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Dr. Boone Wescott sat in the small lodging the population of the Terran planet in the FUSS system had build for her, waiting for the first of many people to interview. During all that has happened, some very nice people have offered her a place to stay and made sure she had everything they needed. Unlike they were made out to be the residents of FUSS were not as savage as often portrayed in Sol media. Although primitive in some regards. This may have been explainable by the fact that all media in the Sol system was owned by a few very influential people, who had reason to dislike the Theseus ship and it's crew, but couldn't do anything about them.
Her lodging was not one of high technology, but a simple yurt. The residents had told her that "they'd provide her with a comfortable log cabin, but the trees were not yet ripe for harvest" and that they "needed to establish a healthy forest first". The first resident entered her tent for the series of interviews.
"Hello", she gestured, "make yourself comfortable". It was time to begin.
Boone: "I'm Dr. Boone Wescott, history professor. And you are?".
Guest: "I prefer not to answer this question. Ask me something else.".
Boone: "Very well, let's get to it then. You don't seem to be a Terran, yet on a Terran planet?"
Guest: "I used to be on Hell's Retreat. Was in a colony there before the evacuation".
Boone: "Interesting. How have you experienced that planet?"
Guest: "I liked it. Not at first, but I came to like it. The Terrans there were unusually nice and helpful. They took us in, traded with us, exchanged technologies and the like."
Boone: "Could you give me an example of these exchanged technologies?"
Guest: "Fire. Our species fears it. I have come to enjoy it. They taught us how to manage it, they made sure we knew what to do if it spread, the showed us so many applications of it".
Boone: "Applications? Like what?"
Guest: "Well...lighting, obviously. We have no need to cook our food, but Slash & Burn was most useful in growing food. Taught us how to make most of the fertile land on that planet".
Boone: "And what technology have you brought them?"
Guest: "We have our own ways of making jewelry. We traded our molten exoskeletons with them. They really like to use our chitin! We thought of it as waste, but it turns out you can do a lot with it. Although, it was creepy at first to drink out of what for your species would be your own skull...the people back on our home planet now think of us as harsh and some as savages..."
Boone: "What is the thing that struck out to you the most about Terrans?"
Guest: "How different they are. I've only dealt with Terrans on station before. Some of them are very nice, others are complete nightmares to deal with."
Boone: "And those from Hell's Retreat specifically?"
Guest: "How different they were from the other Terrans I have met. They were more helpful, in general, they always had time. Having time, that is such a strange concept to us. How can you have something which does not really exist?"
Boone: "What do you mean? Can you elaborate?"
Guest: "Think about it. Time, in a Terran context, is an arbitrary assigned concept. You take a specific atom, see how often it swings, and the amount of swings is then one Terran time unit, if I understood correctly? It's such a strange yet ingenious thing. Then you take that unit and you use that to divide a specific duration into sections. So far, aside from the atom, there has been nothing material. It's just a concept! So how can you possess the immaterial?
Boone: "Doesn't your species do something similar?"
Guest: "For us it's the standard duration between molting's, so yes, but we end up with our exoskeleton afterwards. Which was of no value to us until recently".
Boone: "Interesting".
She talked to the being a while longer until the next person came in. It was a Rakhar, who had brought coffee.
Boone: "Hi, Tythor. Everything going well?"
Tythor: "No. I have the rising suspicion that Süpö the world-eater would prefer it if I did not exist"
Boone: "Oh no! Why?"
Tythor: "I just put Süpö as a grandfather to Rakkes child"
Boone: "Rakke had another child? Boy or girl?"
Tythor: "Neither. Cosmic Sentience."
Boone: "... what?"
Tythor: "You heard me just right. His son, Rakke, gave birth to a cosmic sentience".
Boone: "And who was the mother?"
Tythor: "Rakke, obviously, as he gave birth?"
Boone: "Then who was the father?"
Tythor: "The cosmic sentience itself"
Boone: "You must be joking!"
The look of utter horror on the Rakhars face, transcending species, did not imply that he was joking.
Boone: "He really?"
Tythor: "Yes."
Boone: "And you...witnessed that?"
Tythor: "Yes, and I have witnesses that also witnessed that. My new hire, and Irene. I am jealous of your species capacity of drowning out memories."
Boone: "You didn't prepare something for that?"
Tythor: "I did. I took the strongest stuff Terra could offer to the Rakhar species directly after witnessing it. But the image is forever burned into my memory...I cannot forget, no matter how much I try!"
Boone: "Have you considered asking the cosmic sentience to help you out with that?"
Tythor: "And risk insulting it? I'd rather not! You know what it did to dear old Süpö?!"
Boone: "I have heard rumors...but nobody would explain it. Say I'll have to ask the Jyx myself!"
Tythor: "You will. Let us not talk about this any more. The images are coming up again".
For a moment, the Rakhar looked deeply troubled.
Boone: "So you deal with Terrans a lot?"
Tythor: "I do. They are some of my best customers."
Boone: "And what do you sell?"
Tythor: "It started with coffee. Great substance. Then they came to me with suggestions".
Boone: "Like what?"
Tythor: "Something called duct tape and an oil popular on Terra. I stock multiple varieties of tape now. And multiple oils. You Terrans love your oils. There's an oil for everything, and one oil in particular that is very popular, although it isn't really supposed to be used the way Terrans do according to the products own instructions!"
Boone: "Ah, that one. Yeah, I might buy some".
Tythor: "And hygiene products. Those sell surprisingly well in deep space".
Boone: "I know. Irene told me. What strikes you most about Terrans?"
Tythor: "They are a strange species. They claim aliens are complicated. But the Rakhar language follows sound grammar. Most species have a common tongue. But Terrans have multiple. Terran grammar makes no sense. Amongst all galactic languages, they are the most difficult to learn, even for other Terrans".
Boone: "Do you have examples?"
Tythor: "The Theseus crews have their own languages. They are mostly a mix of all of them, but heavily influenced by the T'euth and Fennec, two of the more sensible languages, even though they are quite complicated. And all the slang. Their language evolves faster than they do!"
Boone: "Fr, fr, no cap"
Tythor: "Oh, I didn't know you speak the ancient tongue. Funnily enough, some aliens have adopted some of their languages. Or parts thereof."
Boone: "Oh? Like what?"
Tythor: "The one in before me. Did you look at it's limbs?"
Boone: "Yeah?"
Tythor: "They didn't have a written language, to say. They had an approximation of that, sure, but nothing as similar as Terran languages, many but not all of which have a writing system. So they copied one and adapted it for their own needs. Obviously, while they can hold a pencil they have hardly the dexterity to use it appropriately".
Boone: "So what did they adapt?"
Tythor: "Something called ku-nai-form. Most ancient even for your standards."
Boone: "Cuneiform? How did that come to be?"
Tythor: "Some of the Theseus showed them their encyclopedia during a feast. You know the one, the one that yours truly rather would not want to exist considering the records of your species misconduct held within it. Seriously, your species was fucked up. Anyways, they stumbled upon the entry for cuneiform. When seeing that they ask what it was".
Boone: "Really?"
Tythor: "Yeah, and then some Terran mixed up some clay. Fascinating material. Anyways, turns out that their limbs were an almost perfect match for that kind of writing. So they adapted it".
Boone: "Strange the one before me didn't mention it"
Tythor: "They still haven't gotten over the fact that fire is useful for so many applications. Cooking, farming, forging...to name a few. Electricity is safer, yes, but fire is more versatile if you know. Although more scary for most people".
Boone: "You aren't afraid of it?"
Tythor: "No. I respect it. But then again, most of my own species claim that something isn't right with me, and that I must have some sort of mental damage. Only because I'm more successful than them and dislike bureaucrats".
Boone: "And why do you dislike those?"
Tythor: "I worked as one".
They chatted for a while longer. The next in the list was somebody called Essix, but nothing was entered in the "Species" category. As the being seated itself across from her, she had issue making out it's form. Maybe it was one of these new sentient clouds she had heard about?

It's pretty hard to have multiple sequences of action occurring simultaneously in writing...
"Well. That takes care of that problem" the intelligence agent whistled while inspecting the carnage, looking at the scene. The previously unknown Terrans had fought surprisingly well considering they were not actively involved in combat for a long time, but their training methods seemed to work. Maybe not well enough, considering they were not alive anymore. Still, their appearance would cause a load of trouble for the Nation of United Terran States: The Galactic Senate was under the impression that Terrans only existed near one system. Such factions appearing out of nowhere was concerning. And then the fact that they revealed that humanity was not as united as was projected...a headache, a real headache...
The enemy was interesting to say the least: Semi-Volatile entities in what appeared to be some sort of suit. The Theseus crew had come with an elegant solution to capturing the enemy alive: Crack their suit, use a modified vacuum cleaner and capture them in non-permeable bags. If they just cracked the suites the creatures escaped and wrecked havoc on ship systems.
A single combatant kneeled within the gruesome scene: A reddish-brown suite, modelled after a rabbit, covered in some type of glittering dust, surrounded by a circle of parts, drawing patterns...The combatant looked up towards the agent. This was the agents last transmission, with an eerie silence following after.
"How long do you think until they send more reinforcements?" Süpö asked a Terran commander.
"Don't know. Could be right now, could take a while. We don't know enough yet" the commander responded.
They were interrupted by a Theseus crew member Süpö had not met yet. "I have an idea" it said, "we need mirrors...or rather something similar to a mirror".
Eyebrows were raised.
"Explain?" Süpö asked, radiating curiously.
"I've noticed that their ships always appear in roughly the same locations. So if we could use those guns to continuously bleed energy, we could theoretically make a barrier" the crewmember said.
"That's so stupid it just might work" the Terran commander grinned, "I'll forward that to engineering. They will, of course, require insights to your system".
"That doesn't solve the second point of entry, at Hell's Retreat though?" Süpö pointed out, "These enemies could've been in our galaxy for a long time without us noticing".
"We've dispatched a special fleet there. Humans are humans. Humans may only be killed by their own stupidity, the environment, or other humans. But that's just my opinion. Backed up with firepower." the Terran commander grunted, pointing towards a sidepiece. "By the way, how's the coffee guys ship? I'll be mad if we won't get our fix. Great motivation for our troops, that guy, you know? Gotta have a death wish that one. One time he flew directly into line of fire just to deliver some sustenance...".
"I don't know" Süpö answered, "there was a distinct lack of The Man during this battle. Maybe he's sitting this one out? His ship got damaged, but they reported only light damage. Still considering the shields on that thing it's amazing they managed to do even light damage". Rakke sighed, listening to the conversation. He was too exhausted to join the conversation.
Tythor was enjoying some coffee at Irenes house, having watched the battle from below as good as he could. In a way, the flashing lights in the sky were beautiful.
"So now what?" Irene asked.
"I don't know" Tythor answered, "without the ship starting, we can't really do that much".
"True. Shameful display on part of the enemy. They say they've pushed them back with heavy casualties" she replied.
"You don't know anything about them either?" Tythor asked one of those he had picked up from Hell's Retreat.
"No. We always thought they were part of the planets ecosystem. They were rarely sighted, you know? Thought they were some kind of apparition. A myth." the refugee answered, "do you think we'll be able to go back soon?".
"Dunno. But until then I don't think there will be any problems if you chose to stay here. I think Irene here may require your expertise in farming" Tythor mused, "maybe...maybe you can help to rebuild here? Some of the debris fell onto houses...now, there's work to be done. Even if the ship doesn't work, our help is required.".
Shadow was on one of the enemies ships. The ploy of the Terrans worked out: They had suggested to use the Jyx needlecrafts in order to pull individuals in sufficient armor towards the enemy ships, to infiltrate and to sow chaos behind enemy lines. Shadow heard a scream, distinctly Terran, and went to investigate: Somebody in a suit that looked harmless was ripping another Terran to shreds, laying out what appeared to be body parts in a circular pattern. This was not something Shadow wanted to be part of, so a silent retreat was decided. It was time to get back to friendlier territory. The Grrkrk had fought valiantly, seeing this battle as a way to regain their species standing in the broader galactic community. A large part of that was based on Shadows own convincing.
"One problem at a time" the Terran commander said, "first we deny them entry there. We will dispatch a majority of our fleet to that system, that Hell's Retreat. We have heard rumors that somebody was living there, but we thought them to be figments of somebodies imagination. Anyways, this will create a chokepoint. That is, if your ingenious plan works. Also, our field agent went silent".
"I said not to go there yet" Rakke grunted exhausted, "I said there was no reasoning with that one in that state".
"And that one would be?" the commander inquired.
"That one in the suit that's modelled after a rabbit. The one who made extra effort to make it look harmless. That one... " Rakke explained before passing out from exhaustion.
"We'll look into" the commander mumbled.
Doctor Boone Wescott looked up at the sky, noticing it lit up, as if the sun had suddenly become rectangular.
"To the caves" somebody shouted, "To the caves. Should be cool enough down there".
"The Terrans yearn for the deep", some alien passerby mentioned to her, "although I do not know why. Your species seems to hold caves in the highest of regards, yet fear them at the same time. Strange!".

