What the fuck? did we even read the same fucking Novel ?
​
Why did you fucks even read Reverend insanity?
Was it Not to be An Absolute God in another world and be completely Sovereign, Powerful, Kill whoever the fuck you want, hold power, ambition and Defy the heavens themselves!!
​
What are these absolute pussies in this subreddit complaining about every little morally grey idea or joking about muuh "most sane ri fan"
Fuck off!
​
Yeah I wanna feel like a Fucking God, rocking and killing people where I wish, Absolutely free to do whatever the fuck i want!
​
and I dont want that to be easy at all, I want the Hardest fucking world possible and me to Fight on the edge of death, suffering hardships and still advancing to the absolute end! I wanna Fight the strongest smartest beings and compete for the absolute top and for the transcendance of that world to put an absolute inferno in me!!
​
Every single climax in every Book was Absolute Fire! An Absolute Majestic display! a Heavenly experience! An Explosion of dopamine rush that completely fulfilles the deepest core of my being
​
I did not read Reverend insanity, I am Reverend insanity!
​
When I enter the story, the entire physical world disappears for me
​
I enter the Novel, EVERYTHING IN IT IS TRUE, REAL and Directly in front of my eyes!
​
to me, This World is Not Real, Reverend insanity is Reality!
​
When Fang yuan fights, I Fight!
I walked in the Reverse flow river!
I fought Feng jiu ge!
I use the Spring autumn cicada!
I Kill Duke Long!
I Destroy Fate!
I became Venerable!
I do not read the story, I am the Story!
Thats why in each climax in each story arc, I am in Absolute bliss of Epicness!
​
Epic music all the way, I feel Infinite bliss and shiver at this absolute Masterpiece!
Giving each scene its time and my mind completely focused for hours, for days till I become the Story
​
I do not read Fang yuan! I am Fang yuan!
​
For 5 months straight of 12 hour day reading, I was Completely Reverend insanity, Pure Heavenly Experience, The Pinnacle of my life and The Absolute meaning that animated my existence
​
I feel nothing is left to accomplish after experiencing this Transcendence
​
When I read it, I talked to no one, barely showered, barely ate, barely drank, I had no fucking life
​
I lived the Fate war, I am Tao zhu, I am all the characters and lived in them and in their back stories
I cried with them, laughed with them, smiled with fang yuan, died with him, returned in time, I was him
​
until after the novel finished did I remember this shitty world where people consider talking a walk or eating something wasting time on.
​
I wanna fight the heavens, kill, do whatever the fuck i want and bask in my eternal freedom!
​
Is this too much to ask for?
Is there a single Actual Real reader of Reverend insanity here? or is it just me ?

“Last time on Total Drama Revenge of the Island! The campers did a fun game of Truth-or-Laser-Shark, which they revolted against, so we instead did a Harold-McGrady-brand-patented obstacle course! Lightning got the boot in the Catapult of Shame (Trademark Pending) because the bird is no longer with us. Or, so it seems. We also cut the Chris Mclean campfire due to budget constraints. Truly tragic, I know. What’ll happen in this episode? What embarrassing comment will Sam make this time? Find out right now on Total Drama Revenge of the Island!”
The Mutant Maggots were sleeping soundly in the luxurious spa hotel. Zoey, in particular, was loving the lavish lifestyle. Her family wasn’t the richest. The whole reason she joined to show was to make some money, to help her father out. It’d been a hard-knock life (Pun very much intended, Zoey loved that film) for her and her father ever since her mother had died. She was determined to bring the money home, no matter what. She’d also joined the show to (hopefully) make some friends. A lonely girl, she was. (Wow, she really was just stocked to the brim with references today.) But it was true! She’d make a friend in this a sweer body on her team, Mike. Nothing out of the ordinary…. Besides the fact that he was her DREAM GUY!! Nice, cute, and got her references! Just thinking about him made her swoon. She shrugged it off and got out of her bed. She did not want to leave, but she had to. After all, it was her tradition to wake up extra early in the mornings and take a walk around her neighborhood. Or, in this case, the island. She slowly inched out of bed, taking account of the sleeping Anne-Maria. She quickly got dressed and brushed her teeth, opening the door. The cool September air hit her, and she shivered. But she loved it. Everything about the island was so peaceful. The waves crashed against the beach. The birds squawked in the distance. She took in a deep breath. It was truly amazing. She started to walk around the island, soaking in the sunlight. Suddenly, she heard the creaking of a door. She turned around. It was Jo.
“Hey, Zoey,” she said, speeding up as she went.
Zoey realized she had the perfect opportunity to make a new friend!
“No, wait! I was wondering if-um, if- you’d like to go on a walk with me?”
(…she Nailed It.)
Jo looked at her, slightly confused. “Uh… Sure?”
Jo wasn’t used to anyone wanting to actually be next to her. Willingly. You couldn’t have waterboarded this information out of her, but the true reason she joined Total Drama was very different from the persona she displayed. Of course, she wanted the Million. Who didn’t? But she also wanted a friend. Someone real! Someone who wouldn’t be scared of her. She was quickly snapped out of her daydreams. Zoey was asking her something.
“Uh, so… Why’d you join Total Drama?” She asked. The early morning sunlight hit her face perfectly.
“Well, for the money! Why else would I join?” She lied.
“Well, I joined to make friends,” said Zoey.
Jo took a mental note of that. I guess she wasn’t the only lonely girl on the island.
“Do you have any siblings?” Zoey asked.
“Yeah. I Have 4 older brothers. But if you came by my house, it certainly wouldn’t seem like it!” Jo laughed. Her laugh was burly and loud. But it was also infectious and full of joy. Zoey smiled and started laughing too. Soon, all that could be heard was the joyous harmony of the two girl's laughter.
Staci was having a much worse time. It was 9:30 when she woke up. She had about 10 minutes to spare before that challenge began. All she could think about was how much she utterly hated herself. She would never dare to admit it, though. She constantly hid behind her thick layer of lies. She wished that she could just stop. But no matter how many times she’d say that she’d stop, it never came. She never stopped lying. Everyone in her life hated her, and she knew it. She was surprised that she wasn’t the first boot, for crying out loud. She slowly climbed out of the crappy bed and walked to the main lodge. She walked in, hunched over. She felt invisible.
“Hey! Come sit with us!”
…Was that to her?
She turned over to find Dawn and B, her fellow teammates, calling to her. Dawn was smiling at her.
That’s new, she thought.
She gingerly took a seat next to the two. The bigger one, whose name was B, wrote something down on his notepad.
Hello! You looked lonely, so I asked Dawn to invite you to our table! Don’t worry, we don’t bite.
Staci still couldn’t process this. Nobody had ever willingly let her sit with them.
“…Thank you.”
B wrote something on his notepad.
You seem a bit tense. You alright?
“Yeah. I was just thinking. You know, my great, great-”
But Staci stopped halfway.
“You know, this dude named William Holley invented that notepad! He invented the pad around when he innovated the idea to collect all the paper scraps from various factories.”
She had done it. She hadn’t lied, for once in her life! She had finally done it!
But before Staci could celebrate, Chris threw open the door, carrying a boombox. He strutted into the lodge, then planted his feet in the center of the room and started to do that one Fortnite dance we all collectively forgot about.
“Please stop,” said Dakota. She was comforting a crying Sam, who was devastated that anyone was still doing that dance.
After a grueling thirty seconds, he finally stopped doing the awful dance.
“Ok, ok, I'll stop! Anyways, today’s challenge is called Wawanakwa Musical! Teams must perform a skit. Everyone must have a speaking part, and it must have a corny message about something found in a typical High School Disney Channel movie. The team with the best number gets to pair up people to go to prom, while the other team gets it randomly. The couples need to face off in prom-themed challenges, such as drinking all the punch, dancing off, and something else I wouldn't want to spoil for you all. The campers who win the most challenges and make the best skit will win!"
“I don't even want to know what that last challenge will be," said Mike.
"Don't worry, nothing too dangerous!" Chris replied. Some of the campers exchanged worried glances.
“Oh, a skit! How exciting!” Chirped Ella, the secret 7th member of the Mutant Maggots. She was surrounded by animals, per the norm.
“Can you please get your stupid animal friends out of my face!?” Shouted Scott, who had become a resting place for the birds, having several perched on his head.
“Little ones, farewell! You must depart, at least for now,” she said, the heartbreak break in her voice crystal clear.
Confessional- Brick.
“Is it just me, or was that girl not here before? But I’m not complaining! Another member of our troop is just what we need!” Brick blushed.
End Confessional.
“I can already tell this one has a wonderful soul! Her aura is exceptionally bright pink, and it suits her wonderfully. As to how she teleported here? Beats me."
End Confessional.
We cut to all the campers outside the main lodge. The Mutant Maggots were doing a group huddle to brainstorm ideas.
“Ok. Mags. Let’s organize a game plan! We’ve got this in the bag if we work hard and persevere!” Said Brick.
“Never call us “Mags” again,” snarked Jo.
“I like that attitude, Brick! I think our message should be about spreading kindness and not bullying!” Chirped Ella.
“I, um, thank you,” fumbled Brick, who was not used to someone complimenting him for a change.
“We need to cast everyone as a part. First off, we’ll need a bully character. Any volunteers?”
Most eyes went to Mike, the self-proclaimed Actor. He started to sweat but soon realized his team needed him. He sighed and took off his shirt. He instantly switched to Vito, one of Mike’s many alters.
“Ayo, what seems to be the issue?” said Vito. Anne-Maria was enamored instantly.
Confessional- Zoey.
“Mike sure does take his acting seriously. Must be a method actor. Not going to lie, it’s a bit weird. But I like weird!”
End Confessional.
“Who knew you had such a bod under that shirt?” Swooned Anne-Maria. She jumped on Vito, who didn’t mind.
“Ok Mike, we get it, you’re a good actor. Are you doing this or not?” screamed an irritated Jo.
“Yeah. sure, whatever,” said a completely uninterested Vito.
“We’ll also need a victim and five other roles. Any ideas?” asked Brick.
“How about we have one bystander and three people who spread the anti-bully message?” Ella suggested.
“Fine with me,” said Brick.
“Anyone want a particular role?” Ella asked.
“I want to be one of the spreaders,” said Jo, which was a surprise of most.
“Ok! Me and Brick can be the other two, Anne-Maria can be the victim, and Zoey can be the bystander. I have an idea for the plot- Mike bullies Anne-Maria, and Zoey doesn’t do anything. Then we come in and tell them to be kind, and then it works, and we live happily ever after!” said Ella.
“Ok, why don’t we run through it?” Suggested Jo.
“Ayo, what am I doing again?” Vito asked.
“Ugh, cut the crap and start acting!” Screamed an irritated Jo.
“Yeesh, it’s cold in here. I’m putting my shirt back on,” pretended Vito, aware that Mike probably needed to switch in. Mike was at first quite confused, but quickly realized what had happened.
We cut to a montage of the Maggots working very hard at refining the script. Lines were changed, parts swapped, and then swapped back again, but in the end, they’d created the perfect skit- the ultimate work of their labor.
However, on the other side of the auditorium were the Toxic Rats, who had fewer hurdles.
B wrote something down on his notepad.
Just make it about how great Chris is and we’re sure to win.
“Sounds like a plan to me!” Said Scott, giving the silent giant a fist-bump.
“Yeah. We can improvise it as we go! We don’t even need a script!” Dakota said.
“Wait, what are we doing?” Asked Staci, who was once again out of the loop.
Soon, Chris, Chef, and some intern sat at a table, waiting for the skits to be presented. They were at the auditorium, where the Talent Contest challenge had been done a few years back.
“Ok, maggots! Wow me!”
Chris leaned back as Mike and Anne-Maria walked out on stage.
“Hey nerd, give me your lunch money!” Said Mike, utterly failing at sounding intimidating.
“Oh no! Whatever will I do??” Said Anne-Maria, who was wearing one of Cameron’s glasses he’d left behind as a pitiful attempt for a nerd costume.
Zoey then walked out. “Oh no! I want to do something, but I’m scared!”
Jo, Ella, and Brick then walked out.
“Hey! Bullying is bad!” Shouted Ella.
“You need to stand up for yourself!” Screamed Brick at Anne-Maria.
“You need to stop being a bully!” Screamed Jo, who was significantly louder than the rest.
“And you need to learn not to be silent! If you see something, say something!” Ella finished.
“Wow! Thank you! I will always stand up for the victim next time I see someone being bullied!” said Zoey.
“And I will be kind!” said Mike.
“You better!” Shouted Jo. “Now get got and leave this poor girl alone!” Jo shoved Mike much harder than she had anticipated.
He fell off the stage, landing right on his head. The others winced at his misfortune.
“…So be kind!” Finished Ella, who then quickly scampered down to check on Mike.
Mike faded in and out of consciousness. But he knew one thing- this was not a good sign. Mike had a 6th Alter. A particularly malevolent one, should I say… His name was… Mal.
Mike stood up, sporting fresh bags under his eyes. Well, the lone eye you could see, as the other was covered by hair. He stood up and grabbed Jo by the collar.
“Don’t touch me,” he said in an even tone.
Jo was hardly threatened by Mike grabbing her, considering she was twice his size. He had no strength. But when he spoke, it was different. Something about the way he spoke scared her. His even but still threatening voice. His unwavering face of pure anger. She backed away.
“Sorry.”
Confessional- Jo.
“I don’t know what came over me. He’s so non-threatening in the physical department, but the way he talks?” Jo looked at the camera. “Someone give that twig actor of the year!”
End Confessional.
We cut to Chris, Chef, and the intern. They all sat with mostly stunned and confused faces. They got into a group huddle before Chris finally spoke.
“…Okay, that was weird. But it was also pretty good, and you did everything right. We’ll give you… a 7/10.”
The maggots cheered loudly. Even though it wasn’t a nine or a ten, they were simply glad Chris gave them a satisfactory score, especially for how much work had been put into the project. Mal took in a deep breath and switched back into Mike.
“…What did I miss?” He asked. Nobody said anything, simply glaring at him.
Confessional- Mike.
“Ok, I’m pretty sure I switched into Mal which is definitely not a good thing.” He buried his face in his hands. “They probably all hate me now…”
End Confessional.
Confessional- Zoey.
“Ok, so about what Mike did back there? So weird! I know Jo shoved him, but that just felt way out of line. Or maybe I’m overthinking it. Is this normal? Am I the weird one??”
End Confessional.
“Ok, you can sit on the bleachers now. Rats, you’re up!”
All of the rats came out at once.
“Man, I really love Chris!” Said Scott.
“Yeah, he’s so cool, and handsome to boot!” Swooned Dakota.
“Chris… Is an interesting guy!” Forced out Dawn, who genuinely could not think of anything good to say about the host.
“I don’t think Chris is all that cool,” said Staci, who hadn’t caught on yet. Scott quickly shoved her to the ground.
“How could someone not like Chris??” Scott questioned.
“That girl is insane,” added Dakota.
B drew something on his notepad. It was a drawing of Chris, with a 12-pack (if that's even possible) and surrounded by adoring fans.
They all bowed, and Chris clapped loudly, much to the chagrin of the Maggots. They had no chance.
“I LOVE it!! 10/10, Rats win!!” Chris shouted, not even bothering to ask for Chef's and the intern’s opinions.
Confessional- Chef.
“If you ask me, the skit the Rats made was a bunch of Chris-propaganda-spouting-nonsense. The Maggots? Now that was amazing. Every part was well played, and every line was perfect. 10/10, truly the Mutant Maggot's magnum opus. What a cinematic masterpiece." Chef then burst out laughing.
End Confessional
“So, it’s clear to everyone that the Rats win. You may start pairing up now. I’ll pair the Maggots in a second.”
“I can go with B!” Suggested Dawn. B nodded.
“I’ll go with Sam!” Stated Dakota. Sam looked up, surprised.
Confessional- Sam.
“You’re telling me that a pretty girl willingly picked me to go to prom with them??!” Sam fainted.
End Confessional.
The only two left were Scott and Staci.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” groaned Scott.
“Ok. Mike can go with Zoey, Ella goes with Brick, and Jo goes with Anne-Maria,” said Chris, without much thought.
We cut to the teams in a warehouse that was decorated to look like a high school. The lights were a deep purple. In the center was a disco ball, and there was a dance floor underneath it.
“Ok, the way this works is that each couple will compete in one challenge each, starting with the punch drinking contest. Each couple will need to down two giant bowls of punch, one for each person. Whoever finished their punch first wins. Also, no spilling can occur our you’re out!”
“We’ll take punch,” said Jo immediately.
“Whoa, I did not sign up for that!” Anne-Maria protested.
“Don’t care, didn’t ask. We’re doing it!” Anne-Maria rolled her eyes but eventually agreed to it.
“I’ll take the punch. I just want to get my “date” with Mrs. Flabby-Mc-chatter-mouth over as soon as possible,” groaned Scott.
The couples were waiting at the punch table for Chris to call start.
“BEGIN!”
Jo quickly grabbed the bowl and downed the juice in two big gulps. She instantly turned to Anne-Maria.
“Come on, hurry up!”
Anne-Maria was having a difficult time getting the punch down. Eventually, she just couldn’t finish it. She spat all of the punch into Jo’s face. Jo screamed and clenched her fists.
“Great job, you lunatic! You cost us the challenge!” Shouted Jo.
“Maybe I woulda done betta if you weren’t SHOUTIN’ AT ME!!” Screamed Anne-Maria, her jersey accent at full display.
Jo lunged at Anne-Maria. Unfortunately for the Maggots, Scott and Staci had already finished their punch. Scott smirked and wiped the punch from his mouth.
“Easy!”
Staci also had punch around her mouth. She wiped the punch residue off her lips, but she couldn’t wipe the permanent grin off her face. She felt a deep sense of accomplishment, despite the fact it was just a bowl of punch. She felt like she'd made a genuine contribution to her team.
“The Toxic Rats win the first round!” Shouted Chris. They cheered loudly, and the Maggots knew their fate was sealed. Jo and Anne-Maria were both fighting each other. Both were covered in the sticky fruit punch, and screaming.
Confessional- Brick.
“That was so unsportsmanlike that I don’t even know what to say.”
End Confessional.
The next challenge was a dance-off. It was Ella and Brick versus Sam and Dakota.
“Ok. So, whoever can dance the longest without tripping up or giving up wins! Good luck!”
Royalty-free romance music started to play in the background. Brick had prepared for this moment his whole life. Well, he wouldn’t have expected it to be on a reality TV show with a girl he’d only known for a few days, but you win some and you lose some. Brick swooped Ella up and spun her around. Ella grabbed his hands and slowly rocked with him. They started to move around the dance floor. They continued to spin each other around in beautiful harmony. Ella couldn’t help but imagine how much this reminded her of the dance scene between Belle and the Beast. Her heart swelled. Had she found her prince? Brick was having similar thoughts. He’d never found someone quite as graceful as Ella.
Sam and Dakota were dancing much less formally. They mostly goofed off, doing random and silly dances. They were laughing very hard. Dakota couldn’t stop thinking about how cute Sam looked! The two continued to boogie, laughing all the way.
After about 30 minutes, the couples were still going strong. Well, one of them was going strong. Ella and Brick were dancing the night away, as their dance was slower and less physically demanding. Sam and Dakota weren’t fairing so well. Sam could only do so many video game dances before he tired out, and he was already on the verge of passing out. Dakota was also getting tired, but in the end, it was Sam who fell.
“The Mutant Maggots win!”
Ella and Brick collapsed into a tight embrace, happy that what felt like hours of dancing was over.
Confessional- Ella.
“Wow, I’ve never felt so magical in my life… And Brick! He was an amazing dancer!” Ella sighed longingly.
End Confessional
Confessional- Brick
“She’s quite the dancer...” Brick looked away from the confessional’s camera, hiding his tomato-red face.
End Confessional
Mike, Zoey, B, and Dawn were nervously waiting for the final part of the challenge. One can only imagine all the messed up things Chris can come up with. Soon, Chris came close to the four teenagers.
Four interns lead the contestants to a large platform that was elevated over a pool of water. The four contestants got onto the platform, and they were given water guns filled with a red liquid.
“Inside these guns are PIG BLOOD!! You must shoot your opponents off the table and into the water. The team who can knock their opponents down first wins!”
Zoey gasped. “Is this some sort of messed up homage to Carrie?!” She asked.
“I can’t state that for copyright reasons, but I think you know the answer,” said Chris.
The duos put their fingers on the trigger, waiting for Chris to let them begin.
“Three… Two… One!”
Mike and Zoey ended up both targeting Dawn, who immediately flew into the water, as she weighed almost as much as a feather. B put his finger over the nozzle of his gun, spraying blood uncontrollably. Mike and Zoey sputtered, and Zoey was close to falling into the water.
“Zoey!” Mike screamed. He quickly jumped in front of the redhead, saving her from a particularly nasty blow from B. Zoey took B’s strategy, and also put her finger over the nozzle. Soon everyone was covered in pig blood. B was standing strong and taking the blows like a champ. However, Mike was still covering Zoey and was not fairing so well. He’d never wondered how bad pig blood would taste, and now he was experiencing it in full force. The disgusting, iron-like liquid flooded his mouth. Soon, he could take no more.
“Zoey, you got this!” He shouted as he was finally knocked into the water. Zoey trembled a bit. It was her versus the smartest guy on the show! Well, maybe besides the skinny one who’d been eliminated in episode one, but she’d already forgotten his name. B continued to spray Zoey, getting increasingly closer and closer. There was almost nothing Zoey could do. Her blows were hardly affecting the juggernaut. It didn’t help that the other team was cheering B on incredibly loudly, whilst the only person cheering for Zoey was Mike. Eventually, she couldn’t handle the blows. She tumbled off the platform and into the water.
“The Toxic Rats win! Maggots, I’ll see you at the campfire tonight.” Everyone started to clear out, sans Mike and Zoey.
B twirled the water gun around and pretended to put it in an invisible holster, stepping off the platform and leaving the warehouse. Zoey was still processing the fall and all the pig blood in her mouth. The water was cold and soothing. She wiggled around in the water, trying to get all the blood off. Once she got most of it off, she resurfaced. Mike was eagerly waiting for her.
“You did so well!” Zoey couldn’t help but smile at his adorable buck-toothed grin. When he wasn’t acting as one of his kooky personas, he sure was sweet. But Zoey still didn’t feel right about him. When he played his characters, he’d act so vastly different. That might seem normal as he was an actor overall, but he was just way too method for her liking. She was planning on asking him to maybe tone it down, if it was ok with him.
“Hey… I’ve been meaning to ask you if you could maybe tone down your acting. If that’s okay with you. It’s just… With the whole jersey shore persona and whatever you did with Jo? It’s just kind of weird because I really like you and I thought you liked me, but then you start flirting with Anne-Maria and...” Zoey started to tear up. “Obviously I don’t owe you anything but...” Suddenly the was met with the warm -if not wet and bloody- feeling of Mike’s body wrapped around her.
“Zoey... I’ve got to confess something. I have this thing called MPD. Basically, it means I have multiple personalities. When I flirt with Anne-Maria and act like an old man? Those are just some of my personalities. I just lied about the acting thing. I didn’t want to seem weird and-” Zoey quickly kissed him.
“You should’ve led with that, you dummy! Why would I judge you for that? Hell, that just makes you ten times cooler!” Mike sighed a deep sigh of relief.
Confessional- Mike
“I can’t believe it! She accepts me! And I didn’t need anyone’s help telling her!”
End Confessional.
Confessional- Zoey
“Well, that explains everything. I suppose it’s best that I found out this now rather than later.”
End Confessional.
“Can you not tell anyone though? I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression about me.” Mike saw something move in the corner of his eye, but he shrugged it off. Probably just a rat or something. The rest of the campers had left the warehouse, and it was just Mike and Zoey. Well, at least that’s what they thought.
“Of course! Your secret’s safe with me.”
The camera panned out to reveal a hidden Scott, who was hiding behind one of the lockers.
Confessional- Scott.
“So, Mike had MPD? I’m sure I can use that in the future. Zoey may not tell anyone, but I might!”
End Confessional.
Confessional- Mike.
“Ok. So, it’s great that Zoey is cool with me, but I haven’t forgotten that… He resurfaced. I might as well fill you all in. Mal is my 6th alter. He’s a protector. But he usually ends up overdoing his job and scaring people away. He knows I need this money, and I know he’ll do anything to get it. He hasn’t come out since my Juvie days.” Mike looked to the side. “But that’s another story.”
End Confessional.
The maggots were quite in a very somber mood. Zoey and Mike were covered in blood. Jo and Anne-Maria were covered in punch. Brick and Ella were the only people who seemed happy, albeit awkward.
“Ok, I think I’m going to take a shower,” said Mike.
The other three girls followed him, realizing that probably was a good idea. The only people left were Brick and Ella.
“Soo, what’d you think about my dance skills?” Brick asked in a joking tone.
“They were good! And I’m not lying, you really know how to dance!” Ella said, pointing at Brick.
“Thank you. I was actually saving that routine for a real prom. But I suppose a fake prom is just as good.”
“Oh! Well, you can always use it again. This of me as a practice round,” chuckled Ella.
“No, it was more than that!” Brick said. “I don’t know, it felt… Magical?”
“I know! It really did,” Ella said. Both parties looked away, blushing.
Confessional- Ella.
“I think I’ve found my prince…” she swooned. “And I didn’t even need to lose my shoe!”
End Confessional.
Ella and Brick both leaned in for a mutually agreed kiss. Their lips almost touched. Almost.
“Oh my god!” Sam shouted. Both Brick and Ella screamed back. Brick even fell off the log they were sitting on.
“I am so sorry! I won’t tell anyone.” Sam covered his eyes with his hands. He stumbled away.
Confessional- Sam.
"Brick? And Ella?! Who would've expected that?"
End Confessional.
Brick and Ella sat in awkward silence. It was finally broken by Brick’s infectious and hearty laugh. It was booming and loud, but it was still beautiful to Ella. She started to laugh too- her laugh was much lighter. It could’ve been mistaken for singing.
A few hours later, The Mutant Maggots were gathered at the campfire. They all exchanged nervous glances with each other. One member of their team would leave the island- permanently.
“Mutant Maggots. Welcome. There are five marshmallows on my plate. One of you will not receive one tonight, and you will catch a ride on the Bird of Shame.”
“I thought the bird died?”
“I lied. So go cast those votes and we’ll get to it!”
Voting Confessionals- Everyone on the Mutant Maggots.
“I’m voting for Jo. That bossy B-I-T-C-(Bleep) Has got to go!” Shouted Anne-Maria.
“Anne-Maria is annoying, and hardly a team player. She’s leaving tonight,” said Jo, casting her vote.
“I’m voting for Anne-Maria. I’d vote for Jo, but I feel bad after the whole Mal thing,” said Mike.
“Anne-Maria. If she keeps rubbing up on Mike, even as one of his alters, I’ll lose it!” Zoey shouted.
“I’ll vote for Jo. Sure, Anne-Maria messed up, but she initiated the fight. Not very sportsmanlike,” stated Brick, casting his vote.
“I’m voting for Jo. She lunged at Mike and set him off. Not very kind,” said Ella.
End Voting Confessionals.
“Okay. You’ve all cast your votes. Let’s get to it.”
“Zoey! Come get your marshmallow. You’re safe.”
Zoey eagerly jumped up and ate her marshmallow.
“Mike- so are you.”
He sighed a deep sigh of relief and took his marshmallow.
“Brick and Ella! Looks like you two lovers are safe.”
Brick and Ella exchanged a glance. “Uh, were not lo-”
“Sure, you aren’t. I can see the cameras, you know that, right?”
Everyone looked at the duo.
“Whatever.” Chris turned to Anne-Maria and Jo.
“Welcome, girls. You both got three votes each.”
The two looked at each other nervously.
“And because of this… You will engage in a tiebreaker!”
We cut to Jo and Anne-Maria on top of an elevated platform over water. In their hands were sticks with foam ends.
“Okay. Your goal is to knock your opponent into the water before the timer runs out. The winner will stay in the game, and the loser will take the bird home. BEGIN!”
Jo immediately lunged at Anne-Maria, expecting her to buckle underneath Jo’s so-called superior strength. But to Jo’s surprise, she held her ground. The metal sticks clashed against each other, and each girl took turns exchanging blows.
“Not bad, jersey girl!” Grunted Jo, who was genuinely struggling. Anne-Maria responded with a growl, knocking Jo to the ground.
“I’m staying in this game, Jo!” She shouted through her teeth.
Jo yelled and lunged at her, for the second time that day. She tackled Anne-Maria into the water, unfortunately taking herself down with her. The girls crashed into the water with a mighty splash. Jo quickly resurfaced.
“Do I win?!” She asked eagerly.
“Not exactly. You both fell into the water…” Chris grinned slyly.
“So?” Both girls asked.
“So, your both eliminated!” Chris shouted, laughing.
We cut to both girls on the docks.
“This is stupid. I won fair and square!” Jo yelled.
“Tell It to the bird!” Chris yelled back. The bird swooped down and took both girls by their arms. They yelled all the way.
“All right! Now that Jo and Anne-Maria are gone, how will the maggots fare? Will Brick and Ella continue their oh-so-secret romance? What will Mike do now that Scott knows about his MPD? Find out next time on,
Total!
Drama!
Revenge of the island!”

