“It is only a matter of time, Sigurrós. They will soon be here, with the animals dead and gone.” In the darkness of the Brightshome's innermost sanctum, Jaelen adjusted the Foundation necklace resting on his chest. He was having a hard time speaking, yet he forced each word to come out. “They'll want to take you.”
Sigurrós looked up at Jaelen's face, her lips pursed. “I know.”
Jaelen tucked his hands deep within his robes. Slowly, he took a step forward. “We aren't safe here, you know that too. It has been a year and a half since we fended the animals off, the city will…” He sighed. “It will do fine in your absence.”
As soon as the words left his lips, her expression tightened into a glare.
“They're my people, Jaelen.” Sigurrós said. “The walls will protect us.”
“For Bright's sake, Sigurrós,” Jaelen replied, irritation seeping into his voice. “The Templars are only still twenty-seven! The Foundation is likely to bring hundreds- no, thousands of men to take you. We have archers, yes, but they are green and will certainly miss more than they will hit.”
Sigurrós closed the small distance between them, looking up into Jaelen's eyes with an icy stare.
“We've discussed this many times before, Jaelen. I have no interest in speaking with you about this again.”
She left him with no opportunity to reply as she stormed off out of the shrine's sanctum, her purple dress billowing behind her.
Defeated, Jaelen leaned on a nearby marble column, crumpling down to the floor in exasperation.
Saints damn it all. He thought to himself. She refuses to listen.
A voice from one of the sanctum's dark corners interrupted the cold Septrimbur air.
“The priestess refuses to listen?” Said Grandmaster Melbrecht, limping out of the shadows. Being one of Sigurrós' chief advisors, he was drawn and tired, frequently complaining about the constant pain he felt from the injuries he had suffered at the Battle of the Horn.
“Yes,” Jaelen sighed. “As always.” He turned his head to look at Melbrecht, regarding him with an exhausted bow of his head. “How is your arm and leg?”
Melbrecht chuckled, the deep timbre of his voice making it echo across the sanctum. “Pained as ever, Brother.” He took a few steps forward, stopping only until he was a few meters away from Jaelen. “Saints above, I never earned this position. It was always me or Galahania, bumping heads as we went up the Templar's rungs together. She would've been well-suited to this advising hogwash, not me.”
He raised his mangled left arm, showing Jaelen his four missing fingers and the noticeably large chunk missing from his palm. “I was just a warrior, a good one, and now not even that.”
Jaelen chuckled. “I never thought you were the type to reminisce, Grandmaster.”
Melbrecht smiled back. “Jackdamn you, Jaelen. I didn't think myself to be the rambling old man that I am now, either.”
Slowly and painfully, the old Templar lowered himself on his knees, bringing his head level with Jaelen. “I do know this, though,” He said, his grey eyes staring intently into Jaelen's own, “Sigurrós will never let herself lose a fight- whether it will be a sparring of words with you or a war with the Holy Foundation itself.”
“She has learned so much so quickly, I'll give her that.”
“That very aspect of her has allowed this city to keep going as it was. She may not know how to defend what she loves, but her heart is always in the right place. Trust her on that.”
Jaelen looked down at his robes. “I will. Thank you, Grandmaster.”
Melbrecht turned to leave. “It's Melbrecht to you, monk,” he said as he left. “I take it you will be attending the council three days from now?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” Said Melbrecht curtly, as he ascended the steps out of the sanctum.
Jaelen slowly came to his feet and sighed. “Let's just hope you're right, old man,” he said to himself.

The sun was well overhead when Jaelen left his room at the Brightshome and hastened to the shrine's council chamber, donning the plain ceremonial robes of a Brother of the Foundation and a simple tunic underneath.
When he arrived, nearly all of the six members of the Council of the Shrines were seated, with only him and the High Priestess herself absent from their seats at the ancient and sacred wooden table.
As he seated himself, Grandmaster Melbrecht silently smiled to himself, amused at the monk's unusual tardiness. Guildsman Raetor, the leader of the merchants and freemen of the city, stayed sullen in his seat, passively watching Jaelen as he seated himself. Lady Maera, the Councilor of Nobles, and Garvin, the marshal, seemed to whisper into each other's ears as they watched Jaelen enter, only stopping when the sullen Raetor glared at them from across the table.
