#without such a giant chasm of status between them :(

[zhoudadudugongjin]

i hate them

[ofdragonsdeep]

20: Petrichor

The wound only heals once you've pulled out the knife.

(HW spoilers, implied m!WoLxThancred and m!WoLxHaurchefant)

Soft snow tumbled down from the grey clouds above, a thin layer of fragile white settling on the shoulders of Ar’telan’s armour as he sat on the wall at Falcon’s Nest and stared out into the Highlands beyond. The stiff breeze brought a numbing cold, not that it made much impact on his statue-still vigil, his face stoic and his mind churning with regrets.

The peace conference had gone poorly, if one was being kind. Instead of the usual assault by heretics that Ishgard was used to, this time it was the victims of war rising up in anger. He could not even blame them for their anger, knowing intimately the wellspring from which it drew, but this?

He should not have accepted the drink. He should have known better. But it stung more than the cold that they thought he did not understand the way they suffered.

“I wondered if I might find you out here. Still hurts, does it?”

Thancred, solid and steady as always. He hopped up on to the wall beside him with customary grace, sitting easily upon the parapet and following Ar’telan’s gaze, as though there were anything of interest to be found at the end of it.

“I don’t need your pity,” Ar’telan said, and Thancred sighed, shaking his head.

“No, you don’t,” he agreed. “Maybe that was indelicate of me. Apologies.” Ar’telan made a muted noise of acknowledgement, looking away until he felt the touch of fingers brush the snow from his shoulders. A fleeting part of him yearned for what was gone - Haurchefant and the knights teaching him the proper way to dry snow-stained gear, coming in from training covered in sleet and mud, Thancred’s touch on the edge of his robe - but it quickly warped and distorted. A hole in a shield, a wound in his heart, Lahabrea muting his voice with a grip on his wrists. He stiffened, and Thancred withdrew.

“...Sorry,” Ar’telan managed, and Thancred made a wearied noise.

“I should think we’ve moved past that part of things,” he said. “How are you holding up? Beside the obvious, I mean.”

“You should not have hit him,” Ar’telan said, which made Thancred start in surprise. “He made poor choices, but so did all of us, at one point or another. He is small, and scared, and alone. It wasn’t needed.”

“You’re the only person who’s said that,” Thancred said, though he did not seem offended by the statement. “Maybe you’re right. You know them better than I do.” Ar’telan shook his head.

“Barely. Just- Just…” He cut himself off, a sharp inhalation of breath reminding him that he had been sat out here for a long time, and he was cold. ”I don’t want to think about it. How long before the Grand Melee?” Thancred shifted his position, resting one arm on a raised knee, considering the questions both asked and unasked, as he was wont to do.

“It will be some time before the Alliance gets themselves into gear, despite the initial offer,” he replied. “A few weeks at worst, a few days at best. What do you want the time to do?” Ar’telan made a noncommittal noise.

“I don’t know. It all feels like it’s too much,” he said. “It was horrible, what happened at the banquet, but at least it felt easier in Ishgard. Simpler, maybe. And then even that fell to pieces, and I… I feel like I break all that I touch.”

“Lahabrea was not your fault,” Thancred said, and Ar’telan flinched as though he was the one who had been struck, and not Emmanellain.

“No. I know that. But… Sometimes I wonder what the point of it is. The people, they… they see me as a hero. Here and in greater Eorzea. But what good is a bulwark if everything around it falls to pieces?”

Thancred was quiet for a while, an unusual state for him. Ar’telan looked over, saw the frown of thought on his face, the clouds in his aether-bleached eyes. It was easy to remember what had happened after the chaos at the Praetorium, the uncertainty and the anger of Thancred’s recovery - of his own. The wounds were undeniable, in both of them. But the way that the Flow had pulled them apart, even if Thancred himself had only tumbled out a few moons ago, gave them just enough distance for it to feel… distant, somehow. Less keen.

“Well, I can’t imagine that travelling on foot will be particularly fun for you, but I’ve a proposal, if you’ll hear it,” Thancred said eventually. Ar’telan nodded, keeping cautious distance. “It’s only a day’s ride by carriage to Thanalan, if you’ll come with me. Put a few malms between yourself and the pain, for a little while.” Ar’telan wasn’t sure there was anywhere on Eorzea that didn’t hold some poor memory, but it was far away from this pain, this betrayal, and he supposed it would do the job.

“Alright. You’re paying for it, though.”

---

Eastern Thanalan sat on the edge of the vast desert, where the Shroud gave way to high heat and cracked ground. The town around the aetheryte sat in a shaded dip just off the main road, which meant that when it rained - as it often did after the Calamity, and as it was when Ar’telan and Thancred arrived - the rain poured down the entry slopes and pooled on every available surface, leaving the townsfolk to slosh through it in despair.

“Not quite the weather I had in mind,” Thancred remarked as they took shelter in the tavern, Ar’telan shaking the water from his armour with a look of dismay writ on his face.

“I don’t even own an umbrella,” Ar’telan grumbled. Thancred chuckled, gesturing to a table with one hand before going over to the bar. Ar’telan watched with careful eyes, but he only ordered one drink, and did not try to pass it over.

“I think you’ve had quite enough liquid for one day,” Thancred said, though it was still obvious to Ar’telan that he had noticed his concern. He held in his embarrassment with the determination of a man who had killed gods.

“If you have not dragged me out here to watch you drink yourself under the table, why are we here?” he asked, trying not to let the bitterness show through in his voice. A look of annoyance passed over Thancred’s face, but it seemed he was being as coy with his emotions as Ar’telan was trying to be.

“Well, the idea was better before the weather turned, I’ll admit,” he said. “I thought it would be… nice, I suppose. Well, you’ve been collecting all of those seeds, haven’t you?” Ar’telan stiffened at the question, staring down at the table and feeling the fingers of his hands slowly curl against the wood. “There’s a clearing near the chasm here. Maybe you know it. Giant goobbue corpse, nothing too unusual - but it’s covered in odd flowers. They say it came down from the mountains before it died.” Ar’telan swallowed back the well of feelings that threatened to overwhelm him.

“Do you know why I…” he tried, his hand movements jerky and uncertain. Thancred took a long drink from his flagon, waiting in vain for Ar’telan to have the chance to finish, before sighing to himself.

“I’ve my suspicious, yes,” he answered. “If only because I’ve never seen anything else tether you so tightly. It’s for your elezen, right?” It was strange to hear it said without judgement, when they had all but ruined what remained of their friendship over his relationship with Haurchefant. When it had become clear that they would not, could not work again in the wounds that Lahabrea had left behind, the ascian’s spite tearing holes in them even after his forcible discorporation. He was dead now, truly dead, as Ar’telan understood it, but his shadow lingered yet.

“Yes,” he said, pulling his hands in close to his chest as he said it, the closest to a quiet word he could manage it.

“I said some things I regret back then, before all of this Ishgardian nonsense kicked off,” Thancred said, his tone light, but the admission was a serious one. “About you. About him. About a lot of things, if we’re being honest.” He glanced at the window, noting the rain hammering down on it, and shrugged. “I suppose we have time to be honest. I’m sorry.”

“You were not the only one who did things they regret,” Ar’telan replied, hands muted, head still bowed. “I don’t know if… if we could have made it work. If there was a solution for us after what the ascians did. But I did not help matters.” Thancred laughed at that, leaning back in his chair with a creak of old, sun-baked wood.

“Best not to spend too long dwelling on it, I think,” he said. “The ifs and the whys and the maybes - none of them matter in the now. Too many moons between them.” He tilted the flagon towards Ar’telan, who shook his head in refusal. “What matters is where we go. How we move forward. But on that, I would give the floor to you.”

“To me?” Ar’telan repeated, surprised. “Thancred, I… I don’t know. Finding a direction for myself is hard enough, never mind for two.” Thancred’s mouth creased up into a smile.

“It’s not a no,” he decided, draining the flagon. Ar’telan found the embarrassment on his face, the twist of his stomach, was not entirely fear or shame. The distance of moons indeed.

“It is not a yes, either,” he said, a stern look on his face. Thancred sighed.

“Yes, yes,” he said, a hand waving through the air as if to dismiss the concern. The look on his face was kind, though, as he brought his arms to the table to rest his head upon his hands. “I jest. Whatever life decides to throw at us, I will respect your distance. And I won’t ruin a friendship for a snuffed candle this time.” Ar’telan sighed.

“As long as you promise not to die, it is a start,” he decided.

“Well, on that front I can only promise my best.”

--

The sparse grass of the eastern reaches of Thanalan sparkled with collected rain, the ground still soft underfoot even though the clouds had cleared to make way for the stars of night. Ar’telan was knelt by the old goobbue’s grave, carefully collecting what few seeds the rain-soaked plants would offer him, Thancred leaning back against the swell of the ground and watching him work. It was a far cry from their first visit to eastern Thanalan, camped out by the little oasis in borrowed rags and a makeshift tent. It would not end the same, either, though Ar’telan noted the appreciative eyes on the taller man as he got to his feet. Not now. Not soon. But, perhaps, eventually. A bridge built between them by their suffering, instead of tearing out the planks in a misguided attempt to heal. The moon twinkled in the sky above them, a quiet witness to their sadness, and it felt a little like the storm had stopped.

If the clouds would abate, only time would tell.

[imagine-darksiders]

Cold Hands, Warm Heart - Chapter 10.

- Falling Tears. 

Words: 10,833

Summary: The Drenchfort is not a place to be taken lightly. Beautiful as you find it, its dark corners hold many, terrible dangers and you soon learn that some monsters lurk closer than you think....

----

“Woah....”

“Do you know something, human? I'm beginning to think you may well be the most easily impressed creature this universe has ever spat out.” In spite of the brusqueness of his tone, Death's lips curve into the ghost of a smile as he watches you zigzag the path ahead of him, every now and again touching your fingertips reverently to the Drenchfort's damp, stone walls.

The horseman, a frequenter of bizarre and spectacular worlds, finds scarce little to be dazzled by in the ancient temple. Its high ceilings and immense chambers hardly seemed to differ from one another. There's a lingering smell of damp that invades his nostrils and absolutely everything is coloured a shade of uninspiring grey.

Life here had disappeared eons ago along with the water.

But here you are, gazing upon it all with the kind of wide-eyed wonder he would have expected you to give the White City.... or Eden. Not this bland, blocky temple stuck out in some far-off corner of a dying realm.

'Still-" He raises a brow as you crane your neck back to peer at the ceiling and end up tripping over a loose stone, 'At least she isn't complaining about wanting to go home.'

Out of nowhere, you decide to stop and poke at a dead fern hanging from the walls, dawdling long enough for the horseman to overtake you and continue on his way down the dank, misty corridor.

“I can't believe we've been living alongside an entire realm, and we had no idea!” you exclaim, tearing yourself away from the odd plant and bounding after Death once you realise he won't be stopping to let you sightsee.

“Well, it isn't as though you've been missing out on much,” he mumbles before raising his voice for you to hear, “Now, come along. The sooner we find the source of the tears, the sooner we can leave.”

Without hanging around to see if you've caught up, Death strides ahead to the end of the vast hallway and a pair of doors that sit squarely in your path. A thick layer of dust resting on the mottled wood indicates they haven't seen use for a good many years. Upon reaching them, he places a hand on their surface, only pausing once he notices your footsteps have ceased.

Sighing, Death glances over a shoulder and finds that you've once again stopped, this time to peer down into a small puddle at your feet.

'Water?' He flicks his gaze up to a hole in the ceiling through which he can make out the cloudy sky beyond. 'Nothing more than rainwater, then.'

“I sincerely hope you haven't already forgotten the first step?” he barks, causing you to jump and snap your head up.

“First step?” you echo, confused. Then, the previous day comes racing back and you recall the ground rules he laid out for you in front of the Cauldron. “Oh! Right, right, yeah. Stay close.” With that, you jog through the puddle - never minding the cool water that splashes up your legs as you go – and hurry back to the horseman's side. Once you reach him, he heaves out a sigh, rolls his eyes and gives the doors one, hard shove.

Awaiting you on the other side is a gargantuan, layered courtyard and what appears to be a statue, far taller and wider than any you've seen. It stands proudly in the centre and depicts some kind of stony giant with a water yoke perched heavily across its broad shoulders.

You're too late to catch the, “Woooah!” before it leaves your mouth.

“You should become an author,” Death says breezily, “Your first book; 'How to express wonder in two words or less.'”

He's only a little disappointed that his observation and suggestion go ignored.

Trundling down a comparatively small flight of stairs, you come upon a low wall and, peering out over it, let out yet another awed gasp.

“My god, it looks as if it could get up and start walking about at any second!” you remark, pushing yourself onto your tiptoes and leaning out even further to gaze down past the statue towards the bottom of the chasm. Several yards below you, sunlight refracts off the shallow water pooled around its feet where the ground is uneven.

“D'you think there are any fish down there?” you wonder aloud, pulling back and traipsing after Death along a pathway that hugs the outer, western wall and curves around to another set of wooden doors.

“If there are,” he replies, “Then I imagine they'd be the kind you want to avoid.”

“Wait. The fish here are dangerous too?”

“We haven't met any yet, but I imagine they would be,” he grunts, “Almost everything in this realm is potentially deadly. Part of why its people are so hardy, I suppose.”

Effortlessly, he throws open the doors and you both carry on into a long passageway that doesn't differ very much from the last. This one, however, houses a large, semi circular pipe that's set into the ground and runs all the way along the left side of the room before it disappears through a wall, sectioned off by a big, stone grate. A few inches of water sit in the bottom of the pipe and it suddenly occurs to you that this must be how the tears used to travel through the temple.

“I dunno why I'm surprised the fish here can be dangerous,” you chuckle out of the blue, filling the empty hallway with sound, “Like the fish on Earth are any less nasty. Ha! When me and my dad were in Mozambique, we.....Say-” You turn your head to scrutinise Death. “- You ever heard of a tiger fish?”

Heaving a weary sigh, he replies, “I've heard of a tiger, and I've heard of a fish.”

“Right, well, basically... Picture a fish about....Mmmm....This big -” Death very nearly gets smacked around the chest when your hands fly out to either side, leaving about three feet of air between your palms to indicate the space where an imaginary fish would go. “- And give it the teeth of a tiger.”

You stare at him for a while until he realises he's actually supposed to be playing along. Resisting the urge to grumble, Death nods curtly. “Alright?”

“Bam! That's a tiger fish!”

“Is there a point to this tale?” he mutters under his breath.

Carrying on as if you hadn't heard, you let your eyes glaze over with a memory, lost for a brief instance in the blissful past. “My dad took me fishing once in Mozambique. We were catching tiger fish and I was so afraid one would jump on the boat – well, it was less of a boat and more of a raft with an engine,” you laugh, “But dad? I remember him turning to look at me with this like, weird look on his face as he said, 'you know there are hippos and crocodiles in here too right?' Man, I screamed loud enough for everyone back at camp to hear me! Mum gave him such a bollocking.” Swiping a mirthful tear from your eye, your laughter eventually tapers off as you glance up at the horseman, who's gaze is trained on you, though it remains unreadable as ever. Sobered by his quiet observing, you cough awkwardly into a fist. “Uh, he was...he was just like that. Dad, I mean. I think he thought he was teaching me an important lesson.” Brows pinching, you swivel your head around to face forwards again. “No matter how much you're scared of a thing, there's usually something much, much worse out there for you to be afraid of.”

From the corner of his eye, Death watches your smile fade until it becomes a pensive frown.

“....Never thought I'd miss his stupid, pointless lessons so much.”

Moisture gathers behind your eyes and you hurriedly pivot away from the horseman, staring at the pipe and taking the opportunity to wipe your face, sniffling glumly, “Never thought I'd miss him so much.”

The horseman blinks, startled to find that his hand has unintentionally begun to rise and had been on a clear path to your shoulder before he caught himself and snatched it back. Scowling rebukingly down at the treacherous appendage, he closes it into a fist and keeps it firmly planted against his side. The mood well and truly soured, you press on in silence.

Before long, the two of you reach a point in the hallway where the path veers off sharply to the right.

Rounding the sharp bend, all thoughts of your father evaporate and you suddenly freeze in your tracks whilst the horseman takes a few more steps, although he too soon slows to a halt.

“Oh, wonderful,” he grumbles, “A stinger hive.”

Sure enough, up ahead and fused to the stone floor by a film of slimy webbing, is a bulbous, writhing pod that more closely resembles a venomous plant than any sort of 'hive.' Chittering and scratching can be heard coming from within the egg-shaped nest, and if you squint, you can even see dozens of silhouettes zooming about behind a thin, orange membrane.

Swallowing past a nervous lump, you suggest, “Maybe we can, like...sneak past?”

As if in direct defiance of your wishful thinking, an explosion of activity causes the pod to jerk violently.

“.....Maybe!” Death agrees, tone mocking.

Before you can move to stand behind him, a pair of flaps at the very top of the hive spring open.

Heart in your throat, you and the horseman stand rigid, staring suspiciously at the opening. Seconds later, you jump as a cloud of gigantic, flying insects comes bursting out and in no time at all, the hallway is promptly drowned under the volume of a hundred, buzzing wings.

You're too late to bite down on the ungodly shriek that leaps out of you and sets Death's teeth on edge.

He has all of a second to spare you an exasperated glower before the first insect whizzes in your direction. A hideous trill announces its approach and it darts expertly over the horseman, making a beeline straight for you.

Your sword and Death's pistol all but forgotten, you throw up your arms to act as meagre protection and cry out, “No!” when, all of a sudden, a pale hand shoots out and snatches the insect from the air a split second before it can thrust its barbed sting into your flesh.

Eyes peeking open, you watch, transfixed as Death clenches down hard, crushing the wriggling insect as though it were little more than a paper cup. “I didn't give you that gun because I was being nice!” he shouts, turning to face the swarm, squinting through it at the nest beyond.

