#right now i have a smaller clan getting absorbed by a larger clan after a lot of deaths including the death of their matriarch

[rxttenfish]

downside to centaur clan structure: much harder to come up with lesbian situationships

[bonefall]

if humanity was wiped out and clan cats were the first species to begin to evolve to take their place, what part of their bodies would be the first to change? what would be the last?

Hmm... Well, I think when discussing evolution, it's good to keep in mind that it is not a process that has a "goal." Humans are an incredibly unique species; there may not ever be anything quite like us ever again.

There are ecological niches; and convergent evolution happens so often because there is an optimal shape to accomplish that task. A social pursuit predator develops long muzzles, and long legs, so hyenas and dogs look similar even though they're barely related at all.

And Clan cats are clearly some kind of subspecies of cat that's finding value in social learning and tool use. If humans were no longer a threat or consideration, and this subspecies kept selecting for traits that value social ability and tool use;

Non-physical changes

Their brains would change. I'm not going to say their skull would get larger though; that's a correlation with species intelligence, but I wouldn't rule out some other change. Feel the back of your skull; that is actually a broken monkey gene at work. OUR brains got larger, but evolution is random change. It's just as likely their brains just get wrinklier, or some protein mutates and makes their synapses fire faster. But the brain would change somehow. Which leads to,

Their diet would change. Brainpower is INTENSE. They would need a lot of food and a more varied diet. for my Clan Culture series I actually gave them a gene that turns their taste for sweetness back on, like lactose tolerance in humans. They may need to eat more fish, or start eating ONLY cooked food to help absorb more nutrients.

Longer lives, longer childhoods, less babies Big brains are INTENSE. We are a cocial species-- that means we have to LEARN as we grow. We are not like precocial, like baby kittens, who are born knowing how to crawl and hiss. This brain takes massive parental investment, both in the womb and after we're born. Even as adults, we're constantly learning, improving our skills, teaching what we know to others. It's not good if your master craftsman dies early or you have generation turnover in less than 5 years. And what good is being a social species if there's no society to support these long, informative childhoods? If you'd waste all that energy pushing out 5 kittens a year only for half of them to die and "waste" so much investment? Smaller litters, longer childhoods.

Physical Changes

Tool Tooth Evolution works with what the organism has. Caledonian crows haven't evolved thumbs just because they use tools; they use their beak and their feet. Clan cats have two paws and a mouth; Hands and a pair of portable scissors. A top-and-bottom pair of teeth might become adapted to be stronger so they stop breaking their teeth while toolmaking.

More dexterous paws Specifically, the pad would be LOWER on the paw, leaving a "dip" between the beans and pad. It would be like that dip in your palm; that is an adaptation for tool use. You don't see that beautiful square-shape in chimpanzees or our relatives. I'd reckon an animal using its hands as toolmakers would develop a shape very similar RIGHT there.

Wrist mobility Turn your palm towards the ceiling right now. That movement is called supination. Now flip your hand and aim it towards the ground. That's pronation. Cats currently can't move their wrists like that. They would be able to, if the species started adapting towards tool use. (Don't do this if it would hurt your wrist of course!! You get the idea.)

Dewclaw would beef up And I say this because every time I see a cat actually needing to manipulate something, the dewclaw is actively used. I think it's likely that it would slide back down the paw over many generations and become a two-knuckle thumb, but with the claw being permanently extended. Speaking of claws,

Index claw would become long and straighter. And it would stick upright like a velociraptor, so that it doesn't dull over time. A very long index claw would be helpful for fine manipulation. Claws evolved for catching prey but becoming useful for tool use instead is called exaptation, when a structure that evolved for one purpose becomes useful for another.

Tails would become even more expressive. Cats do communicate with sound as well; but they say a LOT more with their tails. I think it would actually follow that they would naturally speak a sort of tail-sign, if they were evolving into an extremely social species, especially since they are hunters (and not apex predators at that) and silence is a virtue. To accommodate the complexity of language, that thing would be like a bendy straw.

Tails would have a light tip. Because it makes it easier to see. A cat with out a tip is harder to understand when they're tail-speaking, let ALONE in dark conditions. If it's not white, any lighter color would start being selected for.

And that's all I can remember off the top of my head. I'd considered this heavily before but, there you have it.

[calitraditionalism]

Arc Three: Chapter Eleven

(AO3 counterpart here.)

The silence continued into the dawn. No one got much sleep after Littlepaw’s vision. They were all afraid that they would be next.

Laurelclaw tried his best to stay positive, he really did. He pulled up as many hopeful, happy thoughts as he could while standing guard outside of Littlepaw’s den, ready to jump in and shake her out of another nightmare at the drop of a feather. Flyfang had tried to tell him to rest, but there was a silent understanding between the two that neither of them was going to sleep again when Littlepaw was at risk of falling back into whatever horrible space she had been in. Flyfang had conceded and gone into the den to be closer to her half-apprentice. When Laurelclaw glanced in occasionally, she was curled around Littlepaw’s tightly balled-up body, watching her with exhausted fear. He couldn’t blame her.

It wasn’t just that which made him fail to keep a happy image in his head. All of his happy images were of his family, the Plage – his mother, father, goofy deputy and snarky former mentor, among all the others, walking together, sharing jokes, watching the waves of the ocean rear and collapse, stretching their foam as far as it could go up the beach. The sense of companionship and confidence. Security in their strength as they stood together.

All of it suddenly felt so pointless, in the grand scheme of things. So temporary.

Laurelclaw fought against the dread that came with every reminder that his family was not going to a happy afterlife. He failed to keep it down. It soaked into his chest and stomach, sticking against the walls of his insides, making him sick. He shivered with nausea many times throughout the night.

The sun barely made it through the thick canopy above the makeshift camp. Laurelclaw hardly noticed it was daylight until Flyfang emerged from the den and shook out her fur. She wordlessly went off into the woods, tail dragging on the ground after her.

Everyone was awake and outside, sitting uncomfortably in silence, before Flyfang returned, carrying prey. Beetlefoot went with her to retrieve everything else she had caught, but there were still no words exchanged. They all formed a ring again and picked listlessly at their meals, nibbling without tasting.

Laurelclaw was absorbed in his own thoughts, but the tension eventually became too much to ignore. He followed his urge to say something.

“You know…” he started, and winced when everyone looked at him like he had shouted. “Imagining everyone’s reaction to all of this, it’s… it can be a little funny, I think.”

Silence. Every face was baffled. Laurelclaw internally berated himself and tried again.  

“It’s just me thinking about my mom, really,” he said while fighting off shakiness in his voice. “She’d- she would want to go to sleep and find StarClan and fight it to the death herself. She’d leap at the opportunity. But my dad, he’d run. He’d take the entire family with him – the whole Clan, probably – and flee as far as he could go. He was always a little timid like that.”

The silence calmed a little. Laurelclaw could see the others considering their own families.

“I think…” Flyfang’s eyes lifted up towards the treetops, contemplating. “I think the Marish would panic. My sisters, maybe they wouldn’t get it. They’d think it’s some monster from a story, something easy to beat on your way to becoming a hero. It’d be exciting for them.” Her voice lowered a little, tightened. “I’d prefer for them to think of it that way.”

Surprisingly, Beetlefoot spoke next. “I know the Fleet would all follow Redheart’s idea to get the entire Clan out of the Territory, if they could. Though everyone where I was born is… rather traditional. They prefer the aspects. But they still cling to them going to StarClan for their ‘good behavior’ and ‘righteous worship’. If they knew that all their praying and piousness meant nothing, they might just fling themselves into the river. Leap into the mouth of the beast. Get it over with as soon as possible.”

Laurelclaw looked at Beetlefoot, a little startled. It was the most he had ever said about himself. That tiny, weak cynicism in him remarked wryly about how of course it was unhappy and dour, coming from Beetlefoot. He told that part to hush and be nice.

“My mom wouldn’t believe it,” Littlepaw said, a bit muted and flat. She wasn’t looking at anyone. “She’d find every excuse under the sun to reason it away as a mistake or a lie.”

“Hard thing to convince anyone about,” Mistface said.

Laurelclaw couldn’t help some desperation in his voice. “Isn’t there anything we can do? We could warn everyone, right? Spread the word?”

Redheart sighed, more in a world-weary way than in annoyance with him (thankfully). “I’ve wanted to run around the Territory and tell everyone the truth so many times, Laurelclaw. But the Runagate’s been doing that for generations now, and they’ve barely gotten anywhere. We’re not the first ones to know about StarClan. We probably won’t be the last.”

“I don’t know how much we could do, anyway,” Greyleaf said. His claws were deeply sunk into the soft ground. “Who would believe a deputy on the run, and who would believe a healer, of all cats?”

“But Littlepaw-“ started Laurelclaw, but Redheart shook her head.

“She’s not a seer anymore,” she said. “And so many of our actual seers are fooled, StarClan can easily lie to them and call us insane. Littlepaw got lucky with the Runagate visiting her and StarClan trying to talk to her again, it seems.”

“‘Lucky’ is a real subjective word,” Mistface remarked. “Ain’t sure how lucky it is to see what y’all see.”

“About as lucky as bearing witness to a murder when no one else was around, I suppose,” Beetlefoot said darkly.

“You aren’t wrong.” Greyleaf looked down at his paws and carefully retracted his claws, grimacing. “It’s a stroke of incredible fortune that any of you believed us to begin with. I mean…” He looked to his brother. “You didn’t at first, right? Even you?”

Mistface gave him a non-smile. “Thought you might’ve been crazy for a minute, yes.”

“And he’s my brother.” Greyleaf turned back to everyone else. “The thing is that, yeah, you all believed us, but you’re a smaller group with at least relatively open minds, and it still took a second to win you over. Telling a much larger crowd, or a couple of strangers you’ve never spoken to before, that’s going to be a lot harder to convince.”

“That’s the trouble with all of us,” Darkpelt said suddenly. “I’ve noticed it in my line of work. Cats like to follow along with the crowd because it makes us feel more secure, like somehow more cats means more logical thinking and correct choices. And we cling to any line of security we can get. If you were told a horrible truth, and someone in your group said ‘that’s nonsense!’, you’d be inclined to believe them. It’s safer for your sanity.”

