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I'm not an audiophile, i love music but i don't have a very needy ear, i mostly listen to city pop, rock, lofi, vaporwave and jazz, but i also want to use these iem when i play and study, at the moment i have a pair of linkbuds s.
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thank you very much for your time!

--- Table of Contents ---
--- Part 1/2 ---
When Shon woke again, it was to be told he'd slept, not only the rest of the day and night of the incident, but the entire day after as well. Despite the Cleric assuring Shon that this was normal, he still had Shon eat breakfast in the infirmary while the Squires attended their morning lessons. He'd slept through drills, breakfast, and prayer.
The Cleric kept the curtains drawn over the window, though Shon's head wasn't pounding anymore, and had added a second set of standing curtains around the girl's bed. Shon's eyes flicked in her direction with every alternate bite he managed to force down, but there was no movement beyond the white cloth.
Master Daunas came in shortly before tenth bell and armor practice to inform Shon that he was to take the day off to rest but could rejoin the others in training the following day. He was at least allowed to leave the infirmary, though he waited until he could hear sparring outside before he did. He didn't want to run into any of the Squires.
As he opened the door to leave something flew by the window, catching Shon's attention enough to make him stop and look over. But it was already long gone. Just a bird... Assuming he hadn't imagined it. He shook his head, still aching all over. His mind swam with worries and memories, made worse by the fact that the Cleric was trying to hide shivers now that Shon was fully rested. He'd probably just imagined it...
Back in his room Shon huddled over his journal. He could still smell the smoke in his hair and had decided it would be best to shower soon, but finally alone, his thoughts and memories could no longer be ignored.
So he drew. He tried to start safe. Nangran atop his borrowed horse; Ivelm mostly naked and shaking a club in his doorway; the Archmage's workroom lined in shelves filled with magical components. That one had taken a while. But as he released these images onto the page, others forced themselves forward. Smoke billowing over treetops; a burning tower; charred bodies; and a girl reaching out through the flames. A girl lying asleep in the bed next to his. The stillness of the picture made her look dead.
He dropped his pencil, letting it roll right off the desk. Crossing his arms over the book, he rested his head on his desk. The wood felt warm compared to his skin, comforting. What more could he have done? What could a Paladin have done? Or Master Veon-Zih? Shon saw again the bodies and shivered.
No one could save everyone. To think otherwise was pure arrogance. But knowing the facts and feeling them were two very different things. The tower wasn’t that far from Hamerfoss. Shouldn’t they have known something was going on? Shouldn’t they have been able to do something sooner? Years sooner? Long before the fire killed those people?
A loud tapping startled him awake. When had he fallen asleep? Shon searched his room in confusion, trying to piece together his dream and what had awoken him. He'd been in the Temple chapel, but as he'd walked down the middle aisle, the pews had started to decay, the stone walls crumbling. Small plants, then trees began to sprout from the ground, overgrowing the once-holy place now in ruin. Shon pressed the heels of his hands hard into his eyes, trying to remember what had come next... A man with white hair pulled back in a ponytail had been standing at the head altar... something with leathery wings on his shoulder...
The painful screech of something sharp on glass had Shon jumping up, his chair falling to clatter on the ground behind him. He looked to his window but saw only orange sky beyond. Was the sun already setting? He knelt on the mattress and looked out the window, unsure what he expected to see. He was on the third floor, but that was definitely where the sound had come from, and the window was the only glass in the room.
Nothing but open sky.
He opened the tiny window, the pane swinging up and letting in cold and refreshing air that helped clear his mind. Master Daunas's voice bellowed orders from the courtyard below, and Shon stuck his head out to look down and see his fellows working through their dagger forms. He'd slept through lunch and afternoon lessons. And he still needed a shower.
If he hurried, he would be able to shower before the others finished their lesson. Shon left the window open and even opened his door before he remembered to grab a fresh uniform. Obviously, he still wasn't thinking clearly.
The halls were blissfully empty, and Shon could almost pretend that even if he did pass someone, their breath wouldn't show in the air. It was a short-lived fantasy, however. He managed to make it all the way to the showers, but when he opened the door a voice called, "Squire! Why aren't you... Oh..." Shon performed a sharp about face to stand at attention before the Major General.
"At ease, Squire Shon," Selibra sighed, waving him down, "Did you get enough rest?"
"Yes, Sir," Shon answered but then caught movement out of the corner of his eye, again. He hadn't managed to turn his head far enough to see before the Major General started speaking. Shon snapped his head back to give the officer his undivided attention.
"You did well, Squire. Smith Nangran told us what happened at the tower." Sir Selibra managed a strained smile that faded quickly, "If you want to talk about what you saw there... any one of us will be more than willing to listen. You shouldn't have had to experience death so soon." an image of an arm pulling away from a charred corpse flashed in Shon's vision.
Shon swallowed down the accompanying nausea at the memory and managed a nod, adding a quiet "Thank you, Sir." for good measure.
Feeling the need to scrub even more than before, Shon was grateful when the Major General left, allowing him to enter the still-open room. The shower was only mildly comforting, however. What should have been scalding water felt merely lukewarm now, the mist billowing off his truly icy skin thick enough that he could barely see the spigots. Closing his eyes, he scrubbed and tried to imagine the images flowing off of him with the filth...
Something chirped, and Shon slammed the water off. Just the pipes creaking... How much longer would he have to rest before his mind stopped playing tricks on him? But as he moved for his towel, Shon stopped in shock, his new uniform had been scattered around the benches and floor.
He hadn't heard the door open, but had heard the pipes creaking? But who here would even do something like this? Shon started to search the showers, but as he did, he heard something else—voices in the hall. The Squires were done with their practice. He still didn't want to see them and dressed quickly, rushing from the shower and slamming the door behind him.
Something thumped into the door from the other side. Shon held his breath and turned slowly. It was his imagination. It had to be. He reached for the handle again and, standing behind the swing, opened the shower slowly.
"He's been gone three days... Do you think they sent him away?" Thom's voice sounded from around a corner, and Shon jumped in surprise, pulling the door open fully as if he could hide behind it.
"No way. he's the best Squire we have, so what if he's a Sorcerer." They were talking about him... Shon definitely didn't want to see them yet. He dashed down the opposite way, taking a long way around through the Paladin's barracks and back to his room. Or that's what he'd planned before he remembered the Squires hall would be full of people now taking their break and trying to get into the shower before everyone else. His feet faltered, and he turned away again, to one of the hardly used stairs that would take him down to the rest of the fortress.
Barred from his room, Shon made his way to the place he associated the most with comfort, the chapel. It wasn't empty, three Paladins knelt in prayer near the front, but it didn't matter anymore. He felt a wash of calm as he entered the incense-filled room, the sweet-smelling smoke finally banishing the stench of burning hair from his memory.
Shon took a spot near the back, kneeling to pray as he stared up at the statue of Hengist behind the altar. He was dressed in full plate mail, his arm raised in triumph, holding his mighty sword, Darkspliter.
Shon sighed and felt himself smile for what felt like the first time in a very long time. He could tell Hengist anything and everything, and none of it out loud... But then his smile faded. What would he say...?
I'm sorry. I feel like I've been lying to everyone, to you. I've known there was something different about me, something wrong with me. That's why no one likes to touch me, why everyone pulls away at the feel of my skin, like it's somehow dirty or painful. I should've realized... Should have known...
But I worked so hard... You know that, don't you? And I'm not ready to give up. I'll do whatever it takes, atone anyway I can if you just tell me how. The Major General said something about it being a sign. I want to believe he meant the unlikely convenience of Smith Nangran knowing an Archmage who could make an item so I won't have to get the tattoo. Thank you. I just hope I don't disappoint after getting a second chance...
The bell for dinner sounded. Feeling better, Shon considered going with the Paladins as they left the chapel. Until one of them shivered as they passed. "Winters right around the corner," another muttered.
"We'll need to install the heating orbs soon." the last answered before the door closed... He wasn't hungry anyway.
Please, Hengist. Don't let me hurt anyone else. Kefir was trying to help me, and I answered that kindness with pain. What if the healers hadn't gotten to him in time? Would I have smothered him in ice? Please, I'll give up everything if it means that will never happen again...
But he didn't want to give up anything. He wanted to fight, to reach his highest potential, and lead a life of meaning. He thought of Master Veon-Zih. The Monk had told him that he didn't need to be a Paladin to fight for justice, and he was living proof of that. But...
I don't want to be alone... At first, I thought I just wanted you, a god, as a guiding light in my life. But now I realize that being a Paladin gives me even more than that. It gives me brothers and friends, and I don't want to lose them either. But I especially don't want to hurt them.
Shon clenched his hands tighter, as tight as he could, digging his fingers into the spaces between his knuckles; as if external pain might dull internal strife...
They say I'm scary... And I know they aren't really joking. I can see it in their eyes and hear it in their nervous laughs when they try and make it a joke. But they only mean when they fight me... don't they? And I'll never try to hurt them. It's only sparring... they know that... don't they?
He squeezed his eyes tighter shut,
But what about now? Will they be even more afraid? Even when we aren't sparring? Can I blame them if they are?
He actually found himself waiting for an answer... Of course, none came. He wasn't a Paladin yet, and wouldn't be able to feel the god until he swore his Oath and took a piece of Hengist into himself. For now, Shon took in a deep breath, as deep as he could, then let it out slowly, relaxing his hands and face as he attempted to release his anxieties unto his god.
I won't give up. I'll fight this danger within me as hard as I will fight any threat without. I ask for your help with this. Please don't give up on me yet. I'll prove I'm worthy, I swear.
The bell ending dinner and starting study time sounded. Shon stayed in the chapel until a handful of Squires came in to pray themselves. They hesitated by the door, but Shon didn't look at them. He knew he couldn't hide forever. But he also wasn't sure what he should say to any of them. Or if he should say anything at all. Shon waited until they moved away from the door to finally stand. If he had to face any of them, he wanted it to be the ones he considered friends first.
Shon left the chapel and made his way to the library, fighting the urge to just go back to his room. Heads swiveled in his direction the moment he opened the library door. Shon flinched, sucking in a sharp breath and holding it, pulling his energy in as best he could.
He stepped in, and the Squires exchanged looks, but then the Paladin on library duty coughed, and they quickly went back to reading.
His typical spot was available as usual, so Shon made his way there. The others would want to talk after... and if not, he would just go back to his room. Distracted by his continued worries -and the silent effort to hold his energy in- Shon still heard when something behind him hissed along the stone.
He spun quickly, scanning the floor. This time he definitely wasn't imagining it...
"Squire Shon... Shouldn't you be resting?" He turned back to find the Squires trying to make it seem like they weren't staring at him, while the Paladin who called looked openly concerned.
Shon's cheeks flushed, now feeling cool rather than warm. Another change... He cleared his throat, "No, Sir..." and when the Paladin's worried expression didn't let up, Shon added, "I've been resting all day."
"Three days..." Zihler muttered.
Shon met his eyes and the Squire smiled, but Shon couldn't tell if the expression seemed strained or not. He nodded anyway, taking his seat alone at the table by the window.
Books on their current subject of study were already laid out, and he pulled one forward, opening it without checking the title. As he read, he could hear the others occasionally whisper and even caught snippets of what they were saying,
"I found another one. Do you think this will be enough?" Thom asked.
"We have the rest of the hour; we should find all we can," Rerves answered. It didn't sound like they were studying, but Shon had missed three days of lessons; maybe they were working on an assignment... He went back to his reading. He would get any missed work tomorrow.
When the bell rang that would finally begin their last hour of free time, Shon closed his book. It would be best to just go to bed early; everyone seemed to think he should be resting anyway; they could talk after he got the sealing item... But he hadn't stood yet when his six closest friends jumped up, books in hand, and crowded around him, preventing him from leaving. From running away.
"We're glad you're okay." Rehlien blurted out.
"The Major General told us what happened," Baradin added.
Shon looked from him to Kefir and took in a sharp breath, "I'm..." he started to apologize, but Kefir interrupted with a broad smile,
"I'm fine. I even got a day off for it. I didn't need it though, they healed me up right away."
Rerves placed his book down on Shon's table, "It was just really surprising, you know? But hey! Now we know why you're so cold all the time."
Shon looked down at the massive tome on the table, not wanting to meet their eyes. He didn't know what to make of what they were saying. There was no way it was okay. How could they be alright with a dangerous magic user that could kill them all on accident...
"We found these. We thought they might make you feel a little better," Thom whispered, stacking his book on top of Rerves' and opening it to a page he'd marked with a ripped piece of scrap paper. It wasn't a textbook, it was a record book. Shon furrowed his brows down at the page, reading 'Sir Patrich, served 4876-4929, died 4955. Paladin of Hengist, General. Air Sorcerer...'