“Oh, right!” Throwing your hands down, you frantically tug the gun out of its holster, grunting when it catches for a moment and then slides free. With the sound of angry buzzing filling your ears, you shakily raise your arms and try to aim, which soon proves a near impossibility. “I...I can't get a lock!” you cry, “They're moving too fast!”

There's no response, so you glance over at Death, only to find him gone. Squeaking out his name, you suddenly catch a flash of grey sprinting through the swarm. “Hey! Where are you going! Don't leave me!” It's useless to try and hide the panic in your voice.

Soon enough, your entire field of view is obscured and you can no longer see any trace of the horseman through their midst. The insects screech as one and converge on you, their fangs dripping a clear, no doubt venomous liquid.

Just then, you hear Death shout above the din, “What are you waiting for?! Shoot!”

“Where are you?!” you scream back, but again, you don't catch a reply. That, or there isn't one.

Blood thumping relentlessly in your ears, you take his advice and point the gun at the closest of the insects, squeezing the trigger. The shot rings out, you're nearly sent flying off your feet and a bug behind the one you'd been aiming for promptly explodes in a shower of green blood.

“Oh.”

In this case, it would appear their sheer numbers hold them to a disadvantage. So many insects choke the corridor, you only need to point and shoot in their vague direction and there's a high probability that the bullet will strike at least one.

Again, you fire into the swarm and – even though you're aiming at random – you manage to hit another stinger and send it spinning to the ground, dead. After that, your confidence begins to grow and soon, you've cut the cloud of insects down by a half, eternally grateful that Death's pistol doesn't need to be reloaded. It almost makes your hectic misses seem less costly.

Unfortunately for you, the more bugs you do manage to kill, the harder it becomes to hit those that remain and it isn't long before your arms start to shake, buckling under the strain of the gun's recoil.

All in all, it's abundantly clear to see that you're in trouble and unfortunately for you, the giant, flying insects seem to have noticed this as well.

You've stopped bothering to look for Death in between shots, choosing instead to focus on more pressing things such as not dying.

Only four stingers are left buzzing in the air after you effectively panicked and unloaded a maelstrom of bullets into the swarm, all the while back-peddling like the fires of Hell were licking at your toes.

Putting on a brave face – which is admittedly less brave and perhaps more of an unthreatening pout – you square your shoulders and shoot at the closest bug only to have it zoom out of the path of your bullet and continue to advance with its brethren, slowing considerably as if they're fully aware that you're no match for their speed and not yet experienced enough with your weapon of choice.

Staggering back, you ditch the pistol, all but throwing it back into the holster before yanking the sword out instead and aiming a wild swipe at one bug that dives towards you. Through sheer luck, the tip of your blade cuts across its poised abdomen and it shrieks, recoiling a second too late. The damage is done.

Blood spills from the wound until its wings stop humming frantically to keep it aloft and it falls in a downward spiral until it hits the ground and lays there with the rest of its fallen ilk.

“And then, there were three,” you murmur, slowly retreating whilst keeping a sharp eye trained on the last of the insects as they hover closer, one to your front and two attempting to flank you on either side.

Breathing coming out shallow and erratic, you keep your sword on the move, pointing it continuously between all three.

Of course though, as is just the way your life tends to pan out, the inevitable happens.

The heel of your boot suddenly strikes a loose slab of stone that pokes just a few inches higher out of the ground than those surrounding it. Belting out a short scream, you lose your balance and topple backwards, landing on your rear hard enough to send a sharp pain racing up through your coccyx.

“Gah! Sunnuvabitch, this is getting really OLD!” you holler at your clumsy feet.

For the insects, your mistake is an opportunity too perfect to forgo. Three, ear-splitting screeches snatch your gaze up from your fallen sword and you gasp, heart seizing as they fly at you, their poisoned barbs already oozing viscous liquid that's sure to kill you in three seconds flat. Although your hand reaches out to grab at Karn's sword laying to one side, you can tell you'll never be able to protect yourself in time.

Suddenly, cutting it just a little too close, a scythe comes whizzing into view above your head, slicing through the remaining stingers in a neat arc before curving back around to return the way it had come.

Panting hard, you reach up to wipe the sweat out of your eyes and gaze dumbfounded past the now dead stingers and down the corridor, your heart flip flopping upon seeing Death – scythe in hand – prowling up to you, his bandage-wrapped forearms tinged a dark shade of green.

“Death!?” you squeak, attempting to stand. Your hand slips on a patch of insect blood however, and you crash back onto your rump once again. Although there's a dizzying torrent of relief that he had not, in fact, left you for good, the shadow of a frown drapes across your features. “Where....Where were you!?

The thumb he tosses over a shoulder is casual, entirely too casual for your liking. It's as though he simply hasn't a care for how frightened he'd made you when he disappeared. Still, you crane your neck over his shoulder to see what he's indicating.

Behind him, you see the nest. Or rather, what remains of the nest. Its membrane hangs in tattered strips around the stump and the whole thing has sagged to the ground, wilted and no longer capable of spewing forth any more of those bloodthirsty insects.

His cold hand grabs the collar of your jumper and you glance up to see Death regarding you blankly, his eyes conveying no clue as to his inner thoughts. Just when you think he's about to tell you what a horrible job you did, the horseman pulls you off the ground and sets you carefully back on your feet. “Not bad,” he murmurs, appraising the dozens of dead stingers.

For a time, you simply stare up at him, gulping down breath after breath until your heart rate falls to something far less alarming. Then, to his surprise, your eyebrows scrunch together into a dark scowl and before he can say a word, you wrench your jumper out of his hand and take a step back, puffing out your chest. “Don't ever-” you seethe, raising a trembling finger and pointing it at his mask, “ - ever do that to me again! I thought you'd left me!”

At your outburst, the horseman huffs, affronted. “I was destroying the nest.”

“You could have told me that, you idiot!” After a second, your angry expression falls and you look down, voice losing most of its heat. “I was so scared.”

The horseman peers at you through narrow eyes, hard and unblinking until eventually, he tears his head away and stalks past, picking his way over the bodies of fallen insects. As you watch his retreating back, he grumbles something that sends a stab of shame racing through your gut.

“Yes, well...What else is new?”  

Inhaling softly, your eyebrows tilt upwards but you press your mouth into a tight line, determined to keep your lower lip from quivering.

For the second time in as many days, there's a twinge of discomfort that chases Death's words and a microsecond where he wishes he hadn't spoken them at all. He doesn't even need to look back to know that there are the beginnings of tears glistening in your eyes. Sighing quietly, he pushes forwards and supposes he can't begrudge you that.

Staring after him as he goes, you slowly feel your anger ebb away, rationality settling in its place.

You glance at the destroyed nest, then rove your eyes down to the three insects laying close to your feet.

“You didn't leave me though, did you?” you murmur softly, too soft for him to hear. While you might have been scared out of your wits, you weren't actually hurt. The horseman had come through for you once again, even if he did leave it to the last possible second. And if you ever do end up leaving this place, as Death planned, then he may well be the only friend you-...

Swallowing, you catch yourself before such a hopeful thought can take root.

Death doesn't seem the type to want, have or need friendship. Least of all that of a human's.

But while you're well aware that 'friend' probably isn't even a term in the horseman's vocabulary, you realise you'd rather at least have him as someone who tolerates you.

Squeezing your hands into tight fists, you draw in a deep breath, count to three and then blow it all out again, forcing yourself to deflate and expel the hurt. “Death, wait!” you call out, voice startlingly loud as it reverberates off the temple's walls. For a horrible moment, you think he won't stop, that he'll continue to stalk down the corridor and disappear through the doors at its end. So you're tentatively relieved that he pauses mid stride, deliberating a while until his shoulders slump and he twists his head to the side, just a fraction, but enough that you spot it.

Uninhibited by pride or spite, there's no hesitation when you blurt, “I'm sorry!” and proceed to stand there, fists still clenched at your sides and spine rigid with anticipation.

Each second that passes by in which there's no response renders your nerves more and more frayed. Still, you allow at least another minute to pass before your heart begins to sink, and as it does, your anxiety rises, which only presses you to keep talking. In times of stress, you've often resorted to idle prattling because listening to an awkward silence is something you despise. Best to fill it than let it fester.

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped at you. You didn't do anything wrong and you were right, me being scared isn't anything new! But I let fear make me ratty and I accused you of leaving me and, and-....”

You're forced to hesitate and draw in a lungful of air but any lull in sound makes his silence all the more deafening.

“Death?” Your voice cracks. “I -...I really am sorry, I didn't-”

“I heard what you said,” he finally interrupts, effectively shutting you up and setting your pulse to race.

After an excruciating wait during which you're certain he's getting ready to just up and leave you here in the corridor of a dilapidated temple, the horseman turns.

You imagine that there must be an easy smile on his face because his haunting eyes are soft than they had been moments ago and there's a gentleness to his tone that doesn't fit with the rest of his demeanour. “I was...merely trying to recall the last time I received an apology. It has been some time.”

Death has to hold back a chuckle at the way you start forwards only to stop again after a few steps, uncertain as to whether or not he still wants you by his side. Smirking, the horseman jerks his head at the doors behind him, reassuring you with a light, “Come along then.”

Your feet move before your brain does.

“I thought you weren't ever going to talk to me again!” you smile, jogging over to the horseman and adding a little sheepishly, “Really though, sorry for calling you an idiot and all that...”

“Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've heard it,” he replies, tilting his head down to regard your hesitant smile.

'Always so unsure of yourself.'

The thought has him shaking his head and, swallowing a tidbit of his own pride, he sighs, “And.... I suppose your fear was...rational. I left you alone to face an enemy you don't even know.”

Walking beside him to the end of the corridor, you smirk. “Was that an apology, Death?”  

“It's the closest thing you're going to get so don't push your luck.”

Smirk still planted across his lips, the horseman places a hand on the door and pauses as you do the same.

You shoot him a shy grin, then, together, the two of you push against your respective door and they slide open as one, allowing daylight to flood the hallway behind you.

Stepping through, you raise a hand and shield your eyes, forced to squint after the relative dinginess of the long passageway behind you.

“Finally,” Death pipes up at your side, venturing forward into the new area.

Once your eyes adjust, you lower your arm and blink curiously at your surroundings.

From what you can tell, you're standing on a large overlook that sits above a room you'd previously passed through some time ago. Like more of the temple's chambers, this one's roof has almost completely crumbled away and shafts of sunlight filter in through the huge gaps left in the stone. To your left is a large, familiar pipe. It's set into the floor and spans the western wall, and would have carried on through to the next room had there not been a heavy blockade at the far end, slotted neatly into place and kept there by a pair of thick, black chains hanging from the ceiling.

Here and there are growths of slick corruption, clinging to the walls and the parts of the roof that haven't deteriorated.

But perhaps the object that most captures your attention waits at the very edge of the stone overlook, resting unassumingly on a raised dais.  

“A lever!” you exclaim, bounding after Death as relief washes away the last of the bitter taste of your argument with him. You were beginning to think you'd never make any progress.

The horseman, reaching out and grasping the handle, simply replies, “So it is,” and gives it a sharp pull.

In an instant, the sound of gears clanking and grinding fills the area, though they're soon followed by a far less promising 'thump' and then, everything falls silent once more.

“Of course,” Death growls, yanking the lever a few more times and getting the same result until he promptly snatches his hand away, frustrated. “It's never that easy.” He stands there, chin in hand and muddles over the mechanism in front of him, blissfully unaware that you've started wandering curiously around the room, on the hunt for that mysterious 'thump.'

It doesn't take long to discover the source.

Trailing up a small staircase that takes you right to the lip of the pipe, you peer down inside for a second and your mouth pulls into a grin. Staring back is your wobbly reflection, smiling at you from within a pool of glistening water. Its surface sparkles and shines with every speck of light that hits it, and you can see clear through to the bottom of the pipe. You've never seen water as pure as this before.

There isn't a doubt in your mind of what you've discovered.

“Death! I think I found the tears!”

“That's wonderful, Y/n,” he calls back with the same enthusiasm of a parent whose child had just handed them a mud pie.

Slowly, your gaze travels up the blockade to the chains holding it in place. Sure enough, growing over and around those chains is a large, tangled cluster of Corruption, its putrid yellow crystals sticking out over the barricade.

“Hmm.” After levelling a pensive frown at the contraption, you raise your voice and shout, “Hey, Death!?”

“What?” comes the weary reply.

“Can you pull that lever again?”

There's a pause, then a huff, followed shortly by the sound of metal scraping against stone once more.

A moment later, you watch as the water blockade judders and stirs, rising a few inches above the pipe's base before its ascent is abruptly halted by Corruption. The heavy stone slab struggles up another centimetre or so but ultimately, it drops back down with a resonant thump.

Raising a brow, you scan the surface of the corruption again, murmuring to yourself, “There's gotta be a way to clear this up. We can't have come all this way for – ah hah!”

Just then, your eyes land upon a familiar, round ball that's half hidden in between the Corruption's oily, black tendrils.

Having heard your exclamation, Death starts towards the steps, “Y/n? What was that?”

“Nothing!” you reply hurriedly, grabbing his pistol from your waistband. Luckily, your intended target is neither moving, nor very far away – a damn sight better than the stingers. “Just hang tight, I'm gonna try something!”

“Why don't I like the sound of that?” Death moans.

Seconds after his complaint, a gunshot shatters the peaceful silence and for one, bleak moment, the horseman's gut lurches, fearing the worst. Before he can stop himself, a bark of, “Y/n!?” slips off his tongue, though he's suddenly interrupted by an even louder, more jarring 'bang' that shakes the ground beneath his boots.

Racing away from the lever, he makes for the foot of the staircase you'd previously wandered up, only slowing to a halt when he sees you ambling back down them with a wide smile plastered across your face.

Without uttering a word, he simply stares, head twisting to follow you whilst you squeeze past him and traipse easily over to the lever.

“Y/n?” He pauses to clear his throat. “What did you-”

Swiftly, you hold up a finger to silence him and – incredibly – it works. Death's mouth falls shut and he tilts his head to the side, intrigued.

Still, wearing a proud grin, you take the lever in both hands and shove it to the left, throwing your whole shoulder into it at one point.

As soon as it slots into place, the grinding of gears travels through the floor, up the walls and as you dash back towards the stairs, you see the chains – now free of Corruption – are hoisting the blockade up into the air, and out of the way of the water in the pipe.

“Yes!” you laugh, grabbing Death's arm and giving it an excited jostle, “Come on!” Without waiting to see if he's following, you hop up the steps and drop to your hands and knees at the lip of the stone pipe, peering down as the water rushes through and onwards to some other room in the temple.

Meanwhile, Death remains where he is, curiosity slowly replacing bewilderment. Never before had he seen so much excitement exude from a creature for accomplishing the bare minimum. Then again, perhaps to call it the 'bare minimum' is a little discourteous. After all, he hadn't been the one to figure out why the lever didn't work. Although he absolutely would have managed to...In the end.

Beating back the uninvited smile that had crept onto his face after seeing your own, the Horseman sweeps lazily back towards the room's entrance, confident that he won't get far before you decide to join him. Sure enough, his ears soon pick up the clumsy pitter patter of booted feet as they fly down the stairs in a hurry, straight to his side.

“You're getting rather good at blowing up shadow bombs,” he remarks once you've fallen into step next to him, taking two strides for every one of his.

In response, you shrug and tilt your chin down to hide a bashful grin. “Had to be good at something, I suppose.” A moment later you perk up again and clap your hands together. “So! Back to Tri Stone then?”

“Tri Stone?” he echoes, stepping through the doors into the corridor once again, “You want to leave a job half finished?”

“But...I thought we just...” Glancing back at the room you'd left behind, you continue, “Didn't we release the tears?”

Death finds it odd yet endearing that you included him in that statement. Most would be quick to claim the glory.

“While those are the tears,” he says, “I highly doubt you did much more than move them on to another room in the DrenchFort.”

“How do you know?”

The horseman shrugs. “Call it a hunch. As I said, nothing is ever that easy.”

-----------

“Well, looks like you were right, Death.”

“That surprises you?”

“No, no it's just....I hoped you were wrong.”

Retracing your steps back through the temple, you eventually find yourselves back in the first courtyard, only this time, it's clear to see the changes your actions have incurred. For one thing, the stone giant is no longer burdened by a dry water yoke. Instead, massive torrents of water cascade down from massive pipes on either side of the statue and into a semi-circular pipe that winds around its front with a little offset carrying the water flow underneath a raised balcony, upon which sits the entrance to your next destination.

It's through this entrance that you and Death venture and immediately come to an abrupt halt at the edge of a small cliff. The ceiling of the new chamber looms high overhead, stretching all the way across to the other side whereupon there's another door that no doubt leads to your next destination. However, separating you from this door is a pool. Deep but crystal clear water lets you see right through to the bottom, where stalagmites rise like the clawed fingers of some great, underground giant.

“How on Earth are we supposed to cross this?” you whine, earning an incredulous glance from the horseman.

“Is is not obvious?” he drawls.

“You're not seriously suggesting we swim that?”

“You can't swim?”

“I can too swim, I just -” Eyeing the dark corners of the pool warily, you try not to imagine the horrible, swimming monstrosities that could be lurking down there. “Just wish I hadn't started talking about tiger fish a while back.”

Rolling his eyes, Death takes a step away from the ledge. “I don't think you'll find any variety of Earthen fish down there.”

“Nope,” you gulp, still peering down into the water, “But s'like dad taught me. There's always something worse to be afraid of...”

