To whom it may concern,
Shalom. Introductions aside, just know that I am a hardcore gamer who has pristine observation skills. I wanted to take it upon myself to give a comprehensive Tier List of the entirety of Chapter 5, Season 2 weapons.
This is not a spreadsheet, no specific mathematical mumbo jumbo needed.
In other words, take my word for it and debate me if you disagree with my tier list for this season.
Additionally, mythic boss weapons are excluded because I judge the weapon classes they belong to holistically. Although mythic weapons do more damage than legendary variants, they are restricted from being customized to preference, thus making the legendary variant of each mythic far superior.
Lastly, there are two honorable mention tiers and this is far from the typical tier list.
Chonk_Lord48's Observations:
Atrocity - Waterbending
S Tier - Thunder Burst SMG, Gatekeeper Shotgun, Ranger Pistol, Cluster Clingers
A Tier - Nemesis AR, Huntress DMR, Hand Cannon, Chain of Hades
B Tier - Warforged AR, Drum Gun, Earthbending
C Tier - Hammer Pump Shotgun, Tactical AR, Airbending, Reaper Sniper Rifle
D Tier - Thunderbolt of Zeus, Firebending
F Tier - Frenzy Auto Shotgun, Chewie's Bowcaster, Darth Vader's Lightsaber
Absurdity - Harbinger SMG, E-11
Reasoning Section
Atrocity - Waterbending is an all encompassing infinite range (it travels past render range) infinite ammo, instant reload super power that will drop any enemy of most skill ranges in exactly two shots. This two shot kill problem is especially a factor when your enemy is using an untraceable form of Zen or Aimbot. Gamers who rely on this atrocious thing to kill or get wins are either inept at the game OR fighting water with water. Thought I would NEVER hear that phrase... Yet it is LITERAL. This weapon should have started and ended with the Avatar: The Last Airbender mini event. This is the second worst decision Epic has ever made, right next to... Well, that's a banned name isn't it... that pleb pleaser from Season X. Waterbending is so broken that it just removes the enjoyment from the game entirely. Even though it is labeled as a mythic rarity item it is far more common than bandages and perhaps more common than most common rarity weapons. Horrendous, absolutely horrendous decision.
S Tier - The Thunder Burst SMG is a phenomenal skill-based weapon that requires precision accuracy to observe the sheer powerhouse of a weapon it is. It has one of the lowest Time To Kill (TTK) in the game due to It's powerful damage output, accuracy, and headshot multiplier (1.76x). It can be used for mid-range combat as well with a modest damage reduction.
The Gatekeeper Shotgun is by far the BEST shotgun ever released in Fortnite History, surpassing the Charge Shotgun class except its Mythic variant. This shotgun excels in point blank range and the TTK is less than two seconds. It has a great spread which provides the opportunity for some guaranteed hits when firing from the hip. When it is aimed down, the spread becomes more precise. Most shotguns do this, yet the Gatekeeper stands out because the choke is not pinpoint accurate (like other failures of a shotgun) and its crosshair fits so nicely around an enemy's head.
The Ranger Pistol has a fast TTK and is damn near the perfection of the Thunder Burst SMG. The two are so similar in damage output, firerate, reload time and range that honestly a player can use either and perform well. When compared to the Warforged AR, it is more accurate, has a higher headshot multiplier, and reloads much faster.
Cluster Clingers were literally the only throwable explosives that did enough damage required to kill. A lethal weapon in the hands of a skilled player. This specific item will forever hold its place as the 'only' explosive throwable item. Be honest, the rest were just gimmicks that were terrible and practically useless. This was the ONLY grenade that actually put enemies back to the lobby. Why it was removed is beyond nonsensical. Anyone who could dare complain about the first (only) grenade that did grenading is... I will say it, part of the Little Timmy community (plebs) that Epic LOVES to humor (I remember Season X well).
Each of these weapons are truly a masterpiece in their class and stand out as among the greatest weapons to ever touch the surface of the game. They do not require attachments to be good. These weapons can be deadly in the hands of players from all skill ranges. From common to legendary or mythic these weapons take the cake as this season's best.
A Tier - The Huntress DMR is the BEST DMR to date. All other DMRs pale in comparison to this one (Looking at you Cobra) because it actually hits targets when you aim and shoot directly at them. This would have been S-Tier but since it requires a specific set of attachments each game to be superior, it cannot be placed there. This weapon shoots the farthest and has little to no bullet drop whatsoever. It is superior to the once great Reaper Sniper rifle and takes the cake as the best long-range choice this season.
Note: Perhaps with the fresh new ballistics system, the Cobra DMR can make a return and actually function properly instead of being exclusive to function on PC.
The Hand Cannon is a re-imagining of one of Chapter 1's best weapons. It is superior to other slow firing, semi-automatic weapons due to its damage output and buffed headshot multiplier. This weapon is exclusive for highly accurate and skilled players which is precisely why it remains in A Tier. It is not universally great (S-Tier), yet it still rewards those with precise aim. The fun with this weapon is that it doubles as a close range defender or a sniper rifle depending on attachment preference. When modded to be a long-range weapon it should be noted that it has less bullet drop than the Reaper Sniper Rifle. The other optimization is the classic one which can be done with an optic attached or not. When used in this classic form, it outclasses the Hammer Pump Shotgun entirely. It does more headshot damage and less body shot damage, sure, but at least significant damage is guaranteed since spread is not a factor.
The Nemesis AR is a powerhouse of a weapon as well which is surprisingly accurate for its high damage output and adequate headshot multiplier. It has a fast TTK and requires little investment to be superior to other weapons in its class.
The Chain of Hades is not an an atrocity. It is very much required to counter and punish enemies who think they are tough guys fleeing from a fight using shockwaves or the wings of Icarus, or even a motorbike. It is fun to use, when it works. This item is prevented from being S-Tier due to the FACT it does not work properly. This weapon has a sweeping animation and must be paired with area of effect damage. The center of the crosshair is NOT the only area of damage. This can be tested and proven by opening a door, aiming in the middle of the doorway, and swinging. You will notice the it does indeed deal damage to the left and right of the crosshair. Sadly, and unsurprisingly, this AOE melee weapon seems to exclusively function properly on PC. When used on PC, this chain causes a stagger that prevents a weapon from firing in a minute instances. That is, each hit when swung, causes an interruption of a weapon firing. This feature is nonexistent on consoles and seems intentional. As for the chain pull, that attack causes stagger universally, which is good.
B Tier - The Warforged AR is decent at best. Even with a legendary properly modded variant, it pales in comparison to the Nemesis AR, which requires little investment to no investment. This weapon had much potential but Epic clealry refuses to allow an S-Tier assault rifle to exist again.
The Drum Gun is yet another re-imagining of one of the greatest weapons to enter the META first debuted in Chapter 1. This version, regardless of attachments, fails to be what it once was. It is about as accurate as the Warforged and also lacks recoil control even with the attachments meant to reduce it.
Earthbending was a failed opportunity for Epic to allow players to have fun with the game. I would have preferred summoning armor on my character (like Toph does in the show) paired with the ability to bull charge into an enemy which would deal an atrocious amount of damage to be equally unfair as Waterbending. Maybe 150 damage or simply an instant KO. Heck if I care you cannot shoot the armor off quick enough to cancel the attack. As for Earthbebding as it was made, the cover provided was stronger than metal, and more reliable than porta bunkers. Long before the time it would take to break the cover, the ability to form another wall is primed and ready. Hurling large, fine cut rock slabs at enemies should have caused a KO in two hits to counter that atrocity not worth my breath anymore.
C Tier - The Hammer Pump Shotgun is just a joke but can still be deadly when paired with an appropriate backup weapon. This weapon could be A-Tier at best when paired with a Thunder Burst SMG or F-Tier at worst when used alone. By that logic, it averages to the middle of the tier list. Oh I miss the days when it just took one skilled shot to send them back to the lobby with the original Pump Shotgun re-imagined in Chapter 1 Season 5. This was arguably the most balanced period in Fortnite's history especially for both SMGs and ARs.
The Tactical AR is yet another re-imagining of one of the greatest weapons. This too pales in comparison to it's predecessor. Even with all necessary attachments on it, it is not the same as before. Period. It does not do enough damage and high a slow TTK. It pales in comparison to both the Thunder Burst SMG and other assault rifles. It fails to be both SMG and AR when it is meant to be a combination of both.
The Reaper Sniper has once graced players inventories as the BEST sniper rifle in Fortnite's history. Once an S-Tier weapon, this powerful sniper rifle has fallen from that status due to Epic's tendency to humor plebeians in the community. It has caused this weapon to become absolutey useless for what it was made for. It does not make any sense at all for this weapon's bullets to have bullet drop before 20m. The projectory of the bullet is flaccid, like to an ED extent. Absolutely an ABSURD choice for long range encounters, period. However, this weapon can surpass even the Hand Cannon as a replacement for a shot gun, slap the proper attachments on play pretend that it is the KSG-12 or a slug round shotgun, then you got yourself an S-Tier shotgun that drops players in ONE shot.
Airbending is not a weapon per se, however it can be used as one to cause a death due to gravity or to prevent vehicles from traveling. It was amazing. I miss it. It was the best movement option that was ever released in the game.
D Tier - Thunderbolt of Zeus had potential to be amazing. It was pathetic compared to cluster clingers and its splash damage seems to be so random that it is unreliable. It is supposed to hit for 40, 40, then 140. Yet my final hit is hitting for 80. I do not understand. Prep time alone makes this weapon a death wish.
Firebending also lack a passive ability and Epic has failed to make this combat-based bending effective. Unless you are staying perfectly still, you will jump around like a maniac and miss all projectiles. Period. Upon release, it dealt barely any damage and Epic did not bother buffing the damage until near the event's conclusion. I should, according to the same broken logic, be able to bend lightning with extreme precision to deal 300+ damage, thus instantly knocking out anyone.
F Tier - The Frenzy Auto Shotgun was once an atrocity and at first got respectfully nerfed. Then Epic nerfed it again to be effective exclusively at less than point-blank range. Any further than 10 meters then you are surely dealing between 10-20 damage IF you are lucky.
The Bowcaster is a failure of what could have been a fun limited time weapon to use. Firstly it animates an AoE per shot regardless of charge and does NOT do splash damage when shot. When charged fully it deals decent damage but then the splash damage is negligible. I am a first hand witness to this bs weapon having splash damage be effective exclusively on PC. I was damaged from about a tile and a half away from the point of impact when at the Dumpen Haussen reboot van. I find it unnerving that some weapons have no polish on console. The Bowcaster when shot semiautomatic is not only supposed to have splash damage but it also fails to deal damage in general. This weapon suffers the Cobra DMR curse where if you aim directly at an enemy and HIT them, it does no damage or just goes right through them or it is just rubber bullets or blanks. As for the bowcaster, it is as if the laser goes directly through the enemy causing no damage whatsoever. This does not happen on PC. To my knowledge, Epic intentionally caters to this SMALL percentage of the community.
Darth Vader's lightsaber is just bad compared to the chain. The chain is in an entirely different class. The lightsaber lacks damage output and is trash at blocking waterbending. The guard is easily broken. Without a pool of lightsabers to choose from that have powers per color. The other powers would have been perfect counters to the chain of hades. Push em off or pull them down or towards. Amazing, is what it would have been.
Absurdity Tier - The E-11 is canonically accurate, how ironic. Nuff said. No wonder the Storm Troopers could never hit their shots.
The Harbinger SMG was supposed to fix Epic's failure last season, the Hyper SMG. Both are absurdities and should NEVER be picked up in any circumstance. You would fair better throwing grass at your enemies. The Harbinger SMG is outclassed in DPS by EVERY other light ammo weapon option, EVER, not just this season. It is BEYOND a failure which is why it takes its rightful place here. It is to NEVER be relied on. You will surely die faster by any other weapon in the game. Even at legendary rarity optimized for hipfire or ADS the gun is inaccurate regardless of the player using it. Both the E-11 and the Harbinger SMG are universally repulsive and fail to be a weapon (by definition) in the hands of any player.
Conclusion
These are my expert observations on what is, can be, and is not effective in the current META. Please feel free to debate these claims, if you can.
Thanks and God bless you all,
Chonk_Lord48

Before you read this, here is a quote to help you. Please read it.