Jaelen audibly sighed, leaning back in his seat. Though he'd happily accepted his position as one of Sigurrós' trusted advisors, the past year and a half had proven that working as a member of the council was never what he was supposed to do. Lady Maera had always seemed to find ways to subtly rebuke him for mistakes. Raetor was half too sullen and often cold to both him and the other council members. Melbrecht was always either annoyingly amiable or forcefully aggressive during discussions. Sigurrós herself- Well, he thought, She's changed so much.
Over a year and a half of leading the people of Arnven had hardened Sigurrós, taking her farther and farther away from the girl that she was towards the leader she aimed to be- and it did not help that she was always frightening when her fury came upon her.
“Councilors.” The High Priestess said as she entered the decorated chamber, her dark red ecclesiarchal gown casting an air of authority as she took her seat at the head of the table.
All at once, Jaelen and his fellow councilors stood up and bowed.
Sigurrós nodded. “Please, take your seats.”
Straightening up, Jaelen cleared his throat, standing up to declare the problems that needed the council's attention. “High Pries-“
She raised her hand in a command to halt. “Before we begin this gathering of the Holy Council, I would like to say something before you all.”
Her eyes landed on Jaelen.
“During the month of Agrust last year, our former brothers in the Holy Foundation have… asked for this city to hand me over to the Overwatch Cathedral for proper containment as one of the Expunged.
“When we chose to vote on the matter, all of the members of this council decided to decline.
“This, I regret to say, upset many of the Holy Foundation's cardinal doctors, who threatened to send an army to the Holy City to forcefully capture me in lieu of performing the act of excommunicata totalis on the population of our city. When we ignored even that ultimatum, we had thought that they would not follow on their threat. They, after all, were still occupied with the ongoing attack of the Chaos Insurgency to the north, as well as the remaining animals to the east.
She breathed in deeply for a moment, and continued. “We thought wrong.”
“Our scouts have spotted an army of three thousand heading to the City of Shrines, led by none other than the Cardinal Doctor Asser Clef.”
"They will be here within two days at the most, a day at the very least."
At her declaration, the council chamber immediately fell still and silent.
Marshal Garvin was the first to react, slowly standing up to regard the high priestess. “But… but they've been silent for a year, my lady.” His eyes were wide open and afraid. “Our archers are still yet practicing, and our militia…”
Raetor sprung to his feet next, his expression displeased. “My lady, the guilds are not ready to close the markets and the trading posts. This news would upset our merchants.“
Melbrecht's voice thundered out, booming across the council room. “My lady, the neophytes are still in the early stages of our training. It will take years before they are ready!“
Lady Maera spoke from her seat, quiet and composed. “The nobles are still reeling from the previous attack, my lady. We cannot afford to call the nobility and their retainers to war.“
“Trade will suffer, we will suffer!“ Raetor said next.
“We will be slaughtered, my lady! Slaughtered!“ Garvin shouted out.
“We are only twenty-seven, and our weapons and armor are woefully little!“ Melbrecht boomed.
“The nobles will not hesitate to show their dissent, I can promise you that.“ Maera said quietly.
On and on they went, and only Jaelen and Sigurrós stood silent, staring at each other from opposite sides of the table.
The pandemonium continued in the council room, going further and further on,
Finally, Jaelen had had enough.
“Silence!” He shouted, getting the attention of the four other councillors and bringing the noise to a stop.
“My lords, my lady,” He said. “We cannot afford to turn on each other at this crucial time. Asser Clef himself will be knocking down our gates in a matter of days. Every time we are disunited, we weaken the very fabric of this city, and we risk letting it fall once again to enemy hands.”
He looked back at Sigurrós, standing silently opposite him. “Please,” he said, awkwardly, “trust in the high priestess.”
His piece said, he sat back down.
Sigurrós' face remained stony and serious. “Our efforts to create the walls surrounding the city have been in preparation for this very day.”