This happened 5 years ago and I have not heard from my cousin, I will call him Anthony, since this incident.
To give you some context let me explain why I called him a weirdo. It is NOT because he is autistic. His stemming, the way he speaks and sensitivity to certain things have never made me judge him personally.
It is the things that he does and how he is treated by our family. Ever since I’ve known him he invades others spaces, snatches peoples things including mine like my phone and will laugh like it’s some sort of joke. I told him before if I’m not laughing it’s not funny.
Anytime I express feeling uncomfortable my Aunt (his mom) will tell me that he has autism and he’s different. She baby’s him so much that it’s ridiculous and has held him back tremendously. She basically enables his behavior.
Not only does he snatch things, is too physical and will tap constantly on my leg when sitting next to me, gets too in my bubble but he can be difficult. He has yelled and smacked at my little cousins (his little sisters) before, over dumb things like cooking something he didn’t like the smell of, forgetting to turn off the lights and ignoring him when they don’t want to talk to him.
If he thinks you are doing anything to offend him he will have a full on meltdown and his meltdowns are dangerous, everyone walks on eggshells around him.
My cousin had her 12 year old friend over and kind you he was 18 at the time. He kept trying to hug her and my aunt even asked her to give him a kiss on the cheek and when she was like no my aunt got mad and drove her back home. My cousin told me her friends mom never let her come over her place again.
Now that the context is over, this is what got me estranged from my aunt and cousin. My older sister just had her baby and we had a second baby shower for her now that the baby was here. My sister was sitting down and my aunt got to hold the baby, then I did and my sister just put my nephew back in his car seat.
Here comes Anthony saying he wants his turn too, we explain the baby is sleeping and he says that’s not fair. He genuinely started tweaking and my aunt looks embarrassed like one of those moms who’s toddler starts making a scene in the store for not getting candy. My sister put her foot down and said no.
He lunged at my nephew and snatched him out of his car seat. My sister was trying to grab my nephew back and he drops him. My sister went hysterical understandably. Then Anthony starts crying and slapping himself while my aunt is trying to calm HIM down and taking him to another room, in that room he proceeds to punch a hole in the wall and is freaking out saying he just wanted to hold him. At this point everyone is freaked out. For our family members this was just another one of Anthony’s meltdowns but to my sisters friends and her boyfriends side of the family this genuinely freaked them out and the party was over shortly after starting it. I should also add he knocked the dessert table I made down.
Hours after everyone had already left and I’ve cleaned up after him and my aunt was finished barricading themselves in a room he destroyed. He has the nerve to say he didn’t enjoy the party. I asked him what went through his mind to make him snatch up a newborn baby like that and my aunt was telling me to let it go but I kept going and said no because what you did was wrong to have to understand that. my aunt got in between us and told me he is different from me and on the spectrum and that’s when I said no absolutely not.
I said we are not playing the dodge accountability because I am different game. He doesn’t have the right to cause us trouble and act like a complete weirdo half of the time because he’s autistic. That’s not something you should have to get under control it’s him. He’s an adult! My dad had my back and told her and him to leave but after that we never talked again.
Now it’s my little cousins baby shower and she says I am not invited for how I treated Anthony.

The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County in Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a nearby ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, making a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.

They proceed to call me names that just seem like projections of themselves most the time.
The most frustrating part about how D retells stories is that she doesn't even attempt to tell them in full. She naturally sees no wrong in anything she does, while her and P put up to question everyone else's characteristics. D loves to tell the shower story because she's able to skew it in order to fit her agenda that I'm prude and hot-headed. So let me tell you my side of the shower story.
It starts out with the body of the house; we live in a 2.5 bathroom house. Only months prior I had randomly been banned from the ½ bathroom. There were a lot of humiliating accusations coming from P about me leaving blood on the seat (but mind you exaggerating saying I shit all over the seat), which because of endometriosis it's possible, but there's also a larger chance it wasn't me at all since I rarely used the bathroom. Or that it happened once and she obsessed over it. Everytime she ranted about this, I didn't use the bathroom; it was just a way for her to insult me and keep me from using it. I used the ½ bathroom only when the other bathroom was unavailable , which I don't even have the privilege to now. I break this rule if I can't hold a pee or something but I don't dare go number 2. What happened when I tried to use the bathroom? She would stand in the doorway of her room, watch me exit the bathroom, sigh and complain. Rinse, repeat, and after several encounters like this, plus the yelling at the top of her lungs about how terrible and disgusting I am, I didn't bother using it anymore.
So I was only allowed to use one bathroom, which happened to be the shared Jack and Jill bathroom between the two smaller rooms. No one else has this treatment. When we first moved here, D had set up a lot of her left over makeup stuff but barely made use of the j&j bathroom. She blamed me a lot but it was her decision to use the master bathroom. Her parents' bathroom is bigger with better lighting, so I'm honestly assuming it was an aesthetic issue, sorry. The bathroom was always available to her, unlocked when not in use, and in the beginning it was clean. I tried to keep it clean between all three of us. Dayna used me as a scapegoat as always though, so that's been her go-to excuse about using the master's bedroom over the j&j one for makeup. The first few years it was accessible to her though she only used it for the toilet, and not a whole lot else. Don't let her say she used it all the time or something cuz that'd be an exaggeration.
So fast forward, I no longer can use the ½ bathroom without scrutiny. I get that being bottom of the totem pole, my feelings haven't mattered much to the rest of this family. They have done so much to ensure the existence of this culture, and so anytime I have BIG FEELINGS about something, they can't be bothered to spare even a percentage of their apathy to understand where I'm coming from. Yes, they say they care – when it benefits them. When it makes them look good.
So BIG FEELINGS happen when people disrespect your boundaries and make it apparent they have absolutely no respect for them to begin. For two months I struggled with bad insomnia; this isn't a circadian rhythm thing where I sleep all day and stay up at night. This insomnia will wake me up at 1-3 am and I'll be up for the rest of the night with usually only one or two hours of sleep under my belt, though I try to sleep the whole night. Paired with working, these aren't ideal circumstances but I can live it just fine (and it sickens me when D can claim I'm lying about having insomnia, it's madness).
Anyway, her boyfriend was rude. Dude was a self help guru and was listening to alpha male man Chad podcasts as therapy. I didn't like this boyfriend, for some backstory he thought I was cooking a steak for him on my birthday and then was supremely offended it wasn't for him?? And Dayna rolled with it, acting like I was selfish. Of course like it matters cuz she cheated on him literally their entire relationship, so I couldn't take their bullshit seriously even though together they were power couple neurotypicals one and two.
After never using the shower, this guy and her started to shower together anywhere from 2-4am. I had to get up at no later than 5am to make the commute to work. And these were long, passionate and sometimes angry showers. Showers where the guy is so fucking drunk or high on cocaine he's just pissed at life and bashing into everything. They'd use our soaps and even our towels. If I was lucky enough to be asleep, it was lost because of their reckless witching hour shower. And she did this almost EVERYDAY for a week after doing it on weekends for months. I couldn't get her to stop and asking wasn't enough because it didn't bother or matter to anyone else that she was doing this. Locking and blocking the door wasn't enough. I eventually had to write a sign, which I know now is immature but I was so desperate to have her stop: I HAVE SCHIZOPHRENIA, I DON'T WANT WEIRD MEN SHOWERING ALL HOURS OF THE NIGHT as a sign, which slowed the habit but didn't fully stop it. It didn't fully stop until one night, after days straight of this bullshit clear the coke nose showers, I had a breakdown. I was yelling at the top of my lungs that this couldn't keep happening every night. I forgot to mention that her boyfriend wasn't the ONLY guy she was showering with like this and there were a few side guys that she did this with.
We pay 1.5k for this small room. Others are welcome to think I'm horrible for now denying her access to the j&j bathroom, but she doesn't pay any rent. And she had all three bathrooms accessible to her at one point, so to be honest I don't feel bad for denying her access. I think bad decisions lead to losing certain privileges, and she was holding her power in this family over my head every time she broke the lock, pushed away the stuff blocking the door, and showered with all that in mind.
So she makes it out to be that I'm super prude. The people she tells her story to make fun of me. "Don't knock it until you try it"
There was this plastic candle worth $1 that blew off the porch, or an animal took it or something. And to turn the shower thing around on me, they used that against me saying I threw the candle in an act of aggression. And it's so fucking stupid that a $1 candle meant more to them than any small amount of respect to me. It wasn't a whole lot asking not to shower past 12, but because it came from me it was like execution orders. Their disrespect for me has many stories but they will either ignore, deny or elaborately adjust so that they stay buoyant in their sea of lies

Hey everyone, I’m in TX.
When I found out I was pregnant, I was 4 weeks along. I did let my OB know that prior to finding out I was pregnant, I did cocaine, marijuana, and was drinking alcohol days before. I did not do cocaine often at all, but I was a chronic marijuana smoker. I did stop everything as soon as I found out. Of course, they would test me almost every visit which was fine and understandable. I know I was negative for cocaine all those tests, but I’m sure in the beginning I was still positive for marijuana because it does take a while to leave your system completely especially if you were a chronic smoker.
I have been testing negative after a couple of months of pregnancy once the MJ left my system. I’ve been excited for this pregnancy as this is my first and we have been getting the nursery set up.
However, toward the end of 27 weeks, I accidentally was given a tablet of adderall (I believe 50mg) instead of Sudafed for congestion and allergies I was experiencing. The adderall is not prescribed to me. I noticed when I began to feel SO off and weird and I realized the mistake. The tablets looked extremely similar. I did not disclose this with my OB because I was already getting chastised every visit about my drug use prior to finding out I was pregnant and my OB was very judgemental and snarky with me throughout all my visits, so I was scared of bringing this up. I feel like complete crap and should’ve been more careful.
I’ve been testing negative for drug screenings after however. I’m scheduled to be induced at 39 weeks and I know I’ll be negative for drug test during admission (as I have been) to the hospital but I’m terrified my baby‘s meconium/umbilical cord will be tested and the adderall popping out. It was only that one time and I’m not sure if it will come out at all or what the concentration will be, although I’m sure it will be a low concentration. Will that even matter?
I’m devastated at the thought of my firstborn being taken away from us. My husband still smokes the delta 9 vapes but recently stopped recently in case there’s a CPS case open and they test him, though I’m sure if they do test him, he’ll still be positive as he used to be a chronic smoker as well.
What do you think will happen to us? I’ve been stressing out so much and have been feeling so stupid.
We have a good home for her, have her room ready full of clothes, diapers, blankets, crib, books, etc. I keep the home nice and clean, keep food in the fridge. I go to school full time, and my husband has a good full time job to support us. We have her car seat ready. We are ready for our baby but are terrified of what’s possibly to come. I feel like a terrible mother, and an idiot.