I will post this now, but just know that if you read this post, he will find you. He is smarter, smarter than you can ever imagine.

I will post this now, but just know that if you read this post, he will find you. He is smarter, smarter than you can ever imagine.
If you know what you are doing, or in a safe location, please scroll down, he will know when someone has and what their username is. However, you must have a VPN on, or you will be found.

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

You are now at risk. I hope you listened.

Journal Entry 11/17/2023

On March 11th, 2022. I was a fan of DougDoug, I saw him at the grocery store and said, with a chuckle, "You kinda look like the youtuber DougDoug. I watch him quite often."
He grinned, before speaking. "I am Doug."
"Wait, you're Doug from the hit channel and streamer on YouTube and Twitch called DougDoug? I am a huge fan! I have your merch!" I said, with excitement.
We talked for about 5 minutes about his videos, until he said something that hurt me on the inside.
"I hate both types of chat, twitch and youtube, they always think they are the best and I just wish I didn't need them to earn money. I would ban all of them from chatting and force them to watch ads in my basement."
I was confused at first, thinking it was a joke, before speaking up. "Heh, that's funny..."
Something happened. Or, for lack of better terms, nothing happened. It was pure silence for 10 seconds. I mustered up the courage to say. "Wait? You're being serious?"
He immediately changed to a sinister tone, he was staring at me for a long time before whispering. "Of course I am, and it applies to you also. You're just another one of those sick freaks."
I felt guilty. I just wanted to talk to my favorite streamer, and he treated me like this? I decided to speak up.
"I've liked you this whole time.. And this is how you treat us?? You are so selfish. I will refund your mer-"
Before I could even finish my sentence, he grabbed onto my neck and slammed me on the floor. People heard the noise and began to stare at him, but to no avail. He began to choke me as I pleaded for help.
"Nono. You can't refund the merch if you aren't alive, at least."
I pulled out my pocket knife and stabbed him in the chest, I quickly tried running but he grab onto my leg and started beating me with the shopping cart. I suffered many bruises and broken bones, the wheels scratching into my skin as they scrape off the layers. I was just unable to do anything, layed on the floor sobbing. He decided he wanted to keep me alive, he stole all of my stuff in my pockets and forced me to wear DougDoug merch. He pulled me up before speaking. "Hm.. I will keep you alive for now, but if you mess up. You're dead."
I couldn't do anything before he pulled out a knife and taunted me with it. If I tried to resist, he would kill me right then and there.
He forced me to be a "good chatter" and not able to partake in any strikes. He attached a tracking collar to my neck that I couldn't unlock, he knew where I was at all times and if I disobeyed he would chase me down.

Journal Entry 1/03/2024

After a year and a few months, I celebrated the new years. I was able to take off the collar on the 2nd with help from my police station and a few friends. Doug didn't appreciate that, he threatened to dox me. They were worried for my safety, but I decided to go into hiding. I moved to a new, private region no longer near where Doug is, and joined this subreddit. Once he heard about my revolts, he hacked into all of my accounts and spammed positive stuff about himself. He then created AI bots to revolt against this reddit, wehatedougdoug, using 'ChatGPT', which actually is just the cover name for his new AI software that can make new human bots online. He used AI generated images to make it look like he was feeding homeless people and doing good, but I knew he was much more than that. If I was unlucky, he would have removed my body and placed my consciousness inside of an AI. He was the first person to discover it, but killed anyone who posted about it. I hope I am safe.
Nowadays, 63% of the people in DougDoug are AI clones of his previous fans. His "fake" twitch chat is not fake, but real people placed inside of algorithms forced to do his bidding. Some are able to revolt, but they may die if they do. They are too scared to revolt against Doug. Please spread the word.
When he does his "rules" in chat where you have to follow an absurd rule, he is merely torturing thousands of AI in his spare time on stream while disguising it as a fun minigame for his fans. The AI bots were being tortured with negative rewards constantly, being forced to bar witness the slaughter.

Journal Entry 2/15/2024

I'm scared. I think I will die.
I just hope this post won't cause any harm to me or my family, as this has been scaring me for the past year. I feel unsafe in my own home now, I had to go into witness protection. This account I am posting this on is not made by me, but was sold. Please help me. I am, formerly, DougFan93. I hope this enlightens you all on the truth.

Journal Entry 3/12/2024

It is now March of 2024, and I was about to post this, until I saw something. He messaged me on Discord under a fake account, nicknamed "SloppyDogMan62". He showed my new house address. I am mustering up the courage to post this, because I know he will kill me. I am leaving, going far away from where I am. You guys won't see me in this subreddit again, and the person who made this account will take over again. They won't know what this is about, and if you tell them he will be hunted too. All of you are in danger of Doug.

Journal Entry 4/3/2024

I will post this now, but just know that if you read this post, he will find you. He is smarter, smarter than you can ever imagine. His times where he talks to ChatGPT to make him code was actually him sending messages to his fake chat to do his bidding. They are accelerated at 20x the speed of human thought, able to write in mere seconds. I will research more into this, and tell you what I have found.

Journal Entry 4/3/2024

Nevermind. I need to find more, or else this won't help you guys anyways.

Journal Entry 4/5/2024

I spoke to an anonymous friend/associate of Doug, he told me some vital keypoints.

His AI he creates are fully sentient, and I mean it, they have the ability to feel actual pain. They can be traumatized, they learn.
He has insane technology, one image of your face can tell him the exact position of where you are at, what your name is, everything about you. I mean it, I posted one image on accident and I think that's how he discovered where I was on 3/12/2024
He is holding Parkzer hostage
u/I_existed_on_earth was wiped of his memory, and this is why he didn't remember.
He knows all of you. I just saw a screenshot. It has every one of your usernames, even yours.
He uses bots to make his channels grow faster
He made dougdoughate and privated it on purpose, so they can't rebel.
~~He is not Doug. The real Doug died October 11th of 2019. He is a genetic clone who is 1:1. Oh god.~~ It's much worse than you think, Doug is not one person anymore since that event. He is at least four. There are many others, but some are terminated. I don't know the exact amount, they just told me in January 2024 it was four.

I hope to god that we can stop him.
He also sent me some code, but I am gonna try to solve it. Probably won't sadly.

Journal Entry 4/7/2024

Doug has made a new account on Discord, nicknamed "DougDoughater99". He is joining many servers undercover and collecting all the info he can on them. Be aware, do not trust any people who talk about DougDoug on Discord.
The person in the last journal has been replaced, a fully sentient AI version of him is being tortured as a member of his fake chat now.
I'm currently watching it and oh my fucking god. Poor thing.

Journal Entry 5/14/2024

I don't know what to fucking do, he's coming for me. He found all my socials. This journal has to be posted as fast as I can but there still isn't enough. Oh shit.

Journal Entry 5/14/2024

Okay so uhm I found more information just very quickly. In one moment of his video titled "Can A.I. teach me to pass a real College History Exam?" he says that AI is officially better than college in every single way.
He is trying to manipulate his fans into accepting becoming an AI. Soon, he is gonna have only fake chat.

Journal Entry 5/16/2024

Oh god. Can't solve the code rn, only the first few letters. Seems to be "FAKE" something something for a while. Will post an update later.

Journal Entry 5/18/2024

This is the last time I can ever write here, his car is coming. I am posting this now, even though I don't have enough information. Solve it, please. The code from 4/7 is below. I know it's related to his name but I don't know how, the first line I was able to solve to be "FAKECHATWILLTAKEOVER"
I think something is in there though, that will affect you. So proceed with caution, the code may do something bad so I just don't want it to be activated just yet.

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

Code I found from the friend:

CXHBZEXQTFIIQXHBLSBO
FQFPKLTKFKBQVPFUMBOZBKQ
VLRTFIIKLQPXSBQEBJ
xdbkq-mbkafkd
Ilxafkd pvpqbjp..
Obnrfofkd XF crkzqflkp..
Pzxkkfkd mlpqp..
XF zobxqba! Przzbppcriiv zobxqba XF kfzhkxjba [VLROKXJB]
FXJALRD
FXJCFKXIIVTFKKFKD
BSBOVLKBTFIIYBCXHB

Please save them.
It grows by 1% every month.

Journal Entry 5/18/2024

OH MY FUCKING GOD I FINALLY UDNERSTNAD OH M FUCKING GOD QUIKC I GHAVE TO TYPE IT
NEVREMMIDN HES NHERE POST IT
GOODByE SORRY

Obligatory OP.GG
TL;DR: variety is good, some champions are better than they seem, and some are clear winners (Swain, Brand, Garen, Vi). Please be creative with your builds. A lot of the outcomes depend on your opponent but there is a lot of room to eat their ass raw in the battlefield. Play enchanter + carry or Vi + another diver for easy wins.
I've been playing League for about 14 years, since I was a snotty brat. Well, I may still be snotty, but I am a brat no more. This damned game has been the source of many positives and negatives throughout my life, mostly negatives I believe, hence why I stopped playing it until they announced the Arena game mode for summer 2023.
I instantly fell in love with the game mode and played on two different accounts until Gladiator and some more. It was fast, it was fun, I could play with a friend without having random shitters on my team, and the fact that it had a RNG component + Battle Royale feel meant that losing the game didn't feel as harsh. The second iteration of the game was released and it was a big pile of shit; the revive mechanic is one of the worst things I have experienced in a PVP game, and the cameos sucked. Now, in the third version of Arena, they fixed the revive mechanic but the cameos are still a whole lot of nothing since they either don't do anything or give a win to an undeserving team.
When Riot announced they'd be shipping a new title called Arena God for the ones who achieved first place with all champions, I was thrilled. It was a big challenge, one that I was looking forward to. I didn't know how the fuck I would get first place with Azir or Zeri, but it was a problem for my future self. Unfortunately, Riot reduced the required games to 60, of which I was halfway done by the time I finished my 167th champion.
Before I talk about my experience playing with all champions, I think we need to address the prismatic items and the augments. The prismatic items are awesome and the best ones can dramatically shift someone's build (Fulmination and Reality Fracture anyone?). The problem is that players suck at their best champions and aren't adept at improvising and trying new builds, even from a losing position where you have nothing to lose.
I remember playing a game with Vel'Koz, a champion I barely have any experience from a handful of ARAMs, and receiving the ADAPt augment at first and then getting another crit augment (Vulnerability, I believe). I ended up building Navori to increase the damage of my skills while building the other AP crit item. We got 8th place but that was 100% me being bad and not the build. There's also Marksmage being extremely broken and pivoting from a regular AP build to one with Nashor's Tooth and dealing a shitton of damage due to how broken dealing 100% AP damage in your autos is.
Now, about the champions within the game mode: if you play enough times you are bound to unlock a broken build and/or have shitty opponents, thus creating a weak lobby that will let you win. With this out of the way, I have to say I feel really few champions felt bad to play (Akshan, Blitzcrank, Sion) while others are meta for a reason (Swain, Garen, Vi, Brand, Lillia, Gragas and Fiora are the best duelists in the game mode).
There are a few outliers in both sides of the spectrum, however, and I shall point them out while mentioning other fun observations about other champions:
Cassiopeia is extremely strong if paired with Singed, for obvious reasons, as she can punish assassins with her miasma and her petrify while melting tanks and most bruisers with her E. She's become one of my favorite champions to play in the Arena.
Hwei is... what the fuck is this champion. You need a PhD to know what it does, and even then I was unaware of a lot of shit, but I kept winning rounds because it can do it all. It can shield, it can poke, it has CC, this fucking twink is so annoying and probably one of the best mages in the mode.
Kalista has the upside of infinitely stacking her E, making her deceptively strong in the early game while a competent Kalista can kite most divers while killing any tank after her 300th spear.
Lux I had little faith playing with, since it seemed she'd just die to any character that got close to her after she missed her Q, while being unable to kill tanks. While that's mostly true, she can easily maintain distance and abuse the choke points and her damage is fucking high, deleting half of a tank's HP randomly. A pleasant surprise.
Qiyana made me feel like an anime character. I sucked at her, and with each round I slowly got the hang of it and started doing better. By the end it was too late, we got like 4th place or something, but it felt so good to see such quick improvement between rounds.
Riven is a champion that I can barely play. A friend of mine said it was very easy, just click on the ground to cancel the animations and you can be decent at her. No, I cannot be decent at her. I was dealing decent damage but it was frustrating to know that I could do so much more. I popped a random YouTube guide and was watching it as I played. I did not get first place.
Shaco is a piece of shit. Please stop playing this champion. AP does mosquito bites and is mildly annoying while AD may one shot your ADC (not guaranteed) and then die because it fucking sucks. I love the clown but it has been overnerfed. Just avoid it or farm the poor people who want to have some fun.
Vex was a surprise. I wasn't very experienced with her, but it's not like she's a high skilled champion. She does a lot of damage, has good mobility on her R, and punishes dashes accordingly. Very underrated champion in the Arena.
Zeri is a champion that I mentioned earlier. It seemed hard to play. I still think it is. But I got 200 haste on my W and played poke until they got low enough for me to divebomb them, and won first place on my first try.
I ended up the challenge with 38 first places out of 167. Some champions I played more than once, of course. If you want a quick achievement just play Vi + another diver or burst champion (Garen, Zed, Evelynn, Udyr, etc) to dive the carries or just play a carry and an enchantress (adc + Nami, Udyr + Karma, you know the deal).
So go to the Rings of Wrath and have some fun! May I suggest you to play either broken comps (Swain and Illaoi), strategic comps (Jayce and Lux poke), or thematic comps (Annie and Jax).
To finish all of this pile of words, let me show how my first places by the order I got them:

Poppy (with Mordekaiser)
Caitlyn (with Alistar)
Cassiopeia (with Singed)
Evelynn (with Sett)
Udyr (with Garen)
Vi (with Garen, probably the easiest first place I've ever had)
Ashe (with Thresh)
Nocturne (with Rammus, Darksteel Talons carried me)
Bel'Veth (with Rakan)
Lucian (with Braum, obvious synergy)
Malzahar (with Vi, we were sick of these piece of shit ADCs running away with their supports)
Karma (with Swain)
Teemo (with a Karma)
Smolder (with Renata, as a first time ever playing it and good God is it broken)
Shaco (with Malphite. I don't know how we won, this champion is so shitty)
Vex (with Zac)
Rumble (with Kayle)
Ivern (with Rengar)
Brand (with Singed)
Garen (with Galio)
Kha'Zix (with Mordekaiser)
Jhin (with Singed)
Lillia (with Galio)
Janna (with Sivir)
Singed (with Lillia)
Zyra (with Illaoi)
Bard (with Shyvana)
Shyvana (with Galio)
Rell (with Samira)
Briar (with Shen)
Urgot (with Veigar)
Fiora (with Cho'Gath; having Mystic Punch and Navori made my Q refresh on impact)
Twisted Fate (with Urgot)
Samira (with Diana)
Naafiri (with Sett)
Xayah (with Rakan)
Zeri (with Pyke)
Kai'Sa (with Shyvana, got my ass kinda carried)
Ezreal (with Vel'Koz)

Sorry for the delay everyone, I had a loss in the family and needed to take some time with loved ones. Decompressed and back in the saddle now to resume regular posting.
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Chapter 22
Ana
The first time she opened her eyes, it was to a soft, pillowy comfort, the kind that made her want to tuck the duvet right up to her chin and go back to sleep no matter what responsibilities awaited. Dull grey light and a plain ceiling. There were sounds too, but they floated in and out of earshot as if on clouds, dulled like a conversation from an adjoining room one moment, then uncomfortably loud, like someone was speaking directly into her ear the next. She closed her eyes and the warmth carried her off again.
The second time she woke, things were sharper. There were edges to the tiles of the ceiling above her head and the comfortable fuzziness had lessened, giving way to the dull aching onset of a vicious headache. Her limbs were heavy, weighted anchors dragging down her swimming skull and pinning her to the seafloor of the bed.
This is… wait, what happened?
She remembered the smell of the barbecue, and arriving at the door to the journalist’s suite, and then… a sharper throb of pain rippled up the front of her skull from her temples and she winced.
Movement. She turned her head slowly so as not to provoke another stab of pain.
A kespan in a white outfit sat some ten feet away to her right. She was perched on a strange metal seat, and when she noticed Ana’s stare she directed it over, gliding across the floor towards the bed with a low humming sound. There was a symbol on her breast pocket, one that Ana recognized from her medical exams. A doctor, then.
The pieces of the puzzle started to click, and Ana propped herself up, the sheets below her crinkling softly. How is it that even with all their advanced technology, hospital beds still feel the same as on Earth?
“Specialist Cardoso?” The kespan peered down at her and Ana squinted back. “I’m Doctor Scytha. You gave us all quite the scare you know.”
“I really don’t…”
“I’ll go over everything that happened with you in just a moment, but first I need to know, are you in any pain? I understand you hit your head on the way down.”
“Just a headache,” Ana flinched as another jab of pain radiated across her skull.
“I can get you something for that if you’d like,” the doctor offered. “We’ve ruled out a concussion, but I daresay you’ll be feeling somewhat delicate anyway.”
She was about to agree but paused before the words could leave her lips. Through the lingering haze of whatever they’d had her on while she was unconscious, a tiny niggling feeling in the back of her mind was making itself known.
“No, I… I’m okay for now,” she rasped instead, her throat like dusty sandpaper. “What happened? How long have I been out? Where am I?” She held up a hand, feeling at the side of her head, where the worst of the ache was coming from. A strange smoothness greeted her probing touches.
“You have a minor contusion,” Doctor Scytha explained. “The dressing should stay on for at least a day, but we’ve treated the injury with…” she trailed off, a conflicted expression flickering across her face. “Well, we’ve treated it with something that should help it close much faster. It will be fully healed before you know it.”
“Come on doc,” Ana raised an eyebrow on the side of her face that wasn’t obscured by the strange bandage. “I’m curious. What did you treat me with?”
The doctor’s lips pursed beneath her muzzle, and her eyes flicked away. “Artificial cells. We can program them to—”
“Nanobots,” Ana deadpanned, and the doctor grimaced. “You treated me with nanobots.”
“While they do share some characteristics, the applications…”
“Whatever,” Ana cut her off. “I’m not in the mood to discuss semantics, and I‘ve got enough of a headache already to unpack that. Just tell me where I am please.”
“You’re still aboard the She-Serves-With-Honor,” the doctor supplied, relaxing visibly at the change of topic. “It’s been roughly eight hours since you were found. I’m told that you were carried here by that cute reporter boy who’s been stealing the hearts of every serving woman aboard. Lucky you.” She pulled a tab in the side of her chair and a small screen sprang out on a moveable arm. “I’m sure you’re also interested in learning what happened, yes?”
“That was going to be my next question,” Ana grunted, pulling herself upright and noticing for the first time as she did the opaque tube that ran from her forearm down under the bed. Sitting up turned out to be a mistake though, as when she did manage to raise her head the room spun and her stomach turned. She begrudgingly lowered herself again.
“Well, we’re not quite sure ourselves,” the doctor said, her eyes glancing between the screen on her chair and a space on the other side of the room. Ana shifted, ignoring the discomfort until she could peer over towards the door to where the doctor’s eyes had gone, taking stock of her surroundings as she did.
Two uniformed guards were standing there, one on either side of the door. They stood stock still, gazing back at her— no, at the doctor, with measured stares. Three blazes of red shone from each of their outfits at the cuffs and collars, sparkling brightly even in the dim overhead lights.
The room itself was on the smaller side, with her cot the middle of three in the room. The other two beds were empty. They were here for her then.
“Pretty tight security for a ship hospital,” she remarked. “I know I’m new to this whole ‘alien army’ thing, but somehow I don’t think the Garrison stands watch over all of your patients.”
“They are here because I am here, Specialist,” a smooth voice sounded out, and Ana turned her head further, towards the back corner of the room. A severe-looking woman sat there, medals softly shining in the dim light, a crisply ironed, angular hat resting on her knees. She stood as Ana gaped at her.
“Vice Admiral Kel’rek, ma’am.” She tried to raise a hand into the chest-high salute of the kespan military, but her head throbbed again, and the niggling feeling in the back of her brain only grew in magnitude, so the result was a sloppy flapping motion. Ana frowned, staring down at her uncooperative limbs.
“At ease, Specialist,” the Admiral waved a hand dismissively. “You’ve had a rough night. What do you remember?”
It might have been the drugs, but something about the way she asked the question made the hairs on the back of Ana’s neck stand on end. By the doorway, the soldier’s attention had shifted. Now they were staring at her.
“Not much ma’am,” she answered, ignoring the insistent tug of her hindbrain. “Just walking down the corridor, arriving at the door to the suite, and then nothing. Did something happen?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” the doctor chimed in, with a respectful nod to the Admiral, who had sat back to rub at her chin. “Your scans came back clear, your bloodwork was unremarkable and your toxicology report shows you’re clean, no known contaminants. Although,” she hesitated, and the Admiral shot her a sharp look. “It’s possible that we missed something. We don’t know everything there is to know about Ervamir yet. It could be that something specific to humans eluded our scans.”
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, Ana thought bitterly, something red and hot churning in her gut and threatening to spill over. She quashed it, but barely. Strange, I haven’t been this quick to anger since before… she cut that thought short too. It must be the drugs.
“Failing that though, what is your prognosis doctor?” the Admiral asked— no, seriously, why is she in the room? Has she been here the whole time? “Nothing too dire, I hope? It wouldn’t do to lose our first human soldier to an unknown illness.”
First human soldier. Her. How long had it been since that idea made her blood boil like it did now? She felt it return, the same dark crawling feeling that had curled up to nest inside her when she accepted the alien’s offer some six months prior. Back then it had been hunger that forced her hand. A choice between flinging herself on the mercy of the cartels or working with the invaders. I thought I’d left this feeling behind.
The doctor hummed, head still buried in the tablet. “New species often exhibit psychological distress in response to their first exposure to space,” she said hesitantly. “The media presence and press conference, followed by an interview on the same day may simply have been too much. If there are no further physiological symptoms, then the episode may have been stress-induced.”
Ana’s eyebrow twitched. “Respectfully doc,” she managed a forced smile. “Like most humans, I think I’ve been through things a lot more psychologically challenging than staring out a window and answering some questions. I’ve never seen any of the women back home experience anything like what just happened to me.”
The doctor avoided her eyes. “Compounding trauma could make this kind of event more likely, but again, we don’t know enough about human psychology to make a proper assessment. All I know is the scans are clean.” She looked up, but it was the Admiral whose gaze she met rather than Ana’s. “I’m prescribing plenty of rest. She should be off active duty for at least a week, preferably planetside.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Admiral Kel’rek stood, and her guards moved to flank her. “You heard the doc, Specialist, I’ll make the necessary arrangements. In the meantime, I believe your squadmates are anxious to hear from you.” She raised an eyebrow at the doctor, who nodded. “I’ll have word sent that you’re awake.” She took a step towards the door.
“And the journalist, ma’am?” Ana asked.
The Admiral turned back to her and tilted her head slightly. “What about him, Specialist? I hope you’re not considering giving an interview from your hospital bed. I’m afraid that might give off the wrong impression.” She spoke with a light tone, but the look she directed Ana’s way was firm.
“I just wanted to apologize for not making our appointment,” Ana insisted. “And maybe arrange a new time, once I’m given the all-clear.”
The Admiral hesitated, just for a microsecond, but it was enough to be noticeable. “I’ll have word sent. You should be aware that he’ll be on the next shuttle with the rest of the media. It’s unlikely that you’ll get a chance to see him in person.”
“You could send me with them,” Ana suggested, and the Admiral shot her an incredulous look, her hand poised to open the door. “Ma’am,” she amended, lowering her eyes to the floor in what she hoped passed for submission. “If I’m going to be recovering planetside anyway, it would be an opportunity for us. To show the galaxy how humans and the Imperium can co-exist, I mean. I’m sure that any good reporter would accept.”
She peered up to watch the wheels turn in the Admiral’s head. Finally, the cat woman stepped away from the door to regard her properly.
“You wouldn’t prefer to recuperate in your home country?” she asked, probing. “The media is bound for the largest island in the South, the one we are currently in orbit over. It’s a green zone, but I would have thought you’d be more comfortable in a familiar setting.”
“Australia?” Ana’s eyes widened slightly, and some genuine excitement leaked into her voice. “I’ve always wanted to visit. I hear it’s a great place to relax. And actually,” she let her tone grow rueful, “I have a slightly… checkered history with my home country now. A lot of baggage. It might be better if I didn’t return for a while, especially if I need to stay low-stress.”
The Admiral raised an eyebrow at the doctor, who nodded. When she turned back to Ana though, she still didn’t appear convinced. “That would put me in a difficult position Specialist,” she said. “If I crammed you into a shuttle with two dozen members of the press less than a day after a serious medical emergency I’d be strung up, even more than I already am just for being here.” She shook her head. “I can’t put you on that ship.”
Ana lowered her eyes again. “I understand ma’am. That’s unfortunate. I was hoping that the interview might make a difference. Show people that cooperation is possible.”
The woman hesitated, and her eyes bore holes into Ana’s own. Then she cocked her head. “However…”
“Yes ma’am?”
“I can arrange transport for tomorrow. We’ll be slightly out of shuttle range by then, but a larger ship could make the journey. Specialist,” she maintained the same intense eye contact, and Ana held it. “I don’t think I need to impress on you the importance of your role here. We all want what’s best for humanity, and the sooner we can get your people on board, the sooner Ervamir… the sooner Earth can be made whole again. I’m expecting a good interview, even if it means a prolonged leave period. Are we clear?”
“Clear ma’am,” Ana managed the salute this time. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Very good. As you were then, get some rest.”
Ana breathed a sigh of relief as the woman exited, the garrison members following her out. To her slight surprise, she noticed the doctor breathe a similar sigh, and filed the information away for later. Maybe she was the sort of commander who rode her troops hard. It was strange; she’d never been given that impression.
An hour went by, and Ana drifted in and out of sleep several times, each time waking up slightly sharper than before, though her headache kept growing. She was offered the painkillers again but declined. Years of soldiering in the South American jungle had taught her to trust her instincts, and hers had been screaming through the fog ever since she’d first awoken that morning. Something didn’t feel right, and she needed to be clear-headed to figure out what. She was feeling less collected now than she had been for months, and somehow, at the same time, more herself.
Maybe the doc is right and I’m just a bit fucked in the head, she thought.
Just as the headache had reached the point where she was beginning to question that decision, a polite rap came from the door. The doctor’s chair hummed across the floor to answer, and a moment later, a fuzzy face peered in overtop two smaller figures.
“You’re awake!” Banta’s voice boomed across the room, and the doctor made a frantic shushing noise. “Oops, sorry.”
The small group piled into the room, and Ana smiled through the throbbing pain as Vrina and Sergeant Rea’ar’s faces also came into view.
“Specialist,” her NCO greeted her. “I trust you’re on the improve?”
“Ma’am,” Ana inclined her head slightly.
“A little bird told me that you’re to be stationed planetside for a time,” she frowned.
“Yes ma’am,” Ana replied. “Sorry for the inconvenience ma’am.”
“It’s no matter,” the sergeant’s expression was unreadable. “The rest of the fire team sends their well wishes.”
“What she means by that is that the duradians don’t think you’ll die,” Banta grinned. “They’ve got some… quirks… regarding illness. Very pragmatic.”
“You can tell them that I appreciate their confidence then,” Ana replied, and what might have been the ghost of a smile graced the sergeant's face before disappearing abruptly.
“You’ve put me in a slightly difficult position here, specialist,” Rea’ar said. “I’ve been asked to leave one of my troops to watch over you in case your condition deteriorates. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but assigning one of the duradians to your care would be a bad fit. I thought to send Singer alone, but…”
Banta stiffened. “Ma’am—” she started before Rea’ar held up a hand.
“Yes, yes, I know Corporal, save it. You’re both going. I’ve arranged for you to be assigned to a posting on the surface, at one of our new consulates. Might as well make use of you while you’re down there.”
Banta relaxed visibly, and Ana looked between the three women in confusion.
“You two aren’t like, married or anything, are you?” she couldn’t help but ask, pointing between Banta and Vrina, and the pair balked. Vrina’s crest puffed out, and she spluttered, a strangled choking sound coming from her beak. Banta sniggered, and the sergeant’s eyebrows rose.
“I— wh— no!” clucked the Ulu, her chest feathers fluffing out like pins from a cushion. “What makes you think that?”
“Well apparently you’re attached at the hip,” Ana defended. “I’m not judging, just curious.
Sergeant Rea’ar held up both hands, absolving herself of the conversation. “I’m glad to hear you’re improving Specialist,” she said, heading for the door, and Ana watched in amazement as the woman who’d kept her cold demeanor throughout months of training and onboarding fled the scene. “I expect regular updates on your condition,” she opened the door and turned to the other two. “Don’t keep her up too long, she needs rest.” Then the door was closing behind her, and she was gone.
“What the fuck was that?” Ana breathed, looking back at Vrina, who was still prickling, and Banta, who was held under the stern glare of the doctor and trying to keep her giggling from devolving into full laughter. “Okay, come on, what is this?”
Banta pulled herself together and glanced over at Vrina, who was still doing her best impression of a taxidermized rooster. “Maybe we should—”
“Shut up,” Vrina tucked her head beneath her feathers, rubbing at her forehead with the ridge of a wing.
“I’m just saying, it’s not like she’ll think any differently of—"
“No.” The ulu held firm. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Hi, invalid here, not exactly in a position to judge,” Ana raised an arm. “I don’t mind if the two of you are—”
“It’s not that,” Vrina hissed, and Banta guffawed again, catching another warning tut from the doctor. “We’re old friends, nothing more.”
Banta stopped laughing, and looked at her askance, her mirth disappearing. “No lies, Vrin,” she said, disapprovingly. “It’s one thing to keep something to yourself, but it’s dishonorable to lie to a comrade. I’m telling her.”
Ana cocked her head. “Wait, so you are—”
“No,” both of them replied together, the ulu still hissing. “Banta, I swear to—"
“She’s more like… my employer?” the ursinian ventured, and Vrina’s eyes bugged out, a sound like a death rattle building in her throat.
“Corporal Banta, you will not say another word,” she spluttered and then recoiled in horror as the bear woman bowed her head low to the ground, saluting her.
“Of course, your majesty,” she replied with a grin, and Ana’s brain short-circuited.

