Real housewives of orange county cast

Hello, darlings, from Helena the Clown. I decided to tell you a thing that has happened to me. After that life changing night before Christmas, (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) I decided to step down for a bit and just rest. Take a break. Sleep in my cozy coffin my Vampire sleep. Be a little lazy. Something normal, for both us the immortals and for mortals alike. Especially after all the ordeal of that night.
​
I have to admit, when I had to write it all down, I kind of relieved it. And since it took me more to write it than to live it first hand, I had to return to it over and over, until my mind felt sour. But I needed to tell the story, it felt that I had to.
​
The psychedelic rollercoaster of that night was an experiment of the SRI (Romanian secret service) alongside the CIA, as the agent I caught told me. Was the experiment successful for them? I do not know. Both me and Sophie, the lovely Elf I met that night, who was a collateral victim of it, waited to see any signs from those bastards. Especially since their weapons were able to give a huge power to demons over us. Nothing clear was seen, on the outside, but our souls were heavy on residue, like some thick goo on them, that needed time to wash away. Yet, signs of slow healing are visible, albeit slow.
​
On the other hand, from time to time, I felt some mental ”breeze”. It felt like one of those attacks I experienced, the beginning of it, but dissipating fast. Some went harder than the rest. I talked to Sophie, it seems she had experienced those as well. The Buzz itself did not seem to get the proportions of that night so we can not tell if there are still some agents on us, or just some demons playing around, or our scars, or a combination of those. My ”gut feeling”, something I do not (mostly) rely upon, told me that, most likely, it was not a Human work. At least, not by agents or special drones, like that night.
​
Christmas was peaceful, my first Christmas I celebrated as a Christian since I became a Vampire. My confessor, father George Baka, the exorcist, managed to give me Holy Communion, after hiding me close to the church, in order not to inflict panic on my presence there for his Human parishioners. My dear friend Ruxandra drove me in and out of the village in Ialomița county. As I was back in Bucharest and Ruxandra spent some time with her boyfriend, I met Sophie at night at the Circus Park a few days after, where it all ended, after finding a way to get Vampire magic and Elven magic to work together.
​
Her parents were dead scared, they wanted to convince Sophie to leave Romania for the UK, in order to stay safe. It seems her mother was mostly afraid of the SRI, the descendent of the former communist political police, the Securitate, most of all. Sophie did not want to, since whatever happened in Romania could happen in the UK, hence the involvement of the CIA made it an international matter. And, besides, Sophie felt safer in here, where I resided and where so many Caterpillar Elves like her were, Elves she wanted to awake. She dressed up the whole time as a Christmas Elf (Yeah, some may say it was silly, but she enjoyed it.), even spoke to kids on Elves. Cannot blame her. She can have enough time in her immortal life to be a Full, ”serious” Elf.
​
Indeed, something happened. If it didn„t, I would not be writing this now. Father George decided to perform Holy Liturgy on the night of January the first, which is the secular New Year, like he used to do in the years before, especially since January the first this year was on sunday. Most people would stay up, party and skip church that morning. So, he did it at night, so that at least some will come, then start to party a little. Most will not come.
​
Ruxandra drove there, outside Bucharest, as usual. Since my presence would cause havoc, I was supposed to stay close by, not inside the church, with the people who will attend. Ruxandra asked me to help tune up her laptop, on which a fresh Linux installation was made. Since I knew Linux better than her, who is a lifelong Windows user, and her boyfriend was a Macbook type of guy, I decided to make myself useful a bit, before Holy Liturgy. Adrian came with us, still a bit uneasy about my presence in the car. We came out pretty early. I had the idea of going into the graveyard, where we used to spend time myself, Ruxandra and father George, in late summer and early autumn. Since both me and Ruxandra were supposed to take Holy Communion later that night, we needed to stop eating after midnight. After greeting father George, I decided to get to the graveyard, where there is a temporary plastic kiosk, somewhere near the corner of the graveyard. It was a pretty clean, countryside graveyard, nothing great or fancy.
​
I was dressed in one of my black belle epoque dresses, with a matching hat, this time. For a Vampire like me, winter cold is far better tolerated than for mortals, but even ourselves have our own limits. Ruxandra came with her laptop, Adrian followed her. People were gathering at church, as Father George performed a Lity. Ruxandra wanted to stay with me but, as she was visibly disturbed by the cold, I told her to get inside. In fact, if it weren't for my friends and Father George, I would have stayed at home in Bucharest, alone, as I do not care too much for the secular New Year. In order to get things going, Ruxandra came with Adrian„s Macbook and we managed to set up a small network, using her phone as well, in order we would be able to get online. She stayed with me a bit, then went to the church for Lity, and let me mind my own doing.
​
Yep, it was cold, even I found gloves useful. I spent decades in my grave, hibernating, but that was a special state, pretty different from the one when I am awake and active. I am pretty cold and harsh, but not that much not to feel the cold at all. I started installing and configuring some software from repositories into Ruxandra„s laptop. As night passed, kids around the village started to blow firecrackers and small fireworks on a large scale, it felt like war. I liked it, I admit it, the war flavor of it. I felt like going to them and playing along, but I could not, of course. They have not entered the graveyard, fortunately, although some firecrackers fell inside it. Poor dogs started to bark and howl of that noise.
​
Meanwhile, I managed to install Tor Browser, to get on the Dark Web. You know, you can meet some real Vampires there, if you know where to look. At first, when I discovered it, in the months after waking up from my decades of hibernation, in July 2021, alongside things like creepypasta, the world felt far more interesting on the dark side then today. As you may imagine, it was hard to distinguish at first creepypasta from real things, I am sure sometimes it is harder even for someone who was born and lived in this age to do it. Fortunately, I grew more experienced on this pretty fast. No one I could talk to from those hidden online communities was logged in, as it seemed, so I decided to start digging up some things regarding the effects on infrasounds.
​
Midnight came. I did not feel excited or anything, neither too sad. Perhaps just a little sad. Humans were having fun in the streets, explosions and stuff. Since the Holy Liturgy started, I stopped working on the laptop itself, and tried to listen to psaltical chants on Youtube. I admit I got bored fast, and went to my regular music. Earphones on maximum level, as I usually like to listen (I know, it is bad to do it for long.). I started to feel a little drowsy and sleepy. Probably something was at work at this point, as it was not normal for me (or my kind) to feel sleepy at night. At some point, I placed my head on the table and listened to the music with my eyes closed. My head was inside the hotspot, inside the wifi medium, but I did not realize it. I let myself drift into sleep, thinking that Ruxandra would wake me up.
​
I do not know how, Youtube seems moody at times regarding the autoplay, on being turned on and off. I usually keep it off. As I was signed in with my Google account, it seems it started to play things as I was sleeping, random stuff. I went on for about an hour and a half.
​
Eventually, I woke up. Some kind of ASMR or white noise clip was playing, a grey screen, looking a bit like static on an old black and white TV. The sound sounded a bit like that as well, but not exactly. I said something like ”ASMR Relaxing static for deep sleep”. I turned it off, as I was shaking sleepiness off from my mind. The outside was pretty silent, just some crackers from time to time. It was a feeling of things being a bit off. I do not know how to put it, the flavor of reality was off. A feeling that was a little familiar, since that night not too long ago. I was not too concerned, still, since it was not too strong, we have not noticed anything coming here. Indeed, a was a little troubled by this, but not as much as a mortal would have been, being alone, at night, in a graveyard. For me, it was a place and a time that I was in tune with. Perhaps, If I were Human, I would have had a better attitude in that situation. I started to say the Jesus Prayer a bit, and started to walk towards the church. As I was getting closer and felt better, I started to let my guard down and let my thoughts go loose.
​
I do not know what is the clear border between a thought and an attitude. I am not a psychologist, just my own rambling here. I think some thoughts work at the edge between the conscious and the unconscious, since they manifest in attitudes, even if the conscious does not want to admit them. Those are not just some deep unconscious processes, they are closer to the surface, so to say. Indeed, before Adam and Eve fell, they had no unconscious part of their souls, after the fall they lost sight of a large part of themselves. Only those very spiritually advanced can truly become fully aware of themselves, and turn the whole unconscious into conscious. Of course, I am not one of them.
​
Looking back at those moments, some things are blurry. I was not asleep, for sure, yet it felt a bit like a sleep-like state, the bizarreness of all. It seems some thoughts were moving from conscious to this semiconscious part, back and forth, not all at the same time. I was walking stiffer than I usually do (And I do walk pretty stiff usually.). There was something, I do not remember exactly how much I was aware of, I felt I needed to get closer to the church and away from the kiosk in the graveyard. I started to feel a bit, only a bit, like at the moments during that night, when I felt alone in the whole world. Not strong enough to have a strong attitude, it would have been better if the feeling was stronger.
​
I got close to the church, lights were on, but it was silent, like empty. Familiar feeling, but not too intense. I looked back at the graves, something felt new. Unreal in a new way. All this was still faint, for now. I heard some noises on the other side of the graveyard. Then I had a thought that some kids may enter the graveyard and steal the laptops and rest. Something from my mind was saying to stop, not to go into the weird, unreal darkness from there. But I brushed it out, being too faint, unfortunately for me. I went back towards that place.
​
As I would later find out, at this point, the Holy Liturgy was over, just a small snack for the people inside, Ruxandra was getting ready to come to me, outside, she just waited for the people to leave the church. She heard something outside, and felt my presence faintly. She decided to come out, to see if I had come too early. By the time she was out, I was already on my way back to the kiosk, she saw me from a distance. The sky was unusually dark on one side, and a feeling of a new unease was in the air. She started to go slowly towards the kiosk as well.
​
I walked into the viscous air. Viscous, again. But I was like under anesthesia or on some drugs. Maybe my state was akin to sleepwalking? I was not sleepwalking, for sure, but it felt only a bit like it, if it makes sense. What came next, in the next minute (or minutes) happened on that semiconscious level. I was forcing myself to get into the viscous thing, I would not call it air. Things were like getting blacker, but not physically. I felt worse and worse as I was getting closer to the kiosk. But as I felt worse, a part of my mind fought to keep it semiconscious, not to become aware. Was something taking over me, at least a bit? I do not know. It was like I was heading to my doom, but I was so afraid to admit to myself, so I struggled to ignore that I was doing just that.
​
The kiosk was in sight. Silence around me, a silence that seemed to stretch for miles. Or more. I was getting close to the kiosk, the alley went from the kiosk, and it crossed another alley near it, the kiosk was towards my left-front. Things got really black and, without knowing it, the blackness turned into something visible.
​
I do not know how long it all took. One second, maybe a few? The alley was blocked by something that looked like some kind of black curtain, blocking the normal reality. It was a physical blackness, for sure, but it contained more than that. It had vertical folds in it, like a physical curtain. I could not say how large it was, sideways and up, it covered the full front of my eyes, I did not have the time to check my peripheral vision, and up it covered much of the clear sky. I knew it was something that came from hell, no doubt about it. I knew I had no chance of running away, as it was too close, too big and too powerful. I was at its mercy. My heart soon became overwhelmed, my mind was soon to follow. On my last moment of consciousness, I let myself to the Lord, as nothing else could be done, realistically speaking. I fused this in an iconic gesture of prosternation, semiconsciously. I let myself fall to my knees and stop my head from hitting the ground with my palms.
​
At this time, Ruxandra noticed a black mist starting to gather like a small tower of mist. It was not thick, at least it appeared to her like this. As seconds passed, the mist grew thicker, while she noticed me stopping in my tracks, distantly, then the stars were not visible anymore and something she could not describe took over the sky. An emptiness. Yet, it seems all of it was less intense than for me, not just because of the distance, but some other reason. Perhaps her Human nature, or the fact that she was exposed to the things I have exposed to in the kiosk? Fear inside her started to escalate to panic.
​
As I went on knees, I layed completely down, face down. The last thing I saw was that the lower edge of the curtain arose in a fold, on the ground and was sent towards me, covering me. I started screaming inside of my mind the Jesus Prayer, as Ruxandra lost it at this point and just screamed.
​
That thing, whatever it was, started to take me in gradually, but in a matter of a second, the most, if it makes sense. It felt like being taken up from the ground, at the mercy of that. I kept saying the Jesus prayer, trying to hold on, albeit it was harder and harder. I was inside a bubble of demonic power, this meant no way I would be able not to lose it on my own. Kept saying the Jesus Prayer, as things were speeding up. Something in the back of my mind kept saying: ”Hold on just a little… Just a little…” So I did, I held onto the prayer. Then I do not remember. I think it was like slipping into sleep.
​
Ruxandra was close to being broken, as she fell to her knees too. As I realized later on, after I talked to her, the first impulse was to run. But I was there, with that thing, and she refused to leave me there alone. Even if this was something she never experienced before, something of this magnitude. I can tell you, for a Human Ruxandra is pretty resilient to darkness. Many Humans, even grown men, just fail when they meet me. Just me, nothing stronger or darker. I never heard her scream of fear ever. Strong stock. So you can imagine at this point, at least loosely, how bad this was. But my friend stayed for me. Even if this could have been her doom. Even if all her instincts told her that was doom. Fortunately, she remembered not to look into the mist, after a few seconds, and that she needed to start the Jesus Prayer.
​
In a few seconds, after letting the forehead to the ground and closing the eyes, she was into it as well. Starting to feel lifted, as things were going faster and faster. At some point, Ruxandra„s mind went blank as well.
​
Fortunately, her screams were heard by father George and the rest who were still inside the church. He exited in a hurry, and people followed. They saw something tall and dark, that seemed to look a bit like a tornado, twisted in the middle. Father George started the exorcism formulas of Saint Basil the Great. Several people started to scream and ran away inside the church, some on the gate, into the street, as father George came bravely upon that, not looking at it. Adrian heard his voice going stronger and stronger as she went closer.
​
As he came close to touching the blackness, it started to retreat. He persisted into going further, cursing the powers of hell, and the thing started to back out (Technically to back up). The darkness went up and fading, seeing me and Ruxandra on the ground, holding each other, our eyes being closed and whispering the Jesus Prayer faintly. He did not stop until the night was clear.
​
He came close to us, gently touching our heads. Ruxandra gave a sigh and became silent. I opened my eyes and came to my senses. In a few seconds, my dear friend was awake as well. The night was back to its sweetness, the old graveyard as well, the place where I felt so cozy, like being caressed by a gentle ghost.
​
We looked at father George, as things started to come back to me. Ruxandra held on to me, as she started to realize as well that it was over. We were protected, as our minds blacked out. We did not remember how we ended up hugged. I whispered to her: ”Praise The Lord. It is gone…” Then, after a few seconds of silence: ”Are you ok? Let's get up.” Father George gave us his strong smile: ”If you ok, let's hurry. We shall not let Christ wait for us. I think the best way now is to go to the side of the church (the south of the church), to calm down people who are still inside, as well as those who fled.”
​
I got up, helped Ruxandra get up, got my clothes cleaned a bit, and waited for father George to call people back to the church. On a moment when the way was clear, we proceeded into the side and got to the altar side door.
​
As father George tried to bring people back, me and Ruxandra looked at each other. She was still shaken when I asked: ”Are you ok, sis?” She gave a calm sigh: ”It seems so… I am surprisingly well, after all it just was…” ”I feel you on this… I am surprisingly unaffected. I am not well but, if I remember what just happened, I was supposed to be a mess.” ”Yeah, indeed…” ”We were protected, I think. No way could we have made it on our own and be so unscathed. We need to thank The Lord.” I gave her another hug. We waited then in silence for things to calm down, it took about 15 minutes.
​
Father George came out of the side door to give us Holy Communion, the Body and Blood of our Lord. Ruxandra wanted to wait for me, instead of having Communion alongside the people in the church. After this moment, it felt like the last claw of that thing was gone, but it's leftovers remained, like scattered around. Yet, when Christ Himself comes to you, all those seem less than meek.
​
After getting inside, father George tried to get the people to stay and finish eating, but many of them left early, and this made the rest go with them pretty fast. While this happened, we talked a little. Ruxandra started: ”Those Cones, this was one of those, isn't it?” ”Probably I can say that it was. It felt somewhat like them, but not exactly.” She started telling me how it felt for her, then I told her how it was for me. She went on: ”I want to look into what you were listening to on those earphones, while you were sleeping. YouTube history.” ”Do you want to go back to all that? Being Human, you are more feeble than me.” ”There is something going on. I want to get to the bottom of it.”
​
Father George interrupted us: ”You just received The Lord and you are talking about His enemies? Come on, chill down and get inside.” White we ate, he did not allow us to speak too much of it. Then, he suggested we take a rest a bit, and sleep where he prepared for us. Then Adrian and father George collected all the devices from the kiosk and they were all shut down.
​
The next day, after we were all home, Sophie and her family came to father George, to get the Exorcism formulas performed on them, since Sophie was the subject of the work of hell that night. According to the old custom, the Exorcism Formulas of Saint Basil are performed not just in case of necessity, but also during the day of his feast, January the first. Unfortunately, most priests do not perform this ritual on this day anymore.
​
I met Odette, the mother of Sophie. We managed to get an interesting talk. But that is a story of in it„s own right. What I can tell you yet about her is that she was too a Caterpillar Elf.
​
Adrian, on his own, checked the YouTube history of the device, there were some weird things in there. Some of the clips appeared to be deleted, the last one was not. It became clear that they were taken down one by one. He woke up later the day before Ruxandra did, in a sleep paralysis experience.
​
I checked my Youtube account history as well. I dared not to listen to those still there. In case any of you shall ask for the link to those on DM, as I am sure many would want to, I will not share it, as I do not want to be responsible for what would happen.
​
There are, still, some things I would share with you, perhaps I shall do it, if I shall have the energy. There were some rough months for me. There are many things that can get you down in this world, not all are supernatural, many are just mundane crap that could bring down even a strong Vampire or Elf. But I shall try my best.
​
Take care of you and your loved ones. See you soon.
​
I blow you a kiss (not a bite),
​
Helena

To start I believe one of the biggest problems is that it is incredibly difficult and fundamentally not fun when it is your job to react and save someone from dying often times<2 seconds.
The fact that healers have the smallest impact on winning games that they have had in the history of the game. No matter how well you play, if your dps cant capitalize and secure a kill, there is not as much you can do as healer to make a play and win than in the past.
Historically, healers would utilize the kit they have to influence winning plays; such as an Rdruid following up a cc on the enemy healer with cyclone to get a kill. Unfortunately now with the absurd damage coming in so fast, most often than not if you spend the time to cast a cc, then it is a complete waste of time, even a waste of a gcd, and your dps could very well die in that short time.
To elaborate more on how broken playing a healer is, let me explain a bit about how the fundamental core design of a Resto Druid literally does not work in the current game.
Obviously the main source of healing comes from HOTs. Even with a teammate drenched in every single HOT and big defensive in the Rdruid's kit, they will still die through burst. Since HOTs take time to heal from 6 seconds+, it literally can not keep someone alive when the time to kill often is <2 seconds.
The majority of the healers have core mechanics which they do not utilize or can not use due to everything happening so fast. Most the duration of a match is spent spamming big 'Oh Sh*t' buttons". As a healer, even winning a game after frantically mashing really only big defensive cooldowns just is not at all a satisfying nor fun experience.
This is my observation from being on the inside as a multi-spec healer main throughout the years. Us who truly like to play healers don't play for extra gold or anything like that, it is because it's fun to us, but currently it is just not enjoyable. I hope this can shed some light on the situation with the lack of healers.
I'd love to hear thoughts from other healers as well as dps players, what you think might also contribute to the real underlying causes of the great healer drought.
Thanks.

