It was just a raid. The Krr'za'skrr had left almost as soon as they arrived. Just drop into orbit, hit the main population centres, and pull back again before reinforcements could arrive. They hadn't stayed more than a day. A day had been enough for what they came to do.
​
Everyone was dead. Well, almost everyone. A few like me had managed to find some corner to hide in, or slipped through the net entirely and made it out of the town. Some had been hit and left for dead, but made it through the night. Not many, though; the aliens liked to finish defeated enemies with a knife, some kind of ritual. A couple of people had survived pinned under the bodies of their families and friends.
​
All together, out of the whole town of thirty thousand people a few dozen were left. Maybe a hundred or two... I'm not sure the exact count, but it wasn't even enough to fill the sports hall of my school, which is where they put us. The military had also set up a bunch of screens up displaying the names of the dead, collected from the ID chips on the bodies, so we could check for our families. See if there was still hope.
​
There wasn't. Names were added to the list as the bodies were found, so you could see who they'd been found with. My dad had been with a bunch of other men; militia. He must have died in the trenches at the edge of town. I didn't react when I read his name because really, I'd already known. I kept scanning down the list. Shelter six, our neighbourhood's shelter, was there. I could tell from the cluster of names I recognised: neighbours, friends, kids I'd played in the street with. But not my mother, and not my brother.
​
They were further down. It didn't say where they were found, or what had happened to them. But the names were right next to each other. I'll never know how they died. Shot down in an alley, caught in an explosion... or cornered, and finished with knives. I wake up some nights, sweating, still seeing the afterimage of their deaths. Different scenario each time; which nightmare is true, I'll never know, and that's for the best. At least I know they were together.
​
I went back to the cot that had been set out for me and I cried until I physically couldn't any more. No one tried to comfort me; they all had their own misery to carry without taking on mine. A few more survivors were brought to the school, and a lot more names were added to the board. Almost everyone in the shelters had been slaughtered; they might have protected people from stray shots, but they'd done almost nothing to keep the roaches out. The ones who'd survived were the ones like me who found somewhere else to hide.
​
After three days sitting on a cot eating nothing but military rations, a lieutenant came and announced that we were being shipped out. Just like that, New Montana was being abandoned. They war planners had realised what anyone with half a brain could have told them three years ago: that defending a small frontline colony like that was untenable. Less than ten percent of the population survived the raid. In the towns, it was less than one percent. Now there was nothing left to defend, it wasn't even worth trying.
​
They told us to go home pack whatever we could fit in one bag. Only things you really need. I sat on the cot for a while waiting for someone to take me home, before I realised no one was going to and I'd have to take care of myself. The streets still had bloodstains, and I passed a truck piled up with corpses waiting to be taken to the mass graves they'd dug with mining excavators at the edge of town. They'd brought the power grid back on line at least, so when I got in I stripped off the T-shirt and shorts I'd spent the last week in, and showered.
​
Everything looked so normal. Everything looked like my parents had just gone to the store and would be back any moment, bringing Noah with them. But no one was coming home again. I stood in the shower just letting the water run down my back until my skin wrinkled like dried fruit. After I got out, I didn't even bother to get dressed; there didn't seem to be any point. I wandered round naked, wet hair cold against my back, pulling out drawers and cupboards at random. Trying to decide which bits of my life I could afford to take with me. School art project from when I was eight? A framed photo of all of us just after Noah was born? The book my parents had given me - real paper - when I graduated from primary school?
​
How do you make that choice? A whole life, and you can only take whatever can fit in a backpack.
​
Easy: leave it all. The life I'd had here was over. The roaches had killed it just as dead as everything else.
​
I finally dried out my hair and got dressed, then I folded three sets of clothes and seven sets of underwear, and crammed them in the bottom of the bag. I had a super-folding coat, the kind you get in survival kits, that could be compressed down to the thickness of cardboard, so I took that too. I didn't know if we were supposed to bring food but I threw in a few cereal bars, just in case. No point in taking a phone, they'd all been fried by the EMP. Documents; birth certificate and passport. I found the physical copies in the closet in my parents' room. I took my mother's jewellery as well, in case I needed to sell it. A few more odds and ends, like tampons, and a knife.
​
After waiting a long time, I went into my brother's room. I took his blankey. I could leave my life behind, but not his. I needed something. I also took one of the family photos out of the frame, the most recent, from my last birthday.
​
When I got to the muster point I could see they were dismantling the shield emitter and crating it up. They were taking a lot of care with it, but then, it was more valuable to the military than any of the actual people. I'd say it hadn't done us much good, but if it hadn't been for the shield the roaches would probably just have flattened us from orbit.
​
The last I saw of New Montana was from the window of the shuttle as we reached orbit. All the way below us stretched green fields and forests. You couldn't tell a massacre had happened there at all.
​
Then the shuttle swung round, and there was the blocky, pock-marked troop transport that was going to take me to my new life.
​
I don't think anyone called me Leah for months after that. Whenever someone needed me they barked 'Olsson'. The nurses in the med centre giving me vaccinations. The cooks on the mess line. The harassed looking corporal who was supposed to be in charge of making sure all the kids had someone responsible for them, and then the civilian liaison, who had me and twenty other orphans assigned to her.
​
The less said about the refugee camps, the better. Prospero, New Phoenix, Regulus... I had my head shaved for the first time on Regulus. Lice outbreak. Apparently even in this day and age they can't keep the damn things down except with clippers.
​
Six months earlier I would have bawled my eyes out at the sight of all my long, blonde hair being swept along the floor. By that point, I was all out of tears.
​
Was I a good girl, who followed the camp rules and didn't get into any trouble? Was I fuck. The cliché for a kid like me would have been to fall in with some bad people, start hanging around a gang, get into doing dangerous things for stupid reasons. And I suppose, in a way, I did - although I'll leave it to history to judge how stupid it was.
​
The military were everywhere around the refugee camps. The worlds we were sent to were only a little further back from the front line; no time and no ships to take us further, and no one on Earth, or Centauri, or any other developed world who wanted us. The war had turned all the major worlds along the frontier into staging posts for the military build-up, and the military was responsible for moving us around and making sure we got fed. Another reason not to send us any further: it was simpler if the camps and the military bases shared logistics.
​
There wasn't much for a kid to do in the camps. They tried to organise schooling, but people came and went so often it was hard to get consistent teachers, and hard to keep track of which kids were meant to be in which class. And if you didn't feel like sitting in a tent while some shell-shocked old woman tried to explain Shakespeare to you, well, it wasn't like anyone was going to bother chasing you down. Juvenile guardians came and went with the same frequency; most of them saw me so little I doubt I was anything more than a name on a list to them. And any who did care enough to try and help... well, let's just say I didn't reward them for their efforts. Looking back, I kind of wish I'd cut them some slack. It wasn't their fault they were useless, they did the best they could with what they had. But with almost everything being fed into the war effort, what they had usually wasn't very much.
​
So I ended up hanging out with the marines. Why? Why does any teenage girl hang out with a bunch of young men with abs you could break rocks on. How old was I? I'd been in the camps a while by this point; pick a number that makes you feel comfortable. And however old I was, they weren't much older. Eighteen, nineteen years old, about to be sent off to the front where the casualty lists grew by thousands every day. At the time they seemed so mature, so confident, but I look back and all I see is a bunch of kids, trying to use bravado to mask their terror.
​
Those kids saved me. It would have been so easy for me to fall in with the gangs. There were plenty of them in the camps, running all sorts of rackets just below the radar of the authorities. More or less. Occasionally someone would get stabbed, a sweep would be done, everyone would get their tents tossed over and a few guys would get hauled off to the stockade. Things would quieten down for a bit, then the petty violence and extortion would resume, and nothing much changed. I could have found a place in that life easily enough.
​
But it made a difference to me, that the marines were fighting for something. A real cause, protecting humanity, while the gangs got themselves killed over petty squabbles and greed. So I chose to hang around the military base rather than the gang dens, without knowing at the time just what an important choice that was. Because they were heroes to me. I'd sit on a bunk listening with rapt attention as the one marine in the room who'd actually seen combat embellished his stories to the hilt.
​
Then I'd have to hide because there was an officer coming. Or worse, a sergeant. Those drill sergeants were mean as fuck, they didn't care if you were a little girl: no civilians on base after dark meant no civilians on base after dark, and they'd happily give you a few bruises to remind you not to come back. More than once me and my clothes got thrown out the front gate separately, and then I had to find my shorts in the dark while giving the middle finger to the MPs laughing at me.
​
Didn't stop us. And I say us, because there was a big group of kids who were always hanging around the barracks. Girlfriends, boyfriends, but also kids who could pawn stuff for you, run gambling, find recreational substances. I straddled all of those lines and more. Half the economy on those bases was run by teenagers wearing military boots and camo jackets three sizes too big for them. The gangs would have loved to get in on that action, but the bases and their suppliers were off limits to them, and they knew it. Get between a squad of marines and their weed, and best case scenario you'd be found in an alley missing half your teeth.
​
Life stabilised. The government started to realise the people in the camps were never going to be resettled, at least not until the war was over, so they did what they could for them there. Tents became huts, huts became proper buildings. They stopped moving people around so much, and communities started to form. The camp I was in got renamed from 'Transit Camp 331' to Concord.
​
For the first time since New Montana, I had friends. Both among the soldiers and the other kids. In fact, since I'd never exactly been Miss Popular back on New Montana, I had more friends than I'd ever had back home. Everyone on base knew me, and liked me. Partly because once I finally came out of my shell it turned out I was actually quite fun to be around, and partly because I could get things for people that they couldn't get otherwise. Having found myself unsuited to literature or history or any of the other subjects they tried to teach in the makeshift schools, I did at least get a detailed education in pharmacology and economics.
​
The drill sergeants still gave me the stink eye, but there were enough young lieutenants around who needed to take the edge off that they couldn't keep me out for long. I had friends, I had money, and I had a community. It was maybe the happiest time of my life.
​
And if I ever stopped to think about that, that I hated myself. Because it was like I was betraying everyone I'd left behind on New Montana. Friends, neighbours, people I'd grown up with my whole life until that day when the roaches came. But especially my parents, and especially Noah. I'd take out Noah's blankey, that I'd dragged all that way from camp to camp, and I'd beg him to forgive me for forgetting about him long enough to enjoy myself. And for leaving him behind, that night.
​
It got better, as time went by. Guilt fades. You never forget, but at some point, it loses its power to hurt you. Like a drug you're exposed to so often you develop a tolerance. And when the guilt doesn't hit so hard that you break down crying in the night, you can step back and ask yourself: is this really what they would have wanted for you? Torturing yourself over and over again over something you can't change. And that wasn't your fault anyway.
​
If the people I'd lost hated me that much, I wouldn't have been crying over them in the first place.
​
Finally, I started letting myself enjoy happiness. I'd found my niche and I thrived in it, and it might not have been the life my parents - or any parents - would have wanted for their daughter, but it was mine and I was happy with it.
​
So why did I leave it? I could have coasted in that life for a while, I finally had something going my way.
​
Instead, when I turned eighteen I joined the marines.
​
I told people it was because I wanted to get payback against the roaches. For my colony, for my family. That was a motive people could understand. But it wasn't that. I didn't hate the roaches, except in an abstract kind of way; they were too remote, too alien. You might as well hate the weather.
​
You think I was just a stupid kid dreaming about glory and medals and all that shit? That I didn't know what I was signing up for? I knew what war was, I saw it the night it came to New Montana. And I'd spent enough time around marines to know what happened at the front. Not that they talked about it much. But I saw the fresh battalions go out to the front, then get rotated back three, four months later, with people missing, and with people who were missing something in their eyes. I knew war, in the small hours of the night when some boy who'd just finished his first tour needed someone to hold him while he sobbed.
​
So how did I make that choice? Life, or death?
​
I signed up because the marines gave me life. When I was a lost, angry kid, those stupid, drugged up, immature jarheads were there for me. Maybe not always with the best of intentions, but they made sure I was fed properly, and wasn't hassled by the gangs, and had some place to go where I could have fun and forget I was stuck in what was the next best thing to a prison camp. But more than anything, because they treated me like I was a more than just a surname on a register. I was Leah to them, not just Olsson. When they looked at me, they saw a human being. One of them.
​
Isn't fighting for humanity the whole reason we're in this war?
​
I couldn't sit there, watching my friends get sent to the front, knowing I could be there alongside them and instead had chosen to keep myself safe so they could be fed into the meatgrinder in my place. I couldn't do that, and stay human. I didn't know if it was the sensible choice to join. But I knew it was the right choice.
​
Besides, the draft kept getting expanded. I'd probably get called up sooner or later, but if I volunteered I could pick the branch I was sent to. Girls mostly got put in the navy; less heavy lifting. I wanted to make sure I was sent to the marines.
​
There were four of us girls from Concord, barracks brats who wanted to join. Erin, Yukio, Valentina, and me. I waited a few weeks after my birthday so we could all sign up together. Val didn't pass the physical, but the rest of us got shipped out to boot camp a week later.
​
I left my mother's jewellery and my brother's blankey in a locker, with instructions for what to do with them if something happened to me. I was surprised by how much it hurt to leave them behind, but in the end, I didn't look back.
​
When I got to boot camp, they shaved my head again. It was like saying hello to old Leah again, Leah from the bad old days. Except this time, I didn't just have to sit and take it. This time, I got to fight back.
​
Did I say I knew what I was signing up for? I'd been dodging drill sergeants for years, and basic training was still a special kind of hell for me. Most of the guys arrived there as scrawny kids who'd never exercised in their lives, and they were still in better shape than me, Erin and Yukio would ever be. The girls had a much higher wash-out rate; they'd still get sent to the front eventually, the military was too short of bodies not to use everyone it had, they just wouldn't be marines. But the wash-outs were mostly the conscripts. If you had the will, it could be done. There were points where I thought it would break me, but Erin and Yukio kept me going. And when they were at their limit, I kept them going.
​
The physical demands pushed me right to the edge, but at least I was good at the other stuff. Squad tactics, weapon drill, memorising the infantry manual. One drill sergeant said I might even have corporal potential, which from a drill sergeant is like being told you're the second coming of Jesus. Erin and Yukio didn't do so well with that kind of thing. Erin was tall enough that with her buzz cut you could mistake her for a guy, she did better at the physical stuff, including hand-to-hand combat. Yukio sucked at everything, until they put a rifle in her hands. Calm, patient, and able to stay that way even when there were explosions going off beside her. She could put a round through the bullseye every time, under any conditions.
​
Ten weeks of basic training at boot camp, then four more mandatory assessment and assimilation weeks (no prizes for guessing the jokes) on base before we could be shipped to the front. They sent us back to Concord for that, to our huge relief. We slotted into the battalion as if we'd never left, except now instead of being hangers-on we were a full, official part of the family. Guys who'd treated us like kids now treated us like equals.
​
And of course, the younger friends we'd had before we left, we now treated like kids. We got to show off our gear to them, including clothes that actually fit now. And our fresh tattoos: a spear through a star. Of course, since we were proper jarheads now, if any of the newbies left their still-raw tattoos exposed we'd slap it. You know, for good luck.
​
Six weeks after we got to Concord, our battalion was shipped out to the front.
​
Continued here: Our Choices Make Us Human (Part 3)

I had a dream last night where in it I was some kind of soldier guy with a thick gun and I was just kinda walking around when I get a feeling of being watched and I here someone call out to me so I go to the voice which was that kind of nasally voice from the audiobooks and I got a little scared and I fucking swear it was Erebus from that one image you think of where he’s holding the book, it had everything. I remember the feeling of fear I had turning to rage and I remember the feeling of dropping the gun to start BEATING HIM I WAS SO FUCKING MAD I JUST REMEMBER BEING SO FUCKING ANGRY with a little bit of fear and I remember those tattoos on his face like bleeding or something and then I woke up with a chill in my spine and an hour earlier than my alarm goes off which never happens. Does this mean something?