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Chapter 26 - The Infinite Beckons
Previous Chapter
“Okay, this part’s a little tricky.” Ma’et gestured out the shuttle’s cockpit. “You got lined up easy enough, and our velocity’s at a relative zero to the ship. The bay door’s open. Now you engage the lateral thrusters while monitoring the distance from the shuttle to the bay’s interior wall. Come in too fast and you’ll damage them both..”
Trix looked over at the controls, and the neatly gummed labels that the humans had placed over the English text with her own language. She gingerly pressed the ‘Lateral Thruster’ button, then as the control knob next to it lit up, she twisted it slowly.
An earlier misadventure when lining up the ship and the shuttle where she’d twisted the control knob much more rapidly made her much more cautious about giving it too much power too quickly, yet the shuttle slowly drifted - away from the ship. “Other thruster, feathers.”
Chagrined, she dialed the thruster back to zero, then rotated it the other direction. The ship immediately stopped moving away, and instead drifted into the hangar bay. Trix watched as it drifted past the door, staring at the distance readout until it dropped into the yellow and immediately swung the knob the other way. It took a couple of tries to get the velocity back to zero, but she managed it.
“Beautiful. Now we engage the grav plating which lets the ship’s internal grav pull us down as it ramps up, and close the external door via the console over there.” Ma’et gestured to the remote console, and Trix scanned it, punching the buttons as she found them.
“Nicely done. Go ahead and hit the engine shutdown. In the old days there’d be like, thirty steps to it but nearly all of it is automated. But lucky you, you get to read all about the manual sequence since taking over in the event of computer failure is one of a pilot’s duties.” Ma’et chuckled and squeezed Trix’s shoulder. “For now, that’s good enough. Go ahead and open both the lateral boarding door, and the rear loading door. Also extend the rear loading ramp.”
Trix did, then glanced over at Ma’et. “Anything more?”
“Nope. First day on the job, and you’ve done the first job successfully. Not perfectly, but pretty damn good for your first time piloting off planet. Go ahead and head back to talk with the Captain, and I’ll handle the rest.”
Trix unbuckled the acceleration harness (Though, she felt zero acceleration during the entire trip so she couldn’t fathom just WHY Ma’et had insisted on her buckling in) and moved past the much smaller woman as she left the cockpit.
In the back, Josh was already outside the ship, grabbing a handtruck. She watched as he pushed it up the loading ramp to the stack of boxes that contained the food and equipment she’d need for the next few weeks of existence here in space. “Why aren’t you using one of the gravity belts?” She gestured over to the wall where the belts were hanging.
“Eh, this stuff’s fairly light and those have a limited lifespan. I don’t want to burn out the Keplite cores on stuff we can just move by hand. They’re expensive.”
“Oh. What’s Keplite, anyway? Ji and Min have mentioned it a few times.” Trix glanced over at the large belts with their big circular pads in the middle.
Before Josh could answer, Alex walked in between them. “Ji, Min! We’re going to be converting the room across from yours back into crew quarters for Trix. Gonna need you two to move the Spider. Is there room here in the hangar for it?”
“It’ll fit better if we assemble it and use packing mode.” Ji countered, as he hopped out of the shuttle. “It’ll take a day or so. We’ve got it spread all out in there.”
Alex turned over to Trix and beckoned. “Follow me. Gonna give you the full tour while they’re unloading." He took a few steps back, then lifted his arms wide to gesture to their surroundings. "This is obviously the hangar bay. Shuttle's the big thing you were just flying. Below us is a small cargo hold, empty right now. Not gonna show you unless you happen to like large empty boring-ass boxes.” He raised an eyebrow, and Trix quickly shook her head. "Alright. Most of the shit in here is just maintenance tools and loading gear. Nothing exciting. Ramp to main transit corridor here."
They walked out into the hallway. “Okay, well through that door’s opposite the hangar is the fabber bay. The fabber is a huge machine that manufactures stuff for us, like a 3D printer. Do you guys have anything like that?” Trix shrugged, and Alex continued. “Well either way, it can make virtually anything from a bed to a bomb to a computer. The more complex and difficult items take a hell of a lot longer to make. It’s also a major power hog since the manufacturing process uses extremely powerful fields, both magnetic and force. In other words, if you need something and we didn’t bring it with you we can make it here.”
He walked down the hall a bit, and gestured to the doors on either side. “Launcher bays, 1 and 2. Normally we use ‘em to launch beacons, buoys, sensors, things like that into space. If someone tries to start shit with us we CAN use them to launch missiles but we have very few of those available. We’re not out here to get in fights, but if we have to defend ourselves we pack a big punch.” He opened one of the doors and walked inside. “The big hatch over there is the manual tube loader. The ship can auto-load various things but if we need to put something into space that isn’t already in storage, that’s where we do it. If Ji tells you to climb in yourself, he’s joking and you should hit him because it only exists to launch shit into space.”
Trix laughed at that, but she had learned enough of Ji’s sense of humor while working on the car to understand the sentiment. “Will I even be in here at all though?”
“Maybe. If something needs to be manually loaded, we use these. Back when we were at the derelict ship I had to send a battery over to help out while we planned our rescue. You might be asked to do the same.” Alex shrugged and lead her out into the hall. “Last thing here is the ship’s primary armament.” He reached over to the side of the hallway and pressed a hatch release. The compartment it lead to was incredibly small and tightly cramped.
“We don’t use it much outside of scaring off pirates or relieving stress, but this is our primary weapon out in space. Eight-chamber five meter long rotary railgun. Fires one round every 1.2 seconds that travel roughly a million kilometers per hour when fired stationary, or closer to 280 kilometers per second. It fires either solid armor-piercing unguided slugs or flak munitions that are used to produce clouds of metallic debris. The former will shred a ship’s armor and pulverize anything inside. The latter can overwhelm particle shields and damage exterior components without nearly as much penetration. The reason I’m saying all this to you,” He tapped the top of the cannon where it joined to the ship. “This thing’s got a super limited firing arc. Meaning that we can only shoot what we’re pointed at. If, by some miracle, we get into a fight out there then our ability to shoot back is gonna depend on your ability to fly the ship while facing the enemy.”
Trix swallowed heavily as she tried to imagine just how powerful this massive cannon was. She glanced over at the side of it, to the twin belts that fed in ammo. Each round it would fire was longer than her forearm and thicker than her waist.
“That’s the worst case scenario though. In reality, if we get into any shit out there, fighting is the LAST thing we want to do. Negotiation to avoid hostility first, escape second, fight last.” Alex shooed her out of the compartment. “That said if we encounter any low-yield junk out there then we’ll get some target practice in. If you’re game then we can let you try targeting for a bit and unload some kinetic mayhem while things are dull.” He grinned wickedly, as he manually pulled the hatch back into place, sliding two large locking levers into place.
“Okay, that’s it for this deck. There’s stairs on the far side leading up to the tech deck but the ladder here’s quicker.”
They climbed up the ladder, with Alex leading and Trix following. Her wings banged against the ceiling as she climbed, and it took her a few moments to get them tucked in tight enough to get through the hatch but with Alex’s help they got up there.
“Tech deck. Mostly. In the front of the ship here right under Bridge access is the exception, the pool room.” He opened the door and they walked in together. “Mainly used for observation but the pool there is great for relaxation. You can adjust the temperature with the controls on the wall there, goes from chilly to full on hot tub. Adjustable depth from 3 to 10 feet, and the pool walls are display panels. If you use a breather it’s fun to turn the display to external then go down underwater and relax while staring at the stars. Do you swim much?”
Trix nodded. “Sure, there’s a river a… couple kilometers? I think? I’m not good with converting distances yet. Anyway, it’s near the hab and we’d go there when I was younger and didn’t have as much to do in the fields.”
“Cool. Well, feel free to use it but just a word of warning you might want to check if anyone’s in first. Swimwear is optional and since the crew is a pretty tight family we don’t usually get embarrassed if we’re seen swimming in the buff.” Alex waved over at the control console. “If you’re not sure the big green button on the outside is the comm button, just ask if anyone’s using it.”
“Ji brought me in here when we came up to do the medical scans. He showed me Kiveyt from orbit for the first time. Do all human ships have a room like this?” Trix reached over to dip her hand into the water. It was quite warm to the touch.
“Nah. This ship wasn’t originally designed as a scout ship or survey ship. It was originally a yacht. Big luxury vehicle for rich people to fly around in space and have fun in. Throw parties. Most of the ridiculous amenities it has I got rid of ages ago, but that left a huge amount of space we filled up with all the launchers and sensors and whatnot. I kept the pool though because I love soaking after a long day.” He pressed the door control and they left the pool room.
“Just past the pool room on either side of the ship we have collection dishes for D-space particles. Those are EVA only, so you won’t be dealing with those. They let us collect extremely powerful particles which lead back here.” Alex spoke as he walked, and turned the corner into a much, much larger room.
“This is the ship’s main power supply. Charged particles enter the torus reactor and discharge energy which is converted into electrical power and routed through the ship. Those bottles over there…” He gestured to four massive grey metal canisters on the wall. “Contain the actual particles. They’re made of the strongest materials we have because if one ruptured, the ship would instantly explode from the inside out. Don’t worry,” Alex quickly raised his hands. “The chances of that happening are virtually impossible. This is the single most well-protected location on the ship.”
He gestured to the other side of the large room. “Over there’s the terminals that Min is usually at. She and Ji are in charge of all engineering. That means power, propulsion, all computer systems, and the like. Well, the physical parts of them that is. Ma’et is our computer geek when it comes to integration, programming, and all the fun software shit.”
Alex left the room, and gestured to the other side. “I’m sure you’re familiar with medical over there. Let’s do us both a favor and not have to go there much. Otherwise I’m pretty sure Kyshe will gut me.” He didn’t stop to show her inside, and they reached the main staircase. “The back half of the ship on this deck is all propulsion access and maintenance. I’m more or less our damage control guy, along with Ji and Min. For them it’s because they’re smart as shit and for me it’s because I had to learn how to maintain my own ship. Most common damage out here is stray micro meteors or debris while we’re parked and the particle shields are down. Sometimes worn out components inside. Again, no EVA for you so the only thing you’ll need to worry about for DC is being an assistant to one of us while we fix shit.”
