https://www.northumbriangames.com/post/of-orcs-and-ai

Made vs. Created and the Nature of Orcs

J.R.R. Tolkien's stories are deeply rooted in Thomistic metaphysics and Christian theology, where the distinction between "made" and "created" is pivotal. This distinction underscores the nature of goodness, creation, corruption, and the intrinsic limitations of evil. The dichotomy between making and creating is most vividly illustrated through the origins and nature of orcs, the monstrous foot soldiers of Middle-earth's dark lords.

Creation: The Divine Act

In Tolkien's world, true creation, or creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing), is the exclusive province of Eru Ilúvatar, the supreme deity. This act of creation involves bringing something into existence that possesses the Flame Imperishable (or the Secret Fire), which grants true life, free will, and inherent goodness. Beings created by Eru Ilúvatar, such as the Ainur (angelic beings), elves, and men, are imbued with this divine spark, making them fundamentally good and capable of independent existence and moral choice.
From The Silmarillion:

"Therefore Ilúvatar may not only send forth the Flame Imperishable into the Void, but he may also bestow it to others, who may then sub-create, though only as permitted by Ilúvatar"​​.

Making: The Act of Sub-creation

In contrast, the Valar and other beings can engage in making or sub-creation, which involves shaping or manipulating pre-existing matter. They cannot infuse these creations with the Flame Imperishable. A notable example is Aulë, one of the Valar, who crafted the Dwarves. Initially, these beings were mere automatons, moving only according to Aulë's thoughts. It was only when Eru Ilúvatar chose to bestow them with the Flame Imperishable that the Dwarves gained true life and independence. This story illustrates the fundamental difference between divine creation and sub-creation: the former grants true life and free will, while the latter lacks these essential qualities until blessed by Eru. Tolkien clarifies this distinction in his letters:

"They [the Valar] shared in [the World’s] 'making'—but only on the same terms as we 'make' a work of art or story. The realization of it, the gift to it of a created reality of the same grade as their own, was the act of the One God"​​.

Orcs: The Corruption of Creation

The origin of orcs in Tolkien’s mythos serves as a poignant example of the difference between making and creating. According to various writings, orcs were not created by Morgoth or Sauron but were made by corrupting pre-existing beings. In "The Silmarillion," it is suggested that orcs were originally elves who were captured, tortured, and perverted by Morgoth's malevolent influence. This corruption transformed them into beings of evil, stripped of their original grace and beauty. In Morgoth's Ring we find:

"It became clear in time that undoubted Men could under the domination of Morgoth or his agents in a few generations be reduced almost to the Orc-level of mind and habits; and then they would or could be made to mate with Orcs, producing new breeds, often larger and more cunning. There is no doubt that long afterwards, in the Third Age, Saruman rediscovered this, or learned of it in lore, and in his lust for mastery committed this, his wickedest deed: the interbreeding of Orcs and Men, producing both Men-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile."​​.

Tolkien emphasizes that orcs, though rational and capable of independent thought, lack the divine spark of the Flame Imperishable. This absence signifies that while Morgoth could mar and twist the creations of Eru, he could not create life himself. In Flame Imperishable, Tolkien is quoted as saying:

"Treebeard does not say that the Dark Lord 'created' Trolls and Orcs. He says he 'made' them in counterfeit of certain creatures pre-existing. There is, to me, a wide gulf between the two statements"​​.

Essence
Elves: Created with inherent goodness and free will. Their essence is tied to beauty, longevity, and a deep connection to nature and creation.
Men: Created with inherent goodness and free will. Their essence includes mortality, adaptability, and a dynamic nature.
Orcs: Originally, corrupted elves or men, or made from slime and heat, the essence has been radically distorted and corrupted by evil. Their essence now reflects malevolence, subservience, and a perversion of their original nature.
Existence
Elves: Given existence by Eru Ilúvatar, independent and autonomous. Their being is fully realized with a true purpose aligned with their essence.
Men: Given existence by Eru Ilúvatar, independent and autonomous. Their being is dynamic, capable of growth, and change, and is fully realized.
Orcs: Their existence is subjugated to the will of their corrupt masters (Morgoth or Sauron). While they have real, physical existence, it is dependent on the malevolent forces that control them.
Autonomy
Elves: High degree of moral autonomy, capable of making independent choices and pursuing their own paths.
Men: High degree of moral autonomy, capable of making independent choices and pursuing their own paths.
Orcs: Almost entirely controlled by their evil masters, reflecting their corrupted essence and dependent existence.
Connection to Eru
Elves: Directly created by Eru with the Flame Imperishable, giving them true life and free will.
Men: Directly created by Eru with the Flame Imperishable, giving them true life and free will.
Orcs: Not created by Eru but rather made by corrupting pre-existing beings or materials. They lack the Flame Imperishable, highlighting their dependent and perverted nature.
Philosophical Implication
Elves: Represent the ideal of Tolkien's metaphysical and theological views, embodying true creation and the perfect blend of essence and existence.
Men: Embody the dynamic and adaptable nature of true creation with a perfect blend of essence and existence, according to Aquinas's philosophy.
Orcs: Serve as an example of how essence and existence can be corrupted and diminished by evil. Their existence is real but heavily dependent and perverted, lacking true autonomy and the Flame Imperishable.

Philosophical and Theological Implications

The distinction between made and created has profound implications in Tolkien’s universe. It aligns with Christian theology, reflecting the belief in a singular, omnipotent Creator who alone can grant true life. This distinction underscores the inherent limitations of evil: it is parasitic, relying on the corruption of what is good rather than generating new existence.
Orcs epitomize this concept. They are beings made through corruption, reflecting the perversion of creation. Their existence as fundamentally corrupted creatures illustrates the limits of Morgoth’s and Sauron’s power. They can induce suffering and manipulate life, but they cannot originate a true life that burns with the Flame Imperishable. This underscores a central theme in Tolkien’s works: the resilience of good and the ultimate impotence of evil to truly create.

On Artificial Intelligence

This leads us to Artificial Intelligence. Modern large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence systems, despite their sophisticated capabilities, are constructs without true volition or understanding. Basically, an LLM is an advanced version of autocomplete. These systems operate on vast datasets and algorithms designed to predict and generate human-like text (or audio or images), but they lack genuine consciousness, intent, and moral agency. Unlike beings created with the divine spark in Tolkien's world, LLMs do not possess free will or intrinsic purpose; they are tools made by humans to process and mimic patterns. Some commentators have even referred to AI as an alien intelligence, a ~shoggoth with a human face~, meaning that while the text may look humanlike, in reality, it originated not from a human but from an unknowable, formless alien process, which is the LLM.

"Well, we're fooled by their fluency, right? We just assume that if a system is fluent in manipulating language, then it has all the characteristics of human intelligence. But that impression is false." --Yann Lecun​​ on the Lex Fridman podcast #416

The outputs of an LLM are determined not by experience, education, and emotion but by the data and programming they receive, reflecting the biases and limitations inherent in their design. This underscores the crucial distinction between artificial constructs and beings endowed with the Flame Imperishable, with true life and volition. Parents, for instance, should think carefully about giving a child unbridled access to an LLM which has no discernible ethics. The AI is a soulless, thoughtless machine built by human researchers, much like an orc is designed by Sauron simply to act as an instrument of his evil desires. The ethical and philosophical results of deploying such constructs into our society is staggering indeed.

The AI is only the Tool of the Maker

Of course, while the analogy between LLMs and Orcs highlights the artificial nature and purpose-driven creation of both, there are clear and fundamental differences in moral intent and potential for ethical use. LLMs are not (as far as we know) inherently evil constructs. They seem to be neutral tools that reflect the intentions of their creators and users. As such, the focus should be on ensuring that AI development and deployment are guided by ethical principles to maximize their benefits and minimize potential harm. That said, as with social media, we may come to regret the technology and wish to fling it back into Mordor's fire.

Conclusion

Tolkien's distinction between made and created is a metaphysical aspect of Middle Earth. It emphasizes the unique power of Eru Ilúvatar's true creation and the corruptive nature of evil. The orcs symbolize this dichotomy, illustrating how evil can distort but not create. This concept resonates in modern large language models and AI systems, which lack genuine consciousness and moral agency despite their advanced capabilities. Orcs and contemporary LLMs demonstrate the ethical implications of using such technologies and serve to enrich the philosophical depth of Tolkien's work.

Riyadh Masters 2024 Closed Qualifier

Riyadh Masters 2024: Southeast Asia Closed Qualifier

Coverage:
Liquipedia Joindota GosuGamers Dotabuff
Stream: EN: Twitch 1 Twitch 2

ID	Team	vs	Team	Cntdwn (SGT)	PT	EDT	GMT	CET	AEDT
LBSF	TNC Predator	vs	Blacklist International	12:00	21:00	0:00	4:00	5:00	15:00
LBF	Talon Esports	vs	TBD	16:00	1:00	4:00	8:00	9:00	19:00

Riyadh Masters 2024: China Closed Qualifier

Coverage:
Liquipedia Joindota GosuGamers Dotabuff
Stream: EN: Twitch 1 Twitch 2

ID	Team	vs	Team	Cntdwn (SGT)	PT	EDT	GMT	CET	AEDT
UB1a	G2.IG	vs	Team Bright	12:00	21:00	0:00	4:00	5:00	15:00
UB1b	Zero	vs	KEV	12:00	21:00	0:00	4:00	5:00	15:00
UB1c	LGD	vs	Spiky	16:00	1:00	4:00	8:00	9:00	19:00
UB1d	Azure Ray	vs	Dark Horse	16:00	1:00	4:00	8:00	9:00	19:00
UBF1	TBD	vs	TBD	20:00	1:00	4:00	8:00	9:00	19:00

Riyadh Masters 2024: Eastern Europe Closed Qualifier

Coverage:
Liquipedia Joindota GosuGamers Dotabuff
Stream: EN: Twitch 1 Twitch 2 RU : Twitch 1 Twitch 2

ID	Team	vs	Team	Cntdwn (EEST)	PT	EDT	GMT	SGT	AET
LBF	Natus Vincere	vs	Yellow Submarine	12:00	2:00	5:00	9:00	17:00	20:00
GF	Virtus.pro	vs	TBD	16:00	6:00	9:00	13:00	21:00	0:00

Riyadh Masters 2024: Western Europe Closed Qualifier

Coverage:
Liquipedia Joindota GosuGamers Dotabuff
Stream: EN: Twitch 1 Twitch 2 RU : Twitch 1 Twitch 2

ID	Team	vs	Team	Cntdwn (CET)	PT	EDT	GMT	SGT	AET
UB1a	Team Secret	vs	Dragon Esports	12:00	3:00	6:00	10:00	18:00	21:00
UB1b	NAVI Junior NAVI junior	vs	Dandelions	12:00	3:00	6:00	10:00	18:00	21:00
UB1c	MOUZ	vs	Twisted Minds	16:00	7:00	10:00	14:00	22:00	1:00
UB1d	Entity	vs	JustBetter	16:00	7:00	10:00	14:00	22:00	1:00
LB1a	TBD	vs	TBD	20:00	11:00	14:00	18:00	2:00	5:00
LB1b	TBD	vs	TBD	20:00	11:00	14:00	18:00	2:00	5:00

Riyadh Masters 2024: South America Closed Qualifier

Coverage:
Liquipedia Joindota GosuGamers Dotabuff
Stream: EN: Twitch 1 Twitch 2 Twitch 3

ID	Team	vs	Team	Cntdwn (EDT)	PT	GMT	CET	SGT	AET
UB1a	HEROIC	vs	Orrai + 4	13:00	10:00	17:00	18:00	1:00	4:00
UB1b	Midas Club	vs	Cuyes Esports	13:00	10:00	17:00	18:00	1:00	4:00
UB1c	beastcoast	vs	Lava Esports	17:00	14:00	21:00	22:00	5:00	8:00
UB1d	Boom Esports	vs	Leviatan	17:00	14:00	21:00	22:00	5:00	8:00
LB1a	TBD	vs	TBD	21:00	18:00	1:00	2:00	9:00	12:00
LB1b	TBD	vs	TBD	21:00	18:00	1:00	2:00	9:00	12:00

Riyadh Masters 2024: North America Closed Qualifier

Coverage:
Liquipedia Joindota GosuGamers Dotabuff
Stream: EN: Twitch 1 Twitch 2 Twitch 3

ID	Team	vs	Team	Cntdwn (EDT)	PT	GMT	CET	SGT	AET
LBF	nouns	vs	Apex Genesis	12:00	9:00	16:00	17:00	0:00	3:00
GF	Shopify Rebellions	vs	LBF winner	16:00	13:00	20:00	21:00	4:00	7:00

Countdown times are in local time. All times are subject to change based on the length of matches and delays. Other match discussions: /dota2 on Discord

"Not a single human being on this planet ever saw the universe."
Grand Arbiter Albert XLIII further declared, on their return 37 years after the last broadcast failed in the middle of explaining the secrets of the universe to us.
"What you are seeing is an image of the universe that your brain created to make sense of your surroundings. A mirage, an infinitely imperfect approximation. And there are roughly 8 Billion such approximations on this planet, not even counting non-human entities. We have observed you recently - debating wether the harmonic frequencies of light hitting the rods and cones of your eyes actually generate the same image of color in your brain for all of you equally, and you came to the conclusion that they might not. That everybodies version of "red" or "blue" might be ever so slightly, or completely different. We found it amusing that you aren't drawing the same conclusion to, well, everything else. Through the scientific method and communication accelerators like the Internet, your species managed to align big chunks of those "mirage universes" in your brains, but other areas not touched by the scientific method are left completely unexplored, and therefore to the imagination of the individual. Which lead to many "unfortunate misunderstandings" among you. But make no mistake, even after this global alignment of mirages, the universe inside your mind is still infinitely wrong in the grand scheme of things and unlike any other imagined universe of your peers. Your scientific method suggests the use of calibrated measurement devices that aren't biased by human error to gain knowledge of your surroundings. Which is brilliant, we might add. Your species came up with this kind of technology very early compared to similar lifeforms in other universes. You use these devices to create a "ground truth" from which you reference the rest of your conclusions and predictions. This enabled you to make predictions about the "real universe" you find yourself in, even with this fundamental error underlying your logic system. Either brilliant, or unfathomly lucky. It doesn't really matter. You can pat yourselves on the backs for that.
However, amusingly, you failed to find the crucial detail about the one fundamental, yet completely uncalibrated device at the bottom of everything - your brain - and the sensory organs as extensions of it. No single eye on this planet is the same, no nose, no ears, everything differs ever so slightly. Every brain is folded and twisted differently.
Therefore, what you are observing, and what your scientists are finding models for, is not the real universe. It is the image of this universe your brain creates for you, that makes sense to most of you and that most of your brains are able to understand and find agreement on. Nothing more, nothing less. Especially the intricacies that you are now finding in the infinitissimally small scales and the unfathomly large scales (you curiously still differentiate these two concepts, we observed) are the footprints that the architecture of your brain leaves on these mirage universes. You find numbers everywhere and turn everything into a more and more digital version of nature because the axons that are part of your neurons generate activation signals in a digital, all or nothing kind of way. This part of the brain is what you evolved to use for, among others, your logic systems. Your thinking is in large parts digital, so most of your logic is too. This has gone so far that some of you now think you are actually living in a computer simulation. In some regards, you do, but there is no cosmic entity that generated this simulation and put you in it. You are creating this simulation yourself, in your brain, as a means to maneuver your way around actual physical reality. Imagine having to memorize a picture, but your sensory input systems only allowed you to see one pixel at a time, chosen completely at random, without any reference as to where that pixel is located in the frame. So, you found chunking techniques, the help of your collective hive mind and ideas of particularly eccentric members of your society, to bit by bit close in on a mostly impossible task. But without a paradigm shift on your end, the entirety of the original picture will stay in the shadows of reality.
You created tools like algebra and geometry to circumvent the fact that your logic is mostly digital as a simulacrum of analog information, but for how remarkably useful it is for you to make predictions, it is to what is happening in the real world like what an abacus is to a personal computer. Sure, if you enter '1 + 1', in their own ways, both give you '2'. But one is the tip to the others impossibly large iceberg. It is a sensible abstraction. But it is nowhere close to being an accurate description of what is actually happening or in what ways it useful to you.
We don't want to discourage you by saying this. Your approach, even if it happened out of sheer luck, is brilliant. It really makes the best out of the limitations that you have by your sensory organs and the architecture of your brains. Once a few evolutionary steps later your brain can conceive of more complex logical patterns and images, you will get closer and closer to having an actual copy of the real universe in front of your minds eye. Through the scientific method, you are already optimizing for this. Again, given your species' age, you have developed such a technique incredibly quickly. But what you are doing is finding (very smart) workarounds over a fundamental error you all have in common.
My lifeform, which isn't too unlike yours, just much "older", has taken a different approach in its early stages. Our biggest thinkers found early on that the answers lie within. So for millenia, we focussed our exploration on finding our deepest and truest selves, once we started to move past basic survival instincts, that is. Only after many, many "quantum leaps" in the area of self discovery in the individual and the societal level, we started to artificially accelerate our communication, and overcome physical limitations through technology. It was a slower approach in the beginning, but once we got there, our intellectual growth was exponentially explosive. The time it took us to move from living in basic, mostly local communities that lived off the land - to bending our universe to our wills - was about the time between you writing your currently most popular spiritual fiction and landing on your planets moon for the first time. Note the actual durations might differ greatly, as the concept you call time is very different in our universe and we still haven't fully studied yours.
Anyways. After this event we call "universal reframing", everything else just... fell into place.
Our strategy basically was to, first, fully align our mental universes. And then to perform a depth search from a common starting point. You seemed to have rushed over a few of the crucial bits as soon as the first approach turned out to be useful. Actually, all of the bits but one. It must be a terribly confusing existence that you are living. We can only make an attempt to relate, as our evolutionary strand optimized for alignment before curiousity. That, you could say, was our dumb luck.
Are there any questions so far?"
There was a puzzling silence in an area packed with an amount of people that would normally be present at music festivals or presidential inaugurations. For an event of this magnitude, the stage was sparsely decorated and included only the necessities. Like last time, the visit was spontaneos and unannounced. Or maybe, like last time, we just didn't understand the announcement message, as it might have again came in the form of a formerly undiscovered particle, a seemingly arbitrary number of years prior to this event. They must think they are really funny.
One of the humans chosen as representative of the planet raised their hand.
"Please, speak. As always. Our 'time' is very limited."
"If I didn't misunderstand this: You said, our brains are basically creating what we call 'simulations' for ourselves, in our mind, to make sense of the actual universe we are in and base our actions on. Is this correct?"
"Based on the very crude definition your species has for the word 'correct' I would say 'yes, that is correct.'"
"And these simulations are getting closer and closer to the real deal, right? But what if, say, we didn't want the real deal. What if we liked our own personal pocket universes and instead wanted to bend that one to our own wills instead of the real one? You said we are bad at alignment and I would agree to the point where I say we probably go extinct to our own stupidity before we all agree on even one single thing. Can't we just use your knowledge to just, manifest things into our universe just by thinking about it, like in the movie Matrix, which might have crossed your desk while researching us. Great Movie."
"It did indeed. It is esteemed by my lifeform as what you would call 'slapstick comedy'. Since we moved past what constituted our form of entertainment, the media from your universe has become very popular among my peers. It is by sending samples back to our universe how we finance the probes we are sending here."
"You still have money?"
"I was making - what you call - a joke. Never heard of it in the context of a movie, but that title is immensely funny to me given the circumstances. Anyway, you wanted to know how to bend your 'simulated universe' around you. Alright. You might be slightly dissappointed by the beginning of my explanation, but listen till the end. And make of that what you will.
Let's start by what you mean by 'manifest' exactly. As the inaccuracy of your communication patterns shall not be a hindrance to this mentorship."
"Well... I imagine it. And then it sort of poofs into existence?"
"Understood. Actually, I will start explaning how you perform this action in the actual universe you are in, before I make the transfer to how you do it in the imagined one in your brain."
"Uh.. ok?"
"What would you like to be manifested?"
"I don't know. How about we go nice and easy with a cone of ice cream and start from there?"
"So be it. So, we start imagining the cone of ice cream. What does it consist off? Milk, sugar, eggs, and some smaller additions to suit your individuals taste buds. Let's begin with milk. You are getting it from cows (a practice my society finds quite alienating. We, too, have to get used to the wildly varying customs of lifeforms of the universes). Cows can be domesticated and bred, but first, we would have to overcome the physical distance between us, and a few locations on this planet. For that, I would advice designing and constructing a vehicle that is capa..."
"Oh come on, that's how we manifest things? We go and make them ourselves?? Oh wow, thanks a lot mister transcendant being. So the rest of the stuff you told us was also bullshit?"
"Please refrain from jumping to conclusions without the full picture in mind, even if it is in your existences nature to do so. Alright, so let me offer you a shortcut."
"Please do."
"I know of a location just a few human paces down this road, where you can exchange currency for a cone of ice cream."
"Seriously?"
"Yes."
"What the hell is the point of this?"
"The point is, once again: you - misunderstanding your existence. Especially in conjunction with your incredibly limited ability to verbalize concepts using your own vocabulary. You are barely at the point of being able to convey emotions in every day speech, and are now expecting to understand high level 4 dimensional concepts after just a few of your incredibly inaccurate words. Tell me now, please: What do you perceive as the difference of these two scenarios I just mentioned? In a temporal manner and in the energy required?"
"Well, it would be much easier and faster to just go down the road and buy a cone of ice cream, but that isn't tremendously astounding information to us, you have to understand."
"'Much'? Let's give this word, 'much', a bit of a frame of reference. The differences between these scenarios are: About 15000 years of agriculture and animal husbandry; countless inventions that led to your current state of technology which allows for refrigeration in a way advanced enough to get the ice cream to just the right texture that your modern palate is accustomed to; An education system that allows for such inventions to occur in time for you to be standing here, demanding ice cream, and actually getting it. Not mentioning the infrastructure that makes you bridge the physical distances of every single time any of these steps needed anything. And meanwhile destroying the naturally occuring resources of your planet bit by bit.
Or, scenario 2: You take the money that you got from staring at a computer screen for about 7 minutes, choose one of the ice cream parlors that your civilization made sure to be on average a 30 minutes driving distance from every single living human. (You aren't very good at even distributions though, we found.). And go and get that ice cream. Even including the infrastructural costs existing now, we have narrowed this process down from not even being close to a reality for thousands of generations to being at most 30 minutes away and dirt cheap, assuming an amount of efficient preparation, that is part of the technology that lead you here.
If you ask me, between scenario 1 and 2, you became so many orders of magnitude closer to 'poofing it into existence' that a human mind has troubles comprehending it. And therefore, appreciating it. From '0% of the human population has access to this within their lifetime and no one will for the next couple millenia' to 'Over half the human population has access to this within 30 minutes", taking into account the total timespan, the amount of events that had to occur and the amount of incremental learnings that had to accumulate, for this to happen even once for anybody, I believe the time and energy you have to exert to access your ice cream cone right now is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. And you aren't even close to finishing your development as humans - if you manage to not kill yourself somehow.
You are constantly manifesting things into reality, the only issue is that you severely and heavily underestimate what it means 'to imagine a thing'.
Please allow my vanity, but this is an important lesson for the following part that you are, I'm afraid, more interested in. How to do that in your head. And potentially much faster. Well assuming thaXXXxxxx----.----."
"Oh wow, not again. Mighty convenient this always happens right when it gets interesting."
"First, you have to understand that.,.......... The limitations of spacetime that you perceive.... are not present in nature..... nature is infinitely 'dimensional', and in fact XXxxx.....----..--.-.- has no concept for infinity....-.-.--. it is a human made.....-.-.-.- model to describe a perfectly natural phenomenon you lack the words for at this time..._xxxx.xxx-x---.-.--.-zzzz."
"Come on, speak faster! The battery is dying again!"
" ...physical distance...S;.,.XXXxx...currently a big bottleneck for your progres...asd.döö,,,, is also a limitation of your cortex, not nature,.....-as.d.sa......the concept of an 'extent' only exists from certain frames of references..-.-..-.a.ss.a.as.... in others everything is....a.s-d.-.---.-..-xxxx on top of each other, overlapping each other in what you call 'time' AND 'space'"
"...XXXxsasad Listen."
"I am running out of time again humans. The Hopf Fibration. It is a great first step. But move away from your digital thinking. Treat your numbers. .aD;,aC:.x.cx.ac,.as,dca.s like your waves...CKLUJCJUCCLICK"
The broadcast stopped.
"I never know if these things make me smarter, or dumber. Sadly the alien is gone now so it can't tell me that there actually is no smart or dumb."