TL;DR I'm in the process of working on a Fallout game/setting using the Mythras ruleset. In this post I will present my ideas so far and include a bit of my design thoughts and processes. This will be presented through headings, ranging from Skills, Careers and Perks. Feel free to critique and discuss ideas!
About me: My Mythras experience is not vast, but still adequate - I've also played BRP-engine games like CoC, Delta Green and Runequest for +5 years.
I do have access and have read Mythras Firearms as well as the Mythras Imperative. Me and my group(s) will also be playing using Foundry VTT, so some extra bookkeeping will be automated, mostly meaning that I am not super afraid of extra "bookkeeping mechanics".
My experience of the actual Fallout the Roleplaying Game by Modiphius has been of general disappointment, though it got some bits that I like. I'll use some wording and ideas from Modiphius' game when designing my own Fallout setting using the Mythras ruleset.
What am I looking for?
Help, tips and suggestions on the various mechanics of Mythras within the Fallout universe. In general, I would like to stay true to both Mythras and Fallout, though one would probably need to dismiss one in certain design situations.
Looking at the chapters/headings of this post, feel free to only comment on aspects you find interesting. There is no need to force yourself to read the whole post.
Why Mythras and Fallout?

• Skill-based
• Combat-focus
• Great system for cultures and cults/brotherhoods that fit well into Fallout's factions

Character Creation

Characteristics
It'd be great to have S.P.E.C.I.A.L.S but for simplicity we will stay with the Mythras or BRP base characteristics: Strength (STR), Constitution (CON), Size (SIZ), Dexterity (DEX), Intelligence (INT), Power (POW), Charisma (CHA).
Fallout otherwise have Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Agility and Luck. Five out of these seven have more or less a direct counterpart. Fallout's Luck and Perception will be partly covered by POW. Perception moves to become a skill.
Species/Origin
One needs not to be confined to just humans; I figure Ghoul and Super Mutant would be the go-to alternatives here aside from human. Additional alternatives would be Synths (3rd generation) or other robots like Mister Handy.

• Is it boring to just give bonuses and penalties to characteristics? Like +4 CON & -2 CHA to Ghouls, and +3 CON, +3 STR, +4 SIZ, -4 CHA, -4 INT to Super Mutants.
• This could also include some sort of ability, trait or bonus perk; like "Necrotic Post-human" or "Forced Revolution" per Modiphius' Fallout. Basically giving a bonus to Radiation resistance, prolonged lifespan, etc.

Pulp
How much of the Pulp Heroic character rules would you use? As of now, I only have double the Healing Rate, but might have to include other aspects also to make the game a bit less deadly.
The addition of perks will make characters more powerful. However, there is no magic that characters could benefit from. I would imagine characters will also benefit greatly from consumables and equipment in general.

Skills

While Fallout uses a smaller set of skills than Mythras and most percentile-based games, I think a mix would suit well. We don't want skill bloat, with too many skills overlapping or too many skills ending up being either useless or extremely situational. At the same time, having enough skills to let players feel like they can specialize and be the only one that covers certain skills is also a relevant approach.
I also would like to incentive the allocation of skill points into more niche skills such as Culture, Lore, Art, and Craft. This could be done by separating the pools of Professional and Standard skill points more during character creation.
In Fallout 4 skills were entirely replaced by perks. The Fallout 3 skill list includes: Barter, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Lockpicking, Medicine, Melee Weapons, Repair, Science, Small Guns, Sneak, Speech, Unarmed. New Vegas added a Survival skill. New Vegas also merged Big Guns and Small Guns into a Guns skill, with the design intention that there weren't any early game Big Guns to use. Big Guns would include Flamers, Miniguns, Missile Launchers.
Combat Styles are therefore something I would like your suggestions on. Should I handle Combat Styles more like traditional weapon types like in Call of Cthulhu, i.e., have Combat Style (Shotgun), Combat Style (Guns), Combat Style (Rifles), Combat Style (Swords), Combat Style (Blunt Weapons), etc.?
Right now I am working with the idea of having 5 Combat Styles + Unarmed. Them being Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Melee Weapons, and Small Guns. Is Small Guns to broad (making use of all sorts of pistols, shotguns and rifles)? Is Explosives a redundant skill? Especially so that you would need Athletics to throw an explosive. Perhaps have Explosives as just a professional skill, used to disarm mines, craft and handle explosives, and general knowledge about explosives.
As of now, this is the skill-list, with standard skills listed as (S) and professional skills listed as (P), somewhat arbitrarily:

• Acrobatics (P)
• Art (P)
• Administer (P)
• Animal Handling (P)
• Athletics (S)
• Barter (P)
• Barter (P)
• Brawn (S)
• Combat Styles: Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Melee Weapons, Small Guns, Unarmed
• Craft (P)
• Culture (P) - ***Merged with customs. "***Useful for knowing social codes, rites, rituals, taboos for a particular society. Culture relates to societies that the character has either grown up in, or ones that is foreign to the character’s own. Each Culture skill must be given a particular faction, nation or society to which it applies."
• Decieve (S)
• Disguise (P)
• Endurance (S)
• Evade (S)
• Insight (S)
• Intimidate (S)
• Investigate (S) - To make Perception less impactful. " Useful for investigating a crime scene, finding information in a book or library, spotting secret compartments and inconspicuous clues, and recognizing symbols. Search for clues and make deductions based on the clues. Remembering relevant information from previous investigations. Find a piece of information, such as a certain book, newspaper, or reference in a library, archive or collection of documents, assuming the item is there. Researching by reading books or other documents may take several hours. If the player tells the GM what they do, how they do so, and what ability they use, they should automatically succeed if there is a clue hidden to be found if their Investigate skill is high enough. A failure on the roll can mean that a clue is found, but it leads to other unanswered questions or complications. An extreme success could mean additional context."
• Lockpicking (P)
• Lore (P) - "This skill represents a character’s expert understanding of a subject that falls outside the normal bounds of human knowledge, standard sciences and classic subjects. It can include the history of a particular town, or a specific social class, but should stray away from subjects that are covered by other skills such as Culture. Lore specializations can be more general, of which successful skill rolls will generate more generalized knowledge. Specializations of Lore can be specific and unusual versions of existing skills such as Occult and Survival; 2100s Lore, Brotherhood of Steel Lore, New Vegas Lore, Moon Landing Lore, Fiend Lore. Specific Lore specializations will generate much more accurate and specific information regarding that subject."
• Medicine (P) - Merged with First Aid as I believe consumables such as Medpaks and Stimpaks will be used frequently.
• Perception (S) - "Entails how well you use your five senses. Observation and perception of threats and dangers. Discover ambushes, dangerous obstacles, or even notice visually strange things about people on a high success. Could be used to listen and detect scents too."
• Persuade (S)
• Pilot (P)
• Repair (P)
• Science (P) - This skill determines the chance to successfully hack computers. It could also include general scholarly knowledge of scientific subjects.
• Sleight of Hand (P) - The go-to 'thievery' skill.
• Stealth (S)
• Streetwise (P)
• Survival (S) - Like Medicine and Science, Survival might cover a bit too much for a single skill. "Proficiency at cooking, making poisons, and crafting "natural" equipment and consumables. Also yields increased benefits from food. Knowledge of this skill provides the expertise required to survive in extreme environments. Inherent is the knowledge of hunting, building shelters, hazards (such as the avoidance of poisonous plants), etc., according to the given environment. A character can follow a person, carriage, or animal over earth and through plants/leaves. Factors such as time passed since the tracks were made, rain, and the type of ground covered may affect the difficulty level. The go-to hunting skill. This skill could also be used to traverse the wilds or set simple traps. In neighboring, yet unfamiliar locations or biomes, Survival should be made one or more grades harder."
• Swim (S) - Perhaps redundant. Maybe just use Athletics, Endurance or something else instead?
• Willpower (S)

Culture

There are a number of cultures, but five basic types: Urban, Wasteland, Militant, Criminal, Nomadic. Any other name suggestions for these?
It could be relevant to try and differentiate Cultures with Cults/Brotherhood. Would "Vault Dweller" or "Brother of Steel" be more of a Culture or Cult/Brotherhood?
Urban
Urban would be the 'Civilized' one.
Culture/Lore: NCR, the Enclave, New Reno, Vault City, Shady Sands, etc.
Standard Skills: Insight, Persuade, Willpower; and four of the following: Brawn, Deceive, Endurance, Evade, Investigate, Perception.
Combat Style: Any.
Professional Skills: Art (any), Barter, Craft (any), Lore (any), Science, Streetwise.
Cultural Passions

• Nominal democracy – de facto fascism
• American exceptionalism
• The American Dream
• Rule of Law
• Freedom

Wasteland
Wasteland would be the more rural or tribal survivor.
Culture/Lore: Boomers, Children of Atom, Children of the Cathedral, Megaton, etc.
Standard Skills: Evade, Nature, Persuade, and four of the following: Athletics, Brawn, Deceive, Endurance, Insight, Investigate, Perception, Stealth, Survival.
Combat Style: Any.
Professional Skills: Animal Handling, Administer, Art (any), Barter, Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any), Repair, Streetwise.
Cultural Passions

• Never trust outsiders
• Unify all people under a single banner
• Eliminate the unfaithful from the world
• Ensure the safety of the tribe

Militant
Militant could include Caesar's Legion as well as the Brotherhood of Steel.
Culture/Lore: Brotherhood of Steel, Caesar's Legion, etc.
Standard Skills: Athletics, Brawn, Endurance, Evade, and three of the following: Deceive, Insight, Intimidate, Perception, Persuade, Survival, Willpower.
Combat Style: Any.
Professional Skills: Art (any), Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any), Pilot (any), Repair, Streetwise.
Cultural Passions

• Preserve advanced technology
• Ensure the long term stability of the faction
• Stand firm to your ideals
• Hate an enemy faction/culture

Criminal
I'm thinking raiders here mostly. This kind of overlaps a bit with most other cultures.
Culture/Lore: Fiends, Jackals, Khans, etc.
Standard Skills: Athletics, Evade, Nature, and four of the following: Barter, Brawn, Deceive, Endurance, Insight, Intimidate, Perception, Stealth, Survival.
Combat Style: Any.
Professional Skills: Art (any), Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any), Lockpicking, Repair, Streetwise.
Cultural Passions

• Make someone pay
• Hurt people
• “Omerta”
• Keep your friends close
• Chase the big bucks

Nomadic
This would be the more 'lone survivor' culture, or nomads traveling in small bands.
Culture/Lore: Commonwealth, Mojave, etc.
Standard Skills: Athletics, Endurance, Evade, Survival, and four of the following: Brawn, Deceive, Insight, Nature, Perception, Willpower.
Combat Style: Any.
Professional Skills: Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Art (any), Barter, Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any), Medicine.
Cultural Passions

• Always keep moving
• Don’t stand out
• Loyalty to the clan, faction, leader
• Love (friend, sibling, romantic lover)
• See new places

Fame & Infamy (Reputation)

One major and great aspect of the Fallout games is the reputation you can gain from various factions.
"Fame is positive and Infamy is negative. Both types of reputation are tracked separately, the combination of which determines one's reputation with any given faction. The benefits and drawbacks of any given reputation depend on the group itself. The characters may receive discounts with merchants, provoke attacks from hired thugs, or simply be treated differently.
Points are accumulated by various means. Completing quests, helping people, and generally making oneself useful will result in accumulating positive reputation points. Negative reputation can be earned by things such as killing members of a group, being caught stealing, lying, being rude or treating people poorly, betraying the faction or completing quests for the opposite side."

