#i changed my mind on that they just remain black i think its cool that way

[sirenspells]

[Amnesiac Omori AU]

Grown up Omori concepts! My idea for the final chapter of the fic for this AU is that it's an epilogue that takes place ten years in the future (so he's ~22 years old in this pic), so it's got me thinking about what Omori's like when he's older

Notes:

He dyed his hair partially white to honor his past self and to signify how he's accepted his past as part of himself

He's aroace! Never ends up settling down with anyone and is perfectly happy and content about it <3

Not depicted here but for his career I imagine he goes into computer programming!

I'm thinking he maybe becomes roommates with Andrew, no matter what though him and Andrew remain very close

The main conflict for the epilogue's story is that Omori develops a tendency to overwork himself, which is something his friends help him deal with

[majestyeverlasting]

𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

Paring Eddie Munson x Reader 

Summary In the wake of a storm, you seek out Eddie because he gives the best hugs and may be the only person in Hawkins who has the answers you need [fluff, 2.1k]

A/N Eddie didn’t come back wrong. Not in the way you’re thinking, at least. But he does hear things from time to time…

The sweet scent of wet earth lingers inescapably as you pedal, bike wheels whirring softly as they weave around potholes filled with rain. The familiar stillness that follows every storm has settled over Hawkins. Cool droplets fall from tree branches onto your skin, contrasting the warm fall air. With the wind at your face, the heaviness in your chest begins to lift as you travel further from home. 

When you arrive, rain drips from the Forest Hills entrance sign. The old, chipped wood has survived years of vandalism and wear. Puddles of water have collected on the gravel road, and colorful toys have sunken into muddy portions of front yards. The closer you get to Eddie’s trailer, the more you hear muffled music permeating from within the four walls. 

The lights are on, visible through the curtains. It isn’t until you’re close enough to dismount your ride that you realize you’re hearing Ozzy Osbourne. Eddie’s voice passionately joins in as the chorus circles back around, a smile pulling at your lips as you rest your bike against his trailer. 

The moment you knock on the door, he quiets. There’s brief shuffling, then purposeful footsteps until he’s finally swinging it open. The way his eyebrows shoot up at the sight of you is comical. A guitar solo pours out to greet you as well. 

His curly hair is pulled back in a low, messy bun and a black pair of pajama pants ride his hips. Every time you see him, there seem to be more designs inked across his pale skin. They’re down his arms, splayed across his chest. The dragon was your favorite of them all. Snaked along the side of his rib cage with its mouth bared, shielding a splotch of scars. 

“You’re goin’ off the rails, huh?” There’s a playful lilt to your voice as you quote the lyrics back to him, tilting your head. 

His cheeks flush as he opens the door wider for you, your perfume wafting as you walk in. “Every day of my life—fuck me, I can’t believe you heard all that,” he groans, running a hand down his face. 

After shutting the door, he turns off the stereo. You sigh as you toe off your vans and take a relaxed look around the small space. With Crazy Train having come to an end, you can hear the TV quietly droning about the possibility of more rain. 

For as much as there was that changed in the world, this place seldom did. With its warm lamplight and eternal coziness. The air smelled of pine, underscored with smoke. Even the mug shelves and baseball caps hanging on the walls have stood the test of time. 

When your eyes meet again, he offers a boyish grin that settles under your skin. “Wasn’t expecting your pretty face today.” He tucks some wispy flyaways behind his ears. 

“Sorry I didn’t call first,” you say. “I just needed to get out of the house...needed to see you.” Eddie doesn’t miss the brief shadow that flickers in your eyes, as though another thought is protesting from a cage in the back of your mind. 

As much as he’s tempted, he doesn’t coax it out. “Nothing wrong with a good ol’ change of scenery.” He lifts his brows in that charming way of his. “Not that this is the Four Seasons or anything—” 

Before he knows it, your arms are around him. A hum vibrates through his chest as you tuck your nose into the warmth of his skin. As he hugs you in return, the remaining tension melts right from your shoulders, pooling at your feet. Once he’s sure you’re feeling better, he starts rocking from side to side until your smile slips through. 

You try to pull away, but he only squeezes tighter. “Eddie,” you whine through a giddy laugh. 

“Nope, you’ve gotta commit now,” he quips. “I don’t make the rules, angel.” Hearing that, you relax into him, exhaling at the playfulness and familiarity of his embrace. 

“How do you do it?” You murmur into him like he’s some sort of magic. 

He smooths his palm up your back, gently massaging at the base of your neck. “Do what?” 

“Make everything better,” you whisper, feeling the rest of your worries dissolve under his touch. 

A weak chuckle rumbles through his chest as he pulls back to look at you. The honesty in your eyes makes him feel like he’s an imposter. Like he’s somehow got you fooled. “I don’t know about everything...” 

Life has been different since the Upside Down. There were scars from that day that were never going to fade, engraved beyond skin deep. It was the voices from before, the rumors and taunts, that made him feel like he was that same punk teenager who corrupted everything he touched. Like being himself was innately wrong. 

It was hard to believe that someone like you genuinely enjoyed his company, found him helpful, thought he was good. But he was getting better about it because he didn’t make it this far for those old voices to hold the same power. These days, new voices echoed around him, not confined to memories but strikingly real, intimately near. Never unkind, just disembodied and drifting through the in-between. 

They didn’t scare him anymore. He learned when to listen and when to tune them out. Something was bound to follow after he crawled his way back to the land of the living. Nevertheless, he’s grateful for a second chance at life. If things had ended any differently, he never would’ve seen how much better things could get—or cross paths with you. 

You think for a moment before speaking up again, “Then we’ll agree to disagree.” 

Eddie takes your chin between his forefinger and thumb, eyes flitting over your face in awe. You grow shy under his gaze, and that’s when he leans in to kiss you, his plush lips soft and slow. A satisfied sound rises in your throat as you trail your hands along his waist, feeling the different textures of his scarred skin beneath your fingertips. 

Caught up in the warmth of your mouth and the pleasant stirring in his gut, he doesn’t feel you pull the elastic from his hair, letting it cascade down over his shoulders. However, he smiles at the feeling of your fingertips gently scratching his scalp. 

“I got something for you,” he eventually whispers, pecking your lips one last time before heading to his bedroom. 

Butterflies dance in your stomach as you trail after him, toying with the hem of your shirt. You take a seat on the foot of his bed, watching him saunter to his nightstand, humming under his breath. Your eyes drift to the dagger tattooed between his shoulder blades, the blade descending a short way down his spine. 

“Close your eyes,” he instructs, turning back around with something hidden behind his back. Eddie snickers as he approaches, your eyes adorably shut. It’s a contagious sound. The bed dips as he takes a seat, his thigh pressing against yours. 

He taps your nose with something soft, prompting you to open your eyes. 

It’s a small stuffed ghost with two black buttons for eyes, and an even smaller one for a mouth. You’re quiet as you take it from him, thoughtfully turning it over in your hands. Shaped like a comma, it has two adorable arms raised up from the sides. Faint stitching is visible along the perimeter like it was homemade. Eddie shifts and scratches the back of his neck, unsure how to interpret your silence.

A smile finally breaks across your face. “He’s adorable. Where’d you get him?” 

Eddie runs a relieved hand through his hair. “You’re not gonna believe me, but Wayne and I went to visit Ruth in the nursing home the other day. You remember her? The lady who used to live a couple trailers down.” You nod, encouraging him to continue. “They happened to be having one of those activity days where someone comes in to lead a craft or whatever…“

“And you stayed?”

He kisses your cheek. “Bingo.” Then his voice grows fond. “All I could think about was making one for you.”

Warmth spreads throughout your chest. “I’m gonna name him Ghostie.“

The distant sound of a car door shutting makes you jump and look towards the window. Eddie almost laughs, but stops himself at the way your shoulders slump in dejection. Like you’re upset at yourself for reacting.  

He leans in, talking carefully, “You alright?” You shake your head in dismissal, but his attentiveness doubles down. “Talk to me, Goose.” 

The reference makes you smile, and you nudge him for it. “I’ve just been a little on edge.” There’s something else you want to add, but don’t. Eddie’s ready to prod it out this time around, but you’re quick to tap his nose with the stuffed ghost. “I might just be going off the rails like you and Ozzy.” 

He huffs an amused breath. “Not gonna let that go, huh?” 

“Never.” 

•••

The rain starts back up again. Slowly, before pattering down harsher against the roof. By then, you’ve already eaten dinner and settled on the couch for Beetlejuice, the sun long set. Eddie’s arm rests over your shoulders as you lay asleep in his lap, Ghostie tucked into the crook of your elbow. He had a feeling things would end up this way.

When he shakes with a chuckle at yet another wacky scene, you stir. He doesn’t realize until you shift with a soft hum. “Shit. I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he practically coos, squeezing your shoulder. 

“How dare you laugh and be amused.” Your voice is soft and groggy in that way he adores.

“I know, I’m awful,” he agrees with feigned gravity. “Gotta go turn myself in. Tell the kids I love them.” You snort as you sit up, snuggling into his side with Ghostie in your lap. 

The lights flicker as a strong gust of wind blows outside. A concerned furrow forms between his brows at the way you gasp and stiffen. This jumpiness is unlike you. He rubs your arm in hopes of loosening you up, but darkness promptly envelopes the room. You can hardly see aside from mere outlines. 

The sides of the trailer creak as the wind continues, a bit fiercer than before. Eddie curses under his breath at the inconvenience, while you’ve grown even more rigid and silent. There’s a false glimmer of hope when the lights briefly flicker, but darkness soon prevails again.

“It’s okay,” Eddie assures, pulling you closer. “Wind’s just disturbing the lines. They’ll be back on in a second.” The lights flicker before dying out again. 

Tears well in your eyes. Your voice wavers as you speak, “Eddie?” 

“I’m here,” he assures. “I’ll go grab a flash—”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” 

Now it's his turn to still. It’s not a foreign question, not by a longshot. It’s one that was peppered throughout his childhood, and always returned in the later half of every year when the nights began to grow a little longer. It’s the sound of your voice that sets it apart this time around. You’re not seeking an answer for fun or on a whim. You’re searching for a second opinion. Deep down you knew, out of every other soul in Hawkins, he’d have one to give. No one came back from the Upside Down without a few ties that lingered. 

He’s quiet for a while, the sound of wind and rain filling the space between you. 

“It’s not a matter of belief,” he finally says, swallowing hard. “If something’s real—God, Satan, ghosts, whatever…” he pauses. “It’ll keep existing whether you believe it does or not.” 

“So do you think…are ghosts real?” He can’t see your attentiveness, but he can hear it. 

He chuckles humorlessly, blindly taking your hand in his so you know he’s not making fun of you or messing around. 

The two of you start talking at the same time, “I—” 

“Can feel them,” you breathe. “At my house. It started a few days ago after you left.” 

Like he may have left them behind.

The lights stutter back on as the TV bursts back to life, somehow picking right back up. Eddie reaches for the remote and turns it off, his finger lingering on the button. When his attention settles back on you, there’s a sense of disbelief in his dark eyes, like he’s looking into a mirror for the first time in a while. 

“Feel them?” he slowly repeats, searching your gaze for more. 

“Hear their voices... like soft whispers,” you continue. “So I know they’re real.” 

There’s a thoughtful beat of silence.

“Me too.” 

- 

Thanks for reading! Feel free to let me know what you think. 

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[s7toru]

“spider! babe, there’s a spider in the house!”

your toast clatters on the plate as you drop everything and fling yourself onto the couch, four limbs scrambling to get off the floor. wide eyes seek out your boyfriend in the moment of chaos, and find him crouched on the tv stand, arms wrapped around the tv to hold him still. 

“where?” you ask him, eyes dropping to the ground. he doesn’t need to reply because you spot the creepy crawly darting cluelessly about on the carpet, eight legs crawling about in frantic panic. “oh my god, gojo! do something about it!” 

“are you kidding? you’re out of your mind if you think i’m getting anywhere near that thing!”

your mind blanks at his refusal. “you won’t have to get anywhere near it, dummy. just turn on your infinity and smack it or something!” 

gojo remains wrapped around the tv, already shaking his head even before the last of your sentence leaves your mouth. “that’s not how it works.” 

“really. then, please, remind me why you can’t just use your infinity to kill the spider.” 

“listen, even if it’s on i’ll still be aware that i’m squishing the bug. all its bug juice will splatter out all over me!”

“over your infinity.” you correct him. 

“you didn’t listen.” 

you narrow your eyes at him. “i didn’t want to get rid of the wasp nest outside our house the other day either but i still had to do it. and i don’t even have something to keep them away from me!”

“you lost the rock paper scissors, i had no hand in that.”

“well.” you say. “technically you did. you had a hand, it was a rock.” 

gojo rolls his eyes. “don’t be dramatic, i was supporting you.”

“from inside the house.” you recall his face beaming at you through the window, hand flashing a thumbs up as you were armed with only a rake and your willpower, and your frown deepens.

“and yet, i was still supporting you.” gojo pauses, considering. “you did well, by the way. i’ve never seen anyone smack a wasp mid air like that.” 

the compliment lifts some anger off your shoulders and you grin. “thanks! i was proud of that too!” reality slaps you across the face, readjusting your expression. “wait, don’t think you can change the topic just by complimenting me.” 

he shrugs. “it was worth a try.” 

you pause. “does that mean you didn’t mean it?”

“no! you were actually cool.”

you smile again. “okay, thanks.” 

“the sound it made was really satisfying.” he adds.

“right? like pow.” you gesture an explosion with your hands and watch as gojo gives you a skeptical look.

“really? i thought it was more like thwack.” his voice turns all dramatic at the last syllable and you scoff at his attempt.

“if this was a marvel comic the sound effect that would show up would be pow. in all red too, with crazy fonts.” 

“this is like you saying math is red—”

“it is.” you cut in, matter-of-factly.

“you’re so wrong it hurts. english is red, math is blue.” 

“why would math be blue?”

“because i feel sad doing math.”

“okay fair. but english is green.”

“none of them is green.” 

you furrow your brows. not because of his horrid opinion, but because your eyes had found its way back on the ground. you notice a lack of legs, a lack of a small, black creature terrorising the carpet. "wait, where did the spider go?"

the complain on gojo's tongue dies, and he looks around, too.

your biggest fear becomes reality, and when you look back up at gojo to express your concern, it's there.

something was crawling up gojo’s arm. it fumbles up the fabric of his shirt, swimming through the folds. your mouth falls open but before you can scream out to warn him, gojo's eyes had already followed your gaze. “it’s on me!”

“flick it off!” you cry out in panic, weight shifting as you edge further away from him, though you were nowhere close.

gojo reaches up, prepping his fingers for an attack when you realise the trajectory was aimed towards you. 

“wait, babe! flick it away from us!”

“then we’re going to lose sight of it!” the skin of his finger was turning white at the strength building up behind the flick. if the impact wasn't enough to kill it, the speed in which it hits the surface would send it to the afterlife. “no time to think!” 

he releases his index finger from his thumb and the force smacks the spider head on. it’s a blur really, as the spider flies through the air. you gape at it horrified, watching as if in slow motion as it soars in a beautiful arc, and lands directly on the very top of your head. 

you wonder if your scream could shatter glass. considering that your house still had its windows, you realise it couldn’t. though, you’re sure if you were tested again that it wouldn’t end as cleanly.

“gojo!” you scream. “i don’t ask for much but can you please get it off me, i’m begging you!”

gojo steps down from the tv stand, relief on his face. “thank god it’s off the floor.”

“gojo!” 

“yes, yes.” he makes his way, slowly, painfully, over to you as you crouch frozen on the couch. something in his smile told you he was very pleased at the sight. was that a cramp creeping up your thigh? oh, how you were going to make him pay. “where did it go?” he asks, joyfully, dancing around you.

“don’t even joke.” you hiss at him, and he laughs, reaching over to let the spider walk on his finger. specifically, he lets the spider walk over his finger on his infinity. 

he holds it out to you with a proud smile. “there! we’re all safe and sound now.” 

you glare at him. “what happened to being deathly scared of the spider?” 

he shrugs. 

you reach over and flick the spider onto his face.

a/n: brainrot save me, save me brainrot

[darkestspring]

Sometimes I wonder if you ever think about me the way I think about you.

with aegon x niece or sister reader please!

2k followers event | requests open

Maybe it would be easier if Aegon hated you as he hated your brothers. It would be much easier to just brush off the thoughts he always had of you.

He didn't care about Aemond, egging your brothers on to bully him without a thought and then stopping cold turkey when he saw your disapproving stare.

It hurt more any words, your disapproving stare as you guided your brother's away scolding them.

But that was then, he was a teenager then and he was a man now, just as you were no longer a girl but a woman. He still thought the same of you. Still yearned the same.

No amount of his mother's nagging or his grandfather's shouting could change his mind, he wanted you so badly that it felt like his heart was clawing its way out of his chest. It felt like if you didn't look at him or speak to him, he'd go crazy.

That's why in the several years you were aware after driftmark, he spent them drunk out of his mind or out in brothels, searching for girls that looked like you. But they were never the same and he ended up just giving up and keeping himself stupid drunk.

His every thought was consumed by you, you were drving him mad with your absence.

Come back, he pleaded drunkenly to himself, come back and soothe my heart so that I may be whole again. Take responsibility for what you have caused in me.

When you finally came back, wearing red and black, standing just a bit ahead of Jace, he felt like his breath had been stolen from him. It felt like finally all the fighting with his mother and protesting his farce of an attempted marriage to Helaena was worth it, you were back.

"Niece." His voice was smooth as he cornered you just outside of the chambers you were staying in for the remaining days of your visit.

"Uncle." Your voice was cool as you peered up at him through inquisitive eyes. "Someone might interpret this as something it is not."

"And what is this, niece?" Aegon tilted his head to the side. "Sometimes I wonder if you ever think about me the way I think about you." He whispered softly, thumb grazing over your bottom lip softly, eyes dark as he gazed down at you.

"Do you yearn painfully for me the way I do for you?" His voice turned almost raspy as he leaned closer to you.

You peered up at him almost studying him as you intently peered into his eyes. It seems you had found what you wanted in him that you cupped his cheeks softly with your hands and kissed him.

It felt like another fantasy, was he dreaming again because he missed you so dearly? He didn't care if he did because it was everything he imagined it to be.

He felt whole again.

[lvrtwn]

venus if she was awesome

speedpaint and more thoughts under the cut

venus has always been one of my favorite characters, though i feel her design is pretty underwhelming with a lot of wasted potential. this is kind of a redesign, kind of my own personal headcannon, and kind of how i imagined venus in my head as a kid.

this is supposed to be my version of g1 venus, more similar in facial features and keeping the straight hair. i absolutely love her new hair and face in g3 but im hesitant to call the new outfit an improvement. both g1s outfit and g3s outfit are bad in their own ways. i dont want it to seem like im shitting on the new design. again i think the face sculpts, hair, and body types of g3 are so awesome. its great to see more diversity being included in the designs. i just decided to go with g1 venuses look because thats the venus i grew up with

i definitely took some inspiration from g3s outfit for this design. i like the idea of it but the execution is just not great, not to say her original outfit is any better. i feel like out of all of tge original monsters she was the one with the most waisted potential. i love her personality and the abilities she has but the way she was styled has always bothered me.

in the movies shes described as “eco-punk” which is SUCH a cool style to go with a plant monster character. i just feel like the “punk” in “eco-punk” was never really represented in her outfits. i personally love punk music and clothing; ive been an active member in my local diy scene for many years and i love seeing all the outfits people put together.

i thought i would give her an outfit that shows off a couple of my personal favorite staples of punk style. big chunky leather boots with lots of straps and buckles. kept the shoe mouths from the original because they cool as hell. lots of leather, studs, spikes. i gave her denim cutoff shorts inspired by her gen 3 outfit, same with the torn black top. punk style has a big focus on comfort, practicality, and making things yourself. i imagine she cut a pair of old pants into shorts, roughly cut her “undead kennedys”band shirt tank into a crop top, and probably repurposed the remaining fabric. i also totally didnt draw this whole thing as an excuse to use that pun. i included asymmetrical leg accessories, with one fishnet stocking and one torn up sock. i also feel like she repurposed these, continuing to wear her old torn up socks instead of just throwing them out. i gave her a big chunky studded belt matching one of her cuffs with a recycling symbol belt buckle. i feel like it communicates an important aspect of her personality just at a glance, plus i just love big belt buckles. lastly i added piercings because 1. theyre cool and 2. i for some reason remembered her having an eyebrow piercing but i guess she never had one.

i mostly kept her body and hair the same. changed her ears and hair color slightly but thats just personal preference. i decided to make the vines on her body look more like tattoos instead of being 3d. i imagine she can make them grow into real vines, but when shes not using her powers theyre just flat against her skin. gave her a facial expression that made her look a little more unhinged. she might only do things for the good of the earth but she can still mind control people at will.

i wish i leaned a little bit more into the plant theming but im overall still super happy with how this came out. maybe ill made more monster high redesigns in the future

[alohomorasstuff]

mattheos tutor, slow burn, fluff, angst, trauma, shy school girl

thank u sm for giving me requests. I’ve gone for being Mattheo’s tutor in this one, it’s angsty however i definitely want to create a fic based on the reader being shy soon!