“Then how did we all believe it?” Flyfang, despite her words, did not sound argumentative. She looked more puzzled than anything.

Darkpelt shifted to tuck her front paws underneath her chest and she shut her eyes. Her tone became contemplative. “For me, at least, it just makes sense. I’ve always believed that nothing is impossible, given how real StarClan seemed all my life. And the connections between Redheart and Greyleaf, especially the nightmares, made me far too curious to just pass them off as insane and leave it at that.” She opened her eyes and turned her head in Flyfang’s direction. “Like I said the other day, they have a completely bonkers story that no one would expect to be believed, except a nutter. But a nutter wouldn’t also have the story make sense if one stops to think about the logistics of it.”

“And you believed based on that?” Mistface asked, eyes half-closed as he regarded her doubtfully. 

“Better reason than just a blood connection,” Darkpelt said, with a jaunty nod at him. “You’d believe Greyleaf if he told you he was Derecho in physical form.”

Mistface, surprisingly, did not react with his usual flat irritation. Rather, he looked amused. “It’d make more sense for him to be Gelid, with everything about Gelid’s inevitability, relating to what we know now.”

“You’d make a better Gelid than me,” Greyleaf said.

“Or Brume,” Beetlefoot muttered. “Slow and fluffy as you are.”

Mistface gave a breathy laugh, and with that the air of the ring loosened and relaxed. Appetites returned, everyone now eating properly and with a little more enjoyment of their food. It was quiet again for a while, until Beetlefoot spoke up, almost quiet enough that Laurelclaw didn't hear him.

“You know, Brume and Gelid used to be the same aspect,” he murmured.

Littlepaw perked up immediately. “I thought I heard something like that when I was a kit. Who were they?”

Speaking a little louder and, rather nicely, almost friendlier, Beetlefoot looked at Littlepaw. “They were called Rime. He was the aspect of ice and fog, once. He split into two a long time ago. The Brae still pray to him, though, as if he hasn’t been halved.”

“That doesn’t make much sense,” Flyfang said. “How could he still exist and be two different aspects at the same time?”

“Nothing the Brae do makes sense.” Beetlefoot shook his head. “They’re reclusive idiots.”

“Sounds like the Marish,” Flyfang said, almost nostalgically. “I had to peal out of there when they had their backs turned. They don’t want anyone leaving or coming in.”

Mistface swallowed a mouse tail. “Y’all got more problems in your families than they’re worth, if you ask me.”

“Your brother is on the run because he’s immune to a monster's visions,” Flyfang said, giving him a sarcastic head tilt. “Don’t you talk on family.”

“He’s kind of right, though,” Laurelclaw offered. “I love the Plage, but they can be a lot to handle. They all keep pushing me to be a patroller in the Fleet.”

Littlepaw lifted a paw to hide a smile. “They’ve met you, right?”

“I say the same thing.” Laurelclaw sighed a bit dramatically, for humor’s sake. “I’m just good at taking hits, that’s all.”

“You would not be a good patroller,” said Beetlefoot. “They’re all eager for a fight.” He paused, considering. “Though you cut an intimidating enough figure. You do have a chip in your ear.”

Laurelclaw lowered his head, a little embarrassed. “That was just an accident in my assessment.”

Littlepaw could not hide her smile now. “Have you been in a single real fight at all?”

“…No.” Laurelclaw’s ears (including the chipped one) started to burn, but Littlepaw’s laugh - quiet and small, but genuine - cooled them down again. Flyfang shook her head in mock disappointment. Even Redheart smiled.

There was a lull in the conversation again, but it was nice now – Laurelclaw could see everyone’s relief at the lightening of the mood as they exchanged friendly glances or started grooming their fur. Mistface and Greyleaf were talking in low voices to each other, and Greyleaf seemed calm for once.

“AH!”

A collective jump and the crew all looked at Darkpelt. She had shot up into a sitting position, her eyes huge even compared to her normal wide-eyed blind stare. Her tail stood straight up, fur sticking out like a fox’s.

“Something wrong?” Flyfang ventured when nothing was said.

“StarClan’s visions.” Darkpelt’s head twisted this way and that, like she was seeing something they couldn’t. “Greyleaf has been immune to them his whole life, and Littlepaw can see through the veil. ‘Through the veil’.” Her head turned in Redheart’s direction. “That’s what the Runagate told you. That was the specific wording.”

Redheart haltingly answered, confused. “It was, yes.”

“Littlepaw, Greyleaf, neither of you believe anymore, if you ever did.” Darkpelt looked between them. “As soon as you knew the truth, StarClan couldn’t work its magic on you.”

Littlepaw’s face fell. She seemed to be recalling the memory of her nightmare. “Yes. The field I always see was dead, and then it fell apart.”

“Is there a point to this?” Beetlefoot's head was craned a bit forward and his eyes were narrowed like Darkpelt’s were whenever she was concentrating.

“I don’t know yet.” Darkpelt lowered herself down again. “But it’s important. I can feel that. We have the veil and the knowledge of immunity. That’s all based on belief.” She squinted hard. “Belief. That’s going to be a factor. Keep that in your heads, everyone. We’re going to need to think.”

Laurelclaw didn’t know what to say. Thinking was not his strong suite to begin with, but this incredibly vague command to 'keep belief in his head' was already beyond him.

“Um…” He tilted his head, forgetting for a moment that Darkpelt couldn’t see him. “What does that factor into?”

“Haven’t the faintest,” Darkpelt said. “We’ll just have to wrack our noggins and see. Think hard, everyone. Think harder than you’ve ever thought in your lives. Our home and Clan depend on it.”

Redheart regarded Darkpelt with some puzzlement, but eventually she gave a small sigh. “We can do that. I hope this is going somewhere.”

“It is.” For the first time since they’d left the Clast, Darkpelt smiled broadly. “I promise.”

[ezrisdax-archive]

blood of my blood

@bioware, I need a whole series about Drack raising Kesh so I don’t have to write these stories. (also here on ao3)

~~

Kesh was much smaller than Drack ever imagined. Just a tiny little creature who fell asleep in his lap as soon as she was dumped in to it.

 He was never around to take care of his son, too busy being a merc and nothing really mattered to him back them but now his bones are only just held together by metal rods and he’s got no hearts to spare. There’s nothing good about a Krogan who’s lost that much, there’s no point to him anymore and he knows it.

 Except that the same people were saying the same about Kesh and while she was struggling to breathe she was still holding on to life to prove them wrong.

 “We’ll show ‘em, hey kid?” He rumbled, resting a gloveless hand on top of Kesh’s head. She squirmed a little at the pressure until he lightened it. He sighed, scooping Kesh up carefully and standing with far too much noise. “Too bad you’re stuck with me.” He told Kesh, shuffling around the room and trying to find something suitable for a Krogan child to sleep in.

 Her head plates hadn’t even hardened yet or formed properly, he wondered if she’d always suffer from that or if it was something that would change in time.

 His place really wasn’t set up for a kid, even a Krogan one, and Drack had to give up the hunt for something suitable, heading back to his bed and lowering Kesh on to it. “You can have the bed for now. I’ve slept on plenty of floors in my day.”

 Kesh made a noise, making him narrow his eyes, and she continued to protest, even going so far as opening her eyes though she couldn’t focus on anything yet. When he reached out she grabbed his hand and seemed to sink in to the warmth.

 Drack shook his head, “Demanding thing. Ha, true Krogan knows what they want. All right kid, you win for now.”

 Kesh practically rolled in to his neck when he laid down, sprawling out over him as best she could.

 “Don’t worry kid, I’ll look out for you.”

 Kesh made a gurgling noise that could have been a snore or agreement but Drack was betting was the former. He settled down to let himself go to sleep as well.

 ~~

 “You’re not my father.” Kesh spat it out after another argument about letting her go explore ruins came up.

 Funny how it hurt Drack no matter how true it was.

 “I just worry about you.” Drack admitted, “Maybe I’m getting too damn old for this.” He looked away, “You’ve proven you can take care of yourself.”

 Last week Kesh had headbutted Wratch and come home bleeding but grinning victoriously. She’d shown that she wasn’t a weak child to be abandoned after all.

 Except that Drack could still see the cracks in her headplates that hadn’t connected yet. He had a feeling he always would.

 He stood up, ready to tell Kesh to do what she wanted but his leg crumbled on him. “Shit.” Drack scowled at it, it would mean another surgery for him.

 Kesh was at his side in a second, holding him up. “Forgot to look after yourself again.” She sighed.

 But she stayed.

 ~~

 “…god damn Varren spawned quadless little shit.” Drack swore at the power unit. Behind him he could hear Kesh stifle a laugh.

 “Move.” She nudged him out of the way with her hand and reached in to the unit.

 “You know what you’re doing?” Drack asked, watching her try to navigate the thing.

 “Better than you do.” Kesh retorted and Drack laughed loudly at it. She was only twenty, had really only just started talking it seemed Drack and yet here she was fixing controls like it second nature.

 Except that she’d put a lot in to the work to make it look second nature already, he’d caught her reading articles written by Salarian engineers and scowling at them as she tried to make it work with her larger hands.

 The lights flickered and came back on line and Drack pounded his fist in to his other hand. “Ha, looks like that did it.”

 Kesh grumbled about the wires, still poking at them.

 “C’mon kid, let’s get back to our game. Didn’t fill these mini flamethrowers for nothing.” He could tell that Kesh’s attention was solely fixed on the controls.

 “These could be made better.” She was saying, talking to no one in particular and Drack knew he’d lost her to the puzzle she was trying to figure out.

 He took a seat, watching Kesh work and idly thought it was too soon for him to lose his ru’shan like this – which was ridiculous because he wanted Kesh to succeed, she was brilliant and was going to something amazing some day and Drack damn well wanted to be around to see it. He just also didn’t want to lose time with her while it was happening.

 It took nearly half an hour but Kesh finally noticed him staring. She tilted her head to look at him and then sighed. “Move over old man, it’s my turn.”

