Sw 7043 worldly gray
"Goldhand" Relic Hunter
2023.06.01 09:56 MadeInCanaduh "Goldhand" Relic Hunter
Khadir "Goldhand" Arami, a determined Redguard relic hunter, is on a relentless quest for valuable treasures and artifacts in the vast land of Skyrim. With his exceptional skills in swordsmanship, archery, and survival, Khadir is a formidable opponent in combat.
The determined Redguard relic hunter, has embarked on a quest for valuable treasures and artifacts in Skyrim. Along his travels, he stumbles upon an ancient tome containing the secrets of Arcane - Magnus Spells. Intrigued by the mysteries within, Khadir devotes himself to mastering the art of arcane magic, delving into the fundamental forces of the universe.
Driven by an insatiable thirst for wealth and adventure, Khadir scours ancient ruins, delves into forgotten tombs, and navigates treacherous landscapes in search of elusive relics. His expertise lies in identifying valuable artifacts, deciphering ancient scripts, and overcoming complex traps and puzzles.
Throughout his travels, Khadir's obsession with treasure leads him down a dangerous path. He develops a dependence on skooma and mead, relying on these substances to fuel his adrenaline and maintain an illusion of invincibility. This addiction heightens his desperation, driving him to take greater risks and compromise his morals in his pursuit of valuable artifacts.
As Khadir's addiction takes its toll, he becomes more reckless, morally ambiguous, and loses control over his emotions and actions. His relationships with companions and allies become strained, and he becomes vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous individuals who exploit his weakened state.
In his relentless pursuit of treasure, Khadir faces not only physical dangers but also the inner demons that threaten to consume him. He must confront the consequences of his addiction, the toll it takes on his physical and mental well-being, and the moral dilemmas he encounters along the way.
As Khadir "Goldhand" Arami, you will guide him through the trials and tribulations of the treasure hunting world, making choices that define his character and shape his destiny. Whether he finds redemption, succumbs to his vices, or strikes a balance between the two is up to you.
Embrace the thrill of the hunt, navigate the moral gray areas, and embark on a gripping adventure as Khadir "Goldhand" Arami, the treasure-driven Redguard relic hunter in Skyrim!
Chat GPT pumped this out for me, and im really excited to RP this new character! just wanted to share incase anyone else was struggling to find RP ideas
submitted by MadeInCanaduh to skyrimrp [link] [comments]
The determined Redguard relic hunter, has embarked on a quest for valuable treasures and artifacts in Skyrim. Along his travels, he stumbles upon an ancient tome containing the secrets of Arcane - Magnus Spells. Intrigued by the mysteries within, Khadir devotes himself to mastering the art of arcane magic, delving into the fundamental forces of the universe.
Driven by an insatiable thirst for wealth and adventure, Khadir scours ancient ruins, delves into forgotten tombs, and navigates treacherous landscapes in search of elusive relics. His expertise lies in identifying valuable artifacts, deciphering ancient scripts, and overcoming complex traps and puzzles.
Throughout his travels, Khadir's obsession with treasure leads him down a dangerous path. He develops a dependence on skooma and mead, relying on these substances to fuel his adrenaline and maintain an illusion of invincibility. This addiction heightens his desperation, driving him to take greater risks and compromise his morals in his pursuit of valuable artifacts.
As Khadir's addiction takes its toll, he becomes more reckless, morally ambiguous, and loses control over his emotions and actions. His relationships with companions and allies become strained, and he becomes vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous individuals who exploit his weakened state.
In his relentless pursuit of treasure, Khadir faces not only physical dangers but also the inner demons that threaten to consume him. He must confront the consequences of his addiction, the toll it takes on his physical and mental well-being, and the moral dilemmas he encounters along the way.
As Khadir "Goldhand" Arami, you will guide him through the trials and tribulations of the treasure hunting world, making choices that define his character and shape his destiny. Whether he finds redemption, succumbs to his vices, or strikes a balance between the two is up to you.
Embrace the thrill of the hunt, navigate the moral gray areas, and embark on a gripping adventure as Khadir "Goldhand" Arami, the treasure-driven Redguard relic hunter in Skyrim!
Chat GPT pumped this out for me, and im really excited to RP this new character! just wanted to share incase anyone else was struggling to find RP ideas
2023.06.01 09:52 SvenHudson [TotK] [SPOILERS] Taking things in this game at face value.
Everybody's knee-jerk reaction to this game on here seems to be trying to fix it by saying a bunch of stuff isn't what it says it is so that the stories they're familiar with are set in stone.
Instead, I want to try saying the things in this game are what it says they are: Rauru is Rauru, Ganondorf is Ganondorf, the Imprisoning War is the Imprisoning War.
There is frankly a lot of material in this game that lines up with a straightforward interpretation. Landmarks of the past have a conspicuous resemblance to Ocarina of Time's landmarks. Events have a conspicuous resemblance to its events.
There are differences, too, but I think analyzing those differences is far more compelling than simply pointing at them and announcing that they are different. Retellings of stories often change details, add or remove things at the teller's whim. So instead of the conventional fandom idea of canon where each new story is truer than the last if they ever contradict, we could treat this series of self-proclaimed legends like there's possibly an underlying truer version of events that we can identify through parallels; our understanding of the "truth" (or at least "original story") is then fuzzier where things contradict between stories and clear where they align and there's a lot of room for personal interpretation in between.
That feels, to me, like what this newest game is asking us to do when it so deliberately invokes past game's stories in altered forms.
For example: In the first telling of the Imprisoning War, the seven sages were seven human men, one of them oddly short. In the second telling, they were a diverse group of fantasy races of varying ages and genders. And now in this third telling, the composition of the group is different once again. So the particulars of who was in this group are fuzzy, the particulars that there were some humans and a goron and a zora feel more solid than whether there were zonai or kokiri mixed in, but the number seven is very solid, as is their imprisoning of Ganon.
So let's ask some questions that this game raises.
Let's look at a big difference between the first and third tellings to start with: the location of Ganon's imprisonment. (The second is also different but doesn't matter in the context of this conversation because it's explicitly an alternate resolution rather than a different interpretation of the same resolution.)
In the first telling, Ganon was sealed in the Sacred Realm, the alternate dimension which is the home of the Triforce, which he had corrupted into the Dark World by the time the game begins. The Dark World as seen in the game is an darker version of the regular world the hero comes from, geographically largely identical (right down to the location of the only known populated village in each world) but all-around less friendly to traverse and populated with stronger monsters. Ganon has human followers that live there. Though Ganon isn't yet able to escape the Dark World, he is entirely able to send a out a puppet being called Agahnim to the home world to further his goals and, generally speaking, his evil is said to be seeping into the home world from the Dark World. Many portals in the home world exist that can transport one to the Dark World but they only work one way and it can only be re-exited by the hero due to a magic mirror he luckily happens to own.
In this third telling, Ganondorf is trapped in the Depths, a giant cave system underneath Hyrule. The depths are almost entirely pitch black, geographically near identical to the surface (but with verticality of surfaces inverted so mountains become canyons and vice versa), there are ruins of ancient settlements in the same relative location as contemporary above-ground settlements, the terrain is much more hostile than above, and the monsters that live there are empowered by Ganondorf's magical bad vibes. The humans you find down there are a roguish cult dedicated to supporting Ganondorf. Though Ganondorf does not yet seem able to escape the depths, he is entirely able to send out a puppet version of Zelda (and clones of himself) to the surface world to further his goals, all the while his potent gloom is seeping into the surface more and more. The Depths are entered by jumping into a chasm you can never climb back out of, and the only way to exit the Depths is the hero's unique ability to teleport out or use a magical ability to tunnel up through columns to the ceiling.
It's entirely possible that these two settings are two interpretations of the same place. Is it actually an alternate dimension? Is it actually a cave? Are they both kinda right? Both kinda wrong?
Perhaps the story told before had conflated the Sacred Realm and the Dark World into a singular location when they're actually two separate but related locations. What world is darker than the Depths? What land is more golden than the islands in the sky with their yellow grass and tree leaves? According to Skyward Sword, the Triforce's home was found in the sky, so the sky being what LttP's backstory called the Sacred Realm could track.
So perhaps the Dark World never was the Sacred Realm exactly but it was, instead, the other half of the same overall territory, historically populated by the same god-like beings but having always been dark, though still corrupted by Ganon's presence.
And could the Depths be more places, yet? Could they be Termina, accessed by falling into a horrifically deep chasm, Link rushing past floating lights in a black void on his way down? Could they be Lorule, a dark and hostile parallel world accessed through cracks in the earth?
On that subject, Lorule had its own separate Triforce set from Hyrule meaning Link Between Worlds's two titular worlds have six Triforces between them. I didn't mention this before but another difference between this telling and prior ones is the relic Ganon is fighting for: in prior tellings it was the Triforce and in this new story it's the Secret Stones. Are the Secret Stones a new interpretation of Triforces, then? There are six Secret Stones in Tears of the Kingdom (technically seven but one is a time-travel duplicate of another so it doesn't count), just as there are six Triforces in Link Between Worlds.
Zonai fashion shows an interest in similarly aligned triangles in their clothes that Link can wear; each ceremonial dragon-themed outfit as well as the archaic tunic has nine triangles arranged in two rows. Why nine when I've been talking about the number six, you ask? Those who consume a Zonai Secret Stone become an immortal dragon. Despite that all six of the Secret Stones are accounted for in Tears of the Kingdom's present day, there are also three immortal dragons. Seemingly, then, there were nine original Secret Stones, neatly matching the recurring motif of nine triangles to represent them.
Perhaps the Enneaforce is real, or perhaps these two stories just disagree about which of multiple separate types of magical relic Ganondorf was after and we're meant to interpret the world as having both Triforces and Secret Stones. Because, like, they're not not Sage Medallions, either: there's also known to be six of those and they're even linked directly to the Sages.
If Rauru is indeed a Zonai as this game portrays him, making the royal family in all post-Rauru stories part Zonai, this makes the subject of ears worth examining in some other games.
According to Link to the Past, the Hylian people are said to have magic-infused blood and abnormally long and pointed ears, said to make them better able to communicate with the gods. In the game itself, some human characters have long, pointed ears and some have more rounded ears like real people do. Also in the game itself, some long-eared characters are shown to be capable of telepathy.
And the series continues for a long time in this vein, games consistently have a mix of characters with pointy elf ears and roundy human ears that are presumably Hylian and non-Hylian, respectively.
The only time after Link to the Past it's called to attention, though, is Wind Waker: Ganondorf, searching for Hyrule's princess, has instructed his giant bird to abduct girls with long, pointed ears.
As of Breath of the Wild, suddenly all non-Gerudo humans are called Hylians and all humans, including Gerudo, have elf ears. Also as of Breath of the Wild, there's an indication that Hylians these days are no longer capable of telepathy: if offering to use your "brain powers" to signal Yunobo during the Death Mountain ascent, he'll comment that he heard that used to be a thing but didn't think Hylians could do that anymore. If we look in terms of difference from the general population rather than just the visual, this indicates that Hylians have lost the trait of having bigger and pointier ears and also lost the ears' associated magic.
But now in Tears, the first thing Zelda says when she sees a depiction of a Zonai is "holy fuck, look at their giant ears".
I think the clear takeaway of this is that what earlier games called Hylian is different from what Breath and Tears call Hylian: in older stories the "Hylians" were human/zonai hybrids but in these newer ones the name is basically synonymous with Hyrulean and there's just not enough zonai DNA left in their hybrid descendants to have any observable effect anymore.
That Ancient Hero you can morph into after completing all the shrines who "saved Hyrule in the past" and doesn't appear to be any known character? Maybe people who looked like him are what "Hylian" used to mean. Maybe he's this game's interpretation of another game's Link, when he's being displayed in a story where zonai are depicted as dragon-people instead of how Rauru looked in Ocarina of Time.
I have more thoughts I could ramble about but eventually I have to sleep so I'll shut up for now.
Interrogate my shit, share your own shit, whatever you're into. I'm just desperate to see any actual discussion of this game's lore instead of reflexive attempts to dismiss it.
submitted by SvenHudson to truezelda [link] [comments]
Instead, I want to try saying the things in this game are what it says they are: Rauru is Rauru, Ganondorf is Ganondorf, the Imprisoning War is the Imprisoning War.
There is frankly a lot of material in this game that lines up with a straightforward interpretation. Landmarks of the past have a conspicuous resemblance to Ocarina of Time's landmarks. Events have a conspicuous resemblance to its events.
There are differences, too, but I think analyzing those differences is far more compelling than simply pointing at them and announcing that they are different. Retellings of stories often change details, add or remove things at the teller's whim. So instead of the conventional fandom idea of canon where each new story is truer than the last if they ever contradict, we could treat this series of self-proclaimed legends like there's possibly an underlying truer version of events that we can identify through parallels; our understanding of the "truth" (or at least "original story") is then fuzzier where things contradict between stories and clear where they align and there's a lot of room for personal interpretation in between.
That feels, to me, like what this newest game is asking us to do when it so deliberately invokes past game's stories in altered forms.
For example: In the first telling of the Imprisoning War, the seven sages were seven human men, one of them oddly short. In the second telling, they were a diverse group of fantasy races of varying ages and genders. And now in this third telling, the composition of the group is different once again. So the particulars of who was in this group are fuzzy, the particulars that there were some humans and a goron and a zora feel more solid than whether there were zonai or kokiri mixed in, but the number seven is very solid, as is their imprisoning of Ganon.
So let's ask some questions that this game raises.
In the first telling, Ganon was sealed in the Sacred Realm, the alternate dimension which is the home of the Triforce, which he had corrupted into the Dark World by the time the game begins. The Dark World as seen in the game is an darker version of the regular world the hero comes from, geographically largely identical (right down to the location of the only known populated village in each world) but all-around less friendly to traverse and populated with stronger monsters. Ganon has human followers that live there. Though Ganon isn't yet able to escape the Dark World, he is entirely able to send a out a puppet being called Agahnim to the home world to further his goals and, generally speaking, his evil is said to be seeping into the home world from the Dark World. Many portals in the home world exist that can transport one to the Dark World but they only work one way and it can only be re-exited by the hero due to a magic mirror he luckily happens to own.
In this third telling, Ganondorf is trapped in the Depths, a giant cave system underneath Hyrule. The depths are almost entirely pitch black, geographically near identical to the surface (but with verticality of surfaces inverted so mountains become canyons and vice versa), there are ruins of ancient settlements in the same relative location as contemporary above-ground settlements, the terrain is much more hostile than above, and the monsters that live there are empowered by Ganondorf's magical bad vibes. The humans you find down there are a roguish cult dedicated to supporting Ganondorf. Though Ganondorf does not yet seem able to escape the depths, he is entirely able to send out a puppet version of Zelda (and clones of himself) to the surface world to further his goals, all the while his potent gloom is seeping into the surface more and more. The Depths are entered by jumping into a chasm you can never climb back out of, and the only way to exit the Depths is the hero's unique ability to teleport out or use a magical ability to tunnel up through columns to the ceiling.
It's entirely possible that these two settings are two interpretations of the same place. Is it actually an alternate dimension? Is it actually a cave? Are they both kinda right? Both kinda wrong?
Perhaps the story told before had conflated the Sacred Realm and the Dark World into a singular location when they're actually two separate but related locations. What world is darker than the Depths? What land is more golden than the islands in the sky with their yellow grass and tree leaves? According to Skyward Sword, the Triforce's home was found in the sky, so the sky being what LttP's backstory called the Sacred Realm could track.
So perhaps the Dark World never was the Sacred Realm exactly but it was, instead, the other half of the same overall territory, historically populated by the same god-like beings but having always been dark, though still corrupted by Ganon's presence.
And could the Depths be more places, yet? Could they be Termina, accessed by falling into a horrifically deep chasm, Link rushing past floating lights in a black void on his way down? Could they be Lorule, a dark and hostile parallel world accessed through cracks in the earth?
Zonai fashion shows an interest in similarly aligned triangles in their clothes that Link can wear; each ceremonial dragon-themed outfit as well as the archaic tunic has nine triangles arranged in two rows. Why nine when I've been talking about the number six, you ask? Those who consume a Zonai Secret Stone become an immortal dragon. Despite that all six of the Secret Stones are accounted for in Tears of the Kingdom's present day, there are also three immortal dragons. Seemingly, then, there were nine original Secret Stones, neatly matching the recurring motif of nine triangles to represent them.
Perhaps the Enneaforce is real, or perhaps these two stories just disagree about which of multiple separate types of magical relic Ganondorf was after and we're meant to interpret the world as having both Triforces and Secret Stones. Because, like, they're not not Sage Medallions, either: there's also known to be six of those and they're even linked directly to the Sages.
According to Link to the Past, the Hylian people are said to have magic-infused blood and abnormally long and pointed ears, said to make them better able to communicate with the gods. In the game itself, some human characters have long, pointed ears and some have more rounded ears like real people do. Also in the game itself, some long-eared characters are shown to be capable of telepathy.
And the series continues for a long time in this vein, games consistently have a mix of characters with pointy elf ears and roundy human ears that are presumably Hylian and non-Hylian, respectively.
The only time after Link to the Past it's called to attention, though, is Wind Waker: Ganondorf, searching for Hyrule's princess, has instructed his giant bird to abduct girls with long, pointed ears.
As of Breath of the Wild, suddenly all non-Gerudo humans are called Hylians and all humans, including Gerudo, have elf ears. Also as of Breath of the Wild, there's an indication that Hylians these days are no longer capable of telepathy: if offering to use your "brain powers" to signal Yunobo during the Death Mountain ascent, he'll comment that he heard that used to be a thing but didn't think Hylians could do that anymore. If we look in terms of difference from the general population rather than just the visual, this indicates that Hylians have lost the trait of having bigger and pointier ears and also lost the ears' associated magic.
But now in Tears, the first thing Zelda says when she sees a depiction of a Zonai is "holy fuck, look at their giant ears".
I think the clear takeaway of this is that what earlier games called Hylian is different from what Breath and Tears call Hylian: in older stories the "Hylians" were human/zonai hybrids but in these newer ones the name is basically synonymous with Hyrulean and there's just not enough zonai DNA left in their hybrid descendants to have any observable effect anymore.
That Ancient Hero you can morph into after completing all the shrines who "saved Hyrule in the past" and doesn't appear to be any known character? Maybe people who looked like him are what "Hylian" used to mean. Maybe he's this game's interpretation of another game's Link, when he's being displayed in a story where zonai are depicted as dragon-people instead of how Rauru looked in Ocarina of Time.
Interrogate my shit, share your own shit, whatever you're into. I'm just desperate to see any actual discussion of this game's lore instead of reflexive attempts to dismiss it.
2023.06.01 06:19 xiaolii [H] Lots of Games [W] Trade for Games or Paypal (EU)
Last Updated List: 01/06/2023
I'm primarily looking to trade for games from my wishlist, otherwise I am also open to selling them. I am not interested in games I already have and all games I'm getting are for me and activated on my own account. Other than that feel free to offer your list of Steam games and something I may not have and fulfills my criteria I could/would be willing to trade for it/them.
Info:
I kindly ask of you is to be reasonable when making offers to make it a fair trade for both of us.
Let's have a good exchange/trade!
NEWLY ADDED:
List of games:
submitted by xiaolii to indiegameswap [link] [comments]
I'm primarily looking to trade for games from my wishlist, otherwise I am also open to selling them. I am not interested in games I already have and all games I'm getting are for me and activated on my own account. Other than that feel free to offer your list of Steam games and something I may not have and fulfills my criteria I could/would be willing to trade for it/them.
- To trade you must respond to this thread first, I will not respond or accept anyone outside of this thread, only exception are unless we've traded more than once before.
- Only interested in trading for games on Steam.
- I don't do Humble gifts whether receiving or giving, all my keys are in unrevealed form right after purchase.
- No interest in any keys from an unofficial retailesource (aka grey market), curatoreviewer keys (aka beta/reviewebeta-testing/etc.), abandonware, keys for games that are already free on Steam itself, Steam profile-limited keys, and only slight interest in VR-titles and/or de-listed games.
- Anything marked as wishlist/paypal, it's self-explanatory and I won't look through lists.
- All my keys are EU keys, if you are outside of EU, make sure you double check for any region locks for your country. For quite a few which I was aware of I already listed the region lock, however this is not my responsibility as I did specify the key's region.
- When buying, I only accept payments in Euro's. Minimum purchase of €1,00. Fees are on buyer.
Info:
- Region (and keys region): Europe
- IGS Rep Page
- SteamTrades
- SteamRep
I kindly ask of you is to be reasonable when making offers to make it a fair trade for both of us.
Let's have a good exchange/trade!
NEWLY ADDED:
- Blasphemous (Region Lock: EU/US only)
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Haiku, the Robot (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Lost Ruins (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Rain World
List of games:
- 16bit Trader
- 4089: Ghost Within
- 911 Operator
- Afterparty
- Alien Breed 2: Assault
- Amnesia: Rebirth
- Ampersat
- An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
- Anomaly II
- Anomaly: Warzone Earth
- Apparition
- Arcade Spirits
- As Far As The Eye
- Ashina: The Red Witch
- Autonauts vs PirateBots
- AVICII Invector
- Back 4 Blood (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Backstage Pass
- Banners of Ruin
- BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
- Beholder 2
- Bendy and the Dark Revival
- Bighead Runner
- Bionic Commando
- Biped
- bit Dungeon
- bit Dungeon II
- bit Dungeon III
- Blackguards
- Blasphemous (Region Lock: EU/US only)
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
- Carton
- CastleStorm
- Caveblazers
- Chicago 1930 : The Prohibition
- Chronicon (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Close to the Sun
- Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues
- Colortone
- Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
- Company of Heroes 2
- Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault
- Company of Heroes 2 - The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West
- Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
- Cook, Serve, Delicious!
- Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
- Cosmic Star Heroine
- Crash Drive 2
- Crazy Machines 3
- Curse: The Eye of Isis
- Cybercube
- Danger Scavenger
- Dead Island Definitive Edition
- Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
- Death Squared
- Devil's Hunt
- Dicey Dungeons
- Dishonored
- DOOM II
- Double Kick Heroes
- Drawful 2
- Driftland: The Magic Revival
- Dungeons
- Dungeons 2
- Dungeons 3
- Eldest Souls
- Endorlight
- Eternal Edge +
- Eternal Threads (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Euro Truck Simulator 2
- Evoland Legendary Edition
- Fallout 1: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
- Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Feel-A-Maze
- Fight'N Rage
- First Class Trouble
- Frederic: Evil Strikes Back
- Fury Unleashed
- Garfield Kart
- Garfield Kart - Furious Racing
- Generation Zero
- Gloria Victis
- Going Under
- Golf Club Wasteland
- Good Night, Knight
- Gotham Knights (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Gray Dawn (wishlist or Paypal only)
- GRIP: Combat Racing
- GRIP: Combat Racing
- Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
- Guts and Glory
- Haegemonia: Legions of Iron
- Haiku, the Robot (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Hamilton's Great Adventure
- Heads Will Roll
- Hellbound
- Hero's Hour
- Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?!
- Home Sweet Home
- Homeworld Remastered Collection
- Horizon Chase Turbo
- Hue
- Iron Fisticle
- ITORAH (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Jack Move (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Jagged Alliance: Rage!
- JUMANJI: The Video Game
- Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
- Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe Edition
- King Arthur Collection (Sub ID 25825)
- King of Dragon Pass
- Kingdom Wars 2: Definitive Edition
- Kingdom Wars 4
- Kyle is Famous: Complete Edition
- Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
- Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail
- Lila’s Sky Ark
- Linked
- Little Orpheus
- Lord of the Dark Castle
- Lost Planet 3 Complete Pack
- Lost Ruins (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Lucius III
- Mafia III: Definitive Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Mago
- Main Assembly
- MARSUPILAMI - HOOBADVENTURE (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Medieval Kingdom Wars
- Mega Man Legacy Collection
- Men of War
- Metamorphosis
- MirrorMoon EP
- Monaco
- Moon Hunters
- Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
- Music Racer
- Mystery of Unicorn Castle: The Beastmaster
- Necronator: Dead Wrong
- NecroWorm
- Neighbours back From Hell
- Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
- Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix
- Nihilumbra
- Nomad Survival
- NUTS
- Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
- Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
- Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
- One Finger Death Punch 2
- Operation Tango
- Orbital Racer
- Out of Space
- Papo & Yo
- Party Hard 2
- PAYDAY 2
- Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID)
- Pizza Connection 3
- Planes, Bullets and Vodka
- Police Stories
- POSTAL 2
- QUAKE II
- RAD
- Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
- Radio Commander
- Railway Empire
- Rain World
- Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
- Red Faction: Armageddon
- Red Solstice 2: Survivors
- Regions Of Ruin
- Remnants of Naezith
- Resident Evil 4 (2005)
- Retrowave
- Reventure
- River City Ransom: Underground
- Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
- Röki
- Rustler
- S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
- Salt and Sanctuary
- Sands of Aura
- Scarlet Tower
- Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story
- Serious Sam Double D XXL
- Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
- Shadows: Awakening
- Shape of the World
- She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
- Shift Happens
- Shing!
- Shut Up And Dig
- Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
- Sine Mora EX
- Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
- Sinking Island
- Skeletal Avenger
- Skydrift Infinity
- Small World + 1 DLC
- Sneak Thief
- SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
- Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (DLC)
- Sorry, James
- Soul Grabber
- Soulblight
- Space Crew: Legendary Edition
- Sparkle 2 Evo
- Spirit of the Island (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
- STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
- STAR WARS Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast
- Stacking
- Starblast
- Starpoint Gemini 2 Gold Pack
- Starpoint Gemini Warlords
- STASIS
- Stick Fight: The Game
- Steel Rats
- Strange Brigade
- Streets of Fury EX
- Strider
- Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
- SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Suite 776
- Sunlight
- Super Indie Karts
- Super Magbot
- Super Meat Boy
- Supraland
- Surfingers
- Swag and Sorcery
- Switchball HD
- Syberia
- Synergia
- System Crash
- Tacoma
- Tainted Grail: Conquest (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Tesla Force
- The Anacrusis
- The Amazing American Circus
- The Citadel
- The Dark Eye: Memoria
- The Divine Invasion
- The Dream Machine: Chapter 1 & 2
- The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
- The eXceed Collection: Aural Brutality Edition
- The Falconeer
- THE GAME OF LIFE
- The Initiate
- The Initiate 2: The First Interviews
- The Inner World
- The Invisible Hours
- The Moment of Silence
- The Quarry – Horror History Visual Filter Pack (DLC)
- The Sexy Brutale
- The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf
- The Town of Light
- This War of Mine
- Those Who Remain
- Ticket to Ride
- Timberman
- Time Lock VR
- Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
- Totally Reliable Delivery Service
- Tower of Time
- Townsmen - A Kingdom Rebuilt
- Train Simulator Classic + 2 DLCs
- Tropico 3 Gold Edition
- Tropico 4 Collector's Bundle
- Unity of Command Trilogy
- Unshaded
- Verdun
- Violett Remastered
- VirtuaVerse
- Wargroove
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf
- Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
- Warhammer: Vermintide 2
- Weable
- Weaving Tides
- Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
- Windosill
- Within Skerry
- Within the blade
- Worms Rumble
- Yoku's Island Express
- XCOM 2
- XEL
- X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
- Youtubers Life
- Zombie Army Trilogy
- Zombie Driver HD
2023.06.01 06:19 xiaolii [H] Lots of Games [W] Trade for Games or Paypal (EU)
Last Updated List: 01/06/2023
I'm primarily looking to trade for games from my wishlist, otherwise I am also open to selling them. I am not interested in games I already have and all games I'm getting are for me and activated on my own account. Other than that feel free to offer your list of Steam games and something I may not have and fulfills my criteria I could/would be willing to trade for it/them.
Info:
I kindly ask of you is to be reasonable when making offers to make it a fair trade for both of us.
Let's have a good exchange/trade!
NEWLY ADDED:
List of games:
submitted by xiaolii to GameTrade [link] [comments]
I'm primarily looking to trade for games from my wishlist, otherwise I am also open to selling them. I am not interested in games I already have and all games I'm getting are for me and activated on my own account. Other than that feel free to offer your list of Steam games and something I may not have and fulfills my criteria I could/would be willing to trade for it/them.
- To trade you must respond to this thread first, I will not respond or accept anyone outside of this thread, only exception are unless we've traded more than once before.
- Only interested in trading for games on Steam.
- I don't do Humble gifts whether receiving or giving, all my keys are in unrevealed form right after purchase.
- No interest in any keys from an unofficial retailesource (aka grey market), curatoreviewer keys (aka beta/reviewebeta-testing/etc.), abandonware, keys for games that are already free on Steam itself, Steam profile-limited keys, and only slight interest in VR-titles and/or de-listed games.
- Anything marked as wishlist/paypal, it's self-explanatory and I won't look through lists.
- All my keys are EU keys, if you are outside of EU, make sure you double check for any region locks for your country. For quite a few which I was aware of I already listed the region lock, however this is not my responsibility as I did specify the key's region.
- When buying, I only accept payments in Euro's. Minimum purchase of €1,00. Fees are on buyer.
Info:
- Region (and keys region): Europe
- IGS Rep Page
- SteamTrades
- SteamRep
I kindly ask of you is to be reasonable when making offers to make it a fair trade for both of us.
Let's have a good exchange/trade!
NEWLY ADDED:
- Blasphemous (Region Lock: EU/US only)
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Haiku, the Robot (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Lost Ruins (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Rain World
List of games:
- 16bit Trader
- 4089: Ghost Within
- 911 Operator
- Afterparty
- Alien Breed 2: Assault
- Amnesia: Rebirth
- Ampersat
- An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
- Anomaly II
- Anomaly: Warzone Earth
- Apparition
- Arcade Spirits
- As Far As The Eye
- Ashina: The Red Witch
- Autonauts vs PirateBots
- AVICII Invector
- Back 4 Blood (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Backstage Pass
- Banners of Ruin
- BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
- Beholder 2
- Bendy and the Dark Revival
- Bighead Runner
- Bionic Commando
- Biped
- bit Dungeon
- bit Dungeon II
- bit Dungeon III
- Blackguards
- Blasphemous (Region Lock: EU/US only)
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
- Carton
- CastleStorm
- Caveblazers
- Chicago 1930 : The Prohibition
- Chronicon (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Close to the Sun
- Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues
- Colortone
- Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
- Company of Heroes 2
- Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault
- Company of Heroes 2 - The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West
- Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
- Cook, Serve, Delicious!
- Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
- Cosmic Star Heroine
- Crash Drive 2
- Crazy Machines 3
- Curse: The Eye of Isis
- Cybercube
- Danger Scavenger
- Dead Island Definitive Edition
- Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
- Death Squared
- Devil's Hunt
- Dicey Dungeons
- Dishonored
- DOOM II
- Double Kick Heroes
- Drawful 2
- Driftland: The Magic Revival
- Dungeons
- Dungeons 2
- Dungeons 3
- Eldest Souls
- Endorlight
- Eternal Edge +
- Eternal Threads (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Euro Truck Simulator 2
- Evoland Legendary Edition
- Fallout 1: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
- Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Feel-A-Maze
- Fight'N Rage
- First Class Trouble
- Frederic: Evil Strikes Back
- Fury Unleashed
- Garfield Kart
- Garfield Kart - Furious Racing
- Generation Zero
- Gloria Victis
- Going Under
- Golf Club Wasteland
- Good Night, Knight
- Gotham Knights (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Gray Dawn (wishlist or Paypal only)
- GRIP: Combat Racing
- GRIP: Combat Racing
- Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
- Guts and Glory
- Haegemonia: Legions of Iron
- Haiku, the Robot (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Hamilton's Great Adventure
- Heads Will Roll
- Hellbound
- Hero's Hour
- Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?!
- Home Sweet Home
- Homeworld Remastered Collection
- Horizon Chase Turbo
- Hue
- Iron Fisticle
- ITORAH (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Jack Move (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Jagged Alliance: Rage!
- JUMANJI: The Video Game
- Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
- Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe Edition
- King Arthur Collection (Sub ID 25825)
- King of Dragon Pass
- Kingdom Wars 2: Definitive Edition
- Kingdom Wars 4
- Kyle is Famous: Complete Edition
- Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
- Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail
- Lila’s Sky Ark
- Linked
- Little Orpheus
- Lord of the Dark Castle
- Lost Planet 3 Complete Pack
- Lost Ruins (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Lucius III
- Mafia III: Definitive Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Mago
- Main Assembly
- MARSUPILAMI - HOOBADVENTURE (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Medieval Kingdom Wars
- Mega Man Legacy Collection
- Men of War
- Metamorphosis
- MirrorMoon EP
- Monaco
- Moon Hunters
- Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
- Music Racer
- Mystery of Unicorn Castle: The Beastmaster
- Necronator: Dead Wrong
- NecroWorm
- Neighbours back From Hell
- Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
- Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix
- Nihilumbra
- Nomad Survival
- NUTS
- Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
- Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
- Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
- One Finger Death Punch 2
- Operation Tango
- Orbital Racer
- Out of Space
- Papo & Yo
- Party Hard 2
- PAYDAY 2
- Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID)
- Pizza Connection 3
- Planes, Bullets and Vodka
- Police Stories
- POSTAL 2
- QUAKE II
- RAD
- Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
- Radio Commander
- Railway Empire
- Rain World
- Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
- Red Faction: Armageddon
- Red Solstice 2: Survivors
- Regions Of Ruin
- Remnants of Naezith
- Resident Evil 4 (2005)
- Retrowave
- Reventure
- River City Ransom: Underground
- Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
- Röki
- Rustler
- S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
- Salt and Sanctuary
- Sands of Aura
- Scarlet Tower
- Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story
- Serious Sam Double D XXL
- Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
- Shadows: Awakening
- Shape of the World
- She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
- Shift Happens
- Shing!