CoverVol.1PreviousNextMapsWiki+DiscordRoyal RoadWebNovelTapasKo-FiFandom/wiki
Good afternoon party people.
As a reminder, I will be going on vacation starting tomorrow. I will be gone and away from my computer and duties, so tomorrow's chapter is coming today.
There will not be a chapter Monday, June 5th. I'm uncertain if I will post at all during the week of June 5th. It all depends on when I get back and how I feel after a long plane flight.
Regardless of what I do, we will return to our regularly scheduled posting starting June 12th.
I'll miss you all, and I hope you all have a wonderful week. And for those of you in the state, I hope you enjoy having Monday off.
And for those of you who just can't wait...well...buy me a drink and get some chapters on Ko-Fi >:)
---
Kaladin Shadowheart’s POV
I finished buttoning the top button on Mila’s coat and stepped back to appreciate just how well it matched her school uniform. I had to say. I had done a great job without even meaning to.
She looked positively adorable in all red with her little hat. Even her ears poked out from the top, and now that her hair had grown more, it really helped fill her face out. She looked up at me with piercing blue eyes and an expectant look. I couldn’t help but chuckle and pat her on the head.
“You are too cute for your own good,” I told her.
A smile bloomed on her face, and she hugged the hand patting her. “Daddy is even prettier!”
Prettier, huh? Should I be happy that I’m pretty? I think I should. Better to be a pretty daddy than an ugly one, I guess.
“Are we ready to go?” I asked the person standing in the doorway with a smile on her face.
Mila ran over and hugged Sylvia. “Sylvia is pretty too!”
Sylvia stroked Mila’s hair, and her smile brightened even more. “Thank you, Mila,” she said softly. “Let’s go, shall we? We don’t want to be late for our first day of class.”
Today was the first day of school, so we were all dressed up in our school uniforms. It had been a long time since I donned the red and gold jacket of Forward University, not since I had reunited with my family. In that amount of time, I had missed a lot of school as well as essential tests and such.
It was a shame, but to be honest, I didn’t exactly need to attend classes, nor did I need to graduate. As far as I was concerned, my family came first, and I fully intended to accept whatever consequences came my way, even if that meant expulsion from the university.
However, that never came to pass as Bowen explained that all was well. Students missing class for important reasons was common enough and wouldn’t negatively reflect on them if they had sufficient proof and explanation. But that meant I had to make up all those tests, which was a hassle and something I didn’t want to do.
In the end, Bowen suggested that I simply take the tests I missed. If I passed them, then there was nothing to worry about, and I could continue with my studies as if nothing had happened. Apparently, Forward University did offer advanced placement tests in specific scenarios. After all, it would be useless to have a student take a class they didn’t actually need.
Either way, I’m not looking forward to it, even if I can pass the tests with ease.
“Hey, what is Professor Garrison doing here?” Sylvia asked as we made our way down the stairs.
Professor Garrison was at the front door, talking with my parents. He looked apologetic as he lowered his head after speaking a few times. Our eyes met, and he gave me a quick nod of greeting as well. Come to think of it. I hadn’t parted ways with him amicably the last time we met.
I didn’t mean to do that to him. Professor Garrison had always been good to me, and I appreciated him as a person, friend, and mentor. But at the time, I couldn’t let him threaten my family like that. I had my priorities, and I wasn’t afraid to handle those who wanted to threaten my family, even if they were friends.
“Good morning, Professor,” I said with a friendly nod.
“Good morning, Kaladin, Sylvia, and Mila. I’m sorry to bother you before classes, but I thought it would be best to do this now…I should have come sooner, though,” he said, regret laced in his voice.
I looked at my mother, and she just smiled softly and tilted her chin down. I figured they must have already talked and apologized. If Mom and Dad weren’t mad, then neither was I. Besides, I understood where he came from. It would be hard just to let the person who killed your comrades walk around, even if it was years ago.
“I’m sorry for my outburst in class at that time. I shouldn’t have acted so harshly toward you or your mother. And I definitely shouldn't have drawn my weapon. I’m sorry, Kaladin,” Professor Garrison said with a bow.
I patted the man on the shoulder and just smiled at him. “No need to worry. It appears that everything has already been forgotten and forgiven. And I never harbored any ill will toward you, even after that event,” I told him.
Professor Garrison slowly looked up at me. His green eyes were wide behind his glasses, and his eyebrows were high on his face. He looked genuinely shocked at something.
“Is something the matter? Is there something on my face?” I asked as I wiped at my cheeks.
Professor Garrison shook his head like he was clearing his thoughts with force. “No, no, not at all. I was just a little surprised, that's all.” Then he started laughing, and he even grinned. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen or talked to you, Kaladin. You seem like a completely different person now. No, maybe I should say you’ve finally grown up? No…that’s not quite right either…huh,” he mused with a shrug.
“Hopefully, in a good way?” I asked.
“Yeah…definitely in a good way.” His eyes turned to Sylvia, and he raised an eyebrow. “In a good way?”
“In the best way,” she told him.
Is that so? I think I’ve changed a little, hopefully for the best. If I got any worse, things would probably get ugly fast.
Professor Garrison nodded to himself in satisfaction and then chuckled. “Alright, you three, get to class. I'm going to stay here and talk to your parents for a bit. I might be a little late, so let everyone know for me.”
“Yes, Professor,” I said with a grin.
Mila and Sylvia said their goodbyes and see you laters, and we made our way outside. Forward University was buzzing with energy today as students and staff walked around campus. Even in the early morning hours, the place was truly alive for the first time in months.
We walked through the teacher and staff homes until we reached the main pathway. There were so many students out and about the walkways were actually shoulder-to-shoulder. But as we approached a four-way intersection, there was suddenly a massive traffic congestion of bodies.
Everyone was oohing and awwing as they talked amongst themselves. I followed their eyes and looked up at the giant statue that had been erected in the last few weeks in the new park that had been built. I didn’t pay much attention to it because, frankly, I didn’t care…but now I wish I did.
I gawked at the black marble statue in embarrassment. It depicted what could only be described as me, wearing fancy armor and driving a spear into a Dragon’s skull while I sat atop it triumphantly.
Never in my life had I expected to see me…like that. That’s not even how events played out. My spear never went into the Dragon’s head, and I never stood tall over it. The last time I checked, I was dying while being crushed inside of a rock face.
I really hope there are no statues of me anywhere else…
“Sylvia…remember when I asked if you knew what was going on here…did you lie?” I asked in disbelief.
Sylvia giggled to herself as she looked up at the statute. “I did, sort of. I never imagined it would be taller than the trees.” She tilted her head to the side to look at me. “I think they did a fantastic job. They really caught your general vibe and got your face almost perfect. I probably would have made you a little more handsome, though…maybe make your hair a bit longer.”
I sighed deeply. It was true. Whoever sculpted my face had done a good job at replicating it, which was better than them screwing up and making me look like a fool or too much like some fantasy hero. At least they didn’t have me yelling to the heavens or grinning like a fool. The expression was best described as stoic, which was appropriate considering the event and the number of people that had lost their lives.
“Wow…Big Daddy,” Mila mumbled to herself.
“Please don’t say that out loud, Mila,” I begged.
Then it started.
“Hey, is that him?”
“It is him, right?”
“Yeah, that’s Voker—”
“No, that’s Kaladin, you idiot.”
From there, the voices picked up exponentially, turning into a single block of loud noise. I felt all the eyes in the general vicinity flick toward me as the information of my arrival spread through the crowd. It didn’t help that I was taller than the average person which meant it was easy to spot me in a group.
“Let’s just keep walking,” I muttered.
Thankfully the crowd of onlookers did not impede our walking. They even parted to the sides to let us through, which was both good and bad for various reasons. Mila tightened her grip on my hand, most likely nervous at all the attention she was getting.
Instead of just leaving her be, I picked her up, and she instantly held onto me tightly. I personally didn’t care about fame or the attention. People have gawked at me for as long as I can remember in both of my lives, so this was nothing new. However, it clearly upset Mila, who only had bad memories of large crowds staring at her.
Sylvia and I hastened our pace to class, leaving the onlookers behind us.
—
“Wow, he actually came to class for once. It’s a miracle,” snickered Varnir.
“Indeed, it has been some time since we have all been together, has it not?” Sylas said thoughtfully.
“I suppose it has been a long time since all of us have been in class at the same time. Even Jen is back with us,” Ren said with a warm smile.
I almost forgot what it was like to be in this class…it’s good to see everyone is happy and healthy again.
Jen had put back on some healthy weight and looked far better than she had during winter. Some color had returned to her face and hair, and she smiled as she sat next to Tsarra. It was also nice to see that Tsarra wasn’t hiding under one of her spells. Perhaps Jen and Varnir would slowly whittle down her shell.
There was a solid thump as Professor Garrison dropped a stack of papers on his desk. He stared out at us, and the entire class went silent. The Professor let out a deep breath and walked to the front podium.
“It’s good to be back, everyone. I hope all of you had a wonderful, rest-filled winter break with your friends and family. I also hope that you did some studying,” he joked with a grin.
A few students groaned in annoyance, but Professor Garrison continued with his trademark smile. “So…we have much to talk about today. As you all know, today is the first day of classes despite there being no lecture. So for that, I welcome all of you to your final year here at Forward University and congratulate you all for being in Class Onward. As your teacher, I am proud of every single one of you for the trials you have overcome this previous year. We all know just how difficult of a year it was…”
The Professor trailed off for a moment before heading to the chalkboard and writing down a name. “As you all have heard, the tournament with Sandervile is being hosted in Luminar this year, which means we are going to be incredibly busy these next few months with training. Of course, those of you who have no intentions of competing will not be forced, but those of you who are interested will have to compete in the school’s preliminaries to be selected, as is tradition.”
That applies to everyone but me. As the sole person who received a golden ticket so to speak, I’m exempt from this preliminary, which is nice.
Professor Garrison pointed at the name on the board. “I’m sure you are already aware of all this. His and Her Majesty have changed this year's venue to the coastal city of Flumare. I’m sure this came as a surprise to many of you, and rest assured. It was a surprise to us as well. We only learned of this change around the same time I’m sure most of you did, especially with the addition of Saber Academy and with Tel’an’duth joining us this year. And I’m here to say that for contestants who qualify, nothing will change. The school will house, feed, and equip you free of charge, as they have done every year. For the students who are interested in traveling to the venue, the school is offering free tickets as well as free passage to the city. However, lodging is another matter that has still yet to be resolved. I’ll release the information as I get it but don’t worry too much. I'm sure we will figure something out.”
A few students whispered amongst themselves. But what the professor had said was true. For the first time ever, Tel’an’duth was sending students to the tournament, which was as historical as it sounded since this entire tournament was devised to raise and nurture students to fight against Tel’an’duth.
But now the times are changing. And Queen Maxwell was making her moves.
The professor moved to his desk and grabbed a giant scroll. He unraveled it and laid it across the board for all to see. “Now, this is probably what most of you have been waiting for, our new student standings.”
He gave us a few moments to look over the list. In all honesty, there wasn’t too much of a drastic change overall. However, the top five students had changed significantly, and everyone else sort of moved to reflect that change, staying within one or two spots of their previous ranks.
It was also nice to see that Jen had actually stayed the exact same. It was probably due to the Dragon incident keeping her out of school for so long. If she were to be punished for that, it would have been a heartbreaking penalty.
But…there was a new number one on the board…which I didn’t think was necessary.
“I’m sure that there are very few of you who have complaints about the new number one student. Honestly, giving reasons as to why he shouldn’t be number one would be hard. Well, maybe besides his constant absences,” Professor Garrison said with a grin as he winked at me. “Academically, Kaladin has achieved top marks since his arrival last year, only ever stumbling in his Beastmen language studies. And as for his merits outside of the class and in physical examinations, what else is there to say? Please, everyone, give a clap for our new number one student.”
The class erupted into claps and a few cheers as everyone turned to me. It was a relief to see that people weren’t in an uproar over it. Which I thought would happen since I had missed so much school. But perhaps I had just become too much of a figure to be denied that spot.
I even looked at Lin, and she just winked at me. She had no qualms about relinquishing the position she had maintained all these years. However, I did feel somewhat bad for dethroning her.
“Daddy is number one!” Mila said as she sat up in my lap and hugged me.
Well, this isn’t so bad.
“Now, now, then. We will go over the top five as it has changed the most. Linnetia Paine, although you are now second, I hope you are not discouraged in the slightest,” he said as he eyed Lin.
Lin bowed her head graciously. “Being second to the Dragonslayer is hardly a downgrade. On the contrary, perhaps it’s even more of an upgrade. I have no problems with my ranking, and I am more than happy to congratulate Kaladin,” she said, her voice kind yet firm.
As expected of the next head of the Paine family. I almost forgot that Lin was a noble now.
Everyone clapped at that, and Professor Garrison continued. “Congratulations to Arene Maxwell for successfully holding onto the third-ranked position. In such chaotic times, I believe that shows just how much you have grown.”
Ren bowed her head while everyone clapped for her. “Now, to our new fourth-placed student, Tsarra Tel’an’duth, congratulations on your new ranking. You have by far improved the most out of any previous student. Even though you were not officially recognized for your act of bravery against the Dragon, the school has decided to do this much for a hero. You have also shown incredible growth in your magic, officially reaching the mage rank of Grandmaster. And as to be expected of a princess, your academics are outstanding, and the school has even published your book on illusion magic.”
The room erupted into clapping once more, and I watched Sylvia put a hand to her chin. “She wrote a book? That’s impressive,” Sylvia muttered quietly to herself.
“Is it that surprising? I think she is more than capable of that,” I told her.
“I guess we have two very different images of her then,” Sylvia whispered.
Tsarra, at first glance, seemed to be a shy, introverted girl. And that was because she was. Although she had changed steadily since I met her, her nature was still much the same. However, she became a completely different person when it came to reading books.
And it turned out it wasn’t only reading books she was passionate about but writing them too.
I turned in my seat and clapped for her, but Tsarra looked about ready to explode. Her face was redder than her hair from all the attention. I was afraid she would burst a blood vessel with how hard she clenched her jaw.
Well, some things change. And some things don’t.
“And, of course, another congratulations is in order to our new fifth-ranked student, Varnir Shadowstone. Varnir, you are easily the second most improved student in Class Onward, only falling short of Tsarra slightly in academics, which you have improved greatly in and in outside achievements. However, your prowess in your physical testing has improved dramatically. Once again, congratulations, Varnir,” Professor said, his voice full of praise.
“Hey, look at that! I almost caught up to you,” Varnir said with a chuckle as he hugged Tsarra by the shoulder.
If Tsarra wasn't embarrassed already, that was enough to kill her. I watched as the air around Tsarra wobbled and warped, and she disappeared completely in a blink of an eye. It was amazing that she lasted that long in the first place.
Sylvia grumbled some things under her breath about beating Varnir on the first day of school but still being ranked below him, and surprisingly, even with the clapping, Professor Garrison heard her. “Sylvia, I imagine many people are confused as to why you are only ranked eighth. It’s no surprise that you played a critical role in the Dragon incident, and many people, including myself, owe our lives to you. I think I speak for everyone when I say thank you for saving us. Also, your physical prowess is something to remark on. If we based rankings solely on that, you would be in the top five, no questions asked. However, we take more into account. To be honest, your academic abilities fall short of the class average, which is nothing to be ashamed of. And if rankings were to be recalculated today, your outside achievements would have doubled even more considering your involvement with Dragonheart Foundation. Regardless of your rank, we should all congratulate President Sylvia of the Dragonheart Foundation, who will give us a speech tonight at the school banquet.”
Everyone in the class clapped loudly for Sylvia. It seemed that despite her being a Vampire, many students felt that she had done something remarkable, which was the absolute truth. Sylvia deserved all the praise and more.
“Congratulations, Miss President,” I said with a grin.
“Shut up…” she whimpered, her ears burning red.
“Sylvia is number two to Daddy!” Mila squealed as she rolled off my lap and into Syliva’s arms.
Sylvia looked surprised for a moment but hugged Mila back, the two of them touching heads. “I guess being second to Daddy is okay…” Sylvia muttered.
Professor Garrison took a swig of water and let out a deep sigh. “Sadly, we don’t have time to go over everyone’s rankings today. We would be here all day if we did. For those of you who have complaints or want to know how you were ranked, please head to the counselor's office. They will give you your breakdown there.” The professor clapped and put his hands on his hips. “Now, onto the next and hopefully last article for today. I would like to welcome three new students to Class Onward. And before you ask, I understand that it’s a bit late to be accepting new students into our class. And the school agrees. It’s best to consider these three as… short-term transfer students with exceptional skills and circumstances. Although they will not graduate with you, they may just become teachers one day, so please treat them well and warmly welcome them to our class.”
Everyone clapped once more as the door to the room opened. I was clapping as well, only to stop in surprise. I’m sure I had a dumb expression on my face as I watched the two familiar faces walk in. I had no idea they would attend Forward University, let alone join the class. They had somehow managed to keep this a secret.
The first to walk forward was none other than Padraic. The young Dwarf looked dashing in his gold and red jacket. He left the jacket hang open, exposing the black dress shirt underneath.
He had his trademark grin as he eyed me across the room. I’m sure he was positively reveling in my surprise. And I had a feeling he was about to say something outrageous in an attempt to embarrass me.
Professor Garrison motioned for Padraic to introduce himself, and the Dwarf cleared his throat as all eyes turned to him. “It’s good to meet all of you and all that good fun. My name is Padraic Whitehelm, and to be honest, I’m really only here to use the forges and the school’s resources, and since I had to take classes to do so, I figured I would join the class with my brother from another mother and my two future fiancees. So uh…yeah, that’s it, really.”
Oh, he boldly declared that. At least his embarrassment was targeted at…wait…two fiancees? Who's the second? Did I miss something?
I thought that as I looked back at Jen. Much like Tsarra, she was beside herself as she hid her face in her arms. It seemed she wanted to run away. I scanned the room for the second so-called future fiancee, but it didn’t seem like anyone was reacting to that statement, so I had no idea who it was.
The class clapped somewhat awkwardly but was more or less mumbling to each other. Padraic’s brazen entrance no doubt shocked quite a few students. But that was Padraic for you. He never cared what others thought of him.
Professor Garrison chuckled awkwardly to himself. “Well, that was something. But a little background on our new student is that he not only passed the entrance exam but tested in the top one percent of advanced mathematics, not only in this class but the entire school. Padraic here also impressed both the forge and smithing teachers, earning their respect with a single demo. As well as being an Opal adventurer with three years of experience.”
With a little more context, it seemed that assuaged anyone’s worries, and they put more excitement into their applause. I had no idea he placed so high in math, but Padraic was always good at it. Even back in the day, he took to math faster than Cerila. But that was only when he was actually focusing and not goofing around or teasing me…
And good for him on impressing two teachers at Forward University with one demonstration is definitely something to be proud of. He did make my new bow, which was expertly crafted.
Next up was also a surprise. She looked stunning in her uniform, and it was hard to look away. Her long snow-white hair flowed down to her hips as her new jacket fit snugly around her upper body, accentuating her athletic and curvy physique. And her white and gold skirt was—
“Why is her skirt shorter than everyone else’s? What’s with that crap?” Sylvia growled in a low voice as she glared down at Cerila.
It’s uh…true…Cerila’s skirt, for some reason or another, was shorter than the norm. And it only exposed her long toned yet pale legs even more as she chose to wear short white socks.
I felt Sylvia’s glare turn to me in my absence of a response, but I just kept my eyes forward, fully intent on not meeting her gaze. I felt that no matter what I said, I would be wrong. And it would only open me up for criticism. So the best course of action was to say nothing.
Cerila went over to the board and quickly chalked up a hand that was leaving a head, as well as her name. To an untrained eye, it looked to be as if she drew someone saluting followed by her name in Human. But it was actually a depiction of someone signing hello.
And it was accurate as well as being well drawn. I guess years of drawing on that tablet are coming into play.
Once she was done, she turned around to face the class and repeated the motion for the sign. From there, Professor Garrison took over. “First of all, please welcome Cerila to the class. Although she can’t hear any of you, the gesture still has meaning for her.”
The class looked confused, and a few people muttered to each other, but after a pointed glare from the teacher, everyone quickly gave a round of applause to welcome her. “As some of you have guessed, Cerila is deaf and can not hear you, but that does not mean she can’t talk to you. And although you may think of this as a hindrance, Cerila has lived her entire life this way and has not only adapted but flourished. She passed the school’s entrance exam and tested out of master-level language classes for both Elvish and Human, being able to read and write fluently to the level of a translator. Not only that, Cerila is fluent in a completely new language called Sign Language. As a result, she is able to communicate in everyday conversation with others despite not verbally speaking a single word. She also shows martial prowess that is to be recognized, as she has achieved the adventurer rank of Topaz in only three years. For those of you who are unaware, that is an accomplishment beyond what a normal person is capable of, especially someone so young.”
Upon his further explanation of Cerila’s exploits and achievements, the room did a collective nod of approval and gave her one more final applause. Cerila flashed a stunning smile at everyone, and with Padraic next to her, the two of them walked straight up the steps and toward me.
“Are they really going…what a pain,” Sylvia grumbled quietly to herself.
Sure enough, the two took open seats to my left, with Cerila right next to me. She smiled brightly at me and even let out a noise that was the same as her giggling. she asked.
I told her.
Cerila was about to sign to me again, but I poked her as Professor Garrison cleared his throat loudly. “Now then, would the final student please introduce himself?”
The third student had been quietly standing to the side. At first glance, he seemed…odd, and I found it hard to tell how old he was for some reason. He wore the school uniform just the same as everyone else, and as a tiger Beastmen, he didn’t appear to have overwhelming physical size but was a rather average build. His tiger-like ears poked out from his long hair that was poofed up while being the color of brownish dried blood.
But the oddest thing about him was those dark-tinted glasses he wore over his eyes…they seemed almost like sunglasses, which was weird since we were indoors and the room could hardly be described as bright.
The Beastmen had a proper air about him, almost like a noble, which was all but confirmed as he dipped into an elegant bow straight out of a book on manners.
“My name is Malachi Talgan, and I am the crown prince of the Principality of Nul. It’s an honor to be here,” he said in a velvety smooth voice.
Malachi also took his glasses off, exposing his unswirling Vampiric blood-red eyes to the class. But unlike Sylvia, who possessed entirely crimson eyes, Malachi’s eyes were like that of a half-moon of red, leaving the rest of his iris a dead-looking white color. Of course, I only had two other Vampires besides Sylvia to compare to, but Malachi’s eyes had far more red than the Vampire who kidnapped me and even more than the Vampire diplomat I saw in Sandervile.
And did he just say his last name was Talgan?