"Not a single human being on this planet ever saw the universe."
Grand Arbiter Albert XLIII further declared, on their return 37 years after the last broadcast failed in the middle of explaining the secrets of the universe to us.
"What you are seeing is an image of the universe that your brain created to make sense of your surroundings. A mirage, an infinitely imperfect approximation. And there are roughly 8 Billion such approximations on this planet, not even counting non-human entities. We have observed you recently - debating wether the harmonic frequencies of light hitting the rods and cones of your eyes actually generate the same image of color in your brain for all of you equally, and you came to the conclusion that they might not. That everybodies version of "red" or "blue" might be ever so slightly, or completely different. We found it amusing that you aren't drawing the same conclusion to, well, everything else. Through the scientific method and communication accelerators like the Internet, your species managed to align big chunks of those "mirage universes" in your brains, but other areas not touched by the scientific method are left completely unexplored, and therefore to the imagination of the individual. Which lead to many "unfortunate misunderstandings" among you. But make no mistake, even after this global alignment of mirages, the universe inside your mind is still infinitely wrong in the grand scheme of things and unlike any other imagined universe of your peers. Your scientific method suggests the use of calibrated measurement devices that aren't biased by human error to gain knowledge of your surroundings. Which is brilliant, we might add. Your species came up with this kind of technology very early compared to similar lifeforms in other universes. You use these devices to create a "ground truth" from which you reference the rest of your conclusions and predictions. This enabled you to make predictions about the "real universe" you find yourself in, even with this fundamental error underlying your logic system. Either brilliant, or unfathomly lucky. It doesn't really matter. You can pat yourselves on the backs for that.
However, amusingly, you failed to find the crucial detail about the one fundamental, yet completely uncalibrated device at the bottom of everything - your brain - and the sensory organs as extensions of it. No single eye on this planet is the same, no nose, no ears, everything differs ever so slightly. Every brain is folded and twisted differently.
Therefore, what you are observing, and what your scientists are finding models for, is not the real universe. It is the image of this universe your brain creates for you, that makes sense to most of you and that most of your brains are able to understand and find agreement on. Nothing more, nothing less. Especially the intricacies that you are now finding in the infinitissimally small scales and the unfathomly large scales (you curiously still differentiate these two concepts, we observed) are the footprints that the architecture of your brain leaves on these mirage universes. You find numbers everywhere and turn everything into a more and more digital version of nature because the axons that are part of your neurons generate activation signals in a digital, all or nothing kind of way. This part of the brain is what you evolved to use for, among others, your logic systems. Your thinking is in large parts digital, so most of your logic is too. This has gone so far that some of you now think you are actually living in a computer simulation. In some regards, you do, but there is no cosmic entity that generated this simulation and put you in it. You are creating this simulation yourself, in your brain, as a means to maneuver your way around actual physical reality. Imagine having to memorize a picture, but your sensory input systems only allowed you to see one pixel at a time, chosen completely at random, without any reference as to where that pixel is located in the frame. So, you found chunking techniques, the help of your collective hive mind and ideas of particularly eccentric members of your society, to bit by bit close in on a mostly impossible task. But without a paradigm shift on your end, the entirety of the original picture will stay in the shadows of reality.
You created tools like algebra and geometry to circumvent the fact that your logic is mostly digital as a simulacrum of analog information, but for how remarkably useful it is for you to make predictions, it is to what is happening in the real world like what an abacus is to a personal computer. Sure, if you enter '1 + 1', in their own ways, both give you '2'. But one is the tip to the others impossibly large iceberg. It is a sensible abstraction. But it is nowhere close to being an accurate description of what is actually happening or in what ways it useful to you.
We don't want to discourage you by saying this. Your approach, even if it happened out of sheer luck, is brilliant. It really makes the best out of the limitations that you have by your sensory organs and the architecture of your brains. Once a few evolutionary steps later your brain can conceive of more complex logical patterns and images, you will get closer and closer to having an actual copy of the real universe in front of your minds eye. Through the scientific method, you are already optimizing for this. Again, given your species' age, you have developed such a technique incredibly quickly. But what you are doing is finding (very smart) workarounds over a fundamental error you all have in common.
My lifeform, which isn't too unlike yours, just much "older", has taken a different approach in its early stages. Our biggest thinkers found early on that the answers lie within. So for millenia, we focussed our exploration on finding our deepest and truest selves, once we started to move past basic survival instincts, that is. Only after many, many "quantum leaps" in the area of self discovery in the individual and the societal level, we started to artificially accelerate our communication, and overcome physical limitations through technology. It was a slower approach in the beginning, but once we got there, our intellectual growth was exponentially explosive. The time it took us to move from living in basic, mostly local communities that lived off the land - to bending our universe to our wills - was about the time between you writing your currently most popular spiritual fiction and landing on your planets moon for the first time. Note the actual durations might differ greatly, as the concept you call time is very different in our universe and we still haven't fully studied yours.
Anyways. After this event we call "universal reframing", everything else just... fell into place.
Our strategy basically was to, first, fully align our mental universes. And then to perform a depth search from a common starting point. You seemed to have rushed over a few of the crucial bits as soon as the first approach turned out to be useful. Actually, all of the bits but one. It must be a terribly confusing existence that you are living. We can only make an attempt to relate, as our evolutionary strand optimized for alignment before curiousity. That, you could say, was our dumb luck.
Are there any questions so far?"
There was a puzzling silence in an area packed with an amount of people that would normally be present at music festivals or presidential inaugurations. For an event of this magnitude, the stage was sparsely decorated and included only the necessities. Like last time, the visit was spontaneos and unannounced. Or maybe, like last time, we just didn't understand the announcement message, as it might have again came in the form of a formerly undiscovered particle, a seemingly arbitrary number of years prior to this event. They must think they are really funny.
One of the humans chosen as representative of the planet raised their hand.
"Please, speak. As always. Our 'time' is very limited."
"If I didn't misunderstand this: You said, our brains are basically creating what we call 'simulations' for ourselves, in our mind, to make sense of the actual universe we are in and base our actions on. Is this correct?"
"Based on the very crude definition your species has for the word 'correct' I would say 'yes, that is correct.'"
"And these simulations are getting closer and closer to the real deal, right? But what if, say, we didn't want the real deal. What if we liked our own personal pocket universes and instead wanted to bend that one to our own wills instead of the real one? You said we are bad at alignment and I would agree to the point where I say we probably go extinct to our own stupidity before we all agree on even one single thing. Can't we just use your knowledge to just, manifest things into our universe just by thinking about it, like in the movie Matrix, which might have crossed your desk while researching us. Great Movie."
"It did indeed. It is esteemed by my lifeform as what you would call 'slapstick comedy'. Since we moved past what constituted our form of entertainment, the media from your universe has become very popular among my peers. It is by sending samples back to our universe how we finance the probes we are sending here."
"You still have money?"
"I was making - what you call - a joke. Never heard of it in the context of a movie, but that title is immensely funny to me given the circumstances. Anyway, you wanted to know how to bend your 'simulated universe' around you. Alright. You might be slightly dissappointed by the beginning of my explanation, but listen till the end. And make of that what you will.
Let's start by what you mean by 'manifest' exactly. As the inaccuracy of your communication patterns shall not be a hindrance to this mentorship."
"Well... I imagine it. And then it sort of poofs into existence?"
"Understood. Actually, I will start explaning how you perform this action in the actual universe you are in, before I make the transfer to how you do it in the imagined one in your brain."
"Uh.. ok?"
"What would you like to be manifested?"
"I don't know. How about we go nice and easy with a cone of ice cream and start from there?"
"So be it. So, we start imagining the cone of ice cream. What does it consist off? Milk, sugar, eggs, and some smaller additions to suit your individuals taste buds. Let's begin with milk. You are getting it from cows (a practice my society finds quite alienating. We, too, have to get used to the wildly varying customs of lifeforms of the universes). Cows can be domesticated and bred, but first, we would have to overcome the physical distance between us, and a few locations on this planet. For that, I would advice designing and constructing a vehicle that is capa..."
"Oh come on, that's how we manifest things? We go and make them ourselves?? Oh wow, thanks a lot mister transcendant being. So the rest of the stuff you told us was also bullshit?"
"Please refrain from jumping to conclusions without the full picture in mind, even if it is in your existences nature to do so. Alright, so let me offer you a shortcut."
"Please do."
"I know of a location just a few human paces down this road, where you can exchange currency for a cone of ice cream."
"Seriously?"
"Yes."
"What the hell is the point of this?"
"The point is, once again: you - misunderstanding your existence. Especially in conjunction with your incredibly limited ability to verbalize concepts using your own vocabulary. You are barely at the point of being able to convey emotions in every day speech, and are now expecting to understand high level 4 dimensional concepts after just a few of your incredibly inaccurate words. Tell me now, please: What do you perceive as the difference of these two scenarios I just mentioned? In a temporal manner and in the energy required?"
"Well, it would be much easier and faster to just go down the road and buy a cone of ice cream, but that isn't tremendously astounding information to us, you have to understand."
"'Much'? Let's give this word, 'much', a bit of a frame of reference. The differences between these scenarios are: About 15000 years of agriculture and animal husbandry; countless inventions that led to your current state of technology which allows for refrigeration in a way advanced enough to get the ice cream to just the right texture that your modern palate is accustomed to; An education system that allows for such inventions to occur in time for you to be standing here, demanding ice cream, and actually getting it. Not mentioning the infrastructure that makes you bridge the physical distances of every single time any of these steps needed anything. And meanwhile destroying the naturally occuring resources of your planet bit by bit.
Or, scenario 2: You take the money that you got from staring at a computer screen for about 7 minutes, choose one of the ice cream parlors that your civilization made sure to be on average a 30 minutes driving distance from every single living human. (You aren't very good at even distributions though, we found.). And go and get that ice cream. Even including the infrastructural costs existing now, we have narrowed this process down from not even being close to a reality for thousands of generations to being at most 30 minutes away and dirt cheap, assuming an amount of efficient preparation, that is part of the technology that lead you here.
If you ask me, between scenario 1 and 2, you became so many orders of magnitude closer to 'poofing it into existence' that a human mind has troubles comprehending it. And therefore, appreciating it. From '0% of the human population has access to this within their lifetime and no one will for the next couple millenia' to 'Over half the human population has access to this within 30 minutes", taking into account the total timespan, the amount of events that had to occur and the amount of incremental learnings that had to accumulate, for this to happen even once for anybody, I believe the time and energy you have to exert to access your ice cream cone right now is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. And you aren't even close to finishing your development as humans - if you manage to not kill yourself somehow.
You are constantly manifesting things into reality, the only issue is that you severely and heavily underestimate what it means 'to imagine a thing'.
Please allow my vanity, but this is an important lesson for the following part that you are, I'm afraid, more interested in. How to do that in your head. And potentially much faster. Well assuming thaXXXxxxx----.----."
"Oh wow, not again. Mighty convenient this always happens right when it gets interesting."
"First, you have to understand that.,.......... The limitations of spacetime that you perceive.... are not present in nature..... nature is infinitely 'dimensional', and in fact XXxxx.....----..--.-.- has no concept for infinity....-.-.--. it is a human made.....-.-.-.- model to describe a perfectly natural phenomenon you lack the words for at this time..._xxxx.xxx-x---.-.--.-zzzz."
"Come on, speak faster! The battery is dying again!"
" ...physical distance...S;.,.XXXxx...currently a big bottleneck for your progres...asd.döö,,,, is also a limitation of your cortex, not nature,.....-as.d.sa......the concept of an 'extent' only exists from certain frames of references..-.-..-.a.ss.a.as.... in others everything is....a.s-d.-.---.-..-xxxx on top of each other, overlapping each other in what you call 'time' AND 'space'"
"...XXXxsasad Listen."
"I am running out of time again humans. The Hopf Fibration. It is a great first step. But move away from your digital thinking. Treat your numbers. .aD;,aC:.x.cx.ac,.as,dca.s like your waves...CKLUJCJUCCLICK"
The broadcast stopped.
"I never know if these things make me smarter, or dumber. Sadly the alien is gone now so it can't tell me that there actually is no smart or dumb."

You’re a damn fool, you know that?”, said Gemeti.
After they arrived at the palace, Lord Gyholt’s servants showed them to their quarters where they would stay with the Fursaglan lord’s own staff. It was a spacious set of rooms, whitewashed walls and a light breeze gliding in from the outside bringing in the awful smell of the city’s smoke. They seemed nice enough though there was no way to communicate anything to them since neither group knew the other’s tongue. Gemeti took a reluctant Ettu away from the main group to chastise her in a corner of the room.
Ettu sighed heavily, “Yes, I know. You’ve done nothing but tell me since I joined Lord Palanu’s service. He can punish me if he wants to. That Marhuk’s smile and laughter would be worth every bit of misery”. She could still picture that beautiful smile he had that made her heart skip a beat.
The other woman put her fists in her hips, “What would your mother say about this?”.
Ettu laughed, “She would hand me a flask of animal fat”.
Gemeti blushed and sucked in her breath in irritation before throwing her head back in a guffaw. That’s when Ettu knew she had her. Her mother always told her to win people over with a smile and a jest and ever since it had worked like a charm and got her out of trouble many times. The other woman stopped suddenly when she realized she was loud enough to draw the gaze of several of the other servants but then giggled more quietly with Ettu.
The giggling was cut short when a Fursaglan servant hurriedly entered the room and closed the door behind him. He leaned against the door as if bracing himself to prevent anyone else from coming in.
One of the other Fursaglan servants walked up to him and asked a question. Before he could answer, a sword ran through his back and out of his stomach and spat blood out. The worried man screamed and coughed blood as the door hinges broke and the door itself crushed him. Through the door, came a man in silver armor, other armed men behind him. The warrior was big and muscular which left Ettu in no doubt that he broke the door down by himself. He hacked down the inquisitive servant, killing him with two blows to the head.
One woman belted out an ear splitting scream, cut short by the murderer’s quick dash towards her, ramming his obsidian sword through her heart. Another woman began running for the window which led the others to do the same. More assailants filtered in, slashing at more men and women and creating a pool of gore and guts.
“Oh fuck!”, said Ettu.
Gemeti took her hand and pulled her away from the bloodshed and into the window. But all the servants rushed through at the same time, leaving none of them free to jump out. Hemmed in to one side of the room, they made it easier for the warriors to cut them down.
Gemeti’s face was struck with horror, “Gods! They killed them. Just slashed them like lumberjacks at a forest”.
The first intruder cleaved her head off with his already gory sword. The warrior had been sawing off another servant’s arm when he saw her with an almost feral expression on his face and jumped at her. Blood flew at Ettu’s face, a gasp all that escaped her. She never had it in her to scream but that didn’t mean she wasn’t scared.
Piss slithered down her legs as she knelt before him, “Please don’t kill me. I don’t want to die”, with hands held up as if she could stop a sword swing.
The warrior smiled at her fear, enjoying every second of it. Through his grin he said with a thick accent, “Die, Aroloth”.
Suddenly, one of her hands turned bright green. A sharp pain surged through her arm and manifested itself in a lance of fire, blasting from her palm and into the murderer’s chest. He fell down, never knowing what killed him.
At the north wing of the palace, Lord Gyholt was gesturing at his Sentinels, barking out orders and cursing at his manservant to put the armor on faster. He had men watch the windows to gauge the enemy numbers and servants cowering at a corner. Meanwhile, Palanu calmly ran an oilcloth along his khopesh and swung it around to test it amidst all the chaos in the room. Two of his guards flanking him.
“Asula! Go with Mazni and his brothers. By Crudas! Where’s Marhuk?”, said Gyholt as he swore by the Fursaglan god of warriors.
The throne room was a cream-colored, marble representation of Fursagla’s history with intricately etched bass reliefs of the Eagle Kings and their households. The images were everywhere, in each floor tile, round pillar, step in the dais, and the very throne itself. The whole place seemed to burst with reminders of Fursagla’s martial glory as if a man might quickly forget it.
“What’s the best route to the barracks?”, asked the Aroloth lord.
Gyholt shooed his manservant away once he was done, “What? You mean to go out there? Wait for me and my Sentinels. We can go out together to rescue your men”.
A man’s howl of pain took both lords’ attention. One of the watchers was pierced with an arrow in the clavicle. A warrior climbed in through the window as the watcher sobbed at his pain, the sobbing man grew quiet as a sword thrust to the temple ended him. More assailants entered, killing another watcher with a spear through the skull.
Immediately the Sentinels ran to their lord in a wall of bronze and hides and slammed their shields into the ground with an intimidating, “Huh!”. The enemies quickly swarmed the room, tearing arms and slashing necks all the while of any man not behind the Sentinels or Palanu and his guards. One assailant in particular wore Dendra armor and a plumed helmet with cheek pieces and a grim smile plastered on his face.
“Gojan”, said Lord Gyholt.
“Gyholt”, said Gojan son of Asgena.
“Where’s your father? If we could get to him then we can end all this senseless violence and make amends”, said the Fursaglan lord.
The nobleman sneered, “What makes you think we’re stupid enough to believe that?”.
“You were stupid enough to attack my palace”, retorted the former rebel.
The younger man snarled and shouted an order to attack. His men charged, bringing to bear wrathful blows and glory-hounding sprints. Palanu and his two guards (Sylon and Naru-zim) braced for impact, holding khopeshs and tower-like shields except for the Aroloth lord.
Even with the lack of shield, Palanu held his khopesh before him, giving vicious strokes with its hungry edge to the first man that faced him. The warrior had barely grown his chin hairs when he threw himself at the noble with wide eyes and panicky spear thrusts. The khopesh darted out and banged against his copper helmet. While his opponent was dazed, Palanu quickly reversed his grip and hooked the young man’s shield, pulling him away from his companions as if a babe from a nest of vipers. Only the babe landed in a nest of cobras. Once he stole away the shield, the Aroloth pushed the tip of his sword through his gullet and tore it out with a strip of flesh dangling in the hilt. The fight lasted less than two seconds.
The room became a cauldron of action as men on both sides jabbed and pushed each other, a red flood spilling into the floor. In the midst of this battle, Gojan saw Palanu’s prowess with his khopesh. After killing his first opponent, the lord let the next man come only to hack him down with equal vigor. His beautiful, sky blue sleeves became drenched in crimson blood, spit adorned his forehead, fire burned behind his eyes.
The magma in his veins coursed through his body, his whole world narrowed down to his blade and his next victim. He killed them all, the ugly, the beautiful, the sad, and the happy. Gojan watched it all traverse before him. With greedy determination, he pushed past his men to get to the Aroloth lord.
“AROLOTH!”, he bawled.
Sylon saw him first whilst his lord slew yet another traitor and bellowed out a war cry to call him out. The Fursaglan noble fixed his eyes on the bronze-armored guard and stomped towards him, bashing the heads of the remnants of the fighting men still not in formation, chunks of brain-matter and skull-bone flew up and rained down, adding to the collage of death unleashed by Asgena.
Sylon’s khopesh wove a tapestry of slaughter as he ended the lives of men who stood between him and Gojan. There was no speech by either man like in the songs, no ceremonies like in Strohinite duels or war dances like in the Demon Isles, just the fight. Mace met khopesh, stone against bronze. The bronze-armored man expected to get a few chips off his opponent’s weapon but had realized it was spell-bound. Gojan grinned nastily as he belted out an animal growl that caused it to glow a deep purple and they clashed again.
The blade juddered and nearly leapt from Sylon’s grasp this time, but he bit his tongue in determination and his knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip. The mace spat lightning and hissed with every touch. Another series of clashes pelted Sylon’s khopesh with many notches. Battle-madness held him, veins popped out along his hands and forehead. The Fursaglan noble lost his grin and sweat beaded his brow as he only barely swept aside yet another lunge from the guard.
Though he was an expert warrior trained from birth, Gojan only ever fought against peasants in the battlefield. Unbeknownst to him, Sylon was as blueblooded as he was and was considered gifted for his young age. When the son of Asgena realized the man wasn’t going down, he grew desperate, driving harder swings into his opponent and expending more of his strength.
Sylon realized this and simply let his shield take the beating. The cured hides blackened and light wisps of smoke rose from the places the Fursaglan bashed with his mace. The Aroloth man’s muscles jolted, the slight twinge of fear that belied his defence fueling his every move and stratagem. With a twist of wrist, the mace slid by and took the Fursaglan’s momentum with it. Out balanced and out maneuvered, Gojan was at the mercy of Sylon’s blade. The tortured khopesh sank deep with a vengeance between shoulder and neck.
Nerveless fingers dropped the mace, the deep purple glow dissolving into thin air. The noble warrior himself staring at the ground with glazed eyes and dripping blood. Sylon slid the khopesh out and much of his neck with it. Before the body dropped on the floor, the guardsman yelled out, “For the Emperor!”, as he awaited the next foe.
Naru-zim fought methodically, cold calculation and ruthless determination guiding his strikes and parries. Both khopesh and shield were trained for offense and defense and narrow was the window which a man could strike true against a foe like him. Nary a flinch shook him from his deep concentration from the killing, slicing flesh with a butcher’s precision and sending souls to the River Vim which was his people’s concept of the afterlife. He made no war cry, he let his blade do the talking. And it sang a bloody chorus as men fell like trees in a logging camp. After his last swing felled another man, he noticed the rest of the traitors were retreating with tails between their legs. Cowards, he thought. A man should stand and fight until his lifeblood oozed from him.
Palanu wiped his khopesh in the cleaner parts of his clothing, “Peace be with you”, he said to the dead men who were his victims.
“They were traitors to our God, Lord Palanu. No men are less deserving of mercy as these”, said Naru-zim as he stabbed a groaning traitor and left him in a pool of his own blood.
“Mercy is a gift of the righteous, my friend. A man is not judged more than when he has the upper hand”.
Naru-zim bowed at his lord politely before he turned a corpse over and pushed his khopesh into its neck. When Sylon strayed from them to kill more of the wounded, he barked out, “Sylon! What are you doing?”.
The other guard turned to him, “What do you think? Killing the enemy”.
Naru-zim screwed up his face in anger, “Our job’s to protect Lord Palanu not running off after the enemy”.
“How else do you protect him if not by killing the enemy?”, said Sylon, flabbergasted.
“Enough, both of you”, growled Palanu, “Like a pair of old wives, you are. We are still in the presence of Lord Gyholt and his Sentinels. Don’t shame the Emperor’s name”.
The two guards muttered their apologies and Sylon jogged back to Palanu’s side.
Lord Palanu approached Lord Gyholt and gave him an apologetic smile, “Please forgive the disgrace you witnessed, my lord. My men are… young and untested in the realm of manners and discipline”.
The Fursaglan lord nodded in understanding, “They are like brothers. I’m certain it is merely their eagerness to serve”.
Palanu nodded thankfully yet in the back of his head he was disappointed. ‘All my life I’ve heard of the many glorious deeds of the guardians of the God. I never pictured them bickering amongst themselves’.

