Adrift in the Black

meanwhile, all us lil goblins continue to scurry along ink stamping everything we like, while trying to collect all the shinies for ourselves...

"that's right ya damned dirty squirrel, keep on walking. One of these days when your back is turned trying to bury that nut "POW!" i'll broadside ya like a sleazy alley cat hopped up on catnip and fresh cream. I'm warning ya, ya little rhodent...one of these days!"

I retreat back to my sweet spot and resume my vigil, it's a good job. lots of kibble, the occasional table treats, fresh water, plentiful ear scritches and belly rubs, what more can an honest working dog ask for. I've been with the bigjobs for what seems like an age now. Trained to be a good boy in everything i do for the family. they eventually bring in the mini-bigjob, the boss's kid for me to protect. it's been a good life. the kiddo brings me lots of treats (some unintentional) and i keep the kid safe from anything that invades the sanctity of the home and yard.

I hear bigjob jr. calling from the back porch. i glance up from my spot to see the kid excitedly charging across the yard in my direction. I'm always happy to see the tyke looking happy, and my tail gives a halfwag in greeting.

No chewy orb in the kids hand today. Damn. those are sacred. the fuzzy orb of divine pleasure all dogs love unconditionally and covet above all else. the kid is chatting happily and giving me good scritches in all the right places. Suddenly He takes off for the other side of the yard, the smell of an hour old baloney and cheese sandwich drifting off his hands as he runs away. I drool a little, the smell is good.

Jr. is standing by the garden shed calling my name. I glance over all calm and collected like a good dog is supposed to do. The kid reaches somewhere behind the shed. My ears perk up in case there is trouble. the kind of trouble that requires a little fang and paw action from time to time to discourage bad things from harming the family. my pulse quickens a little bit tensing for an outburst of alarm from the kid, senses ready for action. the kid straightens up a bit and hides his hand behind his back all quick like. He's hiding something from me. I stand up from my spot and watch the kid in case something goes southpaw wrong.

Jr. is smiling in that weird bigjob way they all do and asking me something of a question over and over. my head cocks quizzically at the sounds and i trot over to see what he's going on about, but he's excited about it, and i start to get excited about it too.

with a sudden motion, he whips out a long chewy and starts wagging it in the air above my head. I can smell faint traces of squirrel, mixed in with good earth, and the smell of baloney sandwich mingling in the air and suddenly i want that chewy! I want that chewy like wanting to chase the noisy rolling beasts that pass by the yard daily. I wanted that chewy more than the fuzzy orbs the bigjobs bring me when i'm a really good boy. I wanted that chewy more than chasing tail and digging holes in the flowerbed. I HAD TO HAVE THAT CHEWY!

I lose all decorum and poise and start hopping around like a milk drunk puppy again, vocalizing my need of the chewy to the delighted smiles and laughter of the chairman of the board, mr mini-bigjob jr.

He rears back and gives the much desired chewy a mighty heave across the skies. My eyes track the chewy as my legs begin pumping, (I'm a lean mean chasing machine, nothing can escape my speed!) as i give chase to the flying chewy. Before it hits the ground, i give a mighty leap and deftly catch it in my jaws like a seasoned pro out for a victory lap after a home run. The best catch of my career thus far, if i do say so myself. YES! the chewie is mine! muahahahaha! I proudly take a victory jog in celebration.

Once upon a time there was a dig. a very small dig staffed by 5 archeologists from different places. (mostly because funding was tight, and their respective universities hesitant to allot further funding to something that they felt was already a well trod field in a location that was not noteworthy or anything of significance to history or general research.)

the only reason why they were there in the first place was because some farmer's roaming cattle had injured a leg from a hole in the ground, and when the farmer looked into the hole after rescuing his meal ticket, noticed odd bits n' bobs that were not familiar to his area and in a panic contacted the local authorities who turned the finds over to a local university for study. sufficently perplexed, the department invited colleagues from around the globe to participate in the tentative dig, but out of all the inquiries only 4 others answered the call.

and there they were, 5 peas in a pod, spending all day sifting dirt and recovering the bits n' bobs and hotly debating amongst themselves what they had found. was it a pre-civilization? what's with the tiny bones? is that a pot shard or part of a tablet? is that my trowel in your bucket? why, no you cannot borrow my bing crosby records, it's the only thing keeping me sane out here in the boonies! will we get to borrow your universitie's surveying equipment within the next few weeks? and generally speculating on all they've found thus far to the exclusion of almost everything else.

so, one day the archeologist from Bristol decides they are going to take a lunch break, and seeing it's a very hot day, desires to climb a local cragy tall hill to get above the oppressive heat in the valley to enjoy some lovely sandwiches, a nice cuppa tea, and some biscuits their mam lovingly packed in a tin for their journey abroad. upon reaching the top of the hill with it's nice big trees to provide just enough shade to be pleasantly comfortable with a tolerable cross breeze, they suddenly notice something about the area they hadn't seen before.

recognizing the slight tell tale signs of a larger civilization and the inordinately symetrical surrounding landscape amidst all the foliage. in their sudden excitement at the realization they nearly perished in their mad headlong dash down the hill back to the dig site and the other archeologists.

upon arrival, our mad lad begins telling the others what they had seen up above, but are met with doubt, disbelief, and some minor disdain from one fellow who just recently got a grant boost and possible tenure as provost when they finish their work at the small digsite and return home

they beg and plead with the other 4 to make the journey back up the hill with them to witness for themselves what they had seen, but were soundly rejected by the other 4 as they each had their own individual hypothesis to support and defend and the notion of something more that could possibly upset their findings as anathema. no matter how much our lone archeologist debated his case, the others were simply not interested, or outright hostile to our intrepid archeological explorer.

a few weeks later, the digsite closes, and the other 4 return from whence they came, satisfied they had found what they were looking for, after all, there were papers to write, hands to shake for funding, and circles to chase.

the last one....they went on to find something like teotihuacan just a stone's throw down the valley from the little digsite, but because of peer presssure from their university had to abandon it to return home lest they loose tenure. but they did still find it. only thing leftto do is to secure further funding for a large proper dig and show the other 4 gits just how wrong they were.

"reality is not what you think it may be."

reality is harsh, and hard, and doesn't really care wether you exist or not. doesn't care if you believe a certain way, or follow a specific routine. it just goes on in endless looping circles with it's own engines forever churning, we're simply caught up in the little eddys and currents left in it's wake.

maybe i was foolish for opening the book, reading unfamiliar texts, and trying to selfishly save my own life from a certain kind of hellish torment. sometimes i wonder about the path not taken, or the short road untrod.

i'm sort of an urban myth and legend now. i've gone by many names. the gray man, the watcher in the shadows, forest child, the eel...different names from different places.

