Oh holy night josh groban karaoke

The week went by and everyone kind of just forgot the last session until we all met outside the game shop and saw Barbarian and Druid waiting for us. Seems the weight of the last session had just come crashing back down on them and they were debating on going in at all. Bard and Paladin were already there chatting it up with DM and seeming to have fun. A little talking and we all decided to see where this lead.
Of course as we traveled DM insisted that we roleplay our actions to the extreme as if she wanted a reward for what she did last time. None of us really were in the mood and each explained in their own diplomatic way that we would like to skip to the next town. However Paladin was all up for roleplay. After all we had gotten to explain our backstory so he should get a turn. We agreed thinking it wouldn't take long for him to get on the same page as the rest of us.
Two hours later I have pulled out my laptop to work on some writing, and everyone else is looking at their phones or books while Paladin is still talking. He apparently loves the intense roleplay of describing in great detail all his actions with a hammy over the top way of speaking. His backstory is a line of adventures stolen from his favorite video games. Defeating evil Barron Von Bowser to save Princess Peaches, taking the head of the arch wizard Gannon to lift the curse on a sleeping princess, slaying the evil dragon of the north known as Seath the scalesess to save a blind holy woman, and riding off into the sunset on an axe beak with a young maiden after beating an evil lord named Sephiroth. Just to name a few. This kept on to the point I wanted to remind him he was level two but DM was loving it and on the edge of her seat.
Our saving grace was Bard who spoke up and said that we would break for camp. The next town was two nights away so might as well get one night behind us. Again we got a random encounter roll and again "Oh my this never happens you are all just so lucky, no encounter isn't that great?" The rest of us are angry but we remain diplomatic. Asking, pleading that we have an encounter so we can level up. Everyone wanted to fight the dragons and we needed levels but nope. She had played for FIFTEEN YEARS and THIS WAS THE RULES.
Another hour of stolen game cut scenes from Paladin and we made camp once more. Once again lucky us, no encounter. We begged offering to even roleplay with the enemies having banter and what not. No dice, it was the rules after all and you can't bend the rules... A bit more and we make it to town. At this point we hush Paladin, everyone is ravenous. We are rolling social skills, stopping people, asking questions, anything to get us our next job in hopes that we can level up, anything to further the story. Forget being nice, we were the rudest people you had ever met grabbing any NPC the DM said existed and ganging up on them venomously shouting. "What problems do you have in town?! Anything we don't care even if it's minor. Tell us, we'll even kill rats, got a goblin problem? Kobolds? Seen an undead? Do you just not like someone? GIVE US ANYTHING!"
Barbarian was so desperate he even asked the DM if starting a fight would be survivable and get us XP. She explained that everyone in the entire fishing city was either our level or lower and harming them wouldn't give us any XP what so ever. She went on to say that we didn't find any job hirings, the only thing people were talking about was how the fishing had dried up.
The moment we heard that Wizard, Cleric, and I in unison turned and said "DRUID! You're up. lets get you to the docks." We rushed everyone to the docks, and wanted to hire a ship. The only ship available was a war ship that was docked for resupply. We talked to the captain and paid him nearly every bit of gold we had to rent his ship. So we were out on the ocean and the druid was doing his thing in a small boat while we waited. Calling forth some fish and using a ritual speak with animals to get the information. All of us were very proud of Druid, he came back and we had the answer. Seems some creature had entered into the bay, druid pointed to a sunken single man sailing ship that we could see the mast sticking ten feet out of the water. So fairly shallow water, this is important.
Whatever had scared the fish was there. We sailed over to it and DM goes into her description. Talking about from the ship comes a massive shadow that dwarfs the ship we are on, so large it makes it look like a bath toy. The shadow swims under the ship and it takes half a minute before it is past. As it moves large tentacles are seen breaking the surface of the water.
Druid rolled nature and all of us aided him. He got a fairly high roll and DM informed us that we had just seen a Kraken. I was dumbfounded, how the heck was a Kraken living in a small sail boat when it dwarfed a war ship, and how the heck was it in this shallow of water!? So I asked "We know what it is can I look up the information?" She said ok and I asked what one she was using 3.5 or 5e it was the 5e one so I turned to it and pointed asking "You mean this?" She confirmed the CR 23 monster as the one we had just seen.
Barbarian who only looked at the picture. "Awesome!" Druid "Bet we can take that." Wizard "no we can't. It's CR 23." Barbarian "Cap!" Druid "Does this mean we have to run away again?" DM All smiles "Yep now you have an important second goal! You're so lucky."
Now I will say here I know I am in the wrong for what I did. It is always important to have good communication and talk things out, however we had tried that, I was frustrated, and I wasn't thinking straight. So I became that guy.
DM " When when you run away you have a couple of options you can go to..." Me "Nope we aren't running away. We're gunna fight it." DM "What? You can't." Me "Sure we can, it's here, we're here, we're going to fight it I know everything about them you said so lets see what we can do. Captain how many guns on this ship? Do you have harpoons big ones? How about gun powder you have cannons so how much you got?" Barbarian "So we're fighting it?" Me "Yep we're fighting it! Bring it on you big squid we're having calamari tonight!" Druid "So we can beat it?" Me "Heck no! It's impossible. That thing gets three attacks a turn can hit us on a 2, and will kill us in one hit. Barbarian might survive three hits if he's really lucky and raging. We have no chance." Druid "So why are we fighting it?" Wizard who had just looked up the stats. "Because we're fighting it!" Cleric "Bring it slimy!"
It was amazing, a moment of depression turned to a slight moment of confusion and then everyone was on board even Paladin who didn't get what was going on. Everyone was suddenly excited. Barbarian looked for the harpoons, took three of them and said he was rolling strength to bend them, didn't even wait for the DM to say if he could just rolled and explained how he was making a giant fish hook as his weapon of choice. Taking out rations and spearing them on as bait. Druid Rushed down asking how many barrels of gun powder he could find. Cleric was talking to the crew asking for anything that burned, wood, lamp oil, explosives of any kind. I went about telling everyone this was our ship and we were headed back to town why settle for what the ship had, we were going to raid the town for supplies. Druid pointed out we spent all our gold and I told him. "We are doing this for the good of the kingdom, we'll steal what we need and pay them back later. Lets get this thing!"
DM tried to gain control of her game back as we were going at a pace she couldn't handle, she said the captain was demanding we leave his ship alone and since it was the only ship he was sailing away and leaving us in the city, we couldn't have his ship.
The party was invested now though. Everyone was excited and having more fun then we had since the start. We reminded her that she stated no one was over our level so we would fight the captain and take his ship if we had to. Threatening him that if he didn't get off and leave the ship he would be dead. She relented and had the captain and crew leave. Cleric and I agreed we'd stay to guard the ship and get things ready on it while the party went to gather more things to kill the Kraken. People were looking at skills, abilities, and items. Looking through the book for anything that could help us and asking the DM if the city had it. Shop after shop the blood thirsty adventurers went demanding goods to fight off the threat. Never really telling the people why we needed it or what it was for but insisting there was a danger that would destroy the city, maybe the kingdom if they didn't cooperate. The DM wasn't given a break to process, when one question was answered another was asked. If we couldn't get something we got the next best thing. If we couldn't find a finished product we took the stuff to make it. She was having to improve on the fly and I could see it was taking a tole on her, where since the start she had a look of absolute authority and command, now she was a frazzled mess.
I would have felt bad, I should have felt bad, however from the rest of the players I heard something that I hadn't heard since day one, laugher and excitement. They didn't care I had told them it was impossible. They didn't care I had pointed out we would die and be on character generation. They now had a chance. Even if it was an impossible chance it was a chance to do something and try.
DM "Look if you do this you're all going to end up dead. You can't bet it at your level." She was trying to get us back to just running away and for a moment things stopped. Me "I hope my character doesn't die. I have a cousin in this down, he's a warlock too and he'd be so upset I think he'd go after the thing as well." Wizard laughed and joined in. "Oh yeah my sister has a shop here, if I died without saying hi to her she'd make that thing burn."
Druid and Barbarian got the message, we had all played video games. If we couldn't beat it with these characters we had a city with a population of 6000 possible back up characters to zerg rush it. So plans kept on going, players kept searching for a way to give us the best possible chance of doing this or surviving a couple of rounds because that would be an accomplishment in itself. We were making bombs, alchemical items, improvised weapons. Getting ready every spell and ability we had to try this. When gaming was called the DM and Bard left while the rest of us stayed around for probably a half hour more talking about the plan, joking, and just having fun. All of us left with a smile on our faces.
When I got home I had a message on my answering machine from DM informing me that I wasn't the DM and how dare I highjack her game. That I was a horrible player and I better fall in line because I had her crying. She made some threats about hurting herself if I didn't stop which I hope were lies meant to make me feel bad, and ended the message telling me if I called her back she would call the cops on me. A threat I wasn't going to test. I saved the message for proof later if I needed it and the week passed. When we all met at the shop the next week Bard said DM would be late. We were all still joking and having fun talking about our big plan for the TPK and making joke bets like "If we last three rounds your new character owes mine five gold." It was great.
Time passed though and no DM so we asked Bard what was up. He informed us then that she had texted. Said I ruined her game and she wasn't going to play with people who didn't understand the rules of dungeons and dragons. We broke out magic the gathering cards and played a few hands before heading home all a little disappointed that we couldn't see how far we would have gotten. A little while later I think a couple of months I was telling the story at the shop and Wizard kept making hand motions at me. I asked what was up and he face palmed saying "That's her older brother." Well I had already put my foot in my mouth voicing my displeasure so I figured one more question wouldn't hurt. "Sorry, but it was a bit of a mess of a game. This is my opinion as a player. I know she's family and all so hate me if you like but I am honest. I will ask though, how long has she actually been DMing."
The brother didn't mind and informed me that she had DMed 2 games for him, his younger brother, and their father when she was a child. That was it and they were both one shot things with their father doing most of the work. She never came back to the game shop and I think she moved states, I've never seen her since.

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It was raining the day Finnegan stumbled inside the Lucky Star.
His blonde hair was matted and plastered to his face. Blood soaked his right sleeve, and one of the lenses in his glasses was shattered.
“H-help,” he murmured. His knees hit the polished wooden floor. His glasses close behind.
The inn and tavern were quiet—most girls preferred to stay inside on rainy days. Yomi and Ravyn weren’t most girls, though. Some of the rarest Encroachers came out of hiding during the brutal San Island storms. That meant new weapons, new armor, and Bells.
They were two drinks in, celebrating a successful hunt of a pack of galatrax, when the youth tumbled through the door.
“What the hell?” Ravyn jumped to her feet, Yomi close behind.
“He’s bleeding!” Yomi hissed, rushing to his side. “[Stabilize]!”
Is this really the next man? Emberlynn, Ravyn’s mother, had always built her father as a larger-than-life figure. A man that couldn’t be felled by a little rain or surprised by a measly roach.
This… man… was tall but thin. Gangly. Like he hadn’t had a good meal in a long time.
He blinked up at Yomi. “A-are you… are you a nekomimi?”
“I’m sorry, a what?” Yomi dabbed at the bite on his arm with the napkin she’d snatched from the table.
“Mou ii.” He had the gall to look frustrated. Ravyn scoffed. “A catgirl,” he tried again.
“Oh. Yes.” Yomi looked over her shoulder at Ravyn. “We’re, um, well, we’re all catgirls.”
“Oh my God. This is the isekai jackpot.” He rubbed his eyes with his clean hand, blinking up at Ravyn. “Even if the monsters outside are a pain in the ass.”
Yomi hurried to the table, snagged her glass of water, and moved back to his side. “Here, drink this.”
“Ah. Arigatou.” He accepted the water and took a deep drink.
Ravyn had never heard so many unintelligible words in so few sentences. Which was impressive, considering who her mother was. “You didn’t fight back?” she snapped.
“Fight? With what?” He sputtered a laugh, his energy seeming to return. “Besides, why would I fight something that could so obviously kill me?”
Ravyn marched to his side and snatched his broken glasses from the floor. “To survive. Level up. Get Bells. Moron.”
“Baka!” he hissed back.
“Ravyn,” Yomi warned, her ears twitching with annoyance. “This could be new for him, remember?”
“Uh-huh. Saoirse has blessed us all with a—” She paused, squatting so she was at eye level with the newcomer. “Hey, is there a term for a small man? Like calling a young catgirl a kitten.”
“Erm, a boy?”
“Yes. Good. That will do.” Ravyn snapped the glasses in half at the thin bridge and looked at Yomi. “Saoirse has blessed us with a boy.”
“Hey, I—!” He reached for his glasses, then flinched back. His deep green eyes flickered between Ravyn and Yomi’s faces. “Nani? I don’t need my glasses anymore?”
“Saoirse’s tits, can you please speak like a normal person?” Ravyn commanded.
“Ravyn!” Yomi snarled.
He stared at her in disbelief. “How did you know I didn’t need those anymore?”
I didn’t. “Call it a hunch.” Ravyn tossed the remnants of his glasses in a nearby trash bin and wiped her hands. “Good luck in Nyarlea, boy.”
“My name is Finnegan.” He pushed Yomi’s hands away and stumbled to his feet. “Are you a bitch all of the time, or am I a special case?”
Ravyn growled, her hands balling into fists. On his feet, he was almost a head taller than her. But Finnegan was still a malnourished, ill-equipped boy. She raised one hand level to her chest and flattened her palm, the burst of flame mirrored in her violet eyes. “Want to find out?”
“Holy shit,” he stepped backward, raising an arm to block his face.
Yomi caught Ravyn’s wrist and forced it down. “She won’t hurt you.”
“Hm? Please, try me.”
He froze, then looked at Yomi. “Wait, so… [Stabilize]. That was a Spell?”
I should burn you to a crisp right now. Save the Encroachers the trouble.
“That’s right,” Yomi said, positioning herself between him and Ravyn. “I’m Yomi, by the way.”
Finnegan nodded, and his gaze returned to Ravyn. “And you are?”
“Leaving.” Ravyn turned, retrieving the Bells for their drinks from her [Cat Pack] and plopping them on the table. She came to Shulan with Yomi for an adventure. Not to team up with a feeble man who used a strange language and had no idea that Magic existed.
That was a fast road to a quick death.
“Ravyn, wait!” Yomi turned to Finnegan and raised her hands. “Sorry, give me just a second.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’m, uh, just going to sit down a minute.” He wandered to an empty booth, then searched the pockets of his trousers. “Wait, what’s this?” His hand surfaced with the silver rectangle that Ravyn recognized immediately—an iPaw.
“We’ll explain in a moment,” Yomi replied, taking Ravyn’s wrist and yanking her farther back into the Lucky Star.
Their waitress—Kiri—and three other catgirls in attendance had witnessed his entrance and their exchange. Kiri was at his table in the blink of an eye, offering him whatever was on the menu free of charge. The other three leered longingly, joining into a single throng to share a whispered discussion.
“We will explain, Yomi?” Ravyn snarled once they were out of earshot.
“Yes. We.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you insane?” Yomi gestured wildly toward Finnegan, toward the other girls, and then back to Ravyn. “Isn’t this exactly why we left Zhuli?”
“To die trying to protect a mass of twigs? I don’t think so,” Ravyn retorted. “That is not a man. Let him go get himself killed, and then we can get a real man.”
Yomi fervently shook her head. “I don’t know what your mother told you about the men of Nyarlea, but everyone has to start somewhere, Ravyn.”
“That boy, sitting over there, is beyond novice levels of experience.” Ravyn pulled the hefty pouch of Bells from her [Cat Pack] and waved it in front of Yomi’s face. “Look, right here. We’re doing fine on our own. We hit Level 4 together, and we can hit Second Class together. We don’t need him.”
Yomi glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “No, but he needs us. Look at him.”
The tittering trio had made their way over to Finnegan’s booth, and Kiri had slid into the seat next to him. His face had turned a brilliant shade of red, and he stammered through his answers to the endless stream of questions.
Now that he’d dried off, Ravyn could see the dark circles beneath his eyes and the bruises on his neck and arms. There was a small cut on his temple and numerous abrasions on his knuckles as if he had come to blows with a roach. The tears in his clothing suggested he’d been on the losing side.
This wasn’t Finnegan’s first day on San Island—it had taken him some time to find Shulan. But by the grace of the goddess or otherwise, he’d survived and made it to the Lucky Star.
Memories of lonely nights spent in her own room assaulted Ravyn like a tidal wave. Talking to her only friend—a garnet, for Saoirse’s sake—and wishing someone, somewhere, would take the time to see things from her point of view.
“Fuck,” Ravyn whispered, the fight draining from her shoulders. “Yomi—”
“Look, we can make a deal,” Yomi interrupted, holding up a finger. “We give him two weeks. If we can both agree that he’s a lost cause, we’ll go back to adventuring ourselves. Just the two of us.”
It wasn’t a terrible deal. Two weeks wouldn’t set them back very far. Besides, the Bells her mother kept sending to Yomi—Ravyn had sent them back one too many times, apparently—would keep them afloat for a year if need be. As much as she despised using that money, Yomi was adamant about keeping a safety net should things go to hell.
Well, here we are, Mother. Hell himself has walked through the door.
“Two weeks? Swear on it?” Ravyn sighed.
“I swear, Ravyn. Please.”
Ravyn hooked her finger around Yomi’s, tightening it in a tiny truce. “I’ll have your tail if you push me again.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Yomi grinned and hugged her.
“Oh. That’s overkill. No need for this.” Ravyn held up her hands at her side, unsure how to react to the hug. “I don’t see why you’re so stuck on him.”
Yomi released her, her smile widening. “What kitten doesn’t dream of being in a man’s Party?”
This one. “Yeah. Guess so.” Ravyn turned and marched to Finnegan’s table. Narrowing her eyes, she glared at each of his newfound companions in turn. “Alright, ladies, clear out.”
“Who the hell died and made you queen?” one of the whisperers retorted.
“Are you a healer, kitten?” Ravyn crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “Are any of you healers, for that matter?”
The three girls shook their heads.
Ravyn jerked a thumb at Yomi. “He’s hurt. Let someone who can actually help him through.”
“Kiri, I think one of the girls in the back needs your help,” Yomi said.
Smooth when you can be, huh? Ravyn grinned. “We’ll take good care of him.”
“We’ll see about that,” Finnegan grumbled.
Ravyn cleared her throat and raised her hand in the same movement she’d done before to summon the flame. Finnegan jumped back as far as he could, holding the iPaw up like a shield.
“Don’t set him on fire, Ravyn,” Kiri murmured as she vacated the table. The other three slowly followed, glowering at Yomi and Ravyn as they returned to their seats.
“We’ll see about that,” Ravyn chirped.
Finnegan shot her an angry look over his iPaw.
Yomi took a seat next to him while Ravyn assumed the opposite side. She leaned forward, placed one finger on the top of the iPaw, and tipped it down until it rested against the table.
“Alright— what did you call me earlier? Baka?” Ravyn began, her smile sharp.
Finnegan’s face darkened. “Yeah.”
Ravyn snickered. “Well. Welcome to the Lucky Star, baka. Your training begins now.”
​
Yomi Pro Tip: My mother told me stories of how my father required multiple helping hands to have a fighting chance in Nyarlea.
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I just need to rant about it lol. My MIL has never been my bestie, but I try really hard to be kind to her, we still do see her, etc but we don’t give in to her and aren’t around her all the time for the sake of our own peace. Since having my baby though…holy crap she acts like SHE gave birth to this child. Few recent things- she told us to “put her on the babysitter list” and wrote up this whole sob story text to try to make us feel bad because “it’s been her dream to be a grandma”. (we won’t let her babysit due to her being a generally unfit individual to watch our son)
We went to lunch with husbands side of the family and while I was greeting another person for a moment and had my back turned, she grabbed babys car seat with him in it and placed him on the empty table beside us. I heard him burst out crying and turned around to see where he was and she goes “oh awww hahahaha I scared him!” I was pissed and immediately grabbed him back. So childish.
She called my husband weeks ago with a laundry list of complaints- upset that we go to my parents house on Sunday nights to watch a show with them (they aren’t crazy like her and they live 2 minutes away), upset that we are going on a cruise with my family and some family friends and INVITED HERSELF, upset that twice when she was in the area and I was home with baby she didn’t get to swing by because I was busy.
It just never ends with this woman. I want so badly to just set things straight with her and be like “look. This is mine and DH’s son. As his parents we are deciding what we’re comfortable with. End of story.” But I don’t want to cause drama. 🫠

[Chapter One]
Prev and Next
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Late at night, in the back of a warehouse.
Grigory squirmed against his restraints. The rope binding his hands was coarse and too tight, causing his hands to lose feeling. A bored council guard stood nearby, but was mostly ignoring him. He wasn’t going to get far with his hands and feet tied together. It was worse than he had thought possible. They are very much going to kill him tonight. This was even worse than either Stanisk or Aethlina had speculated, and he just knew that they would use his role in this disaster against him in future disagreements. However, he might be overly optimistic worrying about a future that might not include him.
Grigory thought over what he had left in his notebooks, contemplating if it would be enough for someone to continue his work. He wasn't sure. It was a lot more than he started with, but there weren't a lot of qualified scholars looking to follow his footsteps. The best outcomes for a lot of different paths all need him to survive.
Grigory tried not to be distracted by the ropes digging into him, and frantically wracked his mind for any sort of escape plan. He had a single imp totem on him, and they left him with his satchel nearby. That’s something. He would need to be untied to invoke it, and a single perfectly safe imp wouldn’t change the balance of power much. Perhaps if everyone but the four executive members left, he and Stanisk might have a chance to overpower them. Well he could at least be distracting while Stanisk overpowered them. They also hadn’t checked his satchel yet, so maybe he could bribe them with the ten thousand glindi engraved gold bar he brought to pledge his support? Bribes are a type of negotiation, and being tied up while they already had the gold put him in a frustratingly weak position to start negotiations. Not getting executed by the organised crime successor to the Council of Demonologists wasn’t on his list, but he still felt it was important.
Grigory could clearly see and hear the meeting continue in the centre of the warehouse. A small detail that he noticed was just how small the sums were. Robberies of a few hundred glindi? The value of a business protection racket being ten glucks a week? Had the runaway success of his imp-made goods distorted his value of money? Pandemonium Partners profited a few hundred thousand a month, and the big safe in the workshop’s basement held about a million glindi, mostly in heavy gold bars. That was after the expenses, taxes and salaries had been paid. Maybe bribes will work here.
Another trend that emerged was how cheap lives appeared to be. Stole a knife from the boss? Death. Miscounted the take? Death. Didn’t show up to the job? Finger loss. How they attracted or retained any talent at all was its own mystery. On that note, we wonder if he enormously overpaid his people? These goons were killing each other over sums of money close to what he paid each of his security goons a day, which in turn was a fraction of what he was paying his partners. All the people he hired seemed excited when he told them the starting salary, and not a single one asked for a raise. Not the time for that! Focus on the matter at hand! Grigory continued to look for anything that he could use to escape.
All too soon the business part of the meeting was concluded. Two of the Council's guards wheeled out a cask of beer, and a crate of cheap clay mugs. Not great news for plans that require being left alone. In singles and groups the ‘Demonologists’ started to come over to where he was tied up. To drink cheap beer and look upon true evil in his demon summoning face.
“Hullo gentlemen! This is all a silly mistake, I’m sure we can work something out,” Grigory said with a calmness and pleasantness he didn’t feel.
A gangster in a threadbare tunic and patched leather pants started going through his coat, and then his satchel. His notebooks with neatly written titles were thrown on the floor, and the minor spell reagents placed on top of a nearby crate.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed far too loudly, ensuring everyone saw him pull out the slim gold bar, about the size of a knife handle. “This can’t be real?!” The gangster saw how everyone near him stared, mouths agape at the bar in his open hand. The bar’s engraving of the Royal Mint of Hiruxia glinting in the flickering rushlight.
“Back off! I found it!” He held the gold tight in his fist and drew his dirty, nicked knife from his belt with his free hand. Quicker than a blink of an eye every member had their blades out and the men at arms from the edges moved towards the commotion.
“PUT IT AWAY!” boomed Arcanist Devorio. He reasserted control of the situation with palpable menace. “The prisoner and all his goods are the property of the Council! Put it down on the table, Tricky Tupo!”
The gangsters grudgingly resheathed their weapons, and Tricky Tupo passed the bar to the Arcanist without making eye contact.
“Holy shit, it is actually real gold!” Devorio muttered after inspecting it for a second. “Where the hell did you steal something like this?”
Something in his phrasing crystalized a plan in Grigory’s mind. An insane, reckless, dangerous plan. Grigory tried not to smile when he replied, “Not stolen at all, well not from our plane of reality.”
“You summoned it?” the well dressed head of the council asked incredulously.
“Oh no, not at all! I stole it from the treasury of Hell! You see that’s the point of having a perfectly obedient demon, it does what I say, and not what the Lords of Hell say,” Grigory lied. The Hellplane wasn’t organised like that at all. There was no such thing as a treasury there. He still wasn’t sure how to sell it, but he hoped there was enough ignorance and greed in the room to do the heavy lifting for him.
“Demonologists have never stolen from hell! As far as I know. I think?” The arcanist was in uncertain territory.
“Mostly true! But we steal minor things all the time, like magical energy, or arcane secrets, but the exciting advance I wrote to you about was stealing things like minerals or artefacts and sometimes regular boring gold.” Grigory was hoping he was priming their greed enough. He worried he was being too subtle.
“Well, it looks like you have a new job! You steal Hell gold for us now!” The Arcanist-turned-crime-lord was back in familiar territory of coercing people into giving him what he wanted.
“Oh I couldn’t!" Grigory feigned reluctance. “I don’t have the right equipment, I haven’t done the full balancing equations for today’s planar alignments! I should go home and get what I need, and I’ll be happy to come back tomorrow and we can get a fresh start on this.”
“Not a chance! You’re doing the ritual this instant, or your blood will cover this entire floor!” Davenio countered.
Grigory, aware that excess blood could damage goods, decided against arguing. “Alright, you win, I’ll have my imp steal another dozen gold bars tonight, I guess. But that’s it! I’m leaving after that!”
“Hah! We’ll see about that!” The arcanist cut Grigory’s bonds while staring straight into his eyes.
Grigory rubbed his sore wrists, and looked at the fifty or so people that had gathered around him. Cruel smiles and the stink of cheap beer surrounded him, but he had a plan. “First I’ll need to summon my imp, to help me set up the ritual!” Grigory found himself speaking like a showman at a fair, with exaggerated gestures and in a loud clear voice. The assembled thugs, goons and crime lords backed up to give him some space. Aethlina suggested obscuring the details of invoking a demon, which was a great idea. He slowly and rhythmically chanted in demonic detail how he likes his tea, with lots of hand gestures and steps and ritualistic looking movements. After a few long seconds he pulled out the imp totem from his vest, waved it around like a wand for a bit before doing the quick gesture of invocation to actually invoke the imp. With two small clicks the tiny imp landed on the rough floorboards of the warehouse. Several goons gasped, and one of the lady goons even shrieked a bit. Truly a sad state of affairs when someone calling themselves a demonologist is startled by a tiny perfectly safe imp!
Grigory picked up his notebooks from the floor, and found the one titled ‘Charts, Formulas, and Tables.’. Doing some mental maths, and modifying a few old spells and rituals on the fly, Grigory gave his imp simple directions in demonic. He could have just spoken plainly, but he was aware he was also putting on a show. Keeping everyone’s attention was important for the next part.
“Ahem, is there any furnace ash, or the like? I’ll need to create a circle in ash or wax or sand.” A few people turned to look for what he needed, and Grigory returned to working out the planar alignment in his notebook. They returned with a canvas bag of stove ashes, he looked them over and nodded. “Does anyone have a silvered steel blade I can use? Anyone at all? No matter, I have one!” Grigory pulled out the small pocket knife he used to cut his food with. It actually was silvered steel, since that also came up from time to time in his line of work. Besides it was interesting to learn that was the only silvered steel blade in the room.
Grigory passed the bag of ash to the imp. He gave detailed instructions on the shape, symbols, and spacing of the elements, all crucial to the huge circle taking shape in the middle of the warehouse floor. The assembled crowd of dirty, dangerous, and desperate deviants started to look concerned. What had started as a bit of mean spirited fun was fast turning into the exact thing they knew was evil incarnate. A path to Hell was being built in front of them! A few moved to leave, but the others called them names and threatened their reputations, forcing them to stay and watch. There was a good reason to stay, there was about to be a lot of gold for everyone. In theory.
At last the preparations were complete. Grigory slowly walked the entire outside of his circle to make sure it was unbroken. He had done similar rituals before, but always with hours of double checking, and never with an audience. His hands were sweaty and shaking as he tore a page out of his notebook. Quickly, he scribbled down a final set of instructions in demonic script and handed it to the imp.
“Merp!” it said in agreement.
Grigory turned to address everyone. He saw a very worried Stanisk standing off to the back, and he subtly gestured for him to wait. Steadying his nerves for a second he addressed his gathered kidnappers, “Soon you will see a small tear in reality! Plug your ears, lest the screams of the damned drive you mad!” Grigory looked around, to make sure everyone was properly alarmed, and activated the ritual.
With a crack of thunder and a hurricane blast of dry wind that reeked of hot iron and sulphur Grigory’s surprise appeared in the centre of the circle. A towering rage demon, its black armoured hide covered in dancing hellfire, its wolf-like face filled with jagged fangs, and its shoulders brushing the rafters of the old warehouse. The assembled criminals looked up from the floor and saw the bipedal nightmare towering over them. They stood stalk still, not knowing how to react, nor sure what exactly was happening.
Grigory stood up straight and turned on the crowd, in a commanding bellow he condemned them, “What kind of idiots let a master demonologist do any summoning ritual he wants?! Look upon the true power of hell and despair!! Your petty schemes are –”
Grigory’s gloating was cut short by a foundation shaking roar from the demon. It started grabbing people at random, and biting them in half, throwing hunks of torso against the wall with splattering force. In accordance with the note, Grigory’s imp hopped up on the table, grabbed the bar of gold from where Arcanist Devorio put it, and sprinted figure eights between the demon's legs. With everyone’s fear AND greed now focused in the same area, Grigory took his stuff and ran for the door. Most of the so-called ‘demonologists’ were trying to escape, but a few were focused on the imp running with a gold bar held over its head. That was as much as a labourer would make in a year, and they couldn’t just walk away from that. The massive demon continued to kill and dismember with glee. The sound of tearing meat and snapping bones was even louder than the screams of the dying. As far as distractions go, Grigory was pretty proud of this one.
Grigory started for the door they had entered by. However, it was jammed with people trying to escape. He stopped at the edge of the chaos, trying to gather his thoughts. As he did, a better solution appeared to him. The demon grabbed one of the cutthroats that dove at the imp’s gold, and threw him at the wall with enough force to vaporise him. The impact filled the whole side of the warehouse in a steamy red mist, and sprayed meaty chunks over everything. The demon howled with laughter when he saw how people popped when thrown into walls.
The important part for Grigory was that there was now a second exit. An exit covered in gore and bone fragments, but entirely clear of goons. Signalling Stanisk, he made his way out through the wreckage. Slower than he’d like, and getting blood and worse on everything, but a clear path. The demon had stopped feeding entirely and was just throwing people as hard as he could, first at the floor then at other people. Its roars of rage were now peals of terrifying laughter. The air in the warehouse was thick with a mist of blood from the high energy impacts.
“I assume it knows not to kill us?” Stanisk asked in a ragged voice once he caught up to Grigory.
“Yes, but only not to kill people in purple. So don’t take off your tabard! It was the best I could do!”
They struggled out into the cool night air of the yard, free of the stenches of hell, gore and terror.
Stanisk looked down at his tabard, so soaked in fresh blood that it looked black. He ran even faster to the wagon.
“So this thing is just going to destroy the city until someone slays it then?” Stanisk asked, as they ran to the cart while frantically gesturing for his two guards to turn the wagon around and get it rolling.
“Oh no! Just until midnight” Grigory explained after he dove into the moving wagon. He wiped his blood soaked hands on his blood soaked robes, to no benefit.
Stanisk stared backwards at the destruction unfolding behind them. The demon had brought the warehouse down around himself and was clearly visible from the road. It was still energetically killing and smashing. “That's more than an hour! You reckon it’ll come for us?”
The single horse dragging a cargo wagon with four men on it was maddeningly sluggish
Grigory fumbled around for something to get the blood and bone fragments off his glasses. Finally finding part of his undershirt clean, he wiped them and he replied,“Oh my no,It’s bound to the summoning circle. Within a hundred paces.” They both watched as a few people fled on horseback, and a wagon rattled away at a gallop. Mostly it was a mess of shouting and terror. Knife fights broke out as people tried to commandeer the remaining horses. Horses were panicking and bolting without riders. Some survivors just ran away on foot. With every fresh kill the demon laughed so loud that Grigory felt like it was coming from his own skull.
“What the hell happened in there, sirs?” asked the terrified guard driving the cart.
Grigory turned around to answer, but Stanisk put a hand on his arm and answered instead, “Those filthy witches in there tried to kill us with a demon, but Grigory outsmarted them and turned it on its creators. Keep driving Kedril, we should be safe in an intersection or so.”
“Light preserve us all!” Kedril the driver said. “Is that a real demon Sir?”
Grigory watched the demon grab one of the goons fighting in the yard and threw him in a high arc towards the city centre. The demon’s arm cracked like a whip as it threw. The ragged corpse left a trail of blood mist as it arced far overhead.
Grigory answered calmly, “Yes.”
Grigory pulled out his demon totem from his robes, and devoked the imp, causing a gold bar a block and a half behind them to clatter to the blood soaked warehouse floor and slide into some debris. He was surprised how calm he felt. By all accounts his plan was in shambles and he’d stirred up a dozen hornets nests. Facing certain death and prevailing did wonders for one’s perspective.
Grigory looked over at Stanisk, and he was looking less calm. Which was entirely fair. A lot of uniquely horrific things happened tonight. Stanisk’s mouth was a tight line, face pale and eyes bloodshot. That might have just been blood from before, that got in his eyes.
“We can’t go through town looking like we bathed in the blood of the innocent, take us to the Golden Anchor’s warehouse on Glibstone Street. We own that place, we can clean up and change there,” Stanisk tersely told the driver.
Grigory countered, “First off, the previous owners of this blood were far from innocent, and secondly that’s across town, let's just lay in the bed, throw the rainsheet over us, and go to the main workshop.”
Stanisk groaned and tried to rub the blood off his face while he thought it over, but just smeared it around.
“Fine, Kedril, Remember to do a few triple left turns to make sure we aren’t being followed, like we discussed last month.” Stanisk undid the oilcloth on the side, connected it to the mounting points, and slid underneath.
“I think we need to review our plans!” Grigory whispered.
“Shhhh, cargo don’t talk.” Stanisk whispered back. The soldier cupped his head in one hand, and covered his eyes with the other and tried to get comfortable enough to sleep. Grigory rolled onto his back and stared at the cloth in front of his face. He tried not to dwell on the odd whip crack sound coming from behind them, nor the horrified gasps of the two guards on the driver’s bench while he mentally updated his plans.
****
A few hours later Grigory was bathed, wearing fresh clothes and feeling much better. He sat contemplating at the kitchen table in his workshop. He was troubled by what this was going to mean for his business and for himself. Stanisk was still in the tub cleaning up, and the two guards had been dismissed for the night. It was shortly after midnight now, and that meant more to Grigory than it did other nights. He hoped no one innocent died tonight, but he was also a little surprised how little he was bothered by the destruction he unleashed this evening. Considering it was the first time he took another human’s life, albeit indirectly, he expected a stronger emotional response. Part of this was a clear case of kill or be killed. Another part was these people were awful people. Grigory worried this might mean he had more subconscious bias against the value of the lives of the economically disadvantaged, but that’s probably not it. Being biassed against people that were willing to kill him made more sense, but also he knew the coming years mean that will become the same as willing to kill most of the world.
Grigory put on some fresh tea, and set out another cup for Stanisk when he was done washing. He couldn’t shake the feeling that his worst fear, being mad with power and using that power to violently kill everyone he perceived as an enemy, wasn’t as far-fetched as it was before. These were the goons that might have killed his mentor, Archmage Willoford. Avenging a mentor was a reasonable rationale, at least in songs and plays. Grigory knew that wasn’t his motivation tonight. And besides that was the inquisition from the sounds of it, these ones just celebrated his mentor's execution, which isn’t really moral grounds for demonic dismemberment. He also knew he could have summoned a stench demon or a screaming demon, or just non demon based rituals he could have used to escape without violence. He didn’t even offer to bribe them, just straight to violence. Grigory wasn’t sure he liked finding out who he really was when lives were on the line.
His introspection was interrupted by a sound coming from his workshop door, and he sagged with relief when he saw it was just Aethlina. Relief that was short lived, because the questions started immediately.
“I assume you had something to do with the demonic giant that threw seventeen people into the side of the Cathedral of the Light?” the elv asked, without reproach or scorn.
Grigory took a second to answer. “I had something to do with the presence of that demon in our plane of reality. I had a little to do with either the people it chose to throw. Nothing to do with where it chose to throw them nor its accuracy. Interesting it threw them at the Cathedral, you’d think it would have some kinship with the church? They both love burning people.”
“By all accounts the accuracy at least, was excellent. All the bodies hit Cathedral Square. The Cathedral itself requires extensive repairs to the nave, and two flying buttresses collapsed. At least according to the terrified lady I ran into.” Aethlina paused for a few seconds in case Grigory chose to share more details.
Aethlina asked mildly, “How rude of me. I meant to ask, how did your meeting go tonight?”
Stanisk came out from around the partition wearing fresh clothes. “The fucking witches weren’t even witches! They were just shadow blighted gangsters what stole the demonologists reputation! Broke as shit, and twice as dumb!”
Stanisk grabbed a bottle of whiskey off the shelf and sat down at the table, ignoring the cup and the pot of tea. After drinking right from the bottle he continued, “It hit the actual main Cathedral? The one right in the centre of town? That’s like an hour walk from where we were! A catapult wouldn’t have thrown a person half that far!”
“The one and the same, The Grand Ubrafadter’s residence is in that square, so I assume what follows will be the sort of witch hunt the city has never seen before.” Aethlina turned to Grigory, “May I also assume your reasons for staying in the city are weaker and your reasons for leaving are stronger than they were yesterday?“
“There were definitely survivors, and I was introduced by name. I can’t stay here, probably not in the empire at all. I don’t think they know the name of the company, but Stanisk and I were wearing the company’s sigil, so it might not be long for them to work it out.” Grigory rubbed the bridge of his nose without taking off his glasses. “I guess we should start planning our exit immediately.”
In a rare show of emotion Aethlina smiled for a second, “We are leaving on a ship named the Widow’s Remorse, it’s provisioned for us and departs on the morning tide, in about nine hours. The captain agreed to wait until we were in open water to hear our destination. He and his crew also suffer from a rare medical condition where their memory fades entirely anytime they are given a bag of money. The ship can carry thirty-five passengers, so the guards can bring their families. I’ll describe the places I think we should go, after we are in open waters.”
Grigory was both very impressed and a touch alarmed. “Did you know what would happen at that meeting? Did you know what I was walking into?”
“No, I had mistakenly assumed you were on top of that, and took you on your word about them. The odds of them being what you expected were poor. I also had a detailed plan in case they kidnapped you.”
Stanisk burst out laughing, “Imagine if they kidnapped you, Boss! All trussed up like a rotisserie chicken! Hah! I guess I’ll get packed and meet back here to get everything organised! I’ll miss my townhouse, but I’ve had enough of living in Jagged Cove, it's loud and crowded.”
Stanisk stood up, and turned to leave, but paused mid stride. “Miss Aethlina, how big of an investigation do you reckon it’ll be? Reckon they could keep after us after we leave?”
“Likely.There are cases where the inquisition spent entire centuries on the trail of heretics and their descendents. Those heresies were vocally opposing an aspect of doctrine. This may be the first heresy in which a building-sized demon flung citizens into Cathedral Square. I assume yes, they will be interested in following up.”
“Alright, I’ve got an idea that might buy us some time. Grigory, are there any specific numbers that are significant to demons?”
“Um, not actually, but the older texts are filled with references to threes and eights I guess?” Grigory said with a shrug.
“Perfect!” Stanisks' smile strengthened and he turned to Aethlina. “Can you think of eight nobles, eight businessmen, and eight clergy the city would be better off without? Here, write 'em on this!” He slid her a notebook page when she nodded.
Grigory leaned forward,”I’m not sure what you are going for?”
“In the army, there was a famously clever bird that would trick soldiers, called a red heron. We are going to make a whole flock of ‘em!” Stanisk excitedly explained. “Oh, draw a demon circle on this page, doesn’t have to work or anything, like the one from the warehouse”
Grigory began his sketch. “I don’t think red heron is quite right, but I’m catching your drift.”
While they wrote, Stanisk went to the carved chest where all the imp totems for the workshop were stored, and invoked twenty four of them. Taking Aethlina’s list and Grigory’s sketch, he ordered each imp to sprint across town and use hellfire to scorch the circle into the street in front of the home of a specific name.
After the final imp bounded out of the building and was leaping along the rooflines Stanisk returned to his partners. “Now they’ll have too many leads! Hopefully folk see the imps and hellfire, that’ll be even better!”
“We can just outvoke them in an hour or so, that's easy enough. Great idea, Stanisk!” Grigory said cautiously, still thinking through the plan.
“If your big demon didn’t cause a public panic, I can’t imagine a better way to finish the job.” Aethlina replied.
Stanisk smiled and shrugged. “It wasn’t my good looks alone that kept me alive this long! I’ll send some runners to gather the lads and get this show on the road. Human runners I mean!”
Prev and Next