 “Age before wisdom.” Drack said, picking up the flamethrower to continue the game of firebreathing thresher maws of doom. His arm hurt, moving like that but then again to him everything hurt those days.

 Kesh noticed of course and that night he caught her reading up on medical journals and tried to swallow that guilt.

 ~~

 “It’s a whole other galaxy.” Even with all her blunt way of speaking Kesh couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice, or at least she couldn’t keep it from Drack who could pick it up.

 “I’m too old for this one.” Drack shook his head.

 “All of clan Nakmor is going.” Kesh continued onwards like Drack hadn’t spoken, barrelling through the conversation.

 “Yeah and some others, I heard the spiel.” Wouldn’t it be strange to not have clan Nakmor on Tuchanka? Would that tip the balance in favour of clan Urdnot taking control of all clans. Wrex had already absorbed so many of them and Drack couldn’t help but approve of it, it might mean there was hope for them yet.

 “Will I have to headbutt you to convince you to come?” Kesh finally asked.

 “Kid not even Morda tries that with me anymore.” He followed more out of respect for the Krogan rules and Morda wasn’t always the smartest but she knew that Drack had lived that long for good reason. Kesh still looked like she was considering it so Drack huffed. “Fine. Wasn’t about to let you head off to another galaxy without me anyway. Still want to see this Nexus achievement of yours.”

 He was proud of her and all she’d done for it. There was nothing that would stop him from making sure she knew that.

 Kesh grinned sharply suddenly and Drack tensed, “Just so you’re aware, Vorn is coming.”

 Drack groaned, “Not that idiot.”

 “We need a botanist.”

 “Yeah yeah.” Drack didn’t want to admit to that. “Tell him to at least bring those roots I like.”

 “I already packed them in the seed vault.” Kesh assured him.

 Drack grunted and then out of sentimentality he figured he was allowed for his old age dragged Kesh in close to press his headplates against hers gently. “You done good Kesh.”

 “You got me there.” Kesh reminded him. “I’ll get us the rest of the way.”

 He knew she would.

[clan-fuildarach]

backfire

clan fuil darach meets up with one of the commander’s flotillas. what happens next will warm your heart!

~

The sun was setting over the waters of the bay. Vaska sat with Ailbhe on the deck, hand in hand, enjoying a rare moment of peace.

“It's not bad,” Vaska was saying, stroking her thumb over the back of Ailbhe's hand, “I just didn't think it would be this hard.”

“You're not regretting it, are you?” Ailbhe said. She narrowed her eyes against the distant sun and rested her head on Vaska's shoulder. There was a slight teasing note in her voice.

“No,” Vaska said. “You know me, I'll whine about anything.” The subject of her current complaints was her apprenticeship. Of course she'd expected it to be challenging, but she hadn't expected everything else. “But, seriously,” she went on, “I'm fairly sure that feeding the cats isn't a part of my training, Luke's just too lazy to do it themself.”

Ailbhe snorted. “That's what being an apprentice is like, Vaska. You basically become an errand boy for your teacher. Be thankful that all you have to do is feed the cats.”

“I will not be thankful,” Vaska said, smiling. “That horrible floracat almost bit my hand off yesterday. Look!” And she raised her other hand, revealing several claw marks and a couple of puncture wounds.

“Looks like a good opportunity to practice healing magic,” Ailbhe said mildly.

“Oh, um...” Vaska glanced around the deck, to make sure no one was listening in. The other dragons seemed to be minding their own business, but she lowered her voice anyway. “I still haven't – I still can't bring myself to... actually heal anything...”

Ailbhe's warm golden eyes were full of understanding. She nodded, tightening her grip on Vaska's hand. On this side of the ship, the view north was almost uninterrupted. The southern coast of the Starfall Isles curving away from the setting sun, outlined by orange light.

A hollow thud sounded, like distant thunder.

“What's that?” Ailbhe said quietly, frowning. Vaska followed her gaze, for a moment not totally sure what she was looking at. Just at the mouth of the bay, close to the Starfall Isles, was a plume of smoke, like a bonfire. It rose from the cliffs facing the water.

A wave splashed against the side of the ship, tilting it dramatically. Vaska grabbed onto the rigging, clinging onto Ailbhe with her other hand. Shouts of irritation rose from elsewhere on the deck. Slowly, the ship righted itself.

As Vaska searched the calm water for whatever had produced the wave, she saw it – a distant flash of light from the cliffs, followed in seconds by another thud. She leant over the railing and scanned the water, but the setting sun had cast that area into shadow, so that only the cliffs showed against the violet sky.

“There's something there,” she said, tugging on Ailbhe's hand. “Right? Under the cliffs...”

The thing on the cliff flashed again, and this time it seemed to find its target in the waters below. Flames exploded from a part of the water where there should not have been anything at all, let alone a ship. But there it was, invisible but wreathed in a halo of flame and sparks. It was a ship, but Vaska had never seen one that big before, or that strangely-shaped.

The Cú na Mara's alarm bells began to ring, calling the dragons of the clan to attention. Tadhg, the lookout, fluttered down from the topmast and made straight for the sterncastle.

The artillery on the cliffs fired and missed again. The flames were already going out, leaving nothing but a pall of smoke. For a moment there was silence, and the strange ships were invisible again.

Leo had made it onto the deck, pulling on a shirt as Tadhg trailed after him and narrated what he'd seen by the cliffs.

“I don't know why you bothered me,” Leo sighed, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes. “If it's just two people going at it in the distance, who cares? As long as they don't get any closer.”

Abruptly, the invisibility of the ships cut out. There were three of them, all long and low like barges, each four times the size of the Cú na Mara. Each flew a dark purple flag from the stern. But, strangest of all, each carried structures hundreds of paces long, enormous cylinders that lay along the length of each barge, cylinders that almost resembled-

Vaska's eyes went wide. She tried to yell out a warning, but she wasn't fast enough. With a blast like a volcano erupting, one of the enormous cannons fired at the cliff. There was a flash of light that would have blinded any given non-Light dragon, and under this harsh glow the cliff simply disintegrated. Chunks of rock broke apart in ringing silence, raining into the water, forcing up waves that didn't seem to budge the cannon-barges.

The Cú na Mara tipped again, rolling in the water with terrible slowness. The deck became steeper and steeper, and Vaska shouted but all she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears. She grabbed for a rope, slipped, and found herself facing a fall down a deck that was now almost vertical. Ailbhe caught her by the wrist, hooking her other arm into the rigging.

Someone ran past, arms out for balance. Vaska just about recognised the odd shape of Tiberius the water guardian before he dived off the edge of the ship. Just as Vaska was considering simply transforming and abandoning ship, a huge scaly paw appeared over the side of the ship. It gripped the wood, splintering the railings and severing ropes, and pulled. The ship shuddered, then started to tip back. The deck became horizontal again.

Tiberius didn't release his hold. The choppy waves were dying down, but the cannons on the barges still faced the decimated coastline.

Sound gradually returned to the world. Everyone was shouting at once, scrambling with the sails and cut ropes.

“Wait, stop!” Leo waved for everyone's attention. “They haven't noticed us yet. We need to stay as still as possible. Put out those torches – if they see us they will kill us.”

There was no way of telling whether or not the clan had been noticed. The barges continued to drift along the coastline, moving south. Vaska held her breath, her heart pounding, as they drew closer and closer. She saw what she should have noticed much sooner – that there was a fleet of smaller ships accompanying the barges, hidden among their bulk. A quarter of Rezann's army was in the bay, approaching the Cú na Mara. She closed her eyes and tried to think of something else, anything else, but all her mind would show her was that terrible moment in the old clan camp, when the army had come through the trees and left the clan in ruins. An echo of pain ran along her side, where she'd narrowly avoided being hit that day.

She bit her lip until she tasted blood.

One of the approaching vessels fired on the Cú na Mara. The thud of the carronade was followed almost instantly by the sound of a cannonball splashing into the water. A warning shot.

“What do we do?” someone asked Leo in a tiny, strangled voice.

“I don't... I don't know,” he said.

He delayed just a second too long. The next shot hit the Cú na Mara's foremast and blew it to splinters. Ailbhe shoved Vaska down, shielding her from the rain of splinters and shards of wood. Almost instantly, the Cú na Mara fired back; dragons in the gun-decks must have been prepared for it. It was a mistake, of course.

Engaging an entire fleet of ships and three enormous barges was folly at its finest. Vaska flattened herself to the top deck and clamped her hands over her ears, hating that her biggest fear was that she would be called to heal, rather than that there would be people who required healing in the first place.

There was a short lull. Then one of the Commander's smaller ships simply blew itself to bits. A corona of pink light shredded sailcloth and wood alike in a soundless explosion. The ship went down almost instantly, leaving a scattered trail of debris on the water's surface.

Before Vaska had a chance to absorb this, another ship blew up. When it happened a third time, she saw it – a burning neon rune appeared on the ship's hull, spitting out sparks and steam before simply exploding. She turned on the spot, terrified that some third party had come to complicate things, but the surrounding waters were empty and quiet. She did see John, though. He leant against the rigging while he aimed, his cane upright at his side, both his hands joined as if in prayer. He formed an aperture with his fingers and a new rune flickered into life in the gap.

Leo stood beside him. “Can you get the barges?” Another cannonball whistled overhead and Leo ducked, but John didn't seem capable of much movement. Steam rose from his waistcoat.

“If I know Commander Rezann,” John said, taking aim again, “he will have placed wards on the cannons. But I can aim for the boats, instead...” He spread his hands, making room for a larger rune this time. Vaska could only stare, feeling thoroughly inadequate and useless.

A sparking pink rune appeared on the side of one of the barges, right above the waterline.

“Get down!” John called. Vaska fell to her knees, gathering up Ailbhe in her arms and squeezing her eyes shut. Ailbhe trembled slightly, her breaths harsh on the side of Vaska's face.

The great flash of pink light burned through Vaska's eyelids. Heat grazed the back of her head. This magic was strangely familiar to her – despite its colour, it almost resembled her own Light spells, but was just alien enough to raise the hairs all over her body. She cracked an eye open and glanced across the water. The barge had been halved, and dragons swarmed over its surface, trying to hoist up the cannon before it sank with some success. Some kind of flotation device had deployed under the cannon, so even as the barge broke apart around it, it did not sink.