It was hard, at first.

stepping through a door only to wind up halfway round the world, thousand of miles from what i once knew as home. nothing to my name but the clothes on my back, and what few trinkets and bits i had in my pockets when i first started walking the planet. If my old friends could see me now, they'd crack a joke about D&D and planeswalking. i'd laugh at the absurdity of it all, but the truth still hurts.

surviving my new reality took a little creativity and a dash of minor larceny. something i'm not proud of by any stretch of the imagination, but hunger and the need to sleep someplace dry and relatively safe became somewhat of a priority in the early days. I couldn't sleep indoors anymore unless i got lucky enough to be deposited into an empty room for the night after crossing the threshold of a door. which can be rather dangerous in unto itself...especially if one is deposited into the confines of an active nuclear power plant, military base, garbage reclimation facility, or that thankfully only one time, so far, in a closed bank vault. i still remember the look of suprise on the managers face as i rushed past him to the open vault door and promptly removed myself to another part of the planet.

you'd be suprised at what little constitutes as a "door". I once escaped the cherynobl exclusion zone, being hunted by a military saftey patrol, by finding an old large soggy cardboard box and using a pocket knife and a bit of old charcoal to basically build a rudimentary exit. I also discovered what happens when you drive a nail into a pair of crossed tree limbs, boards, or long logs in a weak attempt to build some sort of lean-to to sleep out the night. imagine my suprise after going through all the effort and work of making a camp only to step through and find myself in new deli India. I lost a lot of good gear that night. after hard lessons learned, i started packing light at all times. It was easy to get gear, walk through a door, or several, till you hit what you needed in a prime location, appropriate the nessesary items, food, clothing, or whatever i needed in the moment, then promptly exit out the closest door. food goes in the backpack, clothes get swapped out on the fly, and learning how to properly rip out the doors on a small tent to prevent unwanted jumps became a priority. It goes without saying that i attempted to pay for goods as i acquired whatever local currency i could beg or borrow, but for the most part it was always quicker to grab and go and pray for absolution later.

of course, learning how to escape restraint also became a priority. getting detained by an enthusiastically overzealous officer, and put in hand cuffs becomes problematic when they go to throw you into the back seat of a patrol car only for you to fall butt first into the dirt someplace else...still handcuffed. a car door is still, after all, a door. and having the right tools hidden about your person in all the right places can mean all the difference between an uncomfortable night, other awkward unwanted encounters, or relative freedom.

i've only been able to make it back to what i consider home once in my travels thus far, and in my excitment i forgot and tried to reenter my house only to wind up somewhere on the outskirts of china. if i ever make it back again, i'll just break my own window and crawl through...but that's a big "IF" because traveling overland without crossing a door is rather difficult in this day and age. i got close several years ago, but before i could make the last leg, got detained for looking funny and ended up somewhere else.

so yeah, that's the journey so far. i go door hopping from time to time for resupply, but mostly i'm just out there in the wilderness wherever i may be wandering, trying to live my best life possible given the circumstances and mostly attempting to stay out of thought and memory of the rest of the planet. when the weather is nice, and i get lucky with my jumps, it's sleeping under the stars for a bit in a location. when it's bad, it's hoping for stepping into someplace more comfortable.

heh, i don't even know why i bother to write these things anymore. it's been so long. i've scattered bits of my story across the entire planet, tucked away in all the hidden nooks and crannies of civilization. maybe this keeps me sane, my last connection with humanity. maybe i just wanted to be remembered before my story truly ends. maybe i simply wanted to document small slices of my own history to be rediscovered later down the road when i'm feeling down. maybe, just maybe, this is my eternal pennance for cheating the devil his due, and the terror of maybe one day seeing the end of the universe with my own eyes.

or maybe i'm just tired...

we found the shadows of civilization buried beneath the soil and plant life. our accomplishments, a proud discovery to the human race.

so we began to dig.

we found structures beneath the dirt. familiar things that reminded us of our own home. the hints of pottery, the detritus of old technology, the bits and bobs of a long since deceased peoples. We brought in anthropologists, and engineers to study all that remained. material scientists to research the scraps to uncover hidden secrets. Archeologists to reveal, meter by meter, a hidden city amongst many still buried by time and nature scattered across the surface of the planet.

seeing the faded images painted on crumbling walls of an alien race that were different, yet hauntingly familiar. their bipedal forms and outstretched arms raised in reverence to a depiction of stellar array of unfamiliar night skies and strange constellations pointing to locations unknown to the human race like a roadmap that was once well trod.

the weeks turned to months, turned to years, as the human race slowly reclaimed the ancient city from beneath the forest. each new discovery sending waves of anticipation and an all too familiar sense of uneasiness throughout the researchers, our joys turned inward to a quiet sadness the more time passed. ancient toys discovered in sealed vaults that felt a little too familiar. carefully preserved and reconstructed garments that fit a little too well. city layouts that mirrored many old cities back on earth. that very erie feeling of holding the remains of a threadbare faded ragdoll with padded hands that reflected our own. The wrecks of ancient machines that felt all too easy for human hands to operate. fields of fossilized skeletal remains scattered around massive empty cradle structures where once something existed but have long since emptied.

we knew how they lived. Their lost words no longer a mystery to us. we knew how they died. the scars long since buried and faded back into the geological record of the planet. we know they survived.

we thought we were uncovering a mystery of a civilization's ending. one of many bookends to humanity's exploration of the stars, only to discover we were but scratching at the doorways of a beginning. One in which the human race was not yet ready to accept...

"It is a tradition in our culture for each to donate a small portion of what they earn to the foundlings."

for those nerds in the back who havn't caught up yet, in this gif set is almost everything you need to understand about how beskar armor is made.

first, pure beskar metal ore by itsef is not strong. it's relatively soft in comparison to other metals in the star wars universe. Hence why it was able to be melted and poured into striated ingots like pouring lead into a long mould. one could physically pierce a thin sheet of pure beskar metal with a little elbow grease and a claw hammer, sharp pointy stick, or other blunt object. the only thing pure beskar metal has going for it at that stage and state of matter is it's ability to easily absorb intense energy like a sponge and redirect it to something else. (which is ultimately why the empire almost completley strip mined it from the planet mandalore after it's invasion and destruction for use in the fusion cores and weapon emitter arrays of the original death star and it's replacement.) but i'm going off on a different tangent and need to focus..

*deep breath*

she was pounding on various other alloys for strength and resillience, building the "bones" of the armor piece out of everything tough that was NOT beskar.

now here's where the magic happens....

you see that cauldron there? yeah, that one. the object of the almost religious like zealotry fervor that branch of mandalorians worship like a god...yeah...the beskar is in the quench.

ok, i can see the confused looks on your faces at this point and will attempt to elucidate (most likely somewhat poorly in literary form) what this means.

"the beskar metal is colloidial suspended into the cauldron quench fluid."

let that thought soak in for a little bit while you ponder the unintentional pun.

the cauldron is sacred. not because it is some part of a quasi-hokey religion fashioned by a race of battle hardened war mongering galactic bad asses beloved by legions of fans worldwide. no, the cauldron is sacred because it contains liquid beskar.

through super secret squirrel mandalorian forging arts passed down through generations, the entire secret of mandalorian beskar armor is in that pot.

the metal piece is forged to shape. then it is heated again and dipped in the fluid to quench. as it is quenched the beskar metal ions suspended in the cauldron fluid thermo bond to the metal turning the base metals into beskar armor. it's not thermoplating, nor electroplating. the chemical soup in the cauldron penetrates into the base metals depositing beskar into the pores and generally binding the beskar to the other metal ions creating a solid piece of armor (or other metal device) capable of deflectiing or absorbing energy based weaponry.

it's for the same reasons why din and bo had to retrieve a vial of cave water from mandalore as pennance. there was something in that water the forge cauldron needs for the beskar atoms to easily bind to other metals, and why it is a reoccuring quest in that tribe for members. the cauldron must be replentished from time to time to ensure the strongest armors and weapons. (which is why we got to see that pretty display in the cauldron fluid when that armorsmith dumped the vial into it after din's absolution)

i mean i could point out that every piece we've ever seen the armorsmith working on in the show starts out looking a certain color, but the moment it comes out of the quench it looks darker than when she started forging. how din's armor in the first season was all shiny and bright with the barest inclusion of beskar, and after she reforged and dipped it, it came out darkly burnished as it was infused with a deeper saturation of beskar metal. that's the secret. that's the knowledge the mandalorians would absolutley kill to protect. that's why that small bucket of pure beskar metal din bequeathed to the foundlings in season 1 was so precious to the armorsmith to the point of her mentioning that it would armor hundreds of foundlings. not one, or two, or a dozen.....hundreds.

on a side note...It's also the reason for the saying "the best mandalorian armors have hearts of pure beskar" that diamond rupee sigil in the center piece of mando armor with the pure beskar core absorbs energy hits like a grounding shunt from the rest of the armor and redirects the excess power through the suits internal mechanisms making mando armor slightly stronger the more hits they take while the surplus energy is shunted into subsystems (helmet targeting, gauntlet weapons, jet pack batteries, secondary shields, etc.) that's why mandos are an effective fighting force, every blaster hit they take is just free energy they can use against their enemies.

so...yeah. grogu's little shield went into the quench as a common piece of armor metal and came out pyro chemically baptised as a piece of beskar armor vastly stronger than it started.

i'm just going to go crawl back into my library hovel, and eat some oatmeal....