Rodney was awakened by the ringing of his cell phone. He had set a special ring tone for Peter just for that purpose, knowing that when his colleague called, it would not stop ringing until he answered. “Morning, K,” he muttered as he slowly crawled out of bed.
“Rod, you need to get over here right away!” Peter said in a shaky voice. Rodney chuckled absentmindedly, “What did you screw up this time?”
“I just made us rich, that’s what I did!” Rodney’s face straightened, “Are you serious?”
“I’m about to post a Twitlonger, that’s how serious I am, Rod. Now get the fuck over here before I do.”
.
Sami arrived at the research lab early in the morning. She was told that the video department liked to start the days early, but the door seemed to be locked. She tried knocking, but with two coffee cups in each hand, the effort seemed as futile as it was embarrassing. She was about to gently tap her foot on the door when Rodney came around the corner.
“What are you doing?”
Startled, Sami turned around, “Oh! Dr Craig. Er, good morning!”
“Were you just trying to kick the door in? You know we have cameras, right?”
Sami smiled nervously, “No, why would… I was trying to get in-”
Rodney cut her off, “I’m just messing with you. It’s Sami, right?”, Sami answered with a shy nod.
.
As Sami and Rodney came walking through the door, Peter was sitting behind his laptop.
“Finally!” he shouted without taking his eyes off the screen, “Hey Rod, remember those new parameters we talked about last Friday? Guess what!”
“K, this is Sami.”
Peter turned around in his chair and looked at Sami in confusion. “Who is this?”
“I literally just told you. What were you saying about the parameters?”
“I’m the new intern,” Sami interjected with the friendliest voice possible.
Peter smiled, “Oh yeah, you’re the influencer!”
“Yes… Well, no, actually. I used to be a content creator on TikTok, not an influencer. But I guess it’s similar.”
“How did that work out for you?”
Sami alternated between staring at Peter and Rodney with a forced smile before breaking the awkward silence, “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Dr. Kaymak.”
“Dr. Kaymak is my wife, call me K,” Peter said with a rehearsed smile and reached out for a conciliatory handshake, but Sami still held the cups.
“Oh, sorry! I brought coffee, where should I…” The two scientists each grabbed a cup from Sami’s hands.
“I’m Rod, by the way,” Rodney muttered in Sami’s direction, “What about the new parameters, K? Did you make any progress?”
Peter turned back to his laptop and gestured at it, “Oh, I made progress, alright! I had the program run through the routine again before leaving last Friday night. It was supposed to create the videos and all the metadata, post them one at a time, and delete them once it had retrieved the analytics data. Only it didn’t do that.”
“So it didn’t work?” Rodney asked impatiently.
“Well let me finish… So far we trained the model on the first four hours of viewing data, so any autonomous adjustments it makes in subsequent runs will be optimized for that time frame. But since you designed the AI to continue training on any data that YouTube feeds back to it, I decided to give the program some leeway. If the AI module determines that there is more relevant data to collect, the process doesn’t automatically stop and the video isn’t deleted.”
“That still sounds like a bug to me.” Rodney interrupted again. Feeling smug, he took a sip of his coffee and jumped abruptly. “This is very cold,” he said to Sami, pointing at his cup.
Sami shook her head nervously, “I waited outside the door for 15 minutes!”
“You could have knocked, I’ve been in here for hours,” Peter said as he typed on his laptop.
Rodney laughed, “Pete, be glad it’s just cold coffee, she almost vandalized our door."
Sami took a nervous sip and winced as well.
Peter looked at her confused for a second before regaining his composure, “Can we focus here? This is big news!”
“Well, so far you’ve only given me your Twitlonger speech. If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear more about the ‘making us rich’ part.”
“Me too,” Sami added confusedly, followed by “Sorry” as she tried to disappear into the background.
Peter inhaled tensely and took another nonchalant look at his screen before turning back to face Rodney. “Well, basically what happened is that we accidentally cracked YouTube’s algorithm. Initially, just one video was uploaded and it went viral immediately. It got 7 million views in 8 hours before our test channel was shut down by YouTube.
.
“You’re joking.” Rodney looked at Peter incredulously.
“I’m not. 63% of the views were from within the US.”
“Holy shit!” Rodney instinctively began to strut around Peter’s desk. “Okay, but that was a coincidence, right?”
“Well, after my program detected that the channel had been terminated, it created a new one and uploaded the second video, which got 49 million views before YouTube killed it again.”
Rodney stared at Peter with a dull face, trying to process the number he just heard.
Peter continued, “Our channels get deleted for spam quite often. I saw the first email notification on Saturday night but didn’t think much of it. Then I got the second one on Sunday morning.”
“Are you telling me that one of our test videos was seen by more people than the super bowl?”
“He doesn’t watch much sports,” Peter laughed, directing his words at Sami. “But yes, a lot of people saw our test video. I had no idea this was even possible. When I saw the emails from YouTube, I figured something about the new parameters must be messing with the anti-spam routine, so I came in on Sunday to fix it. But it wasn’t a spam problem. I think the spike in views must have triggered YouTube’s fraud detection. They probably thought we were using bots to increase the number of views on the videos, which we weren't obviously.
“Huh, that’s new.”
“Yes, exactly. Now get this! When I realized what was happening, I wanted to try to reduce the effectiveness of the program, but adjusting the parameters only reduced the views back to normal, so in that sense, I guess it actually was a fluke. I decided to try switching back to older training data, and that actually helped a lot. Since then, each new video has been getting a steady 140,000 views every two hours before dipping after about 12 hours. The newest channel is still up with several videos. Retention is still pretty abysmal and the comments section is a mess. I guess millions of users were just as confused as we were when they clicked on the thumbnails. But regardless, imagine what someone with real creative talent could do with this kind of exposure. Imagine what they would pay for it!”
Rodney started to walk in small circles again. “Holy shit, K! I mean, if we do this right… if there is a smart way to monetize this, then… holy shit!”
“We did it, Rod. We’re going to make so much money on this,” Peter said, ending Rodney’s train of thought, “But we gotta be really smart about it. YouTube can’t know what we’re up to! Besides-”
“What are the videos about?” Sami asked.
“What?” Peter and Rodney answered in unison.
“I mean, what kind of video gets 50 million views in a few hours? What was it about?”
Surprised by such a badly timed, totally unimportant question, Peter glanced over to an absent-minded Rodney, “Um. I don’t know, I’d have to look it up. But it doesn’t really matter, the parameters can be applied to any topic. We use politics and gaming as our main categories because they tend to get more engagement on YouTube.”
“Wait, you didn’t watch the videos?” Sami wasn’t sure if Peter was just too caught up in the technical side of things, but Peter and Rodney looked at each other completely unfazed.
“Sami, no offense, but given your ‘professional’ background, you of all people should appreciate what we just accomplished. I’ve watched some of the videos. But the point is that this process can be used for any kind of genre with just minor adjustments to the training data.”
“Of course! I think your program is incredible. Um, I’m just a little concerned about the potential damage such a tool could do in the wrong hands. Right?”
Amused by Sami’s unexpected spark of virtue, Peter shrugged. “You mean like in the hands of a social media influencer?”

This post is the last post in a series looking at the massive amount of 'rhyming' recursivity I believe exists between (a) the homecoming of Petyr Baelish to the Fingers and (b) the homecoming of Theon Greyjoy to Pyke.
While this series/post can be read simply as a study 'for its own sake' of the curious recursion between these storylines, it is my belief that the 'rhyming' explored here between the stories of Petyr and Theon may exist (at least in part) to foreshadow that, like Theon, Petyr Littlefinger, is (among other things) a scion of ironborn kings, because Petyr is Hoare-ish: I.e. because Petyr's blood is (in some part) the blood of the ironborn kings of House Hoare of Orkmont and, later, Harrenhal.
This post is also post 25 of 25 in my broader series on the topic of a Hoare-ish Littlefinger, which is indexed [HERE].
Even if I'm wrong about Littlefinger's lineage, the 'rhyming' recursivity between the homecomings of Theon and Petyr detailed in this series remains, and certainly merits attention.
NOTE: In what follows, all uncited quotes are from ASOS Sansa VI, which describes Petyr's homecoming to his "Drearfort" tower of the 'Smallest Finger', or ACOK Theon I, which describes Theon's homecoming to "drear" Pyke.
As in past posts, I sometimes use "→" as shorthand for "'prefigures' and/or 'informs' and/or 'is reworked by' and/or 'finds a recursive rhyme in'.
As in: ACOK Theon I → ASOS Sansa VI.
This post picks up straight-away from where Part 9 left off. You can read Part 9 [HERE].
If you want to begin at the beginning, Part 1 is [HERE].

Aeron & Oswell

After Theon's homecoming chapter opens with Theon thinking "There was no safe anchorage at Pyke", which is copied nearly verbatim during Petyr's homecoming with Sansa, we see Theon anticipating his first glimpse of Pyke castle, and read this sentence:

Theon drew the hood of his cloak up against the spray, and looked for home.

That line proves to be a key part of a pun-tastic 'rhyme' between (a) Theon coming ashore from the Myraham and meeting Aeron and (b) Sansa coming ashore from the Merling King with the aid of Oswell.
I'll explain.
Note first that Oswell, who is…

…tall and gangling, with long white hair and a great hooked nose, with eyes shaded by a cowl [like a monk's cowl!]… (ACOK Theon V)

—clearly 'rhymes' with Aeron, an ascetic priest (see Oswell's monk-ish cowl) who is…

Tall and thin, with… a beak of a nose… [and] ropes of dried seaweed were braided through his waist-long black hair and untrimmed beard.

They're set up as yin and yang: Tall and similarly built with notable noses and long hair… but one has "long white hair", the other "long black hair", and Aeron has an "untrimmed beard" while Oswell is clean-shaven.
Aeron's beard is not simply a beard, though, but a beard with seaweed in it, which 'rhymes' with Oswell being not simply clean-shaven, but clean-shaven in a sea-faring way, as his "windburnt face"—

She studied the old man's lined windburnt face, hook nose, white hair, and huge knuckly hands. (ASOS Sansa VI)

—prefigures the "wind-chafed skin" of Aeron's niece Asha, which is tagged as typical of the sea-faring ironborn—

Ironborn, he knew at a glance; lean and long-legged, with… wind-chafed skin, strong sure hands….

—as are her notably "strong sure hands", which similarly 'rhyme' with Oswell's notably "huge knuckly hands".
SIDEBAR: As for Aeron's robes here being "green and grey" ("and blue"), this underlines that Petyr's oft-mentioned "grey-green" eyes are like the sea, which (as I've mentioned in previous posts) suggests per Archmaester Haereg's maxim—

"You may dress an ironman in silks and velvets, teach him to read and write and give him books, instruct him in chivalry and courtesy and the mysteries of the Faith… but when you look into his eyes, the sea will still be there, cold and grey and cruel." (TWOIAF)

—that Littlefinger is, at least in part, an ironman.
END SIDEBAR
The first thing we're told about Aeron after Theon realizes who he is is that "he washed up safe on shore"—

A memory prodded at Theon. In one of his rare curt letters, Lord Balon had written of his youngest brother going down in a storm, and turning holy when he washed up safe on shore. "Uncle Aeron?" he said doubtfully.

—which prefigures Oswell splashing his way ashore at the Smallest Finger:

Oswell and Lothor splashed their way ashore, as did Littlefinger himself.

(If Oswell is Aeron-ish, surely Petyr making like Oswell and splashing about in the surf here could foreshadow that he is Hoare-ish. And perhaps some kind of religious figure as well.)

Drawn Up Hoods

With that Oswell/Aeron 'rhyme' in mind, consider again that, as Theon approaches castle Pyke on the Myraham…

Theon drew the hood of his cloak up against the spray, and looked for home.

Sound familiar? That's because it's reworked when Sansa is rowed ashore by the "gangling", Aeron-esque Oswell:

Lothor and old Oswell rowed them ashore. Sansa huddled in the bow under her cloak with the hood drawn up against the wind….

When Sansa gets to shore, "two old men" help to make sure she doesn't get even a little bit wet—

The two old men waded out up to their thighs to lift Sansa from the boat so she would not get her skirts wet.

—which was, of course, exactly the thing Theon was trying to avoid back in ACOK when he "drew the hood of his cloak up against the spray", as Sansa drew hers "up against the wind" when Oswell rowed her in.

Gangplank → Gangling.

GRRM is just warming up. When Theon reaches Lordsport and disembarks from the Myraham, he, too, avoids getting wet. At least initially. Where Sansa uses "gangling" Oswell to come ashore, Theon uses… a "gangplank":

Without waiting for a reply [from Myraham's captain], he strode down the gangplank. "Innkeeper," he barked. "I require a horse".

Kneeling Servants

The innkeeper never gets Theon his horse, of course (of course), because Aeron shows up. And what does gangling white-haired Oswell's black-haired physical mirror Aeron do? He makes Theon get wet after all.

"Kneel."
The ground was all stones[!] and mud. "Uncle, I—"
"Kneel. Or are you too proud now, a lordling of the green lands come among us?"
Theon knelt. He had a purpose here, and might need Aeron's help to achieve it. A crown was worth a little mud and horseshit on his breeches, he supposed.
"Bow your head." Lifting the skin, his uncle pulled the cork and directed a thin stream of seawater down upon Theon's head. It drenched his hair and ran over his forehead into his eyes. Sheets washed down his cheeks, and a finger crept under his cloak and doublet and down his back, a cold rivulet along his spine. The salt made his eyes burn, until it was all he could do not to cry out. He could taste the ocean on his lips. "Let Theon your servant be born again from the sea, as you were," Aeron Greyjoy intoned. "Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel."

Note that Theon kneeling on "stones and mud… and horseshit" before a priest with "seaweed" in his beard is reworked even as Oswell rows Sansa ashore and she huddles in her cloak like Theon, when the Baelish household kneels on rocks covered by nasty seaweed and Sansa dodges sheepshit:

Lothor and old Oswell rowed them ashore. Sansa huddled in the bow under her cloak with the hood drawn up against the wind, wondering what awaited her. Servants emerged from the tower to meet them…. When they recognized Lord Petyr they knelt on the rocks.
[Petyr] led them up the strand over rocks slick with rotting seaweed. … Sansa had to step carefully; there were pellets [i.e. sheepshit] everywhere.

Blessings

Meanwhile, Aeron giving Theon his holy "bless[ing]" is reworked just before Sansa is rowed ashore, when Petyr asks for Sansa's "blessing" after he tells her they're not going to Winterfell and that he's going to wed Lysa:

"So silent, my lady?" said Petyr. "I was certain you would wish to give me your blessing. …"
"I . . . I pray you will have long years together, and many children, and be very happy in one another.

Sansa's reluctant acquiescence — both to giving the blessing and to going ashore and going along with Petyr's plan, which she had not anticipated — echoes Theon's reluctant acquiescence to both Aeron's blessing and Balon's plan of invasion, which he hadn't anticipated.
I suspect Littefinger was fed the line, "So silent, my lady?" before asking for Sansa's blessing as a nod to several pertinent silences in ACOK Theon I. First, the "sullen silence" of the Myraham's captain when he reluctantly acquiesces to Theon taking his would-be salt wife daughter below deck to get a blowjob; second, the "gloom of silence" between Theon and Aeron as they make the final approach to Pyke, post-blessing; and finally, Theon marking the absence of Euron's 'lady', Silence, as he sails into Lordsport:

Theon searched for his uncle Euron's Silence.

Truly, all things come round again.

Getting Wet & Staying Dry 1

But what about Aeron getting Theon pointedly wet? Aeron not only making Theon kneel but getting him wet and then riding with him to Pyke, is reworked (and reversed) not just by Oswell and Lothor rowing Sansa ashore — note the "rode" → "rowed" wordplay:

They [Aeron and Theon] rode in a gloom of silence.
Lothor and old Oswell rowed them ashore.

— and not just by Sansa being carried ashore and kept pointedly dry by two old men who were, seconds earlier, kneeling reverently on the seashore, but also by Aeron-ish Oswell helping Sansa "up" onto The Merling King from his rowboat while assuring her he won't let her fall into the sea, which he makes sure she doesn't:

The rower shipped the oars and helped Sansa to her feet. "Up now. Go on, girl, I got you." Sansa thanked him for his kindness, but received no answer but a grunt. It was much easier going up the rope ladder than it had been coming down the cliff. The oarsman Oswell followed close behind her… (ASOS Sansa V)

So: Where Oswell-ish Aeron forces Theon to kneel and then wets him down with seawater, ceremonially "drowning" him after he comes down the "gangplank", the "gangling" Aeron-ish Oswell helps Sansa "to her feet" and then "up" while promising not to let her fall in the sea, where she could drown.

Getting Wet & Staying Dry 2

Aeron forcing Theon to kneel and getting him wet before he "rode" with him to Pyke is also reworked/reversed inside Petyr's tower, when Sansa's 'other' rower Lothor protects Sansa from Marillion's rape attempt— from being (like Theon) forced to get "wet", so to speak:

"My blood is stirred. And yours, I know … there's no wench half so lusty as one bastard born. Are you wet for me?"
"I'm a maiden," she protested.
"Truly? Oh, Alayne, Alayne, my fair maid, give me the gift of your innocence.

The wetness motif is played up again:

"He put a hand on her breast, and squeezed. "Let's get you out of these wet clothes. You wouldn't want them ripped, I know. Come, sweet lady, heed your heart—"

He wants to "get [her] out of [her] wet clothes" so he can get her "wet", so to speak. But where Aeron forced Theon to "kneel" and get wet in language that suddenly reads as quite rapey and spine-chilling—

Sheets washed down his cheeks [which cheeks?], and a finger[!] crept under his cloak and doublet and down his back, a cold rivulet along his spine."

—before he "rode" with him to castle Pyke, Lothor Brune, who "rowed" Sansa ashore, keeps her safe and 'dry':

Sansa heard the soft sound of steel on leather. "Singer," a rough voice said, "best go, if you want to sing again." The light was dim, but she saw a faint glimmer of a blade.
The singer saw it too. "Find your own wench—" The knife flashed, and he cried out. "You cut me!"
"I'll do worse, if you don't go."
And quick as that, Marillion was gone. The other remained, looming over Sansa in the darkness. "Lord Petyr said watch out for you." It was Lothor Brune's voice, she realized.

Dagmer Cleftjaw → Lothor Brune

And what do you know? Oswell's rowing partner Lothor Brune is also prefigured by Theon's homecoming. Not by Aeron, but by Dagmer Cleftjaw, who Theon thinks of as he approaches Lordsport on the Myraham. In fact, there's a huge 'rhyme' between (a) Dagmer Cleftjaw and his "gut-churning scar", on the one hand, and (b) the beginning of ASOS Sansa VI, which describes Lothor Brune and Sansa's upset stomach (i.e. her churning guts) and seemingly permanently scarred psyche, on the other. I'll try to lay out now.
Consider first that as Theon approaches Lordsport on the Myraham, he goes below deck, where he thinks about Dagmer Cleftjaw (along with the sour-like-Aeron Sylas Sourmouth, who was discussed in Part 8):

As the Myraham made her way landward, Theon paced the deck restlessly, scanning the shore. He had not thought to find Lord Balon himself at quayside, but surely his father would have sent someone to meet him. Sylas Sourmouth the steward, Lord Botley, perhaps even Dagmer Cleftjaw. It would be good to look on Dagmer's hideous old face again.

We meet Dagmer in ACOK Theon III,

He smiled himself to show how it was done. It made for a hideous sight. Under a snowy white mane of hair, Dagmer Cleftjaw had the most gut-churning scar Theon had ever seen, the legacy of the longaxe that had near killed him as a boy. The blow had splintered his jaw, shattered his front teeth, and left him four lips where other men had but two. A shaggy beard covered his cheeks and neck, but the hair would not grow over the scar, so a shiny seam of puckered, twisted flesh divided his face like a crevasse through a snowfield "We could hear them singing," the old warrior said. "It was a good song, and they sang it bravely."
…Dagmer grinned more often and more broadly than Lord Balon ever had.
Ugly as it was, that smile brought back a hundred memories. Theon had seen it often as a boy, when he'd jumped a horse over a mossy wall, or flung an axe and split a target square. [More fond memories of Dagmer.]

We later learn that Dagmer is "fearsome" and a "fierce fighter" as well, despite being marked as aged by his "white mane of hair". (ADWD The King's Prize)
Dagmer's ship is named Foamdrinker, a double-entendre about ale-drinking, as he likes drinking, as well as reaving songs — especially the one a singer wrote about him:

He knew that would give Dagmer pause. A singer had made a song about the axe that cracked his jaw in half, and the old man loved to hear it. Whenever he was in his cups he would call for a reaving song, something loud and stormy that told of dead heroes and deeds of wild valor. (ACOK Theon III)

Balon puts Dagmer in Theon's reaving detachment. Theon foolishly resents this, not accepting that he is inexperienced and needs and could benefit enormously from a seasoned number two with whom he has a good relationship:

"You are to harry the Stony Shore, raiding the fishing villages and sinking any ships you chance to meet. … Aeron will accompany you, and Dagmer Cleftjaw."
…Theon felt as if he'd been slapped. He was being sent to do reaver's work, burning fishermen out of their hovels and raping their ugly daughters, and yet it seemed Lord Balon did not trust him sufficiently to do even that much. Bad enough to have to suffer the Damphair's scowls and chidings. With Dagmer Cleftjaw along as well, his command would be purely nominal. (ACOK Theon II)

Balon gives Theon Dagmer to help him, but Theon can only see it as an affront, so he tries to sideline him:

Dagmer Cleftjaw stood by the high carved prow of his longship, Foamdrinker. Theon had assigned him the task of guarding the ships; otherwise men would have called it Dagmer's victory, not his. A more prickly man might have taken that for a slight, but the Cleftjaw had only laughed. (ACOK Theon III)

That Splintery Ladder Again & Lothor's Hand Up

Now, remembering that we're introduced to Dagmer Cleftjaw while Theon is still aship en route to Pyke, consider again the first paragraph of Sansa VI, plus a bit more (which of course takes place while Petyr and Sansa are still aship en route to Petyr's Drearfort):

The ladder to the forecastle was steep and splintery, so Sansa accepted a hand up from Lothor Brune. Ser Lothor, she had to remind herself; the man had been knighted for his valor in the Battle of the Blackwater. Though no proper knight would wear those patched brown breeches and scuffed boots, nor that cracked and water-stained leather jerkin. A square-faced stocky man with a squashed nose and a mat of nappy grey hair, Brune spoke seldom. He is stronger than he looks, though. She could tell by the ease with which he lifted her, as if she weighed nothing at all. …
She had seldom ventured out on deck herself. Her little cabin was dank and cold, but Sansa had been sick for most of the voyage . . . sick with terror, sick with fever, or seasick . . . she could keep nothing down, and even sleep came hard. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw Joffrey… dying….
…Even this close to shore, the rolling of the ship made her tummy queasy.…
[Petyr] put a sympathetic arm about her shoulders. "Are you quite well? You look so pale."
"It's only my tummy. The seasickness."

We're subsequently reminded of Brune's "squashed nose" and "mat of nappy grey hair", and told of his "square jaw" and more:

With his squashed nose, square jaw, and nap of woolly grey hair, Brune could not be called comely, but he was not ugly either. … Sober, he was a quiet man, but a strong one. (AFFC Alayne II)

Recall too that Brune saves Sansa from Marillion, who tries to use her as Theon used the captain's daughter.
Having surveyed the field of (word)play, we can now see the 'rhyming':

• Where Theon goes below deck as he approaches Lordsport and thinks about Dagmer, whose jaw is (verbatim) "splintered", Sansa, with Brune's help, climbs up to the deck using a (verbatim) "splintered" ladder as she approaches the Drearfort.
  
• Where Theon spurns the 'hand up' Dagmer and his splintered jaw could have given him, "Sansa accept[s] a hand up from Lothor Brune" and climbs the "splintered" ladder.
  
• Where Theon think of the Cleftjaw, who has a "gut-churning scar", Sansa thinks about her literally churning guts — her upset "tummy".
  
• Where Theon thinks that Cleftjaw's "gut-churning scar" resulted from his being "near[ly] killed as a boy", Sansa's churning guts are related to the evident psychic scar she's suffered, which causes her to see a boy killed over and over again.
  
• Dagmer's "shattered" teeth and "splintered" jaw (and Dagmar being sent to "Torrhen's Square") → Brune's "squashed nose" and "square jaw"
  
• Where Dagmer is ironborn, and had his jaw "cracked… in half", Brune wears a "cracked and water-stained [as if from the sea]" jerkin.
  
• Dagmer's "snowy mane of white hair" → Brune's "mat of nappy grey hair"/"nap of woolly grey hair"
  
• Despite their 'old hair', Dagmer is "fierce" and "fearsome", Brune "strong".
  
• Where Dagmer's smile is "ugly" but nonetheless fills Theon with warm memories (defying its appearance), Brune, who "could not be called comely, but… was not ugly either", is "stronger than he looks".
  
• Where Dagmer "covered his cheeks and neck" with a beard but can't grow a 'proper' one due to his scar, which appears as a "seam", Brune doesn't look like a "proper knight" in his "patched… breeches" and "scuffed boots". (Note the sewing language — "seam" → "patched" — and the lexical similarity: "cheeks" → "breeches".)
  
• Both men seem to have a penchant for drink (per the implications of Sansa commenting on Brune's nature "when sober") and a foregrounded relationship with singers. (Where Dagmer loves singers and songs, Brune is in conflict with Marillion — although the deeds of "Lothor Apple-Eater" are likely sung of, like Dagmer's exploits.)
  

Thus just as the Aeron of Theon's homcoming 'rhymes' with the Oswell of Petyr's homecoming, so is Theon's Dagmer Cleftjaw reworked in the person of Petyr's Lothor Brune.
And thus everything about Petyr's homecoming continues to remind us of Theon's homecoming, which makes sense… if Petyr is likewise a scion of ironborn royalty (e.g. if he's Hoare-ish).

The End, and The Distinct Possibility That The Rhyme Between Petyr's and Theon's Homecomings Isn't (Just) About Petyr Being Hoare-ish, After All

That's it. That's all I got regarding the recursively 'rhyming' homecomings of Theon and Petyr. For me, the insane scope and depth of the 'rhyming' between Petyr's homecoming and the homcoming of a scion of ironborn kings is entirely consistent with my broader hypothesis: that the blood of ironborn kings likewise flows in the veins of Petyr Littlefinger — namely "the black blood" of House Hoare of Orkmont.
And yet . . .
It remains that notwithstanding that my Hoare-ish Littlefinger posts connected virtually everything we're told about House Hoare and its various historical kings with things we're told about Petyr Baelish, this (sub)series has detailed recursion not between Petyr and the Hoares, but between Petyr and Theon Greyjoy, who is like the Hoares in that his blood is that of ironborn kings, but who is, nonetheless, a Greyjoy.
It also remains that Theon is the grandson of Quellon Greyjoy, and that [as I show here] — or just scroll down, I'll reproduce that post in the comments — Quellon Greyjoy as described in both TWOIAF and in ASOIAF is nothing if not incredibly Hoare-esque, and not just because his policies and biography in TWOIAF 'rhyme' with the policies and biographies of various Hoare kings, but because ASOIAF proper subtly suggests he was something of a 'whore' in that AFFC makes it abundantly clear that Quellon was a prolific sperm cannon by repeating over and over that he sired nine sons we know of (on three different wives).
Recall that we saw in [Part 2 of the original 'Littlefinger is Hoare-ish' series] that Petyr is in certain striking respects similar to Balon, to Euron, to Aeron, to Asha, and even to Victarion.
This all gives rise to the question: Does all the 'rhyming' between the homecomings of Theon Greyjoy and Petyr Baelish as detailed in this series 'merely' (further) hint that Petyr is (literally) Hoare-ish, and hence that he is like Theon in that he, too, is the scion of ironborn kings?
Or do all the Petyr-Greyjoy connections, coupled with Quellon's foregrounded fecundity and the presence of a barely concealed metaphor for an ocean-based sperm (whale) cannon on Petyr's estate (alongside a reminder of invaders from the sea)—

There was one place where the tide came jetting up out of a blowhole to shoot thirty feet into the air, and another where someone had chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder. Petyr said that marked one of the places the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea to wrest the Vale from the First Men.

—hint that at some point during his travels, Quellon Greyjoy bedded Petyr's mother Alayne (or perhaps Petyr's father's mother), cuckolding her husband and impregnating her with Petyr (or Lord Baelish)?
Note that Quellon was a direct, analogous contemporary to Petyr's 'father': Both are said to have fought for the Targaryens in the War of the Ninepenny Kings.

The Mockingbird & The Cuckolding Cowbird

Here we must consider that Petyr's sigil is the mockingbird, and that certain species of mockingbirds (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-tailed_mockingbird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_mockingbird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-banded_mockingbird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_mockingbird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk-browed_mockingbird) are well-known as hosts for the [brood parasitism] of certain [cowbirds]. That is, it is well-known that mockingbirds frequently care for the eggs of cowbirds and feed the hatched chicks of cowbirds as if they were their own offspring.
In short, mockingbirds accept being cuckolded.
Recall here that the men of Pyke greeted Theon with "bovine [as in cow, as in the cowbirds that cuckold mockingbirds] eyes", and that the o.g. brood parasites are cuckoo birds, from whence we derive our term "cuckolding".
Recall, too, that the Greyjoy banner over Pyke weirdly takes on the appearance of a bird during Theon's homecoming, which I've just spent 10 posts comparing to Petyr's homecoming:

Above the Sea Tower snapped his father's banner. The Myraham was too far off for Theon to see more than the cloth itself, but he knew the device it bore: the golden kraken of House Greyjoy, arms writhing and reaching against a black field. The banner streamed from an iron mast, shivering and twisting as the wind gusted, like a bird struggling to take flight.