Been to most of the tourist spots such as Hollywood, Hollywood sign had nice views from the top, Disneyland in Anaheim, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, DTLA and the Fairfax area. Looking for underrated places to visit or hike, so far I'm thinking of visiting 6th Street Bridge to take photos, maybe Orange County and Ascot Hills Park. Anything else to add to the list?

Literally why not
Warlock Solar Aspect [1 fragment slot] - Eternal Dawn - Activating your super while heat rising strengthens Dawnblade. (Decrease passive decay by 50% and regain 30% super energy on hit, up to 50%) - If Dawnblade is fully charged while dead, cast your super to immediately resurrect yourself and become radiant, consuming 50% of your super. (Only activatable in raids if you have a rez token, consumes your own rez token on revival)
Yes, I'm aware self rez is broken, lucky for all of us this isn't real
Warlock Solar Aspect [3 fragment slots] - Benevolent Dawn - Increase effectiveness of Ember of Benevolence, also improves super generation (just gives +50 intellect for the duration, and EoB lasts 25% longer) - Resurrecting you or allies is 50% shorter
It would be nice if Solar Warlock could actually be a comparable support subclass if it wanted to be, right now it still feels homogenised and a bit lacking compared to what it used to be before 3.0 - rn it's just 'yeah it's fine, but why would you use it when sunbracers and starfire are right there?'
Hunter Arc Aspect [2 fragment slots] - Flash, ah-ah - While Amplified, increase the area of Arc Staff block by 100% - Reflected Arc Staff and Gathering Storm initial damage blinds targets - Blinding a target greatly increases your mobility and resistance for 5 seconds (mobility increased to as though you had the amplified move speed buff, also gain 60% resistance 10 second cooldown)
Just want an sect that doesn't revolve around melee please
Hunter Void Aspect [2 fragment slots] - Point Break - While invisible, perform a sliding melee to perform an empowered punch, with increased range and damage as well as causing all targets around them to become volatile (Consumes melee charge, 2:01 set cooldown)
No idea why

I'm a 17 y/o junior and I attend an early college high school. There's less than 200 students and we have a small HS building on a community college campus,, and we only have 6 high school teachers. Because of this, our school doesn't have sports teams or real clubs. The closest thing we have to extracurriculars are student-led clubs that meet around once a month just to hang out. Our school doesn't do honor roll or any sort of recognition for high achieving students. If you want to do sports, you have to go through another high school in the county (I would do this but, like most students here, I'm low income and my single working mom cannot drive me between 2 schools every day). I just feel so useless because I WOULD do sports and extracurriculars if they were accessible (I did cheerleading and played clarinet before high school). What can I do to make me stand out on applications?
I've applied for a summer camp volunteer program and some pre-college summer programs. Also applied for questbridge CPS and plan on NCM. I have straight A's and all of my classes are honors or college courses.
My dream schools are UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, Johns Hopkins, & UCLA

Hello, all!
A few months ago I came across Columbus and Other Cannibals, a book first published in 1978 by Indigenous professor Jack D. Forbes. In it, he makes the case that the root of all human systems of social hierarchy and oppression is a memetic pathogen he refers to as wétiko (the Cree word for “cannibal,” as in his mind, to exploit, violate, abuse, or seek vengeance upon another is tantamount to cannibalism. Slave owners, domestic abusers, religious crusaders, con artists, the rich and powerful, or even your common bigot, by virtue of predating on others’ minds and bodies for their own gain, are, in effect, cannibals.)
By this definition, all of the endemic ills and escalating crises of our society (and those of others), whether the exponential economic growth demanded by capitalism, the rise of a new wave of global fascism, anthropogenic climate breakdown, the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Promethean hubris, generally, would simply be outward manifestations of this psychogenic disease - and none could be successfully ameliorated without confronting their shared root.
In his view, much of recorded history could be viewed as the epidemiological record of wétiko as it spread from one culture to another through war, conquest, and colonization. He pinpoints its potential origin point as being the driving factor behind the first Mesopotamian city-states (though from my own reading, namely of The Primal Wound by Larry Gambone, an earlier origin point might be within the Yamnaya culture of the Central Asian steppe, ~6500 years ago. Gambone argues that the rapid desertification of their homeland within a single generation propelled the Yamnaya to reject their previous matrifocal, animistic ontology and turn towards a patriarchal, dualistic, warlike ontology. They went on to spread their worldview and language through force, birthing the Indo-European language family. The same unique kind of cultural inversion following a fluke climate disaster, he argues, also occurred in the Indus River civilization, as well as for the Aztecs and Incas, independent of the Old World.)
While Gambone doesn’t come out and say it, the narrative he paints of the fate of the Yamnaya to me substantially resembles the Fall of Man in Abrahamic scripture; being cast out of a land of plenty into a land of scarcity, complete with assigning blame onto the original feminine lifebearing entity and consequently women at large; whether that be Eve or a culturally-specific Gaian figure. The transformation of their culture into one of violent expansionism following sudden, crippling deprivation also, in my mind, bears resemblance to interwar Germany. (The Yamnaya themselves may well have been the original “Aryans” the Nazis vacuously bloviated about, in which case their defining characteristic would not have been “superior genetics” so much as their profoundly bad luck.)
According to Forbes, wétiko works by cutting off one’s sense of self from their community, and instills an insatiable hunger; an addiction, nearly - which can manifest in countless destructive ways, all of which ensure its transmission from one generation to the next.
From my own limited understanding, informed by Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco, Intimate Authoritarianism by anarchist essayist Lee Shevek, The Authoritarians by prof. Bob Altemeyer, and The Alt-Right Playbook YouTube series by Ian Danskin, there are distinct characteristics to this mode of thinking, and while fascists basically personify it, we are all carriers for it.
Considering that I’m leaning towards studying cognitive science (the interdisciplinary field pioneered by Noam Chomsky) I personally think that besides possessing profound social and political implications, the concept of wétiko is worth taking beyond the broad brush Forbes painted with. I uncovered a bootleg PDF of Logic, Syntax, and a Structural View: The Psychology of Trump's Hall of Mirrors by CUNY prof. Harwood Fisher, which makes a case (albeit one which largely goes over my head) that Donald Trump’s signature neuroses; such as his refusal to acknowledge his own fallibility, his rabid defensiveness, his conspiracism, his near-solipsistic lack of empathy, and his exemplification of the Dunning-Krueger effect, could in fact be modelled and simulated computationally.
All of that, along with the inspiration brought to me by an article which demonstrates that through natural selection alone our genotypes have a syntax to them, not unlike human programming languages, and my randomly happening to be aware that the genome for COVID-19 comprises a mere 27 kb of data (which has somehow gotten the better of a planet of eight billion supercomputers), has led me to the conclusion that not only could wétiko be very real, but could even be sequenced out like a physical virus. The original strain might be long gone, but what remains still needs a light to be shone on it - and from that, perhaps even an antidote; informed by the convictions of Indigenous societies the world over, as well as the insights of history’s wisest minds and the work of history's most astute revolutionaries, vindicated with a mathematical proof.
I’d honestly like to dedicate my life to working on this. It might as well be the real-life equivalent of decoding the Anti-Life Equation from DC Comics. I honestly don’t know what more important work could be done, at this point.

Hi guys, I live in the west coast of USA so yesterday at 9 P.M. I had to check our mail which is located right outside our house. I was with slippers and socks and a flashlight checking the mail and while I was checking the mail, I felt a stinging sensation on top of my foot. I looked down, did not see anything nor hear anything, just the night and the silence.
2 min later, I went inside and decided to look at my foot and noticed a little red dot, like a pinprick and redness, it started to itch and burn. It hurts when touching that place. Now when I look at it, that location is a little bit peeled off but no blood, nothing like that. Boom, my mind went straight to bats and rabies, and now I am scared that a bat came, bit me on my foot, and left without me noticing.
I was sober, awake and veeeery aware of my surroundings. Did not see or hear a bat, never even seen one in real life, only with pictures.
My city does not have bats, I mean, it does, it's just you won't see them, but my county has 60 or more rabid bats throughout the year. Is this something that I need to worry about or another anxiety overthinking and illogical thinking?
Would i noticed the bat on my foot or felt it on my foot biting me? Thank you

Basically just doing the ones that appear in the Olympic games a lot, but since the side characters barely get any time in the spotlight, I want to explain how I see them.
Sonic
Lifestyle: Jobless and homeless by necessity.
Sonic makes his immediate contacts' lives stable by being a constant target of any given bad guy, and that's great because he's an adrenaline junkie. Definitely the type to get involved in any possible argument because he's secretly kind of into drama but he says he's not. He constantly forgets important dates, so characters like Knuckles and Blaze with long traditional history get kind of annoyed by him, but whatever. At this point he's saved the world so many times he's jumped well past the point of "forgetful and annoying" and right into the zone of "he's good at one thing, let him do his one thing."
Tails
Lifestyle: Commision based repairs in some random little known but effective parts shop.
Tails says he's living a "free life" but his desire for structure is way more than Sonic, so he's got 14 repairs due today, 3 robots he made then realized that they might actually gain sentience so he smashed them and restarted, and a box of empty energy drinks that would have been brought to the recycling already if the recyclo-bot didn't start to verge on rebellion.
Knuckles
Lifestyle: Lives in an abandoned hut next to an abandoned ziggurat because he doesn't come from the priestly line, even though he's the last of his nation.
Knuckles is the last member of his nation, named for having big hands. He has a whole city that he essentially wanders around alone, and there are buildings he literally won't enter because of a caste system that no longer exists. He's a member of the "soldier caste", so he practices ancient fighting traditions and tries to protect the emerald, and is exceptionally respectful to people he believes to be above his station. Sonic annoys him because Sonic doesn't have a house or caste but has used the chaos emeralds more than once, and garners unnecessary respect. Knuckles pretends to not be excited when Blaze shows up, but she's the only other person who gets it.
Amy
Lifestyle: Independent business owner, frequently falls for pyramid schemes.
Amy is high-maintenance as heck, but she's also the glue keeping everyone together. She makes plans and events, and drags everyone to go visit them. Without her, the only pairings that would stay together would be Espio and Vector, and Sonic and Tails. She expects a lot from everyone else, and does a lot of work to remember every day for everyone else. She has a massive wall calendar covered in marked days like "Anniversary of Espio picking up the Shamisen."
Vector
Lifestyle: Owns a failing detective agency and a moderately successful DJ business.
Vector is deeply upset that Charmy somehow was the one of the former "team Chaotix" who's career took off, and he's trying his best to match up to the guy he taught everything to, and failing horribly. He talks about the old days a lot.
Espio
Lifestyle: In constant training, works for Vector to get enough money for food.
Espio is in this constant hunt for perfection of very specific, very unusual hobbies to further his skill acquisition. This means that random skills that nobody has just happen to be things Espio was studying, but equally, people turn to him for specific skills he totally doesn't have. "Anyone know how to pick a lock?" everyone looks at Espio. He's practicing making clay sculptures right now and doesn't have the mental flexibility to switch tasks right now.
Shadow
Lifestyle: Jobless and homeless by not being able to talk to people.
Shadow has no idea how to make friends, but at this point, after years of fighting it, he sees the same people every time there's any sort of threat, and he's gone from despising them to tolerating them to almost... perish the thought... liking them. Now he's this antisocial "ultimate life form" who walks near Knuckles with a book about ancient cultures and hopes that Knuckles notices. The only one who actually notices is Amy, who constantly wants to force Shadow into social situations that he pretends to hate.
Rouge
Lifestyle: Government agent currently under investigation.
Rouge is a difficult person to be around, because she specifically enjoys being around people as a challenge to her skills. She loves Knuckles and Tails because they have so much stuff to steal, and is totally indifferent to Sonic and Shadow for the same reason. She sees it as a game. Knuckles does not. Tails... kind of enjoys her occasional visits, to test his security systems. Neither will vocally acknowledge this fact, since neither is happy when they lose.
Blaze
Lifestyle: Princess of a different dimension, currently on vacation.
She has to act perfectly elegant and in control at all times in her dimension, in this dimension, she doesn't actually know the rules, so she follows along with whatever other people tell her, which means she's roped into something by Amy, Rouge, or Knuckles every single time, and gets a wildly different view of the world from each. She misses it when there aren't any robots to kill. Robots let her vent frustrations from bureaucratic red tape she has to undergo in her hometown. When planning, if Blaze is in town, Tails makes sure she gets her own district of robots to break.
Eggman
Lifestyle: In tremendous debt, trying to come up with a way to get rid of Sonic so that he'll be able to properly make some dang investment planets like he always planned.
Eggman is a very smart guy, who wants to use entire planets to modernize the world, and so far the big annoyance has been Sonic. He's ignoring the many other potential annoyances for the biggest annoyance that's been around the longest, but it's also a case where he has a touch of admiration. Knuckles, Metal Sonic, and Shadow were all Sonic-like figures that he tried to use to match Sonic, and he's just now stepping into his own as a creator to make things that aren't Sonic-like but are still effective enough to handle the real deal. What Eggman doesn't consider is that he's made quite a few powerful enemies over the years who don't bother him because Sonic thinks he's too fun to play with.

Hi guys, I live in the west coast of USA so yesterday at 9 P.M. I had to check our mail which is located right outside our house. I was with slippers and socks and a flashlight checking the mail and while I was checking the mail, I felt a stinging sensation on top of my foot. I looked down, did not see anything nor hear anything, just the night and the silence.
2 min later, I went inside and decided to look at my foot and noticed a little red dot, like a pinprick and redness, it started to itch and burn. It hurts when touching that place. Now when I look at it, that location is a little bit peeled off but no blood, nothing like that. Boom, my mind went straight to bats and rabies and now I am scared that a bat came, bit me on my foot and left without me noticing.
I was sober, awake and veeeery aware of my surroundings. Did not see or hear a bat, never even seen one in real life, only with pictures.
My city does not have bats, I mean it does, it's just you won't see them, but my county has 60 or more rabid bats throughout the year. Is this something that I need to worry about or another anxiety overthinking and illogical thinking?