A sudden rush of air whizzes past you, disturbing your hair and you gasp as Death leaps gracefully off the ledge. You gape at the expert free fall, marvelling after his swan dive. Once the bubbles clear, you can see him below the surface, twisting himself around underwater as he scans for any signs of life, but finding none, he propels himself upwards and bursts through the surface, throwing back his long, black hair, some of which clings to his mask and glistens with little droplets of water. Upon resurfacing, his ears are promptly filled with the sound of clapping and he glances up to where you still stand on the ledge, smacking your palms together and cheering, “Ten out of ten! A perfect entry!”

There's a confused pause before his voice travels up to you, bouncing off the cavern walls. “What?” You open your mouth to respond but Death quickly shakes his head and adds, “Never mind. I don't care. Now, are you coming or not?”

Humming uncertainly, you edge a little closer to the side and squint down into the water, lips pressed together.

Below you, the horseman sees your nerves are getting the better of you. “Listen,” he calls up to you, sighing, “If you're going to spend all your time waiting for 'something worse' to come along, you'll never get anywhere!”

“Alright! Okay, I'm coming!” you shout, muttering to yourself afterwards, “Before I change my mind.”

Taking a deep breath and holding it in your cheeks, you move back, count to three, then run for the edge, leaping off it with a half nervous, half giddy, “CANNONBALL!” blasting off your tongue.

A few seconds of soothing free fall occur and you curl yourself up tight, hands looped around your knees, hair dancing in the wind as the water rushes up to meet you.

The horseman's face falls during your descent but he doesn't manage to move out of the way in time to avoid a wall of water splashing his mask when your body hits the surface and sends waves rippling outwards. Upon coming up to breathe, you wipe the moisture out of your eyes and paddle over to Death, who is floating nearby, water droplets trickling off his chin and a harsh glare leering out at you from behind dark eye sockets.

“Oops. Sorry, did I get you?”

The flat look you receive is enough of an answer.

“Ah well,” you continue, “You were wet anyway.”

He grumbles, somehow a far less intimidating noise now that his hair sticks to his scalp and you can even make out the tops of his ears poking through the ebony locks. Turning himself about, Death begins to swim for the other side. Reaching the rocky wall in no more than a few seconds, he places a hand on it and twists his head round to ask if you'll be needing help climbing up and then lets out a low moan when he sees you've barely managed to swim more than a few feet.

“Man,” you pant, spitting water from your mouth, “I forgot how hard it is....to swim in...clothes!”

Worried that your boots will come off if you kick to hard, you settle for a gentle breast stroke instead, taking your sweet time in crossing the pool. Unfortunately, by the looks of the horseman powering his way back over to you, time isn't something he's interested in taking.

“Come here,” he grunts and slips a large hand around your wrist.

Before you can react, you're suddenly yanked through the water, tugged along by the horseman and making it to the opposite side in record time. Once there, instead of releasing you, Death simply slings your arm around his neck and tells you to hold on.

Understanding, you throw the other arm around him, clinging to his cowl and scrabbling for purchase on his slippery skin. You squeak as the palm of his hand then comes up and nudges your backside, hiking you higher onto the horseman's back so that you're more securely in place. Once he's sure you won't fall off, Death crams his fingers into a notch in the wall and starts to haul both himself and you out of the water.

Shivering at the cold air hitting your skin, you lay your sopping hair against his spine and say, “Thanks for the lift.”

He's quiet for a time, most likely concentrating on scaling the sheer cliff face but eventually he rumbles out a gruff, “You're welcome,” and pushes on.

You get to the top and Death clambers over the lip, crouching slightly so you can slide off his back onto your own two feet again.

After checking that nothing had fallen off during the climb, you accompany your dripping companion through the doorway, wringing out the excess water in your top. Beyond lays a perfectly circular chamber, and although the ceiling is intact, it's significantly lower than the others you've happened upon. The space is large and, for the most part, empty, save for one detail that sticks out like a sore thumb.

“Huh,” you grunt, “That looks... out of place.”

Death's eyes narrow to a harsh squint and he quietly drawls, “Your powers of observation continue to astound me.”

Dead ahead, sitting in the centre of the damp chamber is an odd heap of rocks, branches and other various assortments of foliage, all cobbled together on top of an enormous, grey boulder that protrudes from the stone underfoot. The pile stands high over your head and looks so much like it doesn't belong with the rest of the room's natural décor, you can't help noticing it.

But while you only remain curious as to its odd placement, the horseman beside you is positively quivering with anticipation. For what though, you can't yet tell.

Just as you're about to ask him what he knows that you don't, the walls surrounding you begin to shudder, a low rumble coursing along the ground to shake you in your boots. Then, from the towering lump of debris, something lets out a piercing screech and scuttles from behind a mess of tangled brambles.

“What the Hell!?” you blurt out, stumbling backwards a few steps.

A bizarre creature resembling some unholy fusion of a rhinoceros beetle, a crab and a straight-up boulder scurries about on its six legs, a long, horned snout pointed up in the air as if smelling for something. It's only when you notice a complete lack of any visible eyes that you realise, even if it can't see you, it can probably smell you and Death.

Mostly Death.

The overgrown bug stops at last and snaps its head towards you both, lower jaw sliding open to show off a wide mouth filled with viciously sharp fangs, a low hiss escaping from between them.

“Oh great,” you say, “It knows we're here.”

“It is not the only one,” Death growls, and suddenly, he has his scythes in hand. You never even saw him move.

“What do you mean, 'it's not the only one?'”

He doesn't clarify, and your heart starts to beat a little faster. “Death?”

As if on cue, the chamber trembles once more, only ten times more violently and you nearly stumble into the horseman, who – of course – remains wholly unaffected by the abrupt tremor. Without thinking particularly hard on it, you throw out a hand and brace yourself against his sturdy forearm for balance, failing to note how it goes rigid beneath your grasp.

“What's happening!?” you squawk, but you needn't have bothered asking because a second later, you receive an answer.

Right before your eyes, the ground beneath the mass of rocks and bushes splits, crumbling apart in the wake of a gargantuan monstrosity shoving itself up and out from underneath the very stone itself. As it rises, it becomes clear that the vegetation is actually part of something much bigger, sitting astride a vast back like a growth. For a moment, you're reminded of an iceberg. For all that you can see above the surface, you just know there's something far worse lurking below it. Not a moment after the thought occurred, your comparison proves somewhat accurate.

A leg, thicker and longer than your whole body, wrenches itself free of the ground and slams down next to the smaller creature, and as you watch, horrified, five more legs tug themselves free to join the first. Then, with a final push, the rest of it appears.

As a whole, it isn't dissimilar to the first creature, excepting the fact that it's about twenty times the size and a hundred times more terrifying. The battering ram of a horn, extending at least ten feet from its forehead, swings wildly too and fro as the beast shakes itself loose of lingering debris and bellows out an ear-splitting screech.

“Jeezus,” you gulp, finally releasing Death and letting your hands fall limply to your sides, “that is one. Big. Bugger.”  

Unfortunately, the horseman doesn't appreciate your poor attempt at a pun as evidenced by a scoff that lingers somewhere between disgusted and exasperated.

“Karkinos,” he growls, bending low and switching his gaze between the smaller bug and its far larger counterpart.

“Oh, you two know each other?”

“She's... more of a household name.”

“....That's a she?”

The aforementioned 'Karkinos' turns its horrendous, craggy face towards the sound of your voice and while there are no eyes to find you, it has your position locked. Its angular jaw stretches open across the middle of its head where rows upon rows of teeth – each the size of your hand – gleam out at you from within the wet darkness.

“Do you think you can manage the offspring if I handle its mother?”

Incredulous, your eyes dart sideways to stare at the horseman. “Death, we...we can't fight that thing! She's too big!”

A soft snort, and Death - who still hasn't taken his eyes off Karkinos - hums, remarking, “I've faced far bigger than this.”

Chills run down your spine at his casual remark. It is difficult for you to imagine that there are creatures out there that are larger and more fearsome than this one. You don't have time to let your mind run wild with possibilities though, for the oversized insect suddenly rears back onto her hind legs and screeches, outraged at having her slumber disturbed.

“Maybe she'll be slow,” you whimper hopefully, “because she's so big?”

“I wouldn't count on it. Be ready to – MOVE!”

Death's urgent shout is all the warning you have before Karkinos suddenly propels herself forward, all six of her legs scuttling madly, carrying the heavy bulk in your direction at an alarming speed. She comes within metres of crushing you against the wall when a hand falls heavily on your shoulder and gives it a tremendous shove.

With a yelp, you flounder sideways and hit the ground hard, all the air leaving your lungs. Shortly after you fall, a rush of wind passes over your head and there's an almighty crunch, followed by a roar of pain which quakes the entire room.

Peeling yourself off the ground, you swiftly roll over to see what had happened and would laugh aloud if you could find the courage to.

In trying to flatten you and Death, Karkinos had managed to plough right into the solid wall at the back of the chamber and is now in the process of shaking the daze from her bruised head.

Across the room to your right, Death is already up and running.

Scythes drawn, he lunges for the bug's legs and starts slashing, no doubt trying to cripple it, but the hard shell covering her limbs proves too strong to be broken by even the horseman's weaponry and from where you are, you can tell it's no use, the scythes merely glance off her outer husk.

Giving her head one last, violent shake, Karkinos lets out another shriek of outrage and swings her horn down at Death, barely missing him by an inch as he leaps back out of reach.

“I don't think hitting her legs will work!” you inform him, getting to your feet.

The creature launches herself across the room at the horseman once more but he just has the time to shoot you a murderous glare and a “Really?” that's so heavily laced in sarcasm, you can almost taste the venom dripping from his tongue. Then, he's gone, darting backwards away from Karkinos's swinging claws whilst you watch on, helpless.

You're so focused on Death leading his assailant in this morbid dance that you don't notice the sound of scuttling legs approaching from behind until it's nearly too late. However, at that moment, the hairs on the nape of your neck suddenly stand to attention and you gasp, spinning around to find Karkinos's offspring stampeding towards you.

“Ah! Shi-!” Cutting yourself off, you scramble backwards and attempt to tug Death's pistol out of its holster, which proves to be a lot trickier than you'd like.

Meanwhile the bug is bearing down on you with no sign of letting up.

Closer and closer it charges, jaw hanging open and almost scraping the ground in anticipation of a kill. Already, you can feel the heat of its rancid breath hitting your skin.

“Come on, come on!” you mutter urgently, backing into a wall and still trying to release the catch on the holster, made trickier thanks to the water coating its surface and rendering it slippery to the touch.

Then, just as it seems you might have finally run out of time and beast's shadow falls over you, the pistol flies up and out of its confines, points straight down the bug's gullet and though it may be your hand that's wrapped firmly around the grip, you're sure the gun had moved as if it had a mind of its own.

As the bug lunges, spittle flying from its maw, a rush of hatred pounds through your gut so unexpectedly, you think you're about drop the pistol but instead, your finger squeezes the trigger and a bullet rips out of its chamber and blasts clear through the creature's skull, splattering the wall above you in crimson blood.

Blurting out a surprised trill, it falters and stumbles as its front legs give out, only to slump forward and crash to the ground where it slides to a halt, nose bumping against your boots.

Pressed up against the wall, you watch it twitch and writhe for several seconds, the gun still smoking in your hands.

Suddenly, the bug lifts its head into the air and the motion pulls a scream from your lips and immediately, you point the gun at it again, firing off several more rounds and only ceasing when it thumps back into the dirt, tongue lolling and an ever-growing patch of blood oozing from its grotesque maw.

The sounds of Death's fight against Karkinos still rattle the chamber but for just a moment, you allow yourself to breathe, shakily placing the pistol back into its holster and raising a hand to your forehead. The abrupt swell of hate you'd felt when the bug had been inches from killing you has faded, but the memory of it lingers. Shuddering, you curl your arms around yourself and wish you could shake the feeling. You've hated before, certainly. But never to that extent. It was almost as if the hatred had belonged to someone else entirely.

“Oh no you don't!”

The horseman's harsh shout thrusts you back into the moment and you give a start, head snapping up to spot Karkinos, who had wheeled herself about at the sound of gunfire and, upon seeing her offspring dead at your feet, lets out a mighty roar, scraping her front claw on the ground like a bull readying its charge.

Switching your gaze between the raging monstrosity and her ilk, your mistake eventually clicks.

“Uh oh.”

Karkinos howls and begins to thunder her way across the room.

However, before she can make it more than a few metres, a pale blur speeds ahead of her and suddenly, Death is standing in her path, a furious shield between you and the bug, his back arched and chin tilted down to glare up at her from behind the sockets of his mask.

In spite of her superior size, she slides to a stop just in front of him, stamping her claws into the ground, unsure of whether to advance.

“Karkinos!” the horseman bellows, “Your fight is with me.” With that said, he swings his scythes into a vicious uppercut, connecting with her cragged jaw, and while the move barely does a lick of damage, it does focus her attention back on her former target.

Teeth gnashing, she tries to knock Death off balance with her horn, though she misses spectacularly when he pushes off his feet and dashes aside, drawing her along with him and ensuring that she follows, away from you.

As he does, you abruptly realise that – unwittingly or not – Death has just given you an opening.

While the bug continues to stalk him back across the chamber, she inadvertently presented you with her backside.

There beneath the stony armour, lies a soft, pink underbelly, bulbous and distended and swaying back and forth like the world's ugliest pendulum.

A claw-tipped leg lifts into the air and slams down where Death had been standing mere seconds before.

The horseman feints left and manages to throw another strike at the bug, again to little effect. Karkinos tries once more, this time with the opposite leg and once more, Death spins gracefully to the right, barely avoiding a painful impaling.

But then, the overgrown beetle readies a leg for the third time, and that was the moment where things really went south.

You can see it in Death's muscles, how they bunch and bristle the instant before he makes to dodge left again, his feet planted firmly in the ground and the slight bend of his knees.

He'd already predicted Karkinos's next move and knew what action to take...or so he thought.

Evidently, he underestimated her intelligence, for as soon as she raised her leg and he threw himself sideways with the intention of evading a blow, she thrust her horned head forwards and caught the horseman square in his chest.  

Death's grunt of pain registers well before you even realise you've cried out.

The unexpected blow sends him hurtling backwards several feet where he collides with the wall, head smacking audibly against the hard stone.

There isn't even a second for him to recover before the bug is upon him again, ploughing into his torso with her huge, protruding horn and pinning him firmly in place, grinding forwards to slowly increase the pressure.

It doesn't take more than a second for you to understand that she intends to crush him.

Panic stricken, you freeze, curling in on yourself and staring unblinkingly at the disaster unfolding before you. All of a sudden, your indomitable protector doesn't seem so indomitable anymore. And that frightens you more than you thought it would because it becomes brazenly clear that it he dies, then you most definitely will. It's a selfish thought, but it's the first that popped into your head when you witnessed Death's mistake. After the knee-jerk, selfish thought that stems from an instinct to survive, there comes one that's far more sobering and separates you from your primeval ancestors.

The very prospect of Death being hurt fills you with the same kind of awful, debilitating dread that you experienced on Earth when you watched helplessly from afar as a winged monster smashed its way through the church roof and descended upon dozens of vulnerable people inside. Just as you had then, you find yourself struck by the overwhelming surge of determination to go back, to help.

On Earth, Death had been there to keep you from running headlong into danger.

This time however, nobody is here to hold you back.

Karn's sword is in your hand before you even thought about drawing it and shortly afterwards, you're running full-tilt, blood pounding like the beat of a war drum and eyes fixed hatefully on the creature's exposed belly.

Above the sound of scrabbling claws and your own, ragged breaths, you don't hear Death's frantic shout, but you figure his words can't be any more important than stopping this thing from killing him.

Crying out a mess of utter nonsense, you skid to a halt beneath her and, gathering all the strength your little arms can muster, you thrust the sword up and into the spongey, pink flesh above.

An agonised howl threatens to deafen you as Karkinos throws her head back, opens her maw wide and screams her pain to the heavens.

---------

Free at last, Death drops to the ground, collapsing forwards with one hand braced in the dirt and one splayed out across his battered chest. He will recover shortly, of course. This he's more than aware of. But that doesn't mean it didn't hurt something fierce.

The screech that invades his ears eventually garners his attention and Death raises his head, gaze falling upon the form of his stalwart, little companion, arms half buried in the guts of the monstrous beetle and a look of sheer terror plastered on your sweaty face.

So taken aback by the sight, Death murmurs your name in a gentle breath. “Y/n?”

At the sound of it, your eyes snap down to lock with his and for a split second, he could almost believe you actually look happy to see him.

The remotely tender pang in his chest is soon replaced by a jolt of alarm soon after as the huge beast abruptly swings herself around, faster than either of you could have anticipated and your arms are almost torn from their sockets, the sword sliding free of Karkinos's flesh with a wet squelch.

Time creeps to a near standstill and Death's gaze remains fixed unwaveringly to yours when her monumental horn sweeps through the air....

…and slams into your ribcage.

All at once, the oxygen is expelled from your lungs and steals the scream that had been on the very tip of your tongue. The force of the blow sends you flying several yards until you hit the wall with a dull thud and crumple to the ground an instant later, eyes squeezed shut while your mouth hangs agape, struggling to suck in even the smallest breath through such excruciating pain. Weakly, you draw your hands up towards your chest and there you lay, curled onto your side whilst Karkinos advances with measured steps, lips pulled over her gums and fangs to resemble what could almost be a cruel grin.

Unbeknownst to the horseman, his lips have peeled themselves back as well.

Slowly, he roves his gaze over your limp body, from the hair sticky with sweat and water to your tiny hands that are bent up against your heart, shaking vigorously.

He registers Karkinos stalking towards you and as she opens her mouth to let out a sharp trill, his stupor finally lifts, paving the way for an eerie calm to fall over his mind. The kind of calm he hadn't known in decades. The kind of calm that precedes a most vicious tempest.