Been busy lately. Didn't have time nor energy to write.
"And who the fuck is that?" Süpö asked while waiting for the gun to charge.
"We...we don't know" a crewmember answered, "we have no records of such ships. Neither from the ancient era, nor from the databases we stole from the Galactic Senate, neither from any other database we have ... acquired. They keep sending us that Surrender signal".
"Be of use then, tell us who in the name of Essix that is" Süpö said to the historian Irene had brought along.
"Way to greet somebody. Names Doctor Boone Wescott by the way. We have no clue either" the historian replied, emphasizing the first part of her name.
"Well, Doctor, it's a bit of an emer-" Süpo was interrupted as a crewmember interrupted.
"Kap'tan, two things: Firstly, there are more ships coming in. We don't know from where. Second, we've received word from Hell's Retreat. They've been asked to surrender too" it was reported. Süpös personal communicator rang. Süpö had picked it up from a station soon after getting a mobility suite, having left it in a deposit box. Without one there was always the risk of it being stolen, as a Jyx would have had to rely on others to carry it. During all that time, nobody had called. After all, Süpö had left Jyxia soon after the originals, the Jyx whose material was the template for Süpö by means of division, had passed into the wall. Since then the device hadn't recorded any attempts of communication. Süpö had kept it charged and around simply as a sentimental thing.
"Who the darn are you and why are you calling me on this device?" the Jyx answered, radiating in a glow of annoyance, confusion and sadness.
"TI. Nice to hear from you too, Jellybean" the voice answered.
S: "Great. You fu...nevermind. Are those your ships?"
TI: "No. That's why we're calling you. We have no idea either. We thought you might know? Your ships have been recorded to sail the uncharted voids?"
S: "Never met such ships out there. Why, do you want to send them advertisements for calculators?"
TI: "Not that TI, Jellybean. Terran Intelligence".
S: "Oh. Nope, we know jack all. I didn't even know Terran Intelligence existed. At least we know it's probably not you. How did you know about this anyways?".
TI: "Information System and f\** you too*".
S: "Never mind. Anything else?".
TI: "We'll keep you posted".
Süpö started to get worried.
"Kapta'n! New message from Hell's Retreat: Some residents there have taken to the caves, the others are on Tythors ship. Message from Jyxia too, say they've compared what they know with the Terrans and they also don't know anything. Suggesting it's somebody from outside our galaxy"
Upon hearing this the visionary implements of some of the crew lit up: Outside the galaxy meant a high chance of new tech being acquired. Süpö watched as something hurdled towards the Terran colony. Maybe an attack?
"Negative. That's Tythor. Said he'll attempt the Ygritte-Suicide-Approach to landing. Punched through the enemies blockade, light damage" the crews correspondent replied.
"THEY SHOT AT TYTHORS SHIP? DO THEY HAVE NO IDEA OF ALL THE TIME WE SPENT BUILDING THAT THING? ALL THE EFFORT WE DON'T EVEN REALLY REMEMBER?! BLOCKADE?!" Süpö screamed. It was time to retaliate. "UNLEASH IT" Süpö commanded.
"But Kapta'n...we don't know what's behind the blockade? We might end up frying somebody from the Galactic Community?"
"ACCEPTABLE CASUALTIES" Süpö barked, "FIRE! Then call all of the fleet-ship, and all those who served on it in the past and tell them to bring weapons. Lots, lots, lots of weapons...".
The crew complied. A beam of energy cut across the void, tearing into the enemy fleet.
"Kapta'n! Good news! The other Kapta'ns answered our call. That includes of course our own dear prodigy of a Kapta'n, as well as multiple pirate fleets and multiple flotillas from different species. Jyxia has dispatched their new needle-carriers, the Terrans the war-machine carriers, even the Grrkrk have dispatched what little military they have left. Bad news: It appears this system is about to become a battleground. Good news: 70% of the enemy fleet has been wiped out. Bad news: We have targeting issues and more of them are coming in. And they are pissed".
Doctor Boone Wescott was recording everything. Not only did she get to observe a new Terran settlement, she also got to witness a truly historic event first hand. The information that the galaxy was being invaded by an outside aggressor surely would be beneficial towards unity, at least until the threat was dealt with.
Süpös communicator rang again.
S: "Yes, Zy'an'kk?".
TI: "TI. Who is Zyank?".
S: "The same person as Nonya B. Isness. What do you want?".
TI: "It was pretty easy to figure out".
S: "What was?".
TI: "You stabilized that system, right? The coronal emissions and all that? We think that's what made this invasion possible".
S: "You're saying this is our fault?".
TI: "We have said no such thing. We are simply saying we might use that".
S: "No. We do that now and all our work is for naught. Do you know anything else?".
TI: "Their behavior indicates...that they are similar to us".
S: "What?"
TI: "Similar to Terrans. You know. Used to harsh environments, capable fighters, and so on. I think some of you call us Death Bringers?"
S: "Maybe. I wonder if they're just as good at being self-absorbed and cocky. They're certainly not as smart as the Terrans. Would've invaded a lot earlier otherwise".
TI: "Or they just waited for somebody else to do the heavy lifting for them?"
S: "Terrans..."
Shadow was annoyed. Really annoyed. Having helped Tythor out for a while, it had been time to go back to Grrkrk space and try to establish peace. Which wasn't easy, considering the multiple entities and factions that claimed the Grrkrk throne, and that Shadow couldn't just waltz in and declare to be the spawn of the late imperator... The news of the invasion spread through the galaxy like a disease, causing multiple Grrkrk fleets and factions to interrupt their current in-species struggles. Surely, the most distinguished war-fleet in this conflict would be able to achieve victory and settle the Grrkrk throne. Shadow looked outside the port, as a particular fleet was noticed. All of their ships were of a strange Terran design, and every single one had a depiction of an alien losing it's life to Terran hands in some way or another.
"Oh fu-" Irene was about to say, watching the other ships come in.
"What is it?" Tythor asked, still a bit shaken from the landing attempt. It worked out, but if Tythor used to have any nerve-clusters in his body, they were now fried. At least that's what it felt like. Irene pointed towards the landing ships.
"Those. I thought they were a myth. They are not" she said in a cracked, horrified voice.
"Aside from the...decorations..., what's so scary about them?" Tythor asked.
"Those are a particular brand of Terran. A genocidal branch. Xenophobes, we call them in literature. Fanatic Xenophobes. They say every single one of those decals actually happened in your archives..." Irene explained as the troops were dispatching from the ships.
Tythor had seen Terran military in action, but these had subtle differences to them. Their uniforms were as much for show as they were for combat, similar to the more...imperialist inclined species in the galaxy. It was something that had Tythor confused about the Terrans for a long time: He had heard about imperial ambitions in Terran history, but never witnessed such ambitions from Terra. They seemed content with their few systems on the galactic rim. Tythor watched more closely. These Terrans weren't normal. Their whole organization was as if they were trained for war since they were born, more machine than Terran in their actions. They did not care if there was anybody in their way, they would shove them out of it with a violent gesture, especially hostile towards anything non-Terran, and march on.
"By Essix! Shit...what the..." Rakke uttered, having joined in his trademark pink power armor, "I thought those only existed in the tales of old. If they actually exist and they are here...oh my...".
One of the visitors distinguished officers scoffed at Rakkes remarks, stating that "some ideas never die" and that Rakke "shouldn't be surprised that they still exist". The officer went on a podium overlooking the strange troops to give a fanatic speech.
"Comrades in arms! I ask you: Is this the day we have waited for? Is this the day for sacrifice? Is this the day to fight a war?"
The troops responded in unison: "This is the day. Our lives are yours to sacrifice. Today. We. Fight!", each word linked to an action, such as presenting or shouldering their guns, stomping and so on. Every time the officer ask, the troops answered in unison in agreement. The officer became even more fanatical.
"Comrades in arms! Do you wish to cleanse the universe of this vile, disgusting, inferior threat? Do you wish to fight a war so brutal that even the cosmic horr-"
"SENTIENCE" a voice thundered down. The Terran officer didn't flinch, but his troops sure did. Maybe they were human after all.
"sentience will shriek in fear and recoil in disgust? Do you want to tear the enemy apart? Do you want to smell how the enemy burns*, do you want to fight the enemy even in the face of death, do you wish to* conquer death itself*?"*
This kind of rallying continued on and on while unaffiliated medics were trying their best to give first aid to those who were unfortunate enough to find themselves in front of such troops while they were marching.
Süpö turned to Rakke: "I knew your species is strange, but these people have more screws loose than you my friend".
"Do not compare me with these disgusting monsters" Rakke replied, "we may share our biology, but that's where the similarities end. Oh great. Now it's going to get interesting".
Another fleet of ships landed, all planted with some Terran farming implements. Now, a star on a spacecraft makes sense, Süpö thought, but what the hell is with the farming tools?
The demeanor of the troops of those ships was more friendly towards the aliens, but only slightly. They did the same as the other Terrans: Anybody unfortunate to stand in the wrong place would be violently shoved aside, with no regards given to that individuals health or safety. Their arrival was met with suspicion and hostile glares by the previously mentioned Terrans. Again, their distinct officer gave a speech.
"Comrades! Workers! Now is the time to blast apart the chains that hold you in bondage! A new enslaver has revealed themselves! Show not only them, but show the galaxy, the greatness that is our unity! Fight! Fight until you die! Sacrifice yourself to the cause, sacrifice yourself for the greater good! For the collective! Workers of the galaxy, stand united against this threat!"
"I find this highly confusing" Tythor said to Irene.
"Welcome to Terran extremist politics" she responded with a sigh. Some ideas really didn't die.
"So they both want unity, but they don't seem very united towards each other? So those ones keep trying to hail something, and those ones just like to yell? Is noisiness the thing that unites them?" Tythor asked, trying to make sense of the situation. It was a futile endeavor.
Irene sighed. "I...I'll explain it all to you once this over. If we survive".
A single shot was heard. It was Rakke. The Jyx cannon on his suite was pointed towards the sky, it's barrel smoking.
"YOU ARE ON OUR PLANET! IN OUR SYSTEM" Süpös voice was heard, "YOU WILL BEHAVE YOURSELVES! I do not care! I DO NOT CARE! I do not care what you think of other species, I do not care what inclinations you have, I simply DO. NOT. FU-"
"Shut up you filthy-" both officers tried to say as a single shot was heard yet again. It was in reality two highly synchronized shots: Rakke had shot one of the officers, Süpö the other. The troops of both went into a combat stance. Multiple red dots became visible on them, as well as markers for bombardment.
"I REPEAT: YOU ARE ON OUR PLANET, IN OUR SYSTEM. STAND DOWN. YOU WILL FOLLOW OUR ORDERS OR YOU WILL BE DEALT WITH. IS. THAT. UNDERSTOOD?" Rakke yelled, his words filled with malice and authority. After initial confusion, both armies stood down. There was more important things to deal with than a dead officer or two.
"Oh great. Who is it now? More Terrans? I wonder what bullshit those believe in..." Süpö asked as even more ships came in.
The troops of these ships were less organized, but their equipment seemed to be of a higher quality than both the previous armies. All of them were distinctly different, their armors and weapons highly customized*.* Rakke gulped.
"And those are?" Süpö asked.
"Militant Furries I'd say, considering their armor" Rakke replied. Süpö noticed how every armor was designed to imitate a Terran beast.
"And they make you scared why?" Süpö asked.
"It's not that they all scare me. It's just that one. Bunnyboii" Rakke replied. A chuckle went through both of the fanatical Terran armies. Rakke pointed to a Terran in a white powerarmor, modified to look like one of the less harmful Terran creatures.
"I'm not even going to ask how you know that one" Süpö dryly replied.
"I can assure you...that armor ain't gonna stay white for long. Those idiots might find this amusing, but I don't. That one...that one is the exact opposite from normal in the head. Those guys over there fight out of conviction, out of fanatical ideology, because they are brainwashed or something like that. This one*...this one has no such inclinations...*now fanatics already mean trouble, but this one...this one means worse" Rakke whispered.
"Strong words from you...oh...right we have similar ones on the fleetship" Süpö remembered.
The Grrkrk ships started to trickle in. The Theseus crew organized, counted and recorded every single combatant or helper who showed up. Süpös communicator rang again.
"TI. When you all are ready, maybe after a f\**ing tea party,* get your asses up here! We can't hold them back much longer! WE NEED REINFORCEMENTS ASAP!".
Rakke took to one of the stages where the officers dead body still lay, walking over it disrespectfully and shouted: "DO YOU WANT TO STAND HERE ALL DAY? ESSIX BE DAMNED; GET UP THERE AND FIGHT YOU LAZY BUMS!". The armies did as instructed.
Süpös communicator rang again: "Thanks, Jellybean. By the way, no casualties from that monstrosity of a weapon you guys built. JIG and TI made sure of that. Please at least try to be more considerate in the future?". Rakke ended the call without a word.
"My garden! My garden!" Irene shouted, watching the ships leave, "look at what they did to my garden! I had just planted it! Write that down! Write it down! I want future generations to know that they ruined my fucking garden!". Doctor Boone Wescott wrote it down as instructed, documenting everything in great clarity.