This is my first fic so pls let me know what you all think because i’m low-key proud I enjoyed reading it back 🙏🏽🙏🏽

warning- slightly mature themes but nothing too extreme

—————————————————————————————

Mattheo riddle x reader

Like ink-

Y/n’s audible sigh ricocheted off the cool stone walls of the dungeon in which she was currently suffering through potions in. The cause of this guttural sound was Professor Slughorn, stating that Y/n would be tutoring a fellow member of the class. Now, normally the girl would not mind, she was smart after all and took any chance to help others study as it helped her to consolidate her knowledge. However, the problem lay with who she had been tasked with tutoring for the next few weeks.

By no means was Y/N a terrible person. In fact, she was quite the opposite. She was popular- boys wanted to be with her, girls wanted to just simply be her. She was the Slytherin Princess in her own right. Shiny black locks, dark rich eyes that were deep,told a story with every flutter of her lashes. With no hesitation, Y/n flicked her eyes towards her subject and was met by two gorgeous pools of brown, flecked with gold. A playful, yet almost sinful glimmer flashed across his eyes and Y/n’s eyes darted down to his lips, his tongue dancing across them making them shine.

No.

Y/N redirected her lustful gaze into a hate fuelled scowl. Mattheo Riddle. The slytherin heir, prince, heartthrob was nothing worth falling for. His reputation for having girls like a revolving door made Y/N feel sick.Yes, his face was beautiful but his personality was nothing of the sort. Mattheo continued to smirk, seemingly amused by Y/N’s attempt at intimidation. “Do one Riddle”

“I’d much rather do you Princess” Mattheo chuckled , his curls bouncing across his forehead. Gosh was he beautiful.

“ Oh please, how many girls has that worked on this week?”Mattheo’s eyes remained playful, yet he abstained from answering, his eyebrow quirked in amusement instead.

Pathetic.

“Meet me at 7 in the library and do not be late or I will rip every single curl off of your obnoxiously large head”. This elicited a giggle to fall off Mattheo’s lips, a strange feeling brewing within Y/N’s stomach.

Stop it.

————————————————————————————

Studying with Mattheo was going well, until it wasn’t. Surprisingly, Mattheo was taking in what Y/N was telling him, brows furrowed in concentration as he scribbled down notes on his parchment. Y/N kept stealing glances at him, unaware that he was watching her every move. They continued working until they both reached towards the ink pot. Their hands clashed together sending the pot flying towards its victim - which just so happened to be Y/N’s blouse. The ink sunk into her shirt, spreading like poison leaving Y/N with a damp chest. She was shocked, but even more shocked at the reaction given by Mattheo. He looked guilty and began to apologise profusely, something Y/N was not expecting.

“Teo it’s fine, it’s fine don’t worry” Y/N sighed unsure of what to do. Mattheo’s ears pricked up.

“Teo?” he questioned, staring intently at Y/N.

“oh, I uh- oh be quiet you know what I meant. You’re nothing special Riddle and don’t ever think for a second that you are” she spat. Mattheo’s disposition suddenly changed. He began to move closer and Y/N’s breath hitched in her throat. “Don’t be such a brat Y/N. You know what happens to brats. They get punished. Do you want to be punished?” He groaned.

His lips danced across the skin on her neck and she suddenly felt vulnerable, the damp of her top now not the only wetness she could feel as she clenched her thighs. Mattheo took note of this. He knew she liked it, wanted it, needed it.

This was wrong, so wrong. Y/N had a burning hatred for him she was sure of it. “Go to hell riddle” .

Y/N suddenly felt a strong, muscular hand grip the base of her throat. She whimpered. “Tut tut Y/N. If I were to do that, who would be here to make you feel like this Princess?” he questioned, tightening his grip. He reached down with his spare hand and began to toy with the buttons of her shirt. “Would be such a pity if these were to just-“

Pop.

Y/N suddenly felt the cool air of the library across her chest and gasped. “Teo” she whispered. He looked towards her, his eyes now sinfully dark. “Say that again”.

All sense of wishing him dead had now dried up and the passion within her now began to spread like the ink on her now torn shirt.

“Please Teo, give me what I need”

“And what is that mí amor?”

“you”

Mattheo groaned and connected his lips with Y/N’s. She succumbed to him, allowed him to control her. He moved his head away, Y/N whimpering at the loss of contact.

“So needy, look at you so weak, so desperate for me. I knew it was an act. I knew the pathetic looks, the witty comments were just a facade. You want me. You need me. You know you do ” Mattheo purred, tangling his fingers through her hair.

“Do one Riddle”

“Let me”

And Y/N did; she knew she wanted him, needed him and that was what she was going to get.

————————————————————————————

Panting breaths, roaming hands, stolen kisses, the absence of clothes and the warmth of bare skin.

Mattheo and Y/N’s foreheads were pressed together as Mattheo coaxed her down from her high.

“Still want me to go to hell princess?” He cooed.

“only if you take me to heaven first” she breathed back.

And with that, he pressed his lips to hers gently, the creases of his now plump, red lips tattooing her smooth lips like ink, as if sealing them shut with a promise.

[thefirstknife]

idk if you've talked about this, but Maya says something interesting in her "final" message to the Young Wolf. She says the YW should ponder "iterations" of the conversation on the riverbank (iirc) but I don't remember the YW mentioned in the Dark Timeline, and in the Epistemic lore tab, Praedyth says "the figure always changes." Is the YW a unique individual or do they exist in other timelines too? (I feel like I've missed a few details so I'm hoping you can answer. 😅)

It's a really cool message that will be interesting to revisit from time to time.

I leave this to you now, when it is too early to act. Before you have the faculty to understand its gravitas. You were offered the age you've fought to restore. Everything we've lost. You won't find it on this narcissist's station. I will set it in front of you, finely crafted and tuned. You mistakenly label it hubris, and resist. And you know... failure is a catalyst: it breeds invention. Would you comprehend the endless permutations of our conversation on the riverbank? I was only trying to change your mind. To help you see a better future. That exchange... did not always end in your favor. It does not have to still. You believe my ideology, virulent. All right. Know that I have bled across time, and under the skin of the cosmos. My knowledge became its fabric, filled its vessels, through its mind. Humanity is scattered, yet to see a Collective, focused. But in this infinite network the Vex have created... There is one answer. A Golden Timeline... With a heavy cost.

It took a few reads for me to wrap my mind around this. Maya definitely confirms that this happened in multiple timelines, in some way. We're not really sure if it's exactly the same though, obviously, since we can't really check.

The interesting bit is that the few timelines that Elsie has seen, all of them have failed because, essentially, the YW never became what they did because we didn't destroy the Black Heart. Those timelines have failed completely. But there seems to be other timelines in which we do exist, except we're always someone else (kinda like keeping everyone's Guardian canon, in a way) which we know from Epistemic as you've noted, and it's really cool:

Some visions he gets once, while some come back over and over again. One recurring image: a piece of the Traveler cracked off from its body, lying belly-up in a forest, with a small figure standing in front of it. The figure changes every time, but the sickly glow of the Traveler doesn't.

This is us regaining our Light at the Shard of the Traveler in the Red War, so it's post-Black Heart.

I think the YW is unique in a way that they only exist in the timeline where they destroy the Black Heart (D1 base story), but since there's an unknown number of timelines, this person is always someone different (so there's no one canon YW, it could be any of us). There's also timelines where we never become the YW because Elsie never helps us and we never destroy the Black Heart and things spiral from there.

It always remains a question if anyone using the Vex and their Network and technology is actually seeing real existing things, or perhaps simulations or possibilities. I do wonder if they left Maya around with the Echo for some future purpose or at least to keep their options open. Also intrigued about her mentioning "a Golden Timeline" and if that will mean anything in the future or if it's just her yapping from the Network. I did not expect her to stay around and especially not with the Echo in her posession so I'm super excited about the possibility of storylines with this in the future.

[doomsdaydicecascader]

wow you’re the first person i’ve seen actually support the retcon, that’s cool

i’ve always been neutral on it but would you be down with explaining your opinions on the retcon?

so my number one feeling is that the way homestuck is most like a game is not in its framing or its many subsystems within itself, but in that homestuck is a challenge to the reader first and foremost. it challenges a lot of existing preconceptions about what stories are, what stories can be.

sometimes this is in some stupid ways, but a lot of the time, it's in very palateable ways. hussie describes stuff like the juxtaposition of the earthbound walksprite panels and hussnasty mode as a "creative power move", something that keeps readers on their toes, something which kind of prods at your expectations and why you have those expectations.

and it helps to ask, what challenge is homestuck presenting to me, the reader, by doing this. this is the repeated motion of homestuck, like. "oh, what, it's insane that there's a whole playable game", "oh, what, it's insane that the fallout and consequences of an entire session of the game is being given in just three walkarounds". rose's arc is a challenge to the idea of a "coming of age" story, how do you come of age into a world where the metrics for growth and maturity and adulthood are denied to you? what if "adulthood" and "maturity" were fake ideas all along? well, if nothing matters, maybe you should have a drink to rest your mind about it.

one of the most direct challenges is the challenge of what death means in a story - there are a lot of stories where death is a bad end for a character. an impactful enough character death can change culture around itself for as long as it remains relevant. but that's not what death is in homestuck. death in homestuck is the freedom from being in homestuck. this is most prevalent with its deployment of gnostic ideas - yaldabaoth's treasure being homestuck itself expresses this most directly. the creator has made a flawed world and encourages the suffering of its inhabitants.

death is freedom from this flawed world, and this is expressed in terezi: remem8er. characters who did terrible things, horrible things, unforgiveable things, can find peace in death.

and i think the retcon is far and away the headiest challenge, the final boss of storytelling in homestuck's terms, because it directly challenges the idea of continuity, which is, by the way, TOTALLY FAKE.

continuity isnt actually real, its a thing youre actively constructing as you read. the drawings, the words, the music, the animation, the gameplay - all these things can help shape the idea of art, but the art itself, that's produced by you, the reader. and i think this is a good time to switch over to talking about the never-ending story for a moment.

the never-ending story is a story about atreyu. he goes on a fantasy quest, one which involves the death of his beloved steed artax, the plight of the world of fantasia, and confrontations with the nothing, this devouring force which threatens to end it. and ultimately, he loses. the forces of the nothing are just too overwhelming for a fictional character to overcome. the stakes are too high, no ending could be satisfactory and not contrived.

but then he doesn't lose.

because the never-ending story, the movie, is about bastian, and the relationship and empathy he builds with atreyu as he follows him on his adventure, and bastian, as the reader, is capable of caring about atreyu and fantasia even as it's been reduced to nothing. and its bastian caring about it, and bringing his own context, his own experiences - the name of his dead mother - to the story, that allows it to be reborn as something that can be completed.

and then he rides on the big luck dragon falkor and barfs on the bullies from the start of the movie.

homestuck is doing the same thing, but filtered through the language of video games. if youre playing ff9 and lose to black waltz #3 or whatever, it's a video game, that's to be expected. just do better next time. you wiped on the trial, it's normal, regroup and pull again. youve got 90 minutes. and in that time, in that regression, you become the kind of person who could overcome that challenge.

and it's a powerful challenge! it's one most readers don't overcome, because they are still stuck in the terms of thinking about things in what they expect out of it, instead of what it is. and this is kind of the core idea of homestuck.

hussie put it the best themself:

Homestuck, as an examination of all forms of creative practice, whether cosmic or artistic, isolates the tension between perfect, celebrated idealization and specific, flawed instantiation. The purity of the ideal is what's initially sought, but the imperfection of the specific is what has true value. Conflict and suffering arise from the guilt and stress associated with overvaluing the former. Deliverance and humanity come from recognizing and embracing the latter.

and honestly, i like what the retcon does for basically all the characters it changes dramatically. people take issue with rose's alcoholism plotline being resolved with vriska_slap.png but i don't really, because rose's alcoholism isn't like, of itself if that makes sense. it's alcoholism as an extension of nihilism, in a way that doesn't reflect real alcoholism, but it doesn't have to. s'a story. things can mean things nonliterally.

and vriska regresses as a character, but i think this specific regression is the core of homestuck. you get the platonic ideal of vriska-ness, one who didn't see and feel the trauma she inflicted on tavros, one who has completely supplanted gamzee's role as the plot-mover guide in the alpha session. and one who only makes token gestures at reparations and atonement for her misdeeds. one who is still obsessed with being at the center. and between 2016 and 2019, i was so certain that she had died a heroic death in act 7 that it is an immovable core plot point of my own comic.

(homework: why would homestuck call act 7 the rapture?)

and like, those pre-retcon characters literally do still exist, they show up in remem8er. remem8er goes unbelievably hard on giving every single dead character in the comic the best catharsis available to them: deliverance from having to be in homestuck. and i mean that entirely sincerely! the best ending for a homestuck character is not being in homestuck. and that's a tough thing for people to get their minds around.

but again, it kind of comes naturally with taking homestuck as it is, and thinking intently about what it's doing, what conventions it's challenging and how it's challenging them. because sometimes it's deeply stupid (decade-plus of thought on the matter has not made the incest any more palateable or understandable)

but sometimes it's the best shit in the whole world

[cilil]

𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 | 𝐀 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐬

AN: My last one for @feast-of-horns - for now. The Turgon x Caranthir sequel I promised will be coming, just at a later date. Thanks for reading and being patient!

𓄌 Characters/pairings: Námo x Vairë 𓄌 Synopsis: Námo and Vairë try out their own version of predator/prey play. 𓄌 Warnings: Smut, shapeshifting (Námo with female parts) 𓄌 Oneshot (~1k words) | AO3

"You know," Vairë said, spinning silver threads with four of her six hands while a fifth caressed the back of her husband's cool hand. "I have always been fascinated by this feast Oromë is so fond of." 

"Have you now?" Despite his usual neutral tone and posture, there was a faint hint of humour colouring Námo's voice. 

"Indeed." She hummed to herself, watching the motions of her hands as she dwelt on the thought. "We may not be hunters like he and his people are, but I would be lying if I said I couldn't comprehend the satisfaction of..." 

Skillfully, Vairë looped the thread around four index fingers and pulled it taut. 

"...catching something pretty just right." 

Námo observed her with the calm amusement of one who already knew the outcome of the conversation and was merely waiting for it to unfold. 

"I suppose you do, though your prey is both less corporeal and less flighty than Oromë's," he mused. "Yet thus far you speak in riddles. If there is anything you would have of me, you must ask."

"You would make me spell it out and show you, you who knows all and forgets nothing?" Vairë scolded playfully. "But I don't mind." 

Her sixth hand replaced the fifth, clasping Námo's, while the thus freed hand rose to his face. Gently, she turned his head and pulled away his veil. 

"I think I would like to capture you, my beautiful husband." 

Indeed, he was breathtaking underneath his veil, as Vairë thought whenever she removed it. Features too beautiful and ethereal to ever seem as stern and unforgiving as he was often seen, a face frightening only in its irresistible allure and divine grace. 

Námo smiled at her. "You already have. I shall be all yours." 

It was all the encouragement Vairë needed. Her four hands holding the thread spun around hastily, faster than the eye could see, yet with the precision of a true master of her craft. She then threw it at her husband like a net and crooked two index fingers as if to direct it as it wrapped around his wrists like a silvery snare. 

Reminiscent of a spider web, it floated in the air, thrumming with the power of her will and her music, and Námo kept smiling even as his arms were secured in place and his feet lifted off the ground. 

"Wonderful work as always, beloved."

"Thank you." 

Vairë willed the nails on one of her hands to turn into claws and raised it, ready to strike and devour her food like a spider discovering prey in its web. 

"Tell me, what will I find underneath those robes of yours?" she purred. 

"Whatever it is that you wish to find," Námo answered. 

"You already knew that as well, didn't you?" Vairë let out a chuckle, then cut his robes open with vicious efficiency. 

She was going to fix the damage later if she felt like it; there were prettier things she could find for her husband to wear than those plain black robes. 

Námo's fána was, as it had always been, less corporeal than those of other Ainur, almost ephemeral in the way he willed it in and out of existence within the blink of an eye. Some of its features remained ever the same, most importantly his tall, slender figure, his long, almost spindly legs and the ghostly pallor of his smooth, cool skin. Yet other features were ever fluid, changing and shifting at will. 

His hips were narrow as usual, but between his legs Vairë was greeted with the gentle slope of a vulva. Her eyes lit up in excitement — she had desired to bed her husband in such a manner for a while. For even though Námo aligned more with male temper and often presented accordingly, he was just as, if not more beautiful than any lady she had seen. 

"You saw my thoughts," was all Vairë said as she knelt down in front of him to examine. 

"Such is my nature." Námo spread his legs without needing to be prompted. "My flesh exists only for your pleasure, I need it for nought else." 

"At this point you are asking to be devoured."

"Perhaps I am, yes." 

"In that case, I shall." 

Vairë moved closer until she was kneeling between Námo's legs, caressing his thighs as she rested them on her shoulders. When she kissed his folds, she was reminded of a water lily with its petals closed, delicate and hiding its true beauty, and determined to coax it into opening up to her. 

Námo sighed. He was a quiet lover and not prone to outbursts of passion, but Vairë could tell he was sensitive. Almost as if he had never been touched before. Which he had been, though not in this form. The sense of novelty fanned the flames of her desire.

She took hold of his thighs and began to enjoy his new fána. First quick, teasing licks across his folds to explore. Then bolder, dipping her tongue in-between, pushing inside, searching for the sensitive little pearl that would ensure his pleasure. A gasp, a tentative moan. She could feel it now, right against the tip of her tongue. 

Entranced by the wonderful timbre of her husband's voice, Vairë continued. Námo was panting now, trying to adjust to the new sensations he was experiencing. 

Unfortunately for him, his wife wasn't merciful. She could feel his muscles twitching and traces of his arousal leaking out of him, wettening her lips and chin like morning dew. 

Oh how she loved him. Vairë could do this all day. 

Circling her tongue around his pearl, she carefully pushed one finger inside Námo, then two. He was tight but not entirely unused to penetration, he had taken her before in a different shape. 

"Please..." she heard his voice in her mind. 

"You are begging already?" Vairë neither slowed down nor withdrew, instead taking it as encouragement to thrust her fingers in and out of Námo. 

Whatever he had meant to say in response never came as his fána was overwhelmed by pleasure and driven to an early climax, leaving him speechless. 

It was only then that Vairë granted Námo a break. 

"Coming so fast?" she teased. "You do realise I haven't even started yet?" 

He exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. 

"Take me as many times as you see fit, beloved, as is your right after a successful hunt."

Thanks for reading! ♡

taglist: @asianbutnotjapanese @a-world-of-whimsy-5 @blauerregen @bluezenzennie @edensrose @elanna-elrondiel @eunoiaastralwings @i-did-not-mean-to @just-little-human @saintstars @singleteapot @urwendii @wandererindreams

[arachnixe]

How Could I Ever Forget You?