It begins as a low thrum deep in his chest that slowly builds and builds until he can feel a dark, pulsating ball of ancient magic wedged in the place where a heart has long since ceased to beat. The malicious energy ripples outwards in waves, dispelling any heat from the room and leaving the air far colder than it had been minutes ago. For the first time in years, Death sits at the epicentre of his own, personal storm, inky hair billowing around his shoulders whilst his hands begin to elongate and grow, bones popping noisily whilst his eyes that once blazed like hellish fire now burn white-hot behind his mask's sockets.

The wind whips up around him and as he slowly begins rising into the air, his face disappears into the shadow of a tattered, indigo hood. A flash of blinding purple light illuminates the chamber, soon accompanied by a loud 'CRACK' and there, in the place where Death had been standing, is suddenly a huge, grim and ghastly spectre, hanging suspended in the air with an ancient cloak undulating out behind it.

Its head turns briefly to regard the small, gasping human on the ground, who's eyes are now wide open, bloodshot and staring up into the darkness of its hood as if searching for some semblance of a recognisable face.

Then, Karkinos shifts around to look at the newcomer, who's head snaps back towards her, long skeletal fingers kneading around the handle of a scythe that's almost as tall as its wielder and no doubt just as deadly.

Laying there on the floor, half conscious and in entirely too much pain, it's all you can do to look up between Karkinos's many legs at the giant shade as it stretches out a pair of wings that are devoid of any membrane or feathers. Bleached vertebrae clacks together loudly as it flaps them, a low hiss seeping out from beneath its hood, and when Karkinos turns fully to acknowledge the threat, it pounces.

Tears blur your vision but you can see the first blow it strikes with that wicked scythe, how it bowls the wretched bug right off her feet and sends her crashing onto her side, legs flailing madly as they try to regain purchase on the ground.

Darkness suddenly covers your eyes and you don't realise it's because you've blinked until the haunting, cloaked figure is once more in view, its weapon slicing a perfect cross into Karkinos's underbelly.

The next thing you see is that belly splitting open and a torrent of blood comes gushing out of the wound, flooding the grey stone below and painting it a shade of glistening red.

Another period of darkness passes and upon opening your eyes, you find that Karkinos lays utterly still nearby while the spectre hovers in the air at her side, staring down at the corpse with apparent disinterest.

You blink again, and suddenly, its eerie gaze is turned onto you.

Crying out results in no more than a pathetic whimper. Anything louder and you fear your ribs might break, provided they haven't already.

Delirious, you try to speak. “D....De...”

The phantom looms closer and from the corner of an eye, you spot one of its hands creeping towards you and a fresh bout of fear swells in your chest. “Dea...th!” you croak urgently, “He-elp!”

It's no use. Large, chilly fingers work themselves underneath you, curling around your torso and lifting you off the hard ground where the creature continues to raise you until you're within a mere foot of its face.

Sucking a paltry amount of air in through your teeth, you squint up into its dark hood and press yourself back against the hand that holds you.

“Mmm...Monster...” you breathe, more an observation than an accusation. As if in response, its shoulders slump noticeably, wings drooping a little along with them. 

Finally, your ascent halts and then, it's just you – a young, wounded human – staring up at a figure that's so strange yet so, so familiar at the same time. The part of you that isn't hurting and struggling to breathe wonders how both can be true. How can you recognise something you've never seen before?

All of a sudden, from out of the purple cloak, there's a gentle rattle, followed by a gust of frigid air that washes over your face. Then, eyes widening just a fraction, you focus on the cold, finding that it too is oddly familiar. On a whim, you muster up what precious little oxygen remains in your lungs and exhale, “Death?”

The rattle turns into a low hum which rumbles through your body and the spectre's head dips once, then bobs back up again; an unmistakable nod.

“But.....how?”

Ignoring your question, the Reaper shifts and moves a finger to brush the side of your torso where Karkinos had battered you moments before.

In an instant, white-hot pain lances through your ribcage and you twist your face up, too weak to squirm away. “ARGH! S-Stop!” you choke even as darkness bleeds into the corners of your vision, “You're hu..,hurting me!”

As if he'd been struck, the horseman whips his hand back and an apologetic croon warbles out from under his hood which he shakes rapidly from side to side, trying to convey without a word, that he hadn't intended to hurt you. Listlessly, you wonder why he isn't speaking before a more pressing matter promptly calls for your attention.

Trying fruitlessly to calm down your thundering heartbeat, you pinch your eyes shut and grasp at one of his finger bones, giving it a weak tug as tears stream down your cheeks and drip onto his hand. “Death,” you gulp, failing to hide a flinch when the void where his face ought to be looms closer, “Can't...breathe.” No sooner had you uttered those last words than your eyes roll into the back of your head and Death's insistent rattling fades into silence.

  --------

It takes several, long moments for the horseman's Reaper form to move. One by one, his long fingers curl over the human in his grasp. Although unconsciousness is never ideal, in this instance it seems to be for the best, as already your breaths are coming in a little more easily and your tiny chest begins rising and falling properly. Karkinos's attack had winded you but it was your own panic that exacerbated the symptoms. From what he can tell at a glance, nothing critical is broken.

'Eideard,' the Reaper's more rational counterpart whispers in his mind, snapping the beast out of his trance and pushing his attention to the open doorway standing invitingly at the far end of the round chamber, beyond which he can clearly make out a lever sticking out of a raised dais. You'd both made it. Even the more primal aspect of the Grim Reaper can recognise the end of the goal.

A gentle rush of air escapes from the hood, so quiet it could simply be just another breeze blowing in from outside. Gliding silently towards the lever, the spectre is so busy fighting to stay in control of its host, reluctant to relinquish its hold of the fragile life in its palm, it barely notices that its rawboned thumb has taken to stroking gently down your chest.

[archons-star]

Paradise

Chapter Two

WC: 2179

Ever since Kael left the village two months prior, everything's been getting harder and harder. Food had become even scarcer as time went on. The animals that usually live in the woods are gone, the water supply had dried up, and everyone had begun to lose hope that everything would be alright.

"Arya, why didn't we go with Kael?" Emory asked, and she turned to face him with a serene smile.

"Because he can't be trusted, Em. He's one of the people who caused this war," she replied. Emory frowned. "But don't worry. We'll be alright."

"No, they won't. It's time you stop telling them that," a voice said from behind me, and she turned to see Father Nathan's wife, Clair. She had graying hair pulled back into a tight bun and wore a tattered and dirty dress.

"Mrs. Clair," she said flatly, watching as her hawk-like eyes narrowed on me.

"As time goes on, your boys will be forced to see the real world without you. You need to teach them to survive on their own because, without you, they're basically nothing."

"Why are you such a cruel bitch?" Emory chided. He spoke as if he were speaking to a child, with a slight smile on his face and a soft look in his eyes.

"Why, you little hellion!" Clair bellowed. She raised her arm and was about to strike Emory when she pushed herself between them. Instead of hitting her brother, Clair hit me, and she fell to the ground from the force of her hit.

"Arya!" Atticus barked, coming to kneel at her side. He grasped her hand, and in return, she gave him a soft smile.

"I'm alright, Atticus," she voiced. I’m sorry, boys, she thought solemnly, I can’t keep my promise after all. Deeming it useless, she stayed splayed across the uneven ground.

“Oh, stop being so dramatic, young lady,” Clair hissed, reaching for her hair. Pulling her up, she was forced to meet her cynical eyes.

“Leave  her alone, you witch!” Felix commanded. Emory held his brother back as he flung obscenities at the abusive woman.

“Such abhorrent children,” Clair opined. “If only your parents had raised you right.”

“Don’t you speak of them, hag!” Felix roared, his anger renewed. Her eyes flitting to him, she gave Felix a small smile.

“It’s alright, Felix. I’m alright.” No, I’m not. “It doesn’t hurt that bad.” It feels like I’m being pulled apart at the seams. “I’m really okay.” Please, help me.

Clair, clicking her tongue, let go of Arya’s hair. She crumpled to the ground and stayed there, making no move to get up.

“The reason everyone has false hope is because of people like you, young lady,” Clair sibilated. She glowered at her sunken figure. “Because of people like you, because of you immigrants, their resources have been depleted, resources that were supposed to last for hundreds of years. You immigrants, not caring how many people you hurt when you flee to another country...”

“This is all your fault.”

 # 

Bodies shuffled along, the scent of death being carried on the wind. Nothing was the same. Nothing was as it had been. Villages were burned, reduced to nothing but smoldering ash within hours -- even the largest villages weren’t safe from the destruction.

 # 

In the smaller settlements, food and water ran out first, followed by the hope of the people. Children starved, peasants were taken by the plague; all people -- no matter their background or status -- were stricken with the hatred and despair caused by the international strife known as “war.”

The larger cities were no better off.

In the city of Belador, the City of Merchants was the worst. Because of the staggering amount of ships that arrived daily, the plague spread at an incredible rate. It outran the plague traveling by land, arriving in other port cities days before its land-transmitted counterpart.

Within days, Belador fell to the disease. Panic broke out. Emergency supply reserves were drained within a few weeks of the war beginning, and the plague only made things worse. Medical supplies had already been limited since the fall of Neorem’s chief trading partner, Hylen. Hylen had been the leading producer of medical supplies for three hundred years before they fell victim to an economic crisis caused by its king. For years, the king of Hylen had been depleting the royal treasury for his own personal gains, until they had run out and he imposed a monstrous tax upon his people. The next year, everything crumbled to the ground. Since then, the number of approved medical supplies had dropped, dipping below the line Neorem had deemed “calamitous” and “unacceptable.”

The Plague drained what little Belador had left in regards to medicine -- all of it gone to waste as there was no cure for the pestilence.

Kaelen rode through the streets of the once beautiful seaside city of Belador, a handkerchief covering his mouth and nose. Bodies upon bodies were piled atop one another, and the flies -- oh, the flies -- were horrid. Kael had only seen so many once before -- on the battlefield.

The sound of hooves squelching through the blood-stained streets echoed off the abandoned buildings, the beast’s tail flicking back and forth to combat the carnivorous flies as they searched for blood to drink and flesh to feast upon.

“Easy, Charlle,” Kael uttered as he directed the horse over a precariously stacked pile of bodies, surrounded by dogs whose skin stuck to their bones. The dogs barked as man and beast passed them by, then went back to their feast of dilapidated corpses.

Kael continued onward, towards the center of the city. He passed bakeries, butcher shops, tailors -- a variety of different shops and stores long since renounced by their former owners. In the distance, he could hear the screeching of vultures and the cawing of the crows.

Without warning, a fat drop of rain landed on Kael’s hand, followed by one, then another, until he was in a full-on downpour. Quickly, he directed Charll towards an outcropping near an old blacksmith’s stall. Sighing, Kael watched as the rain washed away the dirt and grime that had piled up in the streets over the past few months.

“Goddammit.”

 # 

Arya’s eyes watched as the clouds rolled by, seemingly without a care in the world. From where she stood, it was as if the clouds were trying to hide the destruction taking place on land from the gods.

We were supposed to be safe here, she thought ruefully, looking over her shoulder at the three boys sleeping in a corner of the house not affected by the roaring winds outside. A sad smile played on Arya’s lips as she watched the three.

A clap of thunder jolted Arya out of her musings, and she turned to the west to see a monstrous gray cloud coming straight for their house. Quietly, so as to not wake the boys, she padded across the worn floor to grab the ratty, tattered blanket -- the last blanket in the house -- and covered the boy with it. She knew that it wouldn’t do much against the frigid rains of this country, but it was better than having nothing to cover oneself with.

Right after she had finished that small task, the rain began. It leaked through the hole-riddled roof and coated the entire house -- inside and out -- in a thin layer of water. She sighed, setting herself close to the boys to keep as much water off them as possible.

 # 

The court was in a panic. Half of the empire had fallen victim to the plague running haphazardly across the country, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

The only thing they could do was watch as chaos unfolded before them.

 # 

Seven hundred years ago, the first people set foot in the country they would come to call ‘Neorem.’ At first glance, it was nothing but plains and rocky outcroppings with trees sparsely mixed in. But once people began moving there, others were sent out to map the land, and they found a land of unparalleled beauty.

In the north were groves larger than one person could explore in half a year. Trees grew to be as tall as the tallest spire on the church in Neorem’s capital, Hundr; the branches reaching for the sky like bony fingers. In the harvest season, the green leaves turn brilliant shades of red and orange. Those forests had been mapped during the harvest season, and explorers had given them the name ‘Ruby Grove’.

In the east were the plains, the first land structure seen by those early colonists. Canyons could be found deeper in the country. After about a days ride through unchanging plains, a plateau looks out into a giant chasm, the rock worn away by long extinct rivers and lakes. The rocks shone a soft peach during the day, but as soon as the moon rose, they changed to a sharp green.

In the south were the beaches and islands of Neorem. Port cities sprung up along the coast almost as quick as Neorem’s rains came. Along with those cities were villages that appeared along rivers leading to the sea, specializing in fish products. During the summer, the beaches were filled with people, both local and foreign, who had come to admire the crystal blue waters.

Finally, in the west were the Ruins, ancient buildings having been claimed by Mother Nature once more. On every side of the old city were mountains; steep cliffs glowering down at the man-made structures below with furious eyes. Whenever anyone would see those mountains -- the “Widowers”, as Neorians liked to call them -- they would always take a few steps back, as if something would attack if they got any closer. One day, something might.

Only those adventurous enough and who had enough money could travel there. Even then, those who made the trek were met with nothing but a barren wasteland; no plants nor animals have ever been seen in the west. Neither had anyone lived there since the previous inhabitants disappeared; to where no one knew.

The one thing they did know was something had befallen the previous inhabitants of Neorem, something cataclysmic. The ground in and surrounding the Ruins was charred black by fire, and everything was coated in ash.

 # 

It was the heat that woke Arya. Being so far into the fall already, the kind of heat she felt had made no sense. Then she heard the screaming.

Screaming -- coming from the left and from the right, in front and behind her -- clued her in on what was happening.

Fire.

Quickly, Arya awakened the boys, urging them to hurry as she gathered what little belongings they had left. She packed them into a small bag and slung it over her shoulder before ushering the boys out of the house. The sight that met their eyes was beyond any nightmare they could think up.

People all around them were running; running away from the fire that had begun to consume the village. Arya grabbed Felix’s and Emory’s shoulders before pushing them in the opposite direction as the flames, with Atticus not far behind. He trailed after her as the fire ravaged their surroundings.

“Arya!” a voice called out, and the girl turned to see a horse racing towards her and the boys. Looking closer, she saw that the village’s stable master was riding his horse while leading more behind him. The man skidded to a stop next to the four.

“Hop on! I’m gonna try to get as many people as I can!” he barked. With no protest, Arya grabbed her brothers and placed them on one horse while she pulled Atticus after her onto another. Grabbing the lead for the horse her brothers rode, she directed both horses towards a rocky outcropping the stable master told her to go to, saying that he’d be there with the others shortly.

Arya dug her heels into the horse's side, and the beast took off like a shot across the worn cobblestone paths, leaving dust in its wake. The wind whipped her unrestrained hair, causing it to block her field of vision. Keeping one hand on the reigns, she pushed her hair out of the way, only for it to be snapped back in her face. Giving up, she focused on keeping Atticus against her so he didn’t fall off the racing animal.

Upon reaching the outcropping, Arya turned her horse around to see her village engulfed in flames, their red fingers extending for the sky. She looked on in horror as her friends and neighbors -- what was left of them, anyway -- were swallowed by the destructive force that had once been seen as having such warmth, of being good.

“Arya..!” Emory exclaimed, quickly covering Felix’s eyes with the hand not holding on to the horn of the saddle. Arya did the same with Atticus, covering his eyes to shield him from the horror of having to watch his friends burn to death.

[twitchesandstitches]

A Girl In The Underground

I was playing Undertale and I got to thinking; what if Sierra went through the events of a True Pacifist Frisk in Undertale’s plot, using magic to make a defensive shield and befriending everyone and hurting nobody?

Possibly as a backstory to the monsters joining the fleet; she set them all free, and their sheer numbers massively inflated the proto-Fleet, bringing it closer to its later status.

Not sure if this should be canon or not, as I’ve implied that the monsters joined the convoy at an earlier point than Sierra even being born. Still, it's fun to at least consider as a micro-AU!

--------

“We call it the Underground,” the skeleton-man said, shuffling through the snow and incidentally clearing a path for her to follow.

Sierra trundled along behind him; she was tall enough that she could handle the snow easily. By human standards, she was massive even just in her mid-teens; compared to some of the monsters she had encountered, she was so unbelievably wide, they were just so thin. Others had been a lot broader. Sans was almost dwarvish; he wasn’t particularly tall, but he was very wide and when he moved, it was like a low wall was shifting itself around. And of course Toriel was a giant, Sierra didn’t even known how she had fit into the cramped ruins-

She tried to put a stop on that thought. Thinking about Toriel, alone in the ruins now with the doorway sealed… it hurt too much.

The skeleton, Sans, stopped. “Hey, kiddo. What’s the hold up?”

Sierra wiped hot tears away from her eyes and tried to hide it. She sniffled wetly, all bundled up in the clothes Toriel had given her. Her old robes, big and thick enough for the ogrish monster mother, and Sierra was nearly swaddled in them, like a child walking around in her mother’s clothes.

Oh no. That hurt too.

“It’s nothing,” she said meekly, a girl who had grown up without someone to watch over her like that. It happened; not everyone in the convoy could spare attention for every individual kid, and their numbers had massively underestimated the amount of kids to go around.

She doubted she’d ever see the convoy again. Never see any of her friends again, her family. Just like how she’d never see Toriel again. She’d promised she wouldn’t go into the dark… wouldn’t open up that door again.

Promises hurt so much.

Sans was carefully looking the other direction. “Weather sure is nice today,” he said in a slightly overloud tone. “Guess I’ll just stand over here and let some snow fall on me. I don’t mind.”