Next

Are we in the wrong here? We have requested a full refund for our stay…
(Short version. Stayed at Airbnb. Arrived to find front door broken, cigarette smell. Reported it. Went to a show/dinner. Came back to sleep. Found bed broken. Rigged it. Host won’t refund. And Airbnb is only willing to give 30% discount even though we could not sleep nor felt safe)
The other night we stayed at a small spot in Baltimore. Upon arrival we walked to our apartment with the front door wide open, and the locks non-functioning (meaning they were installed incorrectly, the dead bolt closes 1/8” and the bottom lock doesn’t catch at all. So if you don’t force the dead bolt the right way, the door did not lock)
I inspected the apartment while my wife stayed outside. All clear but I noticed it smelled heavily of cigarettes. Not a big bother to us. We don’t smoke, but we just made it work. We are very easy going at airbnbs and mostly “get it” people do stupid crap. So we contacted the host regarding the door situation in the hopes it was something that could be fixed or resolved. But also to mention the cigarette smell to pretty much cover our asses that no one could say it was us. The host responded about 20 minutes later apologizing and assured us she would make building maintenance aware. We didn’t know what that exactly meant but we hid our stuff and left for dinner and a concert.
At 11:30-12am we returned to the Airbnb to find the door unfixed and no one in the apartment since we left (my wife put a water bottle behind the door to see if anyone was in.). We sat on the sofa for about an hour just talking and attempting to order insomnia cookies ( unrelated. But they were closed :-()
Around 1am we went to bed. My wife put a chair in front of the front door to make it hard for anyone to get in.) And the moment my ass barely hit the mattress there was a loud bang and the mattress was on the floor. My wife freaked thinking that I had done it. (I am not small… 200lbs. But not big enough to break a damn bed by sitting down) upon inspection I saw the bed was exactly like ours at home. (IKEA bed with wooden slats as the box spring. The wood slates were broken and the cross support bars were broken but also completely missing pieces. This is how I knew it wasn’t me who did this because pieces don’t just disappear.)
Being that it was 1am. I got the bed rigged back together. And GENTLY laid down on my wife’s side and shimmied over to my side. I was so uncomfortable because I couldn’t move out of fear of hitting the floor. (In hindsight. I wish I could have just put the mattress on the floor if it fit somewhere.)
I barely slept and around 4am I decided I need to gently get up and pee. Well the simple act of putting my leg over the edge made the box spring slats shift, the mattress drop and my wife shitting her pants (figuratively of course) that I had fallen out of bed.
We immediately messaged the host at 4am (if I am not sleeping, I’m going to message you!) that it was unacceptable. We took pictures and videos immediately. We then rigged it back up and slid back into bed until 6am-7am. So much for our one night away from our toddlers to sleep in :-/.
The host apologized again but made it clear she was not going to work with us. We called Airbnb support while we were packing up. Sent pics. And explained leaving an Airbnb, in center city Baltimore at 1am on a holiday weekend was not only an unsafe option but not possible with a major concert in town and hotels sold out. They then have offered us a 30% refund from Airbnb. I have declined and made it clear I want a full refund. I am still waiting to hear back
Reading the reviews on the “units” (I get impression they have multiple in this building) some stays at units are great. But others are littered with the same experience as us. Broken doors. Cigarettes. Broken furniture. Apologies are made but no resolution.
Am I over the top with expecting a full refund? I shouldn’t have to sit on every piece of furniture In an Airbnb upon arrival to be sure it’s not broken. We looked forward to our adult evening away, to catch up on some sleep instead of our kids waking us up at 5:30am. Unfortunately that did not happen. We rent airbnbs to sleep and feel safe. Neither of those needs were met. Or resolved.
(There were other MINOR issues with the stay… shower towels still in the dryer upon arrival, bundled up and damp rather than folded and put in the closest. The cleaning staff must have rushed out without finishing but we still have a $100 cleaning fee apart of our stay. Listing promised off street parking but host advised parking garage is only for building tenants and we’d have to find street or public parking. Again. No big deal until I can’t SLEEP!)
https://imgur.com/a/qce4KKw

Just picked up a 2023 Scout Bobber. The seat is terrible after about 15-20 minutes. I like the look of the Mother Road Customs tractospring seat. Any thoughts about comfort, and compatibility with a passenger seat?

Duelist Pack: "Duelists of the Explosive Flames" Edition

Etymology/Translation Corner
Tagline: "Within your fists burns a fighting spirit of explosive flames! Stir up a single strike that will conquer even the fiercest of battles!!"
This is a list of translated Japanese names for all of the cards in Duelist Pack: "Duelists of the Explosive Flames" Edition. See below for further notes.
Each card name is linked to an image!! (Use an image-zooming extension like Imagus to view them instantly.)
Any questions or issues you may have about the translations are welcome.

• Left Leg of the Sealed One
  
• Salamangrate Heat Lio / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Heat Lio
  

1. Salamangrate of Fire
2. Salamangrate Weasel / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Weasel
3. Salamangrate Tiger / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Tiger
4. Salamangrate Burst Gryphon / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Burst Gryphon
5. Salamangrate Raging Phoenix / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Raging Phoenix
6. Salamangrate Charge / Fiery Reinforcements of the Reincarnation Flame Beasts
7. Salamangrate Revive
8. Salamangrate Gazelle / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Gazelle
9. Salamangrate Spinny / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Spinny
10. Salamangrate Mirage Stallio / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Mirage Stallio
11. Salamangrate Bale Lynx / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Bale Lynx
12. Salamangrate Sunlight Wolf / Reincarnation Flame Beast - Sunlight Wolf
13. Salamangrate Sanctuary / Sanctuary of the Reincarnation Flame Beasts
14. Salamangrate Circle / Fiery Circle of the Reincarnation Flame Beasts
15. Salamangrate Transcend / Super-Reincarnation of the Reincarnation Flame Beasts
16. Burning Draw / Treasured Cards of the Swirling Flames
17. Salamangrate Roar
18. Volcanic Emperor
19. Volcanic Trooper
20. Volcanic Rimfire
21. Volcanic Blaze Cannon
22. Fire Ejection
23. Volcanic Emission
24. Volcanic Inferno
25. Volcanic Bullet
26. Volcanic Buckshot
27. Volcanic Rocket
28. Volcanic Queen
29. Volcanic Devil
30. Blaze Cannon
31. Blaze Cannon Magazine
32. Burning Knuckler Uppercutter
33. Burning Knuckler Chief Second
34. Burning Knuckler Promoter
35. Chaos Numbers 79: Burning Knuckler - Caesar the Commander
36. Burning Knuckler King Dempsey
37. Seventh Force / Awakening of the Seven Emperors
38. Burning Knuckle Cross-Counter
39. Burning Knuckler Headgear
40. Burning Knuckler Glassjaw
41. Burning Knuckler Switch-Hitter
42. Numbers 105: Burning Knuckler - Cestus the Shooting Star
43. Chaos Numbers 105: Burning Knuckler - Caestus the Comet
44. Numbers 79: Burning Knuckler - Kaiser the Nova
45. Burning Knuckle Spirits

Etymology and other trivia:

• Salamangrate of Fire's artwork, stats, and effects are a near copy of Achichi @Ignister, the FIRE-Attribute @Ignister Main Deck monster and the one embodying the feelings of Flame from the VRAINS anime. This monster seems to be Achichi wearing an armor similar to Heat Lio's. In Japanese, this is the only Salamangrate monster who doesn't include the Reincarnation Flame Beast subtitle as part of its name.
• Tiger is pronounced using the German pronunciation of the word ("TEE-GAH").
• Raging Phoenix is visually a combination of Salamangrate Pyro Phoenix and Fire Phoenix @Ignister, with the monster bearing the @Ignister emblem on its chest.

• Volcanic Emperor is modeled mainly after Volcanic Devil, but shares some design elements with Volcanic Queen (the lines of flame surging through its body) and Volcanic Hammerer (the way it's posed in the artwork). It could also be named after Hellflame Emperor (Infernal Flame Emperor in the TCG), which was also used by O'Brien in the GX anime.
• Volcanic Trooper is named after and wears a similar cloak as Fire Trooper, another monster used by O'Brien in the anime.
• Rimfire is a type of firearm cartridge where the primer is in the back rim, rather than a central primer cap. They are cheap to produce but cannot be reloaded with powder.
• Volcanic Blaze Cannon is designed to resemble Austin O'Brien's gun-shaped Duel Disk.
• Fire Ejection's artwork is inspired after a scene from the GX anime in which Blaze Cannon's effect is used to destroy Burst Lady during Judai's Duel against O'Brien.
• Volcanic Inferno was also the name of a hidden Deck that appeared when scanning Volcanic Counter and Volcanic Rocket in DUEL TERMINAL.

• Uppercutter is a portmanteau of uppercut (a punch delivered with an upward motion and the arm bent) and cutter (referring to the blades resembling paper cutters attached to the monster's forearms).
• The chief second is the person in command of a boxer's corner during a bout.
• Caesar ("KYE-SAR") is an alternative spelling of Kaiser ("KYE-ZER"), similar to the different spellings used by Cestus and Caestus. The Japanese word used for Commander is written with one of its kanji meaning "star," keeping it in line with all the other Burning Knuckler Xyz Monsters.
• Dempsey is named after the Dempsey Roll boxing technique (named after its creator, Jack Dempsey)—described as a roll of dodging shots swinging from left to right and using the thrust of the boxer's legs to spring on their opponent. This technique was widely used in the Japanese boxing manga Hajime no Ippo, depicting it as violently moving the boxer's body to the left and right, as can be seen in this card's artwork.
• Seventh Force depicts the scene from Yuma Tsukumo's second Duel against Arito in which Arito uses Rank-Up Magic - Varian's Force to Rank Up his Cestus the Shooting Star.
• A cross-counter is a boxing term for a counterattack begun immediately after an opponent throws a jab, exploiting the opening in the opponent's position. Its artwork is taken from Yuma's third Duel against Arito, and its name is inspired after Numbers 54: Lionheart the Rebellious Fighter's effect name in the anime: Burning Cross-Counter.

COCO'S × Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game Anniversary Campaign (Volume 1)