Shon looked up to find them all smiling down at him. Zihler set his book down over Thom's, opened to another personal record, "This one was a fire Sorcerer, and they're supposed to be the most destructive."
Rehlien took Baradin and Kefir's books and stacked them with his own beside the open records. He ran his fingers over the slew of bookmarks sticking out of the closed pages, "All Sorcerers and Paladins." Rehlien said.
"Master Daunas said you would be back in a few days, but just in case we wanted to find these for you," Thom explained in a rush, "You know... in case the officers or Mages needed to be convinced..."
Baradin cleared his throat before he spoke, clasping his hands behind his back, "We haven't found any ice Sorcerers yet, but they're also the rarest, so that really shouldn't be surprising."
"Yeah, and there are plenty of fire who are crazy dangerous even when they're trained," Kefir added quickly.
Shon could feel a burning in his eyes and blinked furiously, looking away from his friends. He wouldn't cry.. he wouldn't. "Thank you..." he managed to croak out, finally giving in and rubbing his eyes. None of them commented on his show of emotion, or the frost clouding his window.
Rerves took the seat across from him with a smile, "So, what type of familiar do you think you'll get?"
Shon managed to stop blinking enough to arch an eyebrow. Hadn't Ivelm said something about a familiar too?
"I bet you it'll be something really lame." Zihler laughed, "To balance Shon's badassness."
"Squire!" the Paladin librarian barked, "Pushups! Now!"
Zihler groaned, mumbling as he stepped back to perform the punishment, "How do they always do that?"
"Divine hearing," Rehlien snickered as Zihler started the pushups, "Probably only works for curses, though."
"You can join him," the Paladin called without looking up from his book, and Rehlien groaned, dropping down next to Zihler.
"Seriously though," Rerves said, ignoring the boys huffing and puffing through their punishment, "Familiars are animals, they're supposed to be even closer to their Sorcerer than a Paladin and their mount! Like an extension of yourself. You can see through their eyes and talk to them with your mind. It's awesome!"
Thom actually blushed, confessing, "We read up on it a bit over the last two days..."
They knew more about what he was than he did. Shon actually smiled, starting, "I don't..." but chittering, like a particularly loud squirrel, interrupted him. The Squires all swiveled their heads to look around, Rehlien and Zihler jumping to their feet with the Paladin, who stood so quickly his chair fell over. The chittering turned to chirping, and then to a purr, as Shon finally found what was making the noise.
On top of the bookshelf closest to the door, sat a tiny dragon.
The size of a large barn cat, its scales were mostly brown but had streaks and blotches of red and orange, like the few deciduous trees that still held their leaves in autumn. Its leathery wings were folded against its back and its front claws grasped the edge of the bookshelf. Its long tail, complete with a scorpion-like stinger, flicked back and forth, its sinuous neck held high as it surveyed the library.
Some of the Squires let slip breaths of wonder, and the little dragon seemed to preen at the attention, holding its head a little higher and purring even louder. The Paladin, however, stepped around his desk and commanded, "Stay back, Squires," before he started chanting. The little dragon tilted its head at the Paladin, as curious as the rest of them. A moment later, the knight's spell washed over them to fill the room, sending a shiver down Shon's spine and making more than one of the other Squires shudder.
The little dragon let out another string of chittering and hissed down at the Paladin, whose eyes went wide as he announced in a breath, "It's real."
"How did it get in?" a senior Squire asked. Shon started to stand but then fell back again as images flooded into his mind. He watched a window opening from outside the fortress, and saw himself lean out. Then the image shifted, and he saw himself digging under his bed for a new uniform and towel as the him that was watching slipped out the door. It shifted again, and he saw himself in the shower, mist billowing off his shoulders before he dug through the piles of clothes left on the bench. It shifted again, and he darted into the library and behind the bookshelf, watching as he, Shon, walked in and sat down at the little table.
Shon blinked and shook his head furiously to try and clear it. All the pictures had flooded in so fast that no one even had time to answer the question or pose their own, "I let it in..." Shon whispered, then looked at the Paladin, explaining quickly, "I didn't mean to. I left my window open to air out my room and..."
"It's okay, Squire," the Paladin was actually smiling, and the little dragon whistled, "They're goodly creatures, though elusive. I've never seen a live one." the dragon leaned forward on the bookshelf, crouching down on its front claws and wiggling its hindquarters before it leaped into the air, opening its wings to spread as wide as it was long. It glided a lap around the library then hovered in front of the Paladin, chittering again and flapping hard enough to blow the man's short hair back before flying right towards the group of Squires around Shon.
It brushed Baradin's head with its claws, the boy ducking as it swooped down to land on Shon's table. The dragon looked from the open books to Shon, then, before Shon could pull back, climbed up his arm and to his shoulder, purring hard enough to vibrate Shon too. It weighed considerably less than it looked like it should, though its claws were sharp enough to pierce through his clothes as it climbed. It brought its face right up to Shon's eye, and though he tried to pull away, it followed him with its long neck, rubbing its cheek along his face. The scales were smooth and lacked temperature, like being touched by a gloved hand. It nuzzled his cheek again, then down his neck and into his shirt.
Surprised, Shon tried to throw the dragon off, but it just dug its claws into his sleeves, chittering angrily then clawing its way around to his back before lifting itself up to drape over his head. "What..." Shon started, but the Paladin cut him off with a laugh.
"I think that answers your friends' questions, Squire."
Shon was too confused to even arch an eyebrow at the man, but Rerves apparently understood what he'd meant because he said, "But I thought only animals could be familiars, like cats and crows and stuff..."
The Paladin nodded but then shrugged, "That's usually the case, but sometimes, rarely, there will be a Sorcerer who gets something a bit more special, like a winged serpent, fairy dragon, or in this case," he nodded at Shon, "A pseudodragon."
The pseudodragon purred, vibrating Shon's head. The Squires all gaped slack-jawed in awe at it, and Shon reached up slowly. He wasn't even sure what he was going to do, pet it? Push it off? But before he'd even touched it, it lifted its head, stretching its long neck out and nuzzling into his hand, obviously not caring that his skin was colder now than it had ever been.
"Damn..." Zihler muttered in obvious disappointment, "I was really hoping it would be a toad so I would have something to make fun of..."
The little dragon's answering twitter almost sounded like a laugh.
***
She groaned, rolling over and nuzzling deeper into Her pillow. Except it didn’t smell like Her pillow. Her eyes flew open, and She sat up. Then fell back down. That was stupid. Ran and Brom had probably taken more blood than usual again… except She couldn’t remember them taking Her for samples. Not for weeks and weeks…
“It’s alright, you’re safe here,” the kindly voice of a man spoke from Her right, and She sat up again, more slowly this time. A stranger in white robes with a sword embroidered on the chest reached out to help Her up, but after touching Her back he pulled sharply away.
She was too confused to apologize for burning him. “Where?” She asked, looking around the room. Like the stranger, it was covered in white. White blankets, white rug, and white curtains hanging to either side of an open window. A window that looked out onto a blue sky. She gasped, scrambling from the bed and nearly tripping over Her white gown. Of course it was white. How in all the hells did they keep it all clean?
She shook Her head and rushed for the window. The man behind Her gasped, his chair scraping loudly as he stood to follow. She pressed Her hands on the cold glass, staring up into the sky, “I’m on an upper floor!?” She grinned excitedly over Her shoulder as the stranger stared at Her, mouth hanging open.
Turning back to the window, She used Her arm to wipe the fog from Her heat off the glass, letting Her gaze trail down. She didn’t see the treetops She expected. Not close anyway. Instead, the forest was beyond a wide clear field, which in turn was beyond a tall stone wall with people dressed in silver walking along its top. She stood on Her toes to look down through the window. Between the wall and Her was a courtyard full of more people swinging things that glinted in the sun.
This wasn’t the tower. None of those people wore robes except the nice stranger. She spun to him, “My treasures, where are they? Brom? Ran? Where…” She saw a flash of red, heard a pained bark, and smelled iron. She fell to Her knees, grasping Her chest and breathing hard, remembering bits and pieces. He killed them. He killed all of them. Then what? She couldn’t remember...
“You are in a training facility of the Temple of Hengist, Hamerfoss, in Clearhelm.” a new voice, deeper, less kind though not cruel, spoke from the doorway. Lifting Her head, She saw the new man wearing a crisp, white, uniform, with a sword hanging comfortably from his belt. Hengist… so that explained all the white.
The kind man in robes had rushed to Her but dared not touch Her. Wise. With Her head spinning so fast, there was no way She was controlling Her heat properly. “How long has she been awake?” the new man asked the kind one.
“She just woke up, Major General,”
“He killed them…” She whispered, squeezing Her eyes shut, pushing back the rage and sorrow, trying to fill in Her memory. What happened next?
“It will be alright. You're safe here,” the kind man said again.
She pulled Her own hair, lacing Her fingers into the golden strands and squeezing. What had happened? She had run down the hall, but how had She gotten out of Her room? There were strangers in Her tower. These men? She glared up at the brown-haired man who looked down at Her, his hands behind his back.
“Who are you? What did you do to the Mages?” She could feel the hair rise on the back of Her neck and a familiar tingling where the collar should be.
The Major General remained calm before Her building fury, saying only, “Calm down.” It was a command backed by magic. She felt the power flow over Her and try to settle on Her mind. She could almost sense the peace it promised but shook Her head, clearing it of the spell.
He could've used his magic to hurt Her. Perhaps not with the collar as the Archmages did, but in other ways. And yet, he hadn’t moved from his spot, his hands still behind his back. She looked again at the sword of Hengist at his side. She'd read all about the gods. Hengist was good and noble, all about self-sacrifice and protecting the weak… A fool, the Mages had said. And yet his Temple ruled this province. The Mages of Her tower would never work with the Temple of Hengist. Or any kingdom order…
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She didn’t need his help to calm down, not when She had something to focus on. She shoved Her grief to the back of Her mind. “How did I get here?” another image flashed in Her mind, fire all around, a white path, blue eyes.
The Paladin didn’t answer right away; instead, he motioned for the robed man - a Cleric? - to bring him a chair. She tilted Her head curiously at him, but he only sat down with a weary sigh, then gestured towards the bed, “Please, have a seat.”
She stood, returning to the bed and eyeing the door over his shoulder. He hadn’t locked it. “We saw smoke from the woods and found you in a burning tower.” the blood drained from Her face, “We have recovered several bodies from around the structure, but there were no other survivors.” he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and fixing Her with a piercing stare, “What happened? What was going on in that tower?”
She brought Her feet onto the bed and hugged Her legs tight, “I don’t… I can’t remember…” a fire, the tower burning… But it was made of stone. Her fire couldn’t burn that hot… Could it?
“Sir Selibra,” the kindly Cleric sounded stern, crossing his arms and glaring down at the Paladin, “She has just woken up from what was obviously a terrible ordeal. Show some compassion.”
The Paladin, Selibra, actually looked ashamed, leaning back in his chair and clearing his throat, “I apologize, miss…” he drew out the last word, looking at Her expectantly. She tilted Her head. “What is your name?” he asked more clearly. She tilted Her head the other way. Were they going to play that game here too?
The Cleric hummed then said, “Please forgive him, miss, we are all very troubled by the events and deaths at the tower. The Major General merely got ahead of himself. If you could tell us your name, then we can let you rest and…”
“I don’t have a name.”
The two men blinked dumbly at Her, and She rolled Her eyes, “I knnnooowww,” She let Her legs fall back down, so She was sitting properly again, “But I don’t know it yet. As soon as I do, I'll tell you.” She assured them. The men exchanged looks as She glanced again out the window. Maybe She should've just told them what Brom and Ran called Her… But those weren’t names. They were descriptors. No better than ‘Firewyrm.’
If these Temple men were to be believed, everything was gone. She had no room, no books, no clothes, no treasures, and no name. What did She have? She pulled Her hair over Her shoulder and stared out the window as She stroked it. She had Her hair. They hadn’t cut it in months. She had Her body. She straightened Her posture, holding Her head high. And She had Her power—the fire crackling deep inside Her soul. The Mages had taken the first two. The third had destroyed them.
“You should rest,” Selibra stood, and Her eyes snapped back to him, “You can send for me when you feel ready to talk. Until then, focus on recovering your strength and your memories.”
He made it all the way to the door, even swung it open before She called out, “What are you going to do to me?”
Selibra turned back, his eyebrows raised in surprise. The Cleric placed a hand on Her shoulder, slowly and carefully, gauging how much of Her heat he could handle. She turned to him, and he let Her go. He'd held on longer than expected. “We will keep you safe, child.” the Cleric assured Her.
The Paladin grew stiff for a moment, then brought his right fist up to his chest, “By the sword of Hengist’s honor, we will safeguard your life and freedom,” Freedom? “Whatever injustices you endured there, you will find justice in the laws of Clearhelm.” She didn’t know what to say, and so, after an awkward moment of silence, Selibra turned for the door again and left.
She didn’t lay down. Instead, She walked back to the window. The view seemed to stretch on forever from so high up, higher than She'd ever remembered being before. Even when She used to climb the trees around Her tower.
Selibra hadn’t locked the door, but the Cleric bustled around behind Her, and the wall below Her clanked with armored knights. What was freedom anyway?
--- Table of Contents ---
Thanks for making it this far, you are the real MVP