Sierra sniffled gratefully, and he left her to her crying.

A few minutes later, her face was a slightly redder shade of brown, but she had let it out for now. “Thanks,” she mumbled, walking into step behind him. He continued moving on.

“Don’t know what you mean, kiddo,” he said, grinning cheerfully. It was funny, she considered. He wasn’t exactly a skeleton, in the sense of being animated bones. He looked like a human skeleton, close to it, but he wasn’t that. He almost looked like he had a solid carapace, bits that almost looked like bones. His face wasn’t a skull, though it looked like one; his expression shifted, a bit like some of the carapacians Sierra had seen on the fleet.

One eye socket glowed faintly. The other didn’t seem empty. Just dim, with only a faint hint of blue. He looked a bit like he was winking all the time, or was half-asleep.

They walked down the bridge, and Sierra’s heart skipped a beat as she looked down; there was nothing down there between the two cliffsides linked by bridge but a swirling chasm. There was blackness, a hint of proto-matter spontaneously appearing and then dissolving, and then… nothing at all. From a distance of what looked like millions of feet. So far down, the depths had its own micro-climate, and there were distant rushes of water where tiny rivers had formed and drained away into the abyss.

Stretching out sideways, the realm continued for some distance. Unimaginably far, miles and miles by the thousands, and Sierra thought that the cracks in the walls of the realm were broken down mountains, so large they had their own dour presence. Past them, beyond cracks so mind-breakingly big that Sierra thought you could fit a whole bunch of planets between them, there was the boundaries of the realm. More of the swirling abyss beyond them, and if you looked up, you saw more of the same.

The Underground, as Toriel had called it, was a prison. A vast realm indefinitely large enough for them to sprawl out, but a limited place. A dry place, and a dead one. Monster magic had brought life to it, but it was weak and fading.

The melancholy of the world around her would have brought Sierra to tears if she hadn’t already spent hers. She obliged her moral duty with a sad sigh. “It’s so big down here but it feels cramped at the same time.”

Sans shrugged as he tugged her open sleeve across the bridge. “Yeah. We’re stuck down here and we make the best of it. Shame you got stuck here.”

“I… might have come here on purpose,” Sierra said, and it wasn’t completely wrong. She had her information wrong, but she had always thought that a heroine-in-training ought to to certain things. She heard a tale of a dimension where persecuted monsters had been sealed away for eons, and she ran to help. That somehow, a human was important to freeing them; she ran faster to do that. And that her own people, the humans, were responsible for their suffering…

Well, that encouraged her to do it even more.

She was starting to suspect she had the facts a bit off.

She was lost in her thoughts and jerked with a surprise as Sans tugged her across the end of the bridge, and she sighed in relief as her feet found solid ground. She was thus unbalanced again when Sans casually said, “You haven’t killed anyone since you came down here, huh?”

She bristled indignantly. “Of course I haven’t! I won’t ever kill someone if I don’t have to!”

He gave her a look that was very hard to read. “...Y’know, most monsters, we don’t really fight. We communicate with magic, but, uh, you fleshy things. It can hurt you and we don’t even realize it.”

Sierra nodded. “Yeah, I figured.”

“But some of us will attack you. Maybe because they’re scared, or because they don’t think they have an alternative.”

“I won’t hurt anyone if I can find another way,” she promised.

He gave a sidelong look at her. “‘Spose it’s good you brought a shield, then, huh?”

Sierra clutched at the old toboggan board strapped to her back. “It’s not a shield! I mean, I’m using it as one, but that’s not what it’s meant for.”

Some part of her felt that the great heroine, Redglare, would probably be laughing at her right now. Not maliciously but still, laughing. For one thing, even if she was using magic, Sierra had no idea how she had channeled power into the toboggan and made it resist hits that should have shattered it.

She just really had thought, in the heat of her battle with Toriel and the crashing flames, that she really didn’t want to hurt anyone, or have to. And something had flowed out of her.

They continued along the path for some time.

“So… my friend in the ruins,” Sierra said, wincing at the lie. “She told me that there’s some kind of a barrier here? And it's what’s keeping the monsters trapped here?”

“Yep,” Sans agreed, snow crunching as they walked. “See, the Underground is a self-contained realm. It’s big, but it has its boundaries. You to go past them, and you just get fired back out. Only way in or out, and that’s the barrier.”

“...So if it was destroyed,” Sierra said slowly, the plan she’d been mulling over clicking into place. “You would be free?”

“...yeah,” he said, very quietly and wistful. He paused, glancing up and staring into the sky. An unchanging, empty sky, without sunlight or clouds or stars.

He didn’t much like thinking of a future where might see real stars. Hope was not something he dared to keep these days.

“So all I have to do is bust down the barrier!”

Sans said nothing to do that, not right away. He was too deep in thought.

The two walked down to the valley, where a town could be seen in the distance.

Eventually, the stocky skeleton spoke.

“The way out,” Sans said. “Is through the barrier. Past the king.”

“Barrier?”

“It’s the only way out of the Underground. And there’s no way of knowing how to bust through it. But human bodies work differently from monster bodies; we’re mostly made of magic and you ain’t!” he threw a friendly punch to her muscular arm to make the point. “So maybe you’re made of different stuff than us and you could just walk through.”

Sierra smiled, never considered that maybe he was choosing his words very carefully. “You really think so?”

“Yeah, could be. Whatever happens… you were nice to my brother, and you seem like a good gal. So I guess I’m rooting for ya, kid.”

He glanced at her shield again. A purely defensive weapon, from someone who could have killed to survive, and had refused to no matter how badly it hurt her. Someone with the resolve not to kill.

He thought of the six human souls, and how all they needed was one more.

And here she was.

And she was so nice.

Sans sighed. “I can’t believe someone like you wound up down here,” he said, and he meant it.

[unlikely-allies]

****SPOILERS****

4/5

Now 14 years old, Percy has been aware of his demigod status for two years and is finally starting to get the hang of it. Unfortunately, it is a bad time to be a hero in training. Kronos is growing more powerful and half-blood have joined his cause or have simply gone missing. Chiron has put the satyrs on red alert, sending them all out to scout for new half-bloods. When Grover believes that he has found two new demigods at a boarding school in Maine, Percy, Thalia, and Annabeth head up to assist him. The half-bloods, a brother and sister named Nico and Biance di Angelo, are being hunted by a manticore disguised as the school’s vice principal. During the battle against the monster, Artemis and her Hunters appear to assist, but Annabeth is stolen away by Luke and his minions. The Hunters had been tracking a great monster when they came across Percy and his friends. Artemis decides to continue on in the pursuit and sends her Hunters with the half-bloods to stay at Camp Half-Blood until her return.

Bianca and Nico are orphans. When Zoe, Artemis’ lieutenant, offers Bianca a place among the Hunters, Bianca is quick to join and get away from her big sister duties. In honor of the Hunters’ arrival at camp, Chiron announces that there will be a special game of capture the flag held. Thalia and Percy agree to be co-captains, but Thalia does her best to take charge. That night, Percy has a nightmare involving Annabeth being in danger. Zoe has a similar dream about Artemis. Chiron decides that a quest will be taken and chooses Zoe to meet with the Oracle. The prophecy given to Zoe is as follows:

“Five shall go west to the goddess in chains, One shall be lost in the land without rain, The bane of Olympus shows the trail, Campers and Hunters combined prevail, The Titan’s curse must one withstand, And one shall perish by a parent’s hand.”

Zoe chooses two additional Hunters, Phoebe and Bianca, and then two campers, Thalia and Grover to makeup the quest team. Zoe will not permit Percy to go because he is a boy. Phoebe falls victim to a prank by the Stoll brothers, but Zoe doesn’t want to choose another person to replace her and the team sets off without a fifth member. Percy decides to follow the team using Annabeth’s invisibility hat, and Nico makes him promise that he will try to protect Bianca.

In Washington D.C., Percy discovers that Luke and the General know that the quest team is near and have sent a monster after them. Luke is trying to have Thalia separated from the others so that he can bring her over to his side. Percy reveals his presence to the quest team to warn them, but Percy and the team still end up having to battle the Nemean Lion. In speaking with Bianca, it is revealed that she and Nico should be older than they appear. Roughly 70 years ago, Bianca and Nico were told that their parents had died and were brought to stay at the Lotus Hotel and Casino. The children believed that they stayed for only a short period of time. In reality, 70 years passed, thought the children had not aged. Someone picked up the children and brought them to the boarding school in Maine, and that’s where Grover found them. Oddly, no one asks for more information about this.

The team arrives in New Mexico, where Aphrodite comes to meet with Percy. She claims to be very invested in the Percy-and-Annabeth love story that has yet to unfold. She claims that she is responsible for the Stoll brother’s prank on Phoebe, which allowed for Percy to be the fifth member of the quest. She also warns the half-bloods to be careful in Hephaestus’ land and not to take anything from his junkyard. In passing through the junkyard the quest team admires the objects that the gods have thrown away. Unfortunately, Bianca tries to take a figure to give to Nico and the team is attacked by the giant figure Talos. Bianca makes up for her mistake by climbing inside the figure and destroying it, but she is lost in the process.

Even with the loss of Bianca, the team knows that they must push ahead. It is revealed that Luke and the General are searching for the Ophiotaurus, a cow-serpent sea creature that when sacrificed bestows the power to destroy the gods. Ironically, Percy had saved the Ophiotaurus when it was caught in a net at camp, and the creature followed him across the country. Grover agrees to take the Ophiotaurus back to camp while the others continue on the quest. The team tracks Artemis and Annabeth to the Mountain of Despair, which is currently located in San Francisco. Thalia suggests that they borrow Annabeth’s father’s car to travel to the mountain, so Percy and Thalia get to meet the man with which Annabeth has such a complicated relationship. Mr. Chase agrees to help them, and it is clear that he misses Annabeth.

Zoe reveals that the Mountain of Despair was her home before she became a Hunter. Zoe was once one of the Hesperides, daughters of Atlas and guardians of a sacred tree. Zoe was exiled for helping Hercules, and since then she has been wary of heroes. When they arrive at the Mountain, Artemis is struggling under the weight of the sky, having taken the burden from Annabeth who had been tricked into taking it from Luke. The General is revealed to be Atlas, and Percy and Zoe face off against Zoe’s father. When it is clear that he and Zoe won’t be able to beat Atlas, Percy takes the weight of the sky from Artemis so that the goddess may fight him instead. During the battle, Artemis forces Atlas back under the weight of the sky. Unfortunately, Zoe succumbs to her wounds. Artemis rushes to Mount Olympus to attend the Winter Solstice Council where the gods will vote about taking action against Kronos. Percy, Thalia, and Annabeth also attend the council to argue against killing the Ophiotaurus, which while alive continues to pose a threat to the gods. To ensure that she will not be the child of the prophecy, Thalia agrees to join Artemis’ Hunters, and Poseidon prevents the other gods from killing the Ophiotaurus and Percy.  

Back at camp, Percy tells Nico about what happened to Bianca. Nico is furious and blames Percy for his sister’s death. When some of Luke’s soldiers appear, Nico causes the ground to split open and the soldiers fall into the chasm before Nico turns and sprints away from camp. Grover, Annabeth, and Percy discuss what to do about Nico and that fact that he is obviously a child of Hades. Given that Nico and Bianca were born more than 70 years ago, their existence doesn’t technically break the oath between the Big Three, but it does provide another contender for the prophecy.

The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan contains the first really sad moments in the series. This adds additional layers to the story and makes it more compelling for older readers. As Kronos continues to rise to power and the epic battle draws closer, each book is packed with more action and higher stakes. Thalia taking herself out of contention for the prophecy would’ve reduced some of the drama because we can more or less count on Percy to do the right thing. However, introducing Nico di Angelo and giving him a great deal of rage at a young age may up the stakes even higher than before.

Annabeth and Percy’s relationship has been strictly platonic up until this point Aphrodite’s conversation with mercy hints that it will become something more, but it has been endearing to watch the relationship grow as the two of them get older. The fact that Annabeth is/was considering joining the Hunters casts the future of their relationship in uncertainty, and makes the reader more emotionally invested in the one of them finally realizing their feelings for the other and acting on them. As much as I am suppose to be upset that Thalia joins the Hunters, I really can’t be. I found Thalia to be annoying and conceited. She treats everyone as though they are below her and can’t stop and consider the opinions of others when making a plan or taking action. Her last stand on Half-Blood Hill ends up looking less like a selfless act and more like typical Thalia refusing to let others share her spotlight.

The addition of characters like Thalia and Zoe that aren’t immediately likable but aren’t villains also added more depth to the story. The Titan’s Curse may not have been my favorite adventure, but in terms of reading quality I believe that it was the best book in the series so far. For this reason I am looking forward to seeing how the remaining books in the series continue to evolve.

[orbemnews]

What Would It Take to Vaccinate the World Against Covid? In delivering vaccines, pharmaceutical companies aided by monumental government investments have given humanity a miraculous shot at liberation from the worst pandemic in a century. But wealthy countries have captured an overwhelming share of the benefit. Only 0.3 percent of the vaccine doses administered globally have been given in the 29 poorest countries, home to about 9 percent of the world’s population. Vaccine manufacturers assert that a fix is already at hand as they aggressively expand production lines and contract with counterparts around the world to yield billions of additional doses. Each month, 400 million to 500 million doses of the vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are now being produced, according to an American official with knowledge of global supply. But the world is nowhere close to having enough. About 11 billion shots are needed to vaccinate 70 percent of the world’s population, the rough threshold needed for herd immunity, researchers at Duke University estimate. Yet, so far, only a small fraction of that has been produced. While global production is difficult to measure, the analytics firm Airfinity estimates the total so far at 1.7 billion doses. The problem is that many raw materials and key equipment remain in short supply. And the global need for vaccines might prove far greater than currently estimated, given that the coronavirus presents a moving target: If dangerous new variants emerge, requiring booster shots and reformulated vaccines, demand could dramatically increase, intensifying the imperative for every country to lock up supply for its own people. The only way around the zero-sum competition for doses is to greatly expand the global supply of vaccines. On that point, nearly everyone agrees. But what is the fastest way to make that happen? On that question, divisions remain stark, undermining collective efforts to end the pandemic. Some health experts argue that the only way to avert catastrophe is to force drug giants to relax their grip on their secrets and enlist many more manufacturers in making vaccines. In place of the existing arrangement — in which drug companies set up partnerships on their terms, while setting the prices of their vaccines — world leaders could compel or persuade the industry to cooperate with more companies to yield additional doses at rates affordable to poor countries. Those advocating such intervention have focused on two primary approaches: waiving patents to allow many more manufacturers to copy existing vaccines, and requiring the pharmaceutical companies to transfer their technology — that is, help other manufacturers learn to replicate their products. The World Trade Organization — the de facto referee in international trade disputes — is the venue for negotiations on how to proceed. But the institution operates by consensus, and so far, there is none. The Biden administration recently joined more than 100 countries in asking the W.T.O. to partially set aside vaccine patents. But the European Union has signaled its intent to oppose waivers and support only voluntary tech transfers, essentially taking the same position as the pharmaceutical industry, whose aggressive lobbying has heavily shaped the rules in its favor. Some experts warn that revoking intellectual property rules could disrupt the industry, slowing its efforts to deliver vaccines — like reorganizing the fire department amid an inferno. “We need them to scale up and deliver,” said Simon J. Evenett, an expert on trade and economic development at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. “We have this huge production ramp up. Nothing should get in the way to threaten it.” Others counter that trusting the pharmaceutical industry to provide the world with vaccines helped create the current chasm between vaccine haves and have-nots. The world should not put poorer countries “in this position of essentially having to go begging, or waiting for donations of small amounts of vaccine,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, senior scientific liaison to the Covid-19 Prevention Network. “The model of charity is, I think, an unacceptable model.” In this fractious atmosphere, the W.T.O.’s leaders are crafting their proceedings less as a push to formally change the rules than as a negotiation that will persuade national governments and the global pharmaceutical industry to agree on a unified plan — ideally in the next few months. The Europeans are banking on the notion that the vaccine makers, fearing patent waivers, will eventually agree to the transfers, especially if the world’s richest countries throw money their way to make sharing know-how more palatable. Many public health experts say that patent waivers will have no meaningful effect unless vaccine makers also share their manufacturing methods. Waivers are akin to publishing a complex recipe; tech transfer is like sending a master chef to someone’s kitchen to teach them how to cook the dish. “If you’re to manufacture vaccines, you need several things to work at the same time,” the W.T.O. director-general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, told journalists recently. “If there is no transfer of technology, it won’t work.” Even with waivers, technology transfers and expanded access to raw materials, experts say it would take about six months for more drug makers to start churning out vaccines. The only short-term fix, they and European leaders say, is for wealthy countries — especially the United States — to donate and export more of their stock to the rest of the world. The European Union allowed the export of hundreds of millions of doses, as many as it kept at home, while the United States held fast to its supply. But boosting donations and exports entails risk. India shipped out more than 60 million doses this year, including donations, before halting vaccine exports a month ago. Now, as a wave of death ravages the largely unvaccinated Indian population, the government is drawing fire at home for having let go of doses. The details of any plan to boost vaccinations worldwide may matter less than revamping the incentives that have produced the status quo. Wealthy countries, especially in the West, have monopolized most of the supply of vaccines not through happenstance, but as a result of economic and political realities. Companies like Pfizer and Moderna have logged billions of dollars in revenue by selling most of their doses to deep-pocketed governments in North America and Europe. The deals left too few doses available for Covax, a multilateral partnership created to funnel vaccines to low- and middle-income nations at relatively low prices. While the partnership has been hampered by multiple problems — most recently India’s blocking exports amid its own crisis — the snapping up of doses by rich countries was a crucial blow. “We as high-income countries made sure the market was lopsided,” said Mark Eccleston-Turner, an expert on international law and infectious diseases at Keele University in England. “The fundamental problem is that the system is broken, but it’s broken in our favor.” Changing that calculus may depend on persuading wealthy countries that allowing the pandemic to rage on in much of the world poses universal risks by allowing variants to take hold, forcing the world into an endless cycle of pharmaceutical catch-up. “It needs to be global leaders functioning as a unit, to say that vaccine is a form of global security,” said Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, a global health expert at Harvard Medical School. She suggested that the G7, the group of leading economies, could lead such a campaign and finance it when the members convene in England next month. The argument over Covid vaccines harkens back to the debate over access to antiretroviral drugs for H.I.V. in the 1990s. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first powerful H.I.V. drug therapy in 1995, resulting in a plunge in deaths in the United States and Europe, where people could afford the therapy. But deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia continued to climb. In 2001, the W.T.O. ruled that countries could allow local companies to break patents for domestic use given an urgent need. The ruling is still in place. But without technology transfers, few local drug makers would be able to quickly replicate vaccines. In 2003, the W.T.O. took a crucial further step for H.I.V. drugs, waiving patents and allowing low-income countries to import generic versions manufactured in Thailand, South Africa and India, helping contain the epidemic. With Covid, the request for a patent waiver has come from the South African and Indian governments, which are seeking to engineer a repeat of that history. In opposing the initiative, the pharmaceutical industry has reprised the argument it made decades ago: Any weakening of intellectual property, or I.P., protection discourages the investment that yields lifesaving innovation. “The only reason why we have vaccines right now was because there was a vibrant private sector,” said Dr. Albert Bourla, chief executive of Pfizer, speaking in a recent interview. “The vibrancy of the private sector, the lifeblood, is the I.P. protection.” But in producing vaccines, the private sector harnessed research financed by taxpayers in the United States, Germany and other wealthy nations. Pfizer expects to sell $26 billion worth of Covid vaccines this year; Moderna forecasts that its sales of Covid vaccines will exceed $19 billion for 2021. History also challenges industry claims that blanket global patent rights are a requirement for the creation of new medicines. Until the mid-1990s, drug makers could patent their products only in the wealthiest markets, while negotiating licenses that allowed companies in other parts of the world to make generic versions. Even in that era, drug companies continued to innovate. And they continued to prosper even with the later waivers on H.I.V. drugs. “At the time, it rattled a lot of people, like ‘How could you do that? It’s going to destroy the pharmaceutical industry,’” recalled Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic. “It didn’t destroy them at all. They continue to make billions of dollars.” Leaders in the wealthiest Western nations have endorsed more equitable distribution of vaccines for this latest scourge. But the imperative to ensure ample supplies for their own nations has won out as the virus killed hundreds of thousands of their own people, devastated economies, and sowed despair. The drug companies have also promised more support for poorer nations. AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been the primary supply for Covax, and the company says it has sold its doses at a nonprofit price. In January, Pfizer announced that it was joining Covax, agreeing to contribute 40 million doses at a not-for-profit price. So far only 1.25 million of those doses have been shipped out, less than what Pfizer produces in a single day. Whether the world possesses enough underused and suitable factories to quickly boost supply and bridge the inequities is a fiercely debated question. During a vaccine summit convened by the W.T.O. last month, the body heard testimony that manufacturers in Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Senegal and Indonesia all have capacity that could be quickly deployed to produce Covid vaccines. One Canadian company, Biolyse Pharma, which focuses on cancer drugs, has already agreed to supply 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Bolivia — if it gains legal permission and technological know-how from Johnson & Johnson. But even major companies like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have stumbled, falling short of production targets. And producing the new class of mRNA vaccines, like those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, is complicated. Where pharmaceutical companies have struck deals with partners, the pace of production has frequently disappointed. “Even with voluntary licensing and technology transfer, it’s not easy to make complex vaccines,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. Much of the global capacity for vaccine manufacturing is already being used to produce other lifesaving inoculations, he added. But other health experts accuse major pharmaceutical companies of exaggerating the manufacturing challenges to protect their monopoly power, and implying that developing countries lack the acumen to master sophisticated techniques is “an offensive and a racist notion,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown University. With no clear path forward, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala, the W.T.O. director-general, expressed hope that the Indian and South African patent-waiver proposal can be a starting point for dialogue. “I believe we can come to a pragmatic outcome,” she said. “The disparity is just too much.” Peter S. Goodman reported from London, Apoorva Mandavilli from New York, Rebecca Robbins from Bellingham, Wash., and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels. Noah Weiland contributed reporting from New York. Source link Orbem News #Covid #Vaccinate #World

