Highmark Provisions - PurpleMilk
I got this 1/8th a WHILE ago and made this review lol. I have a tiny bit of the bud left I think so I'll smoke some while I'm typing the final draft up and update if I can. If I post updates that differ from the original notes then I'll make sure to point it out. Thanks everyone!
This bud looks so good. The eighth is pretty much one bud. It came with one other tiny like .1 nug lol. It's fresh, it doesn't crumble or turn to dust when squeezed. Nice and fresh and moist. Dense and not super sticky.
Smell - smell is skunky and sweet and a little fruity. Breaking it up just releases more of the same aroma but it's really good. The name kinda is true lol it's a skunky fruity creamy sweet smell. Very dank but also fruity at the same time. Definitely more of a berryish fruit smell but there is a tiny but of citrus in there 5oo so it's almos5 like a cereal of fruit loops or pebbles type of smell because of the sweetness and creaminess combining with the fruitiness of the strain. Skunky/sweet/fruity/creamy
Smoking - taste is sweet and creamy smoke. Berry taste and earthiness as well. Earthy/fruity/sweet. The taste is very creamy and good. Sweet Earthy fruity and creamy taste.
Highmark was good as always. Can't wait to try some of their newer strains I've been seeing around! Let me know if you have any other recommendations! Thanks everyone :)
8.717/10.000

Hey guys
Since we are a heavy medical sub, I thought we should have a couple of placeholders where people could add their strain selections in the LEGAL canadian market, specifically to combat INSOMNIA.
I will start
Truro - Sleeping with the Stars
1964 - Death Bubba
RCS - Grand Daddy Purple (GDP)
Royal Cannabis Supply Co's - Pink Rockstar (Good strain, recent batch is a bit low in THC however)
Greenman Acres - Mother of Berries
Eastcann - Poison OG
Any Pink Kush but I REALLY like Coast Mountain Cannabis' Pemberton Pink most
What are yours?
Tx

8 March, 1608
The patient had been mostly unconscious for nearly a full day, his breathing becoming more and more laboured. Heart rate was rather accelerated, though not to enough to be deeply worrying. Appetite was, of course, weak; only some broth and milk-ice had passed the young King's lips the previous morning. There was no fever—if anything he was perhaps too cool, in spite of the well-stoked fire and many blankets—and light perspiration. Urination and defecation were sparse, given the depressed appetite.
Just as Dr. Heilig went to again check the King's pulse, the doors of the bedchamber opened quickly, and Lord Mircescu entered, his daughter in tow. The young lady carried a bundle in her arms that Dr. Heilig well knew to be the crown prince, born in the afternoon two days previously.
Lord Mircescu brushed past and went to the bedside, kneeling and taking the King's hand.
"Majesty. Your Majesty? Vladuț?"
There was a hint of consciousness, a tightening around the patient's eyelids and twitching of the muscles around the jaw, but no other response. Standing again, Lord Mircescu went to his daughter and collected the infant in her arms.
"My lord," Dr. Heilig said, "I hope you do not intend..."
"I intend to show the prince to his father," Mircescu hissed, and again stepped past the doctor.
For some days now they had kept the patient sitting up in bed, propped with a great many cushions and pillows. This eased the breathing somewhat, particularly when alternated each hour and a half or so with helping the patient to lean forward across a rolled blanket. Currently the patient was upright, and Lord Mircescu shoved one of the cushions askew to guide the body into an ever-so-slightly reclined position.
Mihai Mircescu rushed into the chamber, Ileana behind him. He barely registered the doctor near the bed, or the apprentice and assistant in the corner; for Mihai, there was only the sight of his dear young King.
The boy was sitting up in the bed, though he was clearly in some degree asleep or otherwise unaware. Mihai went to him, kneeling and taking the poor, pale, clammy hand.
"Majesty. Your Majesty?"
No response, and so he spoke again, he voice crackling with suppressed tears.
"Vladuț?"
The King's eyelids fluttered slightly, and he seemed to try and close his mouth, perhaps to shut in the horrible gurgling rasps of his breath. That was enough sign to know he would be aware of what followed.
Mihai went and took the little crown prince in his arms, and then the doctor at last drew his attention.
"My lord, I hope you do not intend..."
"I intend to show the prince to his father!"
Moving past the man, Mihai carried the baby to the bedside and shift some of the cushions so the King was closer to lying back, though he was still in actuality sitting up.
Ileana's heart was full of fear and prayers as she followed the father to the King's chamber. She had known Vlad all of their lives, had been his playfellow and friend and even protector.
Now, there was no way for her to protect him from the illness that had been stealing him away for all of those years.
She thought of the young Queen, back in the Purple Room, lying still and sore after so recently giving birth. The poor young Queen, so recently and mother and so soon to be a widow.
She would protect the Queen, and the little Prince, as she had always tried to protect Vlad.
In the King's chamber, Ileana tried not to look at the rasping, skeletal figure on the bed. It tore at her not to look on her old friend, her King, but she wished to remember him as he had been. Never had Vlad been very healthy, but once he had seemed stronger, had been a smiling, joyful figure.
After a moment, her eyes closed in prayer, she felt her father lift the Crown Prince from her arms, heard him exchange some words with someone, and then she turned her back on the whole scene.
She opened her eyes only to gaze down at the carpet and let her tears fall.
Vlad did not know if it was very late, or very early, or no time in particular. His head swam, full of darkness and dreams and threads of thought that were impossible to catch. His mind always was so lost lately. It was so hard to breathe, and to think, and to be.
Somewhere, a great distance away, someone called to him.
"Vladuț?"
He tried to open his eyes, to call out to the person, for he was very lonely here in the dark in his own head, but it was so hard to move and to breathe.
He missed Tata, who always could help him breathe again. But Tata was gone a long time ago now. Maybe a thousand years.
Someone shouted, and Vlad turned his head a little. He hated fighting and arguments.
Then someone moved him, only a little, and he was not sitting up so much.
A weight settled on his chest—not the usual, always weight of fighting to find breath, but some small, warm, soft weight. He was aware a little of a fragrance like the sweetness of warm milk, and then a voice, familiar and beloved, was near his ear.
"You have a son, your Majesty," Lord Mircescu whispered. "A perfect son."
A son? His son? Yes, Juliana had been close to having the baby, last he remembered. Was she all right, his sweet wife? Was she safe?
Straining, Vlad opened his eyes a little as he felt his hands moved over his chest. They settled on a silky, lumpy something, and when he flicked his gaze down, he saw a puff of fine dark hair poking out from the folds of a bundled blanket.
"Mm-my ssson?" Vlad managed.
"Yes, Majesty," Mircescu said. "Your son. Your Crown Prince."
Vlad felt as though his heart, indeed his very soul, soared in that moment to the heavens. He had known he would live to see his son. He had sworn it to himself and to the unborn and to God.
"Hhh... I k-kept... Kept my promise," he sighed, and willed his right hand to gently pat his infant son's back three times.
By Blood Ascended Chronological Listing

Hi. So about three weeks ago I noticed my upper eyelid on the right side was slightly hooded, but I assumed it was nothing. A couple days later I woke up to a lump under the skin of my right upper eyelid just bleow the outside of the brow. I believe it could be my lacrimal gland.
It’s been getting larger and firmer. It’s more swollen when I wake up and as the day goes on I start getting headaches and blurry vision. The headaches are usually around the right eye and in the back of my head. The blurry vision happens in BOTH eyes, one at a time, randomly for 10-15 seconds and worsens as the day goes on as well with the left eye having double vision occasionally. I also have a feeling of something being in my eye for a few seconds occasionally in the right eye.
My guess is the issues with my left eye vision are caused my eye strain since the right one has the lump. But I have no clue really.
My eye doctor ruled out a stye or chalazion but did say I have mild blepharitis. She referred me to an ophthalmologist but they are booked two months out.
I am also getting nauseated and feeling unbalanced at times.
Any ideas of what this could be? When I lift my eyelid the bump kind of goes toward my eye and pops out. It’s lumpy and veiny and red with a purple spot.

Hi guys!
Sharing my experience.
We(Me & my husband) had a train from Yeshwantpur to Kacheguda (Vandebharat) at 2:45 PM
We were staying at a relatives house in Whitefield. We decided to go by metro to railway station. We are from Hyderabad, we use metro for our everyday commute to office.
We reached Whitefield metro station at 1:10 PM. I thought to take the ticket at the counter ( in hindsight, I shouldn't have done that). The queue was long and slow moving. We finally got our tickets and reached platform around 1:25 PM. The train arrived at 1:26PM but we weren't allowed to enter as cleaning was in progress. I guess as this is the terminal station, they clean the train. ( Something that isn't seen in Hyd metro). The train started at 1:30.PM.
I must say that the number of stations in Bengaluru metro are far more than Hyd metro. We should have calculated all of this because at nearly 2:30 PM we were at Majestic. Luckily we got the green line train quickly and reached Yeshwantpur metro station at 2:38 PM.
There was a long queue at exit and we cut the line to get ahead but we could not exit as the slot to deposit the metro coin was stuck. At this point, I was thinking of alternatives to reach Hyd. I also regretted of not buying a UPI ticket. Finally a staff member came and removed a stuck coin. Now the time was 2:41 PM.
We ran as fast as we could. The train was at PF no.1 so we had to climb the foot over bridge. My husband was ahead of me and asked me to catch up with him. With heavy breathing and strained legs, I reached PF no. 1 and entered the nearest coach at 2:44 PM.
I took few deep breaths and there was a announcement of 'Doors closing'. Phew!
Personally I felt purple line to be slower. It was halting at the stations for a longer time. Green line was faster.
That was my first experience with Bengaluru metro today!