Protests, drought, fatalism, recession, and the spread of infectious diseases. Just another week on our dying planet.
Last Week in Collapse: March 26-April 1, 2023
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter bringing together some of the most important, timely, helpful, depressing, ironic, stunning, or otherwise must-see moments in Collapse.
This is the 66th newsletter. You can find the March 19-25 edition here if you missed it last week. These newsletters are also on Substack if you want them sent to your email inbox.
——————————
The U.S. government is auctioning off a colossal section in the Gulf of Mexico for oil drilling. The parcel totals 73.3M acres—just under the size of Italy’s landmass, or the Philippines. Explore the full map here or here.
Southeastern Europe is facing a dry, dry summer. A year of constant record-breaking will not slow down soon. (Can you believe we are already 25%+ through 2023?) Drought is getting so bad in Spain that group prayers for rain have begun. Spain is also seeing wildfires.
North Africa is suffering from drought too, and it’s affecting their crops. El Niño is heating up the Pacific Ocean already, and forecast to become more severe as the year drags on. Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, is feeling the strain of drought.
Once a sustainable producer of grains, Pakistan (due to drought and debt and overpopulation, etc.) is now unable to produce enough grain to sustain its own people. Government distributions of flour have caused deadly stampedes and injuries to the desperate & hungry people.
2,000 elderly Swiss women are taking Switzerland to court, the European Court of Human Rights, to be precise. They are seeking a binding judgment that climate change is putting their health and lives at risk.
After 8,000 gallons of chemicals (190 barrels) spilt in a tributary of the Delaware River, Philadelphia officials say the water is safe to drink.
Berlin voters narrowly voted to obligate their city to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030—but the vote lacked the overall votes necessary to become law. So the climate effort failed. Germany’s economy is contracting and hundreds of thousands of workers went on a one-day strike on Monday.
Private jet use has hit record highs, far surpassing the pre-pandemic figures. Meanwhile, South Korean researchers may have found a method to transform CO2 from the air into a kind of polyester. The study claims that the electricity-intensive process can be easily scaled up.
——————————
Amnesty International released a 412-page report on the state of human rights in the world today. Spoiler: it’s really bad. You can download it in 46 languages. The document is organized by countries, so you can skip to a particular nation and read about its indicators of Collapse.
68 Central/South American migrants, en route to the U.S., were locked in a holding facility in northern Mexico when several started a mattress fire after they learned that they would be deported. Empathy from the guards was lacking, and nothing was done to prevent the suffocation and fire; 38 of the men died.
78% of Americans believe the next generation will have it worse than they do, according to a WSJ poll. The other 22% are fools. U.S. bond markets are in a tough spot, too. The other questions in the poll reveal a damning picture of the American Dream. 27% believe community involvement is very important, while 43% believe money is very important.
Argentina’s currency—the Argentine Peso (the official rate is 1 USD = 208 ARP, but the black market rate is closer to 1 USD = 380 ARP)—has been downgraded from a C rating to CCC, in advance of an “imminent default” of government bonds. Faith in the government’s ability to stabilize its currency is gone—it’s not just the banks that have lost the people’s trust.
China is encountering concerning levels of debt that are forcing governments to find new sources of money. Yet despite China’s structural economic flaws (poor age demographics, corrupt real estate sector, political influences on markets), some economists think China is a safe investment in a turbulent global economy. Last week, China made its first ever purchase of LNG using Chinese Yuan. And China warned the US against hosting Taiwan’s President for a visit.
The IMF says that the stability in the world economy is shaking while growth slows, trust fallout from SVB lingers, and interest rates rise. Central banks are allegedly being called upon to do more—but the situation may be beyond institutional control. What is a bank if not a collection of other people’s debts?
The UK has hit record levels of household debt: £2 Trillion. Meanwhile the ECB (European Central Bank) is warning that shadow banking may lead to the current next economic crisis. “The nonbank {shadow} sector involves firms which are engaged in bank-like activities, but are neither registered nor regulated as banks. These include the likes of funds, insurance firms, venture capitalists and currency exchanges.”
Protests, which are sometimes becoming riots, are continuing in France. This weekly observation gives an interesting summary of the situation. You can watch some footage here, or here, or here. What begins as a protest for one issue can quickly become co-opted by other forces, or organically grow into something larger than itself. Thousands of police and 10 helicopters were deployed in western France to stop protestors trying to obstruct the construction of several reservoirs for agriculture.
Iranian special forces are training to handle new protests; whether their violence can overcome the political grievances remains to be seen. Teachers, many of whom have reportedly not been paid, are allegedly joining the protests. We seldom hear about the situation in Iran these days—is this because the protest movement is dwindling, or something else?
In another silenced conflict, Myanmar, last week the ruling party dissolved a number of opposing political parties, most notable the NLD, the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, who tried to move Myanmar away from military rule. She was eventually removed in a 2021 coup which precipitated Myanmar’s current phase of Civil War.
The runner-up in Kenya’s 2022 election—the 78-year old, Raila Odinga, ran unsuccessfully for President five times—is calling for twice-a-week protests that began two weeks ago. Two protestors have been shot dead in the escalating protests so far, which have given cover for looters and anti-government vandals.
Israel’s embattled PM is temporarily holding back his judicial reform bill after massive protests flexed their opposition. Israel said they totally weren’t intimidated by the US into holding back from the proposed law, which has become a symbol for the struggle of Israel’s identity.
In Senegal, the trial of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko is set to begin—and the people are protesting. The government allegedly wants to block Sonko from running in 2024, accusing Sonko of stirring up the masses to avoid prosecution.
Donald Trump has not (yet) been arrested—but he has been indicted on a number of charges relating to Stormy Daniels and campaign finance law, fraud, etc. Trump said, “this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” and he could be right; however, pro-Trump protests have not yet materialized. Trump is allegedly talking to his advisors about (if he is elected again) going to War in Mexico, something that happened not long before the first American Civil War.
Bakhmut continues to hold out against the Russians. Tanks are arriving in Ukraine and this phase of the War turned 400 days old a few days ago. Russia is believed to be planning another wave of mobilizations to recruit 400,000 men to be sacrificed for nothing. Russia is also becoming more popular in the developing world from a combination of self-interest, anti-western sentiment, and Russian disinformation. The War drags on, and victory, whatever that is, remains far away.
The War in Yemen turned 8 years old several days ago, and peace hinges on a fragile ceasefire. It is believed that the Houthi rebels (backed by Iran, in opposition to the Saudi-backed government) will restart an offensive if a deal cannot be secured. It is always easier to break something than to build it back up.
——————————
Northern China is expected to see more sandstorms as desertification continues. Thailand is seeing blistering heat waves in some areas above 40 ° C (104 °F); Laos set a new record for March.
Several major cities in Tunisia are cutting off water at night as their drought grows more severe. The water rations are expected to continue through the summer—and perhaps beyond. Nigeria is also suffering from water scarcity.
The ICJ (International Court of Justice) is going to give an advisory opinion on climate change and states’ responsibilities surrounding its damage. Some people believe the opinion (if it is favorable to climate activists) will galvanize action—when it is released sometime within the next two years. Others, who have witnessed the quiet IPCC coverage, catastrophic flooding and wildfires, COPout climate conferences pass without fanfare, and the not-so-gradual expansion of extraction companies into delicate ecosystems accelerate…are not so optimistic.
The “full volume” IPCC synthesis report has still not been released yet. But don’t hold your breath; corporate interests supposedly watered down the language and inserted pages of carbon-removal copium, scrubbing the text of many references to fossil fuels and industrial agriculture.
A study from Functional Ecology about plants in the Sonoran Desert indicated that climate-stressed plants are moving to higher elevations—but they are not thriving at the mountaintops.
——————————
A bipartisan supermajority of U.S. Senators, 68-23 voted to end the COVID emergency early—and President Biden has indicated he will sign it, ending the state of emergency about 5 weeks ahead of schedule. With about 1,125,000 confirmed COVID deaths, the United States still leads the world in COVID-19 fatalities. (If you search “COVID India” or COVID {country name}” on Google, you will no longer see the Our World in Data charts appear.) India is currently facing the highest confirmed case numbers in 6 months. Brazil recorded its 700,000th COVID death last week, the country with the second-most COVID deaths.
A small town in Burundi has detected 3 strange deaths from a mystery illness with similar symptoms to Ebola and Marburg. However, both those diseases were ruled out. The disease, whatever it is, killed within 24 hours. Two weeks ago, Burundi saw polio reappear after 30+ years. Polio was also detected again in New York state, after several months of dormancy.
Marburg was detected in Equatorial Guinea’s largest city, while cholera spreads across southern Africa untraceably.
A woman in southern China tested positive for H3N8, a different version of bird flu. She is the third human case in recent history, after two other people in China tested positive last year. A variant of H3N8 killed a million people in the 1889-1890 pandemic.
——————————
Things to watch next week include:
↠ The International Academy of Astronauts is holding its annual Planetary Defense Conference next week to discuss the potential of meteor impacts on earth, and how the human race should respond to unlikely threats from space (impacts, Carrington Events, etc). I, however, believe our Collapse will come is coming from within.
Select comments/threads from the subreddit last week suggest:
-The United States may soon pass the most comprehensive security surveillance legislation since the Patriot Act …ever. This thread on the proposed law, ostensibly intended to regulate TikTok, cites large parts of the bill that are concerning, to say the least. This debacle also reveals how difficult it can be to combat modern hybrid War(s).
-A 2.7 °C temperature increase will devastate India, according to this thread exploring the future of the future-most-populated nation on earth. A few years ago, someone made CollapseIndia to explore Collapse in an explicitly Indian context; the subreddit has never broken 800 subscribers.
-Thawing permafrost is going to be a really big pollution problem, according to this post from BiosphereCollapse. You can read the full study here, from Nature Communications.
Got any feedback, questions, comments, articles, doomed petitions, seed-planting wisdom, hate mail, War advice, clandestine maps, etc.? Consider joining the Last Week in Collapse SubStack if you don’t want to check collapse every Sunday, you can get this newsletter sent to your email inbox every weekend. I always forget something... What did I miss this week?

The #paradigm #shift - or the renovation of the dualistic science building
The major construction sites theory of science
First construction site "the foundation": ontology - the doctrine of being
In the first part of the essay the plan for the "renovation work" on the science building was drawn up. Now this is to be implemented on the two major construction sites of the philosophy of science "Ontology" and "Epistemology". Every form of science (humanities or natural science) claims to be able to describe reality (reality) through knowledge (truth) in order to justify the legitimation of its claim to explanation and effect intersubjectively. This means that the descriptions and explanations provided by the theories and models must have a real (ontological) and true (epistemological) relation to the world in order to be recognized as intersubjective knowledge.
I am already explicitly avoiding the dualistic pair of opposites "subjective-objective" in order not to further underpin the rift in the old paradigm and the accompanying illusion of objectivity. The botched construction should be avoided.
More at: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2021/03/31/der-paradigmenwechsel/
There is an orange translation button at the bottom left that translates into English.