I woke up this morning and strode out to the mailbox since I forgot to yesterday. I didn’t see it ‘til I’d gotten inside and sifted through the junk mail and bills. A letter addressed to me, from my father. I stared at it for several minutes before opening it, and a tiny velvet bag fell out of the envelope along with a thick letter.
I know the postal service can be slow, but if this was real, someone had royally fucked up. The rational side of my brain reasoned that someone probably had dropped the letter in some crack or crevice behind a desk or in one of those mail jeeps and finally found it after more than 40 years. Why 40 years, you ask? Well, he walked out on my mom back in 1981 and disappeared without a trace, not that it had made me sad. I had already grown up, moved out, and moved on by then; His cold and sometimes downright abusive behavior long since passed in the rearview. So, needless to say, I didn’t exactly lose sleep when he ended up on the national missing persons clearinghouse in ‘84. Though I had long since grown up, knowing he was gone brought me some peace.
I’m getting off topic. The only problem with my lost mail theory: The envelope and the paper the letter had been penned on looked brand new, and my father had been missing for four decades and had been presumed dead in ‘98. I figured at that point that it must have been a prank, albeit a very elaborate one, so I decided to read it in its entirety. I was wrong.
Now, if you couldn’t already tell by the numbers and years I’ve been throwing around, I’m not young… at all, so after I got through the letter, I damn near had a heart attack. I’m not completely tech illiterate, but I’m no computer whiz either, so I don’t really know how to go about understanding it fully. I called the library to ask about some of the things mentioned in the letter and all they had was a book by someone named Alistair Crowley and a couple military history novels, but they’d all been checked out. So that’s why I’m here. My daughter Olivia told me that people talk about weird stuff that’s happened to them on this web site for others to try and make sense of, so I thought I’d put the letter here. She got me a laptop computer as a housewarming present for the assisted care apartment I moved into last month, and this is the first time I’ve fired it up, and my neighbor Jan is letting me borrow her Wifi, so I’ve spent the day typing down what the letter said and it’s finally ready to share.
I’ve talked enough, so I’ll shut up and let you read the letter. I’ve used the pound key to indicate the start and end. This is what it says:
###
My dearest son,
Your grandfather served in the United States Army during World War One, and like many veterans of the Great War, he returned wounded—both physically and mentally. Being born in 1920, I knew not what his face had looked like before the war, and as such, I never asked him about his time overseas and he never spoke of it, as though those nearly two years had never occurred.
That was, until he summoned me beside his deathbed, voice hoarse and dry from the respiratory medicines working to keep him breathing. It was the morning of May 19, 1979. A cardinal perched itself on a large branch directly outside his solitary window in the bedroom on the second floor of my home. He had lived with me for several years by this point as his health had deteriorated and he began to need round the clock care. Dementia had begun to gnaw away at his faculties and it was difficult for him to verbalize his needs or say anything coherent, also due to his lung cancer from years of smoking. We had visited his doctor the previous Saturday and he recommended my father’s treatment plan transition to hospice care. As his power of attorney and not wanting to pry him from the comfort of his recliner and the familiarity of his room, I hired a home health service in lieu of sending him to a VA facility.
As the light shone in on his recliner, illuminating his disfigured face, I approached.
“Father, the nurse said you wanted to see me,” I said.
“Come… to me,” he said in two raspy breaths, slowly turning to face me.
I approached in shock. He had essentially gone nonverbal several months prior, typically using only one word and pointing when he needed something. I knew it must have taken everything in him to be able to utter that sentence. Eyes still locked on him, I reached for the folding chair I kept in the corner and opened it, setting it next to his rocker and sitting down, joining him at eye level. He took the glass of water sitting on the TV tray next to him and took several sips. He set the glass down and turned back towards me.
“I need to tell you about Tournai.”
Your grandfather, who I will refer to henceforth as my father, began to tell me of his time in the 1st Engineer Regiment, in which he participated in several battles fought during brutal campaigns throughout France in 1917 and 1918, including the Meuse–Argonne offensive, in which he saw several of his friends die. I wondered in which battle he had lost his left eye and most of the left side of his face, and what kind of weapon could have inflicted such an injury.
In late October of 1918, less than a month before the cessation of hostilities, he and three other American combat engineers were embedded within a small sapper unit of the 63rd Division of the Royal Navy, who were in the city of Tournai supporting French efforts to fortify the city. The German Fourth Army had begun its offensive against Mons, about thirty miles west, and the forces in Tournai had been determined by French high command to be too few to effectively combat the Germans. As such, the French left their positions, though forgetting to inform the British and Americans, who had begun digging trenches and erecting defensive emplacements. By the time they realized the French had retreated to the larger city of Lille, it was too late to fall back. While major action would take place at Mons, General Friedrich Sixt von Armin’s Fourth Army would indeed shell Tournai, too. As combat engineers and sappers, the men, including my father—would have no trouble making their way underground, but under the threat of artillery, they sought shelter in areas where someone had already done the digging.
“These bastards aren’t going to cease, men,” shouted British First Lieutenant Oliver Wescott, as he directed the men near him into the cellar of an old home in the city center.
As Wescott looked back to direct more troops inside, an artillery shell screamed through the air, impacting the street outside, collapsing the roof onto the cellar doors. During the explosion, Wescott was blown off his feet into the cellar where my father, along with Private Lester Daniels and two British soldiers, had taken shelter. They were now cut off from the outside, in pure darkness.
“Are you men alright?”, asked Wescott, winded, but physically unharmed.
My father grabbed for his lighter to illuminate the damp, musty cellar. Flick. His face became illuminated, and as he looked to his left, he saw the nearly-decapitated body of one of the British soldiers, his head severed by a piece of shrapnel, head dangling from his neck like the last bit of metal you have to peel back after you’ve used a can opener.
“Fucking Christ,” said an American-sounding voice to his right.
Private Daniels stood up, taking a step back. Daniels inadvertently dumped his haversack as he stumbled to his feet, ration tins and hatchet clanging as they hit the cobblestone floor.
“Christ, Baker…” said a soft British voice.
Another lighter flicked, and the face of a boy, no older than nineteen, came into view. His skin appeared as smooth as a baby’s, with the exception of a deep gash on his right cheek. His eyes, however, appeared hollow. A tear escaped his eye and his lip quivered slightly. A large, bright flame appeared behind him and then slightly faded. Wescott held a rusty lantern he had found in his right hand, lighter in the other.
The room was large, filled with old furniture on one side, and large barrels on the other. My father looked around, searching for any possible exit point. The roof above them was constructed with heavy wood, many once-strong beams fractured by the explosion. One wrong swing of a hatchet, and the entire structure could crush the men in their escape. As Wescott berated his sole surviving countryman for shedding tears at the loss of his friend, Daniels pointed towards the wall furthest from the staircase.
“The mortar,” he said, matter of factly. “It’s new.”
My father approached the wall alongside Daniels, as Wescott walked behind them towards the wall. My father went to observe closer as Wescott brushed past him.
“Yes, it’s lighter here,” Wescott said.
The mortar of an eight by eight section of the stone wall that stood before the three men was indeed lighter than the aged mortar that adorned the cracks and gaps between the other stones comprising the walls. Not necessarily new per se, but definitely not original.
Lacking explosives and other tools that would be useful for dismantling a wall, all four men began striking the mortar around one large stone with their hatchets, hopeful they had found a way out. After several minutes, the stone fell backwards, leaving a dark hole in its place. A loud thud echoed through the hole, followed by a slightly muffled thud, and several more after that, decreasing in pitch each time.
The men all exchanged looks with each other, unsure of what they had found. After half an hour, a man-sized hole had been created, and Wescott climbed through, lantern in hand.
“What’s there?”, said the young British solider, who had introduced himself simply as Arthur during the demolition process.
“Stairs,” said Wescott in a questioning tone, almost as though he was confused by the concept of a staircase.
My father entered the gap to converse with Wescott, with Daniels and Arthur entering behind him. A staircase stood before the four men, though not one leading back to the surface. Past the landing the men found themselves on, a flight of dark, jagged steps led down to a corridor approximately twenty feet below them, the stone from the wall resting at the bottom.
“Do we wish to travel down there?”, said Arthur, apprehensively.
Another artillery shell exploded on the surface, the ground shaking followed by small chunks falling from the rock ceiling above. With no other option besides waiting to die, the four men returned back to the cellar to retrieve their supplies and rifles, and then journeyed down the stairs.
Greeted by a large passageway spanning as far as the lanternlight could reach, the men moved forward. A soft thump could be heard above the men, and small bits of rock crumbled to the floor. More artillery. After walking for what he estimated was ten minutes, my father heard a noise from up ahead. A large shadow appeared around a corner, illuminated by the lantern, small appendages dancing on the wall like a finger puppet, a large oblong head adorning the top of the form. What appeared to be wings fluttered on the back of it. Wescott drew his revolver from its holster, racing forward with the lantern to confront the unknown shadow. He rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks.
Lowering the revolver and chuckling, Wescott looked back at the three men.
“Was a fuckin’ rat,” he said, laughing.
The rest of the men entered the small room Wescott had rushed into. A small statue rested in the corner of the room, inscribed Clovis, in French. A rat poked its head out from behind the statue before retreating behind it again. The men continued on down the passageway, stopping briefly to drink from their canteens. Shortly after resuming their journey, the narrow hall widened.
“Christ almighty…”, Daniels trailed off, seeing a massive circular room come into view.
The ceilings here extended higher than those in the passageway, though not by much. Enveloping the perimeter of the room like wallpaper, were skulls. In the center of the room laid a large, rectangular stone object, which my father immediately believed to be a coffin. He approached it, the others in tow. While appearing incredibly simplistic from a distance, the dark box was covered in various symbols, none of which my father recognized. He then proceeded to open it. What sounded like a breath emerged from the coffin and a searing pain coarsed through his hand, as though he had been stung. He cried out in pain, clutching his hand, stumbling back. Daniels unshouldered his rifle, hands shaking violently as his finger slipped and he fired a shot into the coffin, putting a hole through the thin rock.
Their ears rang and something clattered to the ground behind the two men. Standing there, facing away from them, was Arthur. The lantern laid on the ground a few feet ahead of him, flame slowly dying.
“Where the fuck is Wescott?”, said my father, voice trembling.
Arthur turned towards him, face completely pale. He spoke in a deep, unnatural voice.
“He…”, was all he managed to get out as the wet squelch of a hatchet burying itself in his head reverberated throughout the room. Arthur fell to the floor, blood seeping from his eyes, now red. As he collapsed onto his side, still facing them, he smiled.
Just then, Wescott emerged from the darkness, holding his rifle, bayonet affixed. My father unshouldered his rifle and pointed it at Wescott.
“Wait,” said Wescott, just as my father and Daniels both fired at the murderer. Daniels’ shot missed by a mile, his hands still shaking, but my father’s shot pierced Wescott’s uniform, puncturing his right lung.
Coughing on blood, Wescott said two words that would make my father shudder when recounting his tale. “Not… him,” he said, drawing his Webley and placing it to his temple. He stared straight ahead at the coffin, eyes wide.