Thus the possibility that Petyr's nominal "father" Lord Baelish (or Petyr's nominal paternal "grandfather") was cuckolded by Quellon Greyjoy, the Hoare-esque sperm cannon from the land of cowbird-evoking "bovine eyes", whose sigil is likened to a bird, is right there in his mockingbird sigil.
Indeed, I very much wonder whether we're not told all about the super-pollinator Garth Greenhand in part as a 'rhyming' hint that Quellon Greyjoy was a super-pollinator who spread his "seed" amongst the ladies of what the ironborn call the "green lands".

The Mocking Bird Went Cuckoo

The notion that Petyr's mockingbird sigil may nod to Petyr's supposed father (or supposed paternal grandfather) getting cuckolded by Quellon Greyjoy reminds me of a song brought to my attention by MaxPayload: The Mocking Bird Went Cuckoo was recorded in the 1930s by at least two acts, including the British movie star [Gracie Fields] — the highest paid film actress in the world c. 1937 — and an act called "The Two Gilberts".
[HERE] is a link to the Fields version.
To say the lyrics of the song remind me of Littlefinger's story is if anything an understatement, beginning with the opening image of "a lovesick youth and maiden":

A lovesick youth and maiden (down on the farm)
With hearts so heavy laden (down on the farm)
They held each other's hands and looked into each other's eye
And started to tell each other lies

To say the least, Littlefinger is closely identified with being a lovesick youth and with lying (including about his sexploits with the sisters Tully). And notably, he and Sansa practically begin their relationship by agreeing to lie about her being his daughter. (Sansa's heart is notably 'heavy laden' when this happens upon arrival at Littlefinger's tower — and sheep farm.)
Regarding the "down on the farm" setting, ASOIAF makes regular reference to the bountiful crops and rich farmlands of the Tullys' Riverlands, and we see the courtyards of Riverrun "teem[ing] with… cows, sheep, and chickens" in ACOK Catelyn V.
The song continues with a first kiss "by the cowshed door" (recalling that we're told that Petyr's estate has "a sheepfold"):

He kissed her by the cowshed door
She said "I've not been kissed before"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

Petyr was, of course, Lysa's first kiss, and probably Catelyn's as well, as well as Lysa's first fuck (regarding which, rest assured that the song gets deep into sexual double-entendre soon enough):

[O]ver there, beneath that bower, she and Lysa had played at kissing with Petyr.
She had not thought of that in years. How young they all had been—she no older than Sansa, Lysa younger than Arya, and Petyr younger still, yet eager. The girls had traded him between them, serious and giggling by turns. It came back to her so vividly she could almost feel his sweaty fingers on her shoulders and taste the mint on his breath. There was always mint growing in the godswood, and Petyr had liked to chew it. He had been such a bold little boy, always in trouble. "He tried to put his tongue in my mouth," Catelyn had confessed to her sister afterward, when they were alone. "He did with me too," Lysa had whispered, shy and breathless. "I liked it." (AGOT Catelyn XI)
"Petyr's breath is always fresh … he was the first man I ever kissed, you know." -Lysa (ASOS Sansa VI)

Next we see the maiden tease the eager "lovesick youth", as Cat ostensibly teased Petyr:

He said "My love I'll swear to you"
She said "I'll smack you if you do"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw
Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly, said "Oh how you tease me"
"I'm so shy, I'm so shy, when you start to squeeze me"
He said "Come tell me pretty miss"
"Where did you learn to squeeze and kiss"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

I'd heard the name "Nellie Bly" before in the version of Frankie & Johnny recorded by the legendary father of country music, [Jimmie Rodgers], so hearing it again made me look it up. It turns out the name in both songs was borrowed from [a world-famous American journalist]. (Recall that GRRM went to school for journalism.)
The real Nellie Bly first became famous for writing an expose of conditions in a lunatic asylum for women in New York City. Her fame redoubled after she traveled around the world in 1889. She went on to write pulp serial novels and — notably, given Petyr's apparent designs on Sansa — to wed a much older millionaire man named . . . (wait for it) . . . "Seaman".
(Obviously "Seaman" resonates with the idea that Petyr is ironborn, with the sea in his eyes, and with the sperm-whale like "blowhole" on Petyr's lands, which recalls Theon's foregrounded semen from ACOK Theon I. It likewise suggests a reading of the song per which an older "Seaman" is seducing the "Nellie Bly". Could this presage Quellon seducing original Alayne, who I happen to believe has very intrepid genes herself?)
Anyway, back in the song, things take a "dark" turn:

She said "I love the twilight," down on the farm
Said he, "The dark is my light," down on the farm

My original Hoare-ish Littlefinger series highlighted various ways in which Petyr Baelish is Satan/Lucifedemon-coded, so the lovesick boy saying "The dark is my light" absolutely leaps out to me.
Especially because the couplet it's part of smells like it may well have informed a certain infamous exchange:

"Are you the Sword of the Morning now?"
"No. Men call me Darkstar, and I am of the night." (AFFC The Queenmaker)

Consider that the Sword of the Morning wields dawn, which colloquially coincides with (the maiden's preferred) morning "twilight", while we are clearly supposed to suspect that "Darkstar" (who is "of the night" a la the lovesick boy) — who is for some reason "the most dangerous man in Dorne" and who apparently resembles a "Dragonlord" — was sired by Aerys during his 270 visit to Dorne, with Aerys cuckolding, presumably, a man of House Dayne. (AFFC The Princess in the Tower; The Queenmaker) Note the double-entendre of laying pipe here — life-giving, fertilizing pipe, no less:

In 270 AC, during a visit to Sunspear, he told the Princess of Dorne that he would "make the Dornish deserts bloom" by digging a great underground canal beneath the mountains to bring water down from the rainwood. (TWOIAF)

There's a clear symmetry between the notion that Aeyrs cuckolded a Dayne to produce Darkstar and the idea that the noted Aerys-supporter and loyalist Quellon Greyjoy cuckolded a war hero small lord on the Fingers to produce Littlefinger. Doubly so if Littlefinger's mother was (as I have speculated elsewhere) the daughter of Duncan "the Small" Targaryen, Prince of Dragonflies.
If that couplet (in a song that otherwise smells Littlefingerian) reminds us of Darkstar, isn't it curious that the basic structure of Darkstar's implied origin (in the cuckolding of a small lord by a far greater lord) may (also/instead?) apply to Littlefinger's origin?
Back to The Mocking Bird Went Cuckoo. The next line reads like a reference to Lysa's opinion of Petyr:

Said she "You seem to big and brave and mighty strong to me."

Compare with Lysa's very personal opinion of Petyr:

"He may not look as tall or strong as some, but he is worth more than all of them." (ASOS Sansa VI)

The song's next line is wild given Petyr and Lysa's history with moon tea (a tea brewed with certain plants not used in ordinary tea) and especially my conviction that [Petyr dosed Sansa with moon tea] during their voyage on the Merling King so as to make sure she was not pregnant with Tyrion's child:

Said he "Yes, I had onions for my tea."

(By the way, onions in ASOIAF are of course all about Davos. And who do I think Davos is? A possible Hoare-son or Quellon-son, and the Sailor's Wife's sailor, i.e. a sailor who sired a child and abandoned the mother, as, perhaps, Quellon sired Petyr on original-Alayne before leaving her to raise him on the Smallest Finger. Surely coincidence . . . unless this strange, weird old song has been informing George's Song since the mid-1990s.)
The lyrics continue with more Catelyn-esque teasing:

He said "I love you, yes I do"
She said to him "Oh yeah, says you?"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw
He said "You're sweet beyond belief!"
Said she "You said it! OK, chief!"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

The lovesick boy is then encouraged to "walk 'round the houses"—

Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly, said "Walk 'round the houses"

—which 'just so happens' to recall rather closely Petyr and Sansa's sight-seeing tour of his lands, when "Petyr walked with her around his holdings", which include not just houses, but a symbolic sperm cannon and a reminder that foreigners sometimes land on these shores:

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said. There was one place where the tide came jetting up out of a blowhole to shoot thirty feet into the air, and another where someone had chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder. Petyr said that marked one of the places the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea to wrest the Vale from the First Men.
Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog.

The song then references farm work and (via double-entendre) sex:

"Just while I, just while I go and milk the cowses"

Milk cows are, of course, linked to wet nursing and babies. And remember: It's cowbirds who make like cuckoos and cuckold mockingbirds.
The double-entendre gradually becomes obvious:

As they sat 'neath the stars above
She says to him "Oh, what is love?
And the mockingbird went hee-haw and the donkey went cuckoo [note the reversal!]
Well she sat there and milked the cow [lol]
"I'll do my bit" said he, "and how!" [lmao]
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw
He found an old three-legged stool
And sat right down to milk the bull [come on!]
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

A milked bull? Quellon's son Victarion is linkened to a bull. Was Victarion's sire "milked" of his "seed" by Alayne Baelish? Did Quellon not only marry a woman of House Stonetree, but bone a woman wed to a man whose sigil was a "stone head"?
Regarding that "three-legged stool", recall that the dragon must have three heads, that a cuckolder turns a partnership into a three-legged affair, so to speak, and that a man with a large penis (see: "Littlefinger"?) is sometimes said to have [a third leg].
From there the song grows only more suspicious as potential inspiration, as it makes explicit reference to concealed paternity, and implicitly to an improper sexual relationship involving a "father" (which see Littlefinger and "Alayne"):

Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly went all in a lather
Began to cry, shouting "Why, that's the cow's father!"
He turned white and looked surprised
Then to the bull apologized
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

The closing line about apologizing to the bull resonates with Petyr's dealings with Hoster, and perhaps with cuckoldry as well, as a trespass against patriarchal rights of possession over a woman.
The foregoing represents the seemingly better known Gracie Fields version. [The Two Gilberts version] is mostly the same, save for a few passages in the middle.
Sidebar: Regarding "The Two Gilberts", there 'just so happens' to be exactly two Gilberts in the ASOIAF canon.
One of ASOIAF's two Gilberts 'just so happens' to be one of the legendary scions of legendary sperm cannon and possibly Quellon Greyjoy analogue Garth Greenhand, Gilbert of the Vines, who 'just so happens' to be responsible for all that good Arbor wine Petyr loves so.
The other Gilbert is Gilbert Farring, who Stannis tells us "holds Storm's End for me". (ASOS Davos IV) Repeating that: ASOIAF'S second Gilbert "holds" something that belongs to Stannis in lieu of Stannis holding it himself. Almost like he's cuckolding him.
There are two other Farrings (like Gilbert) in the canon. One is Godry, "the Giantslayer", which sounds like something one might nickname a guy who cuckolded a guy with the Titan of Braavos on his shield. The other is Annara Farring. She was Lord Frey's seventh wife, and guess what she 'just so happens' to be known for? If you said "cuckolding her lordly husband", congratulations. And guess how we're told that? Via, of all things under the sun, a milk cow analogy:

[Black Walder had] had Edwyn's wife too, that was common knowledge, Fair Walda had been known to slip into his bed from time to time, and some even said he'd known the seventh Lady Frey [Annara Farring] a deal better than he should have. Small wonder he refused to marry. Why buy a cow when there were udders all around begging to be milked? (ASOS Epilogue)

(It was at this point that I went from "Maybe George has heard this song" to "George is 100% familiar with this song.")
End Sidebar
Right after the line about the onion tea, The Two Gilberts version sees the lovesick boy promise riches and wealth, recalling Petyr's lifelong interest in making money:

He said "I'll buy you furs and gems"
"And all the pretty thees[?] and thems[?]"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

CONTINUED & CONCLUDED IN OLDEST REPLY, BELOW or HERE

This post is the last post in a series looking at the massive amount of 'rhyming' recursivity I believe exists between (a) the homecoming of Petyr Baelish to the Fingers and (b) the homecoming of Theon Greyjoy to Pyke.
While this series/post can be read simply as a study 'for its own sake' of the curious recursion between these storylines, it is my belief that the 'rhyming' explored here between the stories of Petyr and Theon may exist (at least in part) to foreshadow that, like Theon, Petyr Littlefinger, is (among other things) a scion of ironborn kings, because Petyr is Hoare-ish: I.e. because Petyr's blood is (in some part) the blood of the ironborn kings of House Hoare of Orkmont and, later, Harrenhal.
This post is also post 25 of 25 in my broader series on the topic of a Hoare-ish Littlefinger, which is indexed [HERE].
Even if I'm wrong about Littlefinger's lineage, the 'rhyming' recursivity between the homecomings of Theon and Petyr detailed in this series remains, and certainly merits attention.
NOTE: In what follows, all uncited quotes are from ASOS Sansa VI, which describes Petyr's homecoming to his "Drearfort" tower of the 'Smallest Finger', or ACOK Theon I, which describes Theon's homecoming to "drear" Pyke.
As in past posts, I sometimes use "→" as shorthand for "'prefigures' and/or 'informs' and/or 'is reworked by' and/or 'finds a recursive rhyme in'.
As in: ACOK Theon I → ASOS Sansa VI.
This post picks up straight-away from where Part 9 left off. You can read Part 9 [HERE].
If you want to begin at the beginning, Part 1 is [HERE].

Aeron & Oswell

After Theon's homecoming chapter opens with Theon thinking "There was no safe anchorage at Pyke", which is copied nearly verbatim during Petyr's homecoming with Sansa, we see Theon anticipating his first glimpse of Pyke castle, and read this sentence:

Theon drew the hood of his cloak up against the spray, and looked for home.

That line proves to be a key part of a pun-tastic 'rhyme' between (a) Theon coming ashore from the Myraham and meeting Aeron and (b) Sansa coming ashore from the Merling King with the aid of Oswell.
I'll explain.
Note first that Oswell, who is…

…tall and gangling, with long white hair and a great hooked nose, with eyes shaded by a cowl [like a monk's cowl!]… (ACOK Theon V)

—clearly 'rhymes' with Aeron, an ascetic priest (see Oswell's monk-ish cowl) who is…

Tall and thin, with… a beak of a nose… [and] ropes of dried seaweed were braided through his waist-long black hair and untrimmed beard.

They're set up as yin and yang: Tall and similarly built with notable noses and long hair… but one has "long white hair", the other "long black hair", and Aeron has an "untrimmed beard" while Oswell is clean-shaven.
Aeron's beard is not simply a beard, though, but a beard with seaweed in it, which 'rhymes' with Oswell being not simply clean-shaven, but clean-shaven in a sea-faring way, as his "windburnt face"—

She studied the old man's lined windburnt face, hook nose, white hair, and huge knuckly hands. (ASOS Sansa VI)

—prefigures the "wind-chafed skin" of Aeron's niece Asha, which is tagged as typical of the sea-faring ironborn—

Ironborn, he knew at a glance; lean and long-legged, with… wind-chafed skin, strong sure hands….

—as are her notably "strong sure hands", which similarly 'rhyme' with Oswell's notably "huge knuckly hands".
SIDEBAR: As for Aeron's robes here being "green and grey" ("and blue"), this underlines that Petyr's oft-mentioned "grey-green" eyes are like the sea, which (as I've mentioned in previous posts) suggests per Archmaester Haereg's maxim—

"You may dress an ironman in silks and velvets, teach him to read and write and give him books, instruct him in chivalry and courtesy and the mysteries of the Faith… but when you look into his eyes, the sea will still be there, cold and grey and cruel." (TWOIAF)

—that Littlefinger is, at least in part, an ironman.
END SIDEBAR
The first thing we're told about Aeron after Theon realizes who he is is that "he washed up safe on shore"—

A memory prodded at Theon. In one of his rare curt letters, Lord Balon had written of his youngest brother going down in a storm, and turning holy when he washed up safe on shore. "Uncle Aeron?" he said doubtfully.

—which prefigures Oswell splashing his way ashore at the Smallest Finger:

Oswell and Lothor splashed their way ashore, as did Littlefinger himself.

(If Oswell is Aeron-ish, surely Petyr making like Oswell and splashing about in the surf here could foreshadow that he is Hoare-ish. And perhaps some kind of religious figure as well.)

Drawn Up Hoods

With that Oswell/Aeron 'rhyme' in mind, consider again that, as Theon approaches castle Pyke on the Myraham…

Theon drew the hood of his cloak up against the spray, and looked for home.

Sound familiar? That's because it's reworked when Sansa is rowed ashore by the "gangling", Aeron-esque Oswell:

Lothor and old Oswell rowed them ashore. Sansa huddled in the bow under her cloak with the hood drawn up against the wind….

When Sansa gets to shore, "two old men" help to make sure she doesn't get even a little bit wet—

The two old men waded out up to their thighs to lift Sansa from the boat so she would not get her skirts wet.

—which was, of course, exactly the thing Theon was trying to avoid back in ACOK when he "drew the hood of his cloak up against the spray", as Sansa drew hers "up against the wind" when Oswell rowed her in.

Gangplank → Gangling.

GRRM is just warming up. When Theon reaches Lordsport and disembarks from the Myraham, he, too, avoids getting wet. At least initially. Where Sansa uses "gangling" Oswell to come ashore, Theon uses… a "gangplank":

Without waiting for a reply [from Myraham's captain], he strode down the gangplank. "Innkeeper," he barked. "I require a horse".

Kneeling Servants

The innkeeper never gets Theon his horse, of course (of course), because Aeron shows up. And what does gangling white-haired Oswell's black-haired physical mirror Aeron do? He makes Theon get wet after all.

"Kneel."
The ground was all stones[!] and mud. "Uncle, I—"
"Kneel. Or are you too proud now, a lordling of the green lands come among us?"
Theon knelt. He had a purpose here, and might need Aeron's help to achieve it. A crown was worth a little mud and horseshit on his breeches, he supposed.
"Bow your head." Lifting the skin, his uncle pulled the cork and directed a thin stream of seawater down upon Theon's head. It drenched his hair and ran over his forehead into his eyes. Sheets washed down his cheeks, and a finger crept under his cloak and doublet and down his back, a cold rivulet along his spine. The salt made his eyes burn, until it was all he could do not to cry out. He could taste the ocean on his lips. "Let Theon your servant be born again from the sea, as you were," Aeron Greyjoy intoned. "Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel."

Note that Theon kneeling on "stones and mud… and horseshit" before a priest with "seaweed" in his beard is reworked even as Oswell rows Sansa ashore and she huddles in her cloak like Theon, when the Baelish household kneels on rocks covered by nasty seaweed and Sansa dodges sheepshit:

Lothor and old Oswell rowed them ashore. Sansa huddled in the bow under her cloak with the hood drawn up against the wind, wondering what awaited her. Servants emerged from the tower to meet them…. When they recognized Lord Petyr they knelt on the rocks.
[Petyr] led them up the strand over rocks slick with rotting seaweed. … Sansa had to step carefully; there were pellets [i.e. sheepshit] everywhere.

Blessings

Meanwhile, Aeron giving Theon his holy "bless[ing]" is reworked just before Sansa is rowed ashore, when Petyr asks for Sansa's "blessing" after he tells her they're not going to Winterfell and that he's going to wed Lysa:

"So silent, my lady?" said Petyr. "I was certain you would wish to give me your blessing. …"
"I . . . I pray you will have long years together, and many children, and be very happy in one another.

Sansa's reluctant acquiescence — both to giving the blessing and to going ashore and going along with Petyr's plan, which she had not anticipated — echoes Theon's reluctant acquiescence to both Aeron's blessing and Balon's plan of invasion, which he hadn't anticipated.
I suspect Littefinger was fed the line, "So silent, my lady?" before asking for Sansa's blessing as a nod to several pertinent silences in ACOK Theon I. First, the "sullen silence" of the Myraham's captain when he reluctantly acquiesces to Theon taking his would-be salt wife daughter below deck to get a blowjob; second, the "gloom of silence" between Theon and Aeron as they make the final approach to Pyke, post-blessing; and finally, Theon marking the absence of Euron's 'lady', Silence, as he sails into Lordsport:

Theon searched for his uncle Euron's Silence.

Truly, all things come round again.

Getting Wet & Staying Dry 1

But what about Aeron getting Theon pointedly wet? Aeron not only making Theon kneel but getting him wet and then riding with him to Pyke, is reworked (and reversed) not just by Oswell and Lothor rowing Sansa ashore — note the "rode" → "rowed" wordplay:

They [Aeron and Theon] rode in a gloom of silence.
Lothor and old Oswell rowed them ashore.

— and not just by Sansa being carried ashore and kept pointedly dry by two old men who were, seconds earlier, kneeling reverently on the seashore, but also by Aeron-ish Oswell helping Sansa "up" onto The Merling King from his rowboat while assuring her he won't let her fall into the sea, which he makes sure she doesn't:

The rower shipped the oars and helped Sansa to her feet. "Up now. Go on, girl, I got you." Sansa thanked him for his kindness, but received no answer but a grunt. It was much easier going up the rope ladder than it had been coming down the cliff. The oarsman Oswell followed close behind her… (ASOS Sansa V)

So: Where Oswell-ish Aeron forces Theon to kneel and then wets him down with seawater, ceremonially "drowning" him after he comes down the "gangplank", the "gangling" Aeron-ish Oswell helps Sansa "to her feet" and then "up" while promising not to let her fall in the sea, where she could drown.

Getting Wet & Staying Dry 2

Aeron forcing Theon to kneel and getting him wet before he "rode" with him to Pyke is also reworked/reversed inside Petyr's tower, when Sansa's 'other' rower Lothor protects Sansa from Marillion's rape attempt— from being (like Theon) forced to get "wet", so to speak:

"My blood is stirred. And yours, I know … there's no wench half so lusty as one bastard born. Are you wet for me?"
"I'm a maiden," she protested.
"Truly? Oh, Alayne, Alayne, my fair maid, give me the gift of your innocence.

The wetness motif is played up again:

"He put a hand on her breast, and squeezed. "Let's get you out of these wet clothes. You wouldn't want them ripped, I know. Come, sweet lady, heed your heart—"

He wants to "get [her] out of [her] wet clothes" so he can get her "wet", so to speak. But where Aeron forced Theon to "kneel" and get wet in language that suddenly reads as quite rapey and spine-chilling—

Sheets washed down his cheeks [which cheeks?], and a finger[!] crept under his cloak and doublet and down his back, a cold rivulet along his spine."

—before he "rode" with him to castle Pyke, Lothor Brune, who "rowed" Sansa ashore, keeps her safe and 'dry':

Sansa heard the soft sound of steel on leather. "Singer," a rough voice said, "best go, if you want to sing again." The light was dim, but she saw a faint glimmer of a blade.
The singer saw it too. "Find your own wench—" The knife flashed, and he cried out. "You cut me!"
"I'll do worse, if you don't go."
And quick as that, Marillion was gone. The other remained, looming over Sansa in the darkness. "Lord Petyr said watch out for you." It was Lothor Brune's voice, she realized.

Dagmer Cleftjaw → Lothor Brune

And what do you know? Oswell's rowing partner Lothor Brune is also prefigured by Theon's homecoming. Not by Aeron, but by Dagmer Cleftjaw, who Theon thinks of as he approaches Lordsport on the Myraham. In fact, there's a huge 'rhyme' between (a) Dagmer Cleftjaw and his "gut-churning scar", on the one hand, and (b) the beginning of ASOS Sansa VI, which describes Lothor Brune and Sansa's upset stomach (i.e. her churning guts) and seemingly permanently scarred psyche, on the other. I'll try to lay out now.
Consider first that as Theon approaches Lordsport on the Myraham, he goes below deck, where he thinks about Dagmer Cleftjaw (along with the sour-like-Aeron Sylas Sourmouth, who was discussed in Part 8):

As the Myraham made her way landward, Theon paced the deck restlessly, scanning the shore. He had not thought to find Lord Balon himself at quayside, but surely his father would have sent someone to meet him. Sylas Sourmouth the steward, Lord Botley, perhaps even Dagmer Cleftjaw. It would be good to look on Dagmer's hideous old face again.

We meet Dagmer in ACOK Theon III,

He smiled himself to show how it was done. It made for a hideous sight. Under a snowy white mane of hair, Dagmer Cleftjaw had the most gut-churning scar Theon had ever seen, the legacy of the longaxe that had near killed him as a boy. The blow had splintered his jaw, shattered his front teeth, and left him four lips where other men had but two. A shaggy beard covered his cheeks and neck, but the hair would not grow over the scar, so a shiny seam of puckered, twisted flesh divided his face like a crevasse through a snowfield "We could hear them singing," the old warrior said. "It was a good song, and they sang it bravely."
…Dagmer grinned more often and more broadly than Lord Balon ever had.
Ugly as it was, that smile brought back a hundred memories. Theon had seen it often as a boy, when he'd jumped a horse over a mossy wall, or flung an axe and split a target square. [More fond memories of Dagmer.]

We later learn that Dagmer is "fearsome" and a "fierce fighter" as well, despite being marked as aged by his "white mane of hair". (ADWD The King's Prize)
Dagmer's ship is named Foamdrinker, a double-entendre about ale-drinking, as he likes drinking, as well as reaving songs — especially the one a singer wrote about him:

He knew that would give Dagmer pause. A singer had made a song about the axe that cracked his jaw in half, and the old man loved to hear it. Whenever he was in his cups he would call for a reaving song, something loud and stormy that told of dead heroes and deeds of wild valor. (ACOK Theon III)

Balon puts Dagmer in Theon's reaving detachment. Theon foolishly resents this, not accepting that he is inexperienced and needs and could benefit enormously from a seasoned number two with whom he has a good relationship:

"You are to harry the Stony Shore, raiding the fishing villages and sinking any ships you chance to meet. … Aeron will accompany you, and Dagmer Cleftjaw."
…Theon felt as if he'd been slapped. He was being sent to do reaver's work, burning fishermen out of their hovels and raping their ugly daughters, and yet it seemed Lord Balon did not trust him sufficiently to do even that much. Bad enough to have to suffer the Damphair's scowls and chidings. With Dagmer Cleftjaw along as well, his command would be purely nominal. (ACOK Theon II)

Balon gives Theon Dagmer to help him, but Theon can only see it as an affront, so he tries to sideline him:

Dagmer Cleftjaw stood by the high carved prow of his longship, Foamdrinker. Theon had assigned him the task of guarding the ships; otherwise men would have called it Dagmer's victory, not his. A more prickly man might have taken that for a slight, but the Cleftjaw had only laughed. (ACOK Theon III)

That Splintery Ladder Again & Lothor's Hand Up

Now, remembering that we're introduced to Dagmer Cleftjaw while Theon is still aship en route to Pyke, consider again the first paragraph of Sansa VI, plus a bit more (which of course takes place while Petyr and Sansa are still aship en route to Petyr's Drearfort):

The ladder to the forecastle was steep and splintery, so Sansa accepted a hand up from Lothor Brune. Ser Lothor, she had to remind herself; the man had been knighted for his valor in the Battle of the Blackwater. Though no proper knight would wear those patched brown breeches and scuffed boots, nor that cracked and water-stained leather jerkin. A square-faced stocky man with a squashed nose and a mat of nappy grey hair, Brune spoke seldom. He is stronger than he looks, though. She could tell by the ease with which he lifted her, as if she weighed nothing at all. …
She had seldom ventured out on deck herself. Her little cabin was dank and cold, but Sansa had been sick for most of the voyage . . . sick with terror, sick with fever, or seasick . . . she could keep nothing down, and even sleep came hard. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw Joffrey… dying….
…Even this close to shore, the rolling of the ship made her tummy queasy.…
[Petyr] put a sympathetic arm about her shoulders. "Are you quite well? You look so pale."
"It's only my tummy. The seasickness."

We're subsequently reminded of Brune's "squashed nose" and "mat of nappy grey hair", and told of his "square jaw" and more:

With his squashed nose, square jaw, and nap of woolly grey hair, Brune could not be called comely, but he was not ugly either. … Sober, he was a quiet man, but a strong one. (AFFC Alayne II)

Recall too that Brune saves Sansa from Marillion, who tries to use her as Theon used the captain's daughter.
Having surveyed the field of (word)play, we can now see the 'rhyming':

• Where Theon goes below deck as he approaches Lordsport and thinks about Dagmer, whose jaw is (verbatim) "splintered", Sansa, with Brune's help, climbs up to the deck using a (verbatim) "splintered" ladder as she approaches the Drearfort.
  
• Where Theon spurns the 'hand up' Dagmer and his splintered jaw could have given him, "Sansa accept[s] a hand up from Lothor Brune" and climbs the "splintered" ladder.
  
• Where Theon think of the Cleftjaw, who has a "gut-churning scar", Sansa thinks about her literally churning guts — her upset "tummy".
  
• Where Theon thinks that Cleftjaw's "gut-churning scar" resulted from his being "near[ly] killed as a boy", Sansa's churning guts are related to the evident psychic scar she's suffered, which causes her to see a boy killed over and over again.
  
• Dagmer's "shattered" teeth and "splintered" jaw (and Dagmar being sent to "Torrhen's Square") → Brune's "squashed nose" and "square jaw"
  
• Where Dagmer is ironborn, and had his jaw "cracked… in half", Brune wears a "cracked and water-stained [as if from the sea]" jerkin.
  
• Dagmer's "snowy mane of white hair" → Brune's "mat of nappy grey hair"/"nap of woolly grey hair"
  
• Despite their 'old hair', Dagmer is "fierce" and "fearsome", Brune "strong".
  
• Where Dagmer's smile is "ugly" but nonetheless fills Theon with warm memories (defying its appearance), Brune, who "could not be called comely, but… was not ugly either", is "stronger than he looks".
  
• Where Dagmer "covered his cheeks and neck" with a beard but can't grow a 'proper' one due to his scar, which appears as a "seam", Brune doesn't look like a "proper knight" in his "patched… breeches" and "scuffed boots". (Note the sewing language — "seam" → "patched" — and the lexical similarity: "cheeks" → "breeches".)
  
• Both men seem to have a penchant for drink (per the implications of Sansa commenting on Brune's nature "when sober") and a foregrounded relationship with singers. (Where Dagmer loves singers and songs, Brune is in conflict with Marillion — although the deeds of "Lothor Apple-Eater" are likely sung of, like Dagmer's exploits.)
  

Thus just as the Aeron of Theon's homcoming 'rhymes' with the Oswell of Petyr's homecoming, so is Theon's Dagmer Cleftjaw reworked in the person of Petyr's Lothor Brune.
And thus everything about Petyr's homecoming continues to remind us of Theon's homecoming, which makes sense… if Petyr is likewise a scion of ironborn royalty (e.g. if he's Hoare-ish).

The End, and The Distinct Possibility That The Rhyme Between Petyr's and Theon's Homecomings Isn't (Just) About Petyr Being Hoare-ish, After All

That's it. That's all I got regarding the recursively 'rhyming' homecomings of Theon and Petyr. For me, the insane scope and depth of the 'rhyming' between Petyr's homecoming and the homcoming of a scion of ironborn kings is entirely consistent with my broader hypothesis: that the blood of ironborn kings likewise flows in the veins of Petyr Littlefinger — namely "the black blood" of House Hoare of Orkmont.
And yet . . .
It remains that notwithstanding that my Hoare-ish Littlefinger posts connected virtually everything we're told about House Hoare and its various historical kings with things we're told about Petyr Baelish, this (sub)series has detailed recursion not between Petyr and the Hoares, but between Petyr and Theon Greyjoy, who is like the Hoares in that his blood is that of ironborn kings, but who is, nonetheless, a Greyjoy.
It also remains that Theon is the grandson of Quellon Greyjoy, and that [as I show here] — or just scroll down, I'll reproduce that post in the comments — Quellon Greyjoy as described in both TWOIAF and in ASOIAF is nothing if not incredibly Hoare-esque, and not just because his policies and biography in TWOIAF 'rhyme' with the policies and biographies of various Hoare kings, but because ASOIAF proper subtly suggests he was something of a 'whore' in that AFFC makes it abundantly clear that Quellon was a prolific sperm cannon by repeating over and over that he sired nine sons we know of (on three different wives).
Recall, too, that we saw in [Part 2 of the original 'Littlefinger is Hoare-ish' series] that Petyr is in certain striking respects similar to Balon, to Euron, to Aeron, to Asha, and even to Victarion.
This all gives rise to the question: Does all the 'rhyming' between the homecomings of Theon Greyjoy and Petyr Baelish as detailed in this series 'merely' (further) hint that Petyr is (literally) Hoare-ish, and hence that he is like Theon in that he, too, is the scion of ironborn kings?
Or do all the Petyr-Greyjoy connections, coupled with Quellon's foregrounded fecundity and the presence of a barely concealed metaphor for an ocean-based sperm (whale) cannon on Petyr's estate (alongside a reminder of invaders from the sea)—

There was one place where the tide came jetting up out of a blowhole to shoot thirty feet into the air, and another where someone had chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder. Petyr said that marked one of the places the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea to wrest the Vale from the First Men.

—hint that at some point during his travels, Quellon Greyjoy bedded Petyr's mother Alayne (or perhaps Petyr's father's mother), cuckolding her husband and impregnating her with Petyr (or Lord Baelish)?
Note that Quellon was a direct, analogous contemporary to Petyr's 'father': Both are said to have fought for the Targaryens in the War of the Ninepenny Kings.

The Mockingbird & The Cuckolding Cowbird

Here we must consider that Petyr's sigil is the mockingbird, and that certain species of mockingbirds (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-tailed_mockingbird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_mockingbird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-banded_mockingbird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_mockingbird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk-browed_mockingbird) are well-known as hosts for the [brood parasitism] of certain [cowbirds]. That is, it is well-known that mockingbirds frequently care for the eggs of cowbirds and feed the hatched chicks of cowbirds as if they were their own offspring.
In short, mockingbirds accept being cuckolded.
Recall here that the men of Pyke greeted Theon with "bovine [as in cow, as in the cowbirds that cuckold mockingbirds] eyes", and that the o.g. brood parasites are cuckoo birds, from whence we derive our term "cuckolding".
Recall, too, that the Greyjoy banner over Pyke weirdly takes on the appearance of a bird during Theon's homecoming, which I've just spent 10 posts comparing to Petyr's homecoming:

Above the Sea Tower snapped his father's banner. The Myraham was too far off for Theon to see more than the cloth itself, but he knew the device it bore: the golden kraken of House Greyjoy, arms writhing and reaching against a black field. The banner streamed from an iron mast, shivering and twisting as the wind gusted, like a bird struggling to take flight.

Thus the possibility that Petyr's nominal "father" Lord Baelish (or Petyr's nominal paternal "grandfather") was cuckolded by Quellon Greyjoy, the Hoare-esque sperm cannon from the land of cowbird-evoking "bovine eyes", whose sigil is likened to a bird, is right there in his mockingbird sigil.
Indeed, I very much wonder whether we're not told all about the super-pollinator Garth Greenhand in part as a 'rhyming' hint that Quellon Greyjoy was a super-pollinator who spread his "seed" amongst the ladies of what the ironborn call the "green lands".