She turned to Garvin. “The same could be said for the unceasing training for our militia and archers,”
Then to Melbrecht, “…the selection of new neophytes,”
Then to Raetor, “…the efforts to secure supplies for a siege,”
Then to Maera, “…the unceasing services to the nobility,”
And finally, to Jaelen himself. “…or the services of our Doctors and brothers to the people of the Holy City.”
Her grey-green eyes grew steely and hard. “We have known that this day was coming from the moment we refused to give me up to the people of the Foundation. Though the alienation of our people from the Overwatch Cathedral upsets us even now…”
She sighed. “We cannot afford to lean on anyone but ourselves.”
Instantly, the near-indomitable nineteen year old leader of the city seemed weary and exhausted. “You have all been chosen as my councilors because you yourselves know what is best for the city, and will do all that you can to save it. The crisis of faith that we all seem to be going through now in the face of the current problem is something that we have all been weathering on our own, and I only ask that you do the same for the harder path ahead.”
“We will not falter, my most trusted councilors. I know that enough.”
She forced herself to stand up straighter, regarding each of her councilors for a few moments.
“You all will have much to do to prepare. This council is adjourned.”

Sigurrós couldn't sleep that night.
In truth, she couldn't sleep during the nights of the past few days, with her mind constantly dwelling on the walls or the concerns of her people.
With the forces of the Foundation now so close, she had made it a habit to stare out the window of the Brightshome's modest library- sometimes praying to Bright or the Saints, other times contemplating her fate in the days to come.
That's how Jaelen found her as she looked out the great window- thinking, contemplating.
“You couldn't sleep?” Jaelen said, as he held a lantern in his good hand.
Sigurrós smiled weakly. “Yes. I haven't been for these past few nights.”
Jaelen put down the lantern carefully on a nearby table and sat on the windowsill opposite from her.
He sighed. “I haven't been, either.”
She looked at him. “Are you scared?” She asked.
“Yes. You?”
Sigurrós hugged her knees and kept them close to her chest. “Yes.”
A long silence came.
Sigurrós broke it. “Do you know the reason why I offered to lead this city, Jaelen?”
“Why?”
Her voice became nothing more than a whisper. “I never wanted the power, I never wanted the station. It was just… guilt.”
She raised her head to look at Jaelen, his eyes meeting hers as she spoke again.
“This city… the only reason why people died when they did was because of me… because of Seth.
“I slaughtered those Doctors and those brothers without remorse, burnt down two of this city's shrines and left the people in… in fear.”
Jaelen spoke. “I… I thought you were better after killing Seth?”
Sigurrós chuckled ironically. “Seth… Seth was my father, Jaelen. I never wanted to kill him… not after what he told me.”
“I wanted to make this city better for him. For me. For everyone that we've killed and all the death we've caused.”
She breathed in deeply. “What I do everyday is so that I can keep everyone safe, so that no one ever dies because of me ever again. Everything- the walls, the leadership, the shrines- they were all so that I could feel better.”
“Nothing has made me feel better after everything that's happened, Jaelen.”
“The notion that more people will die so I could live- it… it terrifies me.”
“It's a debt I can never repay. A sin I could never amend.”
“I'm just scared that in a few days, so many people will die.”
The tears came without her realizing, and never stopped.
Her voice shook. “I… I don't think I can do this, Jaelen. I'm too young. I can't-”
Jaelen embraced her without a word, letting her cry on his shoulder as he held her close.
“I can't.” She whimpered.
No more words were said that night- but both of them slept better than they had for days.

The army arrived at daybreak.
It was humungous for an army- five hundred Omega Guard footmen, two hundred knights from the Orders of Kondraki and Light, five trebuchets, a hundred artillerymen, seven hundred men-at-arms, and one thousand and five hundred D-Caste.
At their head was a tall man in resplendent silver armor, wearing the sigil of Saint Alto and the legendary helmet of his son, Saint Ardam. He sat astride a handsome warhorse, armored with light chainmail and carrying the weapons of its rider.
This was Doctor Cardinal Asser Clef, the legendary war-doctor of the North Crusade and hero of a thousand battles.