“Our God who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Accept me into your gracious arms ‘O Lord,” he sobbed, before pulling the trigger, grey matter and gore spraying the solid ground, the shot deafening to my father and Daniels’ already ringing ears.
Emerging from one of Arthur’s ears came a small fly-like creature, which then flew into the darkness.
Daniels staggered backwards towards the coffin as the light from the lantern faded. My father followed. Using his boot, Daniels, for some reason, kicked the remainder of the stone lid off, revealing a skeleton adorned in jewels, rings, and a golden crown. A sword, whose handle was wrapped in rubies, fit between the skeleton’s hands. My father said he did not know why the two of them didn’t simply run the opposite direction. It was as though they were drawn by the mystery just as much as they were afraid of venturing outside what was illuminated by the still-dying lantern.
Daniels reached into the coffin, attempting to remove a ring from one of the skeleton’s hands, breaking the finger off in the process. A low roar emanated from the direction opposite of which they had entered. A fly buzzed through the air and landed on Daniels’ outer lobe. My father could only watch as it entered his ear, for as soon as he was able to verbalize that there was a fly, it had already burrowed in. Daniels blinked and looked down. He felt the strap on his shoulder and looked at the wooden and metal rifle he now held in his hands, his face reflecting off the surface of the sharp bayonet affixed to the muzzle. Daniels dropped the weapon haphazardly and stumbled towards my father, as if he had not walked in years. My father backed up, frightened. Daniels held up the bony finger in his hand and smiled, a pentagram carved into the middle of the ring and the script of a language unknown to my father, at the time, surrounding it. Daniels moved forward towards my father and touched his face. My father screamed in agony and fell to the ground, steam rising from his cheek, his left eye melting from its socket and dripping onto the ground.
“Put. On. The. Ring,” Daniels said, in what sounded like the voices of a thousand dying men.
My father ran, grabbing his rifle and falling as Daniels fell on top of him. Blood poured out on my father’s torso as it ran like a river from Daniels’ mouth and stomach, his body now resting on top of the rifle, bayonet extending out of his back. Daniels blinked and swatted at my father, his hands unable to make contact. The bony ring finger fell from one of Daniels’ hands and landed on my father’s uniform. A sizzling sound came from his chest as the ring made contact with his skin after eating through the green wool. Another shout of unbearable pain came from my father as he swatted the finger and ring away from him.
The buzzing sound could be heard once more as the small fly emerged from Daniels’ left ear and approached my father, still pinned under the corpse. He removed his lighter from his pocket and sparked it in front of the creature, causing it to burst into flame. An unholy screech could be heard as it fell to the ground, wings alight like a plane that had been shot down, and it impacted the ground. My father stood up, moving Daniels’ body from atop him, and stomped on the downed creature several times before running to the lantern, now barely alight, and rejuvenating the flame.
That’s when he saw them. Hundreds of shadows without owners stood along every side of the room, blocking two passageways. They slowly began to approach him, encircling him with intent. He walked back to the center of the room, now his only option. Grabbing Daniels’ discarded rifle, he backed up to the coffin, panting. The shadows were closer now, nearly upon him. Removing the bayonet, my father painfully explained to me that he put the barrel of the rifle under his chin and fired.
As he lay on the ground, he found himself looking at the body of his friend, rifle still sticking out of his chest, propping him up like a pike. The shadows moved around the corpse as though something in the way—other than the body itself—prevented their travel. My father, in a final act of desperation, crawled towards Daniels, seeking whatever was keeping the shadows away from him. Resting under his rifle-propped body like someone sheltering in a tent, was the skeletal finger, ring and all.
My father grabbed the ring off the finger and the shadows immediately stopped. He placed it slowly on his finger and the pentagram burst into flames. The shadows slowly began to kneel. My father looked around and gasped when he saw Daniels kneeling before him, his dead eyes staring up as blood dripped from his mouth, rifle still buried in his chest.
His now-purple lips moved, and in a scratchy voice, slowly said “My… king.”
My father walked towards the other passageway slowly as he moved to escape, the shadows backing away to form a path. Some of the shadows began to take form, but my father refused to describe them. He finally reached the end of the second passageway, and when he turned around, the shadows were gone. After climbing a set of rocky steps, like those he had descended before, a wall appeared before him, and using the hatchet still in his haversack, still slung around him, smashed through the mortar surrounding a large rock and pushed it through. Outside, he saw men marching down a street, who paused after noticing the rock fall to the road below.
“Hello!”, he shouted, waving his arm through the hole.
My father then pushed his head through and was greeted by dozens of German soldiers. As my father pulled his head back through, he heard shots ring out as the soldiers opened fire. He dropped to his knees and closed his eyes. Then the screams began. The sounds of flesh being ripped apart, throats being torn from bodies as their owners’ screeches ceased as they separated from one another. And then, there was silence. After hacking away at the wall enough to make a hole large enough to pull himself through, my father emerged to a street flowing with blood and bodies twisted and contorted like putty.
One of the German soldiers was still alive, smiling. My father had left Daniels’ rifle behind the wall, and had already dropped the hatchet.
In perfect English, the German spoke. “You are going to need this,” he said, gesturing towards the man’s uniform. The man then fell to the ground, eyes rolling into the back of his head, a small fly emerging from his ear. My father donned the German’s uniform, ditching the Kaiser’s garb after leaving the city, and walked towards Allied lines.
“American, American!”, my father shouted, hands raised, wearing only his undergarments and boots as he approached a trench.
“Christ, get a medic!”, shouted a British soldier.
My father then collapsed.
He awoke in a field hospital and was shipped home. He was fitted with a prosthetic face, covering his lower left side, along with a glass eye, as his upper facial structure remained intact, though heavily scarred from burning.
While he shared his truth, the ordeal was chocked up to shell shock by the War Department. The official story was that my father had been separated from the rest of his comrades during the bombardment of the city, lost his eye, and suffered facial burns due to fire and debris, while the gunshot wound was sustained when a German soldier wrestled with my father for his rifle and it fired, but he managed to survive.
He received several medals and what he called a “wound stripe”, which was the equivalent of the Purple Heart, at the time. He had the option to receive a Purple Heart retroactively later in life after it was introduced, which he declined.
After my father finished speaking, he turned away and looked back out the window, the red cardinal still perched on the branch looking in at him. He smiled at the bird, and I slowly walked back downstairs.
“You were up there for quite a while, is everything okay?”, the nurse, who had been waiting on the couch in the living room, asked me.
“Yeah.. I… uh, was having a conversation with him,” I said.
She laughed.
“Robert? Talking? That’s hilarious. I’ve been here every day for a month now and he’s only spoken to me once,” she laughed.
“What did he say?”, I asked.
“He asked me to put on a ring.”
My father died five months later. He was buried with full military honors, dressed in uniform. As he was lowered into his eternal resting place and the preacher waxed lyrical about his good deeds, I held my hands in my pockets. It was quite chilly that day. In one hand, I gripped the funeral program. In the other, I held the ring that had been on my father’s finger just before he was transferred to the hearse.
In the years following his death, I traveled to Tournai and spoke with numerous scholars and occultists regarding the events surrounding my father’s experience. This is what I found.
Clovis I was the King of Frankia from the late 400s to early 500s, ruling an area which comprised much of what is now northwestern France and surrounding areas including Belgium, where modern day Tournai sits. Relics of his reign were discovered in the late 1600s, including a trove of gold and other precious jewels, metals, and rings whose worth was beyond measure. Though converting to a form of Christianity later in his short life, he was born into a certain breed of pagans and held various beliefs that made those closest to him fearful. Vast riches seemingly did not satisfy Clovis, as he would begin practicing and experimenting in Goetia, a Greco-Roman form of sorcery that existed long before the term witchcraft was coined. While mostly consisting of innocuous spells and methods of divination, there also existed a more supernatural element. Namely, the practice of summoning angels, demons, and other entities beyond our realm of understanding. The Catholic Church, having later granted him sainthood, sought to cover up his sorcerous past, and, given the power of the Church at the time, information on the topic is incredibly limited, found only in centuries-old texts and through the mouths of orators and mystics.
One of the works that especially intrigued Clovis was the Testament of Solomon, a text written in Greek, in which Clovis was fluent. The Testament speaks of King Solomon, who after confronting a demon, receives a ring, known as the Seal of Solomon, from the archangel Michael, emblazoned with a pentagram, giving him the ability to bring demons under his control by branding them with the sigil. Solomon wielded the Seal, bringing countless demons under his behest, including Baphomet; Mephistopheles himself. While certainly equipped with a strong conventional army, Clovis found the prospect of controlling an otherworldly force loyal only to him too tempting, sending multiple expeditions to Israel to search for the ring, his lust for control growing stronger as the years passed. The ring was found, and the fruits of Clovis’ labor could finally be reaped. Shortly after summoning and employing demons to do his bidding in the catacombs, the king died. While the Catholic Church claimed his body was moved to an abbey in Paris, I know that he still rests in the depths below the soil of Tournai.
I understand that this is much to process, though as the years drag on and I gaze upon you from time to time, know that I am proud of you. Congratulations on your new abode. Now, while I have lived much longer than I could’ve fathomed, I am not immune to mortality. It is time for me to bestow the greatest honor upon you, my child. When you were diagnosed with cancer, you feared the worst, but I called upon my servant, Sphendonaêl, to heal you. When you and your wife began to fall out of love, I beckoned Buldumêch to mend your marriage. When you have experienced miracles, my child, they have not been of any god. The Testament explains it much better than I can:
So Ornias took the finger-ring, and went off to Beelzeboul, who has kingship over the demons. He said to him: "Hither! Solomon calls thee." But Beelzeboul, having heard, said to him: "Tell me, who is this Solomon of whom thou speakest to me?" Then Ornias threw the ring at the chest of Beelzeboul, saying: "Solomon the king calls thee." But Beelzeboul cried aloud with a mighty voice, and shot out a great burning flame of fire; and he arose, and followed Ornias, and came to Solomon.
Once he was struck with the ring by the lesser demon Ornias, already behest to Solomon, our Lord became the king’s servant, along with his spawn. You see, my son, this is why I named you Solomon. It is now time for you to reign over Beelzebub and his legion and reap the benefits that come with such an honor.
I know that you have seen the velvet pouch I sent you alongside my letter. If you have not opened it already, it is time to do so, my son.
Put on the ring.
###
And that’s the letter. I’ve been sitting at my kitchen table all day trying to process this. I opened the bag after I finished reading it. It was like an involuntary motion. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. I saw my hands move and could do nothing to stop them.
It’s going on 3 p.m. now and all I’ve done today is stare at this fucking ring. It’s exactly like he described it. It felt wrong at first, just looking at it. Like a kid gazing at a forbidden cookie in a jar. But it’s calling to me. I can see now. It’s so beautiful. It’s just the right size.
Since my wife Ruth died last year, I’ve repeated the same goddamn routine. Wake up. Check the mail. Watch the Rifleman before lunch, go to the civic center for bingo on Wednesdays, and watch M.A.S.H. at dinner with my microwave Salisbury steak. To my only daughter, Olivia, if you are reading this, I am sorry. I’m miserable, so I think I’m going to do something different for a change.
I’m going to try it on.