- Shut Up And Dig
- Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
- Sine Mora EX
- Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
- Sinking Island
- Skeletal Avenger
- Skydrift Infinity
- Small World + 1 DLC
- Sneak Thief
- SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
- Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (DLC)
- Sorry, James
- Soul Grabber
- Soulblight
- Space Crew: Legendary Edition
- Sparkle 2 Evo
- Spirit of the Island (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
- STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
- STAR WARS Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast
- Stacking
- Starblast
- Starpoint Gemini 2 Gold Pack
- Starpoint Gemini Warlords
- STASIS
- Stick Fight: The Game
- Steel Rats
- Strange Brigade
- Streets of Fury EX
- Strider
- Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
- SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Suite 776
- Sunlight
- Super Indie Karts
- Super Magbot
- Super Meat Boy
- Supraland
- Surfingers
- Swag and Sorcery
- Switchball HD
- Syberia
- Synergia
- System Crash
- Tacoma
- Tainted Grail: Conquest (wishlist or Paypal only)
- Tesla Force
- The Anacrusis
- The Amazing American Circus
- The Citadel
- The Dark Eye: Memoria
- The Divine Invasion
- The Dream Machine: Chapter 1 & 2
- The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
- The eXceed Collection: Aural Brutality Edition
- The Falconeer
- THE GAME OF LIFE
- The Initiate
- The Initiate 2: The First Interviews
- The Inner World
- The Invisible Hours
- The Moment of Silence
- The Quarry – Horror History Visual Filter Pack (DLC)
- The Sexy Brutale
- The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf
- The Town of Light
- This War of Mine
- Those Who Remain
- Ticket to Ride
- Timberman
- Time Lock VR
- Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
- Totally Reliable Delivery Service
- Tower of Time
- Townsmen - A Kingdom Rebuilt
- Train Simulator Classic + 2 DLCs
- Tropico 3 Gold Edition
- Tropico 4 Collector's Bundle
- Unity of Command Trilogy
- Unshaded
- Verdun
- Violett Remastered
- VirtuaVerse
- Wargroove
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf
- Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
- Warhammer: Vermintide 2
- Weable
- Weaving Tides
- Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
- Windosill
- Within Skerry
- Within the blade
- Worms Rumble
- Yoku's Island Express
- XCOM 2
- XEL
- X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
- Youtubers Life
- Zombie Army Trilogy
- Zombie Driver HD
2023.06.01 05:44 Extension-Meaning544 Coquette Andrew Tate roasts me.
 | submitted by Extension-Meaning544 to CharacterAI [link] [comments] |
2023.06.01 05:34 Desolane900 The Gladiator: Chapter 7
Author's Note
Hey how goes it
Here's a long one that I should have wrote more for but after passing it through ChatGPT, or whatever subsequent type of AI it was, the results, which aren't posted here, actually gave me some really cool and new ideas that'll come in the next chapter.
Like, super cool things I didn't even consider or think about. So that's awesome.
Expect the usual shenanigans and humanry occurring.
Love you guys and I'm thankful for the people who have been messaging me reminding me that I should keep writing. Sometimes I get a little jaded or just downright depressive thinking about my works of art.
As always, I hope you guys enjoy reading this from the bottom of my heart. I know I say it every chapter but I genuinely do mean it.
Here's the prior one, Chapter 6
And as always, the next chapter will go here once posted.
End of Author's Note
The Gladiator
A 'Space is an Ocean' Story
Chapter 7
The Unlikely Candidates
Something was very wrong about the agent escorting them out of the labyrinthine underbelly of the colosseum.
Xyx had dealt with Systems Authority on multiple occasions. They had augments that curbed their social skills, recorded every action and thought they committed to, and reminded them that the Cewmis were watching.
He'd never met one, of course. Had only heard stories. They ran the Federation and, in turn, the galaxy.
The Xihex'han wondered if this warranted one coming out to That Sand Ball, or if they were going to meet one.
When he got caught on Earth, his crime had been enough that an agent physically apprehended him and escorted him to his own courts, who worked as a liason to the Federation proper.
None of the agents he had ever interacted with were as cocksure as this one.
The reptile adjusted his robes and stepped a bit closer to the human, keeping an eye on the agent in front of them.
"Saul, this agent is.. you could use the term off.", he started.
"Really? Seems like a cop to me.", the little pale ape replied. "Walks like a cop, purrs like a cop."
"No, I mean, well, maybe your cops but he is not acting like our cops.", he glanced down at the man to see if he was catching on. He wasn't.
"Why? He forget to stand for the anthem or something?", the human grinned up at him, "Come on Xyx, you're not your usual zonked out self. Hit that peace pipe you keep hidden on you." The man gestured jokingly toward his robes. "Unless somebody broke it. Did the cop take it?"
The human was lucky he understood the sarcasm dialect of English. He brushed it off and kept as serious a tone as he could muster.
"No, nothing of the sort. Should my behavior not indicate that something is wrong?", he pressed.
"Nah. I think you got involved with the police and you don't wanna be seen as a narc.", the man replied dismissively, stepping over a fallen body. "I don't see you any different and I'm not gonna give you any stitches, so just relax. They're gonna get me home and probably give you a couple bucks for helping. No sweat."
So that's why Saul was being so carefree about this. Obviously. How could he have known?
The reptilian stared at him for a long moment before taking another glance at the feline ahead of them, keeping his eyes on the agent as he spoke.
"That is not at all what will happen, Saul of Earth.", he muttered, catching an inquisitive look from the man out of the corner of his eye.
"Remember what I told you? You are a very sturdy little bastard, and a bioweapon on top of that.", the green scaled biped began explaining.
"You would be the equivalent of a rabid tiger covered in anthrax let loose in the streets of New York.", he peered down at the man to see if he was getting through and, thankfully, he was.
"I do not know where you are being taken nor why you are even alive. They don't charge tigers with crimes.", he finished.
"What about the machines inside me? And.. and you can translate. Tell him I'm not gonna hurt anybody.", the man tried, his eyes now glued to the feline as well. Xyx only shook his head.
"Who knows when those black market machines will fail? Or if they truly kill everything coming out of you. Regardless, my point remains.", Xyx ventured, an accusatory shift coming over his demeanor. "His motives are unclear, your fate is unknown, and he is not to be trusted."
"Off. Right." Saul was mulling over his words with a look of suspicious determination. "What do we do then?", he asked.
Xyx was very glad that he had asked.
"Simply remain amicable until it's time to become human.", he gave the man's shoulder a few reassuring pats.
Ocean of Uncertainty
Banzora sounded lovely right about now.
If anyone asked, Lana'kt'ujam couldn't honestly provide an answer that she felt comfortable with being her final decision, but home would have been one of her options.
On one claw, she could be back under the warm oceans of that blue pearl. Enjoying the pristine waters, abundant fresh food, and unimaginably beautiful stonework her people carve with their own claws.
Conducting honest research with state of the art equipment in an effort to bring more uplifted species to the galactic fold beneath the Federation's benevolent eyes.
Her scientific progress doubling as proof that she's making an effort to reclaim her medical practitioner's license and disbar the charges that robbed her of it.
Serene, happy, safe.
She felt the memories of home coating the seafloor in layers of nostalgic catharsis, a mass of soft sponge for her to sink back down into when the need arises
On the other claw, this cycle had started off with her stuck inside of the glorified closet she called a clinic.
Fixing the deadbeat criminals, untrustworthy contract fighters, and exotic beasts for an arena she wished would burn down.
Deeply loathing her employer and wishing him nothing but death with his establishment dismantled.
She felt the smoldering coal of disdain from the still-fresh memories, burning the cracked statue of pride containing who she once was
But now?
Now, her employer's unburied corpse was pulped on the floor of the embarrassing closet clinic.
She was leaving the dung heap arena falling to shambles with her dung heap responsibilities to the scum that inhabited it.
And one would think nothing could make the day any better?
She felt the coal morphing, growing, becoming a self-righteous fire of empowerment, containing the potential to mend her cracked pride and rebuild the Lana she remembered being
She was accompanying a genuine enlightened Amber class primate and his Xihex'han companion that spent years enriched in his culture, on his home planet.
There was just so much to learn if she could find a moment between all of the sudden violence and minefield of ethical dilemmas to seize the opportunity.
The Amber very clearly wished he weren't a victim of the poking, prodding, or tests conducted on him any time she wasn't relentlessly piecing his burnt pelt back together from the holes and scratches coating it, but she stayed optimistic that he'd warm up to the idea of furthering science eventually.
She felt a bubbling giddiness from anticipation, the dense waters of professionalism keeping them from traveling far or getting in the way
Unfortunately for Lana, the 'human' and Xyx were ahead of her, quietly speaking in his belching, gibbering language and didn't seem keen on including her or her scientific interests.
Despite lacking the facilities to replicate it herself, she desperately wanted to learn the language. His Spike was already translating for her, she only needed to understand him. Then proper interviews could happen.
She observed the pair ahead of her and made a few attempts to glean something, anything, from the interaction.
Obviously they needed some kind of distraction. Maybe they were deciding what to have for dinner once they got out of the arena. Or perhaps Xyx was sharing a secret or traumatic memory of some kind.
Or, the most likely possibility, that she was hopeless in trying to read either of the beings in front of her.
She felt the sharp knife of focus as she tapped into the network to guide her augments, a silk web of attention letting nothing escape scrutiny
For starters, the reptile's species were, unfortunately, completely expressionless. To the extent that they appeared to utterly lack the capacity for complex social interaction to an outside observer.
The one, and only, notable exception mentioned by the networks were the regional accents and dialects that any Xihex'han could simply mimic with relative ease after a few conversations.
Otherwise, they were a blank slate to the rest of the galaxy.
To some degree, it was likely being done intentionally to maintain their stoic desert monk facade.
Xyx being no exception to this, fighting and basking were the contractor's only two notable characteristics before the hominid's arrival, and the arena's subsequent upheaval.
Lately, she noticed him beginning to mirror certain motions and mannerisms she'd seen in the human.
Sorting through footage provided a testimony to her observation. Motions they both went through. Practically identical.
Bobbing the shoulders sometimes, shaking the head there, the occasional hand moving around in front of his chest as he spoke.
It was almost as if he was trying to use the familiarity of the language and gestures to comfort or disarm the Amber for some reason.
If only she could cross reference the collected data with the network to find intent.
She felt unease mixing with intrigue, an uncomfortable skin coating her determination
She made a few mental notes to review more data and continue her observations of the Xihex'han before her attention switched to the fleshy creature beside him and she started trying to figure him out.
The header of her dissertation would definitely make note of the stocky little primate's deathwish since he was tirelessly trying to get himself killed at every opportunity.
Then there was the glaring, irreparable problem of the Command Spike where an augment should be, jutting from his face and mocking her by only operating one way.
He couldn't even access the aug network, not that she thought he could handle such an information overload, but the poor guy couldn't even put on clothes or send pseudo-telepathic messages.
He must have been so embarrassed.
She felt pity for the creature, a soft fog barely concealing the helpless shame of her inaction, in the heart of the mist was a glowing pile of embers, frustration
'May you be forgotten while you rot in the deeps, Burj.' The only fitting curse for his cruelty that she could think of.
The Banzoran did start to internalize that she had been distracted by her pity and frustration for the ape mixing with her shame for failing to stop the Spike from being implanted.
Lana had forgotten to actually observe, to find something notable. She knew she still had recordings of everything but the seed of introspection clung to her thoughts, threatening to grow into resentment.
Resentment would jeopardize her chances of making something bigger with what she had here.
She felt her emotional weakness unsettle the seafloor and break embarrassment free from below, the friction and instability trying to weaken the pillars of duty on the foundations of hope
Turning the last corner shifted her line of thought, the hall stretching towards the hardlight door leading outside to her future of unemployment.
Sweet, succulent destitution.
Lana could find work elsewhere, and would need to, but she really was not going to miss working under Burj. She'd take the uncertainty of starvation over another minute under that fool.
The Projush agent stepped right up to the field and the semi-transparent red door collapsed at his command prompt. Rather quickly for such a thick hardlight field as well.
Lana couldn't help but wonder how the primate was going to react to the world outside the pit when he saw it for the first time.
She definitely needed to keep collecting data on the Amber and verified that both her augs, and her drone, were still recording everything. Twice.
She felt the coarse irritation of her emotional slip begin to sink beneath the stones of clinical detachment, large bricks of chance sinking from the waters above to build a tower gleaming with opportunity or just as easily crush her beneath them
She already had plenty of footage of his biological reactions to the weapons used against him and his own combatives, which needed work. She was quite excited to deconstruct and file away everything once she had a terminal.
As the door drew closer to her, she could hear the rain outside pelting the crowded streets and made a mental note to get data on the acid's interactions with the primate's skin.
Lana genuinely could not get any more excited today. There was just too much work to be done.
No more patching up criminals with subpar equipment. No more listening to an insane warlord's bipolar rambling.
Real work!
A future!
Now to either convince the agent to let her have it or take it herself.
She opened a pseudo-telepathic channel to Ash'shis and introduced herself, opening with a bit of amicable rapport.
You Live Like This?
The cat dude stepped in front of the large open space leading outside. And just stood there for a second.
Saul was keeping a closer eye on cat cop after his conversation with his gator friend. While he wanted to believe that law enforcement was supposed to do the right thing, there's always a bad apple to ruin the bunch.
This one might be that bad apple if Xyx had good hunches.
The cop stepped outside and the three various people followed him, the crab lady was still taking up the rear. He didn't blame her.
If he could put himself between him and the off officer, he would.
He stepped outside and squinted at how dark everything was. Nothing at all like the blue cloudy skies inside the colosseum. Not to mention the rain coming down.
He opened his mouth to catch some of the misty drops floating down and immediately regretted his decision, closing his mouth and feeling a bit torn by the taste of vinegar. At least it wasn't the funion balls but he didn't pack any of the water orbs and that would bite him, for sure.
Before he could bring his head down he saw shapes moving across the sky between the skyscrapers around him.
The sight was enough to make him forget about his open wounds stinging from the vinegar rain.
Massive boats of all shapes and sizes floated through the sky. The largest of them could be glimpsed in the gray sky above the towers. Some of the ship's were small enough to fit between the buildings. Others were so small it was just an alien standing on a skateboard clinging to the singular maste in the middle. The tiniest ones were flying just above his head.
He almost thought about throwing a rock.
"Oh wow. There's fuckin boats flying.", he muttered, jostling the lizard beside him with his elbow.
"There sure are. I believe our host wishes for us to continue though." Xyx replied as flat and bored as always, dragging Saul's attention downwards to cat cop.
The agent was standing a few meters away with his hands on his hips. Beside him was a big rhinoceros manatee hybrid that stood on cloven feet. Crab doc was already waiting beside them.
"Is tubby supposed to be the muscle?", he cracked, starting to make his way over to the agents and trying his hardest not to step in any puddles or lumps of wet trash with his bare feet.
He couldn't even fathom how the aliens live in this place with nothing on.
By the time he tip toed his way to the waiting cops, the big manatee thing was walking past him and going inside while the feline fur bro began to lead the way again, the crowded streets parting for him while he had his empty hand raised above his head.
The human figured his arm would get tired eventually.
One thing he noticed about the streets was the silence. There wasn't very much talking going on and the footsteps around him were louder than the chatter or the rain. It was still depressing.
The alleys and thin streets were a maze and the cat cop was vigilant. Not letting the human out of his sight for a second.
Saul didn't mind. He couldn't help looking around at the city and sky. Between releasing his pent up aggression towards blood sport operators, getting free of the traumatic cage, and being greeted by Picasso's crowded Bladerunner city with boats in the sky, he was actually starting to remember where he left his sense of humor.
submitted by Desolane900 to HFY [link] [comments]
Hey how goes it
Here's a long one that I should have wrote more for but after passing it through ChatGPT, or whatever subsequent type of AI it was, the results, which aren't posted here, actually gave me some really cool and new ideas that'll come in the next chapter.
Like, super cool things I didn't even consider or think about. So that's awesome.
Expect the usual shenanigans and humanry occurring.
Love you guys and I'm thankful for the people who have been messaging me reminding me that I should keep writing. Sometimes I get a little jaded or just downright depressive thinking about my works of art.
As always, I hope you guys enjoy reading this from the bottom of my heart. I know I say it every chapter but I genuinely do mean it.
Here's the prior one, Chapter 6
And as always, the next chapter will go here once posted.
End of Author's Note
The Gladiator
A 'Space is an Ocean' Story
Chapter 7
The Unlikely Candidates
Something was very wrong about the agent escorting them out of the labyrinthine underbelly of the colosseum.
Xyx had dealt with Systems Authority on multiple occasions. They had augments that curbed their social skills, recorded every action and thought they committed to, and reminded them that the Cewmis were watching.
He'd never met one, of course. Had only heard stories. They ran the Federation and, in turn, the galaxy.
The Xihex'han wondered if this warranted one coming out to That Sand Ball, or if they were going to meet one.
When he got caught on Earth, his crime had been enough that an agent physically apprehended him and escorted him to his own courts, who worked as a liason to the Federation proper.
None of the agents he had ever interacted with were as cocksure as this one.
The reptile adjusted his robes and stepped a bit closer to the human, keeping an eye on the agent in front of them.
"Saul, this agent is.. you could use the term off.", he started.
"Really? Seems like a cop to me.", the little pale ape replied. "Walks like a cop, purrs like a cop."
"No, I mean, well, maybe your cops but he is not acting like our cops.", he glanced down at the man to see if he was catching on. He wasn't.
"Why? He forget to stand for the anthem or something?", the human grinned up at him, "Come on Xyx, you're not your usual zonked out self. Hit that peace pipe you keep hidden on you." The man gestured jokingly toward his robes. "Unless somebody broke it. Did the cop take it?"
The human was lucky he understood the sarcasm dialect of English. He brushed it off and kept as serious a tone as he could muster.
"No, nothing of the sort. Should my behavior not indicate that something is wrong?", he pressed.
"Nah. I think you got involved with the police and you don't wanna be seen as a narc.", the man replied dismissively, stepping over a fallen body. "I don't see you any different and I'm not gonna give you any stitches, so just relax. They're gonna get me home and probably give you a couple bucks for helping. No sweat."
So that's why Saul was being so carefree about this. Obviously. How could he have known?
The reptilian stared at him for a long moment before taking another glance at the feline ahead of them, keeping his eyes on the agent as he spoke.
"That is not at all what will happen, Saul of Earth.", he muttered, catching an inquisitive look from the man out of the corner of his eye.
"Remember what I told you? You are a very sturdy little bastard, and a bioweapon on top of that.", the green scaled biped began explaining.
"You would be the equivalent of a rabid tiger covered in anthrax let loose in the streets of New York.", he peered down at the man to see if he was getting through and, thankfully, he was.
"I do not know where you are being taken nor why you are even alive. They don't charge tigers with crimes.", he finished.
"What about the machines inside me? And.. and you can translate. Tell him I'm not gonna hurt anybody.", the man tried, his eyes now glued to the feline as well. Xyx only shook his head.
"Who knows when those black market machines will fail? Or if they truly kill everything coming out of you. Regardless, my point remains.", Xyx ventured, an accusatory shift coming over his demeanor. "His motives are unclear, your fate is unknown, and he is not to be trusted."
"Off. Right." Saul was mulling over his words with a look of suspicious determination. "What do we do then?", he asked.
Xyx was very glad that he had asked.
"Simply remain amicable until it's time to become human.", he gave the man's shoulder a few reassuring pats.
Ocean of Uncertainty
Banzora sounded lovely right about now.
If anyone asked, Lana'kt'ujam couldn't honestly provide an answer that she felt comfortable with being her final decision, but home would have been one of her options.
On one claw, she could be back under the warm oceans of that blue pearl. Enjoying the pristine waters, abundant fresh food, and unimaginably beautiful stonework her people carve with their own claws.
Conducting honest research with state of the art equipment in an effort to bring more uplifted species to the galactic fold beneath the Federation's benevolent eyes.
Her scientific progress doubling as proof that she's making an effort to reclaim her medical practitioner's license and disbar the charges that robbed her of it.
Serene, happy, safe.
She felt the memories of home coating the seafloor in layers of nostalgic catharsis, a mass of soft sponge for her to sink back down into when the need arises
On the other claw, this cycle had started off with her stuck inside of the glorified closet she called a clinic.
Fixing the deadbeat criminals, untrustworthy contract fighters, and exotic beasts for an arena she wished would burn down.
Deeply loathing her employer and wishing him nothing but death with his establishment dismantled.
She felt the smoldering coal of disdain from the still-fresh memories, burning the cracked statue of pride containing who she once was
But now?
Now, her employer's unburied corpse was pulped on the floor of the embarrassing closet clinic.
She was leaving the dung heap arena falling to shambles with her dung heap responsibilities to the scum that inhabited it.
And one would think nothing could make the day any better?
She felt the coal morphing, growing, becoming a self-righteous fire of empowerment, containing the potential to mend her cracked pride and rebuild the Lana she remembered being
She was accompanying a genuine enlightened Amber class primate and his Xihex'han companion that spent years enriched in his culture, on his home planet.
There was just so much to learn if she could find a moment between all of the sudden violence and minefield of ethical dilemmas to seize the opportunity.
The Amber very clearly wished he weren't a victim of the poking, prodding, or tests conducted on him any time she wasn't relentlessly piecing his burnt pelt back together from the holes and scratches coating it, but she stayed optimistic that he'd warm up to the idea of furthering science eventually.
She felt a bubbling giddiness from anticipation, the dense waters of professionalism keeping them from traveling far or getting in the way
Unfortunately for Lana, the 'human' and Xyx were ahead of her, quietly speaking in his belching, gibbering language and didn't seem keen on including her or her scientific interests.
Despite lacking the facilities to replicate it herself, she desperately wanted to learn the language. His Spike was already translating for her, she only needed to understand him. Then proper interviews could happen.
She observed the pair ahead of her and made a few attempts to glean something, anything, from the interaction.
Obviously they needed some kind of distraction. Maybe they were deciding what to have for dinner once they got out of the arena. Or perhaps Xyx was sharing a secret or traumatic memory of some kind.
Or, the most likely possibility, that she was hopeless in trying to read either of the beings in front of her.
She felt the sharp knife of focus as she tapped into the network to guide her augments, a silk web of attention letting nothing escape scrutiny
For starters, the reptile's species were, unfortunately, completely expressionless. To the extent that they appeared to utterly lack the capacity for complex social interaction to an outside observer.
The one, and only, notable exception mentioned by the networks were the regional accents and dialects that any Xihex'han could simply mimic with relative ease after a few conversations.
Otherwise, they were a blank slate to the rest of the galaxy.
To some degree, it was likely being done intentionally to maintain their stoic desert monk facade.
Xyx being no exception to this, fighting and basking were the contractor's only two notable characteristics before the hominid's arrival, and the arena's subsequent upheaval.
Lately, she noticed him beginning to mirror certain motions and mannerisms she'd seen in the human.
Sorting through footage provided a testimony to her observation. Motions they both went through. Practically identical.
Bobbing the shoulders sometimes, shaking the head there, the occasional hand moving around in front of his chest as he spoke.
It was almost as if he was trying to use the familiarity of the language and gestures to comfort or disarm the Amber for some reason.
If only she could cross reference the collected data with the network to find intent.
She felt unease mixing with intrigue, an uncomfortable skin coating her determination
She made a few mental notes to review more data and continue her observations of the Xihex'han before her attention switched to the fleshy creature beside him and she started trying to figure him out.
The header of her dissertation would definitely make note of the stocky little primate's deathwish since he was tirelessly trying to get himself killed at every opportunity.
Then there was the glaring, irreparable problem of the Command Spike where an augment should be, jutting from his face and mocking her by only operating one way.
He couldn't even access the aug network, not that she thought he could handle such an information overload, but the poor guy couldn't even put on clothes or send pseudo-telepathic messages.
He must have been so embarrassed.
She felt pity for the creature, a soft fog barely concealing the helpless shame of her inaction, in the heart of the mist was a glowing pile of embers, frustration
'May you be forgotten while you rot in the deeps, Burj.' The only fitting curse for his cruelty that she could think of.
The Banzoran did start to internalize that she had been distracted by her pity and frustration for the ape mixing with her shame for failing to stop the Spike from being implanted.
Lana had forgotten to actually observe, to find something notable. She knew she still had recordings of everything but the seed of introspection clung to her thoughts, threatening to grow into resentment.
Resentment would jeopardize her chances of making something bigger with what she had here.
She felt her emotional weakness unsettle the seafloor and break embarrassment free from below, the friction and instability trying to weaken the pillars of duty on the foundations of hope
Turning the last corner shifted her line of thought, the hall stretching towards the hardlight door leading outside to her future of unemployment.
Sweet, succulent destitution.
Lana could find work elsewhere, and would need to, but she really was not going to miss working under Burj. She'd take the uncertainty of starvation over another minute under that fool.
The Projush agent stepped right up to the field and the semi-transparent red door collapsed at his command prompt. Rather quickly for such a thick hardlight field as well.
Lana couldn't help but wonder how the primate was going to react to the world outside the pit when he saw it for the first time.
She definitely needed to keep collecting data on the Amber and verified that both her augs, and her drone, were still recording everything. Twice.
She felt the coarse irritation of her emotional slip begin to sink beneath the stones of clinical detachment, large bricks of chance sinking from the waters above to build a tower gleaming with opportunity or just as easily crush her beneath them
She already had plenty of footage of his biological reactions to the weapons used against him and his own combatives, which needed work. She was quite excited to deconstruct and file away everything once she had a terminal.
As the door drew closer to her, she could hear the rain outside pelting the crowded streets and made a mental note to get data on the acid's interactions with the primate's skin.
Lana genuinely could not get any more excited today. There was just too much work to be done.
No more patching up criminals with subpar equipment. No more listening to an insane warlord's bipolar rambling.
Real work!
A future!
Now to either convince the agent to let her have it or take it herself.
She opened a pseudo-telepathic channel to Ash'shis and introduced herself, opening with a bit of amicable rapport.
You Live Like This?
The cat dude stepped in front of the large open space leading outside. And just stood there for a second.
Saul was keeping a closer eye on cat cop after his conversation with his gator friend. While he wanted to believe that law enforcement was supposed to do the right thing, there's always a bad apple to ruin the bunch.
This one might be that bad apple if Xyx had good hunches.
The cop stepped outside and the three various people followed him, the crab lady was still taking up the rear. He didn't blame her.
If he could put himself between him and the off officer, he would.
He stepped outside and squinted at how dark everything was. Nothing at all like the blue cloudy skies inside the colosseum. Not to mention the rain coming down.
He opened his mouth to catch some of the misty drops floating down and immediately regretted his decision, closing his mouth and feeling a bit torn by the taste of vinegar. At least it wasn't the funion balls but he didn't pack any of the water orbs and that would bite him, for sure.
Before he could bring his head down he saw shapes moving across the sky between the skyscrapers around him.
The sight was enough to make him forget about his open wounds stinging from the vinegar rain.
Massive boats of all shapes and sizes floated through the sky. The largest of them could be glimpsed in the gray sky above the towers. Some of the ship's were small enough to fit between the buildings. Others were so small it was just an alien standing on a skateboard clinging to the singular maste in the middle. The tiniest ones were flying just above his head.
He almost thought about throwing a rock.
"Oh wow. There's fuckin boats flying.", he muttered, jostling the lizard beside him with his elbow.
"There sure are. I believe our host wishes for us to continue though." Xyx replied as flat and bored as always, dragging Saul's attention downwards to cat cop.
The agent was standing a few meters away with his hands on his hips. Beside him was a big rhinoceros manatee hybrid that stood on cloven feet. Crab doc was already waiting beside them.
"Is tubby supposed to be the muscle?", he cracked, starting to make his way over to the agents and trying his hardest not to step in any puddles or lumps of wet trash with his bare feet.
He couldn't even fathom how the aliens live in this place with nothing on.
By the time he tip toed his way to the waiting cops, the big manatee thing was walking past him and going inside while the feline fur bro began to lead the way again, the crowded streets parting for him while he had his empty hand raised above his head.
The human figured his arm would get tired eventually.
One thing he noticed about the streets was the silence. There wasn't very much talking going on and the footsteps around him were louder than the chatter or the rain. It was still depressing.
The alleys and thin streets were a maze and the cat cop was vigilant. Not letting the human out of his sight for a second.
Saul didn't mind. He couldn't help looking around at the city and sky. Between releasing his pent up aggression towards blood sport operators, getting free of the traumatic cage, and being greeted by Picasso's crowded Bladerunner city with boats in the sky, he was actually starting to remember where he left his sense of humor.
2023.06.01 05:02 UnDead_Ted Daily Quiet Time Wednesday, May 31st 2023
God's Unfailing Love
Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save. — Isa 46:4What a marvellous promise is this! In days of foreboding, when we fear what may lie behind the veil of the impenetrable future!
Disease? Poverty? Suffering? Bereavement? We cannot tell, but we may turn in confidence to our God. He knows just how much we can bear, for He has made us: “I have made, and I will bear, and will deliver you.”
Even to old age! The hoar-frost may silver the head, the sound of the grinding may be low, the silver cord may be frayed even to the breaking, lovers and friends may have passed on to the other world; like the last apple on the bough, we may be left alone; but in the second childhood as in the first—“Even to your old age—I will carry you”; “For Himself hath said, I will in no wise fail thee, neither will I in any wise forsake thee. So that with good courage we say, The Lord is my Helper, I will not fear” (Heb 13:5).
Prayer
O God, our Father, we are Thine, May we never doubt Thy enduring mercy. We thank Thee! In Jesus name, amen.2023.06.01 04:33 eemapso Thank you for the help! Have some fanart! (PT 1)
2023.06.01 04:24 TheFanatic2997 Solving Fnaf 4(no,really!)
So we all t]know the confusing game that is Fnaf 4, Right? and how it is probably associated with Midnight Moderist? Well I have a theory that I think cracks the case of Fnaf 4 AND Midnight Moderist. I haven't seen this theory anywhere else, so this will be the only instance to the best of my knowledge.
Midnight Moderist
So in Midnight Moderist you play as "Mustard Man" driving in a suspiciously purple car in the rain. he gets home and talks to an unknown person that is not only wearing gray, and speaks in gray as well. they tell you to leave "Him" alone. you never the less knock on his door, demanding to be let in. when that doesn't work, you go around to the back of the house to find a broken window, human footprints leading away from the site, and animal footprints standing just outside. You say "Ran off to that place again. He'll be sorry when he gets Back." and the screen cuts to black.
The Characters
so we can already label "Mustard Man" as William Afton. He drives a purple car, the minigame is labeled in the files as "Later that night" and it is raining, just like the Security Puppet minigame, which shows Charlie Emily's death. with that out of the way, let's talk about about the gray person. this person is most definitely Michael, or "Foxy Bro" watching the TV, just like Michael does at the end of each night in Sister Location. he is also wearing a gray shirt, like Foxy Bro is in Fnaf 4, and he speaks in gray, like Foxy Bro. Now if he is Michael/Foxy Bro, then the "He" he mentions is most likely the Crying Child(CC).
So, What Happened?
Well, William is shown in the Minigame driving home after his first murder, and when he gets home, CC has run away to "That Place" most likely Fredbear's Family Diner since that was where William just was. If CC went to Fredbear's, then wouldn't he be there when his father murdered Charlie? and when The Puppet went outside after Charlie? what if CC saw Charlie outside in the rain, and saw The Puppet go outside too. He would then go out as well, and what would he find? an animatronic laying on top of a child's corpse. It all makes sense now. CC saw The Puppet on top of Charlie and believed that The Puppet killed her. "what is seen in the shadows is easily misunderstood in the mind of a child." now that explains CC's fear of animatronics, and what the Fredbear plush meant when he said "You know what will happen if he catches you." Michael, now aware of his brother's new found fear, would begin to bully him about his fear. Why? Well in Security Breach's CD's one of the backstories provided was that Vanessa's father, Bill, forced her to lie about her mother in court to win the custody battle. in the aftermath, it is implied her mother K*lled herself. this story turns out to be a complete fabrication. but look at Bill's name. it is short for William. this story is not Vanessa's but of the Afton kids. in the aftermath of this traumatic divorce, Michael would express his sadness by torturing his younger brother using animatronic masks. this is backed up in the story "Step Closer" where the protagonist, Pete, shares striking similarities to Michael. In this story, it is said Pete bullied his younger brother to express his sadness over his parent's divorce.
So What is Fnaf 4?
This is where the fun begins. So before we talk about Fnaf 4, I should mention the dirt mound and the animal footprints. In the Twisted Ones, the Twisted animatronics seem to be the counterparts to the Nightmare animatronics. For that reason, I think it is safe to assume that the dirt mound is where at least one of the animatronics bury themselves during the day, like in the Twisted Ones novel, and the animal footprints are from one of the Nightmare animatronics. They would be stalking the house, like seen in the menu screen of Fnaf 4. So, to lead our way to Fnaf 4, I would like to turn your attention to William's line of "He'll be sorry when he gets back." since his kid not only snuck out of the house, but went to Fredbear's on a night he killed someone. as punishment, William locked CC in one of his "Observatory" rooms seen in Sister Location, and would send the Nightmare Animatronics after him. since the Nightmare animatronics are counterparts to the Twisted Ones, then it is not far-fetched to assume they are just bare endoskeletons with a sound-illusion disc on, people see terrifying versions of Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Fredbear.(note that I am going with the idea that Nightmare is Nightmare Fredbear with a malfunctioning illusion disc, like MatPat pointed out) William also put a camera and Walkie-Talkie in CC's favorite toy, Fredbear. too keep an eye on him. in the bedroom we can also see easter-eggs showing a vase of flowers, pills, and an IV. these might be caused by the illusion discs, forcing CC to see reference's to his mother on her deathbed. Nights 1-5 go along with the end of night minigames, leading up to CC's birthday party at his now-least-favorite place, Fredbear's Family Diner. It is on that day, though, that Michael and his friends will take things too far. They pick-up CC, carry him over to Fredbear, and stuff his head inside. They all have a good laugh at CC's expense, when Fredbear's jaw slams shut, hospitalizing CC in the Bite of '83. we also see in the night 6 end-of-night minigame CC pass on, while Michael apologizes and William tells CC"I will put you back together" before it is implies CC passes away. Michael's story continues in The Survival Logbook, where he draws an image of Nightmare Fredbear or Nightmare. how would he know these animatronics exist? Nights 6-8 are when you play as Michael, trapped in the same room CC was in as punishment handed out by William for killing his brother. The box, therefore, could refer to Michael's repressed memories of the incident which killed his brother.