The Mocking Bird Went Cuckoo

The notion that Petyr's mockingbird sigil may nod to Petyr's supposed father (or supposed paternal grandfather) getting cuckolded by Quellon Greyjoy reminds me of a song brought to my attention by MaxPayload: The Mocking Bird Went Cuckoo was recorded in the 1930s by at least two acts, including the British movie star [Gracie Fields] — the highest paid film actress in the world c. 1937 — and an act called "The Two Gilberts".
To say the lyrics of the song remind me of Littlefinger's story is if anything an understatement, beginning with the opening image of "a lovesick youth and maiden":

A lovesick youth and maiden (down on the farm)
With hearts so heavy laden (down on the farm)
They held each other's hands and looked into each other's eye
And started to tell each other lies

To say the least, Littlefinger is closely identified with being a lovesick youth and with lying (including about his sexploits with the sisters Tully). And notably, he and Sansa practically begin their relationship by agreeing to lie about her being his daughter. (Sansa's heart is notably 'heavy laden' when this happens upon arrival at Littlefinger's tower — and sheep farm.)
Regarding the "down on the farm" setting, ASOIAF makes regular reference to the bountiful crops and rich farmlands of the Tullys' Riverlands, and we see the courtyards of Riverrun "teem[ing] with… cows, sheep, and chickens" in ACOK Catelyn V.
The song continues with a first kiss "by the cowshed door" (recalling that we're told that Petyr's estate has "a sheepfold"):

He kissed her by the cowshed door
She said "I've not been kissed before"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

Petyr was, of course, Lysa's first kiss, and probably Catelyn's as well, as well as Lysa's first fuck (regarding which, rest assured that the song gets deep into sexual double-entendre soon enough):

[O]ver there, beneath that bower, she and Lysa had played at kissing with Petyr.
She had not thought of that in years. How young they all had been—she no older than Sansa, Lysa younger than Arya, and Petyr younger still, yet eager. The girls had traded him between them, serious and giggling by turns. It came back to her so vividly she could almost feel his sweaty fingers on her shoulders and taste the mint on his breath. There was always mint growing in the godswood, and Petyr had liked to chew it. He had been such a bold little boy, always in trouble. "He tried to put his tongue in my mouth," Catelyn had confessed to her sister afterward, when they were alone. "He did with me too," Lysa had whispered, shy and breathless. "I liked it." (AGOT Catelyn XI)
"Petyr's breath is always fresh … he was the first man I ever kissed, you know." -Lysa (ASOS Sansa VI)

Next we see the maiden tease the eager "lovesick youth", as Cat ostensibly teased Petyr:

He said "My love I'll swear to you"
She said "I'll smack you if you do"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw
Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly, said "Oh how you tease me"
"I'm so shy, I'm so shy, when you start to squeeze me"
He said "Come tell me pretty miss"
"Where did you learn to squeeze and kiss"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

I'd heard the name "Nellie Bly" before in the version of Frankie & Johnny recorded by the legendary father of country music, [Jimmie Rodgers], so hearing it again made me look it up. It turns out the name in both songs was borrowed from [a world-famous American journalist]. (Recall that GRRM went to school for journalism.)
The real Nellie Bly first became famous for writing an expose of conditions in a lunatic asylum for women in New York City. Her fame redoubled after she traveled around the world in 1889. She went on to write pulp serial novels and — notably, given Petyr's apparent designs on Sansa — to wed a much older millionaire man named . . . (wait for it) . . . "Seaman".
(Obviously "Seaman" resonates with the idea that Petyr is ironborn, with the sea in his eyes, and with the sperm-whale like "blowhole" on Petyr's lands, which recalls Theon's foregrounded semen from ACOK Theon I. It likewise suggests a reading of the song per which an older "Seaman" is seducing the "Nellie Bly". Could this presage Quellon seducing original-Alayne, who I happen to believe has very intrepid genes herself?)
Anyway, back in the song, things take a "dark" turn:

She said "I love the twilight," down on the farm
Said he, "The dark is my light," down on the farm

My original Hoare-ish Littlefinger series highlighted various ways in which Petyr Baelish is Satan/Lucifedemon-coded, so the lovesick boy saying "The dark is my light" absolutely leaps out to me.
Especially because the couplet it's part of smells like it may well have informed a certain infamous exchange:

"Are you the Sword of the Morning now?"
"No. Men call me Darkstar, and I am of the night." (AFFC The Queenmaker)

Consider that the Sword of the Morning wields dawn, which colloquially coincides with (the maiden's preferred) morning "twilight", while we are clearly supposed to suspect that "Darkstar" (who is "of the night" a la the lovesick boy) — who is for some reason "the most dangerous man in Dorne" and who apparently resembles a "Dragonlord" — was sired by Aerys during his 270 visit to Dorne, with Aerys cuckolding, presumably, a man of House Dayne. (AFFC The Princess in the Tower; The Queenmaker) Note the double-entendre of laying pipe here — life-giving, fertilizing pipe, no less:

In 270 AC, during a visit to Sunspear, he told the Princess of Dorne that he would "make the Dornish deserts bloom" by digging a great underground canal beneath the mountains to bring water down from the rainwood. (TWOIAF)

There's a clear symmetry between the notion that Aeyrs cuckolded a Dayne to produce Darkstar and the idea that the noted Aerys-supporter and loyalist Quellon Greyjoy cuckolded a war hero small lord on the Fingers to produce Littlefinger. Doubly so if Littlefinger's mother was (as I have speculated elsewhere) the daughter of Duncan "the Small" Targaryen, Prince of Dragonflies.
If that couplet (in a song that otherwise smells Littlefingerian) reminds us of Darkstar, isn't it curious that the basic structure of Darkstar's implied origin (in the cuckolding of a small lord by a far greater lord) may (also/instead?) apply to Littlefinger's origin?
Back to The Mocking Bird Went Cuckoo. The next line reads like a reference to Lysa's opinion of Petyr:

Said she "You seem to big and brave and mighty strong to me."

Compare with Lysa's very personal opinion of Petyr:

"He may not look as tall or strong as some, but he is worth more than all of them." (ASOS Sansa VI)

The song's next line is wild given Petyr and Lysa's history with moon tea (a tea brewed with certain plants not used in ordinary tea) and especially my conviction that [Petyr dosed Sansa with moon tea] during their voyage on the Merling King so as to make sure she was not pregnant with Tyrion's child:

Said he "Yes, I had onions for my tea."

(By the way, onions in ASOIAF are of course all about Davos. And who do I think Davos is? A possible Hoare-son or Quellon-son, and the Sailor's Wife's sailor, i.e. a sailor who sired a child and abandoned the mother, as, perhaps, Quellon sired Petyr on Alayne before leaving her to raise him on the Smallest Finger. Surely coincidence . . . unless this strange, weird old song has been informing George's Song since the mid-1990s.)
The lyrics continue with more Catelyn-esque teasing:

He said "I love you, yes I do"
She said to him "Oh yeah, says you?"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw
He said "You're sweet beyond belief!"
Said she "You said it! OK, chief!"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

The lovesick boy is then encouraged to "walk 'round the houses"—

Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly, said "Walk 'round the houses"

—which 'just so happens' to recall rather closely Petyr and Sansa's sight-seeing tour of his lands, when "Petyr walked with her around his holdings", which include not just houses, but a symbolic sperm cannon and a reminder that foreigners sometimes land on these shores:

When the rains let up, Petyr walked with her around his holdings, which took less than half a day. He owned a lot of rocks, just as he had said. There was one place where the tide came jetting up out of a blowhole to shoot thirty feet into the air, and another where someone had chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder. Petyr said that marked one of the places the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea to wrest the Vale from the First Men.
Farther inland a dozen families lived in huts of piled stone beside a peat bog.

The song then references farm work and (via double-entendre) sex:

"Just while I, just while I go and milk the cowses"

Milk cows are, of course, linked to wet nursing and babies. And remember: It's cowbirds who make like cuckoos and cuckold mockingbirds.
The double-entendre gradually becomes obvious:

As they sat 'neath the stars above
She says to him "Oh, what is love?
And the mockingbird went hee-haw and the donkey went cuckoo [note the reversal!]
Well she sat there and milked the cow [lol]
"I'll do my bit" said he, "and how!" [lmao]
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw
He found an old three-legged stool
And sat right down to milk the bull [come on!]
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

A milked bull? Quellon's son Victarion is linkened to a bull. Was Victarion's sire "milked" of his "seed" by Alayne Baelish? Did Quellon not only marry a woman of House Stonetree, but bone a woman wed to a man whose sigil was a "stone head"?
Regarding that "three-legged stool", recall that the dragon must have three heads, that a cuckolder turns a partnership into a three-legged affair, so to speak, and that a man with a large penis (see: "Littlefinger"?) is sometimes said to have [a third leg].
From there the song grows only more suspicious as potential inspiration, as it makes explicit reference to concealed paternity, and implicitly to an improper sexual relationship involving a "father" (which see Littlefinger and "Alayne"):

Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly went all in a lather
Began to cry, shouting "Why, that's the cow's father!"
He turned white and looked surprised
Then to the bull apologized
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

The closing line about apologizing to the bull resonates with Petyr's dealings with Hoster, and perhaps with cuckoldry as well, as a trespass against patriarchal rights of possession over a woman.
The foregoing represents the seemingly better known Gracie Fields version. The Two Gilberts version is mostly the same, save for a few passages in the middle.
Sidebar: Regarding "The Two Gilberts", there 'just so happens' to be exactly two Gilberts in the ASOIAF canon.
One of ASOIAF's two Gilberts 'just so happens' to be one of the legendary scions of legendary sperm cannon and possibly Quellon Greyjoy analogue Garth Greenhand, Gilbert of the Vines, who 'just so happens' to be responsible for all that good Arbor wine Petyr loves so.
The other Gilbert is Gilbert Farring, who Stannis tells us "holds Storm's End for me". (ASOS Davos IV) Repeating that: ASOIAF'S second Gilbert "holds" something that belongs to Stannis in lieu of Stannis holding it himself. Almost like he's cuckolding him.
There are two other Farrings (like Gilbert) in the canon. One is Godry, "the Giantslayer", which sounds like something one might nickname a guy who cuckolded a guy with the Titan of Braavos on his shield. The other is Annara Farring. She was Lord Frey's seventh wife, and guess what she 'just so happens' to be known for? If you said "cuckolding her lordly husband", congratulations. And guess how we're told that? Via, of all things under the sun, a milk cow analogy:

[Black Walder had] had Edwyn's wife too, that was common knowledge, Fair Walda had been known to slip into his bed from time to time, and some even said he'd known the seventh Lady Frey [Annara Farring] a deal better than he should have. Small wonder he refused to marry. Why buy a cow when there were udders all around begging to be milked? (ASOS Epilogue)

(It was at this point that I went from "Maybe George has heard this song" to "George is 100% familiar with this song.")
End Sidebar
Right after the line about the onion tea, The Two Gilberts version sees the lovesick boy promise riches and wealth, recalling Petyr's lifelong interest in making money:

He said "I'll buy you furs and gems"
"And all the pretty thees[?] and thems[?]"
And the mockingbird went cuckoo and the donkey went hee-haw

CONTINUED & CONCLUDED IN OLDEST REPLY, BELOW or HERE

I ran a 3.5 mile race yesterday and today I feel better than I have in months.
First off - I don’t exercise regularly.
I am what you’d call “sedentary” for 5 days a week apart from walking my dog. I take 3 mile walks on weekends, but that’s it. Most of the time I am sitting.
Anyway, there was a race in my area for charity. I forgot I signed up for it. I really didn’t want to go, but oh well. Thankfully it was for all ages and skill levels.
I ended up going alone, because I have no friends, and ran the first mile. Got a little dizzy and walked / did short jog bursts for the rest. For the last half mile I sprinted down the finish line and felt euphoric.
I was really proud of myself because I’ve never ran in a race before. I slept like a baby that night. And this morning, I woke up and felt…great? It’s been a few hours and I still feel more alert, positive, and happy.
If this is what exercise can do for my mood, holy shit, I better go on more runs.

[←Chapter 52] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 54→]
Efrain woke, and with consciousness reasserting itself came a pain unlike any he’d ever experienced. It was a lugubrious sensation that stretched over the entirety of his body like a giant bruise. It took a further moment to remember that this was not normal, and in fact was quite alarming. He tried to gauge where he was, but found only blackness to greet him.
So I’m blind as well? He thought, with all the dispassionate annoyance of a man finding a favoured tool lost.
He could still feel his feet and fingers, wrapped in cloth as they were, so that was a comfort. Reaching for his head, he found the cold stone of the mask still there, though it lacked a lot of the curse that gave it its ‘hungry’ quality. Tugging it, he felt it resettle into a more natural position, and with it light came in to show his surroundings.
There was canvas arcing over a ribcage of wood, which rocked with every turn and bump in the rode. A gentle sunlight managed to penetrate the cloth, flickering with the passage of leaves. Efrain gripped the wooden frame and drew himself up to sit, trying to remember how he’d gotten here. His groan at the effort attracted the attention of Innie, who was sitting by the open slit near the front.
“Efrain?” she asked, hesitatingly.
“Yes, yes. It’s me,” he said, the words feeling foreign and slippery on his non-existent tongue.
“Efrain?” she asked again.
“Yes! Yes. It’s me. Here, somehow. What the hell happened?”
“You… you absolute fool!” she half-screamed, “you nearly got yourself killed!”
“I-” he said, the phrase ‘got yourself killed’ stirring something of a memory within. It was very distant, without much cohesion, like a memory of childhood. Still, there was enough there to remember some definite sensations, a sight and sound or two-
“You know what,” he said slowly, “I think I might’ve actually been dead, at least for a little bit,” he said, pulling at his hood.
“What?!” she gasped, “how could you possibly know that?”
“I was… somewhere else. I can barely remember, but it was so strange. I had my body again, I think, and it was…” he started trying to piece together the fragments flitting about the edge of recollection.
Her expression suggested that she was actively considering the potential that her partner had gone completely insane.
“It was someplace I don’t think I’ve ever been before, but it was still familiar,” he said, “I think I met somewhere there. Or multiple people. I definitely saw- there was something that-”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“It was- it was very strange,” he said, further efforts to find other words failing him, “well, in any case, I’m back. I think so, anyway.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been dashed against a cliffside,” he laughed, “I thought I wasn’t supposed to feel pain in this form. That was supposed to be one of the advantages.”
“You scared me. The only reason I didn’t think you were fully dead was that your bones retained their shape, even though you were unconscious.”
“Huh…” Efrain murmured, raising an arm to inspect it, “that shouldn’t be possible. The enchantments holding me together should’ve fallen apart as soon as I went under.”
After a cursory inspection to verify all of his limbs were present and more-or-less correct, he looked over at the cat.
“However it happened, it would appear that I’m not done yet,” he said slowly, only half-sure in the conviction.
There was something different about how he experienced himself, just in the background, but definitely there. It was a sense of disconnection, like he was floating just behind or above his body, experiencing what he did from an outside perspective.
“Well, I suppose that’s… good,” said Innie.
“Don’t cry too much for me,” he said, “anyways what happened? I don’t remember anything after the crypt, other than the fire.”
“We did it,” she said, “more-or-less, the creatures were largely incinerated, good riddance. Unfortunately a defender or two got caught up in the blaze, as well.”
“Oh dear,” Efrain said.
“Are you really surprised? It wasn’t our power, and we certainly didn’t know how to control it. I’m surprised we didn’t burn ourselves in the process.”
“Not an experience I would care to undergo again, that’s for sure.”
Innie’s shiver indicated that she thought much the same.
“Right, right,” he continued, “so then, how did we get from there to here, then? And where is here?”
“A wagon, travelling with the train of troops, heading south for Karkos. The commander offered you a slot, unconscious as you were.”
“I would’ve thought burning a few villagers would’ve soured his disposition.”
“Apparently not. Efrain, I don’t know this man, but he’s clearly playing his own game, and it involves you.”
“I see,” he said, tugging at his robe so that it hung around his shoulder more naturally, “I assume you acted on my behalf while I was… gone, for lack of a better word.”
“I did what I could, which wasn’t much. I was fully expecting them to fall upon us after that, especially you, defenceless. But no, he came to me and proposed that we come with him.”
“He… treated with you?”
“He said that we probably wouldn’t find much welcome among the villagers, and the paladins were not inclined to let us go either. His soldiers, on the other hand, would follow his orders, and he could personally guarantee our safety all the way to Karkos if we chose to come.”
“And you went with him,” Efriain sighed.
“What else was I supposed to do?” None of your ‘friends’ were nearby, and Naia was right about the villagers, to say nothing about the paladins. I don’t use money, nor would most treat a cat given the choice. Did you want me to drag you out into the wilderness and run into a wildling looking for a chew toy, or worse?”
“All right, allright,” he said, raising his hands to placate the wisp mother, “I don’t begrudge you anything. It sounds like you made the right choice.”
There was a silence, in which Efrain clearly perceived that Innialysia was apprehensive.
“Efrain he… and I want you to understand, even with all the things I said earlier, I was still going to refuse him. I didn’t and don’t trust him still but he told me that… that the River had told him that he needed us.”
The revelation was one that ran along his spine, and threw the captain into an entirely different light. Using the River’s words as a bargaining chip, or even just reassurance spoke to a knowledge of the magical world that far surpassed most in his lands. He must’ve known that Innie was loath to speak to the ignorant, and tempered his speech accordingly.
“Well, we’re at his mercy, for better or worse,” Efrain said, “where on the trail are we and how long have I been out?”
“Three nights, so roughly four days of travel,” she said, cocking her head, “I think that puts us two or three days from the city proper. I’m not sure, I’ve rarely come down this way.”
Efrain tried to recall the geography of the region, without much success. After a few minutes though, the aimless maps he drew in his head began to resolve with some clarity. They would be reaching the edge of the forests in a day or two, and entering the outlying highlands of the coast. From there, they’d rapidly come across the farmlands owned by the city that flanked its outskirts. The pain was beginning to subside now that he had started to move his limbs cautiously. To his joy, he could find no fault in them or their function, as far as he could tell.
“Well then,” he said “I guess I should meet with the commander and get a read on what he wants. Do you know where Tykhon is?”
“I think I saw it wandering behind the train, a far distance. It doesn’t want to get too close.”
The wagons had begun to slow, the light outside taking on a reddish hue as the sun began to dip. Obviously they were breaking for camp, which suited Efrain just fine. When they’d come to a full stop and Efrain drew himself up to go outside, he was taken aback by the sudden appearance of a face through the flap.
“Oh!” Aya said, in a half-squeak, “You’re awake!”
“I forgot to mention,” said Innie, “she’s been coming around every now and then.”
“Right, then, yes,” Efrain said, straightening, “how can I help you?”
“Well, I was just coming to chat with the madam,” she said.
“Madam?” Efrain said, looking at the cat who was conspicuously staring elsewhere.
“I didn’t realise that you were awake, I- I’ll just go and come back later. You probably have a lot on your mind,” said Aya, withdrawing through the break in the fabric.
“Well, that was a way to wake up,” said Efrain, listening to her footfalls fading into the distance, “right so… commander! Yes. Just need to get my bearings.”
Outside was slightly foggy, although Efrain gave much praise to gods he didn’t believe in that it wasn’t the unnatural, fear-laced apparition that had plagued them. The trees were less large and intimidating than the ancient northern conifers, the bowes of them dense and green. The breeze that wafted through them was noticeably warmer as well, though it still carried a northern chill.
“Right then,” Efrain said as he clambered down past the hitchings to the ground.
It didn’t take long to find a spirited young man, riding along behind them.
“Would you happen to know where your commander is?” Efrain said, erring on the side of politeness.
“Good evening lord Efrain,” he said, “the commander ordered you to be sent when you awoke. You’ll likely find him near the top of the line, or at the centre of camp, depending on how set up he is.”
He pointed up through the line of horses and various pages and servants. Most were beginning to set up tents and firepits, or leading the mounts to be tied off. Efrain thanked the man and set off in the direction he indicated, weaving between the various groups that were forming. It didn’t take long for him to find Naia’s small tent, the standard bearer in front alerting the commander within.
Naia sat before a small table, furiously scribbling at a scrap of parchment. At his left was Damafelce, still in her riding gear, though she was currently attacking a bowl of something creamy with vigour. Efrain stood in silence for a few moments, watching as the knight pointed out something to the commander and murmured a correction. Both of them looked up as he cleared his throat, and Naia issued one of his sly smiles.
“My, lord Efrain, a delightful surprise,” he said, “in truth, I was beginning to worry we’d lost you for good. It would be an ill thing to carry a rotting body around all the way down to Karkos. Damafelce, you are excused, although I would like you to have that talk with Lethsoco. He’s been getting too eager recently.”
She nodded, and draining the last of her bowl, departed from the room. Efrain was offered a small stool, which he gratefully sank into before the commander.
“I’m sorry if jumping into business immediately might not be to your tastes,” said Naia with a genuine note of regret in his voice, “but there’s some conflicting reports I simply must sort out.”
Efrain laid his elbows on the table and laced his fingers, waiting for the commander to begin.
“Some are from my own soldiers, some are from the paladins, some are from others. I personally have my own beliefs, but I think it’s better to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Would you mind telling me what happened after I rode away from the village?”
Efrain took a moment to gather himself, and piece together what spare memories he could, before beginning to relay the general account of what had happened. Over the course of the next half-hour, Naia interrupted him constantly, asking clarifying questions, or for more detail on this incident and that.
“Lillian told me that you attempted to burn down the church,” he said, “is that true?”
Efrain caught a distinct impression that the captain already suspected the truth, yet was encouraging him to proffer a lie.
“Well, I can understand why she might believe that,” he began diplomatically, “but no, that wasn’t my intent. The magic I was using was difficult to control, and I had to improvise quite a bit. Desperate times, desperate measures.”
“So the damage to the church was merely incidental,” Naia said, his eyes settling, “would that you could convince the paladins otherwise. They seem quite intent that you were trying to kill all of them.”
“I’m not holding out hope to curry favour with those two.”
“Implying that you might wish to do so elsewhere,” Naia said, the glimmer returning, “although I’ve had my fair share of headaches with those two, they’re more reasonable compared to others. They’re still young, they’ll probably settle with time and the right guidance.”
“They’ll have to learn not to be afraid of things they can’t control, if the children are any metric,” Efrain said, not interested in mincing words.
At that, Naia leaned forward, regarding Efrain with such intensity that the older man felt uncomfortable.
“‘Something they can’t control’...” he said, repeating the words with purpose, “but I do imagine you have some things to ask me, don’t you?”
“Several things,” Efrain said, “but I’ll stick with one for now. Why did you save me? Do you need me for something?”
Naia’s silence was full of purpose, cast in the shadows that flickering candles cast on his face. Without a word, he got up, and left through the front of the tent, exchanging words with the standard bearer outside. Efrain heard footsteps receding as Naia reappeared, sat down, and leaned in to lower his voice.
“I would say I believe I owe you a debt, or at least, that’s what I would say if you were stupid enough to believe that,” he said, “given I’ve already used that justification, I wouldn’t blame you if you were suspicious.”
Efrain leaned in himself, wondering where this apparent candidness had come from.
“If you really want to know, then the truth is simple,” he said, “I was taught from my earliest days that only a fool dismisses talent based on superstition. You might notice that many of my own ranks would be dismissed, if not outright laughed at by others. Damafelce, a knight, and what’s more a right-hand? A woman from the barbarous jungle of Nieth?”
He began to tap his quill on the desk.
“Tools, lord Efrain. I want, and have great need of them. I am not the paladins - my words on this parchment could command a garrison to be built, or a man to be cut down in his home. Creation, destruction, good, evil, all dependent on the whims of the wielder. Magic is the same.”
“And which variety would you prefer me to be?” Efrain asked.
“Both, as the need may take it. I did not get this far without being flexible, and neither will you,” said Naia, “and while we’re on the subject, let me offer you something.”
Efrain would’ve held his breath, but settled for stiffening to attention.
“I want you to come with me, to Karkos and beyond. I want you to serve under me, with all the obligations, and privileges, that implies.”
Efrain was struck genuinely speechless. He had, somewhere in the back of his mind, idly conjured the vision of such an offer, but it was a silly fantasy, not something to be believed, let alone desired.
“I understand if you are hesitant,” Naia said, spreading his hands, “but fate has dropped one opportunity into my lap, and I’m inclined to see if I can secure another. Call me greedy if you wish, but I was also taught to not let such things slip by.”
“I don’t- why would you-” Efrain began, trying to form a sentence to describe the whirlwind of shock within him.
“Consider this, Efrain - a young, up-and-coming commander with a good record. Rather unorthodox in his choices of subordinates, enough for some to whisper in the dark, enough even perhaps, to close off some opportunities for promotion.”
A smile flickered at the edge of his lips - he was clearly enjoying this pantomime.
“Now consider, that the man returns, safely bearing a paragon of the church, who’s been sought for over sixty years, through trial and tumult. His warriors and he are lauded for their ability and leadership, despite their odd origins. What could be in store for such a person? Respect, certainly, but what about promotion?”
“So, you want to be a general,” said Efrain.
Naia smiled and bowed his head, humbly presenting himself.
“And you need me because… why? Please don’t think I believe this whole screed on ‘talent’. You’re doing that to appeal to my own sensibilities about the church.”
Naia laughed openly at that, though it wasn’t the most pleasant sound.
“I see you’ll need more cajoling than that. There are other reasons a mage would be valuable to me, this is true. But I wasn’t lying about talent being valuable to me. All I ask is that you think about this offer, and if you’ll accept it, I’ll tell you the rest.”
Efrain sat in silence for a while, wondering at the strange offer. Listening to the wind whistling through the trees, his hand unconsciously crept up to scratch at his forehead. Naia was looking at him expectantly, perhaps hoping he’d jump into it impulsively to reveal the mystery, but Efrain was intent on gauging the motives of this man.
“You do know,” Efrain began, “that inferno up on the roof. It would be difficult, probably impossible to do it again. And, if I tried, there’s no guarantee it wouldn’t cause significant damage to your own side.”
“I guessed as much, and no, I wouldn’t expect a display like that,” Naia said with a wry smile, “you wouldn’t be of much use to me dead, Efrain.”
So he wants me alive to do something, something with magic? Or something else? Efrain thought. He began to think about what else had changed throughout the last few days, and tried to recall what exactly Naia would know from his reports.
Certainly he would probably have at least a neutral appraisal from his soldiers, but that couldn’t be it. And mages could be found to do all sorts of magical tasks, even in Angorrah, if one was willing to seek them out. So was it for some unique power or ability then? He had shown him the River, but that was also an accident. And he didn’t expect him to use the flames of the Wisp Matriarch, or so he said.
What did Efrain offer to Naia, something that he only, or at least only a few others, could offer him? What had changed the offer of cooperation from simple guidance to something more long-term and involved? Efrain furiously reflected over the last few days, and suddenly he had it.
And with that, a whole web opened up before him, glistening with many unknown strands.
“Commander, before I say anything, I would like to ask just three questions. Quick ones, I would think.”
“Please.”
“You are a commander, aren’t you? I was given to understand that they managed much larger forces than this company. Over whole regions, in fact. That would normally be your duties, no?
The man nodded.
“Usually up to a thousand, though circumstances demand otherwise on occasion. Still, this is the smallest force I’ve wielded for a while now. My trusted and favoured.”
“And tell me, the children, they’re usually guarded by a retinue of paladins, I would assume, back in the holy city?”
“Indeed. Dozens of them.”
Naia’s eyes were glittering.
“And you were heading to do what all that way up north?”
Efrain of course knew the answer to this question, but he needed the cover if he could get it.
“Subjugating a castle, filled with undead, or so the tales go,” he said, “they made quite a big deal of it, back in the castle.”
Efrain sat, slotting pieces into place as he studied the man’s face.
“There’s indeed something you’re not telling me, commander.”
“Oh?” Naia said.
It was a game to him, Efrain was sure of it. A game of guesses and knives in the dark.
“So,” he began, “the church talks up a mission to the far north, all the way across the continent. Some terrible beast, holed up in some old castle. Well, of course, they couldn’t finance a full contingent. Only a hundred measly men. No one wants to take the deal, I assume, so they offer something to sweeten the pot, a crusade, with the two most sacred figures of the church at the head.”
Naia offered the slightest nod and opened his mouth to speak.
“Only, that’s not the real reason,” Efrain quickly interjected, deciding to take his chances, “I was there at the Frozen Vale, laying to rest the evil spirit you claim. And there were undead, weak, of poor craft, but numerous. Enough to man the battlements effectively if the spirit so chose.”
The momentum of the lie carried him onwards to his conclusion.
“So, tell me, why did you have few men, no siege equipment, and little stores? And why were the two most important people in the faith there with two bodyguards between them?”
The darkness of Naia’s eyes reflected the candle, twin flickers of flame and serpentine consideration.
[←Chapter 52] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 54→]

1. From method to madness
   
2. And the wiener is…
   
3. Road to the multiverse
   
4. Lois kills Stewie.
   
5. Meet the quagmires.
   
6. Brian wallows and Peter swallows.
   
7. PTV
   
8. 15 minutes of shame
   
9. To love and die in dixie.
   
10. Death lives.
    
11. McStroke
    
12. Blue harvest.
    
13. Stewie loves Lois.
    
14. Death is a bitch.
    
15. Brian in love.
    
16. When you wish upon a Weinstein.
    
17. Road to Rhode Island.
    
18. Untitled Griffin family history.
    
19. Brian sings and swings
    
20. Back to the woods.
    
21. Stewie kills Lois.
    
22. North to north Quahog
    
23. Road to Rupert
    
24. The man with two Brians.
    
25. The courtship of Stewie's father
    
26. Screwed the pooch.
    
27. Fish out of water.
    
28. Petergeist
    
29. Chick cancer.
    
30. Brian & Stewie.
    
31. I dream of jesus.
    
32. Petarded
    
33. Patriot games
    
34. Road to Europe.
    
35. Tales of a third grade nothing.
    
36. The Cleveland Lorretta quagmire
    
37. Peter's daughter
    
38. Something, something, something, dark side.
    
39. Hell comes to Quahog.
    
40. A very special family guy freakin' Christmas.
    
41. Padre de Familia
    
42. The thin white line.
    
43. The fat guy strangler
    
44. Mother Tucker
    
45. Peter Griffin: husband, father… brother?
    
46. Peter's two dads.
    
47. Prick up your ears.
    
48. Fox-y lady.
    
49. Da boom.
    
50. Hannah banana.
    
51. Family gay.
    
52. 420.
    