My father served in the United States Army during World War One, and like many veterans of the Great War, he returned wounded—both physically and mentally. As such, I never asked him about his time overseas and he never spoke of it, as though those nearly two years had never occurred.
That was, until he summoned me beside his deathbed, voice hoarse and dry from the respiratory medicines working to keep him breathing. It was the morning of May 19, 1979. A cardinal perched itself on a large branch directly outside his solitary window in the bedroom on the second floor of my home. He had lived with me for several years by this point as his health had deteriorated and he began to need round the clock care. Dementia had begun to gnaw away at his faculties and it was difficult for him to verbalize his needs or say anything coherent, also due to his lung cancer from years of smoking. We had visited his doctor the previous Saturday and he recommended my father’s treatment plan transition to hospice care. As his power of attorney and not wanting to pry him from the comfort of his recliner and the familiarity of his room, I hired a home health service in lieu of sending him to a VA facility.
As the light shone in on his recliner, illuminating his disfigured face, I approached.
“Dad, the nurse said you wanted to see me,” I said.
“Come… to me,” he said in two raspy breaths, slowly turning to face me.
I approached in shock. He had essentially gone nonverbal several months prior, typically using only one word and pointing when he needed something. I knew it must have taken everything in him to be able to utter that sentence. Eyes still locked on him, I reached for the folding chair I kept in the corner and opened it, setting it next to his rocker and sitting down, joining him at eye level. He took the glass of water sitting on the TV tray next to him and took several sips. He set the glass down and turned back towards me.
“I need to tell you about Tournai.”
My father began to tell me of his time in the 1st Engineer Regiment, in which he participated in several battles fought during brutal campaigns throughout France in 1917 and 1918, including the Meuse–Argonne offensive, in which he saw several of his friends die. I wondered in which battle he had lost his left eye and most of the left side of his face, and what kind of weapon could have inflicted such an injury.
In late October of 1918, less than a month before the cessation of hostilities, he and three other American combat engineers were embedded within a small sapper unit of the 63rd Division of the Royal Navy, who were in the city of Tournai supporting French efforts to fortify the city. The German Fourth Army had begun its offensive against Mons, about thirty miles west, and the forces in Tournai had been determined by French high command to be too few to effectively combat the Germans. As such, the French left their positions, though neglecting to inform the British and Americans, who had begun digging trenches and erecting defensive emplacements. By the time they realized the French had retreated to the larger city of Lille, it was too late to fall back. While major action would take place at Mons, General Friedrich Sixt von Armin’s Fourth Army would indeed shell Tournai, too. As combat engineers and sappers, the men, including my father—would have no trouble making their way underground, but under the threat of artillery, they sought shelter in areas where someone had already done the digging.
“These bastards aren’t going to cease, men,” shouted British First Lieutenant Oliver Wescott, as he directed the men near him into the cellar of an old home in the city center.
As Wescott looked back to direct more troops inside, an artillery shell screamed through the air, impacting the street outside, collapsing the roof onto the cellar doors. During the explosion, Wescott was blown off his feet into the cellar where my father, along with Private Lester Daniels and two British soldiers, had taken shelter. They were now cut off from the outside, in pure darkness.
“Are you men alright?”, asked Wescott, winded, but physically unharmed.
My father grabbed for his lighter to illuminate the damp, musty cellar. Flick. His face became illuminated, and as he looked to his left, he saw the nearly-decapitated body of one of the British soldiers, his head severed by a piece of shrapnel, head dangling from his neck like the last bit of metal you have to peel back after you’ve used a can opener.
“Fucking Christ,” said an American-sounding voice to his right.
Private Daniels stood up, taking a step back. Daniels inadvertently dumped his haversack as he stumbled to his feet, ration tins and hatchet clanging as they hit the cobblestone floor.
“Christ, Baker…” said a soft British voice.
Another lighter flicked, and the face of a boy, no older than nineteen, came into view. His skin appeared as smooth as a baby’s, with the exception of a deep gash on his right cheek. His eyes, however, appeared hollow. A tear escaped his eye and his lip quivered slightly. A large, bright flame appeared behind him and then slightly faded. Wescott held a rusty lantern he had found in his right hand, lighter in the other.
The room was large, filled with old furniture on one side, and large barrels on the other. My father looked around, searching for any possible exit point. The roof above them was constructed with heavy wood, many once-strong beams fractured by the explosion. One wrong swing of a hatchet, and the entire structure could crush the men in their escape. As Wescott berated his sole surviving countryman for shedding tears at the loss of his friend, Daniels pointed towards the wall furthest from the staircase.
“The mortar,” he said, matter of factly. “It’s new.”
My father approached the wall alongside Daniels, as Wescott walked behind them towards the wall. My father went to observe closer as Wescott brushed past him.
“Yes, it’s lighter here,” Wescott said.
The mortar of an eight by eight section of the stone wall that stood before the three men was indeed lighter than the aged mortar that adorned the cracks and gaps between the other stones comprising the walls. Not necessarily new per se, but definitely not original.
Lacking explosives and other tools that would be useful for dismantling a wall, all four men began striking the mortar around one large stone with their hatchets, hopeful they had found a way out. After several minutes, the stone fell backwards, leaving a dark hole in its place. A loud thud echoed through the hole, followed by a slightly muffled thud, and several more after that, decreasing in pitch each time.
The men all exchanged looks with each other, unsure of what they had found. After half an hour, a man-sized hole had been created, and Wescott climbed through, lantern in hand.
“What’s there?”, said the young British solider, who had introduced himself simply as Arthur during the demolition process.
“Stairs,” said Wescott in a questioning tone, almost as though he was confused by the concept of a staircase.
My father entered the gap to converse with Wescott, with Daniels and Arthur entering behind him. A staircase stood before the four men, though not one leading back to the surface. Past the landing the men found themselves on, a flight of dark, jagged steps led down to a corridor approximately twenty feet below them, the stone from the wall resting at the bottom.
“Do we wish to travel down there?”, said Arthur, apprehensively.
Another artillery shell exploded on the surface, the ground shaking followed by small chunks falling from the rock ceiling above. With no other option besides waiting to die, the four men returned back to the cellar to retrieve their supplies and rifles, and then journeyed down the stairs.
Greeted by a large passageway spanning as far as the lanternlight could reach, the men moved forward. A soft thump could be heard above the men, and small bits of rock crumbled to the floor. More artillery. After walking for what he estimated was ten minutes, my father heard a noise from up ahead. A large shadow appeared around a corner, illuminated by the lantern, small appendages dancing on the wall like a finger puppet, a large oblong head adorning the top of the form. What appeared to be wings fluttered on the back of it. Wescott drew his revolver from its holster, racing forward with the lantern to confront the beast. He rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks.
Lowering the revolver and chuckling, Wescott looked back at the three men.
“Was a fuckin’ rat,” he said, laughing.
The rest of the men entered the small room Wescott had rushed into. A small statue rested in the corner of the room, inscribed Clovis, in French. A rat poked its head out from behind the statue before retreating behind it again. The men continued on down the passageway, stopping briefly to drink from their canteens. Shortly after resuming their journey, the narrow hall widened.
“Christ almighty…”, Daniels trailed off, seeing a massive circular room come into view.
The ceilings here extended higher than those in the passageway, though not by much. Enveloping the perimeter of the room like wallpaper, were skulls. In the center of the room laid a large, rectangular stone object, which my father immediately believed to be a coffin. He approached it, the others in tow. While appearing incredibly simplistic from a distance, the dark box was covered in various symbols, none of which my father recognized. He then proceeded to open it. What sounded like a breath emerged from the coffin and a searing pain coursed through his hand, as though he had been stung. He cried out in pain, clutching his hand, stumbling back. Daniels unshouldered his rifle, hands shaking violently as his finger slipped and he fired a shot into the coffin, putting a hole through the thin rock.
Their ears rang and something clattered to the ground behind the two men. Standing there, facing away from them, was Arthur. The lantern laid on the ground a few feet ahead of him, flame slowly dying.
“Where the fuck is Wescott?”, said my father, voice trembling.
Arthur turned towards him, face completely pale. He spoke in a deep, unnatural voice.
“He…”, was all he managed to get out as the wet squelch of a hatchet burying itself in his head reverberated throughout the room. Arthur fell to the floor, blood seeping from his eyes, now red. As he collapsed onto his side, still facing them, he smiled.
Just then, Wescott emerged holding his rifle, bayonet affixed. My father unshouldered his rifle and pointed it at Wescott.
“Wait,” said Wescott, as my father and Daniels both fired at the murderer. Daniels’ shot missed by a mile, his hands still shaking, but my father’s shot pierced Wescott’s uniform, puncturing his right lung.
Coughing on blood, Wescott said two words that would make my father’s nerves of steel turn to ice. “Not… him,” he said, drawing his Webley and placing it to his temple. He stared straight ahead at the coffin, eyes wide.
“Our God who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Accept me into your gracious arms ‘O Lord,” he sobbed, before pulling the trigger, grey matter and gore spraying the solid ground, the shot deafening to my father and Daniels’ already ringing ears.
Emerging from one of Arthur’s ears, came a small fly-like creature, which then flew into the darkness.
Daniels staggered backwards towards the coffin as the light from the lantern faded. My father followed. Using his boot, Daniels kicked the remainder of the stone lid off, revealing a skeleton adorned in jewels, rings, and a golden crown. A sword, whose handle was wrapped in rubies, fit between the skeleton’s hands. My father said he did not know why the two of them didn’t simply run the opposite direction. It was as though they were drawn by the mystery just as much as they were afraid of venturing outside what was illuminated by the still-dying lantern.
Daniels reached into the coffin, attempting to remove a ring from one of the skeleton’s hands, breaking the finger off in the process. A low roar emanated from the direction opposite of which they had entered. A fly buzzed through the air and landed on Daniels’ outer lobe. My father could only watch as it entered his ear, for as soon as he was able to verbalize that there was a fly, it had already burrowed in. Daniels blinked and looked down. He felt the strap on his shoulder and looked at the wooden and metal rifle he now held in his hands, his face reflecting off the surface of the sharp bayonet affixed to the muzzle. Daniels dropped the weapon haphazardly and stumbled towards my father, as if he had not walked in years. My father backed up, frightened. Daniels held up the bony finger in his hand and smiled, a pentagram carved into the middle of the ring and the script of a language unknown to my father, at the time, surrounding it. Daniels moved forward towards my father and touched his face. My father screamed in agony and fell to the ground, steam rising from his cheek, his left eye melting from its socket and dripping onto the ground.
“Put. On. The. Ring,” Daniels said, in what sounded like the voices of a thousand dying men.
My father ran, grabbing his rifle and falling as Daniels fell on top of him. Blood poured out on my father’s torso as it ran like a river from Daniels’ mouth and stomach, his body now resting on top of the rifle, bayonet extending out of his back. Daniels blinked and swatted at my father, his hands unable to make contact. The bony ring finger fell from one of Daniels’ hands and landed on my father’s uniform. A sizzling sound came from his chest as the ring made contact with his skin after eating through the green wool. Another shout of unbearable pain came from my father as he swatted the finger and ring away from him.
The buzzing sound could be heard once more as the small fly emerged from Daniels’ left ear and approached my father, still pinned under the corpse. He removed his lighter from his pocket and sparked it in front of the creature, causing it to burst into flame. An unholy screech could be heard as it fell to the ground, wings alight like a fighter plane that had been shot down, and it impacted the ground. My father stood up, moving Daniels’ body from atop him, and stomped on the downed creature several times before running to the lantern, now barely alight, and rejuvenating the flame.
That’s when he saw them. Hundreds of shadows without owners stood along every side of the room, blocking two passageways. They slowly began to approach him, encircling him with intent. He walked back to the center of the room, now his only option. Grabbing Daniels’ discarded rifle, he backed up to the coffin, panting. The shadows were closer now, nearly upon him. Removing the bayonet, my father painfully explained to me that he put the barrel of the rifle under his chin and fired.
As he lay on the ground, he found himself looking at the body of his friend, rifle still sticking out of his chest, propping him up like a pike. The shadows moved around him as though something in the way prevented their travel. My father, in a final act of desperation, crawled towards Daniels, seeking whatever was keeping the shadows away from him. Resting under his rifle-propped body like someone sheltering in a tent, was the skeletal finger, ring and all.
My father grabbed the ring off the finger and the shadows immediately stopped. He placed it slowly on his finger and the pentagram burst into flames. The shadows slowly began to kneel. My father looked around and gasped when he saw Daniels kneeling before him, his dead eyes staring up as blood dripped from his mouth, rifle still buried in his chest.
His now-purple lips moved, and in a scratchy voice, slowly said “My… king.”
My father walked towards the other passageway slowly as he moved to escape, the shadows backing away to form a path. Some of the shadows began to take form, but my father refused to describe them. He finally reached the end of the second passageway, and when he turned around, the shadows were gone. After climbing a set of rocky steps, like those he had descended before, a wall appeared before him, and using the hatchet still in his haversack, still slung around him, smashed through the mortar surrounding a large rock and pushed it through. Outside, he saw men marching down a street, who paused after noticing the rock fall to the road below.
“Hey!”, he shouted, waving his arm through the hole.
My father then pushed his head through and was greeted by dozens of German soldiers. As my father pulled his head back through, he heard shots ring out as the soldiers opened fire. He dropped to his knees and closed his eyes. Then the screams began. The sounds of flesh being ripped apart, throats being torn from bodies as their owners’ screeches ceased as they separated from one another. And then, there was silence. After hacking away at the wall enough to make a hole large enough to pull himself through, my father emerged to a street flowing with blood and bodies twisted and contorted like putty.
One of the German soldiers was still alive, smiling. My father had left Daniels’ rifle behind the wall, and had already dropped the hatchet.
In perfect English, the German spoke. “You are going to need this,” he said, gesturing towards the man’s uniform. The man then fell to the ground, eyes rolling into the back of his head, a small fly emerging from his ear. My father donned the German’s uniform, ditching the Kaiser’s garb after leaving the city, and walked towards Allied lines.
“American, American!”, my father shouted, hands raised, wearing only his undergarments and boots as he approached a trench.
“Christ, get a medic!”, shouted a British soldier.
My father then collapsed.
He awoke in a field hospital and was shipped home. He was fitted with a prosthetic face, covering his lower left side, along with a glass eye, as his upper facial structure remained intact, though heavily scarred from burning.
While he shared his truth, the ordeal was chocked up to shell shock by the War Department. The official story was that my father had been separated from the rest of his comrades during the bombardment of the city, lost his eye, and suffered facial burns due to fire and debris, while the gunshot wound was sustained when a German soldier wrestled with my father for his rifle and it fired, but he managed to survive.
He received several medals and what he called a “wound stripe”, which was the equivalent of the Purple Heart, at the time. He had the option to receive a Purple Heart retroactively later in life after it was introduced, which he declined.
After my father finished speaking, he turned away and looked back out the window, the red cardinal still perched on the branch looking in at him. He smiled at the bird, and I slowly walked back downstairs.
“You were up there for quite a while, is everything okay?”, the nurse, who had been waiting on the couch in the living room, asked me.
“Yeah.. I… uh, was having a conversation with him,” I said.
She laughed.
“Robert? Talking? That’s hilarious. I’ve been here every day for a month now and he’s only spoken to me once,” she laughed.
“What did he say?”, I asked.
“He asked me to put on a ring.”
My father died five months later. He was buried with full military honors, dressed in uniform. As he was lowered into his eternal resting place and the preacher waxed lyrical about his good deeds, I held my hands in my pockets. It was quite chilly that day. In one hand, I gripped the funeral program. In the other, I held the ring that had been on my father’s finger just before he was transferred to the hearse.
In the years following his death, I have traveled to Tournai and spoken with numerous scholars and occultists regarding the events surrounding my father’s experience. This is what I have found. While I have grown distrustful of the internet in my advanced age, you are free to confirm the following through your own computer research.
Clovis I was the King of Frankia from 481-511 AD, ruling an area which comprised much of what is now northwestern France and surrounding areas including Belgium, where modern day Tournai sits. Relics of his reign were discovered in the late 1600s, including a trove of gold and other precious jewels, metals, and rings whose worth was beyond measure. Though converting to a form of Christianity later in his short life, he was born into a certain breed of pagans and held various beliefs that made those closest to him fearful. Vast riches seemingly did not satisfy Clovis, as he would begin practicing and experimenting in Goetia, a Greco-Roman form of sorcery that existed long before the term witchcraft was coined. While mostly consisting of innocuous spells and methods of divination, there also existed a more supernatural element. Namely, the practice of summoning angels, demons, and other entities beyond our realm of understanding. The Catholic Church, having later granted him sainthood, sought to cover up his sorcerous past, and, given the power of the Church at the time, information on the topic is incredibly limited, found only in centuries-old texts and through the mouths of orators and mystics.
One of the works that especially intrigued Clovis was the Testament of Solomon, a text written in Greek, in which Clovis was fluent. The Testament speaks of King Solomon, who after confronting a demon, receives a ring, known as the Seal of Solomon, from the archangel Michael, emblazoned with a pentagram, giving him the ability to bring demons under his control by branding them with the sigil. Solomon wielded the Seal, bringing countless demons under his behest, including Baphomet; Mephistopheles himself. While certainly equipped with a strong conventional army, Clovis found the prospect of controlling an otherworldly force loyal only to him too tempting, sending multiple expeditions to Israel to search for the ring, his lust for control growing stronger as the years passed. The ring was found, and the fruits of Clovis’ labor could finally be reaped. Shortly after summoning and employing demons to do his bidding in the catacombs, the king died. While the Catholic Church claimed his body was moved to an abbey in Paris, I know that he still rests in the depths below the soil of Tournai.
I understand that this is much to process, though as I approach ninety-seven years of age, it is time for me to bestow the greatest honor upon you, my child. When you were diagnosed with cancer, you feared the worst, but I called upon my servant, Sphendonaêl, to heal you. When your mother and I began to fall out of love, I beckoned Buldumêch to mend our marriage. When you hear of miracles, my child, they are not of any god. The Testament explains it much better than I can.
So Ornias took the finger-ring, and went off to Beelzeboul, who has kingship over the demons. He said to him: "Hither! Solomon calls thee." But Beelzeboul, having heard, said to him: "Tell me, who is this Solomon of whom thou speakest to me?" Then Ornias threw the ring at the chest of Beelzeboul, saying: "Solomon the king calls thee." But Beelzeboul cried aloud with a mighty voice, and shot out a great burning flame of fire; and he arose, and followed Ornias, and came to Solomon.
Once he was struck with the ring by the lesser demon Ornias, already behest to Solomon, our Lord became the king’s servant. You see, my son, this is why I named you Solomon. It is now time for you to take your place alongside Beelzeboul and reign over his legion, bringing blessings and fortune to our lineage and extinguishing those who trespass against us.
I know that you have seen the parcel I sent you alongside my letter. If you have not opened it already, it is time to do so, my son.
Put. On. The. Ring.