First Previous Next
*Knock* *Knock*
A soft knock gently woke me up from my dreamless slumber. When I opened my eyes, I was met with a pitch black expanse. I noted that the retina-destroying light bulb must have been turned off at some point. Feeling around, I could feel my body was less sore then it was the previous, what I’ve taken to calling sleep cycles, as it didn’t feel quite right to call anything night or day anymore.
Still, though, I could feel a distinct pang of pain that shot through me every time I tried to perform an action more complex than raising my right hand, while doing anything with my left was completely out of the picture. With apprehension, I crossed my right arm across my body to gently grope around my left in an attempt to find the part that was actually broken, but it was to no avail, as all I achieved in doing so was hurting myself.
*Knock* *Knock*
Oh right, the door. Were they waiting for me to allow them in? In that case, this definitely isn’t Guard.
“You can come in.” I yelled hesitantly.
The door flew open at such speed that I wouldn't be surprised if the door fell off its space hinges. In the doorway, a figure stood. I couldn’t quite identify their features, but their silhouette was enough to identify the fact they weren’t too tall, by space standards, of course. They still appeared to be easily 6 foot, but at this point I could barely even consider that height tall. No, what actually grabbed my attention was the several appendages that were attached to the top of their head, and that were currently freely swaying in the wind, like seaweed in the ocean. One was currently wrapped around the door knob, clueing me into the fact they were also completely autonomous. Honestly, they reminded me a lot of… tentacles. Shit.
“S-Sorry.” Their voice and movement was shaky and erratic. They walked inside the room before quickly closing the door behind them, their features now much more visible, including the dark yellow coat and pitch black pants they wore. The gray skin across their slightly, to be nice I’ll just say chubby, body was the first notable feature. The second was the feathery gills almost identical to those of axolotl’s on the side of their head. Their face was soft, like the rest of the body, with a giant pair of pink, egg-shaped eyes that hadn't yet left the floor. Their bottom and top lip were not long enough to connect, leading to their mouth being permanently open. Their cone shaped head started pointed at the chin area, and widened out until it was big enough to accommodate the multitude of appendages on their head. They truly looked like an evolved axolotl, sans tail. “I’ve been working out recently, g-guess I don’t know my own strengths anymore.” They nervously chuckled while rubbing their webbed hands together.
“Uh, it’s alright. I mean, it’s not my door so I don’t mind.” I said in an attempt to comfort them. “No shame in working out. It’s clearly effective, right?” At this, the feathery gills adorning their head pulsed slightly in a pink light, before quickly returning to their non-luminescent state. For the first time since they came into the room, they looked at me.
“A-are you the Hum’un.”
“Who are you?” I tried not to be rude, as so far they had given me no reason to be, but it was also imperative I didn’t let my guard down. Better safe than sorry.
“Doctor!” They practically yelled, before seemingly becoming embarrassed. “Sorry, I’m sorry. Doctor, a-as in, that’s wh-what I am. For you. That is.” Christ, and I thought I was nervous.
“What would a doctor of a different species do for me? We don't exactly share the same body.” I tried to not be confrontational, but at the same time, it was a real concern that I knew might impede any help I could receive.
“N-no worries, I’m no regular physician, I’m a trained interspecies specialist, specifically employed to help with whatever ailments might have befallen you. I have certifications in 7 different medical departments, over 8 polar cycles in non-primary education, have treated all sorts of species throughout the galaxy, almost-” I tuned out their accomplishments by this point, letting the ramblings just wash over me. They. I’ve just been saying they as a placeholder until I could figure out their gender, but maybe it was silly to assume an alien would always be male or female, especially considering this probably wasn’t even a mammal, judging by their aquatic look and the fact they lacked any mammary tissue. I mean, so do I, but… whatever. They would probably be fine. “Isn’t that impressive?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah it is. Great job.” I gave a reassuring smile that they appeared to have appreciated. “So, do we begin now, or?” I cut myself off to give them an opening to talk, as it didn’t seem in their nature to have the confidence to initiate.
“Y-yes, of course.” They walked up to the side of my bed before continuing. “I have been tasked with going over any injuries you may have sustained during your last mission. Is this correct?”
“I was hurt pretty bad, yes.”
“Great! Not because you were hurt, of course, just as in, you know.” The gills pulsated again.
“Calm down, I get it.”
“Mhm, of course.” They looked around before continuing. “Before we begin, mind answering a couple survey questions? It won't take long.”
“Questions? Really?” My patience for any sort of questions had run thin after yesterday's fiasco, and it wasn’t something I wanted repeated.
“J-just a couple regarding who you are. It will help me treat you b-better.”
“Fine.”
“Perfect!” They ruffled through coat pockets using the appendages on their head before pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. “Firstly, are you a mammal? Yes or no.”
“Yes.” They emerged a small circle shaped object from their pocket before gliding it gently across the paper, leaving a symbol containing a large circle on the outside with different sized circles on the inside..
“Second, what is your gender?”
“Male.” Again, the object gently flew across the paper.
“Thirdly, does your blood contain any chemicals?”
“Mainly copper, but also some other metals like iron.” I explained. I hoped they wouldn’t ask any questions about my anatomy more complex than that, as my limited biology knowledge wouldn’t get me very far. “Also oxygen. A lot of oxygen.” With one last swipe on the paper, they folded the paper back up before stuffing it back into a pocket.
“Thank you so much for cooperating! You know, you’re nowhere near as aggressive as they said you would be.” The doctor spoke absentmindedly as the appendages began to pull out instruments from their pockets.
“Really? They labeled me as “aggressive?” Maybe if they didn’t try to tear me down at every opportunity, I wouldn’t have a reason to be “aggressive.” Have they ever thought about that?” I steadily raised my voice, making sure that anyone outside could hear me.
“No! Th-that's not it at all. They just implied it because injured animals are usually more aggressive. That’s all!” They sputtered in an attempt to reassure me.
“Animal? Fucking animal?” I muttered incredulously. That implication made me fume. “I’m not some stupid animal that broke its paw; some animal that would die in the wilderness without aid. If I was left in that forest, guess what? I would have found a way to survive. My species was built to survive.” In an attempt to show the doctor what I meant, I decided, for the first time since I was getting knocked around by drones, to move on my legs. I carelessly moved my legs off the bed before gaining enough ambition to jump off.
“Y-You really shouldn’t do that!” The doctor warned, taking a step back to avoid my wake. As I was too focused trying to grow accustomed to the weakness in my legs, I ignored them. I couldn’t stand on my own, instead opting to use the support of the bedside desk as support. Whether this was because I hadn’t used my legs in over a day, or because of any sort of injuries I may have sustained, I wasn’t sure, but ultimately it didn’t matter, as the result was still the same. “Please, sit back-”
“SHUT UP!” They jumped back, almost falling over in the process. Damn it, I didn’t mean to yell, it was just the strain I was putting on myself that made it hard to regulate my volume. Still, it was obvious what they were implying through their facade of “concern.” “I can, ugh, I can do this, back off!” I swung my arm forward for no real reason. They were too far away to hit, being more off a signal to not get near. I took another step.”
“Please, don’t come any closer.” Their voice was soft but at the same time obviously urgent. “You’ll get yourself hur-”
“That’s what you think.” I took another step. “You think you already know me.” Another step. Unfiltered resentment spilled out of me as I continued to move forward, despite the pain in my legs. “You don’t know anything about me. You, no, they all think they know what makes me tick. How to keep me down.”
“Don’t take another step.” Their appendages going wild, each either wrapping around themself for protection, or sticking forward at me. “I-I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Try it.”
“W-what?”
“Try it. Try to hurt me. You lay even a single one of those tentacles on me, I will rip each one off your stout head, Axolotl.” With one final step, I was now far enough away to no longer reach the desk, but even without it, I stood. “So try it, because you have no idea what I’m cap-AGHHHH!” Before I could react, an invisible stream of electricity shot out from a device one of the appendages was holding, sending bolts of pure lightning through my veins.
The sudden pain was intense enough to make me blackout for a couple of seconds. Even after, my vision was still blurry, and all I could hear was a piercing ring. I could feel my legs give out from under me as I fruitlessly swung my arms in all directions to find something for support. This was unsuccessful, and in a moment, I was off my feet and cascading to the ground. I closed my eyes and braced myself for impact, for the feeling of smashing my already broken arm into the ground, but that feeling never came. Instead, I felt multiple firm, long limbs brace around my waist, my legs, and across my chest, keeping me upright.
My brain was too fried to be confused, to fight back, so instead I leaned into the appendages. They didn’t wrap around me tightly, just enough to keep me supported. They slithered across my surface, trying to find crooks in my body for better leverage, or so I assumed. Eventually, they found some appropriate spots to wrap around for the best support. It was comfortable for me. So comfortable, in fact, I didn’t even notice my feet leave the ground.
When I did, I didn’t even have the energy to react,simply going limp in their grasp. I was in the air for what felt like an eternity, which, in reality, was probably 30 seconds at most. I was enveloped by the feeling of my cushy bed. I was pressed into it with more force than was suitable, though I suppose it was a subliminal message to me that I shouldn’t try to leave it. The appendages untangled from my body and soon, all I could see, hear, and process was a faint ringing in my ear and blurred vision that left me in no position to even try and speak.
This lasted for several minutes as I was stuck between what felt like two planes of reality. It was a disorienting mess of stimuli that I had no way of understanding in the state I was in, like how seizures are described. Was I having a seizure?
Several more moments passed, and right as I started to consider that option seriously, my vision slowly began restoring itself around the edges. So did any physical sensation outside of the after shock, shortly afterward. My tongue still felt heavy in my mouth, though, and the taste of copper still lingered, similar to the taste of a bag of electrified pennies shoved down my throat.
That’s just about when I finally heard them again.
“-and I know I shouldn’t have but I got scared and again I’m sorry I didn’t know it was on full charge and I should have checked but also I should have never used it because I was capable of stopping you without it but I was scared and I was in no authority to use it and I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry-”
I attempted a response to the ramblings that had been going on for however long, but all that came out was a bemused grunt followed by a coughing fit. It wasn’t very effective in communicating anything, not even being loud enough to get their attention. So I tried again. “Sss.”
They jumped back at the loud hissing sound. “A-a-are you okay?”
“Ss-shut up.” I practically gurgled out from the depths of my throat. “You talk too much.”
“O-oh th-thank goodness you’re ok. I’m so sorry about this. I shouldn’t have shot the Tuca’p, it was brazzen and unprofessional of me. I should have done something, anything other then-”
“Shut up.” Their expression dropped. “Quit making so many excuses, you don’t need any. I was being a dick to you, which you didn’t deserve. You were only reciting what they said. I shouldn’t have taken that out on you.” Despite everything, I’m glad I never lost the ability to find humor in a facial expression, because the one I was witnessing was priceless. I would have laughed if I’d remembered. “You know, you're not too bad.”
“I-I don’t-I’m not sure what it is-excuse me, I don’t… Thank you.” Their gills flushed a vibrant hue of pink light, filling the entire room for only a moment. “Thank you.”
I picked myself up from the groove in the bed. “Why were you here again?”
“Oh, right!” Instantly, the appendages shot in all directions, some grabbing tools from their pockets, off the desk, while two latched under my arms, and another around my waist. “Is this alright?”
“Sure.”
“Ok, perfect!” They got closer to me, really close, actually, and brought the tools along. “Now, firstly, I’m going to gently move your limbs, and you’re going to tell me if anything hurts, ok?”
“Understood.” Without further warning, the appendages wrapped around the base of my arm next to the shoulder and began to rhythmically shake them. Instantly, I felt a sharp pain in my left bicep. “Fuck.”
“Where?”
“Left. Left arm.”
“Can you use your right to show the afflicted area.” At this point, it was less of a question and more of a command. Without another word, I wriggled my right hand out of their grip and ran my fingers across the afflicted parts of my arm. This ended up consisting of the entirety of it from my shoulder to just before my hand. Damn, I must have really messed myself up.
“Right here.”
“Interesting.” The limbs suddenly left my arms and briefly went to my legs. “Anything?” They asked as they shook my legs firmly.
“No.”
“What about-” They cut themselves off while two appendages ran across my torso and body. As they went, they firmly pressed against me in another attempt to find any pain.
“I don’t think your going to find anything broken ther-shit!” The limbs immediately stopped at the point I made noise.
“Interesting.” They lightly pressed down on the spot, eliciting the same reaction from me.
“Mind telling me what's here?”
“As in bone structure? Well, on either side of my body I have 12 bones that wrap around the interior of myself. We call it a ribcage, ‘cause it’s like a cage.” It was weird to describe an aspect of the human body that is so ubiquitous that in any other circumstance, would not even require a second breath.
“From what I can feel,” they pressed down against the spot again for emphasis, “ It appears something is looser than the other bones around it. Is that normal?”
“No, I think I might have cracked a rib.”
“Will you heal on your own?”
“Aside from getting a limb chopped off, I can heal from just about anything given enough time.”
“Impressive.” They paused awkwardly like they were about to continue, but stopped before the words could leave their mouth, instead just hanging agape like a fish drowning in air. “”Y-you’re impressive.”
The last stutter made me realize how they were completely stutter-free for the entirety of the check-up. Turns out being good at a job brings out the confidence in someone. It was funny, ‘cause I could relate.
“I know.” I couldn’t help but give a smug smile. “Of course I know!”
“I’m glad.” From a coat pocket, they pulled out a small square with a sac full of a purple liquid on the back. On the front, small metal teeth lined the edges of the square, all of which protruded perfectly forward. “That being said, I have some medicine that will speed up the process. Now, if you’ll just stick out an arm.” The appendage slithered its way up the length of my arm and gripped tightly at the elbow. Without further pause, the strange square was pushed into my arm, and started to inject itself into my bloodstream.
The sensation was strange, feeling like an ice cold liquid was dumped directly into my veins. I flinched and yanked my arm back, the square unbothered by this sudden movement as it was completely dug into my arm.
“How is this going to help exactly?”
“The liquid should fuse with your blood cells and increase their proficiency. Y-You have blood cells, right?”
“Yes, I have blood cells. What doesn’t?”
“I don’t know, it's just you’re strange.”
“I know I am, a lot of people have been telling me that recently.” When the square was just about finished depositing the liquid, I yanked it out from my arm and threw it on the nearby desk. “A lot of people.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What was that?”
“I’m sorry The Council and their team haven't met your expectations of decency.” They spoke with a smooth tone that made it clear every word was carefully chosen. “And I’m sorry I contributed to that when I unintentionally disrespected you earlier. I never want anyone to feel that way. I know how it can feel.”
I didn’t respond, not because I understood them, or appreciated the apology, or the words that should have given me some sense of retribution, but because I had nothing to say. The words were phony, they rang hollow because I knew they had no worth whatsoever. What would I do with a sorry, and what did they even represent? That they cared? I think I could count the amount of people who have ever had genuine respect for me on one hand, and even then, that takes time. I have no reason to believe this one who I met 20 minutes ago had any reason to care, so I said nothing.
“W-well, I should be going now. I checked on all parts of your body, and judging by the amount of damage, you should be back up and running in barley a couple Anex’s, so I see no reason why you should worry.”
“Ok.” Their expression faltered, this time giving me no amusement. “Thanks.” I turned away from them, and proceeded to focus on the machines whirling next to me as a distraction until they left.
Finally, after a minute or so, I started to hear footsteps walk towards the door. Then, “You’re not what they say you are.”
“...”
“I know we just met, and I know we don’t know anything about each other but… I know you’re more than some aggressive fighter, more than what's under the surface.”
“...”
“I just… I just don’t believe they know that. Neither do you.” The door opened, signifying their exit. “By the way, I’ll deliver you some clothes next Anex.” And just like that, they were gone.
I didn’t understand that last statement for a minute, before looking down and suddenly remembering I was completely naked save for the crumpled blanket that lay on the floor. ‘Shit, have I been like this the entire time?’ The embarrassment that filled me was immense, and honestly made me laugh with how I didn’t notice. It was enough to, briefly, distract me from what they said to me.
I wanted to act like they had no effect on me, like with the apology, but for some reason I just couldn’t. The words clung to me, and I couldn’t help but ponder them. It was only when I reminded myself of the fact we had only briefly interacted, and that they had no knowledge of me as a person, that I threw the statement to the side to forget about. ‘First impressions are often misleading.’
They were interesting, that's for sure, but they quickly left my mind. What replaced it was the persistent thought that I was weak for rotting in this bed the past couple days. Sure I needed to heal, but by this point, it was plenty. I knew I needed to make myself feel better, and the only way I could was by proving those days of rest meant something. To prove this, I was going to walk.
I had already done it, but that was done for a different reason, and I wanted to prove it wasn’t a one time thing. So I scooted off the bed and with a deep breath, I put both legs on the ground. The immediate pain I felt made me question how I was even able to do it the first time. Still I didn’t let it deter me, and with one step in front of the other, I moved. I moved forward, not gracefully, not quickly, but I moved forward, like I was taught to do.
I touched the wall on the other side of the room and briefly rested against it for support, before walking back to the bed, then back to the wall, over, and over, and over again. The repetition showed it was worth it, showed that I was, in fact, a fighter.
‘Ha, shows what they know.’

In 260 it is heavily implied that Gojo is returning. This could be due to reverse cursed technique, but that seems a bit mundane to me. The entire fight between Gojo and Sukuna made it seem like Gojo was exhausting his ability to keep up RCT, so it feels weird that he'd come back due to that alone.
My theory is that Gojo could come back as a cursed spirit. Before you start saying that people killed by cursed jujutsu can't come back as cursed spirits, I have a few reasons why Gojo could still come back despite this. 1. Gojo wasn't actually killed by cursed energy. Plain and simple. Sukuna made the same mistake Toji did, and didn't actually destroy his head or anything. It's likely that Gojo simply bled out rapidly and died from being bisected. 2. Yes, the attack that killed him was made from cursed energy, BUT the world cutting slash doesn't target Gojo. It targeted the space he occupied, and the space behind him. As a result, it's possible the cursed energy never actually was imparted into Gojo's body, and instead it simply passed through him. 3. People can purge cursed energy from their bodies. Hakari showed that he could, as that's why he didn't die from Kashimo's electric cursed energy. It's explicitly said that he purged the cursed energy itself out through his nose. Gojo could have done the same thing if any cursed energy was still in his body, preventing his incarnation into a spirit.
What would Gojo incarnating as a cursed spirit mean? Pretty much everything. If he is turned into a spirit, he wouldn't have the ability to use reverse cursed energy anymore, meaning no more red or purple, BUT it also means he can heal himself with just regular cursed energy. No more strain on his brain when healing. With the six eyes, this means that his healing gets an even more ridiculous buff. Also, it seems that those who become cursed spirits have their innate technique expanded upon, or at least strengthened. Gojo could be coming back as a veritable contender for the strongest again.

Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road
But no sooner had Rene closed his lids than he was roused by the sound of cannon fire. The Amits! The Amits were scaling the walls!
“Man the barricades!” he shouted groggily, rolling out of his bunk and reaching for his gun. Then his eyes cleared and he saw Zildiz regarding him with a quizzical expression.
“What’s happening?” he cried as the muffled crump of ordinance echoed back and forth across the land, “What are they shooting at?”
Rene felt a swell of hope and pride in his chest. The Fleet had finally launched the grand offensive! No power on Arachnea could stop the triumphant march of humanity’s progress! They would carve out the new territories in quick succession, and all that remained for him to do was walk over to the nearest picket line and hand over his prisoner over questioning. A wave of patriotic fervor gripped him and whooped and whistled, cheering his brothers and sisters-in-arms onwards to victory.
“It’s the just the trees, you child,” Zildiz said irritably.
“Right, sure,” Rene scoffed, “The trees are shooting at us?”
“Gene edited Cucurbitaceae species,” she explained, “They were designed by the Vitalus to deal with this eventuality. They only propagate their seeds during bush fires. You are hearing the sound of them releasing their seed.”
Another detonation went off and made Rene cringe and look instinctively for cover.
“The flame gourd trees store their seeds in a hard shell filled with sugar-rich liquid that is its main source of nutrition, while also doubling as a natural fire retardant. When the shell reaches a certain internal temperature, it forcibly bursts open along its seams, scattering the seeds and simultaneously putting out the fires below. So you see, the Vitalus is already healing the damage that your Engine caused.”
Another bang rippled through the fog, followed by dozens more in quick succession. It sounded for all the world like a battery of howitzers firing a creeping barrage. The fog cleared up a little and he saw a distant hillock ringed by a line of smoldering orange that was advancing up its sides until it came to a stand of stunted trees whose boughs were heavy with large brown fruit. As the flames licked the lower branches, the fruit disappeared in cotton-ball puff detonations, smothering the earth in clouds of gaseous effluents. In the aftermath the entire area was soaked in foamy residue.
“You’re telling me that the Vitalus planted all these special trees?”
Zildiz offered him a deprecating smile, saying:
“It was those trees. Just as it was the fish we just ate, and the plankton in the water you swam in. It is the totality of life on Arachnea, and the sooner you acknowledge its mastery, the easier it will be to accept your fate.”
Rene considered what she’d said carefully. It was certainly food for thought. As primitive and naturalistic as the idea had sounded, Rene had to respect the evidence of his own eyes. By unleashing the Divine Engine, Rene had been the direct cause of a natural disaster, and no small one considering how it had followed him all the way from the ruins of Mound Euler. If the woman’s words were to be taken at face value, then this Vitalus had just reversed a literal force of nature. And from Zildiz’s bored tone, it apparently did such things on a regular basis.
From finding evidence of the intelligence of the Amit race, to uncovering of a mythic tool of the gods, Rene had experienced too many impossibilities in the past few days to be a cynic now. But he knew better than to abandon all skepticism, and took the concept to its logical conclusions by asking:
“If your god is so all-powerful, why hasn’t it seen fit to rescue you?”
“This marks a new chapter in the Great Game. The parameters have been altered. Those who can, shall prosper with the change. The rest will die, or serve the needs of their betters. All shall flow as it must.”
“That’s a pretty crummy way of looking at the world. What’s this Game you keep mentioning, and what’s so great about it?”
“Arachnea is a half-made world. It could have been a utopia once. The Betrayers destroyed it in a fit of jealousy, as with everything else they touched. Only the intervention of the Vitalus prevented total system death and corrected the runaway feedback loops. But the process of restoring the planet to conditions ideal for sentient life requires hundreds, if not thousands of years. Factors such as atmospheric composition, axial tilt, carbon and nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, ocean salinity and thermohaline circulation—all these and more must be finetuned, with the living systems of Arachnea themselves acting as the ultimate terraforming tool.”
“Hence, we exist in a transitionary period. During this period, the Vitalus shall allow nature to select the kindreds who shall be worthy of the paradise that is to come. Only those who can adapt to the changing conditions, husband their resources, and achieve total immersion within the All-In-One will earn their place in the world that shall be. A world without famine or war or disease, where the righteous will dwell in an eternal state of perfection that is of their own making.”
For once Rene had no snide witticisms with which to brush aside her barbarity. The sheer force of her belief and conviction surpassed even the most rabid zealots of the Chaplainage. The Fleet had met and absorbed many primitive cultures in the course of its reconquest of the surface world, from the bog-men of the Burning Marshes to the ice farmers of the mesas of Darood. Each tribe had had its own set of deities, but they all paled in comparison to those of Zildiz’s civilization, for the simple reason that her religion had something which they had all lacked: a basis in harsh, merciless fact. Fascinated, Rene quizzed her:
“Will this perfect world contain the Leapers?”
“Before we Gallivants are done, not a single drop of their blood will remain in the gene pool,” Zildiz said with perfect honesty.
“And could this perfect world contain the Fleet?” Rene said quietly.
Zildiz turned to face him. Her mouth twisted at the corners into a disturbing smile that never touched her eyes. Rene flinched and dropped his gaze, clearing his throat uncomfortably.
“We’ll see about that,” he finally muttered, more to convince himself that anything else.
“No, we won’t,” Zildiz replied, “You can’t hear them, can you?”
“Hear what?”
“Give it a moment…there! What about now?”
Rene strained his ears, but could make out nothing but the pop and bang of the flame gourds. After a moment, however, he began to discern a softer, more regular rhythm underneath the din, as of something hollow being hammered insistently.
“Drums,” he breathed, his veins turning to ice water.
“Leapers,” Zildiz said, confirming his guess, “And from the sound of it, all the tribes have mustered. I would tell you to make peace with your god, but the Vitalus has no place for you and your kind.”
“Gathering for what?” he demanded, annoyed by her nonchalant attitude. Zildiz pouted her lips and used them to point upwards at a region of the sky where the fog had thinned. Rene scanned the clouds and saw silver sheets of rain falling directly on the wildfire, which was clearly weakening. Then a smidgen of the suns shone through the roiling troposphere and for a moment Rene saw something that snatched his breath away.
Rainbows. Not one, or two, nor even several of them—it would have been more accurate to call it a wall of rainbows, as if the world had coyly lifted aside the curtain of paradise itself. The shimmering folds of the improbable fabric waved and flapped amid the powerful headwinds, hundreds of kilometers tall and wide and swelling like the bulge of a soap bubble, vivid purple and blue at its edges while the center faded to transparency.
A host of tiny black spots were clambering up and down the rainbow curtain like sailors on a ship’s rigging, weaving the pattern with their many arms even as they rode the wild thermals.
Leapers. Thousands of them, all working in concert as they marshalled the power of the rainstorm. Rene sat in awestruck silence as the threads of the rainbow curtain caught the downpour and funneled it into scores of places at once, drowning the worst of the wildfire and producing great columns of smoke wherever it poured.
Through it all the drums beat their incessant rhythm, a song that changed with the twisting motions of the curtain. Rene hypothesized that they were a communication system by which the Leapers coordinated their gargantuan efforts.
He wondered numbly if the Leapers had summoned the storm themselves by condensing it with their webs, or if they had simply taken advantage of the existing weather patterns. The question was purely academic; either way, their mastery of the elements was frightening and undeniable. Zildiz on the other hand was trying her best to see the high edge of the storm catcher, but her basic ocular organs had limited magnification. She didn’t have to see that far to know that a squadron of Gallivants were holding up the entire superstructure, working in concert with their most sworn enemies to serve the will of the All-In-One. That could only mean one thing: the Vitalus had called for a general truce. History was unfolding before her very eyes, but from here she was powerless to influence it.
The heavy rains would last several days, the smog even longer. Both of these factors would play hell with the reception of her magnetosynaptic organ. The god would also be preoccupied with measuring and repairing the damage, as well as dealing with the Divine Engine. Zildiz had no doubt in her mind that It would solve these problems and restore the precious equilibrium. But the more cogent question was if It would ever arrive in time to save her from the spawn of the Betrayers.
The spawn in question was in a state of shock from which it was already recovering.
“Alright,” Rene told her, “I’ll admit it. I’m impressed. No, scratch that. I’m utterly gobsmacked.”
“Do you see now the absolute futility of your struggle?” she asked.
“I didn’t say I was beaten,” Rene said, getting back on his feet and pulling his boots back on.
“So you mean to continue on your foolish errand?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Consider me properly motivated.”
Zildiz could not help but chortle at that, a rich and warm belly laugh that surprised even her.
“You are far too stupid to die, Fleet-man,” she decided, “I will observe your progress with great interest.”
“Oh, and by the way?” Zildiz added as if she were airing a casual piece of trivia, “Not all of the Leapers are working on the storm catcher up there. Others will be coming to herd the megafauna away from the destruction. In fact, I think I can hear them getting closer as we speak…”
Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road