Tying It All together
The story of Fnaf 4, I believe, is this: William has just taken a life. he drives back home in the dead of night, and checks on his youngest son, CC, for having his door closed. He goes around the back to find CC has broken out of his room, along with evidence of his Nightmare Animatronics on the prowl. William realizes CC ran off the Fredbear's Family Diner, where he had just killed a child. turns out, CC saw the girl in the ally, and The Puppet go outside with her. after following them, he finds a grizzly scene: The Puppet on-top of the freshly murdered corpse of the girl, Charlie. CC sees that the animatronics are actually bloodthirsty murderers who kill kids. he runs back home. the next day, his Fredbear Plush begins talking to him. William then places CC in his Observatory room, where he uses the Nightmare animatronics to punish his son for disobeying him. CC's older brother, Michael, also begins to torture him, using his new-found fear against him. It seems the whole world was against him. but tragedy would strike on his birthday at Fredbear's, where Michael and his friend's all pick-up CC, and shove him into Fredbear's mouth as a sick prank. it would be then that CC would be put into a coma in the event that would come to be known as "The Bite of '83". in the hospital, Michael would apologize for what he did, while William promises to put CC back together. CC then dies in the hospital. as punishment for killing his son, William would put Michael into the Observatory where CC once was, where he would be tortured by the Nightmare animatronics, events that would continue to haunt him for decades after that.
submitted by TheFanatic2997 to fivenightsatfreddys [link] [comments]
Midnight Moderist
So in Midnight Moderist you play as "Mustard Man" driving in a suspiciously purple car in the rain. he gets home and talks to an unknown person that is not only wearing gray, and speaks in gray as well. they tell you to leave "Him" alone. you never the less knock on his door, demanding to be let in. when that doesn't work, you go around to the back of the house to find a broken window, human footprints leading away from the site, and animal footprints standing just outside. You say "Ran off to that place again. He'll be sorry when he gets Back." and the screen cuts to black.
The Characters
so we can already label "Mustard Man" as William Afton. He drives a purple car, the minigame is labeled in the files as "Later that night" and it is raining, just like the Security Puppet minigame, which shows Charlie Emily's death. with that out of the way, let's talk about about the gray person. this person is most definitely Michael, or "Foxy Bro" watching the TV, just like Michael does at the end of each night in Sister Location. he is also wearing a gray shirt, like Foxy Bro is in Fnaf 4, and he speaks in gray, like Foxy Bro. Now if he is Michael/Foxy Bro, then the "He" he mentions is most likely the Crying Child(CC).
So, What Happened?
Well, William is shown in the Minigame driving home after his first murder, and when he gets home, CC has run away to "That Place" most likely Fredbear's Family Diner since that was where William just was. If CC went to Fredbear's, then wouldn't he be there when his father murdered Charlie? and when The Puppet went outside after Charlie? what if CC saw Charlie outside in the rain, and saw The Puppet go outside too. He would then go out as well, and what would he find? an animatronic laying on top of a child's corpse. It all makes sense now. CC saw The Puppet on top of Charlie and believed that The Puppet killed her. "what is seen in the shadows is easily misunderstood in the mind of a child." now that explains CC's fear of animatronics, and what the Fredbear plush meant when he said "You know what will happen if he catches you." Michael, now aware of his brother's new found fear, would begin to bully him about his fear. Why? Well in Security Breach's CD's one of the backstories provided was that Vanessa's father, Bill, forced her to lie about her mother in court to win the custody battle. in the aftermath, it is implied her mother K*lled herself. this story turns out to be a complete fabrication. but look at Bill's name. it is short for William. this story is not Vanessa's but of the Afton kids. in the aftermath of this traumatic divorce, Michael would express his sadness by torturing his younger brother using animatronic masks. this is backed up in the story "Step Closer" where the protagonist, Pete, shares striking similarities to Michael. In this story, it is said Pete bullied his younger brother to express his sadness over his parent's divorce.
So What is Fnaf 4?
This is where the fun begins. So before we talk about Fnaf 4, I should mention the dirt mound and the animal footprints. In the Twisted Ones, the Twisted animatronics seem to be the counterparts to the Nightmare animatronics. For that reason, I think it is safe to assume that the dirt mound is where at least one of the animatronics bury themselves during the day, like in the Twisted Ones novel, and the animal footprints are from one of the Nightmare animatronics. They would be stalking the house, like seen in the menu screen of Fnaf 4. So, to lead our way to Fnaf 4, I would like to turn your attention to William's line of "He'll be sorry when he gets back." since his kid not only snuck out of the house, but went to Fredbear's on a night he killed someone. as punishment, William locked CC in one of his "Observatory" rooms seen in Sister Location, and would send the Nightmare Animatronics after him. since the Nightmare animatronics are counterparts to the Twisted Ones, then it is not far-fetched to assume they are just bare endoskeletons with a sound-illusion disc on, people see terrifying versions of Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Fredbear.(note that I am going with the idea that Nightmare is Nightmare Fredbear with a malfunctioning illusion disc, like MatPat pointed out) William also put a camera and Walkie-Talkie in CC's favorite toy, Fredbear. too keep an eye on him. in the bedroom we can also see easter-eggs showing a vase of flowers, pills, and an IV. these might be caused by the illusion discs, forcing CC to see reference's to his mother on her deathbed. Nights 1-5 go along with the end of night minigames, leading up to CC's birthday party at his now-least-favorite place, Fredbear's Family Diner. It is on that day, though, that Michael and his friends will take things too far. They pick-up CC, carry him over to Fredbear, and stuff his head inside. They all have a good laugh at CC's expense, when Fredbear's jaw slams shut, hospitalizing CC in the Bite of '83. we also see in the night 6 end-of-night minigame CC pass on, while Michael apologizes and William tells CC"I will put you back together" before it is implies CC passes away. Michael's story continues in The Survival Logbook, where he draws an image of Nightmare Fredbear or Nightmare. how would he know these animatronics exist? Nights 6-8 are when you play as Michael, trapped in the same room CC was in as punishment handed out by William for killing his brother. The box, therefore, could refer to Michael's repressed memories of the incident which killed his brother.
Tying It All together
The story of Fnaf 4, I believe, is this: William has just taken a life. he drives back home in the dead of night, and checks on his youngest son, CC, for having his door closed. He goes around the back to find CC has broken out of his room, along with evidence of his Nightmare Animatronics on the prowl. William realizes CC ran off the Fredbear's Family Diner, where he had just killed a child. turns out, CC saw the girl in the ally, and The Puppet go outside with her. after following them, he finds a grizzly scene: The Puppet on-top of the freshly murdered corpse of the girl, Charlie. CC sees that the animatronics are actually bloodthirsty murderers who kill kids. he runs back home. the next day, his Fredbear Plush begins talking to him. William then places CC in his Observatory room, where he uses the Nightmare animatronics to punish his son for disobeying him. CC's older brother, Michael, also begins to torture him, using his new-found fear against him. It seems the whole world was against him. but tragedy would strike on his birthday at Fredbear's, where Michael and his friend's all pick-up CC, and shove him into Fredbear's mouth as a sick prank. it would be then that CC would be put into a coma in the event that would come to be known as "The Bite of '83". in the hospital, Michael would apologize for what he did, while William promises to put CC back together. CC then dies in the hospital. as punishment for killing his son, William would put Michael into the Observatory where CC once was, where he would be tortured by the Nightmare animatronics, events that would continue to haunt him for decades after that.
2023.06.01 03:25 Bad_wolf_119 Kreetix Homebrew Race
 | This is a new race I created that plays a big part in my Homebrew campaign that I am about to kickoff with a group of friends. submitted by Bad_wolf_119 to newdms [link] [comments] Kreetix share human features, being human in ancestry surrounded by shadow magic. Typically olive skinned, the Kretix come from Mournshire, before being forced to leave over 200 years ago due to the increasingly dangerous amount of shadow maic leaking into the material plane there. While interactions between humans and Kreetix are not uncommon, they do not have the most trust for humans. Their eyes are dark purple in color, bringing with it dark vision and increased senses. Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1, and your Charisma score increases by 2. Age. Kreetix mature at the same rate as humans, but live a few years longer. Alignment. Kreetix might not have an innate tendency toward evil, but many of them end up there. Evil or not, an independent nature inclines many Kreetix toward a chaotic alignment. Size. Kreetix are about the same size and build as humans. Your size is Medium. Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet. Darkvision. You have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray. Being of Darkness. Reduce shadow (necrotic damage) against you by -5. Magical Instincts. Your kind’s minds are highly focused machines, you have an instinct for when the natural world has been altered. You make Wisdom (Perception) checks to notice and see through magical illusions at advantage. Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Feltoungue.. Friend of dark: Gain a proficiency in stealth, and the ability to move through the space of any creature in dimly lit rooms or dark conditions. Shadow walker: When you reach 3rd level, gain the ability to dash as a free action in shadow-covered and dark areas. Ancestry: The Kreetix are descended from humans. Shadow magic corrupted their ancestral home, forcing them to abandon their lands, but not before they inherited distinctive traits from their time spent there |
2023.06.01 03:13 pastelpinkyoshi did my faves one per artist :) open to recommendations!
 | submitted by pastelpinkyoshi to Topster [link] [comments] |
2023.06.01 01:01 stlatos PIE and Armenian K
IE changes to velars (K) often seem irregular, and since these include k > x & *h > k, it is likely that PIE h1 = x^, h2 = x, h3 = xW.
G. kúmbos ‘vessel/goblet’, Skt. kumbhá-s ‘japitchewater japot’, Av. xumba-
*xamanto-s > R. xomút ‘horse’s harness’, Li. kãmanos ‘leather bridle’
*k^alh- > L. calēre ‘be warm’, Lt. silt ‘grow warm’, salts, Li. šáltas ‘cold’, R. xolod ‘cold’
? > *xalpikiko-s > Slavic *xolpĭčĭkŭ ‘boy / young servant’, TB kālpśke ‘youth / boy’
*kaudh-? > OP xauda- ‘cap’, Av. xaōda- ‘helmet’
Skt. kardama- ‘mud’, NP xard ‘muddy place’
Skt. kharjura- ‘silver’, Greek árguros ‘silver’
*h3ost- > G. ostéon ‘bone’, OCS kostĭ, L. costa ‘rib’
*xWokW- >> L. oculus ‘eye’; *xWokW-ixto- >> Li. akytas ‘having eyes’, L. *xokwel-it- ‘having (one) eye’ > cocules ‘one-eyed’
*prdumxo- > Kh. purdùm ‘leopard’, Skt. prdakū-, prdākhu- ‘leopard/tigesnake’
*kxapros > OIc. hafr ‘male goat’, L. caper, *gGapro-s > OIr. gabor, *xałfros > Arm. k’ał ‘male goat’
*kenh- / *kanh- > Arm. kanxem ‘rise up/hurry/go first/arrive before’, OIr. cinim ‘spring / descend from’
*kap-ye- > L. capiō ‘seize/take’, G. káptō ‘gulp down’, Go. hafjan, OIc hefja ‘lift’
*gab- > Arm. kapem ‘bind’
*ghabh- > L. habeō
(compare kapem ‘bind’ to Latvian kampt ‘seize/grasp’)
Slavic *golumb- > R. goluboj ‘blue’, Baltic *golimb- > OPr. golimban ‘blue’, *gelumbiyā- > Li. gelumbė ‘blue kerchief/cloth’
Slavic *golumbi- ‘dove’
Sanskrit kalamba- / kaḍamba- / kadamba-, Greek kolumbís / kólumbos ‘diver (bird)’, Latin columba ‘dove, pigeon’
*š\salam(b)a\u > MArm. salam -u-, salamb -a- ‘(francolin?) partridge’
*kwap- ‘smoke / steam’ > Lithuanian kvãpas ‘breath / odor’, *xwap- > Latin vapor
*k^witro- > Lithuanian švitràs ‘glasspaper / sandpaper’, *xwitro- > Latin vitrum ‘glass’
? > *mxëlto > TA mkälto ‘young’, malto ‘in the first place’
? > *pesuxā- > TA puskāñ, TB passoñ ‘muscles’
? > *lewax^- > TA lu, pl. lwāk, TB luwo, pl. lwāsa ‘animal’
Skt. srákva- \ sṛkvaṇ- ‘corner of mouth’, TB *sǝrkwan- > *sǝrxwan- > särwāna (pl. tan.) ‘face’
Most of these are already recognized as cognates, some are distputed. For Skt. kharjura- ‘silver’, Greek árguros ‘silver’ from PIE *h2arg^uro-, see https://www.reddit.com/IndoEuropean/comments/13umn3s/greek_kh%C3%A1lub_hardened_iron_steel_khalk%C3%B3s/ . Armenian and Celtic sometimes changing *ka- > *ga- (and g > k in Arm.) would explain some data, but this is not regular. Many of these might come from clusters like *k^x-. The similar *zg is also optional around IE:
*mezg- > L. mergō, Skt. májjati ‘submerge/sink’, *mezgu- > L. mergus ‘gull’, Skt. madgú-
*zgWes- ‘quench/extinguish / put out a fire’ > *djas- > Skt. dásyati be exhausted / despair, jása- \ dása-, etc.
*azgWolxo-? > G. ásbolos / asbólē ‘soot’, *ask^ülxo- > Arm. acuł / acux ‘soot/coal’
*presgWu-? G. présbus ‘old man’, Cr. preigus, Arm. erēc` ‘elder’
Some say *pres-gWh2u-? ‘coming before / ancestor’ is needed to explain Armenian erēc`, but I think acuł shows the same (caused by g > g^ before u (indicating u > ü as in Greek)). This would mean h2 was unneeded, and even K > K^ by u in Arm. is not regular.
Just within Arm., the changes to K include k > k \ kh \ x \ *h > 0:
Arm. kayt ‘mark on marble’, xayt \ xayc ‘mark/spot’, Skt. keta-, ketú- ‘mark/sign’, TB kāy ‘mark’
OE sceolh ‘crooked’, G. skélos ‘leg’, skellós ‘crooked-legged’, Arm. šeł ‘slanting / crooked’, xeł ‘mutilated / lame’
Arm. sałim ‘be mistaken’, sxalim ‘be mistaken / stumble’, sxalak ‘drunken’, Skt. skhálati ‘stumble’,
G. skórodon / skórdon, Alb. hurdhë, Arm. xstor ‘garlic’
Arm. mxrčem ‘immerse/dip’, mkrtem ‘immerse/dip / bathe/baptize’
Skt. khād- ‘chew/bite/eat’, Arm. xacanem, kcanem ‘bite/sting’
Arm. ozni, MArm. xozni / kozni, G. ekhînos, Skt. jáhakā-, Brahui ǰaǰak, YAv. dužuka-, NP žūža ‘hedgehog’
(compare kh vs. *h > 0 in G. khḗr ‘hedgehog’, L. ēr )
Li. kárštas ‘hot’, Arm. xaršem ‘cook/burn’, Skt. kuṣāku- ‘burning’, *kurzd- > kūḍayāti, kuṇḍate ‘burn’
*skandlo- > L. pl. scālae ‘ladder / flight of steps’, *sxandułxo- > Arm. pl. sanduł-k` / sandux-k` ‘laddestairs’
G. khaláō ‘loosen/slacken’, Skt. khallate, Arm. xał ‘game/pastime’ (from ‘free / loose’ (compare L. laxus ))
Arm. ktł- ‘burning desire’, xtił ‘tickling/lust’
Skt. kartati ‘cut/slice’, Arm. ktrem ‘cut’, kotor \ ktor \ ktur-k’ ‘cut/share’, ktir-k’ ‘dowry’, hatu-ktir\kčir
*tetk^-? > t’ek’em ‘shape, bend, twist, weave’, t’akart’ ‘trap, snare, net’
*h2aukWtro-? > *akurt > MArm. akut’ ‘cookstove’, Van dia. angurt’ ‘portable clay oven’, *aukslo- > L. aulla ‘pot’
G. knḗthō ‘scratch/itch’, Arm. xaz ‘line (in hand) / scratch’
If x, kh, and k were regular and separate, why would so many words show both? This is not limited to PIE *k(h), even PIE h > h \ 0 \ x has no set order:
*h3od- ‘smell, stink, hate’ > L. oleō, odor, odī ‘I hate’, Arm. hot
*h3owi- > L. ovis ‘sheep’, Arm. hovi-, *+pah2- > hoviw ‘shepherd’
*h2awi- > L. avis, Arm. haw ‘bird / roostehen’, Moks xav
*h2awo- > L. avus ‘grandfather’, Arm. haw
*h2ak^o-sth2o- > G. akostḗ ‘barley’, Skt. apāṣṭhá- ‘barb of an arrow’, Arm. hawasti-k` ‘tassels of a belt’
*h2ak^-st(h2t)i- > Li. akstìs \ akštìs ‘kind of skewer’, Arm. hask -i- ‘ear of grain’, Van xašk
*h2ag^- > G. ágō ‘lead’, Arm. acem ‘bring/lead’
*h2arh2mon- > Li. armuõ ‘arable land’, Arm. haravun-k’ ‘arable land / plow-land’, K’łi harmunk' ‘plowable soil softened by spring rains’
*h1nek^-n- > Arm. hasanem ‘arrive at / reach / catch/take/get/gain’, Skt. naś-, L. nanciscor ‘get/reach/obtain’
? > Arm. xełd- \ hełj- ‘drown/suffocate/strangle’, hełjamłjuk ‘drowned/suffocated’, młjuk- ‘strangle’
*h3oid- > G. oîdos ‘swelling’, Oidí-pous, Arm. ayt -i- ‘cheek’, aytumn ‘swelling’, *xoyt’ > Łarabał xüt' ‘*swelling/*mound’ > ‘hillock’
This works best if h2 = x and most x > h, some retained. Dialects with x- for older h- are more conservative, not innovative. The intermediate s > š > x fit Pamir data for Iranian (sk > šk, other s > x) and sw- > *xw- > kh- in both. Slavic also shows some s > x with no apparent cause. This also matches s > *x > x \ h \ 0, p > *xW > x \ h \ 0, completely bereft of regularity:
*pewyo- > ogi \ hogi ‘soul/spirit’; *pew-ah2- > hewam ‘breathe heavily’
Skt. pṛthuka- ‘child / young of animal’, G. pórtax \ pórtis (f) ‘calf’, Arm. ort’ -u- ‘calf/fawn’, xort’ -o- ‘stepson/adulterine’, Muš. xort’ ‘young (man)’
Arm. ort’ ‘grapevine’, G. pórthos ‘shoot’
*samhǝdho- > E. sand, G. ámathos, Arm. awaz, L. sabulum
*kWyeh1-sk^e\o- > L. quiēscō ‘rest’, *sm- > Arm. hangč’im ‘rest’, Muš hang‘ ‘rest/breath’, Moks xangY
? > Arm. boyl -i- ‘group (of people/deeetc)’, hoyl -i- ‘group of animals/people’, xoyl -i- ‘swelling/tumogland’, bołǰ ‘swelling/tumowound’
Since *h at the start can remain as x, x within words shoud have the same explanation. This includes kanxem above (both k and x odd), and many in https://www.reddit.com/etymology/comments/w04cuz/importance_of_armenian_retention_of_h123/
For PIE *w, a stage with w > GW (G = voiced velar fricative) makes sense (see Hrach Martirosyan). This also shows w > g / kh / x / v / 0 with no cause; it is likely that there was optional *G / *x then optional *x > kh. This is seen by supposed original *gWh = *GW > *x > kh in the other direction. This *x is retained in many examples, often with alternation:
*widk^mt- > *GWic^amt- > *xis^anD- > k’san ’20’
*gWhen- > G. eu-thenḗs ‘in abundance / wealth’, Arm. yo-gn / yo-k’’n ‘numerous/abundant’
*wergY- > TA wärk-, TB wark- ‘shear’, Arm. gercem ‘shave / make bald’, k’ercem ‘shave / peel / strip off’
*Gony- > xonǰim ‘be tired/exhausted’, *yoGn- > yognim / yok’nim ‘be(come) tired/exhausted/discouraged’
*proh3-gWhen- ‘very abundant/large/great’ > G. parthénos ‘virgin’, Arm. aṙa-k’ini ‘valiant/courageous/virtuous/honest’
*GorGuD / *xoruxD > xoroxt / xroxt ‘haughty/proud’, goṙoz ‘proud/arrogant’, goṙ ‘shout/fierce/bold/haughty/warlike’
*wel > G. hélix ‘object with spiral shape’, Arm. xec’ ‘pot / shell (of mollusks)’, xec’ \ hec’ ‘felloe’
*widhw- ‘(arms) apart / tree’ > *GüDG- > *gu(r)g- / *gi(r)k(h)- > Arm. girk-k’ ‘tree’, girk ‘arms/lap/bosom’, gog ‘lap/bosom’, *gurg ‘embrace’, girg ‘tendedelicate/soft’, ołǰ-a-gurem ‘greet / embrace’, gurgurel ‘cuddle/caress’
and even Iran. loans seem to show a stage with GW and optional GW > v or GW > gh:
*g^hew- > jagar ‘funnel’, *javar >> Gr. jabri
*g^wah2lo-, *dz^walanō > Skt. jválana-s ‘fire’, Balochi jal ‘hot ashes / charcoal’, ? >> *azgal > Arm. gazał \ gazax ‘ashes/embers’
Arm. is also known for having odd changes to *r like Arm. kēt ‘biting fly’, kret ‘wasp’; *akurt > MArm. akut’, Van dia. angurt’ (above) among many others https://www.reddit.com/etymology/comments/zkgi2m/latin_pr%C4%93x_request_armenian_a%C5%82ersank_a%C5%82a%C4%8Dank/ . The simplest reason for some r > 0 is a uvular pronunciation R, common in many languages. If R became a fricative, as in French, it might merge with PIE h1, h2, h3 and disappear. The Dardic languages might show traces of this R, with r > x \ h in Kh. (or indirectly, with Rt > xt > th): Skt. vṛtra- ‘stone’, *vart(r)a- > Rom. barr, Kh. boxt \ boht \ bohrt ‘rock/stone’, Ks. bath, Ti. baṭ(h) ‘large rock’, Dm. bāṭ , Dv. wāt'
If this *R is already needed for *r, including *k > *q to help make sense of IE optional treatments of K could work. PIE h1, h2, h3 and R sometimes disappeared; any uvular fricative to 0 would thus cover both. Pamir languages also show irregular K > Q, and their location relatively near Dardic, showing traces of the same, could explain that those on the fringes of IE territory shared this retention. This is not regular, yet orderly, fitting, and in step with common features seen around the world. It also allows many irregular changes to velar C’s to merge into one kind of optionality: K vs. Q. Even if this is not the exact cause, trying to understand broad changes by broad rules is better than coming up with an odd explanation for each oddity.
Alb Albanian
Arm Armenian
Aro Aromanian
Asm Assamese
Av Avestan
Bal Baluchi
Be Bengali
Bg Bulgarian
Bu Burushaski
E English
EArm Eastern Armenian
G Greek
Go Gothic
H Hittite
Hi Hindi
Is Ishkashimi
It Italian
K Kassite
Kd Kurdish
Kho Khotanese
Khw Khwarezmian
Ku Kusunda
L Latin
Li Lithuanian
Lt Latvian
M Mitanni
Mh Marathi
MArm Middle Armenian
MW Middle Welsh
NHG New High German
MHG Middle High German
OHG Old High German
OBg Old Bulgarian
OBr Old Breton
OIc Old Icelandic
OIr Old Irish
OE Old English
ON Old Norse
OPr Old Prussian
OP Old Persian
MP Middle Persian
NP (New) Persian (Farsi)
Nw Norwegian
Os Ossetian
Phr Phrygian
Ps Pashto
R Russian
Ru Romanian\Rumanian
Sar Sarikoli
Shu Shughni
Skt Sanskrit
Sog Sogdian
TA Tocharian A
TB Tocharian B
W Welsh
Wx Wakhi
Gy Gypsy
Dv Domari \ Do:mva:ri:
Lv Lomavren
Rom Romani
Dardic Group
A Atshareetaá \ (older Palola < *Paaloolaá)
B Bangani
Ba bHaṭé-sa zíb \ Bhaṭeri
D Degaanó \ Degano
Dk Domaaki \ Domaá \ D.umaki
Dm Dameli
Gi Gultari
Id Indus Kohistani
Ka Kalam Kohistani \ Kalami \ Gawri \ Bashkarik
Kati
Kh Khowàr
Km Kashmiri
Ks Kalasha
KS Kundal Shahi
Kt ktívi kâtá vari
Kv Kâmvíri
Pl Paaluulaá
Pr Prasun
Ni Nišei-alâ
Np Nepali
Sa Saňu-vīri
Sh Shina
Ti Torwali
Wg Waigali \ Kalas.a-alâ
submitted by stlatos to IndoEuropean [link] [comments]
G. kúmbos ‘vessel/goblet’, Skt. kumbhá-s ‘japitchewater japot’, Av. xumba-
*xamanto-s > R. xomút ‘horse’s harness’, Li. kãmanos ‘leather bridle’
*k^alh- > L. calēre ‘be warm’, Lt. silt ‘grow warm’, salts, Li. šáltas ‘cold’, R. xolod ‘cold’
? > *xalpikiko-s > Slavic *xolpĭčĭkŭ ‘boy / young servant’, TB kālpśke ‘youth / boy’
*kaudh-? > OP xauda- ‘cap’, Av. xaōda- ‘helmet’
Skt. kardama- ‘mud’, NP xard ‘muddy place’
Skt. kharjura- ‘silver’, Greek árguros ‘silver’
*h3ost- > G. ostéon ‘bone’, OCS kostĭ, L. costa ‘rib’
*xWokW- >> L. oculus ‘eye’; *xWokW-ixto- >> Li. akytas ‘having eyes’, L. *xokwel-it- ‘having (one) eye’ > cocules ‘one-eyed’
*prdumxo- > Kh. purdùm ‘leopard’, Skt. prdakū-, prdākhu- ‘leopard/tigesnake’
*kxapros > OIc. hafr ‘male goat’, L. caper, *gGapro-s > OIr. gabor, *xałfros > Arm. k’ał ‘male goat’
*kenh- / *kanh- > Arm. kanxem ‘rise up/hurry/go first/arrive before’, OIr. cinim ‘spring / descend from’
*kap-ye- > L. capiō ‘seize/take’, G. káptō ‘gulp down’, Go. hafjan, OIc hefja ‘lift’
*gab- > Arm. kapem ‘bind’
*ghabh- > L. habeō
(compare kapem ‘bind’ to Latvian kampt ‘seize/grasp’)
Slavic *golumb- > R. goluboj ‘blue’, Baltic *golimb- > OPr. golimban ‘blue’, *gelumbiyā- > Li. gelumbė ‘blue kerchief/cloth’
Slavic *golumbi- ‘dove’
Sanskrit kalamba- / kaḍamba- / kadamba-, Greek kolumbís / kólumbos ‘diver (bird)’, Latin columba ‘dove, pigeon’
*š\salam(b)a\u > MArm. salam -u-, salamb -a- ‘(francolin?) partridge’
*kwap- ‘smoke / steam’ > Lithuanian kvãpas ‘breath / odor’, *xwap- > Latin vapor
*k^witro- > Lithuanian švitràs ‘glasspaper / sandpaper’, *xwitro- > Latin vitrum ‘glass’
? > *mxëlto > TA mkälto ‘young’, malto ‘in the first place’
? > *pesuxā- > TA puskāñ, TB passoñ ‘muscles’
? > *lewax^- > TA lu, pl. lwāk, TB luwo, pl. lwāsa ‘animal’
Skt. srákva- \ sṛkvaṇ- ‘corner of mouth’, TB *sǝrkwan- > *sǝrxwan- > särwāna (pl. tan.) ‘face’
Most of these are already recognized as cognates, some are distputed. For Skt. kharjura- ‘silver’, Greek árguros ‘silver’ from PIE *h2arg^uro-, see https://www.reddit.com/IndoEuropean/comments/13umn3s/greek_kh%C3%A1lub_hardened_iron_steel_khalk%C3%B3s/ . Armenian and Celtic sometimes changing *ka- > *ga- (and g > k in Arm.) would explain some data, but this is not regular. Many of these might come from clusters like *k^x-. The similar *zg is also optional around IE:
*mezg- > L. mergō, Skt. májjati ‘submerge/sink’, *mezgu- > L. mergus ‘gull’, Skt. madgú-
*zgWes- ‘quench/extinguish / put out a fire’ > *djas- > Skt. dásyati be exhausted / despair, jása- \ dása-, etc.
*azgWolxo-? > G. ásbolos / asbólē ‘soot’, *ask^ülxo- > Arm. acuł / acux ‘soot/coal’
*presgWu-? G. présbus ‘old man’, Cr. preigus, Arm. erēc` ‘elder’
Some say *pres-gWh2u-? ‘coming before / ancestor’ is needed to explain Armenian erēc`, but I think acuł shows the same (caused by g > g^ before u (indicating u > ü as in Greek)). This would mean h2 was unneeded, and even K > K^ by u in Arm. is not regular.
Just within Arm., the changes to K include k > k \ kh \ x \ *h > 0:
Arm. kayt ‘mark on marble’, xayt \ xayc ‘mark/spot’, Skt. keta-, ketú- ‘mark/sign’, TB kāy ‘mark’
OE sceolh ‘crooked’, G. skélos ‘leg’, skellós ‘crooked-legged’, Arm. šeł ‘slanting / crooked’, xeł ‘mutilated / lame’
Arm. sałim ‘be mistaken’, sxalim ‘be mistaken / stumble’, sxalak ‘drunken’, Skt. skhálati ‘stumble’,
G. skórodon / skórdon, Alb. hurdhë, Arm. xstor ‘garlic’
Arm. mxrčem ‘immerse/dip’, mkrtem ‘immerse/dip / bathe/baptize’
Skt. khād- ‘chew/bite/eat’, Arm. xacanem, kcanem ‘bite/sting’
Arm. ozni, MArm. xozni / kozni, G. ekhînos, Skt. jáhakā-, Brahui ǰaǰak, YAv. dužuka-, NP žūža ‘hedgehog’
(compare kh vs. *h > 0 in G. khḗr ‘hedgehog’, L. ēr )
Li. kárštas ‘hot’, Arm. xaršem ‘cook/burn’, Skt. kuṣāku- ‘burning’, *kurzd- > kūḍayāti, kuṇḍate ‘burn’
*skandlo- > L. pl. scālae ‘ladder / flight of steps’, *sxandułxo- > Arm. pl. sanduł-k` / sandux-k` ‘laddestairs’
G. khaláō ‘loosen/slacken’, Skt. khallate, Arm. xał ‘game/pastime’ (from ‘free / loose’ (compare L. laxus ))
Arm. ktł- ‘burning desire’, xtił ‘tickling/lust’
Skt. kartati ‘cut/slice’, Arm. ktrem ‘cut’, kotor \ ktor \ ktur-k’ ‘cut/share’, ktir-k’ ‘dowry’, hatu-ktir\kčir
*tetk^-? > t’ek’em ‘shape, bend, twist, weave’, t’akart’ ‘trap, snare, net’
*h2aukWtro-? > *akurt > MArm. akut’ ‘cookstove’, Van dia. angurt’ ‘portable clay oven’, *aukslo- > L. aulla ‘pot’
G. knḗthō ‘scratch/itch’, Arm. xaz ‘line (in hand) / scratch’
If x, kh, and k were regular and separate, why would so many words show both? This is not limited to PIE *k(h), even PIE h > h \ 0 \ x has no set order:
*h3od- ‘smell, stink, hate’ > L. oleō, odor, odī ‘I hate’, Arm. hot
*h3owi- > L. ovis ‘sheep’, Arm. hovi-, *+pah2- > hoviw ‘shepherd’
*h2awi- > L. avis, Arm. haw ‘bird / roostehen’, Moks xav
*h2awo- > L. avus ‘grandfather’, Arm. haw
*h2ak^o-sth2o- > G. akostḗ ‘barley’, Skt. apāṣṭhá- ‘barb of an arrow’, Arm. hawasti-k` ‘tassels of a belt’
*h2ak^-st(h2t)i- > Li. akstìs \ akštìs ‘kind of skewer’, Arm. hask -i- ‘ear of grain’, Van xašk
*h2ag^- > G. ágō ‘lead’, Arm. acem ‘bring/lead’
*h2arh2mon- > Li. armuõ ‘arable land’, Arm. haravun-k’ ‘arable land / plow-land’, K’łi harmunk' ‘plowable soil softened by spring rains’
*h1nek^-n- > Arm. hasanem ‘arrive at / reach / catch/take/get/gain’, Skt. naś-, L. nanciscor ‘get/reach/obtain’
? > Arm. xełd- \ hełj- ‘drown/suffocate/strangle’, hełjamłjuk ‘drowned/suffocated’, młjuk- ‘strangle’
*h3oid- > G. oîdos ‘swelling’, Oidí-pous, Arm. ayt -i- ‘cheek’, aytumn ‘swelling’, *xoyt’ > Łarabał xüt' ‘*swelling/*mound’ > ‘hillock’
This works best if h2 = x and most x > h, some retained. Dialects with x- for older h- are more conservative, not innovative. The intermediate s > š > x fit Pamir data for Iranian (sk > šk, other s > x) and sw- > *xw- > kh- in both. Slavic also shows some s > x with no apparent cause. This also matches s > *x > x \ h \ 0, p > *xW > x \ h \ 0, completely bereft of regularity:
*pewyo- > ogi \ hogi ‘soul/spirit’; *pew-ah2- > hewam ‘breathe heavily’
Skt. pṛthuka- ‘child / young of animal’, G. pórtax \ pórtis (f) ‘calf’, Arm. ort’ -u- ‘calf/fawn’, xort’ -o- ‘stepson/adulterine’, Muš. xort’ ‘young (man)’
Arm. ort’ ‘grapevine’, G. pórthos ‘shoot’
*samhǝdho- > E. sand, G. ámathos, Arm. awaz, L. sabulum
*kWyeh1-sk^e\o- > L. quiēscō ‘rest’, *sm- > Arm. hangč’im ‘rest’, Muš hang‘ ‘rest/breath’, Moks xangY
? > Arm. boyl -i- ‘group (of people/deeetc)’, hoyl -i- ‘group of animals/people’, xoyl -i- ‘swelling/tumogland’, bołǰ ‘swelling/tumowound’
Since *h at the start can remain as x, x within words shoud have the same explanation. This includes kanxem above (both k and x odd), and many in https://www.reddit.com/etymology/comments/w04cuz/importance_of_armenian_retention_of_h123/
For PIE *w, a stage with w > GW (G = voiced velar fricative) makes sense (see Hrach Martirosyan). This also shows w > g / kh / x / v / 0 with no cause; it is likely that there was optional *G / *x then optional *x > kh. This is seen by supposed original *gWh = *GW > *x > kh in the other direction. This *x is retained in many examples, often with alternation:
*widk^mt- > *GWic^amt- > *xis^anD- > k’san ’20’
*gWhen- > G. eu-thenḗs ‘in abundance / wealth’, Arm. yo-gn / yo-k’’n ‘numerous/abundant’
*wergY- > TA wärk-, TB wark- ‘shear’, Arm. gercem ‘shave / make bald’, k’ercem ‘shave / peel / strip off’
*Gony- > xonǰim ‘be tired/exhausted’, *yoGn- > yognim / yok’nim ‘be(come) tired/exhausted/discouraged’
*proh3-gWhen- ‘very abundant/large/great’ > G. parthénos ‘virgin’, Arm. aṙa-k’ini ‘valiant/courageous/virtuous/honest’
*GorGuD / *xoruxD > xoroxt / xroxt ‘haughty/proud’, goṙoz ‘proud/arrogant’, goṙ ‘shout/fierce/bold/haughty/warlike’
*wel > G. hélix ‘object with spiral shape’, Arm. xec’ ‘pot / shell (of mollusks)’, xec’ \ hec’ ‘felloe’
*widhw- ‘(arms) apart / tree’ > *GüDG- > *gu(r)g- / *gi(r)k(h)- > Arm. girk-k’ ‘tree’, girk ‘arms/lap/bosom’, gog ‘lap/bosom’, *gurg ‘embrace’, girg ‘tendedelicate/soft’, ołǰ-a-gurem ‘greet / embrace’, gurgurel ‘cuddle/caress’
and even Iran. loans seem to show a stage with GW and optional GW > v or GW > gh:
*g^hew- > jagar ‘funnel’, *javar >> Gr. jabri
*g^wah2lo-, *dz^walanō > Skt. jválana-s ‘fire’, Balochi jal ‘hot ashes / charcoal’, ? >> *azgal > Arm. gazał \ gazax ‘ashes/embers’
Arm. is also known for having odd changes to *r like Arm. kēt ‘biting fly’, kret ‘wasp’; *akurt > MArm. akut’, Van dia. angurt’ (above) among many others https://www.reddit.com/etymology/comments/zkgi2m/latin_pr%C4%93x_request_armenian_a%C5%82ersank_a%C5%82a%C4%8Dank/ . The simplest reason for some r > 0 is a uvular pronunciation R, common in many languages. If R became a fricative, as in French, it might merge with PIE h1, h2, h3 and disappear. The Dardic languages might show traces of this R, with r > x \ h in Kh. (or indirectly, with Rt > xt > th): Skt. vṛtra- ‘stone’, *vart(r)a- > Rom. barr, Kh. boxt \ boht \ bohrt ‘rock/stone’, Ks. bath, Ti. baṭ(h) ‘large rock’, Dm. bāṭ , Dv. wāt'
If this *R is already needed for *r, including *k > *q to help make sense of IE optional treatments of K could work. PIE h1, h2, h3 and R sometimes disappeared; any uvular fricative to 0 would thus cover both. Pamir languages also show irregular K > Q, and their location relatively near Dardic, showing traces of the same, could explain that those on the fringes of IE territory shared this retention. This is not regular, yet orderly, fitting, and in step with common features seen around the world. It also allows many irregular changes to velar C’s to merge into one kind of optionality: K vs. Q. Even if this is not the exact cause, trying to understand broad changes by broad rules is better than coming up with an odd explanation for each oddity.