I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but the last few years have been wild for airline travel. It seems like not even a week can pass before a new viral video is circulating the internet, showcasing some idiot on a plane or airport screaming, shouting, and even starting fights with other passengers and flight staff for no apparent reason.
I’m sure it’s entertaining when you’re sitting at home and come across these videos while casually scrolling through Reddit or Twitter. You might laugh, or shake your head at the stupidity and not give it a second thought. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option when you’re the one on the job.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to call security to deal with a rowdy or straight-up violent customer in the airport over the last couple of years. Most of the time, the things that set people off are surprisingly minor and avoidable issues.
They want to board now but it wasn’t their turn so they start harassing me and my co-workers. Another passenger looked at them funny so they get into a screaming match. A baby is crying so the grown adult starts whining even louder. The person in front of them took the last chocolate donut with sprinkles from the airport bakery so they start throwing punches.
You would not believe the stuff I’ve seen. Needless to say, I got tired of it. Getting up to go to work, wondering what kind of unhinged maniac was going to make a problem for me lost its appeal. So, I started to look for a new job.
A few weeks into the job search, I began to get doubtful that I would find a suitable replacement. Seeing as my only tangible skills and experience were in the airline industry, I didn’t have much more than other airline jobs within realistic reach. Though I didn’t have a problem with relocation, if it meant I was going to end up in another major airport, I had no interest.
During one 3 am job search after my long shift at the airport, running on nothing but the jittery movements from the room-temperature coffee, I found a new job listing. One Pine Airport, a rural airport in the midwest. I sat up and took another sip of coffee. The pictures for the place gave an idea of the size and it looked tiny. Only a couple of runways, a single terminal, and a cute internal design reflective of the forestry that surrounded it. Perfect for me, I thought. I imagined there would not be nearly as many people to deal with.
I scrolled down to the job details and to my relief, it was for the exact same job I had already been doing. The only difference was that it required frequent night shifts. I had done plenty of night shifts before, but doing a few more of them made no difference to me. Surprisingly listed was the pay. I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were offering more starting than I was being paid at the airport I had been at for over three years.
Now wide awake, I eagerly uploaded my resume, filled out all of the application questions, and even spent the next hour crafting an unnecessary cover letter. I headed to bed with the hope that my days at overflowing airports might be over. The next day as I was getting ready for work, I opened my phone to scroll through notifications and check emails.
To my disbelief, I had one from the job I had applied for only hours earlier. The manager at the airport, who had posted the job, requested an interview over Zoom. I quickly replied and we settled on a time during my lunch break that very day.
The first few hours of work breezed by and as I boarded flight after flight of passengers, I couldn’t help but think about the upcoming interview. When it came time, I was nervous as hell but my fears were diffused within the first minute. A bald, well-kept, and well-dressed man joined the meeting room and greeted me with a warm smile. He introduced himself as James.
I couldn’t have asked for a more friendly interviewer. He welcomed me and after some small talk and a few questions about my relevant experience, he gave an overview of the job's details, that being the same job I already had with better pay but more frequent night shifts. No problem with me. After affirming that I knew all the details of the job, James cracked another wide, friendly smile and asked an unexpected question.
“When can you start?”
I spit the out sip of coffee I had just taken back into the cup. I looked back up at James and tried to find the right words but I was unprepared.
“You uh… aren’t gonna give me a call back like later or something? Don’t you have more interviews and… and paperwork waiting to clear and, and…?”
James waved his hand dismissively at his webcam.
“You’re the only applicant we have, and we couldn’t have asked for a better one. As for the paperwork and such, we’ll figure that out when we figure it out. The job is yours, whenever you can start, that is. Preferably soon?”
Though the feelings of shock and confusion remained, they were pushed to the side by my excitement. Throughout the remainder of our conversation, James and I reviewed our schedules and set up a start date before ending the call. I sat back in my break room chair with a sigh of disbelief and a chuckle.
I am well aware that it is standard to give at least a two-week notice to your employer and moving across states for a job is supposed to take quite a bit of planning but I was dying to get out of my current job. Through both eagerness and maybe a little stupidity, we settled on a day only a little over a week away.
At the end of my shift that day, I let my manager know I had to be done in a week. Though she wasn’t happy, she assured me it wouldn’t be a problem.
My final day was nothing short of horrendous. A couple had come up, demanding and screaming that I refund their tickets for no apparent reason. On top of that, they still wanted to fly. After hearing that no, they would not be able to fly for zero cost, the husband, followed by the wife, both started shouting threats. Security was quickly called to the terminal.
As soon as they arrived, I checked my watch to find that my shift was over. I let out a sigh of relief and excitedly walked away. As deprived of sleep as I was, with a long and undoubtedly stressful drive ahead of me, I was still more energetic and in higher spirits than I had been in a long time.
Surprisingly, the drive went off without a hitch. I arrived earlier than expected and checked into the motel room I rented for the week so I had time to get the move figured out. After dumping a few boxes of personal items and a suitcase of clothes into the room, I turned off the lights. I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I energetically awoke that evening to prepare myself for my first shift. I quickly got dressed and started the drive in hopes of arriving plenty early. Naively, I hadn’t considered how my unfamiliarity with the roads would slow me down, and after a staggering amount of wrong turns, I arrived at the little airport with only minutes to spare.
The airport was even smaller in person than I had imagined it to be from the pictures. I quickly walked through the entrance and was greeted by the small team of security. After notifying them that I was there for work and that James had been waiting for me, they hurried me through without so much as a question. The security, the architecture, the beautiful scenery that surrounded it, nothing about this airport couldn’t have felt more welcoming.
I walked through to find the single terminal inside, devoid of any passengers, with James sitting behind a counter at the end. After a moment he looked up and upon making eye contact with me, his tired face lit up. I was about to apologize for my tardiness but didn’t have the chance as he rushed to show me the employee locker room where he had my new employee uniform and badge waiting inside my very own locker. He told me to get changed and to meet him outside right away.
I did as he asked and within a couple of minutes, I walked out to find him back behind the console at the counter, gathering his belongings. He noticed me approaching and glanced up, thanking me for showing up and starting so soon as he handed me a fresh cup of coffee. He also apologized for not being able to stick around long for my shift but he sounded sure that he wasn’t all that worried.
“I have to be going now, I’ve been on duty for 17 hours. I know you’re plenty familiar with our systems and software, you know what you’re doing.”
He assured me with a pat on the back before walking out from the desk. He turned and added
“It’ll be a quiet night for you anyway. No flights scheduled. Just sit back, relax, and uh... Oh yeah. Most importantly, I nearly forgot”.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a single sheet of laminated paper and held it in front of me.
“Give this a read as soon as you can. Go over it a few times if you need, don’t deviate from it”.
I took it but before I could even get a look, I noticed James begin to walk toward the exit, along with every single one of the security guards and the cashier who had just closed down the only shop in the airport. I then noticed that all of the scanners and metal detectors at the security gate were shut off. I started to panic.
“Hey! James? Where is everyone going?”
I shouted. The first words I had managed to speak to my new boss since arriving. He stopped and turned back again
“Oh yeah. Another thing I ought to have mentioned. Everyone except whoever is working the night shift in, well, your position takes off right around now. Don’t worry, security will be back sometime around 5 am. You’ve got this place to yourself. Grab a magazine from the little store in there if you get bored. Feel free to snag yourself a couple of snacks too”.
He began to walk away again before briefly turning and pointing at me.
“But before you do anything, read that list. You’ll need it”.
I stood, dumbfounded as I watched my new boss along with all of the other airport staff leave. I started to wrap my head around the fact that I had an empty airport to myself for 10 hours, with nothing to do and no one to deal with, all while I was getting paid the highest wage I had ever earned.
As much as thinking about it delighted me, I turned my attention turned toward the sheet of paper I almost forgot I was holding on to. James said to follow whatever list was on it, so I figured I ought to take a look. I walked behind the airport counter and sank into one of the seats behind it. I took a sip of coffee and finally took a serious look.
A total of 6 rules were neatly spaced on the sheet.
Rule 1: All lights in the airport are to stay on at all times. If one is off, or if you are to accidentally turn one off, turn it back on as soon as possible. If a light seems to be broken or is out and unable to turn back on, calmly exit the area. Report the outage to James or maintenance when possible. Do not listen to the sounds. Do not listen to the voices.
Rule 2: Rule 2 pertains to rainy or stormy weather. If it is raining or storming outside, disregard rules 3, 4, and 5. They will not be a concern during these types of weather conditions. Stay inside at all times. Do not use the men’s restroom and avoid going near it entirely if possible.
Rule 3: Sometime between 11 pm and 1 am, a young woman will walk out of the women’s restroom. She will enter the terminal and sit, occasionally getting up to walk around or change seats. Her name is Elizabeth. She will attempt to make conversation but you must not reciprocate. You may look at her, you may give nonverbal communication such as a head nod, you may write as a means of communication, or you may shake her hand but do not speak to her. If you refuse to speak to her, Elizabeth should be gone within a few hours. If you happen to make such a mistake, go to the men’s restroom and wait for her to leave.
Rule 4: At around one or two in the morning, a janitor in blue coveralls will arrive at the front entrance. Crack open the door and ask for his name. If he says his name is Simon, let him in. If he gives you any name other than Simon, shut the door and lock it without another word and walk away. If the janitor is Simon, he will attend to the janitorial needs of the airport. If he asks to clean where you are standing, oblige him. Simon will not interfere with your duties otherwise. He is not hostile or dangerous. You may engage in conversation with Simon. He will leave the same way he came when he feels it is necessary.
Rule 5: At around 3 am, you may notice that a black and red Cessna Skyhawk has landed on one of the airstrips. You will never see it land, and you will never see it take off. It will just appear when you’re not looking. After spotting the plane for the first time, do not look at it again. Avoid looking in its general direction if at all possible. There is a picture of the exact plane displayed inside the terminal, behind the counter.
Rule 6: Later in the night but sometime before dawn, a group of men claiming to be from TSA may arrive at the airport. They will have their own key and let themselves in. Some could be armed. Often, they exhibit panicked behavior. They may search through the airport, sweep room to room, and ask questions. They are permitted to search anywhere in the main airport building that they please, and you may oblige to any questioning but under no circumstances are they permitted to enter the sky bridge. They will not enter without verbal approval and they cannot harm you.
After reading over it a few times, I set the laminated sheet down and leaned back further into my seat before taking a long sip of coffee, wondering what on earth I had just read. I hadn’t taken James to be the imaginative type. Most of all, I hadn’t taken him to be anywhere near the unprofessional type. Though as I thought about it, it was unusual how rushed this all was and how he left in such a hurry, leaving so few details.
I began to wonder if I was being pranked, I considered that maybe this was all some sort of messed up joke or setup. I ruled that out pretty quickly. This was, in fact, a real airport. I had done plenty of research by the time I got here. At least a few real flights were coming in or going out each day. James has been working here for years and I couldn’t think of a reason why he would jeopardize his job or reputation just to get a scare out of me.
After chuckling to myself at the absurdity of my situation, I decided to indulge and see what would happen. Maybe it was a “test” for me as a new employee. Maybe James wanted to see if I could follow orders.
After glancing at the list once more and realizing the impact rule 2 had on the number of things I would have to keep track of, I brought up my phone to check the forecast. Clear skies, not a chance for rain or storms all night. Great, I thought to myself. I had to watch out for these Elizabeth and Simon characters to show up and I suppose “not” be on the lookout for a random plane to appear on the runway.