My father served in the United States Army during World War One, and like many veterans of the Great War, he returned wounded—both physically and mentally. As such, I never asked him about his time overseas and he never spoke of it, as though those nearly two years had never occurred.
That was, until he summoned me beside his deathbed, voice hoarse and dry from the respiratory medicines working to keep him breathing. It was the morning of May 19, 1979. A cardinal perched itself on a large branch directly outside his solitary window in the bedroom on the second floor of my home. He had lived with me for several years by this point as his health had deteriorated and he began to need round the clock care. Dementia had begun to gnaw away at his faculties and it was difficult for him to verbalize his needs or say anything coherent, also due to his lung cancer from years of smoking. We had visited his doctor the previous Saturday and he recommended my father’s treatment plan transition to hospice care. As his power of attorney and not wanting to pry him from the comfort of his recliner and the familiarity of his room, I hired a home health service in lieu of sending him to a VA facility.
As the light shone in on his recliner, illuminating his disfigured face, I approached.
“Dad, the nurse said you wanted to see me,” I said.
“Come… to me,” he said in two raspy breaths, slowly turning to face me.
I approached in shock. He had essentially gone nonverbal several months prior, typically using only one word and pointing when he needed something. I knew it must have taken everything in him to be able to utter that sentence. Eyes still locked on him, I reached for the folding chair I kept in the corner and opened it, setting it next to his rocker and sitting down, joining him at eye level. He took the glass of water sitting on the TV tray next to him and took several sips. He set the glass down and turned back towards me.
“I need to tell you about Tournai.”
My father began to tell me of his time in the 1st Engineer Regiment, in which he participated in several battles fought during brutal campaigns throughout France in 1917 and 1918, including the Meuse–Argonne offensive, in which he saw several of his friends die. I wondered in which battle he had lost his left eye and most of the left side of his face, and what kind of weapon could have inflicted such an injury.
In late October of 1918, less than a month before the cessation of hostilities, he and three other American combat engineers were embedded within a small sapper unit of the 63rd Division of the Royal Navy, who were in the city of Tournai supporting French efforts to fortify the city. The German Fourth Army had begun its offensive against Mons, about thirty miles west, and the forces in Tournai had been determined by French high command to be too few to effectively combat the Germans. As such, the French left their positions, though neglecting to inform the British and Americans, who had begun digging trenches and erecting defensive emplacements. By the time they realized the French had retreated to the larger city of Lille, it was too late to fall back. While major action would take place at Mons, General Friedrich Sixt von Armin’s Fourth Army would indeed shell Tournai, too. As combat engineers and sappers, the men, including my father—would have no trouble making their way underground, but under the threat of artillery, they sought shelter in areas where someone had already done the digging.
“These bastards aren’t going to cease, men,” shouted British First Lieutenant Oliver Wescott, as he directed the men near him into the cellar of an old home in the city center.
As Wescott looked back to direct more troops inside, an artillery shell screamed through the air, impacting the street outside, collapsing the roof onto the cellar doors. During the explosion, Wescott was blown off his feet into the cellar where my father, along with Private Lester Daniels and two British soldiers, had taken shelter. They were now cut off from the outside, in pure darkness.
“Are you men alright?”, asked Wescott, winded, but physically unharmed.
My father grabbed for his lighter to illuminate the damp, musty cellar. Flick. His face became illuminated, and as he looked to his left, he saw the nearly-decapitated body of one of the British soldiers, his head severed by a piece of shrapnel, head dangling from his neck like the last bit of metal you have to peel back after you’ve used a can opener.
“Fucking Christ,” said an American-sounding voice to his right.
Private Daniels stood up, taking a step back. Daniels inadvertently dumped his haversack as he stumbled to his feet, ration tins and hatchet clanging as they hit the cobblestone floor.
“Christ, Baker…” said a soft British voice.
Another lighter flicked, and the face of a boy, no older than nineteen, came into view. His skin appeared as smooth as a baby’s, with the exception of a deep gash on his right cheek. His eyes, however, appeared hollow. A tear escaped his eye and his lip quivered slightly. A large, bright flame appeared behind him and then slightly faded. Wescott held a rusty lantern he had found in his right hand, lighter in the other.
The room was large, filled with old furniture on one side, and large barrels on the other. My father looked around, searching for any possible exit point. The roof above them was constructed with heavy wood, many once-strong beams fractured by the explosion. One wrong swing of a hatchet, and the entire structure could crush the men in their escape. As Wescott berated his sole surviving countryman for shedding tears at the loss of his friend, Daniels pointed towards the wall furthest from the staircase.
“The mortar,” he said, matter of factly. “It’s new.”
My father approached the wall alongside Daniels, as Wescott walked behind them towards the wall. My father went to observe closer as Wescott brushed past him.
“Yes, it’s lighter here,” Wescott said.
The mortar of an eight by eight section of the stone wall that stood before the three men was indeed lighter than the aged mortar that adorned the cracks and gaps between the other stones comprising the walls. Not necessarily new per se, but definitely not original.
Lacking explosives and other tools that would be useful for dismantling a wall, all four men began striking the mortar around one large stone with their hatchets, hopeful they had found a way out. After several minutes, the stone fell backwards, leaving a dark hole in its place. A loud thud echoed through the hole, followed by a slightly muffled thud, and several more after that, decreasing in pitch each time.
The men all exchanged looks with each other, unsure of what they had found. After half an hour, a man-sized hole had been created, and Wescott climbed through, lantern in hand.
“What’s there?”, said the young British solider, who had introduced himself simply as Arthur during the demolition process.
“Stairs,” said Wescott in a questioning tone, almost as though he was confused by the concept of a staircase.
My father entered the gap to converse with Wescott, with Daniels and Arthur entering behind him. A staircase stood before the four men, though not one leading back to the surface. Past the landing the men found themselves on, a flight of dark, jagged steps led down to a corridor approximately twenty feet below them, the stone from the wall resting at the bottom.
“Do we wish to travel down there?”, said Arthur, apprehensively.
Another artillery shell exploded on the surface, the ground shaking followed by small chunks falling from the rock ceiling above. With no other option besides waiting to die, the four men returned back to the cellar to retrieve their supplies and rifles, and then journeyed down the stairs.
Greeted by a large passageway spanning as far as the lanternlight could reach, the men moved forward. A soft thump could be heard above the men, and small bits of rock crumbled to the floor. More artillery. After walking for what he estimated was ten minutes, my father heard a noise from up ahead. A large shadow appeared around a corner, illuminated by the lantern, small appendages dancing on the wall like a finger puppet, a large oblong head adorning the top of the form. What appeared to be wings fluttered on the back of it. Wescott drew his revolver from its holster, racing forward with the lantern to confront the beast. He rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks.
Lowering the revolver and chuckling, Wescott looked back at the three men.
“Was a fuckin’ rat,” he said, laughing.
The rest of the men entered the small room Wescott had rushed into. A small statue rested in the corner of the room, inscribed Clovis, in French. A rat poked its head out from behind the statue before retreating behind it again. The men continued on down the passageway, stopping briefly to drink from their canteens. Shortly after resuming their journey, the narrow hall widened.
“Christ almighty…”, Daniels trailed off, seeing a massive circular room come into view.
The ceilings here extended higher than those in the passageway, though not by much. Enveloping the perimeter of the room like wallpaper, were skulls. In the center of the room laid a large, rectangular stone object, which my father immediately believed to be a coffin. He approached it, the others in tow. While appearing incredibly simplistic from a distance, the dark box was covered in various symbols, none of which my father recognized. He then proceeded to open it. What sounded like a breath emerged from the coffin and a searing pain coursed through his hand, as though he had been stung. He cried out in pain, clutching his hand, stumbling back. Daniels unshouldered his rifle, hands shaking violently as his finger slipped and he fired a shot into the coffin, putting a hole through the thin rock.
Their ears rang and something clattered to the ground behind the two men. Standing there, facing away from them, was Arthur. The lantern laid on the ground a few feet ahead of him, flame slowly dying.
“Where the fuck is Wescott?”, said my father, voice trembling.
Arthur turned towards him, face completely pale. He spoke in a deep, unnatural voice.
“He…”, was all he managed to get out as the wet squelch of a hatchet burying itself in his head reverberated throughout the room. Arthur fell to the floor, blood seeping from his eyes, now red. As he collapsed onto his side, still facing them, he smiled.
Just then, Wescott emerged holding his rifle, bayonet affixed. My father unshouldered his rifle and pointed it at Wescott.
“Wait,” said Wescott, as my father and Daniels both fired at the murderer. Daniels’ shot missed by a mile, his hands still shaking, but my father’s shot pierced Wescott’s uniform, puncturing his right lung.
Coughing on blood, Wescott said two words that would make my father’s nerves of steel turn to ice. “Not… him,” he said, drawing his Webley and placing it to his temple. He stared straight ahead at the coffin, eyes wide.
“Our God who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Accept me into your gracious arms ‘O Lord,” he sobbed, before pulling the trigger, grey matter and gore spraying the solid ground, the shot deafening to my father and Daniels’ already ringing ears.
Emerging from one of Arthur’s ears, came a small fly-like creature, which then flew into the darkness.
Daniels staggered backwards towards the coffin as the light from the lantern faded. My father followed. Using his boot, Daniels kicked the remainder of the stone lid off, revealing a skeleton adorned in jewels, rings, and a golden crown. A sword, whose handle was wrapped in rubies, fit between the skeleton’s hands. My father said he did not know why the two of them didn’t simply run the opposite direction. It was as though they were drawn by the mystery just as much as they were afraid of venturing outside what was illuminated by the still-dying lantern.
Daniels reached into the coffin, attempting to remove a ring from one of the skeleton’s hands, breaking the finger off in the process. A low roar emanated from the direction opposite of which they had entered. A fly buzzed through the air and landed on Daniels’ outer lobe. My father could only watch as it entered his ear, for as soon as he was able to verbalize that there was a fly, it had already burrowed in. Daniels blinked and looked down. He felt the strap on his shoulder and looked at the wooden and metal rifle he now held in his hands, his face reflecting off the surface of the sharp bayonet affixed to the muzzle. Daniels dropped the weapon haphazardly and stumbled towards my father, as if he had not walked in years. My father backed up, frightened. Daniels held up the bony finger in his hand and smiled, a pentagram carved into the middle of the ring and the script of a language unknown to my father, at the time, surrounding it. Daniels moved forward towards my father and touched his face. My father screamed in agony and fell to the ground, steam rising from his cheek, his left eye melting from its socket and dripping onto the ground.
“Put. On. The. Ring,” Daniels said, in what sounded like the voices of a thousand dying men.
My father ran, grabbing his rifle and falling as Daniels fell on top of him. Blood poured out on my father’s torso as it ran like a river from Daniels’ mouth and stomach, his body now resting on top of the rifle, bayonet extending out of his back. Daniels blinked and swatted at my father, his hands unable to make contact. The bony ring finger fell from one of Daniels’ hands and landed on my father’s uniform. A sizzling sound came from his chest as the ring made contact with his skin after eating through the green wool. Another shout of unbearable pain came from my father as he swatted the finger and ring away from him.
The buzzing sound could be heard once more as the small fly emerged from Daniels’ left ear and approached my father, still pinned under the corpse. He removed his lighter from his pocket and sparked it in front of the creature, causing it to burst into flame. An unholy screech could be heard as it fell to the ground, wings alight like a fighter plane that had been shot down, and it impacted the ground. My father stood up, moving Daniels’ body from atop him, and stomped on the downed creature several times before running to the lantern, now barely alight, and rejuvenating the flame.
That’s when he saw them. Hundreds of shadows without owners stood along every side of the room, blocking two passageways. They slowly began to approach him, encircling him with intent. He walked back to the center of the room, now his only option. Grabbing Daniels’ discarded rifle, he backed up to the coffin, panting. The shadows were closer now, nearly upon him. Removing the bayonet, my father painfully explained to me that he put the barrel of the rifle under his chin and fired.
As he lay on the ground, he found himself looking at the body of his friend, rifle still sticking out of his chest, propping him up like a pike. The shadows moved around him as though something in the way prevented their travel. My father, in a final act of desperation, crawled towards Daniels, seeking whatever was keeping the shadows away from him. Resting under his rifle-propped body like someone sheltering in a tent, was the skeletal finger, ring and all.
My father grabbed the ring off the finger and the shadows immediately stopped. He placed it slowly on his finger and the pentagram burst into flames. The shadows slowly began to kneel. My father looked around and gasped when he saw Daniels kneeling before him, his dead eyes staring up as blood dripped from his mouth, rifle still buried in his chest.
His now-purple lips moved, and in a scratchy voice, slowly said “My… king.”
My father walked towards the other passageway slowly as he moved to escape, the shadows backing away to form a path. Some of the shadows began to take form, but my father refused to describe them. He finally reached the end of the second passageway, and when he turned around, the shadows were gone. After climbing a set of rocky steps, like those he had descended before, a wall appeared before him, and using the hatchet still in his haversack, still slung around him, smashed through the mortar surrounding a large rock and pushed it through. Outside, he saw men marching down a street, who paused after noticing the rock fall to the road below.
“Hey!”, he shouted, waving his arm through the hole.
My father then pushed his head through and was greeted by dozens of German soldiers. As my father pulled his head back through, he heard shots ring out as the soldiers opened fire. He dropped to his knees and closed his eyes. Then the screams began. The sounds of flesh being ripped apart, throats being torn from bodies as their owners’ screeches ceased as they separated from one another. And then, there was silence. After hacking away at the wall enough to make a hole large enough to pull himself through, my father emerged to a street flowing with blood and bodies twisted and contorted like putty.
One of the German soldiers was still alive, smiling. My father had left Daniels’ rifle behind the wall, and had already dropped the hatchet.
In perfect English, the German spoke. “You are going to need this,” he said, gesturing towards the man’s uniform. The man then fell to the ground, eyes rolling into the back of his head, a small fly emerging from his ear. My father donned the German’s uniform, ditching the Kaiser’s garb after leaving the city, and walked towards Allied lines.
“American, American!”, my father shouted, hands raised, wearing only his undergarments and boots as he approached a trench.
“Christ, get a medic!”, shouted a British soldier.
My father then collapsed.
He awoke in a field hospital and was shipped home. He was fitted with a prosthetic face, covering his lower left side, along with a glass eye, as his upper facial structure remained intact, though heavily scarred from burning.
While he shared his truth, the ordeal was chocked up to shell shock by the War Department. The official story was that my father had been separated from the rest of his comrades during the bombardment of the city, lost his eye, and suffered facial burns due to fire and debris, while the gunshot wound was sustained when a German soldier wrestled with my father for his rifle and it fired, but he managed to survive.
He received several medals and what he called a “wound stripe”, which was the equivalent of the Purple Heart, at the time. He had the option to receive a Purple Heart retroactively later in life after it was introduced, which he declined.
After my father finished speaking, he turned away and looked back out the window, the red cardinal still perched on the branch looking in at him. He smiled at the bird, and I slowly walked back downstairs.
“You were up there for quite a while, is everything okay?”, the nurse, who had been waiting on the couch in the living room, asked me.
“Yeah.. I… uh, was having a conversation with him,” I said.
She laughed.
“Robert? Talking? That’s hilarious. I’ve been here every day for a month now and he’s only spoken to me once,” she laughed.
“What did he say?”, I asked.
“He asked me to put on a ring.”
My father died five months later. He was buried with full military honors, dressed in uniform. As he was lowered into his eternal resting place and the preacher waxed lyrical about his good deeds, I held my hands in my pockets. It was quite chilly that day. In one hand, I gripped the funeral program. In the other, I held the ring that had been on my father’s finger just before he was transferred to the hearse.
In the years following his death, I have traveled to Tournai and spoken with numerous scholars and occultists regarding the events surrounding my father’s experience. This is what I have found. While I have grown distrustful of the internet in my advanced age, you are free to confirm the following through your own computer research.
Clovis I was the King of Frankia from 481-511 AD, ruling an area which comprised much of what is now northwestern France and surrounding areas including Belgium, where modern day Tournai sits. Relics of his reign were discovered in the late 1600s, including a trove of gold and other precious jewels, metals, and rings whose worth was beyond measure. Though converting to a form of Christianity later in his short life, he was born into a certain breed of pagans and held various beliefs that made those closest to him fearful. Vast riches seemingly did not satisfy Clovis, as he would begin practicing and experimenting in Goetia, a Greco-Roman form of sorcery that existed long before the term witchcraft was coined. While mostly consisting of innocuous spells and methods of divination, there also existed a more supernatural element. Namely, the practice of summoning angels, demons, and other entities beyond our realm of understanding. The Catholic Church, having later granted him sainthood, sought to cover up his sorcerous past, and, given the power of the Church at the time, information on the topic is incredibly limited, found only in centuries-old texts and through the mouths of orators and mystics.
One of the works that especially intrigued Clovis was the Testament of Solomon, a text written in Greek, in which Clovis was fluent. The Testament speaks of King Solomon, who after confronting a demon, receives a ring, known as the Seal of Solomon, from the archangel Michael, emblazoned with a pentagram, giving him the ability to bring demons under his control by branding them with the sigil. Solomon wielded the Seal, bringing countless demons under his behest, including Baphomet; Mephistopheles himself. While certainly equipped with a strong conventional army, Clovis found the prospect of controlling an otherworldly force loyal only to him too tempting, sending multiple expeditions to Israel to search for the ring, his lust for control growing stronger as the years passed. The ring was found, and the fruits of Clovis’ labor could finally be reaped. Shortly after summoning and employing demons to do his bidding in the catacombs, the king died. While the Catholic Church claimed his body was moved to an abbey in Paris, I know that he still rests in the depths below the soil of Tournai.
I understand that this is much to process, though as I approach ninety-seven years of age, it is time for me to bestow the greatest honor upon you, my child. When you were diagnosed with cancer, you feared the worst, but I called upon my servant, Sphendonaêl, to heal you. When your mother and I began to fall out of love, I beckoned Buldumêch to mend our marriage. When you hear of miracles, my child, they are not of any god. The Testament explains it much better than I can.
So Ornias took the finger-ring, and went off to Beelzeboul, who has kingship over the demons. He said to him: "Hither! Solomon calls thee." But Beelzeboul, having heard, said to him: "Tell me, who is this Solomon of whom thou speakest to me?" Then Ornias threw the ring at the chest of Beelzeboul, saying: "Solomon the king calls thee." But Beelzeboul cried aloud with a mighty voice, and shot out a great burning flame of fire; and he arose, and followed Ornias, and came to Solomon.
Once he was struck with the ring by the lesser demon Ornias, already behest to Solomon, our Lord became the king’s servant. You see, my son, this is why I named you Solomon. It is now time for you to take your place alongside Beelzeboul and reign over his legion, bringing blessings and fortune to our lineage and extinguishing those who trespass against us.
I know that you have seen the parcel I sent you alongside my letter. If you have not opened it already, it is time to do so, my son.
Put. On. The. Ring.