"J.A.R.S., in essence, is that your brain is pickled in a chemical slurry of nano machines, preservatives, various nutrient baths, and solutions then placed in a small "Jars" habitat the approximate size and shape of a human brain, slaved up to a network of micro-filaments, and synthetic input/output socket connectors, and when they're happy everything is 100% and fully functional without tissue rejection, they seal up the bottle and basically plug a human brain into various mecha as needed as easy as changing a lightbulb."

"Oh, don't laugh young human...yes, the first jars subjects looked like proverbial pickle jars of old...glass cylinders sealed top and bottom with the cartoonish floating eyes on nerve stalks" (makes two finger servos wiggle in the air in approximation of floating human eyeballs to the giggles of the child). "blame the military for that design flaw. the first test subjects were, after all, soldiers. far easier to armor a brain than an entire human body, and far less costly in terms of living human lives. Mecha war frames can be easily replaced, and the armored jars-head merely fitted into the latest improved model of combat trooper/tank/drone with very little downtime between fights. I am operating what they call a generation 13x model. desiged after the wars for civillian operations. this polycarbonate and alloy body built for general everyday life, though in my past job iterations i've operated everything from a titan class aerial transport all the way down to a public taxi. I think my favorite stint was at the metropolitan library, it was....enjoyable to catalouge books and operate the retrieval system. I spent most of my downtime there reading when not needed to preform searches or go fetch on literary works. Yes, young one...i have several "bodies" in my storage closet, and can swap between them depending on what role i am tasked to preform. Today, it's the general bodyguard/driver doppel. tommorow, i may occupy a different doppel depending on that day's assignments."

"No, young one...it doesn't "hurt". all the sensory inputs of this mechanical body translate into stimulus in my jar core. I don't feel pain as you would. no pain, nor hunger, nor the need to breathe, or any other basic human requirement. the biological responses you see are just the doppel chassi reacting to input stimuli from what my brain remembers of once being human and reacts accordingly. I don't need to breathe, but it makes it easier to hold conversations with normal humans. I don't even need to blink, these synthetic eyes do not require moisture to operate properly, the blinking is an autonomous response from impulses in my brain. I remember when i had to blink as a human and the brain operates like it still has a living body. If i have to, i can suspend those subcconcious functions to work on a task that requires intense concentration...like guarding nosy little boys and girls from dangers unseen." (gives them gentle boop on the nose)

"Do i miss the taste of food? interesting question. part of me says, yes, part of me says no. the yes is for the physical experience of eating, never take that for granted kid...enjoy your food. the no, is in knowing that i don't require it anymore as all doppel bodies do not require food to operate the mechanica. all my nutritional needs are taken care of via a series of Jars bottle injections at the base of my nurological stem soccet. the cereberal fluids in my jar are constantly cycled through a doppel's soccet port to remove spent brain chemical waste while providing fresh nutrient and oxygen to the spinal fluid slurry. Don't look so sad kid, chin up, i taste food every night when i'm back at my home closet and plugged into the network. you didn't know that they managed to map all the brain signals of a single taste? oh, yeah...i can taste all the foods they've managed to map to nurological impulses. pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, burritos...all the tasty stuff. a lot of food imprints are stored in the network. the only downside, is that it's difficult to capture the nuances of certain foods. a beer, tastes like a beer, but that's it...the essential taste of beer, no differentiation between makers, brands, or styles...just the imprint of generic beer. the hamburger will always taste the same in my brain, the hot dog will always taste like the same hot dog. it's sort of the same flavor mapping for all jar heads...we all taste the same things. the minty freshness will always taste like the exact same minty freshness....the banana will always taste like the same bananas, the snozzberries taste like snozzberries...nevermind kiddo, that's way before your time...lather rinse repeat. honestly kiddo, it's hard to miss something i havn't really needed for a very long long time."

"what? oh, that?...yeah, ignore the explosions kid...i've been remotely eliminating several attackers down the past few blocks while we are having this lovely drive and conversation."

"Don't be afraid kid...everything is 5x5, that's why your daddy pays me the big bucks. worst case scenario, the car goes into sealed tank mode, you get home in one piece, while i swap out for the company's war doppel chassi hidden in the rear floor storage and lay down some hell for your attackers while you zip off to safety. easy peasy."

"i can promise you two things today kid. 1. you'll be home in time for ice cream. and 2. i always finish what i start, no matter what the cost. they would physically have to fire my jars core out of a heavy magnetic rail cannon to even come close to damaging me. the docs made sure the nanos were robust enough to constantly repair neuron damage, while my reinforced jar shell is pure durillyium alloy. so dry those tears, kid...it's been an honor serving you today, and hope you enjoy a long life."

(the car goes into tank mode, as i detach my jar from the bodyguard doppel in the drivers seat. the autopilot will ensure the kid makes it home safely. my jar travels down the internal structural frame of the car to the hidden rear storage compartment where the warframe is neatly folded as my jar sockets into the pilot's cradle.)

"cute kid, hope he decides to stay human and not get jarred up with the rest of us."

(Sarge used to call it "no mind" during the last great war. all us jarheads plugged into our mechs, the detachment of battle, not feeling a blessed thing. reminded me of old media FPS video games that used to exist. we just existed and preformed our duties as best as the technology allowed us to be in the moment. no thoughts, no fears, no hopes, no dreams...just the Jar, a mission, the task, and the moment...expecting for a swift death that never came. only the emptiness remains. The eternal Samurai.)

The warframe easily slides out from underneath the rear port of the vehicle like a sleek rectangular coffin. as i boot up, it starts to unfurl into a ronin model quick combat frame. It's armored shield with pulse cannon a matching esthetic to the 7 meter long vibro-blade. this is old tech, pre-war. built like an over-engineered shit house, to use the ancient parlance, to withstand nuclear threat level combat. it was a gift to me for all my decades of service. layered ferrofibrous metal and carbon tungsten polymer that was discontinued when the corporations started building frames out of polyceramics and lightweight alloys for mass production. the old frames were works of engineering art. It's like sliding into a familiar skin, it feels more like the me that used to exist when i was flesh and blood.

I take a quick scan and note the three yokohama light drones with a jaugernaught model bringing up the rear. The call was already sent a while ago for backup. the three light drones i can take easily. their pilot cores will fetch me a hefty bounty with the administration. the jaugernaught....that's a different story. I hope the squad brings the can opener. all i can do is to keep it occupied and distracted for as long as i can till the rest of the squad arrives.

according to my internal GPS, the package is safe at it's destination, and i have the green light to engage the enemy.

"No mind...."

I play an old musical recording in my warframe databanks. It always silences the noise in my head, and keeps me focused as i begin the familiar blade katas like an old muscle memory...an old friend.