I stood up and grabbed my coffee, walking to the glass panes. I took another sip from my cup while admiring the lit runways along the airfield. It sure was a pretty nice sight. As I was raising my cup to finish what was left, I began to hear the click of shoes on the floor somewhere behind me.
Startled, I spun around abruptly, dropping my cup and spilling the remainder of the coffee in the process. At the other end of the terminal seating stood a young woman, around her mid-twenties in my estimation. She was holding two large leather suitcases in each hand and had an old-fashioned sense of style with a skirt and heels. Most surprising was her stunning beauty and welcoming smile.
“Oh I’m sorry dear, didn’t mean to scare you”
She expressed with a sincere tone. I opened my mouth, ready to assure her that everything was fine but I stopped myself. I recalled the list. At this point, I was certain that she was here at James’s request, a paid actor determined to make me break the rules. I was more determined not to. Instead, I simply fixed my posture, straightened my uniform, and looked back with a smile.
She walked to the counter where she placed her leather suitcases on the ground before closing the distance between us.
“Looks like we’ve got this fabulous airport all to ourselves. I am Elizabeth”
She said, reaching out her hand. I shook it, but she didn’t seem quite satisfied.
“And your name?”
I continued to smile and lock eye contact. Her grin grew for a moment before she remarked
“You don’t seem to be much of a talkative one”
And with that, she turned and started to walk away. I returned to my seat behind the counter, watching her closely as I did. Elizabeth proceeded to the unattended airport shop and after a couple of minutes of looking over magazine covers and occasionally taking a peek inside, she returned carrying a small stack of reading material. She approached my counter before placing a National Geographic magazine in front of me.
“I figured you might like this one. Enjoy”
She said, winking before settling on a seat in the first row of the terminal, straight across from where I had been sitting.
Remarkably, her intuition was spot on. I may have lived in cities all of my life but I loved nature, despite how little of it I had gotten to see. National Geographic was a favorite of mine, one I had been familiar with and enjoyed on work breaks from time to time. Rarely was I given this long to be able to read. I was almost tempted to break the rule and thank her for her rather thoughtful act, though I didn’t. I stuck to the rule.
The next couple of hours were uneventful. Elizabeth and I read through our magazines, occasionally looking up at each other to exchange glances and smiles. Within that time, she had attempted to get me to talk at least half a dozen more times. I almost gave in when she asked me if I wanted another magazine.
At a little past 1:30, I could hear a knock at the front entrance. Elizabeth and I both looked before she remarked
“Oh, that must be the nice cleaner man”
With a giggle before returning to her magazine. I walked over to the front doors and sure enough, there stood a man around his mid-thirties, sporting a blue janitor suit waiting patiently at the door. I unlocked the door and opened it. As he took a stride to enter, I remembered the most important detail from rule 4. I closed the door halfway and sternly commanded
“Wait”
The man looked up at me with a surprised look. I asked him the question.
“What is your name?”
The man stared back at me as an innocent smile formed on his face.
“I’m Simon!”
He announced excitedly.
“The Janitor here. Did James let you know I was coming tonight?”
I stood there for a moment, thinking over the rule, before nodding my head and opening the door once again to let him in.
Once inside, Simon walked with purpose to the janitor's closet which was positioned near the men’s restroom. I followed him somewhat suspiciously for the next few minutes as he began to clean but I eased up once I got the feeling that he was just the janitor around here and that James made up the whole “ask for his name thing” to make into one of his rules.
I returned to my counter in the terminal and continued to read. Occasionally, Simon would pass by, off to do his duties in some part of the airport or Elizabeth would stand up to look at the various pictures and paintings on display in the terminal. A good half an hour of this would go on before Simon approached the terminal counter with his mop in hand. He seemed to be eyeing up the two leather suitcases Elizabeth had set there.
Assuming he wanted to clean where they were, I got up to move them. I grabbed each one by the handle but failed to lift them off of the ground. Confused, I stepped back to see if they were stuck on something. They were not. Just two suitcases, left right where Elizabeth had set them.
I tried to lift just one. Again, I failed. I tried both hands, putting my back and legs into it with all that I had. It wouldn’t budge.
I looked back up at Simon who nodded his head in Elizabeth’s direction. I turned to look at Elizabeth, who after noticing my stare, and my apparent inability to move her luggage, smiled and stood up.
“Let me get that for you”
She insisted. With ease, she lifted both leather suitcases and moved them closer to her seat before lowering them, this time letting them drop a few inches. When they hit the ground, a boom echoed through the airport and I flinched in surprise. I looked back at Simon, who hadn’t seemed shocked at all. He just continued to mop.
I slowly made my way back to my seat, not taking an eye off Elizabeth for one second as I did. After a few minutes, she looked back up from her magazine, noticed my stare, and returned to her reading with a grin. She seemed to find my shock amusing. Eventually, Simon noticed my surprise as well. He paused his mopping and approached me before raising his head.
“I know, I know. Stick to the rules and everything will be just fine, trust me”
He stated quietly. I nodded my head in response.
Simon went back to his cleaning. A few minutes passed before Elizabeth had something new to say.
“What a remarkable aircraft!”
She exclaimed, looking out the glass panes facing the runways. I followed her gaze to the lone, black, and red airplane positioned on the runway. I turned around, looking at the picture displayed behind me. It certainly looked like a match. I turned back to the window and felt my heart sink. A silhouette of a person now stood next to the plane, facing the airport and the windows of the terminal.
“Stop looking at it”
Simon sternly muttered from behind me. I looked back at Simon who quickly cowered, seemingly ashamed to have raised his voice at me but I was grateful he had. I read over rule 5 again, specifically where it stated to not look at the plane twice. I murmured insults at myself under my breath but they didn’t have much room between my now heavy, frantic breathing. My eyes darted through the other rules. I chose to focus on that sheet of paper. At least it was something other to look at than the plane outside.
This went on for a good ten minutes or so and my breathing started to calm down. I had begun to pray in my head that whoever and whatever that was would go away when Elizabeth suddenly approached my counter. I snapped my head up in a jittery movement to make eye contact with her.
“I’m going to get some more reading material. Want another one of those?”
She asked, reaching a hand out to my National Geographic magazine. I looked up and nodded, forcing a smile. As She moved away, my gaze didn’t, and once again I found myself looking at the plane on the runway, the silhouette now standing hundreds of feet away from the plane, even closer to the building, and still staring in my direction.
Chills ran up my spine as I snapped my gaze back to my desk. I began to shake with fear and the manic breathing returned. Moments later, Elizabeth returned and placed a new magazine on the counter before running a hand over my shoulder, seemingly to comfort me. Simon then put his hand on my back.
“He’ll be gone soon and so will the plane. Just don’t look at it again”
He assured me.
“Mind if I clean here?”
He then asked.
I got up and walked to the end of the counter, watching Simon thoroughly clean the floor before I looked up and let out a soft
“Thank you”
He nodded and smiled back.
“What was that?”
Elizabeth asked. I turned towards her.
“Oh, I was just thanking Simon for-”
My error occurred to me before I could finish speaking. My eyes locked on Elizabeth as she stood up from her seat and her smile faded. Her eyes and nose began to bleed profusely as she started to sob, lightly at first, then hysterically. She let out a bellowing screech, a mix of pain and anger. She picked up one of her suitcases and hurled it at me, I barely dodged the ridiculously heavy object before it crashed into the wall behind me.
Luckily I was quick thinking this time and made a run for the men’s restroom recalling rule 3. She chased after me but I slammed the door shut in her face and locked it. Elizabeth pounded on the door with furious anger a few times but gave up quickly.
“So that’s how you dance, is it love? I can play that game”
She snickered before flipping a light switch outside of the bathroom. The clicking of her shoes faded away. A few minutes of silence passed before laughter started to become audible from the other side of the door.
One voice grew to two, two voices grew to three, three grew to ten. While others continued their now hysterical laughing, some began to scream. I crumbled to the floor, covering my ears as the voices went on, only stopped by another flip of the switch. Light beamed through the bottom of the door.
“It’s over now. She’s gone, and so is the plane. I’ve gotta be getting out of here soon”
Simon’s calm and friendly voice called out. I reluctantly exited the bathroom and followed him back to the counter, where he had prepared another coffee for me.
“Wish I could have done more there but you’ll come to find out that when Elizabeth gets angry, you just gotta let her do her thing”.
I looked up at him, still with my distraught face, at a loss for words. Over the next few minutes, Simon finished cleaning Elizabeth’s blood from the floor before putting everything back into the janitor's closet. He looked down at his watch.
“I better get out of here. Good luck with the rest of your night. I hope I’ll be seeing you soon”.
He said, letting out a sigh as he again looked at me in pity. I think he knew how shaken up I was. It was like he had seen people in my position before. Something told me he doesn’t have a choice on when he leaves. After I watched him exit the door, I returned to my seat behind the counter. I began to feel alone and afraid, but the loneliness wouldn’t last at least.
Only minutes after Simon left, the doors swung open and men in tactical gear, most of which had their faces covered in masks and goggles, rushed through the door. I sprung back up from my seat and watched as they did, with not much else I could do. They swept room to room, checking every nook and cranny at gunpoint, ignoring my existence at first.
As they cleared the entire building, the twenty or so armed men made their way to the terminal seating area. A lone man in a suit, whom I had not noticed enter, made his way to the front of the group.
“I’m with TSA, I’m going to need you to answer some questions for me”
He demanded. I nodded in affirmation.
“How many individuals have you seen in this airport since the security team left the building?”
“Besides myself, 2 Inside, one outside”
I answered confidently.
“Was the individual outside next to a black and red Cessna Skyhawk?”
“Yes”
I again responded confidently. The man in the suit nodded and paused for a moment before making another demand.
“We’re going to need to search the air bridge”.
I glanced back at the sheet of rules on the counter. Making sure I had read it right before. I took a step forward and straightened my uniform.
“No”
I replied. The man in the suit looked irritated.
“If you do not step aside and give us permission to search, I’m afraid I’ll have to detain you”.
Already tired and worn out, I wasn’t going to break the last rule. I decided to give a not-so-smart remark to the man in the suit
“Looking a little well-armed for TSA, wouldn’t you agree?”
He ignored my comment.
“Last chance, step aside”
“No”
Again, irritated by my response, the man in the suit turned to his right and raised his chin to give a signal. Gunshots rang out and I collapsed to the floor. I felt as though my life left my body before it all faded to black.
The next thing I remembered was the feeling of my hand gripping a water bottle. Then came James’s voice.
“I see you made it through the first night intact. Looks like you got to meet Simon. He’s a nice guy, you’ll get to like him. And Elizabeth, she’s…well, she’s something else, isn’t she?”
I opened my eyes and looked up at James.
“Am I dead?”
I asked in a raspy voice. James chuckled in return.
“No! No, you did great. You’re fine. It does, however, look like you might have been a little assertive to our undead TSA special forces wannabes. I would recommend sticking with the less aggressive tone and word choices, maybe I ought to edit that into the rules sheet… In any case, they can’t hurt you but they can still get a jump out of you, as you saw”.
Once again, I was at a loss for words. I slowly made my way back to my feet from the ground and looked at the sunrise over the airfield. James held out an envelope for me. I opened it, revealing a stack of crisp $100 bills.
“A little bonus for your first night. It sure is a lot to go through for the first time but I promise, you get used to it all”.
I turned to James with an angry look and finally spoke up.
“What the hell is wrong with you? What makes you think it’s okay to put someone through this without any warning? I'm done, keep your damn money. I’m gonna go call the cops”.
I started to walk towards the exit when James stepped in front of me.
“Look, I know it isn’t fair for you but it wasn’t fair for me either. It wasn’t fair for any of us. It’s not okay, I know. But what do you expect me to do? Someone needs to be here for the night shift. You wouldn’t believe any of this if I told you ahead of time. You would have thought I was some sort of nutjob and the police will think of you the same if you tell them. I needed you to see it for yourself”
James was starting to get worked up and stoppeto breatheth before continuing.
“This money is yours, no strings attached. You’re free to leave now and never come back, there will be no shame in it”
I also started to calm down but I couldn’t bring myself to look James in the eye yet.
“If you choose to stay, I’ll see you in my office to finish up your paperwork”.
And with that, James walked away. Facing the front of the airport, I watched the first passengers of the day come through the entrance. I just stood there for a few minutes. Whether I was ready for this job or not, I knew right then I sure as hell wasn’t going back to another overcrowded city airport.
I turned and headed for James’s office.

