#the only reliably sunny area of the entire back yard is the very far back corner....

[blujayonthewing]

adore our lovely tree-filled back yard but also want to garden, wailing and gnashing teeth etc

[paladin-andric]

Blackheart, Chapter 24: Shattered Memories

“A gorgeous day, is it not?”

Basilrin lay in the fields of the park. Wind swept across the grass as the clear skies bathed the area in sunlight.

“Indeed it is,” his brother answered politely, staring off into the sky. Basilrin could sense he appeared...anxious.

“Is something the matter? You seem restless...or bored!”

All around them, the people of the city were crowded around the two dragons, all gazing at them in awe and admiration. The family lived in the caverns below the city, which were off-limits, at is was considered their “residence” and therefore private property.

That didn’t stop several “dragonchasers” as they were called, from delving into the caverns without permission to see them. The family of dragons were welcoming, but as they broke the law, the city guard were less amused.

As such, it was a rare treat to get to see the large and powerful beasts up close, and when they lounged in the park, many cityfolk visited to see them.

Most numerous among their admirers were the kobolds, who, for reasons relating to their very existence, were inexplicably drawn to seek out and serve dragonkind.

Julroul hesitated. His eyes narrowed just enough for Basilrin to notice, radiating awareness of something that no one else could notice.

“Are you...cold?”

Basilrin frowned. “Of course not. It is sunny and warm!”

“I feel a chill in the air.”

His brother closed his eyes and focused, hard. He blocked out the rest of his sense as best he could and felt every inch of the wind in the air, lightly breezing across his form.

The air was indeed quite warm, but...he could feel it. A tiny sting of coolness across the end of each gust of wind.

Something he wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t looking for it.

“...I suppose the wind is cool. What of it?”

“That is not the wind. Something is different. Surely you can feel it?”

Basilrin tried again. He closed his eyes and focused.

“Mmm...no. I do not follow. What is different?”

Julroul smiled. “I do not know, but...it excites me, for some reason.”

It was after that remark that everything changed.

Before Basilrin could ask what his brother meant by such an odd statement he noticed something truly bizarre.

Everything was getting darker.

The various people around the pair noticed as well. A koutu looked up at the sky and frowned.

“Huh? It’s getting dark? But it’s midday…”

The dragon looked up and, sure enough, that was the case...at least partially.

The people of the city seemed to think the sun was setting, or the sky was getting dark, but Basilrin could tell what was really happening.

His draconic senses, superior to all others, honed in on the strange and near-unnoticeable patterns in the sky. Slowly they were wrapping around the entire skyline in a sphere, and began to grow in size.

Mist was starting to form above them, building in intensity.

As soon as he noticed that, the dragon could feel the air growing colder, ever colder around him. This was what Julroul had been talking about.

“What in the world…?”

Someone in the crowd had uttered it, though Basilrin was thinking the same thing himself. As he focused, he noticed something else. Something far in the distance, that the crowd surely couldn’t made out.

Screams.

“Something is very wrong,” he spoke hurriedly, rising to his feet, “We should-”

“Do nothing!”

The voice had come from nearby, but it was...all wrong.

The distorted, otherworldly voice immediately set Basilrin on edge. As he turned his gaze to the person it belonged to, he realized his instincts were all too reliable.

The creature was very large, at least by “normal” standards. Compared to the dragons of course, he was still small. He wore armor that looked scorched by flames and had nasty, pointed edges all over. His helmet had horns...or perhaps, they had openings for the beast’s own. He was outrageously large and stocky, and in between the gaps of his gnarled armor, the dragon could see purple skin and black eyes. The beast also had a spaded tail to top it all off.

“D-demon!” someone in the crowd screamed, the others quickly joining in with terrified cries of their own. They all backed up, hiding behind Basilrin for protection.

“Good eyes,” the demon spoke mockingly, “But unneeded.” He looked over at the two dragons, a predatory glint in his eyes. “You pair, however…”

“Begone!” Basilrin snarled, putting himself in front of the frightened crowd, “Crawl back to the hellscape you came from!”

“Eheheh...not an option. This place will be my home, now...as it will many others. This land belongs to the Underworld, but we are not adverse to letting you live under us. Now, rejecting me is a dire mistake, dragon. I will give you one last chance to change your tune. We are looking for champions, and dragonkind would make mighty warlords indeed. There is so much power you could have in exchange...”

Basilrin lunged forward, slamming his claw into the ground the demon stood on, smirking in satisfaction as he smashed the earth with murderous strength.

As he lifted his claws however, he found...nothing.

“W-what?!”