Careers

With this list of careers I would like to cover most (if not all) professions in the wastelands. Is there a career you think is missing or should be renamed? Is there a career who should have their skills switched around?
Agent (Assassin, Detective, Informer, Spy)
Standard Skills: Combat Style (Small Guns or Melee Weapons), Deceive, Evade, Insight, Investigate, Perception, Stealth.
Professional Skills: Acrobatics, Culture (any), Lore (any), Disguise, Sleight of Hand, Streetwise.
Bounty Hunter (Assassin, Mercenary, Soldier of Fortune)
Standard Skills: Brawn, Combat Style (any two), Evade, Perception, Survival, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Barter, Culture (any), Lore (any), Medicine, Streetwise.
Cook (Apothecary, Bartender, Barkeep)
Standard Skills: Combat Style (Unarmed), Endurance, Evade, Insight, Investigate, Perception, Survival.
Professional Skills: Survival; and any of the following: Art (any), Craft (any), Medicine, Sleight of Hand.
Courier (Messenger)
Couriers sometimes travel very long distances to reach their targets. You can be sure that travels are always dangerous.
Standard Skills: Combat Style (any), Endurance, Evade, Investigate, Perception, Survival, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Barter, Culture (any), Lore (any), Medicine, Repair, Science, Sleight of Hand.
Crafter (Builder, Artificer, Artisan, Handy-man)
Standard Skills: Brawn, Endurance, Insight, Perception, Persuade, Survival, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Craft (any); and up to two of the following: Barter, Science, Sleight of Hand, Repair.
Cultist (Guru, Hermit, Priest)
Standard Skills: Combat Style (any), Endurance, Insight, Perception, Persuade, Survival, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Lore (any); and up to two of the following: Art (any), Craft (any), Science, Repair.
Doctor (Physician)
Standard Skills: Endurance, Insight, Investigate, Perception, Persuade, Survival, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Medicine; and up to two of the following: Craft (any), Science, .
Entertainer (Acrobat, Dancer, Musician, Poet, Singer)
Standard Skills: Athletics, Brawn, Deceive, Evade, Insight, Persuade, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Art (any); and up to two of the following: Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Barter, Culture (any), Lore (any), Sleight of Hand.
Farmer (Gardener, Herder, Hillbilly)
Standard Skills: Athletics, Brawn, Combat Style (any), Endurance, Perception, Survival.
Professional Skills: Art (any), Animal Handling, Craft (any), Culture (any).
Hermit (Nomad, Radio Host, Wanderer)
Standard Skills: Athletics, Combat Style (any), Endurance, Evade, Perception, Stealth, Survival.
Professional Skills: Survival; and up to two of the following: Barter, Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any), Medicine, Repair.
Hunter (Forester, Poacher, Ranger, Scout, Trapper)
Standard Skills: Athletics, Brawn, Combat Style (any two), Investigate, Perception, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Survival; and up to two of the following: Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any), Medicine, Repair.
Merchant (Broker, Caravan Merchant, Money Lender, Smuggler, Storekeeper, Trader, Vendor)
Merchants are the primary source of items and equipment in the wastelands, aside from scavenging or looting from dead enemies. Merchants usually specialize in a certain area such as weapons and ammunition, food, armor, and clothing. Some merchants, such as scavengers or traveling merchants, carry a wide variety of items. Merchants operate out of either fixed stores or are part of traveling caravans.
Standard Skills: Combat Style (any), Deceive, Insight, Investigate, Perception, Persuade, Survival.
Professional Skills: Barter; and up to two of the following: Art (any), Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any), Medicine, Repair, Streetwise.
Official (Dean, Minister, Overseer, Steward, Tax Collector)
Officials are appointed or elected to an office, charged with some administrative duty.
Standard Skills: Combat Style (ranged weapon alternative), Deceive, Insight, Investigate, Perception, Persuade, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Administer, Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any).
Officer (Deputy, Sergeant, Sheriff)
Officers have a leading role in military or pseudo-military outfits. They can be police, military, criminal – self-proclaimed or appointed.
Standard Skills: Athletics, Combat Style (any two), Intimidate, Perception, Persuade, Survival.
Professional Skills: Culture (any), Lore (any), Medicine, Streetwise.
Politician (Advisor, Conspirator, Courtier, Delegate, Diplomat, Sycophant)
Politicians serve as rulers, advisors and policy makers for settlements, factions and governments.
Standard Skills: Deceive, Evade, Insight, Intimidate, Perception, Persuade, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Administer, Barter, Culture (any), Lore (any), Streetwise.
Scavenger (Rover, Survivor, Trader)
Scavengers scour the ruins of the Great War looking for valuables to use or sell.
Standard Skills: Combat Style (any), Endurance, Evade, Investigate, Perception, Survival, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Barter; and up to two of the following: Culture (any), Lore (any), Repair, Streetwise.
Scientist (Engineer, Programmer, Scribe, Technician)
Standard Skills: Insight, Investigate, Perception, Persuade, Survival, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Science; and up to two of the following: Lore (any), Medicine, Repair.
Servant (Captive, Slave)
Standard Skills: Endurance, Evade, Insight, Perception, Persuade, Survival, Willpower.
Professional Skills: Animal Handling, Art (any), Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any), Repair.
Soldier (Knight, Mercenary, Ranger, Trooper)
Standard Skills: Brawn, Combat Style (any two), Evade, Endurance, Perception, Survival.
Professional Skills: Culture (any), Lore (any), Medicine, Pilot (any), Repair.
Thug (Bodyguard, Boxer, Henchman, Mobster, Raider)
Thugs often work for a criminal operation. Sometimes they work independently as thieves, pickpockets and muggers, always looking for a victim.
Standard Skills: Brawn, Combat Style (any two), Endurance, Intimidate, Perception, Survival.
Professional Skills: Animal Handling, Craft (any), Culture (any), Lore (any), Repair, Streetwise.
Thief (Bandit, Burglar, Pickpocket, Swindler)
Standard Skills: Brawn, Combat Style (any), Deceive, Evade, Investigate, Perception, Survival.
Professional Skills: Lockpicking, Lore (any), Sleight of Hand, Streetwise.
Vault Dweller (Barber, Clinical Test Subject, Crematorium Operator, Fry Cook, Hairdresser, Jukebox Technician, Laundry Cannon Operator, Little League Coach, Marriage Counselor, Masseuse, Pip-Boy Programmer, Pedicurist, Shift Supervisor, Tattoo Artist, Vault Chaplain, Vault Loyalty Inspector)
Standard Skills: Combat Style (any); one of Deceive, Intimidate and Persuade; one of Evade or Endurance;one of Investigate or Perception; one of Stealth, Survival
Professional Skills: Art (any), Craft (any), Culture (any), Lockpicking, Lore (any), Medicine, Repair, Science, Sleight of Hand.

Perks

I've added a number of Perks trying to mostly be faithful to the original perks of the games. Characters can choose a single perk during character creation, than perhaps every other progression process.
Below is a selection of perks. Consider aspects such as balance and wording.

Perk	Rank	Requirement	Description
Action Boy/Girl	1	None	You gain one additional Action Point during the first round of combat.
↘️	2	DEX or INT 14	Instead of above, you gain one additional Action Point permanently.
Adamantium Skeleton	1	CON 13, non-robot	Your skeleton has been infused with indestructible metal. All your limbs Hit Locations receive +2 natural armor.
↘️	2	CON 15	When taking a Serious Wound to a limb, you roll Endurance twice versus the attack, taking the better result.
↘️	3	CON 17	All your limbs Hit Locations receive +4 natural armor (instead of +2).
Center Mass	1	DEX 14	Fire straight! When you make a ranged attack, you may choose to strike the target’s abdomen or chest location. Decide before you shoot. You do not need the ‘Choose Location’ Special Effect, but you may only do this once per Combat Round.
Educated	1	INT 12	As you learn, you grow. You gain one additional Experience roll during progression.
Gun Fu	1	DEX 13	You've learned to apply ancient martial arts to gunplay! When you succeed at a ranged attack with a gun, you may use that same level of success on a second target during the following turn but the same round. You cannot use any Special Effects on the second attack.
↘️	2	DEX 14	As above and increase the damage to the second target by +2.
↘️	3	DEX 15	When you succeed at a ranged attack with a gun, you may use that same level of success on a second and third target during the following turns but the same round. You cannot use any Special Effects on these attacks. Increase the damage to the second and third targets by +4 (instead of 2).
Inspirational	1	CHA 12	Because you lead by example, you and all your allies may reroll one Experience roll each during progression.
↘️	2	CHA 13	Your allies cannot harm you with attacks and can’t be harmed by your attacks.
↘️	3	CHA 14	You may spend 1 Luck Point to have an ally reroll an Endurance or Willpower roll.
Intense Training	1	80 % in at least one skill	Increase one of your characteristics by 1 point.
Light Footed	1	DEX 12	While sneaking, you never trigger mines or floor-based traps.
↘️	2	DEX 14, POW 12	You roll Stealth at decreased difficulty.
Mister Sandman	1	DEX 14	You are an agent of death. Your silenced weapons do an additional +1D4 in damage against surprised foes.
↘️	2	DEX 15	Your silenced weapons do an additional +1D6 (instead of +1D4) in damage against surprised foes.
Night Person	1	None	You are a creature of the night! Reduce any difficulty increase due to nightly darkness by one.
↘️	2	None	You gain +2 INT and POW during the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.
↘️	3	None	You gain +3 INT and POW (instead of +2) during the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.
Pain Train	1	STR 15, CON 12	Choo Choo! All aboard! While wearing Power Armor and taking the Charge action, all enemies in your path have to roll an Endurance or Evade roll. On a failure, they take 1D4 damage + damage modifier and are staggered for one round. Robots and enemies with a combined SIZ+STR above 35 are immune to the stagger.
↘️	2	STR 16	The Endurance or Evade roll is made at one degree higher difficulty. The damage is increased to 1D6 (instead of 1D4).
↘️	3	STR 17	The damage is increased to 1D10 (instead of 1D6). On a failure, they are also knocked prone. Only enemies with a combined SIZ+STR above 45 are immune to the stagger.
Paralyzing Palm	1	Unarmed 70 %	Your unarmed attacks gain the ‘Paralysing’ weapon trait.
Quick Hands	1	DEX 15	In combat, there's no time to hesitate. The Load time for guns is 1 lower.
Shotgun Surgeon	1	Small Guns 50 %	And I started blasting. As a critical Special Effect, your shotgun shot can gain the ‘Armor Piercing’ trait.
↘️	2	Small Guns 75 %	When you take the ‘Maximize Damage’ Special Effect, the opponent also has to roll Endurance or become staggered for a round.
↘️	3	Small Guns 90 %	On a critical success, your shotgun shot automatically gains the ‘Bonus Limb Damage’ weapon trait.
Steady Aim	1	STR 12, DEX 11	Stay on target! Hip fire accuracy is improved when firing any ranged weapon. Whenever you spend a Luck point to alter your ranged attacks, you automatically gain the ‘Maximize Damage’ Special Effect.
Terrifying Presence	1	SIZ 12, STR 10, CHA 12	You may take two actions to make an opposed Intimidation roll against an opponent’s Willpower. On a success, the opponent flees in fear. They must move away from you during this round of combat.
↘️	2	One of SIZ, STR or CHA at least 15	When you roll Intimidation, you may reroll once.

Weaponry

I've always seen weapon descriptions from Mythras to be a bit lacking (or rather confusing for newcomers) when it comes to weapon traits and Special Effects. For instance, most bladed melee weapons in Mythras are listed to have either the Bleed or Impale Special Effects (or both), making one assume that they are restricted from other Special Effects.
I don't have a solution to this, though, and I wouldn't want to list every single Special Effect for every single weapon. Either way, below are some selected Weapon tables without any Special Effects listed.
All costs is in bottle caps and straight from New Vegas. At a glance, some weapons seem very overpriced or under-priced, but there are factors such as ammo scarcity and other properties that come into effect.
One Handed Weapons

Weapon	Damage	Size	Reach	ENC	AP/HP	Traits	Cost
Bowie Knife	1D8+1	M	S	1	6/10		1000
Cattle Prod	1D4	S	S	1	10/10	Fatigue Damage	450
Cleaver	1D3	S	S	1	5/4		20
Chopper	1D4+1	S	S	1	5/6		800
Combat Knife	1D6	S	S	1	5/8		500
Hatchet	1D6	S	S	1	4/6		75
Knife	1D3	S	S	-	5/4		20
Lead Pipe	1D8	S	S	2	6/8		75
Machete	1D6+1	M	M	1	6/10		50
Police Baton	1D6+1	M	M	1	6/12		70
Ripper	1D10	M	M	1	6/12		1200
Rolling Pin	1D3	S	S	1	3/3		10
Shishkebab	1D10	M	M	5	6/12	Immolate (1D3)	2500
Tire Iron	1D4+1	S	S	1	4/6		40
War Club	1D8	S	S	1	4/8		75

Small Guns (Pistols)

Weapon	Damage	Range	Firing Rate	ENC	Ammo	Load	Cost
.357 Magnum Revolver	1D6	50/100/200	1	1	6	3	110
.44 Magnum Revolver	1D10	50/100/200	1	1	6	3	2500
.35 Auto Pistol	1D8	50/100/200	1	1	7	3	1750
5.56mm Pistol	1D6+1	50/100/200	1	1	5	3	1200
12.7mm pistol	1D12	50/100/200	1	1	7	3	400
Hunting Revolver	1D8+1	50/100/200	1	1	5	3	3500
M&A 9mm Pistol	1D8	50/100/200	1	1	13	3	1750
N99 10mm pistol	1D8	50/100/200	1	1	12	3	750
Ranger Sequoia	1D8+2	50/100/200	1	1	5	3	1200
Police Pistol	1D6+1	50/100/200	1	1	6	3	1000
Silenced .22 Pistol	1D6+1	50/100/200	1	1	16	3	80

Other Stuff

Creating Cults/Brotherhoods from scratch is something I haven't had time to do thus far.
I've created a radiation mechanic that works like this: Eating and drinking most food items or entering an irradiated zone gives the player radiation poisoning, or ‘RADs’. Characteristics drop at certain thresholds, and radiation poisoning kills the character at 100 rads.
There are five thresholds (20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 rads).

Rads	Level	Effect
0-19	No Effect	-
20-39	Minor Radiation Poisoning	-1 CON
40-59	Advanced Radiation Poisoning	-2 CON, -1 DEX
60-79	Critical Radiation Poisoning	-3 CON, -2 DEX, -1 STR
80-99	Deadly Radiation Poisoning	-3 CON, -2 DEX, -2 STR
100+	Fatal Radiation Poisoning	Death

Rad exposure is usually limited; only very rarely will zones be so irradiated that venturing into them results in a quick death. One needs to stand in +1 rad water for a significant time and more generally it is possible to move through radioactive water dozens of times before reaching the 20 rad threshold.
When exposed to radiation, per the GM:s decree a roll of Endurance should be made. The difficulty grade depends on the level of radiation. How often these rolls are made are up to the GM but in the table below there is an estimated period of which a new roll should be made.

Level of Radiation	Period	Difficulty	Effect (Critical, Success, Failure, Fumble)
Minor Radiation	Every hour of exposure	Easy	0, 0, 1, 3
Major Radiation	Every hour of exposure	Standard	0, 1, 1D10, 10
Critical Radiation	Every 20 minutes of exposure	Standard	0, 2, 1D10+1, 11
Deadly Radiation	Every 10 minutes of exposure	Hard	0, 3, 1D10+2, 12
Fatal Radiation	Every minute of exposure	Formidable	0, 6, 1D10+5, 15

Adding to this are ways to lower your radiation poisoning (paying a doctor, using RadAway, etc.), and having your Radiation Resistance improved through clothing, armor or chems.
I have more tables on this and that but reddit formatting is killing me.
TL;DR I'm in the process of working on a Fallout game/setting using the Mythras ruleset. In this post I will present my ideas so far and include a bit of my design thoughts and processes. This will be presented through headings, ranging from Skills, Careers and Perks. Feel free to critique and discuss ideas!
Edits: Formatting, added Characteristics summary.