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

Hello Everyone,
I intended to write a long preamble, but then decided it's not worth it. Suffice it to say, things happened and I'll likely query this project before querying my political fantasy.
To those curious: I queried this book 1.5 years ago to 24 agents. I got exactly 0 bites. It can still go to 20+ other agents - maybe more, if they open.
The query and words you'll see have gone through minor changes, but are by and large the same I sent back then. The changes include:
- moving the housekeeping to the beginning and cutting it down (it used to include words like "complete" and had some other extraneous details).
- cutting down my bio, including the mention that I live in Poland, rephrased to the more vague "I'm from Poland"
- minor tweaks of word choice and sentences in the pitch - I think I did 3 little changes?
So... I guess this was still quite a long preamble for PubTips' standards. But that's it, that's why I'm asking for your feedback again so soon.
​
Query:
Dear [Agent],
Vampire SHERLOCK HOLMES meets THE WITCHER in THE MONSTER WITHIN, a 97,000-word adult fantasy mystery. It’s a standalone with the potential to be the first in a trilogy.
Arkady is a century old vampire born to be a monster like his parents, but he refuses to inherit their taste for bloodshed. In a world where humans are rapidly industrializing and rediscovering the supernatural at the same time, he’s spent the better part of the last forty years slaying strigas, drowners, and wraiths. Nothing excites him like a good murder—to solve—until a mysterious criminal appears in his city, putting his resolve and skills to the test.
When a striga kills one of the guests at a party Arkady attends, he becomes the prime suspect. The leading officer of the investigation lost her father to a vampire, making her even more prejudiced against his kind than most humans. Arkady teams up with her to prove his innocence. When another demon strikes in the city’s heart, he realizes the striga’s turning was more than a simple tragedy. Someone is desecrating graves and summoning monsters that prowl the streets and prey on the hapless humans. They must be stopped.
Every new demon means new clues in the puzzle that spans the entire city, but also lives lost and a step closer to the criminal’s elusive goal. If Arkady solves the mystery in time, perhaps he can finally prove to himself and everyone around that he’s not one of the monsters. And if he can’t, well, the more people demons kill, the stronger they get—and they can prey on vampires too.
I’m from Poland and I used the region’s history and culture as inspiration for my plot and world building. Please see the first [number] pages of my manuscript below.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
[signature and contact]
​
300 words:
The scent of blood was distracting. Arkady was the only person who smelled it—he could tell that by listening to the merry chatter of the guests around. As he closed his eyes, their laughter and footsteps became almost as loud as the beating of their hearts, and the scents seemed to amplify.
Coming in with the wind. He felt the slightest breeze wafting through the ballroom. From upstairs.
The scent was not the kind caused by a cut finger. It was deep and pungent, whispering of a human’s heart ripped open and the blood spilling free. It was a small victory, really, that looking into the nearby platter, his eyes remained pale blue instead of turning red.
Now what? Arkady picked one of the glasses of wine, careful to avoid touching the silverware. Go there?
He was positive that he could maintain control even when faced with a massacre. He was not his father. However, it would be hard to explain barging into a room full of blood and gore to other guests. They’d only just entered the hall; many were still in the antechamber, shedding their overcoats. Inevitably they would wonder how he’d known where to search or even that there was something to find. It was safer to let someone else discover the body. Sooner or later, the scent of death would reach their mortal senses, and before that happened, Arkady could freely investigate the mansion, asking questions people would later hesitate to answer.
He strolled through the crowd as the trickle of newcomers dried up. The ballroom was simply the hall of a large mansion, now with tables set by the walls and many of the doors open to let the guests into the sitting rooms and the library. One wing led to the kitchens and servants’ quarters, and it was constantly crossed by servers carrying appetizers. [...]

