was damp and heavy. Her assistant handed her a flashlight that she used to scan the rocky floor, ceiling, and walls carefully.
“What do you think?” the Doctor asked.
“It's a lava cave,” researcher Isalamp clacked.
“Strange, though, don’t you think?”Isalamp was correct. They were on Methuselah’s 42nd moon. The planet they were orbiting was perhaps the oldest in the universe, but the moon seemed young geologically speaking. It was extremely volcanic, the gravitational energy from the gaseous planet below churned the moon’s insides, causing it to shoot out mass and energy with unusual frequency. This, combined with intense solar radiation, made the moon’s surface hot and barren.
The odd thing, though, was that this cave seemed to be covered in cave formations typically found in solution caves. If they were on Earth, Doctor Hiestand would have easily classified them as common limestone formations: stalactites and stalagmites, cave bacon and soda straws.
“Should we take a sample?” Isalamp asked.
“Let's do it. These formations seem to be old. At least a few hundred thousand years. There was lava in this region that should have destroyed them within at least five thousand years, though.”
They filled up collection bags with rock chippings. The pair had brought a chemical analyzer with them. The machine spit out the composition: carbon, calcium, magnesium, titanium.Isalamp held up two of their four hands to their scaly chin, “Strange. It is close to the composition of stones found in much older formations.”
“It's a lithic mystery,” Hiestand said, “we’ll have to send a geology team down sometime.”
They were not that team. They were the biologist, sent to see if there was any life teeming within the crevices of the moon. So far they had found none, even though there was enough energy and material being recycled here that you would think some organic entity would have formed. The pair tugged on their ropes and made the short trek back to the cave entrance. They had a small encampment set up for further analysis.
“I was really hoping we would find a living organism,” Isalamp said, “this part of the universe is so old. Maybe we could have found the oldest lineage in existence.”
“Patience,” the Doctor replied, “we’ve only just started.”
There was more calibrating to do. The pair just couldn’t wait to start exploring. Hiestand had also secretly hoped they would discover some novel species just at the edge of the cave. But now they needed to prepare the lab for the long-term. They unpacked all the equipment and living materials. The seismic detectors and back-up generators; the food processors and farms.
“We need to check the microscope,” the Doctor said.
“What should we use?”
“Here,” Hiestand tossed a bag of the rock sample.
Isalamp caught it in their tentacles, “Maybe there's at least some microbes we can find.”
The Doctor turned and began assembling the coffee maker. She wasn’t sure why they made this machine the most complicated, but it would take time to put all the parts together. Before she had fully unfurled the instructions, though, Isalamp made a sharp cripping noise.
“What's got you so excited?”
“I was just joking earlier. But come take a look! There’s something living in this sample!”
Hiestand leaned over and peered through the microscope. Sure enough, little single-celled aliens were crawling around. They had discovered several new species at one glance. The coffee would have to wait. These creatures had the potential to be the descendants of the first life in the universe. Several billions of years older than anything else so far discovered. Astronomers said that Methuselah--probably along with its many moons--had formed likely within a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
By lunchtime they had recorded at least forty-six species of microbes. By dinner the number had more than doubled. Over a course of pre-package rations left over from the trip, they discussed the likelihood that a multicellular organism had evolved. The pair decided to get an early start the next day.
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An alarm woke Doctor Hiestand up in the morning. WIth two suns and a gas giant in the sky, there was no real consistent astronomical night and day on the moon. She woke Isalamp up excitedly and they prepared to explore more of the cave system. Reconnaissance drones set up the day before had mapped out a large portion of the spiraling branches beneath them already.
They searched for several long hours for some sign of multicellular life. Track marks, fossils, anything that could signal complexity. Eight hours in, Isalamp was becoming discouraged, “What if life here remained simple?”
“It would still be an amazing discovery.”
“Of course. But everyone and their progenitor has discovered some single-celled life. Think of the funding we could get if we brought something ‘cool’ back to mission command.”Another four hours and they were starting to get tired. Doctor Hiestand chipped another sample off of a stalagmite. At the very least they could categorize some more microbes. They returned to their base, hanging up their packs and stretching after a long day.
“Do you want me to examine the new sample?”
“No, it can wait until the morning,” she said as she laid the sample carefully on a table.
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Hiestand woke up in the middle of the night feeling like she was dying of thirst. Her mouth was dry and clammy. She reached over only to find her water bottle was empty, so she got up and ventured into the make-shift kitchen area of the base.
She drank a full bottle. Still thirsty. After another bottle failed to quench her, she began to worry. The Doctor called Isalamp in from the other bedroom.“Are you alright?”
“I think so. It just feels like I’m a bit dehydrated.”
“Do you think a foreign microbe got on you?”
“I don’t see how. I was extremely careful when I took the sample. And I washed off before re-entering the base.”
“I’ll look at the sample and see if I can tell anything. Where is it?”The Doctor pointed at the nearby table.
“That sample container is broken.”
“What?” Hiestand looked and sure enough, the glass tube had a hole in it. Not only that, but where it had been filled with rocks just a few hours ago, now it was completely empty. It was like the rock had broken out. She picked it up, yes, yes. It was the container she had tagged. She was always careful to mark the containers with the location and date of the sample.
Isalamp stayed up with the Doctor for a couple hours. Eventually the endless thirst subsided and the pair went back to sleep.
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“What in the actual hell happened last night?” the Doctor said on her way to get her morning coffee.
“I’m not sure. I can’t question your carefulness,” Isalamp said.
“You sure can’t,” the Doctor replied more harshly than she intended, “I mean. I just sat the container down like this.” She demonstrated by gently putting her coffee mug down on the table.
“Wait,” Isalamp said worriedly, “What is that on your hand?”The Doctor looked. It was… a bite mark? Like three little teeth had tried to suck her blood in the middle of the night. “Let’s suit up.”
Isalamp quickly followed Hiestand’s direction. They searched for a few minutes but quickly found a medium-sized soda straw was now in the corner of their bathroom. It looked almost like the stone had grown there since last night.
The Doctor approached carefully and a small insect-like creature crawled out the top of the straw. She snatched it with tweezers and ran back to the lab to place it in the chemical analysis. The machine outputted a similar reading to the one a few days before: carbon, calcium, magnesium, titanium.
“Do you think the microbes… consumed... the glass? And then grew into those things?”
“I know of no species in the galaxy that can process inorganic materials so fast.”
“Heh, maybe the rocks are organic around here,” Isalamp joked.
“What did you say?”
“I said--” Isalamp paused.
Wordlessly, they got on their exploration gear and descended into the caves again. The pair weren’t sure, but had the rocks moved since they had last been in here? They approached a limestone formation and took several samples. Having gotten all that they could carry, they returned back to the surface.
Under the microscope they could see more microbes. But they had missed something before. The stalactites and stalagmites weren’t purely geological structures, they were living cells themselves. The pair did more analyses and found that the rocks had genetic structures and organelles too.
Over the next few months, a whole team of fifty-plus sapients were gathered to research the heavenly body, now called Hiestand’s moon. It was the first time the astronomical community recognized a phenomenon named after a human outside of the Solar System. Further testing revealed that the living rocks on Hiestand’s Moon were in fact the descendants of the oldest known life in the universe, having evolved probably less than one billion years after the Big Bang.