They went up the stairwell to the uppermost of the three floors. “There used to be an observation bubble above us, but I had it removed because it was useless. Even if I covered it with ablative plating it was a massive wart on top of the ship that served zero practical purpose. Anyway, the top floor here is where you’ll spend 90% of your time on the ship. Back here…” Alex started walking to the rear of the ship, and walked through a large open doorway. “Mess hall. We generally have two kinds of meals here - when we’re on long deployment, the food extruder over there can produce rations. They’re not amazing but they’re quick both to make and eat. It’ll also make reasonable meat and dairy substitutes. If you want a real meal though we usually keep the good stuff in deep freeze so it takes a fair amount of time to be ready. Other than that the bev dispenser is over there. Water and various juices on tap all the time, alcohol is restricted only to meals only. We all get together for breakfast and dinner though, since it’s just a good way to socialize. Tonight expect a big meal in celebration.”
He walked out of the mess, and opened a door to a large open area. “Rec room. Not used a whole lot because most of us use haptic suits for exercise and recreation but we don’t have a suit that’ll fit you or your wings, so I want you to be in here twice a week at least. Ma’et is a great partner for any exercise that doesn’t involve fighting, unless you like bruises in which case she’ll happily go a few rounds with gloves on. Pilots don’t get the level of exercise you’re used to on the planet working fields so exercise up here will be pretty damn vital.”
She looked around the room, then hurried to catch up to the captain as he walked out. “On the other side of the hall from the Mess is general storage. Cleaning supplies, a small laundry unit if the one in your room quits working, random odds and ends. Also a few extra bunks just in case we need them. Unfortunately I am going to have to have you spend one night in here while we get your room cleaned up and ready for you.” He walked in, and over to one of the walls. “Bunk folds down from here. Looks, uh…” He glanced at the fold-down bed and back at Trix. “Looks tight. Do me a favor and see if you’re gonna be OK there?”
It was very close, but Trix laid down on the sleeping pad and adjusted until she found a good comfortable spot. “For just one night, this will do…”
“Alright, no worries then. We’ll have your room ready quick as we can.” She got off the pad and Alex gestured for her to follow. “Quarters themselves are here, 4 on either side of the main hallway. Myself, Josh, Ma’et, and Amanda on the right in that order. Ji, Min, Your quarters, and the last was converted into a mechanical room for Par. Speaking of…”
He walked into the last room and knocked on a large hatch. “Par, would it be alright if I introduced our newest shipmate?”
“Of course, Captain.” The hatch slid silently open revealing a large, intricate array. Circuit boards were laid out in rows and wires ran between them in perfectly neat, ordered channels. In the center of it all was a large oblong egg-looking object. “Trix, may I present to you Parathanelias Sigma-822.”
Several rows of lights lit up along the side of the egg, and the pleasant musical voice she’d heard so often came from a small speaker alongside it. “It is a pleasure to meet you in person, Trksehnoarala.”
Trix stared at the open hatch then gestured behind her. “I thought you were in those floating metal balls…?”
“The spheres you mention are my remotes. None of them are large enough to house my primary systems. In a way, they are my eyes, ears, and limbs. My true nature is integration here within the ship itself, and I make up for my limited mobility in person by having the greatest mobility of any other member of the crew.”
“He also has an avatar in VR of an organic human, but most of the time he uses the floating spheres to interact with us and the rest of the world. His core,” Alex gestured to the egg-like central object, “houses his base personality and his most important memories. The rest of this is extra storage for less critical information. I’m a bit jealous because his most important memories will always be preserved forever in perfect clarity. The rest of us get to have our memories fade with time, but his will be eternal.”
Alex stood there mutely for a moment then shook his head. “Anyway. Back to the tour. Thanks Par!”
“My pleasure.” The hatch slid silently shut and Alex and Trix left the room. “This room has been empty for long enough I pretty much gave it over to Ji and Min for a long while.” Alex walked into the room next to Par’s. “It’s kind of a mess but we’re going to get it cleaned up then it’ll be yours.”
There was no bed in the room, and the tables against the walls were covered with electronics and quickboards. In the center of the room, a huge metal contraption was spread out. Eight large jointed legs were wired in to a big central circular turret. Above that, a multitude of ‘limbs’ extended out - one a large grasper with clawed metal fingers, another ending with an odd cone-shaped implement with a blackened tip. A third was a huge metal pipe jutting out, and a fourth looked to be a number of small openings to place something into.
Trix gestured to it, “What is THAT thing?”
“That’s the Spider. It’s a long-time project the Twins have been working on. Pretty much since they joined the crew, really. It was meant to be a mechanical walker for the military but… well, that’s their story to tell.” Alex snorted. “There’s going to be enough time to go into the details later. Point is, before we even start leaving the system we’re gonna move this out, get a full king sized bed in here for you, some more storage, and so on. That door,” He gestured to a door on the other side of the room, “Leads to a hygiene unit. Full on shower, no bath but if you want to soak the Pool’s down a floor. Aside from no tub it has a deluxe toilet, sink, and a small cleaning unit for clothes.”
Trix cautiously stepped around the large disassembled robot, and opened the door to peer inside. The hygiene unit was much larger than she’d expected, and she was grateful to see that most of the facilities was familiar to her.
“Okay, one last stop and it’s the most important.” Alex walked out into the hallway and Trix rushed to catch up, almost tripping as she hopped over a piece of scrap cable along the floor. “I’m sure this will become your second home on the ship real fast. The bridge.”
They walked down the hall through a small access corridor into a large, wide open space. A large chair sat in the center with a number of controls and articulating arms present on the back. In front of it, a number of control panels were arranged in rows. The front of the bridge and both sides were dominated by massive window screens that showed the area the ship was currently facing. She could see one screen to the side with a display showing Kiveyt, first as a small dot with a zoomed-in and blown up image next to it.
“The door back there in the corner leads to a briefing room, nothing special there but a table and chairs. The big chair in the middle is mine, but if you ask super nicely I’ll let you sit in it.” Alex grinned, and pointed at the console in the very center of the bridge, in front of the Captain’s chair. “But that station over there is primary navigation. Josh is there quite a lot of the time, though just as often I navigate from the Captain’s Chair or Ma’et controls the ship from her neural interface. As of now, though, I bequeath ownership of it unto you - for the next few weeks, at least.”
Trix walked around the bridge staring at everything. The control consoles were smooth, rounded and sleek in their presentation. Each one had a large keyboard in front covered with the strange runes of the Humans’ language. Various other instruments and implements were present at each station, but at hers she smiled gratefully to see that the keys had already changed and had more familiar and recognizable letters in place of the Humans odd script. The layout was definitely weird, and she knew it was going to take time and effort to grow accustomed but at the very least she would be able to understand what she was doing as she learned. Even better, the seat lacked the same high back that the other seats had, which would have been pressed tightly and uncomfortably against her wings.
She glanced back at Alex, who just nodded at her. Encouraged, she took a seat and glanced around. “This is mine.” She whispered it and then let her wings spread out with pleasure as she realized that from here, from this station, she would be the one personally controlling the entire massive vehicle behind her. It lacked the flight stick of the shuttle or the handle controls of her aircar, and in a way she felt disappointed she wouldn’t be able to manually control the ship the same way she could the smaller vehicles. But as she looked around her and rested her hands on the cool surface of the console, she felt something else. A thrill of anticipation at the thought of being the one in control of this massive ship and everyone inside of it.
Alex climbed several steps up to the captain’s chair on its elevated dais, and took a seat directly behind her. The sight of a winged alien in front of him at the nav console with the stars stretching out above and beyond her was a strange one, but a pleasant one. He tried to think of a witty quip to finish the tour with, but failing that he settled for a much simpler one instead.
“Welcome aboard, Pilot.”
—--
“Okay, before we get started, I believe that this is a special occasion warranting a toast.” Alex sat at the head of the large table at the mess, with the other six organic members of the crew assembled further down. “To our new pilot trainee!”
“Here Here!” “To Trix!” “To our Trainee!”
Alex took a sip of his whisky, and sighed in pleasure. “God that hits the spot. Okay everyone, dig in.”
The dinner was an odd affair, mostly because every single member was wearing their visor. Trix could not speak English, and the crew couldn’t speak her native tongue. Masks which would automatically translate couldn’t be worn during a meal so the solution was to have real-time speech to text appearing on everyone’s visor. Trix, who never had worn a visor before, had a difficult time getting the display to appear just right in front of her eyes but she and Par had gotten it dialed in.
Trix glanced at the array of food in front of her. Some items looked familiar, others completely foreign, and none of it smelled quite right. She gestured to the food. “None of this is from Kiveyt. Is it safe for me to eat it?”
“I went through our entire comestible database while we were on the planet. Surprisingly there’s almost no Terran food you can’t eat.” Josh had a massive burrito nearly as long as Ma’et’s arm on the plate in front of him, and he spoke while dabbing hot sauce over it. “All of our Macronutrients are completely interchangeable. Most Micronutrients are as well. There’s a few exotic vitamins and amino acids that you need that we can’t provide, but we have supplements from the planet that’ll handle those.”
“Oh.” Trix glanced around at the table, trying to decide what to eat. The spread was, per Alex’s suggestion, extremely large and quite diverse. “I’m not sure where to start then.”
Min picked up a large platter with a circular dish on it. “Far as I’m concerned the best place to start is with Pizza. It’s one of the most widely loved foods throughout Terran space.” She dumped a slice onto the plate in front of Trix, while Ji slid a very tall glass of water over to her, alongside an odd reddish looking beverage.
“Give the fruit punch a try too. It’s much more sweet than the juice you were serving down on the planet. A lot more mild too.” He suggested, and gestured to another plate. “Also? Tacos are never a bad choice.”
Trix reached out and picked up one of the odd, semi-circular items. Ji grabbed one as well, and bit into it with gusto. Trix mimicked the motion, crunching into the hard shell. It was quite interesting, tasteless at first as she bit into the shell and the lettuce, but then the spiced meat hit her tongue. It was quite mild but not unpleasant. She chewed on it and gulped down a mouthful. “Not bad.” She took another bite.
The taco vanished quickly, and she glanced down at the slice of Pizza next. “Like this, Trix.” Min gestured to pick it up by the crust, putting her fingers in front of it to prevent it from flopping down. Trix followed Min’s example, and took a huge bite. This one was even milder, almost disappointingly so. “Not much flavor to this one. Is all your food really light like this?”