John was panting now, his clothes burnt in large patches. One of his eyes was bleeding. But he took aim again, this time for the cannon itself. In the split second before the inevitable explosion, Vaska caught sight of his face and shuddered, an instinctive wariness rising in her at the sight of his eyes, one gold and one magenta.

Then the entire world exploded, and Vaska didn't duck in time.

She woke to a terrible ringing and a blur of gold; Ailbhe was leaning over her, tapping her cheeks, trying to rouse her. Vaska blinked and sat up with a groan that she did not hear, and brushed aside the spell tag that had been stuck to her forehead so that she could see. The deck was in chaos, dragons sprawled out on the cracked wood. Two of the masts were in ruins, but somehow the ship was moving at a fast clip, away from the burning smudge on the horizon.

She peered over the edge of the deck. Nothing remained of the fleet except a scattering of burning debris and the end of one of the cannons, still sinking under the surface. Within a couple of seconds, all three of them had vanished under.

“Ow...” Vaska shook her head, trying to clear it. “What – how are we moving?”

“Tiber's pulling us,” Ailbhe said. “But we need to get somewhere safe so that we can recover.” She nudged Vaska and pointed. “Should you, um, should you be helping them?”

A few paces away, all three of the clan's healers were kneeling around John, Fiach directing the other two, who wrote onto the same scroll in relative silence. Zeta looked like he'd been crying, Luke looked like they'd only just woken up; they wore one of Rúth's shirts, back-to-front.

Vaska approached. Most of John was hidden under a pile of spell tags. But the deck around him looked as if it had been hit with a mallet, cracks radiating out from where John lay. And in those cracks in the wood was something shiny and mottled yellow and pink.

“Hey,” Vaska said, clearing her throat. “Do you... need help?” Please say no, please say no...

“No, Vaska,” Fiach said, pausing his writing for an instant. “This is too advanced for you. But you can tend to the rest of the clan, so long as their injuries are minor.” He glanced down at Luke. “She can, can't she?”

“If she's been paying attention, yes,” Luke said. Vaska frowned for a moment, indignant. Of course she'd been paying attention.

She glanced back, at the various bruised and scraped-up dragons on the deck, then snatched up a stack of empty spell tags and a pen.

“Did we win?” she said, before going to do her job.

Fiach met her eyes, and she instantly felt about two feet tall. “That remains to be seen.”

[quietpagan]

What Falls and What Grows, ch. 8

"A weed is a plant that is not only in the wrong place, but intends to stay."

- Sara Stein

 Trollmarket was in an uproar, and Blinky was…stressed.

As trainer of the Trollhunter, he’d been hounded with questions, accusations, exclamations, and sarcastic mockery in the day following the fight, especially when Alexandra failed to appear. He knew she was injured, but even sticking her head out the door of the quarters and shouting ‘Fuck off!’ would have been better than her absence. The fact that she hadn’t been around after such a controversial fight possibly had ruined what little reputation she had gained.

He and AAARRRGGHH had ventured up to her room with medicines a few hours after the fight, having had trouble shaking off everyone who wanted to ‘congratulate’ Blinky on his rather unorthodox student. Nobody answered the door, so they dropped off what they’d brought and left. They’d learned not to barge into Alexandra’s room after her second morning in Trollmarket, when she nearly took Blinky’s head off when he came to wake her up for training.

Eventually, though, she emerged, looking half-dead but no less eager…

Perhaps ‘eager’ is the wrong word…

…Looking no less determined to continue her training. She was assaulted with both well-wishers and nay-sayers, but when asked about her final decision in the battle her answers more or less amounted to “Deal with it.”

As it was, she was too injured to attend physical training, so Blinky had her hidden in his library, stacks of his brother’s books up to her nose as he deliberately lectured her on the finer points of troll battle cultures around the world. She studiously took her notes, absorbing everything he told her even though she had flouted a good majority of the rules about honorable fighting. He was sure she’d even bitten Draal at one times.

Blinky peered at her over the top of a dusty tome.

She claimed that she had no idea where Draal was, but the entirety of Trollmarket had seen them leave together, and when she came to train or study she smelled like him. Given their mutual dislike, Blinky would be very surprised if they turned out to be lovers, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t still keeping in contact with him.

Not that it mattered. Draal was dishonored, an outcast; his actions and whereabouts were inconsequential. The problem was that Alexandra was lying in the first place. And to her trainer!

Blinky knew that she knew that he was watching her. She had to know; Blinky had never been very good at being sneaky. But she never gave any sign that she was purposefully trying to act casual, or not cause suspicion. In fact she still did things or said things that gave Blinky question, not even trying to hide her peculiarities.  Like when she looked at him as if he was crazy when he suggested closing her wounds with molten metal. Did they not do anything in New Jersey?

Alexandra still hadn’t told him much about her past, but Blinky – as he suspected she knew – was observant, and he’d noticed her muttering in another language during the battle, but it wasn’t Trollish. He hadn’t been close enough to hear.

And her battle tactics!

Blinky gently put down his book and rubbed his hands against his eyes. If he got into thinking about her fighting styles he’d never stop. He had been so absorbed with everything Alexandra for the past week and a half he’d barely had time to think about anything else. Why was she lying? How much was she lying about? Were her oddities truly a product of New Jersey, or something else? He’d never met a more elusive Trollhunter, and the problem was that she genuinely didn’t seem like she was trying to hide anything; only when he dug into matters themselves did he uncover her insincerity, and it just made his head ache.

But a little part of him, the part that Vendel always groused about, was happy. He had uncovered a new mystery, and on such a high-profile subject! Which was exactly why Vendel wasn’t going to know about this. Alexandra was, by every appearance, harmless and dedicated to her destined task. She wasn’t gregarious by any means but the few who had come to her for help or advice had been treated courteously, and although she tended to swear like a demon she trained hard and oh great Deya he was doing it again.

AAARRRGGHH lifted his head when Blinky shuffled over and took a seat closer to his side, but otherwise stayed asleep. He loved to listen to Blinky teach almost as much as Blinky loved teaching, but he always slept better after a lecture and was more than happy to curl up and nap in Blinky’s library. AAARRRGGHH was Blinky’s solace and sanity, now more than ever. He was not nearly as concerned as his smaller friend about the mysteries of their new Trollhunter, and he was used to Blinky sniffing around conspiracies enough that it was old hat. Blinky used him as a sounding board and a retreat when he ran himself ragged over years of messy misunderstandings and paranoid precautions.

AAARRRGGHH practically radiated calmness and serenity; Blinky just sat and emptied his mind for a while, enjoying his friend’s presence and the quiet writing of Alexandra’s pen.

It was nice.

…

…But WHY did she spare Draal’s life if she deeply disliked him, and where had she learned how to fight well enough to defeat him? She had been trained by the troll, true, but he had never trained her like that! She was evading, dodging, almost dancing with him, which was almost the exact opposite of how Draal had been teaching her. It was smarter, in a battle with someone her size versus an opponent the size and strength of Draal, but her knowledge of those tactics indicated that she’d fought before. Against who? When? Where?

AAARRRGGHH gently pat him on the head then, sleepily murmuring,

“Thinking too much.”

Alexandra smiled at them over her book.

Blinky had long since gotten over being embarrassed by AAARRRGGHH. Everyone in Trollmarket knew he was tactile with Blinky; everyone knew he was significantly less than eloquent; everyone knew he had his good days and bad days, and sometimes just needed to be left alone. But Blinky couldn’t help but wonder how Alexandra perceived his massive friend; being from such a strange place (possibly), did she find AAARRRGGHH strange as well, or was she truly as accepting as she appeared?

“AAARRRGGHH’s right, you’re thinking too much,” she muttered. Blinky had the sudden, intrusive thought that she could read minds, but dismissed it almost immediately.

“I was merely wondering,” Blinky said quietly, “Where you learned to fight a larger opponent. You certainly handled Draal well.”

“Yes. Shame I don’t know where he is,” Alexandra replied. She was purposefully misunderstanding his statement in order to draw attention away from her fighting styles! She was hiding something!

“And I picked up a few things here and there. We’re not from the most muscular or battle-ready of clans, after all. Larger opponents are a fact of life.” …Ah. So she answers the question without giving away a single shred of personal information.

Blinky was dealing with a professional.

That was his first thought, anyway.

His second was: Let’s pit her against Bular.

She had no reaction, so she wasn’t reading his mind.

…Just in case.

 Alexandra was nearly ready to go find one of the other Changelings in Arcadia and say ‘Hey! I’m alive! Please take me back!’ if it meant that she could get away from Blinky. He was honestly worse than Stricklander when it came to questions and roundabout inquiries, and now he was beginning to just ask outright! She knew that he was suspicious of her and it was stressing her the fuck out, as if she needed another reason to be stressed.

Draal was still recovering in her room, she herself was only healed enough to wobble back and forth to the library, Blinky played Twenty Questions with her every day, half of Trollmarket thought she was an indecisive coward, and at some point soon she needed to go back upstairs to finish off her affairs and get more cat supplies.

It was not the best time for her trainer to be wondering about her. She was too injured to be able to fight her way out of Trollmarket, if he really discovered who she was. Hell, she was too injured to fight her way out of the library. Blinky could probably take her down now.

Fortunately, nobody really wanted anything from her. A few people had approached her in the library, asking for advice or to settle a dispute – not everyone in Trollmarket had been dissatisfied with the outcome of the match, as it turned out – but for the most part she was left alone. She had proven herself against a formidable opponent, and even though she’d flouted the rules she still won.

Vendel, actually, had seemed the most impressed with her, and she suspected that it was because he cared about Draal. He had cornered her on her way back to her quarters one day, to question her. He had not inquired about the idiot’s whereabouts, but simply asked if he was okay. Alex suspected that her ‘concerned grandparent’ impression actually had more root in truth than she had initially assumed. When she told him of Draal’s condition he took her to his quarters inside the Heartstone and gave her a small bag of simple but powerful medicines, and then refused to interact with her further. But he had been significantly less vitriolic than any other time she’d spoken to him, and she knew he was grateful for her having spared the asshole’s life.