I was just returning back from another interview. It has been the third one this month.
I failed to make the cut yet again.
Life hasn’t been easy for an ex-soldier with the economic downturn currently underway.
The COVID pandemic had also wiped out all my savings.
So I was open to securing any job that would help me pay my bills.
I hadn’t eaten all day and just passed by a McDonalds. It was crowded and I thought to myself, ‘Let me just order a takeout’.
I could see a few vehicles waiting in front of me.
There was a guy in his motorcycle honking incessantly demanding the customer in front to keep it moving.
He was a tall man with long hair and clearly looked edgy and irritable. Both his arms were heavily tattooed. He stepped down from his bike and started to walk towards the car in front of him.
I couldn’t make out what he way saying but I could see the conversation was getting heated.
I got down from my car and walked towards the biker guy.
As I got closer, the biker banged on the hood of the car and was pointing his finger at the man threateningly.
The guy in the car was looking a little alarmed. He had a young boy seated next to him.
The woman working at the driveway counter appealed to the biker to maintain his cool. He would hear none of it.
She then proceeded to call the police and this made the biker more irate. He snatched the receiver from her and hit her face with it. She fell backwards and started bleeding from the nose.
The biker then proceeded to turn his gaze towards the man in the car. He opened the door and dragged the guy outside.
He drew his hand back to throw a punch at him.
I caught his arm from behind and kicked him hard in the shins. He yelped in pain and let go of the other man.
He then turned back angrily to take a look at me. He was wearing a black jacket with the name Kenny embossed in front.
I said, “Listen Kenny. I have had a really bad day. So you either stop this madness or I am going to break your bones.”
He snarled and threw a punch at me with all his might. I swerved to the right and ducked just in time, causing him to miss completely.
Next, he whipped out a switch blade from his pocket and lunged towards me with it. I side stepped him and counterattacked with a punch to his plexus. He went down on one knee.
I caught hold of his knife arm and ordered him to drop it.
“Drop the knife kenny!! This is your last warning”, I repeated.
He started to fidget with his other arm around his shoe. I realized he had another weapon hidden in his sock.
So before he could attempt anything else, I twisted his forearm and landed a crushing blow to his elbow. It snapped into two and he lay on the floor yelping in pain.
By this point, other people came forward to intervene and help with the situation.
As Kenny was being led away by the police, he kept staring at me with madness in his eyes.
“I am coming back for you. This is going to be the biggest regret of your life”, he yelled.
I didn’t care and started going back to my car.
Then the man who was threatened by Kenny came forward and shook my hand.
“Hi. I am Rupert. That is my son Henry”, he said.
I waved my hand at the boy and he waved back.
“I would like to thank you for what you did for me back there”, he said.
“You not only helped me maintain my dignity but also helped me save face in front of my son”, he continued.
“This means a lot to me as a dad” he said.
I nodded in acknowledgement not sure what I was to add to the conversation.
He then reluctantly asked,” Is there anything I can do to repay the favour? Please feel free to ask . Anything. I would be most grateful.”
I thought for a moment. I could see the man was wealthy.
“If it’s not too much of an ask, I would appreciate a job if available. If you feel that is difficult, no problem. Forget I asked. No worries.” I said.
He smiled back at me warmly. He reached into his pocket and handed me a card.
“Please come to my office tomorrow. We can talk” he signed off.
From that moment on, I became the personal bodyguard and chaperone of his 8 year old son Henry. We immediately hit it off and became pals. I looked after all his son’s travelling arrangements.
We would also go to McDonalds every week for his favourite Burger and fries. I later learnt that his father was a very wealthy man who made most of his money during the dot com bubble.
I also became friends with the female employee at the driveway counter who had earlier been attacked by that biker punk Kenny.
Her name was Stella and it didn’t take very long for the two of us to start dating.
With a fulfilling job and a loving girlfriend by my side, my life was finally back on track. I couldn’t be happier.
And then one day - it all came crashing.
Henry and I as usual visited the McDonalds joint and I was surprised to see Stella missing at the counter.
I asked the staff about her and they said she hadn’t turned up today.
I thought that was weird. She had stayed over at my place and I saw her leave for work in the morning.
I tried calling her number but it was unreachable.
I dropped Henry at home and headed towards Stella’s apartment.
She had given me a spare key and I opened the door with it. Everything was in its place.
I tried her number again. It remained not reachable.
I decided to go back to my apartment to check if she might be there.
When I reached the door, I could see the lock had been smashed. The door was left slightly open.
I took out my side arm and slowly entered the apartment.
I could see a life size figure of Ronald McDonald the clown sitting on my sofa.
The famous mascot was sitting cross legged with one arm resting on the backrest. Just like how he likes to sit on benches outside McDonald outlets all across the world.
I was a little taken aback, but quickly switched on the lights to take a closer look.
As I moved closer, my knees buckled under my own weight.
It was Stella. She was the one who was dressed as the clown.
There were injury marks around her neck. She had been strangled to death.
I managed to call the cops while still reeling from the shock.
I also noticed her right hand which was resting on her thigh, was close fisted. When I pried it open, there was a crumpled piece of paper inside.
It read -
“She was really begging me for mercy.
Where was soldier boy when she needed him huh?
Boo Hoo….I’m Lovin It!!
I’m Lovin it!!
Signed Yours Kenny”
I could feel a surge of anger envelop me. And yet I lay there helpless.
Had it not been for the surveillance cameras at the entrance of my home, I would have been in jail by now.
The police could clearly see Kenny carrying Stella’s body and breaking into my apartment.
They put out a nationwide notice for Kenny and he’s been on the run ever since.
Even after 2 months following Stella’s death, the police were not any closer to catching the culprit.
But I did apprise Henry’s dad of the situation. His life was also at risk after considering what happened to my girlfriend.
But our collective worry was for Henry. We didn’t want to see him suffer for no fault of his.
So I started training Henry to take his own safety seriously. I devised multiple safeguards to keep him protected while being outdoors. Always ensured that I was personally there to drop and pick him up from school.
My boss appreciated all that I was doing for his son. He knew I had taken Stella’s death hard.
He was a generous and compassionate man and I liked working for him.
Although he did notice I wasn’t my usual cheery self anymore.
One day when I was waiting at the office, he tossed the keys of his new car at me.
“This should perk you up. Take her for a spin” he said.
“And also go pick Henry up from school”, he finished as he left for a meeting.
I got down to the parking lot, and there she was … waiting. The new Bugatti Chiron.
I opened the door and took the driver’s seat. The fresh smell of the leather upholstery was already lifting my spirits.
‘Boss was right! I am perking up’, I thought to myself.
I drove around the block and stopped by McDonalds to pick up the usual order for me and Henry.
I felt a tinge of sadness when I could no longer see Stella at the counter.
Anyways, I picked the order and started my way towards school.
As I went past the restaurant, I saw an old jeep parked by the side of the road. I didn’t think much of it at that moment.
When I reached Henry’s school, I parked the car a few feet away from the entrance. A couple of minutes later, I noticed the same jeep I saw at McDonalds go past me and park 20 mts in front.
I would have never given it a second glance had I not spotted it at the restaurant.
The jeep had 3 passengers. They looked like bikers with tattoos, beard and long hair.
And then there was Kenny standing behind a tree to avoid detection. But I spotted him.
He was gesturing towards them to get ready. I could see his Harley parked just a few feet away.
They were planning some kind of ambush.
The school bell rang and the children were already out on the streets.
I could see Henry at a distance in the courtyard. He was slowly making his way towards the gate.
I immediately called him on the phone and told him to go to the Principals office and stay there. I made it clear under no circumstances was he to venture out until I gave him the all clear. He understood.
He was safe as long as he was within the school’s premises.
The next thing to do was move to another location. The children were already pouring onto the streets, and the last thing I wanted was to see a child getting hurt.
I started the car and went past the jeep before taking the next turn. I kept driving.
Few moments later, the jeep caught up with me and the driver violently swerved towards the left causing me to go off course. My car came to halt.
The guys quickly alighted from the jeep and they were all armed to the teeth.
Kenny came in his motorcycle and stopped his bike a few feet ahead of me. He took out his shotgun and had it aimed straight at my chest.
The firing started before I even had the time to react.
I instinctively ducked for cover with my eyes closed.
But in my heart, I knew my time was up!!
As the seconds went by, even with all those bullets being sent my way - my body felt strangely light.
‘Am I in heaven already?’ I thought to myself.
I slowly opened my eyes and tilted my head upwards to take a peak.
And I realized I was sitting in an armoured bullet proof car.
The entire biker gang were mad with rage, doing everything possible to penetrate that thick armour plate.
Kenny was barking orders at his gang to continue the onslaught. He then pointed his finger at me and yelled, “I am coming for you.”
I looked down at the seat next to mine and saw the takeout I had ordered.
Just to piss him off even further, I took out my Big Mac and slowly took a big bite.
I sat there in gastronomic bliss savouring my burger, while being under a continuous hail of bullets.
The firing suddenly stopped. Kenny the psycho was livid as hell - to see me have a good time.
I looked him in the eye while I took a sip of my favourite milkshake.
And then, continued to chomp on my burger.
He looked a little crestfallen at how his plan was misfiring and then frantically gestured his troops to keep at it. The firing started again.
But it didn’t last long. They eventually all ran out of ammo and his buddies began to flee the scene, as we could hear sirens at a distance.
The attack had taken a toll on the car. But it managed to withstand all that damage. All that firing.
A life saver!
I looked at Kenny again. Only one thought was running through my head now.
‘My Turn’.
I switched on the ignition and rammed the car straight into Kenny. He hit the bonnet hard while the car continued to race forward.
He was clinging on to dear life with his outstretched hands desperately clutching at the sides of the car.
Next in the demolition line, was his prized Harley Davidson.
I hit it full steam and watched it smash to smithereens - with parts scattering all across the road.
Then, I hit the brakes and Kenny was sent flying 10 feet forward.
After impact, he slowly staggered to his feet - all bloody and bruised.
His face was swollen like an apple.
He was pleading towards me with folded hands to show him mercy.
‘This is for Stella. And She’s lovin it’, I said out loud.
I hit the accelerator again.

guys my friend is tattooing me tomorrow and i wanna get a lyric tattooed but idk which one, any ideas? ill probably get it in cursive writing.

Wolverine Issue #3: Loyalty Gaijin, Part 3
 
Written by: u/PresidentWerewolf Edited by: u/FrostFireFive
Previous Issue
 
From the files of Professor Charles Xavier Audio//Digital//Logan12X14C.WAV
XAVIER: Your students miss you, you know.
LOGAN: It ain’t been but a couple a’ days since I talked to ‘em. If they can’t get along without me for that long, and then I wasn’t much of a teacher, Chuck.
X: I mean, if you are gone, then they are alone with Wade.
L: You trying to make me feel guilty?
X: Am I telling you something you didn’t already know?
L: Look…right now, those kids are better off with Wade Wilson than with Wolverine.
X: So it’s Wade Wilson versus Wolverine, and not Deadpool versus Logan? I fear you may be selling yourself short.
L: I ain’t here for affirmations, Chuck. Wade does just fine with ‘em. It ain’t my place to be their teacher any more.
X: No?
L: No.
X: Why not?
L: I...
X: Well, Logan, I run a school. Let’s go down the list. Did you do something illegal?
L: Guess not.
X: Did you attack a student?
L: No...
X: Not even Quentin Quire. Admirable. Are you attracted to a student?
L: No! I get it, Chuck.
X: Maybe. Tell me this, Logan. Have your students expressed a desire to see you gone?
L: They’re just kids.
X: Hm. Just kids. Logan, when people go through a sudden change in their lives, their own self image can be affected. When that happens, a very common, very persuasive thought is that everybody else’s image of them has changed as well. They may be expecting praise or scorn where none is coming.
L: So, the rest of ya just need some time to hate me as much as I hate myself?
X: Do you truly hate yourself, my friend? No, I am talking about loyalty, in this case. The people who know us the best don’t forget so easily, Logan. You can’t erase all the good you have done.
L: Don’t be too sure.
X: Oh, please. Do you know where your students are right now?
L: I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me either way.
X: They are leaving. They are setting out on their own, as a team. You’re a better teacher than you think.
 
 
Now
One thing a healing factor doesn’t do is fill you in on lost time. Believe me on that. You can have your memory poked full of holes by some Canadian mad scientist, drink yourself under the table with a blue, German elf, or get shot in the head by an angry Japanese heiress, and when you wake up, you’re gonna be just as confused each and every time.
I don’t wake up tied to a bed very often, though. The beeping sounds, the venting air, the scent of disinfectants, they all tell me I’m in a hospital. The rattle of the chain tells me that I’m handcuffed to the bed frame. Forget coming to Japan as some roamin’ gaijin. They know I’ve got a metal skeleton. They know I can take a bullet to the head. Might as well have brought Wade and shot our way to the old guy’s mansion. Woulda been a lot less trouble.
Still...maybe I can do something for old Haru yet, or at least his granddaughter. Still a lot of ground left for my nose to follow. I listen and smell...no guard outside the door. I yank on the chain to test it. Thing is, this is gonna break at its weakest point. Between the steel cuffs, the aluminum bed, and my adamantium bones, guess which one gives up first? I’m out of the room, walking away in my own clothes in under a minute, and I got something I can follow: the scent of the fuel that cyborg used, and the scent of the man inside it.
He was a smoker and a drinker. Every bar I ever heard of has its own unique mix of the two; I could find my own favorite dive from a hundred miles away. I can find his in this city. His filterless, nasty cigs and expensive sake are still clinging to me, and to the men who carted his body off. My nose first leads me down to the morgue, where they must’ve put him away.
There is a single, bored man at a desk. Easy to sneak past, and then I’ve got the body on the table. I took him apart pretty good. Looks like the EMTs picked up every little piece they could find. None of it’s working now, but I poke through anyway, just in case...
There. Got a manufacturer and lot ID that I can look up later. I turn the piece over, and it’s stamped on the silicon: Hayashi Unlimited. Unless Mariko’s bending over backwards to get herself killed, this guy was sent by her uncle. Not that I had any doubts, but this is evidence that rules out any other business rival, period.
I snap a couple pictures with my phone, and I pocket the fragment. Shingen’s cleaners are coming for this thing, but I ain’t waiting around for them. I’m gonna find this guy’s friends, and then I’m working up the ladder.
 
 
It takes me all night, following the smell of my guy across the city and back. He had a fast food addiction, and I stopped countin’ brothels pretty quick. I end up in San'ya, a neighborhood stuffed to the gills with everything but money, and down an alleyway I find the bar. It’s a storefront, and that’s about it. A sullen old man is cooking prawns on a little grill facing the alley, and next to him is the bar, a short, shiny table with six seats lined up.
Four of the seats are taken. My guy’s favorite set, the second one from the alley, is empty. I take it.
The old man turns my way, his voice crackin’ like a whip. “Ugoke, gaijin hito.”
“Gimme a beer,” I say, and I slap a twenty on the bar.
The old man shuffles over and he peers down at the bill. “Anatahadaredesu ka?”
“He’s an American,” says the guy next to me. He’s got a split lip, a nicked ear, and neck tattoos crawling up over his jawline. Guy’s a fighter, and he don’t like me bein’ in this seat.
“Canadian,” I correct him. “Canadians like beer.”
“And Juro likes his favorite seat,” the man sneers.
Well that was easy.
“Juro ain’t comin’ by tonight,” I growl, and I get the reaction I wanted.
The man jumps back and pulls a switchblade. I’m on him before he realizes he’s made the biggest mistake of his life. I barrel into him, slamming him against the wall, and the claws come out. Knife arm is pinned, and I’m a wild animal right in his face.
“Your pal Juro came after a pal of mine. I gotta complaint to file with his boss.”
He’s smart enough to get scared, at least. “I don’t know anything about Juro!”
“You’re saving his seat for him.”
“Just...just protecting the bar, man. Right? Canadians are nice, right?”
“You tell me,” I say, and I twist my wrist. The claws cut gouges in the wall, and his forearm starts to bleed where he’s pinned.
“Okay! Okay! Juro is a friend.”
“Coworker?”
He snaps his mouth shut, fights his fear. He’s gonna lose.
“Just tell me who your boss is, and you get to keep the hand,” I say.
Cold steel cuts through me, and I drop Juro’s buddy. I look down, and the end of a sword, a whole damn sword, is coming outta my stomach.
“Shingen’s men work together,” a voice whispers in my ear. The guy I dropped stands up, a cruel little smile on his face, and he gets his knife ready. I almost feel sorry for them.
 