We killed Joseph Glass for the first time on August 18th, 1999.
I knew he was a strange case since day one. Never seen a guy so happy to die before. It was like we were doing him a favor. He refused the automatic appeal. He refused to be seen by a chaplain. He just wanted it over with. It had only taken a little over a year, and it was already time for him to make his appointment with God.
He freaked me out, just passing by his cell. He was like our very own Hannibal Lector, the way he just stood there in the back of his cell like he’d been waiting for you. The lights always burned out in any cell he was in, and maintenance had gotten tired of fixing them. Not that he seemed to mind in the slightest. The darkness seemed to swallow his top half, and all I could see were the whites of his beady little eyes poking out of all that black.
Billy drummed his baton against the bars. “Up and at ‘em, cowpoke,” he called in that mocking tone. “Time finally come for you to pay what you owe, you sick son of a—”
“Billy.” Warden Taft silenced him with a word. “If you can’t act like a professional, you’re going to have to sit this one out.”
Billy paused… and licked his chapped lips. “Naw,” he muttered. “This a show I can’t miss.”
Glass seemed to tick Billy off more than any prisoner before him. He liked ‘em to at least pretend to feel sorry for what they’ve done, or act scared of what’s coming to ‘em. This one didn’t even have the common decency to shed a tear. He was as stone-faced as a statue, even while being marched to the chair. Billy liked to joke sometimes that we ought to take the guy out back with some car batteries and really put the fear of God into him, get him to cut out that stoic act. I think he was only half-joking.
After what this guy did to those girls… well, Billy has a daughter, so I guess it struck a chord.
We all watched him fry. The warden, his closest men. The thin-faced man representing the Commissioner of Corrections. The prison physician. The families of those poor girls. It couldn’t have gone more by the book. Only oddity I’d noticed at the time was that the stench of death never quite left the clothes I’d worn that day.
And then the next morning, we came into work to see the whites of those beady little eyes staring at us from the darkness again. “Good morning, sirs,” he said, just as he did every morning, in that airy, hoarse little voice.
I’ll admit it. I dropped everything I was carrying, stumbled back, stammered like a confused child. Hell, I almost screamed. “You… you’re not… y-you’re supposed to be…”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir.” He leaned in like he was trying to stare a hole through my chest. His tone almost sounded disappointed. “You never came for me. You promised me that yesterday would be the end, sir, but you never came. I waited all night long. Why did you lie to me?”
Me and Taft looked at eachother. We both had the exact same question on our minds. If Glass was still alive… who the hell did we roll into the morgue last night?
“Jesus Christ.” Taft gagged when he pulled back the cadaver cover, stumbling away. “It’s Billy.”
I looked. I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. And I’ll be forever haunted by the sight of my friend lying there on his back, mouth agape and cloudy eyes staring into the ceiling, open wide as if he’d spent his last moments in a state of terror.
The public never found out what happened. The cover up story was that poor Billy had been taken by cardiac arrest. Internally? It was the scandal to end all scandals. Worst case of incompetence and negligence in history, they called it. They brought the hammer down on anyone even tangentially involved. Me and Taft were out on our ears, and they would’ve prosecuted us too, but that would’ve required admitting it ever happened.
But I just could never wrap my head around it. Of those dozens of witnesses, not a single person noticed we were strapping a guard to the chair, not an inmate? It was impossible to the point of absurdity. Glass had been the man in that chair. I’d never been more certain of anything in my life.
Some months later, I noticed power flickering off all over the city one evening. It was brief, so I thought nothing of it. At least until I got a call from a familiar number the very next morning. “I understand you were one of the staff who regularly worked with one Joseph Glass. We would like to consult with you about an… evolving situation.”
“Oh?”
“At 7 PM yesterday, we attempted the execution of Joseph Glass for the second time.” There was a long pause, and when the voice returned, the professionalism had melted away, replaced with a baffled anxiety. “And, well… it, uh, it didn’t… it didn’t work.”
I blinked. “It didn’t… what?”
There came a long sigh. “Perhaps… it’d be best if you saw for yourself.”
And just like that, me and Taft had our jobs back.
Officially, Joseph Glass had been successfully executed on August 18th, 1999. Unofficially, they’d tried again six months later, just to tie up loose ends. This time, he hadn’t even had the courtesy to pretend to die. He just sat there on the chair, motionless and unaffected, while the CO who’d flipped the switch suddenly seized up and began to convulse, screaming and gnashing and wailing as electricity seared him beneath his skin, clawing at his chest until his eyes popped in his skull and rolled down his face like melted candle wax. All around him, lights flickering, machines bursting from pressure, electrical panels vomiting arcs of static. It was a mess.
The feds were crawling all over this case now, from a department I’ve never heard of. Something about investigating ‘preternatural activity’. They told me Glass was refusing to speak with anybody but the CO’s who’d once cared for him. Being walked into that interrogation room almost made me feel like I, myself, was a convict being marched to his execution.
Glass was staring at me when I walked in, like he’d been sat there, motionless, waiting for me. I expected nothing less. I took a shuddering breath as I sat across from him. I’d sat across from serial killers and psychos before and showed no hint of fear. But how could I not, now, sitting across from a man who can kill people without touching them? “Glass.”
“Officer Mendez.” His tone betrayed no emotion. “I had thought you’d abandoned me.”
I winced. “No. No, Glass, I’d just been… temporarily relieved. It’s… good to see you again. Would you like a glass of water?” I offered it to him. He didn’t even look at it. His eyes just bored into mine, relentless. “I… I’m here to ask you a few questions.”
Silence.
“Okay. Um… Glass, I need to know… how you killed Billy and Cramer.”
“I didn’t,” he replied. “It did.”
“It?”
“The thing standing behind you.”
I didn’t bother to turn around. I had enough experience with prisoners trying to trick me into looking the other way while they pulled off some half-baked escape plan. “Glass, please, let’s take this seriously,” I replied. “I’ve always treated you with respect, haven’t I? You’ve never had any problems with me.”
“Actually, I do. I have a problem with all of you.”
“Oh?”
“You here all believe that… death is a punishment.” There was the first hint of emotion I’d ever heard in his voice. “It’s not. It’s freedom — the only freedom. You promised me that gift. You promised me you’d let me die. You’ve given it to so many other prisoners, while leaving me behind. With all of your machines and your science and your knowledge… surely you can find a way, if anyone.”
My throat felt suddenly dry. I had to take a sip of the water myself, and hoped it would quell my burning nerves. “I… we’re… we’re trying our best, Glass. But you have to work with us. It may help if you told us… what, exactly, is preventing us from executing you?”
He moved for the first time. Leaning in, so slow as to be almost imperceptible. “It won’t let me die.”
And that’s when I felt a hand settle on my shoulder from behind.
Everything stopped. My lungs stopped inflating. I swear, my heart stopped beating, and my blood froze in place in my veins, and it all felt so cold. I could see the hand in the corner of my eyes, long and veiny and black. I could feel the breath on the back of my neck.
I’d once mocked the way deers froze in headlights. Now I understood. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even take a single breath. Even as my lungs began to cry out for air, and my vision blurred, and my thoughts melded together. All I could see was Joseph’s eyes staring into mine. Those infinite fathoms of darkness, that stygian sea that swirled and stormed and thundered in the blackness of his iris, and the eyes of things waiting a million leagues below the waters.
And I would have suffocated there, too terrified to even breathe, if those agents in black had not called off the interrogation then and come storming into the room.
Later, they showed me the tapes from the security camera. There’d been nothing behind me. Nothing placing its thin hand upon my shoulder. Nothing at all.
On May 7th, 2001, Glass was set to be executed for the third time — via hanging, or so I heard — in some government blacksite somewhere, far from prying eyes.
While it was set to happen, me and Taft were sharing glasses of scotch in his office, nominally to celebrate. Really, because we were scared. Taft always struck me as young at heart despite his years, but this was the first time the warden had ever looked truly, properly old. He watched the yard below as he had a drink. “Did I ever tell you why I chose this line of work, Mendez?”
I shook my head, and he sighed. “Back in `63, they found a woman’s body in the back seat of a burnt out car, in some state park near my neighborhood. A prostitute. One of her johns had… chopped her up. Burned all the evidence. And you know what got me, Mendez? Nobody cared. Nobody bothered to investigate. Who will notice one less hooker on the corner of 5th Avenue, right?”
“It… didn’t sit right with me. The way I see it, Mendez, every life matters. Even the ones we try and cast aside. Everybody’s got people who love them, and childhood memories, and all that. Everybody deserves justice. No matter who they were.” He set down his glass and looked me in the eyes. “So I joined the force. Got the case reopened. Found the guy. And I watched him fry. And I like to imagine she was there watching, too, as he burned.”
There was a tense moment. And then a chuckle. “Course, after that bullet to the hip in `71, I couldn’t walk the beat anymore. But I’ve been just as happy here. Watching justice be served… it makes me feel like there’s some kind of karmic order to the world. Good deeds and bad deeds get repaid in kind.”
It was clear there was something lurking beneath his words, some unspoken thesis. Eventually, with old, wrinkled, tired eyes, he said it. “I’ve thought about it, and… if Glass doesn’t die tonight, I’m finally going to retire, Mendez,” he confessed. “After what he did to those girls, what kind of… what kind of order can there be in a world, where a monster like that is just… beyond justice?”
I was shocked. Warden Taft always struck me as an unmoving fixture. What would we do without him? “He’ll die, sir,” I promised. “It’ll work this time. It has to.”
But he seemed deeply uncertain. With one last shuddering drink, he leaned forward. “His eyes.” He stared at my expression, as if desperate for me to understand, for me to know. “Those things… in his eyes. Haven’t you seen them?”
And at that moment, Taft was yanked up out of his chair.
It was so sudden, so inexplicable, I could barely register what I was witnessing. Some unseen force lifted him two or three feet above the ground, dangling him there. He choked, coughed and sputtered, desperate to gasp down air which would not come, and clawed at something around his neck which I could not see. He was hanging, I realized. And with wide, horrified eyes — the same as Billy’s had been — he silently begged me for help.
I sprang from my chair and wrapped my arms around his dangling legs. At first I tried to pull him down to the floor, but I realized it was only tightening the invisible noose around his neck. Then I tried lifting him as high as I could, which gave him some relief, but not much. Tears rolled down his face as it swelled and turned blue, and even though I could not see the noose, I could see the bruised purple skin where it had squeezed around his neck. All the while, I screamed myself hoarse. “Help! Somebody, please! Jesus Christ, we need help in here!” But nobody came.
And all of a sudden, some unseen forced seemed to sweep my feet out from under me.
I dropped like a bag of bricks, but I was so startled I maintained my grip around the warden’s legs. I fell and yanked him down with me, and his body suddenly jolted with a sickening crack.
It took me a while to manage the courage to look up at him. His neck had been stretched far too long, and his head was bent to the side at almost a 90 degree angle. Eyes wide, round and bloated tongue hanging from dry lips. And then whatever force had suspended him disappeared, and his body fell upon me while I screamed and screamed.
I came bursting from his office to find my coworkers casually chatting and working just outside. Somehow, despite all my screaming and begging while Taft was dying, none of them had heard a thing.
I took a page from Taft. I wanted out. We were dealing with something unholy here, something whose tendrils could reach any distance, and my life — who knows, maybe even my soul — was at hazard. But the agents in the sharp suits made one thing clear: if I refused to cooperate, well, I would make the perfect scapegoat for the murder of Warden Taft.
I was marched into the interrogation room to find a Joseph Glass that had abandoned all pretense of humanity. His eyes had darkened to a pure black. Or perhaps he had no eyes at all, only windows into some place of outer darkness. I was shaking like a leaf as I sat in front of him, feeling more like a prisoner than he was.
“M-m-mister… Glass.” No reply. I shuddered, trying to focus on my little piece of paper to distract myself from the blackness of his eyes. “I… I-I have some… questions I’m supposed to ask you. Is… is that okay?”
Silence. I take a deep breath. “How… old are you, Glass?” I thought it was just one of those basic questions. Conversation starters, really. I couldn’t have prepared myself for his answer.
“I am old, child.” His voice was nothing like I remembered. It was deep and low and rumbling, like there were multiple people speaking in unison, and all were equally ancient. “Older than you could possibly know. Older than this nation, and older even than the empire that once bore it.”
I had to fight the basic animal instinct to flee. Focus on the questions, I thought. “Why did you do… what you did to those girls?”
“Just so I could feel something again,” he whispered. “Anything.”
“Did you not feel the slightest bit of… guilt? Remorse?”
“You ask that… of me? Me, who has watched empires rise and fall?” He almost sounded amused. “Does time feel remorse? For time has killed far more than I. But mankind is like the hydra. All I’ve killed will be replaced by, essentially, identical stock, and in greater numbers. And then they will die and be replaced. And so the cycle will continue forever.”
“Did you expect me to pity them for being given the death I, myself, covet? Only the dead are given leave of the cycle. It is a blessing.” And suddenly, he stood from his chair, as if he’d never been restrained at all. “A blessing you promised me, Officer Mendes.”
I stared up at him in disbelief. “What — how did you —“ But I couldn’t even stammer a sentence out before he was upon me, crawling over the table with the eerie grace of a spider.
These were no longer the imperceptible hints of emotions I’d come to expect. It was like a switch had been flipped. Tears streamed down his cheeks, snarling with genuine rage, hurt, betrayal. And beneath those black seas in his eyes, all the things that haunted the fathoms below were rising to the surface. “You owe me a death. Make good on your word. Pay your debt.”
I cried out and recoiled from his every touch with disgust, but he was stronger than he looked. I couldn’t worm my way out of his impossible grip. “I won’t! Get off of me, you sick bastard!”
“Do it! Pay me what you owe!” It was like a thousand different voices screaming in my ear. Straining and weeping, I locked my hands around his neck and pressed my thumbs against his throat, trying to strangle him. But instead, I could just feel that grip upon my own neck, squeezing the life out of myself as my lungs burned for air. Yet I kept pressing harder and harder, as if hoping I might somehow break through whatever unholy force was protecting him.
And then those terrible hands grasped my shoulders again, and I was paralyzed by a terror that could be called nothing but ancient and primal. Like the thing standing behind me was the same force that had kept my ancestors huddled terrified in their caves a hundred thousand years ago, and every one of those voices was crying out to me through my very blood. And it pulled me from my chair, threw me as though I were weightless… and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the infirmary.
Once more, none of this was captured on the security camera. In the footage, I just enter the room and have a seat with strange, almost robotic movements. And then the both us just sit there, staring at eachother, without speaking, without moving, without blinking. For an hour.
After this, Joseph Glass entered a catatonic state, and from then on refused to converse with even me. Now that my usefulness had ended, the agents discarded me like yesterday’s trash. Don’t even seem to care if I tell anybody. Who would believe me?
I thought I’d gotten lucky. That my nightmare was over. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Go sorting through any public records, and you won’t find a single mention of the name Joseph Glass. They’ve squirreled him away in that off-the-books blacksite and scrubbed away every other trace of him. I’d say he’d been unpersoned, if indeed he could ever be called a person at all. But they’re still trying every execution method in the book. I don’t know quite why. Maybe it’s for research. I’m sure the US military would love to find the secret to making its men as unkillable as Glass. And besides, they’re not the ones who have to deal with the consequences.
On June 3rd, 2005, they tried a firing squad. I know this because me and my wife were out on our second honeymoon, slow dancing by the lake at night to our favorite song, when I felt a wetness against my chest. I looked down to see her eyes as gray and dull as foggy glass, and her chest shredded to swiss cheese by rounds that made no sound.
On December 23rd, 2012, they tried lethal injection. That was the day they found my son’s car wrapped around a tree, and baffled coroners discovered that he was dead before the accident even occurred, his bloodstream polluted with Pavulon and potassium chloride.
It’s been years since I’ve isolated myself from everyone I knew, hermiting away in this cabin out in the middle of nowhere, and yet the stench of death still follows me. Just a couple years ago, I found a news report mentioning my nephew. Apparently, he’d been found completely exsanguinated, his veins emptied utterly despite no signs of a struggle. God knows what kind of arcane methods of execution they’re trying by now.
He’s not going to let me walk away from this. Not while I still owe him a debt.
But I’ve been doing some research, too. Research into those untold legions of things I witnessed staring up from that blackened sea in Glass’s eyes. I’ve learned things men were not meant to know. Practiced rites, assembled tools, ingredients. And I think I know where they’re keeping him. Even though they blindfolded me, I counted the second between every turn on our way to the blacksite, and I’ve since spent weeks watching the place, cataloging every entry point.
Maybe I’m slipping into madness. Or maybe I’ve truly found the way to put an end to the horror. To finally give this monster the justice that Taft would have wanted for him. Joseph Glass had been right about one, single thing: I have to pay what I owe.
Even if it kills me.