“A fair attempt,” the demon offered, several yards away, “But even your kind cannot match our might. Perhaps a demonstration will show you who you should strive to please…”

The demon gestured wildly, but before Basilrin could even move to stop the fiend, it was already over. The demon’s arms rose into the air, and Basilrin felt a sudden, intense pain in his feet. A boiling, blistering pain.

The dragon looked down, disbelief overwhelming him as he saw fire emerging from the earth itself, coating the entire area in a sea of flames.

It didn’t kill him, or even wound him. It hurt, certainly, but it took more than fire to kill a dragon.

The same couldn’t be said for the others.

He turned to see that massive crowd behind him, so varying in appearance and size and manner...being utterly consumed. The fire rose up to their heads. The wolf and birdfolk, the kobolds, the insects and lizards and everyone in between...all were being enveloped.

Their screams of agony were cut short as they collapsed into the flames, cries dying out as they breathed their last.

“NO!”

Basilrin could barely comprehend the terror and fury coursing through him. As the hellfire died out, sinking back into the soil, all that remained was the now barren soil...and the charred corpses of all the citizens that had been happily watching the dragons just moments ago.

The young dragon was hardly even an adult. He had lived a sheltered, innocent life during his very short stay on this world. In his time being raised by his mother and father, and growing alongside his big brother, he had not seen so much as a scuffle.

He knew of death, understood it...but he had never witnessed it.

“You...you MONSTER!” Basilrin screamed, lunging out towards the demon. Anger and heartache overwhelmed his rational senses, and he ignored the gestures the demon made as he closed in.

With a flick of a finger, the demon cast another mighty spell. Suddenly Basilrin was no longer flying towards the demon, but away, further and further. He slammed into the ground and rolled along it with the speed he was launched with, leveling several trees as he kept going.

He finally slammed into one last tree, knocking it over as he came to a stop. He groaned as pain filled his body. To be tossed aside so effortlessly, he, a mighty dragon…

“Wow…” Julroul muttered, breathless.

“Indeed. Incredible, isn’t it? And it could all be yours…”

“You...you could truly give me such power?”

The demon grinned. “Indeed. All you need to do is let me give you my gift, and you will have the world at your mercy…”

Basilrin snarled as he climbed back to his feet. “Hah, as if we would ever join you…”

“Yes, give me the power!” Julroul cried, “I want your strength!”

“W-what?!” Basilrin shook his head. “What are saying, brother?!”

The demon’s grin widened. “I knew you had it in you. Come here, and receive my power…”

“He just slaughtered everyone!” the younger dragon bellowed, “Get back, brother!”

“Do not tell me what to do, whelp.”

Basilrin blinked, having trouble believing his brother’s now cold and distant tone. “B-brother?!”

“A worthless bond. All my life I knew I was destined for greater things. You and father blathering on and on about peace and love...soft things, you are! It is why we pathetically submitted to the humans...no more! I will make them pay! I will crush all who oppose me!”

“Brother...this is not who you are! I know it to be so!”

Julroul grinned as he stepped forward and leaned down to the demon. “You have forgotten what you are, ‘brother’. For so long I knew I was superior to humans, yet they thought they could order us around?! With a flex of a claw, we could crush dozens without a thought. It is time they understood and respected that.”

The demon worked his magic, dark mists flowing from his hands and into the dragon. As the corruption flowed into him, his thoughts only darkened further and further…

“Mmm...yesss...I will show them their place...they will kneel...they will ALL kneel!”

Julroul snarled and growled as his mind slipped, becoming more feral and guided by instinct. His new dark, base way of thought made what were once inklings at the back of his mind full-blown wishes and fantasies.

“Gaaah...yes...no more kneeling, no more submission! I will show them what happens when you strike out against your betters!”

“Brother, get a hold of yourself!” Basilrin pleaded, “He is controlling you somehow! Fight, you must fight it! Reclaim your true self!”

“This IS my true self,” Julroul answered with a laugh, “I have only been hiding it, to placate my weak family.”

“Yes, embrace it!” the demon shouted, “Show them who you REALLY are!”

“Yesss,” Julroul hissed, mind unraveling, “Who I am...who I am…”

His body began to warp just as his mind had, swelling in size. Basilrin watched in shock as he grew past the size of their parents, and kept going. Not soon after, his scales changed. The once vibrant green began to dim and darken, growing to a pure black and becoming reminiscent of jagged glass in shape.

Not soon after, the color left his eyes as well, the blue and gold bleeding away until only pure white remained. His irises and pupils left him as well, giving his visage a new blank look about them. Soon, even his brother could no longer read him.