If you enjoyed this story please consider checking out my Patreon! My next post is already on there two weeks early, as well as some exclusive patreon-only stories.

Sand shifted beneath my feet as I shambled down the river’s edge. I tried to recall what had happened, but the throbbing pain pulsing at my left temple robbed me of any conscious thought. A strange static filled the space between my ears. It wasn’t like the kind you’d find on the tv at odd hours in the night, but more so the soft hum of recycled air piping through a small nozzle above your seat on a plane.
I felt like I was in a fishbowl. My vision would blur, then clear and blur once more. I struggled to keep my balance as I stepped through silt and wet stone.
There was no sign of my kayak or gear anywhere. The gray waters roared across boulders as trees loomed over the edges of the bank. Massive, gnarled roots crept through the ground to gather a drink. The underbrush above the bank was so thick it was impossible to guess at how far I’d drifted before washing up here.
I said a prayer to a God I’d long forgotten; keep me safe… please.
I had no desire to get lost in the surrounding forest, so I decided to follow the river. It seemed like the best and only option I really had. Surely, I would eventually come to a bridge that would put me on a road. Then I could flag someone down for help. Or maybe there would even be a clearing where I could gather my bearings. Perhaps a house or a farm would be there.
I’d read that in these situations, a positive attitude was essential for survival.
But the further I got down the bank, the more worry festered in my brain. It punched holes in my flimsy optimism. I was always cursed with being an overthinker, and now more than ever it felt like a mental prison.
What if I have a concussion?
What if I never find anyone and starve to death out here?
Or worse, what if something starving finds me?
The thought sent shivers down my spine. I reassured myself that bear sightings in Kentucky were very rare, and that I also was likely the only cougar around.
A much needed giggle escaped my lips. I wasn’t really that old, although if you asked my mother, I was certainly way too old not to be married yet. Is 34 too old to be single? I shrugged. Maybe if I did have a husband though, I wouldn’t be alone right now in the middle of the god-forsaken wilderness…
I finally came to a bend in the river a few miles down and silently prayed that just around it laid some sort of civilization. My heart sunk once I saw it was just more of the same on the other side. Trees as far as the eye could see.
For the first time on one of my adventures, I missed the city. I promised myself that after I got out of here, I’d sell all my hiking equipment and never leave Cincinnati again.
IF… I ever got out of here.
My calves screamed as I trudged several more miles down the bank. My mouth was as dry as cotton and my stomach rumbled with hunger.
It was looking bleak. That positive mindset had just about fully decayed when I caught a glimpse of something bright yellow near the water’s edge.
It couldn’t be…
I screeched with joy and sprinted towards my pack. I grabbed the bag and hugged it like it was a long lost relative.
Jesus Christ, I couldn’t believe it. I scanned the area hoping I’d see my kayak washed ashore as well, but no such luck. Still… I was pretty damn happy as I pulled out a water bottle and a bag of trail mix from within and devoured them with abandon.
Concern receded just enough for hope to make a reappearance.
I was almost laughing until suddenly, a series of grunts followed by a low growl cut my celebration short.
I froze…
My eyes flicked back and forth, up and down the tree line, but I saw nothing. There was no visible sign of where the sound had come from.
It was definitely an animal. And it sounded, big.
I zipped up my bag and threw it over my shoulders as calmly as I could muster, then continued my travel along the riverbed.
My legs twitched with the desire to run, but I knew that was a terrible idea. Almost everything that saw you run would want to give chase. It was the nature of predators.
After about half an hour I finally released the tension in my shoulders and let myself breathe a little. I told myself I was in the clear, but I just couldn’t shake that feeling of being watched. Like a pair of eyes were fixated on my backside.
I was thankful for my pack that was filled with extra clothes, food and water, but I wish I’d found the other one as well.
My smaller bag contained a map, compass, and GPS phone. God, wouldn’t that be helpful…
One call to mom and she’d summon an army of Park Rangers and law enforcement to get me.
I sighed deeply and pressed onward. No use crying over things that could be but weren’t.
I’d lost track of my steps and wasn’t sure how many more miles I’d covered, but it felt like a lot. Exhaustion permeated my muscles, crept into my bones and tip-toed up into the base of my skull.
I ignored the throbbing of a headache and noticed for the first time that it was getting dark, and quickly. And to make matters worse a rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.
“Great…” I muttered.
There were small cave-like divots pressed into the sides of the riverbank, I searched for one large enough to give me some shelter for the night. Much to my dismay, I wasn’t getting out of here today and I desperately needed some sleep.
After an hour of clearing my spot of rocks, then gathering twigs and dead grass from above, I was able to get a small fire going at the mouth of the hole. Thankfully, my trusty lighter came through in a pinch.
If only that joint I’d been saving wasn’t in the small pack…
The fire warmed the space quickly and muted the smell of earth and moss. I tried to keep my eyes open for a while longer to see if the storm would reach me but couldn’t. My eyelids were too heavy, my body screamed for sleep, and it overtook me despite the roar of thunder above.
----
Lightning and heavy rain ripped me from my sleep.
My pants were saturated with mud from where the rain had blown in while I slept. I could see the river had risen further up the bank and was now only a few feet from the entrance of my burrow.
My mind was spinning as I tried to decide what to do when lightning struck a tree on the other side of the bank. It illuminated the black void of the night and for just a moment I thought I saw something on the other side of the dark waters.