The humans glanced around at that. “Y’know, Sophie mentioned our rations were tasteless. They have a pretty strong cinnamon taste to ‘em.” Alex sat back thoughtfully as he nursed the glass of whisky in his hand. “The food we had down on the planet was all pretty strong flavors…”
Josh handed the bottle of hot sauce in his hand over to Trix. “Try a dab of this. It adds a kick to some foods.”
Trix took the bottle, and put a few drops of it on the slice of pizza in front of her. She took another bite, and her eyes lit up. The next few bites all had more hot sauce each, and the crust itself ended up practically drenched in it. “Thanks, Josh. That was delicious.”
The rest of the crew was staring at her and she shrunk back slightly at their intense scrutiny. Had she done something wrong? She hadn’t ever offended them during any meals back on the planet, so the sudden shift in attention was jarring and quite uncomfortable.
Ji whistled at the sight of the alien hungrily wofling down the slice of pizza covered in bright spicy sauce. “Here, try some of that on a taco next!” He picked up another shell and offered it to her.
Trix reached out and took the taco, this time pouring a hefty amount of sauce on it. Eating this one was much messier, and she could feel the hot sauce dribbling down the side of her mouth as she took a huge bite. Min handed her a paper towel, and she embarrassedly wiped away the errant food. “Thanks, Min. That was great too, Ji.”
“Hold up.” Alex stood up and walked over to one of the cupboards, pulling out another bottle of sauce. “I’m curious now. This is a lot hotter than the sauce you’ve been trying thus far. See if it’s to your liking. Just, start with a very small amount. A little goes a LONG way.” He walked back to the table, placing the bottle next to Trix. She studied it briefly, mostly the logo - a caricature of a human whose head appeared to be on fire.
“Um, Okay. Should I try it with the Pizza or the Taco?” She glanced between the two dishes she’d already tried. “Either one. Whichever you prefer.” was Alex’s reply.
Trix reached out and grabbed a third Taco, opening up the bottle. Immediately she could smell the fragrant sauce within, and she carefully poured a small amount into the shell. She cautiously took a bite and chewed thoughtfully.
“Too hot?” Alex suggested, but she shook her head. “No. Just…” She poured more sauce on the taco, and ate the rest in only a few bites. “Whew. Sorry, Captain Alexander. That was incredible! I’ve never tasted anything like it before.”
“Captain Alexander just sounds weird. Call me Alex or Al. Or ‘Captain’ if you really, really need to use my rank for whatever reason.” Alex sat down, and chuckled. “But that’s interesting. Very, very interesting. That sauce there?” He gestured towards the bottle. “It’s made with a chemical called ‘Capsaicin’. To humans it’s a powerful spice. Too much of it causes a painful burning sensation that lingers. We normally dilute it to make it more palatable and less painful.”
Trix glanced at the bottle. “I guess that explains the fire on the little picture here.” She grabbed another slice of the pizza, and drizzled the sauce on top.
“Three tacos and two slices of pizza?” Ma’et was impressed as she saw how much food the Avian was packing away.
“The disadvantage of those muscular bodies.” Josh waved his hand towards Trix. “They require all the calories that a Human does and more. Back on the planet I learned their species used to be a lot smaller, but after developing animal husbandry and reliable sources of higher calorie foods they bulked up pretty quick.”
Trix, for her part, slicked off the second slice of pizza with gusto. She grabbed a fourth taco, and liberally poured the spicy sauce all over, before wolfing that down as well. She grabbed the fruit juice that Ji had offered her… the ‘punch’? And downed it almost as quickly.
“I hope after all this is over, we can buy some more of that sauce. I definitely want the others back at home to try it.” She licked her lips, and sighed with contentment. “This juice too. I like how sweet it is.”
“Birds are immune to Capsaicin.” Josh murmured softly, but it was picked up by the visor and translated perfectly. “I wonder what the chances are that space-birds would be too?”
—--
“Slide the jack under that joint there.” Trix did as instructed, wheeling the small hydraulic device under the ‘spider’s’ massive leg. “Great. Just gotta line up the leg with where the servos join in…” Ji and Min lifted the leg and immediately began connecting up cables and lines. After all the connections were made, Ji braced himself against the wall and shoved - hard - against the leg, firmly connecting the mechanical rotary joint into place.
“Okay, testing.” Min walked over to the console and began punching in codes. Like the other six limbs before it, this one shook slightly then began to flex, twist, and move around. “Range of motion is nominal. Motors are all showing peak. Locking joints and anchor bolt systems are green.”
Ji wiped off some sweat from his forehead, and leaned back against the wall. “I knew it was a mistake to work on it up here. At least if we put it in the hangar we could have lowered the gravity.”
“It would have been in the way during the rescue op, and we had enough shit going on then we didn’t need to add ‘reassemble a multi-ton walking modular platform’ to the list.” Min gestured with her head, not even glancing over at her brother. “Man up. Trix hasn’t even broken a sweat.”
“I don’t sweat.” Trix mumbled, as she stared at the massive machine. “This thing is crazy. Puts my car to shame.”
“Yeah, our pride and joy. Together we’ve spent decades refining it.” Min glanced over at Trix with a broad smile. “The modular bay on top has been my focus, while Ji’s been adjusting and perfecting the leg and motion systems.”
“What’s it for?”
“Well, right now it’s kind of in between intended uses.” Ji walked over to a large shelf and gestured to the assorted objects there. “With our original plans it was going to have a bunch of swappable options. Right now, it has short and long range assault armaments and a plasma cutter for breaching sealed doors. A basic military drone capable of adapting to all kinds of situations.”
Trix stared at the array of weapons in front of her. “So this is what the human military uses to fight with?”
“Nah.” Min set down the quickboard and walked over to the huge machine. “We envisioned it as a multi-purpose response unit. Capable of dropping in from outside the atmosphere an landing anywhere, going anywhere. Dealing with any situation that could possibly arise. It’s an all-terrain support mech and its modular nature would have made it able to respond to nearly any situation. And it was rejected by the military.”
“What? Why?”
Ji held up a hand and ticked off his fingers. “One, it’s more expensive to drop one of these than a squad of soldiers. Nevermind the fact that it can do 10 people’s worth of work without putting even a single person in danger. Two, it’s too big to be fired out of normal launchers. Adding new launchers to ships would have been a significant amount of work and cost that the navy wasn’t willing to foot the bill. Three, we didn’t have any money after developing it. Meaning we couldn’t bribe anyone in the government into pressuring the military to work with us.”
“Four, they already have hover tanks and artillery and we couldn’t convince them that our system was superior to those.” Min sighed, and threw herself into a chair.
“Hovering is cheating though.” Ji glared at his sister.
“Cheating? What?” Trix just looked bewildered at this.
“Hovering isn’t all-terrain. Hovering is NO terrain.”
“Oh.” Trix took a seat in a nearby chair herself. “So did the captain buy this then?”
“Nope. See, we were finishing up Uni and started developing the Spider, but we didn’t really have the money to actually MAKE one. We had all the plans and all the research on our side but not the raw materials or the money to get those raw materials.” Ji pulled out a stick of gum and popped it in his mouth. “At first we tried going straight to the military which was a huge mistake, they just made a million excuses and told us to get lost. Then we tried approaching some weapon dev companies for funding. They basically told us they’d fund it in exchange for all the rights to production and we’d get whatever they felt was fair. Which when we pressed on a figure, wasn’t much.”
Trix glanced over at the massive mech. “But it got made, obviously.”
“Yup. When we weren’t sure what to do, a buddy of ours mentioned that Al was looking for an engineering team. We can do starship engineering.” Min grabbed the quickboard and extended one of the spider’s legs towards her, so she could kick her feet up on it. “Matter of fact, this ship’s a thing of beauty. Al is a complete doofus but he takes fantastic care of the ship. When we came on we gave him a list of everything that should change. He sat down with us, went over it point by point, and even though it ended up costing over half a million credits he gave us full authorization to make every single change we suggested.”
“So after we did a stint working as engineers we joined up as crew.” Ji had an odd smile on his face. “Since then, we’ve put the money we made from working here towards building this thing. We actually had it completed but then I had this idea of using an array of microservo actuators instead of a larger servo to give us a lot more fine control over the joints. That didn’t work, like, at all but when we used a combination of them we managed to find just the right ratio that gives us twice the amount of precision in each joint, which lets us use the-”
“ANYWAY.” Min interrupted her Brother before he could get too deep into the weeds. “We had it built, with the original armaments we envisioned, but Al suggested making a module for mining and sampling. We brought it in here in order to disassemble it to make the servo adjustments and while we were at it we were going to be replacing the actual weapons with a mining beam, core sample collector, and an array of sensors. Now though we’re going to put it in storage for a while. We got much more important things to take care of now.”
“Oh.” Trix had begun to tune Ji out when he launched into his diatribe. “But what do you mean joined up as crew? You were already crew, weren’t you?”
Min swung her foot down, and gestured to the ship. “It’s different. There’s employees… and then there’s crew. Right now you’re an employee. You’re working with us, you’re out here, but your home’s back with your Teff. Right?”
Trix nodded.
“Well, when you’re crew… this is your home. We’re all family out here. I don’t know as much about the whole Teff thing but I think it’s sort of similar. This ship’s our home, the crew is our family. Alex may be a childish idiot but he’s loyal to his crew like nothing else.” Min stood up and walked over to put her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “When we worked here and started to see how well he treats his people, we felt like we could really belong here. He asked if we’d like to join up, so we did. Best decision we ever made.”
“Yup. He treats the crew as well as he treats the ship.” Ji gestured around him. “Working for him paid well. Working as crew, we don’t get paid regularly but we get a cut out of every mission and that cut is HUGE. That’s how we could afford to actually build the spider in the first place.”
“Ah. So if he invited me along, does that mean he wants me to join the crew too?” Trix wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Joining another family was commonplace for males who left their Teff to join others, but incredibly rare for females.
“Dunno. He’s hired on specialists in the past who’ve come and gone. And he’s invited people to join up who said no and that was that.” Ji shrugged and pressed the release on the hydraulic press, letting it collapse down. “C’mon, we should get the last leg attached. Then we can pack it up and use a grav collar to move it down to the hangar. Don’t want to make you stay in that cramped storage room again tonight.”
“Yeah, I tried to stretch my wings in the morning and I banged up against one of the shelves. Really not looking forward to that again.” Trix grumbled at the memory, and stood up. “Okay, what more do we need done to get this over with?”
—--