A coating of mist enveloped him, the same, purple mist that seemed to emanate from the demon. It was at that moment it all came to a stop. The demon lowered his hand as the ritual came to a close.

It seemed that somewhere along the way, he did truly change. While his evil urges and dark thoughts had already been there, merely teased out into acceptance, his desire to be a ruler and master were quickly thrown away as the now demonic looking dragon dropped to the ground and lowered his head in submission.

“Master Helical...your servant thanks you.”

His voice now carried that same distorted, unholy tone the demon possessed.

“A mere taste, my slave. Your new power will grow as you embrace its use.”

The demon turned his gaze to the other dragon, who felt very small all of a sudden. “Kneel.” What was once his brother turned to face him, his maw now bearing a blank, wild looking grin.

“Join us! Feel the might, the sheer power coursing through you, and discard all other thoughts…”

“Never!” Basilrin cried defiantly, “Murderer, I will never submit to the likes of you!”

“I see.” The demon turned to the other dragon and nodded. “Slave.”

The beast, now looking like a dragon made entirely of shadow, stepped up to Basilrin, that unnaturally wide grin seemingly plastered there for good.

The much smaller, green dragon shook his head, beginning to step back. “Brother...I know you are still there, somewhere. I cannot hurt you. I shall not.”

That grin, though it already appeared too wide, only grew wider as his words.

“But I can hurt you.”

That was the only warning he needed. Basilrin threw himself out of the way as his brother lunged forward with blinding speed. He only just cleared the larger dragon as he slammed his claws to the ground, causing the earth itself to shake.

Basilrin righted himself just in time to avoid yet another lunge from Julroul, who seemed remorseless in his attempts to kill the smaller dragon.

“Stop this!”

Julroul laughed as he continued swinging, the other dragon just barely moving out of the way each time.

“Come to your senses! I am your brother!”

“I know. You are also dead.”

Another swing. Basilrin backed up, holding a defensive stance.

“Please, stop this!”

There was no answer as the larger, corrupted dragon lunged at him again. This time he actually grabbed onto Basilrin’s leg as he leapt away, but the smaller dragon slipped free before any harm was done.

There was no way for him to win this. His brother was so much more powerful now. A single, well placed swing from those claws and…

Basilrin shook his head. He couldn’t do this. Not only did his brother massively outclass him, but his heart wasn’t in the fight. He didn’t want to hurt Julroul...but his brother seemed all too gleeful about cutting him down.

He kicked off, launching himself into the increasingly dark sky and looking back at his brother fearfully as he flew away.

“I...I will get help!” he cried, “I will purge you of their influence! I promise!”

Julroul moved to pursue, crouching low to launch himself into the air, but the demon raised his hand.

“Don’t.”

The dark dragon looked at the creature in confusion.

“Let him come crawling back with others. Then we will have more to swell our ranks.”

Julroul got out of his crouching stance and stood up. He turned to the demon and bowed deeply.

“As you wish, master.”

Many days and nights had passed since then. Basilrin did indeed make good on his promise, and returned with the rest of his family to seek out Julroul.

They found him, and he managed to push them all aside, even slaying his mother in the process. Aurelio was badly wounded by him, and so he and Basilrin retreated back to their caves.

It was there they lay, despair overwhelming them. Aurelio couldn’t get up and Basilrin fearfully crept out into the park to find what little there was left to forage for.

Basilrin had nearly given up all hope...until he spotted a certain, familiar dragon flying towards the academy one day.

“...and that is how all of this started!” Basilrin finished.

Razorwing sighed. “My goodness. This evil...it has ruined everything. Even dragons aren’t safe from the destruction.”

“The true extent of the darkness’ might is frightening,” Charles noted, “I can only imagine what would happen if we don’t stop it…”

“What’s been keeping them in the city, anyway?”

Alexander scratched at his face as he asked the question. “I mean, we’re damn lucky they’re not moving out, but...why aren’t they?”

“The corruption,” Andric answered.

“Huh?”

“That’s right,” Leianna agreed, “They can’t go without it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Lexius stepped forward. “You know by now that the demons and their minions spread the corruption wherever they go, correct? You can see it in the sky, the stone and the very earth in this city.”

Alexander nodded. “Of course.”

“Well, they had to work to make it that way, and if they have plans of world conquest, they’ll need to do this a million times over.”

The knight shrugged. “I’m...not following.”

Andric chimed in again. “Think of it like this: Imagine a priest or magician’s magic. The more they use, the more they exhaust themselves. Use too much and they need to wait until they regain their energy, correct?”

“I get that.”