My heart thundered in my chest. I could swear I saw something out there, watching…
No, it couldn’t be. It had to have been a trick of the light…
Another strike lit up the earth.
A large, black shape towered over a boulder just on the other side. I couldn’t make out it’s features but it’s face looked white as bone with huge antlers spanning over its head like deciduous tree limbs.
I panicked and sprung from my hiding place like a rabbit.
I clawed up the wet clay of the riverbank and blindly tore through the edge of the forest. Limbs and brush whipped at my face and grabbed at my clothing.
All sense was abandoned, flight had taken over.
My legs carried me for as long as they could until I doubled over at the base of an oak tree and emptied the contents of my stomach.
The rain was almost deafening as it pounded on the leaves above, and yet… three grunts… a growl…
It was close.
I couldn’t see a damn thing. I had to move with my hands outstretched in front of me so that I didn’t collide with a tree.
I pushed deeper into the vegetation, completely unsure of where I was going. But something told me, if it caught me, I was dead. Or worse than dead.
I’d read an article last summer that had stuck with me for the better part of a year, where a girl from Russia had been hiking when a Grizzly bear had descended upon her. She’d played dead like you’re supposed to, but I guess it was hungry and began eating her from the feet up. She called her mother and spoke with her for a while as it ate her.
That story looped in my mind like a nightmare as I wept, pushing through thorns, honeysuckle, and saplings.
I patted the Swiss Army knife in my jean pocket and quietly decided that if I was going to be slowly eaten, I’d jam the blade into my neck.
But I prayed it wouldn’t come to that.
More grunts and growls bellowed from somewhere deep within the bowels of the forest. I screamed back this time as tears mixed with rain on my cheeks.
This is it, this is how I die…
The thought felt resolute and concrete. A fact.
But just as I was about to be resigned to it, mercy found me in the darkness.
Headlights cut through the tree trunks about thirty yards away.
I screamed for help as I rushed towards them.
A semi-truck was turning around a bend as I spilled out onto the asphalt, falling to my knees.
I could hear its brakes lock up as the truck skidded towards me, but I couldn’t move. My chest heaved with heavy sobs as the grill of the rig came to almost kiss my forehead.
“WHAT IN GOD’S NAME!” I heard the driver holler as they slammed the door and raced around to the front.
“Are you okay?! What the hell are you doing out here?” A portly woman in overalls grabbed me by the shoulders and examined my face.
But I couldn’t answer. I was too afraid. Too tired.
“Come on honey, let’s get you in the truck.”
She helped guide me up into the cab on the passenger’s side as she told me everything was going to be okay.
I thought… maybe it could be.
Maybe I was okay.
But as soon as hope bubbled to the surface, it once again was massacred by this new reality.
I watched as she waddled around the side of the semi until disappearing in front of the engine block. I saw a flicker of a shadow in the headlights just for a moment.
Then the cab shook slightly. I gasped and leaned over the dash, desperately searching for the woman but I didn’t see her.
My breath pinched off in my throat like a closed pipe. The suspense of the next ten seconds felt like an eternity.
Curly red hair popped over the hood. I furrowed my brow, what the fu…
Then a terrified face emerged, eyes wide like saucers.
“Oh, God… no…” I whispered.
The woman vomited a stream of crimson blood over the hood.
She mouthed something that I couldn’t make out in the rain fall and then was lifted fully into view, impaled in the torso upon massive antlers.
I screamed and threw myself into the driver’s seat.
The gears groaned in protest as I tried to remember how to work the double clutch. My stepdad had been a trucker his entire life and had shown me how to do it… once.
I finally got it into 1-Low after shouting obscenities at the column.
The truck lurched forwards as I watched as the poor woman disappear below the hood again.
The cab rocked violently as I rolled over her and the creature.
A squeal as loud as a dozen elk came from the undercarriage.
I shifted to second gear, then third as I cleared over the top of them.
I watched the rearview mirror as I drove down the hill. I caught a glimpse of it coming to stand, towering over the road.
“FUCK YOU!” I screeched like a Valkyrie.
The turbo whistled as I sped like a madman until it was out of sight.
I drove and drove. Not even stopping at the first two towns I came across. Not until the sun was fully up.
The tears were dry, and my mind was blank. That strange static came back to fill my head. But this time it was much louder, more like a haunted television. And inside the static I was crying out, but I was lost under the noise.
----
The next day I gave the police my statement, or at least a version of it.
I didn’t lie… but I didn’t tell them everything either because I knew they wouldn’t believe it.
It was chalked up to an animal attack. The National Wildlife Department was looking into it.
Cheryl Kramer was the name of the woman who’d tried to help me. They never found trace of her. I knew that they wouldn’t…
When I got home to my apartment I did just what I’d promised, I sold all my gear and donated any hiking clothes I had.
Everything went back to normal for a while. But sometimes when it rained… I could swear I could see something across the street in the open lot.
Waiting…
Watching…

This post is 4500+ words long BUT I promise you, you will learn MORE than any $10,000 high ticket coaching program…
There’s no TL;DR because I only write for a serious audience that likes to read.
I will teach you everything about High-Ticket today so you can make a lot of money with certainty… everything bout using Facebook Ads… everything about high ticket marketing.
I’m currently spending $500,000-$550,000 a week (with a 3.4x cash ROAS) on Facebook Ads across multiple accounts, so I’m certainly qualified to talk on this subject.
You will never find me on YouTube or TikTok.. but you will certainly find the Gurus.