53. Family guy viewer mail #1
    
54. Stuck together or torn apart.
    
55. Road to Germany
    
56. Long john Peter
    
57. The splendid source.
    
58. Don't make me over.
    
59. It takes a village idiot… and I married one.
    
60. Saving private Brian
    
61. Stewie & Stu's excellent adventure
    
62. Breaking out is hard to do.
    
63. Baby not on board.
    
64. Barely legal.
    
65. Believe it or not, Joe's walking on air.
    
66. Sibling rivalry
    
67. Peterotica
    
68. Bango was his name oh!
    
69. The tan aquatic with Steve Zissou.
    
70. Model misbehavior
    
71. Ocean's three and a half.
    
72. Deep throats
    
73. Stewie B Goode
    
74. One if by clam, two if by sea.
    
75. Fast times at buddy cianci jr high
    
76. Brian: portrait of a dog
    
77. Quagmire's baby.
    
78. He's too sexy for his fat.
    
79. Family goy.
    
80. You May Now Kiss the... Uh... Guy Who Receives
    
81. We love you, Conrad.
    
82. Brian the bachelor
    
83. Emission impossible.
    
84. Jerome is the new black.
    
85. I take thee, Quagmire
    
86. A hero seats next door
    
87. Partial terms of endearment.
    
88. Brian goes back to college
    
89. Peter's got Woods
    
90. The father, the son, and the holy Fonz
    
91. Go, Stewie, GO!
    
92. Let's go to the hop.
    
93. Brian does Hollywood.
    
94. Fore, father.
    
95. Mr. griffin goes to Washington.
    
96. Not all dogs go to heaven.
    
97. Dial meg for murder
    
98. Mr. Saturday night
    
99. No Chris left behind
    
100. E. Peterbus Unum
     
101. Big man on hippocampus.
     
102. The former life of Brian.
     
103. Lethal weapons.
     
104. Brian's got a brand new bag
     
105. Death has a shadow.
     
106. Brian Griffin's house of pain.
     
107. Spies reminiscent of us.
     
108. Three kings.
     
109. Peter's progress.
     
110. April in Quahog.
     
111. Business guy.
     
112. Boys do cry.
     
113. Extra large medium.
     
114. Whistle while your wife works
     
115. No meals on wheels.
     
116. Airport 07'
     
117. The perfect castaway
     
118. Stew-roids.
     
119. The story on page 1
     
120. Quagmire's dad.
     
121. Wasted talent.
     
122. Ready, willing, and disabled.
     
123. If I'm dyin', I'm lyin
     
124. The kiss seen around the world.
     
125. Blind ambition
     
126. Jungle love
     
127. Love, blactually.
     
128. Bill & Peter's bogus journey
     
129. Peter, peter, caviar eater
     
130. Love thy trophy
     
131. Damnit Janet
     
132. A picture's worth a thousand bucks
     
133. Play it again, Brian.
     
134. 8 simple rules for buying my teenage daughter
     
135. There's something about Paulie
     
136. Chitty chitty death bang
     
137. Mind over murder
     
138. The juice is loose
     
139. I never met the dead man
     
140. Running mates
     
141. The king is dead
     
142. Holy crap
     
143. The son also draws
     
144. I am peter, hear me roar
     
145. Movin' out (Brian's song)
     
146. Peter-assment.
     

“HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!”
A laugh, what does it mean for a person? A sign of amusement? A mark of contentment? Maybe, a reaction to a quirky comment or action? Perhaps…
But now, all that echoed throughout the burning lands was a guffaw of despair and torment. It belonged to Eve, the future queen of the entire Confederation of Demons. And right now, no trace of royal dignity was to be seen within her. The woman was pulling her white hair, kneeling in her sphere at the sight of the mass-murder.
The snow of death, the sprinkled ash of white and purple fell upon the ground, taking hundreds of lives. Gramgrim, the strongest and the fiercest formation underneath the authority of Me-ua now perished like slugs under the salt. Orcs, dogs, trolls, deer, lions, crows, fiends, mind-flayers, tigers, boars, even a cult of bulls-necromancers – the brigade included many different races, men and women of different backgrounds and upbringings, their tamed beasts and familiars, slaves and draft animals. Looking at the southern organizations, consisting of various Ma-zok tribes was always fascinating. Especially, when none of them could withstand the divine plague, sent as a godly punishment for defiling the holy land of kokuyoku.
Was there any way to save themselves? Yes – they simply never should’ve come to the village. Now, though? Well, not even Panakea’s blessing could save Keyaruga from death, so why should any of them survive?
Such was Eve’s wrath; such was her sorrow, enshrined upon this wretched world.
“Fascinating.,,” Keyaruga muttered, looking underneath him. He couldn’t help but to feel glee. After all, hundreds upon hundreds of high-leveled demons perished, blessing the whole party of five with new levels to enjoy (or hate, in Ellen’s case). Strange, though. Normally, a party couldn’t be larger than four people (not that a mortal had control over it anyway; people could travel in however big assemblies, as they pleased, yet experience was earned only by parties of four), but the group stuck together pretty well. Was it another of Caladrius’ gifts, she just didn’t bother to share? Well, whatever the case…
“I know, it’s not a reason for joy… but we can definitely use all that power in our future battles.” Freia mused with a trace of regret in her voice.
“Uh-huh. Good thing to get stronger before we go after the demon king.” Setsuna supported, trapped in a conflict between joy at reaching her new threshold of power and fury for losing Visou.
“Of course this would happen… This always happens with those people and places I care for or love… I shouldn’t have taken this damned bracelet…” Keyaruga growled, looking at the yorkama talisman on his right wrist. Yet, when he was about to rip it away…
“Don’t do that.” …Ellen stopped him. For the first time in this nightmarish day she was thankful for her new powers, as they allowed her to stop her ‘brother’ from an act of utter stupidity. “It’s not your fault. Look, they came here, seeking Hakuo’s rival! Your sympathy has nothing to do with that, stop dealing in superstitions!” The Apostle of Caladrius attempted to reassure the lad. But alas…
“It’s my fault. Like Visou… like Alban… like Karman… It’s all been my fault.” …the man just wouldn’t listen.
“No… it was mine…” The crimson-haired cutie whispered, yet once again – no reaction. “Hey, brother, see that breached wall behind Mil’s house? I see traces there. Could you, maybe?..”
“Yes… Oh, Ellen, thank you!” Only when she pointed out the obvious, did the man finally wake up from his trance. Just in time to hear…
“KILL!!! KILL THEM ALL!!!” …this. Eve still couldn’t really master her raging emotions, and even the fact that no creature remained alive in the burning village stopped her in any way.
“Hm, I am saddened to inform you, little one, that there is nobody to slay here. And even if there were, I am unable to maintain the offence. I need to feed and regain my strength now.” Caladrius admonished, descending on the earth. “However, down the north road, you may find other survivors. Just make haste; they do not have much time.” The harbinger of plague informed the group, putting the white sphere on the ground. The barrier had faded just as all poisonous ash did as well, coincidentally.
Keyaruga, Setsuna, Eve, Freia, Ellen, Kelly, Patty – all could finally walk properly again. Not really a big perk, when all you’re finding yourself among the still burning remains of a ruined village, though.
“O pluvia clemens, benedic nobis tua gratia recreativa.” Fortunately, they had the Hero of Magic at their side. And so, the first thing Freia did was to cast a simple rain spell. A critically important move, especially when their raptors were getting panicked by the fires.
“Now, if you excuse me.” And what would horrify any sentient being was how gruesomely filthy Caladrius turned out to be. The very first thing she did when the party had finally landed was to grab some dead slimy bastard, and just swallow him whole, like some sort of a pelican.
“Hey! Hey! Hey! He-e-ey!!! The hell are you doing?!” The younger princess yawped, consumed by her anger. Not because she was disgusted, though… “You fucking munched him with all that armor and shit?! What’re you even thinking of?! We need that!”
“I do not care, Apostle. Unless you are willing to strip them yourself, your whining is of little concern to me.” The deity replied dismissively. Even if her plague faded without a trace, the diseased corpses were still a delicacy for Caladrius.
And here I thought Ellen was slandering her about this part. Thought it was just a nice joke. Apparently, not, Keyaruga mused, witnessing the same vile spectacle as his girls did.
“Well, I’m willing as hell! You can buy an entire village for one of those!” The young lady snarled, turning one of the corpses over, just to untie the leashes that held a cuirass in place. When people die, their rectum can’t hold feces anymore. The stench of death, dung, decay, the earth, wet and softened by the rain – so much filth among the corpses, and yet, the warlady felt overjoyed looting the corpses of their fallen enemies before tossing their naked bodies toward her hungry patron.
“Keyaruga, I think, we should…” Freia softly spoke, pointing at the breach on the northern side. She wasn’t overly enthusiastic about defiling the dead, so maybe…
“No, I’m going alone.” Sadly, the healer wouldn’t let anyone accompany him in this quest. Even the golden egg had to leave his back right now. He knew who he was pursuing. And what he would do to his enemies, once he’d reached them. “Setsuna, Freia, hold this, and stay here, and watch out for Eve, and… Well, you may also help Ellen with looting.” The lad spoke, completely ignoring the rain that fell upon his head.
“Uh-huh, got it.” The gray-haired girl agreed, putting the straps holding their unborn ‘child’ on her back. Strangely enough, the ice warrior was more than happy with pillaging the corpses. With her arms being covered in the frozen gauntlets, the girl could easily strip the fallen brigadiers to Ellen’s obvious delight.
“I… think I should bury the villagers.” Freia, on the other hand, grabbed a shovel somewhere. Instead of defiling the dead, she wanted to properly inter the remains of the poor black-wings… until their bodies were eaten by their own god.
“Whatever you wish… Just don’t forget to cut off their wings.” The man ordered, tossing away everything from Kelly’s saddle. He needed speed, not sustainability.
“I see… feathers… magic catalysts…” The sorceress instantly understood what the hero wanted from the fallen villagers. To be honest, that sort of cruelty paled compared to what their enemies sometimes allowed themselves. It didn’t make the pink-haired girl any happier, though.
“Wait!” Finally, just as Keyaruga was about to climb on his reptile steed, he got a companion in the form of the queen-to-be. “I’m… going with you!..” She spoke wearily, yet her tone wouldn’t brook any denial.
“You shouldn’t, Eve. You’re too drained as it is, I can’t risk you now.” That didn’t work on the new hero, though. The red-eyed lad knew, what kind of atrocities he was about to commit. What’s worse – he was looking forward for them.
“No… You know I can’t be killed that easily.” The white-haired woman insisted, allowing herself to climb in the saddle no matter what Keyaruga wanted. “Also, those are my people we’re talking about.”
“Alright…” The man nodded, giving one last brief look at what travesty was currently occuring on this holy ground: hundreds of corpses, two enthusiastic looter-girls stripping them before feeding them to the goddess that was primarily supposed to guard this place from such tragedies, and the strongest mage in the world, cutting off wings with her wavy dagger. All gave him a brief look. “Girls, lady Caladrius, you stay here! The raptor we’re taking will go faster carrying only two of us.” The healer admonished, silently praising himself for not including the plague incarnate in the ranks of his lovers. Wouldn’t that be awkward?
“Uh-huh. Good luck, you two.” Setsuna waved her armored hand, happily proceeding with robbing the corpses.
“Yeah… thanks. We’ll need it.”
…
The forest had been defiled. A trace of bodies, both kokuyoku and their ruthless persecutors, marked a path for the hero and his queen. Faster! Faster! The man smacked his reptile with his heels, struck against the ribs, pulled every bit of speed from poor Kelly. So much so, that even wild scavengers, who came to feast on the corpses, just fled from the massive raptor. And yet, it still wasn’t enough…
“Hey, Keyaruga!” Eve spoke, holding onto the hero’s torso with her trembling arms. “Why are you even helping us? Why… do you even bother, if they die no matter what we do?” The queen-to-be asked melancholically. Right now, she tried to find at least some meaning in her existence, just to not fall into a pit of nihilism and despair.
“It’s because… I have power. I can make a difference. And because I want to do so.” The red-haired lad responded, navigating a path through the woods with his jade eye. His status elevated him above the rest, giving the man many abilities, some considered to be… unnatural. For example, he could easily alleviate Kelly’s fatigue from constant galloping.
“Power, yes?.. The onslaught… it began when Caladrius was playing with us… But instead of putting an end to this hell, she’d go on, and on, and on… And even when we got out, she never told us what was going on. When I asked her to bless you, I was scared… and discomforted, and… whatever other words you have for discomfort. I thought it was because of the trial… Thought it was over… Then… I looked at myself, my own actions, here and in the past.” Eve shared the burden of her guilt with Keyaruga. The white-haired woman couldn’t help but blame herself for everything that happened. If she didn’t ignore her feelings, if she had checked on her wings a little earlier, if she… “If I… If I just could…”
“Was that what you saw in your challenge?” The healer wondered, trying to get his companion out of this ruinous obsession over what nobody could prevent, or even predict.
“Ugm… Who did you meet there?” Did he fail? No, not really. But instead of giving him an answer, the queen-to-be countered with a question of her own.
“Many, many people… I don’t want to talk about it now.” Unfortunately, though, Keyaruga just couldn’t bring himself to reveal what he saw, heard… did with his own hands.
“I… I see…” Eve murmured, getting a message from the lad’s depressed tone. He too carried much pain in his soul, and that vortex of suffering could never be dissipated by shutting down just some of his emotions. To completely silence this pain, Keyaruga would have to become something else entirely, something inhuman, incapable of either hate or love.
“More important, Eve, I want you to sharpen your senses. Maybe, you can trace magic better than me.” The hero suggested, as his right eye rolled around in his socket. The forest was wide and thick, and his sight wasn’t as all-seeing as he’d like it to be.
“I’ll try.” Eve whispered, trying to focus her attention on the ambient mana. Maybe, if she was just diligent enough, she could trace her living brethren? Maybe, all wasn’t lost just yet? Maybe… “You know, Keyaruga, you’re not the guilty one in all of this… If Mil didn’t let everyone in, if I wasn’t saved by your goddess, if our goddess wasn’t just like Ellen says she is… than none of this horror would have happened.” The lady in red deadpanned cautiously. Now that she knew of her ‘future’, how it might’ve been without this self-conflicted man at her side, the kokuyoku scion could clearly tell – her grandfather was just like Keyaruga and Ellen, he wanted the best for his people… and that turned Visou into a deathtrap. After all, Hakuo wouldn’t have sent Gramgrim here if Cornar had come to him with the valuable bounty that was the black-wings’ princess.
“I’m sorry…” The healer uttered, still unaware, just how much of a monster Eve’s first husband really was, and how much she owed him for showing, how the love should even look like in the first place.
“You really shouldn’t be, Keyaruga.” The black-winged prodigy responded sorrowfully. She felt the lad’s distress: it was in his voice, his posture, his way of breathing… “You can’t just carry the burden for everyone else. I tried… and I failed.” Eve spoke, trying to dissuade her defender from thinking he was able to hold the whole world on his shoulders, when, in reality, it was simply impossible. “Don’t do that. You’ll break.” This calm phrase was spoken serenely, and yet, it was a cry. A cry for help, for understanding, for letting go.
“We don’t need Caladrius.” But Keyaruga just couldn’t release himself from this burden. Even now, when riding over the forest floor, covered in disfigured corpses, most of which were charred whole, seemingly by lightning, the man couldn’t stop thinking about Eve, her troubles, the tragic price her ultimate power might demand from her.
“Why?” The lady in red asked, attempting to follow the new line of conversation which her companion had turned to. Why would he even be scared of it? Didn’t Ellen bargain two free casts for her? Ellen… How could this capricious princess be able to extort such a valuable gift from the harbinger of plague? If Eve had done something like this in the first world… then there wouldn’t be the second one.
“She’s… too frivolous, arrogant, she’s thousands years old, yet all I see is an old snobby child with no backbone. We can’t be sure she’ll maintain her promise, and I really, really don’t want to see you wither away.” The man said with that seemingly careless voice of his. “If you need someone dead, I’ll be there for you.” He added grimly then. Eve was too soft, even now, she still couldn’t deal with the moral compromises necessary, and there were going to be a lot more of them on the way toward the Obsidian Throne.
“Hah… You really do want me to fall in love with you?” The queen-to-be noted somewhat playfully. Her mood was still sombered, but even so, there was always a light in the darkness.
“Heh, aren’t you already? I can tell – you’ve changed, so that you could keep up with me, especially in the bed.” Keyaruga followed this little funny road, and retaliated with a joke of his own. But… was it really a joke, though?
“Yes… Yes, I have.” Apparently, not. “I can’t force you to become your old self, but I had a chance to change myself.” Eve explained, lowering her head. She couldn’t keep up with the man last night – he was just too big for her. That’s why, the girl had to go, the queen-to-be had to become a woman, and fast.
And so, there could be only one thing to ask at this point.
“So, do you want to fuck, once this is over?” The hero unceremoniously inquired from his companion. After all, they were already past all those earlier insults and attempts at shaming from Eve’s side.
“Yes, I do! I really, really do. I want you to ravage me, so I wouldn’t go mad.” The Me-ua kahul responded with a plea of sorrow, hate, loathing, and regret. There wasn’t anything enticing in this request, but… it was so humane.
“Of course. I will.” The man promised. Despite everything, despite this day supposedly belonging to Ellen and Setsuna, he wouldn’t refuse her, no matter what. And Eve felt that resolve in the man.
“Also, I won’t stop using Caladrius. We need her, Keyaruga. We need her… to establish our authority. Then… maybe, I won’t have to lose anyone again.” The queen-to-be spoke wearily. She wanted to reach Hakuo, wished to murder this monster once and for all with her own hands, instead of waiting till some disease finishes him. She wanted to bury this king’s legacy once and for all, so that his blood would never poison her life ever again. Eve Reese desired revenge. And Keyaruga would never feel worthy of discouraging his queen. And yet…
“Alright. But you have to promise me one thing – one time. She gave us only two times, and I don’t want you to overreach any further. Everything else I’ll deal with personally. It won’t make a difference to me anyway, my hands are already dirtied enough as it is.” Keyaruga all but demanded. The gods had put them in a tight little cage, where only those who kill more than others, were worthy of wielding great power. Right now, the man wasn’t sure his party was enough to challenge Hakuo’s rule. Even Eve, drained by Caladrius, managed to overpower her ‘heroic’ adversaries. Too bad they left her exhausted for Keyaru to finish the job. Speaking of that…
“But… why would you even bother? Don’t you just want to… make another redo? To fix everything, to save those who you couldn’t save?” The lady in red asked the lad. He was never too secretive about the circumstances he was in, and how the world ended up as it is. Still, each time he spoke of that, pain and loss broke through his armor of callousness.
“No. Just as you said, I have people to live for now. Freia, Setsuna, Ellen, you, Eve – I can’t imagine my life without you. And if I just flee into the past, then what’s even the point of us having this little chat right now?” The healer quarried in response. He was sure of what he was talking about now. Or, rather, trying to convince himself and Eve of that.
“Haa… Right…” For better or worse, the woman just exhaled and dropped the topic. To believe it would mean disregarding Keyaruga’s deep painful wounds, any further prying risked opening them up again. “I think we’ve got something.” Fortunately, right in that moment, Eve noticed a track, something to spot her brethren, where the trail of bodies had just ended.
“What? Where?” Keyaruga asked, now looking around.
“To the left from here. I feel my brethren coming to me from this side. They’re… fighting. And dying.” As the lady in red spoke, pointing in the direction the flow of souls was coming from, the rider pulled the reigns to stop his steed. He then jumped off the saddle.
“Shit, I must hurry!” The hero snarled, pulling the saber out of its sheath. A contradicting statement, seeing as he would be much faster mounted. But no… “Keep your eye on Kelly! I can’t risk the two of you!”
“You want to go alone?” The woman astounded, reaching for her companion. Alas, he never faced her.
“Yes! Our enemies are strong, Eve. And I’m not sure if I can properly protect you. Stay here; cover me with your magic.” Keyaruga urged sternly. He wasn’t a healer, nor a competent defender whatsoever. The hero was a murderer, and nothing could convince him more than the trial he completed just an hour ago.
“Hold on! I won’t let you go alone.” Nevertheless, the kokuyoku scion too wasn’t the same after that challenge. She flapped her wings, and numerous black spheres left her feathers. One, two… ten, twenty… Twenty-three shades now flew around the man, ready to assist him in murdering whoever threatened their kin. “They will protect you.”
“Ah… thanks.” The red-haired man uttered, looking at the fallen black-wings. Right now, they rather reminded him of insects with the way they dashed around. “We’ll be on our way, then.” Still, it didn’t stop him from getting ready to sprint forward to save whoever was left of the kokuyoku-zok and to punish their oppressors.
“Promise you’ll be back! Promise you’ll save everyone!” Eve ultimately asked, looking at her dead brethren. Shying away from them was a luxury, and now she had no time for such things.
“I will, Eve! Take care!”
And so, he ran off, to the site where the last bit of fighting was happening. Him, twenty-three shades… against the elite forces of Gramgrim, the only remaining fragment of the horrifying battalion; now, though, the time had come to end this warband once and for all.
…
Faster! Faster! I must be faster!
Keyaruga lunged through the woods, he jumped across logs, climbed the hills, passed a few ravines along the way, just to finally reach yet another battlefield. Mil was there, the wizened magician firmly held his staff. All bloodied, his robe torn apart, the old man still fought on.
“Masanna tanouti! (kill everyone)” A massive rider, carried by an even greater armored warg tackled Mil and his defense line of mostly women spellcasters, and a few strong men among the refugees.
“Usegi! (run) Usegi-i!!!” Mil yelled, getting ready to ward off the seemingly countless hordes of bloodthirsty invaders, preferably – all on his own. The thought of death never scared the magician, as he already looked in its eyes, and they were gentle.
“Mil-murnaz! (elder Mil!) Katunj pora bornul non! (we have nowhere to retreat!)” An armored old woman yelled, preparing her grandiose fire blast. None of them would abandon him. Only seventeen of them remained against a group of forty-seven raving cutthroats, knowing all too well, they wouldn’t be able to pull through. And yet, none of them would go down without a fight. If they did, they would be slaughtered, and after that – their kin would follow.
“SUNI-I-I-I!!! (DI-I-IE!!!)” The bruised elder snarled, imbuing his wooden staff with an element of lightning. One swing, one smack – and the monstrous wolf fell down, wriggling in the shocking agony, along with its master. One down.
“Globus igneus!” The armored hag next to him yelled, sending a massive fireball into the troops. Seven perished, four else – scattered. Yet, those who fell were mercilessly crushed underfoot by the four brutal tiger-riders – no regards to their allies, and even less toward the foe. Five men and two women from the black-wings stood up to meet them with their spears, staked into the earth… It didn’t work – the demons breached their line, gutting everyone in the reach of their decorated cleavers.
“Katunji! (retreat!) Konato wor marmori! (protect the children)” Mil commanded, tossing two hardened feathers into the enemies. Too close to him, but… it didn’t matter. “KURLINA-A-A!!! (FUCK YOU!!!)” He yelled, detonating the enchanted quills.
BOOM!
An explosion, a shockwave, the trembling of the earth. Kokuyoku were mercilessly pushed further, practically hunted like animals, and yet, their prey had claws and teeth. The blast was mighty, it broke Gramgrim’s formation, allowing the defenders to flee, to run, to… live a few minutes longer.
“Kha-a-a… Ha-a-a… Agh…” Mil helplessly wheezed, pushed to the trunk of the giant oak. His bones were broken, the old man had lost all feeling in his legs, hands, and… No, he knew what he was getting into. “Gh-h-h!.. Ugh… E… va… ma…” Even when some tall goblinoid thug impaled him with a spear, the only thing on the mind of the dying sorcerer was his granddaughter, and all those he tried to save. Tried, but…
“I’VE COME TO SAVE YOU!!!” Keyaruga roared, engaging a bat-like swordsman, lunging toward the fleeing defenders. Just in a few hundred meters away, the refugees were running from the pursuers. It was honestly a miracle to see them keeping such a substantial distance, even though the enemies had carnivorous mounts. It seems, like they were rather enjoying chasing their prey.
“GHA-A-A!!!” Nevertheless, the fencer retreated from the hero, picked up a lance from the roasted wolf-man, and tossed it into the hero. The latter dodged, then pointed in the direction of his adversaries.
“Tania wor tanouti! (kill them!) Orn wor shef na! (don’t be concerned about me!)” And just like that, a cascade of shadows materialized to shred the enemy flanks and rear. The raging dark spirits now flew all across the surviving hunters’ ranks, ripping and tearing, stabbing and shredding the yelling warriors, as they tried to damage the ethereal vengeful apparitions. Could it be worse? Oh yes! Someone began simply sniping them from afar, numerous beams of piercing light took lives of so many, the Gramgrim’s morale hit the bottom.
Still, that didn’t mean they’d stop fighting. Certainly not! The bat-demon just met a shade with a wide swing from his reddish greatsword – an instant later, this spirit was gone. An adamantine blade – Keyaruga couldn’t just let him roam around – the man tossed a dagger from his sleeve, but no. The warrior just easily deflected it with a sneer. Before the lad could go on, he crossed those twenty meters with merely two jumps, ready to cleave the hero’s head in one rapid sweep.
The man ducked, right leg forward, balance toward offence. A slash was aimed toward the leg…
“Ghhh!” And it failed – the healer got a knee in his chin for that. After all, how can a thin saber cut through the metal greaves underneath the surcoat? Discombobulated, the man was about to get a downward cut to his shoulder.
“A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R!!!” Fortunately for him, another shade saved Keyaruga the trouble by backstabbing the fencer. Well, she just impaled him in the right armpit. Did that stop the berserker? “ULMO-O-O!!! (BITCH!)” Well, certainly not. Even if his one limb flopped uselessly by his side now, the warrior firmly grabbed his sword with his left hand, turned around, and slammed the spirit with the pommel, sending herto in the afterlife for sure!
A perfect chance to dispatch the swordsman, right?
Wrong! Barely had Keyaruga reached out to give the adversary one fatal touch, when another massive tiger-like brute attacked him with his massive claws. Slash, swing, up, down – the bruiser-armorclad was fast, his attacks – relentless. The lad was forced to retreat, elope, block – anything and everything to not get smashed. Each time he blocked a hit with his saber, his elbow would dislocate. No matter, Georgius healed in less than a second. No matter, just get…
“Tokalbarne! (got you!)” Alright, now that was surprising. The lad felt the trap, but proved too slow to escape the massive tail. Distracted by the tiger, he let himself be trapped by a lamia, which now not only enveloped the man’s entire body, but also unceremoniously licked his cheek. Was it the end?
“A-A-A-A-a-a… Ha-ha-HA-HA-HA!!! TUYOBU, TONA!!! (harder, mommy!)” Clearly not! Even while being crushed by the mighty snake tail, Keyaruga laughed, intimidating his foes with the undying audacity within his immortal body. “USHI INAV… MUNA CABNEI!!! (YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD!)”
“Nan-! A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A!!!” The lamia groaned in pain. A moment later her body began to swell, to bloat, and to rupture in a gruesome spectacle of blood and gore. Could Keyaruga do it better? Certainly, but he had no time, nor wish to figure out the half-shake’s anatomy, and where her heart (Is it just one?) lied.
Either way, one down, the shades did their job too, keeping the rest of the Gramgrim goons busy, often even ending them. They were forty-seven? Well, now they were just nineteen, and the monsters’ corpses didn’t actually do wonders for the battle spirit of the remainder either.
Keyaruga couldn’t care less, though. He got out from the lamia’s mortal grip, covered in blood and viscera, only his clean white teeth shone brightly.
“E-eh…” The tiger-brawler was shaken by the view. He reached toward the woman, unable to believe his eyes. Was she his lover, or something?
“Die!” No matter, whatever the case, the Hero of Healing dashed toward him, pushed his armored left arm against his chest, and then, the purple hue killed the man for good. His aorta just ruptured from the defiled mending spell.
Then, more beasts, some of which were mounted, lunged toward him. Two tigers, a massive deer, a swarm of eight snakes, and even a giant black bear. The warband reasoned that the fastest way to get rid of shadows was to kill the man. Well, they were wrong.
“Saltare et aurugine ventis!” At this point, he didn’t really care about the melee, that’s why, instead of engaging in anymore close-quarter fights, the lad simply called upon a mighty firestorm, a burning tornado of wind and blaze, which not only killed the animals, but also moved on to the rest of the crumbled Gramgrim troops, razing trees, ma-muana and ma-zok alike, charring their flesh and drowning their screams in the mercilessly loud crackling of magical flames.
I guess, that’s what I’m getting for not min-maxing my physical stats and speed before going melee. Well, no matter. Now that they’re dead… Wait, Mil?
“MIL!!!” Keyaruga yelled, running toward the old mage. He… was already beyond saving. Fifteen shades gathered around the hero, as he looked at the impaled man, and his decapitated green-skinned murderer who had been killed next to him. “Muna sagri. (You may leave)” And so, the healer sent the shades away. Quite in time, actually, as they were already flickering in and out of existence anyway – Eve was losing her mana. Finally, the lad was all alone. “Alright, old daredevil. You deserved a nice funeral.” He pulled the spear out of the corpse, and put it on his shoulder. It wasn’t much, but at least, he would be sent off properly.
Time to go, I guess. Now, let’s reunite with Eve, and then…
“A-A-A-A-A!!!” Another change of plans. The lad heard a scream. Two voices, in fact, both females. The man looked around and saw the bat-swordsman, dragging a mother and her child by their hair, completely disregarding their wails of pain whatsoever.
“What, do you really think taking hostages will save you?” Keyaruga scoffed, taking a step toward the cowardly combatant. Quite surprising really, seeing how good he was with that greatsword of his. But, well, two more, two less – the black-wings were doomed either way, right?
“Keyaruga-maran!” Maybe so, but those weren’t just some unknown refugees – they were Mayala and Brin. When the man saw them, he halted his movements completely.
“Good humie! Stand right where you are, or they die!” The cutthroat threatened. It seemed he had already healed the wound left by a shade with a potion. And now, instead of running away, he intended to use the captured family to extort the hero. For what purpose, though?
“Oh, great! Finally, someone, who speaks a human language!” Keyaruga wouldn’t be swayed by that. Why would he, actually? As it stood now, he could simply send a spell of light through the mother or the daughter, run closer, heal them…
Why should I even care? It’d only hurt for a moment, nothing really…
“Good! And stay there, little shit.” Well, turned out, it worked. The healer lowered his saber.
“Or what? You kill them? See those burning pines, pal? I just killed all of your friends. By the way, Gramgrim is no more. I bet Caladrius has already eaten all of their corpses.”
“Hah, no shit, clever boy! Then where is she?! HE-E-EY!!! CALADRIUS!!! OVER HE-E-ERE!!! See?” Sadly, the bat-fencer remained completely unfazed by the news. He still had an advantage – Keyaruga seemed to care for the weeping family, and that was his weakness. “Drop your sword, then get on your knees, or I’ll take their fucking heads!”
“How enticing…” The man wondered with a nervous grin. He spun his weapon once, and pointed it to the ground. Mayala and Brin looked at him, their black eyes conveyed terror and distress. And still, there was a glimpse of hope. Keyaruga could do a miracle. He would save them, just like he saved the girl from the terminal rabies. “Will you set them free if I surrender?”
“Yau! (yeah!)” The swordsman grinned, drawing his reddish blade closer to their necks. “Drop your iron!”
Ha-ha-ha-hah! Oh, what should I do? What should I make?
“Hey, I’ve got a better idea. How about I kill myself?” And just like that, the healer pointed his own weapon at his chest, sowing dread in the hearts of the hostages and careless amusement in their captor.
“What? He-heh! Go ahead, humie, I’ll watch!” The bastard chuckled, slightly lowering his massive blade. This nasty glee grew only greater, when…
“Heh, I’m serious!” …the red-eyed lad plunged his own saber through his chest. To deep, in fact, that only the handle now stuck out from his torso.
“KEYARUGA-SONA!!!”
“UA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A!!!”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You’re fucking hilarious!”
Three reactions, one of terror, one of tears, and the last one of irrepressible laughter – Keyaruga spat a chunk of blood, such a wound could never really kill him, and yet, it allowed for a safe movement. One, two, three steps – as long as he pretended to limp forward like a dying fool, the enemy would never stop him from approaching. He liked the view, liked seeing the man bleeding and coughing his own lungs out. He even…
A beam. A beam of white energy just flew right besides his head. It took a moment for the cutthroat to get, what was going on, but when he did, when he understood, that some distant caster could take off his head…
“YOU FUCKER!!!” Then, the cowardly warrior grabbed his greatsword with a two-handed grip, swung it at the terrorized family… “I’LL KI-!” …and died. The last thing he saw, felt, and tasted – was the trident that pierced his neck and head from the back.