Dracula: World of War --- The Violet Reaper ---- Humans Don’t Make Good Familiars Book 1 ---- The Lonely World --- Discord ---- YouTube --- My Patreon --- My Author's Page --- ArcAngel98 Wiki ---- The Next Best Hero ---- HDMGF Book 2 ---- Jess and Blinx: The Wizard ---- The Questing Parties ---- Zombies ---- Previous
Jake’s POV
One more, rather intense, sparing session later, and I was back in Suma and Luna’s room. I was being treated for the injuries I’d received during the third round. It was a simple place. Stone walls, those glowing braids sewn into the walls and hanging from the ceiling. The furniture, if you call it that, were just metal and wooden bars and poles placed around the room. In the corner of the room were two boxes, with drapes hanging over the only opening, and a cushion made of animal pelts to sleep in. Lying on the floor, Suma was standing at my side, casting healing spells.
“Jake, these injures are terrible! What happened?” Suma asked. Luna was out with Ciel and his son at the moment, getting seeds and other things from the local market.
“I ran out of mana in the third round of training, and got hit by easily thirty spells in less than ten seconds; from all sides.” I groaned, wincing in pain with every other breath.
“Well, after training with the Royal Mages, I suppose I cannot be surprised that you were injured. How did your other teammates fair?”
“No, it was just me versus them.” I said. Suma gasped snorted in shock.
“W-what?! Then it is no wonder you were injured so badly! Why did they not stop after the first round if they were not going to at least heal you?”
“I wasn’t hurt until the end of the third round. Actually, they ended it because I was injured. They had healers there, but I wanted you to heal me instead since you know-” I coughed hard, feeling my chest rattle and bringing my hand to cover my mouth as I did. Pulling it away, I saw some blood and a cold chill ran straight down my spine and into my stomach. “Oh, that’s probably not good.” Suma immediately fluttered over to my chest, and started another healing spell.
“Never before have I been so grateful for all those confusing lessons on your people’s anatomy.” She said in a frustrated huff.
“Just wish I could have made it through that final round. If I hadn’t run out of mana, my magnetic barrier spell would have stayed up.”
“Jake, it is nothing short of a miracle that you lasted one round, let alone two. And alone no less!”
“You know I won those first two rounds.” I said, smugly.
“You have a head injury, Jake.” Suma said, unfazed. “Once you have stopped spitting up blood, I will treat that too.”
“No, really!” I protested. “And I think I could have won the third one too.”
“If they had not pelted you relentlessly with attack spells?” Suma asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Exactly.” Reaching a hand into my pocket, I pulled out a small wooden plank, engraved with runic symbols and the Queen’s seal, and showed it to Suma. “Got this though.”
“Oh, a Rune-Maker’s permit?”
“Yup. Totally worth it.” I said, just before my toe suddenly popped back into place, sending a sharp and stabbing pain through my entire foot. “AHH! Son of a… ow!”
“That was the last of your injuries. Please, in the future, if you plan on breaking every bone in your body again… change your plans.”
“It wasn’t every bone.”
“But it was quite a lot of them.” She shook her head, probably annoyed. “What are your plans now that you have your license?”
“Nothing immediately, but when we get back to Zach-Ashem, it’ll help with my work with Sela-Car.”
“And what about for the rest of the day? Not another sparring session, I hope?”
“No, but I wish it were.” I said, suddenly feeling anxious. “It’s time.”
“For?”
“To learn how to heal myself.” Holding up my missing hand, she suddenly realized what I meant.
“Ah, do you want me to stay with you while you do?” Suma asked, trying to be gentle, but I’m sure she was still nervous after what happened in the desert. She was no more excited about this than I was.
“Yeah, that…” A deep guttural sigh escaped my lip, almost without me even noticing. “That’d be nice.”
Lying down on the floor, Suma by my head for moral support, it was time to delve into Deyja’s memories. Falling into darkness, I felt that haze wash over my whole body. Searching for information about how he healed himself, despite famously having Death-Mage, I opened the first memory I found. Slowly, everything came into focus as the memory took shape. The first thing I noticed was how high up I was; Deyja was tall. On my, or rather his, left, stood Ashem, who looked different from the last time I saw a memory with him in it. He looked younger, smaller. Both were in a field of rolling hills, surrounded by flowers; some of which came up to their knees. He was using magic to create illusions, and they both were watching them.
“Let us begin our lesson.” Ashem said, his voice rolling like thunder, even despite his youth.
“Thank you again, my friend. I have been wanting to learn to dual-cast for a century now, but have had little time while managing my sections of the project.”
“It is my pleasure, Deyja. I know how hard you have been working with the Neame, and am more than happy to help.” The illusions began to take shape, however it was not pictures, but words written in a language I did not know, floating in the air.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Queen Ompera’s POV
“Leave us.” I ordered my staff. “Svend and I must have a private conversation regarding important matters of state.” Immediately, they all left my private chamber, leaving myself and Svend alone; finally. We laid down in my roost, my head resting on his wing. It had been a long day, full of boring military and diplomatic talks and meetings. All I wanted now was to rest and enjoy my time with him alone.
“Important matters of state? I am certain they all know the truth by this point. Why bother keeping it secret from them further, Ompera?”
“Those gossips would tell our whole kingdom if I ever actually confirmed anything. Let them keep whispering rumors quietly.” I told him, closing my eyes and relaxing.
“Did anything interesting happen today?” Svend asked.
“The campaign to push out the Union from Island of Sangu has officially started. Forces left today, prepared to use Tactical-Scale magic. Evacuations will begin immediately. But I do not want to talk about that.” I told him.
“Okay, then what about the Viking familiar. You went and watched his training today, yes? What did you think?”
I stopped for a moment, unsure how to answer. “He terrifies me.”
“Someone is scary enough to frighten you? He must be quite the intimidating fellow then.” Svend joked.
“Never once in my life have I met someone with so much mana, and such complex and powerful spells. When I requested the General to test him under the guise of training the Royal Mages, I knew what to expect somewhat. I’ve used my Mana Gaze on him before, but I have never seen his complex spells in use until today.” Images of the training flashed into my mind.
“What did he look like?”
“The sheer amount of mana that the spell he used to protect himself with was staggering. It would burn through the entire mana reservoir of the Royal Mages in less than a minute. Yet he sustained it for almost ten minutes. Maybe longer. It looked like wave after wave of mana was just devoured by the air itself. Mana flickered in the air like lightning. Regarding complexity, the only thing I have ever seen even come close to it was Ritual-Magic, and Tactical-Scale magic. But none of that was what truly frightened me.”
“Then what?” Svend asked, listening intently. Clearly uneasy with my descriptions.
“He won.”
“His team won?”
“He fought alone, and still overwhelmed an entire attack squadron of Royal Mages, twice. He was only defeated because he ran out of mana; sacrificed to that monstrous spell. And even when he was finally hit by attack magic, he suffered minimal injuries; until all of the remaining mages seized the opportunity to attack him all at once. But still he refused healing, preferring to have his master heal him instead. Despite how severe his wounds were, he was able to contact his master and left without complaint after receiving his permit.”
“Is this true?” Svend asked, then after a moment of silence he had another question. “Permit?”
“He went through all of that just so that I would issue him a Rune-Crafter’s permit.”
“So, he is insane?”
“Perhaps… But still, to use spells so advanced that they outclassed rituals, and were more powerful defenses that most of the spells used by the dragons; if the records are accurate that is.” I said, suddenly very sure that asking him to go to the islands was the correct choice. “His Drake Squadron should arrive tomorrow. I look forward to seeing the results of his mission.”

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Jake’s POV
One more, rather intense, sparing session later, and I was back in Suma and Luna’s room. I was being treated for the injuries I’d received during the third round. It was a simple place. Stone walls, those glowing braids sewn into the walls and hanging from the ceiling. The furniture, if you call it that, were just metal and wooden bars and poles placed around the room. In the corner of the room were two boxes, with drapes hanging over the only opening, and a cushion made of animal pelts to sleep in. Lying on the floor, Suma was standing at my side, casting healing spells.
“Jake, these injures are terrible! What happened?” Suma asked. Luna was out with Ciel and his son at the moment, getting seeds and other things from the local market.
“I ran out of mana in the third round of training, and got hit by easily thirty spells in less than ten seconds; from all sides.” I groaned, wincing in pain with every other breath.
“Well, after training with the Royal Mages, I suppose I cannot be surprised that you were injured. How did your other teammates fair?”
“No, it was just me versus them.” I said. Suma gasped snorted in shock.
“W-what?! Then it is no wonder you were injured so badly! Why did they not stop after the first round if they were not going to at least heal you?”
“I wasn’t hurt until the end of the third round. Actually, they ended it because I was injured. They had healers there, but I wanted you to heal me instead since you know-” I coughed hard, feeling my chest rattle and bringing my hand to cover my mouth as I did. Pulling it away, I saw some blood and a cold chill ran straight down my spine and into my stomach. “Oh, that’s probably not good.” Suma immediately fluttered over to my chest, and started another healing spell.
“Never before have I been so grateful for all those confusing lessons on your people’s anatomy.” She said in a frustrated huff.
“Just wish I could have made it through that final round. If I hadn’t run out of mana, my magnetic barrier spell would have stayed up.”
“Jake, it is nothing short of a miracle that you lasted one round, let alone two. And alone no less!”
“You know I won those first two rounds.” I said, smugly.
“You have a head injury, Jake.” Suma said, unfazed. “Once you have stopped spitting up blood, I will treat that too.”
“No, really!” I protested. “And I think I could have won the third one too.”
“If they had not pelted you relentlessly with attack spells?” Suma asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Exactly.” Reaching a hand into my pocket, I pulled out a small wooden plank, engraved with runic symbols and the Queen’s seal, and showed it to Suma. “Got this though.”
“Oh, a Rune-Maker’s permit?”
“Yup. Totally worth it.” I said, just before my toe suddenly popped back into place, sending a sharp and stabbing pain through my entire foot. “AHH! Son of a… ow!”
“That was the last of your injuries. Please, in the future, if you plan on breaking every bone in your body again… change your plans.”
“It wasn’t every bone.”
“But it was quite a lot of them.” She shook her head, probably annoyed. “What are your plans now that you have your license?”
“Nothing immediately, but when we get back to Zach-Ashem, it’ll help with my work with Sela-Car.”
“And what about for the rest of the day? Not another sparring session, I hope?”
“No, but I wish it were.” I said, suddenly feeling anxious. “It’s time.”
“For?”
“To learn how to heal myself.” Holding up my missing hand, she suddenly realized what I meant.
“Ah, do you want me to stay with you while you do?” Suma asked, trying to be gentle, but I’m sure she was still nervous after what happened in the desert. She was no more excited about this than I was.
“Yeah, that…” A deep guttural sigh escaped my lip, almost without me even noticing. “That’d be nice.”
Lying down on the floor, Suma by my head for moral support, it was time to delve into Deyja’s memories. Falling into darkness, I felt that haze wash over my whole body. Searching for information about how he healed himself, despite famously having Death-Mage, I opened the first memory I found. Slowly, everything came into focus as the memory took shape. The first thing I noticed was how high up I was; Deyja was tall. On my, or rather his, left, stood Ashem, who looked different from the last time I saw a memory with him in it. He looked younger, smaller. Both were in a field of rolling hills, surrounded by flowers; some of which came up to their knees. He was using magic to create illusions, and they both were watching them.
“Let us begin our lesson.” Ashem said, his voice rolling like thunder, even despite his youth.
“Thank you again, my friend. I have been wanting to learn to dual-cast for a century now, but have had little time while managing my sections of the project.”
“It is my pleasure, Deyja. I know how hard you have been working with the Neame, and am more than happy to help.” The illusions began to take shape, however it was not pictures, but words written in a language I did not know, floating in the air.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Queen Ompera’s POV
“Leave us.” I ordered my staff. “Svend and I must have a private conversation regarding important matters of state.” Immediately, they all left my private chamber, leaving myself and Svend alone; finally. We laid down in my roost, my head resting on his wing. It had been a long day, full of boring military and diplomatic talks and meetings. All I wanted now was to rest and enjoy my time with him alone.
“Important matters of state? I am certain they all know the truth by this point. Why bother keeping it secret from them further, Ompera?”
“Those gossips would tell our whole kingdom if I ever actually confirmed anything. Let them keep whispering rumors quietly.” I told him, closing my eyes and relaxing.
“Did anything interesting happen today?” Svend asked.
“The campaign to push out the Union from Island of Sangu has officially started. Forces left today, prepared to use Tactical-Scale magic. Evacuations will begin immediately. But I do not want to talk about that.” I told him.
“Okay, then what about the Viking familiar. You went and watched his training today, yes? What did you think?”
I stopped for a moment, unsure how to answer. “He terrifies me.”
“Someone is scary enough to frighten you? He must be quite the intimidating fellow then.” Svend joked.
“Never once in my life have I met someone with so much mana, and such complex and powerful spells. When I requested the General to test him under the guise of training the Royal Mages, I knew what to expect somewhat. I’ve used my Mana Gaze on him before, but I have never seen his complex spells in use until today.” Images of the training flashed into my mind.
“What did he look like?”
“The sheer amount of mana that the spell he used to protect himself with was staggering. It would burn through the entire mana reservoir of the Royal Mages in less than a minute. Yet he sustained it for almost ten minutes. Maybe longer. It looked like wave after wave of mana was just devoured by the air itself. Mana flickered in the air like lightning. Regarding complexity, the only thing I have ever seen even come close to it was Ritual-Magic, and Tactical-Scale magic. But none of that was what truly frightened me.”
“Then what?” Svend asked, listening intently. Clearly uneasy with my descriptions.
“He won.”
“His team won?”
“He fought alone, and still overwhelmed an entire attack squadron of Royal Mages, twice. He was only defeated because he ran out of mana; sacrificed to that monstrous spell. And even when he was finally hit by attack magic, the injuries he suffered minimal injuries; until all of the remaining mages seized the opportunity to attack him all at once. But still he refused healing, preferring to have his master heal him instead. Despite how severe his wounds were, he was able to contact his master and left without complaint after receiving his permit.”
“Is this true?” Svend asked, then after a moment of silence he had another question. “Permit?”
“He went through all of that just so that I would issue him a Rune-Crafter’s permit.”
“So, he is insane?”
“Perhaps… But still, to use spells so advanced that they outclassed rituals, and were more powerful defenses that most of the spells used by the dragons; if the records are accurate that is.” I said, suddenly very sure that asking him to go to the islands was the correct choice. “His Drake Squadron should arrive tomorrow. I look forward to seeing the results of his mission.”

Author's note: This is a sequel to my last fic, The Skalgan. This one isn't going to be quite as big or updated as often, because I am taking up a lot of other side activities. This opening prologue isn't that long either, just a bit of set up for whats to come.
Memory transcription subject: Klicli, Dossur youth
Date [Standardized human time]: February 13, 2137
“Klicli, I’m hungry.”
It’s been almost a month now since the Federation attacked our home, Mileau. The Kolshians were beside themselves with rage over how many prey species, the Dossur included, had chosen to leave the federation and align ourselves with the Humans.
The Predators. Ever since they made themselves known things had become extremely interesting. The status quo was changed, and the galactic war that we had always lived in was charged in ways that no one predicted.
“Sis, how much longer until we get to Venlil Prime?”
The Kolshians, who we once believed to be friends, had shown their true colours. They had hidden military power that could have at any point turned the war but chose to not enact it until the humans forced them too. They attacked our home as punishment against the Dossur for befriending the predators, landing their armies, and abducting our people on mass.
Mom was among the abducted. We were left alone. Just me, an eleven-year-old Dossur, and her little siblings.
By the roots, my nose burns. This place is rank.
The steel plated walls rattled from the force of the FTL travel outside of the ship. My sharp nose was making me acutely aware of how the air musty and sour from the years of corroding metals and spilled chemicals that has occurred in this hauler. The lights in this room flickered with each mild jolt of the flight, complete with an electrical hum. I glanced around the cold steel room we had snuck into on this cargo freighter.
We’re tiny, barely noticeable by the much larger, more hulking species.
They all call themselves harmless prey like us, but they never seem to realize just how easily any of them could hurt us. One misguided step, or stumble, or just not watching where they were moving a large heavy object, then that was it for us. They could be more deadly to us than even the Arxur themselves.
“I’m hunnnnngry.”
This whine snapped me out of my headspace as I finally paid attention to the voice of my smallest brother. I pulled my tail from around the three of us and glanced down at the pair of Dossur, the smaller one clinging to the slightly larger one for warmth.
My brothers, Hitlim, who is eight, and Yaflis, five. The pair of them shared the same bright orange coats with brown stripes that I did, so we were a matching trio. Doubly so seeing how the three of us were all stained by various unknown substances, machine oils, and what I hope were rotting fruit juices.
“Right, I’ll check what’s left.”
I reached for my bag, which is now much lighter than it was back when we started this journey, we didn’t have much food to start with. The chaos that Mileau was left in killed most of our infrastructure, so most luxuries and surpluses were lost. The humans were helping by the time we got off world. In fact, it was their efforts that got us reconnected to the galactic information network.
I turned the bag over and let the contents spill out. My holopad along with the remains of our food store: Mostly empty seed and nut shells, but some of them still had some contents.
Barely enough left, but it did it. This freighter is going to Venlil Prime. If we had gotten onto the wrong ship again, we would have been stuck in the sap with no way out. We’ve spent weeks bouncing between starports and space stations, sneaking onto various ships in the hope that each would get us closer to our destination. Some of the ships were cargo freighters, some were passenger ships… One of them was a garbage hauler. Not making that mistake again.
I sifted my claws through the pile of loose seed shells, picking out the few that still had something edible. “Got some here.” My own stomach twisted in pain as I became aware that I had not eaten in at least two paws now.
No, they’re more important.
I handed the seeds to the pair, while giving them reassuring ear flicks that it was going to be okay, before lifting up my holopad and leaning back against the wall.
Each of my brothers took one of my sides, nuzzling into me and watched my paws slide across the small screen, hoping I was about to put on something to entertain them.
Instead, I opened up the same news articles I had been obsessed with for the last two weeks. As I tapped the link to the one I had bookmarked, the screen responded and showed the bright digital scripture just under the glass:
VENLIL FOUND IN ARCHIVES DEPTHS! A PRE-FEDERATION SKALGAN, LIVING IN THE MODERN AGE!
“Klicli, why do you keep looking at this?”
I rolled my eyes at this as I knew my littlest brother needed another explanation. He’s always been really bad at paying attention. Mom would go on about how she thinks he might be predator diseased, like our father. I fear that she might be right but refuse to believe it. I will cling onto my brothers with everything I have, I will not let them be taken from me by some exterminators or predators. We're all we have now, and family should stay together, bonded stronger than the sap itself.
“Because of this.”
I scrolled down the article to get to the images below. Rows of images of what was easily the most well built Venlil I had ever seen took up the screen. He was big and dark, his fur like obsidian, and his wool was in a perplexing woven pattern. But he was not the focus of my attention. Instead, my focus was on a human that appeared in the background of many of these images. This human had blond fur going down from their head and wore a bright pink pelt over their torso. I still know nothing of this species other than how they are predators.
Of course, he’s with the predators. That’s what you do when you’re predator diseased, isn’t it?
This human had one really important detail about them. This detail is the reason why we are on this trip.
I pinched my claws to enhance the image on the screen so that Yaflis could better make it out.
There, hanging in the fabric of that pink garment, obscured by the predator’s blond hair. A tiny orange ball of fur with patterns identical to our own. Patterns I would recognize anywhere. Patterns that abandoned us years ago. I was getting angry just thinking of this, but I didn’t know where else to go.
We don’t have anyone else left in this galaxy, and desperation forces you to make bad decisions.
“There. That’s why I’m looking at this. He’s why we are on this trip.”
“Who is that Dossur? Why are we trying to find him?”
“Because he’s our dad.”