You’ve seen them everywhere… the GURUs!
Youtube, TikTok, Facebook Groups and Twitter - The courses, the masterminds, the telegram groups, the programs…
From the early 2014 Sam Ovens days, to the Dan Loks, to the Gadhzis, Traffic & Funnels (who ACTUALLY had great products), to Cole Gordon (also has good products)… and modern day 20-something Money Twitter chads… this space is not stopping anytime soon.
This space has been prevalent way before Facebook & YouTube Ads were even a thing…
The REAL Goats like Kevin Nations, Tony Robbins, Jay Abraham… ALL sold BIG TICKET when a dollar was worth a LOT more than the dollar is worth today…
Today you’re seeing the mind boggling figures, the sports cars, the luxury vacations, you’re following Tate… and you want what they have, so you buy the courses and the programs in the hope to get that…
But you won’t get it - unless you understand the GAME. And the name of the game is PSYCHOLOGY. Human psychology.
And in this post I will unravel the mystery behind HOW these Guru’s scale “to-the-moon”…

I will unravel what they know (and you don’t)… so you keep buying (or illegally download) their programs in the hope to get the payoff - which is the money!
And even if you don’t buy their programs, and say, you just rip them off of some site… you’re STILL under their influence.
You STILL think the thoughts that they want you to think. And therefore you cannot solely make decisions based on real wisdom that is yours.
It is cult-like behavior where the Guru leads, and the followers look up to him. The followers then force themselves to think and behave like the Guru they look up to…
It’s sad, because in the process you give your individual thinking power away.
In this post I want to give you the tools, the ammunition and the frame - to think for yourself…
… to understand how marketing works, to understand why some businesses make millions while the majority just can’t even get their business off the ground…
And more importantly, I want to give you the power to use these tools to make a lot of money for yourself WITHOUT supplicating to a guru.

Does that mean you should NOT buy programs? No I don’t mean that.
I have personally paid for (and will continue to pay for) expensive masterminds and coaching programs… BUT the difference is… I don’t BLINDLY follow anyone.
I am able to take the BEST parts from everyone I have learned from, and modify it to create my methods that suits my businesses the best.
And I want the same for you.

THE FUNDAMENTALS BEFORE MEDIA BUYING

A lot of you just jump straight to launching ads WITHOUT understanding the fundamentals.
And I don’t mean just the Ad network fundamentals… but literally marketing fundamentals that attract your ideal customers.
I’ll keep it simple.
The High-Ticket sales process looks like this:
Audience -> Copy -> OffeFunnel -> Ads -> Lead Gen -> Sales 101 + Nurturing -> Application -> Sales Call -> Close
The problem is - none of you look at the entire chain above. Everyone’s just shooting for “Leads”
In fact, the term “lead gen” is so bastardized today that a “Lead” itself has no value - because it has no foundation.
In another post I wrote about how YOU have to define what a Lead means to YOU.
So if you’re just going to shoot for leads, what does that really mean? - Is it an opt-in? - a registration? - An application? - a sales meeting booked? - a sales meeting show up?
You can’t know how to work the economics in your favor, if you don’t look at the big picture…
You need to OPTIMIZE everything on a straight line and hand hold a “Top-of-funnel-prospect” into becoming a “Bottom-of-funnel-client”
Hand holding is key.
At any step in the funnel BEFORE the sale if you leave their hand, you will LOSE them.
Your prospects are like your kids. You need to hold their hand until they are confident they can find their own way…
Similarly, you need to hold your prospects hand, and not leave it, until they can confidently make a decision to work with you.
Btw this works for high-ticket & low-ticket both… we’re however only addressing high-ticket fundamentals in this post.

SO WHAT DOES HAND HOLDING MEAN? IT MEANS "CHAIN-LINKING"

The process of taking your prospects from first seeing your Ad -> appealing to their core desires -> modifying their intent & motivation -> nurturing them on the back with emails & sms -> qualifying them via the application process -> making the sales touch points -> closing the deal…
… all of this has to be done using “Chain-linking”
If even one link in this entire chain breaks, your ENTIRE sales process will fall FLAT.
And you won’t even know who or what to blame. - Should you blame the ads? - Should you blame the copy? - The funnel architecture? - The sales person?
You can’t even isolate - and you’ll just turn off the entire campaign… and eventually, your business.

THE GURUS’ SECRET

Pay attention!
All gurus are MASTERS of “chain-linking”
All gurus appeal to your inner-most, CORE desires, lure you in by targeting your PAIN points, then modify your intentions, motivations and your thought processes…
… eventually you’re at the other end of the chain, either reading a sales letter, or watching a webinar, or a VSL… and ultimately buying their courses and programs.
The chain starts from a TOF (top of funnel) video ad, or tweet/thread, or YouTube/TikTok video saying certain things that grabs your attention… and triggers your emotions….
… That links into multiple other videos that “arouse desire” and give you the impression that you’re learning something that will help you achieve your desire…
… but in reality the only thing you’re learning, is to “trust the guru”… and by virtue of that trust you must believe everything they say is true…
… when the Guru has established THAT level of trust, where you believe everything they say is true, you are in what is a called, a “SOLD STATE”.
Chain-Linking is ALL about moving prospects from “attention state” to “sold state”

The reason WHY Gurus are able to sell High-Ticket at SCALE… is because they are able to move thousands of prospects from “attention state” to “sold state” via Chain-Linking.
When a prospect is in the “sold state” you don’t have to sell him. He sells himself on your product.
This is why today, high-pressure sales tactics have EVOLVED into chain-linking sales tactics…
… because technology via the means of YouTube videos, TikTok Videos, Instagram videos is changing peoples thoughts, beliefs, motivations at scale.
Let me give you an example. Take a look at what Iman Gadzhi has been doing with his “Great Reset” series or whatever it’s called.
He’s created a MASSIVE chain-link.
He has 3-4 YouTube videos in this series… and the job of EACH YouTube video is to connect you to the next video - where the story moves forward.
It’s like watching a Netflix show for these kids.