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

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

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

I have been officially together with my girlfriend for 5 months. Initially, she told me that she had worked as a sugar baby for a short time. During our relationship, she asked me multiple times if it would be okay for me if she had a sugar daddy. In this case, she would only send photos and not have actual meetings. My answer was always no, especially because our relationship was still very new. However, it made me very uncertain and a little hurt that she asked me the question repeatedly. So, I had a conversation with her, expressed my feelings about it, and asked her never to do anything in that direction behind my back. She was very understanding and promised me several times that she wouldn't do anything.
Two weeks later, after some strange experiences, I started to suspect that she was hiding something. So, I created a fake account on the sugar daddy website (which I knew from our conversations) and searched for her. I quickly found her account. I wasn't very shocked, but I was still very hurt. The site shows if a user is online or when they were last online. So, for the next few days, I checked her account multiple times and noticed that she was almost never offline for more than an hour. After a few days, I confronted her.
I asked her if she wanted to confess something to me without telling her what I knew. She pretended to know nothing. Then I told her everything. The conversation was calm and without a major argument. She explained to me that she was in financial trouble and as a knee-jerk reaction (she described it as a trauma reaction, which gave me the impression that she was denying any responsibility), she created an account. She said she just wanted to look around on the website and reassured me multiple times that she wouldn't have done anything without asking me. But that didn't mean much to me since she had already broken her promise. I then demanded to see her chat history on the website. After a long discussion, she agreed, and indeed, I only saw conversations from before our relationship.
I told her that I needed some time alone to think about it. After 3 days, she came to me, apologized multiple times, and gave me a letter asking for forgiveness. But for me, it didn't mean much anymore. My feelings for her were still partially there, but nowhere near as strong as before. I broke up with her on the same day. She left in tears.
That was a week ago, and I'm starting to doubt whether my decision was the right one. She broke my trust, and it happened in the early months of our relationship. However, her apologies seemed sincere, and she seemed genuinely remorseful.
I just want to hear your opinions on this. How would you have reacted? Can you understand my actions, or were they exaggerated?

The first Spectacular Edition edit is available now on Firemerk Studios!
Trailers: https://youtu.be/5y3BvHS-rVE
https://youtu.be/tv1diVtdzXA
Synopsis: Peter Parker is just an awkward, dorky teenager, until the bite from a radioactive spider gives him superhuman abilities. Fueled by his newfound powers, and his uncle's tragic death, he becomes a vigilante pursuing the man who killed him, until a new enemy rises from the surface, known as The Lizard. In order to stop this new threat, Peter must put an end to his vengeful crusade and embrace his new responsibilities to save his city from destruction.
Changelist:
- The opening is changed to Peter in his Aunt and uncle's house
- Cut segments of the suit-up montage (he's chasing his uncle's killer, it shouldn't be a grand gesture)
- Cut Peter Googling his parents' history/looking in the bag (instead he goes straight to searching up Dr. Connors)
- Removed Dr. Connors interaction with the Oscorp guy (makes it so that he's doing it out of his own interests, and no one's setting a strict deadline)
- Dr. Connors "Leave so I can do science" talk removed (he literally leaves before Peter does), and made his mannerisms less blunt
- Cut the whole "you're all alone" exchange; just cuts to Cpt. Stacy loading shotgun (kinda pointless, just felt like filler dialogue to make Connors look more evil)
- Cut short Peter's reaction to Cpt. Stacy's death (Andrew did a great job, but it felt forced, considering he didn't know him that well, other than the fact it's his gf's dad)
- Removed a lot of Richard Parker backstory
- Changed the ending (cut from Ben's voicemail straight to the swinging sequence) - And more!
Watch the edit here: https://www.firemerkstudios.com/tasmspectaculared//
If you'd like a download link, feel free to send a DM!

Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and other tech companies are trying new ways to label content made by AI.
https://www.vox.com/technology/23746060/ai-generative-fake-images-photoshop-google-microsoft-adobe
On May 22, a fake photo of an explosion at the Pentagon caused chaos online.
Within a matter of minutes of being posted, the realistic-looking image spread on Twitter and other social media networks after being retweeted by some popular accounts. Reporters asked government officials all the way up to the White House press office what was going on.
The photo was quickly determined to be a hoax, likely generated by AI. But in the short amount of time it circulated, the fake image had a real impact and even briefly moved financial markets.
This isn’t an entirely new problem. Online misinformation has existed since the dawn of the internet, and crudely photoshopped images fooled people long before generative AI became mainstream. But recently, tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, and even new AI feature updates to Photoshop have supercharged the issue by making it easier and cheaper to create hyperrealistic fake images, video, and text, at scale. Experts say we can expect to see more fake images like the Pentagon one, especially when they can cause political disruption.
One report by Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, predicted that as much as 90 percent of content on the internet could be created or edited by AI by 2026. Already, spammy news sites seemingly generated entirely by AI are popping up. The anti-misinformation platform NewsGuard started tracking such sites and found nearly three times as many as they did a few weeks prior.
“We already saw what happened in 2016 when we had the first election with a flooding of disinformation,” said Joshua Tucker, a professor and co-director of NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics. “Now we’re going to see the other end of this equation.”
So what, if anything, should the tech companies that are rapidly developing AI be doing to prevent their tools from being used to bombard the internet with hyperrealistic misinformation?
One novel approach — that some experts say could actually work — is to use metadata, watermarks, and other technical systems to distinguish fake from real. Companies like Google, Adobe, and Microsoft are all supporting some form of labeling of AI in their products. Google, for example, said at its recent I/O conference that, in the coming months, it will attach a written disclosure, similar to a copyright notice, underneath AI-generated results on Google Images. OpenAI’s popular image generation technology DALL-E already adds a colorful stripe watermark to the bottom of all images it creates.
“We all have a fundamental right to establish a common objective reality,” said Andy Parsons, senior director of Adobe’s content authenticity initiative group. “And that starts with knowing what something is and, in cases where it makes sense, who made it or where it came from.”
In order to reduce confusion between fake and real images, the content authenticity initiative group developed a tool Adobe is now using called content credentials that tracks when images are edited by AI. The company describes it as a nutrition label: information for digital content that stays with the file wherever it’s published or stored. For example, Photoshop’s latest feature, Generative Fill, uses AI to quickly create new content in an existing image, and content credentials can keep track of those changes.
AI-labeling tools like Adobe’s are still in their early stages, and by no means should they be considered a silver bullet to the problem of misinformation. It’s technically possible to manipulate a watermark or metadata. Plus, not every AI generation system will want to disclose that it’s made that way. And as we’ve learned with the rise of online conspiracy theories in recent years, people will often ignore facts in favor of believing falsehoods that confirm their personal beliefs. But if implemented well — and especially if these labels are seen as more neutral than traditional social media fact-checking — AI disclosures could be one of our only hopes for navigating the increasingly blurry distinction between fake and real media online.
Here is how some of these early AI markup systems could work, what the limitations are, and what users can do to navigate our confusing post-truth internet reality in the meantime.
The devil is in the metadata
When you look at an image on social media or a search engine today, odds are you don’t know where the photo came from — let alone if it was created by AI. But underneath the hood, there’s often a form of metadata, or information associated with the digital image file, that tells you basic details, like when and where the photo was taken. Some tech companies are now starting to add specific metadata about AI to their products at the moment of creation, and they’re making that information more public in an effort to help users determine the authenticity of what they’re looking at.
Google recently said it will start marking up images made by its own new AI systems in the original image files. And when you see an image in Google Search that’s made by Google’s AI systems, it will say something like “AI-generated with Google” underneath the image. Going a step further, the company announced it’s partnering with publishers like Midjourney and stock photography site Shutterstock to let them self-tag their images as AI-generated in Google Search. This way, if you come across a Midjourney image in Google Search, it will say something like “Image self-labeled as AI-generated.”
Google Search public liaison Danny Sullivan said that this kind of AI labeling is part of a broader effort to give people more context about images they’re seeing.
”If we can show you a helpful label, we’re going to want to do that,” said Sullivan, “but we’re also going to want to try to give you background information that we can determine independent of the label.”
That’s why Google is also adding an “About this image” feature next to image search results — whether they are AI labeled or not — that you can click and see when the image was first indexed by Google, where it may have first appeared, and where else it’s been seen online. The idea is, if you searched for, say, “Pentagon explosion” and saw a bunch of images in the results, you would be able to see a fact-checked news article debunking the piece.
“These tools are really designed to help people understand information literacy more and bake it into the search product itself,” said Sullivan.
Other major industry players have also been working on the issue of how to label AI-generated content. In 2021, a group of major companies including Microsoft, Adobe, the BBC, and Intel created a coalition called the C2PA. The group is tasked with helping to create an interoperable open standard for companies to share the provenance, or history of ownership, of a piece of media. C2PA created its first open standard last January, and since then, Adobe and Microsoft have released features using that standard.
For example, if you’re a photographer at a news outlet, you can mark when a specific picture was taken, who took it, and have that be digitally signed by your publisher. Later, your editor could make changes to the photo, signing it again with a seal of authenticity that it’s been verified by the C2PA standard. This way, you know that the photo was taken by a person — not generated by AI— and know who has made edits to it and when. The system uses cryptography to preserve the privacy of sensitive information.
“Now you can read the entire lineage of the history of a piece of digital content,” said Mounir Ibrahim, EVP of public affairs and impact at Truepic, a visual authenticity app that is a member of C2PA. “The purpose of us is to help content consumers ... decipher the difference between synthetic and authentic.”
Knowing the history and provenance of an image could potentially help users verify the legitimacy of anything from a headshot on a dating app to a breaking news photo. But for this to work, companies need to adopt the standard.
Right now, it’s up to companies to adopt the C2PA standard and label verified content as they wish. The organization is also discussing potentially standardizing the look of the C2PA content credential when it shows up on images, Ibrahim said. In the future, the C2PA credential could be similar to the little padlock icon next to the URL in your browser window that signifies your connection is secure. When you see the proposed C2PA icon, you would know that the image you’re seeing has had its origins verified.
So far, two big C2PA members, Adobe and Microsoft, have announced tools that integrate C2PA standards into their products to mark up AI-generated content. Microsoft is labeling all AI-generated content in Bing Image Generator and Microsoft Designer, and Adobe is using C2PA standards in its new AI Firefly product’s content credentials.
“The biggest challenge is we need more platforms to adopt this,” said Ibrahim.
While the C2PA-style metadata labels work behind the scenes, another approach is for AI systems to add visible watermarks, as OpenAI has done with the rainbow bar at the bottom of DALL-E images. The company says it’s also working on a version of watermarking for its text app, ChatGPT. The challenge with watermarks, though, is that they can be removed. A quick Google search turns up forms of people discussing how to circumvent the imprint.
Another imperfect option is technology that can detect AI-generated content after the fact. In January, OpenAI released a tool that lets you cross-check a block of text to determine whether it’s likely written by AI. The problem, though, is that by OpenAI’s own assessment, the tool is not fully reliable. It correctly identified only 26 percent of AI-written texts in OpenAI’s evaluations, although it’s notably more accurate with longer than shorter text.
“We don’t want any of our models to be used for misleading purposes anywhere,” said a spokesperson for OpenAI in a statement. “Our usage policies also require automated systems, including conversational AI and chatbots, to disclose to users that they are interacting with our models.”
At the end of the day, even if these early AI flagging and identification systems are flawed, they’re a first step.
What comes next
It’s still early days for tech platforms trying to automate the identification of AI-generated content. Until they identify a dependable solution, however, fact-checkers are left manually filling in the gaps, debunking images like the Pope in a puffy jacket or fake audio of politicians.
Sam Gregory, executive director of human rights and civic journalism network Witness, who works with fact-checkers largely outside of the US, said that while he thinks technical solutions to AI identification like watermarking are promising, many fact-checkers are worried about the onslaught of misinformation that could come their way with AI in the meantime. Already, many professional fact-checkers are dealing with far more content to check than humanly possible.
“Is an individual going to be blamed because they couldn’t identify an AI-generated image? Or is a fact-checker going to be the one to take the strain because they’re overwhelmed by this volume?” said Gregory. The responsibility to address AI misinformation “needs to lie on the people who are designing these tools, building these models, and distributing them,” he added.
In many cases, Gregory says, it’s unclear exactly what social media platforms’ rules are about allowing AI-generated content.
TikTok has one of the more updated policies around “synthetic media,” or media that is created or manipulated by AI. The policy, which was revised in March 2023, allows synthetic media but requires that, if it shows realistic scenes, the image must be clearly disclosed with a caption, sticker, or otherwise. The company also doesn’t allow synthetic media that contains the likeness of any private figure or anyone under 18. TikTok says it worked with outside partners like the industry nonprofit Partnership on AI for feedback on adhering to a framework for responsible AI practices.
“While we are excited by the creative opportunities that AI opens up for creators, we are also firmly committed to developing guardrails, such as policies, for its safe and transparent use,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement. “Like most of our industry, we continue to work with experts, monitor the progression of this technology, and evolve our approach.”
But many other platforms have policies that might need some updating. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube both have general rules against manipulated media that misleads users, but those could be clarified regarding what uses are acceptable or not, according to Gregory. Meta’s fact-checking policies state that manipulated media containing misinformation is eligible for fact-checking by its third-party partners, as it did with the fake Pentagon AI explosion claims.
“AI is bigger than any single person, company, or country, and requires cooperation between all relevant stakeholders,” Meta said in a statement. “We are actively monitoring new trends and working to be purposeful and evidence-based in our approach to AI-generated content.”
Technological solutions to help people fact-check content themselves, like AI detection systems and watermarks, couldn’t come sooner.
But NYU’s Tucker says we need to test these solutions to see whether they’re effective in changing people’s minds when they encounter misleading AI content, and what the disclosures need to look to be impactful. For example, if the disclosures that an image or video is AI-generated are too subtle, people could miss it entirely. And sometimes, labels don’t work as expected. For example, Tucker co-authored a study last year showing that high- or low-quality news credibility labels had limited effects on people’s news consumption habits and failed to change people’s perceptions.
Still, there’s hope that if AI disclosures are seen not as politicized fact-checks but as neutral context about the origins of an image, they could be more effective. To know whether these labels are resonating with people and changing their minds will require more research.
There is an urgency to figure out these problems as AI-generated content floods the internet. In the past, tech companies had time to debate the hypothetical risks of AI misinformation because mainstream generative AI products weren’t yet out in the wild. But those threats are now very real.
These new tools that label AI-generated content, while far from perfect, could help mitigate some of that risk. Let’s hope tech companies move forward with the necessary speed to fix problems that come with AI as quickly as they’re being created.