I believed in fairies as a kid. More than believed in them. I think something terrible happened to me, and I've just buried it until now.
Call me a typical emotion-bottling man, but I have never considered therapy. No matter what I went through, no matter how many times I thought to myself, verbatim, that I should talk to someone about this, I just never thought of it as an option. It simply wasn't on my roster. It was just one of those things that existed on a separate plane of existence than I was living in, never to cross paths or interact lest the universe collapse in on itself.
I have no problem with therapy, don't get me wrong. It isn't like I don't understand the overall appeal. I have plenty of friends who swear by it, swear it has helped them tremendously, including my wife. It just wasn't ever something I thought was in my cards.
"I just never really thought about it," I told Alice one evening, when she had brought the topic up once again after dinner.
There was a serene sense of peace wafting through the entire house that day, and I was feeling content. It was a Sunday, and swimming season, so we had dropped Emmie off that morning at the public pool for practice and gone straight to our favorite breakfast place. The rest of the day was filled with all the conversation that had built up over the week, all the topics we couldn't fully dig into with each other while babysitting our eight year old, and lounging, all crammed in between sporadic bursts of housework and paperwork we had to catch up on. It was the perfect day, in my humble opinion. It was a lovely moment of peace in the midst of a chaotic life, as is life with kids. And now the sounds of Mario Kart drifted in from the living room, Emmie's squeals cutting through the cheery music every now and then, causing Alice and I to share small smiles of acknowledgement.
Oh, to be a child again. Still a little drenched from a post-swimming shower, full of chili, eyes glowing with the reflection of a television screen.
"Well, maybe you should." My wife was scooping leftover chili into a Tupperware with a ladle. Her hair had been tied up like it was every day after dinner, as if she planned to run a marathon rather than do the cleaning up. She wasn't looking at me, dialed into the task at hand.
It's crazy how some parts of my memory could be so good, and others nonexistent.
I reached over from where I stood before the dishwasher, sliding my arm around her waist. She gave me a look, like, what?
"I just don't think it's for me, babe," I muttered, resting my mouth on her shoulder as if I was trying to skip her ears and speak right through her skin. "You know those things make me uncomfortable sometimes."
She let out a half groan, half sigh, setting down the container and the ladle and turning to face me, draping her arms over my shoulders.
"Everything makes you uncomfortable, John."
I smiled, letting my hands fall to her hips. I knew her frustrated act was just that, an act, at least for the most part.
"It's good for you," she continued pointedly, reaching up to tap her pointer finger against my forehead as I swayed her back and forth to a nonexistent tune. "Like medicine. And I know for a fact there are some things you need to work through."
I feigned offense. "You think I'm some kind of nut job?"
"Everyone needs therapy," she snarled, pulling out of my arms, but she didn't resist when I reached out and drew her back in. "Not just nut jobs."
And that was how most of those conversations went. Some got a little more heated, ending with a lightly slammed door (so as not to wake our daughter) and a whisper-shout of "this is why you need therapy!"
I feel I'm making it sound bad, but it wasn't. Even our more serious fights never quite felt like fights. They felt like playing. We were like two cats, biting and tackling and swishing our tails, but never baring our teeth to hiss. I never felt genuine, full-bodied anger towards her, and I knew she felt the same. It sounds sappy, but we were just very in love. I sometimes felt that we had never actually left the honeymoon phase.
I'm also making it sound like that conversation was incredibly common, and it wasn't. It came up maybe once every few months. I knew she was just looking out for me. She knew me better than anyone.
We had met through mutual friends, and we had initially bonded over our terrible childhoods. We both had moms who were out of the picture, and over emotional, over compensating dads, although this manifested in vastly different ways. Alice's mother left her father for a D-list rockstar type, following him on his state wide tour. She would sometimes send Alice letters or postcards from the road, although her dad wouldn't always let her keep them if they seemed to be stained with blood or seemed to have made contact with any strange white powders.
Her dad coped with anger. He never laid a hand on her, but his shouting and the sounds of glass bottles smashing against the walls kept her up almost every night. During the days he'd take her out, buy her things, go mini golfing and bowling and to the movies. Anything to seem more fun than her mother.
My mother passed away on my seventh birthday. She was driving home from work, which was at a law firm half an hour away from our house, when it began to rain. She was texting my dad her ETA when she ran a red light and a semi truck T-boned her, completely obliterating her car.
After that, everything changed. My seventh birthday could've been my twenty-first. At night it was the worst. I remember sitting with my dad as he cried, curled up in a sobbing ball on the filthy living room carpet, whimpering like a kicked puppy. He would scream and wail so loud the walls shook. He would say, over and over as if I wasn't hearing him, sometimes mumbling and sometimes shrieking, "She was cut in half. I'm sorry sir, she's gone. No, there's no chance she survived, she was completely cut in half."
The days were almost worse. During the day, when he could decrease the helpless wails into weeping at the very least, his attention turned to me. He tried to get something out of me, almost silently begging me to break down with him. Every other second it was, "How are you feeling, son? Do you understand what's happening? You poor thing, you must be devastated, your mommy is gone... Don't you want to cry?"
But I couldn't indulge, and I didn't want to. I had to wash the sheets, because he'd pissed them again, and I didn't want him to sleep in it and smell like pee when he took me to school the next day. I had to vacuum the carpet, so the next time he curled up on it and begged God to take him too, when he finally stood up, his cheek wouldn't be caked in crumbs and dust.
I don't know if I ever truly mourned. My mother's death was more like an absence, as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and carved a chunk out of my side, or snipped off a limb. I could still feel her, I could still talk to her, but all I got back was a deep ache and a crushing silence.
I hated how people reacted when I told them my mom was dead, and had been since I was a little boy. I hated the looks on their faces when they asked how she died, and when I told them. How their mouths fell open dumbly and their eyebrows twisted and contorted in sympathetic horror. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know," they said, as if there was vomit rising in their throats, and I wanted to say, "Well, you fucking asked, didn't you?"
Alice never reacted like that. In fact, she never really even asked me what happened. We were on our second date, nursing beers while leaning against the pool table a a dingy speakeasy, when she told me about her own mom. It was the first time in a long time I actually felt like the conversation was open, like I could respond and she would listen and care, but not too much. Not an uncomfortable amount. When I told her about my parents she didn't say anything, and her pretty face didn't contort. She leaned over the corner of the pool table and kissed me on the cheek, took my hand.
The day she found out she was pregnant, we promised each other to be better, to not let our child ever have to grieve alone or feel the very specific hopeless terror that only a parent can cause.
So maybe I should have listened to her. Maybe I should have gone to therapy the first time she brought it up, the first time she told me how it had helped her get through her own terrible memories. But if I'm being honest, I didn't think I had anything to get through. I had left it in the past, I had coped so far in my own somewhat crooked way, I didn't want to dig any of that back up. I didn't want to be put back in that place where I was expected to talk, to cry, to open up. It made my skin crawl just thinking about it.
"I was always the therapist," I would say to her with a crooked grin. "And I like it that way."
Then, the dreams started.
I could tell you I don't know what triggered them, I don't know why it was now. But that wouldn't be the truth. I know exactly why I started to remember.
At first, they were brief. Nightmares that I couldn't quite recall or explain, waking up disoriented and a little sick. The rest of my day would feel strange, like I was surrounded by a thick fog. Eventually, they started to wake me up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and screaming, scaring the shit out of my wife. Once I ran to the bathroom and threw up, barely making it to the toilet. That was when the word "therapy" came up again.
It feels like I've been in a coma for twenty years, and I'm just waking up now.
It's so strange how different the world looks to a child.
I believed in fairies as a kid. Laugh it up if you want. When I turned four, my aunt brought me this book - we've all had one, I think. It was one of those huge hardcover books filled with information about something mythical, with little patches of fabric to simulate a mermaid's scales or a dragon's claw.
Mine was about fairies, and it was so real to me. My mom would sit up with me later than she probably should have, reading to me, placing my hand on the textures to feel. I wanted to know everything about them, I became obsessed, and naturally, my parents played along. They bought me toys, books... every year I had a fae themed birthday cake, and any kid who dared to giggle behind their hands weren't invited to next year's celebration.
When I was old enough to use the internet, supervised of course, I began further research. My mom helped me navigate Wikipedia first, and they had plenty of information to sustain me for a while. My interest turned from wings and magical powers to different types of fae from every corner of the earth, mushroom rings and their alleged distaste for iron. While I still wasn't very good at reading, I would just look at the pictures until she got home from work.
When my mom died, the fairy memorabilia began to amp up. My aunt bought me new books, gave them to me wrapped and tied with ribbons with tear filled eyes, and my dad brought them up whenever he thought I needed comforting and felt strong enough to leave the house. "Wanna go look in the forest for fairies, son?"
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I began to worship the fairies. I was convinced they lived in the forest behind my house, just behind each tree I looked at, hiding from me. I would spend my weekends escaping into the woods with a bucket and a cheap pair of binoculars, positive that this time, this day, I would see one.
At night, when my dad finally passed out in his own puddle of tears and other bodily fluids, I would pray to them. I never believed in God, we weren't a particularly religious family, and besides, I had seen what good He had done for my dad thus far. But I believed in the fairies.
I asked them for help with my father. I asked them for peace. I asked them to bring her back to me.
They never answered.
Until they did.
It was a Friday. I remember now, I'm not sure how I could have forgotten. After school I had sprinted into the shade of the trees before my dad could stop me, gripping the hem of my shirt in my fist, the thin fabric bearing the weight of two handfuls of the shiniest silverware and most colorful buttons I could find in our dusty cabinets.
I had a plan that day. I was going to lure them to me.
My path began in a clearing where I thought a ring of mushrooms may have begun to grow... but even without that, it was just the perfect spot for fairies. I could picture them flitting between the trees, chirping to each other happily, picking wildflowers to weave into flower crowns.
I walked backwards all the way back to my bedroom window, dropping another item every few steps. When I got inside and looked out my window, I could see my trail of shiny things curve through the overgrown grass in our backyard and disappear into the trees.
I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself. Tonight, surely, they would come to me. They would show themselves, and they would help me. But after another few late hours of coddling my father, finally convincing him to drink some water and get in bed, I was exhausted. I completely forgot about my plan. When I got to my room I collapsed on my mattress, not even bothering to undress before I closed my eyes.
Then I heard it. The scratching.
I opened my eyes. The moonlight shining through my bedroom window casted strange shadows across my ceiling, shadows of the swaying grass and the creaking trees.
It was strangely silent, other than the sound. Usually there was lots of noise, or at the very least a few crickets, but not tonight. Tonight, I realized, I couldn't even hear the wind.
I sat up slowly, as if in a dream, and looked toward my window. I couldn't see anything out there, nothing glaringly obvious at least, that could be making that noise.
The scratching turned to a tap. Tap tap tap, like a fingernail against a glass. It had a playful air to it, like someone was saying, look over here!
I stood, rubbing my eyes, and stumbled over. The tapping stopped abruptly when I got to the window and peered outside, out to the dark yard, pitch black if not for the moon's glow. The grass didn't sway, the trees didn't creak. I frowned and unlatched the window, sliding it up above my head.
I was right, there was no wind. Not even a gust. Everything was still outside, like it was frozen. I actually started to believe it was frozen, that time had stopped completely somehow, before I saw it.
My trail of silverware and buttons. Sparkling softly in the moonlight.
Disappearing.
It began where the path met the trees, curving off where I couldn't follow it anymore. A fork disappeared right before my eyes, right on the edge. Just vanished, as if someone who was invisible had picked it up and stuffed it in a pocket very quickly.
Then another went, a spoon. Then a particularly large gold button. Whatever was taking them was doing what I had wanted, it was taking my bait, it was coming to me. And it was as if whatever had tapped at my window had wanted me to see this, wanted to show me.
But something felt very, very wrong.
This wasn't how I had pictured it. There was no twinkling, tiny winged thing at my window, winking at me before dashing back into the safety of the trees. There were no secrets being whispered in my ear, no fairy dust or promises of better things.
Something about this wasn't right. It felt like a mimicry, almost a mockery, of what I had imagined. Like something was trying to give me what I wanted, but was rusty at it.
I didn't want this anymore.
My stomach twisted and my hands shook as I pulled the window back down slowly, watching more glittery things disappear from the grass, growing closer and closer. As soon as it was closed I quickly locked it and pulled the blinds shut, turning my back to the window as if something would happen that I didn't want to see.
Nothing happened. The deafening silence continued for a few seconds as my ears strained to hear anything else happening outside. Then the wind picked up, and the sounds of crickets, muffled by my closed window, filled the night air.
I don't remember when I fell asleep that night, I just know I felt unnerved and jumpy for a while. I woke up the next morning feeling guilty. Had the fairies really come last night? Maybe they had come to talk to me, to bring me gifts, favors, and what had I done? I had closed my window on them. I felt ungrateful. Why had I even been scared? Because it was dark outside? What was I, a baby?
When I opened my window and peered outside, I gasped. The trail of silverware and buttons was completely gone, all the way up to the last one, which I had placed on my windowsill. In its place was a shoe. I didn't know what kind of shoe it was, but it looked sort of nice, fancy. I remember smiling out the window as I opened it, as if they were looking, and taking my gift.
How could I forget that night? How could I have forgotten what happened after? I feel crazy, either like I made it all up or like I've made up everything since then, like my life isn't truly my own.
I remember telling my dad. I remember saying, "Dad, the fairies came last night!" and the absent smile he gave me.
Until I showed him their gift. The shoe. Instantly his face went pale and he snatched it from my hands, staring at me as if I was something unholy.
"Where did you get this, Johnny?"
"The fairies, dad, I told you!"
He didn't respond. Just gave me another long, solemn look, before turning away from me, still holding the present I received close to his chest. I was upset, but I knew better than throwing a tantrum. That would be too much emotion anyways, too uncomfortable. Even back then, I didn't know how to handle those things.
I didn't show him their gifts after that. I didn't want to risk having them taken away. I tried not to be scared of the fairies, even though they always came at night, but I didn't go to my window when they came anymore. I read everywhere that fairies didn't particularly like to be seen, even though this one seemed to want to be. It always began with tapping, but otherwise complete silence that almost felt like it was swallowing me... and eventually the tapping would stop, the silence would pass, and I would fall asleep. In the morning there was always another gift for me, sitting on my window sill. A sparkly gold ring, the other matching shoe, a hat... I smiled when I took every one, wanting them to know I was grateful. And I would leave things for them too, little sweets or shiny things like coins or paperclips that I found on the ground at school.
Things seemed to get better with my dad for a while. He kept to himself more, he was quieter. At night he would cry softly in his room, rather than his uproarious wails that I used to have to quell so the neighbors wouldn't come knocking. During the day, he would talk to me, but more casually. He didn't ask me how I was feeling anymore, or tell me to let it out.
I hoped this was the fairies. I felt invincible, like I had a secret superpower that no one knew about. I was friends with fairies.
Then one night, everything changed.
It started with the tapping, as always. That night I was fast asleep, catching up on well earned rest since the nightly therapy sessions had ceased.
The tapping woke me. It was that loud. It was louder than usual... but it seemed like it stopped abruptly as soon as I raised my head to look.
That was different...
That night, I had left my blinds up and my window open by accident. Since that first night, even though I wasn't scared anymore, I had always closed them... but this time, I must have forgotten.
It was silent outside. It seemed darker than usual. I could almost make out something, a shape, way on the other side of the yard, but it was too dark and I was too far away to tell.
That feeling from that first night retuned. A twisting like a hand reaching into my stomach and mixing things around, a heavy feeling in my chest like someone had stolen all of the air from my room, even though the window was open. The silence seemed to crush me, bearing down on me from every angle, making my ribs hurt.
The feeling that something was very wrong.
I don't remember deciding to stand: looking back, I have no idea why I would do that in my state of fight or flight. I don't know if I consciously chose to. I don't remember walking over, but I remember getting there, my hands on the windowsill and my head poking out into the completely still night air.
There was something there. On the edge of the trees. Right where I had seen that first fork disappear into thin air. I squinted, leaning further into the darkness to try and make out what it was.
When I finally did, the outline taking shape as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I began to shake uncontrollably. I remember that I tried to scream, but no sound would come. I couldn't move, couldn't do anything but stare.
Two legs stood in front of the trees, facing me. Two legs, a blood-soaked pair of slacks, no shoes on the purple, swollen feet. And a jagged, violent rip in the torso where the rest of my mother's body had been severed from its lower half.
It took me a while to realize that the legs weren't standing on their own. They began to move, jerking clumsily toward the window, like something I couldn't see was struggling to hold them up. I finally forced myself out of my trance and fell to my carpet, vomiting.
I don't remember much else about that night yet. My dad came running when I started crying, I'm sure, but he didn't see what I saw. My mom's legs were gone, or hidden. Because they weren't for him.
They were for me.
We moved after that. Before now if you had asked me why we moved so far away so suddenly, I probably would have mumbled something about the grief, and it being too hard to stay where my mother had died. But I remember why now.
It was because the next morning, when I checked my windowsill, there was a hand. My mother's hand. Purple and stiff, and missing her gold wedding ring. Reaching, fingers rested against the glass, like it was trying to get in.
Like it had been tapping.
I don't want to think about what else it might have brought, had we stayed.
That thing, whatever it was, wasn't my mother, and it wasn't a fairy. I had invited something else with all my praying, with all my naive and innocent beliefs, and with all my bottled up emotions. I had invited it, and I had let it in.
And then I had forgotten everything. Maybe I bottled that up, too.
Now I remember. Now I'm having nightmares, and waking up with that sick feeling in my gut, my eyes jumping to our closed bedroom window.
Because a week ago, my daughter woke me up very early in the morning my jumping on our bed. A week ago, she shook me awake, her eager smile stretching all the way across her face. A week ago, she told me, "Dad, the fairies came last night!"
She showed me a doll, a ballerina, with a pink tutu and beautiful long blonde hair.
And now, with all these terrible memories hitting me like cold water to the face, only one keeps me awake at night.
I asked them for help with my father. I asked them for peace. I asked them to bring her back to me.
It has granted two of my wishes, in its own twisted way. My father grew distant from me and my mother was brought back in pieces.
I'm happy now. But I don't have peace. I don't think I'll ever fully have peace, at least not with a child and a wife to try and provide for, and not with all of these memories.
So what has it come back for?