Chapter 88 - From All I Believed
​
Morning, Two days before Shel
Captain Setar suppressed a smile as she watched the Ops door close. “Well, that was interesting… Ce’lani is a little cranky.” The last vestiges of sleep clung to her as she settled down into the command chair. She felt worn out, but it was the cusp of dawn, and Pod Seven had only just turned over control. “Report on station?”
“The perimeter’s secure,” Jelki replied crisply, pulling up the map of the campus on the main screen. “Pod One is on station and reports twelve by twelve. Sgt Ma’reis is already complaining about janitor duty.”
“Ah, first pod problems.” Setar shook her head, rubbing her eyes and blowing gently on her mug of tea. “What about the objective?”
“The objective’s secure,” Re’lan piped up, already sounding chipper. The woman could have been priestess of Jrafell. Her unwavering cheeriness would have been a character fault if she weren’t so devoted. As it was, it was a damned penance for everyone else at this time of day.
Jelke finished running the obligatory shift change checks and stretched. Things wouldn't get interesting until breakfast, but watching the perimeter was a given. It didn't keep the curiosity out of her voice, as she cocked her head and glanced over. “What was interesting with Captain Ton’is, Ma’am?”
“Mm! Well… it appears she’s expecting a call from Professor Warrick today,” Setar drawled out, taking a moment to savor their reaction. “She felt a need to remind me she’s devoted to Hele, and that if Be’ona or I let her sleep through the call, she’s going to ‘fuck us up the ass with a lasrifle and pull the trigger’.”
Re’lan was probably blushing like a cadet, but Jelke shook her head ruefully. “I expect there's a ‘but’ in there somewhere, Captain?”
“Well, yeah, she said that’s where the rifle would go…” Setar sniggered before taking a long sip from her tea, and slid a bit lower in the command couch. Her eyes wandered to the traffic on the board. “She also made it clear what’ll happen if anybody listens in.”
Thoughtful silence descended. Setar almost counted to twelve before-
“We’re going to anyway, right Captain?” Jelke asked nonchalantly. “You know, for security’s sake?”
“Sergeant, that would be a base infringement of Captain Ton’is’ privacy, which is in fucking short supply for everyone in this bunker.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully, watching the steam rise from her mug. “Deeps right we are.”
_ _ _
Lady Wicama regarded her guest with interest as their autocab plied its way about the outskirts of Prelitauri. While she’d been free and cheerfully able to accommodate Khelira’s request, Monsignor Santino Barcio, or Friar Barcio, as he preferred, was not at all what she’d been expecting. She supposed it was a matter of exposure…
The Palace had never quite been the same since Princess Yn’dara’s wedding. Yn’dara was one of those odd Royals who, though well-regarded, was seldom in the public eye. A perennial favorite of the Empress, indulging her unexplained absences passed as a matter of course for the Court. Widely known to be estranged from her mother, Princess Arduina, no one enquired either deeply or often, so when she suddenly resurfaced, her return would have equally passed without comment… if not for the wedding.
Yn’dara had shocked the entire Nobility.
While it was common for any woman to marry into an established family and become a kho, the wedding should have been singular for a Princess. Princesses didn’t marry into families, Princesses formed them. And while Yn’dara technically had done so, she’d taken on three unmarried women at the same time as her husband, who was a Human! Favorite or no, the wags in the court were agog that the Empress accepted Adam so readily! The Empress, however, had been adamant; Yn’dara and her family had her blessings, and were to be left alone.
However, time had proven to be on Yn’dara’s side as well as the Empress.
After a wedding seen across the galaxy, Yn’dara’s family settled into a life of public duty. They spent long trips away from Shil, and while quietly dismissed as ‘pleasure excursions’, her trips often showed the throne to the outer provinces. Although her public engagements were few, she’d become a vocal advocate of the Empress’ reforms against graft and corruption, and, gradually, the jealous mutters about scandalous excess and Human debauchery faded away. Her marriage remained an unusual footnote, but time had demonstrated the value of Yn’dara and her wives to the throne.
Then there was Prince Adam.
Rumor held the Prince had made a favorable impression on the Empress years before, at an event hosted by Yn’dara’s mother. While details had never been forthcoming, a more significant story about Adam wafted briefly through the ranks of the Golden Glaives.
Both stories had been effectively silenced, but Wicama knew who to talk to, and being Khelira’s guardian carried a certain clout all its own. Though that influence waxed and waned over the years, raising Khelira required being aware of events that could shape her future, and she’d proven herself to be discreet. Over time, doors had opened and words had flowed.
Time had been on Prince Adam’s side, as well.
As the years passed, she’d had an exposure to Prince Adam that few of the court and none of the public enjoyed. She’d been wary at first, but he’d been a good friend and mentor to Princess Khelandri before she joined the Marines, and however infrequent his presence, he always displayed a keen mind, a loving heart, and a steadfast duty to his wives. Privately, he absolutely doted on young Khelira and possessed a loyalty to the Empress that you could bend battlesteel around. The two got along famously - after all, he was a veteran.
Not Navy, mind you, but you couldn’t have everything.
And so, as Humanity began making forays upon the galactic stage, her first impression of the species had been favorable. She’d witnessed Adam mature into his role with the court, and while the issue of children remained unspoken, that faded as well. At the time, Yn’dara had been sixth in the line of succession. A year after the wedding, Kamaud’re became an adult, followed a year later by Khelandri, and the matter became largely moot.
As for a second impression on Humans, Khelira had provided enthusiastic reports about Thomas Warrick. While the Princess thrived at the Academy, Warrick seemed to be something special.
The absence of a father in her life had been a void that no woman could properly fill, but she’d done her best. Although she’d entertained a few qualms, as the months passed by, Warrick remained a positive influence. Khelira’s messages were infrequent by necessity, but she’d written about her distress over Warrick’s family and clearly been moved. Prince Adam carried his own scars, but what veteran didn’t? He hid them carefully around Khelli, and if Warrick had chosen not to, he’d provided a useful sense of perspective, instead. It was time for Khelira to grow up, and that meant facing the grist of differing opinions and ugly realities. That was what education was actually for, and Warrick seemed to be doing admirably well as a grindstone.
All of that was before the library incident, which settled her opinion once and for all. While erratic, irreverent, and capable of violence, Humans clearly could be a positive influence when channeled in the right direction. Yn’dara had shown what a good Shil’vati woman was capable of with Prince Adam, and Lady Pel’avon was following suit.
And at least the wags at the Palace wouldn’t speak of Yn’dara’s state wedding again. As a subject for spectacle, Miv’eire Pel’avon’s had put it to shame.
Still, it was good to see Warrick married. While Professor Ha’meres scandalous exploits had faded from the public eye, older wo… more mature women didn’t forget such things. The man had been a daring adventurer - and an inveterate gadabout - and an unmarried man around that many young women was too tempting for some girls. A wife or two… preferably more… resolved such idle fancies. If the Pel’avon ceremony had been somewhat… questionable in taste, compared to Adam’s, it remained legally binding. Warrick was willing to settle down, and by all reports his wife had a proper sense of decorum.
Human men seemed to be a trial from the Goddess, but hopefully she and her kho-wife could sort him with time, love, and kindness.
While exposure to only two Humans was not what she’d call a comprehensive sample, in both cases her impressions had been quite positive. And so, when Khelli asked her to escort a Human Priest about the city, she’d been entirely willing.
Thus far, it had been an enjoyable morning. While there had been occasional missteps, their conversation had been delightful as they traveled from property to property. Even so, she hadn’t expected to meet such a kindred spirit.
Admittedly she’d stammered a bit when he mentioned eating the flesh and drinking the blood of his redeemer. On the other hand, she compared it to the first time she’d bled into the ocean, mingling salt in her blood with the seas. He’d turned shockingly pale, so she changed the subject. It was a purely symbolic act to Drepna - just a cut on the thumb, for goddess sake...
She’d taken extra care afterwards. Barcio could be clearly a sensitive male, but diplomacy was part of her work. Even calling her role ‘work’ was deceptive. She’d raised Khelira in every way an Empress could not.
It was easy for other women to appreciate the prestige of her position, but few understood the depth of it - or the satisfaction.
During her career in the Navy, her flotilla had provided direct support for the Empress, and they’d come to work closely over three tours. After Khelira’s birth years later, the invitation came from the Royal Household to act as her guardian, and she’d never looked back. Competition had been fierce for the prestigious position, but applying had been the best move of her life.
Empress Kamilesh loved all her children and had spent as much time with each of them as she could, but her work was all-consuming, and after her husband’s act of… Well, the Empress had been there, but she’d born her pain privately. She had lost herself in her work for many years before recovering a semblance of her former self, and her absence had taken a toll on her children. Kamaud’re had taken it the worst. Khelandri had bounced back, while everyone doted on Lu’ral. Barely more than an infant, Khelira had been far too young to remember. Wicama had been there through all of it.
It was a good life, and the princess was a delightful girl. For Wicama, the absence of a man in her life was something she’d felt now and then, but she invested her life in Khelira. The Empress treated her as a member of the family in all but name… and in a very real sense, the child you raised was your child.
Looking back, some women might insinuate she’d given up her personal life to raise another woman’s daughter. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
She had her calling - just as Friar Barcio had his.
Yes, he was a priest, and his religious strictures were very unusual. A male priest in any of the Shil’vati faiths would never be placed under such restraints, and for a man to go unmarried was noteworthy…
But she understood having a calling. Oh yes, she understood that as few others could.
After discussing his needs, they’d set out to examine three properties around Prelitauri. The Friar’s individual requirements were deceptively difficult when taken as a whole. A complex coupling a generous auditorium, ample administrative space, and he clearly needed substantial grounds to properly convey a sense of aura. Such accommodations were seldom on the market, and since he expected his colleagues to arrive in weeks, his need was immediate.
Thankfully, urban renewal moved in waves. The tides of such fashions meant Prelitauri was once again an up-and-coming area. While difficult to find, three older structures had the potential to be suitable, and so it was that she’d enjoyed learning about her guest as they explored the tiny district.
The Monsignor spoke four other Earth languages fluently. He tended to break into his native tongue and hadn’t mastered contractions yet, but his Vatikre was passable and he listened carefully, seldom needing to ask about a word. After limiting her contractions when she spoke, their conversation flowed easily.
Barcio had shown little enthusiasm for the first two properties, but their conversation regarding other matters never waned. She expanded on her devotion to Drepna, Shil and the roles of each goddess while asking careful questions of his faith. His own inquiries proved thoughtful, and he was as avid in politely asking after her beliefs as explaining his faith.
After their second hour together, she’d taken the liberty of calling Prelate Hi’meta Merlamiss. As a priestess of Drepna’s second circle, Merlamiss had proven a valuable contact over the years. Well connected, she enjoyed a good relationship with many other prelates of the Divine Halls; she also got on well with Xinfess, the Rakiri’s Speaker of the Dark Mother on Shil. A meeting with Barcio would readily open doors for his group that might otherwise prove difficult to attain, and while Barcio’s accent strained now and then, it was clear the Monsignor and the Prelate shared a questionably low sense of humor.
Given a chance, they’d probably get on famously.
Certainly, that would be a blessing. Their hunt for a suitable facility had not gone nearly so well, and while Barcio had been conciliatory toward the first two facilities, she could tell he wasn’t taken with either. The last property wasn’t high in her expectations, so she found herself casting her head to the side when it swept into view and he clasped his hands in excitement.
”*È bella!* This is beautiful,” he exclaimed. “It reminds me a bit of my childhood home in Sacile!”
She looked out at the complex with its low gabled roofs, as their cab wound up from the entrance. Beside the drive, a small river meandered through the campus past the main buildings. She tapped the console to slow their ride and considered the place in a new light. “I’m… well, a bit surprised to be honest, Friar.”
“Please! We have been traveling for hours now, and I am not holding a service.” The Friar spared her a warm smile, before gazing back at the premises. “I would take it as a great kindness if you would call me Santino.”
“Very well - on the condition you call me Wicama.” It had been some time since anyone called her by anything but title or rank, and the informality was pleasant. Still, as their autocab closed on the end of the lane, she let such thoughts go and considered the location properly.
The buildings were low, sensible cubes, but that was largely an end to it. The architect had made some unusual choices in Helkam motifs that strained understanding. A long colonnade bordered the river, and that seemed nice enough, but the buildings! Forgoing purple was one thing, but they were beige! With unusual elements and the repressively bland color scheme, it was small wonder the clerk handling the property confessed that the space had lain vacant. Its original owners went into foreclosure. The exotic design had proven unable to attract interest, laying dormant ever since.
Barcio… Santino… seemed delighted, however, and she pulled up the specifications on her omni-pad. “This site has two smaller auditoriums besides the main one, while the central building has four floors. One is underground, but all the floors face an interior atrium.”
As the cab gently halted in the car park, she climbed out to hold the door but Santino had already scrambled out and was examining the gardens with evident interest. Tall stands of parago trees were losing the last of their fronds for the year, but she had to admit the grounds were substantial. Yesterday’s storm had left the morning air cold and crisp, lending the gardens an appealing aspect. Untended since the last owners, much could be done with them.
She had given up trying to escort the Friar anywhere after their first two stops, and now they fell into an easy pace side by side as they strolled toward the main building. She turned back to the property itself. “So, this reminds you of your home?”
It wasn’t exactly Helkam architecture - domes weren’t covering every possible surface - but the builder had clearly been nodding in that direction. A promenade wound to the entry, supporting white chevrons that arced into the sky. The bright morning sky shone through clever cutouts, making the unusual design at least look light, rather than oppressive and unappealing. With a decent renovation, the facility had possibilities, and the price was comparatively low.
“*Si!* Oh, not so much like home, but there is the sense of it. I was born near the sea, and this feels… similar.” He gave her a depreciating smile before rolling his eyes. “It may not please everyone who is coming, but ‘everyone’ is not here, so I am allowed some indulgence! Better to have something waiting than nothing at all. I confess, some of my colleagues thought we’d only manage when the bridge to Messina is finished.”
“You should not have been sent ahead alone! Surely your colleagues were not that worried about a poor reception,” she tutted. Priest or no, there were decencies about a man traveling alone to be observed. “You shouldn't need a bridge to find a place for your mission. I don’t know where Messina is, but I’m certain Prelate Marlemis wouldn’t stand for it!”
“Tch! Excuse my poor efforts! The older I get, the more I remember things like yesterday. Unfortunately, the yesterdays I remember so well were thirty years ago!” Barcio smiled wryly up at her as they walked. “The ‘bridge to Messina’ used to be a saying… People dreamed of building a bridge to Sicily, and it became something that never happened. My English friends would instead say ‘when hell freezes over’. *Un'espressione volgare*, but very much to the point.”
“Ah… I’m sure we can manage something, and this could be made presentable. Maybe change the beige to a pale violet?” she offered helpfully as she made it to the door first, holding it open. “The aura inside isn’t so bad.”
“You’ve said that several times, but I do not know what you mean?” He paused in looking around the entry, which had an open foyer exposing the two floors above and led out to the atrium beyond. “What is ‘aura’? I do not think I know the word as you mean it.”
“Aura is… Hmm…” Wicama paused thoughtfully and gestured at the atrium. The interior was in better shape than the grounds, and the architect had done something clever. Not yet noon, a bevel along the top edge filled the space with sunlight. “Have you ever walked along a beach and wanted to save a shell? When you are there, that is aura… When you take the shell home and think of the beach, that is aura, but… less focused. Diminished. You sense the beach because of the shell, but you are not at the beach. Places can have aura, but it is more than character. If you move through a place and find yourself experiencing it? That is aura.”
“Mhm! *lodevole!* I like this idea very much. It would be right at home in the Vatican. Not everyone understands a space can move the spirit, or lend power to a message.” He nodded thoughtfully as he cast his eye about the open space. “With the right advice, perhaps we can lead others to these halls.”
“Perhaps. If you tour the Palace, I hope you’ll allow me to show you about? A lot of the real gems are hidden from the public.” She watched as he wandered toward the double-helixed stairways bordering the room. Those were definitely Helkam; walking up one side without meeting someone coming down the other was an interesting experience… once. After that, they could be an absolute nuisance. Spotting the elevators, she called him back. “The nice thing is this place is inexpensive! That will pad out your funds for a good remodel.”
Wicama quietly thanked the Goddesses that the builder’s had the good sense to install normal Shil’vati-style elevators. The sides were open, granting a wide view out over the atrium. The grounds were terraced to create a small park; that could make the underground space bearable, and the plans made them seem spacious enough. Not to everyone’s taste, but pretty. “I feel bad for asking, but can you afford the building? If the price of the first two bothered you, we can find others.”
“I would not hear of it! Thank you for your concern, but we are economical with our funds, and were sent with a generous sum. This is an important venture to everyone involved,” Barcio clasped a hand over his chest, as he shook his head. “I can not thank you enough for your help! You have surely spared me weeks, and I might not have found something half so suitable. As it is, the grounds are enough to gain me converts. Father Roscio and Pastor Weber will surely plant a vineyard before the inside is half done!”
“It’s not a problem. I have plenty of time,” she replied, dismissing the matter as inconsequential. “I work at the Palace, but with the Court away and my daughter at school, I’m a bit at loose ends just now. At the very least, I insist on helping you through the paperwork. I wouldn’t put it past some realty clerks to try and overcharge you… Someone from outside Shil, that is. I’ll ensure they stick to the listing.”
“To someone not from Shil… or someone who is not Shil’vati, perhaps?” His head canted slightly to one side, but he smiled as he said it. “*Certamente!* I would not dream of preventing you, though Rabbi Kleinbaum will be bitterly disappointed she has nothing to moan about.”
“I hope you won't take this badly, as I’ve only met one Human.” Wicama gave him a smile. She was long past girlish uncertainty, and the Navy had taught her a generous measure of professional poise to go with her skills as a markswoman. “You aren’t what I expected.”
“You know the professore, then?” He sucked in a breath and pursed his lips. “I am still deciding what sort of man he is.”
“No, actually, I know another Human but I’ve not… I have not… met Professor Warrick.”
“So. You mean that I am not *un barbaro*? I am here to make sure that we are seen as something more than savage warriors, *capisci*?” He studied her expectantly. “While the Imperium is doing good work on Earth, some still live in want. The Imperium provides enough for all to survive, but not all live in plenty. We need to present ourselves well.”
”That seems like a very secular outlook.” She offered, as they rode up to the third floor. Barcio asked for an explanation of the word, and by the time they’d made their way through the first offices he had the idea.
“My church has not always troubled itself with such things, but our holy father is greatly concerned with such inequalities. He takes it upon himself to address such matters with the Governess, when their time allows.”
“Your church has a good relationship with her?”
“È straordinario! The Governess adores our food, and while she was adamant about taking quarters in the Vatican, she has taken pains not to disturb us.” He shrugged dismissively. “*Cosa sai fare?* It seemed a small price, and we have endured far worse.”
“I used to hear terrible stories about red zones on Earth, though the Humans I’ve met don't seem the sort. It is good that your… pulp?” She tried the word and was rewarded with kind laughter and a gentle correction. “It is good that your pope concerns himself with the full welfare of the people and works with your governess. Our prelates share the same concerns.”
“I thought the Empress was the head of your church? Now, I find you have many…” he groped for a word, frowning, and gave up. “*Questo accento è una prova di fede!* ‘Denominations’ is not the right word, but she is the one revered, yes?”
“Of course! The Empress has to show all of our virtues and none of our faults, but that’s part of her role. To favor any divinity over the others could cause divisions. She has her personal preferences, of course, but never lets them be known.” Wicama explained carefully. “It would be in poor taste.”
“And poor politics, I think?” Santino gave her a long look. At his height it was difficult, but he managed. “This makes sense to me now, that the Imperium leaves matters of faith alone. *Una benedizione inaspettata.*”
Despite the serious topic, his fervent reply brought a smile back to her lips. “It seems your pope considers politics as well as economics.”
“People will always defend economic theories which assume that growth will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice. This has never been confirmed by the facts, and expresses a crude trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.” He said, stopping to clasp a hand over his cross. “Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.”
“That doesn't sound like scripture.” She offered cautiously, as they made their way into a wider suite of offices on the second floor.
“*Esattamente.* The words of Pope Francis, a good and blessed man who appointed me to my position. His successor, his holiness John Paul the Third, is much of the same mind,” Santino said quietly. “Our savior washed the feet of others and urged all to do the same. The hardest step is to be involved. To work together for change, as well as to pray. That is why I am here.
“*I pigri di cuore trovano sempre una scusa* Some Humans, they are yet angry with the Imperium. Now they have enough, they are bitter not to have plenty. For some there is never enough - the true poverty lies within their hearts,” Santino said a bit testily. “Our faith teaches us to find salvation in eternal life, but others? *Pigrizia!* They see it as an excuse from taking agency in themselves. Jesus washed the feet of others - he did not lay down and wait for someone to wash his!”
Wicama turned the unfamiliar metaphor over in her mind but decided she had the sense of it. “Sham teaches us that helping our families and one another is the same as helping ourselves. ‘The rising tide bares us all from the reefs’.” It was a matter of faith… but that was why it was faith in the first place. On the whole, it seemed like a mature perspective that explained the changes she’d seen in Prince Adam over the years. “You’re here to meet with others, but this seems as much about knowing yourselves.”
“*Sì, non è una brutta cosa avere umiltà davanti a Dio.* Human beings, while we are capable of the worst, we are also capable of choosing the good. Of rising up to make a new start. We are entering the galaxy.” He gestured out the window at the world beyond. “If not now… when?”
_ _ _ “So, when are you going to explain this masterpiece you four have been cooking up?” Marin asked. Sammi and Sam were barely awake but the twins had already arrived, bright-eyed and enthusiastic, and Marin cursed the resilience of youth. The room was acceptably warm, but Ayen had complained about the cold and used the excuse to slip back into bed. She was considering her options for joining him.
Somewhere, somehow, Sammi had found their rabbit pajamas again. “Sam, explain it to her? You do it better.” Sammi yawned, but Marin suspected it was an act. Once something got their attention, sleep was usually an afterthought.
“What, now?” Sam had barely stumbled into the room and blinked. Bleary-eyed and barely awake, he looked like he’d been ambushed, which was exactly the case.
“Pllllllleeeease…?” They sat back pulling the ears, giving their best Roger Rabbit impression. Luminous green eyes peered out at Sam, imploringly.
“Alright… I need coffee, but fine.” Sam trudged over to the kitchenette and poked listlessly at the instant coffee. It was getting perilously low, but Marin was sure he’d brought more on the ship. Eventually Sam gestured at the K’herbhal sisters with his mug. “So the girls want to create an artificial topological soliton. It's like a black hole, except where it isn't… It's sort of a kink in space-time.”
“Made you say kink!” Sammi grinned impishly and the girls blushed. Marin shook her head but paid attention. It felt far too early after another late night, but once everyone was up you had to hang on for whatever came next.
“So, what's that got to do with this… hole you want to use for power?” Marin raised her voice just enough to drag the conversation back on track.
“It’s more like a side effect. If it cuts the right angle, it goes into a realm of space-time we can tap for power. Think of it as an obverse of an energy drain, so it's like a white hole.”
“Let me guess.” Marin shook her head and grinned, holding up a hand to forestall the inevitable. “Except where it isn’t?”
“Ummm… pretty much.” Sam grumbled, blowing at his coffee. Marin glanced back at the twins. With Sam busy, the twins had gravitated to either side of Sammi. There was room left on the couch, and she wandered over to settle in beside one of them.
The Sams had been complaining for years about a lack of ‘focal power’ for their mass compression technologies, and while a rubber duck inside a diamond was impressive, they’d wanted to do something more - a lot more. She suspected if the twins were providing the means, then they already had something about to surface from the depths of their imaginations. Over the years she’d learned to pick a bit, rather than take their answers at straight value. “And if things don’t cut at the right angle? You remember how long it took to get rid of the Navy, when you started talking about making black holes?”
“It's not our fault they didn’t understand,” Sammi said defensively, crossing their arms and pouting at her before the rabbit ears fell over their face.
“Who didn’t understand what?” Akeimei yawned at the door. She cast a wink her way before wrapping her arms around Sam and gave him a quick hug. “What did I miss?”
“Umm… a parallel universe, if the math is right,” Sam mumbled from the depths of his coffee cup.
“What? Like identical versions of us?” Marin watched Akimei’s nose wrinkled at the smell before she slipped away from Sam. Slipped down beside her, they rubbed shoulders a moment. “Tell me, is there one where I get more sleep?”
“More or less identical… though it's not like you need to go into a parallel universe for that sort of thing. There’s already a ‘you’ out there somewhere right now, to say nothing of past and future ‘you’.” Sam scratched his cheek idly for a moment “It's just the math. The universe is so vast that there are exact physical cosmic twins of us out there somewhere, not to mention even more almost-twins.”
“Sam’s right!” Sammi perked up excitedly, bouncing on the sofa. “Then there are quantum cosmic twins - which gets weird because particles exist in multiple states and you’d sort of overlap… but the easiest one is probably just another us elsewhere in the universe right now! That's sort of the point where the universe is bigger than you can imagine!”
“So exactly the same… or almost.” One of the twins giggled. “Just like us!”
“Pretty much,” Sam nodded, slowly emerging from the depths of his coffee. “Another you out there on another Shil, or another me on a whole Earth, even - just a little bit different.”
“What? Like an Earth that never met the Imperium?” Marin canted her head, tossing out the obvious. It was hard to remember her life before, and she didn’t want to contemplate the alternative.
“Oh, I don't like that idea.” One of the twins stuck out her lip. “We want to come to Earth!”
“Yeah,” her sister nodded, though she suddenly looked glum. “I don’t know if Professor Warrick would mind though. He’d be with his wife and daughter, there.”
“Oh…” her sister's face crumpled. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
“Well, don’t…” Sammi hugged them both a moment, though they held the first twin a bit tighter. “The point is, somewhere he’s with them right now!”
“Wow, I guess so.” she brightened. “Just imagine! A whole Earth that never met the Shil’vati!”
“I wouldn’t worry, sis.” her twin nodded. “I think Professor Warrick is pretty happy right now.”
_ _ _
“I am not happy about this!” Tom glared at his omni-pad before tossing it down in frustration.
Miv looked up at her husband.
“It’s an honor!” She tucked her chin in and gave him a long, considered look, “What is it that’s bothering you - really? It wasn't Monsignor Barcio. Are you certain this isn't the same sort of thing?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” he growled, looking away like a guilty child. “Alright, maybe… but this uniform is the silliest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll look like a mushroom, and the hat only makes it worse!" Tom grimaced at the omni-pad accusingly, "They won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, so now I’m on the rolls as a Warden Captain - whatever that is - and this ceremony is ridiculous!”
“The ceremony is traditional. Very symbolic... Besides, they don't make wardens out of anyone below the rank of captain - I looked it up. You were one before, so it's appropriate to make you one instead of a Warden Major or Warden Colonel.” She smiled at him serenely. “Surely, it can’t be the worst thing you’ve ever done.”
He turned to wag a finger her way. “I’ll take that bet!”
“Worse than our wedding reception…?” She crooned, teasing him. “Or maybe pre-term night? I swear by the Goddess no one will pinch your ass, except for Lea and I.”
“Fine…” Her smile grew wider as he grumbled, but he was calming down already and there wasn't heat in it. Still, he stubbornly clung on to the point a while longer. "It’s in my top five.”
“I’m sure you’ll survive, husband. Now then, I have meetings all afternoon, so why don't you finish reviewing the menu? You’ll feel better when all this is over and you can go back to cooking, chess, or starting that eeeyiy club… You might even give Ce’lani a call or message her?” She gathered her coat and smiled demurely, though it harbored nothing innocent. “If I’m not here you’ll have perfect privacy… Just don't promise anything you wouldn't promise to me.”
“It’s iai-do…” Tom groused, but he was already picking up his omni-pad.
She blew him a kiss and made her way toward the commons. Tom would probably stew a while, but he’d make the call.
There would be time to meet with Ce’lani on the common, before she had to come home for dinner.
_ _ _
Tom looked over the banquet menu as if it might reach out and bite him. The words stared up at him with perfect innocence.
Appetizer: Fruit and Cheese Platter - Slices of various cheeses and fruits on a platter providing a delicate mix of sweet, tangy and creamy to invigorate the dining experience. Serve with a selection of sweet and semi-sweet wines.
Soup: Choice of Tomato or French Onion Soup - Served with a piece of baguette and cheese.
Salad: Strawberry Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing -- an assortment of greens and fruit with a balsamic grain dressing to cleanse the palate.
Entree: Cornish Pasty - This herb-infused meat and pastry dish provides a counterpoint to the tangy taste of the salad and soup. Served with a creamy buttered mashed potato (a vegetable, humanely prepared!) with chives (also a vegetable). Served with a selection of wines or ales.
Dessert: Chef’s Sorbet Surprise - A sweet treat complemented by a palate cleanser, ending the meal on a piquant note.
His last call with Bherdin had been a trial and a half. Omni-pads were the definition of ‘high fidelity’, and hearing the little Shil’vati hyperventilate for ten minutes over the plan was pointless. At least Melondi had easier going with Vedeem on her side... one way or another this was happening.
As a final consolation, he relented on wearing matching suits. Bherdin frequently bemoaned Tom’s 'lamentable' fashion sense, and he perked up at that, promising to get him some appropriate formalwear for the occasion.
Privately, he suspected his Shil’vati friend was looking for a convenient alibi if a riot started.
In fairness, it probably wasn't a bad idea.
“Too late to use it myself…” he muttered. It wasn’t quite noon, and Miv was probably right. Instead of Chess Club or starting Iai-do practice or just cooking out at Human Food, he was stuck here at home. Miv’s place was bigger, but most of his stuff was still in boxes; it left him listless and climbing the walls. If this worked, at least things could get back to normal.
…Mostly normal…
He flipped back to the picture of the Warden uniform on his omni-pad. It was bad enough, but the hat made the whole thing look like a blue toadstool in silver filigree.
He swiped the picture away like an act of revenge, but didn’t toss the pad back on the table.
…Miv was right... and I promised to call Ce’lani…
Tom centered himself, pulling up the number. The universe was always in motion and a good Taoist accepted their part in what came. That was the lesson of ‘the Vinegar Tasters’, and it held true… The painting showed three men standing around a vat of vinegar. Each has dipped his finger into the vinegar and tasted it. The expression on each man's face showed his individual reaction.
The painting was an allegory for Confucius, Buddha, and Lao-tse. Confucius wore a sour look on his face. He believed life was out of harmony with the universe. As the second figure in the painting, Buddha had a bitter expression. Like the vinegar, life was painful and filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering. The last man, Lao-tse, was smiling at the taste. To him, harmony existed naturally and could be found by anyone at any time in any experience.
He thought about his buddy Dave. The old Marine would probably shake his head and tell him to ‘embrace the suck.’ It pretty much boiled down to the same thing.
Not that he was against calling. Miv and Lea had practically taken turns urging him on and giving their views on why it was a good idea. They hadn't harped about it, but he knew which way the wind was blowing. And Ce’lani’s message had been short, sweet in the literal sense, and the sound file she’d offered up had been…
…Pretty nice, really…
If he still said no, or decided he didn't like where this was going, they’d back his choice, of course. He didn't have a doubt in his mind… But with everything else in his life turned upside down, calling Ce’lani seemed like a calm in the eye of a storm.
…It's just a phone call. Leave the chaos at the gate…
He settled down on the couch to check his messages before giving her a call. It was nearly lunch…

A bit of background, Renée Fleming is a World Renowned Artist I've followed and loved for years, if you have the chance to hear her version of 'Oh Holy Night', I could not recommend it more highly. My personal favorite song ever.
As her performing career is tapering her new focus is Mental Health, healing and the role music and art play. https://reneefleming.com/advocacy/music-and-the-mind/ With funding and studies being initiated at the highest levels of the United States Health Services, her initiatives are only just beginning. At a recent award acceptance she said "music stimulates the vagus nerve in the brain, if you don't believe me, have you ever heard of TikTok?"
This is where Taylor comes in, an Artist that with a sentence in a song led to craft stores running out of inventory and turned into reaching out to strangers in a parking lot to share Friendship is just one sliver of a Mental Health joy her music has provoked and provided.
This is but a tiny example of the positivity her music has played and will play in the everyday Mental Health for her fans and by extension the public at large. I've read countless posts in this sub that backs up her ability to touch and improve, console and encourage, get up and move, reach out in support and on and on and on.
I fully buy into the role Music has in positively improving lives, the development of children and the improvement of senior lives.
Ms. Fleming's music may not be your favorite, but I think the impact this new initiative will have and the participatory level Taylor does play in proving her point.....is well worth reading her thoughts and have hope her studies positively move the health services to accepting music and art as life affirming therapy.

It's Thursday. I got wrapped up in playing Diablo and forgot to take a nap before work. I'm on an egg fast(6 eggs with 6 tbsp of butter and an ounce of cheese twice a day) so I can't buy a bit of ice cream to power through the night. And the hotel is filled with a bunch of kids who were apparently given coffee or something, because they won't go the hell to sleep.
So my night hasn't been great. How about you?
But this tale isn't about tonight. Not my part in it, anyway. The fallout happened today though. But for now, a musical interlude.

There are those who think that life
Has nothing left to chance
With a host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance

Our cast includes Me, Booking Agent(BA), Coworkers(CW1/2) and the star of our little tale, Karen, Mistress of the Self Frag(K).
Last night was fairly slow. I'm working on figuring out what my PC in our tabletop campaign is gonna do next session(she failed really hard in some combats due to bad dice after a kid she's kinda looking out for asked for her to teach him to fight better, so that's gonna be a morose conversation later). And then I get a call and give my Standard Hotel Greeting.
K: "Hi, yeah. So I have a reservation under Karen McCustomer for arriving tonight, but due to some issues, I won't be making it in tonight. I still need the room for Thursday night though. Any way I can cancel the first night but keep the second?"
Me: "Let me take a look at that for you."
I load up her reservation and... uh oh. I have to give her some bad news.
Me: "Unfortunately, it looks like you checked in via the mobile app. Due to that, I can no longer remove the first night of the stay for you. However, your second night is definitely held for you."
K: "There's nothing you can do? I'm a tier 1 shiny(lowest level above basic member)."
Me: "Unfortunately not, sorry."
K: "Well, that sucks. Okay then. Thanks for trying."
If it had ended there, I wouldn't be telling this tale. And she definitely wouldn't have been given the moniker of "Karen". So anyone reading this probably isn't terribly surprised with what comes next. About twenty minutes later, the phone rings again. I give the Standard Hotel Greeting.
BA: "Hello, yes, I'm calling from about a reservation for Ms. Karen McCustomer."
Me, internally: "Of course you are."
Me: "Okay, what can I do for you regarding that reservation?"
BA: "So, Karen has had an issue and is unable to make her first night. Is there any way to cancel the first night but keep the second one?"
Me: "As I told her when she called me a bit ago, since she checked in online through the mobile app, I can't cancel her first night."
I mean, I could have. But it would have both required me to violate hotel policy and engage in extra work. I might do one or the other when I truly feel it warranted, but not at the same time.
BA: "Oh. That makes sense. I'll let her know. Just to confirm, she will have her reservation for the second night, right? We can't risk her having her reservation no showed and her losing the second night."
Me: "That's not an issue at all. She's good to go for her second night."
BA: "That's the important part. Thanks for your help."
Me: "Thank you for calling. Have a good night."
BA: "You as well."
Again, if it had ended there, this wouldn't have been a story worth posting. Guest is told no, tries to get travel agent to talk me into saying yes. Very common tale. However, this is where my involvement in the story ends. The following interactions have been dramatized based on being recounted to me by CW2.

A planet of playthings
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
“The stars aren’t aligned –
Or the gods are malign”
Blame is better to give than receive

It is daytime. Late afternoon. The birds are singing. The machinery of a road crew working just down the street is singing the song of its people. The giant ball of fire is up in the sky doing...things.
Just remember kids: When has a giant ball of fire ever been good? I rest my case.
Anyway, the phone rings. It's busy, so our FOM, CW, gives the Standard Hotel Greeting as he's helping out with the desk
K: "Hi, so I had an issue with my flight, and I only needed one night of my stay."
CW: "Oh, I can fix that for you. What's the name on the reservation?"
K: "Finally, someone who can help. Karen McCustomer."
CW: "Okay, I've fixed that reservation for you."
K: "That sounded really easy. I wonder why the guy last night wouldn't fix it."
CW: "Don't know. But you're good now."
K: "Thank you."
If you've been paying attention, I'm sure you see what has happened. But CW was unwitting. And Karen thought she'd gotten what she wanted. Meanwhile CW sends up someone to make sure the room is cleaned since he just processed a really late checkout.

There are those who think that
They were dealt a losing hand
The cards were stacked against them
They weren’t born in Lotus-Land.

A couple hours later. The giant ball of fire is dipping down along the horizon. I'm at home, wondering to myself why the hell I'm playing the second lowest DPS spec in the game. And why some people keep dying to avoidable mechanics. Oh well, I'm not leading this circus. I just get to be one of the clowns.
Karen arrives, expecting to check into her room. Which has been sold. In fact, it was snapped up within moments, as CW checked the reservations screen after he hung up and we were booked solid again.
K: "What do you mean I don't have a reservation?!"
CW2: "It looks like you were checked out a couple hours ago."
K: "No! I called to cancel the first night, not tonight!"
CW2: "That wouldn't have been possible, as it was already checked in, looks like through the mobile app."
K: "That's what the guy said last night. But the guy I spoke to a couple hours ago said he could."
CW2: "He said he could cancel the first night but keep the second night?"
K, realization dawning: "...he should have known that's what I wanted!"
It devolved from there. Karens gonna Karen. But this Karen got to go Karen somewhere else. All because she chose a path that was clear. She chose free will. Next time, maybe she'll listen to the ready guide in the celestial voice of the auditor.
Who am I kidding? We all know she didn't learn a damn thing here.
I just hope you all have learned to distrust the giant ball of fire.

Hey all,
So that has to be a record for me I think - I finished and posted about Double Agents less than 2 days ago, and am now here with my All Stars post. That should give you a good indication of what I thought about this season. Lets’ discuss!
Disclaimer: At this stage I have only seen seasons 5-36 of The Challenge, plus the VS spinoffs, and AS1. Please refrain from spoiling any other seasons, or returning players. Thanks :)
TL;DR Summary
All Stars is a love letter to the old-school Challenge. OG cast members are brought back and inject new life into the show, falling back into familiar roles, or in some cases, showing tremendous growth and maturity. This season SLAPS, and is a return to form in many ways. Dailies and eliminations are honed back to simple, yet effective, much like we saw around The Duel era. Gone is the over-production of the mainline season, instead showcasing fun and entertainment. The cast brings it across the board, fantastic characters, loveable moments and inspiring growth. The entire vibe of the season is a throwback, with 80s-00s music, a house that calls back to old-school moments, familiar formats and challenges, and of course, the old-school cast. The season is capped off with a genuinely fun and tough final which was a joy to watch, and whilst the season isn’t perfect due to a one-winner final, and it feeling a little short, it’s an A-Tier through and through.
The Good

• The cast - amazing to see so many of these people back
• Yes, Darrell, Jonna, KellyAnne, Kendal, Laterrian, Katie, Syrus, Teck in particular all standouts
• The love and respect between the cast is so evident here - so much lifting each other up instead of dragging each other down
• The dailies and eliminations are simple but effective and are a blast to watch
• The uncensored swearing allows people to fully express themselves and it’s incredible.
• The music is on point all season long
• The final is tough and really interesting to watch unfold. The points system is a great approach to running a staged final.
• More genuine drama and hookups than the main show.
• Diverse casting that feels genuine - race, body types, sexuality, I loved it.

The Not So Good

• It SUCKS that the final is one winner. Especially because Day 1 was incredibly fair for a one-winner final, with Day 2 then ruining that and ensuring a male win. KA and Jonna robbed.
• The season is a touch too short - before I knew it, it was over. Needed more eliminations and a few less people making the final.
• Jemmye has good confessionals but feels a little out of place on the cast
• I wish elimination nominations were anonymous - people putting themselves into elimination was dumb.