(Part 5 of The New Goddess - Previous: Past The Limits Of Worship)

It’s spring, and I’m seated near father as he introduces to his court a new magician. It is considered auspicious to time announcements of major changes with the Feast of Augury, and so it is the first time most of the assembled guests hear the news that old Magister Lange has passed.

Magistra Velle immediately captures my attention with the way her personality seems to dominate the room. She is tall and aloof. Her exotic black dress shimmers, catching the light with rainbow hues like I’ve never seen before—father will later deny my request for one just like it—and I am captivated by the way her lips are painted black—again I will be denied—in defiance of all courtly norms of fashion. I watch the way she moves through the formal proceedings, cordial without a trace of warmth, greeting each member of the court with a just-so bow and a polite smile that never touches her eyes. They are intimidated by her, I realize, ill at ease with her manner.

It feels odd that I should not feel the same way. Though I’m acknowledged as an adult, I wield no authority that doesn’t come from my father. Velle is significantly older than me, fully in possession of her own arcane power. With a snap of her fingers, she could end my life. It would be wise to fear her, but it isn’t fear that quickens my pulse as I watch her.

The ceremony concludes with me, the royal heir, receiving her formal greeting.

“Princess Natalia.” Velle moves to offer her customary bow, but I preempt her by extending my hand. It’s an unusual gesture for this ceremony, but not altogether unprecedented, and to her credit, Velle hesitates for only an instant before taking my hand and pressing lips to it. The look she gives me afterward is unreadable, and it isn’t until she turns away that I exhale a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

I slip away as the attention of the court shifts to the food our servants lay out for the feast. My heart pounds in my chest, so anxious am I about being witnessed as I find an unoccupied room to duck into. When I’m sure I’m alone, I lift my hand to admire the faint mark left behind. Velle’s lip color. I press my own lips to it, lingering far longer than the kiss she offered, until fear gets the better of me and I scrub my hand clean with furious urgency, returning to the feast with an uncontrollable flush in my face.

I remain unaware of the dark smudge on my lips until I retire to my room that night and see myself in the mirror.

---

Some years later and half a continent away, a young mortal woman pours me tea while her husband distracts their children from showing too much curiosity to this oddly dressed stranger in their midst.

“So what brings you to Tassica Village?” There’s no subterfuge in her thoughts, no ulterior motives lurking anywhere in her mind. These people are simply content to offer shelter to a weary traveler—as they assume I must be—as her journey takes her through their town.

“I’m here on a spiritual quest of sorts.” I sip from the steaming cup. The tea tastes like its components, but I feel gratitude toward the generosity that inspired it. “I’m making a pilgrimage to Mount Ossen, which I believe to be the final resting place of one of the old gods.”

My host raises her eyebrows in surprise, glancing out her window at the sleeping volcano that dominates the view. She assumes me to be a cultist of the old pantheon but doesn’t want to offend by telling me I don’t act as unpleasantly morbid as that type tends to be. With quick thinking, she saves herself from appearing rude by directing her commentary toward the tea. “They must like it hot where you’re from, yeah? I have to let mine cool down a bit still or I’ll be suffering from a burnt tongue for days.”

I smile warmly. “No, I confess I’m a bit unusual in my ability to tolerate heat.”

“Well, don’t be in too much of a rush to finish. I’d love to hear more about the kingdom you hail from. What was it called again?”

“Rutennia,” I repeat for her. “Far to the south of here, across the sea.”

“Wow! I’ve never met anyone from such a long way away. Will you stay for dinner and tell us of your home?”

I follow the local custom of declining the initial offer so as not to burden my host, then accepting when she and her husband team up to insist. These sorts of detours among mortals make for a welcome distraction from the pursuit of my ambitions. Someday a great many people like this will know who I am and bow down in worship, and time among them helps remind me why the worship of humans is a worthwhile prize.

---

I scream into my pillow until I go hoarse. They tell me I am an adult when it comes to matters of betrothal and marriage, but when I ask to have Magistra Velle give me private lessons in her craft, I’m suddenly just a teenage girl for whom it’s wildly inappropriate to study black magic. Sure, and when I’m no longer a teenager in a few years, the issue will be that I’m too old to begin studying, and I’m a princess besides, so really I should be focusing on other matters. I know an excuse when I hear one.

I bet Velle got started when she was just a child. She’s probably been practicing her whole life to be as cool-headed and powerful as she is today. I wish I could be like that.

Maybe I should accept my father’s compromise and let Haeland Marta teach me “a few healing spells.” I guess that must be okay because it’s not “magic for war.” Ugh.

But… now that I’m considering it, maybe it’s not so bad. I don’t get to spend more time with Velle like I want, but having magic that complements hers has its appeal. Imagine the two of us together… she throwing lightning bolts at our enemies while I cast a protective barrier to shield her from harm. But then someone gets past my defenses and shoots her with an arrow! She tells me she’s fine, but I know she’s just playing it cool like she always does.

Then I have to take her back home and tend to her wounds, and she resists, telling me “princess, I cannot rest while your enemies are still at the gates!”

And then I go, “but what about you?” with tears in my eyes.

“Who cares about me?” she says. “I’m just a court magician, and you’re royalty!”

And I say “I care! I care about you!”

And then she looks at me and realizes that there’s one person in this world who isn’t afraid of her, and, and…

Ohhh… I can’t let anyone know I’m thinking these kinds of things.

I scrub at my face with my hands. What’s wrong with me?

---

Another tremor. Laying down at the peak, I can feel the volcano threatening to erupt, pulsing and twitching, building to another surge soon. My hand strokes the earth, coaxing it further. I don’t care to wait a century for this one’s next scheduled eruption, nor even longer for the next truly major one. I hunger for what’s inside.

Before long I get what I want. A distant rumble builds into an explosive climax, flinging stone, filling the sky with ash, and flooding this whole slope with a surge of molten rock.

More.

A second eruption washes over me, burying me deeper in lava. I’d be dead in at least four different ways if I were still mortal, but instead I remain dissatisfied. I plunge my senses deeper underground, wrap a hand of invisible force around the source of all this beautiful pyroclastic flow and squeeze until I get another, more powerful than the first two combined.

There we go.

I guide the lava’s flow to ensure it flows over me and past my body, the heat no more than a pleasurable caress that does not distract me from the prize it carries upward from deep under the earth into arms reach at last. I clasp a mummified hand and heave myself and the body up and out of the molten rock.

Here it is, the corpse of another god, unusually intact considering the conditions of its burial. Who were you that you had to be buried so inaccessible a place? How powerful were you in life that I could feel your energy calling to me with such mouthwatering might?

Most of the body is ready to crumble into dust, but I delicately unfurl brittle skin, push aside shriveled lumps of former organs, and find a perfectly preserved liver, still moist and quivering. It tries to jerk out of my grasp as soon as I lay hands on it, resisting me, forcing me to wrestle it into my mouth and fighting my efforts to rip it apart with my teeth and choke it down.

The power of every god wants a vessel, but they don’t like to share. No single god should wield the power of many. What I am doing is blasphemy.

Good.

---

Haeland Marta insists I help prepare Magister Lange’s body for the funeral ceremony. This has absolutely nothing to do with my studies and everything to do with the fact that she’s old and wants someone younger than her to do all the bending and moving that she can’t handle anymore.

Bleh. Some healer she is if she can’t even fix her own joints. I hear Istow’s are the best in the world, but despite them being our neighbor and ally, my father won’t pay to send for a real expert to tutor me. “Marta’s fine to teach enough of the basics to satisfy you.” He has no idea what I need to satisfy me. I could strangle him.

The old woman mutters to herself while passing a hand over the dead magician. “That’s not right…”

“What’s wrong, Haeland?”

She ignores my question, consulting the massive tome she has to lug around because she barely remembers her own training anymore. At last she stabs her finger at a page, clucks her tongue, and sighs. “That’s the one. Still remnants of it in his body. Poison. Ah, Your Highness, I should have checked before.”

I peer over her shoulder at the diagram of a familiar flower. Icy fingers grip my chest, and my breath hitches. I’ve seen some just like this once before: the day I snuck into Magistra Velle’s private rooms. Oh no. This is bad. If Marta tells someone, they might search the palace, and they might find the same poison that killed Magister Lange in Velle’s room, and… then she’ll be gone.

Maybe I can prevent that from happening. There probably won’t be another chance. I can do this. I have to cast the spell I’ve been practicing, but with just the right mistake. Haeland Marta told me how dangerous healing can be if you err in certain ways, and…

I put my hand on the old woman’s shoulder and heal her exactly wrong. Her heart is weak, and it doesn’t take much of a nudge to stop it altogether.

Oh. Oh no. Did I really just…? This was a mistake. This was a huge mistake. I bite my tongue hard to prevent myself from freaking out and screaming. I can undo it, right?

I cast the spell again, but correctly this time, and… nothing. I try again. And again and again. “You can’t bring someone back from the dead, girlie,” Haeland Marta once told me, and she’s wrong because she’s old and stupid and not as good as the healers from Istow, and…

I sob into my hands. What have I done? I… I…

I helped Velle. That’s what’s important, right? And, and, and now they’ll have to send for someone to replace Haeland Marta. Maybe one of the real experts. So this could be a good thing. Good for both of us.

Someday I’ll learn how to resurrect the dead. I’ll learn how to fix my mistakes. And this, this is a mistake, even if turns out for the best. I mustn’t make a habit of solving my problems this way.

---

Panting, sweating, heaving, spasming. This one is too much. It’s much too much. The power of fully three gods inside me. Three gods! Hahahahaha!

It’s too much.

No, no, no, damn it all, no. I will not surrender. I will have it all. There are many more powers to consume after this. This world is littered with them, and I can feel every last one calling out to me.

More like screaming my name in fear.

Whatever dwindling will lingers in each one, they hate that a human has elevated herself above them. Hahahahaha, let them hate. They are lost without me. They are dead and food to me.

A sickening pop inside me curls my body into the fetal position. Blood bursts from my pores, oozing like sweat. Maybe no human is really capable of containing this much power. I feel it threatening to split me open on a spiritual level. This could kill me.

I refuse. My soul is unconquerable. I will grow to accommodate my hungers.

I gave Nina the body she always ached for. I sculpted a palace in the sky for her and Jay to live the lives they deserve. I can do anything, except… No, I can’t die before taming her, can I?

Deep breaths. I just need to expand my sense of self. If a human soul cannot contain this much power, then I will evolve beyond human limits. Monster or dragon or demon, whatever it takes to devour all the gods and all the powers that died on this world, I will become what I must.

---

“Natalia’s aptitude for healing is remarkable, Your Highness, and she’s shown such enthusiasm for the topic as well.” Haeland Moore takes a moment to smile at me with pride. “I would be happy to accept her proposal. I daresay in two more years she’ll earn the title Haeland herself.”

“Her title is already Princess,” my father grumbles. “There are few higher aside from my own.”

“Quite so. It’s just that, ah, in Istow, as you know, one of our most revered monarchs was…”

“You would have me send my only daughter away to study healing magic.” He openly sneers at the idea.

Magistra Velle chimes in. “I say let her go. You have a rebellion to squash, and moving your heir farther from the front lines is a prudent choice.”

The king rubs his temple with two fingers in frustration. “After your most recent blunder, Magistra, I’m much less inclined to trust your judgment—oh, how I wish Lange were still with us—but you may have a point. And after the last two promising suitors turned out to have such weak constitutions,” he sighs, “and the unexpected death of that tutor from Melland as well… perhaps we should let our little bad luck charm be someone else’s problem for a while. If she happens to learn enough to keep her next suitor alive for more than a few weeks in her company, so much the better.”

This might be the first time I’ve heard those three mentioned in connection with me as the common thread before. Perhaps it’s the same for Velle, as some unreadable expression crosses her face, and she shifts her gaze to me appraisingly. I blush, as I always do when she pays attention to me, returning her look with a shy smile. I hope she understands we’re on the same team here.

Haeland Moore ignores everything except his opening. “She will learn how to do that much and more. You have my word, Your Majesty.”

“I’ll take your word, and to that I’ll add a knight to accompany her. Someone not too important, in case her bad luck strikes again. Maybe Count Warren’s boy?” He waves a hand. “Go, make the arrangements before I change my mind.”

I mouth the words “wait for me,” to Magistra Velle, who makes no movement to acknowledge them. I’ll be back for you. I promise.

I have no way of knowing it will be nearly five years before I return, and by then Velle, stripped of her title, will have vowed revenge on the royal family, setting out on a quest to ascend to godhood.

---

I’m stable. Stable enough, at least. Warped and deformed by swallowing something far larger than I should have, but I live. It still fights, but with effort perhaps I can mold my body back into something that appears familiar to others.

I cast my eyes about my surroundings, examining the devastation around the volcano. The lava appears to have mostly cooled already. How much time have I spent wrestling with the digestion process? I really should return home.

Wait, that spot over there. That’s where Tassica was, wasn’t it? Funny how it never even occurred to me to warn anyone that I was planning on provoking this eruption, and that Tassica would be wiped out.

I float down to the spot where kind people showed me uncomplicated hospitality. I pity them, but I feel no particular attachment to them. Mortals die all too easily, right? Does it even matter?

Should I choose to be a merciful god? Would it mean anything in the long run? No, these are the wrong questions. I am a god. I have more power coursing through me than has anyone who ever walked the world. I can do anything. All that matters is what it pleases me to do.

Today I think it would please me to offer magnanimity. It suits me to reward these people for their hospitality. Like puppies, mortals must be conditioned with suitable rewards that encourage behaviors I approve of. I’ve performed a resurrection once before, what’s a few more?

Carve an opening in the cooled lava with a wave of my hand. Restore the plants, the homes, everything burnt to ash, including animals and human bodies. Trace the souls and pull them back. My divine energy is still erratic, it still wants to fight me, but even so this is a shockingly easy task—no not a “task,” I am performing divine miracles, and I laugh with pleasure as I continue.

I can do better than restoring a piece of this flawed world to itself, though, can’t I? I can make it better. Let the land be more fertile, the crops more robust, the buildings sturdier, the people stronger and healthier. I’ll nudge the atmostpheric currents such that these people will never see another typhoon nor dry season. Even that is a trifle.

I do my best to pull my body back into human shape, but the struggle to contain everything is profound. I hardly even notice that the sun has set because right now I am pure daylight, and the one thing that feels beyond me now is to appear as I did when I first arrived. Almost in unison, the villagers awaken, and they are drawn to me like moths. As is only natural, they fall to their knees and heap prayers upon me. It’s beyond anything I ever imagined. One man reaches toward me—oh, the husband who hosted me earlier—and drunk on worship, I permit a finger to gently graze one of his.

He collapses into convulsions, his mind flooded with tiny, chaotic shards of my own sight. He babbles uncontrollably with fragments of phrases almost like truths and—

Ah, I seem to have broken him. That’s… exciting, actually. Terribly exciting. Maybe it’s the intoxication of so much worship, or maybe it’s the wild divine might pushing me to the ragged edge of self control, but I like what that did to him, and I will not undo it.

I shall inspire the understanding that contact with me has gifted him divine visions, and these people will venerate him as a prophet or oracle. Let them gather around and admire the beauty of a mind shattered by contact with the new goddess of this world.

---

Home again, I rest. I grant my little bird a boon.

I digest. My pet princess and I have a date.

I remember self-control. By the time I visit Velle I’m downright stable.

“I hope you’re ready to be tamed.” I speak the words with such profound gentleness that her ears don’t even rupture.

[doodles-of-a-nerd-kid]

*Warning, this is gonna be a ridiculously long post...

So, some of you reeeeally wanted to know just a teeny weenie bit more about my weird boy huh? Well, here ya go:

Yeah, where do I freakin' start with this--? It was not only hard to put together despite the very simple (and more obvious) inspirations... but I had to mega ponder whatever the heck I was on when creating this character, LOL

Lets break it down all over again:

It is extremely obvious (I think) of which characters Tilde's appearance mostly stems from... our funny scout robots from Cave Story: Mr. Traveler and Curly Brace themselves. (Which heehee geddit he has a punctuation naem TILDE ~~ xdd)

I'm pretty sure some of you have probably assumed (Especially with how much I pair them together...^^") Tilde is... well... their kid somehow--

Not... quite? It's... much more complicated than that, don't worry about it! Anyways, I basically chucked them both into a blender to combine their appearances together as much as possible; an example of this is Tilde's hair! It's a blonde color like Curly's and straight; but has a waviness, spiking up at the ends like Quote's hair.

Tilde's antenna earphone things are green, and his eye color is also that bluescreen blue that Curly has as well, lol.

So Tilde's outfit inspirations! Tilde is actually wearing Sue Sakamoto's sweater, along with someone's long green scarf. Its a bit old and worn out... but it's very shnazzy, dontcha think? ^^ In earlier drawing drafts of Tilde back in 2021, his sleeves were actually much more sprite accurate to Sue's-- But then I played OneShot and drew them droopy like Niko's once and it... stuck. idc its staying too. I think I wanted to give him a cuteness bonus, so I gave him hairpins thanks to Chase from Harvest Moon lol

Underneath Tilde's sweater he is wearing a simple black tank with magenta shorts, like Quote's tank and sprite Curly's pants. His shoes I unfortunately don't have a direct correlation for their colors, but they're inspired by Cave Story 3D JP Curly's shoes.

A much more rare appearance, but this is what Tilde looks like as an adolescent-- Don't question why, just roll with it-- I have my reasons and I won't tell you :^) When I was drawing him, my brain just handed me Basil from Omori. Literally, just Basil's energy and a bit of the Mother series protagonists for outfit design... I tried to swishing it around a bit and ended up with a very puntable looking guy, which was the exact vibe I was going for~ >:3c

I gave Tilde a sweater turtleneck and called it a day, then Lucas came to mind again when I was coloring-- Which overall made this particular bit of the outfit more interesting ^^ Tilde here is also wearing Toroko's pendant. Not really much else to cover here, since the many traits from Tilde's youth carries into here. Continuing...

Oh boy, how the times have changed and he's all grown up now T_T

Tilde when he's older takes almost all the liberties from especially Quote, wearing his infamous deadpan expression naturally... but he still remains extremely expressive like Curly ^^

Tilde's outfit is very obviously influenced by them, from their cargo pants to their color schemes (which are also admittedly being carried from his youth as well.) Quote's Blade Strangers design (If you ever heard of it.) was definitely an influence for him as well--

BUT to keep him looking a bit more fresh, I devised to use even more of that special jrpg sauce i love to throw on my characters lmAO

Y'all should already know from my previous post that I'm a weeb a Japanese culture enthusiast, not gonna explain that again

Specially for his outfit Tetsuya Nomura's character designs immediately come to mind, i cannot tell you which one specifically.

While imagining the "cool rpg boy outfit" all these characters blend together in my head, probs because they seem to have similar vibes LOL (very cool Nomura-san)

100% CERTAIN Felix from Golden Sun had an influence on Tilde's outward appearance. I actually drew older Tilde before teen Tilde, and I gave him long hair partly bc of him-- lmao

(While Soren from Fire Emblem is not a main influence for Tilde, he is simply here because I hate him for making me realize long haired dudes are just,,, peak character design idk what to tell you.)

So that's Tilde's sheet

goes very crazy I know

If imma do a Tilde sheet, i gotta do it properly-- He's the best(est)

I'm very tired I worked on this for almost a whole week lol imma sleep or something

[re-whump]

Glass Eden - Enclosure

prev congrats on not being eaten, but you're still trapped with the snake contains: non-human whumpee (borrower and lamia/naga, both tiny), captivity, pet trope, neglect, dehumanization, communication barrier, conditioned whumpee, concussion, (mild) emeto

Poe

It had to be a game of some sort, yes?

She had few ways to truly lose and I even fewer to win, but it must be a game.

The master of the house had thrown me in here for entertainment, after all. I had assumed it would be his entertainment, but apparently I wasn’t even worth that.  