Draal himself was taking his ‘banishment’ reasonably well, even though he was going stir-crazy and driving her to the limits of her patience. He actually was not that bad a roommate, but Alexandra valued her privacy, and until Draal healed she was deprived of it. It was a good thing that trolls didn’t have much of a stink, because he couldn’t even leave to use the baths, but Alex was ready to kick him out for just about any excuse. He scoffed at her when she stayed up reading and her only form of revenge was gotten in the evenings, when he was trying to sleep. Alexandra had had several lovers over her lifetime, but she suspected that Draal had almost none, and when she shifted on the nest he always woke up, clearly not as used to sharing a bed as she was. Alex made sure to always go to bed after Draal was already asleep, just to wake him up when she made herself the little spoon. More than once he’d grumpily shifted so that she’d had to sleep against his crystal-covered back, but it was worth it.

She found and read every song and saga about Kanjigar the Courageous, which was extremely depressing but a good way to both learn about what was expected from the Trollhunter and a fantastic way to annoy Draal, especially when she read them out loud. He couldn’t roar at her to shut her up, in case he was found, so they had several furious but silent fights; which – in their injured states – usually just consisted of slaps and elbowing the other off the nest.

 With the way her body reacted to troll medicine it took almost two weeks for her to get into semi-fighting state, and she spent the time studying, because troll history and culture was fascinating.

She had seen the multiple television screens of static in the market, but she hadn’t known that they actually acted as a sort of relaxant drug to trolls, enough that if one stared too long they would go into a daze. There was a species of troll that had sixty-six different words for ‘to snore’. There had been a human family called Sturges that assisted in the war against Gunmar and his army, acknowledged and honored in the annals of troll history. She learned that the origin story of Gunmar’s that she’d been fed as a child were not exactly true, but he had destroyed both his blood relatives and their records in order to make a cult around himself, and it was damned effective.

She studied biology and physiology as well. She learned about the subtle differentiations in color between males and females, which was handy because with trolls one couldn’t always tell just by shape or voice. There weren’t many trolls that could regenerate limbs, but apparently body modification was heavy in troll culture. Alexandra had noticed the carved tattoos, of course, but she was surprised that trolls would use gems, metal, and wood as well as everyday objects to alter their bodies. And she had no idea that she had seven stomachs. They were different than what humans thought of as stomachs, but still. Seven. She knew her troll form had two hearts, which always felt strange after a Change, but some of the information about her own biology was surprising. Apparently the reason she got so sick when she tried to be a vegetarian in the nineties was because some species of trolls actually died without meat in their diet. And trolls, apparently, did not sneeze. Something about how their nasal and respiratory passages were formed. Which was disturbing because Alexandra, in either form, could sneeze.

And she even found some info on Blinky and AAARRRGGHH. Apparently Blinky had gotten into a waiting-contest, of all things, with someone called Prothnurd the Persistent, which only ended after three years when Prothnurd keeled over and died. AAARRRGGHH was directly descended of the renowned warrior Johanna, who had ripped out Gunmar’s famous eye. He was also from a clan called the Krubera, located underneath the mountains between Russia and Georgia. The book she found said that although his clan reclaimed him, he didn’t remember anything from his original family. She didn’t dare ask AAARRRGGHH himself; she had a feeling that that was a question that would get her fewer odd looks and more banishment than she really wanted.

By the time she was in condition to go back to the Forge, she was avoiding Blinky and AAARRRGGHH. Not only because Blinky was getting suspicious of her, but because they wanted her to go upstairs. Which, to be fair, was something Alexandra was planning on doing anyway, but they wanted her to pick a fight with Bular.

She couldn’t even fathom why. Sure, she was charged with protecting the human world as well as trolls, but Bular couldn’t get into Trollmarket and there were absolutely no reports of a giant stone monster rampaging the streets of Arcadia, so what was the need to go up and find him? Were they actually expecting her to be able to kill him? Historically a battle between Bular and the Trollhunter – any Trollhunter – eventually ended with the Hunter dying – tragically, horrifically, and painfully.

Kanjigar, actually, was the only Hunter who hadn’t died during a fight. There was absolutely nothing Alexandra found encouraging about that.

Draal threw volume twenty-seven of A Brief Recapitulation of Troll-Lore at her face when she hesitated and hid in her room, calling her a coward. She remorselessly reminded him that his father had died after a fight with Gunmar’s son, which shut him up for five minutes before he began berating her again. Blinky and AAARRRGGHH didn’t dare enter her room, but they pestered her about it whenever she went out to get food.

Eventually, though, she had to give. Her cats were creating a good and proper stink, and she needed to terminate her lease and her job. Blinky allowed her one more day after she agreed, to finish healing. When she snuck out of her room again, her body was still sore and bruised, but it didn’t hurt to handle her sword or walk anymore. She took a detour around the Heartstone, for luck or good vibes or whatever it was that the giant crystal gave her. Blinky and AAARRRGGHH were busy with a gnome problem in the middle of the market and Alexandra made sure to give them a wide berth; she wanted to go up alone. If she came across Bular, she really didn’t want anyone to witness her death.

It was late morning when she emerged from Trollmarket for the second time in two weeks, and the sun felt so good that she had to stand and bask in it for a good moment, after having a very, very long look the underside of the bridge. She hadn’t expected a watcher out so soon – Bular and his minions couldn’t know she was a Changeling, so there was no reason that they knew of for her to be out during the day – but it never hurt to be careful.

Time passed so differently om Trollmarket; it was a pleasant, slow Saturday for the denizens above ground, a little later than Alexandra had anticipated. Things seemed to move faster in the sunlight, and Alex took an hour to walk the ten minute route from the bridge to her apartment, just watching.

Assembling the stuff from her apartment was both easy and difficult. Alex was more than practiced in packing up her entire life and hightailing it out of a town, but it was different this time. She wasn’t going to re-use her human things for the foreseeable future. She wasn’t just changing around her life this time, but abandoning it. The CLANK of the storage unit’s door closing seemed significantly more final that it had any right to be.

Alexandra rented her unit for another six months and spent the rest of the day resigning from her job at the bookshop and checking out books from the county library, knowing that she’d probably never take them back. Her back was laden with a heavy backpack filled with cat supplies and stolen books, as well as a handy little package from her apartment. Night had fallen by the time she got back to the park by the canal, as she planned; it wouldn’t look good if Blinky found out she went out and came back during the day.

She Changed in the shadow of a large elm tree, and smelled the goblin before she saw it.

Son of the bitch!

The rubbery, salty scent hit her mind like a brick to the face, and she summoned the sword before she even thought about her little package. The goblin tried to flee, but she dodged through the trees, landing a hit with the flat of her sword and sending it screaming into the canal.

It was still struggling away when she got down to it, amazingly unsplattered. A swift cut rendered it silent. She stayed perfectly still, listening for any others, for when there was one there were often many.

That’s when she heard the breathing.

He’s in the sewers. There was a grate right in the wall, not twenty feet from her. Bular was fucking watching her.

Alexandra dropped the sword and her backpack and tore for the side of the canal as the bars of the grate exploded outward, chunks of metal and concrete raining down at her from the right. She scrambled up the canal wall and dodged through the trees with the thundering of footsteps close, far too close behind her.

“Trollhunter!”

Oh, Lord, she had not anticipated this! Before she was even out of the park she was getting out of breath, a stitch in her side reminding her that she had broken ribs not even a week ago.

She hid behind a tractor-trailer on the edge of the park, and Bular knocked the cab over, just missing crushing her legs as she desperately got out of the way. As the trailer fell on its side she got her first glimpse of him, a steaming, jagged shadow with fiercely glowing eyes. She hadn’t seen those eyes in centuries, and it reminded her to keep hers until check, lest they glow in fear.

Alexandra scampered across the street and through a small alley, forcing Bular to run around the end of the street, and she kept running as she doubled back down another alley to the street she’d just come from. Bular’s frustrated roar echoed in her ears, lending her another turn of speed as she booked it toward the canal.

This is where being human might have been useful, she thought derisively, ducking into a roll down the side of the canal. Her stumpy little troll legs weren’t exactly useful for sprinting, which was extremely inconvenient.

A familiar yell rang over the concrete just as Bular threw a broken tree into the canal, roaring as he did.

“Master Alexandra!” “TROLLHUNTER!”

Alex was knocked aside by the flying tree and ended up with several nasty scratches and a twisted finger. She got back to her feet and summoned the armor, the glow of the sword fading from her eyes just as Bular landed in the canal. She was fifty feet from the opposite wall, where Blinky and AAARRRGGHH were silhouetted against the blue entrance to Trollmarket.

She was only a handwidth out of Bular’s range.

She kept two eyes on him and two on the surrounding areas, in case of an unexpected minion. The unusual input made her head ache, but she had to be aware of attacks from the side.

“Focus on your adversary, Master Alexandra,” shouted Blinky, reminding her that they had her back.

She looked him up and down, trying to find his weaknesses in a split second, but he was armored like nobody’s damn business. The only places she could see were his eyes, neck, and the skin beneath his arms; otherwise, there was nothing.

Bular swiped at her with a sword nearly the length of her body, forcing her to roll away. She came back up with a chunk of concrete in each lower hand and pelted him in the face, distracting him enough to throw the sword straight at his head. He had anticipated this, and the Daylight Sword glanced off his own blades, disappearing into the air with a fizzle of blue sparks. She was already pelting toward the others when one of his swords flew at her side, slicing her lower right forearm. She picked up the thrown sword and swung with it and a newly-summoned Daylight, ducking into Bular’s range as he swiftly caught up with her. He hadn’t expected an attack with his own sword and she got him under his arm, but he caught Daylight by the flat of its blade and wrenched it from her hands just as the other sword swung and fucking got stuck in his armored shoulders.

His kick sent her to her back, twenty feet away.

And only six feet away from her discarded backpack.

Alexandra hoped that Bular was in the mood to brag as she hastily dug through her backpack, watching with three eyes as he smirked and stomped over to her.