A few years ago, I decided I needed a major life change. Everything seemed to be going downhill- my finances, my mental health, my life. I would go weeks without sleeping sometimes as the heavy traffic passed through the city streets down below. Every time I went outside, I saw more homeless people, more needles and crack pipes littering the ground, more muggings and assaults and overdoses and deaths. The city had become a wasteland, and I knew it was time to leave.
I had no girlfriend, no wife, no kids. My parents had both died a few years prior and I barely talked to my siblings anymore. I had nothing to tie me down to this place where I felt like I was dying inside a little more each day.
That was when I sold nearly everything I owned, got in my car and drove up to Alaska to try starting anew. I bought a small cabin and a plot of land in the middle of its majestic mountains and dark, enchanting forests. In the winter, the Northern Lights would shine through like the eyes of God, sending out divine trails of light that danced through the sky in cosmic waves.
And while the move did help give me some peace of mind, in the end, the source of all my problems had ultimately followed me thousands of miles into this endless wilderness. It would take me a long time to realize the cause of all this misery was myself.
Because, as a wise man once said, “Wherever I go, there I am.”
***
I lived in that cabin for three months without any major issues other than the constant threat of bears, moose and wolves. I had a rifle and a shotgun for hunting, a small garden in the backyard and a solar panel to generate electricity.
“This is the life,” I said, relaxing on a hammock I had strung across the corner of the cabin while staring at the endless beauty directly outside the window. White-capped mountains loomed like giants in front of thick clusters of evergreens. A virgin covering of fluffy snow made the entire world glisten and sparkle. There wasn’t a house or road in sight.
“No work, no stress, no pollution, no cars honking all the time…” I closed my eyes, breathing in the clean air. I ended up falling asleep for a couple hours, waking up just as the Sun had started setting. Bright orange streaks mixed with the bloody smears of the fading light as it disappeared behind the mountains.
I groggily arose, stumbling over to make a cup of instant coffee. As I sipped it, I wandered around the room, looking for something to pass the time. There were still quite a few random objects left behind by the last owner that I hadn’t gotten rid of yet. I had moved in to find a stocked bookshelf filled with classics by Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Bored, I started rifling through the collection, looking for something good to pass the time. As I shuffled past “A Maze of Death” and “Ubik”, something caught my eye.
A black, leather-bound book with no title or author name stood there, its cover faded with time and wear. Curious, I pulled it out and opened it. I saw the cursive scrawled across the pages in a neat, copperplate script and realized it was a diary left behind by the previous owner. The first entry was dated “January 9th, 2015.” This is what it said.
***
“I don’t know if I’m going crazy or not. I went into town to talk to my therapist yesterday and she said I should try writing everything down. She talks to me like it’s all in my head. But I know it’s not.
“When I first moved into the cabin, it seemed like Paradise. I never thought in a million years that something would be slinking around at night. I never thought it would be hiding under my bed, peeking in windows and following me like a shadow.
“Right now, I’m snowed in with a cup of coffee in one hand and my pistol in the other. I can’t sleep anymore. I keep hearing something shuffling around under the bed. Sometimes, I think I even hear ragged breathing, as if a corpse with dirt in its lungs had come back to life.
“I’ve caught glimpses of that thing in the darkness. Whatever it is, its skin is loose, almost falling off the bone. It almost looks like a naked, emaciated man. Its eyes are rotted and dark, its back hunched, its spine twisted and jutting out like tumors. It moves in this slow, jerky way, but I can never seem to catch it. Its body seems broken and out of alignment. Its legs bend the wrong way sometimes.
“By the time I turn on the lights or try to take a video of it, it’s always disappeared. But its fetid odor remains. It lingers in the cabin like a sweet-smelling, spreading infection.
“I don’t know what it wants from me. I want to leave, but with the storm raging outside, I’m stuck here, unable to get all the way back to town. The snow surrounds the cabin in mounds five feet high. I feel like a prisoner caged with a rabid beast, not knowing when it will strike.
“My wife claims she hasn’t seen or heard anything, but she keeps vanishing on me. Last night, she disappeared in the middle of a snowstorm. Where did she go? I asked her in the morning, but she said she was here the whole time. She didn’t remember anything. There’s no way she went into town. There wasn’t time and the trails were impassable that far down.
“Something’s going on here, but I don’t know what it is. I’m truly scared for our lives.”
I slammed the diary shut, not wanting to read anymore. I didn’t want to become infected by some kind of contagious cabin fever. If the last owner had gone insane in the mountains and started hallucinating naked corpses crawling around, I really didn’t want to know.
I shoved the diary back in the bookshelf, going for “A Maze of Death” instead. I tried to forget what I had read in the diary as I flew through the novella. All night, I tried to get the image of the naked, twisting man with rotted eyes out of my head, but I couldn’t.
I eventually fell asleep right before dawn. But, as my eyes were closing, I thought I saw a silhouette in the window- a starved man with excited, black eyes that seemed to be rotting out of his skull. I thought I saw him put his inhumanly long fingers against the glass as he leaned forward. I blinked, sitting up and glancing out into the white, snow-covered wonderland.
There was nothing there.
***
Another hunter occasionally followed the deer trails near my cabin. A frozen lake stood a quarter-mile away, the surface white and covered in thick drifts of snow. I bundled up, deciding to go outside for a hike in the frigid dawn. I strapped on my snowshoes and grabbed my shotgun, as I always did when I went outside. I never knew when a polar bear might be waiting around the next tree, after all.
I opened the door, seeing footprints pressed into the snow all around my house. At first, I thought it was that silhouette I had seen, the nightmarish thing from the diary. But the footprints didn’t go over to my window. They followed the trail twenty feet away, veering off towards the frozen lake at the bottom of the hill. I glanced down in that direction, seeing a black figure plodding slowly forward.
“Steve!” I cried, recognizing my only neighbor in a four-mile radius. He had a cabin about a mile away on his own little plot of land. He jumped, clearly startled by the sudden noise. His black snow pants and heavy fur coat swished together as he spun, raising his rifle high. When he saw me, he immediately lowered it and put a gloved hand up in a friendly greeting.
“Hey Josh! Surprised to see you up this early,” he yelled over the muted wintry landscape. Sounds always seemed different after it snowed, as if all the noise in the world had become faded and dead.
“Yeah, I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping,” I said, slinging my shotgun around my shoulder. “What are you doing anyway?”
“Just a little hunting, you know,” he said, giving me a sly wink. “Animals are always most active around dusk and dawn, it seems. That’s when I always have the best luck, anyway.” He stepped close to me, staring me in the eyes. “You do look like shit. Those bags under your eyes are big enough to carry groceries in.”
“Yeah, trust me, I know… Hey, this might sound a little weird, but did you know the previous owner of this cabin?” I asked. Steve’s wrinkled, old face fell into a scowl. His expression immediately became guarded and distant.
“Sure, sure, we met,” he exclaimed bluntly. He seemed to be searching my face for something, but I didn’t know what. His reaction left me feeling off-balance and nervous.
“Is he still around?” I said. Steve’s scowl deepened.
“Buddy, I don’t know what this is about, but he’s dead. He’s been dead. He died in that cabin, actually.” He pointed a finger at my home accusingly. With those words, my heart seemed to drop into my stomach. Waves of dread flowed through my body like water.
“How… how did he die? Like a heart attack or something?” I asked. Steve’s gaze turned downwards. He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Do you know that Alaska has the highest missing persons rate in the entire United States? It’s not even close. In fact, for the population size, we have far more people who go missing and never get found than anywhere else. They even have a name for it: the Alaska Triangle,” Steve said. “And we’re square in the middle of it.” I stared blankly at him, wondering where he was going with this. It seemed like a way to avoid answering my question.
“No, I didn’t know that…” I responded. Steve nodded, raising his head again. He heaved a deep sigh.
“Look, the thing with the last owner and his wife… it’s somewhat disturbing. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but it’s certainly not going to help your peace of mind. And it definitely isn’t going to help you get some sleep.”
“I want to know,” I insisted instantly. The wind started to whip past us. Flakes of ice and snow flew sideways in the sudden currents.
“Let’s go back to your cabin then,” Steve said, pulling his heavy fur-lined hood off and shaking out his long, black hair behind him. “I could use a bit of whiskey to warm up.”
***
We sat down with a bottle of Johnny Walker and two shot glasses. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but Steve certainly was. He chugged three shots in the span of a minute. I sipped at mine, drinking half and putting it back down on the coffee table with a thunk. Steve grunted, hissing through his open mouth for a moment.
“Ugh, that’s the good stuff,” he said, slamming his chest as the burning liquor worked its way down. Steve looked up at me with a new sparkle in his eyes. “Huh, so you want to know about what happened to Will Lenning. Well, I’ll tell you that no one really knows the whole story. I used to see him occasionally, come down and have a drink and talk. We all know each other around here, obviously.” I nodded, motioning him on. “He seemed like a normal, upstanding guy. He kinda reminded me of you, actually. A young guy trying to escape the hustle and bustle of the city life, the cancer of the American Dream.
“Well, he was here for maybe a couple months, I don’t know. Everything seemed fine. We used to go skeet shooting occasionally, have a beer, you know. We’d get together with a couple other hunters who live closer to town and sometimes play some poker. I never saw anything odd about Will. I never could have predicted what happened to him.” He heaved a long sigh at this, looking out the window at the sharp mountains with an expression of nostalgia.
“Well, what happened to him?” I asked, encouraging him to go on.
“He started talking about seeing someone peering in through his window at night. He talked about hearing sounds from under his bed while he was laying there in the dark- sounds like diseased breathing and shuffling. He started keeping all the lights on in his cabin twenty-four hours a day.” Steve leaned close to me. A glimmer of fear rippled across his pale, wrinkled face. “He started to lose his mind. Started digging holes all over the place, looking for something. Even in the middle of snowstorms, I would occasionally see him outside, digging. It seemed like he never slept anymore. It was classic cabin fever if I ever saw it.
“It was only a few weeks later that I came over here, concerned. I hadn’t heard from him in a few days, which was fairly unusual. I found the door hanging wide open. Propped up in a chair in the exact spot where you now sit, Will lay with a blast hole showing clear through his skull, a shotgun laying at his feet.
“And next to him, I found a blood-stained diary opened to the middle page. The last entry was stained with blood spatter, but still visible. I remember leaning down and reading it. It was only a few sentences long.” I glanced over at the bookshelf with the same diary, saying nothing.
“It said something like, ‘I see now what’s going on. The Twisted Man is leading me to the truth. Today, I will finally find it.’”
“And that was his suicide note?” I asked, my heart hammering in my chest. He nodded.
“Yeah. I went into town and got some rangers to come check it out. Eventually, they got cops and CSI there. They took all the stuff as evidence, including the diary,” he said. “Good riddance, I say. Reading something like that is never beneficial. Sometimes delusions spread like a virus, you know what I mean?” I did, but I said nothing. I glanced back at the diary, its black leather cover gleaming like a crouching snake.
And I wondered- if the police took the diary as evidence, how did it get back here?
***
“You said he had a wife living here with him, too?” I asked.
“Yeah… she went missing around the same time,” he said. “Pretty bizarre. The cops thought maybe she just moved away, but…” He shook his head grimly. “As far as I know, she was never seen again. It was like she had evaporated into thin air.”
After Steve left, I walked stiffly over to the bookshelf, taking down the diary. I flipped open through the pages. In the middle, I found the last entry. Spatters of old, darkened blood were scattered over the page like raindrops. I found the suicide note and read the date.
“January 27th, 2015,” it read. Will Lenning had not lived long after he started seeing the Twisted Man. I wondered if my fate would be the same.
The Sun had started to set outside as I sat with the diary at the small circular kitchen table, eating some stewed venison and rice as I read through the entries. At the end, Will Lenning said the Twisted Man had been trying to guide him somewhere, that, in fact, the Twisted Man had been trying to protect him from some great evil, rather than being the source of it.
I scoffed, feeling a flash of anger at his stupidity. His naivety obviously led to his death. But then a flash of insight struck me like lightning.
What if I was committing the same kind of stupidity? Perhaps I should just grab my gun and valuables and leave. I could take off on the snowmobile and be in town within a couple hours.
But, in my heart, I knew I would not. Something about the mystery of all this beckoned me to stay. Like a siren leading sailors to destruction, my curiosity called out to me, and I knew I would not be leaving that night. I needed answers.
And, sadly, I would find them.
***
I had fallen asleep with an empty bottle of beer in my hand. I sat in front of the TV, which only got satellite reception. There were, of course, no cable or phone lines threading their way through the forest. All of my power came from stored solar energy. Since I rarely watched TV and really only used it to cook or heat up water for bathing, the energy produced was sufficient even in winter. Tonight, though, I needed its sound, its mindless flashing of light and colors and canned laughter. It seemed to drive away the creeping, suffocating presence like a candle.
I woke suddenly. The TV flashed with static. The repetitive hissing of the white noise spit from the speakers like thousands of snakes. I glanced up at the clock. 3:33 AM. I looked around the dark cabin, confused for a long moment. I didn’t understand what had woken me so abruptly. The satellite had never gone out before, either, even with the howling winds and freezing hail of the Alaskan winter.
The TV started flickering as if the static were rising upwards. Black lines traced their way horizontally across the screen. The hissing deepened into a gurgle, and for a second, I thought I heard faint words behind the white noise. I thought I heard breathing, slow and diseased, like the death gasp of a drowning man.
A black line rose across the TV and an image came into view. The cabin was suddenly plunged into silence, except for the shrieking, wintry wind outside. I leaned close to the screen, confused at what I was looking at. It looked like a live camera feed of a room. As I took in the details, I realized it was my cabin. I saw myself in the chair, leaning close to the screen. I raised my hand, and the miniature version of me on the screen did likewise. Ice water seemed to drip down my spine as waves of dread coursed through my body.
“What the fuck is this?” I whispered, looking back to where the camera should be. It was just a coarse wooden ceiling in that corner. I turned back to the screen and nearly screamed.
The TV showed a pale, naked man crouching directly behind my chair now. With jerky movements, he rose, his broken spine twisting and shivering. A hissing voice rang out from the speakers. It spoke as if it had dirt and writhing maggots in its throat.
“He is a killer. The shadow of death,” it gurgled. “Many have fallen. Many lie buried across this forest. You will be next. He is watching you…”
Long, broken fingers with blackened nails reached out to touch my shoulders. I jumped out of the chair, stumbling back as I spun around in terror. My back smashed into the TV, and it fell to the floor with a shattering of glass and an explosion of light.
In those few moments before the darkness descended on me like a blanket, I thought I glimpsed a pale, sunken face with rotted, blackened eyes peeking out from behind the chair.
***
I turned on every light in the cabin, but there was no sign of the Twisted Man now. I knew I had to get out of there, though. I thought about the warning that the voice had spoken. If the creature wanted to attack me, then why hadn’t it just killed me while I was sleeping? None of it made sense. Who was watching me? The Twisted Man? And if he was, why warn me? Perhaps it was psychological warfare, I thought to myself. Perhaps the Twisted Man simply liked to play with his food before he ate it.
Thoughts raced through my head at a thousand miles an hour as I threw on snow pants and a couple heavy sweaters and coats. I covered up my entire body as much as I could to try to prevent frostbite. I had made up my mind to flee. There was no snowstorm tonight, though the entire landscape was blanketed in it and I knew the wind chill would be like an ice blade whipping against my skin. It was extremely dangerous to travel in the middle of the night like this in temperatures that might reach negative thirty degrees. Steve had been right, after all- Alaska had the highest missing persons rate of any state, and many of them were never found, their bodies likely frozen solid in the deep snow dozens of miles from the nearest town.
I grabbed my shotgun, jumped on my snowmobile and started heading to Steve’s cabin. I hoped I could wait there until the sunrise and then figure out what to do next.
But fate would take the decision out of my hands.
***
I felt like there were eyes watching me as I drove along the narrow, winding deer trail. The boughs of the evergreens reached into the path like greedy hands, grabbing at my coat and legs. More than a couple times, I thought I saw a pale, naked figure standing in the snow, but it had always gone when I turned to look.
I gave a sigh of relief when Steve’s place appeared in the distance. I could see the lights twinkling through the small windows of his log cabin. I pulled up next to his door, looking down. I saw two pairs of footprints there, one much smaller than the other. I found it odd, but shrugged it off. The snowmobile cut out with a sucking gurgle.
I knocked on the door hard a few times. Steve appeared after a few moments, groggy and half-dressed. He blinked slowly as he looked me up and down. His wrinkled face fell into a frown.
“Steve, I need a favor,” I said quickly. “Something weird is happening in my cabin. Can I stay here until morning, until maybe I can go to town or something? I can’t stay at my place tonight. I just can’t.” He nodded, yawning and motioning me in.
“You can sleep on the couch, I guess,” Steve said. “Put that shotgun somewhere safe, though, boy.” He had a partitioned bedroom in his cabin. It was significantly larger than my little one-room cabin, though it was basically still just a joint kitchen-living room, a small bedroom and a bathroom. He pointed to a well-worn couch in the corner and gave me an apathetic wave as he stumbled back into his bedroom, slamming the door.
I couldn’t sleep, though. I tiptoed around the room, looking at Steve’s bookshelf. He had a rather strange taste in books- lots of Anne Rule and true crime there. I saw dozens of books about Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Chase, Herbert Mullin, Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez among the collection. At the end, a large, black binder stood, unlabeled and worn-looking. It reminded me of the look of that leather-bound diary for a second, and my heart dropped. But logically, I knew this was just a coincidence. Yet, still, I pulled out the binder, my curiosity piqued.
What I found inside filled me with dread and horror.
Countless news clippings covered the length of it. The first clipping was from nearly twenty years earlier, about a woman who went missing in the Alaskan forest while hiking. A later one confirmed that her body was never found, and that her family was still hoping that she might turn up alive somewhere. A reward was offered for any information, it said.
And every page after that was more of the same: missing woman, murdered prostitute, missing man, no leads. I kept flipping through until I found clippings about Will Lenning’s suicide and the sudden disappearance of his wife. On the article about the suicide, Steve had used red marker to scrawl, “HA HA!” next to it.
I heard the click of a gun being cocked from behind me. I froze as Steve’s voice traveled across the room like a whisper.
“How do you like my work, friend?” he asked, his tone jovial and mocking.
***
I still held the binder of horrors tightly in my hands as I stared open-mouthed at this man I thought I knew.
“It’s you? What, you killed Will Lenning and his wife? And a lot of other women, apparently.” Everything felt unreal, as if I were stuck in a dream. Steve’s grin spread across his face, but his blue eyes stayed cold and dead.
“Yes, well, she was cheating on him with me anyway. Just another whore, you know. They always get what’s coming to them in the end,” he hissed with hatred oozing from his voice. “It’s too bad, really. I just killed another slut tonight. I was planning on saving you for later. The urge isn’t too bad yet right now, after all. It comes in cycles, you see. It comes in waves…” I saw a glimmer of pale, naked flesh writhing behind Steve. With jerky movements, the Twisted Man came up behind him. I said nothing, just watching with wide-eyed horror and amazement.
“You need help, man,” I whispered. Steve laughed.
“Help? The only help they give people like me is a needle in the arm. You know that. That’s why it’s important to always cover your tracks…” The Twisted Man ran a long, broken finger across Steve’s neck. Steve gave a strangled cry and jumped. He spun around, screaming. I glanced over at my shotgun next to the couch.
I jumped for it as Steve turned back to me, firing his pistol twice. The first bullet soared high above me, raining wood splinters down on my head, but the second ripped into my leg. A cold, burning pain ran like fire up my shin. I screamed in agony and battle fury as I gripped the shotgun, spinning and firing.
Steve’s head exploded as the slug ripped through his brain. His forehead collapsed like a smashed melon as bone splinters and blood sprayed the wall behind him.
The Twisted Man stood there, hunched over, grinning up at me. I felt warm blood gushing from my leg as I stared back at him, breathing hard. I wondered if I was dying.
“You… you weren’t after me at all, were you?” I asked. “You were after… Steve.” But the Twisted Man said nothing. After a long moment, he slinked back into the shadows of the bedroom and disappeared.
***
As night crawled its way toward morning, I thought back to the words the Twisted Man had spoken through the TV, suddenly understanding everything.
“He is a killer. The shadow of death. Many have fallen. Many lie buried across this forest. You will be next. He is watching you…”
He hadn’t been trying to hurt me at all. He had been trying to warn me. He had probably tried to warn Will Lenning and his wife, too.
I wrapped my leg in gauze, gritting my teeth. The wound looked puckered and deep, but I could still move my foot, and the bullet had gone clean through the flesh. I poured alcohol on it, screaming in pain as it burned its way through my skin. After rummaging through Steve’s bathroom, I found some prescription painkillers and swallowed a handful of them with a beer. I knew I would need the opiate high to get through the pain of riding into town with a mutilated leg.
As the Sun finally rose, I made my way outside the blood-stained floors of the cabin to my snowmobile. Before I left, I glanced back at that horrid place, the scene of so much torment and death.
In the open doorway, the Twisted Man stood, his back hunched, his rotted lips grinning at me. His hand lifted up into the air with jerky movements and waved.
I waved back as I started the engine and headed into town.