The Restless God lies trapped, but not idle in its sealed off realm. It writhes and yearns for the day it may again take pleasure in the pain of mortals. To once again play in the blood and baske in the terror only finite creatures can produce.
Many worlds it's fed upon, but never satiated. But the world that fought back against its attacks long ago are the ones it wants all the more. It has become an obsession.
So it waits, and it feels, searching for weaknesses between the borders of our world and itself. Hungry and anxious it salivates at the thought of breaching into our world again. It will be its greatest decadence and pleasure, and our darkest days. Despite this, we must pray to Her Divine! We must beg for mercy and the return of Her light.
-Grand Mage Tellomon the IV on the prophecy of the Dark God's return (Second Age)
Pitch blackness. Pure darkness. A thick void of nothing completely swallowing me up, like a fish in the depths of an ocean.
I was crouched low in a ready position, using my right hand to balance by holding onto the wagon's wheel beside me. My legs burned from forcing myself to remain completely still. But pain had become a constant in my life now.
But I was grateful for the adrenaline burst that would always dampen the ever present burden of hunger and fatigue. At least it helped for a little. But the pain found its way back to me faster and faster each time.
It was hot and humid, almost like the swamps of the eastern bog a good 3 weeks journey from here. The cold wind stopped when the darkness befell our remote town. The breeze no longer ran its cold tendrils across the barren streets.
I grabbed the thin string tied around my neck and pulled out a heavy monocle hanging from it. I held the cold metal up to my eye, to look through the green tinted glass.
The magically infused monocle always remained cool to the touch, with a static shock feeling emanating from it.
I held it to my eye to see the world around me clearly, yet tented in bright shades of green. My eyes roamed across the quiet, motionless street.
Debris and bloated corpses littered the street. With no wind and the unnaturally heavy darkness, this somehow had a dampening effect on the stench coming from decaying bodies. They could only be smelled once you were almost on top of one of them or a meter away. But my dead kinsmen helped even in death, making good landmarks to navigate through the darkness.
There were monsters that accompanied the dark fog. Twisted figures that were the void itself. Maybe they were the cruel thoughts of the Restless God made manifest.
Humans long ago, in the First Age had named them rippers. We all hoped they were just a myth, not actual walking nightmares
The rippers swarmed the town in the blinding dark. They seemed to only kill for killing's sake. They never ate the people they killed, almost like it was just for fun instead of survival.
It made sense in some twisted way. The Restless God must have returned to our realm, and brought these hateful things with it.
Prophets had long told of The Restless One's return by it sending nightmares through the veil of reality, to infest in the minds of our leaders. Centuries of slowly chipping away at the barrier separating us, chipping away at our sanity.
The Restless One birthed itself into our reality like an already dead stillborn abomination. Like a newborn giant, deformed with extra limbs and already rotting from death.
But it was alive! As alive as this strange creature could be. Now it was free, and this did not bring the thing elation, just more anger and restlessness.
How do I know all these things? The nightmare visions sent to all mortals across the realm since the Restless One's returned. Actually there were nightmares for most of the town leading up to the event. I guess it was our omens for being so close to the epicenter of its invasion.
One omen would have been terrible enough, but something this perverse stacked on the misfortune.
Dark signs of its arrival showed themselves all over the Kingdom of Maldune. The signs stretched further across to the neighboring kingdoms. The wretched god's birth pains were so terrible, I wager they were felt thousands of leagues away on The Wild Continent.
But the other Kingdoms didn't have the vast magical communication network like us Modunians, so reports of bad omens tampered off dramatically outside of our borders.
The misfortune of my town was like I said, we were the closest to the epicenter of the entities push into our reality, closest to the cradle of the spoiled god.
An entire mountain range protected us from the shock wave of magical energy, but all livestock siezed up and died. All birds fell from out of the air. All rodents died in their holes. And our very young died in their cribs.
It was a terrible event to have the town's children instantly killed, but now I see it as a mercy for the little ones. The innocent children got to go to Our Divine in their sleep peacefully, or at least quickly. They didn't have to die in the suffocating dark, or by the diseased claws of the rippers.
The town's guard fell quickly. A group of 16 men on loan from The Capitol, to keep peace and protect the trade routes. Our peacekeepers were more used to using words to settle disputes among merchants, or occasionally throw a drunk into a cell overnight.
They were ill equipped to handle the inky blackness that engulfed the town, rolling down from the mountain like a fluid landslide. The confusion of the townspeople quickly turned to pandemonium as the screams began.
That's when we realized we were not alone in the dark. Things moved quickly in the blackness. The Rippers began to slaughter everyone in the pitch blackness.
The first few days are a blur to me even now. But that's how I remember the beginning of the horror, the beginning of the end. I remember the dark engulfing the town, the adrenaline of fear. My last sight was of silent death spilling down from the mountains like a boiling pot overflowing with a viscous poison.
When the black fog first swept over me, my first few breaths of the miasma burned my eyes and lungs. The taste of metal on my tongue. The smell of sulfur and something sweet. Something sweet and rancid. Decay and corruption.
But now I had to shake the fog out of my head and return to the terrible present. I had to embrace the hopeless situation without falling to despair.
My magical sight gazing through the monocle finally spotted the rest of my group. Jillsophie, Tagert, and Fellip. Tag and Fel carrying the heavy burlap sacks of animal feed, while Jill led the three of them through the darkness with her own magical monocle.
We spotted each other from across the corpse littered roadway. The General Goods store had caught on fire early in the supernatural invasion. Somehow the strange darkness had put out the fire, snuffing it out like a heavy blanket thrown over a weak flame. That's why we were back, looting the store, trying to keep from starving to death before the rippers could kill us first.
Jill gave me a series of quick hand signals I had recently taught her. They had scavenged three bags of feed. Fil was carrying two big bags and Tagert one of them, but they were heavy and we were all weak. Jill wasn't carrying anything. She was too busy leading the two of them by pulling on the corded string she had tied around both their waists.
Before I waved the three of them to hurry over, I turned to Caville, my partner in crime on this side of the road beside me. He blinked wide eyed in the darkness, one gloved hand twisting the ends of his graying mustache while the other held a death grip on the pommel of his sheathed short sword.
I had to remember I could see him clearly through my monocle, but he only saw and felt the oppressive darkness. He was just waiting for a claw or fang to strike him from the darkness.
Because of this I lightly placed my hand on his shoulder. The light touch didn't stop Caville from almost jumping out of his boots. He quickly calmed when he realized it was me. The old warrior steadied himself once more.
I place my hand on the flat of his chest so he could feel my finger placement through his light shirt. I signed the question to him through a series of light thumps separating the words.
"Another bag. 40 LBS. Can carry?" I finished my signing by holding the hand placement designating a question mark firmly against his chest. I saw his eyes widen and he grimaced in doubt. His old frame shook a little as he prepared his answer.
Of course he answered back that he could carry the load, but I knew the real answer. It's amazing how much we communicate through non-verbal cues, and how much more when we think we are concealed in darkness.
He was barely standing on two feet. Starving and aching. He was pushing his late 50's, and his joints and muscles carried the pain of being a veteran soldier for over 30 years. He would collapse under the weight of his light armor and newly added bag of feed. No way he could keep quiet or climb back up into the attic we were all hiding at.
But Caville's years of being a proud soldier almost assured me that he would take on the task regardless of his disposition. So I signed back to Jil, "Drop 3rd bag. Later."
I lied and informed Caville that I was incorrect in my assessment. There wasn't an extra bag of feed, and we would be returning to the relative safety of the windmill.
Jil quietly led Fil, with Tagert close behind, across the road. Her own magic monocle making it possible to maneuver around the maze of debris and bodies. They all moved slow enough for Jil to communicate with sharp tugs on the string fastened around both of them. Stealth was key.
When I first saw it I didn't know how to react. I knew what the rippers looked like through my monocle, and I knew the placement of all the dead town-folk. But as I watched my three companions snake around the bloated body of Mr. Dredge, the blacksmith, I saw the faintest quiver of motion within the corpse.
Normally, that would mean some sort of vermin or carrion feeder had nestled within the body. But in this nightmare world we lived in, the Rippers killed everything that wasn't already slaughtered when The Restless One re-emerged into our reality, sending out It's shockwave of death.
To my horror I realized something else. Upon closer inspection of Mr.Dredge's body. I noticed it had somehow moved a couple feet to the left since last time I had seen him. I could even see the wet smear marks in the dirt from where it dragged itself over.
My magical monocle could also detect other magic. It wasn't very good at it but still could. My vision was bathed in illuminating green, but magic showed up white.
That's what I saw rising out of Mr.Dredge's body. Four bright spider-like legs protruded out of the back of the corpse, and hooked into the ground, lifting the stiff dead body into the air slowly, quietly.
Jil in the others were completely unaware of the horror looming up behind them. The jaw of Mr. Dredge fell off with a soggy "plop" into the dirt. What looked like a large inverted scorpion's tail writhed out the body's mouth. The scorpion tale hung down around the body's bloated chest. The tail curling up to point a large stinger at the group.
I could see that Jil had heard the "plop" of the jaw falling off the corpse behind her. She raised her eyebrows, sniffed the air, and froze in an alert state, her two companions bumping into her.
I had temporarily frozen too. I had never seen a monster like this before. Its spider legs lifting the body up to let its human feet brush its toes lightly on the ground. The whole body was ridged from rigor mortis. The body's hands curled to its chest, making fists, stiff legs swaying like the awkward pendulum of a clock. Still bodily juices and blood oozed profusely from hismouth and ripped open guts.
A surreal thought came into my mind. Maybe it was my mind trying to make sense out of nonsense. Mr.Dredges stiff body reminding me of toy soldier from my childhood. They were always stiff jointed when brand new, not dead.
I finally snapped out of my daze when glowing white spikey tendrils pushed the body's guts out with another wet impact noise. The many spiked appendages snaked out slowly towards the back of the unaware Tagert.
"Jil!" my voice boomed out, breaking the silence like a cannon burst. Everyone jumped in surprise. "Run! Run!"
With my off hand I quickly dug into my pocket and produced a phlare, the phosphorus filled stick. I quickly pulled the cap off with my teeth, igniting the flame dangerously close to my face. I didn't care, and barely felt the heat.
Holding out the phlare to signal to Jil and the others, producing a blinding light in the dark. But the blackness was unnatural and dampened the burning flame into a muted orange glow. Regardless, the phlare was still bright enough to signal the unsuspecting trio crossing the street.
Through the monocle I saw all three of them lock eyes on the light and begin to hurry towards me. It was against human instinct to run unaware in darkness. This made them not fast enough, because the Dredge-thing shot out a torso tendril to stab Tagert in the upper back.
Tagert let out a cry of pain, but kept coming. The cry of pain causing all three to break out into a full run. The need to live finally overriding the need to see.
I dropped the phlare as Jill led the other two up to me. They almost ran her poor soul over as she braced to stop them. The Dredge monster seemed to be slow. Her Divine was still blessing us!
I grabbed Caville's shoulder and Jil grabbed the tail of my shirt. We all took off together, back to the windmill.
We tried to go as fast as we could the couple blocks back to our hideout, but It was hard going. Caville lagged beside me, with Tag and Fel huffing as they carried the 40 pound feed bags.
I looked back at Dredge to see it had fallen on its stomach and was skittering after us like a centipede. It was considerably faster now!
I lowered the monocle to put both hands on Caville's shoulders and push him in front of me. Even if I pushed him we still wouldn't be fast enough.
My mind raced, like it had so many times since the birth of the Restless One. My mind swirled with anxious thoughts of decisions and counter-decisions. My sleep deprived and starving brain hallucinated the faces of my people alongside the terrible silver teeth of the Rippers lunging towards me out the colorless backdrop.
But like always, I made a desperate choice. "Drop the feed bags! Its gaining on us!
I expected to hear the "Thump! Thump!" Of the bags hitting the dirt, but I got what I least expected instead.
"No Jack! Don't drop the feed! I'll buy you time!" Caville said as he shrugged free of my grasp on his shoulders and started in the opposite direction towards Dredge.
"I'm so t-tired of running away! A-and I miss my daughter and grandkids!" the old warrior declared, his voice cracking at the end of his statement.
He held out an outstretched hand and fingers. When the tips of them made contact with Jil's dirty clothes, he easily side-stepped around Jil and the other two with grace as they hurried past him in the dark. These were skills long honed from blindfold training to heighten a soldier's situational awareness level.
Jil was the only other to see what was happening. She reached out for him as the other two pushed her forward. She stifled a cry and pushed ahead.
I was glad Jil wouldn't see this, but I felt I had to watch. I had to witness his sacrifice in the depths of this hell.
I saw Dredge's corpse crawl its way up to Caville, one of its longer talons hooking into Caville's upper knee. Caville screamed and sliced horizontally instantly. The sword cut through the air harmlessly over the monster.
Caville took this information and countered quickly as more sharp tendrils stabbed into his lower body. He rose the blade high over his head and let out a final death blow, plunging the sword downwards to impale the monster, staking it to the ground.
The monster pulled the old soldier down and tore into him. Caville's screams echoed out as I turned to run. Worse is when his screams finally choked out and fell silent.
The group of us made it un-accosted for the rest of our journey. We hurried in silence just like we were in mourning. We made it to the edge of town where the river and the watermill stood.
We climbed up the stacked boxes on the side of the building to slide open a wooden panel into the attic.
The inside of the attic had the low glow of multiple lanterns and the stuffy smell of multiple unwashed people living in tight quarters together for a long time.
We piled in quickly to close up the entrance behind us. There were 8 of us now. Me, Jil, Fil, Tag, Mama Denise, her two kids, and Harper sleeping in the corner.
All eyes met mine as they counted the three of us. No one had to ask what happened to Caville. They all knew. I think even the kids knew.
By the best we could reckon, it had been a month since death swept over our town. The rippers patrolled the streets and buildings constantly, searching for survivors to kill in the beginning. They also destroyed any cache of food or weapons they came across.
There was a deeper intelligence behind the rippers. They were vicious and animalistic when encountered, but they would carry out complicated tasks relentlessly, like soldiers receiving orders. It had to be the malicious influence of the Restless One speaking to all of them, like they were the claws at the end of his corrupting grasp.
It was Jil that had the idea for the feed bags at the General Store. Yes, they were for cows and horses, but they had been magically enhanced and would give the human body what it needed also.
It would give us enough strength to try and escape this Divine forsaken town, and hopefully leave the darkness to flee to the safety of the Capitol.
I knew the thought of making it all the way to the Capitol was ridiculous. The longer we headed east, the more likely we ran into the army of rippers that left the town at least two days ago.
It had been hundreds of them! Me and Jil were out scouting the General Store for the feed bags we had just now retrieved.
The going was slow, because the enemy was everywhere. But we knew how to maneuver from rooftop to closely packed rooftop. And the grew closer togeher the closer we got to the center of the town.
From where we started, the watermill in the outskirts of town, it seemed like the town was suspiciously empty of the monsters. But we soon realized that was the opposite. We didn't see any Rippers on the outskirts because they were all gathering together in the town square
The bright figures of humanoid shaped demons clustered together in a giant group. The magical vision of the monocle causing them to glow from whatever evil sorcery created them. So many of them huddling together created a glowing sea, flooding the courtyard.
Rippers were rumored to have always existed. Even before The Restless One returned. But they were rare and only inhabited places of great tragedy and a history of dark magic. Now there was an army of them, amassing to March East towards The Capitol.
Some said The Rippers were phantoms created by The Restless One. They were his only way to reach through dimensions and torment the living.
More scholarly Old-timers theorized the Rippers came from the vengeful spirits of the long extinct elves, hunted to extinction by Man a millennium ago.
Ancient texts mention the long extinct Legacy Elves had a bad habit of dabbling in dark magic, causing The Restless One to specifically target them, repeatedly using the elves innate affinity with magic to breach into our reality to cause havoc.
Many believe Man's genocide against the elves was not entirely warranted, it had help seal The Restless One away. But not all elves worshipped the Restless One. Many of them worshiped Her Divine like we humans do. But relations between elves and humans had always been strained, and this was the excuse humans needed to eliminate their rival for dominance over the lands, once and for all.
"Why must we be punished?" I remembered Tehama asking when all this first happened, back whe. She was alive.
"It's not our fault! It's the fault of our long dead ancestors! The kingdom that commited the atrocity doesn't even exist anymore!" Tehama said in a fit of nervous mania.
We had to hush her for getting too loud. But the truth is, we had no answer. There was no clear reason why we were all being subjected to such anguish.
Like I said, Tehama didn't make it anyways. On a supply run she had grabbed a doll from her old home to bring to Mama Denise and her two girls, but had dropped it in the street when Jil spotted a group of Rippers scaling the rooftops a block away.
We all scrambled to hide, hoping the Ripper patrol moved along. But they spotted the dolly laying in the dirt. And some sort of supernatural intelligence recognized this wasn't here on their last patrol. They knew humans were moving around.
The five of the Rippers in the patrol circled the doll, all letting out a high pitched squeals, like an alarm calling to others.
Me and Jil hid in a nasty bale of hay next to a gutted horse laying beside it, hopefully masking our scent. Our terror rose as we watched more and more Rippers coming out of the shadows. They slid down buildings, out of doorways, from under debris, and they all were all screaming, almost deafening to us.
There were three magical monocle's during this time. All of us had one. And we could all see the count of Rippers going into the hundreds!
They would find us! By flooding every corner of the street, they would come across us eventually!
That's when Tehama made her decision. I didn't see exactly where she hid, but she wasn't hiding anymore. She broke cover and ran directly into the streets, into the crowd of monsters. She tossed her monocle behind her towards our direction, maybe for us to recover later.
Of course they glowed brightly through the monocle, but to the naked eye they were an inky black. A black blacker than their surroundings, making it almost impossible to see them.
When the Rippers got close to their chosen victim, they allowed their prey to see their shiny silver teeth.
The sharp protruding teeth stand out bright and glistening, almost like silver, against the backdrop of darkness. as they moved in to kill the hapless human.
This is all Tehama saw as she dropped to his knees and searched blindly for the dropped dolly. She screamed and cried as the teeth sank into her tearing off little bits of her flesh.
The Rippers began to whoop and laugh like hyenas as they snatched piece by peice of her away. From the little I knew, the Rippers didn't need to eat. They just bit her for the joyful cruelness of it.
Blood soaked, mostly skinless hands of poor Tehama found the dolly that had started all of this horror. She hugged it close to her skinless chest and let out a gurgling scream before tipping over, most likely dead from shock.
That very second! That truly horrid moment! I decided I wasn't going to die in this town. I wasn't going to "wait it out" like all the old-timers advised. They are all dead now anyways! They didn't wait it out.
The King's armies hadn't made it in time. No fireballs from battlemages to shatter the darkness, no royal purple knights lead by The Heroic Prince Julian, no salvation from Her Divine!
If we waited we would all die in the dark. No doubt the King was coming with his armies, but how many days, or years will it take to Him to reach our settlement?
No, I would not die here. I had promised myself this years ago! I would survive like I had also promised! I would save Jil the way she saved me!
Then the army of rippers moved out East towards the Capitol. But there were still wicked things left behind to kill us. But this was our best chance!
As I sat in the darkness of the attic my mind was free to visualize in wonderful colorful detail my last memories before the Restless One tainted our town with its sightless void.
I remembered walking through the town, going towards the training academy. I was going to climb the mountain behind it. I was going to climb it again and again until I graduated and became one of the Royal Warden's Squires. The academy started soon and I never made it to the top without resting and without dropping my pack.
This is why I was one of the first to see our oncoming doom. The inky blackness spilled out from around the mountain to flood towards the town.
I knew I had to run and give warning to the town's guard. I wasn't a Warden's Squire yet, but I still had a duty to protect the people.
Tears heated up my cheeks as I sat in the dark, greatfull Jil and the others couldn't see me crying, as I remembered the death that followed.
But one of my last memories gave me the tiniest blink of hope. I remembered the peak of the mountain stabbing through the blackness. The mountain was tall enough to escape the flood of hell filling the valleys and town around it.
There was a ceremonial watchtower at the top of the mountain, filled with supplies. It's where the academy cadets earned their badges and completed their training. The mountain was the last test to becoming a Warden's Squire. A grueling uphill climb with a nickname given to the mountain by past cadets that like to boast over their hard earned accomplishments.
The mountain was affectionately called Mt. Despair, and it would be our salvation.
Part 2 https://www.reddit.com/Ceslystories/comments/11q7xcw/despairs_peak_part_2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/Ceslystories/comments/11ziluk/despairs_peak_part_3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Part 4: https://www.reddit.com/Ceslystories/comments/12916odespairs_peak_4_finale/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