1. Black Magician
2. Elemental HERO Neos
3. Stardust Dragon

V Jump July 2023 Edition bonus card

• Dandy White-Lion

QUARTER CENTURY ANNIVERSARY SELECTION

1. The Sky Dragon of Osiris
2. Pot of Avarice
3. Foolish Burial

--- Table of Contents ---
Spring 4984, 9 Kuromoth, Spring Equinox
“Archmage, I thought you had already gone…” Brom’s voice, beyond Her door. She didn’t move, didn’t bother to look towards the closed portal. Had it been months or years since he'd last come to sit with Her?
“I will be leaving presently…” Archmage Morndancer’s cold voice answered. She squeezed tighter into Her little ball in the dark corner. It didn’t matter that he would be gone. He left the tower often, but it didn’t stop Her punishment. Even as the season turned from winter to spring, She'd stayed locked in Her room. With no books and no company. Occasionally being taken out to give samples in a lab completely separate from that of Her treasures. Only their yowls and barks from down the hall offering any comfort.
“It’s an important day, isn’t it, Archmage? Perhaps Sellon will pass the test.” Ran’s voice. Did he sound nervous? Her head tilted, just a little, towards the door. The half-circle of light from Her window did very little to banish the darkness of the room. She hadn’t bothered to light the candles. What was the point?
Morndancer scoffed, “Doubtful. Ronni didn’t manage it. And just as his sister before him, Sellon will join the Mages Guild whether he passes or not.” Sellon and Ronni, Archmage Morndancer’s children. She'd heard of them from Brom and Ran. So they were Mages as well. Perhaps they would be the ones to come take Her blood and cut Her hair in future. It didn’t matter. Nothing had ever mattered.
“But a Wizard-Cleric of Saint Bede might…”
“Enough.” Morndancer interrupted Brom, “Bede is no god, he wasn't even a decent Mage, he was and is a villain. We would not have this responsibility to save the world if he and his lot hadn’t doomed it.”
“Of course, Archmage, yes.” nervous feet shuffled outside Her door.
“Even now, Shaloon is trying to locate the next storm.” Morndancer continued his chastisement, “They come more frequently and destroy greater swaths of land. If we continue to be as useless as the other Talons, there will be no world left to save. So rather than waste your time on prayers to usurper gods, you had best refocus and redouble your efforts while we are away. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Archmage,” Brom and Ran said in unison.
“Good. And be sure to return those to the library when you have finished with them.” the hiss of fabric on stone accompanied the Archmage's exit.
Her door handle jingled, and Her head came up a fraction, but, “Wait…” Brom’s whisper. Silence followed, and She dropped Her head again, pressing her closed eyes into Her knees. Minutes passed, or was it hours? Did it matter? Maybe She would crawl into Her bed and try to sleep. Time passed faster that way. Or maybe She would just stay here in Her little ball in the corner.
“He should be gone by now…” Her lock clicked, and the door creaked open, but She didn’t bother to look up, “Goldy? Maybe She’s sleeping…” Brom whispered.
“Damn, it’s dark in here. Red, can we get a light?” She didn’t answer Ran’s request. What was the point? They would find Her and they would take Her for samples. She didn’t have to help them do it. “Grab the candle from the table, Brom. My hands are full.”
She could feel the life of a tiny flame beyond Her door. Felt it draw closer and enter Her room before it flickered and died. “Oh, Goldy… please don’t…” the shuffling of feet moving carefully in the darkness came closer. She tried to pull in tighter, tucking Her head against Her chest and letting Her now shoulder-length hair fall forward to further hide Her face.
They crouched at either side of Her, Brom setting the useless candle down to Her left with a soft ‘tink’ of brass on stone. Something much heavier was placed on Her right, the familiar scents of hardbound leather, paper, and ink… “We brought you some books, Red…”
She lifted Her head, looking through the tangled strands of golden hair and seeing a pair of worried faces looming in the dark. “If you light up the room a bit, we can read,” Brom slowly pushed Her hair back, careful not to touch Her skin. As though She would burn him. She might have. If She could find the energy.
“You’re not supposed to...” Her voice crackled from lack of use, making Her whisper even more inaudible.
“What?” Ran leaned closer, but She didn’t repeat Herself, “It’s been months, Red. You’re not in trouble anymore.”
She blinked silently at him.
“Look, Goldy,” Brom shuffled forward, still in his crouch, “things can go back to normal now. The Archmage will be out for a few days. We can take you to play with the animals tomorrow.” She shifted Her blank stare to him. Brom waited for a moment, searching Her face for a familiar flicker of excitement. She didn’t give it to him. He sighed, “We’ll leave these with you then. You can read them when you’re ready.”
Brom made to stand, but She grabbed the hem of his sleeve, “Stay with me…” On the candle, the smallest of lights began to flicker to life. Brom sat down with a groan, and on Her other side, Ran plopped down even less gracefully.
He leaned his back against Her bed and picked the top book off the small pile they'd brought Her, “We can stay until lunch, Goldy.”
“But we still have a lot of work to do…”
It was enough. The candle burned brighter, and She shifted Her legs down, taking the book Ran passed to Her. Things would finally be returning to normal. As they always had been, and as they always would be.
***
Shon woke long before the kitchen servant would come to fetch him. Everything was the same, and yet nothing would ever be as it was before. Sitting up, he ran his fingers through his hair, only to realize that everything wasn't the same. The other two boys who'd reached maturity were also awake. It looked like Gaven hadn’t slept at all, his sandy hair tousled and his dark eyes bloodshot.
“This is it then… the last morning in the dorms?” Gaven whispered the useless question. Nan, the oldest by a month, nodded in silence. Shon didn’t bother with even that much, swinging his legs off the bed and kicking something. Another difference. A final gift from the Church. A leather pack for him to carry everything he owned.
Shon dressed in silence only broken by the shuffle of the other two joining him. After tying his boots, he started packing the bag. It was large enough to fit all of his clothes and even his seven journals, though the eighth made it a very tight fit.
“Should we make the beds?” Nan whispered. Again, Shon didn’t answer. Instead, he stripped the blanket and sheets from the mattress, folding them neatly and placing them with the pillow at the foot of the bed.
“Yeah… they'll have to strip them to wash anyway…” Gaven said, following Shon’s example.
They'd just finished when the door creaked open. Normally woken by the morning bells, Gaven and Nan both jumped, looking from the dark window to the door then at each other.
The servant girl who usually woke Shon looked in on them with some confusion, then hummed in understanding before holding the door open for them, “Come on then. There may be some leftover dessert you can have while we make breakfast…”
Shon doubted he could eat anything at the moment. His stomach worked itself in knots that put an uncomfortable pressure on his heart that in turn seemed as though it wanted to beat its way into his throat. The entire sensation made him feel a strange sort of nauseous. Nan and Gaven looked no better than he felt, and they both swallowed before exiting the room. Gaven took a moment to look back over his shoulder before shaking himself and setting his eyes forward. Nan seemed to rush from the room, too afraid to look back. Shon took one last look around before following, the door clicking closed behind them.
He let the other boys walk ahead of him and wondered what they were thinking. Gaven would be taking the test with him today, but Nan had been selected to join the Masons Guild and had opted to accept the offer right away rather than try for one of the divine orders first. Perhaps Nan was the smartest of them.
“We'll miss you…” the servant girl whispered so only Shon could hear, “It isn’t glamorous, but it’s honest work... if you want to join the Servants Guild…” the Servants Guild was a loose association of otherwise privately employed cleaners and cooks. It was the last choice for orphans, but also their most common destination. She'd meant the offer as a kindness, so Shon nodded in thanks, though nothing but the most desperate situation would ever see him join.
The head cook looked up as they entered the kitchen, nodding in understanding, “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked Nan and Gaven, who mumbled incoherently in response. To Shon, the cook smiled, offering only a silent nod.
The girl who'd reached maturity with them was already in the dining room, staring mournfully at a plate of hastily scrambled eggs and a few cookies from the night before.
“Hey Lara, couldn’t sleep anymore either?” Gaven asked with a strained smile. Shaking her head, she picked up her fork and tried to force down some of the breakfast. She'd been accepted into the Tailors Guild, but unlike Nan, had chosen to take the test with Shon and Gavin. Just in case.
The cook himself brought the boys their plates of eggs and cookies, and they ate in silence until the morning bells sounded. The three unused to being up early jumped at the sound, exchanging nervous looks. Their juniors and the priests would come flooding in soon, laughing and talking and enjoying another breakfast with friends and the closest thing they had to family. It would be the last time the four of them ate with the others in this room.
Shon didn’t know if he could take the bustle today, even if it was the last. Or maybe because it was. He stood, taking his mostly full plate and returning it to the kitchen. The cook looked from the untouched food to Shon and back again, then picked up a pair of cookies and held them out to him, “You might not be able to eat now, but you can save these for after.”
Shon took the gift, meeting the cook's eyes and nodding in silent thanks. The cook returned the nod and Shon left the kitchen without looking back. He slipped the cookies into one of the side pockets of his new pack as he made his way to the courtyard. He passed the bathroom, its wall lined with low-hanging sinks and a single long mirror. He'd practiced arching his eyebrows in that mirror...
Entering the courtyard, Shon hesitated, remembering his first early morning. When he couldn’t sleep for excitement at the mere possibility of training with a real adventurer. He'd wanted to learn to fight, but more than that, he'd wanted to learn how to train. After all, he would be doing a lot of that once he joined the Temple. It would be helpful to have a head start… Or, that's what he'd told himself back then.
Shon shut the door with a click of finality that rang in the still morning air. To his left were the classrooms where the city's children took lessons. Just thinking about his last lesson, with only those coming of age, still made him blush. To his right was the door to the chapel, where he'd sat with the other orphans through the weekly sermons. Shon respected the god of life and healing, but Soleil had never been his patron. Across from him was the clinic, where the Clerics of Soleil saw to the needs of the sick and injured. He'd only been sent there once, after breaking his arm trying to climb the tree in the courtyard.
Shon would have no need to pray to Soleil specifically, and the Temple kept their own clinic... if he passed. If he didn't... There was a chance he would see the clinic again, perhaps the chapel...
Shon stepped off the walkway surrounding the central tree, and a familiar voice sounded from its roots, “Feeling up to a few exercises?” Master Veon-Zih asked, rising from his cross-legged seat in one fluid motion. Shon stopped in their little clearing and nodded, letting his pack slide off his shoulder and flop heavily to the ground. “I take it there's nothing fragile in there then?” Veon-Zih asked with a chuckle.
The idea that a thirteen-year-old would have something valuable or fragile enough to break just by dropping the bag finally pulled Shon all the way out of his contemplations. He arched a skeptical eyebrow at his master.
“There, that’s more like it. You looked like a rather well-preserved zombie.” Veon-Zih took Shon by the shoulder, shaking him, “Not a thought in your head, or skip in your step.”
Shon shook his head, sinking into his horse stance to start his drills. He punched with his left fist first, and Veon-Zih took position just out of reach, so Shon’s knuckles barely brushed the fabric of his tunic. Shon held the position until Veon-Zih also threw his first punch. He aimed for Shon’s face, sending a wave of air and ki over his skin and nearly touching his nose. Shon didn’t flinch.
They worked through their punches in unison, nearly touching but never quite connecting. Shon worked in silence for a while then said, “Too many thoughts…”
“And none of them new, I’m sure,” Veon-Zih commented.
Shon nodded, “The same ones circle again and again. Even though I can’t do anything about them... yet.”
“Not until after the test.”
Shon had to swallow a sudden lump in his throat and nodded again, unable to speak even if he'd wanted to.
Veon-Zih moved on to the next strike, and Shon copied him. He'd lost count of the punches but followed his Master's lead. “I don’t suppose you want to talk about it?” Master Veon-Zih asked.
Shon shook his head but then sighed. Most people seemed to like thinking out loud, especially when troubled. He didn’t understand why, but his usual quiet contemplation wasn’t working, so maybe… “If I don’t pass…”
“I would think of all days, today would be the one to take a break!” Father Branston called from the chapel door. He began strolling towards them with a broad smile, “Do you think you’ll be done in time to join me?”
Was it time already? Shon glanced around, noticing Nan, Gaven, and Lara approaching from the living quarter, all looking pale, their lips drawn in tight unsmiling lines.
Veon-Zih hadn’t come up from his stance, so neither did Shon, but the Monk did laugh, “Keeping a routine can be soothing in times of great change.” he winked at Shon, “Even if it’s a positive change.”
Shon tried to smile at Veon-Zih’s apparent show of faith but wasn’t sure if he'd managed it. What if…?
“Well, I don’t want to rush you. Can I trust you to get Shon to the Chapel on time if I take the others now?” Father Branston laughed as though he'd said something particularly humourous, his great belly bouncing with mirth.
“We'll be there.” Master Veon-Zih assured Father Branston, and Shon nodded mutely, resuming his drills and trying not to watch the others leave. “We have plenty of time,” Veon-Zih whispered, “Take a few deep breaths. It's the end of your childhood, not your life.”
They moved from drills to kata. Master Veon-Zih stayed in front of Shon, moving with him and matching his routine strikes with the appropriate counters. “You were saying?” it had been awhile since Shon had tried to speak, though his head continued to spin with the half-formed thoughts.
“I don’t want to think about not passing,” Shon said, kicking high and hitting Veon-Zih’s waiting arm.
“Do you believe such thoughts will jinx you?”
Shon dropped his kick and punched as the kata dictated. Veon-Zih was right; working through their regular routines did seem to help calm his pounding heart. “I don’t know… Maybe? It’s stupid, though. Whether I pass or not was decided when I was born. It won’t change just because I think about it.”
“Emotions are rarely logical.” Veon-Zih smacked Shon’s punch aside at the last moment, and Shon moved smoothly from that strike to the next, “It’s normal to be nervous. One of your peers is just as nervous, and he already knows where he’s going.”
“They all do…” Shon mumbled, snap kicking straight in front of him, confident in his Master’s speed to dodge and counter.
Veon-Zih did indeed dodge, but instead of the usual counter he hooked Shon’s foot with his own and tried to pull him off balance. Shon only stumbled for a moment, shifting his form to a different kata and counter, his body moving before his mind could catch up. Veon-Zih spoke as they continued the different form without finishing the first, prompting, “Even those taking the test have other plans, just in case?”
“Lara was accepted by the Tailors, and Gaven is going to enlist in the guard…” They had sped up the pace, and Shon needed to concentrate, now on edge in case Master Veon-Zih decided to shift the practice again. A few more strikes in, the Monk dropped below Shon’s punch and swung at his ribs, forcing Shon to block. Shon switched the kata to his most recent on instinct, using the block to redirect the punch rather than stop it as the original kata would have dictated.
Veon-Zih smiled, his eyes twinkling at the move as he picked up the pace even further, “Both of those are honest jobs and noble callings.” Shon could only grunt in response, now moving too fast for him to think of anything but the exercise. Veon-Zih continued, “The enlisted make up the bulk of Hengist’s armies, and their loyalty is admirable. The Tailors Guild not only clothes the populace but often creates beautiful works of art that serve to enhance the natural beauty of the human form.”
The Master hadn’t even broken a sweat, but Shon had to gasp out, “But I don’t-” before he was interrupted by another unexpected punch. He countered but then disengaged, breathing deep and slow, “What will I do? If I don’t pass? I thought about joining the enlisted too but…” but the idea of being so close, and yet so impossibly far from his failed dream, pained him in a way he couldn’t put into words.
When Shon didn’t continue, Veon-Zih asked, “Will you reconsider joining me then?”
Shon blinked at the Monk, his eyes going wide. He'd thought he'd lost his chance with the Monastery when he'd denied Veon-Zih for the Temple three years ago, “You mean you'll still take me?” he stammered out.
Veon-Zih closed the distance between them and placed a firm hand on Shon’s shoulder, “So long as you are an obedient and willing student, remember?”
Shon’s eyes burned and another lump rose in his throat, preventing him from speaking. He nodded, and Veon-Zih smiled, turning away from him so Shon could rub his eyes without the Monk seeing. He still wasn’t comfortable with the thought of failing, but he felt a little more at ease, knowing he wouldn’t be alone even if he did.
“Shall we go then?” Veon-Zih scooped up Shon’s pack and held it out to him, “Destiny awaits no man.”
***
The Grand Chapel was dedicated to all the gods of the kingdom, and though today it was closed to the public, the doors were still crowded with families from every walk of life. Merchants and craftsmen mingled excitedly with one another while their children nervously awaited the start of the test that would determine the trajectory of the rest of their lives. A smaller group of only two families stood apart from the throng. Dressed in fine clothes and protected by private guards, the nobles surveyed the commoners with a detached air as though above the gods themselves. The boy Shon often saw at the Temple was among them.
Shon stopped just outside the crowd, arching his neck to try and see the doors. His quiet dread had turned to jitters of nervousness as he and Master Veon-Zih walked through the city. He wasn’t sure if he'd wanted to run or stop moving altogether. Now that they were here, he tried to distract himself by studying the faces and movements of those gathered. Though if he tried to draw them now, the shaking of his hands would probably make the pictures impossible to decipher.
The differences between the nobles and commoners, in particular, caught his eye. One of the nobles, a man of middling years, wore long robes with a high collar buttoned tight to his neck and looked as if he would rather be anywhere but here. Shon had just finished scanning up the man’s robes when their eyes met. A shiver, entirely unrelated to the general anxiety of the test, ran down his spine.
The noble’s eyes went wide, and he started for Shon, the edge of the crowd giving way for him like the sea before a ship. “You…” his voice was breathy, and he reached out. Shon stepped back and ran into Master Veon-Zih, “They are back, truly?” the strange man asked, his eyes fixed on Shon who could only stare in bewilderment.
“My good lord Morndancer!” Father Branston’s joy-filled greeting sounded from the side, “So your youngest has come of age has he?” the Abbot seemed to snap the noble from his focus, and he turned away from Shon as Branston made his way through the crowd, Lara and Gaven close behind.
“Yes, Abbot.” Morndancer surveyed the Cleric with what Shon could only describe as contempt, though the look hardly wiped the wide smile from Branston’s face, “Will we be starting soon? Sellon and I have business with the Mages Guild.”
“Though if young Sellon should find himself capable…” Branston started, but the noble snorted. “Ah well, to each their own.” Branston finished, turning away from Morndancer to address his young charges.
From a pouch on his belt, Father Branston pulled forth three small books that shouldn’t have been able to fit in the little bag, “I present to you, your papers.” He fanned the books out before him, and each of them took the one closest to them. They were bound in leather with the seal of the Kingdom of Daanlin embossed on the cover. The knight on the kingdom seal rode a horse and held a shield with the seal of Clearhelm on it, three tall pine trees in front of a snow-capped mountain.
Their papers were proof of their citizenship and would serve as a record of their lives and accomplishments. Master Veon-Zih had shown Shon his own papers months before. It held a record of every border he had ever crossed and every teleport he had ever taken, as well as proof of all of his adventures and every job performed for any of the kingdom’s organizations. Veon-Zih’s papers were a veritable tome compared to Shon’s meager notebook. Opening it to the first page, Shon saw his name followed by his presumed place and date of birth. It detailed that he had been raised in the Church in Smildna and when he had come of age. At the bottom was a place labeled but left blank for the date and results of today’s test…
Branston was still speaking to them, but Shon only partly registered the words, “You should keep your papers on you whenever possible. You will need them to reenter the city any time you leave…”
Veon-Zih placed a hand on Shon’s shoulder, and he nearly jumped out of his boots in surprise. Leaning down, the Monk whispered in his ear, “Soon this book will be full of your adventures and accomplishments. Regardless of what happens today.”
“Abbot,” Morndancer interjected as Father Branston finished his explanation, “the test? Some of us have places to be.”
“Yes, yes, patience is a virtue, my dear Lord Morndancer. The sun will rise no faster with you tapping your foot at its pace.” he lowered his voice and continued to address the anxious children, “I am so very proud of all of you. Know that no matter what is discovered today, the light of Soleil will always shine with joy at what you have and will accomplish in your lives.” Shon wondered if any of the adults realized that their constant efforts to comfort their nerves seemed to be having the opposite effect. Shon’s palms were sweating as he closed his papers, and he had to wipe them on his pants to try and distract himself from his pounding heart.
“Follow me,” Branston turned away, walking through the middle of the crowd that had suddenly grown hush at his movement towards the door. Veon-Zih gave Shon one last pat, then slipped Shon’s pack from his back and tossed it over his own shoulder. Letting his student know without words that he would be waiting for Shon to return, one way or another.
Shon could feel the eyes of the noble Morndancer boring into him as he followed Father Branston through the throng towards the Grand Chapel. What was that man's problem? Who was back? Shon was too distracted by the test to dwell on it, but the man had made his skin crawl, and having him at his back wasn’t helping his nerves.
Father Branston turned to address the crowd as the doors began to swing open, “The testers will enter alone and present their papers to the clerks by the door. Families and friends may wait outside until the test is complete.” Nervous adolescents made their way forward, careful not to jostle one another, many accepting last-minute hugs and well wishes from their families.
Shon thought he remembered the Grand Chapel well from his visit almost six years ago, but was struck again by the beauty of its art. The masterwork statues and carvings were outshone only by the stained glass dome that painted the round floor in bright light of every color he could imagine.
Of the ten gods, eight representatives stood opposite the doors, waiting quietly while the testers handed their papers to the clerks and shuffled nervously in the middle of the majestic holy site. Neither the Temples of Horsa nor Saint Giorgos were present. Their absence wasn’t surprising. The Temple of Saint Giorgos only took those of noble birth and would give their tests separately, and the Temple of Horsa was openly shunned in Clearhelm, its only branch located in the capital city of Tarorn.
Shon handed one of three clerks his papers. She took them with only a glance, hastily scribbling Shon’s name on a long list before handing the book to one of the others who wrote the date in the spot allocated. By the time all the testers had filtered in, there were about twenty young boys and girls huddled in the center of the room.
The Cleric of Hengist, in robes of white and blue, stepped forward to address them. “You are gathered here today in the hopes of being chosen to serve. To serve the province, the kingdom, and most importantly, the gods. But before the gods can choose you to act as their divine hands and voice, you must train and study hard their tenants and virtues. And before even that, your body must be able to hold and direct their power. For a feather that cannot hold ink will never be a quill. This is not a test of your worth but of your natural, innate ability.”
As he spoke, two other Clerics, Father Branston of Soleil and a female in the colors of Lune, stepped forward, each holding something round covered with a dark cloth. The Cleric of Hengist continued, “Very few are born with the capacity to touch the divine, there is no shame in failing.” the Clerics of Soleil and Lune removed the protective coverings and everyone had to shield their eyes from the brilliant light that flared in Father Branston’s hand.
Squinting as his eyes adjusted, Shon could just make out an orb glowing in a bowl in the Abbot’s hands. The Cleric of Lune held a similar sphere, though it appeared dead beside the brilliance of the other. “When we call your name, you will touch the empty vessel,” the Cleric of Hengist gestured towards the unlit stone, “and then you will touch the vessel filled with divine magic,” with his other hand, he gestured towards the light. “Do not hold the stone for longer than a moment. If your body is unable to channel the magic it could do serious harm,” he warned.
“Trase,” one of the clerks called from the door, reading off the list they'd compiled. A tall boy stepped forward on shaking feet. He approached the Clerics, who nodded solemnly, all encouraging smiles gone. Reaching out, he touched the unlit orb, then with a deep breath, reached for the glowing vessel.
Nothing happened. Trase pulled his hands back, and Branston whispered -though all could hear in the stillness of the room- “It’s alright lad, you may go…”
“Anhala,” the clerk called, and a girl jumped before rushing forward to try.
The first six failed before a girl named Gena reached shaking hands to the orbs. As her fingers brushed the light vessel, the dead sphere in her other hand began to glow. She gasped, holding tight to both globes, now both shining brightly.
“Congratulations, my dear, you may choose an order…” the Cleric of Hengist gestured to the altars around the Chapel. Gena pulled her hands back slowly, and the unlit stone died once again. Shon watched as she walked to the altar of Soleil to await the end of the test before beginning her life as an adept in training at the Church.
“Shaclin Ebonheart,” the noble boy Shon often saw at the Temple stepped forward, rubbing his hands on his pants before reaching for the orbs. Nothing. He held on, and Father Branston gently removed the boy’s fingers from the light orb. Shaclin pulled away sharply, clutching his hand to his chest and whimpering. His skin had grown red and blistered.
“I’m sorry…” the Cleric of Hengist whispered.
Shaclin turned away without a word and strode for the door, still clutching his burned hand, silent tears staining his cheeks.
I won’t cry… I won’t… “Shon,” Shon closed his eyes, imagining himself in the Temple chapel with its calm silence and soothing scent of incense. He could almost smell it when he opened his eyes and moved forward.
Time slowed down… it took hours to reach the Clerics. Days to raise his hand to touch the dark orb. Now that he was closer he saw that they were actually crystals, tumbled into perfectly smooth spheres. His palm covered the dead stone, and it felt cool, as though it had just been dug from the ground by adventurous children. He reached for the stone bathed in light, feeling the warmth radiate off it before he even made contact. It wasn’t nearly hot enough to burn, and yet Shaclin’s hand had shown blisters.
Shon touched the stone. The warmth filled his fingers and crawled up his arm. It flooded his body like a vessel being filled with water before flowing out his other arm and down his hand. The dead stone came to life, its coolness replaced by the warmth of the divine magic, using him as its conduit connecting the two.
“Congratulations, son, you may choose an order…”
Time sped back up, and Shon let his hands slide off the stones. “Congratulations,” Father Branston echoed, nodding towards the altar of Hengist, “The rest is up to you.”
Only two others passed the test. A girl with long auburn hair and green eyes had joined the Temple with Shon, and a boy had gone to the Church of Saint Bjarki. They stood by their respective altars as the last of the failed testers left the Chapel. Gaven and Lara managed strained smiles at Shon as they left. He attempted to return them but wasn't sure if he'd managed it. The eight Clerics all breathed sighs of relief as the last left, and Branston and the Cleric of Lune returned the covers over the stones. Though still lit by the light through the colored dome, the Chapel seemed so much darker without the divine light to fill it.
“Four this year! An entire fifth!” the Druid of Cathbad exclaimed, her brown and green robes rustling as she danced in place.
“Yes, quite remarkable. Twice the average.” the Cleric of Saint Bede agreed. Though he resisted dancing for joy.
The Cleric of Hengist was also smiling broadly, though when he spoke, it was to the kids, “You may spend the afternoon with your families. Report to your chosen order before sixth bell.”
The girl who also joined the Temple of Hengist, Daisy, gave Shon a warm smile and hurried with the others to retrieve her papers. Now marked with their status as divine conduits. Shon walked behind them, his nervousness replaced with excited anticipation. He felt somehow full and empty all at once. With one door open, another had closed...
Shon stepped into the morning light to find the crowd had cleared. Only the three families of his fellows remained, hugging and kissing their children in joy. “We shall have a feast fit for the King!” Daisy’s father exclaimed, lifting her into the air as if she were no more than five. Shon’s stomach growled.
“Hungry?” Veon-Zih asked, stepping out from beside the door and presenting Shon with his pack. Shon felt his cheeks go red, and Veon-Zih laughed, rubbing his own belly, “I could use some lunch myself.”
Hastily Shon dropped his pack and rifled through the outside pockets, finding the cookies in the last one left to check. They were cracked and crumbled in some places, but he held one out to Veon-Zih regardless.
The Monk took it with a bow, “I am trying to resist being disappointed.” he confessed as Shon eagerly shoved his own broken cookie in his mouth.
He nearly choked, and Veon-Zih patted his back hard, not helping. Shon managed to swallow, then stammered, “Master, I…”
Veon-Zih interrupted with a laugh loud enough to fill the empty entryway, “Just promise me you won’t let your new studies dull your old. I plan on testing you with each visit.”
"Visit?" Something Shon couldn’t name filled his chest with warmth reminiscent of the divine light, "Test? You..." He thought he might burst with barely contained hope. No one could be so blessed... "You'll still train me?" Shon asked.
“I happen to be good friends with one of your future teachers at Hamerfoss.” Veon-Zih stated for the first time, “I’m sure he'll welcome my visits. If you'll have me…”
Shon didn’t have words for an answer. Instead, he lunged forward, wrapping Veon-Zih in the first and only hug he could remember giving anyone.
--- Table of Contents ---
All comments and communication are welcome and wanted.