Hi all, I've had itchy hemorrhoids for maybe 2 years now. It's gotten so bad that it's bothering my sleep.
During the day I mostly don't notice anything, even in the toilet. I poop easily once a day with no big straining or constipation. My diet it quite healthy, although I drink less than 2 liters of water per day - working on that.
But when I try to sleep at night, the skin on my butthole starts to itch. Not every single night but most. I don't eat spicy food and have no allergies. I've also checked many times that it's not worms (🙈😬) since it happens mostly at night. But I've stared at my butthole with a mirrow while it itches and it is just the skin that itches by itself.
I'm not sure what stage of hemorrhoids it is, the butthole is "bubbly" and some of them are kinda purple with internal blood. There isn't any bubbles that really stick out or hang out, it's more like the whole hole is irritated and swollen.
How can I get rid of this and prevent it in the future?
Can it be just from sitting a lot and stress? I've been in a stressful job (full home office) + burnout + unemployed + depressed for about the same time as this problem has been getting worse. But I thought there needs to be constipation to get these?
I also very rarely let my bf have anal sex which usually doesn't hurt during but the hole is sensitive after and I feel it cannot be good for the hemorrhoids...
Otherwise there is no pain or bleeding or trouble on the toilet, it's really just the itching. What I've been doing to manage to sleep is applying either almond oil or hydrocortisone cream. Cortisone works better but I read it's not for longterm use as it can cause the skin to get thinner.

ETA- I've been here and posted before but have a new account.
SO and I are low contact with MIL as she is a nightmare and there have been many issues over the last few years where she has been downright nasty or condoned GCSIL being nasty.
Anyway, SO received a message from GCSIL saying she was away for Mother's Day and that it was up to us to organise what we would do. SO called his mum and arranged to visit. We arrive on Mother's Day to find MIL in bed sick "with a cold". She is wearing a mask and we stay well back. FIL gives us dinner and we leave.
Next evening, SO calls MIL to see how she is and she tells him she tested positive to covid. I assume that she tested Monday morning but am starting to suspect she knew when we were there the night before. Important points- neither SO nor I have ever had COVID! We are vaccinated though. SO likely had asthma as a child as MIL always tells us how she sat up with him on nights when he would cough all night... SO is also not currently working so doesn't have any other contact point to have contracted COVID.
Fast forward to day 3 and SO is feeling unwell. He gets a faint line on his test and we wonder if it is faulty because it is out of date. Next day he feels worse and tests again, it's definite- there's a dark purple-red line within a second.
He calls his mother and she flat out denies that he could have possibly got COVID from her, and tried to insist he got it when we stopped on the way home in the middle of nowhere to take some photos and we were the only people around! She knows she is the only person he has had contact with and that she definitely has covid too. She admitted that her symptoms were identical- same strain! She and GCSIL went as far as trying to blame me for getting it from my work and bringing it home (still testing negative... not me!)

I'm just some hobbyist, correct me if I'm wrong. I repost now that the drama is "old", per the rules this time.

Background

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

A popular US seed company. If you would like more background see my post below.

Heirloom vs Non-Heirloom vs GMO

• Heirloom seeds are grown with the intention to isolate desirable traits across many generations in order to produce one stable inbred line of plant genetics, resulting in predictable, genetically similar offspring. This is referred to as "true to seed".
• Non-heirloom seeds are not inbred and carry a lot of variability. When two plants cross pollinate, they create a hybrid of the parents that results in offspring that express an unpredictable mix of genes.
• Genetically modified seeds are engineered using gene editing technology, sometimes with genes from unrelated sources.

GMO and Patented seeds entering the consumer gardener market

• In the consumer market, patents can be granted to plants such as roses and apples. One of the stipulations is that these plants have to be propagated asexually by cutting or (non-seed) tissue culture for the patent to be applicable. This means that it is permissible to save, sell, and grow seeds from these plants (if not sterile), because the offspring are not exact genetic copies.
• Patent granting on seeds stipulates that the traits expressed cannot be the result of open pollination breeding (wind, insects). As a result, these patents are mostly applied to GMO seeds, where genes are manually influenced in a lab.
• Previously, there were absolutely no GMO seeds sold to the consumer market due to USDA/FDA restrictions. Companies fearmongering about GMOs were easily dismissed. You simply could not buy GMO seeds outside of commercial applications.
• The implications of GMO seeds, which are almost all patented, hitting the market is that the plants can cross pollinate with a non-patented plant, and pass patented genetics on to the offspring. The offspring would be the lawful IP of the company that owns the patent for as long as the patent is active (can be as long as 20 years).
• Almost all gardeners rely on open pollination between their plants, so there is untread territory on what may happen down the line when more seeds of this nature become common place.
• Despite this, the reception of new GMO varieties like the purple tomato and glow in the dark petunia has so far been largely positive.

Purple Tomatoes

• Until now, attaining a tomato variety that was purple both inside and out and could reliably hold that genetic trait in its offspring was just out of reach for tomato enthusiasts. There have been many purple skinned varieties of tomatoes, and many that came close to having perfect anthocyanin rich insides, but a company called Norfolk was the first to make it happen through science.

The Controversy

Timeline

• After 20 years of work, biochemist Cathie Martin and her team successfully isolates the gene that codes for color in a purple snapdragon flower and integrates it into a tomato, making a first of its kind stable variety of purple fleshed tomato.
• Norfolk makes headlines for getting the first USDA approved GMO seed out to the consumer gardener market, obtaining a utility patent.
• Around the same time, Baker Creek releases a seed catalog boldly featuring a mysterious new purple fleshed tomato they called Purple Galaxy, as well as making social media posts and videos claiming it is non-GMO.
• Across social media people begin to notice the striking similarities between the new tomato and the high publicity Norfolk Purple Tomato, finding the timing strange.

Speculation

• Speculation begins 1
  

  • "I think you’re right that these look suspiciously related to Norfolk’s GMO purple tomatoes due to the unique purple flesh and also the deep purple gel. But I find it highly unlikely that these actually are related since the purple GMO event was patented and anybody trying to monetize it would be clearly open to litigation."
  • "It’s funny how non-gmo is a thing with home gardeners. You can’t even buy gmo seeds as a consumer."

• Speculation begins 2
  

  • "This looks shockingly similar to Baker Creek's Purple Galaxy Tomato that mysteriously disappeared from availability this year."
  • "Baker Creek are lying liars who lie. That whole catalog is a festival of photoshop, and then if you fall for it you'll only get about 30% germination."
  • "I’d be unsurprised if they are hypocrites, in addition to being wacky."
  • "I really suspect that whoever bred the "Purple Galaxy" variety advertised by Baker Creek somehow got some leaked germplasm from Norfolk Healthy Produce's GM breeding program. I don't doubt that it's possible for a natural mutation to pop up that makes purple tomatoes"

Baker Creek responds

• Baker Creek responds to concerns on social media:
  

  "We have had every possible genetic test ran on these tomatoes to ensure they are Non GMO. This is a product of many years of selection work."
  

• Shortly after, Baker Creek abruptly halts the sale of Purple Galaxy Seeds citing unspecified "production issues". Screenshot credit: @Buckeye on growingfruit.org
  
• Baker Creek pulls the listing and deletes all social media posts about it, appearing to not acknowledge the tomato any further.
  
• As u/fisch09 points out, a mysterious account named u/heirloom23 appears in the comments sections to speak on behalf of the company. It is unclear if this is an official company account, but at the very least it appears to be a loyal employee:
  

  "Labs are looking for specific genetic markers the first lab was looking for 2 specific genetic markers, which it did not contain. As stated in the FAQs, this was acquired from a country that does not allow GMO crops."
  

Norfolk responds

Norfolk releases a response to the speculation that has flooded the internet:

Is NHP's Purple Tomato related to the "Purple Galaxy"?
We have received many questions about the purple tomato marketed by Baker Creek as “Purple Galaxy” in their 2024 catalogs. We understand from Baker Creek that they will not be selling seeds of this variety. Given its remarkable similarity to our purple tomato, we prompted Baker Creek to investigate their claim that Purple Galaxy was non-GMO. We are told that laboratory testing determined that it is, in fact, bioengineered (GMO). This result supports the fact that the only reported way to produce a purple-fleshed tomato rich in anthocyanin antioxidants is with Norfolk’s patented technology. We appreciate that Baker Creek tested their material, and after discovering it was a GMO, removed it from their website.

Gardening reacts to Norfolk statement

Turns out the "Purple Galaxy" tomato advertised by Baker Creek was a GMO

• "Whatever your stance on GMO, I think we can all agree that companies have a legal and moral obligation to accurately represent their product to their customers."
• "Baker Creek lied and possibly ripped off another company's IP? Color me absolutely not shocked."
• "Baker Creek doesn't produce the majority of the seeds they sell, they buy them from seed farmers. But they should have known better when they saw a variety that appeared identical to a "first ever" gene edited strain in development."
• "The problem is that they [Baker Creek] lied and said they tested it for GMO several times"
• "Being that Baker Creek has in previous years jumped all over the anti-GMO fearmongering, I'm howling at the irony."
• "typical baker creek hot mess"
• "Bakers Creek lost my care or business with its shenanigans."

Norfolk goes ahead and posts the seeds for sale at $20 for 10 seeds

• Seeds, fruit and plant material are only allowed in the USA.
• The seeds are a patented variety and are sold to enjoy in your home garden and with your local community.
• No sales of fruit, seeds or plants are permitted in this agreement, including any derived varieties.

Gardening reacts to the patented GMO Purple Tomato seed itself

• "This is why I grow heirloom."
• "It will be interesting when people start making crosses with the trait."
• "Really cool thing about this is that anthocyanins also delay rotting, so these tomatoes are more shelf-stable, making them more environmentally friendly. Anthocyanins are also good for us (like blueberries). It’s a pretty nifty and elegant design, I’m excited to try them out."
• "Just ordered some of these, can’t wait to try them! I hope I can make purple spaghetti sauce and maybe even some purple ketchup later this year (if you know, you know.) Really cool! It’s not every day you get to be part of a moment in food history."

Baker Creek responds to the controversy after some considerable silence and reputational damage

BAKER CREEK DISCONTINUES PURPLE GALAXY TOMATO SEEDS Baker Creek regrets to inform you that we will not sell seeds of the Purple Galaxy tomato, which we previewed in our 2024 catalogs. After repeated testing, we are unable to conclusively establish that the Purple Galaxy does not contain any genes that have been genetically modified. Baker Creek remains steadfast in its commitment to selling only heirloom and open-pollinated, non-Genetically Modified (“non-GM”) varieties.

There is actually a whole rant after that by them about "Big Ag" despite them being one of the most well known online seed companies in the US, but you'll have to read that archive link for the rest.

The Empress Tomato

The purple tomato whose seed was sold to consumer gardeners is now being sold for a limited time in stores as The Empress Tomato by Red Sun Farms.

Super random question.
Been looking to start going to the gym a few times a week. I have very sensitive eyes and bright overhead lights (especially florescents) can trigger very bad migraine headaches. Ambient lighting and colors such as blue, red, purple, orange don't cause any strain for me.
Are there any gyms that use dimmed lighting, or even multicolored lights instead of super bright florescent lights?
This is typically avoided in my day to day life with sunglasses, but I have seen a few trendy gyms online in other cities that have purple/blue/red mellow lighting.
Just seeing if Eugene had something like that.
Any additional advice is recommended. I haven't been to the gym in years.

Apologies for this one being so late; Been sick for the last week or so, and the friday i was meant to post this, I think from memory I was busy :/ But I'm starting to get back into the swing of things, and the Glossary Addendum has also had a bit of an overhaul :D I'll be applying that tonight as well, to each of the currently released chapters.
[First] [Glossary Addendum] [Previous]
[From the Abyss Artisanry, Wolfreach Commercial District, Halsion Reach Region, Haldios IV, 12th of Emheraldis, 5011 TE]
[Boltz] The door chimed, though it sounded... Off today, and I sighed. I'd have to replace the old beeper with something else now that it had broken. As I walked towards the counter, I heard Chit's voice from around the corner as she said,
"I'll be right with you!" I frowned, noticing the strain in her voice. I stepped around the counter and poked my head around the corner, and then immediately rushed to help. She was trying to move a Draekkan mace, and causing gouges in the floor as she dragged the heavy weapon.
"Seriously? Leave Draekkan weapons to me, beloved." I said, and Chit nodded as I lifted the massive, spiked club-like weapon. Made of Luunic steel, the metal was cool against my hand as I cautiously hefted it, a dark blue color akin to the Lunwatch sky on a clear night with few stars. I slowly walked over to the storage racks, and hung the mace on a pair of large hooks. Then I turned back to my lover, and looked her up and down for injuries.
Finding none, I shook my head with another sigh. "Well at least you didn't hurt yourself on it." I said, stepping up to her and wrapping my arms around her lower back. I pulled her cool body towards mine, and she happily melted into my embrace. Chuckling, I planted a kiss on her hair, and gently ran a finger down one of her drit'onthke. Her entire body shivered and she giggled, before wrapping her arms around me and giving me a tight hug.
"So what's on the list for today?" I asked, resting my cheek on her head.
"Just a few armour sets which need some minor repairs, thankfully." Chit replied. I nodded, and then the beeper went off, indicating a customer.
"Solahra's Light, what an awful noise to greet a customer with!" A deep, male-sounding canine voice rumbled from out in the customer area. We reluctantly pulled apart and both went out to see what he needed.

As Chit rounded the corner, she automatically greeted the customer by saying,
"Welcome to From the Abyss Artisanry, how can we help today?" But as I stepped around after her, I froze. The canine man was holding a box filled with shattered pieces of art, it looked like. I stepped closer and realised that they weren't shattered pieces of art, at least not in the traditional sense. Rather, they were the parts of what was formerly a weapon. I felt my eyes widen as I realised what it was. I looked at the canine man, and realised he was a Labardon. I looked back at the pieces of plasma caster, which appeared to, on closer inspection, actually have catastrophically failed at a structural level upon attempting to fire a shot.
"I went to the Lunhaekin blacksmith over in Aellandendil, cos they said that fishing my ancestral plasma caster would be an exceedingly simple affair. Instead, the next time I went to fire it, the blasted thing fell apart in my hands!" The man growled, and then asked,
"How bad is it... Is... Is there any way to restore it?" His eyes went wide as if to wordlessly plead with me, and I gestured for him to give me the box of parts. He hesitantly handed the box over and I gently placed it on the counter before pulling out one of the furcloth rolls underneath and unravelling it. Then, one by one, I pulled out each of the pieces, and with each new item, my heart sank.