“Well, if they leave the area they’ve corrupted for untouched ground, they’ll begin to die. They subsist on the evil as much as they spread it. A sort of balance, like how humans and trees need one another for air.”

“Well, why don’t they make more? They did a damn good job of it here.”

The paladin gestured toward the cave exit. “The entire city’s been corrupted, and only a few demons have actually crawled out of the hole that is their homeland. The ones that have obviously used up all their dark energy corrupting the city and sealing it in a fog of darkness. Hell, they still need to work on the park, it’s still pure, mostly. While the fog and the corruption in it is ever so slowly growing on its own, it’ll be ages before it can swallow all the land around it like that.”

“So the demons are...recharging?” Alexander probed.

“Correct. Also gathering more of their ilk. Once a demonic army is assembled, they’ll be able to spill out into the kingdom and quickly corrupt the land, claiming more and more for themselves.”

“So we’re on a time limit,” the knight said knowingly.

“Indeed...which is why we should hurry and kill that abomination!”

Alexander sighed. “Right...off we go, than! Tourthun, Basilrin and Aurelio! We’ll need all of you to beat that thing, even if it isn’t immortal anymore. I can’t imagine my blade would do much against something that large…”

Tourthun rumbled quietly. “...whatever is needed to stop this, I will do.”

Aurelio nodded. “I shall fight to my last. It is...the least I could do.”

“Perfect!” Basilrin shouted, “Let us be off!”

The group left the caves, preparing for the confrontation with the monstrosity that had kept them trapped here for all this time. Once the way was clear, civilians could flee and the army could be brought in. Soon enough, the final battle would truly begin.

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[andrewdburton]

Three Months of Slacking

Unsuccessfully but Refreshingly trying to climb the local waterfall

“MMM, are you still alive?” – somebody on Twitter

Holy Shit! I just realized that the last time I wrote a blog post for you was on April 18th, and now it’s late July. That’s an entire quarter of a year that I have let this wonderful, golden field of interesting opportunities and people sit untended.

 How could Mr. Money Mustache, a reliable stalwart of bossy financial advice since 2011 and usually good for at least one post per month, have drifted so far from his original dedication? It’s a question that earnest fans have been asking, and that I have even started asking myself.

When you break out of any habit, it can be hard to get back into it: the psychological barriers start to stack up and the pressure rises and you find yourself waiting for more and more unattainably perfect conditions that, surprise surprise, never really come.

If it’s a workout habit that you have broken, you might tell yourself,

“Oh, I just need to get over this injury or this cold.. And then my Mom is visiting next week but after that I’ll be ready to get back to the gym.“

With my blog-writing hobby I make excuses like,

“Oh, now that it has been so long, I have to wait until I have something really interesting or worthwhile to say. And yeah okay, maybe I have a few articles like that in the drafts folder, but those ones take a lot of thinking and focus to write, so I’d better wait until I am feeling really smart and focused to crack into that subject.”

But in both cases, the correct solution is just to say,

“Fuck it. I am going to just do something towards my goal, no matter how tiny.”

To get back in shape, you just need to start with at least a few pushups, which you can do right now on the floor of your office or kitchen. To resurrect the MMM Blog, Mustache just has to type some shit into the computer, and heck, why not just an easy breezy article telling you about some of the interesting things I’ve been doing in lieu of blogging?

Some stories from a real life of early retirement, which may be more relevant than plain old financial analysis and reader case studies anyway. And once we’re all caught up in life, maybe it’ll be easier to keep in touch on a more regular basis henceforth.

So in fairly rapidfire format, here’s what I’ve been up to this spring and summer:

1) Renovating The Shit Out of Our New Two-House Compound

We found the previous shower had been leaking for years and creating the most interesting scene of decay. We tore out and rebuilt the whole area, and cut in a nice window for good measure.

You may recall that back in January, I teamed up with a friend to buy the house next door, with cash, at a below-market price. Once she moved in, we realized that it needed even more renovations than we originally planned. So I’ve had a joyful time tearing down walls, framing in new windows and doors, reworking the floorplan and changing the wall surfaces, as well as fixing the shoddy plumbing and electrical work that was found along the way.

On my own house right next door, I’ve been going just a bit wild with metalworking, making all sorts of fences and decks and even a “Juliet Balcony” which features a fireman pole allowing me to slide quickly down from my master bedroom to the ground where we have a shared hot tub between our properties – in case of Hot Tub Emergencies, of course.