At the END of the chain he sells you his program. But the mastery is in his “Chain-Linking”
1) His Chain starts with a sensational announcement across multiple platforms: YT, Email list, Telegram Group, Insta stories… 2) The announcement teases a “groundbreaking” revelation of the “puppet masters of the banking cartel” and how they’re going to make & keep his prospects miserably poor (touches on the pain points, triggers certain emotions..) 3) The video releases, the production is top quality, the message is extremely sensational like you’re watching a late-night history-channel conspiracy theory show (addictive elements that trigger & glue the reptile brain) 4) The video ends on a sort of cliff hanger that pushes his audience to make sure they watch the next video that releases a few days later, to complete the story and mystery he is “revealing” so they can protect themselves from “tyranny” 5) He has additional components to his chain that make his viewership go viral in the form of free giveaways, cash prizes for liking & commenting on his videos - so he games the YT algos at scale (and actually gives away thousands of dollars in cash which is cool, as that’s fed into his customer acquisition cost). 6) There’s mass hysteria among his target audience, and without them realizing this, they’re giving away their thinking power to him. He thinks for them, they just DO based on what he thinks is right for them. That is to start an agency. Across the several videos they don’t realize but he’s changed their thoughts, their beliefs, and he’s modified their intent and motivations. 7) At the end of the chain his prospects are lead to buy his Agency Navigator program. At this point they are already in the “SOLD STATE” via the Chain-linking mechanism described above. A slight push-over-the-fence from a sales rep, and they all buy PROVIDED it’s a good offer.

There are several components to a successful chain, and there are SPECIFIC methods & actions you need to take to make sure the chain is strong - so you can SCALE your High-Ticket sales.
But you need to understand, that what’s even MORE important than simply running ads to get high ticket clients, is to link a strong chain together.

Again, I am NOT saying this is evil manipulation.
It is ONLY evil, if you falsely advertise your products & services.
If the product or service is fake and doesn’t deliver results, then it’s a CON.
If the product or service is beneficial for the buyer, then it’s MARKETING.

THE COMPONENTS OF THE CHAIN

There are several components to a strong chain, but they are ALL glued together with the power of words.
Whether it’s a video, or written copy - it’s all words.
It’s really only WORDS that has moved human beings from a relatively new species on the planet, to the world’s most powerful & dominant species.
The ability to communicate articulately, transfer thoughts, trigger emotions, transfer ideas, instill beliefs, motivate and inspire actions — That’s what separates us from every other species in the animal kingdom.
- We use WORDS to make people and things move. - We use WORDS to make people create things out of thin air. - We use WORDS to drive people to take action.
Words create visuals in the mind -> visuals create feelings in the body -> feelings arouse desire in the heart -> desire creates motivation to do something -> and the will to do something inspires action
A chain is an assembly of links. A ROBUST assembly is what makes the chain-link STRONG.

These are the components of a robust chain: 1) Words 2) Visuals 3) Feelings 4) Desire 5) Motivation 6) Inspiration 7) Action

At the Top-Of-Funnel of your chain you grab attention with words
Your words should create specific visuals in your prospects minds
Those visuals should make your prospects feel certain things (now they are his visuals & his feelings)
Those feelings should elicit desire for something that he wants
That desire should motivate him to want to accomplish something now
That motivation to accomplish something now should inspire him to take ACTION now!

Every component of the chain needs to worked on thoroughly. You should NEVER take your prospect for granted.
Remember this... -Just because he clicks on your Ad doesn’t mean he will sign up -Just because he signs up doesn’t mean he will watch your video -Just because he starts watching your video doesn’t mean he will complete it -Just because he watches your entire video doesn’t mean he will apply & book a call -Just because he books a call doesn’t mean he will show up -Just because he shows up doesn’t mean he will buy your program

Are you starting to see clearly now?
EVERY component of the chain needs to be thoroughly worked on…
And it needs to be worked on using the power of words.
If you’re not good at writing, then you need to work with a copywriter. A direct response copywriter.
But you will NOT succeed if you cannot write good copy. You need good copy for your videos, your sales letters, your VSLs, your ads, your creatives, all your pages…
Without good copy you will certainly never make it on the internet. Or to put it rather simply - if you want to make it on the internet you need to get good at writing well.
If you’d like to get good at copywriting, you can read my book to learn advanced copywriting frameworks to sell your offers on the internet - you’ll find it on my profile.

So how do you assemble the components of the chain you ask? Keep reading…

THE FORMULA TO ASSEMBLE THE COMPONENTS

Marketing is a creative science. And science follows formulas. There are 4 main pillars to assemble the components of the chain.
The components of the assembly line are based on these 4 pillars: 1) Pain & Problems 2) Mistakes 3) Pleasures 4) Solutions
To dive deeper…
1) Pain & Problems… your prospects are having 2) The mistakes… they’re making due to which they’re having these problems 3) The pleasure… they will derive from fixing these mistakes 4) Your solution… that will help them fix their mistakes, eliminate their problems and help them experience the pleasures they want
These pillars allow you to strengthen the components of your chain...
When you’re trying to move prospects from “attention state” to “sold state”… … When you’re trying to move them from “words” to “action”…
… the more you base your components on these 4 pillars the more successful you will be.

You’ll need these pillars in: 1) Ad copy 2) Sales Letters 3) VSLs 4) Emails 5) Organic YT, TikTok videos
Now remember the High-Ticket sales process I mentioned earlier:
Audience -> Copy -> OffeFunnel -> Ads -> Lead Gen -> Sales 101 + Nurturing -> Application -> Sales Call -> Close
That’s the overall big picture chain…
To attract your audience and close them, you have to move them from “words” to “action”. You need all the components between words & action to move them from “attention” to “sold state”.
And your components need to be based on the 4 pillars I just taught you.
The threshold for how well someone responds to pointing out their pain & problems, directly corresponds to their “emotional state” - but that’s a topic for another post.
Going forward, when you look at Gurus online, pay attention! You will notice these pillars, you’ll notice the components, and you’ll clearly see the invisible “chain-linking” in action…
Only this time you WON'T unconsciously participate in their chain, but you will observe what they’re doing with this newfound wisdom you have.
You will be able to study their marketing, understand what’s going on, and optimize your own marketing based on what you see happening in the market.
This is why it’s important to learn the FUNDAMENTALS.
You don’t just blindly wanna follow Gurus, instead, you want to understand HOW their marketing works - so you can make your marketing better than theirs!