 
About five minutes later, the bartender’s decided to take my money after all. The beer is pretty good. I’m about the furthest thing from a beer snob you can get, but I like them a little heavier. Juro’s seat is comfortable. He knew how to pick ‘em. The bartender hands me a damp rag, and I start to wipe the blood off my knuckles.
He dumps a pile of rags on the counter, and waves around at the room. He wants me to clean the counter. And the seats that are left. And the whole damn floor? Nah.
“Make him do it.” I point to Juro’s buddy, who is sitting up against the wall, cradling what used to be his left hand. The old man yells something in Japanese and tries to take the beer out of my hand. This guy isn’t afraid of anything.
“Fine.” I get up and I walk over to Juro’s friend. “You want to talk?”
He spits at my feet.
I crouch down next to him. He leans away in fear. “You smell like it, too,” I say, sniffing around him. Underneath the sour booze and old smoke, it’s that fuel again. Juro must have been running on something custom made. I picked this up earlier, on my way here. A new, clean warehouse near the water. Security roaming around. Enough lights and sensors to spot a couple of mosquitos flyin’ by.
I’m outside the place as the afternoon sun is starting to slip away. It reeks so bad anyone could’ve found it. I don’t wait around, as I don’t plan on making an appointment.
The first few guards surprise me by firing tranquilizers instead of bullets. The sudden burst of cold as they hit me slows me down, but they don’t have enough to keep me there. I can feel my body metabolizing the drug, feel its effects rise and fall every time I get stung with a new volley. I’m in check as I attack, claws out. I’m not killing anyone. I don’t want to see the blood fly. I’m not here to put them down.
The weapons, though, end up diced and cubed on the asphalt, and I got no problem sending a security guard to dreamland. Sirens are already going as I cut through the side door and get inside. More security, and they’re lined up with real guns. Behind them...good god, enough gas to blow us to Asteroid M, refining equipment, cracklin’ ozone, and drugs. Stimulants, opiates, and some new stuff I can’t pick out.
And I just noticed, this place goes down. Way down. There are echoes under my feet.
“Well, boys?” I ask. At this point, they’ve all got a pretty good idea of who I am, even if they haven’t heard of me. “Let’s get started. We ain’t doin’ this the easy way.”
They part right in the middle, like good soldiers. This is because they are good soldiers. This is the level of the organization I’m at, the true believers, the ones who are doing this for either lots of money or more than just money. Standing there between them is the guy on top, at least at the moment. He’s wearing silk robes, hair in a top knot, belt with a long sword. Beneath it all, the way he carries himself, he’s a killer.
“Mr. Logan,” he says in a deep, measured tone. He’s going for unconcerned, restrained, superior, but I can hear his heart pounding. He’s furious.
I sniff the air. Yep. “You’re a Harada.” It catches him by surprise, but he hides it well. “Shingen’s son, is my guess.”
“Close enough. Harada Kenuichio. Proper men from Japan know to fear the name.”
“I ain’t never been accused of bein’ proper, bub.”
“I have no doubt. You have been acting like a true gaijin, Mr. Logan, putting your nose where it does not belong.”
“Where Haru Hayashi is concerned, I got more right to be here than you do.”
He flashes me a smug little smile. “As I said, a true gaijin. You should know, regardless of what you do now, the contract has been sealed. Your mission is a failure.”
Mission? Mariko mentioned a contract before she shot me. “Look, bub, I don’t speak the local language, and your English ain’t makin’ sense either.”
Now he looks concerned. “Wait. You are not here for...but you are a mutant?”
“Last I checked.”
That smug smile again. “It is too bad you will not speak with Mariko again. I would enjoy seeing the look on your face.” Harada holds out one hand, and then he lowers it. His men lower their weapons at the same time, same speed. “You have a mutant ability to heal. I have no desire to throw my men’s lives away if they cannot inflict lasting damage.”
He draws his blade, a steel katana that glints emerald in the factory lights. Suddenly, it flashes with energy, taking on a bright glow of its own. He slashes down, and the tip of the sword goes clean through the concrete floor, leaving a crescent at his feet.
“That honor now falls to me.”
 
Next: The oldest friends

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

So awhile ago I had posted on here that I wanted a paramore tattoo somewhere, I'm thinking I'm just going to get the BNE butterfly on my thigh, but I'm not sure, it's my favorite paramore album, but I'm also thinking of just getting "Careful" tattooed somewhere in cursive, what do you guys think? :)

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
   
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
   
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
   
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”
   

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

Hello! I was recently recommended the ambition soldier tattoo gun as a good wireless starter gun, but I wanted to ask y’all if you had any thoughts/recommendations? I’ve gotten a bit tired of stick and pokes, so I’m gonna give this a go.

Hello all, first time poster here, for everyone that’s not interested in reading the niddy griddy I’ve posted a TLDR at the bottom.
So, I’m making this post, because I have a very religious family, my father is a Christian pastor, my family are Christian missionaries, and although they are a bit open minded, it does not exclude the fact that they think Satanism is of course “evil”.
For some background, this family is on my father side, and they practically raised me when I was a kid, they took me out of a really bad situation that my mother had put me in and let me live with them for for a couple of years and they took me to church with them and I got “saved”. But even when I was a kid, I always felt very uncomfortable in the church, I never felt like I’ve belonged, and I always had questions that were rude to get answers from I guess, and I got older I realize that I wanted to be in the church because I wanted to have that acceptance and that connection, that community and safety I never received as a child. And, of course, big magic man in the sky make all mistakes go away? Sounds like a sweet deal right? Lol. But years past and I got myself into therapy and I realize that I was abused when I was a kid and I did not like the way that the church would always Band-Aid what happened to me: things happen for a reason, love the sinner hate the sin, forgive, God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers, all that bullshit. It made me feel unjustified, and it made me feel like I had no power, like I was weak and whatever happened to me was just in God’s plan and I needed to use my testimonial to get others to come to Christ, more bullshit. And it wasn’t until I found Satanism that I realized that I was justified in my anger, my anger is my power, and what happened to me was not right, I am powerful, I make my own destiny, and I choose to be good person regardless of what happened to me and I don’t need a Bible to be my moral compass.
However, I am respectful, every time they wanted me to pray with them or every time they wanted me to do something I would do it, and not attend church as I got older, or just respectfully distanced myself. They always wanted me to come back to church, but I always declined and I just kept it hidden. My religion is my business, but unfortunately, the cat was let out of the bag a couple months ago, and it went as horribly as you would expect. My dad was crying telling me about how he was worried about the salvation of my soul, my aunt couldn’t believe it saying that Christ was still in my heart and as a child I was so happy when I was in the church and she was crying too. It was a whole mess, but they eventually dropped it.
Leading up to now, I’ve moved states away, I’m finally getting my weight loss on track, finally have a good career with good money and I’m getting all my tattoos I’ve ever wanted, which includes a giant Lucifer tattoo on my shoulder lol and I have a reunion coming up in August. So, yes, you can say that I’m going to be turning a bit of heads when I arrive. I’m not doing this to shock anybody, I’m doing this because this is the person I’ve always wanted to be and I want them to understand that you can still be a good person without Christ, without the church. But I already know that my family who hasn’t seen me that our missionaries might come at me with questions, concerns and unwanted prayers. I don’t want to be rude, but there’s a part of me that thinks that I would have to be in order to set my boundaries. I have absolutely no problem with telling them things like “I’m uncomfortable with this conversation, let’s drop it” or “No thanks, I don’t need prayers.” They are so used to seeing a meek, chubby, shy little woman, and I’m not that anymore. I was only that because it pleased everybody, I was only that because that’s what I was used to being to survive, to be accepted. Being a Satanist to me, means so much. I feel like because of Satanism I was set free, getting to blossom into the strong woman who doesn’t take shit from anybody anymore, who sets boundaries, who says what she feels, and who glows in her own right, in her own way.
But I would still like to be respectful as I said, so I’m coming to this Reddit post to see if anybody has some advice for me? If anyone has a similar story with their family or friends? What did you say to justify yourself or set your boundaries? What happened? Any certain phrases or words you used? Any advice is appreciated! Thanks for the read.
TLDR; Christian family reunion coming in two months, my appearance has drastically changed and so has my attitude. I would like some advice on how to combat theire pestering or concerns about me being openly Satanist.

Hello! It's Goody and I'm finally back with some fun comps to play!
All of these comps are based and centred around the 20 New Artefacts coming next patch! (Here's the Full List)
This is part of a collaboration I did with other TFT Creators called the Composition Competition. So big shout out to Rapid, Alan and Nomsy Diff for their contributions, I think we really cooked with this one! Please go show your support!
In total, there's around 30 comps I'll cover. Some of which you'll have never seen before but others are just slight variations of existing comps.
That is due to some Artifacts not being unique enough to build entire comps around them
However, most Artifacts are awesome! And I can't wait to show you the comps around them!
I will try include as much footage as possible in each section as well!
TLDR;
Forbidden Idol -> Kench
Silvermere Dawn -> Kha'zix/Wukong
Talisman of Ascension -> Sylas
Corrupt Vampiric Sceptre -> Gnar
Seeker's Armguard -> Malphite/Sylas
Mittens -> Any Melee Carry (E: Lee Sin)
RFC -> Qiyana
Prowler's Claw -> Kayn
Spectral Cutlass -> Qiyana/Lee Sin
Luden's Tempest -> Caitlyn
Suspicious Trench Coat -> Ornn/Udyr
Innervating Locket -> Any Tank (I like Yorick)
Horizon Focus -> Lux/Nautilus
Lightshield Crest -> Thresh/Galio
Unending Despair -> AP Kench?
Fishbones -> Ashe
Blighting Jewel -> Teemo/Morgana
Cursed Blade -> Irelia
Lich Bane -> Teemo/Syndra
Wit's End -> Bard/Lux or UdyLiss
Also, due to delays, I haven't been able to make the video for this just yet but I'll update the post as soon as I can.
Disclaimer: I tested these on the PBE and I have not played them in ranked. For transparency, here is my lolchess

There may have been changes during PBE to Live

There have been many patches during the PBE cycle, during which Riot may have removed an interaction. If anything didn't work, let me know! (It's difficult to test because the Artefacts aren't common)
But let's get started!

Inspiring Idol (Forbidden Idol)

As a brief history lesson, I made a discovery about Forbidden Idol, Kench and the Inspiring Epitaph and I had a Kench 2 reach 80k HP which I posted to Reddit
(My VOD of this is here)
And then Perfect-Tangerine638 completely dwarfed this by making his Kench hit 2.2 MILLION HP! What a chad!
So what's going on here? How is Kench reaching such absurd HP numbers?
Well that's because Kench's shield scales of his max HP and Forbidden Idol converts that shield into more max HP and so Kench will rapidly increase his max HP due to this loop. The only other unit that has a max HP shield is Ornn but Kench's HP ratio is higher.
I'm not sure what Tangerine did to reach such an insane number but I can tell you what I did.
I noticed that Forbidden Idol also worked on shields granted at the start of combat as well as from Augments
A great example of this is Inspiring Epitaph.
Any time a unit near Kench dies, Kench instantly gained 12.5% max HP and so he could start to snowball far faster.
However did you know that Azir's soldiers also proc Inspiring Epitaph?
So if you keep Azir summoning soldiers near Kench, Kench will snowball out of control as each of the soldiers perish and increase Kench's HP by 12.5% each!
An that's another reason why Ornn and Kench are the best users of Forbidden Idol, as they both can easily field Azir and Invokers.

And so this is what your Inspiring Idol board would look like

Where you can give the Idol to Kench or Ornn and you have 4 Invoker active to keep Azir casting.
In my opinion, Kench 2 is stronger than Ornn 2 with Idol as Kench has higher HP ratios on his shield, he has HP multipliers through Mythic and Bruiser and you can hit Kench far sooner than Ornn.
Just be wary of Lissandra because even a 80k HP Kench will lose to Liss (i got 3rd) due to her insane CC that will displace Kench and stop him from casting.

AD Thresh (Silvermere Dawn, Talisman of Ascension, Corrupt Vampiric Sceptre)

This idea was invented by Alan and tweaked by me.

AD Thresh board

[VOD] AD Thresh in action

Now the reason why AD Thresh is possible is due to his insanely high base AD (Thresh almost has the highest) and 3 of the incoming new Artefacts
Specifically, there's Silvermere Dawn, Talisman of Ascension, and Corrupt Vampiric Sceptre.
Silvermere Dawn will give Thresh a huge amount of AD, Armour and MR whilst also not debuffing Thresh that much since his base Attack Speed is 0.5 anyway.
But there's also Corrupt Vampiric Sceptre that will get rid of that annoying ability and keep Thresh autoing and sustained.
And Talisman is generally the most reliable choice since Thresh is 2 range and so can sit behind your tanks and stall those 18 seconds, after which he'll just clean up.
So AD Thresh is incredibly flexible due to what items he can take but also due to Fated.
You can select whichever Fated Bonus to make up for what Thresh is lacking.
For example, you can link Syndra and Sett is Thresh is lacking Omnivamp and a Damage Amplifier. Or Aphelios and Thresh if he's lacking AD and Tankiness and so on.
Just bear in mind that Thresh can auto as little as once every 2 seconds, so you need him to hit as hard as possible. So I love items like Infinity Edge and Last Whisper but you also can't go wrong with DB. Just make sure you have reliable Sunder as Aphelios may not be enough.
Admittedly, while I have loved playing this comp (I even played it during Mortdog's Artifact Tournament), I have struggled due to how contested Thresh can be.
And while Thresh is a really fun user of these Artefacts, there are better (more meta) users of them

Corrupt Vampiric Sceptre Gnar board

CVS is insane on Gnar as Gnar's passive will continue to stack, which will then get further increased by CVS and in turn, give Gnar a ton of healing.
So this board isn't anything new but Gnar's itemisation will. Ideally you want to give Gnar Double Titan's + CVS so he can get as much AD as possible, deal as much damage as possible, and heal for as much as possible.
With Dryad, Warden and Double Titan's, Gnar will be considerably tanky and dish out a ton of damage.

Talisman of Ascension Sylas/Riven

Riven Comp Guide

(Play a similar board for Sylas)

Riven and Sylas are probably the best users of Talisman for a few reasons. Firstly, vertical Bruiser is a ton of HP to get through which will stall for enough time especially since Riven and Sylas innately have healing in their abilities.
But if you're worried about the holder dying in combat, you can just trap then in a corner with ranged carries. And it doesn't matter if you're entire board is dead as your last unit will easily be able to wipe the enemy board with double the HP and a massive damage boost (except against Lissandra)
But there's also a bug with this Artifact where Bruisers can double dip into the HP gain.
Have a look at these images of Sylas (VOD HERE)
Before combat he has 5k HP but once Ascension procs, he shoots all the way up to 14k HP.
What's happening here is that Bruiser gives Sylas all the HP before combat, but then during combat Bruiser is also affecting Talisman's bonus HP and increasing it by an additional 80%. (5x2.8 =14)
So due to this bug, Bruisers are disproportionately broken with Talisman thus you should always give it to them.