​
Ahh, dear reader, hello there! So lovely to see you once more... well figuratively speaking that is… or is it?
After all, I am exceedingly well versed in The Arts. Maybe I am watching you at this very moment, with Clairvoyance or perhaps a Scrying Spell or maybe an enchanted object like the good old fashioned Crystal Ball? The Magus has one you know…
Just teasing… or am I? …teeheehee…
Anyway, this latest instalment comes to you courtesy via a Voice to Text application my Magus recently acquired for me, as he said listening to me speak aloud while typing is too distracting for him. I find that interesting considering his immense mental discipline yet understandable at the same time. After all, extoling ones inner monolog to an uncaring audience would be tedious to experience. Hmm… I’ve just thought of a new torture for the souls of the dammed, specifically for writers who think they are better than everyone around them. How ingenious of me!
In any case, I would prefer to distract him in other ways, mark you.
I also must say what wonderfully inventive creatures you humans are! An application of mathematical code, the base language of reality. It is very much like a spell in its function and nature I would say, that it allows my phone, yes the Magus got me one, to record all I say and transcribes it into neatly typed words on its electronic pages. It’s like having a monk-scribe in your pocket! Unquestionably wonderful!
So as I relax in my fabulously hot, luxurious scented, oiled bubble bath, I can easily regale you with further tales of the adventures I have had thus far on this wonderous blue and brown spherical rock that is third in line from our star. And I do not have to type with two fingers either, which is a massive bonus let me tell you!
If memory serves… ahh yes, we had just returned to the car where I saw a sign of my Magus’s humour on display in the form of his licence plate.
I do have to admit dear reader, I was indeed highly amused. He knows he’s going to hell, he just insists that it be on his terms! I love it! Such confidence, such audacious willpower.
That is exceedingly… stimulating for Succubi.
Ok dammit, it makes me tremendously horny, and I’m not talking about the ones on my head either you know! We are incredibly lusty beings, us Succubi, after all.
I was already in a highly ‘excited’ state when we got to the car, so much so that I had to use my Cell Adjustment Psionic discipline to tremendously dull down my inflamed senses as I did not wish to leave the tell-tale mark of my inflamed passion on the lower back portion of my new dress and also not on the car-seat when I sat back down in the vehicle.
Ahem…
After a few moments, which caused the Magus to glance up at me with a slightly puzzled expression, of standing outside the car (he had no idea nor cared… hmmph!) I opened the door and folded myself back inside the vehicle and resumed my seat. I later learned that I could have mostly avoided this… embarrassment… by actually wearing what you call absorbent lined underwear! I wasn’t wearing panties at the time as I was totally unaware of their existence. I do so now as its much more comfortable in lots of ways and in addition, stops the shiver when an errant chill wind blows unexpectedly up your gusset!
Moving on…
Getting into the car, the Magus paused until I had done up my seatbelt before starting the engine, waiting for another car to pass us by before safely pulling out and sedately driving off. I later learned that we could have gone screaming down the road in a cloud of burning rubber if the Magus was of a mind to. I would have if given the opportunity! Something to look forward to dear reader.
Instead, we drifted slowly through the placidly moving traffic as I watched the sun descend below the horizon of the ocean. I had only been back here on Earth for a few hours but every second was total bliss. I do not think that most of you humans realize how good you have it here. Even those who do not reside in the more developed and advanced nations, being on Earth is special.
There are infinity more worse places you can be, let me assure you of that.
We drove back mostly the way we had travelled to this particular beach. This time though it was much later in the day, heading in the opposite direction, I became aware of many more things that had escaped my attention earlier on.
We passed by denser zones and clusters of buildings where I could see various shops, food outlets, restaurants and varying vendors, all brightly lit up now as the daylight was fading. I saw incredibly tall metal poles with blazing, glowing lights illuminating the surrounds with a warm yellowy orange glow making it still easy to see. Electric lighting will never cease to amaze me. Yes dear reader, I can experience a sense of wonder and joy at simple things, even beyond the act of slaughter and soul draining. Would it astonish you that I like flowers? Such strange lifeforms that had developed aromas they use as a method of propagation. Delightful.
Anyway… we shortly crested the hill that we had previous ascended westwards earlier on the way to the beach and then I saw it!
I was awestruck once again.
Towering edifices, glittering, shining buildings monstrously higher than Hagia Sophia was, the most immense human made structure in the world when I was last in it. These glistening towers of glass, metal and stone made that church look like a feeble children’s toy. I could see over a dozen of these buildings of varying size, clustered together in less than a square mile.
The Magus glanced to his left and saw me gaping at them.
“They’re called Sky Scrapers Meridiana. They’re generally office buildings, places of business where people daily work in their wage-slave jobs then go home at night. The buildings are left vacant but light up at night as you can clearly see.”
I turned and gawped at him.
“They’re empty at night?”
I could not comprehend why such space, that had amazing views, would be left empty of an evening?
“Yep. Well most of them are. There will be some that still have people in them, conducting various types of business overnight because its what they do for a living.”
“What do they do?” I asked in a murmur as I turned back to see the vista be obscured by a large set of commercial and residential buildings that we were currently passing.
The Magus shrugged.
“They’ll be doing all sorts of things, financial trading, working back late to do their jobs… various affairs of commerce and such. It’s not that important really Meridiana. I’ll take you into the city another day when we have time for you to be a tourist. Now, if I may, I want to know more about your Telekinesis. I got an idea of how much you can lift, probably over 1400 kilograms at least if my guess as to how much a warhorse in armour with a rider would weigh… maybe more? Probably more but we’ll test that later. Anyway, it’s your fine control skills I’m interested in.”
I turned back to the Magus who was looking ahead, driving us through the busy traffic that had become a factor. I later learned that it was a time of day called ‘rush hour’.
“I am capable of very delicate manipulation with my Telekinesis, especially in regards to the erotic arts,” I said to him with a husky, low, salacious purr.
“That’s cute but I really want to know if you could snatch out of the air and control a very small, fast moving bouncing ball, say the size of your thumbnail?” he asked in an offhand manner as he slowed down due to the traffic which was banking up in front of us.
I inwardly sighed once more. Such a challenge he was!
“Yes I can but why?”
He briefly turned to me and broadly grinned before returning his attention to driving.
“There’s a game that we will ‘play’ after dinner. It is called Roulette. The game features a spinning wheel with thirty seven little slots. Into the spinning wheel a little white ball is spun in and circles around, eventually slowing and bouncing into once of the numbered slots. The slots are alternately coloured red or black and all are numbered from 00 to 36. You can bet where the ball will land, either in red or black and specifically in a numbered slot. If the ball lands in a slot you bet on, you get a payout of thirty seven to one. Ever dollar you bet wins you 37 back. You can also just bet on which colour the ball will land in giving you your money back plus it’s value as a reward. Bet $100, you get your $100 back plus another $100.”
“Dollar... that’s money right?” I said as the implications slowly dawned on me. You could make a fortune from this!
“Yes Meridiana. Dollars are what we use as currency these days. Gold is still used but not in the way you were used to. It’s still valuable as are other precious metals but that’s going to take a long explanation which is a distraction for now. So, do you think you could perhaps catch the bouncing ball with your power, directing it into the number we bet on?”
I thought about it for a few moments.
“I will have to see how the ball moves but I think I could, yes.”
“Excellent. You stand to make us a lot of money tonight. There are other games like card games, slot machines which I’m uncertain that your powers would be able to mess with. Roulette is our hunting ground. We must be careful though.”
“Why?”
I was surprised by his tone of caution. We were power incarnate! What could possibly touch us?
“Casinos hate losing money. Roulette is going to be the hardest one they can prove that we’re cheating on if you use your Telekinesis. We will be closely watched the entire time we are in the casino. There are devices called cameras, similar to Crystal Balls, that observe everything they see, relaying the images back to people in other rooms whose task it is to spot potential cheaters in the casino. They also have people walking the floor, disguised as ordinary folk, always watching everyone else. And I want to avoid the eyes of any infernal beings who may be in the casino.”
“Ahh… I see… a healthy paranoia then, for them and us hmm?”
He nodded once, emphatically.
If you have a fortune, you need to protect it, especially from people like me. His caution in regards to our identity was also most prudent and he was correct that there was a possibility that there may be others of my ilk lurking in the shadows, walking in human form as we often do.
I have to confess dear reader, that I am a master thief as well as an expert assassin, in addition to being an accomplished warrior although I rarely fight in hand to hand combat, preferring seduction, subterfuge and skulduggery as my main methods of killing. Yet still, I can fight and kill extremely proficiently with many weapons, being skilled at one of the highest levels of melee combat, the use of weapons and ways of fighting with them. I’ve been around a while you know? You pick up on things like that if you wish to live as long as I have.
Besides… stabby, stabby, stabby, bash, slash and smite can be loads of fun when you’re doing the stabbing and bashing with a well-balanced blade or mace in your hands. But I digress…
“You have it Meridiana. Yes the casinos’ management are extremely paranoid. We will have to alter our appearance as well before we enter the casino. I shall use a minor low level spell while you can take a new face. We will do so after dinner.”
I nodded then a thought came to me. I asked,
“You said we were going to something called a buffet? I know what the word means as my abilities allow me to understand any spoken language, much like the enchantment known as Tongues. Yet I’m finding it hard to match the word with the concept.”
The Magus raised an eyebrow in interest at this revelation.
“Oh right. Just because you know a word doesn’t mean you automatically understanding it conceptually and in context either. Good to know. Well, a buffet is an enormous array of various foods, hot and cold, sweet to savoury, where you merely help yourself and consume as much as you wish. You pay for the privilege of course.”
“Truly? How much will this cost you?” I inquired wide eyed.
I noticed that we had moved through the traffic and had turned down a descending road and were now going into a massive concrete tunnel along with hundreds of other cars, all slowly moving in the same direction. It was quite honestly astounding that everyone was not smashing into one another. All the drivers were…well mostly were, attentive to their immediate surrounds and situation as we gradually merged our car into the main lane of traffic which was making its way under the earth via the huge yawning tunnel ahead.
Such staggering feats of engineering and construction which would have made the Emperor Justinian weep copious, bitter tears of pure envy. Oh how I wished I could make him see this and realise his idiotic boast was pointless when he finished Hagia Sophia. He bragged that he had surpassed Solomon himself with his church. He had but it wasn’t worth it. Justinian nearly bankrupted the Eastern Roman Empire, all for a useless church and his own vanity.
Moron.
Still, I shouldn’t care, his hubris ended up sending him to hell anyway so... yay! His actions also exacerbated the effects of the famine and plague that swept the through the empire and western Europe in the year 535 with his stupid desire to re-unify the Roman empire under his rule. You will be pleased to know dear reader, that he is burning in eternal torment for his multitude of sins so it is all good. My thoughts of deceased, vainglorious emperors and their fate were interrupted as the Magus spoke again,
“Hmm? … it should set us back about $80 each I’d should say? A small price to pay in all honesty when you see what is on offer. Drinks will be on top of that price, unless you just have plain water but tonight Meridiana, I shall introduce you to Champagne, one of humanities greatest achievements.”
This was enticing to hear!
“If you say so Magus. I completely believe you as you will not be lying to me,” I said, nodding and trying to think about Champagne.
So many new concepts were entering my mind, it was hard to keep my mind and thoughts in order. I understood that Champagne was a special type of wine, one which had a fizz embodied within it, making it highly regarded but that’s all I could deduce for now.
Also… I had a thought: the Magus could and would never lie to me. The feeling I had earlier, in being able to trust everything he said to me because of the oath he gave to me, was an unfettering sensation.
All my existence I have dealt with bare faced lairs, deceivers, misshapers of the truth who twisted words to suit their own selfish ends. With the Magus, all I had to be concerned with was his agenda, which actually had my interests aligned with his own. Truly remarkable.
I needed that champagne now!
We emerged from the tunnel, traveling with the traffic over wide dark river, again on another immense concrete bridge this time. There was a gigantic colosseum off to our right, all lit up with multiple coloured lights that ran around the circumference of the structure. It was like as though it was enveloped in a rainbow. Frankly, it was amazing to behold.
Beyond that, I could see many more large towers and structures, lining the sides of the vast road we were hurtling along now. The Magus had increased our speed as traffic had thinned out. Never in my life had I moved so fast, well unless I was using a Haste spell to briefly increase my physical speed, which I use in combat if necessary.
I barely had the sense we were travelling in the car at roughly 80kph. Such an odd experience to have for the first time. There was no rushing of wind, no press of air on my face, just comfort and air-conditioning. Marvellous!
After a few minutes later I saw our destination.
Again I was nearly stupefied by the gigantic structure. Multiple massive buildings, all surrounded by lush green, well-manicured and maintained gardens made my jaw go slack with disbelief.
“That’s Crown Casino, Towers and hotel Meridiana. I can see you are impressed. Let me just say that if you think this is amazing, wait until we go to Las Vegas…” he said as he turned the car into the driveway of the complex.
“There’s even more impressive structures than this?”
My mind boggled dear reader. It was almost too much to take in.
“Yep. My city is a small one compared to others around the globe. We will travel to them, in due course. I know you can use your powers of Dimensional Walking, moving through other planes of reality and appearing on a different part of the planet. However, there will be times when we will need to travel together conventionally. Perhaps one day, if I learn the right spells, we will be able to avoid having to fly in an aeroplane and by-pass the utter tediousness of baggage check-ins, airport security and so on…” he muttered darkly.
“HUMANS CAN FLY!?!” I said in a loud strangled astonished voice.
The Magus chuckled with genuine amusement.
“Think back Meridiana. I said humanity has been to the moon and back. I said we can travel safely and comfortably in a machine, called an aircraft, across the planet. Some ‘planes are huge while others are not much bigger than the car. Oh, that reminds me, we will have to construct an identity for you. We will begin that process tomorrow. You are going to need a passport soon enough,” he said as he found a relatively unoccupied parking area west of the massive structures.
He saw my puzzled expression and mistook it for wondering why we had parked here.
“It’s free to park here and there are hardly any security cameras in the vicinity.”
I nodded dumbly.
“But of course Magus…”
He saw my expression as he switched off the engine. A tiny look of… sympathy appeared on his face. He spoke to me in a soft, calm, soothing tone,
“Take a breath Meridiana. Close your eyes and focus upon the stillness within the vehicle. You are safe here with me. Nothing will harm us. Just breathe and relax, let each breath calm you. With every breath you are at peace within yourself and the world around you.”
I did as he said and instantly sensed my whirling mind begin to centre itself, become still.
I may be an ancient and powerful demon dear reader, however I have been imprisoned for nigh on a thousand years and now have been released into a world that I was unable to recognise at all.
The Magus later told me I was suffering from a psychological malady called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Yes dear reader, even us demons can get mentally fucked up. I mean, compared to the average human, we’re all demented, tormented psychopaths which explains a lot about ourselves but still… even a psychopath can suffer from mental trauma. Demons can go insane.
I breathed rhythmically, each exhaling breath calming me. With one final exhalation, I opened my eyes, turned to my Magus and softly smiled at him.
“Thank you,” was all I said. I meant it.
He nodded briefly, his intensely burning eyes boring into mine, deeply searching, looking for signs of any madness that may still be lingering within. Well, there’s always the hunger for sex and mayhem, but that’s natural for me.
“Come on, you look fine now, let’s go,” he said as he got out of the car.
I followed his example, releasing my seat belt and stepping out of the car. Closing the car door behind me, walked over to the Magus then I threaded my right arm around his left as we walked off like a normal couple, casually strolling through the car park towards the casino and hotel.
I could hear the noise of all the adjacent traffic all still travelling busily along the massive road that went past the enormous complex. There was the calls of various birds I’d never heard before, the waft of scented flowering plants and the heavy aroma of moisture in the air from the nearby river. I closed my eyes for a second just to let it all wash over me as I sedately walked along with my Magus.
Soon we came to the entrance. Huge dark glass doors magically opened for us upon our arrival. To my right I could see various coloured signage, advertising the types of ‘fast food’ eateries that people could choose to dine at. They were all brightly lit and mostly clean.
It was at that moment I saw my first wretch.
A dishevelled, unkempt, shabby man sat listless outside the fast food eateries upon the low stone wall that contained a small, well-kept garden. He looked up at us as we approached, his eyes full of misery and despair.
“Got any spare change?”
“Sorry mate, no one carries cash anymore,” lied my Magus to him with a conciliatory voice, a sad but brief compassionate smile appeared briefly on his face.
The wretched man’s face became even more resigned. He nodded back in understanding, returning his fallen face back to morosely contemplating the ground at his feet.
We kept walking, leaving the broken man behind us.
I was about to congratulate the Magus in his treatment of the beggar when I had to stop as I was confronted by an incredible sight.
Before us, in the huge well-lit lobby of the building, was a huge pair of MOVING METAL STAIRCASES!
One staircase ascended while another came down from the landing some 50 feet above us. On either side were normal, marble clad stairs that some people were using. Yet many other people were on the moving metal stairs, all just taking the experience of being raised or lowered completely for granted.
“It’s just an escalator Meridiana. A simple machine that makes life a little more comfortable. Take it, go for a ride. I’m taking the stairs as I need the incidental exercise,” he said to me as he pried my clutching hands from his arm. I had been unconsciously gripping him tightly in my amazement at seeing such a machine.
The Magus walked off to the left, climbing the steps briskly while I gingerly walked forwards, watching the metal stairs endless appear and ascend upwards. The hand rail also moved in synchronicity with the metal stairs. I observed as a pair of young women, chatting intently to each other, walked past me and up to stand upon a metal stair which was part of dozens of metal stairs it seemed. I saw them be lifted by the moving stairs, rising above and away from me.
Summoning my courage, I stepped forwards onto a moving stair, wobbled slightly as I was not used to the speed which it moved, making me grab the moving banister tightly to steady myself as I rode my way upwards. I let out a small laugh as it was such a novel experience. The young women in front of me turned around at my laugh, raising their eyebrows at me as well as actually truly seeing me for the first time. Their smiles faded as I grinned back at them.
The young women could see my infinitely superior beauty on full display. They looked hesitant, now uncertain of themselves as they mistakenly believed themselves to be beautiful. They were, passible, not ugly but not worthy of a harem to be perfectly honest. I later learned dear reader that many foolish young women, especially in what you call the western world, regard themselves as queens, rating themselves ten out of ten on a scale of dazzling good looks. These sad women are delusional. I mean, if they were that beautiful, why weren’t their faces on the covers of the glossy magazines I see in various ‘supermarket’ check outs? No matter, vanity and hubris are all ways to damnation and misery. So many people sending themselves to eternal torment simply because they were raised by idiotic parents who never properly taught their children the need for humility. It’s all win-win for the pits you know…
My Magus met me at the top of the stairs, holding out his hand to me and then leading me through the vast interior of the complex.
“That’s the casino,” he indicated to our right.
Looking, I could see dozens of people making their way inside into the brightly lit and noisy interior of the casino. I caught the whiff of desperation, despair, avarice, lust, elation and a strong aroma of human urine. I wrinkled my nose in disgust. Yes, even I have some standards dear reader.
“Magus, why does it reek of piss?” I asked as we strolled by and proceeded into the most immense, glass covered atrium I have ever seen.
“Oh, you can smell that?” He looked intrigued.
I nodded with a mild look of disgust.
“Hah… interesting. Well… some gamblers get stuck on a poker machine. They sit there for hours, desperately hoping that the machine they are playing on will pay out. The poor fools stupidly believe that if they play at the machine long enough, they’ll win big. So they stay seated, ignoring the need to relieve their bodily urges, to the extent that they prefer to piss themselves rather than abandon the machine that is draining away their money. The poor fools are incapable of understanding that the machine is designed to rarely pay out. Every time they play, it has a simple algorithm that calculates the chance of a payout. Most machines will payout a small amount of money occasionally, thus keeping the gambler hooked in the mistaken belief that the big one is just around the corner. It rarely, if ever, is.”
I stopped, stunned at what I just heard. The Magus stopped and looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“That’s… diabolically genius!” I stuttered as I considered the fiendish brilliance of the whole concept.
Someone had made hell on earth not only possible but also could make a fortune from it as well as breaking people’s souls and spirits in the process! The concept of dangling hope in front of a damned soul, then snatching it away was one of the oldest known tortures of hell. This was a magnificent, a culmination of the perfection of thousands upon thousands of years of the torture, all neatly packaged in a fairly simple machine designed to beggar it’s user and turn them into slaves to it. Gobsmacking was the only word I could think off that fully encapsulated the way I felt at that moment.
“Yes it is, isn’t it? I have always suspected that those machines were most likely invented by a demon. It makes perfect sense,” he said as he shrugged, then tilted his head, indicating we should proceed onwards.
I noddled dumbly as again, I had been totally overwhelmed by the latest piece of information the Magus informed of. I barely registered the hundreds of people all wandering around the massive lobby of the hotel atrium. Many were dressed finely while others, mostly men, were dressed casually. My Magus was one of them, still wearing his novelty T-shirt and hemp pants. They were clean though and his shoes, a brand known as Babuuk, made him look somehow better dressed then the other men who were similarly attired. Maybe it was just his subtle aurora of power, his sheer confidence and his towering Will that made him stand out from the mouth breathers all around us? I guess it was.
We arrived at the entrance of the restaurant and the Magus was greeted by a short Asian woman, dressed neatly in the hotels livery.
I started to realise that there were people from so many different races of humanity all around us. I had come from a time where only what was left of the Eastern Roman Empire was this diverse, and even then it was but a shadow of the heyday of the full glory that was Rome. Here were people from almost all the lands of earth, all happily co-mingling, getting on with having dinner with family and friends. Very surprising indeed.
The Asian woman at the reception counter spoke to us with a friendly smile,
“Good evening sir, madam. A table for two for you then?” she asked politely, her voice tinged with a broad accent I had not heard before. She spoke English yet I could tell that wasn’t her first language.
“Yes please,” politely replied the Magus.
This was something I did not expect. Despite his and my obvious power, he was respectful and even kind to the servants. All of them. He didn’t condescend nor sneer down at the servants of the hotel. It is still something I have difficulty reconciling. I said nothing, just observed. Oh, he has since instructed me not to call them servants, they are members of staff and will be treated with respect until they show they do not deserve it, then they are fair game. I can live with that.
“Table seventy one is ready for you both, have a lovely evening.”
She actually meant it! I could see it in her eyes, she was truly enjoying her task. She was smiling and joking with her fellow staff members, politely greeting the next people behind us with her cheerful friendly demeanour.
Astonishing.
In my prior experiences, servants and slaves were a miserable lot but then again, that was understandable. They had no choice as to their circumstances. They had to obey lest they suffer harsh punishment.
As we proceeded into the large dining room, with over a hundred tables of varying sizes, I could see off to my left where the food was.
I stopped again and stared dear reader.
I have been to banquets with Emperors and Kings, Popes and Princes, all sumptuous feasts but nothing was like what I saw before me. Dozens upon dozens of people had plates in their hands, all calmly wandering around the incredible cornucopia of varieties of food that were on display, all brightly lit up for them to simply help themselves to as much as their plate could hold.
Roasted meats, all neatly carved by expert chefs, freshly shucked oysters all seated in enormous silver ice-filled serving bowls, trays upon trays of cooked vegetables of kinds I had never seen before and… a dazzling array of sweet desserts and treats that made me almost go weak at the knees at the very sight of them.
“Come on Meridiana, you’re starting to drool,” whispered the Magus gently into my ear as he dabbed my wet lips with a soft piece of paper that he withdrew from his pants pockets.
Once again I nodded dumbly as I allowed him to escort me to our table. He even seated me, pushing me and my chair in one I had sat down. After he had taken his seat, a young man, quite a handsome one from the Indus I believed?... came over to us, again dressed in the livery of the hotel.
“Good evening, sir, madam. Would you care for something to drink?” he inquired ever so politely.
“And good evening to you sir. Yes indeed, may we please have a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, two glasses and a bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling water?” he asked with a real smile to the servant… no member of staff.
“Of course sir, I shall get that for you immediately,” replied the waiter with a pleased smile at being spoken to so politely.
“Thank you,” said the Magus then he turned to me and asked,
“Do you need a moment Meridiana? I understand this might trigger you again…”
I shook my head.
“No. It is overwhelming… but in a good way Magus. I have to ask, how can a place like this provide so many people with so much food? Even in the height of the Empire, there were magnificent feasts to be sure but… you say this happens everyday, that this is just a Tuesday and not a busy night?”
He nodded.
“This is the age of abundance Meridiana. Many of us, who live in what is known as The West, have dwelt in an age of such wealth and richness that almost all here never think on their incredible luck and privilege to live in such times. They do not know that it will come to an end. Maybe that is a small mercy. All golden ages end as you well know. So I say, let them dwell in ignorant bliss for now. We can enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Huh? Why do you believe that your golden age will end Magus?”
“It’s a long explanation and one I do not wish to go into detail here and now Meridiana but later, I will share my thoughts with you on this. Ahh, here comes our champagne.”
The waiter and another staff member had returned, with one carrying two bottles while the other had a metal bucket partially filled with ice. The waiter from the Indus placed both bottles on our table, displayed the label to the Magus who briefly nodded. Then, the waiter removed the cork from the bottle with an adroit twist of his wrist. It made a pleasing pop and I could see a little haze of cold… smoke? lightly emanate from the neck of the bottle. He poured the brightly bubbling and fizzing wine into both our glasses, carefully making sure the foam did not overflow them. He was very good at his task.
“Thank you good sir,” said my Magus to the waiter who beamed back at him with a happy smile. He placed the bottle into the bucket of ice and withdrew, leaving us alone, amidst the crowed dinning room.
The Magus took up his glass, holding it in front of him. I mirrored him.
“Here’s to a good dinner with interesting company and later, ripping the shit out of a casino Meridiana.” He pushed his glass gently forwards, lightly clinking it against mine. I wasn’t familiar at the time with that form of salute and toast but went with it anyway, after all… when in Rome as they used to say.
“That sounds… delightful Magus. I am eager for it all.”
I then took a sip of my champagne and was transported into a realm of heavenly bliss.
It was exquisite.