[expatimes]

The automated path to social and ecological destruction

In the mid-1980s, Max Headroom, a “computer-generated” TV personality with a zany sense of satire and an electronically altered stutter, became the world's first Artificial Intelligence (AI) superstar. Back then, of course, computer technology was not yet up to this mammoth task, so the intelligence behind Max Headroom, just like the actor portraying him on television, was very much human.

Max Headroom was from a dystopian future in which the world is ruled by an oligarchy of television networks. In a way, reality not only met but exceeded the show's predictions. Sure, our lives are not controlled by “advertising-mad” TV companies, but they are being overwhelmed by equally advertising-mad social media companies that monitor and record the minutiae of our behavior.

Moreover, technology has advanced so much over the past 35 years that the emergence of a computer-generated TV presenter like Max Headroom would hardly surprise anyone today. In fact, we already have machines convincingly acting like humans - so much so that we can create the entire computer-generated worlds for our entertainment and fill them with seemingly intelligent characters.

The advances in computing power, robotics and AI have enormous implications for society. Most importantly, although we are still some way away from becoming humans obsolete in the workforce, much of human labor has already become surplus to requirements.

Factories that can function with zero or minimal human intervention (known as “lights-out manufacturing”) are but one visible example of this. A couple of generations ago, a typical factory would employ hundreds, if not thousands, of workers. Today, many manufacturing facilities are more or less completely automated. The FANUC manufacturing facility in Japan, for example, functions like a robotic womb, using robots to build robots without the need for human intervention.

While full automation is still relatively rare, partial automation is everywhere - from agriculture to manufacturing. The service sector, which had long been viewed as the one sector which would continue to create jobs no matter what, is also falling prey to automation.

This can clearly be seen in the diminishing number of service sector workers required to generate wealth. In the 1960s, telecoms giant AT&T was worth $ 267bn in today's money and three-quarters of a million people. Google, in contrast, is worth considerably more ($ 370bn) but employs far fewer humans, only about 55,000.

Innovations that reduce in the service sector needing fewer human workers have undoubtedly brought some benefits. For example, during the coronavirus lockdowns, millions with broadband connections were able to work from home and connect with their loved ones without breaking physical distancing rules - something that would not have been possible just a few decades ago. But these obvious benefits should not cause us to ignore the many drawbacks of such technologies.

At their best, new technologies work in synergy with humans, freeing us from drudgery and bolstering our mental capabilities. At their worst, they force us to behave more like machines in order to compete with them and keep our jobs.

However, with the way our economies are currently structured, the fruits of automated labor have largely gone to multinational corporations, their shareholders and top executives - the feudal class of the information age.

Unlike what has been predicted in countless dystopian science fiction novels and movies, humans have not been enslaved by robots. Rather, high-tech machines became the new slave or serf class. They work relentlessly, accurately and obediently without needing sleep, paid holidays, health insurance or organized unions. No wonder they are so loved by their masters.

The working classes, from factory workers to middle-class professionals, meanwhile, have seen their status corroded, with a growing number unable to find work or forced to labor under rapidly deteriorating conditions.

This process has been a long time coming and warnings about how the “cybernation” of our economies would create “a permanent impoverished and jobless class” date back to at least the 1960s.

It is a testament to the genius of the proponents of new technologies that the worsening economic reality and prospects of ordinary people have triggered far more xenophobia than technophobia, with people blaming migrants and foreign workers rather than machines and computer programs, for the disappearance of jobs and societal protections.

Socially, the destruction caused by automation has started to outweigh its constructive potential. The widening gap between the productivity of capital and labor, along with deregulation and tax avoidance by the super-rich, have led to a devastating chasm between the haves and have-nots, fomenting popular unrest and social conflict.

Thanks to unprecedented technological progress, income and wealth inequalities today appear to be higher than they have ever been at any time in human history, even though the material wealth of the poor has risen.

While many of us are primed to see the green potential of new technologies, one under-appreciated and overlooked aspect of high-paced automation is its devastating environmental impact, which looks likely to multiply in the future.

Today's economy produces massively more per unit of human labor than ever before, which leads to enormous levels of overproduction, even if each individual item is produced more efficiently.

Keeping people in work or creating new jobs means that this overproduction needs to be matched by an equivalent level of overconsumption. This overcapacity is a major factor behind our shift towards a throwaway, disposable culture.

Moreover, new technological tools and automation have become such an integral part of modern labor that the ecological footprint of work has skyrocketed. This is also visible, paradoxically, in the most ancient of jobs - farming. For example, although agriculture only employs about four percent of the European labor force, it accounts for about a tenth of Europe's greenhouse gas emissions.

Little wonder, then, that a growing body of research indicates that shortening the working week would be good not only for workers' health and wellbeing but also that of the environment. Shaving a day off our working week would reduce our carbon footprint by as much as 30 percent, according to one study that is almost a decade old.

The above is not an argument for technophobia, but a plea for techno-realism. To gain the maximum benefit for humanity from technological progress, we must move beyond the narrow focus on economics and profit maximization and look at the wider social and environmental picture.

No major new technology should be rolled out before a thorough social, environmental and ethical assessment has found that its potential benefits outweigh its potential costs. Some sectors, especially areas where human contact brings with it intangible social and emotional benefits, could be partially de-automated to preserve and create jobs and reduce alienation.

More fundamentally, the fruits of automation need to be more evenly distributed. This can be accomplished through truly progressive taxation, taxing capital at a higher rate of labor and introducing such schemes as a universal basic income for everyone.

In the throes of the Great Depression, the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes, in an essay titled Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, cast aside the economic pessimism of the time and predicted that we can inverse our working life, with two days of work and a Five-day weekend, or three-hour daily shifts of work, within a century.

The fact that this is not our reality today, nearly 90 years after the publication of Keynes' essay, is not due to a failure in his foresight but to our failure to exploit our economic bounty for the good of all.

“There is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy, ”Keynes presciently foretold.

It is high time that our societies overcame this dread and that we collectively strive to enjoy our unprecedented material abundance through the pursuit of happiness for the many rather than the pursuit of unfathomable for the few.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

. #world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=14118&feed_id=17382

[coreshorts]

Mine

Her mind turned again and again to the sight of the younger girl, slowly withering, her normally plump, hourglass figure starting to shrink, her eyes heavy with dark bags, porcelain skin almost ashen. When she felt her, it was was even worse. Her aether slowly draining away, she felt as though she was constantly slowly dying, something dark and vicious welling up within her to take her place.

The first time the shinobi had noticed her Moon begin to wane, she had frantically begun searching for answers. She needed options, ways to combat what was being done, that she could grasp and bring to bear against this panic-inducing problem. She was given a small number, some of which were far more preferable than the others.

Hali was forced to settle upon an option which was the best she could hope for in such short notice: She had been told by a close friend - an incredibly accomplished mage by name of Naoh Tayoon - that her best bet without outright killing the girl she had come to so adore was to obtain a charged Amdapori Wardstone. However, the ruins of Amdapor were heavily-guarded and access strictly forbidden. She, herself, had one, but it was not charged, and the only person who came close to knowing could not remember.

"...charge one...” Fiona had muttered over the private line, “I- I think I remember. Just- nnnh. I remember doing it. I don't remember how."

The only other solution would be to use an Onmyouji ritual which not only required multiple practitioners, but would cut the girl off from her aether use entirely - forever - even though it would mean that she could never be possessed again. It was beyond that last thing that Hali wished to do, and the half-elezen’s response chilled her blood.

"...we should keep it in mind. Just in case."

Thus, she turned to Naoh, who instructed her on where to search in the ruins to find Wardstones. She was, after all, not only a shinobi, but one of very high aether sensitivity, which would help her not only infiltrate the ruins, but potentially locate a stone, as well. Loathe to go alone, however, she brought her former teacher - her best friend and sister in the shadows - Kaori, seeking her help to sneak in and out while keeping one another safe.

It was a fortunate thing that she had. The ruins of Amdapor were crawling with horrible creatures. Due to the way the entrances and perimeter were guarded, the two were forced to take a back route through the abandoned keep in order to access the city. 

Though it was suspected that the keep ruins might hold what they sought, it was quite the opposite. The absence of long-established Amdapori artefacts of white magic to stave off the Mhachi void magic and wild beasts that roamed the area has left the entire structure to be overrun by the void in the wake of multiple attempts by the Lambs of Dalamud - some of whose reanimated corpses they had found, already slain - to summon their god back to the star.

Hali found it funny. If Dahlia truly was Dalamud incarnate - if she was some kind of god, they were all wasting their time. She almost thought to tell the mage upon her return, but not knowing her relationship with the cult, she assumed to likely be negative.

It was rough going after they’d fought their way through the maddened flora and fauna both, both of which fought them at every turn in the overgrown keep. She had visited once before, but it had never been quite as overgrown as it was then, she’d thought. By the time they reached the passage needed to slip through catacombs and into the city, Hali had wound up sick nearly twice due to the sheer amount of corrupted aether in some areas. Guarding the passage, they had even encountered a powerful voidsent who struck Hali as mildly familiar. A man she had met before, named Resh, who had been heavily voidtainted and even possessed, bore a very similar voidsent which could materialise separately from his body. Fortunately, the two shinobi made short work of most things in the keep, void included.

The passage put them right by the entrance to the city, and the two made their way down. Mould assailed their lungs, giant insects assailed their bodies, and doubt assailed Hali’s mind. The investigation of the keep had proven fruitless, but her initial scouting of the area around the Lost City had some promise. Deep within the city, she could feel something, and it was very close to what she sought. For a mercy, it had begun to rain, clearing much of the spores in the air, but bringing out insects much larger than either of the two Au Ra. However, they managed to dispatch most of them with ease, even having moments to admire some of those less hostile.

Despite their skills in combat, it was no easy task. In what Hali regarded, in hindsight, though not at that time, as a stroke of irony, Kaori had been assaulted by a massive moth - a creature almost resembling the guardian spirit of their village - and stuck down. Thankfully, Hali had managed to bring supplies enough to complement her admittedly-weak conjury, which, she had found, grew significantly easier and more potent in the ruins, which gave her some hope. Once Kaori was healed properly, her arm set and functional again, and Hali’s panic abated, they moved on.

Continuing deeper in, they were best by ever-increasing wonders. A seemingly-bottomless chasm surrounded them with platforms that connected with aethereal bridges, old wards still present, lingering from when their source stones were once in place, though nothing remained within them for them to protect. Hali’s hope grew again at that, and ,especially,when they found a host of voidsent and reanimated magi who had been attempting to breach a heavily-warded door. After having cleared them out, the two were able to set to work on breaching the door, themselves, seeming unaffected by its protecting wards.

What they saw on the other side was something akin to another world. Blissful, pure, and almost heavenly, they had found themselves in something akin to another world, constantly shifting ivory and gold pillar surrounding bridges and platforms that seemed to manifest from nothing. Sprites of pure light and torches of white fire that sang melodically lined the bottomless - and skyless - expanse of pure radiance.

The two shinobi found themselves almost unnaturally enraptured by the purity and bliss of it all, resolving themselves, one day, to return, though their aims were significantly different. Kaori wished to calm herself and to find inner serenity to better herself, but Hali found herself giggling at the thought of a pocket world created by mortals; it was her ticket to unlocking secrets that would allow her to shape reality to her whim, and she would, one day, have those secrets.

They, finally, reached what seemed to be a council chamber of sorts, empty of all things but a massive winged statue, armed with stone sword, shield... and three charged Wardstones - smooth, red, fist-sized stones that emanated a pure aether - set in its breast and behind both hands. In her excitement, Hali rushed in headlong, Kaori on her heels. The statue, like many others, was a gargoyle, enchanted by Amdapori magic, inset with Wardstones to make it effective against voidsent in the War of the Magi, she assumed. Fortunately, between their skill with ninjutsu, despite the stone being highly resistant to their poor blades, dinged and damaged from assaulting stone creatures, they managed to exhaust the statue’s animating magicks.

Prying the still-gleaming stones from the statue, Hali made one last attempt to contact Naoh, asking how to work the stones, and what she could do with three, rather than one. There was no response. Wherever they were in Amdapor, they were cut off entirely from the outside world. She and Kaori decided to beat a hasty retreat, vowing to return in the future in order to pursue their goals in that wondrous place.

When they neared the entrance to the Lost City, Hali’s heart jumped into her throat as a familiar presence became apparent in the patterns of aether around her: Dahlia. However, it was not simply her Moon. Her aethereal presence had all but winked out, and swirling about it in a writhing, chaos mass was the void-tainted aether of the voidsent that had possessed her, driving Hali to their task in the Lost City in the first place. Kaori and Hali immediately followed their shinobi instincts and made themselves scarce, watching the warped woman, clad in a strange outfit and mask, descend the stairs toward the landing where Hali has used her Vanishing jutsu to hide herself from him.

“Naras... wasn’t it? Come out...” the possessed woman crooned in an unmistakably male voice.

Hali’s heart pounded in her hiding spot. Dahlia’s form had shifted ever-so-slightly in the imbalance between her aether and that of her possessor. Her normally-mis-matched green and brown eyes had turned a deep red, one darker than the other, the edges dark and almost sunken. Her nails had grown into long, sharp claws, and she had a terrible, deathly pallor to her. The voice that came from her was not her own. It was Mirseleiris.