Heavenly Dawn (Heavenly + Silvermere Dawn)

But let's get back to the fun stuff! Here's Heavenly Dawn from Alan

Heavenly Dawn Board

(Enable whoever your carry is)
As Alan mentions here, Silvermere Dawn is best on AD casters who have powerful ults and can use the tank stats well like Sett or Wukong.
However, Wukong is the better choice here as he can easily heal for his insane damage through Sage and due to Kha'zix and Malphite also being great users of the item.
(Here's Silvermere Dawn Wukong in action)
Like Wukong, Kha'zix is an AD caster but Kha'zix jumps about and one shots whatever he ults. And the tank stats are great for Kha'zix as it makes up for his squishyness.
(Silvermere Kha'zix in action)
Alternatively, you also have Malphite. He doesn't use the AD well but he is the most effective with the CC as any units hit but Malphite's ult cone, will also get stunned.
Unfortunately, Malphite and Kha'zix can fall off late game mostly due to them being 1 cost units.
But, the next Artefact stops Malphite from falling off and that's Seeker's Armguard

MalFIGHT (Malphite Reroll + Seeker's Armguard)

I gotta give full credit to Rapid for this one. This comp is so insanely fun to watch just because of how hard Malphite can clap.
(Seeker's Malphite Footage Here!)
And as Rapid says here, since Malphite’s auto are AOE, he gets takedown credit incredibly easily and so he can snowball very quickly as he converts both the bonus Armour and AP into more damage.
But even though his base AS is pretty low, you still want to give him Rageblade so his can auto more during his ult duration.
So Malphite's main items are Rageblade + Seeker's then you can give him whatever you want.
You can't go wrong with more omnivamp (Like BT), but what could be hilarous is Jewelled Gauntlet.
So your comp will look something like this

Seeker's Malphite Reroll

Bear in mind that both Heavenly and Behemoth are incredibly flexible and so this board can wildly vary. So just play around what you get.
But Malphite does love the AP from Soraka, the HP from Neeko, the Attack Speed from Wukong and the omnivamp if you get a spatula.
And if Malphite has crit, then you can play Kha'zix to increase his crit chance.
Ghostly is also nice here to stop Malphite getting stuck on mega tanks and Sage will give him more sustain.
Your level 9 can be Rakan, Lissandra, Udyr or Azir.
But Malphite is not the only great user of Seeker's

Mageseeker Sylas

Now, I'm sure many of you have already thought about Sylas being the best user of Seekers due to him being a Melee AP Bruiser carry who can use all of these stats well.
So let me add a bit of extra flavour here by combining Seeker's with Ionic Spark

Here's the board I play

This combination is phenomenal for Sylas as he can dash toward the enemy backline so they're in range of his Spark and so proc the damage on frontliners as well as backliners.
Now this is amazing as Sylas will now scale incredibly quickly with Seeker's as he will gain the takedown credit for any unit that Ionic Spark procc'ed on. And so this combo makes up for Sylas' single target weakness and let's him turbo scale
Eventually, Sylas will have so many stacks that backline carries and Mages just can't do anything to him and Sylas will just one shot them. Hence Mageseeker Sylas (is this lore accurate?)
Now ideally, you combine Sylas with Alune as her backline damage is great and can execute especially if she has anti-heal (Morello/Red Buff).
But Seeker's plus Ionic isn't exclusive to Sylas, and you can give these items to another melee AP carry or even a tank.
Seeker's is incredibly flexible like the next Artefact.

Mittens

Now this Artefact is perhaps the most flexible out of the new and existing Artefacts, as any unit in the game can use Attack Speed, Damage Reduction and movement speed well.
But it will be better on melee carries as they tend to be a tad squishy.
Edit 1: Thanks to ContaneShoko for the insight
Mittens is really good on Lee Sin as he uses the Attack Speed well with both of his traits
With Mittens, Lee Sin refuses to die while also slapping everyone and everything.
Lee is so absurdly tanky and the immunity to Chill is huge to keep his damage up
However, those stats don't really matter. The only thing I care about is the reduced unit size
I mean just look at how small this Teemo is with Trench Coat and Tiny but Deadly
[Full video Here!)
IT'S SO CUTE
So here's my request to you guys
Please please please show me screenshots of you stacking Mittens, Mittens + Trench Coat, or Mittens + Tiny But Deadly.
Can it get any smaller and cuter?

RFC Qiyana

But let's talk about something that isn't small, which is the range you can gain from the return of RFC.
Now what's interesting about this Artifact is that not many abilities scale with range. In fact, some units like Kayn and Wukong actually have negative range scaling as their damage is dealt in a 1 hex radius around the unit themselves and not the target.
So you want to give RFC to units that aren't impeded by range, the best of which is Qiyana.
[VOD] Footage here
Regardless of range, Qiyana's ult will always hit her primary target and any units 2 hexes behind her target.
And Qiyana will try to reposition to hit as many units as possible with her ult which allows her to farm that extra range very quickly.

I covered Qiyana Reroll in depth in this video

But here's the comp you play around Heavenly and here's the comp you play around Duelist.
(The Heavenly version is stronger imo)
But generally, RFC is best on units like Qiyana who have secondary damage that can farm range and not on units like Kayn who have terrible range scaling.
But the opposite of this is true for the next Artifact

Prowler's Claw Kayn

The big issue and limitation with Prowler's Claw is that the holder can still take aggro from enemy carries. So if the holder doesn't have enough tankiness or sustain, then they can just get obliterated and do nothing.
The holder of this item needs to be able to tank damage, have incredible sustain, while also being able to get away with building survivability items.
Most AD carries, like Qiyana, can't do this, but of course, Kayn can!
Kayn gets loads of damage from Reaper and his transformation. So with HoJ, BT and Prowler's on Kayn, he meets all the conditions perfectly. [VOD] Footage here And Prowler's will allow Kayn to cleanse any anti heal on him.
From what I've played no one felt nearly as good as Kayn but I think an OK secondary option is Lee Sin as he's kinda similar to Kayn in terms of tankiness but Lee won't be dealing nearly as much damage.
So out of all the AD carries, I just think this item is specifically amazing on Kayn.
But there is an Artefact that most AD melee carries will love which is Spectral Cutlass

Spectral Cutlass Duelists

This item gives AD stats, so it'll best on an AD carry and since the holder needs to be able to sustain damage from the enemy carry, it's best on an AD melee carry.
With this item, you can snipe the enemy carry before they get the chance to do anything
Now Kayn can waste the 6 seconds as he needs to transform so this item is ideal for those who can quickly cast their abilities like Lee Sin and Qiyana (VOD of this here) And what's great with Lee and Qiyana is that they scale quickly with Duelist and their abilties can multiple units and once, and so you can nuke the backline within those 6 seconds.
So you should place your Spectral holder in your centremost rearmost hex so they can target left or right and hit as many enemy carries as possible.
But as this point, I'm sick of AD Artefacts, so let's move on to an AP one!

Heavenly Caitlyn (Luden's Tempest)

Now Caitlyn loves this item as she tends to overkill a lot
And the Luden’s damage can proc Luden’s again if they overkill which is common since the Ghostly Spectres transfer before the Luden’s damage will hit
So of course, any Caitlynn Reroll comp is great but here's also a new variant from Nomsy Diff which is

Heavenly Caitlyn

Through Heavenly, you give Caitlyn as many raw stats as possible so her first ult completely nukes, procs Luden's and proceeds to wipe the board
But is there another Luden's user?

Lucky Luden's (Luden's Tempest)

This was shown to me by Rapid and I mean just watch this clip.
[More Footage Here]
Kobuko just completely nukes the entire board with a single cast because he has scaled so much and how much damage amp he has. And the subsequent Luden's procs are just mental.
Now a lot of the power here is behind those Talismans of Ascension that Kobuko has.
So how do we even mimic a fraction of this power?
Well we need a Talisman for ourselves or Kobuko's Lucky Paws Hero Augment. Either of these give Kobuko a insane damage boost with Ludens
But one of these conditions must be met for this to work but ideally you have both :)
Anyway, Luden's is great for Kobuko as that is the only damage item you need on him as Kobuko's damage scales with max HP. Kobuko gains more HP through his passive and you can play more Bruisers to increase his damage, which means that your item options on Kobuko are extremely flexible.
I'd recommend tank or sustain items but again, you have a lot of options.
And Lucky Luden's Kobuko makes me curious how Ethereal Blades Shen would perform with this Artefact.
But I will say that the setup for Kobuko is far more difficult than Caitlyn's, so if you want a safe Luden's user, then go for Cait.

Piñata Party (Suspicious Trench Coat)

Here's another one from Alan
With Trench Coat, the effects of the holder's items can proc again on the clones. And that includes the effect of the new Support item Unstable Treasure Chest.
Even just 1 Trench Coat and 1 Treasure Chest will result in 9 bonus items for your team, which is insane!
But what if you don't get Treasure Chest?
Well, you can also Trench Coat Ornn so each of the little Ornns can ult and farm items for your team.
And there's also other crazy combinations where you combine Trench Coat with Diamond Hands.
(VOD OF THIS HERE)
Diamond Hands will proc on the initial unit and then proc each time on each of the clones. So per combat, you can proc it up to 4 times!

Trench Coat Teemo (Suspicious Trench Coat)

But are there any carries that can use Trench Coat well?
Well, Alan also came up with Trench Coat Teemo
As Alan mentions here, each unique Teemo can stack their DOT on the same unit.
But this is risky because Teemo needs to be in range of damage so he can proc Trench Coat.
So you can give Teemo Edge of Night as each of the clones will be able to proc the item as well.
This is similar to Udyr who has in built aggro shed through Spirit Walker, that each of this clones will also benefit from.
So your safest bet for a Trench Coat carry will likely be Udyr.
Alan also cooked up Tattoo of Force, Trench Coat and Horizon Focus on this Rek'sai which just perma knocked up everything and dealt a ton of damage.
However, this combination will be incredibly rare
! But be careful, the Coat Clones can drop items if they're ulted by Lissandra. !

Innervating Locket Yorick

Next up, we have Innervating Locket which is huge for any tank that have ults that increase their tankiness, particularly if they increase their max HP.
For example, Diana, Ornn, Garen with his Hero Augment or Yorick with or without his.
My favourite is easily Yorick because he can scale so rapidly with the Locket mana generation. Amumu is also a great option as he'll just keep casting, healing and getting damage reduction from Porcelain.
But the next Artefact is a tank's worst nightmare

Horizon Focus Lux/Naut

This Artefact is super scary for any unit as now the holder's CC will now deal a ton of damage alongside it
So the 2 units with the most CC output are Lux and Nautilus, both of which you play on

4 Porcelain 4 Warden

Lux is your safe backline option but Nautilus is your option if you want him to nuke the enemy backline as soon as possible.
So you can give Horizon Focus to Lux until you find Naut 2
And what's insane with this item is that the damage from it can crit with the Jewelled Lotus Augment (but not Jewelled Gauntlet) (Footage of this Here) And if you combine this Artefact with Silvermere Dawn, then you'll proc the effect of Horizon on every auto!
However, this Artifact is hard countered by CC immunity because the holder can't stun whoever is CC immune and so can't proc the effect of Horizon Focus

Lightshield Crest Thresh/Galio

Now this item is similar to Innervating Locket where it's just generally good on a tank but I think Lightshield is better for your secondary tank as you get a lot of value when the holder dies.
So Thresh is likely the best user as he gains resistances from Fated and Behemoth and his ult also provides shields alongside resistances. So Lightshield Thresh makes your board considerably more tanky.
Alternatively, Galio can give big shields during his ult as he gains Armour and MR based on his current Armour and MR. And if he dies during his ult, then that's a massive shield for your board.

AP Kench (Unending Despair)

OK so I'm not going to lie, this Artefact is probably the least interesting out of the bunch, and I wouldn't really recommend you take it over the other ones.
This Artifact should be better in conjunction with other Artefacts like Forbidden Idol but it's rare for you to get multiple Artifacts in a single game
However having said that, I do think there is potential with units that love Idol like Kench and Ornn.
Especially if you play AP Kench which was posted to Twitter by Tex Summers
Kench should get massive shields on this board and so should maximise the value from Despair. If this board doesn't use it well, i don't know what else can.

Fishbones Snipers/Tristana/Malphite/Azir

So of course with Fishbones, Snipers will love this item as they'll use the extra range extremely well and deal more damage with it, particularly if you give them Fishbones alongside Runaan's or Red Buff.

(Fishbones Ashe is very flexible)

But let's talk about something more fun and that's Fishbones Tristana.
With Fishbones, Tristana can cross map ult and nuke backlines. This is especially hilarious with her buff in 14.9 and IE + DB. However it is inconsistent because there tend to be more frontliners than backliners
(Fishbones Tristana VOD Here)
And funnily enough, Rapid showed in this video that Fishbones Malphite isn't that bad either because he won't get stuck on a single unit and can deal loads of damage all over the place.
Lastly, Fishbones isn't that bad on Azir because he'll spawn the dummy where he ults, which could just be near the enemy backlines. So Azir's soldiers can find themselves in interesting places.

Foamy Teemo (Blighting Jewel)

Now Blighting Jewel is a very narrow Artefact wherein only Teemo and Morgana use it well and that's it.
The MR reduction applies per tick of their DOT abilities so they reduce MR rapidly and start generation mana very quickly.
I've tried this item on other AP carries like Alune, but it never performed as well as Teemo/Morgana
So you should just aim to play around them with this Artefact.

Bruiser Kai'sa For Teemo

(Here's footage of Foamy Teemo from Rapid)

And I like Sage Sylas for Morgana

Cursed Blade

Now last time I checked, this item was godlike on Irelia and subpar on everyone else but that may have changed with one of the numerous patches since.
For most units, 13 stacks is pretty hard to get. And with the effects of this item being hard countered by Edge of Night, I honestly don't think this item is that great.

Lich Bane

Nothing special here, just goes on units that like Blue Buff and Nashors like Teemo and Syndra

Wit's End

Lastly, we have Wit's End
I generally think that you put Wits on a backline carry with a lot of attack speed like Lux or Bard and you give them Rageblade. Or you put this item on a melee AP carry with high base Attack speed like Lissandra or Udyr as they'll use the resistances from the item well.
But luckily Rapid is here to save the day with Rageblade Rageblade Wit's End Malphite which hits really hard and heals for a ton. If you want to try something unique, definitely try that out!

Fin.