“I would have thought we’d meet sooner,” said Bular quietly. “It’s been too long since I’ve had a good kill.”

Yes, the evil villain monologue, Alexandra thought, desperately tossing through books and bags of cat food.

“I was washing my hair,” she muttered, aware that Blinky was screaming at her to abandon her backpack and get the fuck over to the portal.

Bular snorted.

“A sense of humor,” he said. “Useless.”

He looked over her, lying defenseless on the hard concrete, his fiery eyes roaming over her stubby legs, her four arms, and extended horns. She tried to look fierce, and knew that she failed.

“How many jokes do you truly believe you can make before your death?”

I’m so glad he likes to talk. Aha. Her hands found the little package, and she paused.

“I’ve only got one thing for you,” Alexandra said, her heart racing so much she almost felt nauseated. Bular, standing over her with two swords and three hundred pounds more, did not look intimidated.

“And that would be?” Alex smirked through her fear.

“A Saturday Night Special,” she said, and shot him in the right eye.

Bular screamed like a bull and stabbed at her, but his depth perception was compromised and she rolled out of the way, slicing at his exposed neck with Daylight as she picked up her backpack and booked it toward Blinky and AAARRRGGHH.

‘murica, fucker, she thought, just before her helmet saved her from being brained by a piece of rebar. She both heard and felt Bular chasing after her, so much swifter despite his heavier body, the reverberations of his feet and hands shaking through the concrete. AAARRRGGHH yelled a warning and she dodged to the left, avoiding another flying blade by inches. She shrugged her pack off and tossed it to AAARRRGGHH, who unceremoniously threw it through the portal, just before the thing apparently got bored of waiting and turned back into a solid wall.

Bular and Alexandra fell into their space as he tackled her from behind, breaking her nose on the concrete and forcing the two to scramble out of the way.

“I’ll drink your blood out of a goblet made from your skull!” Bular screamed, catching her head in one hand and smashing it against the ground. The helmet saved her again, but she could barely see from the sudden dizziness and double-vision and only managed to avoid being torn like poor Unkar the Unfortunate by taking another shot at Bular’s armored chest, which did not wound him so much as it lightly chipped the hard armor there. But it pissed him off, and she managed to sun-stain a good chunk of his left thigh before he kicked her away.

“Don’t be sore, Bular! I thought you wanted to be more like your father?”

A roar answered her. His now single eye looked as if it wanted to set her on fire, and she felt like it was succeeding. They circled each other, Alex trying to keep Blinky and AAARRRGGHH behind her as much as she could, and Alex could feel her older injuries acting up.

She was caught off guard when he lunged, not for her, but for the two trolls behind her, having correctly gauged them as Alexandra’s biggest weakness. His tail smashed into her hip as she turned, sending her to one knee, but she grabbed onto his belt and hauled herself atop his back. He lost his balance when she grabbed one of his horns and pulled, but he flung her off, charging for the undefended pair.

Blinky was only saved from immediate death by his friend, who blocked him and was flung against the wall of the canal by Bular’s massive forearm, chunks of concrete crashing down from the impact crater.

“Oh, this is not the way I imagined such a life as mine to end,” Blinky wailed in a panic, throwing up his arms as Bular aimed both swords at his head, but Alexandra flung herself between the two and the swords landed against Daylight with a ringing clash. She kicked behind her and shoved Blinky away, grabbing Bular’s swords and pulling her body forward until she was directly in his face, close enough to catch two fists against the stone-turned slice on the side of Bular’s neck, making him bellow and drop her.

She wasn’t fast enough to get completely out of his range, but her armor saved her from being sliced in two, and Blinky caught her when she fell backward with a wheeze.

“My many thanks, Alexandra,” he said hurriedly. “Perhaps now would be a good time to retreat!” Alex opened her mouth to reply but had to pull Blinky beneath her as Bular’s sword swept over their heads, taking a good slice out of the back of AAARRRGGHH’s shoulder as he ducked over them to cover them. Alex left him to look after Blinky and twirled under his arm, using her sword like a spear to try and drive Bular back.

But Bular was pissed the fuck off. She wasn’t sure if any Hunter had actually managed to land a hit as devastating as her bullet to the eye.

He stabbed at her at the same time that he got another hit on AAARRRGGHH, who, Alex noticed, was moving much more stiffly than before. He and Blinky were distractions; not only did she have to defend herself, but she had to protect them as well, and now one of them was injured.

Blinky, at least, was trying to help, scrambling back and forth to gather up pieces of fallen concrete and throwing them as hard as he could at Bular’s face. It actually was a decent distraction, and Alexandra managed to make the fucker back away a few feet by slicing at his back, forcing him to turn around to try and fight her.

AAARRRGGHH caught a boulder the size of his head before it could crush Alex, and then dropped it on the ground, instead of, oh, say, fucking throwing it!

“AAARRRGGHH, what the fuck? Give us a hand!”

“Pacifist!” he yelled, dodging to the side before a brick hit his shoulder.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!”

What he’d said was enough to make Alex freeze, just long enough to trip when one of Bular’s blades slammed into her shin guards. The armor flashed blue, blinding everybody for an instant. When her vision came back, Bular’s sword was an inch in front of her face, and she screamed when it sliced across her nose and into her second left eye.

Oh, god, the pain was immense. She’d had sand and fists in her eyes before, but this was so fucking different. Bular’s laugh was nauseating as she tried to get past the shooting agony, but it was her eye and the sharp pain laced through her entire face. She swung her sword blindly and shot at where his vague, blurry shadow was, but the pain was so distracting that she missed both times. Arms grabbed hers and pulled her away, but they lost their grip when Bular snagged a claw inside her breastplate and pulled her away from the others. She lashed out desperately and elbowed him in the bleeding, glowing socket she had destroyed. The yellow glow of the portal turned to mist in her watering eyes as he dropped her painfully, and she pelted full-out to the wall. Alexandra slammed against Blinky, sending them both tumbling through the portal, and it closed up inches behind AAARRRGGHH’s tail, a bellow of rage following them until it echoed into nothingness.

Alexandra lay where she fell, Blinky’s weight crushing her legs, a hand pressed against her lost eye. She ground her teeth to avoid moaning when AAARRRGGHH carefully lifted her and Blinky to their feet, and she dismissed the armor with a shake of her head. Actually, her whole body was shaking.

“What the fuck,” she groaned.

“An admirable effort,” said Blinky to her right, sounding as shaken as she did but still patting her on the shoulder.

“You struck a fierce blow,” he continued, with a hint of pride in his voice. “As well as several others. I believe I owe you my life.”

Several fast, bitter thoughts ran through her head them.

Yeah, you owe me a fucking eye.

Yeah, at least you tried to help.

Yeah, no thanks to AAARRRGGHH.

The last one stuck.

“Not one single book I found mentioned you didn’t fight,” Alexandra said, leaning her arm against the wall of the entrance cave and glaring at the immense troll in front of her. To his credit, he looked uncomfortable.

“Don’t fight…anymore,” AAARRRGGHH rumbled. Alex grimaced.

“I got that.”

Blinky dusted himself off and stood at AAARRRGGHH’s side, appearing both defensive and confused.

“My friend took a vow of peace just before the Battle of Killahead,” he said tightly, looking at Alex’s tense shoulders, the hands curling into fists. “Surely that is common knowledge, even in as strange a place as New Jersey.” “It’s not.”

“Ah. Well, this is why we have a Trollhunter,” Blinky said calmly, seamlessly falling into Education Mode. “AAARRRGGHH renounced the violent path ages a-“ “So, wait-“ Alexandra held up a hand and halted him. She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to make sure she really understood what Blinky meant.

“So you’re saying…this…all of this could have been avoided is AAARRRGGHH were to fight?”

They looked at her like they had no clue why she sounded so mad.

She realized that they actually didn’t understand why she was so angry. Troll culture was so rooted in the glory in battle and fighting that she would never have considered a troll so respected to call himself a pacifist.

The use of the word stung her a little bit, because she had grown up in a society of pacifists. Unlike AAARRRGGHH, who seemed to simply refuse to participate in battle himself, her Quaker family had disagreed with all forms of violence, and it annoyed her to hear AAARRRGGHH, who sounded more hypocritical every second, putting himself in the same box as her former family.

Especially she was directly experiencing the repercussions of his decision.

“All twenty-six Trollhunters have been killed by Bular, all of them,” she hissed. “And this would never have happened if AAARRRGGHH had just got up off his ass and sent Bular back to the hellpit he spawned from centuries ago!”

“Master Alexandra…” Blinky looked back to his friend, an apology in his eyes. “…You do not understand – “

“I chose,” said AAARRRGGHH, quiet but firm. Alex peered at him over Blinky’s shoulder.

“To what? Sit back and let every Hunter be murdered in a war you could have ended half a millennia ago?!” “I chose,” AAARRRGGHH said, somewhat more forcefully.

“You’re not even a fucking pacifist!”

Alexandra angrily slashed her sword through the air, making the two lean away.

“A pacifist disagrees with violence completely; but you just sit back and let everybody else do the fighting, don’t you?” He turned away from her and she could see his shoulders shaking, his fists clenching before he moved them out of her sight, but she wanted him to take a hit; she wanted him to get angry.

Why should he be able to put aside his violent past? Why should he be allowed to disregard and be forgiven for his dark beginnings, the tortures and experiments that all of Gunmar’s stolen children were forced to suffer? He had been taken, he had been changed, but he walked freely and loved openly and was loved in return – whereas if she dared the Change, she’d be murdered on the spot.

Why should he be able to sit by and watch while she was chosen to fight in a battle he could have ended before she was even born, a battle that would most likely kill her, just as it had killed every single Trollhunter before her.

Blinky tried to stop her, and she dodged him. She didn’t know where she got the strength, but she shoved AAARRRGGHH on the arm hard enough to make him stumble sideways.

“I challenge you,” she spat, so angry that her voice shook. AAARRRGGHH stared at her in incredulity before turning his face away.

“Not fighting,” he rumbled.

“’No backing out of a challenge’,” she quoted at him, making his ears dip and his shoulders hunch. The armor was summoned with a thought and Alexandra punched him hard on the arm.