I couldn’t know if I’d been spared out of mercy or boredom or merely saved for later. I wasn’t even sure she was intelligent enough to have had a reason, that my survival wasn’t mere whim. The master of the house kept her like a pet, so it was possible her relatable visage was mere coincidence. Then again, it had seemed like she had been trying to speak with me, and the master of the house was hardly a compassionate figure. He threw me in here for sport, he may as well be keeping a person in a cage.

I think he knew that she wouldn’t finish me off. He left before she had released me. But I also recognized the silver box on the other side of the glass and its ominous black eye. He was still watching, or at least recording to watch later. He would be able to entertain himself with my inevitable death, over and over again. He would watch her feed on me and be able to share it with however many of his awful kin as he liked, just as soon as she changed her mind and attacked me again. Nightmare after never ending nightmare. 

For now she seemed content to remain in the stone-looking cave on the far side of the terrarium. One bend of her pale, looping tail squeezed out the entrance, so I could even look over and be sure she stayed put. But my tail continued to quiver at her perfect silence. She could come for me at any moment and if I wasn’t looking at her, I wouldn’t know.

I needed to hide. I could feel the instinct pushing up beneath the rest of my thoughts to demand attention. Anger, self-pity, despair…none of them quite held up to the desperate urging to escape back into the shadows. I had been raised to believe—to know—that being seen by the monsters that owned the house was one of the worst things that could happen to me, and I couldn’t just push the feeling aside now that I’d been caught. The glass walls and open air were torturous.I would worry about survival later. I would worry about water and food and self-defense and how to get out of here later. First, I was going to carve a hiding space into the bark lining the cage, tucking in between the glass and some large stone. My crushed ribs burned as I pushed myself beneath the surface. 

When that was done, I curled up to cry.

When that was done, I was still trapped. 

~

Hecate

I had pleasant dreams about a patch of sun and another body lying curled up alongside my own. 

I played them over in my head for awhile, lazily enjoying the empty schedule ahead of me. Hugh only ever expected me to perform when he had guests, not like the last hands. And he liked me to look like me, not dolled up and polished. 

I scratched an itch along the thin scales on my hips and decided I could do with a wash anyway. That wasn’t polish, that was hygiene. I had a rash or something on my side there that never seemed to heal. I couldn’t do as good a job as the hands, but a long soak in even the tepid water on the cool side of the tank would feel refreshing enough.

I slid towards the sound of gently running water. There was a short waterfall on one end of the shallow pool that provided an endless supply of clean water. I’m not sure where exactly it came from, but there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. I only ever got to take short excursions beyond my glass walls and hardly anyone had ever thought I might like an explanation. It wasn’t like I could ask for clarifications. Mostly, I was thankful that this enclosure was at least full of interesting plants and clean bedding and even some clay I could sculpt with.

The water stole away that wonderful heat reserve I’d built up sleeping over the hot floor, but it was worth it. The sharp pinches that dotted the line between scale and skin fell away too, although the burning lower down on my belly lingered. I twisted around to check on what that might be, then tensed as I remembered how I’d hurt myself. Or, not myself, how I’d gotten…bit? Scratched? Hurt, somehow, by the…thing. The little prey-person-thing. The maybe-child. 

Were they still here? Or had Hugh come back to collect them?

I whistled as I drew myself out of the water. Their scent was faint, but in a space that usually only housed myself, it was more than enough to trace them. They were wedged between a stone hide and the wall, lying still. As I got closer, they made a muffled squeak, not unlike a rat’s.

I slowed, continuing to sing. It was an old song, a gentle one, one I’ve known since I was just a hatchling. I used to know words to it, something about the sun, but it had been so long and become so meaningless that now all I knew was the tune. The words were in the language I had used with my clutchmates anyway, one without all those tricky human noises. I doubt the prey-person-thing would have understood it. 

The substrate lurched as they clawed their way to the surface. I leaned back to keep the spray of bark out of my face. The glass pinged as they backed themself into the wall. 

“Hey, hey, shhh,” I whispered. 

“No, no, stop! Please! I’ve done nothing to deserve this!” they cried.

“Shh,” I repeated.

There wasn’t much else I could say. I couldn’t speak, not like they did. I had the wrong mouth for it. My tongue was meant for sneaking tastes of the air, not dancing between t and k and th and r and all the rest. 

“You-you aren’t attacking me?” 

I shook my head. I hoped they could see, even if I couldn’t. It seemed like it. They took a sharp breath like they were reacting to something. 

“You understand me? You are intelligent, then? Can you talk?”

“I…mm.”

I pushed off the ground, head cocked. I could hardly answer three questions at once. I motioned with my hands for them to go slower, but it must have looked like something else from where they were standing. They were still sweating fear. 

“J-just stay away from me! Please!” they whimpered.

I wanted to hold the poor thing to reassure them, but I wasn't dumb enough to think it would work. I just did my best to show him I meant no harm. 

--

Poe

The python-woman stared for several excruciating seconds.

She sighed and looked as if she might cry, then lowered herself back down against the ground again. I wanted to believe it was some kind of submissive gesture, but I was loathe to get too optimistic with my life on the line.

I wished she would blink. 

I didn’t move. I was too afraid it was some sort of trap about to spring. I watched a cat catch a mouse like that once, on a trip out into the garden. It had hunkered down and just stared for nearly a full minute. And that minute must have felt like an eternity for the mouse as it waited for that inevitable pounce. The cat had let it go again and again and again until the poor girl was too bloody and tired to try and run.

Eternity dragged on. 

I waited and waited and waited until the creature finally grew bored of waiting. She backed away and silently drifted back to the other side of the cage. 

I had to get out of here.

I crept around the perimeter looking for some way out. The only breaks in the glass were along the front, where the human had first thrown me in. The glass fit together so tightly, I couldn’t even wedge my fingers between the two panes, never mind try to pry them further apart. The mechanisms to lock the door in place were too far overhead for me to even examine. I turned to glare at the camera still gawking at me from the other side of the glass. 

I could weave something out of the foliage, perhaps, or turn my little dagger into something more useful. Assuming I had the time.

I kept my distance from her as I explored and only partially for that most obvious reason of avoiding her. The far end of the tank where she seemed to prefer to rest was significantly hotter than the other, and the whole place was uncomfortably humid. I assume it all suited her but it was making me sweat on top of everything else.

I thought about taking off the wool I had wrapped around my shoulders, but it was also the closest thing to armor that I had. I was dressed to survive the cold floor of the underused study, not monster attacks. I retreated back towards where I had heard water on the cooler half of the enclosure. My aching ribs demanded a rest anyways.

The water was…not clean, to say the least. A small waterfall churned the pool, likely intended to keep the water from growing too stagnant, but it was clearly not up to the task. I knelt down and grimaced at the pool. It was clear, but a layer of dirt and dead bugs littered the bottom. I drank anyway; it wasn’t as if it was the most questionable thing I’d ever ingested. It was refreshing enough.

After a short break I thought about what to do for shelter while I was trapped in here. I probably couldn’t make anything truly safe, but I could at least gather up a decent bed to rest in. Something more comfortable for my sore ribs. As for food…I would have to hope some of these plants might be edible. I didn’t know them. I chose a spot to set up distance from the water, assuming she’d come back here to drink again before long.

A distant creaking caught my attention, and it was not the snake. The housemaster was back. I ducked as deep into the shadows as I could, as much habit as anything.

He moved slowly, spending a few minutes walking around and admiring various displays around the room. It was too far for me to make out the details, but I assume he was looking at other pets. I didn’t want to know anything more. 

He turned to this prison before too long. The snake emerged from her cave to whistle and wave at him. He greeted her with a smile and oh-so-easily opened up the doors, nearly removing the entire front wall.

And his attention was fixed on the snake, not me. 

I warily crept towards the open doors. I waited until he had his hands full with the snake-woman and I launched towards my freedom. 

It was a hopeless endeavor. The movement caught his eye and he released the snake to take a clumsy swipe at me. Of course, a man twenty times my size didn’t need to be too precise to ruin me and these were hardly ideal conditions for me. His massive forearm slammed into me like a wall, knocking my breath away. I went skidding off the edge of the shelf before I could catch my balance. 

“Shit!” the master hissed. “Didn’t realize you were still in there.”

I landed in a heap at his feet. At some point, either during the fall or the landing, my head cracked against something hard. My eyes watered as I tried to pull myself back together, back into a coherent train of thought, so I could get up and—

“No, no, you’re not getting out of here. I’m not letting some thieving vermin run wild in my home,” the master said. 

A flat weight collapsed on top of me as I tried to crawl away. Shoe, I registered dimly. Very bad place to be. Very messy death. I wondered how much of it I would feel. He pressed down, just hard enough that I might burst if I tried to move, and dragged me towards the rest of him. He leaned down. My head swelled full of pain and panic. 

I heard someone scream. I wondered if it might be me, even if screaming wasn’t a behavior borrowers were naturally inclined to perform. I closed my mouth with a groan and the sound kept coming. I pressed my ears back. It hurt. My head hurt so bad and the noise made it worse. 

“Hey! Hey, my! My!” the scream shrieked. 

Something struck the glass overhead and the weight crushing my chest pulled away. I threw myself forward to escape at the same moment the master bent down over me and all that motion all at once set my head spinning and stomach heaving.

“Mm? You do want it, then, girl? You were just saving it for later?”

I may have taken an entire two steps before collapsing back onto my knees to vomit up the meager contents of my stomach. I was still retching, unable to move, as the housemaster’s hand fell over me and pinched the back of my shirt. Vomit ran down my chin as I was lifted so quickly into the air that the world turned into a blur. 

“No, don’t,” I croaked, several seconds after he tossed me back in the bark. 

The snake woman reached for me. I kicked at her. She sputtered, but only because the housemaster pulled her away. 

“Ah-ah, Hecate. I’ll let you have the little pest, but for now you’re coming out with me. Come along. It won’t go anywhere,” Hugh said.

The glass slid closed. The lock clicked. The towering shadow disappeared down the hallway. I stopped fighting to keep my eyes open.

I might as well finish dying before she came back to finish her game.

[a-moth-to-the-light]

Comeback Celebration: Current Top Ten Sunmi Songs

I noticed, while I was working on this, that I talk about Sunmi the way orbits talk about Loona--I think you'll see what I mean as we go down the list! I think it's the admiration I have for how creative & well-crafted her releases are. "Heroine" was the song that got me into Sunmi, though her most recent comeback at the time was "Lalalay" (I remember because the ponytail dance was EVERYWHERE). My admiration was secured after her 1/6 album--even though her discography is still small, I think that album really fleshed it out, to the point where I finally felt like I could understand her as an artist. Happy Sunmi comeback to us all!

1. pporappippam

This is my "Butterfly". I remember when this song came out, I remember when it changed the world, it's all things divine, it's my conduit to a romanticized version of my teenage years, it's a supercut of all the most wonderful colors you've ever seen in the sky at sunset. In all seriousness, though--I really don't get how people find this song boring. It manages to be a soft, ethereal track and an addictive pop hit, a perfect balance of peaceful atmospherics and unrelenting pace. This one is really special to me!

2. 1/6

This is my "Loonatic". I got dream pop with this song--okay, "1/6" might not exactly be dream pop, but it's soft and dreamy in a way that made me finally see the appeal of that type of song, like why someone would want to get lost in that hazy sonic world.

3. Siren

"Siren" is a piano crashing into you from a third-story window. Like, I don't know how it's ever possible to be emotionally ready for this song. Its brute-force approach is just so goddamn memorable, especially because Sunmi doesn't overuse it in the rest of her discography--she usually goes for subtlety, but her vocals carry a powerful chorus like this one just so well.

4. Narcissism

This one's also in the brute-force category, especially because the production takes this really messy, maximalist approach--and fuck it, it works. I love this song a whole lot: the soft intro; the weird schoolbell-through-intercom-static sounds; the way the chorus hits; the way Sunmi navigates the song's rapid rises and falls. If you miss old-school EDM (read: if you obsess over Dreamcatcher's "Can't get you out of my mind" like I do), I think you'll really enjoy this one.

5. Call

Yeah, no surprise here, I always love club music. But this club classic is particularly intricate, built on a really interesting contrast: Sunmi's gritty vocals over an exceptionally pristine house beat.

6. Black Pearl

This song is just cool. Like, that saxophone solo is just really, really cool. Like, I want to be a guy who has this song at the top of his most-listened list. Maybe one day!

7. Heroine

Yeah, the beat drop is kind of wimpy, so that part didn't age all that great. But Sunmi's PERFORMANCE here?? That prechorus is one for the ages. Five years ago, the emotion of this song absolutely captivated me, and it still resonates with me today.

8. Lalalay

In contrast, this one aged wonderfully! Now that I'm not being constantly overloaded with beat drops in every other song (thank you, 2019 Twice & 2021 Olivia Rodrigo!), I can really appreciate how interesting "Lalalay" is! I used to think this one was boring and lacking inspiration, but now that I'm revisiting it, I think the dynamics of the chorus are pretty compelling (yes, I think the beat drop is compelling, sue me)--like, do you hear how the weird note thingie is fading in and out? how the volume shifts? I love it so much!! My favorite part is the bridge, though--the flight attendant bit remains iconic, and the segue into the final chorus is breathtaking.

9. Heart Burn

This will forever remind me of a song from my childhood--the melody of the chorus is vaguely reminiscent of Taylor Dayne's "Tell It to My Heart", which my mom used to play in the car--so this song hits unfairly hard for me. Like, it's already a reserved, mysterious summer hit, but to me it sounds like a half-formed image of your old living room, or the voice of an elementary-school friend whose name you can't quite recall speaking from the void. Cloudy, surreal, a bit unsettling, but altogether sweet. Also, the color scheme of this music video is super striking, so "Heart Burn", despite its simplicity, gets a LOT of bias points from me.

10. What the Flower

This is like the evil twin of Red Velvet's "Good, Bad, Ugly". They both go for the lounge-singer vibe, but Red Velvet have really pure, sweet-sounding vocals, while Sunmi's voice, and her work as a whole, have always been very savory (like, anti-saccharine?). Both songs are great, and I especially love how both allow for some wonderful piano appreciation (shoutout to the guitar in "What the Flower", too!). The singalong bit at the end of "What the Flower" is really striking, so this one has stuck around in my head over the years, even before I could really appreciate its quieter sections.

Honorable Mentions: 24 Hours (obligatory), Who am I, Curve (also obligatory), Tail (Sunmi's charisma wins this one), Call my name

[phant0m-l0rd]

I wanted to share this cool find I made a few weeks ago while going through some of my uncle's old music magazines from the early 80s : an article from June 1984 written by Hervé Picart about a little up and coming band called Metallica... Finding this article felt like opening a time capsule.

(Magazine: BEST N°191, June 1984, French.)

I translated the article to English for the non-French speakers- translation after the cut:

Everything is currently changing on the good old West Coast. Just as we thought Frisco and Los Angeles forever attached to FM rock, poppy hits and beach boy philosophy, a surprising push of hard fever has come to contaminate them. Van Halen is no longer alone. Mötley Crüe, Heaven, and many others are shaking up the prophet kingdom in California, to such an extent that it might soon be necessary to rebaptise the Golden Gate "Metal Gate". Among all these new groups which are currently candidates to convert Jerry Garcia to heavy music and force everyone to trade their flower patterned bermuda for a black leather jacket, Metallica is without a doubt the most significant, and the most jostling act. These Californians have only released one album as of right now, but an album of such power, and accompanied by such emotion that a regular dose of Metallica has become a priority for all metalheads worthy of that name. There is no doubt both from a musical standpoint and from a purely emotional one that America now beholds its own Iron Maiden. Nothing less.

Like always in the case of rising waves, it was a compilation of various heavy groups, created in 1982 by the little local label Metal Blade Records and baptised "Metal Massacre", which revealed to the public of aficionados and curious minds alike the existence of Metallica. Their unique title, the henceforth mythical "Hit the lights", crushed all competition like Maiden's "Sanctuary" had done on the legendary "Metal For Muthas". "Hit the lights", it was a sort of sonic whirlwind which makes one want to take from all bands known for their label of "speed" that very label and reserve it for Metallica. The gang was then at the tail-end of their first chapter and was finishing off their work with their first formation, as five, with two guitarists.

Of this initial quintet, today there only remains the singer/rhythm guitarist James Hetfield and the drummer Lars Ulrich. The others, exhausted, passed the baton to the bassist Cliff Burton (speaking of which, treacherous minds have said ever since his solo "Anesthesia" that he had a dinosaur for a teacher), and the electrifying lead guitarist Kirk Hammett. As evidenced, Hetfield and Hammett are the two poles of Metallica, one with his warm and powerful voice which lends itself well to choruses of miraculously melodic quality amongst such chaos, and the other with his totally insane solos. Visibly, Kirk Hammett has learned to play his Flying V thinking it was a machine gun because he seems to create blasts more than anything. His virtuosity, the speed of his going along the fretboard inevitably make you dizzy.

After having blown minds from the get-go thanks to "Hit the lights", Metallica found a peculiar glory as immediate as it was underground, as those wired into heavy music consider it the pinnacle of power to be able to share, like sharp conspirators, precious copies of cassettes of demo tapes the band had made in order to make the rounds among record labels. While some official labels, rather frightened, quickly closed the door on them, the incredible interest from the underground scene acted like propaganda for the group, from Frisco to LA. Metallica then decided to play this game in their favour and opted for the small label Megaforce in order to release their first album, the crushing "Kill 'em all", very quickly released in England by the knowing people of Music for Nations, then later here by Bernett.

This more than mighty album does a good job in presenting two different aspects of Metallica. On one hand, relatively short songs, but hyper-accelerated, like "Hit the lights", the famous "Motorbreath", or the terrific "Whiplash". On the other, much longer tracks, composed of various sequences which battle each other, superposing riffs, rhythmic sections syncopated to an extreme, and more labyrinthine tracks that undeniably make one think of Iron Maiden. And all of that magnetised by the two bewitching Flying Vs, that of Hetfield which sounds like a metallic cavalcade (that of the "Four horsemen" of the apocalypse), and that of Hammett which comes again and again like a Mirage plane attacking. Midway between Motörhead and Maiden, then.

Ever since this incandescent record which has made them appear in Europe like the saviours of American rock, Metallica is progressively emerging from its lair. This spring, they were in Europe recording a new album. "Ride the Lightning", which will come out in June when they'll come to shake the first swarms of French fans, will give you all the occasion to fully integrate their healthy maxim, "Bang that head that doesn't bang"!!!

- Hervé Picart

Discography:

- In French pressing: "Kill 'em all" (Bernett- Musidisc)

- Imported:

"Seek and destroy " (max 45 live tours)

"Metal up your ass" (other version of "Kill 'em all")

[nero-vanderwolf]

Warm.

That’s what Makoto feels- warm and hazy, like he’s hovering on the edge of consciousness. Somewhere beside him, Kotone is floating too. His sister is with him, and that comforts him.

“You could stay here,” a familiar voice says.

Makoto sits up, staring into the white void.

Ryoji appears, a soft smile on his face. “You and Kotone both. You could stay here, between life and death. Your bodies would remain alive, but your consciousness would be here.”

Makoto pulls him into a wordless hug, holding him close. Kotone stirs beside him.

“I don’t want to stay here,” she says softly, taking Ryoji’s hand in her own. “I promised everyone. I swore to them that I would fight. And I want to keep doing that.”

Ryoji looked at her with a sad smile. “I understand. I will always be with you, though. Right by your side. The offer still stands if ever you change your mind.”

Kotone nods, then extends her hand to Makoto. “C’mon, Mako. We have a promise to fulfill.”

Makoto hesitates. Does he really want to leave Ryoji? Does he really want to go back?

He could stay here, Ryoji said. He could stay here and be happy and stay alive. Everything could be okay.

But then, faintly, he hears noise. It sounds like screaming, like yelling, like pleading.

It’s Yosuke, shouting at him to get up, dammit. It’s Yu fighting off Shadows with Izanagi, begging for him to wake up. It’s Akihiko telling him he’s stronger than that, that he knows Makoto can get up.

“...One day, Ryoji. One day, I’ll come back to you and stay. I promise.”

A light gleams in his and Kotone’s chests, bright and warm. Ryoji smiles sadly, gently pulls his hand away from Makoto’s.