Sarge always said it weirded her out a little bit how easy it was for me to slip into MU space. I always shrugged my warframe's shoulders and made an old joke about grabbing some beers back at the base when the mission was over.

the squirrel super secret of it all is that you will naturally acquire all these things in pursuit of your hidden desires over time. (if you really want to)

this is a perfectly natural human thing and something you've already gone through probably several times so far in your life up to this point. (though in retrospect, your parents likely called it "fads" or "phases" while you were going through your childhood or teenage years and maybe you only briefly recognized it after moving on to the next big thing in your life and were cleaning out your room to make way for the new.) like i said, this is all normal.

"humans subconciously acquire the things it desires over time."

if you are a sculptor, you will acquire the tools n' things that will help you sculpt...(even if that involves spontaneously buying chicken wire for no reason at all just because you went into a supply store looking for nails and paints for a home project and ended up with a bunch of random things along with the paint and nails just because you thought you would need them later.)

same thing for artists and painters. you walk into a store for basic groceries and wind up with groceries and pipe cleaners, and finger paints, and some nifty watercolor set on sale for 75% off, and a couple of bottles of rubbing alcohol (or cheap terps) to help clean some stubborn acrylic paints off your nice set of art brushes while looking through the seasonal art supply stash of your favorite grocery/item store while wondering if that cheap bottle of olive oil on isle 3 could be used as a basic oil paint thinner for an art wash project without running all over the studio carpet.

writers are no different. you will walk into stores or bookstores (or heck, anywhere there is some form of paper products and accoutre'mou) and subconciously start acquiring things that are within your current financial budget and you will start to stockpile those things into your personal home environment. it's a gradual process that happens over years that you won't recognize until your closest acquaintences visit your home and remark how cozy a library you've built for yourself, or how goblin(cottage)core you've grown over the years.

this is normal...

yes, you will acquire fancy notebooks by sheer instinct, and then proceed to completely ignore them in favor of the cheap dollar store composition notebooks (or ring binders full of cheap loose leaf school notebook paper, or a 30 pack of post it notes pads on sale in stationary isle, or that weird roll of blank cash register tape you carry in your backpack for no reason other than if you need some quick paper to jot down an idea) that are rough and tumble for everyday use while your fancy notebooks gather dust in visually appealing places in your home. yes, you will cultivate borderline fetishes for certain ink pens and writing tools (i have tin lunch boxes (plural) full of unsharpened pencils. for one, i love the esthetic and handfeels of a clutch of pencils in my off hand while i write, for the other, well....one never knows when they will need a pencil...better to be prepared than to be without.) yes, you will acquire research materials (books) in stackable quantities out of habit because you think you need them to develop a certain character or concept. you may even develop certain fashion habits while writing (like comphy clothes, a hooded robe, or favorite PJ's that put you in a writing mood...both at home and in public. though the fuzzy PJ bottoms may raise eyebrows at the coffee shops.)

as for the hearts of enemies, feline familiars, and makeshift magical talismans...that's all personal choice and general reflections of the individual writer. if that's what you want in your life, moar power to ya, you do you boo boo.

but the coffee mugs WILL randomly spawn in your cupboards for no reasons other than someone gifted you one, random strange acquisition (oft through parental intrusion), and/or you forgot about them(plural) over the years leading you to question your sanity on why you have so many tea cups/mugs to begin with, how they got there, and a heated internal debate about the need to go to the store for more tea/coffee to justify the ownership and usage of such a unique collection of hot berevage service containers.

in conclusion,

you don't really have to do anything other than to exist and to write. the rest is just an outward manifestation of subconcious acquisitions into your daily life and will accumulate naturally over time.

i mean, if you are seriously concerned about acquiring the stuff n' things of writing. I always advise taking it to it's most logical and most absurd extremes and comparing the two.

most logical is for you to take a picture of your favorite writing spot in your home, continue on writing, and after a decade of writing and living, you look around at your surroundings and compare it to the starting picture/s for all the subtle changes in your life that have happenned because you are a writer. (works for any art, and any medium.)

the most absurd extreme is to rush out and spend an insane amount of money on writey stuff and things while dressing strangely and cackling at nothing while furiously scribling into a comically large leather bound tome notebook with a quill pen in public spaces while trying to converse with anyone who is not completley weirded out, and will still engage you at that point, in shakespearian english.

the logical first is the natural lifecycle of any artist, in any medium. given enough time, you will surround your nests with the things that are a reflection of yourself. The absurd latter is a rediculous characterization of a writer person as told throught the lense of parody.

well, we have the usual assortment of lost souls, Adam... the misaligned, the just plain lost. the usual. oooh, here's one for you. a former soldier who died trying to save innocent civilians.

"really? why are they here of all places? don't they usually get the express fast pass for self sacrifice? this is all highly irregular..."

I know....normally, they go to the gates and get to chat with peter, and take the ol' walk down memory lane and eventually come to the realization they were worthy all along. somehow, this one asked to come here on their own accord.

"that's not uncommon amongst the lost, but to not even try the gates...well, that's just plain weird."

what should we do, adam?

"has anyone tried to talk with them yet?"

no, they just stand at the river. sometimes silently weeping, or they just sit and stare off into the darkness. they ignore most voices and other lost souls who try to speak with them. almost like they are waiting for something.

"Curious...i wonder what?"

Should we try the memory regression? it may lend a clue we can use to assist them.

"worth a try."

the mists rise around the soldier where bits of his life play out. the usual childhood sins, normal human behaviors and desires, his enlistment into the army, boot camp, the aggression, murder....death. the soldier just stares through the mists waiting for punishment. there is a sudden sharp intake of breath as a scene plays out. a certain batttlefield, enemy combattants, explosions, the images of the soldier shooting across as his platoon advances on fortifications. the sounds of rapid heartbeats as he enters the building, shots ring out. the cries of the wounded and dying. seeing the blood of other members of his squad, the anger and hatred, blind rage. then the quiet. firing into an alcove on a sweep. the dead eyes of the teenage child holding a rifle with a bomb pack strapped to their back. the dead eyes. the silent watchers hear the sob coming from the soldier standing at the river as the images are projected. this was the moment. guilt.

"so that was the reason....they want to be punished."

yes adam, this one still carries the burden of guilt upon their shoulders like the weight of eons not realizing what this moment did to save them.

"can we reach them in time?"

anything is possible, the real question is if the soldier can forgive themselves after.

"find the kid..."

yes, adam....

the mists herd the soldier on past the river to a clearing. it's sparsley bare, one lone gnarled tree with spindly leaves cast slight shadows underneath a pale sky. the soldier rests beneath it's branches.

bob and adam find the kid. it took several routes through heaven, and a couple of backtracks till they found the area where the kid's people were all residing in their own little slice. they sit the kid down by a crystal river and explain the situation. the kid looks slightly troubled and tells adam they think it's their fault the man went to hell. adam assures the kid that's not the reason, and asks if he would be willing to drop down for a bit to lend a hand. without hesitation this child asks to go get the man. the kid's family give him hugs and touch hands to lips, forehead, and heart while reciting the ancient blessings of their people for his journey. the three descend back down into hell hand in hand.

Adam, do you think this will work?

"hopefully, bob. hopefully. Normally it's easy....give a soldier something to believe in again, build a stage there and let them die again in hell as attonement with a visit from an angel dressed as a valkerie, or sage, or whatever that soul believed in and show them the way to heaven...it worked for Virgil and Ciscero, only it doesn't require as many steps as they once took."

so you hold out hope for this one, eh?