Ok that was extremely long but I think that's everything?
I may add more as I play more but I'm very exhausted so bear with me :)
Again, huge shoutout to Rapid, Alan and Nomsy Diff for participating in the Composition Competition!
Please let us know which of these comps are your favourite!
And if there's anything I missed, any questions you have or any silly typos, let me know! I'll address them as soon as possible
These Artefacts are very fun and I hope you guys enjoy playing with them!
Thank you for reading <3

Well I had always loved Charlotte's channel and never dreamed about posting here. But I (at the time 24 F) attended my Cousins wedding lets call her Danica. Danica is a few years older then me I'm not sure by how much and are directly related our mothers being sisters.
Here's some history/context before the drama. My dad was in the military and was deployed a lot throughout my childhood so I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house in the middle of the woods.
Danica seemed to be frustrated every time I was there. Whenever I was going something with grandma she'd ask to go ride horses (they had 4 horses at the time) Grandma said I could show a horse, meaning a horse competition. Then Danica asked to show it so I could no longer show the sand horse not sure why.
So with the horse's and middle of nowhere ranch feel she grew up in Danica ended up being a redneck wanna be. Dressing in plaf and cowboy boots going to amature car races where she later met her soon to be husband.
Let's call him Patrick. Patrick worked for Danica's father Uncle Bob #2 (Danica ans my mother have a brother named Bob)
So Danica brings her Dave Matthew's band look alike boyfriend to the holidays. Where hw, just like het father, proceds to go out of his way to not talk to me or be in the same room. To the point when Danica mocks my switch and games I was playing he remarked to her I must not have a lot of friends
Flash forward to 2021 So more content Danicas parents got married on September 10th and our shared grandparents got married on the 12th of September. So what did she choose? Well thr 8th makes since to the pattern right? Well Danica is a attention seeker. So she gets married on September 11th. Yes we are america so she knew full well what day that was and even more crazy wad it was the 20th anniversary of said event.
Guess who's family was affected by September 11th? Ours. Our grandmother's sister was a vet (like animals) and tended to the police dogs and other animals on ground zero. While my father was a military veteran. So he had to not attend certain engagements with his former comrads. My father's arm was twisted by my mother to attend saying it was the only wedding on her side of the family. And possibly the last family wedding we would attend.
My dad has a neice whos married ans has two young kids, and a nephew who's not married. As for me? I'm the oldist of three so she pretty much said she had no hope in her kids getting married.
So the wedding is a 3 day event us haveing to arrive the 10th her parents anniversary meaning they can't do anything since they had to do wedding things. Till the 12th our grandparents haveing to do the same.
The wedding is held at a Waterpark. Not one of the ones you'd think. It's a overnight resort with woods themeing in a city that's 2 hours away for most people. It's a rather popular tourist destination in our state so there was plenty of stuff to do around there but due to the events no one could really go out and explore.
I arrive at around 2 am since I worked the day of the 10th. I had worked at a diffrent Waterpark of the city at the time so it was only a hour drive for me. I get into my room and my dad is already stressed. He suffers from ptsd so he can't handle big things well.
Figuring out what's wrong, I learn my angel of a mother has taken a lot of duties away from her sister and started buying decorations and putting things up. My mother did photography in her youth and still does it as a hobby. (She has a bridzilla story from those days) so she was asked to take photos. This is also the time that I learn that my invite to the wedding was, a bribe. Our grandmother had threatened to cut the funding of the wedding by around 1,000 and my mom not shoot the wedding if I didn't make the cut to her rather large wedding.
Now day of the wedding arrives. My mom finds out Danica hired a photographer as our grandmother chimed in MORE money after I got a invite. (I had never gotten a offical invite either)
Danica and Patrick had a theme to there wedding as most. So the two colors where blaze orange, like hunting gear and traffic Cone orange. As it was Danicas favorite color and Jean blue, like pants as it was Patrick's favorite color.
The guests had a dress code. Cowboy boots blue jeans ans western style tops. Cowboy hats where encouraged.
Getting downstairs to the venue I find my Grandma complaining about Bob #1 not being at the wedding to his son Xander. Bob #1 never sees Xander as he lives with his mother on a diffrent coast of the country after his father was stripped of his rights after a DUI. Or at least I was told.
Turns out Bob #1 didn't come becuse of his wife Rose didn't let him. They offered to pay for him and his new young son Buckley to come. Bob #1 said if they wernt paying for Rose's and her mother's ticket he wasn't comming. So he didn't come.
Buckley was about 4 and that also was the amount of times my grandparents saw him. I had never met him and neither did 99% of the family ad Bob #1 doesn't like to visit. Even though he has 3 collage degrees his parents paid for.
The set pieces on the table where vases filled with orange clear and black orbiz. Obviously fake flowers sit in the vase. Theres blaze orange cups at each table with Patrick's race car number on it.
The best part wad the guest book. To the lift when you entered the hall was a table woth gifts for certain members of the family and all children of the family. The only child on our shared side of the family was Buckley who was not there.
The guest book itself? Well it's a car door. Not just any car door it's pulled from one of Patrick's wrecked race cars. It was cleaned and had no dents in if with a black sharpie to sign. However their was massive black letters and even bigger numbers on the door where the sharpie didn't show up. By the time I got to the guest book there was no room to sign.
Wedding comes and Patrick walks out in a cowboy hat, blue jeans, a stained white dress shirt and cowboy boots. His best men walk out wearing the same. The only difference was he had on a black vest.
Danica and the brides maids where late getting to the wedding. Why? We'll my friend it was becuse the horse Danica was ment to ride in on hated her and didn't want her on them. She swapped horses with a brides maid and off they go. They don't arrive on the horses and we could barely even see them arrive.
Now I use to listen to country music. So I know your Toby Keith (r.i.p) Brad Paisley, and Trace Adkins. So none of them where the country twang song that rung out while Danica walked down the Isle but it was a country song for sure.
She was dressed in a very pretty wedding dress with dome cool leave hair peices. So honestly I felt like I was looking at a beauty and the beast tattoo in real life. Beast in weird lettering and beauty in cursive.
Wedding mostly goes fine aside from our Grandfather who was officiating accidently calling Patrick dick.
We all get up and head into the venue to sit and wait for food and drinks.
A little more about the enigma in my family that is me. I'm autistic so like my father I don't like places like weddings. So I had a ear bud in playing vaporwave music and my sketch book. Drawing keeps me calm and not panic and freak out. So imagen the A24 horror I feel when a elderly family member try to RIP my sketchbook out of my hands.
I, a autistic, lesbian, who loves anime and horror draws some things that could kill a victoran child. So it could evaporate a elderly country type person for sure. I really didn't have anything like that in this sketch book. It was a new sketch book but I was practicing drawing kissing so I had a lot of dudes and chick's kissing on one page. So in a panic I tear it out and stash it in my bag. Earning a yelling lecture from my saint of a mother.
Food is served and guess what? I can't eat any of it. Me and my grandma can't have gluten. I can deal with it better then her. I don't eat beef or pork so the ribs are out of the question and the chicken is slathered in gravey. I have gravy and it has flower in it. So I take a plate full of peas and eat up. They didn't have a cake but a dessert table where I grabbed the dryist cookie in the world.
More time passes and well nothing else happens aside from Xander just hanging out with me and my siblings the rest of the week as he really has no connections to that side of the family and he and my brother are close in age. Danica being the oldist of the grandkids followed by me.
So wedding is over, I tell my friends of the mess of a wedding that was. Well in a discord call with my friends I Go to Danicas Facebook and show them pictures of the wedding.
Your classic, a monster truck jumping over them as they kiss. Danica riding a horse. Patrick dipping her as a monster truck drives past kicking up dirt. The classics.
Well as we laughed and looked I'm struck by a emotional monster truck. I see a family photo that was taken at that fateful September 11th. Me at the sorta middle of the photo there's me. Photo shopped to be fatter and my boobs smaller. Even my friends commented. It wasn't even a good photo shop warping the fence behind me.
Now this year Danica will celebrate her 3 year anniversary of that wedding. The only one I have ever gone to in my adult life. Her husband and father still have never spoken a word to me. And our grandparents replaced all photos of me and my siblings with photos of Danicas wedding.
Moral of the story? I am very thankful to my dad for not letting any of us end up like thar.