A few years ago, I decided I needed a major life change. Everything seemed to be going downhill- my finances, my mental health, my life. I would go weeks without sleeping sometimes as the heavy traffic passed through the city streets down below. Every time I went outside, I saw more homeless people, more needles and crack pipes littering the ground, more muggings and assaults and overdoses and deaths. The city had become a wasteland, and I knew it was time to leave.
I had no girlfriend, no wife, no kids. My parents had both died a few years prior and I barely talked to my siblings anymore. I had nothing to tie me down to this place where I felt like I was dying inside a little more each day.
That was when I sold nearly everything I owned, got in my car and drove up to Alaska to try starting anew. I bought a small cabin and a plot of land in the middle of its majestic mountains and dark, enchanting forests. In the winter, the Northern Lights would shine through like the eyes of God, sending out divine trails of light that danced through the sky in cosmic waves.
And while the move did help give me some peace of mind, in the end, the source of all my problems had ultimately followed me thousands of miles into this endless wilderness. It would take me a long time to realize the cause of all this misery was myself.
Because, as a wise man once said, “Wherever I go, there I am.”
***
I lived in that cabin for three months without any major issues other than the constant threat of bears, moose and wolves. I had a rifle and a shotgun for hunting, a small garden in the backyard and a solar panel to generate electricity.
“This is the life,” I said, relaxing on a hammock I had strung across the corner of the cabin while staring at the endless beauty directly outside the window. White-capped mountains loomed like giants in front of thick clusters of evergreens. A virgin covering of fluffy snow made the entire world glisten and sparkle. There wasn’t a house or road in sight.
“No work, no stress, no pollution, no cars honking all the time…” I closed my eyes, breathing in the clean air. I ended up falling asleep for a couple hours, waking up just as the Sun had started setting. Bright orange streaks mixed with the bloody smears of the fading light as it disappeared behind the mountains.
I groggily arose, stumbling over to make a cup of instant coffee. As I sipped it, I wandered around the room, looking for something to pass the time. There were still quite a few random objects left behind by the last owner that I hadn’t gotten rid of yet. I had moved in to find a stocked bookshelf filled with classics by Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Bored, I started rifling through the collection, looking for something good to pass the time. As I shuffled past “A Maze of Death” and “Ubik”, something caught my eye.
A black, leather-bound book with no title or author name stood there, its cover faded with time and wear. Curious, I pulled it out and opened it. I saw the cursive scrawled across the pages in a neat, copperplate script and realized it was a diary left behind by the previous owner. The first entry was dated “January 9th, 2015.” This is what it said.
***
“I don’t know if I’m going crazy or not. I went into town to talk to my therapist yesterday and she said I should try writing everything down. She talks to me like it’s all in my head. But I know it’s not.
“When I first moved into the cabin, it seemed like Paradise. I never thought in a million years that something would be slinking around at night. I never thought it would be hiding under my bed, peeking in windows and following me like a shadow.
“Right now, I’m snowed in with a cup of coffee in one hand and my pistol in the other. I can’t sleep anymore. I keep hearing something shuffling around under the bed. Sometimes, I think I even hear ragged breathing, as if a corpse with dirt in its lungs had come back to life.
“I’ve caught glimpses of that thing in the darkness. Whatever it is, its skin is loose, almost falling off the bone. It almost looks like a naked, emaciated man. Its eyes are rotted and dark, its back hunched, its spine twisted and jutting out like tumors. It moves in this slow, jerky way, but I can never seem to catch it. Its body seems broken and out of alignment. Its legs bend the wrong way sometimes.
“By the time I turn on the lights or try to take a video of it, it’s always disappeared. But its fetid odor remains. It lingers in the cabin like a sweet-smelling, spreading infection.
“I don’t know what it wants from me. I want to leave, but with the storm raging outside, I’m stuck here, unable to get all the way back to town. The snow surrounds the cabin in mounds five feet high. I feel like a prisoner caged with a rabid beast, not knowing when it will strike.
“My wife claims she hasn’t seen or heard anything, but she keeps vanishing on me. Last night, she disappeared in the middle of a snowstorm. Where did she go? I asked her in the morning, but she said she was here the whole time. She didn’t remember anything. There’s no way she went into town. There wasn’t time and the trails were impassable that far down.
“Something’s going on here, but I don’t know what it is. I’m truly scared for our lives.”
I slammed the diary shut, not wanting to read anymore. I didn’t want to become infected by some kind of contagious cabin fever. If the last owner had gone insane in the mountains and started hallucinating naked corpses crawling around, I really didn’t want to know.
I shoved the diary back in the bookshelf, going for “A Maze of Death” instead. I tried to forget what I had read in the diary as I flew through the novella. All night, I tried to get the image of the naked, twisting man with rotted eyes out of my head, but I couldn’t.
I eventually fell asleep right before dawn. But, as my eyes were closing, I thought I saw a silhouette in the window- a starved man with excited, black eyes that seemed to be rotting out of his skull. I thought I saw him put his inhumanly long fingers against the glass as he leaned forward. I blinked, sitting up and glancing out into the white, snow-covered wonderland.
There was nothing there.
***
Another hunter occasionally followed the deer trails near my cabin. A frozen lake stood a quarter-mile away, the surface white and covered in thick drifts of snow. I bundled up, deciding to go outside for a hike in the frigid dawn. I strapped on my snowshoes and grabbed my shotgun, as I always did when I went outside. I never knew when a polar bear might be waiting around the next tree, after all.
I opened the door, seeing footprints pressed into the snow all around my house. At first, I thought it was that silhouette I had seen, the nightmarish thing from the diary. But the footprints didn’t go over to my window. They followed the trail twenty feet away, veering off towards the frozen lake at the bottom of the hill. I glanced down in that direction, seeing a black figure plodding slowly forward.
“Steve!” I cried, recognizing my only neighbor in a four-mile radius. He had a cabin about a mile away on his own little plot of land. He jumped, clearly startled by the sudden noise. His black snow pants and heavy fur coat swished together as he spun, raising his rifle high. When he saw me, he immediately lowered it and put a gloved hand up in a friendly greeting.
“Hey Josh! Surprised to see you up this early,” he yelled over the muted wintry landscape. Sounds always seemed different after it snowed, as if all the noise in the world had become faded and dead.
“Yeah, I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping,” I said, slinging my shotgun around my shoulder. “What are you doing anyway?”
“Just a little hunting, you know,” he said, giving me a sly wink. “Animals are always most active around dusk and dawn, it seems. That’s when I always have the best luck, anyway.” He stepped close to me, staring me in the eyes. “You do look like shit. Those bags under your eyes are big enough to carry groceries in.”
“Yeah, trust me, I know… Hey, this might sound a little weird, but did you know the previous owner of this cabin?” I asked. Steve’s wrinkled, old face fell into a scowl. His expression immediately became guarded and distant.
“Sure, sure, we met,” he exclaimed bluntly. He seemed to be searching my face for something, but I didn’t know what. His reaction left me feeling off-balance and nervous.
“Is he still around?” I said. Steve’s scowl deepened.
“Buddy, I don’t know what this is about, but he’s dead. He’s been dead. He died in that cabin, actually.” He pointed a finger at my home accusingly. With those words, my heart seemed to drop into my stomach. Waves of dread flowed through my body like water.
“How… how did he die? Like a heart attack or something?” I asked. Steve’s gaze turned downwards. He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Do you know that Alaska has the highest missing persons rate in the entire United States? It’s not even close. In fact, for the population size, we have far more people who go missing and never get found than anywhere else. They even have a name for it: the Alaska Triangle,” Steve said. “And we’re square in the middle of it.” I stared blankly at him, wondering where he was going with this. It seemed like a way to avoid answering my question.
“No, I didn’t know that…” I responded. Steve nodded, raising his head again. He heaved a deep sigh.
“Look, the thing with the last owner and his wife… it’s somewhat disturbing. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but it’s certainly not going to help your peace of mind. And it definitely isn’t going to help you get some sleep.”
“I want to know,” I insisted instantly. The wind started to whip past us. Flakes of ice and snow flew sideways in the sudden currents.
“Let’s go back to your cabin then,” Steve said, pulling his heavy fur-lined hood off and shaking out his long, black hair behind him. “I could use a bit of whiskey to warm up.”
***
We sat down with a bottle of Johnny Walker and two shot glasses. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but Steve certainly was. He chugged three shots in the span of a minute. I sipped at mine, drinking half and putting it back down on the coffee table with a thunk. Steve grunted, hissing through his open mouth for a moment.
“Ugh, that’s the good stuff,” he said, slamming his chest as the burning liquor worked its way down. Steve looked up at me with a new sparkle in his eyes. “Huh, so you want to know about what happened to Will Lenning. Well, I’ll tell you that no one really knows the whole story. I used to see him occasionally, come down and have a drink and talk. We all know each other around here, obviously.” I nodded, motioning him on. “He seemed like a normal, upstanding guy. He kinda reminded me of you, actually. A young guy trying to escape the hustle and bustle of the city life, the cancer of the American Dream.
“Well, he was here for maybe a couple months, I don’t know. Everything seemed fine. We used to go skeet shooting occasionally, have a beer, you know. We’d get together with a couple other hunters who live closer to town and sometimes play some poker. I never saw anything odd about Will. I never could have predicted what happened to him.” He heaved a long sigh at this, looking out the window at the sharp mountains with an expression of nostalgia.
“Well, what happened to him?” I asked, encouraging him to go on.
“He started talking about seeing someone peering in through his window at night. He talked about hearing sounds from under his bed while he was laying there in the dark- sounds like diseased breathing and shuffling. He started keeping all the lights on in his cabin twenty-four hours a day.” Steve leaned close to me. A glimmer of fear rippled across his pale, wrinkled face. “He started to lose his mind. Started digging holes all over the place, looking for something. Even in the middle of snowstorms, I would occasionally see him outside, digging. It seemed like he never slept anymore. It was classic cabin fever if I ever saw it.
“It was only a few weeks later that I came over here, concerned. I hadn’t heard from him in a few days, which was fairly unusual. I found the door hanging wide open. Propped up in a chair in the exact spot where you now sit, Will lay with a blast hole showing clear through his skull, a shotgun laying at his feet.
“And next to him, I found a blood-stained diary opened to the middle page. The last entry was stained with blood spatter, but still visible. I remember leaning down and reading it. It was only a few sentences long.” I glanced over at the bookshelf with the same diary, saying nothing.
“It said something like, ‘I see now what’s going on. The Twisted Man is leading me to the truth. Today, I will finally find it.’”
“And that was his suicide note?” I asked, my heart hammering in my chest. He nodded.
“Yeah. I went into town and got some rangers to come check it out. Eventually, they got cops and CSI there. They took all the stuff as evidence, including the diary,” he said. “Good riddance, I say. Reading something like that is never beneficial. Sometimes delusions spread like a virus, you know what I mean?” I did, but I said nothing. I glanced back at the diary, its black leather cover gleaming like a crouching snake.
And I wondered- if the police took the diary as evidence, how did it get back here?
***
“You said he had a wife living here with him, too?” I asked.
“Yeah… she went missing around the same time,” he said. “Pretty bizarre. The cops thought maybe she just moved away, but…” He shook his head grimly. “As far as I know, she was never seen again. It was like she had evaporated into thin air.”
After Steve left, I walked stiffly over to the bookshelf, taking down the diary. I flipped open through the pages. In the middle, I found the last entry. Spatters of old, darkened blood were scattered over the page like raindrops. I found the suicide note and read the date.
“January 27th, 2015,” it read. Will Lenning had not lived long after he started seeing the Twisted Man. I wondered if my fate would be the same.
The Sun had started to set outside as I sat with the diary at the small circular kitchen table, eating some stewed venison and rice as I read through the entries. At the end, Will Lenning said the Twisted Man had been trying to guide him somewhere, that, in fact, the Twisted Man had been trying to protect him from some great evil, rather than being the source of it.
I scoffed, feeling a flash of anger at his stupidity. His naivety obviously led to his death. But then a flash of insight struck me like lightning.
What if I was committing the same kind of stupidity? Perhaps I should just grab my gun and valuables and leave. I could take off on the snowmobile and be in town within a couple hours.
But, in my heart, I knew I would not. Something about the mystery of all this beckoned me to stay. Like a siren leading sailors to destruction, my curiosity called out to me, and I knew I would not be leaving that night. I needed answers.
And, sadly, I would find them.
***
I had fallen asleep with an empty bottle of beer in my hand. I sat in front of the TV, which only got satellite reception. There were, of course, no cable or phone lines threading their way through the forest. All of my power came from stored solar energy. Since I rarely watched TV and really only used it to cook or heat up water for bathing, the energy produced was sufficient even in winter. Tonight, though, I needed its sound, its mindless flashing of light and colors and canned laughter. It seemed to drive away the creeping, suffocating presence like a candle.
I woke suddenly. The TV flashed with static. The repetitive hissing of the white noise spit from the speakers like thousands of snakes. I glanced up at the clock. 3:33 AM. I looked around the dark cabin, confused for a long moment. I didn’t understand what had woken me so abruptly. The satellite had never gone out before, either, even with the howling winds and freezing hail of the Alaskan winter.
The TV started flickering as if the static were rising upwards. Black lines traced their way horizontally across the screen. The hissing deepened into a gurgle, and for a second, I thought I heard faint words behind the white noise. I thought I heard breathing, slow and diseased, like the death gasp of a drowning man.
A black line rose across the TV and an image came into view. The cabin was suddenly plunged into silence, except for the shrieking, wintry wind outside. I leaned close to the screen, confused at what I was looking at. It looked like a live camera feed of a room. As I took in the details, I realized it was my cabin. I saw myself in the chair, leaning close to the screen. I raised my hand, and the miniature version of me on the screen did likewise. Ice water seemed to drip down my spine as waves of dread coursed through my body.
“What the fuck is this?” I whispered, looking back to where the camera should be. It was just a coarse wooden ceiling in that corner. I turned back to the screen and nearly screamed.
The TV showed a pale, naked man crouching directly behind my chair now. With jerky movements, he rose, his broken spine twisting and shivering. A hissing voice rang out from the speakers. It spoke as if it had dirt and writhing maggots in its throat.
“He is a killer. The shadow of death,” it gurgled. “Many have fallen. Many lie buried across this forest. You will be next. He is watching you…”
Long, broken fingers with blackened nails reached out to touch my shoulders. I jumped out of the chair, stumbling back as I spun around in terror. My back smashed into the TV, and it fell to the floor with a shattering of glass and an explosion of light.
In those few moments before the darkness descended on me like a blanket, I thought I glimpsed a pale, sunken face with rotted, blackened eyes peeking out from behind the chair.
***
I turned on every light in the cabin, but there was no sign of the Twisted Man now. I knew I had to get out of there, though. I thought about the warning that the voice had spoken. If the creature wanted to attack me, then why hadn’t it just killed me while I was sleeping? None of it made sense. Who was watching me? The Twisted Man? And if he was, why warn me? Perhaps it was psychological warfare, I thought to myself. Perhaps the Twisted Man simply liked to play with his food before he ate it.
Thoughts raced through my head at a thousand miles an hour as I threw on snow pants and a couple heavy sweaters and coats. I covered up my entire body as much as I could to try to prevent frostbite. I had made up my mind to flee. There was no snowstorm tonight, though the entire landscape was blanketed in it and I knew the wind chill would be like an ice blade whipping against my skin. It was extremely dangerous to travel in the middle of the night like this in temperatures that might reach negative thirty degrees. Steve had been right, after all- Alaska had the highest missing persons rate of any state, and many of them were never found, their bodies likely frozen solid in the deep snow dozens of miles from the nearest town.
I grabbed my shotgun, jumped on my snowmobile and started heading to Steve’s cabin. I hoped I could wait there until the sunrise and then figure out what to do next.
But fate would take the decision out of my hands.
***
I felt like there were eyes watching me as I drove along the narrow, winding deer trail. The boughs of the evergreens reached into the path like greedy hands, grabbing at my coat and legs. More than a couple times, I thought I saw a pale, naked figure standing in the snow, but it had always gone when I turned to look.
I gave a sigh of relief when Steve’s place appeared in the distance. I could see the lights twinkling through the small windows of his log cabin. I pulled up next to his door, looking down. I saw two pairs of footprints there, one much smaller than the other. I found it odd, but shrugged it off. The snowmobile cut out with a sucking gurgle.
I knocked on the door hard a few times. Steve appeared after a few moments, groggy and half-dressed. He blinked slowly as he looked me up and down. His wrinkled face fell into a frown.
“Steve, I need a favor,” I said quickly. “Something weird is happening in my cabin. Can I stay here until morning, until maybe I can go to town or something? I can’t stay at my place tonight. I just can’t.” He nodded, yawning and motioning me in.
“You can sleep on the couch, I guess,” Steve said. “Put that shotgun somewhere safe, though, boy.” He had a partitioned bedroom in his cabin. It was significantly larger than my little one-room cabin, though it was basically still just a joint kitchen-living room, a small bedroom and a bathroom. He pointed to a well-worn couch in the corner and gave me an apathetic wave as he stumbled back into his bedroom, slamming the door.
I couldn’t sleep, though. I tiptoed around the room, looking at Steve’s bookshelf. He had a rather strange taste in books- lots of Anne Rule and true crime there. I saw dozens of books about Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Chase, Herbert Mullin, Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez among the collection. At the end, a large, black binder stood, unlabeled and worn-looking. It reminded me of the look of that leather-bound diary for a second, and my heart dropped. But logically, I knew this was just a coincidence. Yet, still, I pulled out the binder, my curiosity piqued.
What I found inside filled me with dread and horror.
Countless news clippings covered the length of it. The first clipping was from nearly twenty years earlier, about a woman who went missing in the Alaskan forest while hiking. A later one confirmed that her body was never found, and that her family was still hoping that she might turn up alive somewhere. A reward was offered for any information, it said.
And every page after that was more of the same: missing woman, murdered prostitute, missing man, no leads. I kept flipping through until I found clippings about Will Lenning’s suicide and the sudden disappearance of his wife. On the article about the suicide, Steve had used red marker to scrawl, “HA HA!” next to it.
I heard the click of a gun being cocked from behind me. I froze as Steve’s voice traveled across the room like a whisper.
“How do you like my work, friend?” he asked, his tone jovial and mocking.
***
I still held the binder of horrors tightly in my hands as I stared open-mouthed at this man I thought I knew.
“It’s you? What, you killed Will Lenning and his wife? And a lot of other women, apparently.” Everything felt unreal, as if I were stuck in a dream. Steve’s grin spread across his face, but his blue eyes stayed cold and dead.
“Yes, well, she was cheating on him with me anyway. Just another whore, you know. They always get what’s coming to them in the end,” he hissed with hatred oozing from his voice. “It’s too bad, really. I just killed another slut tonight. I was planning on saving you for later. The urge isn’t too bad yet right now, after all. It comes in cycles, you see. It comes in waves…” I saw a glimmer of pale, naked flesh writhing behind Steve. With jerky movements, the Twisted Man came up behind him. I said nothing, just watching with wide-eyed horror and amazement.
“You need help, man,” I whispered. Steve laughed.
“Help? The only help they give people like me is a needle in the arm. You know that. That’s why it’s important to always cover your tracks…” The Twisted Man ran a long, broken finger across Steve’s neck. Steve gave a strangled cry and jumped. He spun around, screaming. I glanced over at my shotgun next to the couch.
I jumped for it as Steve turned back to me, firing his pistol twice. The first bullet soared high above me, raining wood splinters down on my head, but the second ripped into my leg. A cold, burning pain ran like fire up my shin. I screamed in agony and battle fury as I gripped the shotgun, spinning and firing.
Steve’s head exploded as the slug ripped through his brain. His forehead collapsed like a smashed melon as bone splinters and blood sprayed the wall behind him.
The Twisted Man stood there, hunched over, grinning up at me. I felt warm blood gushing from my leg as I stared back at him, breathing hard. I wondered if I was dying.
“You… you weren’t after me at all, were you?” I asked. “You were after… Steve.” But the Twisted Man said nothing. After a long moment, he slinked back into the shadows of the bedroom and disappeared.
***
As night crawled its way toward morning, I thought back to the words the Twisted Man had spoken through the TV, suddenly understanding everything.
“He is a killer. The shadow of death. Many have fallen. Many lie buried across this forest. You will be next. He is watching you…”
He hadn’t been trying to hurt me at all. He had been trying to warn me. He had probably tried to warn Will Lenning and his wife, too.
I wrapped my leg in gauze, gritting my teeth. The wound looked puckered and deep, but I could still move my foot, and the bullet had gone clean through the flesh. I poured alcohol on it, screaming in pain as it burned its way through my skin. After rummaging through Steve’s bathroom, I found some prescription painkillers and swallowed a handful of them with a beer. I knew I would need the opiate high to get through the pain of riding into town with a mutilated leg.
As the Sun finally rose, I made my way outside the blood-stained floors of the cabin to my snowmobile. Before I left, I glanced back at that horrid place, the scene of so much torment and death.
In the open doorway, the Twisted Man stood, his back hunched, his rotted lips grinning at me. His hand lifted up into the air with jerky movements and waved.
I waved back as I started the engine and headed into town.