“I’ll wait for you until then,” Ryoji says, and everything fades away into blackness, just like it did when they sacrificed their powers for the Great Seal.

“COME ON! GET UP, MAKOTO!”

Makoto sits up, gasping for air. It feels like any trace of oxygen has been sucked from his lungs, and he’s desperate to get it back. His skin feels clammy and cold, and he struggles to his feet, coughing.

Akihiko swings at a Shadow that definitely had its eyes on Makoto, and Yu obliterates it with a strike of lightning from Izanagi.

“Sorry- Didn’t mean for that to happen,” Makoto mumbles, stabbing at another Shadow. It snarls, attacking Yosuke- who sidesteps it with ease.

“Hey, all good! Just try to stay on your feet next time, okay?” He says, giving Makoto a grin. Makoto still feels like he had all his internal organs rearranged inside him, but he nods and continues to fight.

After the battle, Yu stops, puts a hand on Makoto’s shoulder and taps his earpiece. “Fuuka-san, can you bring my and Junpei-san’s groups back to the entrance?”

“Are you sure?” Fuuka asks. Just like with everything she says, it’s clear she doesn’t doubt Yu as a leader. It’s more confirmation for what she needs to do.

Makoto can think of more than a few times where he’s accidentally activated the teleporter and managed to save himself from accidentally going all the way back to the entrance because Fuuka asked before activating it on her side.

“Yeah, bring us back,” Yu confirms, then seemingly remembers he isn’t talking to Rise, because he hastily adds in a “please-!”

So Makoto and Kotone both end up in what they’ve decided to call time-out, with Yu and Shinji agreeing that they look sickly and need to rest. Akihiko reiterates to Fuuka and Rise that they are absolutely, in no way, by no means, allowed to go back into the dungeon. Which they find incredibly unfair. After all, Ken is their friend, too. They want to help look for him, to help rescue him.

However, despite all their complaints and protests, Shinji and Yu end up being proven right after they fall asleep on each other, covered by Fuuka and Rise’s jackets.

Maybe some things are better sat out.

Maybe other things are better with the power of two ex-Wildcards.

holy shit. the revival. that's so cool and also scary??? like imagine dying and coming back to life, you have no air and your body is cold... i never really thought about the fact they DIE when they fall in battle. also them seeing ryoji when they die... and makoto promising that someday he'll see ryoji again... im not crying you're crying. the fact he doesnt want to die anymore because he wants to live to protect his friends, to live with them, to have a life. its just so...

[jgmartin]

THE RUNAWAY

The forest is black. Pitch black.

I pound over the dirt trail, my feet turning the pedals like twin pistons. The bicycle bounces and jolts, shuddering as it rolls across the wooden bridge. There’s something in the air tonight. A chill. 

But it isn’t the chill of autumn. No, this is the chill of unease. It crawls up my spine carrying the deep-rooted knowledge that something about these woods, something about this trail isn’t right. It’s the unmistakable dread of being watched. 

Pursued.

I stand up and ride harder. My lungs burn with every push of the pedals but I can’t shake the feeling that I need to get out of these woods fast. The hospital is twenty minutes away. I just need to make it there.

I’m close. 

So close. 

WOMP

Bass rumbles behind me. It’s followed by a rush of wind, enough to throw me forward while ravishing the forest like a tempest. Trees groan. Their frames break and kneel, surrendering to the gale. Branches and leaves come loose. They ricochet through the air like shrapnel, cutting into my cheek and and I throw up an arm to keep myself from losing an eye. 

This is insanity. 

It’s lunacy. 

I don’t know what’s happening, but I know I have to make it through this. I have to get out of these woods, get back to the hospital to see my sister before the heart monitor flatlines. 

She’s not doing well. Are your mother and father home?

No, ma’am. 

Can you get here to be with her? She doesn’t have long. 

Yes ma’am. No matter what. 

The distant bass nears, growing thunderous. It’s as though the whole world is shaking, like the Earth might split in two and swallow me whole. I grit my teeth. I let loose a defiant roar, sweat pouring down my temples as my legs tremble, willing my bike forward.

Faster, dammit!

Faster!

There’s a flash. Then another. 

Lightning?

No.

I’m answered by an explosion of light, so violent and bright that I can’t see a damn thing. I holler. Scream. My body jerks forward as my front wheel collides with what feels like a fallen branch. Next thing I know, I’m flying over my handlebars.

What’s the phrase?

Ass-over-tea-kettle.

Yeah, that’s it. 

I brace myself for a broken arm, maybe worse, but the pain never comes. Nothing comes. It’s as though I’m floating in limbo, like gravity’s unable to finish what it started. I can’t feel a thing– not the dirt beneath me, not my face pressed against the bark of a tree. For a little while, I think I’m dead. That I’m in purgatory. 

But then my eyes adjust. The world comes into focus, beginning as a blurry smudge, but soon becoming a picture-perfect recreation of my worst nightmare.

I’m not in the forest anymore. 

I’m above it. 

I’m looking down at the mess of trees and I’m terrified at how small they are, how much smaller they’re getting with every passing second. 

I’m floating into the sky, being carried by a narrow beam of light. 

___________________________

That was a long time ago. Thirty years, give or take. 

A lot’s changed since then, but one thing’s remained the same: the nightmares. I have them every night. I dream about that blinding light, that same low bass and that same gut-churning horror of being eaten by the sky. 

I used to think they were a coping mechanism. I figured that since the dreams came shortly after my older sister passed, that maybe they were just how my eleven-year-old brain was dealing with the grief. My therapist seemed to agree.

“You’re quite right that there may be a link there,” she’d tell me, lowering her glasses and offering a medical-grade smile. “It’s very likely that these dreams are a form of abstract healing, a means to allow your mind to come to terms with its trauma.”

For a long time, I thought she was right. Or better put, I hoped she was. Now though? Well, I think maybe we were both wrong. 

Shit. 

Where are my manners? 

I’m over here rambling about my childhood, and you’re wondering who the hell I am. 

My name is Isaiah Mitchell. I’m a boogeyman, but not the cool kind. I don’t hide in closets or haunt old houses. I’m the type that your parents rant about while watching the evening news, the sort that tinfoil hats point to whenever things go wrong.

I’m what you might call a Man in Black. 

The work I do is classified. It’s the sort of work that happens behind the scenes, with shadowy people in shadowy circles. So when I tell you that last night something catastrophic happened, I’m not talking about the stock market dipping a couple percentage points. I'm not talking about increased traffic on your morning commute. 

I’m talking about trouble. 

Lots of it.

It’s the kind of trouble that’s making me do something I don’t generally do, which is break rules. By the end of this, I might break all of them. But this is important, and in moments like these I find myself thinking about my late sister, Hope, and how she would have wanted me to do the right thing. It’s how she raised me, after all. 

So here goes nothing. 

This begins with a story, but it ends with a decision. The story is mine, and the decision is yours. When I’m finished, you get to choose whether you spend the time you have left a little wiser, or laugh this off as the ramblings of a lunatic. 

Whatever you choose, I’ll have made my peace. 

The story is a personal one. It’s about me, but it’s also about you– it’s about everything in the universe, right down to the last atom, and how all of us are facing a horror the likes of which we can’t begin to imagine. 

It’s the story of the worst night of my life, and what might one day be the worst night of yours. 

It goes like this. 

_______________________

The beam of light sucks me up and spits me into absolute darkness. The sensory whiplash is enough to give me a headache, something like a migraine that pulses near my temples and feels like a bulldozer inside my skull. 

It’s uncomfortable. 

But not half as uncomfortable as the situation I’m in. 

“Hello?” I mumble to the dark. I stumble to my feet, feeling around my environment blindly. It’s cold. Hard. It feels like I might be in a room full of metal, but I can’t imagine where that would be. A warehouse?

Footsteps echo in the distance. They’re closing in. 

“Who’s there?” I sputter, and I think maybe I’ve been drugged. People don’t just up and float into the sky in the middle of the night. It isn’t a thing. 

That means I’m hallucinating. 

That means whoever kidnapped me knows a thing or two about stealing kids. 

That means they’re a professional. 

What’s the phrase?

Serial killer.

Yeah, that’s it.

WOOOOMP

I clap my hands to my ears. It’s that same bass from the forest, except now it’s reverberating all around me. Another bass joins it. This one is different… coming from a new direction, with a lower tone. It’s almost like they’re communicating– like morse code. 

“Please,” I beg. “Just let me go. I swear I won’t tell anybody!”

Static crackles. It’s followed by a sharp squeal of microphone feedback, then the buzz of modulating frequency. “Communication calibrated,” a digital voice says. “Subject identified: homosapien. Geographic location: New Mexico. Language model: English.” 

There’s a pause, it’s long and silent enough that I can hear my pulse rushing through my veins. I’m positive I’m going to die. These things don’t happen to people who live to tell the tale. 

“Can you understand us, homosapien?” the voice asks.

Yes, I say. 

Can you turn on the lights? I ask. 

The only thing worse than being murdered is being murdered in the dark. 

Yes, they say. 

I’m blinded for the third time in as many minutes. I blink, my eyes adjusting to the green glow as it fills the chamber. Wherever I am, it’s strange. Alien. Tall vats of liquid are scattered around a large, circular room, each hosting tubes that extend outward to a central console. Everything is metallic. I can’t make out any labels– any sort of identification at all. 

“Is this level of light sufficient?” another voice asks, this one right behind me. 

I wheel around, and my breath catches in my chest. In front of me is something that doesn’t exist– can’t exist. It’s roughly ten feet tall, and it’s got sharp teeth, sharp claws, scaled skin, and a tail. It’s a monster. A living, breathing monster. 

Fuck.

I scramble backward. My back collides with one of the vats, and blue liquid sloshes against the glass. “Thehellareyou?” I shout all at once. 

“We are the Chosen,” says the first voice, approaching my other side. “We are lifeforms from many galaxies away, and we have come to save humanity.”

They stare at me through giant eyes, and each of those eyes are filled with dozens of pulsing pupils. Almost like ink blots. 

“I’ve been abducted…” I sputter, hardly able to breathe. “By aliens. Aliens… are real… and I’ve been abducted…”

“Correct,” says one of the aliens. I realize this one has gray scales, while the other has teal. At least I can tell them apart. 

Gray looks at his arm, and a digital screen comes to life. He taps at it with a crooked finger. “Readings indicate heightened levels of cortisol and increased adrenal flow. Source: Fight or flight response. Biologically rational, but devoid of purpose.” He looks at me, cocks his over-large head to the side. “You have neither the option to fight us or flee us, so it would be best to comply. Do you understand?”

My jaw hangs open. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. Are these aliens really standing there reading me my Miranda Rights? “Are you going to probe me?” I ask. “Like the movies?”

Teal blinks at me, his pupils dilating. “Negative.” He points to a vat. “We will break down your genetic tissue into usable material, harvesting your most compatible DNA strands while discarding the rest. It is for the greater good.”

I follow his finger to the tank, and now that I’m right up against it, I can see clearly what’s floating inside. My stomach twists into a knot. Inside of it is a human body. Everything from the man’s waist down has been dissolved, and what’s left of his intestines are dangling freely. 

“Jesus Christ!”

“There is no cause for concern,” Teal says. He lumbers across the chamber to the metallic console that all the tubes are feeding into. “Your disappearance will be accounted for. A clone will be deployed to resume your life, preventing suspicion and avoiding social disruption.” 

“Let me get this straight,” I say, trying to ignore how faint I’m starting to feel. “You’re going to kill me… to save humanity?”

“Correct.”

The room spins. My chest gets tight and my vision becomes a scrambled mess. My ears are ringing like church bells. I stumble, losing my sense of equilibrium and I think I taste vomit in my throat.

“No,” I mutter. “This isn’t happening… Can’t be happening…” 

I steady myself against a vat, looking up to see a dead woman’s face staring back at me. Pieces of her skull have been eaten away. I can see the wrinkles of her brain underneath.  

“Heart rate out of range,” Gray says, but I hardly hear him. He grabs my wrist, presses a device against the center of my hand. 

I struggle. Fight. I try to use my teeth, but he’s strong, much stronger than me. A coldness pulses against my palm, almost like an ice cube, and soon that frigid sensation is traveling across my fingertips. Up my arm. 

“What did you…” I mutter, but the sensation is rolling through the rest of my body. It’s soothing. My eyes find my palm and I see a strange shape seared into the skin, a scatter of dots surrounding a black square.  Suddenly I can’t remember the thought I was trying to finish. Was any of this really worth panicking over? 

It was just a few corpses in vats, after all. 

“You have been administered a sedative,” Gray explains. 

My heart rate slows. My ears stop ringing. The ghost of a smile sneaks across my face.

Gray’s staring at his display. “Cortisol levels reduced. Adrenal response suppressed. Biometric readings indicate subject has achieved a suitable level of suggestibility to proceed.” 

“Affirmative,” says Teal, working the console. 

I feel like I’m drifting through the lake on a warm summer day. My heart is full. I’m in absolute bliss, and all I can think is that Hope should get to experience this before she dies…

“Pulse is quickening,” Gray says with a frown.

Hope.

My sister.

My dying sister, alone in the hospital wondering why her little brother abandoned her. 

“Sedation effect dropping,” Gray says. “98%. 94%. Emotional instability reaching unacceptable levels.”

“Hope,” I sputter, feeling like I’m coming out of a daze. “I have to get to the hospital– please! My sister is sick! She needs me!”

Gray presses the device against my other hand, and another pulse of relaxation courses through me. “Invalid concern,” he tells me. “Clone will be a perfect recreation of you, body and mind. It will retain all memories allowing it to continue your life uninterrupted. Conclusion: your expiring sibling will receive suitable emotional support prior to her decomposition.”

Fucking aliens. It takes everything I have to fight against the sedative, to make my case. “How?” I groan. “How is my DNA supposed to save humanity? What the hell is it saving us from anyway?”

Teal turns from the console to face us. His giant eyes are narrowed in a thoroughly displeased manner. “Invalid request. Information too critical to risk dissemination.”

“Rebuttal,” says Gray. “Clone’s memory can be modified. Current biometric readings indicate high levels of emotional discontent, placing likelihood of a compromised harvest at 34%. Solution: permit subject to understand purpose of sacrifice. Result: sense of closure and enhanced probability of project success.”

Teal turns back to the console. “Rebuttal accepted. Proceed.”

Gray looks at me. He places his scaly fingers against my head, and I squirm a little. “Brace yourself for disorientation,” he tells me. “You will experience physical unease and hyperstimulation. After, you will understand the horror that awaits your species in the dark.”

_________________________________

For a long time, that’s as far as the nightmare gets. Gray prattles on that I’m about to see the truth, some twisted fate that justifies melting humans into sludge, but before he can deliver the goods, I wake up. 

Every. Time. 

Blue balls doesn’t begin to describe it. 

Last night, it happens again. The nightmare, I mean. Same aliens, same tanks of human soup, but this time I wake up in a cold sweat. My phone is ringing on the bedside table. There’s a name on the screen that I hate to see.

“Whatisit?” I grumble. 

“Jesus Christ, Mitchell. I’ve been calling for ten minutes!”

My boss. Lisa. 

She goes off. The words are coming out like machine-gun fire, and from the background chatter I figure she’s speaking to more than just me. It sounds like there’s a crowd around her, like she’s briefing suits as she jogs down a hallway.

“Got all that?” she asks. 

Something about a shitstorm. Something about an F35. The air force just shot down a UAP, which is how we say UFO these days to avoid getting laughed out of the room. Apparently it happened in New Mexico. My backyard. 

This calls for a liter of coffee. Maybe two. 

I stumble into the kitchen and put a pot on. I have some time while she holds the phone to her chest and barks orders at the drones around her. One cream. One sugar. My spoon clinks against the side of the mug as her voice blares through the speaker. 

“Mitchell?” she says. “Still there?”

She says she’s got coordinates. I take a sip of scalding java. I’m dazed enough I barely feel it burn my tongue. My fingers punch the coordinates into my laptop, bringing up the location the supposed UAP was shot down. 

I spit my coffee over my screen. 

“The fuck?” I mutter, leaning forward and doing a double take at the map. 

“What is it?” she’s asking.

“Nothing,” I’m saying. 

But it’s a lie. The truth is, the coordinates are a dead match for the forest where I had my waltz with psychosis thirty years ago. They’re the coordinates from my dream. Right down to the rickety old bridge. 

I ask her if she’s sure the numbers are correct.

“Am I sure?” she snaps. “Look, if you’re asking me if this is another Chinese spy balloon then the answer is go fuck yourself. I’ve been pulling my hair out for the past twenty minutes. This is the real deal, so suit up and get ready to go. I’ve got a bird on the way.”

The clock on my microwave reads 2:34 a.m. and my stomach is telling me to sort my life out. “Do I have time for breakfast?” I ask. 

Click.

The line goes dead. 

Twenty minutes later, a helicopter is landing on my lawn. I board it in a daze, and we take off in the direction of the crash like we’re trying to outrun a cruise missile. I’m watching the lights of the countryside drift by, and it occurs to me that from all the way up here, in the dead of night, they almost look like stars. 

I wonder how long it’d take to snuff them out.

How long it’d take to burn a whole galaxy to ashes?

To crush a universe in the palm of your hand?

Things to consider. 

The closer we get to the crash site, the worse my thoughts become. They’re bordering on obsessive. I’m tangoing with darkness. Radio chatter is coming through the com line, something about aliens and extraterrestrials, but all I’m thinking about is controlling my bladder. 

I’m drowning in hypotheticals. 

I’m wondering what happens if I lose my mind between here and the crash site, what the protocols are, where they’ll take me. Do I get the night off? The week?

“Everything okay, sir?” 

It’s the co-pilot. She’s turning in her seat and looking at me like I’m having a medical emergency. 

“You look a bit pale,” she tells me. 

My muscles work overtime as I twist my mouth into a smile. “Never better,” I lie. “How far out are we?”

“Twenty miles,” she says with a reassuring grin. She turns back in her seat and I take the opportunity to let out an exhausted sigh. 

I close my eyes. Take a dozen deep breaths. 

Happy thoughts. 

I try to ignore how dry my mouth is, how badly my hands are shaking. I try to ignore the fact that every time I look down at my palms, I see that same scatter of dots, that same faded square that no doctor has been able to explain. “I’ve never seen scars like that,” they tell me. “How’d you get them?”

I don’t know, I tell them.

I don’t know.

But I do.

I’ve known this entire time, probably, but I’ve just been too terrified to accept it. I’m not what I think I am– this world isn’t what I think it is either. It’s all of this that’s making me want to curl into a ball. It’s making me want to weep on the floor, to scream at the top of my lungs and pull my hair out with everything I have.

It’s making me want to throw open the helicopter door, take a breath of fresh air and then plunge head-first into the dirt like a human turnip. And if I thought it was that easy, I might just do it. 

But somehow, I know it isn’t.

I know it won’t save me– won’t save us, from what’s coming. 

See, last night I had the same dream I’ve had for the last thirty years. The same abduction. The same aliens. But last night, I got to see the director’s cut. The Extended Edition. Last night, when Gray told me he was going to show me just how fucked we all are, he actually came through. 

Imagine that. 

What I saw was everything. 

I saw how all of this ends. How all of it began. What I saw is what’s waiting for us in the black infinity of space. And the more that I think about it, the more I think it might be driving me mad. 

“Just up ahead,” says the pilot. “Ten minutes to touch down.”

Eight minutes.

Five. 

“Jesus,” he says, at the three minute mark. “Are you two seeing this?”

And up ahead is a plume of smoke, rising into the night sky. There’s the faint flicker of fading fires, the haphazard glow of industrial lighting, and there, at the center of it all, is the unmistakable shape of something that shouldn’t exist.

“That… doesn’t look like it’s from this planet…” the co-pilot mutters over the com line. 

“No,” the pilot replies, and his voice is shaking. “It doesn't.” 

They’re right. They both are. What it looks like is something extra-terrestrial, something alien. It looks like something ripped straight from my worst nightmares.

And really, that’s just where I wish it had stayed.  