The format
The format this simple is so simple and it’s fantastic.
This season is essentially an individual game, with some dailies performed in pairs/teams depending on the episode. The usual daily/elimination structure remains, with all contestants participating in a daily challenge each episode. Each day is either a male or female elimination day. Depending on the day, the top and bottom performing male/female earn immunity or a direct ticket into elimination (LOVEEEEE seeing daily losers going straight into elimination). Their opponent is then chosen by majority vote in the cast, although much of the time people end up self-nominating this season.
For the first half of the season the ‘additional twist’ is the lifesaver - a twist we haven’t seen in a long, long time. The top performing alternate gender from the daily gets access to the lifesaver, and can use it to save the nominated/voted contestant from going into the elimination. It’s only used once, and when it is, involves a majority re-vote on the spot to find the new contender.
For the second half of the season, the lifesaver is dropped and the individual eliminations turn into double eliminations. The bottom performing male AND female are made a pair and go straight into elimination. The top performing male/female get immunity. The house still continues to majority vote the opponent, but only vote for one person. That person then gets free choice from the whole cast on who they want as a partner, for the elimination. This was a little clunky and unfair I thought. Probably the weakest part of the format, and robbed Kendal from a final spot.
Overall though, I enjoyed the down-to-earth feeling of this format. It was simple. No ‘security breaches’, no ‘kill cards’ (as much as I love that twist) - just straightforward. It’s a perfect match to the OG feel of this season.
The cast
The cast this season is mostly fantastic. You can all tell that are having such a great time being there. We get contestants falling into familiar moulds, contestants who have grown and changed, and most importantly, contestants that want to win.
Yes: This is my first true exposure to Yes as a contestant. I previously saw him in Battle of the Seasons where he was first boot, and for a few episodes in Sexes 1, but I couldn’t tell you a thing about him from that season. This one showing has made me a huge Yes fan though. I love his attitude, and his positivity, I love his approach to the game, and I think he put in a powerhouse performance in that final, playing not only harder, but smarter as well. I was definitely rooting for him (among pretty much everyone in that final LOL) and was glad that we got a brand new Champ this season. Congrats to Yes and hope to see lots more of him - also him calling out the ‘punks on those other shows’ is iconic.
Jonna: Jonna was absolutely fantastic this season. I LOVE the maturity and grace that she has come back to The Challenge with. The Jonna we had previously known was much younger, much more fiery and immature, and going through a bit of a rough patch in her life (including getting partnered with Zach). This new and improved Jonna was a delight to watch. She’s a mom now, and come onto the show a mere 7 months post-partum, and she does FANTASTIC. I think she was such a likeable and enjoyable presence all season long, and then went on to perform so well, unexpectedly, in that final. I cannot wait to hopefully see her back on AS2 - I truly think she could smash it.
Darrell: This might be one of my favourite Darrell seasons ever. After he was robbed of all airtime on Double Agents, we get huge exposure to Darrell this season, with him being one of the main narrators and confessionalists. He is in prime form when it comes to his comedy this season. I don’t know if it was cause he could swear, or what, but he was more hilarious than ever before. I have a ridiculous number of quotes from him that I want to call out below. Great, strong performance throughout, and was the second TRUE threat to win in that final, alongside Yes. Loved their friendly rivalry, and whilst I’m happy Yes won… I was rooting even harder for Darrell. So close!! I hope he gets more time on the All Stars show because it really suited him.
KellyAnne: Those that have followed along with my posts will know I’m a massive fan of KellyAnne, and so I was extremely happy to see her cast this season. It’s been way too long. It’s probably not one of her most memorable seasons, she plays a pretty low-key game and doesn’t have a huge amount of screen-time, or memorable moments, but I loved watching her make another final and essentially ‘winning’ for the girls side alongside Jonna. The two of them 100% deserved at least some prize money, and should have received a title.
Mark: Mark is one of the challengers this season that hasn’t changed a bit, for better or worse. Mark has always been an interesting character to me - he’s obviously prolific for being a S1 Road Ruler, a big part of early challenge seasons, and producing All Stars (idk when I found this out, but I know he had something to do with it), but aside from that, and having no personal attachment to those things, I don’t always find him genuinely entertaining or fun. He tries really hard for the camera this season, and really plays up his role as the ‘godfather’, which comes across as a little cringe and overdone at times. He’s ridiculously in-shape though, and I’d be surprised if he didn’t win an AS season.
Jemmye: Jemmye is the one person on this cast I was a bit shocked to see. Almost like, Faith on the US team in WotW1 levels of shocked. She feels a little out of place in this cast, which is a little strange because she debuted at a similar time to Jonna, but Jonna feels like a better fit. Perhaps because Jemmye continued to be quite prominent on the main show up until quite recently. With that out of the way, I think she was fine throughout the season. Alongside Darrell, I’d bet she had one of the highest confessional counts all season, and I have always appreciated her narration capabilities so I think that’s completely fine. I also think she performed unexpectedly well at times, both at certain stages in the final and at some dailies.
Alton: Alton is someone I predicted on this season but didn’t genuinely expect to see, so I was surprised to see him here after his experience on Bots2. I can tell this season was a much better fit for him though, with much of the youthful partying and drama gone. I think he was a pretty good contestant this season. He still has a little of that trademark arrogance and doesn’t always come across the best, but he’s a fantastic partner to the everyone in the final, even whilst taking Aneesa’s yelling, and always remains a good sport. I also loved how he picked Aneesa to come into elimination with him, giving her some respect, and surprising her at the same time. I also loved the little Syrus and Alton drama and hope we get to see it continue in AS2.
Ruthie: Loved seeing Ruthie back as well this season - it’s been a huge amount of time since seeing her. A very, VERY low-key season for her overall though. I was a bit disappointed to never see too much from her, especially because I remember her for her powerhouse performances in those early seasons (especially that line-drop challenge challenge, forget its name). She remains fun throughout though, and I loved when she called out Aneesa, but she ends up performing surprisingly poorly in the final, at least compared to my expectations. If she gets to come back on another season I’d love to see the edit showcase her a bit more.
Big Easy: Much like Mark, Big Easy is a contestant who has not changed at all. He still has this weirdly misplaced arrogance and attitude that makes him comes across extremely poorly at times. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for him, because he debuted in my first season and continued to have a storyline over the few after that, but I can’t really excuse how he talks to some people, particularly in the final. Also, how he tried to convince Jemmye to quit the food portion so he could quit too. Saying that, he has some good moments this season as well. He has some surprising puzzle performances, one quote in particular which rocked me and had me dying, and I appreciated his storyline of ‘finishing a final’, and that he was able to accomplish that.
Aneesa: This feels like a MUCH better spot for Aneesa to stay as opposed to the main challenge. I actually thought she was quite likeable again this season (after thinking so on DA too), albeit it seemed she was having even more fun here. Yes, we get the EXACT SAME STORY as the main show ‘I get booted before the final every time, I can never win, this is my season’, which is old and a bit dry, but she had a few moments which I found quite sweet - her reaction to getting picked by Alton as a preferred partner into elimination. Her reaction to making the final, etc. She’s never going to win, and has to drop that thought (and those confessionals), but I didn’t mind her this time.
SIDENOTE: I can’t believe I’m STILL talking about finalists. Pretty crazy that half the cast makes the final.
Derrick: Has Derrick always been this cringe? I think he might be my least favourite contestant this season, without a doubt. The whole season is just him being a bit of a cartoon character and playing up to the camera, or sucking up to Mark. It’s not a great look and not really how I remembered Derrick from way back. Hopefully it’s a one-off and he comes back with a bit more maturity, but was really not a fan of his at all this seaosn.
Jisela: Jisela was another contestant I didn’t really remember. And I went on a bit of a rollercoaster with her this season. I initially adored her after that first episode - coming in as a bit of an underdog and putting in a fantastic, gutsy performance at the first challenge to prove herself. I think she had a really nice storyline there. Over the course of the season I soured a little though. She had a whole bunch of seemingly misplaced anger towards to Kendal which I didn’t appreciate, but also a weird and uncalled for reaction to Aneesa ‘not giving her her first choice’ into elimination, ending their friendship over it?!? Did the cameras not show something here? She’s quite funny though, has a bubbly personality and some good confessionals.
Nehemiah: Is dead to me after pulling Kendal into her THIRD elimination and sending her home before the final. Up until that point I was really enjoying his return. His win against Teck was solid, and he was injecting a little bit of drama into the house. I’ve always enjoyed his personality and think he speaks well and is able to tell a story. Bummed that his season ended with the aforementioned Kendal thing though as it has soured me on him a little, especially when he was the number one person saying ‘new people should go into eliminations’ - a bit hypocritical.
Kendal: I couldn’t tell you a thing about Kendal from Inferno, but I adored her this season. She was an underdog from the get-go, with the entire house hating on her non-stop (do we have details on why this is btw?). That automatically endeared me to her, who doesn’t love an underdog story, but she went on to be a solid competitor. She wins two eliminations, both of which aren’t super easy, and goes in a THIRD time in a season with only six eliminations. She’s good at dailies as well, and has a really enjoyable, down to earth personality. I love how real she feels, which is actually a bit of a theme this season, aside from a few exceptions in the cast. Completely robbed, deserved a place in that final. Hope she’s back for AS2.
Laterrian: Laterrian went from being an absolute nobody to me, to one of my favourites coming out of this season. I loved everything about him. His drive, his determination, his fleeting aggression, his need to win no matter what. He’s such a real friend to those in the house, speaking up for and supporting Syrus with the Alton altercation, and then being the ONLY person to happily throw their name in the ring to be Katie’s partner - so much humility and grace in how he handled that situation and resulting loss. He also had a fantastic showing against Ace and in the mini-final. I think Laterrian has turned into a serious winning threat.
Katie: I’m a massive Katie fan and continued to love her this season. She’s just fantastic. You can tell she has definitely matured and grown as a person, and she’s often biting her tongue, but we still get so many memorable moments from her - the many times she had to fall from heights and flashed back to Cutthroat, her fight with Trishelle, and her trademark dry humour. Katie is probably someone I don’t expect to see on AS2. She seems like she enjoyed herself this season but is maybe happy with where her story is at, and whilst I love her, I have to agree. She’s had a good run and this is a great season for her to end with, if that is the case. Quotes from her below for sure.
Syrus: Really enjoyed Syrus this season. I don’t remember a huge amount from him, even though I HAVE seen him on a few seasons, but despite being an earlier boot he’s memorable here. I loved his relationship with Beth, really appreciated his drive to win, and loved the little rivalry he developed against Alton. He got SO unlucky with his injured leg, and then heading into an elimination which involved landing on said leg. Regardless I loved that his ego got in the way and he called out Alton for that elimination when he could have had anyone else. Was a great storyline, hope to see him on AS2-3.
Beth: Beth came back this season to prove she’s matured, I think. I always hated Beth on the show, I could never enjoy her and just found her grating and annoying. But she’ so different this season, and I think accomplishes a lot in improving my view on her. She’s more mature, she’s likeable, and she avoids all the drama and crap she used to stir up in the past. I loved seeing glimpses of her family, and think she got a little screwed with the sudden shift to double eliminations. Much like Katie I could see this being her only AS appearance with a young family at home, but we’ll see. If it is, it’s a great place to leave things. Loved her humility in defeat, and how that was juxtaposed to Syrus’ swearing and anger. She clearly had a great time this season.
Teck: My first season seeing Teck, I believe. The only person on this cast that I’d never seen before (even though I didn’t remember a few others). I could not get enough of him. Teck is absolutely hilarious. He’s fantastic at confessionals, such a shit-stirrer and so entertaining. He put in a genuinely strong elimination performance against Neh, coming THIS close to taking that win. A bit of a quote machine in his short time on this season, very reminiscent of Darrell, and gone way too soon. Because he hasn’t done ANY seasons I’ve seen, I expect he may be one and done with AS1, but I hope I’m wrong and he is back again!
Arissa: Arissa has a crazy few episodes on this season. She turns from hippie, chilled, weed-food lady who prays to the sun into this swearing, loud quitter in the span of one episode and it’s ridiculously memorable and fun. She’s a great early boot.
Ace: I actually feel so bad for Ace. He’s never performed that well on the show, but my heart just broke for him this season. He seems like such a pure soul. Loved how he didn’t even want the money for himself, but to donate, and how he said he missed his dog. So sadddd and was absolutely brutalised by LT in that elimination.
Trishelle: omfg Trishelle has not changed at ALL. She had me in the first half though, not gonna lie. She starts off so strong, with an apology to Aneesa for what happened on Rivals 2, but that quickly devolves into CRAZINESS when she unleashes on Katie for ‘not coming right up to her’, which in turn sets Katie off briefly. She’s promptly sent into elimination, and looses with humility, taking her trademark brand of insanity home with her. A short stint, but so in-character.
The challenges
The dailies
Dailies were so different to what we’ve grown used to on the main show. They are so much more simple and low-key, no explosions or over-production, and it work so well. It’s such a return to form imo.

• Deep Blue Dive is a great start to the season, and involves swimming out quite far in deeper water, and diving for numbers which are used to solve math equations. This was HILARIOUS, with almost every contestant getting rescued at some point. Great commentary from Teck here and really nice scenery. A good opener.
• Ancient Challenge History is the first trivia in quite a few seasons that I haven’t zoned out a little whilst watching. All questions are based around the history of the challenge, which was fantastic to play along with. I wished they would have shown all the questions rather than skipping through, and think it was a bit of a strange choice to base falling on weight, as some people could get three wrong answers and some only two, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. And Ruthie had an impressive knowledge of the show considering how long it has been since she was on.
• Melt Away is such a call back to old challenges, involving melting a huge block of ice, in teams, in any way possible. It flops a little, because TJ has to introduce hammers after the contestants aren’t able to make any dents, but it’s a silly little challenge that’s memorable, if gross.
• On The Ropes is so simplistic but I love the little twists it introduced. Contestants are in teams and have to make their way between two platform using a series of four ropes. After completing a leg of the challenge, a contestant can release a rope from the other team, reducing the number of ropes they can use and sending some people down into the water. A really fun challenge.
• Connect Em All is a fantastic mini-challenge, with puzzle checkpoints, endurance, and strength all involved. Some really food performances from individuals here, loving seeing LT take the win.
• Escape The Room might, strangely, be my favourite daily of the season, which is strange because it’s so simple. In teams of four, players are placed into a floating shipping container on top of a trapdoor. They each have a puzzle in front of them, but the trapdoors open one by one from right to left, and whichever team completes the most puzzles wins. I just loved the fear introduced by the trapdoors, and also the visuals of people getting suddenly dumped out. Easy has a surprise win here, being the only one to solve the puzzle.
• Rib Cage Pass is the most similar to a current day challenge, and also my least favourite this season. It involves navigating a simple beam obstacle course down the side of a moving semi truck, delivering balls from one end to another.

The eliminations
Eliminations are closer to what we’ve seen on the main show, but it’s a curated choice of games, all of which are interesting and fun to watch played.

• Pole Wrestle starts the season and is an absolute blow-out in LT’s favour as he crushes Ace. It’s a classic for a reason, loved seeing it here.
• Knot So Fast is another classic, and very welcome here as well this season. A great win by Kendal, the first of two for her.
• Going Out Of Tile involved Nehemiah and Teck each having to consume two Carolina Reaper peppers before having to enter a ceramic cage and punch out your coloured tiles. It’s a little weak, probably the weakest of all eliminations this season, but it’s entertaining. Also, I was so confused when TJ was pulling out the peppers. Why was he so suss about it, putting on a glove and then pulling this random bag out of his pocket lmao.
• Over and Under is the first of our double eliminations, a truly gruelling challenge. It involves a sequence of four walls with hollow insides, covered in plasterboard. As a team, one of each duo must climb and go over each wall, with a ball, whilst the other punches through the wall and goes under. They need to deliver five balls this way, from one end to the other, before winning. Strength and endurance are both required here, and everyone involved puts in a great amount of effort. The Syrus / Alton rivalry comes to fruition as well. Good elimination, perhaps my favourite this season.
• Pull Me Over is pedestal tug of war, and one we’ve seen in the past, such as when Jordan absolutely embarrassed Josh. Laterrian selflessly volunteers to go into elimination, like a madman, alongside Katie, and unfortunately is not able to pull out the win against Mark and Kendal. I would have been sad to see Kendal go here, but I wanted LT and Katie to stay in the game so bad. Proud of them to at least take the first round though.
• Ring Cling is a bit weak in design, largely because it removes any agency Jisela and Kendal had in the game. Not only did Kendal get dragged into her third elimination by Nehemiah, but then she gets and elimination where it’s essentially all up to him to win it for them. It involves using a series of chains and hoops to form makeshift ladder up a wall, with first person to ring a bell winning. Jisela is injured form the get-go, and unable to stand on her foot, and Big Easy SOMEHOW goes on to clutch up and beat Nehemiah. It’s a hilarious outcome, but losing Kendal to it is rough.

The final
This final was really special to me. I haven’t enjoyed a final so much in so long.
Everyone involved was having the best time, and they were all so supportive and uplifting to eachother. Everyone was a fantastic partner, outside of Big Easy - Alton, Yes, Darrell and Mark all showcasing how to treat and support your partner. Everyone is keen for the win and trying their hardest.
I’m usually not a fan of staged finals but the approach taken here was fantastic and kept things really fair. Instead of stages being timed, and leading to an arbitrary advantage at the next stage, all stages were scored with points, 5/4/3/2/1 depending on placements. The entire first day was ran in duos, with partners rotating between every stage. I was initially thinking this was an insanely smart way to make a one-winner final fair. Day 2 goes onto ruin this, but Day 1 is incredibly smart in keeping things even. There’s a bunch of running, swimming and cycling through beautiful jungle and waterways, with stages between involving eating, assembling bicycles, puzzles, and the overnight endurance portion.
Day 2 is a straightforward long race up a mountain, and at this point the final becomes completely individual, ensuring a male would take home the crown - this is annoying, and my least favourite part of the final. Points from Day 1 STILL MATTERED though.
Overall, despite one-winner, it’s still a fantastic final and one I really enjoyed watching.
Random remaining thoughts from throughout the season

• Mentioned above but the inclusion of uncensored swearing this season is incredible - so much more expression from everybody.
• The house was such a throwback - the pictures, the quotes, the named helmets. So cool to see.
• ‘Nehemiah, Tenderoni?’ ‘Oh. My. God.’
• Teck: ‘welcome to The Challenge. We got the medics out here, the wheelchairs, the walkers’
• Laterrian, fully drowning: ‘I look like a f*cking punk’
• Ace taking his nom personally ‘you’re all f*cking monsters’ - I can’t believe he actually called everyone monsters just for nominating him lmao.
• Laterrian: ‘What the f*cks a Pole Wrestle?’
• Aneesa: ‘Ace looks like he’s getting plunged. Like in a toilet’
• TJ: ‘Who said: I will cut you with words’ Katie: ‘it sounds like Coral’ Aneesa: ‘KATIE’ Katie: ‘who was it?’ Aneesa: ‘ME, AND YOU WERE THERE!’
• ‘I hit my face again you f*ckers’
• Kendall v Trishelle ‘Listen To Your Heart’ - one of many great musical moments, and the first I’ll note down here.
• Arissa trying to summon the sun had me dead
• The Jonna butt scooting montage along the rope was your standard ‘empowering’ moment, and I love that it was upended, and the music cutofff, as KellyAnne JUST beats her to the end and drops her rope.
• It seemed like TJ was having such a great time this season - he was always smiling or laughing. It was great to see.
• The first revote. TJ: ‘Alright Darrell we’re going to start with you’ Darrel: ‘Oh you motherf*cker’
• I loved how much history this season pulled on - so much of what happened on RRW and the early challenge seasons mattered here. That’s something I think the main show has lost.
• Arissa actually goes out in a crazy way, saying the whole house is living foul, and if ‘she can’t box’ she doesn’t want any part of it. ‘F*ck you, I’m done, you can kiss my motherf*cking ass, and that’s my motherf*cking game’
• TJ drops a ‘don’t take care, hope to see you never’ - um, where was this last season for Fessy
• Alton leaving Syrus’ handshake hanging, and then Syrus sipping on water from a wineglass. What a mood.
• So many hook-ups this season - more than we’ve seen on the regular show lately. Jisela and Alton, Aneesa and LT, etc
• Aneesa so flattered and emotional that she would be first picked by Alton - it was as sweet moment.
• Derrick to Syrus: ‘don’t jump like that, hang off the side, you’re going to f*cking hurt yourself’
• The I NEED A HERO needle drop for Syrus’ perseverance and elimination attempt was epic.
• Syrus fired up at the end. ‘I’m not done, I need a f*cking physical 1:1 with that motherf*cker’ - please give it to us next season
• ‘Paramount’ - TJ looks to camera ‘see what I did there’
• Here I Go Again by Whitesnake as Katie waits for her trapdoor to drop. Flashbacks to her past falls. Yes saying ‘Keep your elbows in’ - it was SO GOOD. Editing top tier.
• After Katie falls you can see Mark offscreen ask if she’s ok and she says yes - there’s so much love between the cast this season, it’s great.
• Laterrian is such a real one for being the only one to go up to Katie and say she can call his name out. ‘You call me in and I’ll come down and let the dog out’ - everyone else with excuses was a bit pathetic.
• ‘Would I be able to sleep at night knowing I had a friend in need and didn’t help? Hell no’ - badass
• Nehemiah saying ‘I’m not scared of you. Nobody is’. Easy: ‘You should’ve been. When I sent your ass home in motherf*cking Duel 1, cousin’ - I know he’s boasting about a nothing elimination, but the line itself absolutely destroys Neh. It almost had me spit-take. It was so good. Even reading it back has me laughing. He really ‘cousined’ him.
• I mentioned above but the season is TOO SHORT! We needed just a few more eliminations I think, things were over as soon as they began.
• ‘When TJ tells us we’re pairing up with the girls I’m pretty stoked. I mean, I’d rather them than Big Easy’
• Yes waiting on finishing his tangram to secure himself a good kayaker, making sure he wouldn’t be purged, was an incredibly smart move from him. The first of many this final. He was switched on.
• Darrel talking from the canoe ‘They’ve got Alton in the front, they f*cked uppppp’
• ‘Waterfalls’ whilst Aneesa and Alton struggle to get back into their boat had me dead
• Jisela: ‘I’m f*cking reversing this b*tch’
• Easy and KA last Minute overtake for the final spot over Jisela and Derrick - I was SO happy. Jisela and Derrick deserved to be first out, and whilst Easy performed awfully at the puzzle and deserved it too, KellyAnne absolutely did not. Jisela and Derrick both couldn’t kayak, so fairs fair.
• Jemmye: ‘Darrel can you check my tires right’ whilst it’s literally sideways
• Darrel to the bike tool: ‘I’ll take this f*cker with me’
• Darrell JOGGING up the hill carrying Ruthie to secure first place in the stage was epic.
• Carolina Reapers knocking down half the cast - these probably shouldn’t have been included in the final right? Becayuse gross food is gross food, but people have different spice tolerances.
• KellyAnne pulling DARRELL up the hill - she was fantastic at this stage.
• ‘Flagpole Sitta’ aka ‘I’m not Sick’ during the gross food portion was great, as was Alton treating the food like a delicacy.
• Easy trying to convince Jemmye to quit so he doesn’t need to eat was such a scummy move. Loved that Jemmye saw right through him and persevered.
• Alton: ‘I’m done with Yes’ fake positivity BS, I’m done with KellyAnne complaining, but I’m hanging in here for Jonna.’ - loved that he stayed up and let Jonna sleep for as long as possible.
• TJ riding in on a horse for Day 2 had my dying. And the fact that it kept trotting away.
• Yes quickly making two walking sticks and then shedding some layers - he is so switched on, and these choices probably clutched him this win.
• ‘All I know is suddenly I hear something… and there he is… With his two sticks, like he’s on an elliptical at NordicTrack’

Conclusion
So yeah, I bloody loved this season. I had so much fun and was smiling from ear to ear all season long. It’s such a great love letter to the show, and I’m beyond excited for AS2 and AS3, if they are more of the same. A great cast, good challenges, a good final, amazing music and uncensored swearing, and a cool new winner. Slightly marred by the one winner final and some other nitpicks, but it’s an A-Tier season. SO MUCH FUN.
Next up will unfortunately be S37, even though I badly want to skip straight to AS2. I’m staying chronological! So check below for my predictions for the next season, and please let me know your thoughts on this season!
Rankings
This will be ranked quite high. Perhaps too high, but I had too much fun with it. It’s holding a special place for me at the moment. It’s possible it drops slightly over time, with less recency bias.

1. S25: Free Agents
2. S24: Rivals 2
3. S33: War of the Worlds
4. S21: Rivals
5. S34: War of the Worlds 2
6. The Challenge: All Stars
7. S13: The Duel
8. S30: Dirty 30
9. S10: Inferno 2
10. S29: Invasion of The Champions
11. S20: Cutthroat
12. S8: The Inferno
13. S19: Fresh Meat 2
14. S12: Fresh Meat
15. S26: Battle of the Exes 2
16. S22: Battle of the Exes
17. S32: Final Reckoning
18. S17: The Duel 2
19. S15: The Gauntlet 3
20. S18: The Ruins
21. S31: Vendettas
22. S36: Double Agents
23. S28: Rivals 3
24. The Challenge: Champs v Stars 2
25. The Challenge: Champs vs Pros
26. S6: Battle of the Sexes
27. S14: Inferno 3
28. S11: The Gauntlet 2
29. S7: The Gauntlet
30. The Challenge: Champs vs Stars
31. S5: Battle of the Seasons
32. S9: Battle of the Sexes 2
33. S23: Battle of the Seasons (2)
34. S27: Battle of the Bloodlines
35. S35: Total Madness
36. S16: The Island

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Tropico 6 El Prez Edition
Iron Danger
Autonauts
Shadows Awakening
Fantasy Blacksmith
Goat of Duty
The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day
Basement
Humble November 2020 Leftovers
Darksiders 3
Imperator: Rome Deluxe Edition
Crying Suns
Darksburg
Rover Mechanic Simulator
Townsmen: A Kingdom Rebuilt
Humble December 2020 Leftovers
Shining Resonance Refrain
Zwei: The Arges Adventure
Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection
Tabletop Playground
Humble January 2021 Leftovers
PC Building Simulator
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
Warhammer: Chaosbane
Total Tank Simulator
Not Tonight
Vampire TM: Shadows of New york
The Ambassador: Fractured Timelines
Humble February 2021
Outward + The Soroboreans + Soundtrack
Endless Space 2 Digital Deluxe
Trine 4
The Wild Eight
Train Station Renovation
Boomerang Fu
Werewolf: Heart of the Forest
Humble March 2021
Control Standard Edition
Xcom: Chimera Squad
Elex
Kingdom Two Crowns
WWE 2K Battleground
Hotshot Racing
Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
Cyber Hook
Pesterquest
Wildfire
Boreal Blade
Ageless
Humble April 2021
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts
F1 2020
Shenmue 3
Main Assembly
Rock of Ages 3
In Other Waters
Aven Colony
Colt Canyon
Skully
Popup Dungeon
Humble May 2021
Darksiders Genesis
Hellpoint
Cook, Serve, Delicious 3
Fury Unleashed
Size Matters
Retimed
Family Man
Vane
Humble Alphabetical List
Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot The First Cases Ageless Alfred Hitchcock Vertigo Aliens: Fireteam Elite Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Autonauts Aven Colony Bartlow's Dread Machine Basement Battalion 1944 Battle Group VR Beyond a Steel Sky Bionic Commando Boomerang Fu Boreal Blade Burnout Paradise (Origin) Burnout Paradise Ultimate Box Capitalism 2 Catherine Classic Colt Canyon Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 Uprising Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 Uprising Origin Command and Conquer Remastered Collection (must activate by June 7th) Control Standard Edition Cook, Serve, Delicious 3 Crying Suns Cyber Hook Darksburg Darksiders 3 Darksiders Genesis Deadbeat Heroes Disciples Liberation Driftland: Magic Revival Elex Embr Endless Space 2 Digital Deluxe Epic Chef Equilinox Evergarden F1 2020 Family Man Fantasy Blacksmith Felix the Reaper Founders' Fortune Fun with Ragdolls the Game Fury Unleashed Gabriel Knight 3 GameDec Gas Station Simulator Gauntlet Slayer Edition Genesis Alpha One Deluxe Edition Goat of Duty Golf Gang Golf with Your Friends Grid Ultimate Edition Hellblade Senua' Sacrifice Hellpoint Hot Wheels Unleashed Hotshot Racing House Flipper VR I am Fish Imperator: Rome Deluxe Edition In Other Waters In Sound Mind Iron Danger Kingdom Two Crowns Little Big Workshop Magicat Main Assembly Medal of Honor (Origin) Men of War: Assault Squad 2 Mirror's Edge Origin Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp Niche Not Tonight Octahedron: Transfixed Edition Oh My Godheads Outward + The Soroboreans + Soundtrack Overload Oxenfree PC Building Simulator Peaky Blinders: Mastermind Pesterquest Phoenix Point GOTY Pine Popolous Origin Popup Dungeon Propnight Pumpkin Jack Rad Raiden V Director's Cut Railroad Corporation Resident Evil 0 HD Remaster Resident Evil Decades of Horror Resident Evil HD Remaster Retimed Revita Rock of Ages 3 Rover Mechanic Simulator SCP: 5K Shadows Awakening Shenmue 3 Shining Resonance Refrain Shoppe Keep 2 Siege Survival Gloria Victis Sims 3 Sims 3 Date Night Sims 3 High End Loft Stuff Sims 3 Late Night Size Matters Skully Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts Spellcaster University Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom Star Trek: Bridge Crew Strange Brigade Street Fighter V Strider Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones Super Meat Boy Superfly Supraland Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality Tabletop Playground The Ambassador: Fractured Timelines The Ascent The Blackout Club The King's Bird The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day The Wild Eight Them and Us This is the Police 2 To the Moon Total Tank Simulator Townsmen: A Kingdom Rebuilt Train Station Renovation Trine 4 Tropico 6 El Prez Edition TruberBrook Turok 2: Seeds of Evil Ultra Street Fighter IV Vampire TM: Shadows of New york Vampire the Masquerade Coteries of New York Vane Vikings Wolves of Midgard WWE 2K Battleground Walking Dead Saints and Sinners Wargroove Warhammer: Chaosbane Werewolf: Heart of the Forest Wildfire Xcom: Chimera Squad Zenith: The Last City Zero Caliber VR Zwei: The Arges Adventure Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection
Fanatical, GMG, other Keys:
Aragami Assassin's Creed Odyssey Gold (requires Uplay login) Atari Vault Biped Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead Cat Lady Card Game Clustertruck Crown Trick Deponia Doomsday Dustforce DX Everspace Everspace Encounters Dlc Everspace Upgrade to Deluxe Edition HoPiKo Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?! Horizon Chase Turbo Kill It With Fire Liberated Metro Redux Bundle Monster Slayers Monster Slayers Advanced Classes Unlocker Monster Slayers Fire and Steel Expansion Monsters Den Chronicles Moon Hunters Neon Abyss Pillars of the Earth Project Nimbus: Complete Edition Quest Hunter Shadowhand RPG Card Game Shieldmaiden Remix Skyhill Slain Back from Hell Spirit Hunter Death Mark Starpoint Gemini Warlords Swords of Gargantua VR Tangledeep The Dark Eye Memoria The Long Reach Tokyo Xanadu eX+ Wayward Souls XIII Classic
I'm mostly interested in trades. Let me know what you got! Thanks!

Except I eat a bunch of caffeine pills, weed and whatever before so maybe it's not.
They are doing it every 2 weeks now and I'm going to feed on it like some weird deep sea fish. I got there early, camo pants, black boots, knife on my boot, hawaiian shirt, spiked metal bracelet.
I open the night with Pat Benetar - Heartbreaker, it was great. I wasn't drunk enough so we started into the white claw and vodka nonsense.
We started a a "bjork off", she sang it's oh so quiet and i responded with army of me, she won. I know when I'm defeated.
It got late and I finished the night with scarlet begonias, that's a great song. There was a 12 year old little girl who was singing karaoke and it was so wholesome that it kinda even melted my heart in a sense and then i started thinking like "this is what it's like when you give a kid a sip of your beer" because karaoke is the strongest drug I've ever done.
I dunno, god, I would love to sell everything I own and just travel in my van from karaoke night to karaoke night and work from a coffee shop in the morning before showering and working out in the gym and then hit happy hour before karaoke and maybe a rotary meeting in between. Ugh I'm talking myself into it. Getting laid in the van is going to be tough but I'm still pretty cute. I hope, that's where the gym comes into play.

Well fuck me, it's that time again...
I can't believe its been a year since we last gathered up the financial wreckage that is ASX_Bets into a tidy little package, but it seems as though you tards are going as strong as ever.
(If you'd like to see what the fuck this is all about here are some links to Part 1 and Part 2. )
Or just take a deep breath, ignore the smell and dive head first without any DD at all into Part 3 of the weird, wild and wonderful history that is degenerate gamblers support group ASX_Bets.
(Personally, Mods blame u/SunkDestroyer for all the craziness of the last financial year, shits never been right since they set off the fire alarm...)
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Enjoy cucks..
​
A FUNKY MARKET AND SOME DOGS ON THE LOOSE
Given the way things have tracked along since the last post, I thought it fitting to kick of this years mash-up with a post from u/Pastry1 that got an awful amount of traction, a rundown of the ASX biggest dogs. Mostly, it's just indiscriminate venting from folks about their favorite Clifford, but it's still worth a read for nostalgic purposes.
PAPPY ELON AND THE TWITTER SCAM DREAM
Never shy of a controversy, Papa Elon initiated a whole bunch of crazy in the markets during the purchase of twit-wit. Commentary and the linked post was provided by u/Wannaliveinpenthouse, kind of ironic given the circumstance really...
AN EPIC BAN BET
Generally, I won't single out a specific bet unless its really off the scale, like bodily fluids, daddy/sister banging, tattoo's, or in this case buying an acreage of growth forest and cultivating the ASX_Bets logo into it. Seriously, this is the claim u/joeycloud has made in their epic bet from 2022.
DESPERATELY SEEKING BLM
In the absence of u/ilyfish and DW8 (R.I.P) or the waxing/waning of u/SlaughterRain and their WBT commentary, u/Maleficent_Ad_1982 has become our most obsessive poster. (having said that, WBT has fairly clearly won the giga-chad award for the chippie stonks, so big ups to slaughter given they backed this one through highs and lows)
I've gone back in time to the original comment when they were so young and starry eyed, dreaming of quick bags on AZL to the First countdown post, the melt-down at day 100 and now the grizzled wreckage of a human we see before us to show just how deep this rabbit hole goes. In particular, I enjoyed the anniversary rant on day 365. You've got to admire the determination, if not be slightly concerned about the obsessive compulsiveness...
(Based on a suggestion from u/AntiCGT Mods are currently trialing a Rule 12 regarding starting a countdown, we will see whether we can be bothered pursuing this or not in time..)
RETURN OF THE SOULESS DAY-WALKER
Our resident ginger, u/FameLuck served out their year long ban and returned this year in a blaze of, well, glory I guess. Mods conferred behind the scenes and decided to offer the ginga ninja a slot in the Banning of the Tards Hall of Fame, where he sits beside revered company indeed with Big Jim, Kooksy, Stinky, Mutated and Josh. Another point about ginge, he definitely loves a bit of experimentation.
Also, there is a a very weird 3-way fetish thing with u/ChZakalwe and u/Blisser_the_sniff. Still, it earnt Chaz some shiny heels to go with that utopian scam dream flair, so not all was lost.
SPEAKING OF CUNTS...
While we are on the topic, lets have a little rehash of when u/Mutated_Cunt mercilessly dissected fabled doggie ZIP. In the post aptly titled anatomy of a dog, our resident genitalia deformity systematically destroys Larry's love child with disturbing precision.
It appears though, that we will not be able to enjoy the cunts commentary any further, a thread on Atayls seemed to indicate that reddit had nuked their account.
THE LITHIUM BUG
- u/Jswyft has been banging on about the Lithium cycle for long enough now that even the most smooth brained amongst us have at least had the opportunity to make some tendies. Whether you're into that type of thing or not, we have to give a shout out to the Lithium king and all the information he puts up here for you fuckers.
- u/SoftTopMafia also provided an interesting post regarding the Lithium Bulls.
RENEWABLES?
- Its been a big topic in the markets this last year. u/BigJimBeef kicked off the renewable energy debate in this post and its had a thread running through a lot of the sub conversations ever since.
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN
- Love her, loathe her, don't care or whatever, there is no denying that the world lost an iconic figure in 2022. In fitting ASX_Bets style, u/zupahorse made us a touching tribute to our departed overlord.
WAKA WAKA
- Fucking Waka Waka. Scotty and the boys rose to BRN levels of fomo when they discovered something spicy in the dirt across the sea. There were innumerable shit posts, comments, average DD assessments and the bets. Oh my lord the bets. We managed to ban half the sub due to a failed drill bit.
Fittingly, the peoples Mod u/mcfucking created a touching video representation of the whole debacle.
SOME OTHER STUFF
- Not to be deterred by the already impressive volume of dog-shit on the exchange, u/Outrageous_Junket817 floated the possibility of starting a mining company.
- u/dontletmedaytrade put up a post on Credit Suisse and the financial impacts of a crash, which was actually a pretty good read and commentary.
- u/Far_unit9020 created a write up about Red Flags. Applicable to majority of the subs tinder profiles and stonk choices, this one was another good read.
- u/TwoMenOneJar dropped in and set the daily threads on fire. Clearly a stray, they wandered off-lead from the den of HC into our wholesome little sub, proceeded to argue with and then block half the users here.
Now, a little ditty that we couldn't share with you then that I'll share with you now. Behind the scenes, a message was quietly sent to the lad regarding misusing the ''reddit report'' function. They responded with a message of their own, stating they had also been reported for self-harm. So obviously, they could not be the culprit as they are clearly the victim. A screenshot was produced. They had indeed been reported for self-harm. However, they had also neglected to crop out the previous reddit alerts, including the ones about ''we have reviewed the report you made''...
Remember folks, when you're purchasing stonks, this is the calibre of intellect you are betting against...
PURGE/COMPS
As always, we ran THE PURGE. Congratulations to u/MotherFuck3rJones who was the winner this time round. Our loser, currently serving out their year ban was the infamous u/logofpoo. They made a fitting farewell post from the deed.
- u/FameLuck ran the first ASX_Bets Dog Race.
- u/LegendoftheASX produced a write up about 2023 predictions. Fittingly, sub veteran u/WowVeryJosh took it a mile further, with a 2023 stonk picking comp.
MOD STUFF
- We had a few decent debates this year. Mods try and put up posts about current events, it gives us some direction as opposed to just running it all through the daily threads. Also highlights that we do have some wrinkled brains amongst the smoothness...
- recession debate
- Interest rate debates
- Budget night debates
- As is tradition, a perma-ban victim was released from the dungeon during Easter. Congrats u/Competitive_Copy2451, our shit post content went up an awful lot.
- Now, we all know there is no justice like angry mob justice. So, kangaroo court was back in session this year.
- April Fools this year had the Mod team partnering with Netflix. Oddly enough, there is actually some reasonably funny back story to alot of the sub and it Nope, it's a fucking terrible idea.
THE ELUSIVE 100K
Well, it finally happened. Over 100,000 of you cucks in this cesspool. Un-fucking-believable.
SHIT-POSTS
If we have said it once, we have said it 47 million times. Above all, we love YOLO's, shit-posts and dank memes. Here is but a sampling of the top shelf collection from the last 12 months...
- u/yothuyindi with some upbeat advice for the resident ZIP hodlers, a beat for the boomers, an Attenborough special and a ASX_Bets personalized ETF. Some fine work from one of our finest users.
- u/Far_Unit9020 discovered origins of LKE and provided us with an always popular Hitler parody.
- u/BigJimBeef had us in stitches with a, well, I'm actually not sure but it's funny as fuck and it has a fish in it. He also provided a sage reminder of the darker side of the year, the lettuce saga of 2022
- u/litres-of-cum made a little zippy ride
- u/Jenky83 provided some top shelf meme work with this offering
- u/HiVisEngineer got in on the act, giving us some lithium perspective
- u/prestiCH did the financial review for us
- u/hunnymunster made sure we never forget our cuck friends over at Ausfinance
- u/Denominator_K gave us the Lambo inspiration when times were dark and a hotcrapper pummelling.
- u/zupahorse cancelled the recession and for an encore gave us an American Psycho parody for the ages. They created a little super-mario throwback, even Bluey got a run...
- It's rare to get a shit-post series, but thats exactly what u/justjohncliff has given us with their advertising saga
- u/Competitive_Copy2451 gave us a rundown of what to expect from interest rate hikes, a tribute to sub dog DW8, more Scotty- Mac posts than you'll know what to do with and a rundown of the ASX dogs.
- u/sneakycutler with a , well, its pretty fucking disturbing whatever it is
- u/kervio made an oddly heart-warming musical piece for you all to enjoy here, with some shout out's to the departed.
- u/Instantly-Regret, (who by the way has the most on point username on the entire sub), made us a Monopoly game in honor of some of the sub's finest doggies...
- u/i_bid_thee_adieu had a sneaky little swipe at Rusty Rake Capital and their obsession with BOQ earnings
GAINS
As always, this is but a mere sampling of the gains.
- The gains posts have been a little thin this past year, however ASX_Bets rare earths mogul u/Calculated-Punt managed to make a fucking lot of bags on this little puppy
- u/FurcationInvolvement showed us what a 600% gain looks like.
- u/joeycloud is still tracking along nicely with the MNS gains.
- u/1000baggers is living up to their username, posting some nice portfolio numbers
- u/Particular_Love_8811 has been keeping us updated periodically on the musings of Rusty Rake Capital. As inexplicable as their trading methodology is, this user appears to be making money so go figure.
- u/Springoniondip provided us some warm and fuzzies with their love affair for LTR. You always remember your first.
Allegedly..
LOSS PORN
Ahhhh, loss porn. Again, only a taster plate from the many, many choices.
- u/After-Note921 with some top shelf loss porn. (Odd side note to this, the user was banned at a later date for portfolio claim they refused to provide proof of. Weird...)
- u/StrethAU threw out some tasty BNPL losses
- Always good for some Epic Red, the artist formerly known as u/Rude_Jello_377 politely presented this offering
- Some HVY loss porn, courtesy of our resident T20 hodler u/dskoh1
- u/JoeHax00 and some breath-taking loss pornography
- u/JDK-Ruler and a DW8 masterpiece
- u/Luck_Beats_Skill showed us the importance of believing your investment thesis and hodling through the storm, producing this glorious post.
​
KOALITY CONTENT
Again, this is but a sample of the $$ and blood sacrifices made throughout the year.
- u/tassiboy42069 and some heartwarming content
- u/Rosencrantz1710 and a RUOK donation pledge that went viral pretty quickly
- u/spank-hair and a Blood Sacrifice
- u/Silvertigar with a heartwarming koala donation
- u/RandomVanBloke and a Blood Sacrifice
- u/Calculated-Punt came good with a bet donation, spreading the love around to a number of different charities.
​
And alas, it comes to the awkward part where I need to finish the post but suddenly remembered the thousand other things that deserved a mention here. I seem to say this every year and every year it becomes more apparent, so much goes down it's just not possible to capture it all.
Although we lurk like shadowy forces, rarely commenting, (discussing our losses on the Mod Chat so as to save ourselves public embarrassment) Burn, Ruin, Phantom, MCF and I really do appreciate you all from the bottom of our collective degenerate heart.
I'm not crying, you're crying...
​
Till next year, stay sexy you beautiful bastards...
​
TLDR: τα γαμημένα ελληνικά είναι δύσκολο να μεταφραστούν