Alb Albanian
Arm Armenian
Aro Aromanian
Asm Assamese
Av Avestan
Bal Baluchi
Be Bengali
Bg Bulgarian
Bu Burushaski
E English
EArm Eastern Armenian
G Greek
Go Gothic
H Hittite
Hi Hindi
Is Ishkashimi
It Italian
K Kassite
Kd Kurdish
Kho Khotanese
Khw Khwarezmian
Ku Kusunda
L Latin
Li Lithuanian
Lt Latvian
M Mitanni
Mh Marathi
MArm Middle Armenian
MW Middle Welsh
NHG New High German
MHG Middle High German
OHG Old High German
OBg Old Bulgarian
OBr Old Breton
OIc Old Icelandic
OIr Old Irish
OE Old English
ON Old Norse
OPr Old Prussian
OP Old Persian
MP Middle Persian
NP (New) Persian (Farsi)
Nw Norwegian
Os Ossetian
Phr Phrygian
Ps Pashto
R Russian
Ru Romanian\Rumanian
Sar Sarikoli
Shu Shughni
Skt Sanskrit
Sog Sogdian
TA Tocharian A
TB Tocharian B
W Welsh
Wx Wakhi
Gy Gypsy
Dv Domari \ Do:mva:ri:
Lv Lomavren
Rom Romani
Dardic Group
A Atshareetaá \ (older Palola < *Paaloolaá)
B Bangani
Ba bHaṭé-sa zíb \ Bhaṭeri
D Degaanó \ Degano
Dk Domaaki \ Domaá \ D.umaki
Dm Dameli
Gi Gultari
Id Indus Kohistani
Ka Kalam Kohistani \ Kalami \ Gawri \ Bashkarik
Kati
Kh Khowàr
Km Kashmiri
Ks Kalasha
KS Kundal Shahi
Kt ktívi kâtá vari
Kv Kâmvíri
Pl Paaluulaá
Pr Prasun
Ni Nišei-alâ
Np Nepali
Sa Saňu-vīri
Sh Shina
Ti Torwali
Wg Waigali \ Kalas.a-alâ
2023.06.01 01:00 JoshAsdvgi The Fire Leggings
 | submitted by JoshAsdvgi to Native_Stories [link] [comments] The Fire Leggings There had been a sudden change in the weather. A cold rain was falling, and the night comes early when the clouds hang low. The children loved a bright fire, and tonight War Eagle's lodge was light as day. Away off on the plains a wolf was howling, and the rain pattered upon the lodge as though it never intended to quit. It was a splendid night for storytelling, and War Eagle filled and lighted the great stone pipe, while the children made themselves comfortable about the fire. A spark sprang from the burning sticks, and fell upon Fine Bow's bare leg. They all laughed heartily at the boy's antics to rid himself of the burning coal; and as soon as the laughing ceased War Eagle laid aside the pipe. An Indian's pipe is large to look at, but holds little tobacco. "See your shadows on the lodge wall?" asked the old warrior. The children said they saw them, and he continued: "Some day I will tell you a story about them, and how they drew the arrows of our enemies, but tonight I am going to tell you of the great fire-leggings. "It was long before there were men and women on the world, but my grandfather told me what I shall now tell you. "The gray light that hides the night stars was creeping through the forests, and the wind the Sun sends to warn the people of his coming was among the fir tops. Flowers, on slender stems, bent their heads out of respect for the herald wind's Master, and from the dead top of a pinetree the Yellowhammer beat upon his drum and called 'the Sun is awake - all hail the Sun!' "Then the bush birds began to sing the song of the morning, and from alders the Robins joined, until all live things were awakened by the great music. Where the tall ferns grew, the Doe waked her Fawns, and taught them to do homage to the Great Light. In the creeks, where the water was still and clear, and where throughout the day, like a delicate damaskeen, the shadows of leaves that overhang would lie, the Speckled Trout broke the surface of the pool in his gladness of the coming day. Pine-squirrels chattered gayly, and loudly proclaimed what the wind had told; and all the shadows were preparing for a great journey to the Sand Hills, where the ghost-people dwell. "Under a great spruce tree - where the ground was soft and dry, OLD-man slept. The joy that thrilled creation disturbed him not, although the Sun was near. The bird-people looked at the sleeper in wonder, but the Pine squirrel climbed the great spruce tree with a pinecone in his mouth. Quickly he ran out on the limb that spread over OLD-man, and dropped the cone on the sleeper's face. Then he scolded OLD-man, saying: 'Get up - get up - lazy one - lazy one - get up - get up.' "Rubbing his eyes in anger, OLD-man sat up and saw the Sun coming - his hunting leggings slipping through the thickets - setting them afire, till all the Deer and Elk ran out and sought new places to hide. "'Ho, Sun!' called OLD-man, 'those are mighty leggings you wear. No wonder you are a great hunter. Your leggings set fire to all the thickets, and by the light you can easily see the Deer and Elk; they cannot hide. Ho! Give them to me and I shall then be the great hunter and never be hungry.' "'Good,' said the Sun, 'take them, and let me see you wear my leggings.' "OLD-man was glad in his heart, for he was lazy, and now he thought he could kill the game without much work, and that he could be a great hunter - as great as the Sun. He put on the leggings and at once began to hunt the thickets, for he was hungry. Very soon the leggings began to burn his legs. The faster he travelled the hotter they grew, until in pain he cried out to the Sun to come and take back his leggings; but the Sun would not hear him. On and on OLD-man ran. Faster and faster he flew through the country, setting fire to the brush and grass as he passed. Finally he came to a great river, and jumped in. Sizzzzzzz - the water said, when OLD-man's legs touched it. It cried out, as it does when it is sprinkled upon hot stones in the sweat-lodge, for the leggings were very hot. But standing in the cool water OLD-man took off the leggings and threw them out upon the shore, where the Sun found them later in the day. "The Sun's clothes were too big for OLD-man, and his work too great. "We should never ask to do the things which Manitou did not intend us to do. If we keep this always in mind we shall never get into trouble. "Be yourselves always. That is what Mantou intended. Never blame the Wolf for what he does. He was made to do such things. |
2023.06.01 00:51 Ruumandbored I'd like some help to see the light, I'm finding survivor pretty underwhelming :(
I LOVED fallen order. It had it's whackadoodle moments and issues sure, but overall it was a great experience. I beat it on Grandmaster as I assume thats where the souls-like comes from.
I'm currently on the dagon gera fight for persepective.
However in this game I can't help but feel an undercurrent of mocking cynicism in nearly everything.
submitted by Ruumandbored to FallenOrder [link] [comments]
I'm currently on the dagon gera fight for persepective.
However in this game I can't help but feel an undercurrent of mocking cynicism in nearly everything.
- Names are puns. Cere=Seer(living plothook) Merrin(Mary Sue)Bode, His name is literally a synonym for omen and it feels like a placeholder that just got left in. Vocabulary alone spoils the fact that he's going to turncoat even though i'm not there yet.
- The combat system is very much less of a skill based system and a more about picking the right loadout for the fight. They design things to be possible sure but so wildly inconsistent that for proper gameflow and combat flow there are very obvious "right" choices for lots of fights. Blaster stance for oggdo to interrupt him constantly is one instance. Doublesaber for literally every group of enemies because cal can't deflect more than one bolt without being locked into a defense animation. You should be able to time the deflect parries and bounce them back as long as you aren't hit or miss the timings.
- Deus ex Merrin.
- The worlds are pretty, but Fallen order takes the cake and it's not close. Map design is very nice with the shortcuts though I will say that.
2023.06.01 00:42 girl_from_the_crypt Stuck on earth and looking for a job: Olms and Jewels
Coming face to face with people in suits always makes me hyper-aware of how badly I dress. Since I knew I was going to meet up with Mary Markov today, I intentionally put some more effort into my appearance. I picked out a pressed shirt to wear over my leggings. Since it was far too big for me, I threw my wide yellow belt into the mix. Thus satisfied, I called up Elijah Carter and asked whether he wanted to come along. He agreed readily enough so I had him pick me up and drive us over to Mary's office. It was nowhere near the hospital and not in the vicinity of her news channel headquarters either. It was located in a slate gray concrete building that was quite confusing to look at.
No outside observer could have mistaken it for a residential house, for there was hardly a less homely or comfortable place imaginable. It was utterly repellent in its rough, dreary nature. It couldn't have belonged to some kind of business either, though. There were no marked parking spaces for employees, no signs or advertisements. Altogether, it reminded me of something out of a cheap or unfinished video game.
"Sketchy," Eli remarked, eyeing the slab of concrete with a similar lack of enthusiasm. "Looks almost abandoned. How weirdly fitting for a semi-secret government operation."
I nodded. The warm air had taken me by surprise and I found the weight of my jacket suffocating, so I took it off to leave in the car. "What is it?" I asked, noticing the way Elijah squinted at my outfit.
"What are you wearing?"
"Clothes."
"You don't say." He snorted. "Looking kinda funny there, Shirley."
"I look professional," I corrected him.
"I suppose." He grinned to himself. "Depends on the profession, though."
We rang the bell and a highly official-looking security guard let us in through the heavy double doors after confirming that Mary Markov was expecting us. He gave the necessary directions, sending us down several flights of stairs. The better part of the building was in fact underground, like with an iceberg. Eli made a remark about how it'd be safer if outsiders weren’t allowed to roam the place by themselves. It seems to be a habit of his to vaguely analyze and point out flaws in the structures of government institutions. Then again, maybe it's just flaws in general he's fascinated with.
Upon arriving outside Mary's office, we were called inside to find her sitting behind her desk. She lifted her head, giving us a polite, if cold, smile. "Good morning. You're on time. Wonderful."
"Would you please give me an honest appraisal of my outfit?" I asked.
The newsreader frowned in confusion, her eyes briefly roaming my form. "You put effort into your appearance today," she concluded. "It's appreciated."
"Wait, what do you mean today?" I inquired.
"Note also how she did not actually answer your question," Elijah added.
I huffed, flinging myself into one of the chairs in front of Mary's desk. Eli sat down beside me, folding his hands in his lap and leaning back. "Thanks for letting me come with Shirley," he told her.
"Naturally. I assume you're her emotional support human." Mary Markov's lips curled slightly. "At any rate, you had contact with the Collective yourself, so this does concern you. As far as I'm concerned, it can't hurt having an ex-cop in the mix, anyways. Despite the regrettable reasons you had for leaving the force."
Elijah's brows lowered, the muscle in his pronounced jaw twitching. "How do you know about that?"
Mary looked innocent. "It's very important that I'm fully informed, of course. Don't worry. We don't need to go into it, and I don't judge you, either. The effect the incident at that highschool had on you is completely understandable."
"I didn't ask for your assessment." My friend's voice had sharpened. "Can we move on from this?"
"Of course." If the sudden shift in tone had rattled the agent, she wasn't letting it on. Sifting through the neat stack of papers on her desk, she pulled out a thin brown file which she slid over to me. "Miss Shirley, you remember the female member of the Collective we took into custody? She has already been questioned by the local police. Unfortunately, I don't have the authority to lead such an interrogation, but I was present for it and I want you to have this transcript."
I perked up and began leafing through the folder.
"You may take that with you to read in peace," Mary told me. "But don't expect too much, lest you'll be sorely disappointed. The girl hardly said anything at all. The most helpful information she gave us was a name she kept referencing. Jewel. At first, we thought it was a sort of code word, but it seems to be what the other person she was with calls themself."
“Jewel,” I echoed.
“Sadly enough, that’s all we have. We’ve never provided our services to anyone of their physical description. There are a couple clues, but they don’t amount to anything helpful. There’s the fact that you met them at a convenience store with relatively high prices. Maybe I’m just grasping at straws, but that could indicate a cushy financial situation. On top of that, the store is rather far away from here, so they might be an out-of-towner. They also might be able to influence the way others perceive them, considering the way they seemed to hypnotize you in the woods merely by holding eye contact.”
“How come they couldn’t do anything to Frank Preston?”
Mary Markov twinkled at me. “They couldn’t? Huh. That rather intrigues the philosopher in me. Jewel works through eye contact and it is said that the eyes are the window to the soul.” She cocked her head at me.
“Are you saying Blondie doesn’t have a soul?” Eli asked, raising a skeptical brow. “Is this one of those Plato-Schopenhauer-whatevers?”
The newsreader shrugged artfully, watching my reaction. “We could discuss this for hours on end. I only meant to draw attention to the implied distinction between an organically born entity and a being who was originally an inanimate object.”
“I beg your pardon?” I said slowly.
“Oh, nevermind; that’s neither here nor there.” Her tone told me that she did, in fact, consider it to be both here and there. Not wanting to go further into this with her, I made a mental note to ask Frankie later.
“There’s more,” I added, trying to gently prepare her for what I was about to say. “I want to get Kit Sutton back.”
Mary’s lips thinned. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t mean for the town to get flooded in the process. I think we can find a solution to help her, if we work together. I’m convinced we can figure something out, but I don’t believe in abandoning her anymore. Which is essentially what we’re doing if we leave her to her fate.”
“You do realize what you’re asking of me? Your former roommate isn’t some kind of minor water spirit. Her father appears to hold tremendous power over the seas, or at the very least our part of it. He has countless similarly dangerous individuals at his service so he might be considered a ruler of sorts, if not a deity.”
“So Kit’s the little mermaid, basically?” Elijah asked, equal parts joking and genuinely intrigued.
Mary grinned an actual, amused grin. “I must ask you to take this seriously, Mr Carter.”
“I am!” he chuckled, raising his hands. “I swear.”
“Anyways, Miss Shirley, the point you make is an individualistic one, but I see why you’re invested in the girl’s fate. I want to help, I do… But we need to proceed with caution. If you can suggest to me some kind of sensible approach, then I’ll do what I can. That’s all the promises I can make at the moment.”
I thanked her and got up, Eli following me as I headed for the door. “Miss Shirley,” Mary called out and I stopped, turning back around to face her. “If you like my style, we could perhaps meet up to go shopping sometime? I could show you some quality stores. It wouldn’t be anytime soon since I’m currently swamped, but I figure—well, just in case you might like to.”
I nodded. “That sounds pleasant enough.”
She smiled brightly and waved us out the door. “Excellent. I’ll be in touch.”
Back inside the car, I tossed the file onto the backseat to read later. “Would you like to go to the beach?” I suggested.
“Why not. Wait, is this for a stroll and ice cream or do you want to kickstart the mermaid-rescue-operation?”
“I can’t see why it shouldn’t be both,” I replied comfortably. “We’ll need to take your flashlight, though.”
"You know I don't like getting myself into trouble unless it's paid."
"Yes, but you also find me endearing and want to protect me from danger, which you can only do by accompanying me."
"You're a terrifying tentacle beast from another dimension. I don't know that I'm all that scared for your safety," he grunted.
I gave him an affronted look. "You have now hurt my feelings."
"Have I?"
"Plenty, but I'll forgive you if you come with me."
Elijah Carter sighed deeply but started driving anyway. I let my arm dangle out of the open window, allowing the warming spring air to wash over my skin. The closer we got to the shore, the stronger the scent of salt mixed into the breeze. The cries of seagulls became audible over the sounds of the road and the streaming wind and was finally joined by the crashing of waves when we pulled into a parking spot and got out of the car. Taking along the heavy duty flashlight he always kept in the passenger seat footwell, I led Eli to the mouth of the cave, explaining what Nettie and I had seen along the way. He looked commendably calm, simply turning on the torch and entering alongside me.
The tunnels were just as damp, dim and quiet as the last time. Before long, we had reached the spacious canyon room with the lake at the bottom. "I want to go across and see if there's anything important in the rest of the grotto back there," I reminded him. "Please hold on to your bearings."
"I'm not repeating your mistakes," he replied gamely. "What do you think? This oughta be connected to the ocean somehow." He let the beam of the torch roam the mirror-like surface of the lake. It seemed almost deceptively quiet. My eyes followed the lengthy stone ledge. Eli stepped close, and after receiving a nod of approval, he grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me onto the rocky protrusion. I straightened up, instantly pressing my back against the wall. A wave of nausea hit me as I glanced at the water below. "Chill," Elijah muttered, climbing after me with ease. "Nothing will happen. You're not gonna fall."
I merely shook my head. "You didn't see what's down there."
"And I won't, because we'll be careful," he answered steadfastly.
I started walking, the warm light of the torch upon my back, illuminating the path ahead. The shelf narrowed as we reached the end. I swiftly clambered down, relieved to place my feet on wider, solid ground once more. Now looking over the lake from the other side, it had an entirely different feel to it. It seemed darker somehow, but also less big—I attributed it to the change in perspective. We were standing in a cramped little nook with two passageways leading off into separate directions behind us. Elijah Carter eyed them pensively. “Which do you reckon?”
I pursed my lips. “The right one. Because it’s right.”
“Makes sense.”
We proceeded into the passage, the tight space pushing us closer together. He had to duck his head, uncomfortably hunching his shoulders, and for once, I was grateful for my own short stature. The corridor seemed to go on forever. The darkness and silence created a feel of unnatural solitude, and for more than once, I got the distinct impression that I must have jumped dimensions again. It was as though Elijah and I were enclosed in some kind of bubble, cut off from everything outside; a place where time was a foreign concept and the only sun was our flashlight. Needless to say, I was distinctly uneasy. I allowed myself to lean back, brushing against Eli’s chest whenever I could. Eventually, I cleared my throat.
“Could you touch me?”
“What?”
“Just so I still know you’re there.”
His palm came to rest on my shoulder, his thumb digging into one of the tense, painfully rigid muscles of my upper back, forcing it to soften. “Good?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He hummed. “You’re scared.”
“Yes.”
“Me, too.”
This caused my resolve to falter. “Maybe we should turn around after all,” I said quietly. “Who knows how much longer—”
“Look.”
I perked up. Before us, the tunnel grew wider, opening into a large, spacious room. We picked up our pace, tackling the remaining distance in a light jog, and finally found ourselves standing in another hall. The beam of light traveled the floor and high walls, revealing a sight that took our breath away. We were standing in front of another lake, only slightly smaller than the last. The water glittered in violet hues and strange, pale plants climbed up the walls, some of them looking rather like starfish. Multiple rocky protrusions formed an almost complete bridge across its middle. With a bit of light climbing, we'd undoubtedly be able to get to the other side. Wordlessly, Elijah Carter swung himself up onto the platform closest to the edge of the water, pulling me up after him. The flashlight switched hands a couple times as we maneuvered ourselves along.
Soon, we reached the middle of the lake. I risked a glance at the water below. All was still and perfectly quiet. Eli was about to take on the next rock when suddenly, I felt something heavy and gooey drip onto my head from above. I flinched, then slowly pointed the torch up to the ceiling. My stomach dropped. My throat had turned paper-dry, and I frantically tugged on Eli’s arm. He tipped his head back, following my pointing finger. His eyes blew wide and his face fell.
There was a creature clinging to the high walls, its pale, enormous body describing a streamline curve as it pressed itself against the hollowed stone. The closest thing I can compare it to would be a sort of olm, except probably a hundred times larger. Its snout looked large enough to swallow either of us whole. It hung open, secreting a thick fluid that slowly dripped down to hit the rocks or create ripples upon the water. Its blind eyes seemed to be trained on us, and I could spot tiny, sharp teeth lining its maw. It wasn’t moving, not even an inch, but somehow, I knew it was aware of us.
I looked up at Elijah, the panic in his eyes mirroring mine. Both of us had freezed up mid-motion, not daring to take another step. My mind was running wild; I was thinking feverishly. We’d have to turn around for sure, but how? The olm was already highly alert, if we were to start scrambling back to solid ground, it would undoubtedly hear us straight away. Eli looked equal parts terrified and furious, and I could tell he was scolding himself for not thinking to check the entirety of the room before proceeding across the lake. I could understand the sentiment, we’d definitely made a grave mistake. I figured it had been the misleading beauty of the cave hall that had taken our edge off. Glancing over into the direction we’d come from, I found myself wishing to be back in the endless dark corridor. The entrance to the passage seemed miles away.
The olm lifted a three-toed foot, shifting its massive form to a lower spot on the wall. It was taking a tentative step towards us, extending its snout as its body bent into our direction. Elijah had grabbed onto my arm, his fingers clamping around it like a vice. He stayed silent and unmoving, but he held my gaze with clear, sharp eyes.
“Don’t move,” I mouthed, and he gave me a curt nod.
Slowly, I reached around to push my shirt out of the way of my unfurling tentacles. Elijah took a quiet step back to make room for my changing form, something of a resolute expression settling on his face. I opened my mouth, relieved when my teeth acted according to my will and elongated. I didn’t know to what extent I would be able to defend against this absolute giant of an amphibian, but at least it would give us a chance. I took a deep breath, trading glances with Eli once more before darting off to the side, bounding onto the platform next to our current one. Elijah followed suit, grabbing onto one of the limbs I extended to him for support. Despite the swiftness of our movements, we were anything but quiet, and the olm reacted in an instant. It slithered down from the wall, sinking into the lake below to make its way to the rocks we were standing on. As we headed for the next stone, it darted out of the water, splashing wildly as its snout breached the surface. Its jaws snapped at us, missing me by a mere foot as I jumped across the gap between the protrusions. Droplets flew as the creature dropped once more, but instead of retreating, it swam around the platform. Its massive, snake-like body was bobbing up and down as it circled us.
“Oh fuck,” Elijah breathed, his chest heaving. “Keep going! Move, move!”
I took a short running start, then flung myself onto the next rock, using my extra limbs to land safely. I then helped him cross again. The olm rose from the depths of the lake once again, and I lashed at it with one of my tentacles, hitting it on the snout and forcing it to dive underwater again. We kept working our way back towards the other side of the lake, slipping and sliding as we went. The water surrounding us seemed to hum with unrestrained energy, the white salamander’s tail whipping up waves and splashing around. We were finally getting close to solid ground again, or at least it looked like we were for a moment. That’s when the creature took a massive leap, draping itself over the final stepping stone, effectively blocking our path.
“Shit,” Eli hissed beside me as we came to a skittering halt.
I’d have to try and fight this thing. There was no way around it now. I clenched my sweat-laced palms into fist, trying to slow my rapid, shallow breaths. I can do this, I said to myself. All I’d have to do is send it back into the lake for long enough so we could run back into the tunnel. There was no way the olm would fit through the passage—once we were in there, we’d be relatively safe. I stared at the dripping, writhing animal; stared at its bared needle teeth, and the less hopeful, more realistic part of my brain told me that I would, indeed, probably not be able to do this. Just as I was contemplating the degree of our screwed-ness, an unseen someone called out from behind us. I didn’t understand a word they were saying, but I recognized the language, and more importantly, the voice.
It was bright as a bell, girlish but with a rough, warm edge. Even before I could turn to face her, I knew who it was.
The gigantic amphibian perked up at the sound, lowering its head and withdrawing into the murky depths with a splash. Elijah Carter let go of a long-held breath, dropping his shoulders before tensing up again, realization setting in. He shot me a look of utter disbelief.
“Wow,” the newcomer spoke up again, this time not in the tongue of the deep ones. “You two have to be actually crazy or something to show up here.”
X
1
2: deadbeat roommate
3: creepy crush
4: relocation
5: beach concert
6: First date
7: Temp work
8: roommate talk
9: a dismal worldview
10: warehouse
11: staircase
12: explanation
13: hurt
14: hospital
15: ocean
16: diner
17: government work
18: something in the caves
19: shopping cart
submitted by girl_from_the_crypt to nosleep [link] [comments]
No outside observer could have mistaken it for a residential house, for there was hardly a less homely or comfortable place imaginable. It was utterly repellent in its rough, dreary nature. It couldn't have belonged to some kind of business either, though. There were no marked parking spaces for employees, no signs or advertisements. Altogether, it reminded me of something out of a cheap or unfinished video game.
"Sketchy," Eli remarked, eyeing the slab of concrete with a similar lack of enthusiasm. "Looks almost abandoned. How weirdly fitting for a semi-secret government operation."
I nodded. The warm air had taken me by surprise and I found the weight of my jacket suffocating, so I took it off to leave in the car. "What is it?" I asked, noticing the way Elijah squinted at my outfit.
"What are you wearing?"
"Clothes."
"You don't say." He snorted. "Looking kinda funny there, Shirley."
"I look professional," I corrected him.
"I suppose." He grinned to himself. "Depends on the profession, though."
We rang the bell and a highly official-looking security guard let us in through the heavy double doors after confirming that Mary Markov was expecting us. He gave the necessary directions, sending us down several flights of stairs. The better part of the building was in fact underground, like with an iceberg. Eli made a remark about how it'd be safer if outsiders weren’t allowed to roam the place by themselves. It seems to be a habit of his to vaguely analyze and point out flaws in the structures of government institutions. Then again, maybe it's just flaws in general he's fascinated with.
Upon arriving outside Mary's office, we were called inside to find her sitting behind her desk. She lifted her head, giving us a polite, if cold, smile. "Good morning. You're on time. Wonderful."
"Would you please give me an honest appraisal of my outfit?" I asked.
The newsreader frowned in confusion, her eyes briefly roaming my form. "You put effort into your appearance today," she concluded. "It's appreciated."
"Wait, what do you mean today?" I inquired.
"Note also how she did not actually answer your question," Elijah added.
I huffed, flinging myself into one of the chairs in front of Mary's desk. Eli sat down beside me, folding his hands in his lap and leaning back. "Thanks for letting me come with Shirley," he told her.
"Naturally. I assume you're her emotional support human." Mary Markov's lips curled slightly. "At any rate, you had contact with the Collective yourself, so this does concern you. As far as I'm concerned, it can't hurt having an ex-cop in the mix, anyways. Despite the regrettable reasons you had for leaving the force."
Elijah's brows lowered, the muscle in his pronounced jaw twitching. "How do you know about that?"
Mary looked innocent. "It's very important that I'm fully informed, of course. Don't worry. We don't need to go into it, and I don't judge you, either. The effect the incident at that highschool had on you is completely understandable."
"I didn't ask for your assessment." My friend's voice had sharpened. "Can we move on from this?"
"Of course." If the sudden shift in tone had rattled the agent, she wasn't letting it on. Sifting through the neat stack of papers on her desk, she pulled out a thin brown file which she slid over to me. "Miss Shirley, you remember the female member of the Collective we took into custody? She has already been questioned by the local police. Unfortunately, I don't have the authority to lead such an interrogation, but I was present for it and I want you to have this transcript."
I perked up and began leafing through the folder.
"You may take that with you to read in peace," Mary told me. "But don't expect too much, lest you'll be sorely disappointed. The girl hardly said anything at all. The most helpful information she gave us was a name she kept referencing. Jewel. At first, we thought it was a sort of code word, but it seems to be what the other person she was with calls themself."
“Jewel,” I echoed.
“Sadly enough, that’s all we have. We’ve never provided our services to anyone of their physical description. There are a couple clues, but they don’t amount to anything helpful. There’s the fact that you met them at a convenience store with relatively high prices. Maybe I’m just grasping at straws, but that could indicate a cushy financial situation. On top of that, the store is rather far away from here, so they might be an out-of-towner. They also might be able to influence the way others perceive them, considering the way they seemed to hypnotize you in the woods merely by holding eye contact.”
“How come they couldn’t do anything to Frank Preston?”
Mary Markov twinkled at me. “They couldn’t? Huh. That rather intrigues the philosopher in me. Jewel works through eye contact and it is said that the eyes are the window to the soul.” She cocked her head at me.
“Are you saying Blondie doesn’t have a soul?” Eli asked, raising a skeptical brow. “Is this one of those Plato-Schopenhauer-whatevers?”
The newsreader shrugged artfully, watching my reaction. “We could discuss this for hours on end. I only meant to draw attention to the implied distinction between an organically born entity and a being who was originally an inanimate object.”
“I beg your pardon?” I said slowly.
“Oh, nevermind; that’s neither here nor there.” Her tone told me that she did, in fact, consider it to be both here and there. Not wanting to go further into this with her, I made a mental note to ask Frankie later.
“There’s more,” I added, trying to gently prepare her for what I was about to say. “I want to get Kit Sutton back.”
Mary’s lips thinned. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t mean for the town to get flooded in the process. I think we can find a solution to help her, if we work together. I’m convinced we can figure something out, but I don’t believe in abandoning her anymore. Which is essentially what we’re doing if we leave her to her fate.”
“You do realize what you’re asking of me? Your former roommate isn’t some kind of minor water spirit. Her father appears to hold tremendous power over the seas, or at the very least our part of it. He has countless similarly dangerous individuals at his service so he might be considered a ruler of sorts, if not a deity.”
“So Kit’s the little mermaid, basically?” Elijah asked, equal parts joking and genuinely intrigued.
Mary grinned an actual, amused grin. “I must ask you to take this seriously, Mr Carter.”
“I am!” he chuckled, raising his hands. “I swear.”
“Anyways, Miss Shirley, the point you make is an individualistic one, but I see why you’re invested in the girl’s fate. I want to help, I do… But we need to proceed with caution. If you can suggest to me some kind of sensible approach, then I’ll do what I can. That’s all the promises I can make at the moment.”
I thanked her and got up, Eli following me as I headed for the door. “Miss Shirley,” Mary called out and I stopped, turning back around to face her. “If you like my style, we could perhaps meet up to go shopping sometime? I could show you some quality stores. It wouldn’t be anytime soon since I’m currently swamped, but I figure—well, just in case you might like to.”
I nodded. “That sounds pleasant enough.”
She smiled brightly and waved us out the door. “Excellent. I’ll be in touch.”
Back inside the car, I tossed the file onto the backseat to read later. “Would you like to go to the beach?” I suggested.
“Why not. Wait, is this for a stroll and ice cream or do you want to kickstart the mermaid-rescue-operation?”
“I can’t see why it shouldn’t be both,” I replied comfortably. “We’ll need to take your flashlight, though.”
"You know I don't like getting myself into trouble unless it's paid."
"Yes, but you also find me endearing and want to protect me from danger, which you can only do by accompanying me."
"You're a terrifying tentacle beast from another dimension. I don't know that I'm all that scared for your safety," he grunted.
I gave him an affronted look. "You have now hurt my feelings."
"Have I?"
"Plenty, but I'll forgive you if you come with me."
Elijah Carter sighed deeply but started driving anyway. I let my arm dangle out of the open window, allowing the warming spring air to wash over my skin. The closer we got to the shore, the stronger the scent of salt mixed into the breeze. The cries of seagulls became audible over the sounds of the road and the streaming wind and was finally joined by the crashing of waves when we pulled into a parking spot and got out of the car. Taking along the heavy duty flashlight he always kept in the passenger seat footwell, I led Eli to the mouth of the cave, explaining what Nettie and I had seen along the way. He looked commendably calm, simply turning on the torch and entering alongside me.
The tunnels were just as damp, dim and quiet as the last time. Before long, we had reached the spacious canyon room with the lake at the bottom. "I want to go across and see if there's anything important in the rest of the grotto back there," I reminded him. "Please hold on to your bearings."
"I'm not repeating your mistakes," he replied gamely. "What do you think? This oughta be connected to the ocean somehow." He let the beam of the torch roam the mirror-like surface of the lake. It seemed almost deceptively quiet. My eyes followed the lengthy stone ledge. Eli stepped close, and after receiving a nod of approval, he grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me onto the rocky protrusion. I straightened up, instantly pressing my back against the wall. A wave of nausea hit me as I glanced at the water below. "Chill," Elijah muttered, climbing after me with ease. "Nothing will happen. You're not gonna fall."
I merely shook my head. "You didn't see what's down there."
"And I won't, because we'll be careful," he answered steadfastly.