“To the pious residents of the Holy City of Arnven,” He began, his deep voice booming and reaching the top of the grey stone walls. “I come for your witch, and have brought three thousand faithful servants of Bright to aid me in my mission.”
“We know of your hardships in the last year and a half, and have come to relieve all of you from the tyranny of the magical heretic known to you as Sigurrós.”
His voice turned cold. “We will give you a day to deliberate amongst yourselves- though we do not want to destroy the beautiful City of Shrines, we must do our solemn duty to Bright. After daybreak on the morrow, if you do not hand over the tyrant witch to us, we shall start using our siege weapons and fire rocks into the city.”
“This I swear, on my holy blood and honor as a Clef.”
From the top of the wall, the councilors of the city could only watch helplessly on as the armored Cardinal slowly walked to the lines of his army, and began giving the orders to set up camp outside the walls.
Sigurrós joined them within moments, dressed in full battlegarb.
“Councilors,” she said as she looked intently at the army camped right outside her walls, “Bar the gates, ready the archers and the militia, and tell everyone of what has happened.”
She turned to them. “We're being sieged.”

All around the city, life soon began to come to a stop.
In the Agathan Quarter, Raetor announced the news to the guildsmen, freemen, and merchants of the city, telling them to make ready for the hard days ahead. This was met with sullen acceptance, with only a few murmuring in discontent.
In the Spirit Quarter, Lady Maera bid the nobles to gather in front of the Brightshome, addressing them regarding the situation at hand. This was met with outrage by many, who went back to their manors questioning the orders of the High Priestess and the councilors.
In the River Quarter and the Altostown, Jaelen called for calm and order, reassuring the peasants of the city that while the days to come will be hard, their cooperation would go a great way to ensuring their safety. This was met with general agreement and acceptance, much to his relief.
Garvin, meanwhile, began giving out the orders for the fletchers and the smiths to create more arrows, weapons, and armor for the war to come. Soon after, he called the militia and archers to man the walls, assigning units on shifts for the various parts of the day and night.
High Priestess Sigurrós herself spent much of the day preparing the grey stone walls for the assault to come, reinforcing the solid structure with enchantments to keep them strong.
By the end of the day, the entire city began to adjust to a life under siege- for better or worse.

Dawn broke over the second day of the siege, and the trebuchets were making ready to loose.
Sigurrós and her five councilors watched from the top of the wall as large stones were loaded onto the trebuchets by crews of artillerymen, taken from a nearby quarry the day before. Beside them, a group of exhausted D-Castes pulled a large cart carrying a peculiarly crimson metal beside the siege weapons, putting a small piece each into the sling with the large rocks.
“Are you ready?” Jaelen asked Sigurrós, who was beginning the gestures and incantations of an advanced protection spell.
The tired priestess smiled. “I'm damned if I'm not.”
Raetor nodded at the direction of the loaded cart. “I wonder what that metal is for. Kindling?”
Melbrecht crossed his arms. “I have never seen anything like it before. Might be Lightsfire.”
“Isn't Lightsfire blue?” Garvin noted. “And even if it were Lightsfire, the priestess herself should be able to repel it.”
Maera laughed quietly pointing to the sling of a trebuchet as men loaded more of the crimson metal unto it. “There are many kinds of substances in the Holy Foundation's arsenal. There is the mysterious Scrantonum- though that's been gone for a century. There is the explosive Saintsflame- dreadfully expensive, I'm told. There is the deadly Mongersand- but I've heard that it can only be mined far to the west.”
Melbrecht turned to the noblewoman beside him. “What exactly is your point, Lady Maera?”
Maera took a sip from her wine glass and continued. “My point, Grandmaster, is that we have no idea what ancient weapons the Foundation has at their disposal. They will almost certainly be rare and hard to come by- though it is not much of a stretch of the imagination to think that our lady priestess would pose as much of a threat to the Church as the most serious incursions of the Serpent's Hand.”
In front of the wall, a tall man walked to face the councilors, a small smile spreading across his face.