"there is always hope, bob, it's the one thing the creator gave the soul to deal with trauma. we can only hope this soul finds forgiveness within itself. we simply play our parts as the architects of a lost soul's passing into the beyond."

the three touch down at the edge of the clearing, the stage set for attonement. bob and adam smile down at the kid, and gesture for him to approach the man.

the kid walks barefoot into the clearing. the simple desert robe gleaming in the pale sky's light. he hesitates near the edge of the tree seeing the shadowed glimpse of a hunched soldier sitting in the hollow of the tree and hears the gentle sobs comming from the man.

"As-salamu alaikum" says the boy as he smiles and touches hand to head and heart.

the soldier peers across folded arms, a single tear falls down their cheek as they brokenly utter back "Wa alaikum assalam" in an approximation of the language they had briefly learned during their many tours of service.

no other words needs be said. the boy and the man sit there beneath the tree and weep the tears that were long in coming. the man asks for forgiveness, the boy graciously gives. time has no meaning there so they sit and talk. they talk of their lives, how they lived, how they died, and at the end of it all the boy stands, stretches out his hand and asks the soldier to join him. the man hesitates because they never felt worthy of god's grace. the boy says there are people waiting to see the soldier again, and hold out his hand.

the old soldier takes the boy's hand and together they walk into the gates of heaven as friends.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Adam, did we witness a miracle?

"i don't know, bob...maybe? the creator works in mysterious ways. wouldn't you call this part of hell a miracle in unto itself?"

I wouldn't know, i'm a demon after all and not privy to the workings of higher powers. i'm assigned here same as you. personally i'm more of a fire and mental pitchforks kind of guy, but big D must have some reason to allow this all to exist. i'd rather crack a whip than play mary poppins to all the lost souls out there any day.

"come on now bob, where's the fun in all that. come along now, we've got a nice pagan with an exestential crisis down by the docks we've got to sort through. wouldn't it just be a kick in the pants for them to figure out all the old stories are true and valhalla is but another facet of the afterlife. worked for that nice hindi fella last week, and what about the bhuddist? we gave them nine hells to walk through on their way to nirvanna and their grandma was kind enough to come down to collect them, even got some dumplings for all our troubles. cheer up buddy, it's a new eternity every single week."

*sigh* oh well, if you say so....still think you ought to let me wear the spiky costume every once in awhile for dramatic effect. i've still got a reputation to maintain after all.

let's see, where to begin...Ah Ha! a brief recap...

Magic is as common as water, air, earth, and fire. carry some basic ingredients and tools, know the right words, and can scrawl a passing sigil down on a leaf, stick bark, or bit of parchment and presto wiggly hands (or whatever pretentious movement is currently en vouge with the court and towers)...magic will happen.

(especially fun when you teach the children how to build tiny mud golems with bits of spider silk, a leaf sigil, some grass, a bird feather, and a mud ball and then hold messy mock battles by the creekside to see who controls the water and ultimately the right to call themselves the mud king/queen....good times. i miss the sounds of children's laughter.)

sometime in the last century, there arose a trend amongst the nobles and magical tower muckety-mucks that all magic should be only the birthright and legacy of their peoples and no other. they passed laws forbidding outside use, common practice, or anything remotely useful and productive for the common people behind layers of buracracy and royal red tape. this, of course, has led to magical services being sold at a premium, and ever increasing stupid magical monkey-jumping-through-hoops unnessary steps to achieve simple goals. it's only gotten worse over the years, as wizards, mages, and sorcerers insist on only using the most expensive possible ingreidents to do the most butt-numbingly simple procedures (and to charge the most asinine prices imaginable to maintain the illusion of power and control) which puts most common helpful magics out of the price range and pockets of the masses. all by design.

Me? yes, yes...i know. I'm a mage, and i like to think of myself as one of the last damn good ones.

let me make an attempt to explain...long before all the royal dumbfeckery, and tower interference, i was THE hedge mage (capital T.H.E., which was some other mage's inside joke within their enclave that stood for "The Heathen Engineer"). the wizard of practicality, the sorcerer of simplicity, i could weave magic into useful forms as easy as it is for you to breathe. i learned shortcuts, and efficiencies that shaved precious time and energy off the casting resulting in close instantanous effects. my services were highly sought in the early days as i could accomplish more with less. i was the mage, other mages sought out, when things went poorly, or the crown needed a quick fix for problems they already made. getting woken up at 3am by distraught midwives to assist with difficult births, or wounds too grevious to heal with traditional means. That was the job, and i did it well.

flash forward a hundred years, and now it's all "sorcery for the highest bidder.", "Mages for Cash.", and "wizards for the wealthy!" they've managed to turn magic into a money crop to be utterly controlled and carefully harvested to the exclusion of all but the most wealthy and powerful...and quite frankly, that really pisses me off.

remember when i talked about the small mud golems? yeah, that kid's toy spell. I teach it to every kid i meet. for one, beause it's fun, and the other is because all i need to do, is to teach them the other sigil to turn a simple toy mud golem into an enourmous emergency response golem capable of leveling terrain, basic search and rescue, and general security. a little trick i picked up in the east continent when i saw their massive terracotta guardians, and figured out the litany needed to craft the sigils necessary for movement and obedient control. i've also embedded saftey protocols into the sigils for the tiny toy mud golems. if a child is in danger, the sigils activate to turn a toy golem (or any sufficent nearby material) into a guardian golem. remember that giant housefire blaze that swept through the lower wards a few years ago? how there were almost no casulties but a lot of mud that got baked into hard clay mounds that they found the people safely inside each and every one, a little parched but none the worse for wear? you're welcome...i taught all the lower ward kids how to build mud golems ages ago. the monthly pit tournaments were always a highlight of my day watching what new and exciting mud creations the kids came up with to battle in the dirt arena. the rewards were always a bag of sweets and another micro lesson on sigil crafting so the kids could build better golems for the tournament (as long as they kept them small). we're able to do all this, because a few of the royal's kids and some nobel's brats pestered me enough to teach them the basic sigils, and now the tournament is a somewhat respectable monthly affair in the lower wards, and i only have to mud soak a mouthy noblewoman or lord once in a blue moon when they get haughty in the pits. the mud Pits, to me, are neutral ground for nobel and commoner, and i even hung up a huge mud sign that read "check your crowns and brass hats at the door, no titles allowed beyond this point." only the mud matters here. it's messy, and squishy, gloopy and gooey, but to all the kids...it was a playground paradise. Thank goodness the pits are near the rivers so the kids can get somewhat clean again before going home. it's all good clean fun in the messiest sort of manner possible.

but i digress....

I, and a couple of others like me, exist in this realm because, for one...there is always a need for mages by almost everyone regardless of social strata. and the other is that the king owes me some favors for special services rendered long ago and i not too politely mentioned (with slight demonstration) that i could entirely fill up his castle with mud golems turing the kingdom's castle into the prettiest dirt block this side of the mountain ranges, and would not loose sleep over doing so. (to the excited cheers of his kids who actually wanted to see a castle filled up with millions of toy mud golems in one go.) we have a royal understanding of sorts...i keep doing the helpful things i've been doing all these years to keep the kingdom safe while the towers and courts turn a blind eye to my personal business and dealings, while i pretend that i couldn't easily take down all their high towers with a bit of sulfur, a dragon scale, one moderate fire sigil, and the hair from an imp on a tuesday with time enough left over to grab a meat pie and a tankard of ale from the nice new tavern down the street in the poor district from that lovely couple that moved in down from the highlands with their exceptionally blessed children who can weave magic almost as proficiently as myself, and who graciously allowed me to train them in the ways of magical simplicity in exchange for the occasional meat pie and ale while teaching them how to be helpful in an age where doing so is frowned upon by the current magical conclave. it's a living, and one i'm happy to utilize for the betterment of all.