I started walking, the warm light of the torch upon my back, illuminating the path ahead. The shelf narrowed as we reached the end. I swiftly clambered down, relieved to place my feet on wider, solid ground once more. Now looking over the lake from the other side, it had an entirely different feel to it. It seemed darker somehow, but also less big—I attributed it to the change in perspective. We were standing in a cramped little nook with two passageways leading off into separate directions behind us. Elijah Carter eyed them pensively. “Which do you reckon?”
I pursed my lips. “The right one. Because it’s right.”
“Makes sense.”
We proceeded into the passage, the tight space pushing us closer together. He had to duck his head, uncomfortably hunching his shoulders, and for once, I was grateful for my own short stature. The corridor seemed to go on forever. The darkness and silence created a feel of unnatural solitude, and for more than once, I got the distinct impression that I must have jumped dimensions again. It was as though Elijah and I were enclosed in some kind of bubble, cut off from everything outside; a place where time was a foreign concept and the only sun was our flashlight. Needless to say, I was distinctly uneasy. I allowed myself to lean back, brushing against Eli’s chest whenever I could. Eventually, I cleared my throat.
“Could you touch me?”
“What?”
“Just so I still know you’re there.”
His palm came to rest on my shoulder, his thumb digging into one of the tense, painfully rigid muscles of my upper back, forcing it to soften. “Good?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He hummed. “You’re scared.”
“Yes.”
“Me, too.”
This caused my resolve to falter. “Maybe we should turn around after all,” I said quietly. “Who knows how much longer—”
“Look.”
I perked up. Before us, the tunnel grew wider, opening into a large, spacious room. We picked up our pace, tackling the remaining distance in a light jog, and finally found ourselves standing in another hall. The beam of light traveled the floor and high walls, revealing a sight that took our breath away. We were standing in front of another lake, only slightly smaller than the last. The water glittered in violet hues and strange, pale plants climbed up the walls, some of them looking rather like starfish. Multiple rocky protrusions formed an almost complete bridge across its middle. With a bit of light climbing, we'd undoubtedly be able to get to the other side. Wordlessly, Elijah Carter swung himself up onto the platform closest to the edge of the water, pulling me up after him. The flashlight switched hands a couple times as we maneuvered ourselves along.
Soon, we reached the middle of the lake. I risked a glance at the water below. All was still and perfectly quiet. Eli was about to take on the next rock when suddenly, I felt something heavy and gooey drip onto my head from above. I flinched, then slowly pointed the torch up to the ceiling. My stomach dropped. My throat had turned paper-dry, and I frantically tugged on Eli’s arm. He tipped his head back, following my pointing finger. His eyes blew wide and his face fell.
There was a creature clinging to the high walls, its pale, enormous body describing a streamline curve as it pressed itself against the hollowed stone. The closest thing I can compare it to would be a sort of olm, except probably a hundred times larger. Its snout looked large enough to swallow either of us whole. It hung open, secreting a thick fluid that slowly dripped down to hit the rocks or create ripples upon the water. Its blind eyes seemed to be trained on us, and I could spot tiny, sharp teeth lining its maw. It wasn’t moving, not even an inch, but somehow, I knew it was aware of us.
I looked up at Elijah, the panic in his eyes mirroring mine. Both of us had freezed up mid-motion, not daring to take another step. My mind was running wild; I was thinking feverishly. We’d have to turn around for sure, but how? The olm was already highly alert, if we were to start scrambling back to solid ground, it would undoubtedly hear us straight away. Eli looked equal parts terrified and furious, and I could tell he was scolding himself for not thinking to check the entirety of the room before proceeding across the lake. I could understand the sentiment, we’d definitely made a grave mistake. I figured it had been the misleading beauty of the cave hall that had taken our edge off. Glancing over into the direction we’d come from, I found myself wishing to be back in the endless dark corridor. The entrance to the passage seemed miles away.
The olm lifted a three-toed foot, shifting its massive form to a lower spot on the wall. It was taking a tentative step towards us, extending its snout as its body bent into our direction. Elijah had grabbed onto my arm, his fingers clamping around it like a vice. He stayed silent and unmoving, but he held my gaze with clear, sharp eyes.
“Don’t move,” I mouthed, and he gave me a curt nod.
Slowly, I reached around to push my shirt out of the way of my unfurling tentacles. Elijah took a quiet step back to make room for my changing form, something of a resolute expression settling on his face. I opened my mouth, relieved when my teeth acted according to my will and elongated. I didn’t know to what extent I would be able to defend against this absolute giant of an amphibian, but at least it would give us a chance. I took a deep breath, trading glances with Eli once more before darting off to the side, bounding onto the platform next to our current one. Elijah followed suit, grabbing onto one of the limbs I extended to him for support. Despite the swiftness of our movements, we were anything but quiet, and the olm reacted in an instant. It slithered down from the wall, sinking into the lake below to make its way to the rocks we were standing on. As we headed for the next stone, it darted out of the water, splashing wildly as its snout breached the surface. Its jaws snapped at us, missing me by a mere foot as I jumped across the gap between the protrusions. Droplets flew as the creature dropped once more, but instead of retreating, it swam around the platform. Its massive, snake-like body was bobbing up and down as it circled us.
“Oh fuck,” Elijah breathed, his chest heaving. “Keep going! Move, move!”
I took a short running start, then flung myself onto the next rock, using my extra limbs to land safely. I then helped him cross again. The olm rose from the depths of the lake once again, and I lashed at it with one of my tentacles, hitting it on the snout and forcing it to dive underwater again. We kept working our way back towards the other side of the lake, slipping and sliding as we went. The water surrounding us seemed to hum with unrestrained energy, the white salamander’s tail whipping up waves and splashing around. We were finally getting close to solid ground again, or at least it looked like we were for a moment. That’s when the creature took a massive leap, draping itself over the final stepping stone, effectively blocking our path.
“Shit,” Eli hissed beside me as we came to a skittering halt.
I’d have to try and fight this thing. There was no way around it now. I clenched my sweat-laced palms into fist, trying to slow my rapid, shallow breaths. I can do this, I said to myself. All I’d have to do is send it back into the lake for long enough so we could run back into the tunnel. There was no way the olm would fit through the passage—once we were in there, we’d be relatively safe. I stared at the dripping, writhing animal; stared at its bared needle teeth, and the less hopeful, more realistic part of my brain told me that I would, indeed, probably not be able to do this. Just as I was contemplating the degree of our screwed-ness, an unseen someone called out from behind us. I didn’t understand a word they were saying, but I recognized the language, and more importantly, the voice.
It was bright as a bell, girlish but with a rough, warm edge. Even before I could turn to face her, I knew who it was.
The gigantic amphibian perked up at the sound, lowering its head and withdrawing into the murky depths with a splash. Elijah Carter let go of a long-held breath, dropping his shoulders before tensing up again, realization setting in. He shot me a look of utter disbelief.
“Wow,” the newcomer spoke up again, this time not in the tongue of the deep ones. “You two have to be actually crazy or something to show up here.”
X
1
2: deadbeat roommate
3: creepy crush
4: relocation
5: beach concert
6: First date
7: Temp work
8: roommate talk
9: a dismal worldview
10: warehouse
11: staircase
12: explanation
13: hurt
14: hospital
15: ocean
16: diner
17: government work
18: something in the caves
19: shopping cart
2023.05.31 23:42 Amrx4to5 Chromiecraft - Heroic dungeons 7th June & 1-65 XP rate changes
A mighty fine day to all of you wonderful people on wowservers,
https://www.chromiecraft.com/en/
https://discord.gg/chromiecraft
Many full dungeon rewrites later, we are finally through with TBC dungeons in terms of progression plans. It has taken some time but that means we can now finally get into some TBC Heroic dungeons!
We have also been listening and taking in your comments and feedback, one of the most requested features involves our current usage of weekend XP rates. Currently, we offer X2 quest XP rewards every Friday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59 (server time which is UTC). Alongside that, we have our Recruit-a-Friend (RAF) module which offers 30 days of permanent rested XP to level 65 or 30 days (whichever is hit first).
A couple of things to mention regarding this:
• We have optional built in Challenge Modes on the server. We offer Hardcore (1 life, permadeath and deleted character upon dying before level cap), Bloodthirsty (gain XP only via mob kills) & Ironman (no talents, only white & gray items) rulesets as well. With a dedicated guild (.challenge guild) to join other challenge enthusiasts, you can earn some fantastic rewards such as T3 armour mogs for your class, pets and mounts. You can even combine challenges for even more rewards!
• We offer our own Transmog System on the server. Not a fan of transmogs, no problem simple type in .transmog off and it is as if it never exists for you!
• We have dedicated GM team who do all we can to ensure any bots, RMT or gold sellers are banned as soon as discovered.
• Longevity. We have been around for over 2 1/2 years now and will be around for years and years to come.
• Zero P2W items available, forever. We promise we will never sell gear, boosts or stats / power to anybody. All donations are immediately reinvested back into the server (we are a registered non-profit organisation) with Chromiecraft. These go to paying for servers, bug bounties, freelance developers etc. You can also earn Chromiepoints (CP) in game! We pay out to the winners of the most amount of BGs per bracket (twinks very much welcome here) as well as to those who report bugs and contribute to the server every month! We also hold random in game events such as Hide & Seek where you can win shop items as well.
Thank you as always for taking the time to read this and have a fantastic rest of your day!
Construct, Chromiecraft Project Lead
submitted by Amrx4to5 to wowservers [link] [comments]
https://www.chromiecraft.com/en/
https://discord.gg/chromiecraft
Many full dungeon rewrites later, we are finally through with TBC dungeons in terms of progression plans. It has taken some time but that means we can now finally get into some TBC Heroic dungeons!
Heroic Dungeons on Chromiecraft (all of them) will be released on Wednesday, 7th June! A short while after this we will be announcing the TBC world bosses release as well as the first TBC raids.
Some off-set season 1 PvP item will release (arenas will start on the first raid bracket) and the Karazhan attunement will open for all to complete as well. As a reminder, raids in Chromiecraft will have two modes - normal with a light tune to account for the increased power of Wrath skills and talents as well as what we are now calling our 'mythic' mode which will give a serious challenge to all (new mechanics as well) and rewards for completing these raid types!We have also been listening and taking in your comments and feedback, one of the most requested features involves our current usage of weekend XP rates. Currently, we offer X2 quest XP rewards every Friday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59 (server time which is UTC). Alongside that, we have our Recruit-a-Friend (RAF) module which offers 30 days of permanent rested XP to level 65 or 30 days (whichever is hit first).
Upon the release of Heroics, the default quest XP rate on Chromiecraft will be X2 going forward, everyday.
A couple of things to mention regarding this:
- This only affects Quest XP gains (which also doubles the reward upon a successful RDF dungeon run) and runs until you hit level 65.
- The Recruit-A-Friend (RAF) module still gives you permanent rested XP (blue bar) for 30 days or until a character hits level 65 (whichever is hit first).
- You can still opt out of this and play with X1 rates should you choose to do so (type in the command .weekendxp rate 1).
- Challenge modes (Hardcore & Ironman) are still run to x1 rates and are not affected by this change (Bloodthirsy only rewards XP by mob kills so is also unaffected by this).
So, why should you choose Chromiecraft?
• We are a PvE server with a sole focus on making the best Wrath of the Lich King core out there. Created by the team behind the open-source Azerothcore, all fixes we do to the server is available for all for free, forever. Outside of the boosted XP rates, all other rates are blizzlike.• We have optional built in Challenge Modes on the server. We offer Hardcore (1 life, permadeath and deleted character upon dying before level cap), Bloodthirsty (gain XP only via mob kills) & Ironman (no talents, only white & gray items) rulesets as well. With a dedicated guild (.challenge guild) to join other challenge enthusiasts, you can earn some fantastic rewards such as T3 armour mogs for your class, pets and mounts. You can even combine challenges for even more rewards!
• We offer our own Transmog System on the server. Not a fan of transmogs, no problem simple type in .transmog off and it is as if it never exists for you!
• We have dedicated GM team who do all we can to ensure any bots, RMT or gold sellers are banned as soon as discovered.
• Longevity. We have been around for over 2 1/2 years now and will be around for years and years to come.
• Zero P2W items available, forever. We promise we will never sell gear, boosts or stats / power to anybody. All donations are immediately reinvested back into the server (we are a registered non-profit organisation) with Chromiecraft. These go to paying for servers, bug bounties, freelance developers etc. You can also earn Chromiepoints (CP) in game! We pay out to the winners of the most amount of BGs per bracket (twinks very much welcome here) as well as to those who report bugs and contribute to the server every month! We also hold random in game events such as Hide & Seek where you can win shop items as well.
Thank you as always for taking the time to read this and have a fantastic rest of your day!
Construct, Chromiecraft Project Lead
2023.05.31 23:30 JonathanRedding Ghost Word Pt. 2
Continued from Pt. 1, which can be found at:
Pt 1: https://www.reddit.com/Horror_stories/comments/13wymkl/ghost_word_pt_1/
WARNING: This story contains depictions of non-consensual sex and gun violence.
---------------------------------
Lyle found himself on foot, the valise at his side, the night air crisp and noisy. He realized he was ravenous. No surprise there, he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in twenty-six hours. The late evening traffic was brisk around the campus, and as he passed a roving pack of students Lyle realized it was Thursday night*. Thirsty Thursdays*.
In keeping with ancient tradition, the majority of undergraduates avoided Friday morning classes at all costs, preferring to begin their weekend revels on Thursday nights. Lyle followed his feet. He imagined power emanating from the briefcase at his side, thrumming up his arm. He felt, for perhaps the first time in a life of shrinking uncertainty, boundless.
And it felt extraordinary.
Somewhere inside of him a notion was forming that he did not dare articulate. But he followed his feet. The easy ebb and flow of walk signals, the pleasantly cool night air, the passing chatter, even the occasional car-horn—which in the past had never failed to startle him, jittery as he was—seemed buoyant and agreeable. The night was his. He realized he was sloping gently downhill, as he followed his feet. He realized he knew exactly where he was going. He found himself before O’Flaherty’s Pub, with its sandwich-board blaring LADIES NIGHT 1/2 WELL DRINKS -- TRUST ME YOU CAN DANCE in electric pink loops. It felt only natural to step beneath the awning, swing wide the knotted mahogany door, and enter the din.
The ham-hock manning security—probably a redshirt lineman in his off-season—turned toward Lyle on autopilot, one hand reaching out as a question formed on his lips, lemme see some ID. Lyle made no attempt to reach for his wallet because he knew the inevitable would happen when the bouncer took in his face, which he did a half second later. A tiny beat of recognition flickered and was gone, and the bouncer turned away. No need to card the old dude. Good luck navigating the vicissitudes of adult life, you Mongoloid, Lyle thought. The jag off had a Black & Mild tucked up behind one ear, Lyle felt an insane urge to snatch it off his head and break it in half. He did not do well with the pretend authority of chunky, dead-eyed adolescents.
But I’m not here for him.
Lyle wove his way into the evening crush with the delicate, shuffling little steps he always used in crowds. By fits and starts he made his way deeper, deeper, winding toward the back bar, the one with the full-length mirror. That was her favorite. O’Flaherty’s had a Crosley jukebox, wood-paneled and coin-operated, reaching for vintage but stuffed to the gills with Bluetooth and wi-fi and digital memory and whatever else. A woman’s voice was booming out of it, an empty pop ballad gussied up by her big, operatic sound. Lyle tried to think of the singer’s name, but couldn’t. He squeezed into a narrow gap at the back bar.
Darby was flirting as she mixed a rum-and-coke for a gawky, dough-faced kid in a flat-cap and a Harrington jacket. On the few occasions he had come out on Darby missions, Lyle had stayed well back from the bar, waiting for drink service at one of the small cafe tables lining the billiard room. But tonight, he wasn’t here to watch.
Darby handed off the drink and caught sight of Lyle. He winced—he could read the surprise, even discomfort, on her face. But she was tending bar, and she was quick on her feet, and she rearranged her expression into a smile. She held up a finger—*one sec—*to which Lyle nodded, as she took flat-cap’s (father’s) Amex back to the register and opened up a tab.
Lyle enjoyed watching her walk. Enjoyed looking at her from the back, or in profile. He usually saw her face, in class, big brown doe eyes and very pale, freckled skin. A shade away from clear, he had heard her joke once, to James, as she had invited him to touch the roadmap of blue veins on her inner arm. That had enraged Lyle—the sudden, unwelcome image of James with those long creamy legs locked over his waist, his long, slow thrusts.
Because he restrained himself from ogling her in class, it was a pleasure to come to O’Flaherty’s during her shifts and watch her as she worked. Darby was not the first of what Lyle thought of as his “favorites”. Every year or two there was a fresh, irresistible young thing, for him to think about, alone, late at night. One of the unspoken perks of professordom was the constant influx of eye-candy, of short skirts and long legs and high asses and pert young tits. In his mind’s eye it was an endless profusion of imagined aureoles, of wondering about their panties—boy-briefs or frilly little whatsits or g-strings or none at all—and even if Lyle never slept with them there was an intense eroticism in holding power over these girls he could never have bedded in his own college years. In pushing that term paper over the failing line and waiting, deliciously waiting, for them to come to his office hour and plead. Only Darby’s work was reasonably competent, so even that grimy thrill was denied him.
Darby finished up with the register and came over, the pale of her neck stark against her tight black t-shirt. O’FLAHERTY’S was printed on it in green, the name stretched to accommodate her bust. Her hair frazzled at the temples; she’d been working hard.
Just a little dirty, that’s how I like you, he thought.
“Dr. L! We missed you today, thought maybe you caught the gunk. You all right?” Darby beamed her big smile at him, a gift of the gods (and of immaculate orthodontics).
“I’m fine, Darby, thanks. Just a communication mix-up. I’m sorry you all waited.”
She kept smiling, seemed to be waiting for more. He didn’t give it to her.
“Well—can I get you anything?”
Lyle hesitated, trying to think of a manly drink, something urbane and—professorial.
“Scotch-rocks. A double.”
Darby continued to stare at him, expectantly. “Any… particular poison, or-?”
Lyle glanced up, made a show of studying the bottles arrayed behind her. He knew nothing about scotch. Stupid. He settled on Johnnie Walker Black, and Darby poured his drink.
Lyle realized his heart was racing. Darby set the drink in front of him and he downed half of it in one swallow. He managed to keep his face neutral as the liquor seared his throat.
“This is a—little bit of a departure, for you, huh?” Darby indicated the scotch.
“What?”
She must have known he heard her but she raised her voice anyway. The music had changed to a British pop group with a lot of electronic undertones, trying to sound haunting.
“The scotch,” she said. “Don’t you always order lemon drop martinis? When you come in?”
Busted. Two bright red circles appeared high on his cheeks.
“You know, it, it depends,” he replied. “Depends on my mood. And you—you make a hell of a lemon drop martini, here.”
Fucking idiot, he thought. They make the same Goddamn lemon drop martini as everybody else and she knows it.
Darby was smooth, though. Graceful. She rolled right past it. “I wondered why you never came over and said hi.”
“Well I don’t want to, you know, be a bother. You’re working. It’s always busy. And I’ve been coming here for years, off and on. You get used to seeing students out on the town. I try to give them their space.”
“Oh.” Her smile reappeared. “Well I’m glad you came over. Let me know if I can get you anything else?” She was already angling away.
“How was class today?” Lyle didn’t want to let her go. She glanced down the bar, she had customers waiting.
“It was great, really great,” she hurried her answer. She was giving him the brush-off. “James did great. He’s an awesome teacher. Awesome guy.”
“You know, I’d been meaning to ask you, about James…” Lyle leaned in, conspiratorially. Darby’s smile was faltering, but courtesy won out and she leaned in to hear.
“Are you fucking him?”
Darby recoiled, as though he had spit on her.
“What?”
“Do you laugh at me, when you do it? When you fuck, do you laugh at the scabby, horn-dog professor?”
Darby’s breath hitched in her chest, she looked like she was about to cry. She took a step back. She looked down the bar, and then past him—toward the door.
Bouncer, he thought. She’s looking for the bouncer.
“I think you need to—” she began.
Then Lyle said the Word. The alien Word, meant to be moaned, easy as pie, really, when you thought about it, how the sounds flowed together. The Word that meant libido.
Darby froze. Her pupils flickered, Lyle saw, they constricted down to pinpricks, and then dilated as wide as they could go, swallowing the puppy-dog brown of her irises. Her face went slack. That wide, expensive smile vanished, and her mouth hung slightly open.
“Moisten your lips, Darby,” he said.
Her tongue slid out, pink and supple, and she obeyed.
Oh, my God, she OBEYED.
Lyle’s penis twitched in his pants, he realized he was painfully erect, his balls aching. He realized he had been, had been since—since I said the Word—since he had her and a cruel, savage sense of triumph shook him, he felt his pulse hammering in his veins, he felt like standing up on the bar and—
ROARING I want to ROAR at this dewy twat and all her imbecilic peers—
But instead, he took his cock firmly in his hand, through the cheap fabric of his Ross trousers, squeezed himself, and said—
“What are we going to do with you, Darby?”
#
Lyle fucked her in the alleyway behind O’Flaherty’s. That meant hurrying more than he liked, the dumpster provided cover but the blocks surrounding the campus were too well policed. It was all right, though. Now that he was armed with the libido-Word, the next time could be more leisurely.
He took her in. All of her. The small, surprisingly dark nipples, nothing like he’d imagined. The fine, black hairs on the nape of her neck, the peach fuzz of her freckled low back, her inner thighs. Her panties were white briefs with green stitching, they were covered with tiny frogs. He tugged them down, and nuzzled her there. He left hickeys, on her ass, her mons. Her smooth, exquisite young cunt.
Lyle took her from behind and saw the groggy confusion in her dilated eyes, the amazement*—*and through that the pleasure, the unsuspected, unwanted, violating pleasure that jolted moans out of her.
Lyle sucked her neck, bit it, hard enough to sting. She gave a tiny mewl as she came, and her spasm triggered him also. Lyle buried himself to the hilt in her, finished in her, and felt—
Like a king. Like a GOD.
They stayed there as the minutes stretched out, panting, still joined. He savored her, until his own tumescence vanished, and he slipped out. Lyle patted her derriere.
“Get dressed and get back to work, Darby,” he said. “We don’t want you to get in trouble.”
She jerked her head, drunkenly, from side to side, as though she were trying to shake water out of her ears. Lyle breathed deep, in through his nose, the fine scents of the city. Fried food nearby, probably the Thai joint catty-corner to the pub. He stood and admired, as Darby tugged her frog-panties back up those long pale legs.
“I’ll see you in class.”
Darby stared blankly at him as he took up his suitcase, turned, and strode into the night.
#
When Lyle opened his eyes the next morning, he was only mildly surprised to discover that he felt no guilt at all. The sun streamed in, the world was up and running, coffee was calling, and by God he felt fine.
He sat up in bed, stretched. He glanced at the alarm clock, that hateful sentinel, now toothless—10:27AM. The mattress was bare, beneath him. He’d never washed the sheets. Puddled on the floor were yesterday’s clothes. He resisted the urge to tidy them up. Later. He padded to the bathroom and went about his ablutions, brushed his teeth, took out his shaving kit. He had used the sleep-Word on himself again, last night. After.
After! He let the memories wash over him. Her smell: the tang of sweat, bar-odors, the undercurrent of peach soap. The taste of her! And then the feast, afterward. He had followed his nose to Great Elephant Thai, wolfed down a plate of kai thot, fried to a crisp and dripping oil*.* It may have been the finest meal of his life.
And he had had such dreams! Dreams of Darby, and of favorites past. Dreams of fucking and of wealth and of slights avenged and of respectful, deferential looks, dreams of voices falling silent when he entered a room, of every eye on him. A song lyric drifted into his head, something from his childhood, a favorite of his father’s one long summer, repeated ad nauseam on the fourteen-hour drive down to Savannah.
“Twenty years a’crawlin’… were bottled up in Tommy… he wasn’t holding nothin’ back, he let ‘em have it all…” Lyle sang, full voice, into the morning. A stupid grin spread over his face, as he wicked away the last patch of Barbasol, the careful spot right over his Adam’s apple, and rinsed his razor. He took a long look at Mirror-Lyle, looked into his eyes. He almost always avoided a close examination of his reflection, force of habit, but today he was a new man, and he wanted to take that man’s measure.
“Everyone… considered him… THE COWARD OOOF… the COUNTYYYY…”
Something else surfaced, then, in his memory, something that cranked the wattage down on his smile. He didn’t get all of it, just a glimpse, like a dorsal fin rising above the water. He had dreamed of more than power and sex. There had been something else. Lyle had a vague red recollection of tangled depths and faceless figures. His mind offered up a fleeting image of a crumbling stone structure, of keening wind and squat pillars; and of a great broken vault overhead, through which could be seen a blasted sky.
Lyle charged his phone as he brewed up a fresh pot. It had run out of juice somewhere during yesterday’s festivities, and when it finally powered up again it began to vibrate against the Formica tabletop in his dining nook. He ignored the first two pulses, but the phone insistently continued, not with the regular rhythm of an incoming call, but rather the inconsistent bursts of message notifications trickling in from the cloud. He tapped the touchscreen, and saw he had seven missed calls: one from a colleague, yesterday; and six from James, each one with a voicemail attached. The most recent of these had come just twenty minutes ago.
Lyle sipped on his coffee as he retrieved the briefcase from beneath his bed. He sat at his dinette and removed the fascicle, easily finding the rigid page. He opened it, and this time the new Word was waiting for him below the first, long entry: the entry corresponding to the letter “A” itself. This Word was angry, Ks and Zs, a hornet-word, serpent-word. Lyle looked to the white space, where the definition would arise. He pricked his forefinger with the tip of a steak knife and squeezed out two droplets of blood.
der zorn
Lyle sipped. Lyle thought. Greek, then Latin, now German. Was it moving forward in time? He wondered again about those first shapes he had seen, in the library. The more he tried to remember the more he doubted they had been in Greek. Something older, maybe. Phoenician syllabary? He would likely never know. But the Words were changing. The book was changing.
And there was this: both of the—*spells, they’re spells, let’s cut the shit—*both of the Words it had given him so far had been…
“Intuitive,” he said finally. “Useful. Like it knew.”
Lyle took down the last foil sleeve of blueberry Pop Tarts from his cupboard. Pauper’s breakfast, he thought, but not for much longer. He searched through his contacts until he found the number for the Chancellor’s office. He thumbed the little blue phone icon beside it.
#
Lyle had just started boxing up his things when James burst into his office, perfectly symmetrical face distorted by fury, his generous features made ugly. Ah, the righteousness of youth. James took in the dense sheaf of Staples boxes, waiting to be folded; took in the bare walls, the stacked diplomas and photographs.
“What the fuck is this?” he demanded.
“Emergency leave,” Lyle answered with a dismissive wave. “I’ve had a family crisis. I’m afraid I have to attend to it. Professor Chole will be taking over my workload for the remainder of the semester, I’m sure she’ll be in touch—"
“What did you do to Darby? What the fuck did you do?” James spoke with the husky, quaking tone of pure adrenaline. He was just barely restraining himself from lunging across the desk, Lyle realized. He took the younger man in with bemused calm. He let the moment stretch out.
“Therese called me,” James continued, the words throttling out of him. “Darby’s roommate. She came home last night, she has—bruises, all over her, little, little *bites—*she won’t speak, she just sits there and cries, but she said your name. It’s the only thing she said. What did you do to her, Lyle? Did you rape her?”
“Dr. Hereford,” Lyle replied.
James craned forward. “What?”
*“*You don’t get to call me Lyle.”
Lower, now, almost a whisper: “Tell me what you did to her.”
“I made her come,” Lyle said. “And she fucking loved it.”
James did lunge then, he screamed and he leapt across the desk, coming down on Lyle in a tangle of thrashing limbs and rabbit punches, the two of them toppling Lyle’s chair, compressing awkwardly into the tight space between desk and wall. James kicked hard off of the gray metal drawers, managing to end up on top. His hands found Lyle’s throat and began to squeeze. Lyle felt himself constricting, felt the energy draining out of him, pinned, as he lost oxygen. He noticed the curds of spittle at the corners of James’s snarling mouth. He started to see spots in the periphery of his vision, and as he slapped ineffectually at James’s face he thought am I going to die here—?
Lyle dug down for the last of his strength. The Word chose me. This wasn’t the end. Couldn’t be the end. He extended his leg as far as it would go, and used the distance to drive his knee, hard, into James’s crotch. A grunting exhale was propelled out of the younger man*.* Lyle pulled back to do it again; James squeezed his thighs together to block, and when he did, he compromised his balance. He took one hand off Lyle’s throat and thrust out his arm to catch himself as be began to roll, allowing Lyle to draw in a long, ragged breath.
Then Lyle spoke the Word.
The der zorn-Word.
The word that meant anger, that meant rage, that meant WRATH.
#
“Son. Son, you’re bleeding, let me—let me help you, come on. Son, it’s gonna be okay, come on, now— “
The campus policeman approaches James like a dog that might be rabid, that slow hunched posture with arms wide, except for the policeman it’s only one arm because his right hand is flush up against his service weapon and his thumb snaps the little thumbsnap and it’s a very small noise but it’s so loud in James’s head and he shakes it, his head, does James, from side to side, in herks and jerks, like a dog that might be rabid, now, like there’s water in his ears and he’s trying to shake it out, is James, and the policeman is coming on and speaking in clear precise syllables that explode behind James’s temples, clusterbomb-words, and the cop is speaking but he’s hearing another voice, is James, and it’s Lyle’s voice, it’s Dr. L’s voice, not Lyle never Lyle, and Dr. L’s voice is saying snakebit you’re snakebit she fucking LOVED it and James touches his own face now and it must be true because there’s blood on his face and when he blinks his blink is heavy and liquid like he just dropped Visine in there but the thing is but only but except it’s blood and he’s bleeding from the eyes, is James, and now the policeman is right on top of him saying “son what happened can you hear me respond if you can hear me” and James hears the exploding words all right and he blinks and blood oozes from the corners of his eyes and the cop is changing now, in the blood, his face is BOILING and now it’s Darby’s face on the policeman and she opens her mouth and her head cranes back and she’s ruined inside OH FUCK SHE’S RUINED INSIDE SHOT HERSELF SHE SHOT HERSELF SHE’S SHOT and now it’s DR L IT’S DR L SCREAMING SNAKEBIT SNAKEBIT SNAKEBIT—
James rears back and head-butts the campus cop as hard as he can, the smooth acne-less center of James’s forehead connecting with the soft cartilage of the policeman’s nose. A sick crunch echoes in the lobby of the Humanities building, a young woman close enough to hear it vomits on the floor, it is the first puking incident of the day but not the last.
The cop recoils with a sick moan, in his surprise clapping his hands to his shattered nose; in that moment James bellows, an awful inarticulate animal sound of hate, and yanks the policeman’s service piece free of his holster.
The handful of rubbernecking students freeze as James shoots the policeman in the face.
The policeman’s name is (was) Lou, the students know, and he is (was) genial and well-liked. A silent second passes in the lobby, and then the screaming begins.
James dips down and pulls two spare clips out of Lou’s belt. He pockets them. When James looks up, he doesn’t see fleeing students.
He sees Dr. L.
A gaggle of Dr. L’s. A school, a clutch, a murder. He sees laughing Dr. L’s running in every direction, diving behind furniture, breaking for the street or hurtling into the stairwells. One Dr. L dives behind the reception desk. James starts after him on wooden legs.
When he reaches the desk, there is Dr. L beneath it, a cell phone in his hand, cackling. James shoots him in the stomach. Dr. L keeps right on laughing, howling with it now, whatever it is must be hilarious, a real knee-slapper, then James remembers its him, Dr. L is laughing at him so James shoots him again, shoots him so he’ll stop but there are so many more—
#
Lyle Hereford, Ph.D., rested his browning forearms on the wrought iron railing of his third-floor balcony. He looked out over the Gulf of Mexico. The breeze was warm and gentle, suffusing, but it no longer calmed him. He took no notice of it. He was lost, as he was always now lost, in thought.
The one, lone thought.
It had taken a little less than two weeks for James’s horrific shooting spree to drop out of the news. The demands for GUN CONTROL NOW (or, conversely, for guns in every classroom) receded and were shelved for the next go-round. Politicians took to the field and unfurled their heraldry for the usual pro-forma skirmishes. Then, mercifully, a Cabinet official fucked somebody he really shouldn’t have and the national discourse (such as it was) barreled off, like a dog chasing a ball that its owner had only pretended to throw. As to why a handsome, popular, well-adjusted student should suddenly snap and murder sixteen of his fellows? The theories ranged from medically reasonable (an inoperable tumor which could not be verified via autopsy, as James’s brains had been removed by the responding tactical unit); to the paranoiac (James had been the subject of a Manchurian Candidate-style CIA/NSA/Acronym-of-your-choice experiment gone horribly wrong); to the Occult (the Devil made him do it).
Lyle had enjoyed that last one.
What Lyle had not enjoyed was that some of the conspiracy theorists, and even some of the legitimate press, had mentioned him by name. He had disappeared, after all, on an auspicious and chaotic day, to manage a crisis no one could verify involving a family no one could find. It had not been difficult to remain ahead of any enterprising investigators, though. Not with the Words.
And there had been so many more Words. Words in French and Finnish and Russian and Spanish and Mandarin. Words that meant envy and silence and fear and blindness and, perhaps the most potent yet, a Word that meant stupid. Lyle had employed that one against a statie who pulled him over as he crossed the Louisiana line, coming through Vicksburg. The guy had been six-two, maybe two-twenty, with sharp, curious eyes sunk deep in his skull. Lyle hadn’t liked the way he had looked at him, so he used the Word. Now the statie—*Edmonds was his name, Trooper Edmonds—*was six-two, two-twenty of drooling simpleton, probably staring at a wall somewhere in the nearest brain injury ward and driving the resident neurologists absolutely bugshit.
By the time Lyle made it to a quiet, lazy town on the Cajun Riviera and decided to set a spell, he had traded in his Acura for a Beemer and was carrying close to a hundred and twelve thousand dollars in cash. He had also acquired a 9mm Ruger and a shotgun with a pistol grip (the dealer had called it a snake charmer just before Lyle killed him).
None of that matters now, though.
All that mattered was the Word. Which, he had come to realize, was the last Word.
Because the book was alive, of course, had always been alive, Lyle knew that. Hadn’t let himself come right out and say it, but he knew. It had slept, maybe, possibly, until he woke it, with his touch, with his blood, but if it slept, it woke up thirsty*.* The book was always ready with the next Word, the next thing he would need. The book was collaborating with him. It was dancing with him, and at first he had thought he was the one leading, but now he knew better.