__________________________

The moment Gray touches my head, static ripples across my skull. I froth at the mouth. Choke. For a little while, I think I’m probably dying, but then I lose all sense of awareness. I’m falling. I’m breaching the atmosphere of my mind and crashing into a dimension outside of myself, outside of everything. 

Images flash. They’re like a film reel, playing across my consciousness from every direction. They’re everywhere. Inescapable. It’s as if I’m inhabiting them, as though they were moments in time and everything from sight, sound and smell are collapsing in on one another like a dying star. 

Gray calls this ‘disorienting.’

But then, just when I tell myself I want out— that I can’t take it anymore because my disembodied ghost is about to explode… It slows. The whole process hits the brakes. The visual hurricane calms from a category 5 to a 3, and then settles into a 1. 

Whew-ie!

Moments float to the surface. Others sink out of sight. 

Like a sponge, my mind starts absorbing information– everything from quantum physics to the lyrical discography of Shania Twain. Knowledge becomes trivial. As soon as I want to know something, I reach out and take it. 

It’s exhilarating. 

But then, something catches my attention. It’s a series of shimmering lights in my lake of thought, gleaming jewels that seem to be drawing me toward them. Somehow, I know that these are why I’ve come here. These are what Gray meant for me to find, the so-called truth that would justify all of the abductions, all of the murders. 

So I reach out. 

Information bombards me. It carpet-bombs my mind, and in the overwhelming chaos of it all, the entire history of the cosmos is laid bare before me.

I see it. I see everything. 

Gray and Teal? Not monsters. An alien species called the Vytar. Their technology eclipses humanity’s, and they’ve existed for billions of years. They’ve done remarkable things in that time, everything from mastering hyperlight travel to creating edible spray cheese. They’ve even charted the entirety of the cosmos. 

What I’m saying is they've been busy.

But my revelations don’t stop there. No, they keep coming.

Tragedy. 

I see tragedy. 

I see it in the Vytar’s search for answers. In their quest to uncover every nook and cranny of the universe, they come across two devastating discoveries. Firstly, they learn that they are alone in the cosmos. Secondly, they discover their species is going extinct. 

How?

It happens like this. 

Near the edge of space, a Vytar ship discovers life. But it isn’t intelligent. Far from it. This life is microbial, viral, and it infects the explorers. They toss themselves into quarantine. They’re observed, and a shocking discovery is made– this virus?

Not so bad.

In fact, maybe it’s just what they've been looking for.

Soon, Vytarians across the cosmos are lining up to be infected with the virus. Within a century, their entire species are carriers. It jumps between them like the common cold, but they don’t mind. Not at all. Why? Easy. This virus comes with a satisfaction guarantee: biological immortality. 

Now there’s a deal. 

The trouble is, these Vytar don’t work like humans do. They don’t have sex and make babies and then sleep and then wake up and do it again. No, these Vytar lay eggs. And only certain members of their species lay eggs. And what’s more? They only lay eggs during a specific molting period at the end of their life cycles. 

See what I’m getting at?

Biological immortality or laying eggs. Pick one. You can’t have both if you’re the Vytar. But by the time they figure this out, this virus has infected every last colony of their civilization. Unable to reproduce, their population enters freefall. It develops what’s known as an existential crisis, and if there’s one thing civil society hates, it’s dealing with an existential crisis. 

Tempers flare.

Emotions run hot. 

This brings us to the crux of the Vytarian dilemma. War. 

And lots of it. 

Worlds erupt into conflict. Galaxies become battlefields, and whole solar systems are laid to ash. If you thought nuclear weapons were bad, then consider what happens when a moon is kicked out of orbit into the surface of a planet. The bloodshed is immeasurable. As the fighting escalates, the stars themselves become weapons. The Vytar discover that if you can just push one toward instability…. Well, boom. 

There goes the neighborhood.

These Vytar? Nothing if not creative. 

But it’s just this penchant for outside the box problem solving that massacres their species into the low billions. Over a single millenia, the Vytar are swept from an inter-galactic species, to one inhabiting a single world on the edge of space. 

Having met their downfall at the hands of their technology, the surviving Vytar turn toward spiritualism. Cults form. Different sects have different beliefs, but one eventually consumes the rest: The Way of the Chosen. The Way promises an end to Vytarian pain. 

No more existential crisis. 

No more killing. 

All the Vytar need to do is open their hearts and minds to a simple three step program:

Show a little pride. We’re the only intelligent life in the universe, so start acting like it!

Persevere. Immortality is our final test. Keep your chin up!

Ascend. Just make it to the heat death of the universe, and you’ll be granted salvation!

Believe it or not, it’s a big hit. 

The Vytarians flock to it in droves because it offers what they need– a sense of purpose, and a break from the emotional turmoil that’s consumed them for decades. In a matter of years, The Way becomes the dominant socio-political force across the Vytarian homeworld, bringing the last of the warring factions together. 

It’s a beautiful thing. 

But what’s the phrase?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Yeah, that’s it. 

Not everybody is a fan of how The Chosen conduct business. But The Chosen make it easy for them– all who disavow their belief system are exiled. It’s for the good of the Vytarians, they say. And maybe they’re right. After all, these are a species of aliens that have seen just what disagreements can lead to. 

Fire. Fury. Mass graves and floating corpses in the vacuum of space. 

No thank you. 

That’s a risk they won’t take. 

One of these exiled Vytarians is a scientist. He has no name in the shared memory save for ‘The Heretic,’ and he is both the architect of humanity and the genesis of our greatest threat. In his assessment, the Vytarian extinction is an inevitability. He perceives their current peace as fragile, held up by a corrupt theocracy whose foundations could crumble any moment. Once they do, boom. Back to war. Back to genocide. 

It won’t be pretty. 

Worse still, when the last of the Vytar perish, so too will the last form of complex intelligence. Their species won’t just die– it’ll be forgotten. The universe will become a barren void, an unconscious minefield of drifting cadavers.

That will be their legacy. 

But the Heretic, he’s a mover-and-a-shaker. He’s the sort of individual who likes to solve problems, not create them, and so when he thinks of the Vytarian extinction, when he acknowledges it as a slow-motion inevitability, he isn’t giving up. No, he has a plan. It’s not a great plan, mind you. It’s not even a plan with a high-likelihood of success, and nor, for that matter, is it a plan that’s strictly legal.

But it is a plan. 

It goes like this: if the Vytarians are dying out, then something must replace them. There must be intelligent life to take their place, to give warmth to this cold cosmos, and remember their legacy. Since no other intelligent life exists in all the universe, that leaves him a single option.

He’ll just have to make some. 

And this Heretic? This mover-and-shaker?

Well, he succeeds. 

And really, that’s where this nightmare begins. 

_________________________________________________________________________

The helicopter touches down in a clearing that shouldn’t exist. 

I step out to find a forest that’s broken, smoldering, one that’s cleaved in two with a cloud of cinders in its wake. This isn’t how I remember this place. Not at all. I remember a wooden bridge over a lazy creek, and tall trees that–

“Mitchell!” 

Somebody’s calling my name. Running toward me. 

My boss.

Lisa’s got her phone pressed to one ear and her other hand is frantically waving at me. All around us are government personnel, fellow men-in-black types looking equal parts panicked and terrified. Nice to know I’m not alone. 

“Mitchell,” Lisa says, breathless. “Finally! Follow me.”

We take a stroll down the newest gully in America. Pieces of splintered metal scatter the ground, and here and there I see techs in hazmat suits brushing dust from the debris. Above us, the moon is being shrouded by a gigantic tarp. They’re extending it across the entire crash-site, likely hoping they can get it up before foreign satellites move into position and stick their noses into our business. 

“Looks like a warzone out here,” I say, loosening my tie. Is it hot out, or is my anxiety just turning my body into a furnace? Tough to say.

Either way, Lisa’s not paying attention. 

“Understood, sir. I’ll keep you posted with any and all updates as soon as we have them.” She hangs up her phone and turns to me. “Sorry, did you say something, Mitchell? Tonight’s been a nightmare.”

I can imagine. 

As we make our way toward the UAP, Lisa tells me the government’s been hounding her for details. 

What exactly did we shoot down? 

Are we going to war? 

She says we’ve probably got three hours until the media wakes up, and then we’ll need to start beating the journalists back with sticks.  “This is a fucking disaster,” she tells me, and she reaches into her jacket and grabs a flask. “Whisky?”

I shake my head. “Haven’t touched the stuff for years.”

“Suit yourself.” 

Bottom’s up. 

She wipes her mouth and shoves the flask back into her jacket, taking the sort of breath you take when you’ve hit your limit. “I should’ve kept on as an accountant,” she says. “I’d still be in bed right now.”

The closer we get to the UAP, the easier it is to see through the haze of smoke. The craft is no longer just a smudge in the distance. Now I can make out its general shape. Its general size. It looks big enough to pass for a stadium, and round enough to sell the illusion. 

“A flying saucer,” Lisa says, shaking her head. “You’d think these aliens never heard of a bad cliche.” 

We get to the edge of the perimeter and flash our badges. Three soldiers let us through. 

“Listen,” Lisa tells me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Before we go inside this thing, I want you to take a few deep breaths, okay? We’ve had a couple incidents already.”

“Incidents?” I ask. 

“Sure. One guy pissed his pants. Another was taking photos of this… corpse in a vat, and he throws up all over the inside– of the vat, not the corpse. Whatever. Point is, he completely fucked the lab team trying to get a sample.” She runs a hand through her hair. Chuckles darkly. “Luckily, there are about a dozen other corpses where that came from, but still. The smell was awful.”

Vats. Corpses. My stomach does a front flip and I almost take a page out of the photographer’s playbook. “So this is the real deal,” I mutter, pretending this whole thing doesn’t feel uncomfortably familiar. “Aliens actually exist, huh?”

“Just wait,” Lisa says, stepping into the dark of the ship. “This next part is gonna blow your mind.”

_________________________________________________________________________

The Heretic creates life in his image, using Earth as his petri dish. 

His first lifeforms are what you’d call prototypes. Rough drafts. They’re giant reptiles, dinosaurs, and a scattershot of various traits and biology. They’re a means to discover what works and what doesn’t on the path to evolving complex intelligence. He studies them closely. Then he studies them some more. 

But what’s the phrase?

Nothing lasts forever. 

Yeah, that’s it. 

We’ve covered that the Vytarian are an advanced species. We know that they’re no strangers to space, and we’re well aware that their wars wiped out 99% of their population. But what we haven’t covered, is that some toys are still left-over from those wars. 

And The Chosen? They possess almost all of them. 

One of these is a fleet of surveillance drones, the sort that drift through the cosmos and ping headquarters if they see something suspect. One of these happens to drift by Earth. Can you guess what happens next?

Images of the Heretic’s well, heresy, are transmitted to The Chosen. Minutes later, he gets a collect call from 40 billion light years away. 

What is this, the Chosen High Council asks. 

Blasphemer, they condemn. 

But the Heretic isn’t shocked by this. He knows that according to The Way, the creation of new lifeforms is the exclusive domain of their deity, The Distant One. He knows that what he’s done is criminal. That maybe it’s also considered an affront against all of existence, and that it’s maybe grounds for execution and inviting the wrath of god upon all Vytarians. 

Relax, he tells them. 

It’s you or us, they say. 

I can explain, he tells them.

Don’t bother, they say. 

The line goes dead. The Heretic figures he’s got about a handful of weeks before The Chosen arrive to dish out their justice, so he flees to a neighboring star system. While there, he realizes The Chosen were never aiming for him– only his life’s work. A meteor is propelled into the surface of the earth, and the moment it impacts the planet becomes fire. Six trillion lifeforms scream in momentary agony before turning to ash. 

The Heretic weeps. 

_________________________________________________________________________

Years pass.

Then centuries. 

These turn to millenia, and millenia become eons, and the Heretic decides to risk returning to earth. He wants to find closure for the loss of his creation. He wants to pay his respects. But when he arrives, his sorrow becomes hope. Life, it seems, has survived. 

More than that, it has thrived. 

Yet this life isn’t the same that he set out to create. No, this life is the biological progeny of tiny balls of fur he created to feed his prototypes. They’re what you and I might call mammals. Except some of these mammals are impressive– they have large brains, opposable thumbs, and what’s more, they look a bit like you and I. 

They’re humans. Among the first. 

The Heretic is fascinated by these humans. He recognizes they possess complex intelligence, sentience, and a strong sense of adaptability. He observes them as they form social groups, watches as they create the ghosts of language. 

Yes, he thinks. This is it. These lifeforms will inherit the universe, and in doing so, immortalize the Vytar in their memories. 

But a problem remains. The Chosen.

If they discover the earth is teeming with life, then they’ll circle back and finish the job. This time, they won’t pull punches. The planet will become an asteroid field, and all of its life will be red mist upon the floating rocks. 

But what to do?

How to keep humanity alive, to shield it from the overwhelming might of the Vytarian military? It seemed impossible. Equations run through the Heretic’s mind, scenarios infest his thoughts and in not a single one can he fathom succeeding. He has but one spacecraft. No weapons to speak of. 

And it occurs to him. 

Humans are hardy creatures– adaptable. Given time, they will evolve to reach parity with the Vytarians. Then, their superior numbers could compensate for any gaps in technology. But such a plan hinges upon them getting up to speed, ascending to an evolutionary singularity in which their gains become exponential. He cannot afford to wait millions of years when The Chosen could discover him any day. 

No, he’ll need to interfere. Spike the gene pool. Rig the results. He’ll need to give humanity more than a push, he’ll need to throw it down the damn stairs if they have any hope of surviving. 

But there’s a way. 

Yes, there’s always a way. 

He devises a solution called Project Runaway. 

It starts by creating a new lifeform. It’s aesthetically identical to a human male, but it’s born from the genetic harvest of thousands of his peers. Each strand of his DNA will be carefully selected for, prioritizing the potential for runaway evolution. Then, these strands will be spliced with Vytarian genes. Not much, but enough to access fragments of the shared memory– the Collective Recall. This will allow the man to gain intuitive understanding of billions of years worth of wisdom. It’ll permit him to think faster. Adapt more quickly. 

Then, as this man spreads his genes through the population, his progeny will inherit his DNA. They’ll evolve quicker. Think faster. This is how it works.

This is how humanity inherits the universe. 

_________________________________________________________________________

“Watch your step,” Lisa says, stepping into the UAP. 

I follow her inside. For a moment, I’m blinded by the glare of industrial work-lamps. Then my senses are assaulted by a cacophony of sound and movement. We’ve entered a hive of activity. Crowds of people buzz around us, some in biohazard suits, others in military camo. 

Where we are is a large circular chamber, one surrounded by dark corridors leading to other locations of the ship. Right now, teams are taping those entrances up with plastic wrap. Other teams are setting up perimeters, hanging pieces of paper above archways labeled A through Z.  

“You alright, Mitchell?”

“What?”

“Are you alright?” Lisa says, and she’s got her arms folded. She’s looking at me like she thinks I’m about to become her newest headache, maybe piss myself all over the deck. 

“I’m fine,” I tell her, forcing a smile. “It’s just a lot to take in, you know? Never been in an alien spaceship before.”

“Sure,” she says, lifting an eyebrow. “Join the club. We’re heading down corridor D to find somebody named Major Luca– I was talking to her a few seconds before you showed up. She said she’s got something to show me. Something big.”

“Spare me the suspense, Lis. What are we after?”

“From the sounds of it? Bodies.”

“Bodies?” I say. “Like those corpses you mentioned, the ones in vats?”

“Not quite. According to Luca, these bodies aren’t exactly… Well, they’re not human. Probably.” She punches my arm, gives me a cheeky smirk. “Relax, Mitchell. The Major confirmed they’re already dead– nothing to be scared of. Let’s go.”

She leads us down the corridor labeled D, and every step I take is worse than the last. 

My heart is flying. It’s pounding a million beats a minute. I put on my best poker face, nodding along as Lisa briefs me on the UAP, but internally I’m having a breakdown. It’s taking everything I have not to hyperventilate. The further we get into the spacecraft, the more I’m wondering how much of my dreams were dreams.

The more I wonder if all I am is just some clone with a badge. 

“What did the bodies look like?” I ask, clearing my throat. “Did these aliens have scales, and tails…and  sort of look like lizards?”

Lisa laughs. “No idea. Luca didn’t give me much of a description, but I’d bet money they were little green men. It’d go with the whole flying saucer motif, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” I swallow. “Suppose it would.”  

She chatters on. This, that, something else. Apparently they’ve got an ironclad alibi to deal with the journalists, something banal enough to keep them far away from the crash site. But I’m too deep in my own thoughts to register what is. I’m too deep remembering all the awful aspects of the dream that wasn’t supposed to be real. I’m remembering him. 

The Runaway. 

And the more I remember, the more I wish I could forget. 

____________________________________________________

The first time the Runway opens his eyes, he’s twenty years old. 

He’s laying naked in the jungle, the sun scorching his skin with ultraviolet rays. He sits up. He has no instructions. No guidance. This world is entirely new to him, utterly foreign and in his stomach flutters the first ghosts of adrenaline. 

From the outer ring of Saturn, the Heretic watches.

The Runaway rises to his feet. He takes his first shaking, trembling step and stumbles into the grass. He groans. Pain. A new sensation. He gets back up, tries again. It’s harder than it looks, walking when you’ve never done it before, but eventually he gets the picture. For him, it gets easier by the second. 

After only an hour, he’s running through the ferns. Climbing trees. And his stomach is screaming. 

Food.

He must find food. 

But what to eat? 

By his third hour alive, the Runaway has learned to forage. By his sixth, he’s consumed enough poisonous berries to floor an elephant, and is writhing on the ground. The poison burns his stomach. It makes his tongue swell and his skin glisten with sweat, but as the seconds become minutes, the agony fades to pain fades to healing.

His body is adapting. His digestive systems are hardening themselves against the poison, and soon, the Runaway rises back to his feet. 

Evolution has begun. 

As the sun sets, the Runaway collects wild game from crude traps. He has begun subconsciously tapping into the Collective Recall, intuitively teaching himself to skin animals, to make fires, to cook flesh for taste and health. 

He is learning. 

As the week comes to a close, the Runaway is surrounded. A pack of wolves has been hounding him for days, and now they’ve come to deal with this trespasser upon their territory. They circle him. Their teeth gnash, saliva leaking from their jaws. In their throats is a growl, a threat of death, but the Runaway has learned to handle his fear. Now, it serves him.

His muscles tense. His hands flex in and out of fists, and his eyes follow the beasts as they pad the ground. The large one, he thinks. The large wolf will engage, and the rest will follow. But he doesn’t give it time– he dashes forward, faster than even the wolves can react, and he brings his fist down upon the skull of the largest. The animal is stunned. Dazed. He follows up by grabbing its jaws, and pulling with all of his might. 

The other wolves flee. They yelp and they scream as their champion falls to the dirt, dead. 

The Runaway dresses himself in its hide. 

At the end of the month, the Runaway has evolved to the point he barely needs to eat. Twenty calories a day serve him all that he needs. A handful of berries, and he can operate at peak mental and physical capability. By the close of his second month, he no longer needs to breathe. He fishes hundreds of meters below the surface, fighting off sharks for choice morsels swimming in the deep. 

On the anniversary of his birth, the Heretic observes that the Runaway no longer ages. His DNA suffers no damage each time it splits. He has become biologically immortal. 

After five years, he transcends humanity. The Runaway is now capable of perceiving individual atoms, and by the sixth year of his life, he can manipulate them. Matter becomes his plaything. The laws of physics become little more than suggestions, and so if he wants to fly, then he does. If he wants to reach into the minds of living creatures, he does that too. 

The Runaway has become the most powerful lifeform to ever live. But the Heretic is not concerned. 

No, he sees what his creation is. He sees that this anomaly, this Runaway is kind. Empathetic. With each passing year his interest in violence wanes. Before long, the Runaway cuts himself off from humanity altogether, unable to stomach their wonton savagery and thirst for blood. Some have taken to worshiping him. Others, reviling.