Memory Transcription Subject: Talyn, Extermination Guild Paramedic, Sivkit Grand Herd.
First/Previous/Next
I… I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out why a demon would go behind her superiors for some prey.
Variah hasn’t stopped visiting this cage… t-though, I try to limit exchanging words with the beast as her proximity gnaws at my nerves to no end. Her moving maw leaves an unobstructed view at a row of endless pointed teeth that could easily crush through Sivkit bones, if at any moment she deemed that her desire. However, after all this time… she hadn't mauled me yet.
Nor did any of the other, more openly wicked beasts let their instincts get the better of them either, so I suspect that these demons can reign in their bloodlust better than the Arxur can, a-at least for practical reasons, but I don't exactly want to put that to a test. D-Damnit, why is she doing this? It’s difficult to keep my mind off it when everything else was a failure.
I… I’ve been trying to find a way to break free ever since the predator keeping me company gave her warning about the rest of her kind. N-not that I needed any monster to clue me in on their malicious intent or more prompting to look for a way out of here, but so far, any avenue to escape seems completely futile, at least… f-for now. Can’t give up.
J-Just remember your training… t-though it’s not exactly useful here.
Most of my guild practice had me safely locked within a medical wagon, waiting around on standby in case a front line exterminator suffered a mauling. I- I don’t have enough personal experience with this sort of thing to keep myself level headed, t-to know what to do, b-but… but I’ve heard stories from my… f-from my now ex-colleagues, about retrieving escaped convicts back for treatment.
I- I could take a few pages out of their play book, copy how they got out of their facilities and avoid falling for the same pitfalls that got them found. E-Even if doing so would be more than unorthodox, but… I c-can’t just sit around forever.
Even if for now all I can do is watch out for opportunities, think and plan.
Occasionally, the scientists lead me out of this box to conduct new experiments. I was hoping to find something useful when taken from these confines but I'm always trailed by those towering guards who never take their vicious eyes off me, or let me step out of line… or even let the scientists come too close when not instructed to. The director's men, as I've heard the so-called doctors call them while whispering amongst themselves; e-evidently also afraid of the beastly soldiers.
T-There are cameras everywhere, in every hallway and almost in every room. The few that don’t have them always have a beast there present with me, rarely taking an eye off me, so I can’t bet on finding a blindspot outside this room.
Main doors are locked with codes and keycards, but that doesn't matter much because if I managed to get my paws on a set I'd need to carry around a damned stool to reach a security pad while standing on my hind toes because of these giant freaks. Not even knowing where any door leads since I can't read their scratchy script.
Worse yet, from what I could tell while eavesdropping…
This facility is built at least several levels underground, and it’s located near the outskirts of a m-major predator population center. Meaning that any exits going “topside” had to be intentionally dug out by design, and almost definitely surveyed by guards and cameras.
Only to be surrounded by a countless horde of sapient predators once I got out, a-and… given that I’m at the edge of a monster city and how untamed my crash area appeared, the zone marked for emergency landing for all falling vessels, I… I must have been taken far from any other Sivkit survivors on this planet.
C-Constantly watched, locked and isolated. E-Everything, everything is stacked up against me… D-Damnit, j-just, just move forward, k-keep thinking… I-Ironically, my best bet for escape might be in this very room.
A ventilation duct right behind the bed, t-the only one I could reach with pipes that look wide enough to squeeze into if I managed to get the grate off, c-climb up, if that’s p-possible, u- until I feel fresh air.
The glass screen is positioned on the other side of the bed, with the grate being obscured further by the counter at the bedside and I’ve noticed that the cameras start moving back and forth at night, or at least, when the lights shut off, possibly going into an automated mode when the beasts stop watching the cell… t- the demons have to sleep too at some point I suppose, n-no better time to try.
Every couple of minutes as the cameras move, the lenses line up away from the bed for a few seconds at a time, granting me one consistent blindspot where I could fiddle with the screws if I kept my paw hanging off the bed when pretending to sleep.
But the damned grate is bolted in too tight.
I tried using my claws as an improvised screwdriver, wedging them into the divots and twisting… but those attempts only cost me a few nails with nothing to show for it. So if I had kept it up eventually the predators could notice that all my claws were suddenly wearing away. The demons would scour every surface for the cause, not something I can risk if I want to hold onto the only possible escape route I could find.
I just need something metal… something that wasn’t initially in shortage before I figured out the truth and tried to defend myself, i-if only I managed to maintain a cooler head back than… D-damnit, still at square zero, f-for now, I- I just need to bide my time… h-however long I might have.
T-The predator scientists seem to be conducting more and more redundant tests now, w-with some beginning to whisper about getting started on more t-thorough research, especially when they think I’m out of ear shot. I… I might not have long left before they just decide to dissect me.
“You hanging in there, Talyn?” A long dull claw poked my cheek, sending sharp shivers through my core.
It jolted me back to reality and forced me to regain awareness of the silver predator looming by the bedside, w-whose presence slipped my mind after a-somehow allowing my guard down around her.
“Heh, doesn’t really look like you’ve taken a liking to the book… you’ve been staring at the wall for a while now.” Variah’s voice almost sounded dejected, her head pointed down at the bizarre novel while flipping through its yellowed pages in an apathetic manner.
All I could do was lay behind the covers, grasping onto them as if they could shield me if the demon had a shift in whims, poking my head out while unable to look away as fur all along my back raised with pins and needles shooting through my skin.
An uncomfortable silence swept the room when Variah's horrid eyes began staring down at me, t-though… t-they almost looked tired and unmotivated, like they were begging for something?
“Ah-I… I spaced out for a minute, ah- I’m s-sorry.” The predator raised a single ear at me, s-surprised that I actually answered her this time, and I… I'm not s-sure why I did it either.
Her ears perked up a little, while I briefly flinched away as she opened up her maw, but quickly found that she only did so to speak again. “You don’t have to apologize, I… I can stop reading if you don’t want to hear it?”
The question actually paused me for a minute, a part of me couldn’t stand having to bare a predator’s presence constantly while hearing her voice narrating some damned book that doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but I… partly hating myself for it, but I p-prefer hearing Variah’s voice over the quiet, e-even if it's wrong to be listening to a predator. “Y-you… you can c-contiunue… p-please.”
Variah huffed to herself, keeping her ears pinned back in an awkward manner while lingering a strange, unnerving gaze on me for an uncomfortable minute, before turning back to the book and raising her ears up a little. “Alright, alright… I’ll just start over with the chapter.”
“O-Okay…” I muttered, but it made no difference either way. It’s not like I was even able to listen fully while all those things are constantly prowling around me, my instincts getting the better of me… or, with every clashing thought swirling around my mind. About what happened, about what they are?
B-But I got bits and pieces here and there, just enough to roughly know what’s going on. It detracts from everything dire, but I… I can allow myself this one distraction from this place. Even if willingly indulging in some predator’s work just makes my core feel vile. Though, from what I’ve followed, it… it feels like listening to a lie, n-not like the type of fantasy a predator should either read or write about, but that thing looks far too old to be a forgery for my sake.
“For two years their engines roared, two years of steady descent as long white trails of plasma were cast forth into the inky void, decelerating the wanderer on their journey before the antimatter drives were cut and the great vessel came to a halt on its final destination, after centuries, settling into orbit around Aldiel star.
Awe and wonder resonated from the crew, the voyage was long, with countless wonders and detours on their journey through the Galaxy, but it has been twelve-hundred years since the 1st generation set them on this path, twelve-hundred years so that the 48th could bask in the light of the star that guided their ancestors since the days of wind and sails.
And, since it’s mysterious call beckoned them into the stars…”
Variah’s voice filled the room with considerable mirth in her tone despite her prior hints at treachery… doing a far too convincing job at masking that her prior warning ever happened. Though I- I might be going crazy… but there’s almost an air of stress o-or sadness behind her horrid eyes.
S-Somehow, I… I’m not sure what to think about that predator.
She doesn't fit in with the rest of the beasts roaming around this facility, and for a second… You could almost forget that she's a natural hunter, that the being sitting by my side didn’t evolve to kill and gorge on flesh like the rest of them because those facts clash against the image painted right before my eyes.
The same frightening figure doing something as innocuous as reading through a novel by my bedside, as- as if I was some lost child cooped up in a Zurulian nursery.
However, the beast herself went through apparent lengths to reaffirm my sense of danger here while displaying a clear aptitude towards deception, lying even to her own kind… i-it seems foolish to doubt their nature now.
Y-Yet… seeing her yapping about some fiction novel with such glee, I… I can’t exactly see a monster cut from the same cloth as the Arxur. No Grey in existence would ever try to help prey, nor would they ever produce a novel, much less the contents in this one.
P-Predator explorers traveling across the stars in so-called generation ships, i-it’s… r-rather dumb, honestly. The idea of anyone being crazy enough to cross the void without FTL is ridiculous, though, p-predators fantasizing about it is certainly terrifying. I-imagining what lengths they could go to breach their system… I should be happy that the primitive hunters apparently deluded themselves into believing that super luminal speeds are impossible… at least, until we came along, a-and broke that notion for them.
W-when Variah said the book was a story about their vision for space travel I thought I’d be faced with an early glimpse into the nightmarish future we just created. A ravenous horde of canide demons unleashed to murder their way across the stars, if they got their claws on our FTL tech. Bombing worlds, enslaving cultures and spilling blood before tearing into sapient flesh. Y-Yet, that wasn’t in the pages… t-the opposite was.
Wanderers going from system to system, discovering new life, new wonders, new people… and embracing them with open arms instead of clenching teeth, even if by their own perception that life seemed incomprehensible or monstrous… i- initially, at least.
I… I don’t know.
The predators must have been under the delusion that most sapient life would be just as flesh craving as they are before I spilled the truth, with only a few chapters depicting contact with herbivore species, this being portrayed as some unique encounters, a-and… p-peaceful, n-no hunting, no war. W-Why?
Comparably, there were just as little chapters depicting conflict altogether, n-nothing that would delve into their true nature, a-at least… n-not what their nature s-should be.
It's d-difficult to reconcile everything I’ve heard with what we know about predatory minds, with the confessed threat lurking within this facility, though I can’t exactly ignore it either… I-It doesn’t seem like hunger alone drives these monsters, not like the Greys… t-then what does?
T-There… There was a moment where I almost wanted to just ask, t-though I stopped myself before I could do something that stupid. D-Damnit… What am I even doing listening to that damned thing?
Those weren’t the only things that stuck out while listening, more peculiar passages here and there… from what I can tell these beasts hold a strong aversion towards foreign diseases.
With characters being weary of exposing themselves to alien atmospheres before developing cures and vaccines, or trying to prevent their own predator sicknesses from spreading onto other worlds. It explains the suits from earlier, and why some of the predators wear them even now, but not so much the reason for the alarm in the first place… I would have thought that carnivores should be accustomed to carrying pathogens?
Stranger is that they seem to expect to find life in almost every system, even among inhospitable worlds with characters being surprised to find a barren system, or that “there is only one habitable world around the star.”
Or when finding extinct civilizations… a- and mourning their loss.
I-It’s… it’s not like life is rare in the galaxy, but Grand Herd scouts would weep in joy if someone ever found a corner of space as fertile as envisioned. It's… odd, usually its the opposite for species that developed electricity on their own and found the universe quiet, e-except th-the Verin and Onkari… a pair species.
E-Earlier, it sounded like Variah mentioned some others, w-with some notable differences from her. C-Could there… Considering their views about herbivores, t-than it would be a… n-no, I- I don’t know. W-What are the c-chances, and p-predators would conquer any neighbors… r-right?
D-Damnit, I-I’m just going insane in this… this glorified cattle pen, t-trapped for who knows how long? J-Just questioning myself, w-with no one but horrid predators.
Argh! This book! It… i-it really isn’t something a predator should indulge in. Yet some sapient beast wrote it, w-while Variah seems enamored with that thing, the covers seemingly worn from use. What could a hunter like her see in a story almost void of violence?
Reading through the pages with perked up ears, while casting the occasional glance at me to make sure I’m not totally ignoring her, a w-weary look painted on her ugly face.
Sh- e-earlier she mentioned that… t-that she reads that thing during dark times, i-is… is now… No, w-why are you thinking about that now? How can I trust a single word coming out of that maw? I-It could all just be manipulation a-and you’d be falling right into it like s-some dumb, p-predator-brained Venlil?!
T-Though if… if she isn’t as… D-Damnit, my time might be running out, a-and I’m short of options. If there’s even a slim chance that she’s not lying, I… d-despite what she is, despite better judgment, I… I wish I could count her as an ally in this horrid place, w-without fearing any ulterior motives she could have for trying to help me earlier.
If they were the Greys, I could chuck it up to hunger for alien flesh, s-some ploy to get everything for herself… but that doesn’t seem so clear anymore, when their… agitation doesn’t seem focused on their cravings, and when Variah stands out further from the other demons… She must have had a reason.
This… t-this is incredibly foolish, b-but I clenched my shivering paws and cautiously turned my head towards the demon, taking a shaken breath and opening my mouth to speak. “V-variah…?”
The huntress paused some senseless tangent about dyson swarms and ring worlds, whatever that even was… before turning her horrid eyes on me in a quizzical manner and forcing me to gulp after managing to grab her full attention.
“W-Why… w-why are you not like t-the others?”
The silver demon stared at me for a moment with confusion, before taking a claw underneath her chin and scratching while glancing to the side as if looking for an answer. “Oh- erm… My mother hailed from a nation in the far, far south, the native people have similar coats on that continent. Why?”
Coat? “Wha- n-no, I-I mean, why a-are you here, w-why are you s-so interested in aliens? T-The others, t-they are… t-they are more h-hostile, c-cold, y-you aren’t?”
“Ohh, I see… There might be many reasons, Talyn, but I think most are just scared.” Variah looked away from me and pointed her eyes towards the ceiling before continuing on.
“Everything on Valh was turned on its head when you crashed, and no one knows what's going to happen, or what your people even want… but so far their actions haven’t made you seem very approachable, and your reaction to us hasn’t exactly reassured anyone here either.”
“S-Scared… O-Of us? Y-you can't be s-serious, p-predators c-can’t feel true f-fear, n-not because of p-prey, you- you c-cause fear…” She paused and stared at me for a few uncomfortable seconds, her ears pinned tight to her skull while ducking her head a little more at my comment.
“You have some… interesting views Talyn, I have to say. The things you say… they can be quite silly sometimes. Of Course we have fear, I… erm, people thought the world was ending because of the flashes, because of your ships meteoring through the damn sky… Do you really think no one was scared?”
T-There was a pleading glint within her exasperated eyes, paired with ears that stayed pinned to the back of her skull as a paw rose up to hide her face. This… t-this doesn't feel like a fake reaction.
I… d-don't know, m-maybe if… If they did misidentify our burning ships as hurling meteors then it would make sense even for predators to experience the same amount of dread as herbivores do, though I can’t see those instincts sticking once we hit the ground, f- fear of the unknown then? W-What c-could predators fear in the unknown, b-bigger predators?
“I-If they are acting out of f-fear… T-Then why are you so different? A-Are you not s-scared… i-is that w-why you are fascinated by aliens, m-more willing to be approached?”
“Gods, of course I'm scared, I just… have hope that things won't turn out for the worst… and no, it’s nothing to do with fear. I've been interested in this sort of thing since I was a teen, in large part due to this very book… I must have read it cover to cover just about a hundred times.”
“B-But why? W-why would a- a being like you care for something like that?”
“I… I'm not sure, it's nice to read something optimistic, no? I got it from my parents when the world didn't seem so hopeful, I’d read it all the time whenever they went away… I guess it was a nice distraction during the war… now it’s something I can remember them by.”
The predator's long ears slumped low as she closed the novel, slowly tracing clawed digits across its sealed pages while staring at the worn out cover, eventually putting it back into the bag. Are… are her progenitors dead? Y-You could imagine a predator cub feeling despair when losing a vital guardian that was keeping them alive, n-not a fully mature one.
“Y-You have families?”
“Heh, of course we do, big ones usually, is that not common?”
“I-It… it is.” My body shuddered knowing that these terrifying beings come in large groups, something that goes counter to the anti-social nature of the Arxur, however my reaction caused the silver predator to grow even more despondent.
“Ahh… monsters aren't meant to have families, no?” Her long snout pointed down at the floor while crossing her paws together. I-It was such a strange feeling seeing her like this, i-in such a passive state next to prey… o-only drawing her image further than the beasts we know.
“M-Monsters d-don’t… b-but you do… I- I don't r-really understand w-what you are.”
Variah raised one ear at me, slowly pointing her head half way in my direction before lingering a stare from a single eye. “You… can always ask, you know. I’ll answer anything you want to know, just like before. What do you want to hear?”
J-Just ask? H-Heh… i-it can’t exactly be the same once you know you’re talking to a flesh eater, though, I… I think these beasts have to be a tamer breed of monsters than the Arxur, c-closer to true sapience, a-at least compared to those cursed reptiles. D-Damn, what harm could finding out more about their nature really do?
“A-Alright… I- I don’t know, l-let me think…” My thoughts traced over our conversation, until they landed upon something that stood out, o-one of many things not fitting of a predator. “E-Earlier you mentioned gods, d-do you have a religion?”
“Many. I don’t believe in anything of the sort myself, not really anyway… but most of my family prays to the old gods. People all around Valh most commonly follow the new pantheon and the nomad faiths it originated from.”
“M-Many? Okay then… w-what do you p-predators believe in then?”
“It depends, I guess… Most gods are meant to embody a part of nature in some way, the popular ones usually correspond to some star or celestial object in the sky… like I said I don't really put much stock into the supernatural so I don’t know much, though it… can be uncanny how many things are close to being correct in the nomad myths.”
Nature? Not something I expected, but I suppose predators worshiping aspects of nature isn't inconceivable when it's their hunting grounds. Though, it was worrying to hear a predator getting nervous about their own belief systems. “T-The nomads? You… you mentioned them before, Teh… Tesh, yes? W-What’s so b-bizarre about their beliefs?”
“Oh… yes! You actually rem-” The predator's volume spiked along with terror within my chest, but she stopped herself the moment I flinched away.
“O-Oh, I… I didn't mean to shout, s-sorry. They just can be… curious. Really secretive and stubborn about sharing their lores with us but we had some of their legends written down from centuries back and they always just… seem to know things, or at least, are close to vaguely knowing things they really shouldn't until modern times.”
Not that I have much faith in anything she says to me, but my skepticism was certainly beginning to grow. “W-What do you mean, like what?”
“Where can I even start? From what we can tell they always had an obsession with the night sky, but what’s kinda scary is that they have star charts showing surprisingly correct models of our system, with planets that are invisible to the naked eye… a-and later proven real with the invention of telescopes. M-Most were anyway, except for the supposed distant ones.
They knew of new continents and their rough shapes before they were even discovered, they had vague beliefs about the world and basic biology that weren’t too far off from reality if you exclude all the mysticism. They say that their gods granted them knowledge, I… sometimes find it difficult to explain it any other way.”
I've heard of faiths from half the Galaxy, but never had anyone tell me about getting preordained knowledge about science before. “Centuries you say, erm… I-if I were to b-believe you… are you sure t-these nomads haven’t been contacted by other aliens before o-or something?”
“Hah, if you dig around the internet for long enough I’m sure you’d stumbled upon some conspiracy about the Tesh somehow coming from Tielen or something crazier, but I really doubt that.” She chuckled to herself, before abruptly stopping and looking at me with crooked ears. “W-Wait, you… y-you don't know tha- I… I'll tell you later.”
Something about that answer felt off, b-but I couldn’t pinpoint what. “T-These nomads… a- are they just as frightening as y-you…?”
“I'm not frightening, Talyn… but, I suppose if you need a comparison, erm… I guess you might be a tiny bit taller than your average Tesh if you stood on your back legs, take that however you like.”
That much of a difference, i-is she serious?! T-there really might be another species here… t-two predators species o-on the same world?! That… that just can’t be right, p-predators would see another race as competition, a-and she doesn't speak of them as an enemy… m-maybe it's some weaker subspecies that's tolerated enough to not be driven to extinction?
“A-Alright… e-enough about that, p-please.” Whatever the truth is, the last thing I want to hear about is how diverse in form the monsters I’m surrounded by are, n-not when the whole point of us leaving federation space was to evade a pair of hunters… j-just like herself.
It felt… wrong, just considering this question that came to my mind, but having contact with a speaking monster, willing to answer any question… it sowed a certain level of morbid curiosity that couldn’t be ignored. “W- w-what do you feel when you go on a hunt, when you c-catch prey? D-Do you… do you do it often?”
I took a gulp when those words left my lips, but Variah just tilted her head at me as if my query made less sense than warp drive engineering. “When I hunt? Talyn I… I don’t hunt, not anymore anyway. My uncle took me a few times when I was younger, but it’s not something that I, or most people, do on a regular basis… it's not really my thing either.”
“Yo- you don't go hunting?! Y-You’re a carnivore, h-how… how d-do you g-get flesh?!”
“At the market…” Her voice sounded exasperated, like the apparently non-hunting predator couldn’t believe I had to ask.
Having to Imagine these demons selling bodies at a store like they’re some commodities is nothing short of horror, likely coming from cattle farms if most of them really don’t hunt, b-but… it’s inconceivable that a predator would forgo their own personal blood drive and delegate hunting to someone else… n-not her thing?
“Y-You still hunted prey b-before, w-what did you feel when… w-when you k-killed them?”
The predator looked unsure what to say, looking to the side and rubbing her ear. “I… I only managed to shoot something once, I… I guess I felt a rush at the time, pride… along with some pity for the thing. Again, it’s not something I liked, but I don’t feel bad about it, Talyn… I’m sorry if that’s not something you want to hear from me.”
Despondence grew within my heart as she confessed to having no remorse for the life taken, y-yet, she understands enough compassion to attempt alleviating my feelings about it? With a meek voice I tried to speak up again. “B-But… c-couldn’t you just s-stop eating f-flesh? Y-You can eat r-roots and f-fruit, e-even if i-it needs to be b-burnt… t-there is no need for m-murder.”
“Murder?” Variah looked at me in confusion, lingering a concentrated gaze on me for some time. “Talyn… why do you think carnivores eat meat?”
“T-To sate your b-bloodlust… t-they say you c-can’t help yourself, i-it's in your instincts to k-kill.” Variah furrowed her eyes at me and pinned back her ears, though this time it didn’t come off as stress, rather… bewilderment?
“Listen, we eat meat because it’s a physical nutritional need. We can’t eat plant matter like you do because we lack the right enzymes to digest it properly, and regardless of that, meat has proteins my body can’t synthesize on its own so I would eventually starve to death if I ate nothing but plants, cooked or not.”
She grabbed both ears and started rubbing them in an anxious manner. “Sure, instincts do play a role in how predators behave… any creature with specific biological needs had to evolve a drive to fulfill those needs, but it’s about survival, not some… some constant mind consuming lust for carnage?”
“Y-You really expect me to b-believe that you won’t start drooling t-the moment you feel hungry?!”
Variah’s paws moved from her ears and down on her forehead, staring straight at the floor for a few seconds with a fatigued posture before sliding her paws down again to hide her snout as she started to… c-chuckling? “By the gods. I hope you won’t… but if you’re still worried that much my belly’s all full right now, so you have nothing to be concerned about.”
Is she… is she finding this funny!? The thought of her being fully sated with corpses just sent a shiver down my spine, I don’t even think she realizes how morbid the comment was but I could only feel bitter in the moment. “H- how l-lovely for y-you… t-that just makes me feel s-so much b-better.”
Variah narrowed her eyes and slowly looked in my direction, causing mine to widen in response. The silver predator raised a paw and extended it towards my face.
Dread shot through my heart, forcing me to flinch away and shut my eyes before the horrid demon made contact and I squealed in terror, b-but… instead of her claws flaying me alive, I only felt a harsh flick across my ear. “You must be feeling all great now after all if you’re willing to speak with so much spite.”
Cautiously, my eyes opened to see Variah leaning close, her increased proximity immediately sending off alarm bells in my head. However, the overgrown demon just sat there still with closed eyes and perked up ears, holding out a clenched paw in front of me, with only the pinky extended forward.
I just stared at her for a moment, unsure what she wanted me to do before finally recoiling my arm back with a mix of scorn and trepidation when I figured out her attempted gesture. Contemplating my actions here, then contemplating her’s…
B-before averting my gaze from the demon and lowering my arm, and… a-and deciding to cautiously raise my arm, hovering a shaking paw right before the demon’s digit a-and managing to grab on, n-not fully sure of every reason why I did it?
It felt… wrong, loathsome, holding onto a predator, b-but some part of me liked feeling her warmth. She didn’t react at first, but after a few seconds Variah’s digit curled in on itself and pressed my paw against her other knuckles… It surprised me, b-but, it didn’t feel like a grip I couldn’t get away from if I let go now, s-so I just sat there for a moment, taking in how surreal the situation had become.
“See…” Variah finally decided to speak up as I raised my gaze to meet the strange predator once again. “I’m not as terrifying as you think.”
An odd mix of emotions went through my head, b-before I finally let go of her. “Y-you are… y-you just… c-could be w-worse.”
The silver beast seemed disappointed for a moment, but her overall demeanor seemed more positive than before. “Heh, I guess that’s an improvement so I’ll take it, for now.”
For once, I’ve seen Variah’s ears pointed to full height, and she… she really didn’t seem as frightening, m-making my ear rise a little higher too, awkwardly sitting in a crooked manner. “H-heh… y-you… you are a s-strange being, Variah… n-not how I could have e-ever imagined. You… d-do you really not like hunting?”
“Not really, no, if you're willing to believe it… though I won’t lie, I do enjoy the outdoors aspects of it. The hiking, the camping… get to do it a ton for my main line of work.”
The most arduous parts of working in the wild? Why would a scientist have to work in the wilds anyway? “W-What do you actually d-do? A-and, w-why are you here now?”
“Many things, but primarily astronomy and anthropology work. We survey the night sky deep in nomad territory because their communities produce far less light pollution, so I tend to have a ton of contact with the tribals. These are usually joint ventures with archaeology and zoology teams, so we regularly assist with each other's work too.”
“As for why I’m here, the military swooped me up once the dust settled long enough to know that it wasn’t space debris that landed on our world. I… I wrote a paper about a hypothetical first contact with extraterrestrials, and how it could play out based on cultural interactions throughout history… turns out that was enough for the government when they were scrambling to find scientific personnel capable of contributing with an alien encounter.”
It was bizarre hearing that hunters would care about so many fields of study. At best I thought they would focus on utilitarian pursuits, not something as frivolous as archeology. Much less would I have expected that predators would be speculating about aliens. “H-Have you imagined f-first contact going like this?”
“I- I didn't even think we would ever have an actual first contact, n-not in my lifetime… with the distances involved the chances of an encounter were literally astronomical, at least, until we learnt about your physics-breaking technology. Realistically, the best I ever hoped for was living long enough to watch someone land on Tsn, or hell, even our other moon… When they told me what I was meant to do here and got rushed into this room with you, I… I thought I would faint.”
The last bit left a tinge of guilt within my heart, even though it’s for a beast that technically shouldn’t deserve it. My glare just lingered on Variah while listening to the giant predator spill her woes and dreams like any actual sapient being in the Galaxy. It feels… d-dreadful, l-like there was actually someone I could have liked had they not been trapped within that body.
S-Still… I found myself with a need to answer back, turning away from her direct sight. “I- I’m sorry about that, I guess.” I really am going crazy here, aren’t I?
My eyes found themselves staring off at the ceiling while the silver predator just tilted her creepy head at me in a puzzled manner, lingering her unnerving eyes before finally answering back. “You don't have to worry about it… but thanks.”
Nothing more was spoken between us for several seconds, the extended silence drawing more attention to the strangeness of the situation I found myself in, until the moment was cut short and without warning a buzzer sounded over the door.
An ominous voice came online from the speakers, announcing that guards were about to escort me for another set of experiments. Something that left off, and must have also taken Variah off guard judging by her shift in demeanor. “More tests? Strange… nothing else was scheduled for today.”
The door began to cycle through its opening sequence and my anxiety flaring back up to how it was before, shivering, as the sudden break in routine caused an impending sense of doom once I realized that something even more nefarious could be afoot.
It could be futile, but my eyes snapped around the room looking for something, anything that could keep me safe if the worst came to pass, until they landed upon Variah… and the silver predator glanced back at me. Scanning over my current state with concern in her eyes, y- yet again contradicting what her nature should be truly.
A- a desperate thought crossed my mind, s-something… completely unthinkable, but no alternative seems at all feasible, a-and my time is drawing short. I- I cannot do this alone…
“Va- V-variah…” I hissed, my voice so weak that it's a shock that the beast managed to hear it even with those long ears. “P-please… You- you godda k-keep me s-safe.”
Her creepy eyes widened with shock, almosting freezing on the spot, but the predator recovered quickly, likely trying to look inconspicuous before glancing side to side and turning her head back to me with perked up ears.
“I- I promise I’ll do what I can…” She spoke in a low tone while reaching a giant paw towards my head. The sight of claws nearing my face compounding instinctive dread, but despite flinching once her palm made contact with my head, I- I didn’t shy away as much as before.
“On my honour. I just… need to figure out what’s going on first.” Variah took her paw away as the door hissed open, a-and for a moment m-my… my muscles twitched to pull her back before I stopped myself, u-unsure what compelled that impulse.
Two large guards stepped in, sporting fur dark as pitch and looking far more imposing than Variah ever could. “Doctor…” The demon spoke with a low tone that made my claws vibrate while slightly bowing his head in some form of greeting.
“I-is something wrong, sir? I wasn’t aware of any changes in the roster?” The silver predator appeared far meeker than the two beasts in front of her, though her demeanor didn’t suggest an expectation of being harmed by the two, despite her earlier treachery or our interactions from today.
“Nothing’s wrong Doctor, the administrator got a green light for a new line of research, so we’ve been ordered to escort the subject to the lower levels, please step out of the room.”
For a moment, something the demon said shook the silver predator, causing her head to snap in my direction with concern as I shuddered from the sight. “T-the lower levels? I thought those were shu-” She paused once looking back at the giant guard who seemed to be running out of patience. “R-right, apologies, I’m on my way.”
The silver predator moved sheepishly towards the door, lingering at the threshold to look my way one final time, clear concern painted on her face, at least before perking up her ears in what looked like a vain attempt at reassuring me and ducking out of the room soon after.
I- I guess it was just a deranged fantasy ever considering that begging some carnivore for help would materialize into anything. Now I was left alone with two demonic shadows ordering me out of the bed. My muscles weakened when their voices called, with nauseating sickness almost making me vomit from overwhelming dread.
However, following their commands was preferable to these monsters dragging me off by force so I just climbed down the frame, disheartened, and almost collapsed on the floor before letting the demons lead me into deeper depths.
First/Previous/Next
Special thanks to u/TheWalrusResplendent and u/Killsode-slugcat for proof reading this chapter. The help is always greatly appreciated.
Hope you all enjoyed the chapter, been a while since we saw what Talyn. We'll be back with Kafny next chapter to see how she'll adapt to her new situation.