Lyle felt it. Felt it—pulling on him. All the time. Felt it in the room behind him, pulling, knew that he would go back in, sooner or later, go back in, and open the book, the book that has been leading him. Knew that he would open its hundreds of pages, because it was longer now, because it had grown, because it was three inches thick and the front plating had vanished and it wasn’t pretending to be a dictionary anymore.
He knew that he would open it and on every single page, centered, would be a single Word, the last Word, the Word that he will say, that he must say, sooner or later, and under it swirling in blood, blood that must be the book’s own, the final explication, the final command, the final meaning, and God, oh God, Lyle was afraid, because the last Word was
DOOR
submitted by JonathanRedding to Horror_stories [link] [comments]
Pt 1: https://www.reddit.com/Horror_stories/comments/13wymkl/ghost_word_pt_1/
WARNING: This story contains depictions of non-consensual sex and gun violence.
---------------------------------
Lyle found himself on foot, the valise at his side, the night air crisp and noisy. He realized he was ravenous. No surprise there, he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in twenty-six hours. The late evening traffic was brisk around the campus, and as he passed a roving pack of students Lyle realized it was Thursday night*. Thirsty Thursdays*.
In keeping with ancient tradition, the majority of undergraduates avoided Friday morning classes at all costs, preferring to begin their weekend revels on Thursday nights. Lyle followed his feet. He imagined power emanating from the briefcase at his side, thrumming up his arm. He felt, for perhaps the first time in a life of shrinking uncertainty, boundless.
And it felt extraordinary.
Somewhere inside of him a notion was forming that he did not dare articulate. But he followed his feet. The easy ebb and flow of walk signals, the pleasantly cool night air, the passing chatter, even the occasional car-horn—which in the past had never failed to startle him, jittery as he was—seemed buoyant and agreeable. The night was his. He realized he was sloping gently downhill, as he followed his feet. He realized he knew exactly where he was going. He found himself before O’Flaherty’s Pub, with its sandwich-board blaring LADIES NIGHT 1/2 WELL DRINKS -- TRUST ME YOU CAN DANCE in electric pink loops. It felt only natural to step beneath the awning, swing wide the knotted mahogany door, and enter the din.
The ham-hock manning security—probably a redshirt lineman in his off-season—turned toward Lyle on autopilot, one hand reaching out as a question formed on his lips, lemme see some ID. Lyle made no attempt to reach for his wallet because he knew the inevitable would happen when the bouncer took in his face, which he did a half second later. A tiny beat of recognition flickered and was gone, and the bouncer turned away. No need to card the old dude. Good luck navigating the vicissitudes of adult life, you Mongoloid, Lyle thought. The jag off had a Black & Mild tucked up behind one ear, Lyle felt an insane urge to snatch it off his head and break it in half. He did not do well with the pretend authority of chunky, dead-eyed adolescents.
But I’m not here for him.
Lyle wove his way into the evening crush with the delicate, shuffling little steps he always used in crowds. By fits and starts he made his way deeper, deeper, winding toward the back bar, the one with the full-length mirror. That was her favorite. O’Flaherty’s had a Crosley jukebox, wood-paneled and coin-operated, reaching for vintage but stuffed to the gills with Bluetooth and wi-fi and digital memory and whatever else. A woman’s voice was booming out of it, an empty pop ballad gussied up by her big, operatic sound. Lyle tried to think of the singer’s name, but couldn’t. He squeezed into a narrow gap at the back bar.
Darby was flirting as she mixed a rum-and-coke for a gawky, dough-faced kid in a flat-cap and a Harrington jacket. On the few occasions he had come out on Darby missions, Lyle had stayed well back from the bar, waiting for drink service at one of the small cafe tables lining the billiard room. But tonight, he wasn’t here to watch.
Darby handed off the drink and caught sight of Lyle. He winced—he could read the surprise, even discomfort, on her face. But she was tending bar, and she was quick on her feet, and she rearranged her expression into a smile. She held up a finger—*one sec—*to which Lyle nodded, as she took flat-cap’s (father’s) Amex back to the register and opened up a tab.
Lyle enjoyed watching her walk. Enjoyed looking at her from the back, or in profile. He usually saw her face, in class, big brown doe eyes and very pale, freckled skin. A shade away from clear, he had heard her joke once, to James, as she had invited him to touch the roadmap of blue veins on her inner arm. That had enraged Lyle—the sudden, unwelcome image of James with those long creamy legs locked over his waist, his long, slow thrusts.
Because he restrained himself from ogling her in class, it was a pleasure to come to O’Flaherty’s during her shifts and watch her as she worked. Darby was not the first of what Lyle thought of as his “favorites”. Every year or two there was a fresh, irresistible young thing, for him to think about, alone, late at night. One of the unspoken perks of professordom was the constant influx of eye-candy, of short skirts and long legs and high asses and pert young tits. In his mind’s eye it was an endless profusion of imagined aureoles, of wondering about their panties—boy-briefs or frilly little whatsits or g-strings or none at all—and even if Lyle never slept with them there was an intense eroticism in holding power over these girls he could never have bedded in his own college years. In pushing that term paper over the failing line and waiting, deliciously waiting, for them to come to his office hour and plead. Only Darby’s work was reasonably competent, so even that grimy thrill was denied him.
Darby finished up with the register and came over, the pale of her neck stark against her tight black t-shirt. O’FLAHERTY’S was printed on it in green, the name stretched to accommodate her bust. Her hair frazzled at the temples; she’d been working hard.
Just a little dirty, that’s how I like you, he thought.
“Dr. L! We missed you today, thought maybe you caught the gunk. You all right?” Darby beamed her big smile at him, a gift of the gods (and of immaculate orthodontics).
“I’m fine, Darby, thanks. Just a communication mix-up. I’m sorry you all waited.”
She kept smiling, seemed to be waiting for more. He didn’t give it to her.
“Well—can I get you anything?”
Lyle hesitated, trying to think of a manly drink, something urbane and—professorial.
“Scotch-rocks. A double.”
Darby continued to stare at him, expectantly. “Any… particular poison, or-?”
Lyle glanced up, made a show of studying the bottles arrayed behind her. He knew nothing about scotch. Stupid. He settled on Johnnie Walker Black, and Darby poured his drink.
Lyle realized his heart was racing. Darby set the drink in front of him and he downed half of it in one swallow. He managed to keep his face neutral as the liquor seared his throat.
“This is a—little bit of a departure, for you, huh?” Darby indicated the scotch.
“What?”
She must have known he heard her but she raised her voice anyway. The music had changed to a British pop group with a lot of electronic undertones, trying to sound haunting.
“The scotch,” she said. “Don’t you always order lemon drop martinis? When you come in?”
Busted. Two bright red circles appeared high on his cheeks.
“You know, it, it depends,” he replied. “Depends on my mood. And you—you make a hell of a lemon drop martini, here.”
Fucking idiot, he thought. They make the same Goddamn lemon drop martini as everybody else and she knows it.
Darby was smooth, though. Graceful. She rolled right past it. “I wondered why you never came over and said hi.”
“Well I don’t want to, you know, be a bother. You’re working. It’s always busy. And I’ve been coming here for years, off and on. You get used to seeing students out on the town. I try to give them their space.”
“Oh.” Her smile reappeared. “Well I’m glad you came over. Let me know if I can get you anything else?” She was already angling away.
“How was class today?” Lyle didn’t want to let her go. She glanced down the bar, she had customers waiting.
“It was great, really great,” she hurried her answer. She was giving him the brush-off. “James did great. He’s an awesome teacher. Awesome guy.”
“You know, I’d been meaning to ask you, about James…” Lyle leaned in, conspiratorially. Darby’s smile was faltering, but courtesy won out and she leaned in to hear.
“Are you fucking him?”
Darby recoiled, as though he had spit on her.
“What?”
“Do you laugh at me, when you do it? When you fuck, do you laugh at the scabby, horn-dog professor?”
Darby’s breath hitched in her chest, she looked like she was about to cry. She took a step back. She looked down the bar, and then past him—toward the door.
Bouncer, he thought. She’s looking for the bouncer.
“I think you need to—” she began.
Then Lyle said the Word. The alien Word, meant to be moaned, easy as pie, really, when you thought about it, how the sounds flowed together. The Word that meant libido.
Darby froze. Her pupils flickered, Lyle saw, they constricted down to pinpricks, and then dilated as wide as they could go, swallowing the puppy-dog brown of her irises. Her face went slack. That wide, expensive smile vanished, and her mouth hung slightly open.
“Moisten your lips, Darby,” he said.
Her tongue slid out, pink and supple, and she obeyed.
Oh, my God, she OBEYED.
Lyle’s penis twitched in his pants, he realized he was painfully erect, his balls aching. He realized he had been, had been since—since I said the Word—since he had her and a cruel, savage sense of triumph shook him, he felt his pulse hammering in his veins, he felt like standing up on the bar and—
ROARING I want to ROAR at this dewy twat and all her imbecilic peers—
But instead, he took his cock firmly in his hand, through the cheap fabric of his Ross trousers, squeezed himself, and said—
“What are we going to do with you, Darby?”
#
Lyle fucked her in the alleyway behind O’Flaherty’s. That meant hurrying more than he liked, the dumpster provided cover but the blocks surrounding the campus were too well policed. It was all right, though. Now that he was armed with the libido-Word, the next time could be more leisurely.
He took her in. All of her. The small, surprisingly dark nipples, nothing like he’d imagined. The fine, black hairs on the nape of her neck, the peach fuzz of her freckled low back, her inner thighs. Her panties were white briefs with green stitching, they were covered with tiny frogs. He tugged them down, and nuzzled her there. He left hickeys, on her ass, her mons. Her smooth, exquisite young cunt.
Lyle took her from behind and saw the groggy confusion in her dilated eyes, the amazement*—*and through that the pleasure, the unsuspected, unwanted, violating pleasure that jolted moans out of her.
Lyle sucked her neck, bit it, hard enough to sting. She gave a tiny mewl as she came, and her spasm triggered him also. Lyle buried himself to the hilt in her, finished in her, and felt—
Like a king. Like a GOD.
They stayed there as the minutes stretched out, panting, still joined. He savored her, until his own tumescence vanished, and he slipped out. Lyle patted her derriere.
“Get dressed and get back to work, Darby,” he said. “We don’t want you to get in trouble.”
She jerked her head, drunkenly, from side to side, as though she were trying to shake water out of her ears. Lyle breathed deep, in through his nose, the fine scents of the city. Fried food nearby, probably the Thai joint catty-corner to the pub. He stood and admired, as Darby tugged her frog-panties back up those long pale legs.
“I’ll see you in class.”
Darby stared blankly at him as he took up his suitcase, turned, and strode into the night.
#
When Lyle opened his eyes the next morning, he was only mildly surprised to discover that he felt no guilt at all. The sun streamed in, the world was up and running, coffee was calling, and by God he felt fine.
He sat up in bed, stretched. He glanced at the alarm clock, that hateful sentinel, now toothless—10:27AM. The mattress was bare, beneath him. He’d never washed the sheets. Puddled on the floor were yesterday’s clothes. He resisted the urge to tidy them up. Later. He padded to the bathroom and went about his ablutions, brushed his teeth, took out his shaving kit. He had used the sleep-Word on himself again, last night. After.
After! He let the memories wash over him. Her smell: the tang of sweat, bar-odors, the undercurrent of peach soap. The taste of her! And then the feast, afterward. He had followed his nose to Great Elephant Thai, wolfed down a plate of kai thot, fried to a crisp and dripping oil*.* It may have been the finest meal of his life.
And he had had such dreams! Dreams of Darby, and of favorites past. Dreams of fucking and of wealth and of slights avenged and of respectful, deferential looks, dreams of voices falling silent when he entered a room, of every eye on him. A song lyric drifted into his head, something from his childhood, a favorite of his father’s one long summer, repeated ad nauseam on the fourteen-hour drive down to Savannah.
“Twenty years a’crawlin’… were bottled up in Tommy… he wasn’t holding nothin’ back, he let ‘em have it all…” Lyle sang, full voice, into the morning. A stupid grin spread over his face, as he wicked away the last patch of Barbasol, the careful spot right over his Adam’s apple, and rinsed his razor. He took a long look at Mirror-Lyle, looked into his eyes. He almost always avoided a close examination of his reflection, force of habit, but today he was a new man, and he wanted to take that man’s measure.
“Everyone… considered him… THE COWARD OOOF… the COUNTYYYY…”
Something else surfaced, then, in his memory, something that cranked the wattage down on his smile. He didn’t get all of it, just a glimpse, like a dorsal fin rising above the water. He had dreamed of more than power and sex. There had been something else. Lyle had a vague red recollection of tangled depths and faceless figures. His mind offered up a fleeting image of a crumbling stone structure, of keening wind and squat pillars; and of a great broken vault overhead, through which could be seen a blasted sky.
Lyle charged his phone as he brewed up a fresh pot. It had run out of juice somewhere during yesterday’s festivities, and when it finally powered up again it began to vibrate against the Formica tabletop in his dining nook. He ignored the first two pulses, but the phone insistently continued, not with the regular rhythm of an incoming call, but rather the inconsistent bursts of message notifications trickling in from the cloud. He tapped the touchscreen, and saw he had seven missed calls: one from a colleague, yesterday; and six from James, each one with a voicemail attached. The most recent of these had come just twenty minutes ago.
Lyle sipped on his coffee as he retrieved the briefcase from beneath his bed. He sat at his dinette and removed the fascicle, easily finding the rigid page. He opened it, and this time the new Word was waiting for him below the first, long entry: the entry corresponding to the letter “A” itself. This Word was angry, Ks and Zs, a hornet-word, serpent-word. Lyle looked to the white space, where the definition would arise. He pricked his forefinger with the tip of a steak knife and squeezed out two droplets of blood.
der zorn
Lyle sipped. Lyle thought. Greek, then Latin, now German. Was it moving forward in time? He wondered again about those first shapes he had seen, in the library. The more he tried to remember the more he doubted they had been in Greek. Something older, maybe. Phoenician syllabary? He would likely never know. But the Words were changing. The book was changing.
And there was this: both of the—*spells, they’re spells, let’s cut the shit—*both of the Words it had given him so far had been…
“Intuitive,” he said finally. “Useful. Like it knew.”
Lyle took down the last foil sleeve of blueberry Pop Tarts from his cupboard. Pauper’s breakfast, he thought, but not for much longer. He searched through his contacts until he found the number for the Chancellor’s office. He thumbed the little blue phone icon beside it.
#
Lyle had just started boxing up his things when James burst into his office, perfectly symmetrical face distorted by fury, his generous features made ugly. Ah, the righteousness of youth. James took in the dense sheaf of Staples boxes, waiting to be folded; took in the bare walls, the stacked diplomas and photographs.
“What the fuck is this?” he demanded.
“Emergency leave,” Lyle answered with a dismissive wave. “I’ve had a family crisis. I’m afraid I have to attend to it. Professor Chole will be taking over my workload for the remainder of the semester, I’m sure she’ll be in touch—"
“What did you do to Darby? What the fuck did you do?” James spoke with the husky, quaking tone of pure adrenaline. He was just barely restraining himself from lunging across the desk, Lyle realized. He took the younger man in with bemused calm. He let the moment stretch out.
“Therese called me,” James continued, the words throttling out of him. “Darby’s roommate. She came home last night, she has—bruises, all over her, little, little *bites—*she won’t speak, she just sits there and cries, but she said your name. It’s the only thing she said. What did you do to her, Lyle? Did you rape her?”
“Dr. Hereford,” Lyle replied.
James craned forward. “What?”
*“*You don’t get to call me Lyle.”
Lower, now, almost a whisper: “Tell me what you did to her.”
“I made her come,” Lyle said. “And she fucking loved it.”
James did lunge then, he screamed and he leapt across the desk, coming down on Lyle in a tangle of thrashing limbs and rabbit punches, the two of them toppling Lyle’s chair, compressing awkwardly into the tight space between desk and wall. James kicked hard off of the gray metal drawers, managing to end up on top. His hands found Lyle’s throat and began to squeeze. Lyle felt himself constricting, felt the energy draining out of him, pinned, as he lost oxygen. He noticed the curds of spittle at the corners of James’s snarling mouth. He started to see spots in the periphery of his vision, and as he slapped ineffectually at James’s face he thought am I going to die here—?
Lyle dug down for the last of his strength. The Word chose me. This wasn’t the end. Couldn’t be the end. He extended his leg as far as it would go, and used the distance to drive his knee, hard, into James’s crotch. A grunting exhale was propelled out of the younger man*.* Lyle pulled back to do it again; James squeezed his thighs together to block, and when he did, he compromised his balance. He took one hand off Lyle’s throat and thrust out his arm to catch himself as be began to roll, allowing Lyle to draw in a long, ragged breath.
Then Lyle spoke the Word.
The der zorn-Word.
The word that meant anger, that meant rage, that meant WRATH.
#
“Son. Son, you’re bleeding, let me—let me help you, come on. Son, it’s gonna be okay, come on, now— “
The campus policeman approaches James like a dog that might be rabid, that slow hunched posture with arms wide, except for the policeman it’s only one arm because his right hand is flush up against his service weapon and his thumb snaps the little thumbsnap and it’s a very small noise but it’s so loud in James’s head and he shakes it, his head, does James, from side to side, in herks and jerks, like a dog that might be rabid, now, like there’s water in his ears and he’s trying to shake it out, is James, and the policeman is coming on and speaking in clear precise syllables that explode behind James’s temples, clusterbomb-words, and the cop is speaking but he’s hearing another voice, is James, and it’s Lyle’s voice, it’s Dr. L’s voice, not Lyle never Lyle, and Dr. L’s voice is saying snakebit you’re snakebit she fucking LOVED it and James touches his own face now and it must be true because there’s blood on his face and when he blinks his blink is heavy and liquid like he just dropped Visine in there but the thing is but only but except it’s blood and he’s bleeding from the eyes, is James, and now the policeman is right on top of him saying “son what happened can you hear me respond if you can hear me” and James hears the exploding words all right and he blinks and blood oozes from the corners of his eyes and the cop is changing now, in the blood, his face is BOILING and now it’s Darby’s face on the policeman and she opens her mouth and her head cranes back and she’s ruined inside OH FUCK SHE’S RUINED INSIDE SHOT HERSELF SHE SHOT HERSELF SHE’S SHOT and now it’s DR L IT’S DR L SCREAMING SNAKEBIT SNAKEBIT SNAKEBIT—
James rears back and head-butts the campus cop as hard as he can, the smooth acne-less center of James’s forehead connecting with the soft cartilage of the policeman’s nose. A sick crunch echoes in the lobby of the Humanities building, a young woman close enough to hear it vomits on the floor, it is the first puking incident of the day but not the last.
The cop recoils with a sick moan, in his surprise clapping his hands to his shattered nose; in that moment James bellows, an awful inarticulate animal sound of hate, and yanks the policeman’s service piece free of his holster.
The handful of rubbernecking students freeze as James shoots the policeman in the face.
The policeman’s name is (was) Lou, the students know, and he is (was) genial and well-liked. A silent second passes in the lobby, and then the screaming begins.
James dips down and pulls two spare clips out of Lou’s belt. He pockets them. When James looks up, he doesn’t see fleeing students.
He sees Dr. L.
A gaggle of Dr. L’s. A school, a clutch, a murder. He sees laughing Dr. L’s running in every direction, diving behind furniture, breaking for the street or hurtling into the stairwells. One Dr. L dives behind the reception desk. James starts after him on wooden legs.
When he reaches the desk, there is Dr. L beneath it, a cell phone in his hand, cackling. James shoots him in the stomach. Dr. L keeps right on laughing, howling with it now, whatever it is must be hilarious, a real knee-slapper, then James remembers its him, Dr. L is laughing at him so James shoots him again, shoots him so he’ll stop but there are so many more—
#
Lyle Hereford, Ph.D., rested his browning forearms on the wrought iron railing of his third-floor balcony. He looked out over the Gulf of Mexico. The breeze was warm and gentle, suffusing, but it no longer calmed him. He took no notice of it. He was lost, as he was always now lost, in thought.
The one, lone thought.
It had taken a little less than two weeks for James’s horrific shooting spree to drop out of the news. The demands for GUN CONTROL NOW (or, conversely, for guns in every classroom) receded and were shelved for the next go-round. Politicians took to the field and unfurled their heraldry for the usual pro-forma skirmishes. Then, mercifully, a Cabinet official fucked somebody he really shouldn’t have and the national discourse (such as it was) barreled off, like a dog chasing a ball that its owner had only pretended to throw. As to why a handsome, popular, well-adjusted student should suddenly snap and murder sixteen of his fellows? The theories ranged from medically reasonable (an inoperable tumor which could not be verified via autopsy, as James’s brains had been removed by the responding tactical unit); to the paranoiac (James had been the subject of a Manchurian Candidate-style CIA/NSA/Acronym-of-your-choice experiment gone horribly wrong); to the Occult (the Devil made him do it).
Lyle had enjoyed that last one.
What Lyle had not enjoyed was that some of the conspiracy theorists, and even some of the legitimate press, had mentioned him by name. He had disappeared, after all, on an auspicious and chaotic day, to manage a crisis no one could verify involving a family no one could find. It had not been difficult to remain ahead of any enterprising investigators, though. Not with the Words.
And there had been so many more Words. Words in French and Finnish and Russian and Spanish and Mandarin. Words that meant envy and silence and fear and blindness and, perhaps the most potent yet, a Word that meant stupid. Lyle had employed that one against a statie who pulled him over as he crossed the Louisiana line, coming through Vicksburg. The guy had been six-two, maybe two-twenty, with sharp, curious eyes sunk deep in his skull. Lyle hadn’t liked the way he had looked at him, so he used the Word. Now the statie—*Edmonds was his name, Trooper Edmonds—*was six-two, two-twenty of drooling simpleton, probably staring at a wall somewhere in the nearest brain injury ward and driving the resident neurologists absolutely bugshit.
By the time Lyle made it to a quiet, lazy town on the Cajun Riviera and decided to set a spell, he had traded in his Acura for a Beemer and was carrying close to a hundred and twelve thousand dollars in cash. He had also acquired a 9mm Ruger and a shotgun with a pistol grip (the dealer had called it a snake charmer just before Lyle killed him).
None of that matters now, though.
All that mattered was the Word. Which, he had come to realize, was the last Word.
Because the book was alive, of course, had always been alive, Lyle knew that. Hadn’t let himself come right out and say it, but he knew. It had slept, maybe, possibly, until he woke it, with his touch, with his blood, but if it slept, it woke up thirsty*.* The book was always ready with the next Word, the next thing he would need. The book was collaborating with him. It was dancing with him, and at first he had thought he was the one leading, but now he knew better.
Lyle felt it. Felt it—pulling on him. All the time. Felt it in the room behind him, pulling, knew that he would go back in, sooner or later, go back in, and open the book, the book that has been leading him. Knew that he would open its hundreds of pages, because it was longer now, because it had grown, because it was three inches thick and the front plating had vanished and it wasn’t pretending to be a dictionary anymore.
He knew that he would open it and on every single page, centered, would be a single Word, the last Word, the Word that he will say, that he must say, sooner or later, and under it swirling in blood, blood that must be the book’s own, the final explication, the final command, the final meaning, and God, oh God, Lyle was afraid, because the last Word was
DOOR
2023.05.31 23:27 JonathanRedding Ghost Word Pt 1.
Hello all! I'm a screenwriter and longtime lover of horror prose, taking some time during the strike to polish up old unpublished pieces and maybe embark on some new ones. This is the first I'm sharing publicly -- it's a nasty piece of work, about a nasty little man who receives a power he really shouldn't have. Most of my stories aren't like this, but Lyle Hereford insisted upon himself, and I haven't yet managed to forget him. It's also a bit lengthy, about 8600 words (30ish manuscript pages). I'm posting it in two parts.
WARNING: This story contains depictions of non-consensual sex and gun violence.
GHOST WORD
By Jonathan Redding
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ghost word
1. (noun) A previously unknown word appearing in a dictionary or list of words, often by error--but sometimes by design.
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Lyle Hereford laid there, slick and frightened, and thought about the Word.
He rolled his head to the right, to the nightstand beside his narrow bed, saw the flat green numerals pronounce it 3:17AM. On another night he might have thought of the Gospel According to John, at that hour, or more obscurely, of the Weird Sisters, of the Walpurgisnacht. Sleeplessness was a condition of his pinched, brittle being*.* Tonight he lay there sweating, insomnia buzzing in his thighs, his hamstrings. The inevitable heartburn seethed in his concave chest, and he thought about the Word.
The Word was not with him.
He thought about it sitting, inert, on the small rolling desk, in his office, across the city. Thought about the urban glow, blotting out the stars, seeping in the window, slanting though the low-bid venetian blinds the first contractors must have installed and none of those cheap bastards at the University ever bothered to replace, the blinds that always tear at their thin top fixtures, that Lyle mends with tight sleeves of Scotch tape. He thought about the city’s ambient nightlight seeping in, and falling, across the side desk, across the Word. He thought about the binding. Cream, once, probably, soft and blameless. Faded to no-color, now. An old traveler. But what was it? And how had it come to be there? How did it come to rest on that shelf, that groaning, overburdened, mid-century plank?
Lyle imagined someone slipping into the library, furtive, mounting the stair, the tome swinging against them, tucked in a messenger bag. Some faceless someone, head down, hood up, sunglasses in the dim. Lyle pictured them skirting around the encyclopedias and the medieval histories and bypassing the long rows of technical manuals and the corridors of Euclidean geometry and enzymology and theoretical economics and arriving at the neglected, quaint, neat rows of purest Reference: the Dictionaries.
Lyle had gone to consult the Oxford English Dictionary. Specifically the 1989 Second Edition, magnificent in twenty volumes; a tool with which he insisted each of his students familiarize themselves. On this day he had sought out the second volume specifically, the one beginning with B.B.C.
James, that young Turk, had challenged his interpretation of a passage of Taming of the Shrew. It turned on the etymology of the word bonnie.
Tried to score off me, in front of the whole class, that smug little prick.
James, graduate student par excellence. James of the falling black hair, perpetually obscuring his face, terminating above his perfect smile. James who was such a favorite among the bouncing, giggling undergraduates. James who found it easy to excel, in any environment, who found it very difficult to accept Lyle’s criticisms, Lyle’s guidance. James was many things Lyle was not, had never been, and Lyle knew it. But James had not yet learned to survive in academia. James was going to discover that you did not score points off Lyle Hereford, Ph.D., and Lyle would see to it that it happened painfully. In the town square, as it were. It would have to be just a touch humiliating.
`Darby, especially, Lyle thought. She has to see it. Yes. Just the right amount of condescension to really cut into him, to make it memorable.
Only Lyle never found his ammunition in the second volume beginning with B.B.C. because his interest was diverted. He never queried the etymology of bonnie in the compressed italics of lexicalese, never perused the examples from John Donne and Sir Thomas Aquinas and the Cursor Mundi behind their truncated century marks, because something else caught his eye. Something that shouldn’t have been there. Tucked in between the seventh and eighth volumes (Interval and Look, respectively, he knew) was a tattered book, somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred pages, grayed to nothing, the color of a shroud. Lyle reached down, placed his index finger atop the book’s spine, and drew it from the shelf. He gave it a cursory glance—the cover lettering had been savaged by time, but fragments of the lower half survived:
PART A—ANT
#
OXFO D
1877
“What in the world,” Lyle said. The library swallowed the sound, took it into the mute stillness of itself, into its hush. What he held in his hands was not genuine—could not be genuine. The original OED was printed like this, piecemeal, in what were called fascicles.
But not this soon, God, not this soon! They hadn’t even started!
The first fascicle of the OED, the very first product of their seventy-year odyssey, the publication that made the London philologia realize they had bit off quite a bit more than they could chew, was designated A-Ant. It was a rare bird, a thing to be coveted. It was valuable.
It was first printed in 1884.
Lyle had always thought it a clever, tiny nod of Orwell’s, lost to the mass of readers: that the OED should rule for a century, before Newspeak replaced it. This, then, if it was what it purported to be, what the front cover claimed it to be, was early. Seven whole years early.
A misprint, he thought. Has to be. That would change the valuation—this could be one-of-a-kind. Not that Lyle would dream of selling such a book. Before this moment, he wouldn’t even have allowed himself to dream of holding such a book. He checked for a barcode, a borrower’s card. He found neither. What is it DOING here?
He had let it fall open at random, there, among the stacks, a single water-damaged page stood up like a cowlick, he gingerly pressed it flat. The type within was much more preserved than the weathered front-plating. He scanned, gliding over the forms: aglist, aglitter, aglomerular, aglopened, aglossal, aglow-
That was when he had seen the Word.
Though it wasn’t the Word itself, that had drawn his attention. It was the empty white, beneath it. The dictionary game was all about spatial economy. Column inches and abbreviations. In forty-seven years of nebbish quietude, forty-seven years of slow vanishing into a wilderness of text, Lyle Hereford, Ph.D., had never encountered empty white space in the body of a dictionary. Thus, first, the white. Then he had looked above it.
The Word did not begin with the letter “A”.
The Word did not conform to any structural schema that Lyle recognized. There was no easily discernible root in the Romance lineage, nor the Germanic, nor even the primordial Oriental or Sanskrit Anglicizations which the casual peruser of the Mahabharata or of Patanjali’s Sutras might intuitively place. The Word began with the character “X”, and proceeded from there to a feral enjambment of consonants and choked, almost Hebraic “Y’s”. It possessed no other vowels. Merely the Word, this strange word, had greeted Lyle. No origin, pronunciation, part-of-speech. No definition. Merely the Word, and the white beneath, there in the stacks.
Lyle brushed his thumb across the Word. Looking back, now, he couldn’t really say why. It was the sort of automatic, immediate impulse that you don’t question until it’s complete. It came over him like a yawn. He felt the thin whisper of the paper beneath his skin, he traced the Word from its first syllable to its eighth and final and
“FUCK— “
A kind of WRETCH, a spasm, behind his eyes, within his temples, his core, the cilia of his inner ears. His stomach flopped over queasily in his abdomen and he clenched his ass, just ahead of a hot dart of pressure, a hot sharp dart of pressure, gas and a tincture of liquid, a foul egg smell, he fought to hold it—
“fuckfuckfuck— “
Tremoring in his calves, his whole body strained, the feeble musculature flared from his neck, his weak chin pressed down and his gorge rose. Warm coppery blood pattered and trickled over his lips. Lyle’s nose was bleeding. The fit—whatever it was—began to pass, and Lyle looked down through watering eyes to the object in his hands.
“What in the Christ-?”
The library remained silent, the book remained still, the Word remained inscrutable. He noticed the spatter, low on the page, of his blood, obscuring the column inches, smearing over agnathous. He gathered up a shirt cuff in his hand, squeezed it to his nose—*that’s never coming out—*and awkwardly sat, pooling the book in his lap. He reached down with his other cuff to dab at the page, mitigate the damage. That is when, Lyle now thought, he may have gone mad.
The beads of blood began to crawl up the page.
The traversal of the droplets wasn’t smooth, wasn’t a rolling. They jerked upward in spurs—they forked, like lightning. They crept laterally, then cut upward again, the spastic scribbling of an unseen hand. Lyle became aware that his body was rigid, his breath held, his eyes dry and pained, he stared unblinking. Sweat stood out on the crenellations of his widow’s peak, his acne-scarred brow. His ruptured sinus oozed, his sleeve was warm and sodden. The bloodbolts reached the inexplicable white gap. Swirled into the emptiness. Beneath the Word the blood swirled. It arranged itself.
It formed shapes.
It formed letters.
Lyle had made a sound, then, something between a sob and a laugh and a scream—
—snakebit it’s a snakebit sound—
*—*rupturing the stillness, a harsh throaty sound, reeding through the library, and then he clapped the book shut and fled.
“But I didn’t drop it, did I?” he asked the green numerals. They showed 4:07AM. Time always slid, on sleepless nights. He thought it one of their worst qualities.
“I ran. I ran from it*.* But my hands… my hands wouldn’t let it go.”
Lyle sat up in bed. Only when the sheets peeled away from his back did he realize he was perspiring. He stripped the damp bedclothes and shambled across the room, to his small closet. He bent to his hamper, deposited the sheets inside, closed the latch with a discrete click. He took a fresh button-up and crisp slacks down from their hangers, and he began to dress.
#
Lyle barely heard as the starter of his aging Acura chugged, and whinnied, and finally caught. He floated across town, the CD player in the dash resumed Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor, the volume hovered at the bottom edge of audibility. It did not pierce the veil of Lyle’s exhaustion. His memory, the vision of the mounting blood, felt unreal. The marine layer had rolled in with the night’s cool, heightening the strangeness. Occasionally headlights swam up out of the fog, the vague shapes of alien drivers flickered and were gone. Lyle had passed through a membrane—*a glass, darkly—*and everything normal was rendered strange, as though the laws underpinning the universe had grown suddenly elastic. His fatigue coupled with the new fact of the Word to cast a surreal pall over the familiar streets. He wondered, at each car he passed, about the journey of the driver. Was it possible that just beneath the frequency of his attention there was a whole world of men on grim, predawn errands? Men confronting mad and impossible things, men fallen through unsuspected cracks in their comfortable facade? And just where in the wild blue fuck had it come from?
Lyle made it, not without difficulty, to the faculty lot. He parked askew—someone’s sure to bitch about that he thought, and tittered*—*and walked his scuttling walk across the plaza toward the Humanities complex, fumbling for his keycard. His footsteps seemed to echo off of nothing but haze. The fog encroached, he felt as though it watched him.
His office was a shabby, cramped afterthought on the fourth floor. He turned the bolt behind him as he entered, resting his weary head against the door. He thumped it, once—his forehead, that is—against the wood. He crossed to his chair, the brown faux leather cracked and peeling, and sat heavily. The office was cheaply appointed, but pristine. No tchotchkes or personal touches were in evidence, with the exception of some of Lyle’s own (stark, black-and-white) photography. The book he had found, the impossible book, was not alphabetized on his shelves with the others. It sat alone. Nothing shared, with it, the small rolling side-desk, which Lyle pulled to himself. He reached for the book, heart pounding, hands tremoring. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes. Mastered himself. By and by, the shaking passed. He opened his eyes to look, again, upon the Word.
First there’s fear, of course there’s fear, but then... but then....