Lashay Hulgan. I have lived in Cullman & I am initially from Bessemer, Al and for the last 4 years my life has been taken hostage and targeted by a group of criminals that need to be brought to justice. I'm what you call a 'Targeted Individual '. When you read or hear about a targeted individual usually it gets looked over or laughed about in some way or another. When this finally gets posted it will sound so dumb because anyone who tries to stop this from happening can't put the truth out there until you read about an event happening like this on an obituary like my parents. So please DO NOT hit the X button or just scroll through this post because it is probably been adjusted and posted by the hackers version not the victim. I have tried to put the real truth on web sites, Facebook, or anything where someone could relate and bann together to stop electronic harassment and illegal use of electromagnetic weapons. Listen this is as real as it gets and if not somehow stopped then over time cyber terrorism and electronic harassment will become headlines like 9/11 daily and by then can not be stopped because it will be too late. I am one of a million of human beings out there that nobody will listen too or take serious that has been electronically harassed, and taken hostage and has become what is known as a targeted individual. It has been called gang stalking, electronic torture, brain torture, microwaveable guns, Havana syndrome, stalkerware, direct energy weapons, sexual mind torture, and so many other things I could list. I and so many others are alone and scared because nobody will believe anything people like me say and when I and probably everyone else has proof or comes up with proof it gets deleted or stolen and nobody can put what is going on out here because they control all of a TI's life and it becomes a revolving cycle. In my case and the people or person that has done this to me and destroyed my life somehow knows my soon to be exwife, and are very jealous, dangerous, and has been claiming to be with the local 2 law enforcement agencies from the only 2 counties that i have lived in for 43 years. Everything over 4 years is starting to point towards a possible relationship/friendship between my stalker and my soon to be ex wife. I have had 8 emails, 6 cell phones, and 3 places of living that have all been hijacked, and broken into over the past 4 years. I have had no privacy whatsoever in the last 4 years. My wife and I are currently going through our 3rd divorce and my wife swears she has no idea who they are but everything that happens has been centered in some way around her. She does things that follow events happening to me. We have a 4 year old little girl, and I know they have harmed her by burning her with laser weapons, and have caused her to fall unexpectedly so many times and my wife just acts if nothing happened at all. During this time my water system at my parents house has been overtaken and is controlled by this individual. My wifi (Spectrum) is controlled and hijacked. My ADS alarm system can be turned off for them to come in my home when I leave to ruin groceries i have, and any type of food in the home gets ruined in some way, they have cameras and some type of laser devices in my parents home that Ican't discover. They have harmed my dog, and I have several witnesses of his behavior as of late and matter how many times I have tried changing the alarm code they hack it. My garage doors will only open if they want them to. I have spent thousands of dollars on security cameras within this time and I have bought almost every brand from Roku, Blink, and Nest and all were tampered with, rewired, or reprogrammed to cause me problems, and bankruptcy issues at one time. I hear of a device out there now that is called stingray device. This device can be used if close enough to zap electronic devices, and mirrored and even taken over as there own. I can't even use the rest room without being watched and abused in stores, work places, my home, and anywhere I go. I have reported to local and federal law enforcement agencies and they don't know what to do and nothing happens about it. The people harassing me follow me around everywhere I go. I have spent over $70,000 in 9 months staying in hotels to get away and purchasing non lethal weapons for protection. They have done everything to destroy my career, marriage, and harmed anything I care about except my wife. She is the only one that has never been threatened in this. In fact one of our first arguments we got in 4 years ago tells me now alot because she said that someone was watching and would help her to get rid of me if she wanted them to and at the time it was laughable because of her past. Everyone else I care about have been threatened in some fashion or another. I can't count how many times they said they were going to kill my parents when me and my wife separated in 2020 and sure enough both my mom and dad were found dead last year with gunshot wounds. It was labeled and setup as murdesuicide. They are no way that happened. They have cameras watching so many people that has no clue especially women. I have had side effects of shortness of breath, constant ringing in my ears,chest pains, eye pain with blurry vision, nasal congestion, . I am trying to post more but they are erasing it and making it sound dumb. Please contact me if you would like further information at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]), [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or my cell

We took all the clean towels and covered the macabre paintings and collapsed into bed.
That night I had the worst sleep paralysis episode I had ever had.
I just remember that I was sitting up in bed, looking at the door to our room because something was behind the door that made me bolt up and start sweating, despite the brumal chill that came over the room.
The sound of as like a cat scratching to be let inside.
Suddenly the door burst open violently and there was an apparition of an elderly woman in a pure white evening gown.
She was levitating about a couple feet off the ground. Her eyes were white like a severely blind old dog.
Below her there were snake like lizards that made figure eights, chasing each others tails in some ritualistic undulating circle.
The apparition floated to the foot of my bed. Her arms were outstretched in front of her, shoulder height like Frankenstein and the lizards followed her wherever she went.
The old woman began shrieking like a banshee and the room filled with blinding white light.
Next I’m laying in bed screaming and Carolina is shaking me out of my vivid and lucid sleep paralysis.
She was terrified.
I sprung out of bed and ran to the door to see if it was still locked.
We tried to shrug it off and return to bed but the room was so I cold I was expecting to see my own breath.
Carolina pointed out that something sounded like it was scratching the window lightly and a distended humanoid shadow was cast across the wall.
I opened the curtains to see if it may be hail making the noise as we were way too high up for it to be anything else.
The shadow figure would vanish each time I yanked the blinds open but it and the scratching would manifest again a few minutes later each time.
The thermostat said the room was 80 degrees and we had the cranked to no avail. It would get progressively colder and colder each night until exactly sunrise and then it seemed the heater would finally function properly.
So, I gave up on sleeping but my girlfriend slept well into the afternoon.
I called down for more towels but nobody came so after an hour I took the one down that we had hung over easily the must unnerving painting in the whole room.
Just above the toilet was the saddest sack of shit wino clown that appeared to have the wounds of Christ in its wrists and of course, just behind the clown was like a wendigo or skinwalker entity that I hadn’t noticed initially.
Regarding the painting, my girlfriend took pictures of all of them just because she knew that no one back home would believe that they were real. Also, they were so complicated that it’s truly hard to describe exactly what was going on in each one. The best comparison I could make was if Hieronymus Bosch used oil paints and charcoal on an average sized canvas and had a hard on for clowns.
After a year or so, she and I both felt that the photos of the paintings should be deleted as we both experienced frequent sleep paralysis the following year or so. Part of me regrets that decision.
Oh well.
It was 2016 so it didn’t help that it was that year where disturbing clowns were popping up all over to the point where McDonald’s nixed Ronald McDonald for good.
So, there I am in the shower with my back to Clowny McAntichrist and I’m feeling distinctly like I’m being watched.
I allow myself to revisit my nightmare from the night before but suddenly there was only one thing I could think about…
The disembodied, Krusty the Clown cartoonish laughter that suddenly manifested near my right ear.
I yanked the shower in the direction I thought was off and ended up scalding my neck and butt and almost completely ate it.
I pulled the shower curtain open from the other side and searched the entire room for whatever made that noise.
At this point, I was convinced that it was my turn to go crazy seeing as my older brother lost his mind around the same age. That’s another story but he is a homeless schizophrenic meth who talks to himself and went full on Syd Barret with out any prior indication of mental health problems.
Heartbreaking as my brothers descent into madness was, I was selfishly more afraid of waking up one day just as insane as he is.
I couldn’t tell Carolina what I was experiencing. If I was losing it, she is the last one I would want to find out about it.
We went to a dinner show thing at a Japanese restaurant called Ichiban.
Our cook was awful.

So i do not know if this has been stated anywhere else (as this is my first time seeing it) but in the new Shadowsun novel her full Tau name is revealed straight from the horse's mouth. I'll break down every component of the name that is available and make an inference where nothing exists.
Shas'O Vior'la Shas'len'ra M'yen Sha'serra.
Shas'O- Fire Caste Commander Vior'la- home planet Shas'len'ra- cautious warrior M'yen- Unforseen
Sha'serra does not have a defined meaning in the book's terminology section. However, we can make a few guesses based off what it does give. Commander Farsight's name is Shovah. Shovah directly translate to Farsight. If we give this treatment to Shadowsun, Sha'serra could literally translate into Sun of Shadow, shadowed sun, dark sun, you get the idea. But it's cool to get some real confirmation on her full name and planet of origin. I think this is the first time it's been directly stated Shadowsun is from Vior'la while some other novels referenced it.

Some thoughts:

• When I say it's like Argo, it has the same this true story is insane so we are somewhat jokey about it tone that Argo has. I haven't seen Argo in a while but I feel like Argo had a greater this "operation" shouldn't have worked but maybe that's because most people were less familiar with what was depicted in Argo then Air. But it doesn't hurt the movie for me.
• Matt Damon is good at being both serious and funny as he always is. His speech during the pitch meeting to Jordan and his parents and how it comes about is kind of at the center of this is how you turn this story into a screenplay and is a little too convenient to make me entirely believe it went like that in real life. I also don't know how much of it is what these people actually thought of Jordan at the time vs the script applying what we now know about what Jordan did to this story solely about 1984.
• That said if Nike was where they say they were when the movie begins, they must have had some insane pitch to convince him to sign. At the beginning, as far as Jordan is concerned Nike might as well not exist at all.
• I have yet to watch Claydream but I feel like Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) gets portrayed in Air as a decent guy but again I'm not sure that is fair thing to do or not.
• Jason Bateman is cast to do the Jason Bateman thing. When you get some characterization I thought it was a bit out of nowhere like there was more of it that got cut.
• Chris Messina as Jordan's agent is the MVP for me. I never watched Entourage so it might be a little Ari Gold but he's a lot of fun.
• I feel like Chris Tucker has always been a love him or find him annoying kind of performer. There is a part of the pitch meeting when he works really well but when they try to give him real scenes to play it doesn't work for me.
• In case you don't know they do a 50s Ben-Hur with Jordan himself. There is an actor who stands in for him but he's always shot from behind or has his face obscured. There are a few lines that Jordan has but I'm not sure if the actor is saying them or they are sampled from things Jordan has said over the years.
• Over the credits they play real Jordan's Hall of Fame induction speech where he does give a lot of credit to his mother so I assume she was important to his story. I also understand that if you cast Viola Davis you give her a decent size part (which while definately supporting she has two very good scenes). However, if I remember correctly The Last Dance placed a lot of emphasis on the father, and he's not that big a part of Air but maybe you can only do so much in two hours.
• Maybe I just that I didn't know it, boy does Adidas not come off well based on the movie. Though they have some great jokes at their expense.
• With the exception of one very appropriate needle drop, I could have used less 1980s needle drops. It's like how Captain Marvel just used every 90s song people would know that mostly have nothing to do with what is happening on screen except this is the 1980s. At a certain point it's like we get it, it's the 1980s. Also, I haven't looked it up yet but I'm not sure if every song used was out in 1984.

But again these are basically nitpicks and questions I had, in the end I had a good time with it. I definately think it's worth checking out.

I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, but I thought I'd just share my experience with this idea and why you might want to try it out in your campaign. Even if just as something added to a random room and let players interact with it.
So I DM online and at a local tabletop shop and in my experience trying to run mysteries, horror events or anything aside from a straight dungeon crawl can be difficult to build suspense. Every room players enter they cast half a dozen spells to find every little secret. It is cute at first, but after a while it makes the sessions feel very monotonous when a PC casts counterspell on a NPC magician entertaining NPC children. Or they finally get to meet the king and before anything is said, someone casts Sleep on every NPC in the room and they strip every NPC naked. It's all very murder-hobo-esk, but then there are the plot hole issues my players find which also bother me. A PC druid wildshapes into a nat and crawls through a crack in the wood and circumvents 45minutes of planned puzzles. He then returns to the village of druids and chews them out for not doing the same. I have to agree with his logic. They should know.
So enter a simple world object that fixes everything. The "Anti-Magic Crystal". A football sized quartz crystal that when placed inside a room projects a permanent Anti-Magic field. The crystal itself is indestructible and (usually) immovable. Oh, and I make them emit a soft yellow/orange candle light for looks.
My players now look for these crystals everywhere. Any place I would deem needing to be "safe" gets a crystal. The princess's bedroom, as an example. A druid attempting you wildshape into a Tardigrade now can't get inside this room. But crystals aren't free, or cheap. I explain them as being ancient relics that only royalty can afford. So finding a random hag in the woods with one becomes a plot point for the players.
I also had a little fun with a "damaged" crystal that has a visible crack down the center and instead emited a cold blue light. Players can cast spells but in a very body horror kind of way. Dancing lights now starts under the skin in your palm and forces its way out like glowing marbles, shredding the flesh in your palm as they exit your body. They still act like normal, but you take 1d6 piercing and I describe the gruesome sight in just enough detail that it feels scary. Adding a lot to a horror themed session.
It's let me strike a fantastic balance in my games. Rooms that need to feel secure actually are. In a world where everyone has magic, the existence of such crystals feels like a necessity. Castles can't be secure without such a thing.
My barbarian player now interacts with the world outside combat instead of waiting for someone to cast enough spells to open the door. It creates opportunities for less rolling and more player thinking. That same barbarian is now searching for buttons among the bricks or a special book in a bookshelf. The next room though, doesn't have a crystal, so the wizard can do their thing to solve whatever is inside.
It's a fun little thing I'm sure most of you have thought of, but I was just seeing so much success with it, i wanted to share just in case.

So I was lying in bed last night thinking about real housewives (as one does) and thought it'd be fun to rank the husbands of each franchise by best husband, hottest husband, most entertaining husband, creepiest and most problematic husband, and saw that divorce coming. Here are my takes, leave yours in the comments
RHONY:

• Best husbands: Bobby Zarin, Jonathan (Heather's husband), and Simon (yes he was weird but perfect for Alex)
• Hottest husband: Mario Singer
• Most entertaining: Simon Van Kemp
• Most Problematic: Aviva's husband Reid, Dry Cleaner Guy, and Harry Dubin
• Saw that divorce coming: Jules and Michael, Bethenny and Jason, Luanne and Tom

RHONJ:

• Best husbands: Joe Benigno (he just follows whatever Marge wants lol)
• Hottest husband: Nate Cabral
• Most entertaining: Joe Giudice and Bill Aydin
• Most Problematic: Jim Marchese, Frank Catania, Rich Wakile
• Saw that divorce coming: Marty & Danielle

RHOBH (disclaimer I stopped watching after like s9)

• Best husbands: Ken Vanderpump and Mauricio Umansky
• Hottest husbands: Mauricio and Harry Hamlin
• Most entertaining: Ken
• Most Problematic: PK and Tom Girardi
• Saw that divorce coming: Camille and Kelsey

RHOA

• Best husbands: Gregg Leakes and Kroy (yeah kroy and kim are weirdly codependent, but he is good for her)
• Hottest husband: Apollo
• Most entertaining: Gregg (honk the horn on their asses Gregg)
• Most Problematic: Peter, Apollo, and Kordell
• Saw that divorce coming: Peter and Cynthia, Drew and Ralph

RHOM

• Best Spouses: Russell and Martina
• Hottest husband: Russell
• Most entertaining: Martina and Anthony
• Most Problematic: Lenny and all of Adriana's boyfriends
• Saw that divorce coming: Lenny and Lisa

RHOSLC

• Best Spouses: John Barlow and Justin (he really does love and adore Whitney)
• Hottest husband: John Barlow
• Most entertaining: Seth
• Most Problematic: Seth (stop talking abut your wife's friend's boobs), Duy and Elf on a shelf
• Saw that divorce coming: Not actually divorced but I forsee Sharieff and Jen Shah