Hi all, trying to come up with a full list of what is different between the community defense rifle and the current rev WWSD, each as available on KE Arms's web site today. Didn't find this all listed in one place; thought it might come in handy to other shopping.
I based this on inrange & forgotten weapons's announcement videos for the CDR and the CDR and a read of what is on the web site.
I've come up with the following:

• silent capture spring (deletable from WWSD, -110)
• carbon fiber hand guard (deletable from WWSD, -150/170)
• Rekluse trigger vs. mil-spec (configurable on CDR for SLT +180 or Rekluse +270)
• chrome bolt carrier group vs. nitride (+180 on cdr)
• ambi selector (+30 on CDR )
• ambi mag catch (+45 on CDR)
• WWSD has a larger charging handle? CDR's handle is still ambi and larger than mil-spec?
• trapdoor butt plate (+15 on CDR)
• WWSD includes a magazine ($20 retail elsewhere)
• WWSD can be discounted with whatever discount code works, discount code on CDR limited to 10%.
• Either can be configured to include a forward assist or a ban state grip fin
• WWSD can be built with your choice of muzzle device, mail it to KE Arms
• WWSD is available in 14.7" barrel with permanent muzzle device
• CDR available now, WWSD 3-4 week lead time

Am I missing anything?
Other questions I've had as I shop that weren't immediately obvious
SLT-1 vs SLT-2: Only obvious difference is the shape of the trigger - curved vs. straight blade
RTS-1 vs RTS-2: simpler trigger shape on RTS-2, both curved. Not obvious to me what the advantage of the complex one would be, maybe slightly lighter?
Aluminum handguards: Delta-R has short pic rail at front for bipod use, Delta-S does not

I am thinking of moving all of my non category credit card spend to my American card, earning 1x loyalty points. Right now I put that spend on my Citi Double Cash & Blue Business Plus. I figure I will forfeit about 50k Membership Rewards points per year and about $1000 in cashback “value” but I’d be able to hit the 200k loyalty points. I will also lean towards the American shopping portal over Rakuten to earn American loyalty points instead of MR when the deals are pretty close.
I fly trans-con a lot and was flying delta as a platinum but recently did a status match to American for more direct flight options. If I can go all-in on American and earn Executive Platinum, will that keep me high on the upgrade list? And are the other benefits above Platinum Pro (where I am now) worth it?
Or do the first class seats for trans-con typically sellout anyway?

Editing to clarify that I fly a lot and I do drink lots of water. Being parched is till a problem for me on 10+ hour flights, but maybe that's not true for many. Thanks for the suggestions anyway.
Curious if anyone has flown with a mini humidifier to use while flying? I'm seriously considering bringing one since there are super tiny ones that will run off a glass of water and a USB. They are permitted by TSA but not sure about other countries? I'll be flying Air France and Delta.
Also, if someone seated near you had one, would it be bothersome?

A special thank you to the amazing u/SpacePaladin15 for this fun world.
A thank you u/ImaginationSea3679 y u/Acceptable_Egg5560 for helping me with plot stuff.
Sunday Time! Two chapters in one today!
[Prologue][Previous][Next]
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Memory Transcription Subject: Extermination Officer Tova
Date [standardized human time]: August 24rd, 2136, Late first claw
“Dad!?”
My shout was barely loud enough to go over the noise of blaring klaxons. I skipped alongside my father, his paws clasped around mine as he tried to pull me down the hall.
“Not much farther, Tova. Your mother’s waiting for us at the brid-” A panicking venlil stormed right through the hallway, sprinting right between my father and I, sending all three of us sprawling out onto the ground! The rude man didn’t even stop to help us back up, running a stampede right back through the swarming venlil!
“RUN! RUN! THEY’RE COMING! GET ME OUT OF HERE!!! I DON’T WANNA DIE!!”
Of course, he wasn’t the only one shouting; a mother crying for her pups, venlil screaming in panic, and the cries of pain: Many venlil having been trampled in the mad dash in random directions! The general fear was merely feeding into a grander self-fueling cycle of panic!
“My arm hurts,” I whine, watching my father spring up from his fallen position. He is barely able to move before the entire ship’s hull lurches to one side, sending most venlil careening into one of the walls, but thankfully for me, the impact wasn’t hard enough to break any of my bones. My father wasn’t so lucky, clutching one of his legs with a tight grasp, and letting out a pained whimper. “Splesh…” He groaned out, grabbing tight for a brief second before correcting himself. “Gah, sorry, shouldn’t have said that in front of you.” He chuckles aloud despite the pain and does well to maintain a cool and collected gaze.
I didn’t really care if my father had said a naughty word. I was more worried about the crooked state of his leg. It was bent at an old angle, and one part that was normally straight, his upper thigh, was actually bent as well.
It looks awful!
I crawled my way over to him as quickly as I can, wrapping my two paws around his wrists. “C’mon, we need to hurry! Please get up!” I tried to tug my father up onto his paws, but due to my smaller size, I wasn’t able to be of much assistance. “Come on, Dad!”
I try again to lift my father up but to no avail. The middle-aged venlil merely hobbles one step before collapsing back onto the ground. The other venlil all begin to stand up and swarm past us. I am thankful that they don’t manage to accidentally trample us beneath their paws.
“Come on, Father! It isn’t that much farther, just about fifteen more tails or so, and we’ll be safe with Mom!” My voice breaks as it raises in pitch, crying out in anguish and desperation! I give one last firm tug to my dad’s wrists, but instead of pulling the man upwards. He gives me a small shove, sending me falling down onto my hindquarters.
The sound of more screaming venlil fills the corridor as the taint makes itself known. A brief exchange of plasma fire is heard beyond the wall, but other than that, I could only discern the fact that the arxur have boarded.
“Go! Your mother can take care of you. She’s a good woman. Just go!”
I turn tail and make a mad dash with the rest of the venlil toward the bridge’s doors, stopping to look over my shoulder upon reaching the giant mechanical doorway, peering through the now-closed window.
Arxur by this point have begun to make themselves known, coming around the corner with speed! They don’t waste any time, jumping upon downed and injured venlil, and chomping down upon limbs and arms.
Their screams fill the hallway and leak into the bridge…
My father, despite his injury, reaches for a knife he likes to carry on himself, and readies the blade, waiting for the first Arxur to approach. He doesn’t have to wait long, for one is already barreling down onto him. Its massive jaws opening wide!
“Tova!? Tova! Tova!”
And within a moment, I am jolted from my nightmarish slumber by Quilix’s paws shaking my chest. He had a tight grip on my short wool, grabbing on firmly. I could feel his grip ease up the second he noticed an eye looking back up at him. “Y-you were screaming, so I… I figured I’d… I’d check up on you.”
The small and white venlil looked like he was on the brink of crying: Tears were coating the undersides of his eyes, which appeared to be puffy and orange. I was so enthralled with my nightmare - I haven’t had nightmares in years: Not one since I have been around Quilix, that I hadn’t remembered the past two paws very well, but when I did, I placed a paw against Quilix and gave the male a weak shove, pushing him off of me with ease. “Don’t touch me, I still have not forgotten what you have done.” I take a moment to adjust my messy wool. Quilix does the same, taking a moment to adjust the scraggly mess it had become within a mere two paws.
He still appeared to be taking care of himself, at least. I couldn’t say the same for myself. Normally, I’d take a shower after grueling work claws because I often got some grease or oil in my fur, but the past two paws had left me feeling ragged.
He nods to my words. “You should take a shower, my beautiful-” - “Don’t tell me what to do.”
The sharp, bluntness within my tone cuts down whatever Quilix was going to say. He lowered his head and tail before sheepishly walking out of the room. A part of me wanted to feel bad about seeing my mate like that, but I struggled to find that empathetic bone within me. It just wasn’t easy to take his words with any meaning after having that whole fiasco dropped on my head!
The insincere guile of hiding everything from me! Then he feels bad when I learn about it!?
It actually takes some effort on my part to not slam the door when I walk into the bathroom. I waste no time turning on the water to its hottest setting and slide back over the mirror. I stare at my reflection, loathing the mess that I appear to be; split ends, unregulated wool, drooping eyes, grease stains, and oil stains that have gone uncleaned. I felt like an idiot for not taking that one shower when Arwen was still sleeping.
Why does Arwen want Quilix and I to get back together so quickly? Is this a human thing?
I briefly pause, remembering something.
I mean, it isn’t like I could break up with Quilix. My mother would kill me, and I am fairly positive Quilix’s parents would do the same.
I should have just gone with Pasala to have my mind fixed. I spehing hate this. I thought my nightmares were over with… I’m not deserving of this second chance with Arwen.
I briefly rub my tearing eyes with my paws, wiping away the dampness that had built up underneath my two eyes. I take a moment to adjust myself, scratching a few itches and doing a bit more rubbing, and then finally hop into the hot water.
My muscles and mind relax under the pouring stream for a few minutes, letting it clear my mind and thoughts away like that of a morning’s rain. Then I go through the routine of shampooing, conditioning, and cleaning out all the nooks and crannies between my paws, ears, tail, and so forth.
Eventually, I turn off the shower and finish up with the rest of my cycle; drying, brushing my teeth and brushing my wool until it’s smoothed down. Finally, I walk out and head down to our living room. I may have not eaten over the past few claws, and I can feel myself grow famished.
When I enter the living room, I take note of the fact that Quilix is reading on his tablet. Something I seldom see the small male do. Normally, he does all of his reading and writing for his books on his main computer, which he has stored away in his office, so this was quite new to me.
His expression quickly shifts the second he sees me: ears perk up highly and his tail wags against the couch, but the expression is fleeting, falling not even a moment later, for he quickly notices my sour gaze landing right back on him.
Regardless of my disappointment, I still couldn’t keep my curiosity at bay. “What are you reading?”
My belated curiosity was enough for the male to perk right back up with a hopeful ear flick. “Well, Arwen and Trivi sent us instructions on what we should say when we go to acquire our visas to Earth, and what not to say to the humans. We’d probably get in trouble, but I’d be worried more about Arwen.”
“Just forward it to my tablet and I will read it later. I’m hungry.”
“You don’t want to read it with me?” His hopeful tone tugged at my heartstrings.
“No, I said I am hungry!” And like that, he was crushed right back down.
A part of me actually did want to read it with him. He was still my mate after the fact, but that was a very small part of me. I was still upset, angry, livid, even! I was also very, very hungry.
With another annoyed tail flick, I moved my way to the kitchen and fixed myself a snack, eating it at the dining room table. Quilix continued to look at me, holding out that I would join him on the couch, but once again, I would dip back to my room to retrieve my tablet, opening up the message from Arwen and Trivi.

Hello Quilix and Tova,
There’s been a small change of plans, but I won’t tell you the little details. What I do want to tell you is what you should and shouldn’t mention to the UN visa agent that came to Venlil Prime. Firstly, don’t mention the ranch, for obvious reasons…
If I were you, I’d talk about your passions, and claim that I mentioned one of them. I do recall hearing something about you liking swords, right?

I do like swords… How does Arwen know that?

Well, you could talk about some old medieval museums: St. Fagans is a good one to talk about. I’ve actually been there, but only because my father was a bit of a history buff. Hah! They have some swords on display and a really, really old sword. It’s about 1.45 Tails [870 millimeters] if I remember correctly. I figured you’d like to see it.

Wait, aren’t we supposed to be treated like cattle? Was that the change of plans? Oh… Yeah, forgot about needing to sneak through.