Cutting a giant hole in the back of my house (in February!), adding a sliding door where there was previously only a silly little shitty window, then many fun, casual days of metalworking. The last pic is my side deck, which I built mostly out of wood but also features lots of metal and a fun little outdoor kitchen including coffee machine and induction cooktop!

2) Working on a Pretty Big Documentary Project

Hmmm.. something seems different about the HQ kitchen.

I have said for years that I would never do it, but somehow a very persuasive filmmaker who has made some documentaries that I really respect, roped me into helping out with a probably-pretty-big documentary.

I did a casting call in March and found a couple that I am now coaching and working with throughout 2021. The film company doesn’t want me to talk about it much until they are ready to announce it, but suffice it to say that it is taking a lot of my time and energy, which comes out of what would otherwise be my blog-writing time budget.

However, this is the good kind of hardship – forcing me to experience things I wouldn’t otherwise get to do, and the end result will be reaching a lot more people than I could by just writing on this website alone. My fingers are crossed that it will come out the way I hope!

3) Switching 120,000 Underserved MMM Email Subscribers over for Better Newsletters

Easier signups, and better eventual emails.

Since the beginning, I’ve mostly ignored the fact that I sorta have a list of email subscribers, with predictable lackluster results. People were able to subscribe and unsubscribe themselves automatically, and the only thing it got them was an automated mailing of any new blog articles on the day that I posted them. The emails were poorly formatted, people who had non-gmail addresses often had trouble subscribing, and many probably wondered why I couldn’t make it work better.

Thankfully, a mini-crisis happened that has forced me to do the work to solve this problem, at last: Google announced that they were shutting down the aging Feedburner email service, so all of the old-school bloggers like me who were still using it were forced to migrate to a more modern platform.

I did some research, and in the end I decided to go with a higher-end option called ConvertKit, which is one of the most popular email services. It can do a lot more cool stuff, and I have taken advantage of this to create an automated (and free of course) “MMM Boot Camp” email series that people can sign up for. 

It’s just a curated feed of some of my most useful articles (about 35 out of the 500), which automatically go out to people once per week until they have graduated, so you’d think it would be pretty easy for me to create this.

But as I read through my old stuff, of course I realized that much of it was crappy and outdated so I ended up partially rewriting every one of those 35 posts as I went through, which took some time. The good news is, the updated versions are here on the website as well, so the work should benefit anyone who happens to read them in the future.

4) Having lots of Fun Times (and Hard Times) In Real Life

Just another cool sunset/storm in my back yard, taken during the traditional Evening Walk.

I’ve had a series of wonderful visitors who came and stayed at my house, sometimes for a week or more. Friends and I have hosted some big events at the HQ Coworking space, which left me both energized and drained at the same time. Then I got Strep Throat in mid-July, which knocked me out for the count for a full week or more – even well after the antibiotics worked their magic, I have still been having some ups and downs with energy. 

And then of course there’s the heat – I am always more energetic in cool weather (The typical 50 degree sunny days of a Colorado winter are some of my favorite for outdoor work in t-shirt and jeans). So the summer season here is always a challenge for me, with an endless procession of cloudless 95 degree desert days making me resent the very Sun I normally worship so much. I’ve been taking refuge indoor more than I should, hiding in my air conditioned house and making excuses and accomplishing less because of it. At least this has led me to the keyboard today, to write this blog post.

5) “Cutting the Pipe” at HQ and Installing a Giant Fancy Heat Pump system.

I had fun working alongside my co-owner Mr. 1500 for this work. Everything was easy about this install … except rebuilding some of the filthy century-old ductwork we found once we took out the old furnace.

Since I first bought the building in 2017, the MMM-HQ coworking space has been limping along with a clunky decades-old gas furnace, a gas water heater that was about 20 years overdue to spring a leak, no central air conditioning at all, and very high utility bills due to the way our local gas company charges commercial customers.

When you combine these irritants and contrast them with the fact that we happen to have a glorious solar electric array on the rooftop that makes a surplus of power, you can see why I would be itching to tear out all the gas appliances, cancel the service account permanently, and install all-electric replacements that are more efficient and will also save an estimated shit-ton of money each year.

I’ll save the full details of this for my very next blog article, but as a spoiler: we found and successfully installed a unit that should be able to cool and heat our building year-round, is very DIY-friendly, and cost only about $4000 to buy. It should prove to be a great annual return on investment, and I am excited to start installing these things on all of my properties and those of any friends who are doing upgrades.

And with that, I’d say we are all caught up.

In the comments: what have YOU been up to these past 3 months? And what subjects do you think we should be covering here on MMM in the next three?

from Finance https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2021/07/25/three-months-of-slacking/ via http://www.rssmix.com/