This would not be a simple fix of just re-assembling the pieces. I let out a heavy sigh, and, leaning on the counter, covered my mouth with the side of my hand while looking at the arrayed parts.
"This is... At this point you might as well just buy a new plasma caster." I said finally, still looking at the parts. I looked up at the man and said,
"If I reconstruct this, because that's what it will take, a full reconstruction, it WILL cost more than buying a new caster." I looked down at the parts again, and swore under my breath.
"The focusing plate has been shattered, and those things are near indestructible when carved right, the prism chamber is cracked, so that's no good any more, and the magnetic acceleration rings..." I trailed off, and swallowed before looking up at the man.
"They're not rings any more..." I whispered, and the man's face seemed to break.
"Is there anything we can salvage of the original parts?" He asked, his voice shaky. I looked down at the parts, and realised that there was just one piece that was fully intact. With a mirthless chuckle, I picked it up.
"The plasma compression chamber. That's it." I laid the small metallic chamber down again, and sighed.
"The rest is just... Junk. Scrap even." I shook my head, running the numbers in my head. When I finished, I swore again, and dropped the bombshell.
"You're looking at around fifty thousand in parts alone." I said, and the canine's shoulders slumped.
"If that's the price it takes..." He said.
"I will try and recover as much material as I can though; I might be able to melt down the mag rings for example and re-energise them."

[A Cycle Later...]
[Chit'eiwu]
The Labardon stepped into the store, a simple digital bell sounding, and he sighed, his tail wagging a little as he did so.
"Much better than last time!" He joked, and Jakob walked around the corner holding a box, grinning from ear to ear.
"Just in time, good sir!" He exclaimed. He set down the box, and the Labardon's gaze instantly honed in on it. Jakob laid a hand on the lid, and said,
"Behold, your restored heritage!" And with that, he lifted the lid like he was proposing to the customer, and the canine's eyes lit up, his tail suddenly zipping back and forth as though it were some kind of demented metronome. As he lifted the ancient weapon, my own eyes widened; It was truly a thing of beauty.

[Boltz]
I smiled as the Labardon man admired my handiwork, and in a voice that sounded like it was half pure air, he whispered,
"It's as beautiful as the day my sire first showed it to me..." My smile widened, and I said,
"I was able to salvage more than I thought, in the end. I managed to keep the primary focus cone; I simply had to melt and recast it due to a crack in it, the laser projector's crystal matrix casing also was salvageable, though I did have to replace the crystal matrix. So it now has a Kaurine crystal for providing the first round of focusing." The man froze, and his gaze flicked to me. His hands still raise, he asked,
"A Kaurine crystal? Genuine?" I nodded.
"Cut the crystal free from the rock myself." I replied. The man laid the plasma caster on the counter gently, though it rattled slightly from his shaking paws as he ceased to support it.
"My sire said that it originally had a Shell crystal as its matrix..." He said, voice trembling as much as his paws.
"They are great crystals for energy conduction as well as for energy focusing. It took a bit to set the frequency for the right channels though." He nodded, and shakily handed over his Orionpay card. I handed it to Chit'eiwu, right as he asked,
"So how much was it all up?" I grinned and replied,
"An even fifty five thousand." He blinked, and asked,
"But... the crystal... Surely that alone would be a few hundred thousand!" I shook my head, and replied,
"It's not a Blade. And it doesn't need to be anywhere near as big. Only came to around three thousand." He nodded, and Chit'eiwu input the numbers and scanned the card. The system registered a successful transaction, and she handed the man back his card.
"Thank you for choosing From the Abyss Artisanry!" I said, and he nodded, his eyes turning shiny with unshed tears.
"No, thank you. All of my friends will be hearing about this, and you will be my first stop for anything artisanal." I nodded to him, and he left, carefully cradling the restored plasma caster in its box. Looking over to the clock, I noticed that it was indicating less than an hour before Lunrise. I jerked my head towards Chit'eiwu and asked,
"Think we should close up the shop early, or wait until Soldown before we stop operating?" She looked up at the clock as well, then back to me, and shook her head.
"No, I think we can afford to close early this evening." I nodded, and pressed the button to activate the end of Watch sign system, and a moment later, a holosign in the window came to life and began a 10 minute countdown.

We always did the countdown so that prospective customers knew how long they had to enter to the store before we stopped taking new customers prior to closing down for the Lunwatch. As usually happened however, the sign completed its countdown and flicked to the "Closed" display, and I pressed a second button to lock the door remotely, and arm the security system. As I did so, Chit'eiwu walked into the apartment, and soon after, I heard the sound of her cooking. I smiled, knowing that she was bound to make an incredible dinner as per usual, and let out a contented sigh as the system went through the arming process. Life with her was... Good. Not necessarily great by any stretch of the imagination; Most of our days were spent working after all. But it was at least a good life. A life I was more than happy to lead.

When the system indicated full armed status some minutes later, I followed my aquatic lover into our home behind and above the shop, and arrived just in time for her to serve up dinner. As I sat down, a stupid grin spread across my face as I beheld what she had cooked up. On the plate was a kind of "nest" made of purple coloured strands of pasta, and topped off with a green-sauced mince of some kind. I looked up at my lover, who was watching me expectantly. My grin refusing to go away, I obliged her apparent intent, and used a fork to collect some mince with sauce, and some of the pasta.

As the food reached my mouth, it was like an explosion of flavours; An earthy, slightly spicy flavour issued forth from the sauce, and the mince tasted somewhat like yuron, a kind of cattle animal from Zehllukarn Prime, and it was followed up by a surprisingly sweet flavour from the pasta as it rotated around in my mouth as I chewed. Swallowing, I said,
"This is incredible! I can't even properly describe it; it's... It's like an explosion of all different flavours coming together in my mouth!" Chit's face turned a fierce azure, and my grin widened. The grin morphing into a smirk, I added,
"You're definitely getting rewarded this Lunwatch, beloved."

[A Few Hours Later...]

[Boltz]

As Chit'eiwu walked into the bedroom we shared upstairs, I put the dishes from our dinner into the automatic dishwasher, and followed her up. As I reached the laundry room, I stripped off my clothes from the Solwatch, and tossed them expertly into the laundry, each garment hitting the wall and bouncing off slightly to fall into the clothes basket waiting below, before walking into the bedroom entirely unclad. Chit'eiwu was laying in the bed, the blanket covering her amethyst body from view, and in such a way that I knew that she too had put her clothes in the laundry. I walked around the bed, and pulled down the blanket to get in beside her, and after that, things turn rather hazy for a little while.

[A Week Later...]

[Chit'Eiwu]
Jakob and I stepped off of the transport, hand-in-grasper, him looking absolutely divine in a glacial blue suit with silver trimmings, seeming to be a walking ice sculpture. Complimenting him, I opted for a taste of my birthplace; Trimmed with onyx hems, I was wearing a deep, abyssal purple dress, showing off my relatively lighter purple skin, becoming a shadow of the Abyss to act as the dark counterpart to my Warrior of the Overwaves. I looked towards him as we stepped inside the Fortress of Kaur'Ainda together for the first time since I was Ascended by both him and Cewa together.
He looked back at me, smiled and squeezed my hand reassuringly, before saying over our rarely-used connection,
There's no need to be nervous; It's just a Greenmarch Feast, my Siren. As I did every time he called me that, I giggled; At first I had been confused by him calling me an alarm sound, until he showed me one of the few surviving Terran records from... Wherever it was that they came from. Terran, or at the time, Human, women of extraordinary beauty, totally uncovered, and singing some kind of song that lured male sailors to their deaths.
Then he had sent me an image of how he viewed me; My plain purple skin instead appeared almost... Luminous, and my average green eyes were glittering emerald gems. My hair, an equally unremarkable azure, was a brilliant blue that resembled the Azuresheet high above even the Overwaves, and in his mind's eye, my cheeks were flushed slightly blue. I had never considered myself to be attractive by any means; In the Abyss I would have struggled to find a mate...
But here in the Overwaves? I had been chosen by a Terran, that enigmatic, smooth-skinned, near-prey-like biped species who were renowned for absurd feats of strength and endurance. I was not as fragile as I seemed, even before my Ascension...
But Jakob seemed to realise that early on; The first time we lay together, an eye-rolling, mind-erasing experience, he showed such gentleness that it was hard to believe the stories... Until the very next day when I had struggled to move a shipment of materials that had come in, even barely raising it, and he had simply come in and told me to let it go, before seeming to effortlessly pick up the heavy box and carry it into the Forge, before placing it down and rapidly sorting the material inside for me. I had asked him about it, and his response was a mere shrug, and to say, It wasn't that heavy for me; Absolutely awkward, but not anything that will break my back.

In the present, we stepped into the Great Hall, and froze. It had been totally transformed, becoming a verdant green forest canopy under which wooden tables seemingly made from the trunks of trees, with seats formed from sections of log from great tree branches. Seiranha saw us enter, and rushed over to greet us.
"Boltz! Chit!" She exclaimed, and hugged us both in turn. It felt... Odd, to be given a hug by a Vampyris, but this particular one was a friend, and so I happily returned the hug, albeit reluctantly letting go of Jakob's hand to do so. We held the hug for a few eternal moments, before she let go and did the same to Jakob, who greeted her warmly.
"You look great!" Jakob said to the Vampyris warrior, and she blushed a deep golden color on her pale cream skin. It looked almost like golden Skyblaze rays were touching her cheeks as she giggled. But Jakob was right; She was garbed in a flowing set of obviously ceremonial armour which appeared to have been made by first weaving a suit of leaves, and then attaching segments of bark to the resulting garment. And combined with her silver-in-crimson eyes...
"You look sort of like a vengeful forest spirit in this armour, Master Seiranha!" I said, and the woman grinned.
"That's sort of the idea. Not many people remember that the spirits of the forests of all our worlds yet live... And for those who do not respect the forest's inhabitants, only death can be anticipated, or worse."

Over the course of what remained of the Solwatch, we enjoyed the Greenmarch Feast, and soon enough, it was time to scatter to our homes once again, to rest away the overindulgences of the Feast.

[Boltz]
As the transport landed at the Wolfreach starport, Chit and I walked down the ramp, though she was somewhat unsteady on her legs. Chuckling, I asked her,
"Would you like me to carry you home?" She looked at me, her face blazing sapphire, but through our connection, she, apparently not realising she was 'speaking', replied, I thought you'd never ask... My mighty Skybright, carrying me like an Inkle in his powerful arms... As the thought travelled over our connection the azure spread, and I shook my head with a grin. I really was the luckiest guy in the Reach to have landed such an exotic life partner. She happily stepped in closer to me, and I swept her off her feet, much to her almost drunken delight, and she let out a whoop of surprise.
However, as her intoxicated brain realised what had happened, she melted into my embrace, burbling away in my ear as though she had been returned to her youngest of Watches. I was all too happy to carry my lover home of course; The sound of her tripled heartbeat like a three-beat rhythm pulsed against my own heart, and her emerald gaze was transfixed on my face, the look in those beautiful green orbs one of utter and complete adoration.

After around 10 minutes, we reached the shop, and I swiped my wristcomm over the new sensor, first up-down, then right-left. The two-part verification proved my identity, and the door swung open automatically, a recent addition I had also made. As we cleared the door, I swept my foot around and behind me to close the door again, and carried Chit to the bedroom in our apartment, before laying her gently down on the bed, and saying,
"Unfortunately, I've gotta take that incredible dress off you or it will be ruined in your sleep." Chit vaguely nodded, and I helped her stand back up. Having done this routine together before, she laid her arms on my shoulders for added balancing support, and I bent down to grab the bottom of the dress, before slowly pulling it up to her chest. Feeling the garment fully above her hips, Chit carefully sat down on the bed, and I carefully pulled the dress up and over her head, then down her arms.

Turning around, I draped the dress across a nearby dresser, smoothing out any wrinkles in it, and then returned my attention to my lover, who was now completely undressed. Once again taking up the role of caregiver, I wrapped an arm around her and scooped her up once more before laying her on the bed sideways, where she let out a small gasp as the cold fabric touched her bare skin. I gave her a reassuring smile and said,
"I'll have you nice and warm soon enough, Heartstreasure." And with that, I stripped off my own suit, carefully draping it over a chair, and then pulled off the underwear I had worn for the Feast, and climbed under the covers beside Chit. Upon feeling me enter the bed, she shifted over, hissing a bit as she moved off the warmed area, and melted her body against my own. As she settled into a comfortable position, one of her legs across mine, she said through repeated yawns,
"May... May you swim... With the... Blessing of... Of Drynedaea... My.... Sky-Warrior..." Chuckling as I wrapped an arm around her back, I kissed her gently on the forehead and over our connection, replied,
"May Luunah Guard your Dreams, Heartstreasure of the Depths." And with that, as if it were a cue, Chit's breathing shifted to become deep and regular, and the sound along with the rising and falling of her amethyst chest against my skin sung its own siren song, dragging me down into...
[Next: To Tread the Shaded Path]