Utopia Private Messenger is more than just a messaging app. It is a fully decentralized platform that puts you in control of your data and communications. With features like end-to-end encryption, anonymous accounts, and no central servers, you can communicate and collaborate with complete peace of mind. And now, with ChatGPT, you can have a personal assistant right at your fingertips.
It is a fully decentralized messaging platform, is proud to announce the addition of ChatGPT, your personal assistant available 24/7 right after installing the app. ChatGPT uses artificial intelligence to answer your questions and provide helspful information in real-time.
With Utopia Messenger, you can have the power of ChatGPT in your pocket, absolutely free of cost. It is a powerful tool that can help you with a variety of tasks. Whether you need help finding a restaurant nearby, looking up the latest news, or just want to chat with a friendly virtual assistant, ChatGPT has got you covered. Plus, with Utopia Messenger’s commitment to privacy and security, you can be sure that all your conversations with ChatGPT are completely confidential.
With it you can send instant text and voice messages, transfer files, create group chats and channels, news feeds, and conduct a private discussion. A channel can be geotagged using integrated uMaps which simplifies the Utopia channel search and adds an additional security layer. As a result there is no need to use public map services which are known to collect your data to feed Big Data massives.
WHAT YOU CAN DO USING UTOPIA?
While using Utopia, you can send personal messages or particulate in a group chat (both public and private), send internal uMail (email used only inside the ecosystem), send voice messages, share files with your friends, make financial transactions denominated in our own cryptocurrency called Crypton. All of this in total privacy.
Even better, while using Utopia you will be earning Cryptons through a process called mining which does not slow down your computer. There is nothing more satisfying than using your favorite software and earning simultaneously.
WHY USE UTOPIA OVER OTHER SYSTEMS AND MESSENGERS?
It is important to note that Utopia is not a whitepaper, some abstract idea or statement of intent. This is a fully functional software product ready to be used. This makes Utopia a one-of-a-kind decentralized ecosystem with no true alternative or comparison. Key Privacy features of the Utopia ecosystem:

• A truly decentralized peer-to-peer ecosystem with no point of failure
• Interception-proof advanced encryption based on elliptic curves
• It cannot be banned by internet censorship
• No third-party software is involved, all tools are available within the Utopia ecosystem
• No-one collects your data such as Chat messages, Emails, IP address or Geolocation
• Local storage is encrypted by 256-bit AES protecting all of your data, history and settings

Website: https://u.is

I hope to find a kind-hearted woman to build a lasting relationship with. Genuine and kind, someone I can talk to about anything and everything. I want a partner who's excited to share their knowledge and experiences with me, grow together, learn new things from each other, and connect on a deeper level. You can share your thoughts and ideas with me, and I'll be happy to discuss all kinds of topics. I want us to build a wholesome relationship where being there for each other is enough.
This part is about what I'm looking for in a relationship: - Mutual love an respect and care, my chest will be your pillow while we binge episodes and watch a lot of things while cuddling, romantic dinners, cooking together, enjoying life to the fullest , holding hands while walking , going to the beach, traveling to new places, trying new things and experiencing what life has to offer together :) . Being there for each other through good and bad times . You can always count on me and tell me everything, I will be the shoulder you can lean on. I'm very romantic and I have a lot of love to give. When we are together expect me to always hug you, kiss you on your forehead, hold your hands and express my love to you and how much you mean to me while I look deeply into your eyes . Romantic moments and lovely things like giving each other pet names, making you bed surprise breakfasts. Tons of Cuddles and hugs . I will always sheer you up, motivate you, and help you . I'll always be there for you.
Currently located in Morocco. I'm looking for someone 20 or older who's okay with long-distance until we figure things out.
As for my physical attributes, I have light brown skin, black hair, and brown eyes, average looking guy. I used to train in calisthenics and weightlifting, but I had to stop due to shoulder injuries. Personality-wise, I'm an ENFP MBTI type with a bubbly, caring, affectionate, patient, and ambitious personality. I'm easy-going, non-judgmental, and an ambivert depending on the day. I have a good sense of humor and always make my friends laugh. My hobbies and sports include running, calisthenics, cycling, cooking, and hiking. I enjoy reading, playing video games, traveling, camping, watching movies, TV shows, documentaries, and anime.
I can speak four languages fluently and hope to learn more in the future. I love to do many activities like having long walks and exploring new places. When it comes to indoors, I'm very creative at finding ways to enjoy our time. I love discussing all kinds of topics; we can talk about anything from history, geography, cinema, sports, religion, philosophy, languages, food, politics, spiritualism, video games, travel, cultures, technology, and more.
Regarding religion, I'm agnostic, and I don't believe in any religions. I'm still searching for the truth, so I don't have a problem with you being from any religion.
When it comes to films, TV shows, and anime, it's hard to pick favorites, so you can ask me later. As for music, I enjoy classic hip-hop, rap, rock/post-rock, jazz, 80s music, some metal, classic, ambient, pop, and soundtracks. I used to watch anime growing up, and I still enjoy it, but I don't watch it as much as years go by, still watching certain weekly releases.
Thank you for reading through all this! If you're interested, please contact me through DM or chat. Introduce yourself and tell me a bit about you, write more than Hey.

Forgive my formatting errors. Reddit's formatting guide is dumb.