sometimes the kids suprise even these old tired eyes with some new discovery that saves time and effort in the long run. i managed to pull a few royal strings and get the eldest officially registered with the court as a healing mage with a lot of potential. though sometimes i have to show her a more correct path to accomplish her castings because the court teachers are somewhat pathtic in their instructions (and i suspect trying to deliberately sabotage her to maintain their own lofty positions and ambitions) the harshest lessons she has yet to learn about the current magical heirarchy is how to hide her true talents from prying eyes, and how to preform what looks like healing miracles while making it look all the while like it was the work of another, or sheer divine intervention without drawing obvious attention to her talents. a difficult challenge, but one i believe she's capable of handling on her own one day. in the meantime, i take her along with me to various locations around the kingdom to practice with the rural folks who can't afford regular medical care from the courts. She's getting damn good at making it look like the person healed on their own with simple blessings, and she's almost mastered delayed castings. having the healing spell trigger a few hours after she's long departed by adding in a degenerating trigger timer into the sigils before applying the healing to a person. makes this old hedge bastard proud to see it. Teaching her magical slight of hand to hide what she's really doing. came in handy on the road to the hinterlands when we came across a party that had been badly attacked by a bandit raid. the court mage with them was doing all they could to heal, and would have nearly cost the lives of a couple of that party had my apprentice not intervened and managed to cast quick heals to stablize the more deathly injured party members while making it look like she was just lending power assistance to the court mage without appearing to overwrite the court mage's healing sigil with one of her own. some of my best teaching, that was, and made me proud watching her micro adjust the sigils on the fly underneath her power casting to where the court mage couldn't see what she had done. of course we both hemmed and hawed about how good the court mage was to the rest of the party, while exchanging knowing looks between each other and just happy no one died that day. I finally knew she was ready to take her own steps into the world the day we visited a temple hospital in a nearby city and she was drifting like a heavenly angel between all the sick and injured on her own, masking her sigil fixes with blessing cantrips and hidden timers beneath the watchful eyes of the senior mages without them once seeing what she had done. i knew then that the kingdom had inherited a powerful healer indeed. it was a good day. I gave her one of my hearty practical travel robes (lots of hidden pockets), and put the finishing touches on her staff of office as a parting gift along with a copy of my personal research notes on practical healing and how to shortcut sigils to achieve acquired results i had been working on for a long time. the book coded to only be visible to her eyes only...to anyone else it looked like nonsense herbal poetry written by some lovesick poet enamoured with a stack of hay.

In her hands, the book revealed a lifetime of secrets (like how to make a powerful bloodclotting poultice from salt clay, spider silk, cotton reed, and moss bark for sealing open piercing wounds until a healing cantrip was able to knit the wound closed. or my personal favorite of the firemint balm rub that warms the joints and relieves pain with the secondary effect of minor healing from cuts and abrasions. farmers love that one.) the rest of the book was my notes on various sigils and how to hack them to splice desired parts to draft new sigils on the fly for whatever need a caster may have. to the court and towers, my personal book is almost considered blasphemy and heresy to the established order because the simple premise is that anyone with even the slightest inkling of magical potential could create any number of countless powerful sigils and useful cantrips with a simple bee's wax crayon and a rub of hearth ash on a river pebble and be able to almost fell a dragon or any number of foul beastie on a whim. sort of counterproductive to a shady institutionalized grift if everyone and their pet dog could accedentally implode a thief by tossing a cow patty with a chicken feather sticking out the top, (a pinch of sulfur, one nail, a robin's egg, and a copper penny inside the patty, then gently placing the stinky mess into the entrance of whatever you were trying to protect) only to wake up the next morning to the smell of brimstone and a pile of scrap cloth and thieves tools. So yeah, i've had to go to great lengths to protect basic uncommon knowledge from those who would seek to profit greatly from it.

I wish her all the luck in the world, and hope she gets great use out of the gift items.

as for the quality of my work, i consider it practical over pretentious. a farmer doesn't need a fancy gold powered plow to till their fields (like every tower mage tries to peddle on the workforce), they need rich fertile soil, easy access to clean water, and the means to protect their livestock from the ravages of predation, illness, and pestilence. simple things to confound the wise, as the old scholars used to say. far better a simple clean water sigil etched into the foundation stones of a well, than some gaudy, months long to prepare, expensive contraption that does the same thing at three times the cost. sigils are fairly easy to protect and maintain, and i often train the buyers on how to care for and repair worn sigils on equipment and structures for free. for one, it's far less costly, and for the other, it frees me up to persue the things im interested in learning or researching instead of having to be on call all the time to fix some gods aweful redundantly complicated mechanism all the time. like i said, the instutionalized grift is distasteful and real.

Shoddy? mine? of course they would say shoddy...if your entire line of work is built upon the predation of the masses, and anyone who came along who could do the exact same work with minimal effort and expense, wouldn't you go about trying to besmirch, belittle, and tarnish the reputation of that person in a vain attempt to protect your institutionalized grift? wouldn't you do everything in your power to remove any obstacle that stood in your way to achieving absolute control by dictating or manipulating laws, or placing the biggest obstacles in the path of your competition? when you finally figure that one out, and you'll pretty much understand the entirety of mercantilism, and why bad people are allowed to exist and operate under the law, and why the greedy never seem to be punished for their sins. That's why i don't advertise. those who know, know. the people who seek me out, know what i can do, what i'm worth, and that i'll do my best to fix a problem in the most simple, efficent, and fundamentaly permanent manner as i am able to perform. No flash, no pagentry, no pretentions. just you, me, a few sigils, maybe a cantrip or two, and a blessing. maybe feed me, offer me some small token, owe me a favor if you are hard pressed, or point me in the direction of someone who may have something i need and are willing to work a trade or deal. that's how this works. power and wealth are for fools and those who lack real power of their own. i have use for neither in my life which is why i mostly operate under the radar and have garnered a clientele relationship that crosses boundaries and social strata. I'm a budget hedge mage, that's all anyone really needs to know.

so....you need something? or is this a social call? cause i've got to go help heal a herd of sick dairy cattle a couple of villages over and on the way i need to find some wheat stalks, some holly, and scribble a few dozen sigils on some scrap paper the butcher was kind enough to gift me for fixing the lady of the house's broken ankle. i could use a lift in your cart if you are heading in that general direction while i scribble out the sigils. otherwise, have a blessed day, and call on me when ya really need some stuff done.

The visitor had studied human culture from afar, witnessing the transmissions, hearing the radio waves, seeing humanity through the lense of entertainment, art, and artifice. before it was a rather large door, old and age worn, the reddish hue of metal oxidation upon the hinges, lintels, and metal banding holding the door solid. off to the right of the door sat a little roll top desk where sat something humanish, but not quite. the mental projection was in flux. one minute a man, the next a woman, followed by shifting into fauna, sometimes a rock, a feline, a canine, ursine before shifting back into something resembling it's target.

"welcome....please, have seat and let us converse for a bit before you proceed." the shifting projection smiles. "for ease of conversation, you may call me Ego, if it will help."

"what is this?" the alien invader queries.

Ego again smiles that little knowing smile of countless conversations it's already had with itself. "This, is where we meet. a most fitting setting for an invader, wouldn't you say. a neutral ground within this mind where we can talk and assess the situation before deciding what to do next."

"Is this all that you are?" the invader intones...

"hardly, look...." ego waves it's appendage and light and sound start to fill the dome. happy images of open fields and smiling people familiar to the mind projected on the dome's walls, the sounds of childrens laughter, and animals barking fill the room. "you must have seen a lot of this on your descent down through this mind, layers of happiness, sadness, intimacy, and loss..."