Hey RPDR Fantasy lovers!!
Season 8 saw the crowning of Raven! She didn't have that tough of competition in her season (hoping to balance it out a bit more in future seasons) but I guess it's good that the IRL runner-up has finally gotten a crown!
​
Let's see what Season 9 holds!
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
Then in walks the first queen of Season 9...
--
--
--
--
--
​
Processing img d9iewxe7c6qa1...
Mayhem Miller is the first queen to enter the werkroom. She walks in and mentions how it's about time she be cast on Drag Race. She talks about how she knows so many past Drag Race queens and how close she is with the previous season's winner, Raven. As she walks around the werkroom it's clear that she feels she will be the one to beat this season.
​
​
Processing img e0g707m5q6qa1...
Olivia Lux, Symone, Malaysia Babydoll Fox and Daya Betty are the next few queens to enter the werkroom. Olivia and Malaysia both fangirl over competing against Mayhem. Olivia opens up about being newer in drag and her experience makes some of the other queens question if she will last. Symone jokes with Daya about being the diversity queen so far in the group. Daya talks to the other girls about being Crystal Methyd's drag sister to which Malaysia mentions that she doesn't see the similarity in their styles.
​
​
Processing img b7jt1o4bq6qa1...
Brooke Lynn Hytes, Luxx Noir London, A'Keria C. Davenport and Monica Beverly Hillz are the next queens to walk in. When Brooke joins the room the queens are immediately gagged that a former Miss Continental is in the group. Brooke and Mayhem then start sizing each other up. Luxx talks about how stoked she is to be cast on her favorite show. The other girls look at her as a fashion queen until A'Keria walks in and talks about how big she is going to make the Davenport name this season. Daya jokes with her that the Davenports don't have a history of doing too well in the competition though. Monica comes in and the starts to butt heads with Luxx almost immediately as they don't seem to want to give the other the final word.
​
​
Processing img 2ts7e76hq6qa1...
Latrice Royale, Chad Michaels, Shuga Cain, and Sasha Colby are the next group into the werkroom. Mayhem is stoked to see Chad in the competition and talks about how it is going to be a tough season for the other girls. Latrice cracks the other queens up with her humor. Latrice also tells the younger girls that they have to get ready for a big girl to walk away with the crown. Shuga comes in and she and Olivia bond over being New York queens. Sasha's entrance gags a ton of the queens who all talk about how they are so excited to see what she can do. Sasha immediately runs over to Brooke and tells her that she is ready to see how they both do as Miss Continentals.
​
​
Just then another queen enters the werkroom. The girls are gagged at how good of a Lady Gaga impersonator she is....
​
Processing img eepze6siq6qa1...
Until they realize she IS Lady Gaga!!
​
The queens are all stoked to see her and share with Lady Gaga how much of an impact she has had on queer art. Following the queens' kiki with Gaga, they are joined by RuPaul!
-
-
-
-
​
https://preview.redd.it/yn2769wrfdra1.jpg?width=742&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e45a69427154b8a5d39e7e56f236c6c92a20cc18
​
RuPaul welcomes the queens to the season and tells them that this will be a season stuffed with star power! She then informs them that for the first time in drag race herstory that for this premiere NO ONE is going home!
​
https://preview.redd.it/4lpd1nc0jdra1.png?width=310&format=png&auto=webp&s=9ed8e6c6300527bc9431ee727432890e483d06a9
Latrice jokes that she is happy to know that no one is going home on the premiere but that it also means more weeks with all these other girls in the competition.
​
RuPaul goes on to say that for their first challenge they will be competing in the Miss Charisma Uniqueness Nerve and Talent Pageant! RuPaul goes on to say that as a part of this pageant the queens will be walking the runway in two categories. The first should be a look that pays homage to their hometown and a second look, inspired by their guest judge, should be their favorite Lady Gaga drag!
​
RuPaul and Lady Gaga then leave the queens to begin their preparations.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
MISS C.U.N.T PAGEANT PREPARATION
After Gaga and Ru leave the werkroom the queens scurry to grab their luggage and claim their spots within the werkroom. We see Luxx push other queens things out the way so that she can claim the spot that she wants while other queens, like Malaysia, struggle to find an open work station.
​
https://preview.redd.it/zmdva1n0ldra1.png?width=318&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ea941b9193f8eb98bfecd25c53d4c1425977e22
In her confessional, A'Keria mentions that the first challenge hasn't even started yet and the other girls are already being cutthroat.
​
Monica talks with Shuga, Symone, and Olivia about the first challenge. She talks about how the stakes are high especially since they are all up against two heavy-hitting pageant girls. Symone mentions that she isn't threatened and that she thinks they all need to stand firm in the package that they brought because why else show up to Drag Race. Olivia then talks about the piece she is planning to wear for her hometown look and then starts to show it off to the other girls.
​
https://preview.redd.it/za8sqfjfndra1.png?width=314&format=png&auto=webp&s=209d9968b17c93a38df93ddb64a9f5ab25032435
Monica mentions that the other girls are definitely using this pageant as a way to try to intimidate the other girls and that she isn't going to let them get under her skin.
​
Latrice talks with Malaysia, Mayhem, and Chad about their approach to the first challenge. Latrice shares that she thinks that this is already shaping up to be an iconic season and that she sees nothing but fierce queens in the room. Chad agrees and says that a small part of her still wishes that there would be an elimination this week. Malaysia agrees and says that she's ready for the first strut her way to the finale and no one going home this week will make it tougher.
​
https://preview.redd.it/8v0s2drendra1.png?width=312&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0e7648925863cc99d3695342106b11779c00acd
In her confessional, Malaysia says that the other girls are sweet but that it just makes it that there are even more girls that she has to stand out against.
​
We also see Luxx talking with Daya about the looks that they have brought for the challenge. Daya mentions that she thinks that Luxx's look seems like something they have seen already on the show. Luxx gets offended by this and defends her looks saying that she has her own point of view. It then comes out that Monique Heart from Season 2 is her drag mom to which Daya states that she thinks that it is just clear that Luxx just studied the show as opposed to learning her own artistic expression. Luxx storms off before saying that she can't wait to send Daya home.
​
https://preview.redd.it/xtvj8afgndra1.png?width=310&format=png&auto=webp&s=163703765b1ece855aae406659e0edec286c1e92
In her confessional, Daya mentions that she isn't worried about Luxx and that if she has to get into her competition's head to get them to buckle she won't shy away from that.
​
​
THE MISS CHARISMA UNIQUENESS NERVE AND TALENT PAGEANT
RuPaul takes to the stage and welcomes all the judges to the pageant. She starts off by saying that the queens will be introducing themselves to the judges with frocks inspired by their home towns.
https://preview.redd.it/8uf01fdjjdra1.jpg?width=768&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ea52c2bd6afd25bf442aa82b781e400387b3b375
Hometown Realness
Latrice is the first queen on the runway, and she sports a look that is covered in palm tree print and the color of sunrise as she pays tribute to Florida. Brooke decides to pay tribute to her Canadian roots with wearing a sequinned mountie look. Malaysia, another Florida queen, wears a resort dress with a sunhat and sunshades. Olivia shows her NYC pride with a look inspired by Broadway and Luxx follows her with a tribute to Jersey that glamorizes of the Jersey Shore. Shuga wears a look that ties in the latin cultural influences that are prevalent in NYC and Sasha wears a culturally inspired Hawaiian look. Monica wears a look that shows the banjie side of southern black culture and A'Keria wears a rhinestoned cowgirl look. Symone wears a look that seems inspired by Hollywood Boulevard while Chad seems to reference the sunny skies and skyline of Los Angeles. Daya wears a look that pulls in the famous Arch as well as the more rural side of Missouri. Mayhem closes the category with a LA valley girl look accompanied with the perfect comedic strut.
​
Lady Gaga Realness
The queens all take to the runway in their favorite Lady Gaga inspired looks.
https://preview.redd.it/5iy5lbrieera1.png?width=1202&format=png&auto=webp&s=d61e9943cbd00b2ebc85228057c9f1aba4bf1e5c
-
-
-
-
JUDGING
Following all of the main stage runway presentations, the judges sit to discuss the queens' performances.
​
https://preview.redd.it/wb8lmxkljdra1.jpg?width=740&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=963a0c5a387dfc7ac31697cb330b7dd7922b1549
Michelle starts with Latrice and points out that she thinks that she is extremely polished and that she has a lot of personality which could take her far in the competition. RuPaul agrees and says that there's a spark to Latrice that pulls you in.
​
Ross then talks about how he found Brooke to be just absolutely show stopping. He gushes over her mountie look and says that she is going to be one to watch. Lady Gaga says that she thinks Brooke's interpretation of her look was impeccably done.
​
Carson moves on to Malaysia and says that she knows her figure and dresses it so well. Ross agrees and says that she looked great but that he wishes she presented with the same level of confidence as the other queens in the competition.
​
Lady Gaga then talks about Olivia next and mentions that she has a light to her and that when she was on stage she wanted to smile. Michelle brings up that she really enjoyed her Gaga look but wished that her Broadway look came across stronger.
​
RuPaul then talks about Luxx and mentions how she is such a young kid but that she has so much realization into who she is as a drag artist. Ross agrees and adds that he wishes that the level of confidence that Luxx exuded on the runway that she could give to some of the other girls.
​
Carson moves on to Shuga and mentions that she just exudes really strong charisma but that her looks just didn't stack up. RuPaul says that she can see a star in Shuga and that with some prodding she thinks that they can get her star to shine through.
​
Lady Gaga then brings up Sasha and says that she is a queen that knows exactly what she is doing and what she is portraying. Michelle agrees and says that Sasha comes into the competition with a weight on her shoulders and a reputation to uphold and that she thinks she nailed it this week.
​
Ross goes to talk about Monica and says that he got an idea of what her point of view would be but that he still felt that it was half-baked. RuPaul disagrees and says that she thinks Monica may be rough around the edges but that she was intrigued by her.
​
RuPaul then uses that to transition to A'Keria and says that while the polish was 100% there that she couldn't put a finger on who she was as a drag artist. Carson says that she is definitely a beautiful queen but that there was a level of intrigue that seemed to be absent.
​
Michelle then talks about Symone and says that she was one of her favorites of the night because the references were on point and that even when she was Gaga she still exuded her own aesthetic. Lady Gaga agrees and says that she had a tricky outfit but that she is clearly a queen for the details because she nailed it.
​
Michelle thens says that Chad actually could make her rethink what her favorite looks of the night were because they were also so well done. RuPaul agrees and says that all of the girls are going to make it really tough on them as judges if they continue to perform at this level.
​
Ross then talks about Daya and tells her that she nailed it for him with her Gaga look because it was such a strong presentation. Carson agrees that she has real stage presence and that he really wants to see what more she can do this season.
​
Carson ends the critiques with Mayhem and mentions that he is the most excited for what she will bring to the season because it is clear that she is out to slay the whole competition. Michelle agrees and says that she had a strong first week and that she will definitely be a queen to watch.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The queens return from untucking backstage.
​
RuPaul then goes on to announce the judge's decisions.
​
https://preview.redd.it/di6590yojdra1.jpg?width=794&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b5a32edf7b86576a6e93f142fbf7cba8f8939b84
She announces that....
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
​
https://preview.redd.it/3ego32p8fera1.png?width=582&format=png&auto=webp&s=f4c890a0cc6263033f31208440ae6a9d27b7fd19
Sasha Colby, Brooke Lynn Hytes, and Symone are the top three of the pageant and asks them to step forward as she reads the name of the winner...
​
She then announces...
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
​
https://preview.redd.it/7er019xqjdra1.png?width=242&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba66549dd57e61bda0c7c6f990bef101a43db629
Brooke Lynn Hytes is the winner of the first challenge!
​
https://preview.redd.it/i50fl7ksjdra1.png?width=316&format=png&auto=webp&s=3c8b0875e4e3cbcc549e09c4c30045c37dbd15dc
Brooke celebrates her win and says that it feels so validating to come out on top in the first challenge especially against such talented queens.
​
The Pit Crew bring out a sash for Brooke to wear as she prances the runway. Just then, RuPaul then shouts for everything to stop. She goes on to say that Brooke is still the winner of the challenge but that an announcement must be made...
-
-
-
-
She goes on to say that it is time for the real competition to begin and tells the queens to join her in welcoming a 14th queen!! The queens look on shocked to see...
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
​
https://preview.redd.it/su6vqrc4kdra1.png?width=244&format=png&auto=webp&s=f91a8ae97810bf01b71d9f21fa2ec14464b4c7c5
Season 8's Alyssa Hunter!!
​
https://preview.redd.it/gadrl2k7kdra1.png?width=310&format=png&auto=webp&s=12a8879e0819b5bf92284d483c18296fa33eda9e
Alyssa mentions that she hopes the other queens are ready because this time she's in it to win it.
​
​
14 Queens Remain...
​
SPREADSHEET