Then, perhaps, there was room for curiosity. He had found this thing, this extraordinary thing, or perhaps, just possibly…
“It found me. Maybe it was--meant. For me.”
And if it were, that might make it—would make it—the first thing, the first special thing, that had ever been meant, for Lyle Hereford, Ph.D. He opened the book, the tremor in his hands barely perceptible, now. He sought out the Ag’s—aglow, aglist, aglitter—and found them easily enough. He stared, eyes bulging, straining, at the page.
The Word was gone.
Nothing. No fractal X’s and Y’s, no phantom space, no broken line. Smooth, black column inches, the rhythms of the dictionary, nothing out of place.
“No—no, no, no—” Lyle flipped the page, aggressively, almost tearing it from the binding, another, another, flipped them, faster and faster, scanning, rapidly scanning, seeking white space.
“No, fuck you, no, it was here, you were just here, I didn’t imagine you you cocksucker come back here and talk to me— “
He flipped forward, the opposite direction, toward the front of the fascicle, when he felt something under the pad of his thumb. It was—a shift in the texture, a vibration—a definite, awful, sly little movement. He felt the thing change, somehow. Lyle froze. He held perfectly still—*snake, snake in my hands, subtle subtle snake—*then he slid his thumb, just his thumb, the tiniest hair, a fraction of an inch, over the page-ends. Rasped his thumb, along the margin of the book. *Something, there’s something, right there—*he rasped again. Felt it. Toward the back. A water-damaged page. Lyle seized on it, almost eagerly, letting the book part around it. It stood up like a cowlick. He pressed it carefully down, closed his eyes. Lyle felt a curious swirl of anxiety and hope. He was afraid. Afraid to see it again.
He needed to see it again. He needed to know.
He opened his eyes. He scanned the page, now, a completely different section of the fascicle. Amputee, ampyx, amrel, amrita, amry, amsel. Faster, faster…
There.
Crowded into the bottom-right corner. An empty, white space. Above it, a Word.
A different Word.
This one began with an LN, and to the litany of Y’s had been added double-Us. The same layout: no explicatory text below, nothing else. The single, unpronounceable Word.
“There you are,” Lyle whispered. He turned to his computer, felt for the green button along the back of his monitor, pressed it. He thumbed the spacebar on his keyboard. The desktop awoke mid a staccato burst of tiny electronic clicks, followed by the usual cheery synth-tone. Lyle set a yellow legal pad on his lap, popped the well-chewed end of a mechanical pencil into his mouth, clenched it between his teeth. He tugged open a gray metal desk drawer, hideous and utilitarian, pawed around inside until he found what he wanted, closed it again. He turned back to the Word.
“Tell me a secret,” he said. His voice was queerly pitched, hollow. He hardly recognized it. He held up the small object taken from his desk, held it up above the page, showed it to the Word. It was a pushpin. Tell me. Lyle pricked the ball of his middle finger, blood welled into a fat bead. He turned his hand over, held the blood above the white, watched it distend, watched it fall. This time there was no lightning, no crawl. This time it sizzled, as though he had dropped it on a skillet. It sizzled, bubbled, on the white, then separated, it raised blood-red letters below the Word. Characters. This time, Lyle was ready.
It’s Attic Greek, he realized. The characters stood out in the elegant script of the Septuagint, the language of Alexander the Great. The language that, at one time, had conquered the world, and had later been conquered in turn. A language of emperors, and of slaves. Lyle sucked on his bleeding finger as he hunched over the legal pad, copying out the unfamiliar letters:
ύπνος
It was a matter of a few moments to download a keyboard for ancient Greek characters on the desktop. A few more to pull up Google, find a translator widget, and hunt-and-peck his way to the answer. The cursor blinked beside the translation. The word beneath the Word, the Greek extraction written in blood, fat and placid and banal:
sleep
Lyle felt a flush of disappointment. He had expected something, he realized. Some kernel of an answer. The name of a daemon, or of a god. A celestial body, perhaps. And why Greek? If it was printed in the nineteenth century, printed in English in the nineteenth century? Lyle turned back to the fascicle but the blood was gone. He brushed a cautious knuckle across the white gap and found it dry.
Thirsty, he thought. You feel thirsty.
The language of Alexander, and of Oedipus Rex, and of Aristotle. He considered the Word. Sleep. A definition? Was the book itself carrying some kind of, what, repository, fragments of a lost language, preserved by some oblique arcana? The work of a secret society, or a cult? Some Rosicrucian gimmickry? He looked down at the white space, the secret-keeping space, awakened by blood. Considered, again, the crooked syllables, the LM, the double-X, the Y’s and double-U’s.
Sleep.
Sleep was a word with a certain beauty. Especially for the chronic insomniac. A beauty and a kind of longing. Sleep. The LM, the double-X, the Y’s and the double-U’s. Strange, riotous Word.
“Sleep is a beautiful word.” Lyly was unaware that he had spoken aloud. The LM, the double-X, in the middle, the double-X. It occurred to him that this Word, too, was beautiful.
Beautiful and possessed of a kind of interior sense, Lyle realized. A kind of logic. When you think about it.
The double-X, a kind of sluggish, sloughing sound in the middle. A collapse, to link the long consonants, as if the effort of producing the Word were too much for one’s throat, all at once. The LM, the double-X, the double-U’s. Lyle opened his mouth, still unaware. The Word intensified, in his field of vision, came into a sharp focus. The rest of the page somehow fell around it. Lyle wondered if he was being hypnotized. There was no more color in the world, he knew how to say the Word, the Word was teaching him, patiently, to say it, he opened his mouth not knowing and he said the Word that meant Sleep and—
#
Lyle awoke on the floor of his office. He shook his head, once, experimentally. He winced—his left temple was sore; a bruise was coming on.
Did I fall? Black out? The fascicle was still on his side-desk. It was closed, now. His computer was dark and quiet, hibernating. All at once he remembered—*oh, my God—*it wasn’t a definition or a repository or a code—
“It’s a command,” he croaked, his voice husky in the stillness. Everything clicked, almost audibly, like tumblers turning in his head. It was a command, and that made the book something else, that made the book something very much else indeed, oh, oh God, that makes it something else.
What time is it? The sun hadn’t risen, the streetlights still slanted through his shitty, frail blinds. Traffic had picked up though, he could hear it outside, and he felt—incredible, I feel incredible—fine, other than the bump on his noggin and a few cricks in his shoulders, his neck, Lyle felt like a million bucks. He pawed at his phone. He carried it in his front-left pocket, and if he had fallen on it it might have—
The phone showed 9:44PM. He had slept, all right. He ran the math. He had been at his desk, it had been maybe five thirty…
It put me to sleep for sixteen hours? Lyle have never slept that long in his life, to the best of his knowledge*.* It was enough to make him want to weep. He’d been just an anxious little bedwetter when his long war against insomnia began, and the notion of simply saying a Word, a beautiful Word, and dropping off like a stone—
He crossed to his office door, turned the bolt. Opened it. A sticky-note was affixed to the outside:
Dr. L, wasn’t able to get ahold of you today, hope you feel better. Walked the class through Act III, reiterated their assignments re: Marlowe comparison & cut them loose, will check in tomorrow first thing.
It was James’s fluid cursive. Even his penmanship was pretty*.*
Lyle turned his attention back to the fascicle. He picked it up carefully, reverently. He felt a surge of glee, an unbridled joy at the power in his hands. When he closed his eyes he could still see the sleep-Word, the constellation of unwieldy letters stood out bright and vivid. His heart raced with the implications of his discovery—something else something else it’s something else—
The term Grimoire drifted hazily across his consciousness.
He rasped his thumb along the margins and felt immediately the bristle of the damaged page, somewhere in the center. He held the book upright and let it fall open, the single page left standing. He smoothed it carefully down. He looked upon the book.
The empty white stood out easily, in the center column, the exact mid-point. Above it was yet another Word, this one shorter, beginning with an A and three O’s, a sound meant to be moaned. Lyle rummaged for another push-pin in his desk. He pricked his ring-finger, this time—*spread the love, I might be doing this a lot—*and smeared a sizzling patina of blood onto the white paper. The red letters formed on the page, he couldn’t wait for them, he was greedy for them—
That isn’t Greek, Lyle realized. The new Word was explicated in a much more familiar—and, curiously, more recent—tongue. The new Word was translated in Latin.
libido
Was the first Word I saw translated into Greek? he wondered. When I ran from the library, from the blood, the first time, were those Greek letters? He couldn’t be sure, it had happened so quickly, and hysteria warped the memory.
He couldn’t be sure, no. But he didn’t think so.
“Libido,” he pronounced into the quiet of the office. “Lust. Desire.” He stood there a long moment, lost in thought. Finally he reached beneath his desk and pulled out a slender leather briefcase. He wouldn’t leave it at the office again, not—
Not knowing what it can do.
He placed the fascicle inside, locked the briefcase, and killed the grating fluorescents overhead. As he left the office he crumpled James’s sticky note in his fist and let it fall.
CONTINUED IN PT. 2:
https://www.reddit.com/Horror_stories/comments/13wyq9j/ghost_word_pt_2/
submitted by JonathanRedding to Horror_stories [link] [comments]
WARNING: This story contains depictions of non-consensual sex and gun violence.
GHOST WORD
By Jonathan Redding
-----------
ghost word
1. (noun) A previously unknown word appearing in a dictionary or list of words, often by error--but sometimes by design.
-----------
Lyle Hereford laid there, slick and frightened, and thought about the Word.
He rolled his head to the right, to the nightstand beside his narrow bed, saw the flat green numerals pronounce it 3:17AM. On another night he might have thought of the Gospel According to John, at that hour, or more obscurely, of the Weird Sisters, of the Walpurgisnacht. Sleeplessness was a condition of his pinched, brittle being*.* Tonight he lay there sweating, insomnia buzzing in his thighs, his hamstrings. The inevitable heartburn seethed in his concave chest, and he thought about the Word.
The Word was not with him.
He thought about it sitting, inert, on the small rolling desk, in his office, across the city. Thought about the urban glow, blotting out the stars, seeping in the window, slanting though the low-bid venetian blinds the first contractors must have installed and none of those cheap bastards at the University ever bothered to replace, the blinds that always tear at their thin top fixtures, that Lyle mends with tight sleeves of Scotch tape. He thought about the city’s ambient nightlight seeping in, and falling, across the side desk, across the Word. He thought about the binding. Cream, once, probably, soft and blameless. Faded to no-color, now. An old traveler. But what was it? And how had it come to be there? How did it come to rest on that shelf, that groaning, overburdened, mid-century plank?
Lyle imagined someone slipping into the library, furtive, mounting the stair, the tome swinging against them, tucked in a messenger bag. Some faceless someone, head down, hood up, sunglasses in the dim. Lyle pictured them skirting around the encyclopedias and the medieval histories and bypassing the long rows of technical manuals and the corridors of Euclidean geometry and enzymology and theoretical economics and arriving at the neglected, quaint, neat rows of purest Reference: the Dictionaries.
Lyle had gone to consult the Oxford English Dictionary. Specifically the 1989 Second Edition, magnificent in twenty volumes; a tool with which he insisted each of his students familiarize themselves. On this day he had sought out the second volume specifically, the one beginning with B.B.C.
James, that young Turk, had challenged his interpretation of a passage of Taming of the Shrew. It turned on the etymology of the word bonnie.
Tried to score off me, in front of the whole class, that smug little prick.
James, graduate student par excellence. James of the falling black hair, perpetually obscuring his face, terminating above his perfect smile. James who was such a favorite among the bouncing, giggling undergraduates. James who found it easy to excel, in any environment, who found it very difficult to accept Lyle’s criticisms, Lyle’s guidance. James was many things Lyle was not, had never been, and Lyle knew it. But James had not yet learned to survive in academia. James was going to discover that you did not score points off Lyle Hereford, Ph.D., and Lyle would see to it that it happened painfully. In the town square, as it were. It would have to be just a touch humiliating.
`Darby, especially, Lyle thought. She has to see it. Yes. Just the right amount of condescension to really cut into him, to make it memorable.
Only Lyle never found his ammunition in the second volume beginning with B.B.C. because his interest was diverted. He never queried the etymology of bonnie in the compressed italics of lexicalese, never perused the examples from John Donne and Sir Thomas Aquinas and the Cursor Mundi behind their truncated century marks, because something else caught his eye. Something that shouldn’t have been there. Tucked in between the seventh and eighth volumes (Interval and Look, respectively, he knew) was a tattered book, somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred pages, grayed to nothing, the color of a shroud. Lyle reached down, placed his index finger atop the book’s spine, and drew it from the shelf. He gave it a cursory glance—the cover lettering had been savaged by time, but fragments of the lower half survived:
PART A—ANT
#
OXFO D
1877
“What in the world,” Lyle said. The library swallowed the sound, took it into the mute stillness of itself, into its hush. What he held in his hands was not genuine—could not be genuine. The original OED was printed like this, piecemeal, in what were called fascicles.
But not this soon, God, not this soon! They hadn’t even started!
The first fascicle of the OED, the very first product of their seventy-year odyssey, the publication that made the London philologia realize they had bit off quite a bit more than they could chew, was designated A-Ant. It was a rare bird, a thing to be coveted. It was valuable.
It was first printed in 1884.
Lyle had always thought it a clever, tiny nod of Orwell’s, lost to the mass of readers: that the OED should rule for a century, before Newspeak replaced it. This, then, if it was what it purported to be, what the front cover claimed it to be, was early. Seven whole years early.
A misprint, he thought. Has to be. That would change the valuation—this could be one-of-a-kind. Not that Lyle would dream of selling such a book. Before this moment, he wouldn’t even have allowed himself to dream of holding such a book. He checked for a barcode, a borrower’s card. He found neither. What is it DOING here?
He had let it fall open at random, there, among the stacks, a single water-damaged page stood up like a cowlick, he gingerly pressed it flat. The type within was much more preserved than the weathered front-plating. He scanned, gliding over the forms: aglist, aglitter, aglomerular, aglopened, aglossal, aglow-
That was when he had seen the Word.
Though it wasn’t the Word itself, that had drawn his attention. It was the empty white, beneath it. The dictionary game was all about spatial economy. Column inches and abbreviations. In forty-seven years of nebbish quietude, forty-seven years of slow vanishing into a wilderness of text, Lyle Hereford, Ph.D., had never encountered empty white space in the body of a dictionary. Thus, first, the white. Then he had looked above it.
The Word did not begin with the letter “A”.
The Word did not conform to any structural schema that Lyle recognized. There was no easily discernible root in the Romance lineage, nor the Germanic, nor even the primordial Oriental or Sanskrit Anglicizations which the casual peruser of the Mahabharata or of Patanjali’s Sutras might intuitively place. The Word began with the character “X”, and proceeded from there to a feral enjambment of consonants and choked, almost Hebraic “Y’s”. It possessed no other vowels. Merely the Word, this strange word, had greeted Lyle. No origin, pronunciation, part-of-speech. No definition. Merely the Word, and the white beneath, there in the stacks.
Lyle brushed his thumb across the Word. Looking back, now, he couldn’t really say why. It was the sort of automatic, immediate impulse that you don’t question until it’s complete. It came over him like a yawn. He felt the thin whisper of the paper beneath his skin, he traced the Word from its first syllable to its eighth and final and
“FUCK— “
A kind of WRETCH, a spasm, behind his eyes, within his temples, his core, the cilia of his inner ears. His stomach flopped over queasily in his abdomen and he clenched his ass, just ahead of a hot dart of pressure, a hot sharp dart of pressure, gas and a tincture of liquid, a foul egg smell, he fought to hold it—
“fuckfuckfuck— “
Tremoring in his calves, his whole body strained, the feeble musculature flared from his neck, his weak chin pressed down and his gorge rose. Warm coppery blood pattered and trickled over his lips. Lyle’s nose was bleeding. The fit—whatever it was—began to pass, and Lyle looked down through watering eyes to the object in his hands.
“What in the Christ-?”
The library remained silent, the book remained still, the Word remained inscrutable. He noticed the spatter, low on the page, of his blood, obscuring the column inches, smearing over agnathous. He gathered up a shirt cuff in his hand, squeezed it to his nose—*that’s never coming out—*and awkwardly sat, pooling the book in his lap. He reached down with his other cuff to dab at the page, mitigate the damage. That is when, Lyle now thought, he may have gone mad.
The beads of blood began to crawl up the page.
The traversal of the droplets wasn’t smooth, wasn’t a rolling. They jerked upward in spurs—they forked, like lightning. They crept laterally, then cut upward again, the spastic scribbling of an unseen hand. Lyle became aware that his body was rigid, his breath held, his eyes dry and pained, he stared unblinking. Sweat stood out on the crenellations of his widow’s peak, his acne-scarred brow. His ruptured sinus oozed, his sleeve was warm and sodden. The bloodbolts reached the inexplicable white gap. Swirled into the emptiness. Beneath the Word the blood swirled. It arranged itself.
It formed shapes.
It formed letters.
Lyle had made a sound, then, something between a sob and a laugh and a scream—
—snakebit it’s a snakebit sound—
*—*rupturing the stillness, a harsh throaty sound, reeding through the library, and then he clapped the book shut and fled.
“But I didn’t drop it, did I?” he asked the green numerals. They showed 4:07AM. Time always slid, on sleepless nights. He thought it one of their worst qualities.
“I ran. I ran from it*.* But my hands… my hands wouldn’t let it go.”
Lyle sat up in bed. Only when the sheets peeled away from his back did he realize he was perspiring. He stripped the damp bedclothes and shambled across the room, to his small closet. He bent to his hamper, deposited the sheets inside, closed the latch with a discrete click. He took a fresh button-up and crisp slacks down from their hangers, and he began to dress.
#
Lyle barely heard as the starter of his aging Acura chugged, and whinnied, and finally caught. He floated across town, the CD player in the dash resumed Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor, the volume hovered at the bottom edge of audibility. It did not pierce the veil of Lyle’s exhaustion. His memory, the vision of the mounting blood, felt unreal. The marine layer had rolled in with the night’s cool, heightening the strangeness. Occasionally headlights swam up out of the fog, the vague shapes of alien drivers flickered and were gone. Lyle had passed through a membrane—*a glass, darkly—*and everything normal was rendered strange, as though the laws underpinning the universe had grown suddenly elastic. His fatigue coupled with the new fact of the Word to cast a surreal pall over the familiar streets. He wondered, at each car he passed, about the journey of the driver. Was it possible that just beneath the frequency of his attention there was a whole world of men on grim, predawn errands? Men confronting mad and impossible things, men fallen through unsuspected cracks in their comfortable facade? And just where in the wild blue fuck had it come from?
Lyle made it, not without difficulty, to the faculty lot. He parked askew—someone’s sure to bitch about that he thought, and tittered*—*and walked his scuttling walk across the plaza toward the Humanities complex, fumbling for his keycard. His footsteps seemed to echo off of nothing but haze. The fog encroached, he felt as though it watched him.
His office was a shabby, cramped afterthought on the fourth floor. He turned the bolt behind him as he entered, resting his weary head against the door. He thumped it, once—his forehead, that is—against the wood. He crossed to his chair, the brown faux leather cracked and peeling, and sat heavily. The office was cheaply appointed, but pristine. No tchotchkes or personal touches were in evidence, with the exception of some of Lyle’s own (stark, black-and-white) photography. The book he had found, the impossible book, was not alphabetized on his shelves with the others. It sat alone. Nothing shared, with it, the small rolling side-desk, which Lyle pulled to himself. He reached for the book, heart pounding, hands tremoring. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes. Mastered himself. By and by, the shaking passed. He opened his eyes to look, again, upon the Word.
First there’s fear, of course there’s fear, but then... but then....
Then, perhaps, there was room for curiosity. He had found this thing, this extraordinary thing, or perhaps, just possibly…
“It found me. Maybe it was--meant. For me.”
And if it were, that might make it—would make it—the first thing, the first special thing, that had ever been meant, for Lyle Hereford, Ph.D. He opened the book, the tremor in his hands barely perceptible, now. He sought out the Ag’s—aglow, aglist, aglitter—and found them easily enough. He stared, eyes bulging, straining, at the page.
The Word was gone.
Nothing. No fractal X’s and Y’s, no phantom space, no broken line. Smooth, black column inches, the rhythms of the dictionary, nothing out of place.
“No—no, no, no—” Lyle flipped the page, aggressively, almost tearing it from the binding, another, another, flipped them, faster and faster, scanning, rapidly scanning, seeking white space.
“No, fuck you, no, it was here, you were just here, I didn’t imagine you you cocksucker come back here and talk to me— “
He flipped forward, the opposite direction, toward the front of the fascicle, when he felt something under the pad of his thumb. It was—a shift in the texture, a vibration—a definite, awful, sly little movement. He felt the thing change, somehow. Lyle froze. He held perfectly still—*snake, snake in my hands, subtle subtle snake—*then he slid his thumb, just his thumb, the tiniest hair, a fraction of an inch, over the page-ends. Rasped his thumb, along the margin of the book. *Something, there’s something, right there—*he rasped again. Felt it. Toward the back. A water-damaged page. Lyle seized on it, almost eagerly, letting the book part around it. It stood up like a cowlick. He pressed it carefully down, closed his eyes. Lyle felt a curious swirl of anxiety and hope. He was afraid. Afraid to see it again.
He needed to see it again. He needed to know.
He opened his eyes. He scanned the page, now, a completely different section of the fascicle. Amputee, ampyx, amrel, amrita, amry, amsel. Faster, faster…
There.
Crowded into the bottom-right corner. An empty, white space. Above it, a Word.
A different Word.
This one began with an LN, and to the litany of Y’s had been added double-Us. The same layout: no explicatory text below, nothing else. The single, unpronounceable Word.
“There you are,” Lyle whispered. He turned to his computer, felt for the green button along the back of his monitor, pressed it. He thumbed the spacebar on his keyboard. The desktop awoke mid a staccato burst of tiny electronic clicks, followed by the usual cheery synth-tone. Lyle set a yellow legal pad on his lap, popped the well-chewed end of a mechanical pencil into his mouth, clenched it between his teeth. He tugged open a gray metal desk drawer, hideous and utilitarian, pawed around inside until he found what he wanted, closed it again. He turned back to the Word.
“Tell me a secret,” he said. His voice was queerly pitched, hollow. He hardly recognized it. He held up the small object taken from his desk, held it up above the page, showed it to the Word. It was a pushpin. Tell me. Lyle pricked the ball of his middle finger, blood welled into a fat bead. He turned his hand over, held the blood above the white, watched it distend, watched it fall. This time there was no lightning, no crawl. This time it sizzled, as though he had dropped it on a skillet. It sizzled, bubbled, on the white, then separated, it raised blood-red letters below the Word. Characters. This time, Lyle was ready.
It’s Attic Greek, he realized. The characters stood out in the elegant script of the Septuagint, the language of Alexander the Great. The language that, at one time, had conquered the world, and had later been conquered in turn. A language of emperors, and of slaves. Lyle sucked on his bleeding finger as he hunched over the legal pad, copying out the unfamiliar letters:
ύπνος
It was a matter of a few moments to download a keyboard for ancient Greek characters on the desktop. A few more to pull up Google, find a translator widget, and hunt-and-peck his way to the answer. The cursor blinked beside the translation. The word beneath the Word, the Greek extraction written in blood, fat and placid and banal:
sleep
Lyle felt a flush of disappointment. He had expected something, he realized. Some kernel of an answer. The name of a daemon, or of a god. A celestial body, perhaps. And why Greek? If it was printed in the nineteenth century, printed in English in the nineteenth century? Lyle turned back to the fascicle but the blood was gone. He brushed a cautious knuckle across the white gap and found it dry.
Thirsty, he thought. You feel thirsty.
The language of Alexander, and of Oedipus Rex, and of Aristotle. He considered the Word. Sleep. A definition? Was the book itself carrying some kind of, what, repository, fragments of a lost language, preserved by some oblique arcana? The work of a secret society, or a cult? Some Rosicrucian gimmickry? He looked down at the white space, the secret-keeping space, awakened by blood. Considered, again, the crooked syllables, the LM, the double-X, the Y’s and double-U’s.
Sleep.
Sleep was a word with a certain beauty. Especially for the chronic insomniac. A beauty and a kind of longing. Sleep. The LM, the double-X, the Y’s and the double-U’s. Strange, riotous Word.
“Sleep is a beautiful word.” Lyly was unaware that he had spoken aloud. The LM, the double-X, in the middle, the double-X. It occurred to him that this Word, too, was beautiful.
Beautiful and possessed of a kind of interior sense, Lyle realized. A kind of logic. When you think about it.
The double-X, a kind of sluggish, sloughing sound in the middle. A collapse, to link the long consonants, as if the effort of producing the Word were too much for one’s throat, all at once. The LM, the double-X, the double-U’s. Lyle opened his mouth, still unaware. The Word intensified, in his field of vision, came into a sharp focus. The rest of the page somehow fell around it. Lyle wondered if he was being hypnotized. There was no more color in the world, he knew how to say the Word, the Word was teaching him, patiently, to say it, he opened his mouth not knowing and he said the Word that meant Sleep and—
#
Lyle awoke on the floor of his office. He shook his head, once, experimentally. He winced—his left temple was sore; a bruise was coming on.
Did I fall? Black out? The fascicle was still on his side-desk. It was closed, now. His computer was dark and quiet, hibernating. All at once he remembered—*oh, my God—*it wasn’t a definition or a repository or a code—
“It’s a command,” he croaked, his voice husky in the stillness. Everything clicked, almost audibly, like tumblers turning in his head. It was a command, and that made the book something else, that made the book something very much else indeed, oh, oh God, that makes it something else.
What time is it? The sun hadn’t risen, the streetlights still slanted through his shitty, frail blinds. Traffic had picked up though, he could hear it outside, and he felt—incredible, I feel incredible—fine, other than the bump on his noggin and a few cricks in his shoulders, his neck, Lyle felt like a million bucks. He pawed at his phone. He carried it in his front-left pocket, and if he had fallen on it it might have—
The phone showed 9:44PM. He had slept, all right. He ran the math. He had been at his desk, it had been maybe five thirty…
It put me to sleep for sixteen hours? Lyle have never slept that long in his life, to the best of his knowledge*.* It was enough to make him want to weep. He’d been just an anxious little bedwetter when his long war against insomnia began, and the notion of simply saying a Word, a beautiful Word, and dropping off like a stone—
He crossed to his office door, turned the bolt. Opened it. A sticky-note was affixed to the outside:
Dr. L, wasn’t able to get ahold of you today, hope you feel better. Walked the class through Act III, reiterated their assignments re: Marlowe comparison & cut them loose, will check in tomorrow first thing.
It was James’s fluid cursive. Even his penmanship was pretty*.*
Lyle turned his attention back to the fascicle. He picked it up carefully, reverently. He felt a surge of glee, an unbridled joy at the power in his hands. When he closed his eyes he could still see the sleep-Word, the constellation of unwieldy letters stood out bright and vivid. His heart raced with the implications of his discovery—something else something else it’s something else—
The term Grimoire drifted hazily across his consciousness.
He rasped his thumb along the margins and felt immediately the bristle of the damaged page, somewhere in the center. He held the book upright and let it fall open, the single page left standing. He smoothed it carefully down. He looked upon the book.
The empty white stood out easily, in the center column, the exact mid-point. Above it was yet another Word, this one shorter, beginning with an A and three O’s, a sound meant to be moaned. Lyle rummaged for another push-pin in his desk. He pricked his ring-finger, this time—*spread the love, I might be doing this a lot—*and smeared a sizzling patina of blood onto the white paper. The red letters formed on the page, he couldn’t wait for them, he was greedy for them—
That isn’t Greek, Lyle realized. The new Word was explicated in a much more familiar—and, curiously, more recent—tongue. The new Word was translated in Latin.
libido
Was the first Word I saw translated into Greek? he wondered. When I ran from the library, from the blood, the first time, were those Greek letters? He couldn’t be sure, it had happened so quickly, and hysteria warped the memory.
He couldn’t be sure, no. But he didn’t think so.
“Libido,” he pronounced into the quiet of the office. “Lust. Desire.” He stood there a long moment, lost in thought. Finally he reached beneath his desk and pulled out a slender leather briefcase. He wouldn’t leave it at the office again, not—
Not knowing what it can do.
He placed the fascicle inside, locked the briefcase, and killed the grating fluorescents overhead. As he left the office he crumpled James’s sticky note in his fist and let it fall.
CONTINUED IN PT. 2:
https://www.reddit.com/Horror_stories/comments/13wyq9j/ghost_word_pt_2/
2023.05.31 23:25 Borchert97 Hot Take: LGPE and PLA are the only truly good main series Switch games.
I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion but I truthfully feel like every other release has had too many notable issues that ruin the overall experience. I’m not saying LGPE and PLA are perfect 10/10 games because they’re not, but they properly achieve what they meant to achieve. PLA wanted to be that fresh open world Pokémon game, the “Breath of the Wild” of Pokémon, so-to-speak, and LGPE wanted to be a faithful nostalgia trip through Kanto with stunning graphics meant to pull the Go crowd into the main series game and I still think LGPE is one of the best Pokémon games if you can get over the Go catching mechanics (which really makes catching Pokémon even easier than in normal games, but that’s a discussion for another time).
Anyways, I’m not saying this without play time. I have over 100 hours on Violet and like 250 on Sword, I also have like 80lbs on BD, and yeah, these games just don’t hit the same as LGPE and PLA did. I really wanted to like BDSP too but that game was trying way too hard to be DP and not hard enough to be Platinum. The only thing I can commend that game for is the well-designed and difficult Pokémon League teams and rematch teams from Platinum.
If I had to rate every game, these would be my ratings.
PLA: 9/10
LGPE: 8/10
SV: 7/10
SwSh (with DLC): 7/10
BDSP: 6/10
Also shoutout to Mystery Dungeon DX, I’d give that game a 9/10 too and it’s not even a main series game.
submitted by Borchert97 to pokemon [link] [comments]
Anyways, I’m not saying this without play time. I have over 100 hours on Violet and like 250 on Sword, I also have like 80lbs on BD, and yeah, these games just don’t hit the same as LGPE and PLA did. I really wanted to like BDSP too but that game was trying way too hard to be DP and not hard enough to be Platinum. The only thing I can commend that game for is the well-designed and difficult Pokémon League teams and rematch teams from Platinum.
If I had to rate every game, these would be my ratings.
PLA: 9/10
LGPE: 8/10
SV: 7/10
SwSh (with DLC): 7/10
BDSP: 6/10
Also shoutout to Mystery Dungeon DX, I’d give that game a 9/10 too and it’s not even a main series game.
2023.05.31 23:18 Archives-H Watch out for Corpse Boats when you travel by ferry. Don’t end up like the many missing people of Bandai Landang.
This story takes place a few years ago, back when I had just graduated from high school, in the summer months that separated my juvenile years from the coming dawn of (semi)-adulthood.
I was naive then, still a child without a care in the world, save for my life ahead of me and spending the rest of my ‘youthful days’ with my friends.
So we decided to go on a trip around the world to sightsee, to be close before we were inevitably forced apart. We journeyed off into the lands of the British, to the towers of France, and even to the deep jungles of South America.
It was all very fun until we decided to head over to a little known island by the name of Bandai Landang somewhere in the Java Sea. If you look for the island now it barely shows anything save for a few internet forum adventures gone bad and Bandai Namco, the entertainment company.
I think our friend Canopy was the one who found out about it. He was always into the weirder side of things.
The island can be considered a micronation, but the countries nearby all claim it’s part of theirs. Indonesia, Malaysia, and even China have it listed as some other name. No, I’m not going to share the ‘official’ name of the island- I don’t want anymore unfortunate wanderers.
Anyway, Canopy said the island promised exquisite beaches, awesome views, and untouched air and a sense of peace.
“I’ve never heard of this,” I pointed out. “Is it really a thing?”
He patted my shoulder. “It’ll be fun! My cousin’s been there and she said it was AWESOME!”
So we decided to venture onto the island. We were nearby anyway, and after asking around, Canopy managed to find us a ferry that would take us there.
This is where things go wrong. This is where we had to split up.
“I’m sorry,” the old man running the boat said, “the ferry's full.” And so our group of six was split into three.
Canopy, Myra, and Al went on first, and the rest of us- me, Quincy, and Jan would have to stay over the next day. Now it was only too late when we found out that there were no ferries crossing the next day.
“It was perfectly fine yesterday?” I snapped, confused. “The weather hasn’t even changed!”
The old man who’d ferried our friends shook his head. “Today is… festival,” he pronounced. “Water no good- there are things in the water. Evil things.”
“What festival?” Quincy demanded. But the old man had walked away, leaving us on a very empty dock. “What-” he sighed.
“It’s okay,” Jan assured. “There’s things to do here.”
I nodded, and we started to walk back to our hotel when a burly man appeared. He was white, not local, and had an air of gusto to him. “You three really believe that crap about the festival?”
I looked at him, perplexed, and shook my head. “No. We just want to get too the island.”
He took my hand and shook it. “Name’s Captain Murrow,” he told. “And I can take you to the island.”
This was great news. So I shook it and we settled on a deal. He charged double the price, being as that he was the only one willing to take us. And being naive kids, we decided it was a fair trade.
We just wanted to see our friends.
Besides us and the Captain there were two others on board- a rich couple that seemed to avoid us with their dog, a fancy chihuahua of some sort that barked at everything.
“Enjoy yourselves,” Murrow suggested. “It’ll be an hour.”
An hour wasn’t that bad, considering the flights we’d traveled and the hikes we’d been on. So me and my friends made small talk, and we chatted about colleges, journeys, romance, all the little things that made up life.
The fog rolled in an hour later, when we were supposed to have arrived.
“Excuse me, friends,” Captain Murrow announced. “We seem to have drifted…” there was a certain confusion to how he was saying his words, “...off course?”
Me and Quincy ran up on deck while Jan slept. We found the rich, pretentious looking couple bickering with the captain. “I can’t wait any longer with this riff-raff on board,” she hissed, dog barking in hand. “We’re going to be late for the auction!”
“Is this some sort of tourist trap?” her husband snarled. “I’ll pay you all you need to set us back on course!”
Murrow’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know what exactly is going on,” he told. “This hasn’t happened before.”
Quincy spoke up. “Maybe the legends are true and we never should’ve gone.” I giggled at that. “OoooOo!” he joked. I think Murrow found it a little funny, cause he smiled.
The couple most certainly did not. “Kids like you will never understand what it means to be on time,” the woman hissed. “Always late.”