Hello. I a have worked in video for over 10 years and dabbled in photography always using constant light or ambient/natural light. I recently got into flash photography and I am struggling so much. For equipment I have a can r6 mark ii, a wescott fjx3 control and a wescott fj400 off camera flash. I cannot for the life of me get it working properly. So for example, I have been watching YouTube to get into it and it's helped but I cannot get the settings down to get what I want. I get me ambient exposure like I am supposed to first and then when I turn on the flash I always no matter what, bright day or dark at night get super overexposed shots. Especially when opening my apaerature, I only somewhat get decent results when I close my aperature but thats not what I want. I have looked into high speed sync yet still I can't get the photos. I know it has to be something in my gear settings I'm not doing right and I was wondering if anyone can give insight or know where I could go to get better instructions for setting up high speed sync.
Thanks for your time.

Hello. I a have worked in video for over 10 years and dabbled in photography always using constant light or ambient/natural light. I recently got into flash photography and I am struggling so much. For equipment I have a can r6 mark ii, a wescott fjx3 control and a wescott fj400 off camera flash. I cannot for the life of me get it working properly. So for example, I have been watching YouTube to get into it and it's helped but I cannot get the settings down to get what I want. I get me ambient exposure like I am supposed to first and then when I turn on the flash I always no matter what, bright day or dark at night get super overexposed shots. Especially when opening my apaerature, I only somewhat get decent results when I close my aperature but thats not what I want. I have looked into high speed sync yet still I can't get the photos. I know it has to be something in my gear settings I'm not doing right and I was wondering if anyone can give insight or know where I could go to get better instructions for setting up high speed sync.
Thanks for your time.