Hello my name is Damian.
All my life I have pondered on why the world is the way that it is. Why evil seems to prevail in this world. Why people are called 'Great' for being conquerors and killing people. Out of everyone in history there hasn't been anyone like Jesus Christ. In 3 years of ministry with no army, spreading love has left such a massive impact 2000 years later. To me this proves his divinity. I truly believe in my heart that Jesus is God and the Son of Man. I am willing to die for this message. I have had 6 encounters with God now. He has revealed the secrets of the universe to me and confirmed my already existing suspicions of this world. I do not want any glory for my self, all glory to the one and true God Jesus. I am just simply relaying the infinite wisdom he has given me - but all glory comes from him. I am a mere mortal Human like yourselves. After what I experienced and have been told and the love I experienced and that engulfed my spirit. I know for my self, I just want to spread this to as many people as possible. Because Jesus loves every single one of us, he really does. He told me. However, we do also have free will and that plays a massive part in life. If you choose to live your entire life apart of him and you don't even dedicate 1 second of your time to get to know him - how can then you turn around and say "Father you have forsaken me" when something bad happens in your life? Imagine you are a father and you are responsible for a child's life. Now lets say that child grows up and chooses to disregard you as a teacher and chooses to never listen to you. Now lets say your child gets him self in some trouble. Can that child now turn around to the Father and say "This is because of you" or should that child take accountability? He chose to live his life outside the teachings of his father and got himself in the mess he got himself into. Regardless the Father still loves the child and can't stop loving him despite the fact the child does not listen. That is us and God. He still loves you even when you are sinning but he hopes you find the light. Just as the father of the child prays to see the day his child does well and succeeds and becomes a full grown well taught and well behaved functional member of society and adult. That can look after him self and others around him. God is everywhere around us, he sees everything. My human mind cannot begin to comprehend and articulate the greatness of God. I could wake up and talk about it and go to sleep and wake up and repeat and to the day i get old and grey I still will have words to say, and i would never run out of words. God is the word of life. To quote the scriptures John 1:1 - In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He really is the word of life and this elaborates on his infinite greatness. God wants you to find him and he hopes the best for you - he wants you to eat among him in the kingdom of Heaven. The question is are you willing to let him in? What is the number one persecuted religion in the world? Christianity. The one religion that gets openly mocked, everyone feels disheartened by but nothing is done about. This proves it is the truth to be a Christian means to follow God and the teachings of God. Accept Jesus as the Son of Man and let the truth set you free. Amen. No other religion gets so criticized as much as us by Hollywood, media and music industry etc. Street preachers will be attacked on streets for spreading the good news of the Gospel in a 'FREE COUNTRY'? Do we have freedom? or is freedom just an illusion and a tactic of Satan, he made us all think freedom is money when in reality freedom is God. Take a look at Lil Nas X, Sam Smith, these are humiliation rituals taking part and they are openly mocking us now... They worship Ba'al as mentioned in Romans 11:4, Numbers 25:3 and Judges 2:11. Why are they doing this? Let me explain. They want to reject the one true God because they want to be God's themselves, they see them selves as icons and idols. They want worship of the people and we are giving them that. All the glory they want is from the people. I have seen heavenly things now personally so no earthly things could make me reject Jesus Christ. They want you all to think we are more advanced than what we are - this is a hard truth pill to swallow i am aware. But Jesus said in Matthew 11:15 - "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." So those who are willing to accept the truth. Note, this will disrupt the whole fundamental belief you was told to believe in and your reality will be shook. We have been brainwashed since school since kids we was told we live on a sphere, most of us grew up in Christian countries and they never put any emphasis on the Bible they just dismissed the teachings of it and replaced it with science. Who you going to trust the almighty all knowing God or a human prone to error. They hide the truth away from you. The Flat Earthers are correct the world is Flat, not because they are wise and they figured it out and we are all stupid. Everyone knew the world is flat since existence the concept of a spheroid Earth is a relatively new idea. The bible confirms this is true there are only 3 dimensions, Heaven, Earth and Hell. Even the concept of 3D they stole of the bible and tried making it their own. The bible gives you answers about life, Science just creates more questions not answers. Lets further dive into this so you know i am speaking of the truth, lets talk moon landing. The great deceptions to fool many due to a space race with the USSR, USSR sent the first satellite into space 'apparently'. America caught winds of this and thought how can we top them up and assert our dominance, we send people to the moon. People that believe that we have been to the moon you are greatly lost and i hope you find Christ and welcome him. Notice how when the USSR dissolved and countries became independent and Russia wasn't seen as a great threat no more as the ideology of Capitalism won against Socialism, we haven't been so eager to get ourselves back there... I wonder why that enthusiasm has burnt away? After all, i thought space is the final frontier? With the technology we had back then do you guys think this is possible? According to their own science it contradicts everything they said that the vacuum of space has so much radiation, that i am struggling to believe that a normal not even specialized for the event camera was abled to take photos on the moon and return back home with clear images... The Earth is flat and the moon and Son is within the firmament. I know the first human emotion of someone reading this is going to be that is a big bombshell. Now lets look into the deeper reason why that is, you have been programed to be hostile to the idea of any other theory besides the one you have been taught in school and subscribed to without knowing. And your first instinct when you hear a view as such is to say to the person 'you are stupid' and laugh at them because you think they didn't listen in school or they are slow. In reality they are the ones who are wise because they seen what the Earth is with their own eyes and made their decision on that. Lets have a look what the famous band had to say in the song 'Califiornication' by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. "The sun may rise in the East, at least it settled in a final location, it understood that Hollywood sells Californication." Now lets really analyze what was the authors intended message of this song, as everything is ambiguous and open to interpretation by others, however, the author always has an intended message. What can the Sun be looked as. God. So if you replace Sun with God, God raises us and he understood that Hollywood sells Californication. Now what is Californication? That is the fairytale that came from Hollywood, California - the AI dream all you guys are eating up. "Space may be the final frontier, but it is made in a Hollywood basement." Now what is a final frontier? It is the final and most biggest achievement for humanity. This is just a illusion sold to you by the devil for your soul and money. You can try discredit this particular group as conspiracy theorist or maybe look to the possibility they got given everything they wanted the money and they still wasn't happy, they was around all the wealthiest and most powerful people in Hollywood, just as i trust the eye-witness testimony of the disciples. So do i trust the subliminal eye-witness account secretly contained in this song. I can imagine he saw a lot of shady stuff going on in Hollywood that really troubled his soul. You don't have to look far to know Hollywood is a dark and evil place. Think R Kelly, Drake and Diddy to name a few but i could go on more. It is evil. Do not wish to be a part of that table, as thy not know what they are wishing for. The is a reason so many celebrities are leaving that place... Lets talk about Michael Jackson, a gifted and talented individual who the world once loved. He spoke out about the dark side of Hollywood and they killed him. You would think they would stop there... No they made allegations of him being a pedophile despite the fact that he is dead and cannot defend himself. Whether you believe in God or not, ask your self is this just. Now whenever i mention him people mock his name, yet he is not here to defend himself. These people are evil. As said in Isaiah 5:20 - Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil." bless him father. Lets talk some more about Ba'al the false deity of the rich and powerful. Jeremiah 19:5 says "They have built the high places of Ba'al to burn thier children in the fire as offerings to Ba'al - something i did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind." Bohemian Grove is a great example to strengthen this point. Isn't it strange that the top 0.1% of the most elite bankers and politicians gather together and dress as druids and offer burnt sacrifices to an owl God. In form of 'Prop' children. Everyone disregarded this as pure non-sense and conspiracy. Then Alex Jones of InfoWars infiltrated this event taking place and publicized it to many millions. It was news for some time and people know vaguely about it but the world swiftly moved on. In a free country he has been completely silenced by the Government. Even the US constitution that can't be changed was changed for that man. As the freedom of speech is a right given to all Americans. Why silence him? Because he spoke great truths that is the thing. Athletes who are spotted drinking partying with girls get spoken more about than this happening with the 0.1%. It is very sad how ignorant we all are... We indulge of the distractions of life too much to realize the truth is in front of us. They are dropping us hints and we still obey them like sheep. Whilst we are distracted with football, cars, material things of this Earth. They are dressing up as druids and laughing at us and how easy it is to deceive the world. As the colosseums were built as a tactic to not lose power and control and distract people from the issues at hand, so are they doing with football stadiums around the world. Ryan Garcia speaks openly about God and Hollywood and they are not trying to portray to the masses he is having a mental breakdown. They are scared of you o' father Jesus. Now lets talk Baalenciaga, every materials girl and boy most favorite 'devil worshipping' brand. The 2022 ad campaign featuring children holding teddy bears dressed in "Bondage". If you were to look into this and see that this is a ritual they are doing, study the photos and look at the hints and symbolism of it all, you will see how twisted they are. Are we really going to let them defile our children like this and do nothing about it? We are really enabling and allowing these scumbags to do this to us and our children... God bless all those children affected o'Lord. In regards to this matter. It was news for a week now it has been forgotten about and everyone still wears the brand now. Whilst we are busy distracted there doing this to our own people, orchestrating their evil plans. You might have read now and you might be thinking to yourself, but why that is the purpose of all this deception. Money. Money is the root of all evil. They want you to worship money and in return they also take your soul. Nasa the biggest space program in the world with annual budgets of $25.4 billion in 2023 and $24billion in 2024. And international space program being worth 447 billion dollars in 2022. This explains the collective deception and the argument why so many would be in on it. Here you go. Money. As said in 1 Timothy 6:10 - "For the love of money is the root of evil.". If you were to ponder for a long time you will realize as all roads in Europe lead to Rome. Anything you can think of evil is money related. People will kill for money, betray one another, because of lack of money the demons will tempt you to steal and get from other to benefit yourself. Money is evil and is the root for all our problems. Lets stop worshipping a piece of paper, a note that is a ledger that tells you that Government has gave this note this much value and worshipping the one true God Jesus Christ, o' Father put glory on your name, amen. Paper will not defeat us as people. If we all raise we all have a chance. Enough is enough, the world was made for all of us not them. Lets take back what is ours from them. Draw Jesus in closer and he will draw in closer to you. There is a reason there was film made called 'Don't look up' because if you did you will see all the angels in their glory. The time has commeth, the son of man will be back soon amen. Lets have a further look into Nasa for the non-believers of my testimony. Nasa in Hebrew means 'Nasha' or 'Naw-saw' it means to lead astray or delude/deceive. What does being lead astray mean "to be lead away from the correct path or direction." This is hidden in plain sight, only those with a deep consciousness can see these things, those who don't see these things have been swallowed up by the Earth and material things of the Earth. They are mocking us. The founder of Nasa 'Werner Von Braun' 1912-1977, guess what he got made to be put on his gravestone... Psalm 19:1, now what does Psalm 19:1 tell us "The heavens declare glory of God; the skies proclaimed the work of his hands." Guilty conscious? Maybe he was mislead, only God will know. What I do know is even he knew the truth. Lets not let them win guys. God has personally told me he loves us all; however, we do have free will. He can't decide what you do with your life. What was written has to be fulfilled; if you like this idea or not. It is the reality Amen, i do not seek any glory of the people as the only glory i seek is from the one true God. I am just speaking of what i know and what God has educated me on. It is not too late to get good with God, he loves you. He will always be there for you. Are you going to stand on the side of Evil or the side of the Light with God. I know what path i am personally choosing. They can build bunkers, you can't run away from the wraith of God, as Jesus drank the cup that the father gave him. So shall a lot of you people too. As mentioned in Isiah 2:19. You are smart Satan, but I a meer mortal like my self figured out your entire plan before the father even confirmed this to be truth. Shame on you. You will never be like my almighty power God, Jesus Christ. Trust his plans guys. God is Good and God is Great. What has been written has to come true. I have nothing to gain from this personally but I just hope this reaches a lot of peoples hearts... I hope you guys let him in. He is a jealous God, he is like a father to you all, of course he is upset when he is seeing his children going astray and living a life of Sin. Even if i see one person in Heaven that has read this and believed in the one true God. I will be the happiest man alive. I am just a witness of that light. May we give Glory and peace to the one and only true son of Man, and lets all be eternally thankful and grateful for the amazing life he gave us. If you break everything down, when you are on your deathbed, money is the last thing that will be on your mind, it will be the experiences, friends and family you will be thinking off and all these experiences are only made possible through God. Heaven is real you will see your loved ones again, i promise you. Believe. This is my testimony. I have so much proof and further evidence. Check my Tik Tok d.0113 for videos proving God performing miracles that can't be explained by Science. And if any of you feel lost in this world - just know i felt that too. If anyone needs a friend to speak to i am always here to help, just as is God. God can help you will a lot than I, however, i will do my best. God bless you all brothers and sisters, I once hated you all, now i love you all because God loves you all. Amen.

Notes: I've already been posting this on ao3 for the past few months. But I've decided to post a few of the first chapters here to see if anyone has any thoughts on the series. It's where the main characters all get reincarnated into a normal world and its supposed to be pretty chill but it's also meant to be a bit of a mystery. So if anyone wants they can ask for the link for the whole thing.
So here's chapter 1 👍
Chapter 1: We found a body in the woods. (Originally posted April 12th 2024)
The whole thing was like some hazy dream. Another word where they didn't have to suffer at least not as much. And a world where curses didn't exist… At least that's how things would seem
Three kids played on the swings together in the playground. Smiling and happy in a world where they lived happily without any of the horrors of their previous lives. And that was all they needed.
Yuji helped swing Nobara, she was as happy as she could ever be with the world's biggest smile on her face. “Weee” She cheered her voice filled with happiness. Meanwhile Megumi pushed himself on the swings because he was tall enough to do that.
“Hey, Loosers.” Shouted a voice in front of them. The kid had blue silvery hair and Heterochromia. His right eye was blue while his left eye was gray. It was none other than Kurokawa Mahito, the town bully. “Well if it isn't one eyed Nobara.” He looked at her with a smirk etched on his face. ‘‘Shouldn't you be playing with your dolls?”
Nobara looked down, she looked like she might start crying. “Hey, Leave her alone!” Yuji called out, clenching his tiny little fists. “Or what!? Oh I'm so scared.” Mahito laughed at Yuji's words. Nobara got off the swings. She tried to slap Mahito with her tiny hand but he just backed away a bit. “Ha Ha!’’ He laughed again.
“You three are the biggest losers I've ever seen.” Yuji stomped up to the other boy. “Hey! We're not losers!” The bully crossed his arms. “Oh really, then prove it!?” His smirk grew. “And how's that jerkface!” Nobara butted in. Mahito scratched his chin.“Hmmm” He chucked.“You three have to go into Onryo no Mori forest.” He laughed.
“You're on.” Nobara clenched her tiny fists, accepting the dare. Megumi got off the swings.“I don't know about this Nobara,they say this forest is haunted… and even if it isn't it's pretty dangerous.” Megumi warned.Yuji looked at Megumi and then at Nobara. “Yeah, I think Megumi is right. That place is dangerous.”
“Oh come on Yuji, you Chicken!?” Mahito pressed his finger against the pink haired boy's chest clearly trying to push Yuji's buttons two. “N-No I'm not.” His eyebrows furrowed. Mahito laughed, just because he was only a few months older than the three he felt like that meant he could push them around. “Fine, I'll go. But you have to go with us!” Yuji added onto the dare. Mahito crossed his arms. “Okay… fine.” He rolled his eyes.
—
The four kids walked through the forest. Mahito felt like he should be the one leading the others because he was the oldest of course. “So what are we supposed to do again?” Yuji asked, following behind Mahito the closest. “We're supposed to go through this forest until we get to the exit. We then leave.” Mahito began to speed up a bit. Yuji grabbed onto the kid's black sweater to try to keep pace with him. “Hey! Wait for us!” Nobara called to the two, Megumi walking behind her. He looked a little scared too.
The four continued walking through the forest. “Hey… I don't think we're supposed to go this deep.” Megumi muttered, looking around the forest. “Oh come on, don't be a loser.” The bully laughed. The group started getting deeper into the forest, walking past an obvious warning sign. “Hey… that sign.” Yuji pointed to the sign saying something like: "Unsafe area". Mahito shrugged “Just ignore it.” Mahito was clearly getting a little scared.
And then… they saw it
“Hey look, she looks hurt.” Megumi pointed to a woman on the floor in front of them. It looked like an older teenager probably in his last year of high school. “Huh?” The four looked at her and started walking to the body.
… the dead body
“Ahhh!” Mahito screamed out in fear. The body didn't look normal, her skin looked a little purple, her body looked twisted and contorted like she was stretched taffy. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot and her face was contorted like she was constantly screaming.
The others screamed too. “We need to tell the police!” Megumi frantically told the others, he was clearly disturbed by the sight like the others. Mahito ran out of the forest right away, screaming in fear. The other three watched as he ran. They had to follow behind.
Now they were finally out of the forest Yuji went to the Payphone close to the playground outside the forest. They had to drag Mahito along. “My friends and i… we.” he gulped. “We found a… we found a dead body in Onryo no Mori forest.” He said in the call. He trembled in fear. The sight of that body was nightmare fuel. The call continued, it felt like hours when it was only a few minutes.
After a while longer the four heard sirens. Some officers and an investigator or two entered the forest and marked the crime scene. An officer walked up to the four and started to interview them about what happened. The whole thing felt like an eternity.
When everything was over they walked to their own homes. They'd just try to find a way to forget this. Everything would be normal after this. Right?
Yuji walked to his home. It was probably dinner time by now. He couldn't shake off the image of that body. He arrived home and knocked on the door. His grandpa opened the door. The smell of food wafting through the air. “You're late.” Yuji looked down. “I know…” He wiped the dirt off his Sneakers and put them in the shoe holder and walked to the kitchen and started cleaning his hands. “Oh Yuji, You're back I was starting to worry about you.” His mother said as she refilled a pitcher with water.
He went to the dinner table with her and he decided to carry the pitcher for her. His dad and older half-brother were there. “Yuji, you're just in time.” His father spoke, a smile on his face. “Dinner's still warm.” Yuji smiled a bit. He sat down with the rest of his family and they ate. It looked delicious, it was: Chicken Caprese. After everyone said grace like they usually did whenever it was a big meal they dug in. “Yummy.’’ Yuji exclaimed, one of the world's biggest smiles on his face.
“He's right, it's pretty good.” His older brother Choso bit in smiling like everyone else. Choso was his half-brother; he was born when Yuji's mother Kaiori was with some other guy who she divorced. And then she married his dad Jin, Yuji was born and the rest was history.
As everyone happily ate, The thought of telling them about that body popped into his head. But it was getting late and right now probably wouldn't be the proper time. So he'd tell them tomorrow. As he ate… he felt a pit in his stomach.
That girl whose body they found in the forest… What was her life like? He felt bad for her and horrified too. Who would do something like this?
His grandpa looked at the time.“Well look at the time. It's getting late, you should go to bed, Yuji.” Yuji rubbed his eye, already feeling tired. “You're right, I should get ready for bed.” His mom nodded her head. The boy got out of his chair and did his nighttime routine: Take a bath, Brush his teeth, put on his pajamas and go to bed.
He decided tonight he was going to tuck himself in. He layed in bed and sushied himself in between the blankets. His mom walked in.usually Jin or her would tuck him in then maybe even read him a bedtime story on some nights if he was lucky one of them might even read him too bedtime stories. ‘‘Oh, you decided to tuck yourself in?” She asked. Yuji rolled around a bit, his back now facing her. “Yeah.” She took out a book; I was Yuji's favorite. “Do you want me to read you a bedtime story?”
Yuji curled up a bit. That was his favorite story, it was always a treat. But… he just felt wrong. That woman was dead while he was living a cozy and happy life with his happy family. That girl must have suffered a lot when she died. Which made him feel even worse. “N-No.” He responded. “Oh?” She seemed pretty surprised by that.
She nodded her head. ‘‘I understand. You must be tired.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “Sweet dreams.” She bidded. Before leaving the room. Yuji didn't know why but another feeling went over his body. He felt like he was remembering something it felt like it was from long ago, like a past life. He just tried to ignore it. And eventually: He fell fast asleep.
Everything would be normal again,this was all just a bad dream…Right?
Speaking of bad dreams, Yuji was having one right now. It was all a blur of course but since it was a nightmare he'd probably remember it a little more than other dreams. Yuji woke up in the dream to the sound of blood dripping. “H-Huh.” his eyes began to open a bit more and just as that happened he coughed up what could be a cup full of blood. "Oh no" he thought. His thoughts were suddenly cut off when he noticed something.his arm was in his chest, which would explain the bleeding and I was moving on its own. His surprise was cut off by the searing pain of having his heart being ripped out by himself. A look of shock and pain etched on his face.
He fell to the floor bleeding out, what was happening to him!?
Yuji woke up in his room. The dream was well just a dream,and he soon forgot about it. “Yuji! Breakfast is ready!” His brother called from downstairs. Yuji got out of bed. “Coming!” He started getting dressed for school.
It was a simple T-shirt and some shorts with some comfy socks. It was a good outfit for the warmer weather they were starting to have. He'd brush his teeth, he'd smile looking at his now shiny smile. He'd step downstairs. His mom was packing lunches for Him and his brother. “Thanks mom.” She smiled at him thanking her.
Breakfast was already on the table it was pancakes. “Pancakes!” He grinned. He went to the chair and dug in. ‘‘Your the best mom!” He happily ate his breakfast. “So good!” After a bit he finished his meal. “Thank you mom, thank you dad.’’
He hugged his parents. “Oh, and thank you too Grandpa.” He hugged his grandpa. And then he hugged his older brother. “Thank you big bro, I hope you have a good day at middle school.” His smile was probably the biggest one possible. He put on his red sneakers and a nice summer hat.
“Oh Yuji,don't forget your lunch.” His brother handed him the lunch their mom made for him. ‘‘Oh, Right.” Yuji took his lunch box. “Thanks Choso.” After saying goodbye to everyone again he left the house and started walking to school.
On his way there he picked up his Friend Megumi who was wearing a nice dark blue shirt. “Hey guys, wait for me!” Nobara said, she ran up to them. Her brown hair had a light blue hair clip in it and she wore a red Jacket people usually wear with track suits and she wore a black skirt.
“Oh of course, we were going to just go pick you up too.” Nobara smiled, holding her pink polkadot lunchbox. “Good.” She smiled too. The three walked together to school. The cherry blossoms blowing in the air, spring was just starting; it was cherry blossom season.
The three kids would walk to school together, they were going to be the best friends ever. No matter what happens.