"yes, a lot of contradictions for your species within one mind. Why this?" it looks around at the drab surroundings while gesturing with an apendage of it's own. "Why a dome? why so dark? why a door?"

Ego sighs, "ah, simple. if you think of the human mind as a tall tower, one in which you've traveled downward through the layers to reach here, you've reached the sub-basement floor. beyond this point is hell as this mind sees it. I am the guardian at the gate between Ego and ID. oh sure, you've already met a lesser aspect of Id on your way down Yeah, that silly little thing that told bad dad jokes and playing pranks on the rest of the memories. it's mostly harmless, the spark of creation, if you will, that allows this mind to dream and create at will. that's why we are here, in this room, at this moment. Little Id thought it would be a good be a good fit for this meeting."

"interesting, are all humans build in this fashion?" the eyes of the alien invader briefly flash some sort of interest before resuming their stoic countenance again.

Ego cocks it's head to one side with a slight grin. "I don't know, maybe, maybe not. i only know this mind. some minds might be like an open book (images of books appear whose pages are turned by countless hands.) while some minds might be layers of color like a rainbow (images of emotions play out overhead, each one tinted a different hue.) still, some minds may be like mazes of intellect persuing the answers to the questions of the universe (images of scientists, mathmeticians, astrophysicists, and engineers briefly flash overhead dutifully persuing their chosen fields.) This mind? this mind dreams. a lot. sometimes it feels it dreams too much. the warrens of it's mind cluttered with the detritus of milllions of influences, and the occasional means to extrude those dreams into the waking world. It is an average mind, and one unique to itself and no other if that answers your question."

"Thank you. and the door?" the invader points to the mental structure.

"As i said, i am but the guardian. i am constructed in this moment to warn you about the dangers down in the ID. I cannot stop you from delving deeper, but i encourage you not to dive too deep. some still waters should not be disturbed. Beyond this point lays what most of human polite society calls the evils of humanity. The darkest parts of an individual's psyche. the primal fear and desires of a millenia of evolution tamped, coralled, and buried deep within the mind to protect ourselves from self injury and bodily harm to others. it is not a place of honor in the mind, no great deeds are remembered here, and if you were wise you would flee this place and never return. if you were wise..." Ego just stares blankly at the invader within the last phrasing.

the alien presence chooses to ignore ego's warnings in it's persuit of information about humanity, and rises from the swiftly dissapearing chair to move towards the door. it has to mentally push hard against the braces of the door. the sound of thunder and earthquakes within the created liminal space loud in the invader's auditory receptors. The door resists, so the invader applies it's vast mental disciplines to break down the structure so it can enter. wood creaks and splinters, old iron banding buckles and wrenches from it's moorings as the door falls inward of the frame into blackness. the invader steps through....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

shortly, what seemed like a nightmare later, a large glowing hand reaches down into the blackened mental depths and wrenches the torn and broken psychic carcass of the invader from the sea of hands admist a chorus of voices rising from abbyss screaming "get OUT!" and tosses it nonchalantly into a large chair that appears back into the dark dome of the mind.

"heh, hi. welcome back...i'm ego's big brother....you can call me Chuck for brevities sake. find out what you needed to? ya know, ego did warn ya what was beyond that mental representation of a door. you could have just left it at that, had a plesant conversation with lil' sis, and been on your merry way no worse for wear, but noOOOOOoooo....you had to go digging like a dumbass down in the basement. I hope it was worth it ya sorry bastard. I'm going to end up spending months beating the nightmares back down behind this door again..... before i kick you out of here, i just got to say....among our planet's saying and euphamisims, for this encounter, the phrase "let sleeping dogs lay." comes to mind (while images of sleeping dogs and aggressive canines flash overhead in the dome). there's a reason why humanity buries their evils deep inside and bind them back with chains of discipline, morals, and heaps of kindness. inside each human is a monster buried deep beneath an ocean of conciousness, bound to the darkest depths hopefully never to see the light of day. push too deeply, dig too harshly, and you will find out just how violently monsterous humanity can truly be. so when you go back to whatever misbegotten hole in the cosmos you crawled out of, tell your masters this..."the human race can either be a good friend, or the most terrible enemy you will ever face. Come in peace and friendship, and that hand will be offered to you in return. come in violence and death, and we will heap that shit upon you 10 fold and giggle while we do it....your choice." Now GET THE FUCK OUT!!!!

-----------------------------

involk scoutship. one galactic standard week later.

acting medical officers log:

"it's been a length of time since the chief medical inquisiton officer attempted to make contact with a newly discovered race out on the fringe of the great hub. Reports have been filed with central bureau and inquest regarding the incident. with reprimands all around. the chief medical inquisitor has been warned before of attempting mental intrusion into a prospective member species, and now it's paid the price, which worries higher command at the notion of making contact with so-called "Humanity". Chief medical inquisitor is currently heavily sedated in it's pod pending a full mental scrub and psychic rework at the nearest medical temple. it took several thralls to restrain the inquisitor after returning from it's mental journey. screams and trills of grasping hands rending flesh, copulation and horrific ultra violence, the laughter of children, flaying skin, cruicifiction, and other psychic horrors a gibbering blather from the mouth of the medical inquisitor. all attempts at getting a coherent narrative and debrief of the encounter have temporarily failed which has led many in the medical staff to question the wisdom of trying to make contact with a type 3 civilization on the cusp of reaching type 2 status when one of their best was rendered mentally unstable through their standard contact with a target species. during the last rest cycle, staff could hear a single phrase being repeated over and over during one of the chief medical inquisitor's restless periods while restrained in it's pod.

I see the ranger laying in a heap to one side of the battlefield. this fills me with rage, and anger thinking of the worst possible outcome. I focus my gaze on his still form for the slightest of pauses, and note the slight rise and fall of labored breathing. Good. still with us.

when i was around 10 cycles of the great wheel old, my father took me up into the mountains to long forbidden places as a test of skill and manhood. there we faced hardship after hardship, all the while, my father teaching me the old stories and how to defeat monsters in the most efficient manner. Old places, where the curses of ancient humanity still lingered after milllenia, and the abhorrent roamed unchecked and wild. these were the playgrounds of my youth, and lessons most harshly earned.

the wizard is shouting profanities in my general direction again, some plea to unseen gods to spare them from the stupidity of barbarians and their ilk. I've learned to oft ignore the petty mewlings of magic weilders too weak to adequately defend themselves from lesser creatures. why should i harken unto someone who let themselves become gravely injured at the weakest encounter of a goblin scouting party. I focus my thoughts to tune out the wizard.

I recognize this particular branch of evil. I've encountered something like it before in my youth. the fetid stench of sulfur mixed with rusty iron. A fabrication, something unnatural and manufactured. the slight flinching movements of it's limbs, i know this...

the healer is trying to get to the ranger. i hold her back, blocking egress to the left because i've seen the reach of this monstrosity and know that she'd be in deadly range of the creature if allowed to continue. the paladin is standing in the circle of combat there within the radius of the monster's reach, the paladin's shield taking the brunt of blows, but there is now a stalemate. he can't attack, cannot progress forward to victory, spending all his effort defending from the enemie's attacks.

my memories flash back to my 16th cycle, when my hunting party was ambushed by a few golems way up in the highlands. creatures of the old world. tough as stone, impervious to most attacks outside of great mace or blunt hammer attacks. They all behaved the same, turning their bodies to face foreward towards their targets. flanking was difficult, but not impossible. I saw my openning and lept past the golems while the rest of the hunting party held their attention. It was then i noticed the glowing sigil and shimmering stone imbedded in their backs, and attacking the new found targets, I was able to defeat those hulking monsters of the past. It was then that i learned from the elders the sins of humanity and all that they had wrought. I gained in knowledge that day, and was sad in the learning thereof.