THE FACEBOOK ADS FUNNEL

Facebook is my favorite Ad network. I’ve made millions of dollars using it… For other businesses, I’ve made over $55M+ in just the last 3 years…
I’ve been running Facebook Ads since 2010 (still have that Ad account). BEFORE they even had this thing called the “pixel”. Back then we would just buy impressions by targeting interests - there were no optimization events.
As of today, it’s an extremely intelligent Ad network.
The cost effective ability to just launch an offer and start making money from the first day of running ads, just doesn’t exist on other networks…
Most people fail on Facebook because their fundamentals are not in order. The same fundamentals I just taught you in the sections above.
But now that YOU have your fundamentals sorted, you can confidently run Ads, and you will make money with certainty!
However, before you start running Ads you need to make sure you’ve set up your structures correctly - so that you don’t get banned or get your accounts disabled.
Read my blueprint here on how to properly configure your Facebook Ads setup so you’re good to run profitable ads without the worries of getting your ad accounts banned or restricted…

WHAT WORKS FOR HIGH-TICKET?
Models change as markets get more sophisticated.
What was new becomes old, and what’s old could possibly become new again. But in most cases old models never return.
The pager will never return, fax will never return…
In high-ticket marketing we used to have Webinars. The webinar model was popularized by Sam Ovens. Many experts then taught what he taught - and eventually the webinar model stopped working.
There are a plethora of models that have come and gone… we had the long form VSL (with text subtitles)…
We had the case study model… then we had the 5-min VSL (which is still doing well)… now Podcast VSLs are becoming the new thing…
The question you need to ask yourself, is what does YOUR market consume?
What skills can you bring to the table to make your assets more engaging? Are you good at video? Are you good at writing copy? Are you a good media buyer? Are you good at SEO? What is YOUR skill?
YOUR skill needs to be the primary driver of your campaign.
For me it’s always been copywriting that’s my primary skill - I can write 10,000 words a day if I really want to without getting bored. I genuinely love it.
So naturally, sales letters were the primary driver of my campaign.
So in this post I’ll talk about my Sales Letter Method that’s left industry experts astonished at my results.

My sales letters in the high ticket space have turned: - $4k of Ad spend into $10M for a investment offer - $7k of Ad spend into $200k/month for enterprise software - $5k of Ad spend into $50k/month for web development agencies - $500k of Ad spend into $3M/month for home & bath remodeling

I’ve done the sales letter method in 37+ industries, over 217 businesses and $55M+ revenue generated..
Here’s how it works.

The Sales Letter Method

On the surface the concept is simple. You write a long form sales letter for your market with your offer. You have NO opt-in page… you send traffic straight to the long-form.
The sales letter is usually 3000-4000 words long. The goal of the sales letter is to educate + motivate the reader. Educate them on what they’ve been missing… and motivate them to take action.
It works in every industry.
One of my clients named Arash hit $20,000/month in commissions selling mortgages, with a simple sales letter backed by only $1.5k in Ad spend…
And then I have real estate brokers who’ve sold multi-million dollar luxury homes using the sales letter method.
The goal is to heighten emotional impact via education and then motivate them to get the pay off.
There is NO call-to-action anywhere on the page, except for the BOTTOM.
Only after they’ve read the entire sales letter, at the bottom of the page they find a CTA that asks them to opt-in to proceed to an application.
When you do this, you eliminate bad leads, and only have qualified prospects at the bottom of the letter.
After they opt-in, they have to fill an application form that further qualifies their intent. This application will tell you if they’re motivated to get started soon, if they have money to spend with you, what kind of help they need, if you’re able to even help them etc. etc. - the more information they give you in the application the more motivated they are…
After they fill up the application form, you send them to your calendar to book an appointment. They select a day & time and book that meeting.
With the sales letter method we shorten the chain, we make it tight and only let QUALIFIED prospects through the door… those who are motivated and ready to buy your products right now…
The sales letter method can easily get you from $0 to $50k-$100k a month. On a light $5k-$8k ad spend..
The sales letter method replaces the webinar because nobody wants to watch 1 hour long videos to get the payoff - if the market is sophisticated - people want the solution now… and that’s what the sales letter gives them.
If your sales letter has ALL the components of the chain based on the 4 pillars I mentioned above - you will have a HIT letter! And this letter can make you lots of money for a year or two easily.
So naturally the next step is to understand how to run Facebook Ads and throw traffic at this sales letter that brings you high-ticket clients.

FACEBOOK CAMPAIGNS

The setup is extremely simple. I’ve written a TON of posts on how to setup your campaigns in detail which you can find anywhere on my profile.
But since this post is already getting too long, it’ll keep it short.
a) You create 1 CBO b) 1 Ad Set c) 1 or 2 Ads 1) Set the budget on the CBO to $100 per day (…or $50 per day if you use my special targeting method explained later in this post)
2) With the Ad set stack it up with audiences relevant to your niche, and make sure you narrow them down to your particular demographic (when you use my special targeting method you don’t need to do this - instead you directly target people with money!)
3) Keep your audience size between 3M-5M
4) Set placements to Facebook newsfeed ONLY
5) On the Ads level write 1 ad with mid-form copy 500 words max… and have 2 creatives in there.
And that’s all. Just leave it alone. This setup alone should get you 2-5 appointments a day…
As you want to increase lead flow, simply bump up the budgets and wait 3-5 days for the ad sets to optimize.
If you want to spread lead flow across multiple sales teams, just make sure you add more creatives as you bump budgets up.