Ahh, dear reader, hello there! So lovely to see you once more... well figuratively speaking that is… or is it?
After all, I am exceedingly well versed in The Arts. Maybe I am watching you at this very moment, with Clairvoyance or perhaps a Scrying Spell or maybe an enchanted object like the good old fashioned Crystal Ball? The Magus has one you know…
Just teasing… or am I? …teeheehee…
Anyway, this latest instalment comes to you courtesy via a Voice to Text application my Magus recently acquired for me, as he said listening to me speak aloud while typing is too distracting for him. I find that interesting considering his immense mental discipline yet understandable at the same time. After all, extoling ones inner monolog to an uncaring audience would be tedious to experience. Hmm… I’ve just thought of a new torture for the souls of the dammed, specifically for writers who think they are better than everyone around them. How ingenious of me!
In any case, I would prefer to distract him in other ways, mark you.
I also must say what wonderfully inventive creatures you humans are! An application of mathematical code, the base language of reality. It is very much like a spell in its function and nature I would say, that it allows my phone, yes the Magus got me one, to record all I say and transcribes it into neatly typed words on its electronic pages. It’s like having a monk-scribe in your pocket! Unquestionably wonderful!
So as I relax in my fabulously hot, luxurious scented, oiled bubble bath, I can easily regale you with further tales of the adventures I have had thus far on this wonderous blue and brown spherical rock that is third in line from our star. And I do not have to type with two fingers either, which is a massive bonus let me tell you!
If memory serves… ahh yes, we had just returned to the car where I saw a sign of my Magus’s humour on display in the form of his licence plate.
I do have to admit dear reader, I was indeed highly amused. He knows he’s going to hell, he just insists that it be on his terms! I love it! Such confidence, such audacious willpower.
That is exceedingly… stimulating for Succubi.
Ok dammit, it makes me incredibly horny, and I’m not talking about the ones on my head either you know! We are intensely lustful beings, us Succubi, after all.
I was already in a highly ‘excited’ state when we got to the car, so much so that I had to use my Cell Adjustment Psionic discipline to tremendously dull down my inflamed senses as I did not wish to leave the tell-tale mark of my inflamed passion on the lower back portion of my new dress and also not on the car-seat when I sat back down in the vehicle.
Ahem…
After a few moments, which caused the Magus to glance up at me with a slightly puzzled expression, of standing outside the car (he had no idea nor cared… hmmph!) I opened the door and folded myself back inside the vehicle and resumed my seat. I later learned that I could have mostly avoided this… embarrassment… by actually wearing what you call absorbent lined underwear! I wasn’t wearing panties at the time as I was totally unaware of their existence. I do so now as its much more comfortable in lots of ways and in addition, stops the shiver when an errant chill wind blows unexpectedly up your gusset!
Moving on…
Getting into the car, the Magus paused until I had done up my seatbelt before starting the engine, waiting for another car to pass us by before safely pulling out and sedately driving off. I later learned that we could have gone screaming down the road in a cloud of burning rubber if the Magus was of a mind to. I would have if given the opportunity! Something to look forward to dear reader.
Instead, we drifted slowly through the placidly moving traffic as I watched the sun descend below the horizon of the ocean. I had only been back here on Earth for a few hours but every second was total bliss. I do not think that most of you humans realize how good you have it here. Even those who do not reside in the more developed and advanced nations, being on Earth is special.
There are infinity more worse places you can be, let me assure you of that.
We drove back mostly the way we had travelled to this particular beach. This time though it was much later in the day, heading in the opposite direction, I became aware of many more things that had escaped my attention earlier on.
We passed by denser zones and clusters of buildings where I could see various shops, food outlets, restaurants and varying vendors, all brightly lit up now as the daylight was fading. I saw incredibly tall metal poles with blazing, glowing lights illuminating the surrounds with a warm yellowy orange glow making it still easy to see. Electric lighting will never cease to amaze me. Yes dear reader, I can experience a sense of wonder and joy at simple things, even beyond the act of slaughter and soul draining. Would it astonish you that I like flowers? Such strange lifeforms that had developed aromas they use as a method of propagation. Delightful.
Anyway… we shortly crested the hill that we had previous ascended westwards earlier on the way to the beach and then I saw it!
I was awestruck once again.
Towering edifices, glittering, shining buildings monstrously higher than Hagia Sophia was, the most immense human made structure in the world when I was last in it. These glistening towers of glass, metal and stone made that church look like a feeble children’s toy. I could see over a dozen of these buildings of varying size, clustered together in less than a square mile.
The Magus glanced to his left and saw me gaping at them.
“They’re called Sky Scrapers Meridiana. They’re generally office buildings, places of business where people daily work in their wage-slave jobs then go home at night. The buildings are left vacant but light up at night as you can clearly see.”
I turned and gawped at him.
“They’re empty at night?”
I could not comprehend why such space, that had amazing views, would be left empty of an evening?
“Yep. Well most of them are. There will be some that still have people in them, conducting various types of business overnight because its what they do for a living.”
“What do they do?” I asked in a murmur as I turned back to see the vista be obscured by a large set of commercial and residential buildings that we were currently passing.
The Magus shrugged.
“They’ll be doing all sorts of things, financial trading, working back late to do their jobs… various affairs of commerce and such. It’s not that important really Meridiana. I’ll take you into the city another day when we have time for you to be a tourist. Now, if I may, I want to know more about your Telekinesis. I got an idea of how much you can lift, probably over 1400 kilograms at least if my guess as to how much a warhorse in armour with a rider would weigh… maybe more? Probably more but we’ll test that later. Anyway, it’s your fine control skills I’m interested in.”
I turned back to the Magus who was looking ahead, driving us through the busy traffic that had become a factor. I later learned that it was a time of day called ‘rush hour’.
“I am capable of very delicate manipulation with my Telekinesis, especially in regards to the erotic arts,” I said to him with a husky, low, salacious purr.
“That’s cute but I really want to know if you could snatch out of the air and control a very small, fast moving bouncing ball, say the size of your thumbnail?” he asked in an offhand manner as he slowed down due to the traffic which was banking up in front of us.
I inwardly sighed once more. Such a challenge he was!
“Yes I can but why?”
He briefly turned to me and broadly grinned before returning his attention to driving.
“There’s a game that we will ‘play’ after dinner. It is called Roulette. The game features a spinning wheel with thirty seven little slots. Into the spinning wheel a little white ball is spun in and circles around, eventually slowing and bouncing into once of the numbered slots. The slots are alternately coloured red or black and all are numbered from 00 to 36. You can bet where the ball will land, either in red or black and specifically in a numbered slot. If the ball lands in a slot you bet on, you get a payout of thirty seven to one. Ever dollar you bet wins you 37 back. You can also just bet on which colour the ball will land in giving you your money back plus it’s value as a reward. Bet $100, you get your $100 back plus another $100.”
“Dollar... that’s money right?” I said as the implications slowly dawned on me. You could make a fortune from this!
“Yes Meridiana. Dollars are what we use as currency these days. Gold is still used but not in the way you were used to. It’s still valuable as are other precious metals but that’s going to take a long explanation which is a distraction for now. So, do you think you could perhaps catch the bouncing ball with your power, directing it into the number we bet on?”
I thought about it for a few moments.
“I will have to see how the ball moves but I think I could, yes.”
“Excellent. You stand to make us a lot of money tonight. There are other games like card games, slot machines which I’m uncertain that your powers would be able to mess with. Roulette is our hunting ground. We must be careful though.”
“Why?”
I was surprised by his tone of caution. We were power incarnate! What could possibly touch us?
“Casinos hate losing money. Roulette is going to be the hardest one they can prove that we’re cheating on if you use your Telekinesis. We will be closely watched the entire time we are in the casino. There are devices called cameras, similar to Crystal Balls, that observe everything they see, relaying the images back to people in other rooms whose task it is to spot potential cheaters in the casino. They also have people walking the floor, disguised as ordinary folk, always watching everyone else. And I want to avoid the eyes of any infernal beings who may be in the casino.”
“Ahh… I see… a healthy paranoia then, for them and us hmm?”
He nodded once, emphatically.
If you have a fortune, you need to protect it, especially from people like me. His caution in regards to our identity was also most prudent and he was correct that there was a possibility that there may be others of my ilk lurking in the shadows, walking in human form as we often do.
I have to confess dear reader, that I am a master thief as well as an expert assassin, in addition to being an accomplished warrior although I rarely fight in hand to hand combat, preferring seduction, subterfuge and skulduggery as my main methods of killing. Yet still, I can fight and kill extremely proficiently with many weapons, being skilled at one of the highest levels of melee combat, the use of weapons and ways of fighting with them. I’ve been around a while you know? You pick up on things like that if you wish to live as long as I have.
Besides… stabby, stabby, stabby, bash, slash and smite can be loads of fun when you’re doing the stabbing and bashing with a well-balanced blade or mace in your hands. But I digress…
“You have it Meridiana. Yes the casinos’ management are extremely paranoid. We will have to alter our appearance as well before we enter the casino. I shall use a minor low level spell while you can take a new face. We will do so after dinner.”
I nodded then a thought came to me. I asked,
“You said we were going to something called a buffet? I know what the word means as my abilities allow me to understand any spoken language, much like the enchantment known as Tongues. Yet I’m finding it hard to match the word with the concept.”
The Magus raised an eyebrow in interest at this revelation.
“Oh right. Just because you know a word doesn’t mean you automatically understanding it conceptually and in context either. Good to know. Well, a buffet is an enormous array of various foods, hot and cold, sweet to savoury, where you merely help yourself and consume as much as you wish. You pay for the privilege of course.”
“Truly? How much will this cost you?” I inquired wide eyed.
I noticed that we had moved through the traffic and had turned down a descending road and were now going into a massive concrete tunnel along with hundreds of other cars, all slowly moving in the same direction. It was quite honestly astounding that everyone was not smashing into one another. All the drivers were…well mostly were, attentive to their immediate surrounds and situation as we gradually merged our car into the main lane of traffic which was making its way under the earth via the huge yawning tunnel ahead.
Such staggering feats of engineering and construction which would have made the Emperor Justinian weep copious, bitter tears of pure envy. Oh how I wished I could make him see this and realise his idiotic boast was pointless when he finished Hagia Sophia. He bragged that he had surpassed Solomon himself with his church. He had but it wasn’t worth it. Justinian nearly bankrupted the Eastern Roman Empire, all for a useless church and his own vanity.
Moron.
Still, I shouldn’t care, his hubris ended up sending him to hell anyway so... yay! His actions also exacerbated the effects of the famine and plague that swept the through the empire and western Europe in the year 535 with his stupid desire to re-unify the Roman empire under his rule. You will be pleased to know dear reader, that he is burning in eternal torment for his multitude of sins so it is all good. My thoughts of deceased, vainglorious emperors and their fate were interrupted as the Magus spoke again,
“Hmm? … it should set us back about $80 each I’d should say? A small price to pay in all honesty when you see what is on offer. Drinks will be on top of that price, unless you just have plain water but tonight Meridiana, I shall introduce you to Champagne, one of humanities greatest achievements.”
This was enticing to hear!
“If you say so Magus. I completely believe you as you will not be lying to me,” I said, nodding and trying to think about Champagne.
So many new concepts were entering my mind, it was hard to keep my mind and thoughts in order. I understood that Champagne was a special type of wine, one which had a fizz embodied within it, making it highly regarded but that’s all I could deduce for now.
Also… I had a thought: the Magus could and would never lie to me. The feeling I had earlier, in being able to trust everything he said to me because of the oath he gave to me, was an unfettering sensation.
All my existence I have dealt with bare faced lairs, deceivers, misshapers of the truth who twisted words to suit their own selfish ends. With the Magus, all I had to be concerned with was his agenda, which actually had my interests aligned with his own. Truly remarkable.
I needed that champagne now!
We emerged from the tunnel, traveling with the traffic over wide dark river, again on another immense concrete bridge this time. There was a gigantic colosseum off to our right, all lit up with multiple coloured lights that ran around the circumference of the structure. It was like as though it was enveloped in a rainbow. Frankly, it was amazing to behold.
Beyond that, I could see many more large towers and structures, lining the sides of the vast road we were hurtling along now. The Magus had increased our speed as traffic had thinned out. Never in my life had I moved so fast, well unless I was using a Haste spell to briefly increase my physical speed, which I use in combat if necessary.
I barely had the sense we were travelling in the car at roughly 80kph. Such an odd experience to have for the first time. There was no rushing of wind, no press of air on my face, just comfort and air-conditioning. Marvellous!
After a few minutes later I saw our destination.
Again I was nearly stupefied by the gigantic structure. Multiple massive buildings, all surrounded by lush green, well-manicured and maintained gardens made my jaw go slack with disbelief.
“That’s Crown Casino, Towers and hotel Meridiana. I can see you are impressed. Let me just say that if you think this is amazing, wait until we go to Las Vegas…” he said as he turned the car into the driveway of the complex.
“There’s even more impressive structures than this?”
My mind boggled dear reader. It was almost too much to take in.
“Yep. My city is a small one compared to others around the globe. We will travel to them, in due course. I know you can use your powers of Dimensional Walking, moving through other planes of reality and appearing on a different part of the planet. However, there will be times when we will need to travel together conventionally. Perhaps one day, if I learn the right spells, we will be able to avoid having to fly in an aeroplane and by-pass the utter tediousness of baggage check-ins, airport security and so on…” he muttered darkly.
“HUMANS CAN FLY!?!” I said in a loud strangled astonished voice.
The Magus chuckled with genuine amusement.
“Think back Meridiana. I said humanity has been to the moon and back. I said we can travel safely and comfortably in a machine, called an aircraft, across the planet. Some ‘planes are huge while others are not much bigger than the car. Oh, that reminds me, we will have to construct an identity for you. We will begin that process tomorrow. You are going to need a passport soon enough,” he said as he found a relatively unoccupied parking area west of the massive structures.
He saw my puzzled expression and mistook it for wondering why we had parked here.
“It’s free to park here and there are hardly any security cameras in the vicinity.”
I nodded dumbly.
“But of course Magus…”
He saw my expression as he switched off the engine. A tiny look of… sympathy appeared on his face. He spoke to me in a soft, calm, soothing tone,
“Take a breath Meridiana. Close your eyes and focus upon the stillness within the vehicle. You are safe here with me. Nothing will harm us. Just breathe and relax, let each breath calm you. With every breath you are at peace within yourself and the world around you.”
I did as he said and instantly sensed my whirling mind begin to centre itself, become still.
I may be an ancient and powerful demon dear reader, however I have been imprisoned for nigh on a thousand years and now have been released into a world that I was unable to recognise at all.
The Magus later told me I was suffering from a psychological malady called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Yes dear reader, even us demons can get mentally fucked up. I mean, compared to the average human, we’re all demented, tormented psychopaths which explains a lot about ourselves but still… even a psychopath can suffer from mental trauma. Demons can go insane.
I breathed rhythmically, each exhaling breath calming me. With one final exhalation, I opened my eyes, turned to my Magus and softly smiled at him.
“Thank you,” was all I said. I meant it.
He nodded briefly, his intensely burning eyes boring into mine, deeply searching, looking for signs of any madness that may still be lingering within. Well, there’s always the hunger for sex and mayhem, but that’s natural for me.
“Come on, you look fine now, let’s go,” he said as he got out of the car.
I followed his example, releasing my seat belt and stepping out of the car. Closing the car door behind me, walked over to the Magus then I threaded my right arm around his left as we walked off like a normal couple, casually strolling through the car park towards the casino and hotel.
I could hear the noise of all the adjacent traffic all still travelling busily along the massive road that went past the enormous complex. There was the calls of various birds I’d never heard before, the waft of scented flowering plants and the heavy aroma of moisture in the air from the nearby river. I closed my eyes for a second just to let it all wash over me as I sedately walked along with my Magus.
Soon we came to the entrance. Huge dark glass doors magically opened for us upon our arrival. To my right I could see various coloured signage, advertising the types of ‘fast food’ eateries that people could choose to dine at. They were all brightly lit and mostly clean.
It was at that moment I saw my first wretch.
A dishevelled, unkempt, shabby man sat listless outside the fast food eateries upon the low stone wall that contained a small, well-kept garden. He looked up at us as we approached, his eyes full of misery and despair.
“Got any spare change?”
“Sorry mate, no one carries cash anymore,” lied my Magus to him with a conciliatory voice, a sad but brief compassionate smile appeared briefly on his face.
The wretched man’s face became even more resigned. He nodded back in understanding, returning his fallen face back to morosely contemplating the ground at his feet.
We kept walking, leaving the broken man behind us.
I was about to congratulate the Magus in his treatment of the beggar when I had to stop as I was confronted by an incredible sight.
Before us, in the huge well-lit lobby of the building, was a huge pair of MOVING METAL STAIRCASES!
One staircase ascended while another came down from the landing some 50 feet above us. On either side were normal, marble clad stairs that some people were using. Yet many other people were on the moving metal stairs, all just taking the experience of being raised or lowered completely for granted.
“It’s just an escalator Meridiana. A simple machine that makes life a little more comfortable. Take it, go for a ride. I’m taking the stairs as I need the incidental exercise,” he said to me as he pried my clutching hands from his arm. I had been unconsciously gripping him tightly in my amazement at seeing such a machine.
The Magus walked off to the left, climbing the steps briskly while I gingerly walked forwards, watching the metal stairs endless appear and ascend upwards. The hand rail also moved in synchronicity with the metal stairs. I observed as a pair of young women, chatting intently to each other, walked past me and up to stand upon a metal stair which was part of dozens of metal stairs it seemed. I saw them be lifted by the moving stairs, rising above and away from me.
Summoning my courage, I stepped forwards onto a moving stair, wobbled slightly as I was not used to the speed which it moved, making me grab the moving banister tightly to steady myself as I rode my way upwards. I let out a small laugh as it was such a novel experience. The young women in front of me turned around at my laugh, raising their eyebrows at me as well as actually truly seeing me for the first time. Their smiles faded as I grinned back at them.
The young women could see my infinitely superior beauty on full display. They looked hesitant, now uncertain of themselves as they mistakenly believed themselves to be beautiful. They were, passible, not ugly but not worthy of a harem to be perfectly honest. I later learned dear reader that many foolish young women, especially in what you call the western world, regard themselves as queens, rating themselves ten out of ten on a scale of dazzling good looks. These sad women are delusional. I mean, if they were that beautiful, why weren’t their faces on the covers of the glossy magazines I see in various ‘supermarket’ check outs? No matter, vanity and hubris are all ways to damnation and misery. So many people sending themselves to eternal torment simply because they were raised by idiotic parents who never properly taught their children the need for humility. It’s all win-win for the pits you know…
My Magus met me at the top of the stairs, holding out his hand to me and then leading me through the vast interior of the complex.
“That’s the casino,” he indicated to our right.
Looking, I could see dozens of people making their way inside into the brightly lit and noisy interior of the casino. I caught the whiff of desperation, despair, avarice, lust, elation and a strong aroma of human urine. I wrinkled my nose in disgust. Yes, even I have some standards dear reader.
“Magus, why does it reek of piss?” I asked as we strolled by and proceeded into the most immense, glass covered atrium I have ever seen.
“Oh, you can smell that?” He looked intrigued.
I nodded with a mild look of disgust.
“Hah… interesting. Well… some gamblers get stuck on a poker machine. They sit there for hours, desperately hoping that the machine they are playing on will pay out. The poor fools stupidly believe that if they play at the machine long enough, they’ll win big. So they stay seated, ignoring the need to relieve their bodily urges, to the extent that they prefer to piss themselves rather than abandon the machine that is draining away their money. The poor fools are incapable of understanding that the machine is designed to rarely pay out. Every time they play, it has a simple algorithm that calculates the chance of a payout. Most machines will payout a small amount of money occasionally, thus keeping the gambler hooked in the mistaken belief that the big one is just around the corner. It rarely, if ever, is.”
I stopped, stunned at what I just heard. The Magus stopped and looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“That’s… diabolically genius!” I stuttered as I considered the fiendish brilliance of the whole concept.
Someone had made hell on earth not only possible but also could make a fortune from it as well as breaking people’s souls and spirits in the process! The concept of dangling hope in front of a damned soul, then snatching it away was one of the oldest known tortures of hell. This was magnificent, a culmination of the perfection of thousands upon thousands of years of the torture, all neatly packaged in a fairly simple machine designed to beggar it’s user and turn them into slaves to it. Gobsmacking was the only word I could think off that fully encapsulated the way I felt at that moment.
“Yes it is, isn’t it? I have always suspected that those machines were most likely invented by a demon. It makes perfect sense,” he said as he shrugged, then tilted his head, indicating we should proceed onwards.
I noddled dumbly as again, I had been totally overwhelmed by the latest piece of information the Magus had informed me of. I barely registered the hundreds of people all wandering around the massive lobby of the hotel atrium. Many were dressed finely while others, mostly men, were dressed casually. My Magus was one of them, still wearing his novelty T-shirt and hemp pants. They were clean though and his shoes, a brand known as Babuuk, made him look somehow better dressed then the other men who were similarly attired. Maybe it was just his subtle aurora of power, his sheer confidence and his towering Will that made him stand out from the mouth breathers all around us? I guess it was.
We arrived at the entrance of the restaurant and the Magus was greeted by a short Asian woman, dressed neatly in the hotels livery.
I started to realise that there were people from so many different races of humanity all around us. I had come from a time where only what was left of the Eastern Roman Empire was this diverse, and even then it was but a shadow of the heyday of the full glory that was Rome. Here were people from almost all the lands of earth, all happily co-mingling, getting on with having dinner with family and friends. Very surprising indeed.
The Asian woman at the reception counter spoke to us with a friendly smile,
“Good evening sir, madam. A table for two for you then?” she asked politely, her voice tinged with a broad accent I had not heard before. She spoke English yet I could tell that wasn’t her first language.
“Yes please,” politely replied the Magus.
This was something I did not expect. Despite his and my obvious power, he was respectful and even kind to the servants. All of them. He didn’t condescend nor sneer down at the servants of the hotel. It is still something I have difficulty reconciling. I said nothing, just observed. Oh, he has since instructed me not to call them servants, they are members of staff and will be treated with respect until they show they do not deserve it, then they are fair game. I can live with that.
“Table seventy one is ready for you both, have a lovely evening.”
She actually meant it! I could see it in her eyes, she was truly enjoying her task. She was smiling and joking with her fellow staff members, politely greeting the next people behind us with her cheerful friendly demeanour.
Astonishing.
In my prior experiences, servants and slaves were a miserable lot but then again, that was understandable. They had no choice as to their circumstances. They had to obey lest they suffer harsh punishment.
As we proceeded into the large dining room, with over a hundred tables of varying sizes, I could see off to my left where the food was.
I stopped again and stared dear reader.
I have been to banquets with Emperors and Kings, Popes and Princes, all sumptuous feasts but nothing was like what I saw before me. Dozens upon dozens of people had plates in their hands, all calmly wandering around the incredible cornucopia of varieties of food that were on display, all brightly lit up for them to simply help themselves to as much as their plate could hold.
Roasted meats, all neatly carved by expert chefs, freshly shucked oysters all seated in enormous silver ice-filled serving bowls, trays upon trays of cooked vegetables of kinds I had never seen before and… a dazzling array of sweet desserts and treats that made me almost go weak at the knees at the very sight of them.
“Come on Meridiana, you’re starting to drool,” whispered the Magus gently into my ear as he dabbed my wet lips with a soft piece of paper that he withdrew from his pants pockets.
Once again I nodded dumbly as I allowed him to escort me to our table. He even seated me, pushing me and my chair in once I had sat down. After he had taken his seat, a young man, quite a handsome one from the Indus I believed?... came over to us, again dressed in the livery of the hotel.
“Good evening, sir, madam. Would you care for something to drink?” he inquired ever so politely.
“And good evening to you sir. Yes indeed, may we please have a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, two glasses and a bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling water?” he asked with a real smile to the servant… no member of staff.
“Of course sir, I shall get that for you immediately,” replied the waiter with a pleased smile at being spoken to so politely.
“Thank you,” said the Magus then he turned to me and asked,
“Do you need a moment Meridiana? I understand this might trigger you again…”
I shook my head.
“No. It is overwhelming… but in a good way Magus. I have to ask, how can a place like this provide so many people with so much food? Even in the height of the Empire, there were magnificent feasts to be sure but… you say this happens everyday, that this is just a Tuesday and not a busy night?”
He nodded.
“This is the age of abundance Meridiana. Many of us, who live in what is known as The West, have dwelt in an age of such wealth and richness that almost all here never think on their incredible luck and privilege to live in such times. They do not know that it will come to an end. Maybe that is a small mercy. All golden ages end as you well know. So I say, let them dwell in ignorant bliss for now. We can enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Huh? Why do you believe that your golden age will end Magus?”
“It’s a long explanation and one I do not wish to go into detail here and now Meridiana but later, I will share my thoughts with you on this. Ahh, here comes our champagne.”
The waiter and another staff member had returned, with one carrying two bottles while the other had a metal bucket partially filled with ice. The waiter from the Indus placed both bottles on our table, displayed the label to the Magus who briefly nodded. Then, the waiter removed the cork from the bottle with an adroit twist of his wrist. It made a pleasing pop and I could see a little haze of cold… smoke? lightly emanate from the neck of the bottle. He poured the brightly bubbling and fizzing wine into both our glasses, carefully making sure the foam did not overflow them. He was very good at his task.
“Thank you good sir,” said my Magus to the waiter who beamed back at him with a happy smile. He placed the bottle into the bucket of ice and withdrew, leaving us alone, amidst the crowed dinning room.
The Magus took up his glass, holding it in front of him. I mirrored him.
“Here’s to a good dinner with interesting company and later, ripping the shit out of a casino Meridiana.” He pushed his glass gently forwards, lightly clinking it against mine. I wasn’t familiar at the time with that form of salute and toast but went with it anyway, after all… when in Rome as they used to say.
“That sounds… delightful Magus. I am eager for it all.”
I then took a sip of my champagne and was transported into a realm of heavenly bliss.
It was exquisite.