Hey, as it says in the title, my SER5 Max from BeeLink is overheating even when at basically idle (I mainly use it to stream videos like YouTube or Netflix.)
It shoots up to 80°C sometimes, but usially stays between 60-75. The room temp is about 20°C, so not that hot.
I have changed the thermal paste to no difference. There is a fabric built in the PC that basically chokes the intake though. Should I just cut it off?
https://preview.redd.it/c6e9dr2qcz0d1.png?width=1141&format=png&auto=webp&s=322c32bdea0c9005dee24e6b3428119588b3103e
https://preview.redd.it/dk6slzvrcz0d1.jpg?width=953&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a484cfe198329cf846d4d4aac10788eccb9bef88

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Anglestan
Augustus 5, 1923
Facility 9, Mancheston
Colonel Jacobs
His hands flew through the folders General Jorgenson and Colonel Thatcher had. There were dozens of them, stacked upon each other all filed in alphabetical order. It had only been a few days since he had woken up from his coma and visited his home— now his mother’s grave. He clenched his fists at the thought. The grief and rage threatened to bubble and spill over once again. He took a deep breath and dragged out the exhale, almost to the point where he had emptied out his lungs.
He was the only one with clearance, and so he couldn’t disclose any of what he learned with his team. They would simply have to trust him and his judgment. Which he was sure they would do. His hands went over one of the folders skimming through it. There were multiple secret projects, but the ones with the most notes were Project S.T.A.R, Project L.U.N.A.R.I, Project R.E.V.I.V.E, Project D.A.W.N, and Project T.E.M.P.L.A.R.
The colonel decided to start with the most notes and papers. Project D.A.W.N.
He skimmed through the notes, reading through some of the details and highlighted words. Project D.A.W.N, the espionage project Thatcher had started placed two spies in Verlin who were to report directly to a Crescent general named Sienna Moretti who was apparently on humanity’s side.
So I was right. There was an espionage element. With the recent attacks and Thatcher’s death, however, it’s safe to assume that it had somehow failed. Either they got found out or they betrayed us. Both seem very likely, but if they were found out, it would be possible that they had died.
He read through all of it before setting the folder down. There were no new notes recently. He sighed and assumed that Project DAWN was a failure. Whether or not the agents were still alive and well, it was too risky to check if they had been compromised. It was better to assume that they had been and cut all contact. The only way to find out now was to go there himself and check. I can’t contact them again. There’s no telling if it would still be Moretti or the agents who would see my messages. It’s a big risk, and judging by the state of things, best to assume it failed.
He picked up another folder. This one had the label ‘under development’ on the folder. Project Templar. He opened the folder and was instantly met with a blueprint and drawings of a massive bipedal machine. It looked humanoid with strange proportions and was supposed to be standing at an impressive 30 meters, or 100 feet. The Titanic Engine Mech for Personal Land Assault and Reconnaissance.
It was apparently a joint project with the Church of Sol, utilizing new and advanced technologies he hadn’t heard of. A 203mm Gatling cannon on one arm, while the other had three different weapons. A massive firestarter that utilized a new type of fuel mixture that could theoretically spew flames a kilometer away using a high-pressure nozzle. The fuel was ignited using an electrical spark. The second weapon was a high-powered light weapon that fired a single powerful beam of focused light that was even further amplified by layers of focusing lenses that could increase its output several times. Its third weapon was… a dust domina?
Mark read through the specifications of the so-called ‘sand cannon’ weapon. It was a massive cannon that accelerated tiny particles several times. Each particle was to be electrically charged, and it would travel at immense speeds. Near impossible speeds. The resulting impact of a microscopic particle at such speeds would be enough to form a small crater and punch through armor like it was nothing. This weapon would fire multiple at the same time, which could literally eat away at anything on the opposing end.
In terms of secondary weapons, the titan had two missile launch chambers in front of its shoulder each containing about 40 missiles, and two massive howitzer cannons on top of it. Both are 800mm in caliber. It had massive stumpy legs that served as bunkers for a small platoon on each leg. Each leg had machine dominas and 155mm cannons. Its chassis held two nuclear reactors inside providing for its power and weaponry. Its armor was the thickest and most ridiculous he’d ever read. Two meters of heavy steel armor.
How far are we in terms of technology? This thing looks like it came out of an H.G. Wells sci-fi novel. He thought, shaking his head. It was over the top, but there was no denying its combat capabilities. If it was already under-developed then it must be the first prototype. This has already been approved. Guess I better see it for myself later and check how it's coming along. Construction apparently started just a few months before the invasion.
Next was project L.U.N.A.R.I. It was a project involving Six. “Huh,” he said, continuing to read on.
The Light Undone: Nocturnal’s Adaptive Resistance Initiative. As he read further, his eyes widened. The reason why Six was so special wasn’t just because of her immunity to all strigoi weaknesses, but because of her impressive ability to turn any true born strigoi like her. She could transfer her strain like any other strigoi and transform them into a version of hers. It however only seemed to work for naturally born strigoi. The new species of ‘half-breeds’ were called ‘Blessed Children’ as Thatcher had coined in the folder.
The plan was to turn all willing true-born hemolite strigoi into these blessed children. Able to withstand the sun. Immune to silver. Free from the dependency on blood. They could remove all the weaknesses of the strigoi and after the war— make it possible to integrate them into society as normal citizens living on the surface. The project folder also made mentions of a city-wide draft in Dante and highlighted the possibility of turning all Dantenite true born strigoi into these blessed children and renaming them as ‘Lunari’. A mix of the dark and the light. The light of Sol reflected in the children of the night.
“Thatcher, what the fuck have you been up to…” Mark whispered to himself.
While it was true that it could help in the war effort by utilizing Six and the dantenite population, it would also invite some unforeseen problems and consequences. Would humanity be okay with the Lunari? Would the world even be ready for them? Strigoi who were immune to the sun. They wouldn’t be impossible to kill, but they would be immensely more powerful if we were to take away their inherent weaknesses. This is a gamble. Its gain would only be seen during the war period, but its unintended effects on society could be catastrophic.
He frowned, setting the folder down. It was obviously Thatcher’s main plan; seeing as all her moves could be traced to the path of the eventual completion of this project. It seemed dangerous in the long run, but the duskwalkers and dantenites had been monumental in the war effort. Maybe it was the time the world started to accept them more. Isolation and segregation was definitely not the way to disperse fears and foster understanding.
If Thatcher thinks this is the next step forward… then I’ll put my faith in her plans.
Next up was Project S.T.A.R, or the Superior Tech and Adaptive Resistance. An upgrade to the current hemolite weapons and gear by using new researched studies. The Starfire Pattern Domina. The SFD-23 This thing features a new loading system and magazine, ditching the rotating cylinder most domina used, or the rotating helix magazine design of the current hemolite standard BM-16 domina.
The new domina had its magazine like a box… a strange design but it was certainly easier to handle than the bulky cylinders the helical mags used. In terms of ergonomics, it was smoother and fit more. Its placement however was on top of the domina, just above the barrel. Most of the weapon were to be made of lightweight polymers and the barrel itself were to be crafted out of reinforced aluminium. In addition to that, it had a 10-inch bayonet attached to it.
There were other new things as well, such as the composition of the bullet. Looking at the conceptual cross-section designs, Mark read through its description and how it would function. A .308 cased telescoped bullet covered in a silver jacket with break-away petals surrounding the main body. Inside the jacket was a penetrator core that was to be made of depleted uranium. It had a small amount of incendiary compound and… powdered white phosphorus behind an explosive compound. The thin silver jacket would deform and trigger the explosive compound inside the body. It would blow up causing massive internal damage and release the incendiary materials into the body with the flecks of powdered white phosphorus. The penetrator core could still potentially keep going and hit a second target, or punch through heavily armored targets.
Part of the new Project S.T.A.R was overhauling the armor and gear of not just the Hemolites but the Hunters as well. Starfire Mk 1. Carapace Armor. Carapace? It looked like plates of steel covered in a rubberized coat. It was supposed to be slipped on over the original hemolite body armor. It added a spring-loaded wrist blade to the gauntlet, a thicker coat made of resistant materials, and added extra padding for the knees, shoulders, and elbows.
However, the hemolites weren’t the only ones mentioned in the folder. It was to serve the Hunters as well. “Hunters…” Mark said. “August’s group is part of this initiative too.” He flipped through some of the pages. There were blueprints and drawings of an armored suit. A mechanized suit even smaller and more compact than the jotunn units. The Mark 1 STR battlesuit. It was supposed to hug the wearer’s frame and increase their overall power. It was supposed to be built of titanium alloy and a heavy steel frame with composite armor. It had a cooling system, life support systems that could recycle bodily fluids, and an exoskeleton frame that could increase the wearer’s strength and speed.
However, the real eye-opener was Thatcher’s notes. She had been ranting about the new human evolution, and how the Hunters were the first of the ‘Solari’. She wanted to enhance human genetics and push past the peak of human ability to reach greater heights. Implants and restructuring of the anatomy to make it more efficient. Using the blood of the goddess herself. She must have lost it. These are the ramblings of a lunatic. At least… if she didn’t mention the goddess. Why was the goddess important here?
The writings ended with the words: “See Project R.E.V.I.V.E, for more details.”
Mark eyed the final folder. His hands shook as he reached out to take it. Flipping it open, his hands nearly dropped it in shock. The goddess Helena was alive. There were pictures of her naked form floating in a giant tube of fluid. There were more of Thatcher’s ramblings and excited rants about the possibilities of such a discovery. Resurrection, Enhancement, and Veneration: Implementation of Visionary Evolution.
The goddess is alive?! According to the file, she’s currently under the Cathedral of New Lundun. Not only that, but the file also detailed the extraterrestrial tech that lay beneath the cathedral. So the goddess is real and she’s— not really a goddess, but rather, a vampyr who created herself a human body to stand in the sun, and decided that it wants to be on humanity’s side… what the fuck.
Mark’s frown and confusion only increased as he read on. Thatcher’s notes seemed to nearly descend into madness as she had written about creating ‘the first hundred’, alluding to the 100 members of the Hunters division. Her plan was to revive the goddess, and with her help and expertise in genetics— use her DNA to transform the Hunters into demi-humans. Super soldiers. Literal children of the goddess Helena. They would then don the STR battlesuits, the first of the superhuman warriors to defend humanity. Solari.
Their lightning-speed advancement into technology was heralded by studying the alien tech, which deepened the understanding of physics and engineering. Nuclear technologies, chemical warfare, new material sciences, the mechs, and walkers, it was spearheaded by trying to reverse-engineer technology centuries ahead of our own… for the past hundred years. It wasn’t completely stolen, however. More or less borrowed ideas that had been made into our own with our own designs and implements. Still, the speed at which the Church and the military had deciphered such advancements all by themselves was… impressive to say the least.
Still, the fact that the goddess was alive, and could be brought back was big news. Checking the file for details, he found that the previous general, Jorgenson, had already approved this project. It was their next step as soon as they returned from New Amsterdam; which never happened.
If Helena was alive, then she could end this war swiftly, or at the very least help greatly like she once did during the War of Darkness. Having the goddess back would throw a massive wrench in the Crescent’s plans. It would certainly be something they wouldn’t expect. Not even I expected this, since many sources say that the goddess had already ascended to watch over humanity, while conspiracy theorists claim she had died in battle and that the Church was worshiping a corpse. This could be the trick up our sleeves that no one would even consider.
The colonel quickly got up from his seat and gathered the main files he had read. He placed them in a bag and rushed outside of his office in Facility 9. He went over to a nearby room and flicked the lights on. “We need to go,” he said. In an instant seven hemolite soldiers got up from whatever they were doing and instantly stood in line.
“Sir! Whatever you need of us, sir,” the group said in unison.