And that’s Godox. I was in search of an on camera flash and was intrigued by the Westcott lineup. I bought the FJ80SE and found it to be a reasonable option. The build quality was nice and the accessories that came with it were pretty good.
I found out that the flash is a 6500k light. It requires the use of an included gel and magnetic gel holder to make it 5500k. It’s also a multi-brand flash so the mount is a touch wobbly on an XT-5’s hot shoe.
I went back to the camera store and forked over another $150 to upgrade to the Wescott FJ80 II M. This is the exact same flash but with a touch screen and color temp of 5500. I wasn’t too concerned about the hot shoe mount at time of purchase. I take it home and the camera doesn’t register that there’s even a flash attached to the hot shoe. I tried updating the firmware…same thing. I tried it on my XT-3, same thing.
So now I’m forced into the Godox corner. I know there’s Profoto and even a couple Fujifilm offerings, but they’re way beyond a reasonable price point.

Hi everyone,
I’m going to be shooting lots of interviews all over the world this year and I’m going to have very little choice about the venues where I’ll be shooting. Most venues will be either offices or rooms in hotel conference areas (closed off , dedicated interview rooms, at least). I’m going to have some b-roll throughout the film, but it will be a good bit of talking heads.
For those of you who have faced this before, how have you approached it? Bring your own pop-up/muslin drop background(s)? If so, do you bring a mix of background colours/textures? How do you keep this as light as possible for travel? If I get an 8x8ft wescott x-drop pro can I just let it hang off the grommets from two light stands and not worry much about getting it taught? How do you keep things visually appealing and differentiate between speakers without lots of different backdrops?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions other than to scout my locations ahead or book a studio space and rent furniture to stage it (not options). 😁

HOLY SMOKE
Why the doctrine of the Trinity was found to be necessary in regard to either our Christology or salvation remains unclear. To study the history of the time would make it appear to be politically motivated. The Apostle Paul brought the gospel about Jesus Christ to an empire already crammed full of deities. The citizens of the Roman empire were extremely tolerant of foreign gods. The oldest and most accepted group of foreign deities were the gods of ancient Greece.
During the Roman period a new legend developed concerning Dionysus, one that offers intriguing parallels to Christianity. According to this legend, Dionysus was killed while battling the enemies of Zeus. His body was dismembered, but Zeus restored him to immortal life. Henceforth, according to the late first-century Greek philosopher Plutarch, Dionysus became a dying and then rising again God, a symbol of ever-lasting life.
This new concept offered the Roman Emperor a chance to better unify the ultitude of gods being worshiped into one triune/singular God most people would accept. This allowed the state to rule over one faith, one God, and one set of rules and regulations. In addition, of course this handed the Catholic Bishops a tremendous amount of power and resultant wealth. Any belief outside of their proclamation was of course, heresy and came with very serious consequences. (see The Inquisition)
The Trinity as defined by the Nicene Creed established in the beginning of the third century by Catholic Bishops and agreed to by the Roman Emperor states in brief: That Jesus is, co-equal, co-eternal and co-substantial (of the same substance, not only similar substance but indeed the same essence of) God Almighty. See Greek homoousion and homoiousian. The old seminary joke is there is only one i-ota of difference between the two, get it? There was actually a third belief held somewhere in between the two by the Arians that considered Jesus a mere (blessed) mortal. This died out as a heresy later. No pun intended.
An examination of statements by Jesus himself in fact would tend to indicate the contrary. When pressed by the Jewish leaders as to his real identity, Jesus responded in a way that adds great clarity to his admonishment.
John 10:33-36
3The Jews answered, ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.’ 34Jesus answered, ‘Is it not written in your law,* “I said, you are gods”? 35If those to whom the word of God came were called “gods”—and the scripture cannot be annulled— 36can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, “I am God’s Son”?
There is no such contention of (John 10:33-36) the scripture above.
If it is true that scripture is the best interpreter of scripture, then these contested verses would have to pass the litmus test of agreement with other verses. Here at John 10:36, obviously, he plainly states who he is and no one argues the translation.
As can be seen at John 1:18 (and others, such as “the firstborn of all creation”) Jesus is clearly said to be the “only begotten” of God. Even if we stretch the idiom to include the root word “generated” in some verses as an underlying meaning, the fact remains he came forth from God, and as such was created and exists, as a separate being. The book of Wisdom has some very interesting readings on this subject.
The Trinitarian will tell you there is “no separation in substance” between the three entities. They are “co-substantial” and that God is operating on one plane as three beings simultaneously. This of course would mean that God sent part of himself in the form of Jesus to be humiliated and die on the cross asking at the very end “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” If he is God, why did he have to ask?
Jesus was not co-eternal with God but indeed was, according to scripture, created by God, (ergo, having a beginning) therefore coming after God, not God himself. Afterwards, as we will see, he then remains a separate entity on earth and further, in heaven. All I can say is, “sola scriptura”. Never have I heard such pretentious meta-physical speculation in my life.
Further, and perhaps most telling, was the understanding of his disciples in the early times. The verse below clearly shows what they declared in no uncertain terms to all that listened to them as they spread the word of the gospel.
1 Corinthians 8:5-6
Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth – as in fact there are many gods and many lords – yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. All being Jews, it would have been total blasphemy for Paul or his disciples to proclaim Christ as God in any way. This is why Jesus, carefully, did not do so at John 10:36.

Subordinate to God

John 8:27-28
27They did not understand that he was speaking to them about the Father. 28So Jesus said, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me.

Not having the knowledge of God

Matthew 24:36
‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
In Heaven - nothing changes
Revelation 3:12
If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
Here in Rev.3:12 as we can see Jesus has obviously separated himself from God and revering God as “my God”. As in John 1:1 you cannot be the one, with whom you are with and/or owe your allegiance to.
For centuries the Catholic Church read the bible in Latin, already then, a dead language, and did little if anything to explain it or allow it to be questioned or understood. When questions were asked, plausible answers were given to pacify the person and to question the answer was to invoke a possible charge of heresy, not what you wanted any part of.
Verses like John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God had been cleverly mistranslated so as to offer an entirely different interpretation and give credence to the doctrine of the Trinity.
In a further attempt to confuse the partitioner and justify the Trintiy claim
John 20:28 where Thomas inspected Jesus’ body and to his amazement exclaimed “My Lord and my God!” (NRSVUE)
It has been translated without with the oxford comma for pause in the English vernacular after the words “My Lord”. This lacking comma changes the entire emphasis of the sentence and renders an interpretation that it was a proclamation, NOT an exclamation on the part of Thomas. The church now with that translation, proceeds to interpret that it reads Thomas was referring to Jesus as his God, or God Almighty. Of course, Thomas being Jewish and being well aware of John 10:33-36 would not have had anything to do with referring to Jesus as God Almighty.
With the proper comma in place the verse correctly reads My Lord, (brief hesitation) and My God! Exclaiming his amazement to both his Lord and as an additional acknowledgement to his God, the other primary party to this event. The fact he was singularly addressing Jesus does not mean he could not refer to multiple subjects as he exclaimed his astonishment with the situation. Obviously, John could have easily written “You are my Lord, and my God” or “My Lord, you are my God” if that’s what was intended, but he didn’t.
It is said a half truth is a whole lie. Later, I was given my first Christian history book that prefaced "By identifying truth with faith, one must teach and properly understood, does teach - that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts. A Christian which draws the line limiting the field of enquiry at any point whatsoever, is admitting the limits of his faith itself. He is also destroying the nature of his religion which is a progressive revelation of truth." Iver Buckinghamshire 1975
Even the Catholic Church, the originators of the doctrine, admit it is not the explicit word of God but rather the implicit word. It has been carefully polished, lied about, killed over and supported by spurious insertions into the bible over the centuries.
It was not until over 1600 years after Christ and the Apostles had died that the first bible in English was published. The Protestant reformation was in full swing. By then of course, the traditions of men including the Trinity doctrine, now became Protestant baggage.
After nearly 250 years of this in the mid 1800’s, two rather astute men named Wescott & Hort set out to compile the original Hebrew and Greek texts based on new archeological findings in Egypt. Alexandrian manuscripts, so called, of the New Testament in Greek had been found that far pre-dated and out numbered the manuscripts used to translate the second English Bible (KJV) in 1611.
A new Greek proof text for bible translation appeared. Wescott and Hort were heralded by the theological community worldwide as champions of the faith and defenders of the truth. Greek textural scholars such as Dr. Thayer and others now had found their Rosetta stone by which all past idioms could be compared. It was a new dawn.
With a new dawn comes light. Some of the most learned men who studied these texts concluded that some dogmatic assumptions of the past were incorrect. Regarding John 1:1-2 Dr. Thayer said, "The Logos was divine, not the divine Being himself."
Later Dr. Moffett’s translation properly read “and the Word was divine”. Wescott and Hort voiced different but similar concerns over the doctrine’s validity. These and many more, some of the finest theological minds in the world, still today, quietly but firmly deny the doctrine of the Trinity. Current bias are contested by a wide range of scholars (e.g.) John 1:1-2, Hebrews 1:8 (see James BeDuhn / Truth in Translation and Philip Harner / JBL, vol.92, 1973, pp.84-87) Their credentials surely cannot be denied. Indeed, they are revered.
Many seminary graduates and acting Pastors are afraid to speak out least they be shunned by the major orthodox owned and operated churches. Knowing they would be denied congregations and appointments they studied for years to get, so, the silence continues. Many have come to realize that if the average parishioner were told the truth on many subjects their congregations would dwindle to nothing. It is ironic that the story being offered today is the very one that is resulting in smaller and smaller congregations everywhere around the world.

I'm doing a sort of fashion/lifestyle shoot in a cafe soon, and I was originally hoping to use some nice big 5 bulb lamps I picked up, but I'm thinking about the size and proportion of the space. I got a hold of 2 Wescott spiderlite td5 with stand and directional shades that I've just been dying to use. Without those, I'd just use available light and my nikon sb-600 flash with a diffuser, which I've used with pretty great success.
What would pull you to shoot with more or less lighting one way or another?

Hey guys I’m looking to get some new ac/dc strobes most likely a couple Wescott fj400s. Do you find there are a lot of sales on lighting during the holidays? Just wondering if I should wait or just buy it now. Thanks!