“Fight me!” she yelled. “NOT FIGHTING!”

AAARRRGGHH roared, slashing his arm a foot over her head and cracking the stone wall to her right, moving so suddenly that she didn’t even have time to flinch. Standing upright he loomed head, shoulders, and chest over her and she instinctively drew her sword, but when she found his eyes – almost directly over her head – her arms froze in horror.

They were jet black, the pupils like pinpricks encased in rings of a sickening green that was spread across his tattoos as well. She had only been a small child the last time she’d seen eyes like those, but they still numbed her to her core.

AAARRRGGHH’s entire body shook with heavy breath and the immense, visceral effort that he was taking not to crush her like a twig. For the first time Alexandra truly appreciated how terrifying a Gumm-Gumm AAARRRGGHH must have been, and what that really meant. How stark the differences were between the quiet, cheerful troll she was familiar with, and the enormous warrior raised in pain and violence. How much visible effort it took to hold that back.

He didn’t refuse to fight just for his own sake, Alexandra realized then, but for the safety of everyone he cared about. His past may have been over, but it was not gone. She understood, now, why everyone in Trollmarket was so gung-ho about AAARRRGGHH refusing to fight. If he truly lost himself again, there would be nothing to stop him and Bular from destroying everything. AAARRRGGHH’s presence in Deya’s army, his mere absence from Gunmar’s, had turned the tide of the war overnight – Alexandra could only imagine in horror what a force he could be if matched with the killer of Merlin’s Champions.

They stood locked, the frozen Changeling and the looming monster, until AAARRRGGHH slowly banished the anger, tears forming in his brightening eyes. Blinky, unafraid, laid two hands on his side and they seemed to melt the tension completely out of AAARRRGGHH’s body.

Alexandra had never been the subject of so shaming a glare, least not by someone who could do it with six eyes. Blinky’s face clearly told her to get the fuck away from his friend. She’d disrespected a trusted member of Trollmarket. He was shaking and in tears because of her.

Her quiet, whispered sorry was ignored. Alexandra watched them for a minute, deliberating on what she should do, before she picked up her battered, bloodied backpack and left the cave, the crystal staircase appearing at her feet. The blue glow of the crystals illuminated the two she left behind, and she could see AAARRRGGHH’s shoulders shaking before they disappeared from view.

The denizens of Trollmarket looked concerned at her beaten and bloodied appearance, but her face was dark enough that none of them bothered her. She dimly recognized that she wasn’t creating a very open or friendly reputation, but she felt pissed-off and guilty enough that it really didn’t matter, not then.

The door to her quarters opened quietly. Draal was asleep on the nest, one of her books on the musical culture of trolls across Europe open on his chest. Alex dropped her backpack on the floor. The cats scampered around her feet, and then retreated hastily to the bathroom when she yelled wordlessly and slammed her fists into the wall, cracking both it and her knuckles. Draal awoke with a startled yelp and stared helplessly as she punched and punched, losing herself to the rage and guilt, only stopping when the skin broke and glowed with the crystal-skin beneath.

Alex stood for a minute, breathing heavily, absently shaking the pain out of her hands. Draal shifted on the nest, and she cut her eyes to him. He froze, caught in her glare.

“Um. What has…?”

Alex took a deep breath, and straightened up.

“You’re healed enough,” she said, so quietly that he had to lean forward. “Please leave.” Draal stared at her for a moment, then gently peeled the book off his chest and placed it on the floor. Eyes not leaving hers, he stood and backed out of the door, closing it with a sullen thud.

By the time Alex settled down, alone in her bed for the first time in a week, she wished she hadn’t asked him to leave.

  A/N: I actually love AAARRRGGHH to pieces, he’s the most beautiful cinnamon roll ever, but my Alexandra is a little more hot-tempered than me. The show does actually imply, if not outright state, that the whole reason there’s a Trollhunter is because AAARRRGGHH no longer fights, implying that he’s the only one tough enough to actually kill Bular. I’d like to point out that – although Jim did the stabbing bit – AAARRRGGHH was the one to actually land the final blow on Bular.

Blinky also stated that he took his vow of peace directly after he changed sides, so he never fought for Deya; he just simply didn’t fight for Gunmar. And he still got Deya a victory, simply because he didn’t fight. How fucking powerful must someone be to be able to turn the tide of an entire war just by not fighting?

Alexandra is actually incorrect here. I don’t have any idea how many Trollhunters there have been, but a decent few of them lost their lives to Angor Rot, not Bular, but Alex doesn’t know that yet.

If you don’t think that Blinky would deliberately pit Alexandra against Bular you haven’t seen the first few episodes, because he outright shoved Jim into the Training Pit Of Death with the kid having no training, shot arrows and giant stone blades at him, and had absolutely no reaction to Jim and Toby’s first encounter with Bular other than you’re not dead yet, that’s good! Blinky is a stone-cold guy. Literally.

I got a lot of the culture and lore of trolls from del Toro’s book, from which the show was inspired. I wasn’t impressed with Jim or Claire in the book, but Blinky and ARRRGH!!! were fantastic and so was the writing. Some things are changed around, of course, but I wanted to make a reference or six to the book, because I really enjoyed it. Blinky was an absolute joy. Read the book just for Blinky.

Do you really think that at some point in four hundred years - in America – she wouldn’t have bought a gun?

Can also be found on fanfiction and AO3

[fitnesswomenshealth-blog]

5 Reasons that counting calories will make you dumb and fat

New Post has been published on https://cialiscom.org/5-reasons-that-counting-calories-will-make-you-dumb-and-fat.html

5 Reasons that counting calories will make you dumb and fat

If you’re trying to lose weight, let me guess…

Have you weighed yourself too often? Counted food calories too often? Counted exercise calories too often?

Obviously, if you burn more calories than you consume, you’ll lose weight.

But how do you do it? What healthy habits can you create to lose weight and keep it off?

A lot of weight loss programs focus on empty processes going for instant calorie deficit. You know the fatigue and epic binging that follow. The orange Cheetos stains might still be on your fingers.

You’ve always felt there should be a healthy AND satisfying way to do food and exercise, but we’ve lost it.

Until recently.

“Ancestral” diets have surfaced, as well as new exercise and lifestyle methods.

If you want to silence the calorie-counting health app on your phone, there are truly effective concepts for weight loss.

Let’s start with these five…

1. Modern wheat was invented in the 1960’s to slow starvation in third world countries. Great idea, iffy results.

Wheat, corn, and soy are out of control.

Understanding that our bodies are the same now as they were 30,000 plus years ago helps guide new research. We evolved as hunter-gatherers with wild sources of food that were scarce.

Farming started only 10,000 years ago. Yet Homo sapiens like us were thriving and evolved eons before.

The Primal Diet, Bulletproof Diet, etc. have preached omitting most grains completely. Research has shown that grain has led to modern diseases for various reasons.

Are you grain-sensitive? Meaning you’re sensitive to me telling you not to eat bread or pasta?

Grain is now 20–50% of the diet in most modern populations. If you’re not eating it directly, you’re eating animals that eat it and taking in lectins and toxins either way.

The current version of wheat grain was invented in the late 1960’s. Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Prize for the new hybrid and his production methods. They would help limit starvation.

It led to a much bigger yield and then over-consumption. Gluten is but one of the lectins in grains. Actually, “whole grains” have even more lectins than white grain products. Lectins cause auto-immune diseases and increased intestinal permeability (leaky gut.)

Lectins upset your body’s internal communications, and hormonal functions get disrupted. That makes weight management and other functions more difficult. Arthritis, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes, and autoimmune diseases are linked to the lectin situation.

Have you tried stopping all grain consumption for a bit? Also, stop the grain-fed dairy you’re consuming. Try it for a month. Switch to grass-fed butter. Eliminate milk and cheese. Double or triple your veggies (not nightshades) and add a little fruit.

Some of these “healthy whole wheat” products are packaged as low calorie, but their lectins make you fat and diseased. It’s easy to be tricked by calorie talk. Artificial sweeteners have zero calories, but study after study prove that they make you fat and diseased.

So, in case of starvation, eat wheat. Other than that, let it die on the shelf. Should take a few months.

2. I can’t get no… satiation.

Don’t you feel like food should be tasty and satisfying. Shouldn’t that lead to not overeating? Why do we want more and more? And more.

Satiety and satiation refer to nutritional signaling to the brain to give you happy satisfaction from your food choices. The signals will tell you to stop. The signaling may also say “Put the pie and the vodka down, you freak.” It depends, your signaling may be a little sassier than mine.

Satiation makes you stop eating, and satiety keeps you feeling satisfied for a while.

For the two S’s you need high-fiber foods, protein, or fat. The fiber and protein might make sense to you, but some of us still think fats are unhealthy. I get it, you’re a bad girl or boy, and you don’t want to be too good to yourself. Keep reading.

Choosing the right fats (non-toxic ones) is huge for being healthy and having satisfaction. Again, the ancestral diets have this down very well. Toxins are stored in fat and meat on animals. So, eating fat from toxic animals will transplant the toxins to you.

Guess what’s wrong with fat from healthy, pastured, grass-fed animals. Nothing.

The toxic fats will start a fat storage process in your body. These inflammatory fats have the same 9 calories per gram as healthy fats. So again, staying lean will not happen from focusing on calories.

Toxic, oxidized oils like soybean and canola will make you fat from inflammation and oxidize your cells, placing you squarely in free-radical city. Free radicals cause inflammation and disease. And they will rip your cardiovascular system to shreds.

There are truckloads of soybean oil and canola in grocery store and restaurant product. These two oils alone might make up over 30% of your total calories! That crap is in everything.

If you want to stay lean, you gotta eat your veggies and leafy greens. Veggies provide satiety from the fiber. They’re also super low-calorie if that still turns you on. The mass of fat-soluble vitamins and minerals in veggies are absorbed if eaten with fat. Plus, the fat makes a veggie portion even more satiating.