“Tyrants of Arnven,” he began. ”With your refusal to surrender the witch Sigurrós, we have been driven to do the thing we loathe most.”
“At my order, these faithful brothers of the Holy Foundation will loose rocks unto the city, killing many. Do you have no answer to our threat? Do you have no concern for the people of your city?”
Hearing this, Sigurrós began to shake as she made her incantations, her speech lilting and stuttering as a large green dome began to form over the city walls.
Jaelen kept his eyes on her as the Cardinal made his speech. “Sigurrós…” he said.
“I am fine, Jaelen.” She replied in between incantations.
Asser put his hand to his ear, mockingly gesturing as if he was willing to listen.
Then he put his hand down, turning to the trebuchets behind him as he raised his other arm in a held signal.
“Ready,” He shouted.
Sigurrós finally finished her incantation, solidifying the transparent dome on top of the walls with a light green surge of energy.
The councilors on either side of her began to brace, anticipating the first volley of the siege weapons.
The Doctor Cardinal swung his hand down. “LOOSE!”
At his command, the four trebuchets assembled outside were cut and loosed, sending the large boulders flying through the air towards the walls and the dome.
Only Maera noticed the pulsing that accompanied each rock, forcing a long-forgotten memory to the surface of her mind.
“Oh Saints, no.” she whispered.
The first rock crashed through the dome with a sickening crunch, punching through it almost effortlessly. A crimson explosion accompanied its breach of the transparent dome- the only other indication of what the deadly crimson metal truly was.
Instantly, the dome began to weaken, the green energy that made it slowly growing fainter and fainter.
Sigurrós suddenly felt her knees buckle under her as her mind began to falter and weaken- yet she stretched her arms out in front of her, maintaining the magical dome with what willpower she had left.
As what was left of the first boulder penetrated the dome, its pieces crashed into the homes of the Altostown, killing a dozen people.
The second and third boulders crashed through the dome at once with a large crash, breaking into tiny pieces as the same crimson explosion lit up the air around the dome. Those pieces, like the first, crashed into the interior of the city, destroying many more houses and buildings within the River Quarter and Spirit Quarter.
Then, the fourth and final boulder made its entry, destroying what was left of the dome and connecting with the Shrine of St. Alto, ruining its beautiful marble columns and causing it to collapse under its own weight.
Sigurrós fell to the ground as it did, her body seizing and shaking as her councilors gathered around her.
Maera could only watch in horror as the name of the substance came to her mind.
“Bright's mercy, they never sa…” She said, taking a step back. “How did they get ahold of Scrantonum?”

On and on the siege went, going for eleven days and ten nights.
On and on the city burnt, tightening the noose around the city.
On and on Sigurrós slept, her fever burning hot as she rested within the Brightshome.
Ever since that second day of the siege, her councilors ruled the city in her stead, calming the population as their homes burned and their Shrines were destroyed.
After eleven days of constant siege and bombardment, the people of Arnven were broken, scared, and on the verge of full-out mutiny.
The Altostown and the River Quarter had stayed silent, for the most part- thanks to the efforts of Garvin and Melbrecht.
The Agathan Quarter grew more discontented by the day, as the merchants lost their profits and livelihoods with each volley of the trebuchets outside. Raetor did his best to reimburse the angered merchants and guildsmen with his own funds, though his treasury was running lower and lower by the day.
It was the Spirit Quarter that posed the greatest threat to the integrity of the city- the obligations that Maera had imposed on the nobles and their retainers had been met at first with begrudging acceptance, yet as the days went on and their servants on the walls were killed or injured, the nobles of the city began to grow more and more angry by the day. Aside from a few heated conversations however, all outward dissent was quelled by Lady Maera, who promised the nobles that the siege would end soon.
In eleven days, what needed to be done was clear to the council- they needed the High Priestess back, for better or worse.
Jaelen stayed by his Lady's bedside for the past eleven days, watching for any sign of her coming to consciousness. While the other councilors came and went as their duties called to them, Jaelen himself had kept by Sigurrós' side, praying day and night for her recovery.