Securing the stones to herself as she frantically called Naoh for help over a linkshell that she knew Dahlia did not have, she was given an idea: all she had to do was get them close, so if she could grapple Mirseleiris, the stones would be able to do their work and suppress him, forcing him into stasis within Dahlia and giving her back her body and her control so long as they remained near. From time to time, she threw a small rock, skipping it on the stone stairs to make it seem as though she was sloppily fleeing further into the city. Fortunately, it seemed to distract the voidsent.

“[Kaori,]” she had said in Hingan over that same shell, “[I am going to do something very stupid. I am counting on you to back me up.]”

“[I will do what I feel is necessary,]” the other shinobi had said, adding, “[Trust me.]” Trust was something Hali had learned to put in Kaori. Though she could hardly trust the whole of the world - it was, after all, most assuredly out to get her in any way possible - she trusted Kaori to be able to handle things, every time.

Having slowly climbed atop the archway above the city’s entrance, she leaped from it, using a Shukuchi to rapidly get closer to Mirseleiris as he searched for her, taunting her. Arms wide, one Wardstone tied tightly to each of her palms and one affixed to the chainmail beneath her ningi, she attempted to embrace Dahlia’s possessed form, only to have the voidsent controlling her move her quickly away.

“Another new trick?” he crooned, then, realising what she had attempted to use, the proximity alone causing his head to spin, hissed, “Wardstones...”

Kaori, however, had been ready, and popped up from a ledge below the landing on which they had engaged Mirseleiris. Grabbing Dahlia’s ankles, she wrenched the Ishgardian’s legs from under her, causing the voidsent to tumble and temporarily release his grip on her. When she landed, it was Dahlia’s voice again, claws and eyes changing back slowly as Mirseleiris‘s presence faded.

However, when Hali straddled the girl, beginning to affix the Wardstones to her, she wound up in, she realised, a trap. Mirseleiris quickly took control of Dahlia again, one hand shooting forth to try and slash at her face and the other attempting to take her by throat. Thanks to Kaori’s quick reaction, smascking the first strike with the spine of her katana, the swipe only managed to tear part of Hali’ hood. However, the voidsent managed to take the heavyset Raen by the throat, choking her with vicious claws sinking into the skin at her neck.

Hali did everything she could not to lose control. It was chaos. It was fear. It was pain. It was rage. The thoughts had started to become murmurs, voices telling her what to do.

Kill her. Kill them both.

Knock her out.

Kill yourself.

She could hear Kaori, but no matter how she tries, she could not understand what she said amongst the din. Then, it got worse as a scream shook her very soul: Dahlia was screaming. Before her, Kaori had thrust the tip of her blade into the mage’s abdomen and drawn it clean, causing her to begin bleeding profusely.

“WHy... WOn’T... yoU... lEavE HeR?!” her body screamed in a disturbing dual voice, one belonging to Dahlia, the other to Mirseleiris, his grip slipping between the mageling’s intense pain and the Wardstones weakening him.

“W... why w- won’t... youhhhh...” Hali wheezed amongst the chaos and pain, before finally being released as Dahlia wrested control once more from her possessor. 

With the time the distraction gave her, she began fastening the second stone. The chaos in her head reached another crescendo as, Dahlia now fully in control and aware of her state, began screaming in agony again.

“Hali... Kel... help...! GahAHAhAHAhAhAHAHAAH!” she pleaded before Mirseleiris began to emerge again, mad dual-toned cackling beginning again, “She’s mine, mine!”

That tipped the scale in Hali’s head from fear to blind rage, and she screamed in response, “SHE’S MINE YOU WORTHLESS SHITSTAIN! SHE’S MINE! I’LL SODDING KILL YOU FOR THIS!” She couldn’t help, after the fact, remembering what she had yelled and how, deeply embarrassed at such melodrama, but she couldn’t help herself. Her mind was slipping, and fast.

“TheN If I cAn’T HAVe hER, I’Ll taKe hEr WIth mE!” the dual voice cackled maniacally, and the claws that had gone to Hali’s throat when, instead, to Dahlia’s poised to tear her own throat out in desperation.

Kaori had busied herself with activating pressure points and calling out to Dahlia, given Hali’s panicked and addled state, in order to try and help. At the same time, despite the start of a protestation from the other Raen, the hand holding the third stone rose, abandoning attempting to tie it to the girl’s choker, and came down hard on the side of her head, immediately knocking her out, as Hali, too, attempted a rather desperate manoeuvre, giving in to the voices as they screamed at her to do it, do it, do it, DO IT. 

Mirseleiris could tell what was coming and, instead of attempting to prevent it, lashed out one last time with claws and a kick, sending Hali reeling backward as not only did she gain two deep gashes across her nose and an eyebrow, she was hit in the death wound at her stomach, sending a massive cramp through her that caused her to lose her breath and fall over.

Silence, however, was the next sound, rain falling lightly upon the three, heavy breathing from them all following the struggle. Hali recovered just enough to carry Dahlia, and they managed to return to the Bountiful Chest. All three were in dire need of healing. Kaori’s arm was still in poor shape from the behemoth moth’s awful bites, and she had some minor wounds and inhalation of mould besides. Hali, too, suffered from inhaling the mould, though not as much, but the slashes across her face and puncture wounds around her neck required treatment. Dahlia’s were, thankfully, only superficial thanks to Kaori’s skill with her blade and proactive tactics, save for the concussion from Hali’s desperation.

Hali, once healed, could only lay in her bed in the medical ward and cry, her mind racing. They had done it. Dahlia could be safe - or even just relatively so while the stones were near or on her - until they had a more permanent solution. They had discovered in their hunt amazing things beyond description. Hali had a new lead into bettering herself, even to the point gaining the power to alter reality to her whim as she had seen done in Amdapor. Yet, she still could not stop panicking.

"Oh, gods, what did I do? She's going to hate me. This is all my fault... Fuck! Why did I say anything?! I knew he was listening! I shouldn't have done any of this... I should leave her alone, but... is she okay...?” she thought to herself on and off in a mad train of thought between bouts of panicked crying.

Slowly, eventually, once she had overheard that Dahlia had been healed and her concussion faded in the process, she shakily got up from her bed, sniffling, to move a few beds down toward hers. Silently padding across the floor on the other side of the curtain, she carefully climbed into the bed in which Dahlia slept. She curled up next to her and just cried, silent and shaking, almost afraid to touch her but still wanting to be close. Everything was still chaos. She needed something.

She’s not yours, you worthless creature; she is my Moon, and, with any luck, will always be mine.

[fearlesshades]

D&D Stories

@charlesoberonn asked for fun stories from Dungeons and Dragons so here are some of the best from the group I'm in right now. (There's eight of us and we are currently in 3 different campaigns so there's a lot of shenanigans.)

(Under read more because wow so much shenanigans it got way longer than I thought it would)

First Campaign:

This party consists of: a pyrophobic elven druid, a dragonborn sorcerer (pyromancer), a dwarven fighter, a half-elf warlock, a half-orc paladin, a changeling bard, a human ranger (me) and her Tibetan Mastiff, Pup.

We met our dwarf after he had pissed off an evil wizard and was teleported away, where he dropped on top of a table in the beginning tavern.

We met our warlock when he was completely naked

He had clothes. They were in his bag. He didn’t remember why he was naked.

Upon being confronted by a cultist asking after the gem we had just found in a mine, our sorcerer responds with, “What’s a gem?”

The time we were all being slaughtered by dragon wormlings (no spell slots between the 7 party members, four AOEs at our faces) and the dragons kidnapped our paladin to carry him to the top of the tower and our bard got to second base with a god

So we had already been in this tower and we had looked through the trapdoor in the ceiling. After seeing the BBG’s crest in the sky a la Dark Mark with bats pouring out of its mouth we closed the trapdoor and continued on our way. Turns out this tower roof was where we were supposed to meet BBG for the first time and have our first big battle with him.

We were trying to get out of the castle so we could rest in the forest without fear of being attacked en masse by the castle. As we’re walking through the front door the four creepy dragon statues turned into four creepy baby dragons that immediately dropped a couple of us.

We were struggling. Dying. It was not good. Until...

UNTIL

Our bard looked down and saw ‘Blessing of Milil’ written on his sheet.

Like three months ago real word time he had left like 10 gold at Milil’s alter and our DM had told him to write that, which we all promptly forgot about

But, in our dire straights, we decided it was time to try whatever that was.

Bard starts playing and calling to Milil. And light comes down from the heavens with tinkling music, surrounding our almost dead paladin and invigorating him. It filled his HP, his Lay On Hands, and his spell slots to the brim.

He starts slashing, healing, etc, managing to get everyone else out of the entryway. He then turns to get himself out of the entryway when he got hit from behind and dropped.

Dragon wormling takes him and starts flying for the top of the tower with the BBG fight we had accidentally skipped

Our sorcerer (no spell slots and 2 HP) and I (also no spell slots and 3 HP) sprint to the top of the tower where we are immediately Charmed by BBG.

We are expecting Death

Meanwhile, on the ground, our bard is still playing in the hopes of wresting one more favor from Milil

Milil shows up in person in front of him

Milil dusts him off (restores all his spell slots and inspirations and HP), then slaps him on the ass, sending him flying up to the top of the tower, screaming an empowered Counter-Charm the whole way.

The time our sorcerer set a tree on fire right next to our (pyrophobic remember) druid.

The time our sorcerer tried to make up for setting a tree on fire next to our druid’s head by getting him a magic flower pot

The pot is enchanted to resist cold so the flower doesn’t die and has a Ring of Spell Storing wrapped around it

He spent an entire day (in game) and thirty minutes (real world) doing this

The time we (level 7) fought an ancient red dragon with our DM’s old party

Three of them came up to play with us

One was an insane cleric named Pancake Flea (yes really)

One was a level 15 Druid (we didn’t know he was level 15 until we came up to the dragon though)

The third we thought was a bronze colored dragonborn paladin

He was not

He was an ancient bronze dragon

When we came up to fight the ancient red he dropped the polymorph or whatever the fuck he was using and transformed into a giant fucking dragon who then went toe to toe with the other one, sassing the whole way

The time I pissed off the DM by making him come up with what all the hundreds of alchemical bottles in a witch’s brewing room were and he blinded my dog in retaliation

The time our bard cast sleep on skeletons. And then did it again.

The time our paladin (of Bahamat. Oath of Devotion) ran away from skeletons, leaving our much less tanky sorcerer alone in their path

The time we made our DM hate us by using Leomund’s Tiny Hut to take a long rest in a dungeon, and then fought all of the things that had gathered around outside the hut through the walls of it

The time we beat the BBG I’ve talked about before by shoving him in an invisible box and ignoring him until he was tired

Staff of Power is ridiculous, and has Wall of Force

Second Campaign:

This party consists of: a human dragonknight and his friend platinum dragon, a human Eldritch Knight, a dwarven sorcerer, a half-elf monk, a human barbarian, a halfling bard, and a halfling rogue (me).

The time the rest of the group forgot to get me thief’s tools and then asked me to pick locks cause the key was broken

Turns out our sorcerer has mend. And didn’t use it on the broken key.

The time(s) our barbarian (INT 7) crit:

(Little bit of background, the barbarian, for roleplay reasons, can only attack while raging and can only rage when someone else in the party has been hurt)

Created a hang-glider out of bug parts, thereby allowing us all to get over a chasm and escape

Cast shriek because he couldn’t attack yet and the bard had just cast shriek

(He screamed and crit on the attack role, he did like 3 damage or something)

Did the best goddamn pose after the two halflings flipped onto his shoulders to diffuse tension

The time our sorcerer hit me with lightning so I hit him with fruit.

I wanted to hit him with fruit until I did equal damage he had done to me with the lightning (it worked out to 15 fruits that would have needed to hit him) but the rest of the party didn’t let me

Everyone in the party asking the dragonknight for permission to do everything, from getting out of line, to retrieving a dagger (ok it was actually just me but that’s only cause he had yelled at the sorcerer for not following orders) (also this character of mine is 16 (14 in halfling years))

Third Campaign:

This party is made up of: a human ranger, a human rogue, a tiefling multiclass, a human barbarian, a gnome mad scientist, a human monk, and a goliath fighter (me).

The time I got into a shouting match with a statue about the city outside that had been completely wiped off the face of the planet about 30,000 years ago

He didn’t know the city was gone

The city was fUCKING GONE

The time three of us couldn’t shake one bad guy’s concentration cause we were rolling too low on damage

The time our rogue got the entire town guard on his side and threw the ranger in jail

He said the ranger had stolen his dagger, which he actually just happened to have a match to, but the point was he was rolling really well on deception, the guards were rolling really low on insight, and the ranger was rolling really low on persuasion, so ranger went in jail

We went to get the ranger out of jail and the rogue said he would drop the charges if he got his dagger back. When the ranger got out of the jail, he started yelling at the rogue. The rogue had been doing so well on his roles the entire guard was basically in love with him and smacked the ranger, yelling about how “this nice, honorable young man just got you out of jail! How dare you speak to him like that, he’s so nice!”

The time our ranger filled a Bag of Holding with water and got all his stuff wet

The time my goliath (who doesn’t like alcohol btw) got into a drinking contest with the Viking barbarian and passed out, before waking back up and the two of us went drunkenly singing through and out of the town we were supposed to buy all our supplies in and our DM had spent hours on all the different shops and the various people running them

Just goes to show: don’t put effort into anything as a DM cause your players will fuck it up

The second time my goliath got into a drinking contest with the barbarian, won this time, before waking up with the worst hangover ever and deciding to stick to what she actually wants out of life and had milk with her breakfast

Don’t change for anyone, kids

[cucamonga-springs]

The Void, by Dr Leon Burnett

“Poets of all ages have grappled with the idea of the void both as a cosmic phenomenon (or anti-phenomenon) and, in concert with modern philosophers from Søren Kierkegaard to Albert Camus, as a manifestation of a dreadful inner emptiness. The mysterious, inexplicable quality of the void makes it a subject particularly amenable to myth, as does its range of metaphorical and symbolic meanings.

A feeling of metaphysical emptiness lurks in the background of every observation of the natural world and threatens to suppress all delight in the superficial spectacle. Demonstrative of this susceptibility is the state of mind evidenced in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s nineteenth-century Dejection Ode, in which the romantic poet acknowledged within himself “A Grief without a pang, void, dark, & drear”, while “gazing on the western Sky”: “And still I gaze – & with how blank an eye!”.[1]

Similarly, but with a shift in key to a modernist sensibility, Wallace Stevens wrote in the twentieth century of the “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is”, which the solitary man in the snow beholds. Readers of his poetry have debated at length the meaning of the closing line of “The Snow Man”, but they have devoted less attention to the assertion preceding it that the man listening to the wind is “nothing himself”.[2]

The prominence——and provenance——of this discordance may ultimately be traced back to the narratives and imagery in myths around the world that engage with origins. The void is the nihil out of which existence and being emerge and often ultimately return. This nihil is quite distinct from any imagined otherworld that accommodates in one form or another, comfortably or uncomfortably, all those who have departed in death.

There is a cosmic void and there is a personal void, the former usually situated before the creation of the cosmos and the latter after the extinction of the individual, whose transitory status on this earth is encapsulated in the designation mortal (from Latin mortalis, “subject to death”).

The cosmic void is encountered in Greek and Norse mythology. Hesiod’s Theogony refers to chaos [Χάος], a chasm but, in the way of the Ancient Greeks, also a goddess, and “Völuspá” in the Poetic Edda to a “yawning gap”: “Earth had not been, | nor heaven above,/ But a yawning gap, | and grass nowhere” [gap var ginnunga, en gras hvergi].[3] It was in the Gunningagap that the frost giant Ymir took shape. From the various parts of his body the earth and the sky came into being.

In the opening verses of the King James Version of the Bible, when “God created the heaven and the earth”, “the earth was without form, and void”. Mary Phil Korsak in her translation of Genesis, has “the earth was tohu-bohu/ darkness on the face of the deep”.[4] Tohu-bohu is normally understood as meaning “formless” and “void”. The same words occur in Isaiah 34:11, where the KJV renders them as “confusion” and “emptiness”.

These accounts of a cosmic void may all be regarded as interstitial, situated in-between earth and sky, in a non-physical gap in the fabric of the universe at a time before time. In this they show an affinity with fundamental concepts in the creation myths of Ancient Egypt. The Ogdoad of Hermopolis has eight divinities to represent the watery void, whereas Theban theology confines itself to one originary god. In the Old Kingdom record, he was Amun, the hidden one, who lived a mythical “negative existence” (Nun) before the creative principle led to the appearance of Shu (male, dryness) and Tefnut (female, moisture), who begat Geb (earth) and Nut (sky).[5]

The idea of nothingness is central to Taoism. The Tao Te Ching refers to the Tao as “Something formless, complete in itself/ There before Heaven and Earth”.[6] Richard Berengarten’s twenty-first-century, poetic homage to the I Ching states that “Endless beginingless/ heaven holds everything/ including astronomical// creation and demise/ of universes into and out/ of nothing”.[7] For him, “This constant flow//between notness/ and isness becomes and is/ all ways key”.[8]

Etymologically, void is related to vacancy, vanity, vastness and waste. All these words share a common Indo-European root and point to a recognition of the indeterminacy and lack of substance that is implicit in the poetic and mythological explorations of the measureless gap anterior to cosmological formation, marked by an absence of time and space, as well as the personal dimension of the nature of the “undiscover’d country, from whose bourn/ No traveller returns”.[9]

In the beginning was the void or, rather, before the beginning was the void. The beginning marks the advent of the word, of the god, of time and space – all abstractions designed to fill the void, as, indeed, mythological accounts of the void are. The various myths of creation ex nihilo propose two processes to account for the transition from void to plenitude: appearance and metamorphosis. The necessary condition for the existence of the material world arises from the appearance of a god or a divine object leading to some kind of transformation before the world can be populated.