Make veggies as delicious as they’re supposed to be. Most of them need to be cooked. Season them nicely, and butter them up. Cook them slowly without killing them completely. Or make a huge salad with lots of olive oil. Remember to stay away from the nightshades with lectins. All ancestral diets will agree.

Are you feeling me yet that only focusing on the number of calories in your food is dumb at best? Satiating, non-inflammatory foods will keep your appetite and fat storage down.

Don’t delete your health app just yet. I’ll show you, it is good for something.

3. Cavemen cooking with fire is what evolved our big ole brains.

Believe it or not, modern humans didn’t evolve to our state until after we began cooking with fire.

That’s right. Our brains didn’t finish their growth past other humanoids until after cooking. The book “Catching Fire” by Richard Wrangham goes into great detail.

The caveman version of chef Gordon Ramsey was cranking up his fire pit and cursing out his entire clan even 40,000 years ago.

We couldn’t scarf enough calories to feed this big ole brain without some cooked foods. Beginning to cook and process more calories is what gave us the larger brain and also guts that were smaller than apes.

The right raw foods are awesome as well, obviously. Avocados, and salad greens come to mind. Some of the diets focusing too much on calories try to use mostly raw foods because they’re so low in calories. They ignore poisonous lectins and think that raw is natural. But cooking, which we’ve done at varying levels for 200,000 plus years is also natural.

Most fruits are going to be good in limited quantities, in season. If fruits or veggies taste good raw, they’re usually good for you raw. If not, they are probably slowly poisoning you with phytates, protease inhibitors, or lectins. Those are the protectants used by plants to slowly poison their predators. Believe it. These little green guys are trying to kill us!

Take a bell pepper for example. It doesn’t seem to taste very good raw, but you may be on the fence. That bell pepper has a lot of the poisonous demons I described. Cooking and removing skin and seeds will help, but some lectins will remain. In Italy tomatoes are deskinned and deseeded to be rid of most lectins.

Gluten is the most famous lectin, and lectins are the reason that almost any wheat, corn or soy product will be harmful with regular use. I refer to Dr. Steven Gundry’s extensive work and helpful lists when it comes to lectins. Lectins aren’t only making us fat. They’re truly killing us.

There is a long list of produce that carry the especially dangerous lectins that includes nightshade vegetables as well as squashes, legumes, cereal grains, white potatoes, soy, corn, and others. This would be why everyone is telling you sweet potatoes are okay but white potatoes are the devil. Nothing to do with calories. The lectins are in fact, the devil.

Here’s some good news while I’m ruining your day trashing all the foods you love. White rice has less lectin than brown rice, and white bread, especially sourdough, is better than whole wheat. Feel better?

4. Mitochondria are so important, humans are mating with them.

You heard me right. Two people use their DNA to mate with a third person’s healthy mitochondrial DNA. Test tube style.

A 3-parent baby. The last time this was legal in America or the EU was back in 2000 when a now 17-year-old named Alana was born.

Mitochondria are unique organelles in most of our cells. They are the power plants of the cell. Uniquely, they have their own DNA. They were originally bacteria hosted in our bodies that became part of us.

Recently, nutrition experts Dave Asprey, Mark Sisson, and Robb Wolf have told us that modern mitochondria are struggling. They need improvement for optimal energy, metabolism, and disease prevention. Food, sleep, drugs, stress, and even artificial light are harming our little partners.

Nutritional ketosis and intermittent fasting are being used by people to reprogram the DNA in mitochondria.

Imagine your mitochondria being so powerful that you can utilize 600 calories a day from compounds called ketones from the liver. That’s 600 less food calories you need for energy. That results in less oxidation, better energy, and better weight management.

With too much carbs and also frequent meals, we’ve created weak and scarce mitochondria that are not burning as much fat as they could.

That’s why everyone is talking about intermittent fasting and ketosis, two methods that build mitochondria. See my article about how I was tricked into nutritional ketosis here…

Clearly, if couples are adding a 3rd anonymous parent to the mix, there’s something to the mito-hysteria.

Would you skip breakfast or decrease carbs every now and then to boost mitochondria and become a fat burner?

It’s not about calorie counting and doesn’t require going hungry. It’s about boosting mitochondria. No need for test tube polygamy, unless you’re just into that.

5. Your prehistoric ancestors never did Pilates or circuit training.

I’m a former Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS.) I was a full-time strength & speed coach, mainly for a major college football program, and I’m telling you, we were not meant to exercise.

Great news, right?! Well hold up, don’t strap up your hammock yet. We respond better to lots of “physical activity” than to lots of intense “exercise.”

Physical activity as light as walking or mild yoga is awesome for us, but too much strenuous exercise can be detrimental. Walking is good for fat burning in a hormonal way, not necessarily for the calories burned.

Obviously, athletes the world over are doing frequent, intense work with great success, but they are usually in their teens and 20’s. They usually don’t have insulin resistance yet from all the carbs and protein required. They can also afford to sleep like crazy, supplement like crazy, and do any modern training methods to recover and get the job done. They’ve had hundreds more ice baths than you.

Do not train like an athlete unless someone is paying you handsomely. And get a good, guaranteed contract.

Nothing good happens in your body without hormones. Growth hormone, for example, burns fat and builds muscle. Deep sleep is a big factor in growth hormone production among other things. Many factors affect testosterone production, and it’s also a crucial hormone, and there is much more to the endocrine system than just these two.

If you’re doing things right, you aim to do the minimal effective dose to get the hormonal results you want. Too much training can stimulate the stress hormones like cortisol. That’s bad unless you like more sugar in your bloodstream. The Russians did oodles of exercise research in the 1980’s as they were going to ridiculous measures to win the Olympics. I think they won a few medals, and much research has been done since.

We’ve learned that time under tension in a weight-lifting workout drastically improves the hormonal response that will build muscle and burn fat.

The time under tension workout in Dr. Doug McGuff’s book “Body by Science” will do in 12 minutes a week what you accomplish in three 45-minute workouts. It does more actually, and yes, that’s 12 minutes per 7 days. I still do a second lifting session, with a few heavy lifts and a lot of stretching and maintenance work. Nothing intense.

I can’t believe I used to do 3–4 long lifting sessions a week for worse results. Too much lifting also got me into sleep deprivation and adrenal fatigue, which increased food cravings and fat storage.

Those McGuff workouts include all of 5 sets total, one set of each exercise. Each set is about 5 super slow reps(about 10 sec up/10sec down) with the set lasting 90 seconds to 2 minutes. You get to failure on each set with very little time between sets. Believe me 90 seconds is an absolute eternity, much less 5 of those back to back. Go for it, you’ll see.

The hormonal response to this workout is off the charts for muscle maintenance or growth as well as fat burning and a cellular aerobic benefit.

Raise your hand if you’ve had a trainer, or a machine, or a phone app telling you how many calories you’ve burned. Let’s say it’s 600 calories over forty minutes that your trainer jumped, twisted, rolled, punched, and lunged out of you.

A long, intense workout like that will cause a need for extra food calories that surpasses the calories burned in the workout. So, you went backwards. There’s no way to green smoothie your way out of it either. The craving for extra calories is now there. Better make sure it’s the type of workout that gives you massive hormonal benefit.

Keep it short, very intense, and infrequent versus long, torturous, and often.

And what about that extra sleep the long workouts cause a need for? Yes, that’s a thing. Do you have 9 hours of sleep in your time budget? You’ll cause a need for 8 or 9 hours with the long workouts but probably only get your normal 6 or 7. Now you’re sleep deprived. Here come the extra food cravings and insulin resistance.

One or two short, intense lifting workouts a week with one or two 10 to 20-minute, high intensity interval runs would be ideal for most of us.

Fitness Master Thomas Delauer

I also recommend light jogging or something in the morning on an empty stomach. Keep it around 120–140 bpm depending on age and go 15–40 minutes. Very effective fat burner and toxin mobilizer, and it’s very mild. You should be able to have a conversation. It’s not the long tortuous, detrimental workout I described earlier. Thomas Delauer agrees.

Strenuous activities for extended periods every couple of weeks are great. Maybe a 1–3 hour mountain biking trek or random adventure. The rest of the time, lots of general physical activity like walking will be better for you. And that’s where your phone’s health app comes in. The step counter or mile counter will let you know you’re being a Home sapiens and moving around enough. Health apps have some very smart features, but too much focus on calories does more harm than good.

As a hunter-gatherer you didn’t have to chase down a bison 5 times a week. We walked a lot, climbed, carried stuff, slept a lot, and we did some intense activity every now and then. Your hormones respond well to that life with movement. It’s not about the calories in or out.

“Make your long, easy workouts longer and easier, and make your short, intense workouts even shorter and more intense.” -ancestral living guru Dr. Mark Sisson

https://www.marksdailyapple.com/introducing-the-new-primal-blueprint/

If you are here, and you are… then you were meant to really punch it every now and then to survive something serious. As a hunter-gatherer, if you didn’t go with max intensity when it counted, well that genetic version was eaten by a tiger. Or evaded by the bison you were hunting and starved. That version of us was naturally deselected out, plucked out of history. Those genes are gone from us.

So, keep that in mind when doing the “Body by Science” workout and getting to failure on each set. Your genes are made for it. Consult your physician first.

Make America Human Again

Things as holistic as nutrition or exercise are tricky to optimize. Our bodies, stresses, relationships, mentality, and proximity to Whole Foods Market are ever-changing.

You want to find simplicity, but you need to learn some sound concepts and see if you can execute them with satisfaction.

Focusing on an instant net calorie deficit is far too simplistic and not truly satisfying or effective long term.

Imagine that caveman version of yourself again. Add a smartphone and some clothes, but everything else about your vision is Paleolithic.

What preserved, boxed foods are around? Where are all the caged chickens cooped up? All the antibiotic-laced, GMO-fed livestock? Where are all the refined carbs? Or the year-round fruit? Where are the three meals a day? Where’s the office chair and the car? Where’s the 5 days a week at the gym?

Recently, we have tested some sound ancestral concepts with modern, tech-savvy methods. You can even keep more than just your phone and clothes, and you can still hit the gym.

Join millions of people who are using science and anthropology to pioneer their way to health and satisfaction. You’ll really enjoy being a human for a change.

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