Her husband looked out into the mist and pointed. “Look- there are-” he squinted his eyes, “boats!”
Jan came out, wondering why we hadn’t arrived. I told her we didn’t know, and the three of us- and Murrow walked over to the edge.
There was nothing out there, much to the man’s confusion. But the more we drifted, and the more Murrow tried to set us back on course the more it seemed there was something out there.
A sense of- dread? Fear? Excitement- filled my veins. It was all very new and interesting. A youthful adventure- a group lost at sea, ready to be rescued!
“Boats!” the husband shouted. “Look!”
This was when they came into view. First it was one or two, little wooden rafts that drifted in the distance against the ferry- despite the wind blowing the opposite direction.
And then more started to come, and closer they came. They were tattered wooden things, ripped by wind and cut-like marks.
That’s when we saw what was on them. “What the hell?” Jan whispered. “Are those-”
They were almost like dolls, burnt and faceless, strung against the boats, strapped downwards with odd multicolored ropes that stood out against the graying mist. “They must be dolls, right?” I asked.
Quincy sniffed the air and withdrew in fear. “I don’t think so.” I smelt it too as the wind blew, now harsh.
It smelled of decay. Burned flesh and the sickly stench of burnt hair. “Is this the festival?” the woman pleaded, asking Murrow. She folded her arms in disbelief. “Some trick.”
“I’ve heard of these,” Murrow murmured, now serious. “I didn’t think they’d be true.”
Jan asked him what they were as more drifted nearer and nearer. The answer was just as foreboding.
“Corpse boats,” he told. It was said an unprepared traveler wandering the seas at night would find themselves met with the rafts. They would smell the decay at first, and the burnt hair.
Then they would see the burnt, paper-wrapped bodies, strapped to the boat. It was said that once a year a couple traveling out those would kids would meet them- and that they would vanish forever.
And there was something else to them, too- staring at them for too long would-
The husband gasped before Murrow could finish. “Alice, look!” he shouted. “It’s- it’s Marissa!”
The woman looked blankly at the ocean, seeing nothing. “What the hell are you talking about?” she spat. “Of course you’re thinking about your ex at a time like this!” And then she turned to the captain. “Get us out of here. This trip is over.”
“No, look- it’s-” and then he stopped. And then across the boat, floating in parallel with us was one of the corpse boats, closer than ever.
The raft was different. Three sharp, pointed sticks raised upwards, and the foul smelling corpse-doll (what were they?) was impaled. A stick through the head made it look upwards.
“She’s calling my name,” he stammered, walking away back. He screamed and put his hands around his ears. He screamed and screamed, backing away, terrified. We started to back away, shocked by his actions.
And then he did the impossible. He ran and flung himself off the ship, whispering the name “Marissa!” as he fell.
There was no splash. Just an empty nothing. “What the hell!” I yelped. It wasn’t even a question, it was just- shock.
Hesitantly, the three of us looked downwards. No strung up impaled corpse was there. No husband to be seen. Just the fog, the sea, and the corpse boats in the distance passing us by.
“Don’t look at them!” Murrow snapped, finishing his story. “Don’t look at them or they’ll take you!”
We instantly avoided our gaze, returning to the center of deck, staring at the ground instead. The boat suddenly hit something, and it flung us to a side.
I picked myself up and-
It was in front of me. Impossibly, an impaled, foul smelling corpse covered paper, arms strung almost trying to reach me. For a second it wasn’t a corpse but the dead body of my high school sweetheart and I almost reached to meet it.
But I avoided my gaze and shut my eyes.
Then my hair began to be brushed, to be braided, they same way she would do it before she’d been killed in a car accident. I heard whispers in my ear, whispers I couldn’t make out that sounded all too familiar.
“Come with me,” I heard. “Float away…”
And then I heard screaming, and the feeling of the thing near me evaporated. I opened my eyes to see the rich woman tugging at Captain Murrow. “Look!” she cried, pointing to the ocean.
“I don’t-” he was tugged, “-want to!”
“It’s my husband!” she snarled. “How’d he get on one of those?!” she slapped Murrow across the cheek. “Get him back here.”
In the sea I saw a corpse, impaled and stretched out to reach out to her. The woman started back lovingly. “Don’t worry- I’ll get you!” And then she, with Murrow in hand stepped over the barrier and, with her free hand, clasped the corpse’s hand in hers.
And then she screamed. The body pulled her dowards with such force her arm was ripped clean off.
She screamed and fell over the edge- taking Murrow with her- but Quincy and Jan leapt to action, seizing him just before our captain was lost forever.
Like before, there was no splash. Nothing to tell us she’d ever been there but for a confused chihuahua and blood on deck.
We spent the next hour below deck, avoiding the rest of the corpse-boats. And just as it had all begun the boat seemed to right itself on course. The sun shone brightly, and Murrow ferried us to the docks.
I texted my friends, the three who'd come before- but they didn’t respond.
I asked around where they’d gone, and after a while, a visitor to the island told me they jumped off after looking into the ocean for far too long. I asked further, to the locals who had been on the boat the day before.
So many had vanished on the journey. They were only three more.
I researched this phenomenon as the years passed by, wondering if they would ever be found. This event isn’t local to the journey to Bandai Landang, though. No, Corpse Boats have been sighted throughout history and in international waters.
Be careful when you travel by ferry. Don’t look at the corpse boats or you’ll end up like many of the missing at sea.
submitted by Archives-H to nosleep [link] [comments]
I was naive then, still a child without a care in the world, save for my life ahead of me and spending the rest of my ‘youthful days’ with my friends.
So we decided to go on a trip around the world to sightsee, to be close before we were inevitably forced apart. We journeyed off into the lands of the British, to the towers of France, and even to the deep jungles of South America.
It was all very fun until we decided to head over to a little known island by the name of Bandai Landang somewhere in the Java Sea. If you look for the island now it barely shows anything save for a few internet forum adventures gone bad and Bandai Namco, the entertainment company.
I think our friend Canopy was the one who found out about it. He was always into the weirder side of things.
The island can be considered a micronation, but the countries nearby all claim it’s part of theirs. Indonesia, Malaysia, and even China have it listed as some other name. No, I’m not going to share the ‘official’ name of the island- I don’t want anymore unfortunate wanderers.
Anyway, Canopy said the island promised exquisite beaches, awesome views, and untouched air and a sense of peace.
“I’ve never heard of this,” I pointed out. “Is it really a thing?”
He patted my shoulder. “It’ll be fun! My cousin’s been there and she said it was AWESOME!”
So we decided to venture onto the island. We were nearby anyway, and after asking around, Canopy managed to find us a ferry that would take us there.
This is where things go wrong. This is where we had to split up.
“I’m sorry,” the old man running the boat said, “the ferry's full.” And so our group of six was split into three.
Canopy, Myra, and Al went on first, and the rest of us- me, Quincy, and Jan would have to stay over the next day. Now it was only too late when we found out that there were no ferries crossing the next day.
“It was perfectly fine yesterday?” I snapped, confused. “The weather hasn’t even changed!”
The old man who’d ferried our friends shook his head. “Today is… festival,” he pronounced. “Water no good- there are things in the water. Evil things.”
“What festival?” Quincy demanded. But the old man had walked away, leaving us on a very empty dock. “What-” he sighed.
“It’s okay,” Jan assured. “There’s things to do here.”
I nodded, and we started to walk back to our hotel when a burly man appeared. He was white, not local, and had an air of gusto to him. “You three really believe that crap about the festival?”
I looked at him, perplexed, and shook my head. “No. We just want to get too the island.”
He took my hand and shook it. “Name’s Captain Murrow,” he told. “And I can take you to the island.”
This was great news. So I shook it and we settled on a deal. He charged double the price, being as that he was the only one willing to take us. And being naive kids, we decided it was a fair trade.
We just wanted to see our friends.
Besides us and the Captain there were two others on board- a rich couple that seemed to avoid us with their dog, a fancy chihuahua of some sort that barked at everything.
“Enjoy yourselves,” Murrow suggested. “It’ll be an hour.”
An hour wasn’t that bad, considering the flights we’d traveled and the hikes we’d been on. So me and my friends made small talk, and we chatted about colleges, journeys, romance, all the little things that made up life.
The fog rolled in an hour later, when we were supposed to have arrived.
“Excuse me, friends,” Captain Murrow announced. “We seem to have drifted…” there was a certain confusion to how he was saying his words, “...off course?”
Me and Quincy ran up on deck while Jan slept. We found the rich, pretentious looking couple bickering with the captain. “I can’t wait any longer with this riff-raff on board,” she hissed, dog barking in hand. “We’re going to be late for the auction!”
“Is this some sort of tourist trap?” her husband snarled. “I’ll pay you all you need to set us back on course!”
Murrow’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know what exactly is going on,” he told. “This hasn’t happened before.”
Quincy spoke up. “Maybe the legends are true and we never should’ve gone.” I giggled at that. “OoooOo!” he joked. I think Murrow found it a little funny, cause he smiled.
The couple most certainly did not. “Kids like you will never understand what it means to be on time,” the woman hissed. “Always late.”
Her husband looked out into the mist and pointed. “Look- there are-” he squinted his eyes, “boats!”
Jan came out, wondering why we hadn’t arrived. I told her we didn’t know, and the three of us- and Murrow walked over to the edge.
There was nothing out there, much to the man’s confusion. But the more we drifted, and the more Murrow tried to set us back on course the more it seemed there was something out there.
A sense of- dread? Fear? Excitement- filled my veins. It was all very new and interesting. A youthful adventure- a group lost at sea, ready to be rescued!
“Boats!” the husband shouted. “Look!”
This was when they came into view. First it was one or two, little wooden rafts that drifted in the distance against the ferry- despite the wind blowing the opposite direction.
And then more started to come, and closer they came. They were tattered wooden things, ripped by wind and cut-like marks.
That’s when we saw what was on them. “What the hell?” Jan whispered. “Are those-”
They were almost like dolls, burnt and faceless, strung against the boats, strapped downwards with odd multicolored ropes that stood out against the graying mist. “They must be dolls, right?” I asked.
Quincy sniffed the air and withdrew in fear. “I don’t think so.” I smelt it too as the wind blew, now harsh.
It smelled of decay. Burned flesh and the sickly stench of burnt hair. “Is this the festival?” the woman pleaded, asking Murrow. She folded her arms in disbelief. “Some trick.”
“I’ve heard of these,” Murrow murmured, now serious. “I didn’t think they’d be true.”
Jan asked him what they were as more drifted nearer and nearer. The answer was just as foreboding.
“Corpse boats,” he told. It was said an unprepared traveler wandering the seas at night would find themselves met with the rafts. They would smell the decay at first, and the burnt hair.
Then they would see the burnt, paper-wrapped bodies, strapped to the boat. It was said that once a year a couple traveling out those would kids would meet them- and that they would vanish forever.
And there was something else to them, too- staring at them for too long would-
The husband gasped before Murrow could finish. “Alice, look!” he shouted. “It’s- it’s Marissa!”
The woman looked blankly at the ocean, seeing nothing. “What the hell are you talking about?” she spat. “Of course you’re thinking about your ex at a time like this!” And then she turned to the captain. “Get us out of here. This trip is over.”
“No, look- it’s-” and then he stopped. And then across the boat, floating in parallel with us was one of the corpse boats, closer than ever.
The raft was different. Three sharp, pointed sticks raised upwards, and the foul smelling corpse-doll (what were they?) was impaled. A stick through the head made it look upwards.
“She’s calling my name,” he stammered, walking away back. He screamed and put his hands around his ears. He screamed and screamed, backing away, terrified. We started to back away, shocked by his actions.
And then he did the impossible. He ran and flung himself off the ship, whispering the name “Marissa!” as he fell.
There was no splash. Just an empty nothing. “What the hell!” I yelped. It wasn’t even a question, it was just- shock.
Hesitantly, the three of us looked downwards. No strung up impaled corpse was there. No husband to be seen. Just the fog, the sea, and the corpse boats in the distance passing us by.
“Don’t look at them!” Murrow snapped, finishing his story. “Don’t look at them or they’ll take you!”
We instantly avoided our gaze, returning to the center of deck, staring at the ground instead. The boat suddenly hit something, and it flung us to a side.
I picked myself up and-
It was in front of me. Impossibly, an impaled, foul smelling corpse covered paper, arms strung almost trying to reach me. For a second it wasn’t a corpse but the dead body of my high school sweetheart and I almost reached to meet it.
But I avoided my gaze and shut my eyes.
Then my hair began to be brushed, to be braided, they same way she would do it before she’d been killed in a car accident. I heard whispers in my ear, whispers I couldn’t make out that sounded all too familiar.
“Come with me,” I heard. “Float away…”
And then I heard screaming, and the feeling of the thing near me evaporated. I opened my eyes to see the rich woman tugging at Captain Murrow. “Look!” she cried, pointing to the ocean.
“I don’t-” he was tugged, “-want to!”
“It’s my husband!” she snarled. “How’d he get on one of those?!” she slapped Murrow across the cheek. “Get him back here.”
In the sea I saw a corpse, impaled and stretched out to reach out to her. The woman started back lovingly. “Don’t worry- I’ll get you!” And then she, with Murrow in hand stepped over the barrier and, with her free hand, clasped the corpse’s hand in hers.
And then she screamed. The body pulled her dowards with such force her arm was ripped clean off.
She screamed and fell over the edge- taking Murrow with her- but Quincy and Jan leapt to action, seizing him just before our captain was lost forever.
Like before, there was no splash. Nothing to tell us she’d ever been there but for a confused chihuahua and blood on deck.
We spent the next hour below deck, avoiding the rest of the corpse-boats. And just as it had all begun the boat seemed to right itself on course. The sun shone brightly, and Murrow ferried us to the docks.
I texted my friends, the three who'd come before- but they didn’t respond.
I asked around where they’d gone, and after a while, a visitor to the island told me they jumped off after looking into the ocean for far too long. I asked further, to the locals who had been on the boat the day before.
So many had vanished on the journey. They were only three more.
I researched this phenomenon as the years passed by, wondering if they would ever be found. This event isn’t local to the journey to Bandai Landang, though. No, Corpse Boats have been sighted throughout history and in international waters.
Be careful when you travel by ferry. Don’t look at the corpse boats or you’ll end up like many of the missing at sea.
2023.05.31 23:16 AslandusTheLaster Wyn-OWLS admins say you should touch some grass
Original prompt: [WP] Humanity has advanced to the point they live entirely online. You disconnect offline into a physical body for a government expedition. Report everything you’ve discovered about the offline world. (link)
I was halfway through a dragon-slaying quest with my guild when the message arrived. Apparently I'd been selected to take part in an "expedition", and if I didn't log out of Wyn-Life's Open World Life Simulator (Wyn-Owls for short), then I'd be ejected by force. My guild was supportive, as always, but none of them hid the fact that they had no idea what it meant.
About a day later, I discovered I'd been added to a messaging group with the other expedition members. Looking around the existing messages, the feelings among the group seemed mixed. Some, who had grown up hearing family members' stories of The Time Before were excited to see the world outside. Others were skeptical, thinking of the physical world as being just like Wyn-Owls, except they couldn't hack the system to fly or turn the world pink.
Personally, I was among the skeptics. I'd seen the physical world, but only during the recommended physical exercise periods. What I'd seen wasn't anything special, a chamber with solid gray walls I couldn't punch through, a few glowing LEDs, a few pieces of furniture for dealing with bodily functions while outside our life-support modules... Spending a matter of weeks out there just seemed like a miserable chore. Still, Wyn-Life had given the order, and they controlled both Wyn-Owls and the life support modules, so we didn't have much choice in the matter.
My preparations for the expedition were... Well, nonexistent, frankly. They could force me out of the OWLS, but they couldn't make me leave the bunker, so I didn't plan to. After a few days, they'd have to let us back in, so I planned to just sit around eating microbe chips and waiting to be allowed back online.
When the day finally came, I had been in the middle of figuring out the alchemy system, attempting to create a potion that would allow me to breathe underwater. It was slightly jarring to go from carefully measuring out colorful chemicals to coughing up faux-amniotic fluid on the concrete floor of my bunker, but I quickly pulled myself together and settled in to wait it out.
Well, I tried to. After about ten minutes of stretching and milling around my bedroom (accompanied by the usual cacophony of my joints cracking and popping after days of disuse), the lights shut off and a small rectangle lit up. Some kind of handheld communication device had been created in my 3D printer while I was still in Wyn-Owls, and was now blinking in a desperate gambit to draw my attention. I took a look at it, and wasn't particularly impressed. It was far less convenient than the communication windows in the OWLS, but I would have to accept the inconvenience since the physical world apparently wasn't sophisticated enough to have communication windows.
The communicators defaulted to a group chat with the other expedition members, who seemed to be in a similar state. Even the ones who had been excited before were terrified. We didn't even have light switches, so the lights going out all at once seemed like a borderline apocalyptic scenario. As we were speculating about what they were going to ask us to do, the LEDs near the floor began blinking in sequence, directing me toward the door.
I considered sticking with my plan of sitting around, but decided against it. Doing so in the dark wasn't what I'd had in mind, and who knew what else Wyn-Life would pull to make us do their bidding? Instead, I quickly got dressed in the drab clothes of the physical world and stepped out of my room for the first time in over a year.
My parents' bedroom was active, with the lights visible behind the door, but locked as usual. Grandparents, same story. Siblings, surprise surprise, also locked. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure all of them were still alive (or any of them for that matter), but they still answered my messages within a few days of them being sent, so I assumed they were. Sure, there were rumors that Wyn-Life could maintain a person's consciousness inside Wyn-Owls even if their physical body died, but I'd assumed they were wrong. After all, Wyn-Owls basically was the world these days, so why would they bother having us leave to do physicals and such if we didn't need our bodies? I quickly realized I had gotten distracted, and returned to my path.
The lights led me out of my family dormitory, and past the doors of our neighbors. I had met many of them in passing, but I was only 14. It wasn't expected that we'd get married until the Pairing Day of our 25th year, so I had plenty of time to decide which of the girls in the community I disliked the least.
As I continued to follow the lights, I passed the common room where community gatherings were held back in the Dark Times, before Wyn-Owls was properly set up. Nowadays it was basically obsolete, OWLS made gatherings easier and much more interesting, but the automated maintenance systems still kept the room in good condition just in case.
Finally, I reached what looked like a destination. It wasn't a gate to the outside, but one of the old armories. Not to say that it was just a stockpile of ancient weapons, though it did have a fair few of those, it also contained its own more sophisticated 3D printers with access to weapon schematics. As I entered, two items had just been finished, hot off the printers. One was a Holo-Rifle, identical to the standard guns used in Wyn-Owls for marksmanship and hunting. I had little doubt that was intentional, though I wasn't sure whether they'd modeled the guns in the simulation after the real thing, or built the real thing based off how their virtual guns worked. I had never been a big fan of them personally, they were pretty bulky and the light beams they fired didn't have as much impact as I would've preferred, but if Wyn-Life thought I might need it then I'd take it with me.
The other item was an Omnitool. The handle was easy to keep a grip on, which was good given that the liquid metal that formed the actual operative instrument was still shifting around like crazy. It formed a blade, a weighted hammer, a segmented whip, a crook and a surprisingly long baton before retreating into the handle. I was more familiar with this tool, it was a lot of fun to play around with, and you could pull off some crazy stunts in the tournament arena if you used it well, but for the expedition I had to assume they intended it to be a multitool and not a wacky weapon. I carefully stowed the tool in my pocket as the lights dimmed again, and the LEDs on the floor began guiding me to a new destination.
I passed the old cafeteria, where food used to be served regularly before the nutrient synthesizers were installed in our rooms. They still saw some use during events, and the hydroponically-grown food was always a nice treat compared to flavorless paste the synthesizers usually produced, but I did not miss the lines we had to wait in.
Finally, it seemed I'd reached a door I'd never seen the other side of. The Big Door, which led to parts unknown. I'd wondered when I was younger what was on the other side, but had since lost interest. Now, though, it opened, and behind it was... a stairway. There was also an elevator, but the lights weren't directing me to it and the buttons didn't respond when I pressed them, so I assumed it hadn't been maintained properly and began climbing the stairs.
The staircase was enormous, and as I climbed I passed other doors that I could only assume led to other Wyn-Life community bunkers. Door after door, I climbed what must have been dozens of flights worth of stairs until I reached an even bigger door. After a few seconds, a klaxon sounded while a spinning red light filled the room and the door began to open. Behind it was an airlock, and I stepped inside, the door to the bunker sealing behind me before the door on the other side opened. We'd all been taught about The War, so I'd almost expected a burnt-out hellscape to be waiting beyond the door, but as the outside came into view, it quickly became apparent that that wasn't the case.
The light was absolutely blinding. I had always wondered why the comfortable level of illumination was only 5% of what the settings allowed, but seeing how bright the outside was, it made a bit more sense. After all, the basic design for the bunker had almost certainly been made back when people were still living out here, so this must have been the standard for the original designers. The air also seemed strangely... rich? It was moist, and felt a bit thick, but also significantly more pleasant to breathe than the air from the corridors I'd just left. As strange as it may sound, it almost felt like it was the first time I'd gotten to properly use my lungs.
As my eyes adjusted, I noticed just how strange everything looked. Even the most exotic servers and alien worlds generally had a familiar feel, sort of like recolors or alterations of objects from other places in the Wyn-Owls. Even just looking at the plant life from the entryway of the bunker, it seemed... off.
The first thing I noticed were the trees. Evergreens so tall that they seemed to touch the clouds, with no low-hanging branches that would allow anyone to climb them. I was already missing the ability to fly, it would've made examining the treetops much easier. Closer to the ground there were ferns, vines covered in thorns, and... A plant with fur on its leaves? It seemed the outside was a bit too strange to rely on just a written report, I desperately needed to take some screenshots to accompany it. Nobody would believe me if I just told them about this stuff!
I almost immediately realized that the physical world didn't support screenshots, much to my chagrin. Since my communicator gave me access to the messaging system, I wondered if I could use it to get around this limitation as well.
After touching it in a few places and a few ways, I found a way to open a menu offering different functions. I flicked through the various options, and stopped on photography. The device was a bit finicky, so it took me a few tries to get a good shot, but I did manage to get some clear pictures. I quickly began drafting a report, as I took my first step onto the ground outside. The ground sank in a little under my foot, nearly causing me to fall over. The soft ground only added to the alien feel of the outside, as if I was walking on the skin of some giant animal instead of nice, solid tile flooring.
Still, it wasn't altogether unpleasant, and I bandied around the idea of taking off my shoes to feel the soft ground with my feet before noticing all the debris that would probably have impaled my feet if I did. As I submitted my first report, I was already considering what direction to explore first. No HUD icons, no quest markers, no actual objectives aside from "look around and report what you find", and no advice to be had apart from that of other idiots who were in the exact same situation. It was terrifying, and also somewhat exhilarating, but it seemed that I would need to carve my own path for the foreseeable future.
submitted by AslandusTheLaster to AslandusTheLaster [link] [comments]
About a day later, I discovered I'd been added to a messaging group with the other expedition members. Looking around the existing messages, the feelings among the group seemed mixed. Some, who had grown up hearing family members' stories of The Time Before were excited to see the world outside. Others were skeptical, thinking of the physical world as being just like Wyn-Owls, except they couldn't hack the system to fly or turn the world pink.
Personally, I was among the skeptics. I'd seen the physical world, but only during the recommended physical exercise periods. What I'd seen wasn't anything special, a chamber with solid gray walls I couldn't punch through, a few glowing LEDs, a few pieces of furniture for dealing with bodily functions while outside our life-support modules... Spending a matter of weeks out there just seemed like a miserable chore. Still, Wyn-Life had given the order, and they controlled both Wyn-Owls and the life support modules, so we didn't have much choice in the matter.
My preparations for the expedition were... Well, nonexistent, frankly. They could force me out of the OWLS, but they couldn't make me leave the bunker, so I didn't plan to. After a few days, they'd have to let us back in, so I planned to just sit around eating microbe chips and waiting to be allowed back online.
When the day finally came, I had been in the middle of figuring out the alchemy system, attempting to create a potion that would allow me to breathe underwater. It was slightly jarring to go from carefully measuring out colorful chemicals to coughing up faux-amniotic fluid on the concrete floor of my bunker, but I quickly pulled myself together and settled in to wait it out.
Well, I tried to. After about ten minutes of stretching and milling around my bedroom (accompanied by the usual cacophony of my joints cracking and popping after days of disuse), the lights shut off and a small rectangle lit up. Some kind of handheld communication device had been created in my 3D printer while I was still in Wyn-Owls, and was now blinking in a desperate gambit to draw my attention. I took a look at it, and wasn't particularly impressed. It was far less convenient than the communication windows in the OWLS, but I would have to accept the inconvenience since the physical world apparently wasn't sophisticated enough to have communication windows.
The communicators defaulted to a group chat with the other expedition members, who seemed to be in a similar state. Even the ones who had been excited before were terrified. We didn't even have light switches, so the lights going out all at once seemed like a borderline apocalyptic scenario. As we were speculating about what they were going to ask us to do, the LEDs near the floor began blinking in sequence, directing me toward the door.
I considered sticking with my plan of sitting around, but decided against it. Doing so in the dark wasn't what I'd had in mind, and who knew what else Wyn-Life would pull to make us do their bidding? Instead, I quickly got dressed in the drab clothes of the physical world and stepped out of my room for the first time in over a year.
My parents' bedroom was active, with the lights visible behind the door, but locked as usual. Grandparents, same story. Siblings, surprise surprise, also locked. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure all of them were still alive (or any of them for that matter), but they still answered my messages within a few days of them being sent, so I assumed they were. Sure, there were rumors that Wyn-Life could maintain a person's consciousness inside Wyn-Owls even if their physical body died, but I'd assumed they were wrong. After all, Wyn-Owls basically was the world these days, so why would they bother having us leave to do physicals and such if we didn't need our bodies? I quickly realized I had gotten distracted, and returned to my path.
The lights led me out of my family dormitory, and past the doors of our neighbors. I had met many of them in passing, but I was only 14. It wasn't expected that we'd get married until the Pairing Day of our 25th year, so I had plenty of time to decide which of the girls in the community I disliked the least.
As I continued to follow the lights, I passed the common room where community gatherings were held back in the Dark Times, before Wyn-Owls was properly set up. Nowadays it was basically obsolete, OWLS made gatherings easier and much more interesting, but the automated maintenance systems still kept the room in good condition just in case.
Finally, I reached what looked like a destination. It wasn't a gate to the outside, but one of the old armories. Not to say that it was just a stockpile of ancient weapons, though it did have a fair few of those, it also contained its own more sophisticated 3D printers with access to weapon schematics. As I entered, two items had just been finished, hot off the printers. One was a Holo-Rifle, identical to the standard guns used in Wyn-Owls for marksmanship and hunting. I had little doubt that was intentional, though I wasn't sure whether they'd modeled the guns in the simulation after the real thing, or built the real thing based off how their virtual guns worked. I had never been a big fan of them personally, they were pretty bulky and the light beams they fired didn't have as much impact as I would've preferred, but if Wyn-Life thought I might need it then I'd take it with me.
The other item was an Omnitool. The handle was easy to keep a grip on, which was good given that the liquid metal that formed the actual operative instrument was still shifting around like crazy. It formed a blade, a weighted hammer, a segmented whip, a crook and a surprisingly long baton before retreating into the handle. I was more familiar with this tool, it was a lot of fun to play around with, and you could pull off some crazy stunts in the tournament arena if you used it well, but for the expedition I had to assume they intended it to be a multitool and not a wacky weapon. I carefully stowed the tool in my pocket as the lights dimmed again, and the LEDs on the floor began guiding me to a new destination.
I passed the old cafeteria, where food used to be served regularly before the nutrient synthesizers were installed in our rooms. They still saw some use during events, and the hydroponically-grown food was always a nice treat compared to flavorless paste the synthesizers usually produced, but I did not miss the lines we had to wait in.
Finally, it seemed I'd reached a door I'd never seen the other side of. The Big Door, which led to parts unknown. I'd wondered when I was younger what was on the other side, but had since lost interest. Now, though, it opened, and behind it was... a stairway. There was also an elevator, but the lights weren't directing me to it and the buttons didn't respond when I pressed them, so I assumed it hadn't been maintained properly and began climbing the stairs.
The staircase was enormous, and as I climbed I passed other doors that I could only assume led to other Wyn-Life community bunkers. Door after door, I climbed what must have been dozens of flights worth of stairs until I reached an even bigger door. After a few seconds, a klaxon sounded while a spinning red light filled the room and the door began to open. Behind it was an airlock, and I stepped inside, the door to the bunker sealing behind me before the door on the other side opened. We'd all been taught about The War, so I'd almost expected a burnt-out hellscape to be waiting beyond the door, but as the outside came into view, it quickly became apparent that that wasn't the case.
The light was absolutely blinding. I had always wondered why the comfortable level of illumination was only 5% of what the settings allowed, but seeing how bright the outside was, it made a bit more sense. After all, the basic design for the bunker had almost certainly been made back when people were still living out here, so this must have been the standard for the original designers. The air also seemed strangely... rich? It was moist, and felt a bit thick, but also significantly more pleasant to breathe than the air from the corridors I'd just left. As strange as it may sound, it almost felt like it was the first time I'd gotten to properly use my lungs.
As my eyes adjusted, I noticed just how strange everything looked. Even the most exotic servers and alien worlds generally had a familiar feel, sort of like recolors or alterations of objects from other places in the Wyn-Owls. Even just looking at the plant life from the entryway of the bunker, it seemed... off.
The first thing I noticed were the trees. Evergreens so tall that they seemed to touch the clouds, with no low-hanging branches that would allow anyone to climb them. I was already missing the ability to fly, it would've made examining the treetops much easier. Closer to the ground there were ferns, vines covered in thorns, and... A plant with fur on its leaves? It seemed the outside was a bit too strange to rely on just a written report, I desperately needed to take some screenshots to accompany it. Nobody would believe me if I just told them about this stuff!
I almost immediately realized that the physical world didn't support screenshots, much to my chagrin. Since my communicator gave me access to the messaging system, I wondered if I could use it to get around this limitation as well.
After touching it in a few places and a few ways, I found a way to open a menu offering different functions. I flicked through the various options, and stopped on photography. The device was a bit finicky, so it took me a few tries to get a good shot, but I did manage to get some clear pictures. I quickly began drafting a report, as I took my first step onto the ground outside. The ground sank in a little under my foot, nearly causing me to fall over. The soft ground only added to the alien feel of the outside, as if I was walking on the skin of some giant animal instead of nice, solid tile flooring.
Still, it wasn't altogether unpleasant, and I bandied around the idea of taking off my shoes to feel the soft ground with my feet before noticing all the debris that would probably have impaled my feet if I did. As I submitted my first report, I was already considering what direction to explore first. No HUD icons, no quest markers, no actual objectives aside from "look around and report what you find", and no advice to be had apart from that of other idiots who were in the exact same situation. It was terrifying, and also somewhat exhilarating, but it seemed that I would need to carve my own path for the foreseeable future.
2023.05.31 23:00 therealfosterforest [Rewatch] Magia Record Season 3 Episode 4 Discussion
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Original episode discussion thread
MyAnimeList AniList
Depending on where you are in the world, Magia Record's streaming availability tends to be pretty good. You can watch it on Crunchyroll, HiDive (S1, S2, S3), Wakanim (DE, FR) or Amazon Prime Video (Amazon US seems to be missing the last 5 episodes from what I can see, Amazon DE has all of S1, S2 and S3). The show is also listed on Funimation if you still have an account there. See LiveChart.me for their list of streaming options. Lastly, there have been Blu-ray and DVD releases in Japan, North America, Germany, Australia, and probably other places.
Added note: People have pointed out to me that from around the middle of season 1 onwards, you are going to see increasing quality differences between the TV broadcast version and the Blu-Ray version of the show. These differences will increase in number and severity through later seasons, sometimes with entire shots missing. Many streaming sources, notably Crunchyroll, only offer the TV version. If you've enjoyed the show so far and you would like to experience the rest in the most complete version available, it may be worth double-checking if you can get your hands on the Blu-Rays.
Newly introduced this episode:
submitted by therealfosterforest to anime [link] [comments]
Welcome to the Magia Record rewatch, season 3 episode 4!
Relevant links
Season 3 did not have any TV end cards, so for a bit of levity here's a featured page from Magia Report instead! This is chapter 68 of season 2. Magia Report is a comedy manga by PAPA that started out as a sort of manual/advertisement for the Magia Record game, but then just kept going with jokes. I guess there are no more anime spoilers as of today, so if you don't mind spoilers for the game, feel free to go and read Magia Report!Original episode discussion thread
MyAnimeList AniList
Depending on where you are in the world, Magia Record's streaming availability tends to be pretty good. You can watch it on Crunchyroll, HiDive (S1, S2, S3), Wakanim (DE, FR) or Amazon Prime Video (Amazon US seems to be missing the last 5 episodes from what I can see, Amazon DE has all of S1, S2 and S3). The show is also listed on Funimation if you still have an account there. See LiveChart.me for their list of streaming options. Lastly, there have been Blu-ray and DVD releases in Japan, North America, Germany, Australia, and probably other places.
Added note: People have pointed out to me that from around the middle of season 1 onwards, you are going to see increasing quality differences between the TV broadcast version and the Blu-Ray version of the show. These differences will increase in number and severity through later seasons, sometimes with entire shots missing. Many streaming sources, notably Crunchyroll, only offer the TV version. If you've enjoyed the show so far and you would like to experience the rest in the most complete version available, it may be worth double-checking if you can get your hands on the Blu-Rays.
Questions of the day
- While the Magius plan had a self-serving pragmatic goal, Alina Gray's plan was more driven by emotions. What did you think about it?
- When was the last time you felt like one chapter of your life was ending and a new one was starting?
- Fanfic/headcanon time: We see the world go on after Homura vanishes into her time warp. What does that mean for the PMMM multiverse?
Characters
Character chartNewly introduced this episode:
- Nobody
Visuals of the day
Here are your VOTD entries for yesterday's episode! Please let me know if I've missed anyone's.Spoiler policy
I guess today there aren't any spoilers for the show anymore. But if you want to post about events exclusive to the game or other media (e.g. the manga), please continue to spoiler tag them appropriately.Tomorrow's questions of the day
For those who want to prepare their comment in advance:- [MR] What's your overall verdict for this show? What is its place in the wider franchise in your eyes?
- [MR] How did you like this rewatch? Should it be run again at some point? If so, what should be changed?
- [MR] What will you be watching next?