To him, they are all the same. Misguided, fearful, and ruled by instincts he has learned to see beyond. These humans may as well be a separate species. 

To find respite from this chaos, he meditates. Sometimes he does this at the bottom of the sea. Other times he does this atop high, wind-swept peaks. Anywhere his senses are sufficiently assailed to block out the madness of the world around him.

And it’s while meditating on one of these peaks that the Runaway begins looking to the stars. He wonders if there may be more out there. 

Is it possible, he thinks aloud, that there are others like me?

Could I find a companion of my own?

And it’s while he’s pondering these thoughts, while he’s gazing into the deepness of space, that he finds something looking back at him. A lizard. Housed within a strange capsule, floating in the outer rings of a celestial body we know as Saturn. 

It is the first time he and his maker lock eyes. 

Weeks later, the Runaway’s breached the atmosphere of Earth. A month after that, he’s traversed the solar system and made it to the Heretic’s ship. He’s tapping on the hull. The Heretic welcomes him inside. 

“Hello,” the Heretic says, in the ancient tongue of man. 

The Runaway peers at him. “Hello…” he says slowly, but it is not in the ancient tongue of man. It is in the low bass of Vytarian. “Your language is… strange… but I believe I can master it. Who are you? Why have you been watching… me?”

The Heretic doesn’t see the point of mincing words. He comes clean about everything– after all, the Runaway is capable of looking into his thoughts. What’s the use of playing coy? He starts with the extinction of the Vytarian people, and ends with humanity’s role as inheritors of the universe, and the Runaway’s role in leading them there. 

“Have you any questions?” the Heretic asks. 

“Many,” the Runaway tells him. “Above all, why do you fear me?”

“I don’t,” the Heretic says. 

“You do. I see it reflected in your thoughts.”

“The fear you see reflected in my thoughts,” the Heretic begins, speaking with careful deliberation, “... it does not belong to me. You are viewing fragments of the Collective Recall, a shared knowledge passed down by my people. You are viewing the beliefs of those of us who remain from the Old War– followers of the Way of the Chosen.”

“These followers,” The Runaway says, his expression twisting with shock and horror. “They think of me as a monster– an abomination!”

“Not exactly,” the Heretic tells him. “Strictly, they do not think of you at all. In order to protect my work, I cut myself off from the Collective sometime ago, so all you’re seeing are faint echoes of their dogma. To them, my work is blasphemy. But yes… I believe that should they learn of you, your vast capabilities would indeed frighten them. They would think you a monster.”

“And to you?” The Runaway asks. “What am I to you?” 

The Heretic reaches toward the Runaway, claps his shoulder. He smiles in the human way. “I am a barren lifeform, ravaged by a virus that has stolen the hope of my people. I am unable to achieve my biological imperative. Reproduction is beyond me. You ask me what you are to me? You are my legacy.” He slowly, awkwardly performs the human ritual of embrace, wrapping his arms around the Runaway.

You are my son.

_________________________________________________________________________

I take a breath. It’s brief. Gasping. Gray is standing in front of me, his pupils pulsing, and I’m suddenly aware that his name isn’t Gray it’s Wor. He’s 70 million years old. Not only that, but so is his friend– and his name isn’t Teal, but Kez. They’re both devotees of the Way of the Chosen. 

“Did you see?” Wor asks, and he’s no longer using his digital translator. After the thought transference it seems I can understand the Vytarian language, make sense of the various vibrations that previously just seemed like low bass.

“Yes,” I say, leaning forward. “But not everything.” I look up at Wor, and hit him with an accusatory glare. “There’s more to this story, isn’t there? What aren’t you telling me?”

Kez twists his neck to look at us. His pupils are blowing up and shrinking in quick succession– a reaction I now understand to mean I’m pissed. “You have seen enough, human. Prepare for genetic deconstruction and we will be done with this.”

“No!” I exclaim, and I’m surprised to hear my voice rumbling throughout the ship. It’s thunderous. I clear my throat. “No,” I say, and this time my voice is appropriately subdued. Vytarian is apparently a powerful language. “If you want me to jump into a vat and turn into… corpse chili or whatever, then you have to show me it’s worth it.”

The Vytar exchange glances. Wor’s pupils shrink– he’s nervous. Concerned. “To show you more may invite excess unease,” he says. “It was my hope that a brief glance at the history, the origin of everything could provide necessary closure to commence the harvest of your DNA.”

“Look,” I say. “I’ve seen a lot. I know that whatever genetic material you’re grabbing off people is a lot more useful if we’re agreeable. It’s like hunting an animal. Kill it scared, and the meat is tough. It’s a chemical thing– I get that, and I’m telling you that if you show me the rest, I’ll let you do what you need. I’ll play my part.”

“Invalid request,” Kez says. “Such knowledge is beyond your capacity to bear.”

I frown. “It’s him, isn’t it? The Runaway. It’s obvious he’s the source of your fear and this so-called mission to save humanity. Yeah. I might not have all the details, but just looking at your reactions– it’s gotta be. More than that, I can guess you haven’t had much luck dealing with him either.”

Wor and Kez don’t speak a word. Their expressions say everything I need to know. 

“The way I figure it,” I continue, getting to my feet and taking a deep breath. “Is that I’m a human too. On some level, I’m like The Runaway, just less… well, terrifying. But maybe there’s something in those visions, something in the Runaway’s actions or his behaviors that only a human could make sense of. Ever think of that? I mean, what if I can help you catch something you’re missing? Isn’t that chance worth taking?”

The Vytar are quiet. They stare at one another for a long while, and their pupils explode in waves of emotion. Kez turns away. He lets out a gruff warble and throws up his arms, cursing Wor and me both. 

“What’s his problem?” I ask.

Wor steps forward. He gingerly looks back to his companion, but Kez’s back is turned, hunched over the console in clear disagreement. 

“Kez does not wish to harm your mind,” Wor says quietly. “Your story of your sister… this expiring human you call Hope, well, it has moved him. He fears that if I show you the rest of The Runaway’s story it will cause your mind to fracture, shattering your consciousness in such a way that it may not be repaired. There will be no perfect clone. Your sister will find no solace in her dying moments.”

I look at Kez, watch him tap at the console’s controls and I can’t help but feel guilty for judging him so harshly. At the end of the day, he was just looking out for my sister. 

But, on the other hand, he also wants to turn me into DNA soup. 

“This feels important,” I say to Wor, balling my hands into fists. “If this is really about the fate of humanity, the fate of everything– well, I think Hope would want me to do anything I could to help.” I plaster a weak smile onto my face, trying to hype myself up with fake confidence. “Besides, I can’t imagine it’s that bad, is it?”

Wor places his hands on my temples. Closes his eyes. “You’re right,” he tells me. “You cannot begin to imagine how bad it is.”

_________________________________________________________________________

Images riot past me. 

I’m falling again, out of my body and out of my mind, back into the collective history of the Vytarian species. Millenia pass in moments. Epochs become blurs. My very consciousness is straining under the weight of it all, like a molten ball of mental energy growing redder with every new detail, every new memory. 

And then it cools.

The maelstrom of history becomes a focused lens. Once again I’m observing the spacecraft orbiting the rings of Saturn. It’s the same ship that the Heretic and the Runaway are standing in, exchanging words that will decide the fate of the universe.

“They have come for my world before…” The Runaway says, blinking as he scans the Heretic’s memories. “They took the great lizards then… I see it in your thoughts. Their strike was powerful enough to nearly wipe out all life, to bring the planet to its knees and make molten liquid scream from its surface. If they return…”

“Yes,” The Heretic tells him, placing a hand against the observation window. In the distance is a speck of green in a field of darkness, magnified by a digital overlay. “They will ensure the planet is shattered, along with all life it hosts. They cannot understand you, and this frightens them.”

“And if they understood me?” The Runaway asks. “If I visit them, if I go to this world of The Chosen and show them that I am not some tool of violence, would they forgive you then? Forgive my world?”

The Heretic’s pupils shrink, becoming tiny beads. “A million years of peace could not convince them to love you. It is against their nature. To them, you will always be a false god. A pretender.”

“A false god?” The Runaway mutters. “If I am a false god… then who is the true god?” His expression hardens, his eyes narrowing as he sorts through deeper pools of knowledge within the Heretic’s mind. Suddenly he takes a sharp breath. Stumbles against the hull of the ship. “... Him…”

“The Distant One,” the Heretic explains, predicting what his creation has seen. “Yes. He is the deity of The Chosen, a so-called omnipotent force that exists just beyond the reaches of the universe, in a place called Edge.”

The Runaway’s lips tremble. His eyes, unblinking, grow bloodshot. “This Edge… Have you ever visited it?”

“No,” says the Heretic, sitting down next to him. “It is an unreachable place. Many have set out on pilgrimages to traverse the Edge, but none have returned. If the universe can be called hostile to life, then that place holds an active malevolence for it. None who seek it survive.” 

The Runaway is silent. His mouth hangs open, and he gives the impression that even his ever-expanding intellect is struggling to handle this philosophical equation. Minutes pass. The Runaway does not move. He does not respond to The Heretic’s prompts. 

The two sit in silence for hours. 

The Runaway lowers his head. “These humans are not like me,” he says at last. “And nor are you.” Something wet slips from the corner of his eye. A tear?

Yes.

More come. They fall in a torrent. 

“I am born from these humans,” he says, his words fragmented beneath the weight of his grief. “I am shaped by them, but they torment me with their genetic influence! I am driven toward compassion. My body screams for connection! But to me, these humans offer nothing– their thoughts are too limited to grant me wisdom, their perspectives too narrow to afford me connection. With every passing moment, my mind expands. My function grows. I have become powerful beyond belief, but I would throw it all away to be like them.” He turns his head, locking eyes with the Heretic. “Why? Why would you make me this way? ”

The Heretic’s words are fragile. “I am sorry,” he says. “You must know that it was never my intention to hurt you, child. Were it possible, I would do anything to make that pain go away.”

The Runaway looks away. His hands become fists and he raises an arm, wipes the tears from his eyes. “Perhaps you already have, father.”

“Child?” the Heretic says. “I don’t understand your meaning.”

“Connection,” the Runaway explains, rising to his feet. He leans his head against the observation window, looks out into the black abyss of space and swallows. “I will find somebody like me, somebody that understands what it means to stand above all other forms of life.” 

An uneven smile slips across his lips. “I will find God.”

_________________________________________________________________________

My consciousness crashes back into me. I gasp, throwing my head backwards, smashing it against a deconstruction tank. “Fuck!”

Wor grasps my shoulders. He’s staring at me with a wild look, and Kez is right behind him, both of their pupils are exploding like fireworks. “You saw?” they ask in unison. 

“More than last time…” I mutter, rubbing my head. “The Runaway went to look for God… or The Distant One, I guess.”

“Yes,” Wor says somberly. “The Distant One. The Runaway sought out the Edge.” He pauses, looking concerned. “We had to pull you out of the Recall, biometrics indicated your body was under considerable stress. How do you feel, human?”

“A little fuzzy, but not too bad.” I blink up at the Vytar duo. “Everything alright?”

They exchange looks. Kez huffs, stalking back to his console, his clawed feet echoing off the metal deck. Wor’s eyes are wide. He’s pleased. “We were able to pull considerable data from you during the Recall. I think it may help us in our mission, greatly enhancing humanity’s chance for survival.”

“Great,” I say. “Does that mean you’re not going to deconstruct me?”

“Oh no,” Wor says. “Your genetic material has become even more useful. If we can marry it with the neurological data we processed during your time in the Recall, we can accelerate the production of our countermeasure!”

Maybe it’s the sedative wearing off, or maybe I’m just tired of being buried alive in cosmic horror. “So that’s it, then?” I snap, rounding on Wor. “I get an inch away from understanding the biggest dick in the universe, and instead of throwing me a bone, showing me how it ends, you just expect me to jump into a pit of acid and do my part?”

“No,” Kez says. “You will enter the Recall once more.”

“But–” Wor starts.

Kez’s pupils flare. “The human has aided our efforts at great personal risk. Now is the time to provide him the closure we promised.” His attention turns back to me. “Though this human must acknowledge he may not reemerge from the Recall. This final trip may destroy him.”

I swallow. 

Wor is fretting. “Another Recall could limit our ability to harvest the DNA. After what we just discovered–”

“When the Heretic created humanity,” Kez says, cutting him off, “he did so under the belief that humans would one day choose their own destiny. Perhaps it is time we let this one make such a choice.”

Wor turns back to me. There’s an expression of deep concern in his features. “Your last Recall has given us much data to work with. If you go back… If your mind fractures, then we may not be able to use what we recovered to aid in human salvation.”

They’re both staring at me. It’s like getting to the final episode of X-Files and being told you’ll never learn how it ends– not unless you doom every human on earth. “And if I can take it…” I say, sorting through my thoughts. “If I can handle another dip into the Recall, then is it possible you’d be able to pull even more useful data from me? Could I accelerate this so-called salvation even faster?”

“Hypothetically,” Kez says. “But the chances are slim. Your ‘Hope’ may not receive the support you desire, as the cloning process will be compromised. It may not be possible to produce a clone at all.”

A slim chance is still a chance.

“Do it,” I tell them. “Show me how this ends.”

_________________________________________________________________________

My mind catches fire. 

I feel my consciousness fracture and split, shuddering beneath an unbearable force. For the third time, I descend into the Collective Recall, and this time I know I can’t take it. Thoughts begin to burn up. Memories ignite, scorching to ashes as they’re blown into the void. 

I’m losing time.

Losing all sense of self.

My mother’s name. What was it again?

Wendy? Whitney?

No… Something else.

My birthday. How old am I?

Eleven? Fourteen?

I’m watching myself fall to pieces from the inside out, and it’s terrifying. Bit by bit, I’m forgetting who I am. What I am.

Human?

Vytar?

W   H   O          A    M          I     

And then it stops.

Everything stops.

The cacophony of panic, the missing memories and the impossible fear. It fades to black.

No, not black.

But space.

I’m gazing out into space. There’s a ship here, a metallic craft floating outside a large planet with rings, and suddenly, piece by piece, the memories come back. Saturn. The ship belongs to the Heretic.

I have to investigate. I have to know how this ends. 

Inside, the Heretic is pacing back and forth. He is deep in thought, and there is no sign of the Runaway. He’s gone, I realize. He’s left to find God, or The Distant One, or the Edge. Whatever it is– he’s gone. Missing. 

The Heretic is concerned. He does not think of his creation as volatile, as threatening, but if it were to make contact with the Edge– that place where the laws of physics become unknowable and violent, then there’s no telling what will happen. No. He must intercept the Runaway before he reaches the outer limits of the universe.

He must stop his child.

But his ship cannot track him. He is but one Vytarian and his resources are limited. This Heretic, he’s a smart guy– a real mover-and-shaker, and so he knows what he has to do. It scares him. There will be consequences, but perhaps not worse than the consequence of inaction.

He contacts The Chosen.

They have the resources he needs, controlling the vast fleet of surveillance drones scattered throughout the cosmos. If they allow him their access, then maybe, just maybe, he can find the Runaway and convince his child to stay in the bounds of this universe.

Maybe, just maybe, he can save us all. 

He opens a communication channel. The Chosen aren’t happy with him, not happy at all. 

What have you done, they say. 

You have doomed us in your arrogance, they tell him.

It was never my intention, he replies. If we move quickly we can stop him, we can still set things right. 

Remain where you are, they order.

He does as he’s told. For he is not a fool, and he knows that there is no longer anywhere he can run. This is a disaster he must confront head on. This is his reckoning. 

The Chosen imprison the Heretic. They deploy a fleet to intercept the Runaway, but they fail to reach him in time. He breaches the Edge, vanishes beyond the furthest reaches of the universe and enters that forbidden realm belonging to eternity itself. 

He is with the Distant One now.

God help us all.

Years pass. The Chosen torture the Heretic, they demand he tell them everything he knows. He does. He holds nothing back, save for the birth of humanity. That is a secret that he cannot reveal– The Chosen must never punish the humans for his folly in creating the Runaway. The humans must persist. 

He believes they may yet be our only hope. 

Decades pass. The Heretic sits in chains, buried in a prison deep beneath the dirt. He is being kept alive while The Chosen monitor the Edge, nervous of the Runaway returning. If he does, they may need the Heretic yet. He could hold the key to solving this. 

A hundred years pass. Then nine hundred more. 

At the thousand year anniversary of the Runaway’s blasphemy, a Vytarian vessel reports anomalous activity near the Edge. Space there is behaving strangely. It’s a phenomena they’ve seen only once before, when the Runaway stepped beyond the Edge to find God.

Something is emerging.

It’s him. 

The Vytarian military is deployed to intercept the Runaway. His appearance has changed, his body now sallow and long, his eyes sunken and black. Images are relayed to the Heretic, who has been called before the High Council to advise on the situation.  

This is not him, he tells them. This is not my son. 

Then what is it, they ask. 

But if the Heretic knows, he does not speak of it. He watches the video feed in detached horror, his whole body trembling as a thousand military vessels surround the Runaway. His creation does not move. He floats idly just beyond the Edge, unbothered by the building threat around him. 

“Surrender,” the flagship demands. “Or we will be forced to open fire.”

“Fire,” says the Runaway, and the words echo in the minds of everything across the universe. “You know nothing of fire.”

With a wave of his hand, a thousand warships are torn asunder. They crumble, exploding in blue and black flames as their video feeds are extinguished one by one. A distant surveillance droid relays the carnage. It shows the High Council the nightmare unfolding, and shows the Heretic too. 

He weeps. Howls in despair. 

But the High Council has had one thousand years to prepare for this. They are not yet finished. As the last of the warships burn to dust, they reveal a ring of planets surrounding the Runaway. These planets have come a long way. They have been carted from distant solar systems, distant galaxies, and they have come here for one reason. 

To become dust. 

The High Council flips a switch. Powerful thrusters begin to move the planets toward the Runaway, a hundred of them converging on him at faster and faster speeds. Their surfaces tremble. Their cores begin to shudder.

One by one, the planets crash into the Runaway.

He is buried beneath a solar system, the resultant shockwaves causing the galaxy to shake. From light years away, the High Council observe with bated breath. The Heretic does not look up, for he knows that this ungodly display of force is nothing compared to a god itself. 

What has happened to his child?

How has the Edge corrupted him so?

As the last of the planets impact the Runaway, as the last of their fire and fury fades to scattered rubble, he is revealed to be a mangled corpse. His torn carcass floats between the debris. Pieces of him are scattered millions of miles apart, and these images are shared across the Collective Recall to all living Vytarians. They jump. They cheer. 

The false god is no more. The pretender has been unseated from his crooked throne. 

But bit by bit, his mangled carcass begins to move. It drifts at first. Slowly. But then it picks up speed, and soon pieces of his arms are smashing into his torso, and fragments of his skull are snapping up against one another. He is reforming himself. Resurrecting. 

What returns in his place is a monstrosity. It is a twisted mess, an abomination with nine arms and three legs. Its head is over-large, misshapen and draped in patches of black hair, and his eyes… His eyes are swirling, endless pools of cosmic abyss. No longer, the Heretic thinks, is this thing living. It is now beyond life. Beyond everything.

But the High Council is not convinced. 

A thousand years is a long time, and it’s longer still for a race as advanced as the Vytar. They have suffered wars that have ended solar systems, turned whole galaxies into wastelands, and so they are no strangers to violence. This Runaway? He will learn his place, one way or another. Those planets were never meant to end the monster. No. They were merely an opening salvo. A distraction to give the High Council time to prepare their real weapon. 

And now it is ready. 

In the crackling feed of a distant surveillance drone, the Heretic watches as a red hypergiant star begins to pulse. Plasma lashes from its surface. It throbs. This is it– the most powerful weapon in the Vytarian arsenal, and they’re triggering it on one of the largest stars in all the universe.

Supernova. 

There’s a flicker of light, and the drone feed goes dead. Another drone is tapped from a neighboring solar system, and it reveals a distant glimmer that’s growing, growing. It’s an explosion that’s engulfing everything within millions, billions of miles. It’s stretching outward and consuming neighboring systems. Whole planets and stars are vaporized in the cataclysmic fury of a dying titan. 