For Quilix, there are plenty of art museums, more so than medieval-based Museums, so I am pretty sure we can find something for him as well. Anyways, I will see you later. I assume the twenty-eighth? That will be roughly four paws from now. I do suggest you get your visas, it might be a day, or not…

I finally close my tablet, having finished the message. I sat there for a couple of minutes to process what I have been told. My mind wandering back and forth in trying to decipher if Arwen changed her mind, was toying with us, or was purely trying to sneak us back to Earth under a more wholesome-sounding guise.
I only knew her for about half a paw, and within that half-paw, it was mostly filled with that massage and poem reading, so really, I didn’t even know her at all, and she still wanted to go through with this!?
Either she really wants clothes made from our wool or actually is extremely serious about forgiveness. I think… I think I am leaning toward the latter. Could also be humiliation… Wait, didn’t she agree to Quilix’s original plan…
OH BY THE SPElSHING STARS!
I calmed down rather quickly at the small realization. Arwen was probably angry and just suggested that on a moment’s notice. She probably wasn’t thinking straight and said something somewhat stupid. That’s all.
That’s what I told myself.
I hopped up from my bed, leaving my tablet behind, and walked back into the living room. Quilix was still sitting on the couch, but staring blankly at the wall. “Not going to draw or write?”
Quilix had a way of getting everyone to feel bad for him, and it wasn’t even purposeful to my knowledge. He was just so small and helpless, so when his mood shot down the drain, it was like looking at an unhappy child. His tail was limp and he had a general malaise over his posture: body laying flat across the couch with the tablet screen down on his chest. “Don’t feel like it.”
Even his tone was lower and slower than its normal high and fast pitch.
Ugh… I don’t want to deal with him.
Despite my inner thoughts, I remember what Arwen asked of us. I really didn’t want to put up with my mate, but it was probably the right thing to do.
Or at least I hope it is the right thing to do.
Memory Transcription Subject: Extermination Officer Tova
Date [standardized human time]: August 24rd, 2136, Early second claw
It wasn’t a long drive down to the UN’s little building, but it really was an awkward one. Quilix and I sat in relative silence, unsure of how to start any conversation. It made me wonder how humans dealt with mate infidelity.
Do they force the pair to stay together, or do they just split up?
I knew that splitting up wasn’t really even an option. We had both of our parents’ blessings. My mother would be displeased if we split up, and she’d probably be angry if I did: Our vyalkit was made from not just my and Quilix’s wool, but also our parents, and their parents, and then their parent’s parents! My side was almost touching sixty-three generations, and Quilix was thirty-two. To break apart would be to desecrate multiple generations of honor-bound loyalty! How could Quilix do such a thing!?
It was nearly impossible to keep myself from crying in the car, keeping myself calm with cool and steady breaths, but with every thought that came roaring through. I worried that I would burst like an over-pressured levee.
Am I, not enough?
Does he not trust me?
How would he have acted if I had done the same?
Those thoughts rattled around in my mind due to my inability to distract myself.
Quilix was unusually quieter than normal, and for a moment I caught myself hoping he’d hum a melodic tune, but no sound came from him, causing the car ride to be unnaturally quiet.
No poems read.
No songs sang.
No conversations pulled.
This car ride practically resembled our horribly damaged relationship; empty, degraded, and silent. Though to be fair, Quilix had tried a couple of times to bridge the gap, and I just wasn’t receptive. I thought about speaking several times to alleviate us of this awkwardness, but every time I tried to speak, I remembered what I did to Arwen, or what Quilix had done to me, and with a pain in my chest. I remain quiet. Thankfully, the drive comes to an end.
“Ah, welcome to the UN embassy. You must be Tova and Quilix, right?” A human with remarkably dark skin of brown coloration greeted us at the door. He didn’t have any hair on his head like any of the humans I have seen but sported hair along his jawline. A mask covered the rest of his face.
Quilix and I both nodded.
“My name is Davian Karslon, it is a pleasure to meet you. I will have you know that I got your message. Now, if you would accompany me inside.” He gestured for us to come inside.
Quilix and I followed the big, human down a few hallways before inevitably entering a small office. He beckoned us to sit down, seating himself behind a wooden desk that looked like it was just placed down within the last day.
It probably was.
“I’m a bit shocked that we already have venlil applying for a visa, and you two in particular.” The male clasped his hands in front of his stomach, leaning back in his chair.
I wasn’t expecting an interrogation! I was expecting them to be like “Oh? A venlil wants to go to Earth!? We must be making good impressions!” Speh, what did Arwen want us to say?
“Arwen suggested we can learn more about humans if we come visit her at her home. She mentioned lots of things regarding museums, and as you know, I am a poet, an artist, and a writer. Now, I am no fool, for I know you humans didn’t show us all you had done within the last few millennia. You avoid things like meat eating for our sake, and showed us the book Frankenstein, which while simple, still had a good sense of morals: Don’t judge someone based on their appearance. I wish to learn more, and I can’t do that here. I’ve already read most if not all of the books you have given us that weren’t pups’ books.” Quilix came to my rescue, for I was on the edge of having a nervous breakdown, but him speaking allowed my thoughts to coalesce.
“Marvelous, it seems someone here loves literature to quite the great degree!” Even with the mask on, I could feel the human’s gaze shift onto me. I do my best not to flinch under the hidden, but binocular gaze.
“I uh… Arwen- Well, you see the federation isn’t really fond of things I like, and Arwen told me that there are things on Earth that I can’t find on Venlil Prime, The Cradle, or Nishtal…”
“And those things are?”
I take a deep breath. “Swords.”
“Swords?” Davian repeated. “Elucidate me.”
“I’m pretty sure you see a lack of swords, right? Well, that’s because we stopped making them because they were predatory, so now they pretty much don’t exist. However, I now own my great, great, great…” I waved a paw for emphasis, “Grandfather’s sword. The only other people that know are Quilix, Pasala, and my mother, but that’s because they like me, and a couple fellow exterminators. I… want to look at more swords and donate mine, because, unlike my father. I don’t know how to take care of it. I have instructions to take care of it, and I can read it, but I don’t want to risk damaging something of such importance to me. The most I have done is clean the blade.”
“I see, and how old is this sword? What’s it made out of? How big is it?”
I take a moment to think, counting back over the number of generations the sword has been within my family. “It was pre-federation contact and for about thirty generations, so roughly eight-hundred years?” “EIGHT-HUNDRED YEARS!?”
The man’s booming voice caused Quilix and I to recoil back in shock. Thankfully, nothing happens.
“What the hell is that thing made out of!?”
“I don’t know!”
Thankfully, that answer seems to appease the man. He relaxes right back into his chair as if he had never shouted. “Sorry, that’s such a long time for a blade.”
All I can do is shrug in agreement. “Anyways, it’s about just more than one tail [twenty-four inches] in length, so I have it stored in a chest at home. Used to have it in my office, but I didn’t want anyone seeing it after a while.”
Davian clicked his tongue against the inside of his cheek a few times, thinking up his response. “That’s all wonderful to hear. I’m quite surprised.”
Yes!
“But,”
No!
“I heard from one of your fellow Exterminators that you two had a bit of an altercation. Any reason why that was filed?”
Speh! Speh! Speh! I don’t know how to respond to that!
“Well, you see, Arwen arrived early two paws ago, and well, Tova walked in on Arwen and I snuggling on the couch, and mistook that as flirtation. The miscommunication has since been cleared up.”
If it weren’t for Quilix’s ears and tail giving him away like the fibber he was. I would have been caught off guard by such a lie! He never was a good liar. Actually, he was still a poor liar.
“I see,” the human nodded to Quilix’s answer. “Well, it was pleasant to meet you two. I will go check with my agent and see if I can get your stuff sorted. Again, it was pleasant to meet you two.”
Wait, that worked?
Well, with that out of the way. That just left introducing the idea to our parents… Scorch it, I just hope they don’t kill us.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
[Prologue][Previous][Next]
Heavily inspired by the likes of…
Pack Bonding
Foundations of Humanity
Mixed Signals (NSFW)
And I snuck in some lingo from Nature of Humanity
Don't Look A Human In The Eye
I highly suggest you check them out!!

First Previous Next
Patreon Official Subreddit Series Wiki
Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Thacea and Emma’s Bedroom. The Tent. Local Time: 0500 Hours.
Emma Booker
I fucked up.
Big time.
And I had no one else but myself to blame.
You know that feeling when you dive head-first into a project that you had zero doubts would somehow work itself out in the end?
The sudden surge of confidence that comes when you let the indomitable human spirit take the wheel?
Well that was me at 0300 hours when my eyes landed upon the hygiene module, and pictured the inevitable outcome of a steaming hot shower after an entire day of nonstop grinding.
I couldn’t help myself but to fall into the same trap as every other would-be DIY-er. I couldn’t stop the excitement, the sudden surge of energy, and the absolute hyperfixation that came with completing a project that promised nothing but endless positives, at the expense of some time and effort that would prove minimal in the grand scheme of things.
And just like every would-be DIY-er, I was this close to completing the task at hand, before finally reaching a roadblock that inevitably brought everything to a screeching halt.
FINAL STEP: REFER TO [UNDESIGNATED WATER SOURCE] FOR ATTACHMENT OF INTAKE PIPE [EIP23] TO EXTERNAL PUMPING MODULE [EPM-1].
That one, final instruction, decimated me.
Especially as I got to that final step at just shy of 0500 hours, when I finally had the entire damn module set up, only to realize that I had missed out on a vital pre-procedure checklist that I’d purposefully skipped because I’d assumed it would be a non-issue.
ENVIRONMENTAL PREREQUISITE: LOCATE, EVALUATE, AND SECURE A RELIABLE WATER SOURCE.
And that’s why I only had myself to blame for this fiasco.
Because I’d assumed that the availability of a water-source in the dorms would’ve been an open and shut case. It only made sense for me to make that assumption though, as I saw that Thacea had clearly used the dorm’s en-suite to shower just the night before.
It was because of this that I didn’t even bother checking the bathroom to begin with. I thought that whatever was in there could’ve easily fit the hyper-modular fittings of the source-intake pipe.
Things couldn’t have been further from the truth however, as what I saw within that bathroom made me question the very fabric of my own reality.
As within those four marble walls, was nothing.
Nothing, but a series of dull flat marble surfaces, and some strange wall-fittings that looked like something out of a 21st century ‘modern’ art exhibit.
There was nothing here that resembled a tap, or even hinted at the fact that there were even any pipes carrying running water behind those four bare walls.
The only other thing of note here was an unseen light source keeping the bathroom lit.
Aside from that, there was literally nothing else here.
This meant I had only one option available to me.
The most logical and straightforward option, of simply nudging the avinor princess awake just so I could ask where I could find a fucking tap.
Whilst it was the most straightforward thing to do, I just couldn’t get myself to do it.
I’d thought about going up those stairs to nudge the avian awake, to then apologize profusely for disturbing her sleep… but given everything Thacea had done for me thus far, and considering the fact that I was responsible for almost all of the headaches we were currently experiencing, it just felt wrong for me to disturb here at that hour.
So I was left with the inconvenient truth of my circumstances, and decided to just embrace the suck, toughing out the folly of my hubris…
At least, until morning came around.
At that point, I could rest easy in actually asking the princess for pointers on the enigmatic machinations of the bathroom.
Until then, I would sleep.
And hopefully, my shortsighted adventure would bear some fruit when morning rears its ugly head around.

Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Thacea and Emma’s Bedroom. Local Time: 1000 Hours.
Emma Booker
Good news: Half of my hard work actually paid off.
Bad news: Only half of my hard work actually paid off.
Upon waking up three hours later, forcing my carcass up and back into the suit, I’d managed to flag down Thacea just as she was getting out of bed.
The princess’ reactions to my questions were nothing short of the politeness I’d expected from her.
Which managed to put me at ease as I was getting worried I was starting to get on her nerves with my constant flurry of questions.
The bathroom turned out to be yet another demonstration of the Nexus’ completely unhinged philosophies. As it relied entirely on a mana user’s manipulation of the room to operate. Apparently, whoever designed this place took the whole concept of a modular, personalized room, and just ran with it. Making it so that every aspect of the room relied solely on the mana user to work, as they had to shape, form, and structure the otherwise blank slate before use. This was supposedly done so that the room could be made to fit the precise criterion of a person’s liking. To me however, it just felt like another bizarre concept pulled straight out of the Nexus’ seemingly endless idea-pool of zany, overkill, and mana-addled solutions to problems that sort of existed.
Thankfully, the bathroom didn’t require constant intervention from a mana-user to operate, as certain elements could be permanently turned on.
This included the water mains, which I immediately hooked up the pipes to, as the mana-contaminated water was quickly siphoned into a series of filtration units, all with the express purpose of extracting and removing every ounce of mana present within the water.
This process took about two hours to do.
But by the end of it, I was rewarded for all my troubles by one of the best showers I’ve ever had.
All of the stress, even the constant ticking of the bomb which constantly gnawed at the back of my mind, seemed to fade away for a few short minutes as the warm water washed everything away.
But that about wrapped up the good news.
The bad news however, came in the form of the little MREDD experiment from the previous night.
As I opened the triple-airlocked compartment on my side of the tent, I was met with what could only be described as ‘food’ in name and aesthetics alone.
The soft, white, fluffy loaf of bread had literally become a baton. Whilst the pancakes were now more reminiscent of a mini-frisbee that cracked and crumbled the moment I laid my fingers on them.
My immeasurable disappointment grew the longer I stood there next to the MREDD, and the longer I stared at the small stack of dust that was once a perfectly cooked stack of pancakes.
Beyond this however, I could feel a bit of anxiety seeping in, as the results of the experiment did make me a bit anxious as to the long-term food security of this mission.
Then again, I should’ve expected this result.
It was the first calibration test after all.
“I should’ve expected this, shouldn’t I?” I spoke to no one in particular, but quickly garnered the attention of the EVI who remained within the power armor that currently stood imposingly just a few feet away from me.
“That is correct, Cadet Booker. As you are already aware, the MREDD is designed with multiple calibration protocols in-effect, each which correspond to the type and densities of the foodstuffs to be desaturated. In addition to this, the systems are designed to test the maximal extraction threshold against the subjective palatability gradient with the food safety variable as an integral aspect of these tests. Thus, the first-round extraction procedures dictate that the MREDD will attempt maximal extraction settings, in order to both stress-test the components and systems, as well as to garner data on the mana-extraction process at the maximal setting.”
I blinked rapidly upon hearing the EVI’s explanation being blasted from my suit’s speakers. It felt somewhat jarring turning around to face my armor talking to me. But then again, I should’ve expected it, as I’d yet to set up any other speaker systems within the tent for it to speak through.
“I know, EVI. They already ran everything by me during the briefings. Though I would be lying if I didn’t say I sort of hoped that putting the food under full blast for 7 hours would’ve somehow miraculously resulted in something edible.” I managed out with a sigh.
“Cadet Booker, it is logical to assume that since the extraction of mana from both food and water is indeed viable, that the only point of contention is now the palatability of the foodstuffs rendered through the MREDD.”
“Yeah, well…” I trailed off as I began tapping on the loaf of bread that sounded like styrofoam when I hit it against the armor. “I think you and I have different definitions of palatable.”
“I am confident that the mana-extraction process can be optimized, Cadet Booker. It is at this point that I must ask that you assess the palatability of the designated foodstuff marked CONSUMABLE GROUP A, ITEM 1, for the purposes of data-gathering and analysis.” The AI spoke in a no-nonsense fashion, as I turned around, giving it a look of utter incredulity.
“You want me to try to eat this?” I shot back, tapping on the styrofoam bread for added effect.
“I require data on the palatability of foodstuff A-1 [BREAD] as it is a subjective dataset relying entirely on the input of the human subject.” The AI continued.
I couldn’t help but to shudder at that last line, especially with how it was delivered.
Popular media back home was currently going through another AI-apocalypse phase, with a lot of movies, both immersive and traditional, diving deep into the uncomfortable topics of human-AI relations post AI-takeover.
Being stuck in a bare, white tent, with a monotone, somewhat disgruntled-sounding VI talking to me through a suit of armor several heads taller than me all the while suddenly referring to me as subject really wasn’t doing my movie-binging gremlin brain any favors.
I hesitated for a few seconds, tentatively staring at the bread, then the armor, then back to the bread again, before finally just going for it...
CRUNCH
It did not end well.
“Cadet Booker, I did not require that you actively consume a foodstuff you consider inedible or are uncomfortable eating. I merely needed a dataset for the purposes of this experiment, even if that data-set is a refusal to consume the foodstuff in question.”
I stared back at the VI with unamused eyes and a mouthful of hard-tack currently turning my mouth into the Greater Sahara.
“Damnghit Aeevi.” I managed out with a mouth full of bland, stale bread, before reaching for the water dispenser which thankfully still had some mana-free water inside of it.
“Shall I log A-1 down as unpalatable then, Cadet?” The AI spoke with a hint of disappointment in its voice.
Though I was probably just imagining the actual tone of its voice.
Projection was a heck of a thing after all.
“Yes. And make sure you clarify your intent next time.” I snapped back, as I finished up what limited bits of housekeeping I needed to for now. Which included punting the balled-up undersuit into the washer, getting the wash and dry cycle started, before grabbing a fresh undersuit from the cargo airlock and quickly putting it on.
“I guess the next test with the MREDD includes extracting mana at a slow, sustained rate?” I spoke as I began recalibrating the different electronic components within the undersuit.
“Correct, Cadet Booker. Provided of course, that the foodstuffs are of a similar type, and contain similar properties to GROUP A.”
“Acknowledged.” I responded promptly, shuddering a bit as the haptic feedback finished its calibration cycles. “Alright then, we got a lot of work ahead of us, so let’s get going. System status, SRR?” I asked as per protocol, steadying my hand on the suit’s ‘backpack’.
“Diagnostics running… pending… All systems nominal, Cadet Booker. Status: Ready for standard operations.”
“Operator acknowledges system status after pre-mission diagnostics.” I replied dryly, and with a few final breaths I pulled myself back into the armor. “Current objectives? Preferably the ones I listed before dozing off last night?” I continued, as my eyes quickly readjusted to the constant assault on the senses that was the HUD.
“Priority Objective: Locate and Secure Container 10. Current time remaining until activation of the Denial of Sensitive Assets to Unauthorized Parties Protocols… 36 hours, 34 minutes, and 47 seconds.”
“Alright then, let’s pay a visit to our dear old friend… hopefully she’s alive and lucid enough to get us to the bottom of this little predicament.”

Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Thacea and Emma’s Bedroom. Local Time: 1020 Hours.
Emma Booker
Transitioning from the tent to the marble and cobblestone world of the Academy was always jarring. Opening those external protective flaps to reveal something that wasn’t more bare white paneling and drab gray composalite would probably be something I’d need to get used to.
I got into the swing of things quick enough, as I was met with the likes of Thacea who was busy reading on one of the many ornate seats that formed the mini-living room within our loft.
“Was the water to your liking, Emma?” Thacea asked with a clack of her beak.
“I managed to squeeze in a couple minutes worth of a shower, so that’s a win in my book!” I beamed out. “But with a constant stream of filtered water filling up my reservoirs now, I should be able to get something more substantial later tonight.”
The princess nodded slowly at that. “The lengths to which you need to go, just to attain what we take for granted on a daily basis, is quite remarkable Emma.”
“It is what it is, Thacea.” I shrugged in response. “The very air I breathe needs to be filtered. This whole world, or heck, even your worlds are actively hostile to human life. These measures are something that are cumbersome, and seriously draining to deal with, but it’s necessary. Besides, it’s not as if these measures are something new where I come from. My people have had a history of intrepid explorers, brave pioneers, and foolish thrillseekers who all surge forward into inhospitable domains just so they can crest the next wave, or see what’s over the next hill.” I paused for a moment, as I was tempted to strike a pose, but quickly decided against it. “I’m just furthering a legacy that’s already been established. Or at least, I hope I’m doing that. Heck if I know if I’m actually doing things right. Nine times out of ten, I feel like I’m just making the best of my situation.”
“I can’t say I can understand the appeal of this legacy of actively seeking hostile-domains.” Thacea responded with an equal mix of curiosity and genuine concern. “And I do not know what manner of civilization would result from such a culture, though I do harbor a morbid curiosity to inquire further… However, I can most certainly resonate with your latter statements, Emma. Half of the court politics I contend with simply amounts to making do with the hand you’ve been dealt, of making best of one’s situation, and doing whatever it is in your limited scope and power to maintain life, security, and perhaps some waning semblance of your own personal liberty. It’s a great game, where doubt comes naturally as a result of being a player and not the host.”
There was a small pause that followed Thacea’s response as one point in particular caught my attention more than any other.
It was unfortunate that it was so topical as well, given how if things had turned out any differently, this conversation would’ve moved right on into an hours-long exchange of life and culture.
Thacea mentioning the concept of a great game, immediately brought me back to the conversation with Ilunor the previous night.
“Thacea… would you mind if I consulted you on something?” I began, as the gears in my head began turning now at the first major issue of the day.
The princess seemed to catch on as she leaned forward in her seat intently, and nodded. “By all means.”
“Something happened last night at the workshop, and it wasn’t anything to do with the armorer… though, we can talk about that later.” I took a deep breath as I shelved that topic for another time. “Did you happen to pay any attention to Ilunor’s whereabouts after I left for the workshop?”
“Not particularly, no. Lord Rul-, erm, Ilunor had seemingly remained in his room until Thalmin and I retired to our respective rooms. After that, I simply have no recollection of anything beyond my own domicile.”
“Well, Ilunor followed me to the workshop.” I stated plainly, pausing for a moment to gauge Thacea’s reaction. Of which there really was none as she managed to keep that signature poker-face that was probably second nature to her by now.
“And I’m assuming since you managed to uncover this, that his meddling had failed in some way shape or form?” Thacea shot back coolly.
“Correct. However, here’s where things get complicated. I’ll save the bulk of the events for later, but long story short, that discount kobold decided to use some sort of a projection spell to spook me just as I was in the middle of the weapons inspection with the armorer, and the projection used wasn’t just something a random monster or anything… he purposefully chose to bring out a carbon-copy version of the null.”
Thacea’s face shifted at this, which given how difficult it was to phase her, probably meant her mind was going through the full implications of this revelation.
I pressed on as Thacea urged me to continue with a single nod. “Well, I shot it. And, no, nobody was hurt. Fast forward a chase sequence later, and the armorer eventually managed to corner and capture Ilunor. However, when we pressed him for answers about why he was there to begin with? Well… I think it’ll be better for you to see for yourself.”
It was with this that I brought out my data-pad, and began replaying the relevant scenes for Thacea to see.
Starting from the brief spats between Ilunor and the armorer, all the way to my confrontation with the diminutive lizard, Thacea’s gaze remained completely transfixed. She did flinch a bit when the footage finally went over my dealings with the lizard, and Ilunor’s sudden shift in persona as I pulled out the library card and began talking his language.
Yet despite being inundated with this sudden flood of information, with a completely unexpected tangent, she soon responded cooly and without much in the way of a delay. “This complicates matters.” She began slowly. “This entire situation calls for a complete reevaluation of the dynamics of this peer group, and how we need to approach Lord Rul-, Ilunor.” Thacea promptly corrected herself before continuing. “There’s a great number of layers to this unexpected development, each of which hints at a greater game being played here, and points at the fact that there are a great number of interested parties beyond just Ilunor.” The princess took a moment to let out an exasperated coo, her eyes finally moving away from the tablet and back to me. “You must understand as well as I, that Ilunor’s actions do not constitute a scheme of his own making, correct?”
“That I do.” I nodded simply. “The fact that he’s even bothering to do this in the first place is outside of his whole I’m above you persona. I’m not sure if the same rings true here, but where I come from, becoming a spook is not something that most people in high and mighty positions would ever stoop down to. Besides, I think we have a lead. I don’t think a student would actively defer a bit of punishment from a lower level administrator, in order to fast-track it to the highest authorities if they weren’t in cahoots with them.”
“This coincides with my observations of these developments as well, Emma.” Thacea responded with a resonant chirp. “To add to this, his knowledge of the null is most certainly not circumstantial, and considering he was absent from our adventures the previous day, his knowledge of this creature would hint to either the feeding of information via a higher benefactor, or a direct observation of our activities from afar. Either way, this does not bode well.”
“This leads me to what I wanted to consult you on, Thacea. If Ilunor’s out there waiting for us right now, would it be best if we confronted him outright in front of Thalmin or-”
“No.” Thacea interjected sharply, and with a certainty that was almost uncharacteristic of her. “Confronting Ilunor out in the open, in front of others not privy to you and the Vunerian’s current game, would be outright suicide to the dialogue you’ve managed to broker with him the previous night. You’ve managed to prove yourself as not just another pawn, but a player in the game, at least in Ilunor’s eyes. It would be wise to maintain that momentum, Emma. By continuing this line of dialogue with him in private, there is a higher likelihood the Vunerian will divulge more information as he speaks to you frankly, beyond what his current facade will allow. This is now a matter between you and the Vunerian, as Thalmin and I are not privy to these political transactions.”
I couldn’t help but to mimic the princess by gripping my forehead as well, letting out a sigh as the dread of complex court politics had begun seeping in faster than I expected. “That shouldn’t be too hard to do. I’ll just let that situation slide for now, making sure not to mention my dealings with Ilunor when he’s around, and focus instead on our other problems. It’s not like we have a shortage of other things to worry about after all.” I sighed sharply.
“That is an acceptable plan. ” Thacea responded promptly as she stood up and began straightening out her uniform. “Right then, shall we proceed?”

Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Living Room. Local Time: 1025 Hours.
Emma Booker
As we exited the bedroom, we were once more met with a similar sight reminiscent of the previous day’s. As there, on the couch, were the bickering pair that had seemed to have carried over their arguments from the previous night.
Except this time, the context seemed to have thankfully shifted to something new.
“Every minute I waste in this room for the sake of that Earthrealmer is another minute that I grow increasingly more famished. It is unbecoming of a noble to sit in waiting for a commoner. In fact, it should be the other way around. Or perhaps this is yet another one of your Havenbrockian reforms that test the Nexus’ patience, Prince Thalmin?” I could hear Ilunor snapping at Thalmin just as we made our way into the living room proper.
Thalmin, amazingly, resisted responding in kind as he got up as soon as we made our way towards the pair.
“We were waiting for the both of you, but it should be fine. Should we miss the breakfast, there is always an a la carte menu we can-”
“I have met the criterion for your unlawful detainment, mercenary. Thus, I shall take my leave.” Ilunor promptly jumped off from the couch and began trotting his way over to the door, his little legs were clearly attempting to generate some sort of a forceful series of thumps as he did so, but only resulted in a light series of taps given his diminutive size.
“Hold on a minute there! That wasn’t our agreement! You agreed to-”
“I agreed to wait for the Earthrealmer and the tainted one. I have no other reason to be here. Now, I must resume my extracurriculars. You lot can do whatever it is you get up to. I will be having none of it.” Ilunor turned to face the Lupinor one final time, before slamming the front door shut, and skittering off.
This made things so much simpler as it meant we were in the clear for now.
“I’m sorry princess.” Thalmin turned to face Thacea. “I thought we might be able to squeeze something out of him yet, but the Vunerian continues to be as squirmy as a prairie rodent.”
“It’s quite alright, Thalmin.” Thacea began, as she turned towards me as if to confirm whether or not I wanted her to proceed on my behalf. To which I did. “There are a few matters we must address regarding Ilunor, which I suggest we do over a short breakfast, as we have even more pressing matters following this.”
After a reluctant pause, the lupinor prince nodded in agreement, leading to both of us sitting down-
ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 275% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS
-and a privacy screen being brought down soon after.
“So, shall we talk about this over a brunch platter?”

The Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts, En Route to the Healing Wing. Local Time: 1050 Hours.
Thalmin’s reactions were nothing short of what I’d expected.
There was absolute outrage, followed by an unrepentant series of growls, capped off with barks of seething anger at the same clips I’d played for Thacea earlier.
The mercenary prince was perhaps even more uncomfortable than I was at my entry into this game, as it was clear Thalmin despite his noble heritage, wasn’t really one to dabble in it at all.
“I’m telling you Emma, this is a dangerous path forward. Are you certain you are making the wisest choice?” He spoke once again, continuing the conversation from earlier, underneath yet another privacy screen Thacea was maintaining as we approached the medical wing.
“I don’t like it either, Thalmin. There’s nothing more I hate than playing politics, but it’s unfortunately a pill I have to swallow if we’re going to get to the bottom of the issues surrounding Ilunor. I mean, I overheard you guys arguing late into the night. I really don’t think confronting him normally is going to get us anywhere.”
The lupinor let out a sigh of defeat at that, as he lowered his head in my general direction. “I can’t fault that logic, Emma. Perhaps… speaking his language, as you put it, would bring us some resolution to this frankly irritating problem. However…” The Lupinor’s voice lowered, just as we were about to reach the doors to the healing wing proper. “I know how these games work, Emma. It’s dangerous, so make sure you tread lightly, and just know that I, as part of your peer group, am here to support you should the need arise.” The prince reassured me with a smirk, as we pushed past the double doors and into the medical wing proper.
Or at least, that’s what I thought, as we entered what looked to be a massive circular room with multiple branching hallways connected to it like spokes on a wheel. In typical Academy-fashion however, the room really wasn’t at all modest with its size. As it went up a solid twenty or so stories, with high pillars piercing straight up into a marble-lined rotunda with moving murals painted on it like some grand cathedral. Between these pillars were little outcroppings where several gargoyles were perched.
Gargoyles which I could swear were looking straight at us.
ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 425% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS
My gut was proven right again, as it only took a few seconds after our entry for these stony beasts to come to life, with multiple bursts of mana-radiation accompanying what could only be described as the sounds of cracking concrete.
Soon enough, several large gargoyles made harsh, heavy landings right in front of us. The two closest to us held out their arms, before zapping two stony spears into existence, crossing them in a clear display to stop us from going any further.
“Halt!” A voice commanded from above, as a shadowy figure landed right in front of the two gargoyles blocking our path. The figure’s face was hidden underneath an unnatural shadow casted by his hood, revealing just two trapezoidal lights where his eyes should be. “The healing wing is currently off-limits to visitors. So state your ailment, or leave where you came from.” The voice boomed, echoing throughout the large open space, as all eyes within the room now landed squarely on us.
First Previous Next
​
(Author’s Note: Hey guys! We see more glimpses of Emma's quality of life getting set up here, and we're now making our way over to the apprentice! I hope you guys enjoy! :D The next Chapter is already up on Patreon if you guys are interested in getting early access to future chapters!)
[If you guys want to help support me and these stories, here's my ko-fi ! And my Patreon for early chapter releases (Chapter 33 of this story is already out on there!)]

My last post
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while and life got in the way. So it’s a little longer than I would like. To anyone who reads the whole thing, thank you.
For those who prefer a TL;DR: My progress has been so fucking good. I completed a 4.2-mile race I’ve wanted to do since I was in college. I spent a week in Disneyworld for the first time ever and did multiple open to closing days without feeling like I wanted to die. I am on track for my goal of being under 300 pounds before my 30th birthday and take my first discovery flight on that day to begin training to get my pilot’s license.
I feel so fucking good.
Now onto the full post.
I never thought I’d write something like this.
When I was in college, my mother passed away unexpectedly. It was, as one might expect, extremely difficult and something I was nowhere close to being prepared for.
My mom was a spectacular woman in many ways but what I always admired her most for was not putting up with any bullshit people tried to give her. It was likely her upbringing in Jersey City, in the shadow of the skyscrapers of Manhattan, that fostered that.
When she passed, my immediate feeling was numbness. After returning back to school following all the business that had to be done at home, the feeling remained for a long time.
I remember not long after she passed, I was given my first internship. Since completing an internship was required for graduation from my program, it was something I had been long stressing about and venting to my mom about. So even after hearing the news I couldn’t celebrate.
Why should I if I couldn’t call my mom to tell her?
Suffice to say, my mental health after she passed was not good. I spent a lot of time by myself and when I was with friends I was not a pleasant person to be around.
It was around this time I had the idea of running a race that is organized by a foundation affiliated with my alma mater. I could not tell you how overweight I was at the time exactly but it was definitely well over 400 pounds so I knew I would have to do serious preparation to do it.
But I don’t think it will come as a shock that I couldn’t do it. It was a goal that simply was far too great for my current mental state and I gave up on the idea not long after beginning a moderate gym routine which I also abandoned to return to my room where I’d spend my time in much less productive ways.
It’s been over 8 years now since my mom passed.
If anyone has ever experienced loss in that way you’ll know that it never really leaves you. It certainly gets easier to live with but the thought of your loved one not being there for you is always there in your mind no matter what.
I have done plenty of growing in that time. I’ve had a few jobs. I started my first real relationship with a woman who I know beyond a shadow of a doubt loves me for who I really am and who I love in return. I have, what I honestly believe and will argue to the end of time, is the best group of friends anyone could ever ask for.
But there was always still this feeling that I was missing something.
If you’ve read my other posts here you’ll know I began losing weight back in September but really began taking it seriously around February. It was around then I decided to commit to walking more and more every day and being more mindful of what I eat every single day. During one of those walks it hit me that the same race from college was coming up in a couple months and they always have local versions of the race organized by the alumni associations.
I decided then to sign up.
I wasn’t planning on even jogging it. I was planning on walking the entirety of the race just so I could say that I could. But when I was on the sign up page it included a training schedule for people who wanted to prepare for jogging. The race is slightly over a 5K so the training plan is a somewhat modified version of “Couch to 5K” programs.
I realized that if I started the program that week that it would line up perfectly with race day. To make this as short as possible I’ll just say I was shocked at my progress in the program. There was only one training session I wasn’t able to complete. I felt great.
Mind you I was not jogging very fast, and still don’t go very fast on my jogs. Before the start of the race I had the goal of finishing in an hour and 15 minutes.
The run was not easy. Even with all the training I’m still carrying so much extra body weight that it is still very difficult. But I had so many of my fellow runners giving me signs of encouragement along the course I felt truly phenomenal.
I crossed the finish line in under an hour and hugged my girlfriend and cried. Her and my friends had come down from Los Angeles and made signs and all made t-shirts spelling out my name. Typing it now is making me cry again.
Race day was April 15, 2023 and I weighed in at 353.8 pounds.
Today is May 27, 2023 and this morning I weighed in at 332.3 pounds.
As of posting I am officially down 90.6 pounds since last September.
In the time between I got the chance to spend a week in Orlando visiting Disneyworld and one day at Universal Studios. It was the only week since I began training that I did no jogging but, in my humble opinion, I think I made up for it with the amount of walking.
Even on the “off” day I took from the parks I spent most of it walking all around Disney Springs and the resorts exploring. On the first night we stayed past close to ride Space Mountain and I felt incredible.
I love theme parks but for context, in the past I rarely if ever stayed to close because my body simply wouldn’t let me do it. We stayed to close multiple nights during the trip and I never really felt that bad.
I came back from the trip essentially at the same weight I left it despite having some poor options for food in the parks (literally the first thing I ate in the Magic Kingdom was a hot dog with electric green relish). The amount of movement during the trip was able to offset it thank goodness.
Upon return, I’ve tried to keep the jogging going although there have been one or two nights where I skipped it but even on those nights I went for my long walk. I’ve continued being mindful of what I’m eating while not feeling like I am missing out on anything at all.
Did you know you can get a power bowl from Taco Bell that tastes like all their other items but you can make it so it’s only like 450 calories for like a good amount of food? I just got that last night for dinner and while it’s not something I get regularly it feels like cheating.
Going to Orlando was a good reminder of one of the goals I have. For those like me who are big and also love theme parks, you’ll know that Universal is not a very accessible park. I can go on my soapbox but I’ll just say I think a lot of times it’s just out of sheer lack of consideration.
Despite my progress there were still several rides I couldn’t do. And even though I didn’t need a seat belt extender for an airplane I did need one for the Jimmy Fallon ride, but whatever.
But one of my goals from the beginning has been being able to go on thrill rides like those without worrying about fitting in the seats. I fully believe that goal will be achieved.
The other two goals I’ve had also are well within my reach. Firstly, I wanted to be under 300 pounds by my 30th birthday in November. At my current rate, I should be well under it by then.
I also have a goal of taking a discovery flight on my birthday as the first step to getting my pilot’s license. I’ll need to start calling flight schools to see if they have specified weight limits but I feel good about the possibility of it happening.
I still have a long way to go but there have been so many little victories as well. I recently have finally started seeing a difference in progress photos I take. There is a shirt I’ve had in the bottom of a drawer I wore maybe twice because it was too snug and I put it on recently and it was actually loose.
I feel really, really good. I feel like the things I’m doing continue to be sustainable. And I feel like I can do anything.
And I also feel like anyone reading this can do this too. Be consistent, don’t let one day define the story. It’s a long road but it can be filled with wonderful moments worthy of celebration.

So I live in Dallas and I was at my head shop yesterday and they were like, "hey man the CBD products are but 2 get one." And I was like nah. I've had delta 8 and CBD and it doesn't really do anything. Well he said "this isn't D8, it's THC-A, when burned at 200 degrees or higher it just turns into regular weed. It's about the strength of a mid dispensary weed."
I just got paid so I said fuck it but I only bought a 8th, figured I'd come back the next day (today) if I wanted more.
Well my BM plugs have all been super cheap, like 180 an ounce normally cheap. I have been wondering about that and also been a bit sus a out D8 being bought and sold on BM and not even having a way to know.
Well I smoked a J of the THC-A and was sitting in the back yard and thinking, "I thought I couldnt get this high right now!!!".
I've been smoking for 20 years, since I was 16, and I have stopped and started for jobs and stuff and also learned to take tolerance breaks.
I'm in a shitty living situation temporarily so I haven't taken a tolerance break for over a year so I thought I had just hit my ceiling. This is not the case. I have now sobered up and gotten super stoned like 3 times, as well as smoked my other shit and can tell a major difference. It even burns slower and feels different.
I understand the THC-A loophole, I'm actually calling around for different prices because a TON of places carry it now, but should it really be stronger than street flower?!
I'm thinking maybe I got lucky and got one of the "says its legal but it isn't" ones?
I'm going to drop on a varied ounce (four different quarters) and see what happens. I'd rather spend more money on weed that feels like I remember.
And for clarity- I have gotten from 5 separate people in the last 2 years and the normal price is 200, 180 now, and high is 280. None of these plugs use the same re-up (I checked with them) but all of their bud is like that. I look at around 6 jars usually and pick, but after going to New Mexico this spring and shopping at a dispensary for the first time, I realized how blind I actually am in the BM, looks and smells don't tell you the THC %. (When I smoked in New Mexico I had just not smoked for 2 weeks for traveling and thought that was why I was getting so high, for a solid week /facepalm)
I've known these people for a long time, 2 are good friends, and knows that at least one of them doesn't do it on purpose because I know he smokes what he sells and has the same issue, he's coming over later to smoke out with this to try it.
My plug I've known the longest has actually sold me an ounce for $90 and it was like 10 years ago, when 8ths were $65. I can't imagine how cheap they can get it now. Especially if they can get D8 throw out weed for dirt cheap since it's not like you can go back and be like, "bro, I smoked a J and didn't get as high as I want, I want my money back."
I don't know, this whole debacle has me paranoid about street bud. I'd rather spend a tiny bit more and have a receipt even if it doesn't do much, it's better then the usual.
Also- What is everyone else's experiywith THC-A in legal states and THC-x? I saw that yesterday.