TARGETING

Targeting can make or break your campaigns. Yet this is what confuses most people. And now with Facebook removing interests by the thousands, and Google removing targeting options everyday… it’s become even more confusing.
The main thing you want to look for when targeting is “intent”. If you change your focus from demographic to “prospect intent” you will be more successful.
When you think within the constraints of avatademographic - you’ll be very restricted. Restricted because you’ll type in the same first things that come to all your competitors minds.
So what ends up happening is everyone targets the same interests and keywords - and that drives competition up.
When all your competitors are targeting the same keywords and interests that also drives CPMs up - so advertising becomes increasingly expensive.
That comes with the added issue that your prospects are seeing the SAME messaging from multiple people, they’re seeing the same claims being made - that makes markets sophisticated.
So you need to focus on prospect “intent” and think of what their intentions are, and target their intentions.
One of the things I am currently doing is targeting “High-Intent Audiences”
If you’re technically savvy you’ll understand what I mean by the following: Since interests on Facebook don’t work as well as they used to, due to increased competition and fewer interests available, I’ve started targeting custom lists.
What I do works very well.
I developed a tool at my agency that scrapes & builds large targeted lists of High-Intent prospects. The tool grabs hundreds of thousands of emails & phones from FB profile IDs then matches them with other social parameters on LinkedIn, IG, Twitter etc.
This can be done in any niche, and you can do it too. Or you can use mine, just ask me or send me a message.
I then upload these lists to any FB Ad account via their API and after they match the lists with their datasets - I always end up getting a 80-85% match rate.
That’s great because with a list of 100,000 contacts, even if 80,000 match - I am now able to create 1-2% LOOKALIKES of this targeted list.
This allows me to target millions of people that have shown HIGH-INTENT for the products and services I am advertising.
For example, I do this a lot when helping investment funds get accredited investors. It’s not easy to target by net worth on FB anymore - so with my tool I am able to laser target exactly who fits the accredit bracket and target only them with Ads.
This has resulted in $50 appointment bookings for investment funds with 7-figure accredited investors. This is how I was able to help one fund accrue $10M with just a $4k in ad spend.
You can easily do this if you understand apps and how to use the FB API - it will require some coding and programming on you part..
Or you can use some high-intent marketing and targeting tools to get your hands on such lists and then target them with your ads.

FINAL WORDS

If you’ve read up to this part you’re my type of person. I spend hours on the internet reading long form content. I have a voracious appetite for reading & writing.
Also, if you’re read up until this point you’re probably very intelligent and I would love to be friends with you. If you enjoyed my content, and found it valuable and beneficial in anyway, please share it with your network.
Please share it with anyone you think will benefit from this knowledge. I love to write and educate people, and more importantly I love connecting with my readers. So feel free to leave a comment below and send me a message if you’d like to be friends!

Here are some Reddit links to some valuable posts I’ve written in the past, I hope you find them beneficial:
- How 1 CBO on Facebook brings 200+ Leads per month & 80+ QUALIFIED booked calls…
- How To Get 50+ Hot Leads & Sales Meetings Per Week Using High Intent Customer Targeting (FACEBOOK ADS)
- How to ACTUALLY get Quality Leads using Facebook Ads and make a lot of money
- The "2023 How-To-Get-Clients Playbook" From an 8-Figure Marketer
Have a great day/night!

Is this a hot take? Quite possibly if I go by what this and other subreddits are like but hear me out first.
I'm mostly a solo queue player though I will dup or trio with friends or randoms that communicate but I'd guess about 75% of my games this season are solo queue.
Since I started the game, I've been gradually getting better, hitting that "gold" bottle neck, then the "platinum bottle neck" and then simply the "I don't play enough games to truely climb higher" over the last couple of seasons. I hit Diamond once.
Feeling: Last season it was a hot mess, some games I was better then people, other games I was the worst player in the lobby and by the time I made platinum I was constantly seeing Diamonds, Masters and Preds in my lobbies whilst still seeing Bronze to Gold players as teammates.
It started to stop being fun so I played less. I'm an older gamer with other hobbies so I'm not exactly willing to throw hundreds of hours at a brick wall and I learn slower then I used to. When all it's going to keep doing was put me in lobbies against people I have no reasonable chance of beating.
It's like putting a load of lower division footballers/cricketers/american footballers/baseball players etc.. in the very top leagues and going - it's ok, you just keep palying against these pro's, you'll get better.... Yes, maybe they will but they're not going to become that level themselves. Skill is a thing and some people are jsut better at stuff then others - Someone has to be last place.
The climb was just... horrible. It was a sentiment shared by a huge majority of players from what I could tell.
There was also the general feeling that this was no longer a battle royale but just a looter shooter and hot drops was all the majority seemed to do.
This season I feel like every game I have a chance, I'm fighting people who have a similar level of skill to me (most of the time), if I'm getting out played I can get away - I'm 'alright' with Pathfinder and can get away if it goes to hell. That top 20% of the playerbase can still chase me down and the top 10% will still kill me. The climb has so far been enjoyable. The skill level feels fairer, the opponents I feel are fairer, I have a chance. Now I'm hitting Diamond and Masters lobbies and I'm getting wrecked, getting beat, but I'm not getting absolutely rolled. I'm not seeing those Masters and Preds every other lobby bouncing off walls and one clipping me because I missed my shots and didn't hug the cover instantly.
I don't care that I'm Diamond and that there is a huge amount of palyers that are Diamonds or Masters but the fact I'm being rewarded for playing well (well, not amazing) is great.
Does that mean I should be Diamond? Does that mean I should be able to push masters? Possibly? Possibly not? I just want balance and for the first time in APEX I feel like it's balanced.
Statisitcally: Last Season I had just over 200 games per split and made Platinum 3 in both splits. Started in Bronze 2 I think?
0.9KD, 7% win rate, 30% top 5s, AVG Damage 427, highest kills 9, 2 win streak, 85 revives and 24 respawns.
This season I have just made Diamond 4 (for my 2nd ever time) in 180 games. (It started me in Rookie 4) 1.05KD, 8.5% win rate, 50% Top 5s, AVG Damage 520, Highest Kills 9, 2 win stream, 37 revives, 45 respawns.
Closing Thoughts:
To me, all of this feels fairer and more balanced. Every game I have a chance. There are a lot of people ratting for points and climbing - that's ok I guess? They don't ruin the game for me. They're just another thing to watch for. Does my current stats and performance mean I'm where I should be? I don't know - I don't particularily mind thats for Respawn to reflect on.
But I'm having a blast with APEX this season, people are playing it like a Battle Royale, they're doing everything they can to win. Playing it safe, Playing it agressively, Taking fights, Running from stupid ones.
Solid season for me.
Thanks for reading (if anyone did) if not, was happy just to vent for myself :)