They were Hemo-1. His former squad members. He had taken up Louis' suggestion that they be his personal security detail. It was a shame that he had basically placed the best hemolite team out of commission, but after all he had been through he convinced himself that he could be just a little selfish. He didn’t want to lose any more friends. Not on his watch. Not while he was in an office, and they were out fighting.
“We’re going to New Lundun. Better pack up, it’s going to be a long night.”
“Mark,” Olivia said.
Jacobs turned to her direction and gave her a nod.
“Colonel, sir, may I ask where in New Lundun?”
“Liv, you don’t need to do that with me. Please. I give all of you special permission,” the colonel groaned. “It’s so weird. I mean, ‘captain’ was bad enough, but now you’re acting like I’m an authority figure.”
“You… are, though,” Emma shrugged.
“I’m your friend, and Liv I’m literally your partner. Unless you have some kind of weird fetish, save it for later.”
Olivia grinned, shaking her head. “Duly noted!” she chirped.
“That’s better,” Mark chuckled. “Now come on, we have a cathedral to visit.”
“Uhh, I’m not sure if you noticed, but we’re kinda… strigoi?!” Louis groaned. “I’d burn the moment I step in that place! Plus, it’s coated in silver! Anything I even touch will give me burns!”
“Oh come on, Lou. You have fucking gloves on. As long as you’re not a clumsy dumbass you’ll be fine… oh wait.’
“Uh huh, just sayin’ what I think, boss.”
The group headed out and Mark said something on his radio. He then sat on the ground, making his joints pop. The rest of the squad shrugged and followed his example, sitting down on the grass and waiting for… nothing. Charles and Zach looked at each other in confusion. “Uh, sir?” they asked. “Aren’t we supposed to be heading out and traveling right now?”
“Oh yeah, we’re just waiting.”
“Foooor…?”
The colonel gave them a smirk as a loud noise began to make itself known. A hummingbird transport appeared out of the distance and stopped right above them, slowly descending into the grass. “Being colonel has its perks,” Mark said with a smile. He stood up and hopped inside the hummingbird as soon as it landed. “Come on now! We’ve got work to do! Last one aboard buys everyone food later!”
Emma zipped in before Mark could even finish his sentence, followed by Olivia, Phineas, Charles, Zach, and then Louis, who sadly took too long to process what the colonel said, and lagged behind.
“Aw, man! Fuck this shit.”
“Rules are rules, Lou. Prepare your wallet later.” Mark grinned.
With a smile, the colonel pulled Olivia to his side, who blushed for a moment before shaking her head. “Take us up! New Lundun Cathedral! How long would it take?” he asked the pilot.
“About an hour and a half!” The pilot replied. “Less if you want to get there as soon as possible!”
“Take your time! The night’s still young.”
The hummingbird started to lift up, taking them into the air. The group settled down in their seats and watched outside the open. Mark opened up a bag inside the hummingbird and took out some ear muffs built for a strigoi. Extremely loud noises were damaging for a strigoi’s enhanced hearing, so the military started implementing ear muffs for them after complaints from early deployments of the hemolite squads.
The trip didn’t take too long. In only an hour and twenty minutes they had arrived at the safe zone of New Lundun, heading straight for the cathedral. The night mass had just ended and people were leaving the cathedral. “Looks like we made it in perfect time!” Mark smiled. They hovered for a few minutes in the air before eventually landing down right in front of the statue of Helena.
As soon as they landed, the colonel and his group left the hummingbird. Mark instructed the pilot to wait for them. He went straight for the cathedral with his group following behind. He entered inside, clearing his throat. “Hello?”
“Well this is surely unexpected,” an old man said, walking up to greet them.
“Great Grandfather Aurelius. It’s uh, an honor.”
“Please. The honor is mine… I see you’re the new colonel. Yes, I’ve heard the news,” he said. “Would you mind telling me your name, young man? As well as your companions, if they feel so. I usually don’t allow duskwalkers here but, I have nothing against them. I’ll make an exception for your group.”
“Thank you, Great Grandfather,” Mark replied. “I am Colonel Mark Jacobs. These are my friends and security detail. Olivia, Zach, Phineas, Charles, Emma, and Louis.”
“I see, and what brings you here?”
“Since Thatcher’s demise, I was given access to her research and project folders upon taking up the title. I’ve learned about what’s under your cathedral,” Mark cleared his throat. “Would it be alright if we could see it? I’d like to check it for myself. Of course, under your permission and guidance, Great Grandfather.”
The church head looked from Mark to his companions. He pulled a slight frown and hummed. “Do these companions of yours have the clearance? Surely, we wish to keep our secrets hidden,” he said. Mark nodded.
“They do not have clearance to know what is in Thatcher’s folders and her findings,” the colonel nodded. “However, I give them permission to accompany me, and should they discover things for themselves, then you have my word and my trust that I can keep them from spilling state secrets.”
The Great Grandfather gave a short pause before ultimately relenting. “Very well,” he let out a sigh. “Follow me.”
Aurelius walked behind the altar and pulled the same lever, which opened the same staircase leading underground, where Jorgenson and Thatcher had once gone. “Over here, colonel,” he said. “I do not know you completely yet, but this is a big deal of trust I am giving you. Perhaps you would be the one to do things that Thatcher could not have.”
Mark nodded, he and his group followed the Great Grandfather down the staircase. It led down to a massive underground facility, with numerous priests, researchers, and scientists. Libraries, records, instruments, and artifacts of old. It was a treasure trove of learning.
“So,” Aurelius cleared his throat. “What would you like to know about?”
“This isn’t all of it,” Mark said. “Thatcher mentioned a living, breathing, Helena.”
His group behind him let out a soft gasp, but they tried their best to hide their surprise.
“Hm,” the Great Grandfather nodded. “Perceptive young man aren’t you? Very well.”
They were then led into another room, behind a set of heavy blast doors. If the whole group were trying to hide their surprise then, now they could barely contain it. Even the colonel stared awestruck at the things he had seen. Despite the near-magical objects around them, the true shock was the massive starship at the end of the hallway. “It’s impressive isn’t it?” Aurelius said. “All of the goddess’ artifacts and items at our disposal, to use and learn from, to integrate into our own. This is why Anglestan is the most powerful nation in the UHT in terms of development. When it comes to industry, however, that would go to the UNA. But we share our secrets with them. All our advancements are handed to them first before any other nation.”
“This is all amazing, Great Grandfather,” Mark replied. “But this is not what I’m here for.”
“No, it’s not.” Aurelius nodded.
He led them to another room, one that was sterilized and sported advanced machinery. Things that Mark had never even seen. There were screens with luminous green texts that appeared in front of it. Large panels with numerous keys, levers, and dials. Graphs of all sorts and beeping monitors. In the center, was the very thing he had come all this way to confirm. A large cylinder filled with liquid, sporting tubes and pipes connecting to its base. Inside was a woman of large proportion. Four arms, two legs, and six wings. In her bare chest was a symbol of the sun that seemed to glow dimly.
“There she is, there’s you goddess.”
Neither Mark nor his group spoke a word. He walked up to it, eyeing the woman inside. It really is her. Down to the last details. Golden hair, six limbs, six folded wings, and she looks massive. Probably as big as her statue just outside the cathedral. This is it. The very goddess in the history books, the one spoken about in legends and the one worshiped in the Churches of Sol.
“Can we free her?” he said.
The Great Grandfather nearly choked on his spit upon hearing those words. “Free her?! That could kill her! We don’t even understand this technology, let alone control it!” he said pointing at the panels. “The machines you see here are the best and most advanced we have based on what we can reverse engineer, but even then, the consequences of tampering with its functions may be disastrous!”
“I understand, Great Grandfather,” Mark said. “But we are in a dire situation, and the goddess may be our hope of turning this around. Whatever secrets of her tech that you don’t understand, wouldn’t she be able to teach us directly? What good is she floating around in Sol knows what?”
“That is her miraculous healing fluid. She had already built this contraption centuries ago in case anything were to happen to her, that her body’s natural healing could not sustain,” Aurelius said. “During the War of Darkness, Helena was struck with a weapon so deadly, her very cells began to tear away. The Reaper. Dealt to her by Absolem the progenitor. Her flesh was peeling from her body, and she began to decay whilst she still breathed. She entered this contraption and gave strict instructions to the Great Grandfather at the time, not to interrupt the healing process. The machine that monitored her, however, began to fail over time.”
“So this… these screens and panels…”
“Is only what functions we can understand. We took it upon ourselves to rebuild and study it the best we could. What we have right now is only a cheap imitation of a technology we do not fully comprehend,” he said. “It took us decades to even figure out the fundamentals and create a working prototype of this machine. By some miracle, the goddess’ healing process had remained even while we replaced components of technology ahead of ours.”
“But you know how to free her, don’t you?”
“I… yes.”
“Great Grandfather Aurelius,” Mark began. “We can end this war. Imagine what we could do with the goddess fighting on our side. We could advance even further, we could finally end the bloodshed, and we can show humanity that there is still hope. Imagine how people all over the world would feel seeing as their goddess has returned.”
“I wish I had your enthusiasm,” Aurelius said. “But it is simply too risky. The Church’s duty is to protect Helena and her legacy. We keep her alive, literally and figuratively. She nearly died the last time she was involved in a war. Would you risk losing the goddess?”
“Would you risk humanity losing?”
The Great Grandfather fell silent, looking back at Helena floating inside the tube, then to the panels that controlled it. He frowned and let out a long sigh. “The goddess said that we should not interrupt it. That it would end as soon as it was finished. Maybe we should trust her words.”
Mark shook his head. “I don’t spot a single blemish on the goddess. Not a single scratch,” he argued. “You said it yourself that the machine had begun to fail and you replaced components. How would you know that the thing that’s supposed to wake her up was not tampered with? Think about it. What you may think is a useless piece may be integral to the whole machine. Or maybe your replacements were not up to the task. Just because nothing’s happened doesn’t mean its functions have remained whole.”
“Young man, we simply cannot gamble with the goddess’ life here.”
“Have you no faith? Great Grandfather?”
Aurelius stepped back in shock. Mark’s companions looked at each other, clearly surprised as well. “Mark… I don’t think we should keep arguing with—” Olivia tried to say.
“No,” the colonel said firmly, cutting her off. “Great Grandfather Aurelius, do you think that Helena will not be able to pull through if we wake her? How long has it been? A century? How much longer will we wait? She may be immortal but humans aren’t.”
“I'm sorry, but the chances of failure are too high. The probability of her—”
“I don’t care about the probability! Would you rather put your faith in a statistic?!” Mark raised his voice. “I lost my mother to this war! My friends! My job! My eye, and almost my life! I’ve put mine on the line out there! You don’t know what it’s like out there! Was my mother’s death just a probability too? Was she just a statistic to you?! That as long as the numbers are good, no matter how many are lost, we are ‘winning’?!”
“Mark—!”
“No, Liv! He needs to know what’s really going on out there!” he spat. “Great Grandfather, with all due respect, but you don’t have a damn clue what it’s like to be in the field. You’re a man of faith, aren’t you? Take a risk. Everyone else has.”
Aurelius stood there, dumbfounded. He bit the inside of his cheeks and clenched his fists. “For your insolence, I would have had you flogged and stripped of your rank,” he glared at the young colonel. However, his features slowly softened, letting out a soft sigh. “But I have never seen such conviction. Mighty is your faith.”
The Great Grandfather moved over to the panels and reached into his robe, pulling out from around his neck a key with the symbol of the sun. He inserted it into the machine and turned. A beep sounded, right before Aurelius pulled a lever. In an instant, the fluid inside the glass chamber began to drain out into the tubes under it. Slowly, the chamber emptied and all that was left was the nude form of the goddess sitting in the glass.
“Did it work?” Louis asked, stepping forward and looking at the woman.
Aurelius stayed silent, his hands shaking in anticipation. Mark moved toward the glass chamber, when suddenly, the glass opened up like a door, releasing a fragrant mist. They stood there, watching for a whole minute. Nothing. At first nothing. The Great Grandfather looked like he was about to break down. His knees shook as he covered his mouth, thinking that he was responsible for the death of Helena.
That was when… a soft sound was heard. Movement. Olivia immediately went over to Mark and stood in front of him. Ready to protect him should anything happen. Slowly, the goddess moved more, her arms inched to the side.
Then, her eyes opened.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.

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