New Chapter on every MWF (Monday, Wednesday,Friday)
[First] [[Next>]
[Discord] [Buy me a coffee]
Chapter 21: Reborn
Gribble sitting alongside his grandfather, Gorp, at a serene lake nestled in the heart of a lush forest. The gentle lapping of the water against the shore and the melodic chirping of birds create a peaceful atmosphere. Gribble's small, green hands grip a fishing rod, his eyes fixed on the unmoving line, frustration etched across his youthful face as time passes without a single catch. The sun's warm rays dance upon the lake's surface, casting a golden glow on the tranquil scene, yet Gribble remains oblivious to the beauty surrounding him, consumed by his growing impatience.
Gorp, a wise and patient goblin with a wrinkled face and kind, knowing eyes, notices his grandson's mounting frustration and offers a reassuring smile. With a gentle touch, Gorp places his weathered hand on Gribble's shoulder, his presence alone seeming to calm the young goblin's restless spirit. In a voice filled with wisdom and understanding, Gorp imparts a profound piece of advice that will forever shape Gribble's perspective: "Patience, my dear Gribble, is the bridge to success; when coupled with an unwavering belief in oneself, it becomes an unstoppable force, capable of overcoming even the most daunting of challenges."
As these words resonate deep within Gribble's mind, the peaceful scene begins to fade, the colors blurring and the sounds growing distant. The harsh reality of the present situation comes crashing back, and Gribble finds himself torn from the comforting memory, thrust once more into the dangerous reality of the cave and the looming threat of the Thundercat
Gribble lies on the cold, hard ground of the cave, his small body battered and bruised from the Thundercat's relentless assault. The air is thick with the scent of blood and the tang of fear, as Gribble struggles to catch his breath, each inhalation sending shockwaves of pain through his weakened frame. The Thundercat looms over him, its massive form casting a sinister shadow across the cavern floor, its electric blue fur crackling with barely contained energy. The creature's eyes gleam with a predatory hunger, its gaze fixed upon the helpless goblin, as if savoring the moment before delivering the final, fatal blow.
Gribble's heart races, his pulse pounding in his ears like a frantic drum, as he stares into the face of death itself. The Thundercat's hot breath washes over him, carrying with it the stench of primal ferocity and unbridled power. Gribble's own breath comes in short, desperate gasps, his lungs burning with the effort of drawing in the damp, musty air of the cave. The cold tendrils of fear wrap around his soul, threatening to suffocate him with their icy grip, as he confronts the terrifying realization that his life hangs in the balance, dependent upon the whims of the savage creature that towers above him.
In this moment of absolute horror, Gribble's mind races, desperately searching for a way out, for some glimmer of hope amidst the overwhelming darkness. He knows that he must act quickly, that hesitation will surely spell his doom, but his body feels leaden, weighed down by the burden of his injuries and the paralyzing fear that grips his heart.
In a last-ditch effort to save himself from the Thundercat's impending attack, Gribble musters the remnants of his strength, drawing upon the very last reserves of his power. He calls out to the earth, seeking to summon the dormant life that lies beneath the cave floor, hoping against hope that his earth vine powers will answer his desperate plea. Gribble's mind races as he focuses all of his energy on this single, crucial task, his brow furrowed in concentration, his eyes squeezed shut as he wills the vines to burst forth from the unyielding ground.
The thick green vine is sluggish in its movements, its progress hindered by the unnatural environment of the cave, but still, it inches forward, guided by Gribble's unwavering determination.
Gribble's heart leaps with a sudden surge of hope as he watches the vine snake its way towards the Thundercat, a small, defiant spark igniting within his chest. He knows that this is his only chance, that the success of his plan hinges upon the strength and speed of the vine, and he pours every last ounce of his will into the endeavor. The vine quivers and strains, as if struggling against an invisible barrier, but Gribble refuses to yield, his mind locked in a silent battle of wills with the very earth itself.
As Gribble watches the vine's sluggish progress, a sudden flash of inspiration illuminates his mind, and a daring plan takes shape. With renewed focus and determination, he directs the vine's growth, shaping and molding it with his earth magic, willing it to take on a new, more deadly form. Slowly, the tender green tendril begins to elongate and narrow, its tip sharpening into a wicked point, until it resembles a crude but effective spear, poised to strike at the heart of the Thundercat.
Gribble's eyes narrow as he concentrates on the newly-formed vine spear, his body trembling with the effort of maintaining his mental grip on the volatile plant matter. The spear quivers in the air, its tip aimed squarely at the Thundercat's broad, muscular chest, as if seeking out the creature's vital organs with a hunter's precision. Gribble's breathing grows shallow and rapid, his heart pounding against his ribcage as he prepares to unleash the improvised weapon, knowing that this single strike may well determine the outcome of the battle, and perhaps, the very course of his life.
With a final, desperate surge of energy, Gribble thrusts his hand forward, his fingers splayed wide as he channels every last ounce of his power into the vine spear. Time seems to slow to a crawl as Gribble watches the spear's progress, his heart in his throat, his eyes wide with a mixture of hope and fear, as he silently prays for the success of his gambit
The vine spear’s sharpened tip finding its mark with a sickening thud as it pierces the Thundercat's muscular chest. The creature lets out a deafening roar of pain and surprise, its voice reverberating through the cave like a clap of thunder, as it staggers backward, its electric blue fur standing on end. The Thundercat's eyes widen in shock and disbelief, its gaze fixed upon the slender green tendril that protrudes from its body, as if struggling to comprehend the reality of its own vulnerability.
Gribble watches in stunned amazement as the mighty Thundercat, the very embodiment of primal power and ferocity, begins to falter, its movements growing sluggish and uncoordinated. The creature's massive frame shudders and convulses, its muscles rippling beneath its fur as it fights to remove the vine. The Thundercat's breaths come in short, ragged gasps, its eyes growing dim and unfocused as the life slowly drains from its body, until at last, it collapses to the ground, a final, shuddering sigh escaping its lips.
The cave falls silent, the only sound the steady patter of the rain outside and Gribble's own labored breathing, as he struggles to come to terms with the magnitude of his victory. He stares at the Thundercat's lifeless form, scarcely daring to believe that he, a small, unassuming goblin, could have felled such a formidable beast. A mixture of relief and exhaustion washes over Gribble, his limbs trembling with the aftershocks of the intense battle, as he slowly begins to process the implications of his triumph.
Gribble crawls towards the fallen Thundercat, his movements slow and painful, each breath sending a fresh wave of agony through his battered body. As he nears the creature's lifeless form, an inexplicable urge takes hold of him, a primal desire that he can neither explain nor resist. Before he can question the impulse, Gribble finds himself drawn to the Thundercat's still-warm chest, his hands moving of their own accord as they seek out the beast's most vital organ.
With trembling fingers, Gribble carefully parts the Thundercat's thick fur, revealing the smooth, blue skin beneath. He hesitates for a moment, his mind reeling at the thought of what he is about to do, but the compulsion proves too strong to ignore. With a deep breath and a quick, decisive movement, Gribble plunges his hand into the Thundercat's chest, his fingers closing around the creature's still-beating heart. The organ pulses in his grasp, its rhythm slowing as he carefully extracts it from the Thundercat's body, a faint crackle of residual electricity dancing across its surface.
Gribble brings the heart to his lips, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and anticipation, as he contemplates the enormity of the act he is about to commit. The coppery scent of blood fills his nostrils, mingling with the damp, earthy smell of the cave, as he parts his lips and takes a tentative bite of the Thundercat's essence. The taste is overwhelming, a flood of rich, primal flavors that dance upon his tongue, setting his senses alight with a rush of power and vitality unlike anything he has ever experienced. The world narrows to a single, focus point, as if the universe itself is holding its breath, waiting to see what awestriking abilities Gribble will gain from this bold act of consumption.
As Gribble swallows the last morsel of the Thundercat's heart, an electrifying surge of power courses through his veins, setting every nerve ending alight with a tingling, almost painful sensation. The goblin's small frame begins to tremble and convulse, his muscles twitching and spasming as the creature's essence merges with his own life force. Gribble gasps as he feels his body start to change, subtle shifts taking place throughout his musculature and skeleton that quickly escalate into all-consuming physical transformations as the potent powers from the heart take hold.
Gribble's once small, wiry muscles begin to bulge and swell, expanding with newfound strength and vitality, as if the Thundercat's raw power is being transmuted directly into his own cells and sinews. His scrawny limbs thicken and lengthen, the sudden growth of his body accompanied by shooting pains and cramps, as he undergoes an accelerated metamorphosis. The goblin's stature increases rapidly, his height multiplying at an astonishing rate, until he towers over his former self, a new, imposing figure of raw power and potential.
But the changes do not stop with his musculature alone. Gribble's senses sharpen to a degree he would never have thought possible, his eyes able to penetrate the thick darkness of the cave without hindrance, every detail of his surroundings now clear and sharp as if bathed in the bright light of day. The goblin's ears twitch and thrum with a newfound sensitivity, able to pick up the tiniest sounds and vibrations from the depths of the cave. Most astonishing of all, sparks of brilliant blue electricity emerge through the hairs on Gribble's arms, dancing and pulsing with a life force that both fascinates and terrifies him. He has been reborn, a product of the powers that now surge within, his body and mind irrevocably altered by the essence of the Thundercat.
As the initial shock of the transformation begins to subside, Gribble becomes aware of a soothing warmth spreading throughout his body, a sensation that stands in stark contrast to the pain and exhaustion that had plagued him mere moments before. The goblin looks down at his battered and bruised form, his eyes widening in astonishment as he watches the myriad wounds and gashes that mar his skin begin to knit together before his very eyes, the flesh mending itself at an impossible rate.
Deep lacerations seal shut, leaving behind only faint, silvery scars that quickly fade into nothingness, as if erased by an unseen hand. Ugly purple bruises that had blossomed across Gribble's body, testaments to the savage beating he had endured at the claws and fangs of the Thundercat, now rapidly diminish in size and color, until they vanish entirely, leaving his skin unmarked and pristine. Even the bone-deep aches and pains that had settled into Gribble's joints and muscles dissipate, replaced by a newfound sense of strength and vitality that courses through his veins like liquid fire.
As the healing process nears its completion, Gribble slowly rises to his feet, marveling at the ease with which he can now move, his body no longer weighed down by the burdens of injury and fatigue. He flexes his fingers experimentally, feeling the raw power that thrums just beneath the surface of his skin, a barely contained energy that whispers tantalizing of limitless potential. A sense of invincibility washes over the goblin, the knowledge that he has not only survived the brutal encounter with the Thundercat but emerged stronger and more powerful than ever before. Gribble's gaze hardens with a newfound sense of purpose, steadied by the certainty that he can now overcome any obstacle that dares to stand in his path.
Even as Gribble revels in the rush of power and the exhilaration of his miraculous recovery, a faint shadow begins to creep across the edges of his consciousness, an unsettling presence that lurks just beyond the reach of his newfound senses. It is a darkness that seems to emanate from deep within his own being, a nebulous entity that tugs at the corner of his thoughts, whispering of hidden costs and unspoken dangers.
The goblin tries to shake off the growing sense of unease, pushing the troubling thoughts aside as he focuses instead on the incredible changes that have taken place within his body, marveling at the raw strength and vitality that now course through his veins. Yet, even as he seeks to bask in the glow of his transformation, the darkness persists, hovering at the edge of his awareness like a silent, watchful specter.
As Gribble moves through the cave, his steps imbued with newfound purpose and power, he cannot escape the nagging feeling that something fundamental has shifted within him, a subtle alteration that goes beyond the physical changes he has undergone. It is as if the essence of the Thundercat, now intertwined with his own lifeforce, has brought with it a touch of something primal and untamed, a wildness that threatens to consume him from within. The goblin's heart begins to race, a sense of trepidation rising in his chest as he ponders the implications of this strange, unsettling presence, wondering what price he may ultimately pay for the powers he has so eagerly embraced.
Driven by an instinctive need to escape the confines of the cave and the lingering presence of the fallen Thundercat, Gribble makes his way towards the entrance, his steps steady and purposeful, imbued with a newfound sense of strength and determination. As he nears the mouth of the cave, the sound of the pouring rain grows louder, the steady patter of droplets against stone echoing through the cavernous space like a ghostly drumbeat.
Gribble steps out into the downpour, his body immediately assaulted by the cold, stinging droplets that fall from the sky in an unrelenting torrent. The water sluices over his skin, running in rivulets through his hair and down his face, yet the goblin barely registers the sensation, his body thrumming with the power of the Thundercat, the electricity that courses through his veins keeping him warm and insulated against the chill of the rain.
He tilts his face upwards, his eyes closed as he allows the water to wash over him, a silent, almost meditative gesture that speaks of a desperate need for cleansing and renewal. The rain beats down upon Gribble's body, as if seeking to purge him of the darkness that has taken root within his soul, to wash away the lingering traces of the Thundercat's essence that now mingle with his own. Yet, even as the water pours over him in an unending stream, the goblin knows that some stains are too deep to be cleansed by mere rain alone, that the changes that have been wrought within him are irrevocable and permanent.
As Gribble stands there in the pouring rain, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in a nearby puddle, the image distorted and rippling with each falling droplet. The face that stares back at him is at once familiar and utterly alien, a strange amalgamation of the goblin he once was and the creature he has become. Gone is the scrawny, unassuming figure that had entered the cave, replaced now by a being of raw power and untamed potential.
Gribble's once wiry frame is now corded with muscle, his body honed and sculpted by the Thundercat's essence, every sinew and fiber imbued with a strength that defies belief. His eyes, once a dull, unremarkable shade, now glint with a predatory intensity, the pupils narrowed to vertical slits that seem to pierce the very darkness itself. The goblin's skin, too, has undergone a transformation, the surface now alive with tiny bolts of blue electricity that dance and crackle with each movement, a testament to the power that flows through his veins.
As he stares at his altered reflection, Gribble is struck by the realization that he is no longer the same goblin he was before, that the experiences he has undergone and the powers he has absorbed have changed him in ways that go far beyond the physical. He senses a new hardness within himself, a steely resolve that was absent before, tempered by the trials he has faced and the darkness he has embraced. The goblin knows that he has crossed a threshold, stepped into a realm of power and potential that few of his kind have ever dared to tread, and that there can be no turning back from the path he has chosen.
As the initial rush of adrenaline and euphoria begins to fade, Gribble is struck by a profound and unsettling realization, a truth that settles over him like a leaden weight upon his soul. The powers he now possesses, the incredible abilities granted to him by the consumption of the Thundercat's heart, have come at a terrible cost, a price that he is only now beginning to comprehend.
Gribble senses that a part of himself has been lost, consumed by the very darkness that now resides within him, a fundamental piece of his being that has been forever altered by the merging of his essence with that of the Thundercat. It is as if a shadow has fallen over his spirit, a veil of darkness that threatens to engulf the very core of his identity, to erode the values and beliefs that once defined him.
The goblin's mind reels as he ponders the implications of this realization, the knowledge that he has willingly embraced a power that may ultimately consume him, body and soul. He wonders what challenges lie ahead, what trials he will face as he navigates this new and uncharted realm of existence, and whether the strength he has gained will be enough to see him through the darkness that surely awaits.
As Gribble stands there in the pouring rain, his body thrumming with power, his mind haunted by the specter of an uncertain future, he knows that he has set foot upon a path from which there can be no retreat. The goblin steels himself, his jaw set with grim determination, as he prepares to embark upon a journey that will test the very limits of his newfound abilities, and perhaps, the very essence of his being. With a final, lingering glance at the cave that has borne witness to his transformation, Gribble turns his face to the storm and steps forward into the unknown, ready to embrace the challenges and dangers that lie ahead.