The rest is story.”

[atrayo]

Jewels of Truth Statements: How the Divine Sanctuary Is Located In The World

Hello All, A Happy Easter to all Christians today! As Jesus the Christ reminds many on this day of his miraculous feat of resurrection over the world itself by means of the cross. We must also by example lift ourselves off of our crosses that we bear in the world. Be they figuratively or literally in other cases in how we approach our troubles. By seeking ways that heal the situation involved versus just maintaining a dysfunctional status quo. I may have been born Roman-Catholic making it as far as my 1st communion as a teenager. Although now having been exposed to the unconditional love of God in my life with an informal spiritual practice since 1986. I have evolved into adhering wherever God has loved absolutely upon benevolence in the world that is simply my faith. So I adore and respect all religions, spiritual traditions, and secular philosophies that advocate goodwill equally.  As Gandhi once stated that "God has no Religion". And, so I worship God with a cosmopolitan all inclusive compassionate stance towards spirituality coupled with the angelic frame of reference I have as an oracle. Those that dismiss others that believe in all faiths stating they believe in nothing. Often forget that life is a living paradox and the opposite of nothing is absolutely everything. As God is the whole living paradox of Creation as nothing and everything simultaneously absolutely forever. Amen. Today's "Jewels of Truth" angelically channeled spiritual wisdom statements are on the topics of Gateways 2439 (Longhand); Love of God 2412 (Meme), 505B (Assorted); Love 506B (Assorted); Oracle 507B (Assorted); Souls 2409 (Meme), 508B and 509B (Assorted); Royalty 2409 (Meme), 510B (Assorted), and finally on Angels 511B (Assorted). Noting that the topics of Souls and Royalty are both excerpts from the identical overall statement 2,409 as two separate memes. With today's entry offering 11 statements across 7 topics altogether for your reflection spiritually. May you be as enriched in whichever faith tradition you practice as I have in channeling them by all of our angels in heaven.

Gateways: 2439) To reach heaven on Earth love truly by the examples of countless spiritual and religious giants before our present era in time. To love with the pure magical innocence of a child with joy and a minor streak of mischievous playfulness. Opens up such a portal for heaven to reach your heart and cleanse you of the fears of this world. Not to forget the painful lessons incurred but to heal them holistically with character building forgiveness. Heaven is discovered by a remarkable glee that exceeds mere joy. A constant tidal wave of wonder that all float in the direction of the flow of good fortune. More than plain luck but as an awakened divinity that crystallizes the impossible as common every moment occurrences. When you yield deeply to the holy illumination with humility all shimmers with a renewed glow in unison of exaltation. Simplicity is the grand master connecting comprehension elegantly beyond dumbfounded complexity. To step into this realm of paradise as a mortal only occurs if such an archway is discovered on any number of life-giving worlds such as the Earth. Although feeling as intuition is undeniable as a sensor to gauge euphoria and goodwill if one is near such a heavenly portal of a gateway vortex. The opposite is also plainly true if a hellish gateway is discovered with a despicable foreboding that creates vileness as hatred in your common midst. Only the idiotic, the brave, and the fallen usually dare to proceed to such condemned portals of what is often deemed to being a metaphysical underworld. By any other means those that seek miraculous healing attempt such a journey to find holier ground. Such as Fatima, Portugal for an angelic intercession of the Holy Mother Mary of the angelic choir of cherubs by God's grace. There are many other idyllic enlightened realms on this Earth akin to limbos of pure being where pilgrims of higher dedication soon find by destiny. As Heaven and Limbo on Earth are found by any number of spiritual moderate pathways of faith. Not at the extreme fringes of good and evil which anything that is limitless outside of moderation in the world soon finds zealotry as fanatical on the horizon. Which have led many of the good intentioned astray seeking unconditional good without balance or without moderation soon creates an uneasy quandary of chaos. Only moderation with a contrarian unconditional practice unites the paradox of the world as a complete detached circle of pure blessed life. This is the fabled eye of the needle in order to find the salvation of the holiest ones by faith in the Holy Spirit of God. No matter if the presence is heart to heart or mind to mind it all is governed by the spirit within as the doorway of faith in the divine. Amen.                                                                                          ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo. Love of God:

505B) The Life essence of the divine is God him / her / itself in all its exalted glory. Many come to understand that the powerhouse of our very souls is the engine of Creation itself. The golden film of heaven embodied as everything imaginable and quite unknown as the mysterious in all its grandeur. The essence that first sparked countless Universes beyond our local one out amongst the stars. Has also sparked countless unimaginable realities that cup our understanding of this reality into place.

Many are the vessels of the divine nature of God to reach into our lives. Be they triumphs well into the chasm of tragedies that we are given a choice to climb out of the pit of despair. Our mind's, heart's, and spirits are but unique avenues for the Will of God to reunite himself with his equal facets of himself to abide in its remarkable glory. As we recall these sublime truths our lives feel the empowering grace holding our lives in place. Ever all so gently with the smile of God as the warmth of our very souls expanding all throughout the world. Amen.                                                                            ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo.

Love:

506B) Be the expression of a truer love in the world and so the fulfillment of the refined graces of the Angels expands to impact those in deepest need. 

Oracle:

507B) I often find that both science fiction and history itself as two excellent forms of being a bonafide Oracle. Meaning predicting in a generalized to a specific manner what is to come upon us all. Not necessarily the whole context of what is being displayed but just slivers of it as slices of our reality of this our human condition. A catalyst to remembering what is and what could be again, since we are the ancient souls of God reborn from across eternity. Amen.                                                                                                   ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo.

Souls: 

508B) As we are perceived many souls we are actually the singular Soul of God echoed continuously throughout paradise and everywhere else in between. A soul is merely a repository of the delightful presence of God in totality as a vehicle to experience the multiplicity of life in its audacious variety. No matter if it is experienced as real or fantasy it is all with the intended purpose to evolve beyond goodness, benign neutrality, and evil into what is a singular pristine Enlightenment of Divine Being.

The route is up to the spirit for each entity to explore by trial and error what is best for them individually and collectively as a species of amazing possibilities. Our Soul of God we all share equally is simply playing a role upon the performance of our reincarnations. Humanity adds the drama at its own discretion, however, the heavens adds the redemptive qualities in order to overcome the world. Amen.                                                                            ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo. 

509B) We are each sharing equally the One Supreme Soul of God there is no such thing as separated isolated spiritual entities. 

Royalty: 

510B) We are all the Angelic children of God reborn some are affectionately referred to as Earth Angels and certainly, all innocent newborns are given such a remarkable honor in truth. God sees us as his darlings no matter if we are newborns to elderly centinels in the world we are the babes of paradise given a renewed lease on mortal life. As we are the macro representation of the One Soul of God(dess) makes us collectively as his infinite brood his marvelous Omni-Presence through all Creation(s) as One family metaphysically.

For God doesn't create subpar anything and so we are all collectively as spirits we are human, creature, or the Earth itself as the Kings and Queens of the afterlife. No matter if we venture from Heaven, Limbo, and the tortured ones from Hell. All living entities are the Omnipresence of God reborn to please the union of his Supreme authority and purpose of maturing through his / hers / its creations. We herald far and wide some native to this world in rebirths and others as visitors fulfilling the Grandiose Will of God's Mighty Benevolence Everlasting. As the Kings and Queens of Paradise, we are the spiritual minor baby gods and goddesses of ancient yesterdays, modernity, and countless tomorrows come full circle once more. Amen.                              ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo. Angels:

511B) We the Infinite Children of God as heirs of totality only through God in faith we are the Angels reborn as godly beings in Image and Likeness. Amen. 

Ivan "Atrayo" Pozo-Illas, has devoted 21 years of his life to the pursuit of clairvoyant automatic writing channeling the Angelic host. Ivan is the author of the spiritual wisdom series of "Jewels of Truth" consisting of 3 volumes published to date. He also channels inspired conceptual designs that are multi-faceted for the next society to come that are solutions based as a form of dharmic service. Numerous examples of his work are available at "Atrayo's Oracle" blog site of 11 years plus online. Your welcome to visit his website "Jewelsoftruth.us" for further information or to contact Atrayo directly.

[orbemnews]

What Would It Take to Vaccinate the World Against Covid? In delivering vaccines, pharmaceutical companies aided by monumental government investments have given humanity a miraculous shot at liberation from the worst pandemic in a century. But wealthy countries have captured an overwhelming share of the benefit. Only 0.3 percent of the vaccine doses administered globally have been given in the 29 poorest countries, home to about 9 percent of the world’s population. Vaccine manufacturers assert that a fix is already at hand as they aggressively expand production lines and contract with counterparts around the world to yield billions of additional doses. Each month, 400 million to 500 million doses of the vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are now being produced, according to an American official with knowledge of global supply. But the world is nowhere close to having enough. About 11 billion shots are needed to vaccinate 70 percent of the world’s population, the rough threshold needed for herd immunity, researchers at Duke University estimate. Yet, so far, only a small fraction of that has been produced. While global production is difficult to measure, the analytics firm Airfinity estimates the total so far at 1.7 billion doses. The problem is that many raw materials and key equipment remain in short supply. And the global need for vaccines might prove far greater than currently estimated, given that the coronavirus presents a moving target: If dangerous new variants emerge, requiring booster shots and reformulated vaccines, demand could dramatically increase, intensifying the imperative for every country to lock up supply for its own people. The only way around the zero-sum competition for doses is to greatly expand the global supply of vaccines. On that point, nearly everyone agrees. But what is the fastest way to make that happen? On that question, divisions remain stark, undermining collective efforts to end the pandemic. Some health experts argue that the only way to avert catastrophe is to force drug giants to relax their grip on their secrets and enlist many more manufacturers in making vaccines. In place of the existing arrangement — in which drug companies set up partnerships on their terms, while setting the prices of their vaccines — world leaders could compel or persuade the industry to cooperate with more companies to yield additional doses at rates affordable to poor countries. Those advocating such intervention have focused on two primary approaches: waiving patents to allow many more manufacturers to copy existing vaccines, and requiring the pharmaceutical companies to transfer their technology — that is, help other manufacturers learn to replicate their products. The World Trade Organization — the de facto referee in international trade disputes — is the venue for negotiations on how to proceed. But the institution operates by consensus, and so far, there is none. The Biden administration recently joined more than 100 countries in asking the W.T.O. to partially set aside vaccine patents. But the European Union has signaled its intent to oppose waivers and support only voluntary tech transfers, essentially taking the same position as the pharmaceutical industry, whose aggressive lobbying has heavily shaped the rules in its favor. Some experts warn that revoking intellectual property rules could disrupt the industry, slowing its efforts to deliver vaccines — like reorganizing the fire department amid an inferno. “We need them to scale up and deliver,” said Simon J. Evenett, an expert on trade and economic development at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. “We have this huge production ramp up. Nothing should get in the way to threaten it.” Others counter that trusting the pharmaceutical industry to provide the world with vaccines helped create the current chasm between vaccine haves and have-nots. The world should not put poorer countries “in this position of essentially having to go begging, or waiting for donations of small amounts of vaccine,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, senior scientific liaison to the Covid-19 Prevention Network. “The model of charity is, I think, an unacceptable model.” In this fractious atmosphere, the W.T.O.’s leaders are crafting their proceedings less as a push to formally change the rules than as a negotiation that will persuade national governments and the global pharmaceutical industry to agree on a unified plan — ideally in the next few months. The Europeans are banking on the notion that the vaccine makers, fearing patent waivers, will eventually agree to the transfers, especially if the world’s richest countries throw money their way to make sharing know-how more palatable. Many public health experts say that patent waivers will have no meaningful effect unless vaccine makers also share their manufacturing methods. Waivers are akin to publishing a complex recipe; tech transfer is like sending a master chef to someone’s kitchen to teach them how to cook the dish. “If you’re to manufacture vaccines, you need several things to work at the same time,” the W.T.O. director-general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, told journalists recently. “If there is no transfer of technology, it won’t work.” Even with waivers, technology transfers and expanded access to raw materials, experts say it would take about six months for more drug makers to start churning out vaccines. The only short-term fix, they and European leaders say, is for wealthy countries — especially the United States — to donate and export more of their stock to the rest of the world. The European Union allowed the export of hundreds of millions of doses, as many as it kept at home, while the United States held fast to its supply. But boosting donations and exports entails risk. India shipped out more than 60 million doses this year, including donations, before halting vaccine exports a month ago. Now, as a wave of death ravages the largely unvaccinated Indian population, the government is drawing fire at home for having let go of doses. The details of any plan to boost vaccinations worldwide may matter less than revamping the incentives that have produced the status quo. Wealthy countries, especially in the West, have monopolized most of the supply of vaccines not through happenstance, but as a result of economic and political realities. Companies like Pfizer and Moderna have logged billions of dollars in revenue by selling most of their doses to deep-pocketed governments in North America and Europe. The deals left too few doses available for Covax, a multilateral partnership created to funnel vaccines to low- and middle-income nations at relatively low prices. While the partnership has been hampered by multiple problems — most recently India’s blocking exports amid its own crisis — the snapping up of doses by rich countries was a crucial blow. “We as high-income countries made sure the market was lopsided,” said Mark Eccleston-Turner, an expert on international law and infectious diseases at Keele University in England. “The fundamental problem is that the system is broken, but it’s broken in our favor.” Changing that calculus may depend on persuading wealthy countries that allowing the pandemic to rage on in much of the world poses universal risks by allowing variants to take hold, forcing the world into an endless cycle of pharmaceutical catch-up. “It needs to be global leaders functioning as a unit, to say that vaccine is a form of global security,” said Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, a global health expert at Harvard Medical School. She suggested that the G7, the group of leading economies, could lead such a campaign and finance it when the members convene in England next month. The argument over Covid vaccines harkens back to the debate over access to antiretroviral drugs for H.I.V. in the 1990s. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first powerful H.I.V. drug therapy in 1995, resulting in a plunge in deaths in the United States and Europe, where people could afford the therapy. But deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia continued to climb. In 2001, the W.T.O. ruled that countries could allow local companies to break patents for domestic use given an urgent need. The ruling is still in place. But without technology transfers, few local drug makers would be able to quickly replicate vaccines. In 2003, the W.T.O. took a crucial further step for H.I.V. drugs, waiving patents and allowing low-income countries to import generic versions manufactured in Thailand, South Africa and India, helping contain the epidemic. With Covid, the request for a patent waiver has come from the South African and Indian governments, which are seeking to engineer a repeat of that history. In opposing the initiative, the pharmaceutical industry has reprised the argument it made decades ago: Any weakening of intellectual property, or I.P., protection discourages the investment that yields lifesaving innovation. “The only reason why we have vaccines right now was because there was a vibrant private sector,” said Dr. Albert Bourla, chief executive of Pfizer, speaking in a recent interview. “The vibrancy of the private sector, the lifeblood, is the I.P. protection.” But in producing vaccines, the private sector harnessed research financed by taxpayers in the United States, Germany and other wealthy nations. Pfizer expects to sell $26 billion worth of Covid vaccines this year; Moderna forecasts that its sales of Covid vaccines will exceed $19 billion for 2021. History also challenges industry claims that blanket global patent rights are a requirement for the creation of new medicines. Until the mid-1990s, drug makers could patent their products only in the wealthiest markets, while negotiating licenses that allowed companies in other parts of the world to make generic versions. Even in that era, drug companies continued to innovate. And they continued to prosper even with the later waivers on H.I.V. drugs. “At the time, it rattled a lot of people, like ‘How could you do that? It’s going to destroy the pharmaceutical industry,’” recalled Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic. “It didn’t destroy them at all. They continue to make billions of dollars.” Leaders in the wealthiest Western nations have endorsed more equitable distribution of vaccines for this latest scourge. But the imperative to ensure ample supplies for their own nations has won out as the virus killed hundreds of thousands of their own people, devastated economies, and sowed despair. The drug companies have also promised more support for poorer nations. AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been the primary supply for Covax, and the company says it has sold its doses at a nonprofit price. In January, Pfizer announced that it was joining Covax, agreeing to contribute 40 million doses at a not-for-profit price. So far only 1.25 million of those doses have been shipped out, less than what Pfizer produces in a single day. Whether the world possesses enough underused and suitable factories to quickly boost supply and bridge the inequities is a fiercely debated question. During a vaccine summit convened by the W.T.O. last month, the body heard testimony that manufacturers in Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Senegal and Indonesia all have capacity that could be quickly deployed to produce Covid vaccines. One Canadian company, Biolyse Pharma, which focuses on cancer drugs, has already agreed to supply 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Bolivia — if it gains legal permission and technological know-how from Johnson & Johnson. But even major companies like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have stumbled, falling short of production targets. And producing the new class of mRNA vaccines, like those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, is complicated. Where pharmaceutical companies have struck deals with partners, the pace of production has frequently disappointed. “Even with voluntary licensing and technology transfer, it’s not easy to make complex vaccines,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. Much of the global capacity for vaccine manufacturing is already being used to produce other lifesaving inoculations, he added. But other health experts accuse major pharmaceutical companies of exaggerating the manufacturing challenges to protect their monopoly power, and implying that developing countries lack the acumen to master sophisticated techniques is “an offensive and a racist notion,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown University. With no clear path forward, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala, the W.T.O. director-general, expressed hope that the Indian and South African patent-waiver proposal can be a starting point for dialogue. “I believe we can come to a pragmatic outcome,” she said. “The disparity is just too much.” Peter S. Goodman reported from London, Apoorva Mandavilli from New York, Rebecca Robbins from Bellingham, Wash., and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels. Noah Weiland contributed reporting from New York. Source link Orbem News #Covid #Vaccinate #World