And then the explosion fades. It reveals nothing. The whole of the solar system– multiple systems burned to less than ash. Even the Runaway is no more. 

It seems too good to be true. The Heretic wants to believe, but he can’t. He knows just what his creation is capable of, having already seen it recover from being splintered into pieces and scattered across space. He may be vaporized, but…

And there. Slowly, pieces of matter begin to grow in the void. They grow and they grow, reforming until the Runaway’s screaming mouth emerges from a body now wholly unrecognizable as human. It’s a skeletal figure, long and decrepit, with dozens of limbs and a thousand mouths. Its eyes have become one, and within it, there is emptiness. 

But the assault isn’t over. 

The High Council grip their table, watching with nervous trepidation as the final phase of their attack begins. At the center of the supernova, something is forming. It’s swirling. Matter is being drawn into it. Light itself. The hypergiant star has collapsed into a supermassive black hole, and its gravitational force is such that even neighboring galaxies feel its pull. 

The Runaway is being dragged toward it. Still weakened from the largest explosion since the birth of the cosmos, he cannot resist its might. The event horizon is calling to him, beckoning him toward the most powerful trash compactor in all the universe and he is powerless before it. 

Now we will crush him, the High Council declares across the Collective Recall.

Vytarians cheer. 

Now we will break his bones.

Vytarians cheer.

Now we will unmake the unmaker.

Vytarians cheer.

We do this for all of the Chosen! To bring glory to The Distant One!

They cheer and they cheer. 

The Heretic watches through the Recall as Vytarians celebrate in the streets, sing and dance, speak scripture as they hold their arms to the sky in the way of prayer. It is done, they think. This is their judgment day, their final test, and now they will join The Distant One in the Edge. Now they will be granted their salvation. They will ascend. 

But the Heretic sees what they cannot. 

As the High Council exchanges congratulations, the Heretic is watching as the black hole’s pull on the Runaway diminishes. It’s subtle. The distance the Runaway is covering is slowly being reduced from millions of miles per second, to thousands, to hundreds. He is evolving. As he reaches the event horizon, where time and space begin to warp, the Runaway does something he hasn’t done in a thousand years. 

He opens his mouth. Takes a breath. 

And this black hole, this unfathomable force of gravity, is sucked up inside of him. His mouth closes. He swallows. 

“I had almost forgotten…” the Runaway says, his guttural voice echoing across all of creation. “... What pain felt like.”

He blinks out of existence. 

The High Council exchange looks of utter terror. The Heretic is bawling on the floor, for he knows that what comes next will be a horror none can imagine. 

End this, he begs them. End us all. 

And in his mind, he hears screaming. In all of their minds, they hear screaming. Through the Collective Recall, they watch as Vytarians run in panic, fleeing a mangled creature with an eye of a melting star. 

He is here.

The Runaway has come. 

You, the High Council shouts, pointing to the Heretic. We have shown leniency but it’s clear that The Disant One demands your blood! 

There’s a foot on his head. A blade in an executioner’s hand. 

If you have any sense, he tells them, then you’ll give this whole planet the peace of death. 

This began with you, they say, and so it shall end with you. 

And the blade comes down. The Heretic’s head is cleaved from his body, and as his consciousness begins to slip, his final wish is for everything they said to be true. 

The High Council frantically scans the Recall, growing more desperate, more horrified. Any moment now, they think. Any moment The Distant One will intervene, he will deliver them from this monster, this evil made flesh and they will all ascend to join him, having proven themselves loyal. Dedicated. After all, the Heretic is dead, isn’t he? What more is there left for them to do?

But the screaming doesn’t stop. Their Recall is assailed by nonstop suffering, nonstop cries for aid, for mercy, and the High Council watches helplessly while Vytarians are pulled apart, piece by piece. They watch as the Runaway poisons their heads. As he infiltrates their consciousness, cutting up their thoughts and marrying the agony of their body with the agony of their minds. 

Please, the High Council is pleading. They splay across the floor, raising their hands above them in the way of prayer. Help us, Distant One!

And there’s a loud crack.

The Runaway appears before them. He’s levitating in the air, his torso a mangled mess of limbs, his large eye blazing the heat of a billion dead stars. His body is coated in blood. In skin. 

Deliver us from this evil! the High Council says.

Restore that which is holy! they plead.

Unmake the pretender! they beg.

Destroy the false god! they shriek.

And the Runaway spreads a dozen crooked arms, tilts his grotesque head and for the second time in a thousand years, he takes a breath. An uneven smile slips across his face.

He tells them, I already have. 

_________________________________________________________________________

I’m choking on my vomit. 

Strong hands roll me over, and I let loose what’s left of my dinner onto the deck. I cough. Sputter. My eyes are bulging, my heart is racing and it feels like a hundred tiny explosions are going off across the surface of my brain. 

“Human,” Kez says, turning my face to look at him. “Human! Respond!”

I grunt. The words come out a jumbled mess, and I stagger to my hands and knees. “I… I’m alive…” I say, trying again. Good. Those are real words. 

Progress.

“You have been unconscious for an hour,” Wor says, lifting my matted hair. “We thought you were slated for expiry. We had prepared the vat to dissolve your corpse, hoping to get what little data we could.”

He points to a lowered vat in the ground. It’s been emptied of the blue fluid inside all of the others. 

 “Jesus…” I mutter, rubbing my eyes.  The environment is blurry, but second by second it’s getting clearer. “I’m okay, I think. Just a little woozy.”

“Did you see it, then?” Wor asks. “How Vytar ends?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “But that was a long time ago. Where’s the Runaway now?”

Wor and Kez are quiet. It’s as though they’re not certain how to go about answering the question, like they’re worried it’ll unearth memories better left buried. 

“He is still there,” Kez says, eyes downcast. “He is taking his time inflicting pain upon our people. He pulls them apart. Sometimes by their bodies, sometimes by their minds. Often both. When their life gives out, he puts them back together again. Starts over. None can escape.”

Wor nods. “We were off-world when the Runaway attacked. Our task had been to monitor a distant area of the Edge for his reemergence, but once we saw what was occurring through the Recall… We fled.”

“Won’t he know to find you?”

“Oh yes,” Wor says. “He will know to find us. He will know to find Earth, and once he has had his fill of our people, I suspect he will come back and take out his pain upon humanity. Your genetic signature is what has caused him such grief, after all. It is what drove him to find our god.”

I shake my head. It’s almost too much to imagine– some all powerful monster tormenting a population for thousands upon thousands of years, remaking them every time they die. “How…” I mutter. “How do you expect to stop him? After everything I just saw… The Chosen threw a whole solar system at him, caught him in a supernova and even tried dragging him into a black hole. Nothing worked. How are you going to beat something like that?”

“We will destroy him the same way that we were destroyed– and the same way that he was born,” Kez says, placing a hand against one of the vats. Inside of it is a man, and his limbs are dissolved and so are portions of his cheeks. “We will create a virus with accelerated evolution, an evolution more rapid than even the Runaway’s. His immune system will attempt to adapt to it, but it will adapt to his defenses even faster, and then it will consume him, and destroy him.”

I look at the dozens of vats, the scattered corpses of humans being turned into genetic slush. I look at the tubes extending from the vats, follow them to the console in the center of it all, where I see a large capsule sitting on top. Inside, fluid is bubbling. Boiling. 

“Is that it?” I say, nodding to the capsule. “Is that the virus?”

“Yes,” Wor replies, pupils shrinking. “Though it is not yet ready. We are hopeful that we can complete its construction before the Runaway finishes with our people, and comes for your own.”

“How long?” I ask, my voice quiet.

“Two hundred and fourteen years,” Kez says. 

I blink, tears forming in my eyes. “Two hundred… Good God. That’s forever. What if it’s not done in time?”

“Correction,” Wor says, referring to the readout on his arm. “Two hundred and fourteen years was our previous assessment. However, with the data we were able to compile from your experience in the Recall…” His long fingers tap at the display. “We estimate it may be finished in as little as thirty three, assuming your genetic deconstruction goes smoothly.”

Thirty three. 

It might as well have been a million knowing what we were up against. “And what do you call it?” I ask. 

“Query unclear,” Kez replies. “In this instance, a name serves no purpose. The virus has a function and it will either succeed or fail in it, and that is all that we are concerned with.”

“But this virus…” I begin, reaching for the right words. “This is the universe’s last chance at saving itself. It’s humanity’s last chance of surviving. It’s your last chance. That’s a big freaking deal– it should have a name, shouldn't it?”

Wor’s biometric readout flashes. “Cortisol levels are rising. Please calm yourself, human, otherwise you risk compromising valuable genetic data.” He looks up at me over his display. “Your clone will have no memory of this, so such an emotional response is illogical. As it happens, should you wish to say goodbye to your expiring sister, we will need to begin your deconstruction immediately. The clone will take a day to prepare.”

I open my mouth to speak, but I don’t know what to say. Tears leak from my eyes. I sniffle, wiping at them as I feel my heart crushed beneath the weight of so much pain. 

My sister. 

Hope. 

She’s dying in the hospital, and I won’t even get to say goodbye. The best she'll get is some lab-grown copycat. On top of that, there’s a mad god rampaging across the universe and he could show up on our doorstep any second. 

My knees buckle. I collapse onto the ground, and for the first time since I was very little, I cry my eyes out. I lean my head against the vat of a dead person, and I cry and I cry. I cry for Hope, I cry for myself, and I cry for every Vytarian who’s dying over and over and over again just to satisfy the twisted whims of the Runaway. 

A hand grips my shoulder. I look up, blinking through the tears clouding my vision. It’s Kez. 

“It is almost time,” he tells me. “Are you ready?”

“Sure…” I mutter. “We all die someday, right?”

He helps me to my feet and leads me toward a lowered, empty vat. “Human,” he says, blinking twice as his pupils pulse with effort. “No– Is…Isaiah Mitchell. It distresses you that we have not named this virus. Why?”

“Because it’s important,” I say, exasperated. I find myself wishing I could be as much of an emotionless husk as the Vytarians. It might make this whole self-sacrifice thing a bit easier. “It’s the most important thing ever created… and it’s just… nameless. It feels wrong. Don’t you see that?”

“No,” he tells me, helping me into the vat. 

I step into the thick, transparent tank. Liquid begins to pour out of several connected tubes, pooling at my feet. It feels tingly. Almost like an anesthetic. 

“What would you name this virus?” he asks, standing above me. 

I close my eyes. I think long and hard, happy for a distraction from my own mortality. But try as I might, I can’t bring myself to focus on it– I can’t make myself think about the virus, the mad god or the end of the universe. All I can think about is her. My big sister. I think about how much I’m going to miss her, and how I wish I could have had the chance to say goodbye before this nightmare unfolded. I think about playing boardgames as kids. I think about her making us popcorn, and watching Jurassic Park past my bedtime. I think about the two of us swinging on the playground, late into the night, and her reading me bedtime stories while our mom and dad were passed out drunk. 

“Isaiah,” Kez says, snapping me out of my reverie. “The name?”

The liquid is around my chest now. I squint up at Kez, my mind already beginning to feel distant, hazy. This is it. The final frontier. 

I give Kez a smile, and I say the last word I’ll ever speak. 

_________________________________________________________________________

The place Lisa’s taking me is on the far end of the spacecraft. It’s deep enough inside that teams haven’t gotten around to rigging it with lighting. So we’re doing things the old fashioned way.  

Right now, Lisa’s making shadow puppets with her flashlight. 

“You have to admit this one looks like a giraffe,” she says, twisting her fingers in a way that looks nothing like a giraffe. 

“How far left?” I ask, ignoring her. 

She sighs. “It’s just ahead. What’s gotten into you tonight, Mitchell?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, frowning. 

“I mean it’s usually me that’s all business. You’re the asshole who everything slips off of like cellophane, but now you’re all brooding and serious.” She shines the light in my eyes, and I stumble backward.

“Jesus! Quit it, will you?”

“Just needed to see your eyes,” she laughs, turning the light forward again. “Had to make sure the aliens hadn’t possessed you.”

“Give me a break.”

“A break? You only just got to work.” She stops suddenly, jerks her head to the side. Her flashlight illuminates a piece of paper hanging above the top of an entryway, and the paper reads D34. “This is us,” she says. “After you.”

I step inside. The room is dark, but to my right, in the far corner, is a scatter of lights and a small crew of people. They’re buzzing around a field of vats. I throw my light over, and my breath catches in my chest. The vats are filled with blue liquid. They’re filled with floating human corpses. 

“It’s real…” I mutter. “Jesus, it’s all real…”

“No shit,” Lisa says, pushing past me. “Major Luca?” she calls out.

A woman comes forward in a white lab coat, and on her uniform is a patch that reads LUCA. “Agents,” she says, pulling down her mask. “Good to see you. The bodies are just this way.”

She leads us through the maze of vats. There are people in lab attire standing above the tanks, dipping sticks inside to grab DNA samples. Others are draining the fluid with small portable pumps. This is it. This is the place I go every time I fall asleep. 

“Here they are,” Luca says. She points at a gray tarp, and I bend down and lift it up. Beneath are two bodies, both large, both dead. They have scaled skin, long teeth, serrated claws and even tails. Once I would have said they looked like monsters, now I think they look like old friends. 

Their name are Kez and Wor.

Lisa whistles, circling them. “Scary bastards, huh? Good thing they weren’t alive and kicking when we got inside. Probably would have gone all Xenomorph on our asses.”

Lisa makes a face, and Luca chuckles. 

I stare at the dead duo. How? How did they let this happen? They were Vytarians– the most advanced species in the history of the universe. How did they get shot down by something as archaic as an F35?

“Did the pilot give a report?” I ask. 

Lisa looks up, lifts an eyebrow. “You’re looking at the first real, flesh and blood aliens that anybody’s ever seen, and you’re asking about fucking paperwork?” She rolls her eyes. “Mitchell, I’m telling you– you’re losing it.”

“The report,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “What did the pilot see? Why’d they fire on the UAP?”

She sighs, long and hard. “Alright. Let’s get this over with. According to the report, the pilot picked up something weird on radar. Flew over to investigate. Once he gets there, he sees this giant aircraft that’s flickering in and out of existence, like one second it’s there, the next it’s gone kinda thing. Real strange. The pilot thinks maybe this is some kind of unknown Chinese spycraft and reports it in, but before he can finish the report, the UAP fires something into the sky.”

“It fires something?” I say, blinking. “Like a weapon?”

She shrugs. “That’s what the pilot thought. He figured it might be some kind of pre-emptive nuclear strike, and so he returned fire on it. Launched everything he had.”

“And what was it? What did they fire?”

“No idea,” she says. “NASA recorded it leaving our atmosphere, and the thing kept picking up speed until it cleared our solar system entirely. They lost track of it an hour ago.”

I shake my head. Pieces begin to fall together, and I wonder if maybe whatever it was the Vytarians fired required such immense power that they had to divert everything towards its launch. All cloaking functions. All shielding functions. That’s the only thing that made any sense to me– there was no way an F35 could match them otherwise. 

“That’s not all, ma’am,” Major Luca says. Her voice is slow, almost nervous. “After I radioed you about the bodies, my team found something else. We think it might have been the payload. The one the aliens launched just before the jet took them down.”

“Show me,” I say, shoving past Lisa. “Now.”

The Major hurries past rows of vats, and I follow. The whole time, I’m trying to ignore the twisting horror in my gut, the creeping dread that my nightmares were more real than I ever was. I see the bodies dissolving in the blue fluid, and I wonder how many other humans are clones. I wonder if the original Isaiah felt any pain when he died. I wonder if he’d hate me now. 

“It’s here,” Luca says, stopping in front of a large metallic console. Yet another relic of my memories. She points to an empty pedestal on top, and in the center of the pedestal is a hole, some kind of chute. “We think the payload they fired was sitting on here,” she tells me. Her eyes move across the rows of vats, the dozens of dead humans and her lips curl in disgust. “Best as we can tell, we think they might have been using our DNA to create some kind of bioweapon. I think that’s what they fired tonight.”

“A bioweapon?” Lisa says, catching up. “Why? Were they trying to wipe us out and just missed?”

“Maybe,” Luca says. “Or maybe it’s like an ICBM, except instead of breaching our atmosphere it’s breaching our solar system. Might be it’s coming back.”

Lisa says something in response.

Luca replies.

They go back and forth. At some point, I think Lisa might be talking to me, trying to get my opinion on something, but my mind is a million miles away. It’s thirty years away. I take a step toward the metal console, toward the empty pedestal. This is where it was– the virus that Wor and Kez had been building to destroy the Runaway.

Hang on.

There’s something underneath it. 

A label. It might be the only label in this entire ship, but it’s covered by dust and made faint by decades of wear. 

Lisa grabs my arm. “Earth to Mitchell?”

I mutter something in response, but I can’t tell you what it is. Words. Just words. 

Just like the word sitting beneath the pedestal. It’s a word that brings back memories, but not memories of floating corpses, or exploding stars, or aliens and mad gods. No, this is a word that brings back memories of a hospital room. 

White.

Sterile.

Inside of it, a girl is lying in a bed, and her skin is pale and thin. She’s having trouble breathing. Tubes are pouring into her throat doing their best to keep her alive, but she doesn’t have long. This girl is dying. And she’s the most important thing to me in the entire world. 

“Chin up,” she’s telling me, and her frail hand rests against my own. She’s smiling. She’s seventeen years old, hardly even had a chance to live, and she’s smiling because she knows that’s what I need to see. “Everything will be okay,” she says. “You’ll see.”

But I think about our mom and dad. I think about how right now, they’re passed out on the couch, and how maybe if I’m lucky they’ll drink themselves to death before I get home. I think about the bruises up and down my arms. I think about the moment my guardian angel intervened, and pulled my dad off of me, just in time for him to shove her backward down the stairs.

I think about the sound her body made as it hit the floor. How still she was.

And now, I’m here, and she’s smiling at me, and she’s telling me that everything is going to be okay even though I know that isn’t. I know nothing will ever be okay again. “I don’t want you to go,” I tell her, and I squeeze her hand as gently as I can. Tears are pouring from my eyes. “Please…”

And I know it’s selfish. I know it’s pointless. I know that my older sister is dying whether I like it or not, and that putting this on her at the very end is cruel, but I’m a kid. Eleven years old. I know if I don’t try I’ll always wonder if it might have worked. If maybe I had just asked, she might have stayed. 

The machine that’s beeping in tune with her heart starts to slow. Beep… Beep. She leans forward, presses her forehead to mine. “I have to,” she whispers. “But don’t think for a second I won’t be watching over you.”

I blink back tears. “Promise?”

“Sure,” she tells me, pulling me into a hug. “That’s what big sisters are for, right?”

And we hold each other like that until the beeping stops. 

___________________________________________________

“I'm talking to you!” Lisa snaps. 

“Huh?”

“Fantastic! You’re still alive.” Lisa looks panicked. Her hair is a mess, and she’s taking another swig of her flask.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. 

She’s wiping her lips, putting the flask back into her jacket.  “Look,” she says. “If this thing really is a bioweapon, then we’ve gotta get information on it. And fast. Like Luca said, just cause we’ve lost track of it doesn’t mean it’s not going to loop back around for us." She pulls out a crudely printed map, starts tapping at it with a finger. "Here, I’ll organize a search through Alpha to Delta corridors, and you handle Echo through Hotel. Look for records, data– anything you can find. Got it?”

“Right,” I mutter. “I'm on it.”

“Great.” She starts fast-walking away, her hands balled into fists. “I’m fucked,” she's muttering, over and over. “There’s a fucking bioweapon out there and I don’t know the first thing about it… I'm fucked…”

I look back to the console, to the empty pedestal where the virus once sat, and I think to myself that what Lisa's saying isn’t quite true. We do know something about this. My fingers brush the dust from beneath the pedestal, revealing the worn label. On it is a single word, scratched by a Vytarian claw thirty years ago.

It’s a name.

A virus like this shouldn't need a name, Kez told me as much. But if it had one? Well, I think I would have named it after my guardian angel. 

I think I would have called it Hope.