I know you’ll never see this letter, and I suppose I should be grateful for that, but I still feel so stupid for writing it. Stupid because there’s no reason my feelings should be this strong and my heart should hurt this badly. We were only talking for a few short weeks but, man, I fell HARD and I fell FAST. But now it’s all over and I’m left here to pick up the pieces. I’m sure you’re happy with her, and that’s great. I want you to be happy. But I want to be happy too. So, in an attempt to help heal my broken heart, I just wanted to write down (almost) all the things I’ll never get to say:
-When you first messaged me after we matched for the 4th time in as many years, you said “the universe just wants us to be together.” I responded by saying “and who are we to tell the universe it’s wrong?” Well, we called the universe’s bluff and now I feel like I’m the one paying the price for it. You get to move on and fall in love and I get to sit at home, too afraid to go out anywhere in case I run into you. If I need to drive through your neighborhood to get somewhere, I’ll take a longer route just to avoid the possibility of seeing you.
-I still walk the dog on that nature trail and by the park where we had our first date. I feel safe there because you didn’t know it existed before I told you about it, and there’s a very slim chance you’ll ever go back. It’s the dog’s favorite route to walk along though, so I still take him every day after work. But it breaks my heart to be there because all I can think of is you, and our conversation, and the way my head rested perfectly on your chest when we hugged because you’re so tall, and the way your lips felt pressed against mine.
-the dog is on a diet and I hate that every time I feed him, the sound of kibble and chicken falling into his bowl is replaced with your laughter as you said “aww no look at him, he ain’t missing no meals!” He was wary of you, but oddly enough I think he misses you. When we pass by someone on our walks that looks even remotely like you, his tail will wag uncontrollably and he tries to jump on them. He still growls a bit, but he just seems sad when he realizes it’s not you. I do too.
-I hate doing laundry now because doing laundry means I need to open the closet door where the washer and dryer are. The same door you picked me up and pressed me up against, my legs wrapped around your waist, when you did everything you could to turn me into putty in your hands. I want to pull those doors off the hinges so I don’t have to look at them every day.
-You ruined chocolate chip cookies for me. They were my favorite midnight snack and now all I think about is baking late-night, post-sex cookies with you. I’ve been fortunate to live my entire life without any allergies, but now it feels like just one cookie will kill me. Even when I pass by the pre-made dough in the grocery store, I can feel my heart constrict and my throat close up.
-You ruined Star Wars for me. I thought it was so cute how you, a chemistry nerd, never saw the penultimate nerd series. I was excited for our plans to have a movie marathon. I was excited to show you to the galaxy. Now I stop the microwave before the timer hits 0:00 because it sounds like R2-D2 and it makes me lose my appetite.
-I bought new lingerie I was hoping to surprise you with. It arrived in the mail after we stopped talking. I can’t even force myself to try them on to make sure the sizes are correct. They’re just sitting in a drawer with the tags still on, collecting dust. I used to feel sexy and confident in my underwear. Now I feel like a sheepish little girl, too afraid to undress in the locker room before PE class.
-I told you I didn’t want kids, and that only one man in my entire life truly made me consider starting a family, but that he hurt me so badly I was completely sworn off. That was a lie. Maybe not at first, but it became a lie. When I found out you had a kid, after the shock and hurt subsided, after you spoke of how much you love your child, there was a second man I could see holding my child in his arms. You. A gorgeous little creature who would be the best parts of you and me put together. Now I fear that if I ever have children, I’ll resent them because they won’t be half of you.
-I hate that every time I see a car like yours, my heart skips a beat. I almost got into an accident the other day because I thought I passed you on my way into town. I’m afraid to drive now because all I do is look out for your car, wondering if you’re looking out for mine.
-I hate how deeply I care about you, and how I wish you nothing but the purest love and happiness. I hate that I can’t hate you. It would all be so much easier if I hated you. I wouldn’t be hurting so much. I could chalk this all up to the fact that you’re an asshole. A player. You used me and threw me away. But that’s not you. You’re kind and caring and gentle and, if I had only given us a proper chance, I could have known what it would feel like to be truly loved by you.
-I hate that I swallowed my pride and apologized, when I honestly didn’t have much to apologize for, only to be met with silence. My pride was all I had left, and now that’s gone too. And I especially I hate how pathetic and desperate this all sounds. After my last serious heartbreak, I put so much time and effort into myself, and I reminded myself that I am amazing and anyone is lucky to have me. Now I’m back to apologizing for using up oxygen.
-I hate that I believed you when you said you still wanted me, desired me, even though I could feel the distance between us growing larger. And I hate that now you’re so cold, so indifferent. I hate that you act like it was all just in my head. Even if it was, I wish you would just say that instead of leaving me with radio silence. It would be easier to understand that maybe I really am just obsessive or crazy, than to be left wondering how it all went wrong. But I know there’s nothing to wonder about. You said that if you didn’t want to talk to me, you wouldn’t. It appears you are a man of your word. I just wish I took you at your word when I still had the chance.
-You said I don’t know you or understand you, and I hate that you’re right. I hate that you don’t know or understand me either. We never gave each other the chance to. And I hate that we’ll probably never get that chance again.
-I want you to be happy, and I hope she does make you happy. But, like I said, I want to be happy too. I want to be with you. I want to hear your laugh again, see your perfect smile again, hear your heart beat as I lay on your chest again. I want to feel you in me again, holding me tightly. I want to sit on the swing with you, my legs across your lap as I listen to you tell me all your wildest stories. I want to feel your lips press against my forehead as you slip out of bed. I just want to feel like you care again. Even if it was all in my head.
I know we may never speak again, but I want you to know that I will always want you. And I hate that. But I don’t hate you. Not even a little bit.
Yours, always.
Baddie

Swiss miss hot chocolate nutrition facts

Nearly a half a pound of sugar and almost a full day’s worth of salt!