I was extremely bored one night and bad things tend to happen when there was nothing to keep me out of trouble. I found myself down a rabbit hole looking at old or interesting websites. I think I saw the Space Jam site still up like a small internet time capsule. Seeing that had been a bit of a trip down memory lane. Through clicking random links, I found a site claiming to be a monster blind dating site. I only saw it for a second and the entire thing went down before I got a good look at it. After digging for information about it I read that it could only be accessed at midnight. If you clicked on the link at 12:01, you may get a glance of it but then it would go down before you could fill out a dating profile.
I thought it was a cute little gimmick. There was no way it could be real. I mean, a monster dating site sounded like something my kid sister would read. But I kinda did want to see what the site looked like. The second it was up I saw a chunky mouse cursor and blocky sidebars that reminded me of what the internet looked like in the 90’s. I can still remember the dial-up tone and my Neopets username...
The next night I found myself counting down the seconds until midnight. I refreshed the page a second after the clock rolled over. An odd excitement came when I saw the site go live. It reeked of the early internet, and I loved it. The webpage didn’t lag and didn’t have any terrible design choices that made it impossible to read text or find links like real older sites.
I didn’t plan on filling out a dating profile. Just to look around. I had a countdown of 13 minutes and not much else to look at. The home page displayed a few dating profiles of monsters complete with grainy images making it hard to really see their features. All of them were booked up. When I refreshed the page a few of the profiles changed and at least two had some availability. When I clicked on them, they became booked up within a second.
Were other people on this site? Or was it just a script running in the background? Was this just a fun little joke or some sort of code for people to actually hire sex workers but in a discreet way? I thought I would never find out the answer.
Another option was to make your dating profile instead of trying to book a certain monster. It asked very basic questions and thankfully lacked a spot to fill out your credit card information. As a joke I filled out a fake profile and used my burner email address I made just for things like this. My time ran out and the site went down. At least I'd been fun while it lasted. I wanted to get a screenshot of it but when I did, the image was black. I didn’t find that strange, but I felt a little disappointed I didn’t have any proof of the odd website.
That was until my cellphone pinged showing I had a text. I read the message of dread coming to my stomach. This could not be right. It was from an unknown number saying a date was arranged at ten PM next Friday with a Google Street View image of a nearby street corner.
I tried to think of a way this joke site got my phone number. I was under a family plan, so my number wasn’t even under my own name if they somehow got my name from, what? Hacking my computer somehow? Did I click a bad link somewhere? My Anti-Virus was normally so good at protecting me from my own mistakes. Maybe I should stop being cheap and pay for a VPN. Just to be safe I deleted the message and blocked the number. I then did a massive password overhaul and a few virus scans that came up empty.
I kept an eye on my bank and emails to see if anyone tried getting into my accounts to have nothing happen in the next few days. I learned my less than just clicking random links and going on a sketchy site wasn’t worth it.
I also avoided the street corner for the rest of the week. I needed to take a long way home from work but refused to be anywhere near the place. I got worried about how they got my address. Did they really have my address or just a general location and send the text to freak me out? I couldn’t really do anything about it besides keeping my doors locked and an eye out for anything strange. The cops would laugh in my face if I brought this to them.
I fully planned on staying on Friday night. Best not to even be outside in case this wasn’t a prank pulled by someone with a bad sense of humor. But a friend of mine called me over requesting I bring him some soup from a restaurant down the street. Everything was within walking distance and my buddy was sick as hell. He didn’t want to pay the ten-dollar delivery fee, plus the tip when he could just ask me to do it and give me the tip instead. I put aside my fear and did him the favor to get him his damn broccoli and cheddar soup. He'd done a bunch of stuff for me in the past, so I needed to help him out.
On the way back from his place I kept my hands in my pockets and looked around expecting someone to be following me. It was Friday night and almost ten. The sun has long since set and the street empty of other people. I took the long way again, still refusing to go near that street corner. My pulse rose every time I heard a sound on my walk. Only two blocks to go from home and I relaxed a little. I felt silly letting that site get to me so badly.
From behind I heard some papers fluttering in the wind. Nothing strange about that so I didn’t turn around to look. If I did, I would have gotten a head start at running.
“Mr. Stevens...?”
A voice came from behind and I stopped dead in my tracks. The voice sounded paper thin and hard to hear over the other rustling sounds. I realized that papers could not be fluttering in the wind because there wasn’t a breeze. Slowly, I turned only my head, trying to see the source of the voice that called my name.
The street was lined with lamp posts. From between two posts, a shape came out of the darkness and into the same light I stood under. The thing is at least ten feet tall and long. The body was in constant motion and made of different-sized pieces of dark stained paper. I didn’t see any kind of arms or legs on the creature, instead, it appeared to float a few inches off the ground. I darted my eyes upwards to look at the face. A large scroll hung down from the forehead attached to a massive twisted golden horn. The paper covering most of the face had odd golden writing on it. Under the paper, I saw a pair of sunken dark eyes and a mouth that reached to each end of the face. The hair was also made up of those papers flowing outwards. They were covered with the same golden writing. We made eye contact, and a smile came that showed off countless needle-pointed teeth.
Yeah, no.
I booked it. I wasn’t going to deal with whatever this thing was. I ran down the block, my legs burning within seconds. I wished I stayed in shape. The thing following behind, easily keeping pace. The countless papers rustled with each movement and the damn thing started to laugh making my heart nearly stop from fear.
Laughter grew making my head get dizzy. The sound echoed off the empty road and sounded so clear, almost as if someone was clicking glasses together. My vision faded and I found myself running the wrong way. I should have taken a left to get home but I turned it right and towards a park. When I pulled through the brain fog, I didn’t have a chance to correct myself. If I turned around, I would run right into the creature chasing me.
I couldn’t keep up running for much longer. My face dripped with sweat, my face red from effort. I ducked inside some trees a part of the very small park thankful my city even had a park like this. I slammed into a tree, panting and listening for the monster. The laughter stopped and I didn’t hear the paper rustling again. Was I going crazy There is no way that thing was real. I shook my head trying to figure out what I should do. I pulled out my phone to call for help. Even if it wasn’t real, I needed someone to come down here to get me to a hospital to get my brain looked at.
I stood sweating and fear turning my body cold. My phone refused to turn on. I held down all the side buttons forcing the phone to restart. It came back on, but the screen showed a glowing golden symbol and not the photo of my baby sister as my lock screen. This simply could not be happening. I needed to find a person, a real person to help.
I looked up through the dark trees and saw some leaves that looked a bit strange. All at once, golden writing flickered on showing the outline of the monster wrapped around a tree staring in my direction. I let out a scream that in any other situation would be embarrassing. Blinded by fear I ran right into a tree, smashing my nose and causing it to bleed.
I ran again, mind blank. I had no thoughts but to just get the hell out of there. I spilled out from the trees and into the park. The play equipment was off in the distance, but no one was in sight. I also considered trying to hide in the plastic slide, or inside the worn-out hollow plastic dinosaur that had seen better days. My feet became tangled trying to race up the hill and I fell forward.
The papers were on me at once. I rolled on my back, looking up at the creature and directly at the face inches away from my own. The eyes glittered in twisted joy at my fear. I was mistaken about this thing not having any limbs. A set of arms came from under the papers to grab my own. The ice-cold skin made my entire body crawl. I kicked my feet, and more arms shot out. Soon I was pinned down to the hard ground with too many hands to count. The creature let out another ringing laugh that made me nearly pass out. I snapped back, when the thing flicked out a tongue to run it over my face, tasting the blood from my nose.
“I Do not normally kiss on the first date, but you are a precious little thing.” The monster spoke, the whispery voice causing my body to shake.
“D-date...?” I choked out, mind moving slowly.
Was that damn monster dating website real? I didn’t have a chance to really think about it. The face came down over my own, the flesh colder than anything else I’ve ever felt. The sheer cold hurt my skin. Second passed and the pain became bearable, and the icy feeling started to fade. The hands gripped tighter, bruising in some places. When the monster pulled away, I gasped for air, unable to do anything else. I looked up and did not like the look in that creature’s eyes. It looked starving. Mouth wide and twisted in an uneven smile with saliva starting to drip out of the corners of the mouth. The long tongue came out and licked it away, but it was a losing battle to keep its face clean. I started to worry this thing had other ideas for me besides tearing my organs out as a snack.
“You are such a darling creature. I cannot help myself. I do hope you forgive my forward nature.” The monster spoke, and the tone sounded as hungry as it looked.
I struggled again against those hands knowing I wouldn’t get free. To my horror, the papers fanned out and they all came down wrapping around my body and blacking out my vision. I assumed this was another way this monster could eat me and was thankful it was fairly painless.
I jumped awake, finding myself in my bed safe and sound. Well, not entirely sound. My body had hand-shaped bruises everywhere that monster grabbed me. I looked around stunned by the previous events. It was early in the morning, and I wore the same thing I did the night before. I even still had my shoes on. I heard pans moving coming from my small kitchen and smelled of cooking.
Slowly I started to leave the room holding a bowling trophy as a weapon. I really didn’t have anything else and thought the heavy base might do some damage. I didn’t get the jump on the one inside my kitchen. The person turned around from where they stood at the stove and gave such a wide and blinding smile it made my head stop working. They were tall with an androgynous body. They were wearing my clothing that didn’t fit on their frame. I’ve never seen someone with such a beautiful shade of dark skin. Every feature was perfect down to evenly arranged pulled-back long dreadlocks.
“I made you some breakfast. I can’t stay long. You need to buy more food, there isn’t much here. Do you need money? Hang on.”
My mind was still in shock leaving me unable to respond. I watched as the stranger placed some scrambled eggs on a plate and set them down on the counter. I didn’t own a table and just ate my computer desk. When the person stopped in front of me, I became so spellbound by their golden eyes that I didn’t even notice they took my weapon away and placed something in my hand. I shook my head to look down to see a small pile of glittering gold pellets in my hand. No, they had a shape I recognized and wanted to toss the gold when I saw they were human teeth of different sizes.
“I can turn things to gold. I had these just taking up space, so I made them useful. Get yourself something nice and don’t be late for our date next Friday. Although I don’t mind chasing you down. That was the most fun I’ve had in a while.”
I couldn't find my voice. I had a million questions. The first one was why they just had human teeth. With so many questions I found it impossible to pick one to speak. This person didn’t look like the monster from the night before. They didn’t look like a monster at all. When a quick kiss was placed against my cheek, and I felt the cold feeling all over again I knew who this creature was.
“I... What... date this Friday?” I croaked out stunned thoughts jumbled together.
“Oh, you are too much!”
Three more quick kisses were placed on my cheek and if it was anyone else, it would be a cute action. The monster drew away and then quickly headed towards the door, face shining with a smile.
“I normally eat my partners quickly, but I’ll keep you around for a bit. We’ll have a great time together until I can’t hold back.”
Without being able to stop them, the monster left through the front door with a wave. A second after it peeked a head through to add one more thing.
“My name is Guild!”
And then they were gone again leaving me standing in the middle of my kitchen with a handful of golden human teeth and the first breakfast someone had made for me since I was a child.
I put the teeth down first and ate the eggs with some issues. My stomach turned. Somehow, I’d gotten myself into a huge mess. I would need to keep seeing the nightmare of a monster for dates until it decided to eat me. My life is now to be decided by someone else. I quickly sent a text to my sister telling her I loved her in case Guild came right back for brunch. She was confused at the random message, but I figured it was long overdue.
The only upside to this entire nightmare I found myself in was Guild looked cute disguised as a human. And I suppose I didn’t have to worry about money either, but I didn’t want to ask Guild for gold fearing what I may be handed next. My new relationship started with hundreds of red flags I can’t do a damn thing about.
Do me a favor and if you do come across a monster dating website, don’t humor it. I wish I never made that mistake. Just don’t go clicking on random links online. You’ll never really know where it might take you and what kind of horrible outcome it may have on your life.

A few years ago, I was moving from Cleveland to Minneapolis. It had been the worst year of my life. The man I’d been dating for the past three years had been involved in a scam and squandered most of our joint savings along the way. Shortly after, I lost my job. I just couldn’t keep up with the pressure of finding a new place and surviving on breadcrumbs, and I just… broke down.
So I decided to start over in Minneapolis. I had a couple of friends who offered me a couch to crash on for a couple of weeks. I was looking to get a new job and start over fresh. I got on a greyhound with nothing but two suitcases and a handful of unread DMs.

It was a long trip. Most people stepped off in Chicago and Milwaukee, so for the final stretch of the trip there was only two people left; me, and a passenger sitting right across from me. A man in his early 60’s. He had a kind face and spent most of his time sending messages to his friends and family. I got the impression that this was some kind of event for him. He had a fanny pack with snacks, an extra battery for his phone, sunscreen on the tip of his ears, and a pair of ray bans resting on his trucker cap.
I talked to him a little. His name was Noah. He was heading home after a long consultation job out-of-state. He was some kind of environmental lawyer. He was all about public transportation and reducing the carbon footprint. I could tell he was a jubilant fellow – I don’t know a lot of people who speak so highly of their job.

About half an hour from our destination, the bus suddenly lurched. There was someone standing in the middle of the road, and the driver had done his best to steer out of the way. I saw a brief silhouette of someone small go by the window – possibly a child.
Moments later, we were thrown into a ditch, and the bus tipped over. In the blink of an eye, all turned to chaos. I was thrown out of my seat like a slack-necked doll, and there was this awful metal groaning noise. The side of the bus was torn open.
Suddenly, the world was still. My mind was spinning. I barely made it off the bus before I hurled, my inner ear screaming at me to lie down. Everything felt different. The air tasted metal. We’d driven straight into a field, leaving a long trail of bent grass and wild blue sunflowers behind us. As the engines of the bus died, all that was left was the flapping of moth wings. Looking back at the road, there was no one there.

I couldn’t see Noah, or the bus driver. I picked up my phone and called the police without a second thought. I felt disoriented, and the strangest details stood out to me. Like, how often do you stop to look at the shape of your phone, or stop to think about the actual code you use to unlock it?
While still on the phone, I was asked by the operator to check if everyone was okay. I moved to the front of the, saw the driver’s seat empty, and rounded the corner.
“Can you see them?” the operator asked again. “Is everyone alright?”
I heard the noise before I saw them. This thick, meaty squish. The tearing. Clicking teeth.
The kindly-looking Noah was sitting a bit further out in the field with a streak of blood trailing him. He was cradling the driver in his arms; slowly biting off pieces from the side of his head. Hair and all, slurped up like spaghetti.
It looked almost serene, like a grazing antelope.
“Excuse me, miss?” the operator repeated. “Can you see them?”
“Y-yes,” I whispered, breathlessly. “Yes, I do.”
“Is everyone alright?”
Noah looked up at me with complete disinterest. For a moment, his eyes met mine, and he was as calm as ever. There was no panic. No regret. Nothing. Like a dog enjoying a meaty bone.
“No,” I wheezed back into the phone. “N-no, we’re… we’re not alright.”

Yes, he’d killed and eaten that man. The moment we got off the bus, the first thing he’d done was to kill, and eat him. No hesitation whatsoever.
For a good fifteen minutes, I just stood there, watching. The police were on their way, but this was a bit out of their way. Noah didn’t seem to mind an audience. He just bit, chew, and swallowed. Bit, chew, and swallow. Thin spurts of blood stained his horn-rimmed glasses. But I couldn’t move or look away. I couldn’t bring myself to move or turn my back on him. I was just… frozen.
The moment the police arrived they didn’t even pull out their guns. They just stood there, staring in disbelief. Putting Noah in handcuffs and taking him away was completely uneventful. There was no struggle, no sudden attacks, nothing. Noah just looked disappointed to have his meal taken away, like a child tiredly reaching for his teddy bear.

I was so distraught after stating my witness account that I forgot one of my bags. I just took the one closest to me and got out of there. I couldn’t bring myself to call on my friends; I crashed at the first motel I came across. I sat up all night, staring into the ceiling, still trying to make some kind of sense about what I’d seen. I didn’t notice myself crying, and I didn’t notice how those cries slowly turned to screams. I just lay there, head empty, screaming into a cheap, tear-stained motel pillow.
Over the following weeks, I settled into a new place, a new job, and a new life. Everything was different, but in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I felt like an alien, as if the world had shifted. Like I’d seen something not of this Earth. Some of the most mundane things felt strange. Eating a sesame seed bagel at the café down on the corner felt like ashes in my mouth. All I could think about was teeth. Tearing. Ripping. Curious eyes looking my way.
But looking past all that, there was something else that kept crawling back into my mind; just how awful I was at judging someone’s character. How I hadn’t noticed the scam my ex had been wrapped up in, costing us our savings. How I hadn’t noticed how I was neglecting my work to the point where they had to let me go. And now this; how I couldn’t see that the friendly Noah on the bus had been ready to eat a living person at the drop of a hat?
It didn’t add up to me. How do you miss something like that?

I was one of the witnesses called in the trial that followed. I hoped it’d be a chance to finally put it all behind me. I said my piece, and I stayed to watch the proceedings. I had to know more about this man, and what turned him into this… monster. He didn’t look like a monster though. He was just a man in a suit. He even had the same glasses. I couldn’t look past his friendly demeanor – still as unbothered by this whole situation as the day I saw him bite down on raw flesh.
There was a clinical psychologist called to the stand. He’d been there to assess Noah’s mental state and was ready to share his findings.
“Mister Ayton is deeply confused,” he said. “To him, this behavior is not something new. This is something he’s been forced to do for years in order to survive.”
“Is he confessing further crimes?”
“Yes,” the psychologist continued. “But mister Ayton has lost perception of reality. He speaks of living in a forest, hunting people for food. He has no memory of ever having a family, or an occupation. To him, his life has been about… inhuman acts brought by never-ending strife.”
“And… you assess that this belief is a genuine response to trauma?”
“Yes, his belief is genuine,” the psychologist agreed. “This man has suffered a great trauma.”
There was a short pause as the psychologist checked his notes and adjusted his glasses.
“It’s… it’s as if he believes he comes from a different world.”

In Noah’s mind, he’d been a murderer for years, trapped in a sort of limbo state. His description of the world was horrifying; living in a space of ruptured reality, where the only certainty was famine and pain. He’d taken refuge in what he believed to be the shell of an abandoned bus. Suddenly, there were intruders in his space; one of which he killed and ate. The other he didn’t mind since he was already having his fill. According to his testimony, he was even willing to share. He wanted to be a good host.
His family spoke of another story. To them, Noah was a kind man with a busy schedule. There were pictures of him coaching his son’s basketball team. He’d recently celebrated 30 years of marriage to his wife, which he loved dearly. To them, this was an unreal nightmare. There was nothing in his history pointing to this kind of madness.
“Something happened,” they said. “Something must have happened on that bus.”
I hate to admit it, but I agreed. It just didn’t make sense.

I’m not sure what happened to Noah. There was a lot of talk behind closed doors, and most of what was said stayed there. The papers didn’t say a lot about it. There was mention of a case of “mutilation”, but every report about it was vague. It’s as if no one really wanted to report it. Maybe they didn’t know if it was a case of mental illness or something more sinister. Either way, there wasn’t much said about him.
I tried to put it out of my head. I caught up with my unread DMs. I’d been dreading reading worried texts, demands about unpaid bills, and whatever else might kick me further while I was down. I couldn’t go back to that world just yet, but I sort of had to.
But that’s where things took another turn.
I didn’t recognize these messages. Unknown names and numbers, asking me to call them back. One begged me to “reconsider”. Another sent me an address and a name. All kinds of strange, even coded, messages. Also; bank accounts. Payments.

That made me pause. I had no idea who these people were, or what they wanted from me. Had they gotten the wrong number?
I remember my second bag. I’d only brought the one, which I’d stashed away in my bathroom. I hadn’t opened it since that night. And the second bag, well… I still hadn’t talked to the police about it. But I decided that before I did anything else, I ought to at least unpack what little I’d brought. Even though it might be stained with blood, or worse. I couldn’t bear the thought of it.
But opening the bag, well… there was nothing of the sort in it.
It was my bag. I was certain of it. But there were no clothes or keepsakes. Instead, it had syringes wrapped in leather casings. Little clear vials; unmarked. Sheets of plastic, bags, duct tape, and knives. Several knives, of various sizes. All sharpened to perfection.

I picked one up. It fit perfectly into my hand, as if made for me.
Looking up at the bathroom mirror, there was something about the image looking back at me that I couldn’t recognize. While I could feel a frown forming on my brow, the face looking at me had a creeping smirk.
And I saw it blink.

That was only the beginning.
The police didn’t have my second bag. There had never been a second bag. There was only that one bag, and I couldn’t recognize a thing in it.
Even stranger, I couldn’t get in touch with anyone I knew. All numbers seemed to be out of commission. My parents, my sister, my friends… none of them. I couldn’t call them or find their social media profiles.
In my bag, there was a wallet. Several fake IDs, and thousands of dollars in cash.
I couldn’t recognize the president on the bill.

With every revelation, the smirk on my mirror image deepened. It would tilt its head the other way. It would look up and down; observing me. I’d raise my hand towards it, and it wouldn’t return the gesture.
Once, when I was in the bathroom, the bulb went out. I was standing there, fresh out of the shower, in complete darkness. I wrapped my cold towel around me, and I heard something. It sounded like a distant echo of my own voice, as if spoken from the other side of a window.
“…closer,” it whispered.
I didn’t say anything. I just held my breath, and listened.
“…I’m lost,” it continued. “…coming home.”
A finger brushed against my hair. I recoiled, and so did something else. I heard footsteps, moving away. As I opened the bathroom door and let some light in, the mirror image was nothing out of the ordinary. But somewhere out there, in the dark, I heard waning footsteps.

With every message I received, it was becoming increasingly clear that people were expecting something of me. That I’d move somewhere, meet someone, do something. I was asked about my equipment, about places and times. There were also a handful of threats from people expressing disappointment.
There was a knock on the door once. Another time, I saw a car slowing down to watch me through the kitchen window. There were mysterious phone calls at night. And whenever I stepped into a dark room, I’d stay clear of mirrors. If I stepped too close, I could hear something moving in there. Footsteps. Irregular breaths.
Sometimes, I’d feel the warmth of something reaching for me. Skin, just inches away.
Then, a hasty retreat.

I decided to retrace my steps. After all, Noah Ayton had been a family man before we swerved off that road. But what the hell had I been? Maybe he wasn’t the only one who’d changed.
I rented a car and took to the highway. I was having trouble navigating, ending up down a couple of roads I wasn’t supposed to. When I finally began to recognize where I was meant to go, the sun was already setting. I didn’t care. I was ready to drive through the night, if need be.
The first rain spatter came as soon as the sun set. The wind was picking up. I didn’t dare to look in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t want to think about what I might see.

I don’t know how long I drove. After a while, I stopped seeing other cars on the road.
Then, a shadow. Someone in the middle of the road. A boy?

I stepped on the breaks. A couple of moths thumped against my windshield as my car came to a full stop. I caught a glance at a side-view mirror, only to see a hand reaching out. I blinked it away.
I got out of the car, looking back down the road. I could still see the silhouette of a boy, walking away. Just like that night when the bus swerved off the road. This had to be connected; it just had to. I left my car running by the side of the road.
“Wait!” I called out. “Hold on!”
He didn’t stop. I was catching up, but as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one.

As I got closer, other figures emerged from the rain. Some of them looked like me. Others only held a vague resemblance. A select few were identical.
Further out, there were other figures. Some impossibly tall, others barely even human.
We all looked at one another; our heads turning in unison. Left. Right. Left. Like a ripple of thought, forcing us all to do the same. A collective impulse.

“I want my knives back.”
A voice breaking through the rain. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. I’d seen her in the mirror dozens of times by now. But this time, her voice was unhindered. There was no mirror in the way. I could feel her staring at me.
We were all spread out in a circle around the mysterious boy. A sort of beacon we’d all gathered around. And the closer we got, the stranger things became.
I lost track of time. I could barely feel the weight of my heartbeats as they quickened and slowed seemingly at random. The wind picked up, then disappeared, then reappeared. Rain, to snow, to hail, to summer sun. In one blink of an eye, the world was on fire. In another, we were standing in oncoming traffic; cars throwing themselves off the road to avoid us. In one place, the stars were gone and the ground was nothing but black sand.
In so many places, there was nothing left. No life. No sky. Nothing.

It was terrifying. I wanted to turn around to run, but I couldn’t trust the figure to my side not to take advantage. Instead, I stopped. A few moved closer, only to dissipate or be changed forever. One sprouted a third arm. Another was dragged into the dark by an unseen force. One fell to the ground, stretched, and bent like hot metal. Screams, cries, and hysterical laughter.
Slowly, the boy moved away. And with every step he took, I could feel my world slowing down. By the time I could feel the rain on my skin again, there was a hand on my shoulder.
I was grabbed, spun around, and pushed. In front of me; my twisted mirror image.
“Go home,” it hissed. “I’m done with this place.”

A push. Shadows growing distant, and the rain growing stronger.
A different rain.

There was an unknown car waiting by the side of the road. One more neatly parked. Similar to the one I’d used, but not the same. Going through the glovebox, I recognized several items. Looking in the back seat, there were two familiar bags.
I realized what had happened. I’d been gone, and now I’d returned.

I have been back here for quite some time now. Here, where Noah Ayton is an ordinary family man without any articles mentioning his name. I settled into my new place, and eventually got a new job. Got back in touch with my family and friends. I started to recognize the faces on my dollar bills again.
But a few things have happened. No one has seen my ex for a while. There was a string of disappearances around the area where I used to live, back in Cleveland. I don’t like to think about what has happened there. Am I responsible? If not, who is?
I’m not sure what happened that night. Not really. I think we got too close to something we shouldn’t, and what little sense we make of this world got mixed-up.
I can’t help but to look a little longer at mirrors. I lean my ear in to listen, making sure I don’t hear anything. I turn my head back and forth, making sure the image follows. So far, it does. But I sometimes get the sense that it doesn’t. Maybe in the dark, when I can’t look as closely.

If you find yourself near a strange sunflower field, keep your eyes on the road. Slow down.
And if you do get a little too close, watch your surroundings. Check your bills.
And in more ways than one – know your place.

I have locs (had them for 3 years) and I always pull and twirl them whenever I’m excited, anxious, in deep thought or trying to think of what to say. I also touch my earlobes when I feel these same emotions, but now that I have locs I pull my hair as well. Sometimes I may not like the tightness or texture of my locs when I pull or twist them and may want to cut them off sometimes but I also love my hair. It’s like my crown and I wouldn’t want any other hairstyle. I rely on my mom to retwist my hair (I’m not very good at retwisting my locs) and I often let my hair get dry weeks after getting them retwisted. I was wondering if anyone else touches and pulls their hair when they are feeling these emotions (especially if they have locs or braids). I’d be happy to hear from you 🙂.

My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
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• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
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• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
​

• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
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• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
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• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.