“Right. Tarp,” Saph muttered to herself as it became evident where the rather massive section of canvas had been hiding. Galaxer had been using it as harness padding, which was mostly due to there really being nowhere else to put it. Even folded in on itself twice it still covered all of the venerable dragon’s back.
“I still don’t get what you want that for? Don’t we have tarps? Actually, no, I know we have some. We used them for the logs and shit,” Pho complained, still not having worked out the purpose of a keep-dweller getting a few dozen square meters of stout waxed canvas.
Saph had to admit it looked to be quality stuff and brand new. It was laid out in the grass for inspection by the buyer, Ray walking along the sides of it, looking it over and passing Saph on her walk round.
“Sooo who is it for?” Saph questioned as she came by.
“Tiguan. For when it rains,” Ray answered meekly as she carried on.
“Ahr I see.”
“Wait, you got this for a dragon who is staying at a keep? Don’t they have a greeting hall?” Pho piped up again, clearly wanting to be heard today.
“Yes, but the floor is stone. It gets cold in winter. Also he gets to keep it. He told me about all the times he has had to sleep outside before. Now if he has this he could stay dry. Or have something nice to lie on.”
“Yes, it can certainly help make a campsite more comfortable,” Galaxer agreed, giving the woman a nod. “But it seems you know that already. Is that for Glira by chance?” he questioned, glancing towards where Saph and Fengi had set up the other tarp for Yldril, to give her some shelter from the rain.
“No, that is for our resident black dragon,” Saph clarified. “I believe she is currently napping in protest.”
“Ahr…” the dragon responded, glancing to Baron, the decorated war veteran. “A peculiar allocation of resources isn’t it, sir?” he asked, with what Saph thought to be humor in his voice.
Baron and Jarix had been sitting behind the line of dragonettes, waiting patiently and having a chat with the two new arrivals when they weren’t busy with all the unloading and various questions.
“It is indeed… but she is of the keep. We are not. If we wanted a tarp we best bring one ourselves,” the red dragon responded, calmly and seemingly not upset about the fact he was sleeping outside still.
‘Didn’t think of that,’ Saph cursed to herself. Glira had of course complained, but, well, she was a bit of an arse too. Baron though, he didn’t deserve worse hospitality than a slave. That wasn’t right.
“Maybe I should bring you one for next year old sport, if they let you out here again that is of course.”
“If they do not, then they best find a suitable replacement. We need every dragon currently on the island, and I doubt that is to change soon.”
“Right you are, well I suppose a lesser teacher will have to do for the recruits. I am sure they will find someone.”
Baron did raise an eyeridge at that comment but didn’t offer anything further.
“Right, okay, my question now. Why don’t you bring a tarp along if it is so nice ?” Pho tried again, glancing between the red and white dragons.
“It is heavy of course, and I do not plan on staying in the wilds any more than is needed. That and I have cargo to carry of course,” Galaxer deflected with a huff, not paying the young huntress much mind.
“Isn’t that gonna be a bit heavy for a dragon who’s supposed to fight then? I swear I’m not trying to be an arse here.”
‘Well you are failing there Pho,’ Saph grumbled to herself, as she watched Ray look down at the tarp, ears lowering slightly.
Saph knew getting something that big couldn’t have been cheap though. Perhaps the greenhorn did have a point. Tiguan couldn’t even be half the weight of Galaxer. But on the upside he didn’t have a shred of armor to wear, unlike Jarix and especially Grevi, so perhaps it would be fine. Might even make his harness a bit more comfortable. It hadn’t looked to Sapphire like the finest of work.
“I’m sure he will be fine. If luck would have it I’m sure he’ll be sticking around this island for some time. Then he can just leave it at whatever keep is closest to what he’s doing, isn’t that right you old grizzled veteran? You must have done that a few times, no?”
Ray’s ears did raise a little at the hopeful words as she looked to Baron.
“It doesn’t get any worse than he leaves it somewhere for a time if he is expecting battle, no. And I do not believe he has a place of his own in the city yet. If what Galaxer says is true and they have taken new recruits, then the shared stables would be quite packed indeed.”
“Oh yes, a fair few young and old. It seems news of the fighting on the frontier lit a few souls.”
“Indeed. Well in that case he might be most appreciative. Some privacy is always nice, even if it is only a clearing somewhere.”
“Oh that is good, I was worried for a moment there he wouldn’t like it,” Ray said happily, giving the tarp one last final glance. “It looks good too. I am very happy with it.”
“Well then I guess we can knock you off the list as well then. I will tell Carnige. Is this black dragon going to come and get it here?”
“Oh I hope so.”
“He will, ain’t no way he’s heading home for winter without swinging by to say hi. If he ain’t staying the winter that is,” Saph declared. She was quite confident in that statement all things considered. Tiguan was a big softy and Ylditz wouldn’t be able to stand the complaining if they didn’t.
“Very well, will you all put it away or should I take it up to the greeting hall when time allows?”
“Oh if you wouldn’t mind. I think it would be quite hard to get up the stairs.”
“Very well. Perhaps before dinner, I do seem to smell something quite lovely yes.”
“We have some stuff on the spits, yes. I hope you will like it. We know you have flown a long way.”
“Indeed, it is always rough doing such a long stint in one go, and I would hazard a guess we aren’t getting more than a few days here before heading home this time now are we?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure just yet Galaxer,” Saph interjected. “We did find something more down below which they are very busy with.”
“Of course you did. Well I am sure we shall hear more of that very soon. Did you hear that, Arch? More stuff down below,” Galaxer called out towards Arch, who seemed to have been having a conversation with Jarix upon being reunited. He did turn his head towards them to answer though.
“Well yes, there were two more vaults. Did they get them open?”
“Well, did you?” Galaxer questioned, looking down to Sapphire.
“Only the one.”
“Ahr, very well. Maybe a chance of a winter flight out here for the inquisition then, that should pay nicely.”
__________________________________________________________________________________
Tom looked about the library that was now filled with playing children, all having fun with their various new toys. The strange board game pieces were currently being used to depict soldiers around a keep made of wooden blocks, which Tom was quite sure the craftsman who made the set would have been appalled by.
Essy and Lothal had come up to oversee the kids after the unloading had been concluded and all the stuff had been stashed away wherever it was destined. Sadly that meant Tom probably couldn’t put off having that chat with Joelina much longer, though he was seriously considering putting it off till after dinner time. Sadly he had a feeling they might have a drink or two tonight, so that probably wouldn’t be such a great idea.
Vulzan had gone down to assist Arch, promising to bring up Tom’s box of stuff sometime later, after he was assured that they would read the letters he had given them today. The trader had brought it up a few times, so he had probably agreed to make sure Tom did indeed read them.
“I think the quality assurance department has declared the toys satisfactory, don’t you think, Jacky?”
“Well nothing has broken yet, so that’s good,” Jacky replied, stepping aside as a pair of kids came running by with red flags strapped to their tails. Said flags were more dragging along the floor than flapping in the wind, but Tom supposed they weren’t made for running speed.
“No, no, they are being very careful. I must say some of these things are very nice though,” Essy added as she arbitrated just how many pieces Revo and Hulunar could have so they could try actually playing said board game. This was met with vehement opposition from Kiran, who needed every soldier for his keep.
“True that. Well best of luck. I’ll go read the mail, shall we Jacky?” Tom questioned, resigning himself to just getting this over with.
“I suppose we shall, yes,” Jacky grumbled in reply, seeming less than pleased.
The two of them made their way out of the library, leaving the kids in the capable hands of Essy, Apuma, and Lothal.
“Probably best to read the letters first. Upstairs?”
“Let’s. If it says something we don’t like we can always burn it and pretend we didn’t get it then.”
“I somehow doubt that would work, but I suppose,” Tom half-sighed and chuckled.
The two of them made their way up to Jacky’s room as she got out the letters she had stashed away inside her breastplate. Tom shut the door behind them and Jacky laid down the letters on the bed so they could have the sun behind them to help read what they said.
“Right then, what are the chances some of this is good news?”
“About the same as Kalestine deciding that we have been working very hard and she’s going to send a herd of tirox marching past the front door,” Jacky replied as they both took a seat on the bed and Jacky took out her knife.
“You know, maybe Shiva will let you have that fancy one with the ruby in the hilt?” Tom tried in good humor as Jacky set about looking through the envelopes, presumably looking for the oldest.
“I wish. Can you imagine what she would do if I dropped it or something? Maybe for some special occasion.”
“Well, if it can sniff out deer hiding in the bushes then surely it’ll be fine. Are you in the habit of losing things in the forest?”
“It has been some time… but it has happened,” Jacky admitted a little sheepishly as she found what she was looking for and started opening one of the envelopes. Inside there was a folded up crisp white paper.
“Oh my, look at this stuff, it’s almost as nice as some of your paper.”
Tom just nodded, watching as she unfolded it, revealing an utter mess of what Tom could only guess was the equivalent of dragonette cursive. “Oh you have to be shitting me, what the hell is that?” he protested, looking at the nearly impossible to decipher scribbles.
“Fucking city dwellers,” Jacky agreed, squinting as she held the letter up a bit closer. “I guess I need to make Apuma proud.”
“If you could, yeah. I’ve got no chance.”
“Dear Tom. I hope this finds you well. -Oh you wish for that now- Since last we met I have formulated some questions for which I would like you to provide me with an answer. Send your reply via Vulzan if you are able… -What is she on about, she sent us a pair of those earrings?”
“I don’t know… is that it?”
“Well no we got questions you see,” Jacky replied, tapping the paper with the claw on her thumb.
“How do your people know of dragons? Why are infants thrown into pools of water? What is the point of a cat? Where do cars come from? Are they grown? Why is there music everywhere? Is it true that giving birth is truly the most painful thing in the world to a human? -It just goes oon and oooon. Look at this shit, she really fit it in here.” Jacky turned the letter around to Tom to see and it ruely was packed, line after line. “She ran out of space… oh no, bit on the back here. What is the meaning of the combat simulations displayed by the thinking machine, is it training? And why is it not take more seriously if it is? Are you tricking the children into accepting grueling training for more than 12 hours a day?”
“Oh my, yeah she’s in my younger years I guess… I used to love going to the swimming halls, you know… and I might have liked my computer a bit too much.”
“I never would have guessed.”
“Oh come on, it was good fun at the lake.”
“Get me warm water and then we are talking.” Jacky dismissed, looking back to the letter.
“We do have that actually.”
“Oooh.”
“Anyway, next letter please. I have a feeling this isn’t the end of the questions.”
“Yeah probably,” Jacky agreed, trimming the top of the second envelope with a claw and taking out the letter. “Oh she’s uhm… her writing is a bit worse on this one. Where are the ships that breach the heavens and the universe itself? I have seen movies and imagery of them, but never in your memories do they appear! Do they exist?! Are you from a backwards country without lance weapons and teleportation machines? And how were dogs produced from wolves!? I must know this!”
“Oh my… someone has been to the mental cinema I guess… Wait. I thought she already knew about what a movie was? I could have sworn she saw a movie in my memories.”
“Paulin did get to see one if I remember right. She must have told her all important Joelina about it.”
“Yeah…” Tom replied, thinking further on the implications of this. “She is definitely seeing more than I am too. I’ve only seen a few flashes of her childhood and younger days, though it seems to be slowly advancing towards the current time.”
“Maybe she can use her mind magic stuff to see more? I don’t know. I bet you a gold she’s trying to make the dreams worse, not better like us. Maybe it’s driven her a bit mental? Well, more mental.”
“I suppose so yeah… Another one,” Tom replied, gesturing for her to continue.
“Yup. Next one it is… Oh dear. Right.” Jacky squinted at the paper. Tom leaned over and confirmed that the letter was indeed a mess, complete with drips of ink and smudged out symbols. “I ha-have. Discovered. What a motion image is… -Well that’s good-. I understand the art of the computer’s hallucinations. They are not real. But rockets! Are rockets real Tom? Have your people visited the gods! Why is there only one god at the churches where you grew up? Yet there are other churches, the other gods are seen as alien, or different, why? Where are the gods Tom! Why are they disparate!... -Man, I think she’s about lost it.”
“Oh dear… Yeah, might need to clarify some things… And sweep some under the rug. If she’ll even believe me,” Tom said doubtfully, grimacing as he looked at the remaining letter. “Let’s get it over with, last one.”
“Right oh, let’s see what this one says… Oh… I think this one is for you.” She simply turned the letter around and showed the contents, big bold drippy latin letters—in Danish.
“SVAR MIG.”
“What does it say?” Jacky questioned, sounding a touch worried.
“Answer me… I’m guessing this is where she decided on sending those earrings.”
“Ahr yeah that would make sense,” Jacky agreed, glancing at the wooden box which contained the lone earring. “Wait, why did she bother leaving in the first letters when she sent this anyway?”
“I don’t know, why did she feel the need to put childrens toys in the same box as a suit of enchanted half-heretical armor and the blade of... what was he called again?”
“The second most wanted man alive”.
“Yeah that… I don’t think she’s doing so hot.”
“Think she’ll be very mad if you wait till tomorrow?”
“Probably,” Tom conceded as he slid the lid off the box, picking up the small silvery piece of jewelry. He took a deep breath, looking to Jacky. “Right, safeword is spaghetti. If I say it thrice in a row, take it off.”
“Right, sounds like a plan. Good thing Paulin isn’t here, right?”
“Yeah… actually,” he leaned in and whispered, “Go check the corridor, someone might be listening. Quietly.”
“You’re the quiet one,” Jacky complained as she got up, Tom picking up the earring and studying it in his hands.
It had fine intricate runes running along its surface in little channels. It was exquisite handiwork, that much he could tell. ‘And not cheap like we know.’
Jacky went up to the door and with a rapid jerking motion opened it, sticking her head out to glance down either corridor. “All clear…” She pulled her head back in and locked the door. “Put the damn thing on then. No promises I won’t fuck up your ear if I have to rip it off.”
“Rather that than something worse happening. I kinda wished I’d gotten to see more of her life before this.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jacky questioned as she sat down next to him on the same side where a hole had already been punched for the last time he had a crack at this sorta thing. “You always wake up, shaking, cold, crying, screaming or whatever the fuck might have happened that time. And you want more?”
“Well not that part… I guess she has already been through my memories once before, and not like she knows something about me I don’t… but still would be nice to know how the hell she ended up where she is. She knows that about me.”
“Or how her mentor’s knife ended up at Furlong keep.”
“That too… that too… maybe I’ll be able to ask.”
“You do that… now, get it over with.”
“Right.” Tom held the earring up to his ear and started to fiddle with it a bit. A bit turned into a while and soon enough Jacky grew impatient.
“Really? You can’t put on an earring?”
“It’s not like it’s something I do often. Damn thing is fiddly, don’t wanna break it either.”
“It’s mithril, it won’t just break. Here let me.”
Tom resigned himself to being helped as Jacky quickly put in the little thing and slid in the locking pin. “Right, there you go. Have fun I suppose.”
“Yeah yeah, try not to rip my ear off if I start making funny noises. Remember, safeword is spaghetti.”
“I got it.”
“Right, how was it? I close my eyes an-”
__________________________________________________________________________________
“Anyone seen Tom and Jacky? Dinner is almost ready,” Ray questioned as she came up the stairs from the kitchen into the grand hall where everyone was starting to congregate. Well, all of the dragonettes at least. The dragons had elected to eat all together down in front of the keep, rather than having one or two of them eat in the greeting hall.
That was all the dragons save for Yldril though. She was consigned to her awning and would get what was left over. That should still be a fair bit of food, and certainly better food than she got normally, but Saph doubted it would do much for her demeanor. Said demeanor was why she was consigned however; no one wanted to put up with her at a feast.
“No, we were told not to disturb them. I think they got something to do. They are up in Jacky’s room,” Saph replied on her way to sit down at the huntress table.
“Ahr okay… should I put something aside for them later?”
“That might be best. We don’t know how long they will be.”
“Okay. I’ll be back in a minute then. Tell the others to start taking seats, we are nearly there.”
Saph just nodded and smiled as Ray turned back and hurried down the stairs, but a moment later Balethon and Herron came up said stairs with a spitted deer, which was to be their main course for the day. ‘Oh this should be lovely… Do I wanna try out some of the ham too today I wonder?’
As she sat down at the table it was pretty evident that most of the others had decided that yes, they would be trying out some of the interesting new things they got. It was rather hard to complain after whoever had sold you something had already left.
There had been a lot of chatting and a few good laughs as they all got settled in, and true to Ray’s word they were soon called up to come get their portions of meat and sides. It was good stuff. Someone had snuck in some extra herbs and spices either at the last minute or possibly used the last of old stores now that they knew resupply was coming.
They did have a few guests at the huntress table, namely Udanti and Tirox from Archeon’s crew. They were of course interrogated thoroughly for any news about how things had been going in the world at large.
Tirox spoke highly and with his usual brash bravado about tales of battles fought all along both the frontier and even some middling keeps. He did not seem worried in the slightest, relating victory after victory. Udanti seemed less enthused, and as the meal progressed hushed murmurs and gossiping began to spread among all the tables, as far as Saph could work out from where Udanti was sitting.
Darklings attacking middling keeps, or ring keeps as some would call them, like the one where she grew up. That could not be good. The darklings were growing bolder. Udanti had heard rumors that the guard had suffered losses too. Last time they had received much news of the war, there had been no mention of any defeats by the guard, only keeps raided or besieged. But according to Udanti, an entire combat wing of rookies had not been heard from for some time, and no one was being told what had happened to them.
Tirox didn’t think much of it. Maybe they were just holed up, and even if they had been lost it was only one wing of dragons. That was to be expected in war. By the time the dinner was more or less finished they had also all heard the rumors about Rashan. Bo and Pho had needed to be brought up to speed on just who that was, but everyone who had been with the keep before all this started knew well enough who that was and what this all meant.
“I guess Shiva is gonna need to try again to convince Tom to make that dragon killing cannon then?” Fengi questioned, seeming almost apathetic about it.
“Or something like it,” Essy echoed, nodding as she sipped a cup of a special tea she had bought.
“Don’t push him on that. I’m sure all the stuff we’re already doing will be plenty. There are so many other things he wants to do. Most sound like they would be good news for us too.”
“Yeah speaking of good news, miss silver streak, I heard you found someone special. Where is he at?” Udanti the archer questioned, seemingly wishing to change the subject as well.
“Oh Maiko? I don’t know actually?” Sapphire admitted, looking around to see if he was sitting at the guards table like he usually did, but there was no sign of him.
“I think he is with Yldril,” Fengi added, sipping the tea a little as well. “I’m sure he snuck her some food or something.”
“Maiko got a soft spot for a traitor dragon or something?” Tirox questioned with a huff, tilting his head.
“No, he’s trying to get on her good side. Might be handy one day,” Fengi answered plainly. “… And it might make her a little less insufferable.”
“Oh… I see, so it’s like a mission you put him on?”
Saph wasn’t sure this was something that should be discussed openly at the dinner table, but she wasn’t about to stop Fengi. At least not yet.
“Yes, don’t blab to the dragon about it. Then it won’t work. And her ears are good, remember that.”
“Oh… okay,” the male trader escort replied, looking at Fengi a little confused.
He likely remembered a far happier and more bubbly girl than who was sitting at the table now. Saph sighed to herself. These past months had been hard on Fengi. Very hard. Hopefully things would get better. Maybe they could do something about all that now. Then it clicked for Saph why Fengi might not be so cheery today. It wasn’t just that Yldril had been segregated around the back of the keep.
‘Maybe she got some bad news from those trying to find Dorae for her… Probably best not to bring that up here.’
“Oh yeah by the way, I heard some talk you got the hook up too, didn’t you Fengi?” Udanti questioned, once more trying to steer the conversation back to something positive, obviously not knowing that was a touchy subject.
Fengi put on a forced smile. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to show she at least appreciated the gesture. “I did… it’s been a little rough though with all this… stuff going on…”
“Ooooh riiight,” Udanti replied, seeming to catch on now. “I’m guessing he isn’t much for getting bossed around.”
Before Fengi could reply, Essy interjected. “Oh no, quite the opposite. He’s a right little knight so he is. But he is at times a bit of a… oh speak of the devil,” she carried on, her gaze carrying past Udanti to the young guard approaching the huntress table. Saph spied a familiar looking small box in the palm of one of his hands.
By the time he made it up to the table all heads were turned to look at the young man, which seemed to unnerve him just a touch, which was understandable to be fair.
“Hi uhm… Okay. So many more people hehe… Right,” he went, seeming to steel himself, Fengi turning around fully on the bench to face him. “I know what you think of me… that I’m a weak willed coward… I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better, but I can’t promise anything. Here,” he went, holding out the little box towards Fengi. “I know you don’t like flowers much… So I got you this instead.”
There was perfect silence at the table, especially from the trader escorts who had no clue what was going on. Fengi gingerly held out a hand and took the box, looking up at Unkai with a curious expression then down to the box as she opened it, revealing a beautiful pair of silver earrings with rectangular cut emeralds set in them.
“I hope you like them.”
Fengi stared at them for a moment, one hand going up to touch the plain copper ones she wore most days. Saph couldn’t actually remember, but she guessed Shiva had made them some time back. They were not overly remarkable, almost rugged looking by comparison to the new silver ones.
“I love them,” Fengi finally declared just as it seemed like Unkai was losing hope. Looking up at him she wore a far more genuine smile than before. “Though I could do with some flowers too one of these days. Those times were simpler.”
The guard let out a slight involuntary chuckle and nodded. “I think I can manage flowers.”
“You used to be quite good at picking out the prettiest ones,” Essy added in her motherly tone. “Maybe there are still a few who haven’t succumbed to the cold and rain.”
Fengi took one of the earrings out of the box and held it up to her ear, looking around at them all. “How do they look?”
“Elegant,” Saph said, nodding her approval. It was the truth. They weren’t overly ostentatious, and they wouldn’t have suited Fengi if they were. And who knew, with everything happening at the keep, she might find herself with a matching silver crown before too long. “Silver suits you.”
Fengi even let out a little giggle at that, putting it gingerly back in the box and looking back to Unkai, who had not moved a muscle, probably having run out of planning 30 seconds ago. And Fengi’s smile faded a touch. “I’m sorry but… I didn’t think to get you anything special…”
Unkai had seemed worried for a second as her smile had faded, but livened right back up as the reason was made plain. “Oh don’t worry about that…just try not to hate me. That will be plenty.”
Fengi’s smile faded a little further. “I don’t hate you, I’m sorry if you thought that.”
Saph and the others did exchange some glances. There could be no doubt they had been hard on the guy, but it did seem to have worked.
“No no, it is okay. I get it… I was a jerk… I might be again. But I’ll try not to be, okay?”
“I guess I’ll try not to be so scary… no promises either.”
‘Awww that’s nice,’ Sapphire mused to herself, a smile starting to grow. ‘Ooh I wonder if Maiko got me something?’
__________________________________________________________________________________
Righty oh, your medicin has been administered, I do hope you liked it, I did try my best to make it palatable. on the news front things appear to be going swimingly, so expect HoH to carry on as normal for many more months to come. We also got a bit more cool art, check it out if that's your sorta thing.
Till next time, take care.
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