Shady's back, tell a friend. Guess who's back, guess who's back.
Anyway, yeah. I'm back for the ten people or probably less that have the attention span to get through this monstrosity, I'm back.
Back again.
Ok, thats enough of the joke. I'll post the next part of chapter four tomorrow, and hopefully I can get back on track with it. Enjoy-
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Chapter Four
Eventful Events
“-ubber flobber glibber gobbler-” A was cut off.
“I’m sorry, what?” The stranger tilted their head.
They were likely a man by their voice, but you could never really tell.
“What do you mean, ‘what?’?” A asked in kind.
“What kind of swear was that?” The newcomer sounded confused.
“Nevermind that, what even are YOU?” A got to his feet. “I’m fairly sure that any sane worker drone wouldn’t have come anywhere near us, and since K and X haven’t killed you, I would like to know.” A questioned.
“Well sir, I was just telling you-” K began.
“I’m the one talking right now, shut up.” A waved dismissively at K, who shrank down to a meager size.
“Uh, I’m me.” The stranger suggested.
“Yes, I can see that, but what ARE you, specifically.” A insisted.
“Uh, I’m somebody, or something, you never know.” The newcomer was dodging the question.
“Alright, I’m done.” A retracted his hand, a gun taking its place, before aiming it directly at the person’s face.
“Okay, alright!” The unknown person put up their hands. “Calm down. I’m a human.”
A didn’t lower his gun. “That's a lie.”
K intervened, stepping in between the stranger and A. “It's true sir. He was the origin of the distress signal.”
A fixed K with a withering stare, who bravely didn’t back down.
“Sir! You said it yourself that the possibility of a human being there was possible!” K exclaimed.
A scoffed. “Well I didn’t mean it! That was just to get both of you up and away from here.”
“Well sir, it appears that the mission has borne a rather precious fruit.” K gestured towards the person, who gave a little wave.
“As a certified me, I can certainly say that I’m me, which is also a human.” The apparent human stated.
A’s mind just fogged with confusion. “Uh, what?”
“You heard me.” The person didn’t elaborate.
“You know what? You must be a human, because you just said the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” A lowered his gun, shaking his head.
Suddenly, with a yelp of surprise, the human was pushed down to the floor, landing on shaky feet.
“Oh nice.” The human murmured.
X then leapt through the opening, nearly squashing K. “Wassup, I’m back. Who died?”
A shook his head again. “Idiots. I’m surrounded by idiots.”
“Not me!” The human spoke up.
A looked back at the human, remembering something.
“What's your name again?” A asked.
“Oh, I’m Jacob. I’m kinda the resident important person here.” Jacob’s hands strayed towards his chest, as if to adjust a tie, only to remember that he wasn’t wearing a tie, so they just folded themselves across his chest.
A let a moment of silence sound through the pod. “OK, why don’t you take off your helmet?”
Jacob shook his head. “Can’t take it off.”
“Why?” A inquired.
“Toxic atmosphere.” Jacob explained.
“Oh, yeah. Well, can you just make the visor clear?” A suggested.
“I don’t know how to do that, I just got this thing after all.” Jacob shrugged.
“You just got it? What were you doing here anyway?” A’s eyes narrowed in suspicion yet again.
K stepped in again to defuse the situation. “Listen, sir. We can all explain this, if you just give us time.”
A stared back at her, who shook slightly under the beam.
“Well then, get started.” A sat down. “We’ve got time.”
* * *
“Ugh, what's that scratching noise?”
A pair of drones walked along a mostly intact pathway covered in rubble and snow, lighting up the darkness with built-in lights.
“That would be ice building up in our armor, I think.” The second drone answered.
“Really? You know how to get rid of it?” The first drone asked.
The second drone shook her head. “Nah, we can’t. Trust me, I’ve tried before, and while I can get the surface level ice, the stuff that coalesces in between the chinks is too deep to get out.”
“Just use something sharp and thin then.” The first drone suggested.
“Where can I find something sharp and thin, Carl?” The second drone replied.
“I dunno, somewhere on the ground, I guess.” Carl looked around the floor, searching.
“You’d be surprised at how hard it is to find something thin enough to fit in between our armor plates around here, and rubble doesn’t really match specifications.” The second drone kicked a rock into a small crater.
“Nobodys got any knives or something?” Carl questioned.
“You think we have knives? Anything that isn’t a nanoblade will only be useful for cooking, and since we don’t even have kitchens, that's out of the question. And nanoblades are impractical, one minute you’re flipping the blade around in your hand, and the next your hand is on the ground, cut clean through.” The second drone explained. “That's why we don’t have them, they’ll slice anything off that isn’t an artificial experimental alloy.”
“I know that, but you would think somebody would have something. What about a pencil?” Carl stopped walking for a moment.
“Pencils will just break, and keep walking, we gotta hurry up.” The second drone motioned for Carl to resume movement.
“Alright, fine. But the moment we finish our shift, I’m going around to see if anybody has something, and we’ll see who has the last laugh, Damina.” Carl glared at Damina.
“Yeah, alright.” She replied.
The pair walked in silence for a few seconds.
“By the way, you ever hear about that Sterl guy?” Carl spoke up again.
“Who?” Damina asked.
“You know, Sterl. He’s one of the only people who survived one of those hunter drones attacking him.” Carl explained.
“So that's what we're calling them? Hunter drones?” Damina said in a dry tone.
“What else would we call them? Killer drones?” Carl stared pointedly at Damina.
“Well I guess the name fits, hunter drones. But I feel like it doesn’t really match their . . .” Damina trailed off.
“Their what?” Carl insisted.
“Their aura.” Damina finished.
“Their aura? THAT'S what you're going with?” Carl said.
“It's the best word I could use. ‘Hunter’ just feels really underwhelming I guess.” Damina shrugged.
“Well, what would you suggest? I’m open to them.” Carl inquired.
“Uh, you’re kinda putting me on the spot here.” Damina scratched her head.
“Take your time.” Carl replied.
“Uh, maybe, murder drones?” Damina suggested, not letting the credits roll just yet.
“Murder drones.” Carl deadpanned.
“Yes.” Damina confirmed.
“Murder drones?” Carl repeated.
“Uh, yes?” Damina sounded more unsure.
“You really think that's better?” Carl questioned.
“I dunno, you didn’t really give me a lot of time to come up with one.” Damina defended herself.
“Hunter drones are better, I’m saying it right now.” Carl crossed his arms.
“Okay, fine, it's better.” Damina relented. “But what about, uh, reaper drones?”
Carl tilted his head in thought, so Damina continued.
“You know, because they only strike from the shadows, and when they come, they only cause death.” Damina clarified.
Carl slowly nodded. “Alright, I’ll give you that, that is a much cooler sounding name, but it's too poetic.”
“TOO, poetic?” Damina asked.
“Yeah, too poetic.” Carl confirmed. “I mean, yeah, they are pretty deadly, but we can’t really be calling those things reapers, can we?”
Damina grunted. “Back then, they used to call early attack drones reapers.”
“What? They did? How do you even know that?” Carl said in a surprised tone.
Damina shrugged. “I must’ve heard it somewhere.”
“Is that even real? I mean, how long ago are we talking here? A few decades, or a few centuries? Attack drones have been around for a really long time, I need specifications.” Carl questioned.
“Like, a thousand years, I think.” Damina explained.
“A thousand years!” Carl exclaimed. “You’re trying to tell me that we got information out of the ancient dark ages!?”
Damina shrugged again. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Carl shook his head. “You’re crazy.”
Damina scoffed. “Whatever. Come on, we need to get moving.”
* * *
Silence filled the pod.
A sat in a chair, arms crossed, eyes staring in the general direction of Jacob, who was sitting directly across from him. K looked around nervously, while Jacob just seemed confused. X had left the pod at some point to go jump off a rooftop for something, doing whatever thing he did to pass the time.
A had listened to K, X, and Jacob explain their small adventure, with K doing most of the talking, because X just told straight up lies most of the time, like claiming that they had found a whole farm of enslaved tornados who were aptly named, “Whiggers” and that they had participated in the freeing of those tornados from enslavement, establishing a new state in the middle east for them afterwards. Jacob was forced out of the explanation because the majority of his speech consisted of, “Uh”, “Um”, “Like so”, “You see”, “Kinda”, and multiple backtracks because he had forgotten to say something important. So, it was only reasonable to just shut up before he embarrassed himself any further, the goddamn idiot.
Finally, K spoke up.
“So, what do you think sir?”
A glanced up at K. “What do I think?”
K squirmed under his gaze. “Er, yes sir.”
A sat up in his chair. “Well, I think that it's a miracle that the human is still somehow alive.”
“Some would say otherwise.” Jacob interjected.
“I feel halfway partial to just calling it all a lie and putting a bullet through this guy’s head.” A ignored the comment.
“I’m . . . not sure if that is the right course of action, sir.” K replied.
A scoffed. “It's a figure of speech, K, calm down.”
K blinked. “Oh, uh, sorry sir.”
“And stop saying sorry so much, it's annoying me.” A added.
“Yes sir, sorry sir.” K said quickly.
A shook his head, before looking at Jacob. “And what are we going to do with you?”
Jacob shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
A leaned forward. “Don’t you humans have to eat regularly to stay alive?”
“I have to take my helmet off to eat, and I’m not really sure that’s a good idea.” Jacob explained.
“Hmm, I see.” A leaned back, deep in thought.
This proved to be a problem, since the survival of the human was paramount to A and his squad’s success. When the distress signal had come through, A had taken an arguably large gamble on it. He had sent the majority of his team out to investigate an unknown signal, when they could’ve spent those days and nights grinding for extra credit.
While some might think that a few days shouldn’t have made a difference, the reality was much harsher. With a whole planet full of competing teams, all vying for control, one had to remain constantly vigilant and active to stay up top. While most of the time in a standard squads lives were spent just cutting down the occasional worker drone that was foolish enough to go outside, which happened quite often, sometimes they would crack open a bunker, which was more than enough to boost them to the peak of the leaderboard.
One wouldn’t even have to tackle a whole bunker, if they so desired. They could just put in overtime hours, spending night after night slaughtering any drone who had stumbled into danger, rapidly clearing out a zone empty of all life, save for the ones that caused it. This could bear a great number of points if it was executed correctly, and while it was time and energy consuming, it was very effective.
So far, A’s team had been doing neither, just killing the stray worker drone that stumbled in their path every now and then, which is what most squads did, just to a higher extent. This was causing them to lag behind, as stated earlier. Also stated earlier, the recent destruction of the local worker drone bunker had boosted them up high into the rankings, but it wasn’t meant to last. And if their scores weren’t up to par, disassembly for themselves was an option.
But now, through some stroke of magnificent luck, A had been thrown a lifeline in the form of the adolescent human boy sitting across from him. If no other humans were hiding in some small nook or cranny around the planet, then that would make Jacob the last living human on the entire planet. Even an idiot could tell you that that arguably made him the most important thing for miles, which made Jacob’s earlier statement somewhat true. If A and his squad were able to somehow return Jacob to the company’s hands, then they would likely be rewarded a large amount of points for their innovative and smart behavior, shooting them up through the ranks until nothing could challenge them for a while.
And so, that made the consequences for failure even higher.
If Jacob were to die, or even suffer from some sort of severe injury, then the blame would lie at their feet. They would be blamed for any and all harm that came to the human, and would be punished accordingly. They likely wouldn’t even know they had been punished, as their memories probably would’ve been scrapped as well.
All in all, A was taking yet another big gamble. They had very high rewards, since if they could place Jacob back into company hands, they would be set. However, they had high risk as well, since they had to keep him in perfect condition along the way, like a small, delicate package that was prone to breaking. A was willing to take that risk, since frankly, he saw no other option. They were too deep in to back out, even if they wanted to. Abandoning Jacob to the elements would garner an even harsher punishment than if they had tried to protect him and failed.
And so, A now had to devise a way to keep Jacob perfectly well, and that began with a rather pressing issue.
“Hey, kid-” A began.
“Name’s Jacob.” Jacob interrupted.
“Uh, I know.” A continued. “Kid, listen, do you even have anything to eat at all?”
Jacob pulled out a shiny silvery package from an armored pocket. “Yep, this here.”
“Are you sure that's edible?” A didn’t relent.
“Uh, yeah. It says, ‘RATION’ on the side so it probably is.” Jacob replied.
“And it's not expired?” A inquired.
“No, it isn’t. I’m good, I have tons of food, it's fine man, calm down.” Jacob tilted his head to the side, before pocketing the ration bar.
A grunted. “What about water?”
Jacob froze. “Uh, I dunno.”
“You thought to take ‘tons of food’ but didn’t take any sort of form of hydration.” It wasn’t a question.
“Erm, yes.” Jacob fidgeted.
A facepalmed. “Do you know WHERE you can get any water?”
Jacob shrugged. “Snow? Ice?”
“The snow and ice on this planet likely contains copious amounts of toxic gasses.” A stated.
“Well what do you want me to say, that I just pulled a random depot of fresh water from nowhere?” Jacob complained.
“Well I don’t know, I figured that the ‘hyper-intelligent’ and ‘oh-so-smart’ human would’ve thought to bring some goddamn water.” A replied, annoyed.
“Well I didn’t think a few days ago that I would be trekking through a freezing wasteland!” Jacob cried out.
“Speaking of, what were you doing a few days ago? I doubt that you were ‘just chilling’ in a cryo pod that failed to break down when every other one did.” A’s eyes narrowed yet again.
“Well I just was! That's the truth of it, kind of . . .” Jacob trailed off.
A felt his opportunity. “Continue.”
“Besides, I’m pretty sure that you aren’t cleared for that information.” Jacob finished.
A inwardly cursed. Once Jacob had subtly implied that there was something more to the story than what he had let on, A had believed that he would be able to get some more out of him, maybe even deducing what made the kid so important. A wasn’t gonna believe for a second that Jacob had just happened to stumble upon a facility full of autonomous guards that had just somehow happened to decide to protect him with their lives, while finding the sole fully-operational cryo pod on the planet, and just so happened to survive for a good amount of time while everybody else died. And the fact that A had received the distress signal on a government transmitter that had just so happened to be placed in their ship made Jacob even more suspicious.
Multiple things weren’t adding up, which is why A had jumped at the chance to wring Jacob dry of any more information he could get. But, A hadn’t expected him to pull out the ‘Classified Information” card. While it did confirm that something bigger was going on behind the scenes, A was now effectively neutered in his future chances to learn, because since he now knew that the information he was searching for was behind higher clearance, continuing his search would be a clear breach of company protocol. Breaching company protocol, like many other things, leads to a rather bad chance of living.
A leaned back in his chair, contemplating his next course of action. He first had to find a breathable atmosphere for Jacob, as well as finding an uncontaminated source of water. Next, and perhaps the most difficult of all, A had to somehow get Jacob off planet. Some very high orders for his little squad.
“How long can humans go without needing food or water?” A questioned.
“Uh, I can’t remember exactly, but I think that if I don’t have any sort of water, then I’ll die within three days.” Jacob answered.
A cursed yet again. Three days wasn’t a time frame big enough to get a source of reliable water in this wasteland.
K coughed politely. “Uh, if I may, sir.”
A’s gaze shot to K. “What?”
“Well, we could scavenge.” K suggested.
“I’m fairly sure that I could’ve come up with that myself.” A replied.
“Oh, uh, sorry sir.” K backed down.
A, in fact, hadn’t come up with that himself, for some odd reason. It seemed like the only viable course of action, and yet he hadn’t even given it a modicum of thought. Strange, but not important.
A stood up. “Well, I guess that's settled. X,” X looked back up from his little thumb game. “You’re going with K.”
“To do what?” X asked, confused.
“Of course you weren’t listening. You’re going to try and find some water for the human.” A answered.
“What!? I don’t wanna do that, why can’t she do it by herself!?” X cried out, pointing at K.
“Because in your absence, I’ve found that I rather like having both of you away from me. And plus, the more the merrier.” A pointed at the exit. “And you’re going right now.”
The night was still hanging ever-present over the planet, a fact made clear by X’s careful inspection from his undesirable point of view.
X opened his mouth to protest further, but the act was cut off by A.
“And that's final.” A glared at X. “Understand?”
X scoffed. “Alright man, fine. No need to get all worked up.”
A turned to K. “Anything you want to say?”
K seemed caught off guard. “Oh, uh, no sir, I’m fine.”
A nodded. “Good. Now off you go.”
Jacob watched the pair leave the pod with a watchful gaze.
A turned towards Jacob.
“Now what do you want me to do?” Jacob asked.
“Now that's the big question.” A replied. “I’ve never really had a human with me.”
“Well, I’m not really gonna just sit here, doing nothing.” Jacob stated.
“You might have to deal with it.” A dryly replied.
The two stared at each other in silence for a moment.
“Listen man, how about we talk?” Jacob broke the silence.
A’s LED screen formed an eyebrow and raised it. “About what?”
Jacob was a bit unnerved by the display A’s face just did, but pressed on. “I dunno.”
“I’m not giving a suggestion.” A said.
Jacob thought for a moment. “Well, those guys that just left didn’t really tell me a lot about what’s really going on, so how about that?”
A pondered on the notion. He was tempted to turn it into an exchange of information, but that would still be a violation of policy, and he wasn’t sure if the human would even oblige. And plus, he didn’t really see that issue with giving out that kind of information, as it would even endear Jacob to A, which might pay off in the long run.
“Alright, I can do that.” A agreed.
“Oh nice.” Jacob replied.
“So, it all started with . . .”
* * *
The clacking of the keyboard.
A familiar sound to anyone living within the modern era, or anyone past the 1990s. Commonplace in areas such as work offices, accounting offices, home offices, government offices, probably a lot more offices, and gaming rooms that were only occupied with hunch-backed teenagers who were chronically online. Or maybe just avid fan fiction writers, you never know.
However, those that weren’t accustomed to the fast-paced rapid clicking of buttons would often find the sound annoying or unrestful, especially when the area was overly silent. In this case, a duo were inside a small tent, lit only by the glow of a computer screen, with a robot sat over the keyboard, typing away at the device with the surety of a slight breeze; soft, yet clearly ever-present. The second robot was currently sitting in another chair that was on the other side of the room, trying to fall asleep. But, it appeared as though that they weren’t a fan of the constant noise, deafening in the silence of the night.
Groaning, the second drone called out to the one at the computer.
“Ugh, man, keep it down.” He whispered.
“What do you expect me to do? Type slower? I wanna get this done as soon as possible.” The first drone replied, also whispering.
“Just be quieter, I’m tryna sleep here.” The second drone murmured.
“Why are you sleeping!? You’re supposed to be awake and watching, not dozing off!” The first drone whisper-yelled back.
“You’re awake right now, so it's fine.” The second drone waved his hand.
“No it’s not! I could be stabbed by one of those hunters when my back is turned and you’re asleep!” The first drone exclaimed quietly.
“Don’t care.” The second drone laid back in his chair.
“You know what, Frant!? Get up here, this’ll keep you awake.” The first drone called to Frant.
“No, lemme go to sleep.” Frant replied sleepily.
“Get up here, before I report you, and then you’ll be sleeping forever.” The first drone narrowed his eyes.
This proved to wake up Frant to the fullest extent, causing him to shoot upwards in his seat.
“Are you serious Carme!?” Frant spat between clenched teeth.
“Just come over here, it’ll keep you awake.” Carme ignored the question.
Frant obliged, stomping over to Carme, leaning over his shoulder to see the glowing screen.
“What are you even doing here?” Frant inquired.
“I’m reviewing our files to make sure nothing got lost in the transition.” Carme answered.
“What if something did get lost?” Frant continued.
“Then I notify the experts.” Carme simply replied.
“Uh, okay then.” Frant pulled his seat over, plopping down next to Carme. “Why’d they have to assign me to watch? Couldn’t they have just gotten a soldier to do it?”
Carme shrugged. “They’re spread too thin, the military’s having a hard enough time already trying to maintain a proper perimeter. Watching over the workers would be asking for numbers they don’t have.”
Frant nodded. “I guess that makes sense.” Frant then paused to think. “Hey, why do you know all this stuff anyway?”
“They sent it in a memo.” Carme handed a sheet of paper to Frant, who took it.
Frant skimmed over the paper, taking in all the essential bits.
“You get it now?” Carme looked over his shoulder at Frant.
Frant nodded again. “Yeah, but why didn’t I get this?”
Carme shrugged yet again. “You probably did.”
“Huh.” Frant scratched the back of his head, before squinting at a document on the computer. “Uh, what's that?”
Carme followed Frant’s gaze to the icon on the screen. The file in question was an innocuous little folder that simply read, “DO NOT OPEN WITHOUT PROPER AUTHORIZATION” which was a bit dramatic.
Carme and Frant looked at each other, before settling their focus back on the screen.
“. . . you wanna open it or something?” Frant suggested.
Carme thought for a moment, before shrugging for the hundredth time in a minute. “I’m down.”
Carme moved the cursor over to the icon, double clicking it. The page entered a loading phase, with nothing but a blank screen to greet them for a moment before it opened the file. Inside was a document that had several pages, with the first one having some rather disturbing text.
“‘DO NOT LET ROBOTS READ, THEY WILL NOT LIKE IT’? Why? What does that even mean?” Frant asked no one in particular.
“Probably to make sure robots don’t read it.” Carme answered.
“Yeah, I get it. Scroll down, I wanna see the rest.” Frant leaned in, completely disregarding the warning.
Carme obliged, scrolling down to the first page which had more large, bold text, which read, “NO SERIOUSLY, WE MEAN IT”.
Carme and Frant scrolled down to the next page, which also had more text, which said, “ALRIGHT THEN, JUST MAKING SURE THIS TIME”.
Scrolling down to what would hopefully be the last page with warnings on it, Carme and Frant gazed upon the holy scriptures, which now read, “YOU WOULD THINK THAT WE WOULD PUT A TEST IN HERE TO MAKE SURE YOU AREN’T A ROBOT, BUT THEY DIDN’T GIVE US ENOUGH BUDGET FOR THAT”
Frant groaned. “What is this guy’s deal? Just let us through.”
Carme scrolled past the warning, finally arriving at a page which had something other than a loud warning. A logo could be seen at the top, proclaiming whatever they were to the few that could read the document.
“What is, ‘JCJenson, IN SPAAAAACEE!!!!’?” Frant asked, squinting at the computer.
“I dunno.” Carme shrugged, goddamn man, stop shrugging.
“I thought you knew everything?” Frant looked at Carme.
“I just pay attention, nothing else, and nothing I’ve seen mentions that.” Carme gestured towards the screen.
“Whatever, keep scrolling.” Frant looked back at the display.
Carme and Frant looked on at the screen, scrolling slowly so that they could both see. As they read, their expressions went from curious, to confused, to disturbed, to confused again. The strange document was filled with strange labels and diagrams that just didn’t make sense to either of them, displaying graining images of what appeared to be a drone, with some . . . interesting . . . additions.
“What the hell is a zombie drone?” Carme asked, LED eyebrows furrowed.
* * *
​
​
Again, I'm gonna post the second part tomorrow, and after that it'll take about a week to finish the fifth chapter. This will hopefully be segmented into three parts instead of four like that last one that was more than two, but no promises. Reddit character capacity is a cruel mistress. Hopefully I'll have more free time on my hands going forward, and maybe I will. See y'all.

Week 1

Time	FOX	FS1	BTN	CBS	CBSSN	NBC
Early Day	COL @ TCU	USU @ IOWA	FRESNO @ PUR		BGSU @ LIBERTY
Late Day	RICE @ TEXAS	BUF @ WISC	TOW @ UMD	OH ST @ IU	USF @ WKU	TEN ST @ ND
Early Night		UTSA @ HOU	TOL @ ILL	TTU @ WYO	WSU @ CSU	WVU @ PSU
Late Night		SHSU @ BYU			ID ST @ SDSU

​

Time	ABC	ESPN	ESPNU	SECN	ACCN	P12N
Early Day	UVA vs TENN	ARK ST @ OKLA	LA TECH @ SMU	BALL @ UK	NIU @ BC
Late Day	BOISE @ WASH	UMASS @ AUB	CAL @ UNT	SE LA @ MISS ST	WOF @ PITT	POR ST @ ORE
Early Night	UNC vs SC	UNM @ TX AM	S. ALA @ TULANE	MTSU @ BAMA	ODU @ VT	NEV @ USC
Late Night		CC @ UCLA				N. AZ @ AZ

- This is just the Saturday schedule. It does not include the multitude of games scheduled on that Thursday, Friday, Sunday, or Monday.
- Some of the biggest games being broadcast outside of Saturday include: Nebraska @ Minnesota, Florida @ Utah, Kent State @ UCF, Louisville vs. Georgia Tech, Northwestern @ Rutgers, Oregon State @ San Jose State, LSU vs. Florida State, and Clemson @ Duke
- There are more streaming only games now than ever before. Every SEC team going forward has to have 1 game on ESPN+, and Peacock has the exclusive rights to 8 Big 10 home games plus 1 Notre Dame game a season.
- The first Saturday sees streaming exclusive games like: ECU @ Michigan, Mercer @ Ole Miss, UNI @ Iowa State, Colgate @ Syracuse, West Carolina @ Arkansas, UT Martin @ Georgia, Southeast Missouri @ Kansas State, Eastern Kentucky @ Cincinnati, Texas State @ Baylor, and Central Arkansas @ Oklahoma State.
- A big reason why so many of these games are going to streaming in Week 1 is that ESPN2 will only be broadcasting the US Open during this weekend.
- CBS is going to have an insane schedule this year. They are balancing the SEC's #1 games for the final season with 7 Big 10 games across the season, as well as the Mountain West's #1 games as well. This in-between year might create a big of confusion and less consistency in 2023 as to what games are where.
Week 2

Time	FOX	FS1	BTN	CBS	CBSSN	NBC
Early Day	NEB @ COL	TROY @ KSU	YT ST @ OH ST		DEL ST @ ARMY
Late Day	IOWA @ ISU		RICH @ MSU / UTEP @ NW	UNLV @ MICH	WAG @ NAVY
Early Night	ORE @ TTU	UCF @ BOISE	TEMP @ RUT / EMU @ MINN	UCLA @ SDSU	AFA @ SHSU	CHAR @ UMD
Late Night	STAN @ USC	OK ST @ AZ ST

​

Time	ABC	ESPN	ESPN2	ESPNU	SECN	ACCN	P12N
Early Day	ND @ NC ST	UTAH @ BAY	PUR @ VT	JMU @ UVA	BALL @ UGA	VAN @ WF
Late Day	TX AM @ MIA		MISS @ TUL		KNT ST @ ARK	C-SO @ CLEM
Early Night	WIC @ WSU	TEX @ BAMA		MCN @ FLA	AZ @ MS ST	APP @ UNC	TULSA @ UW
Late Night		AUB @ CAL				S-MISS @ FSU	UCD @ OR ST

- Streaming exclusive games this week include: Delaware @ Penn State, Holy Cross @ Boston College, SC State @ Georgia Tech, Eastern Kentucky @ Kentucky, SMU @ Oklahoma, Duquesne @ West Virginia, Lafayette @ Duke, Middle Tennessee @ Missouri, Grambling State @ LSU, Furman @ South Carolina, Nicholls State @ TCU, Southern Utah @ BYU, and Austin Peay @ Tennessee
- ESPN's late afternoon Saturday window is booked by the Women's US Open Final
- There are still a few games which do not have times set including: Illinois @ Kansas, Cincinnati @ Pittsburgh, Western Michigan @ Syracuse and Houston @ Rice. You would assume a few of those end up in the open ESPN2/ESPNU slots. There is also a slot reserved for a game on ESPN Friday Night that has yet to be filled.
Week 3

Time	FOX	FS1	BTN	CBS	CBSSN	NBC
Early Day	PSU @ ILL	N DAK @ BOISE	GA SOU @ WISC / LOU vs IND		LIBERTY @ BUFF
Late Day	WKU @ OH ST	SDSU @ OR ST	VT @ RUT / WMU @ IOWA	S CAR @ UGA	FIU @ UCONN
Early Night	TCU @ HOU	NIU @ NEB	BGSU @ MICH		VAN @ UNLV	SYR @ PUR
Late Night		FRESNO @ AZ ST			KAN @ NEV

​

Time	ABC	ESPN	ESPN2	ESPNU	SECN	ACCN	P12N
Early Day	FSU @ BC	LSU @ MS ST	ISU @ OH / WF @ ODU	ISU @ OH / WF @ ODU	KSU @ MIZZ		WEB ST @ UTAH
Late Day	BAMA @ USF	OU @ TULSA / MINN @ UNC	OU @ TULSA / MINN @ UNC	TUL @ S-MISS	ULM @ TX AM	NW @ DUKE	ID @ CAL / N. COL @ WSU / UNCC @ UCLA
Early Night	PITT @ WVU	TENN @ FLA	BYU @ ARK	AKR @ UK	GT @ MISS	FAU @ CLEM	HAW @ ORE / SAC @ STAN
Late Night		COL ST @ COL					UTEP @ AZ

- Streaming exclusive games this week include: Washington @ Michigan State, LIU @ Baylor, South Alabama @ Oklahoma State, Tarleton State @ Texas Tech, Samford @ Auburn, Miami (Ohio) @ Cincinnati, and Villanova @ UCF.
- The only game which has yet to have a time announced is VMI @ NC State, which likely could fill in the early window on ACC Network.
- Wyoming @ Texas is being broadcast on the Longhorn Network

ARTHUR: Halt! Hallo!
Hallo!
ARTHUR: Halt! Hallo! Hallo!
FRENCH GUARD: Allo! Who is eet?
ARTHUR: It is I King Arthur, and these are my Knights of the Round Table. Whose castle is this?
FRENCH GUARD: This is the castle of my master, Guy de Loimbard.
ARTHUR: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.
FRENCH GUARD: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen. Uh, he's already got one, you see.
ARTHUR: What?
GALAHAD: He says they've already got one!
ARTHUR: Are you sure he's got one?
FRENCH GUARD: Oh, yes. It's very nice-a. (I told him we already got one.)
FRENCH GUARDS: [chuckling]
ARTHUR: Well, u-- um, can we come up and have a look?
FRENCH GUARD: Of course not! You are English types-a!
ARTHUR: Well, what are you, then?
FRENCH GUARD: I'm French! Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king-a?!
GALAHAD: What are you doing in England?
FRENCH GUARD: Mind your own business!
ARTHUR: If you will not show us the Grail, we shall take your castle by force!
FRENCH GUARD: You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur King, you and all your silly English k-nnnnniggets. Thpppppt! Thppt! Thppt!
GALAHAD: What a strange person.
ARTHUR: Now look here, my good man--
FRENCH GUARD: I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
GALAHAD: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
FRENCH GUARD: No. Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
FRENCH GUARD: Allo! Who is eet?
ARTHUR: It is King Arthur, and these are my Knights of the Round Table. Whose castle is this?
FRENCH GUARD: This is the castle of my master, Guy de Loimbard.
ARTHUR: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.
FRENCH GUARD: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen. Uh, he's already got one, you see.
ARTHUR: What?
GALAHAD: He says they've already got one!
ARTHUR: Are you sure he's got one?
FRENCH GUARD: Oh, yes. It's very nice-a. (I told him we already got one.)
FRENCH GUARDS: [chuckling]
ARTHUR: Well, u-- um, can we come up and have a look?
FRENCH GUARD: Of course not! You are English types-a!
ARTHUR: Well, what are you, then?
FRENCH GUARD: I'm French! Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king-a?!
GALAHAD: What are you doing in England?
FRENCH GUARD: Mind your own business!
ARTHUR: If you will not show us the Grail, we shall take your castle by force!
FRENCH GUARD: You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur King, you and all your silly English k-nnnnniggets. Thpppppt! Thppt! Thppt!
GALAHAD: What a strange person.
ARTHUR: Now look here, my good man--
FRENCH GUARD: I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
GALAHAD: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
FRENCH GUARD: No. Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!