Miles needs to get his happy ending. Not because we all love him, not because he's the protagonist or a Mary-Sue, but because he, as a character, has PROVEN that he can make it happen. "You're the best of all of us Miles. You're on your way. Just keep goin'" Aaron's dying words are prophetic. Every single person, save Miguel, that Miles has a interaction with is changed for the better through said interaction. They KNOW something is different about him, not just because he's the original anomaly, but his personality, his actions and deeds make them change their minds. It started with Peter B. Parker, then it moved to Gwen and the other three, even Aunt May and his dad. In Spiderverse 2, Gwen and Spider-Dad change their minds. Spider-Man India, Miles saved his girlfriend's dad AND the little girl when it wasn't supposed to happen (sure it caused another problem but Miles still SAVED them). Hobie saw something in Miles that caused him to be a mentor, to plant those seeds of rebellion...And create the D-Bracelet he gives to Gwen. It is Miles who ultimately will correct the course of the Spider-Community because it led to nearly ALL of them being told "We're supposed to be the good guys" by Gwen. You can see that radiate, however subtly, through the foreground characters in that moment AND the background spiders. Miles is incredibly smart. He is determined. He can save his dad AND the Spiderverse so long as he is given a chance. That is what they begin to realize and snap out of the tunnel vision that Miguel had them all looking through. The entire assembled Spider-Verse could not stop him, so what is to say that he can't beat the odds with his Canon Event? And again, yes, Miles is the main character of these movies, but main characters are, at least in the great stories, not promised their happy ending. They have to EARN it, and I fully believe the Miles has proven that he can.

Thank you for coming to my Spider-TEDtalk.

Hello!
Looking for a song/music video that was uploaded to YouTube between 10-15 years ago. Video was fairly popular, and consisted of a bunch of clips from movies such as Back to the Future, Predator, Star Wars, No Country For Old Men and more. The beat of the song was made with someone whistling from a movie and someone throwing a baseball repeatedly against a wall. The lyrics are a mash up of Arnold saying "Come on, do it!" from Predator and someone else saying "Chop Chop". I believe the person who made/uploaded the video either had master chief in their name or had a picture of master chief. I know this isn't much to go on, but it's all I remember at the moment. I originally saw the song in the early 2010s on a Ludeon Blog Post for Rimworld, not that this information adds much.
Thank you for your help searching!

Due to an influx of need for writing help and such, here are the top three websites I recommend when asking about Canon:

The ASOIAF Wiki and A Search of Ice and Fire and Interactive Map of Game of Thrones

​

The Wiki of Ice and Fire is dedicated to the A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones series. It is a fan-curated community website.

This website is best for looking at character profiles: compiled KNOWN history & info of each character, summaries of book chapters, religions, and settings. What to know canon family trees? What a character did and why they did do or did not do such and such? Who is related to who? What marriage proposals were on the table but didn't occur?

Search the full text of Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire books.

If you are looking for a direct quote and know the keyword(s) this site is fantastic. Looking for direct book evidence in an argument or a quote to twist and paraphrase for your fic? This site is most useful.

A map of Westeros and the rest of the known world in Game of Thrones and the Song of Ice & Fire novels.

This map allows you to follow either the show or book journeys of characters in this map. See where a character moves per chapter OR episode. Now, the characters available are only from the main series and notably the main characters. The interactive map's timeline starts and ends with 298 AC as per the first book to 300 AC as per the last published chapters of the series AND the first episode of GoT to the last episode of the tv series.

I write book reviews on Half Past Midnight, a blog dedicated to the surreal world of fantasy and science fiction. A few days ago, I posted reviews for the first two books in this series. While this review does not have spoilers about book 3, it does have spoilers for books 1 and 2.
Welcome to my humble appreciation post for the third book in the A Chorus of Dragons series. Or better yet - call it the rollercoaster which never ends.

Plot

The Name of All Things ended on a bitter note with the destruction of Atrine after Morios completely wrecked the city. Vol Karoth, previously imprisoned for thousands of years, is now finally awake. Relos Var won (once again). Things tend to go your way when you've planned each of your steps centuries ahead of your enemies.
Although not fully free of his bonds, Vol Karoth has now woken up from his deep slumber. That is pretty terrifying. Knowing that some part of Kihrin's soul is somehow connected to this dark, endless entity is also terrifying.

No one could truly see Vol Karoth. He formed a man-size hole cut from reality, a silhouette of absolute, perfect blackness. His appearance offered up the final, absolute proof of my worst nightmares: Vol Karoth was free.

The only thing that can possibly stop the utter annihilation of the world is the ancient Ritual of Night. Meant to be enacted by the leader of an immortal race, this ritual could give the Eight more time to figure out how to deal with the impending destruction of the world. As it turns out, it can only be performed once by each race, and at a terrible cost. Since its creation, The Ritual of Night has already been enacted by three of the four immortal races - the voras, voramer, and vordreth - leaving only the vané. They have just one shot to do it, and to do it right.
Kihrin, Janel, Teraeth, and Thurvishar start this book with a single objective - to convince the vané king, Kelanis, to perform The Ritual of Night. And as usual, nothing goes according to the plan. Why am I not surprised?
Traveling to Manol makes for quite a change from the usual locales we are accustomed to, and boy - is it fun. A lot of old characters finally come back - I was glad to see a lot of the first book's cast return. Therin, Khaeriel, and Terindel (Doc) show up amid a lot of family drama, which is one of the best parts of the book. It was great to see a lot more quieter moments this time, since we don't usually see the more intimate side of the characters while they are dealing with whatever nightmares haunt them. Nonetheless, those scenes, although intimate in scale, often add a lot of depth since they reveal what really drives the characters on a personal level.
What it results in is a story chock full of morally grey characters switching sides, refreshing worldbuilding, little side quests, and lots of vané politics. I loved all chapters equally. Although Xivan and Talea are a little boring to me as characters, having Senera and Suless around ensures there's never a dull moment.
I really enjoyed how Lyons handled the past lives of Janel, Kihrin, and Teraeth. Each of them has reincarnated over the centuries as notable people in history. While Teraeth remembers those lives in clear detail, the other two don't. Very aptly named, this book spent a lot of time exploring what happened in those previous lives, and I loved it. So many more things start to make sense about Elana, S'arric, and the dark connection between Kihrin and Vol Karoth.

The memories are too much, so overflowing I feel like a cup trying to hold the ocean. I can only gulp mouthfuls, knowing it would take me centuries to swallow the sea. I am drunk on memory, drowned in my identities. It hasn’t just been one or two. I’ve lived a dozen lives. But that first one lasted ten times longer than all the rest combined.

At last, The Memory of Souls gave me something I'd been waiting for. Just Kihrin, Janel, Teraeth, and Thurvishar hanging out together, fighting demons and bantering. Part of the reason why this book works so well is that the narration is nowhere near as convoluted as before, and all our favorite characters finally are TOGETHER. Give me a great cast, and I'll go anywhere with them.
The ending of this book had some events that felt a lot more permanent than the previous ones. The course of our characters is now set in stone. There was a tipping point, and now there is no turning back on the consequences.

Characters

I found it weird that almost none of the side characters from The Name of All Things made it to this book, and I’m a little annoyed at that. Why make a whole book about them?
Nonetheless, there are a lot of complex, interpersonal relationships uncovered between the characters - both old and new. I love that no matter how big the threat facing them is, everyone still has their personal problems with family members, both close and estranged. The Memory of Souls exposed the darker side of a lot of different people. How far would you go to achieve your goals and who are you willing to sacrifice for it?

Kihrin

As always, Kihrin brings with him a chaotic, confused energy that so helpfully lends itself to this glorious mess of a book. Despite everything he's seen and everything he's undergone - Kihrin still marches on, determined to save the people he cares for. Although marked by prophecy, he still takes the agency to make his own choices, no matter how painful a path they might lead him to. Between his feelings for Teraeth and Janel and Vol Karoth's hold on him, the poor guy goes through a lot.

“You’re terrible,” Janel murmured.
“I’m honest,” I whispered into her ear. “And you are music and songs and the light of a thousand stars. You are storm clouds and velvet skies and brilliant columns of fire. How can I not be drawn to you?”

Teraeth

Teraeth finally gets a POV and some excellent character development. Although we only saw him as Kihrin's best friend in The Ruin of Kings, this book explores the deeper scars left on him by his past lives and the messed up dynamics between him, his mother, Khaemezra (Thaena), and his father, Terindel the Black. Thaena has her claws in him deep. This time around, we see a lot more flaws in her real nature as a manipulator who moves people around to do her dirty work, as well the effect it has on the said people - including her own son.

Janel

Janel, surprisingly, is almost relegated to a side character. There are chapters where she does nothing more than serve as a point of conflict between Kihrin and Teraeth. I found this really upsetting since The Name of All Things focused sorely on her as a character and made me love her as much as Kihrin. But this time, Lyons sees her more as a plot device to unlock Elana's memory and not as a person, as Janel Therannon, in her own right. Although she still has her conflicts with Suless and Xaltorath, I wish she felt more involved in the plot.

Relos Var and Senera

Relos Var is an accurate reflection of what happens when you believe in your cause so strongly that you cannot see anything past it. Senera, blinded by her faith in him, still can't quite realize that she is nothing more than a tool in his hands. Although I found her a little annoying last book, she seems to have matured this time, bringing a sort of quiet tiredness to the table with her valuable magic skills. I don't know if I could call them both villains, though. This book makes it clear that there is no black and white, no good and bad - everyone's morality is in those varying shades of grey.

Worldbuilding

History-wise, this novel sheds more light on the origins of the Eight, the dragons, and the Ritual of Night, as well as Vol Karoth's creation. I'd been looking forward to these bits for a while, and you finally get more answers. I love how the series always goes a step back into the history of the world with every book. It's a bit like peeling the layers of an onion - every part pulls back the curtain on yet another aspect of history.

Writing Style

This book still follows the jumpy narrative style of its predecessors but with a lot more POVs. Mercifully, the time gaps are not too huge and the chapters are chronological (for the most part). The different points of view and timelines are aligned in a way that the reveals make the most sense - the timelines in the past always coincide with a relevant chapter in the present. This would have taken a sheer amount of effort to get right, but it shines.
The story takes us from the dry, void reaches of the Korathean Blight to the exotic, lush jungle of the vané. Overall, the writing just seemed leveled up this time. I'm not sure why, but the prose and the choice of words seemed a whole lot better. The great dialogue and witty banter are always a plus.

In Conclusion

The Memory of Souls is a gift that keeps on giving. This might be my favorite book of the series and the year. This was the book that made trudging through The Name of All Things absolutely worth it. Despite some minor misgivings, this is the strongest installment yet in a series that rewards its readers with great characters, rich world-building, and twists that subvert expectations. Onward and upward to the next one!