I feint towards the right, trying to draw it's attention away from the paladin and healer allowing her to make her way left towards the fallen ranger to render assistance. I need to draw it away from that area, it's the most practical course of action to allow for the most successful outcome. No one dies today! I won't allow it.

another old memory surfaces. in my 19th cycle i was taken to a hidden grotto by the elders upon completing the trials of ascention to become a hunter and protector of the clan. The grotto was an old library, full of the spoils and trophies of battles long since won. Knowledge gleaned from a thousand generations of hunters, tribesmen, and tribeswomen. the weaknesses of a thousand foes. the most efficient means to defeat monsters. what was valuable when harvesting a kill. Identifying the signs and behaviors of enemies. lifetimes of knowledge to glean and grow.

the monster has all but ignored the paladin, by my design. this is a good thing. the paladin needs the break to regroup and hopefully mindful enough to protect the healer, and i can't find out what i need to know with him in the way. I pick up a heavy chained censer where it fell from the ceiling onto the combat floor and begin to swing the long length around my head. If all goes according to design, i should find out what i need to know in the next few moments. if not, well....today is not a bad day to die after all. at least i'll be taking out a great evil with me when i go. My clan can honorably celebrate my funeral in a spectacular fashion, and my legacy will be preserved in the grotto for future generations to learn and draw inspiration from. i am content.

the enemy lunges at me in a mindless rage. at the farthest apex of my swing of the heavy censer, i let out a mighty battlecry like my ancestors of old did, and pour a burst of strength into the return swing which wraps thick chain swiftly around the monster twice before the heavy head of the censer impacts heavily into the back of the massive creature. i hear a sickly thud and slight metallic clang of false bones, but no tell-tale crack or tinkle of broken vials, shattered crystals, or mangled machinery. the monster bellows rage before tripping on what remained of the heavy chain that i whipped in the counter direction as a distraction. Damn! not good, not what i needed to hear. when the monster fell i was able to briefly see it's back. where there should have been a ring of glowing sigils, maybe a stone or two, or some sort of contraptive mechanry embedded within, there was a sickly concaved crater oozing where once it's control would have rested. What devilry is this? the signs all pointed to a golem, or flesh construction of the old world, but this? this should not be possible. with no control mechanism, this golem should not be able to function, much less move about independently like it has been since the fight started. think! I'm sure the elders spoke to me about this decades ago....i just need to remember.

the wizard finally finished their mumblings and finger waving, don't know what they were trying to accomplish, but to me, it's always too little, too late. some sort of barrier forms over the flesh golem, but i know it won't last long. unnatural things tend to have resistances to magics and the wizards attempts will be for naught if we can't find a way to kill it permanently.

the ranger comes to with the help of the healer, he got smashed up pretty badly so it's going to be awhile before they are hale and whole again. wordlessly the ranger points to a little alcove indention off to the right of where the golem began attacking. I think that's where the ranger was standing when they got sideswiped by the golem. there must be something there we havn't seen before.

the paladin is conferring with the wizard about what the party should do next, with one eye on the bound golem struggling on the floor against the heavy chain and the wizard's barrier. it's lifeless eyes scanning everything trying to find a way free, stretching the bonds as far as it was able to. i can hear the straining creak of the wrapped chain, and the sound of resistance tensioned against a magical barrier. the slight electrical crackle of tremendous force against immovable object. I also hear under baited breath what they think of me when they think i'm out of earshot and cannot hear them. we're not out of danger, yet, why is the rest of the party acting like we won? this is just the warm-up for round two. i feel it in my bones, like that tingle at the nape of the neck when you know someone is watching you from hidden places. for so called intelligent and enlightened humans that come from what they call civilization, their situational awareness leaves much to be desired, i know of 6 cycles old children back in the creech that are more aware of their surounding environment than these people. I'm constantly amazed that they've managed to survive this long on the earth with what little they know of monsters and basic survival knowledge. the ranger gets a pass in my ledger, at least they have some semblance of situational awareness (when not pummeled to an almost bloody pulp), and know how to basic survive in the wilds...it's their general monster knowledge i tend to question, but other than that, they're alright and would pass a basic muster back home.

the healer is helping the ranger across the floor towards the entrance and to relative saftey, i can tell from the bruising around the neck and upper chest area that the ranger still has a few broken ribs, a collarbone even with the healers touch, and can't really talk at the moment. he keeps trying to elder forest hand sign a danger at the wizard and paladin, but they are too busy coming up with a plan to notice. the ranger has those pleading eyes, and keeps siging danger while trying to point at the plinth in the tiny alcove. i notice a misshapened lump proped up in the shadow upon the plinth, sometimes, i hate that i'm right and didn't catch it early enough to swiftly act.

there is a sudden explosion. bits of shattered chain and the force of a broken magical barrier knocking everyone off their feet. the monster screams it's rage into the sky. the wizard was protected by the paladins shield and begins to chant another barrier again as the paladin recovers enough to stand between the rest of the party and the foul monster. i know what i have to do. it's in my blood.

the helm is stifling. it narrows my vision so i am forced to focus only on what is in front of me, to the exclusion of most distractions. in battle against monsters it's a boon that helps me hone my concentration only on the target i need to eliminate. I take off the helm to the cries of dismay from the rest of the party. I need to see the bigger picture, and to do that, i need to breathe. the target is small. the wizard calling me a stupid barbarian, the paladin calling me crazy, the horrified look of the healer thinking i've lost my simple mind. the ranger staring blankly with that look of knowing, and then the frown. I nod. to those who know, it's a sign and affirmation of intent. to those who don't know, it just looks like another barbarian about to do something completley reckless that to them seems stupid or foolish. it's all calculated and planned based on a life of combat, honor, and skill.

I reach behind me to withdraw a small piece of home. an heirloom handed down from father to son and so forth down my lineage for generations. the folded bone axe is ancient. chiped and shaped from the pelvic bones of a young dragon, it's blade edges lined with sharpened mithril, each blade tip capped with the diamond hard venom teeth of a wyvern. each half nestled cleanly against the other until one twisted the haft handle allowing the blades to spread open into it's final scalloped batwing glory. a child's toy that was meant to teach one how to hunt around crowded trees to hit game hiding behind them. the fluted hollows of the blades acting like an airfoil to sharply curve the thrown blade around an object to strike a target beyond.

a reminder of home, a makeshift altar to my gods, and of a promise unkempt. i kiss the haft, shout my fury to the heavens, and throw it at the monster bellowing before me.

it's a beautiful sight, watching that toy fly, always brings me a sense of joy watching it arc knowing i will hit what i aim for. i've had lot's of practice in my youth to the point of almost absolute control. the right flick of the wrist, the proper release, the slight adjustments from my fingers as the haft leaves my hand to allow for optimal flight... after all, the target is small.

I spread my arms wide in the face of mindless fury ready to die, as i stare deep into the monsterous golem's lifeless eyes, and shout my final defiance into it's form willing it to cease to exist.

*whoosh.... ka-thunk* (cracke/tinkle)*

*massive thud*

____________________________________

several months later at a pub.

Ranger: "hey, remember that temple we were sent to retrieve that tome for the wizards council?"

Barbarian: "Yes, i recall the deed, i also recall you getting nearly mauled to death by a foul creation."

Ranger: "i've always been curious to know, did you always know how to defeat it? I mean, that's something your people prepare for? right? i still can't get my head around the paladin's notion that you beat it with a crude toy! i'd have never believed it if i didn't partially see it for myself through a fog of pain. still think i was dreaming the whole thing."