“Praying to Lord Bright will not do much, you know,” said Melbrecht as he limped into the Lady's room on the eleventh night. “With the siege going as it is, it will not be long now before Asser and his ilk stream into the city and take her for themselves.”
“Saints damn it all, Melbrecht.” Jaelen said, his eyes red and puffed as he turned to look at the Grandmaster. “She lives, her fever is breaking- it… it will not be long now.”
Melbrecht banged his hand on the wooden door behind him, causing the noise to echo across the chamber. “I never took you for a fool, Jaelen! Do you honestly believe that?!''
Jaelen gritted his teeth. “Yes.”
The Grandmaster leaned in close to the monk, bringing his face almost level with him. “It has been eleven Brightdamned days, monk! She will never wake up- or if she does, it will not be in time before Asser-accursed-Clef breaks into the city and kills us all!”
Jaelen's expression hardened as he glared at Melbrecht. “Be careful with your words, Grandmaster.” He said, his voice low and growling. “You are perilously close to treason.”
The Templar's fist crashed into his face, sending him to the ground.
“Saints, you really are a fool.” Melbrecht said, limping over to the crumpled form of the monk. “You dare name me traitor, monk? I became Grandmaster for her! I led my brothers to death for her! I kept the peasants in the Altostown down for her! Among the councilors of this Brightforsaken city, I am the most committed- not Raetor, not Garvin, not Maera,”
Melbrecht took him by the scuff of his robes with his good hand and drew him up to the air. “And- not- even- bloody- YOU!” He brought his head crashing down to Jaelen's face as he said each word, punctuating every syllable with the clashing of his head against the monk's.
Jaelen slumped to the ground, his nose broken and bleeding, grunting with the pain.
Melbrecht stood over the defeated body of the monk, his breaths deep and panting.
“Saints, Melbrecht-“ A familiar voice said behind him. “What have you done?”
Behind him, High Priestess Sigurrós rose from her bed, her eyes wide with horror.
“M-my Lady…” The Grandmaster began, his anger gone in an instant, turning his head to the High Priestess. “I didn't mean to-“
Sigurrós leapt from her bed and knelt down to put Jaelen's head on her lap, making gestures in the air as she began to cast a spell.
“I didn't mean to-“ Melbrecht began again.
“Save it, Grandmaster.” Sigurrós' cold reply came, catching the Grandmaster off guard. “What has happened in the city so far?”
“T-the city is on the verge of open revolt, Lady. The Altostown and River Quarter are c-currently quiet, so is the Agathan, but the Spirit Quarter…“
“By Bright…” Sigurrós exclaimed as she finished casting her spell, leaving Jaelen unconscious as he began to heal.
“A-a-about Brother Jaelen…”
“How bad was the siege when I was asleep?” Sigurrós said.
“Very bad, my Lady. The Shrine of St. Alto has collapsed, and so has many of the buildings of the Altostown. The Brightshome itself has suffered from the bombardment, but the Shrine of St. Rights and the Rivershrine remain unscathed.”
Sigurrós sighed, gritting her teeth as she came to her feet.
“Call the Templars and the neophytes, Grandmaster.” She said. “Fetch Marshal Garvin as well- tell him to bring half of the horses and half of the militia.”
Melbrecht took a step forward, shocked at what the High Priestess had just said. “But my lady, what of the Scrantonum?”
Sigurrós began to put on her light mail armor, placing her black robes over the chains. “Short of throwing it at me, they will almost certainly be starved of ways to bring me down from the air.”
“The air? You intend to fly, my Lady?”
“Of course I intend to fly.” She placed her mail hood over her head, turning to the Grandmaster to give her answer. “You, Garvin, the Templars, and the militia will provide the distraction as you sally out from the west gate. Then, I will come in from the sky, destroying every tent I come upon until I destroy the one where Asser Clef resides in.”
Her steely glare met Melbrecht as she turned to leave. “We will discuss your assault of Brother Jaelen later. For now-“
“We break this Brightforsaken siege.”

Marshal Garvin sat astride his horse beside Grandmaster Melbrecht as the gates rumbled open, revealing the torchlit figures of the tents of the Foundation's army in the distance. In one hand he held the reins of horse, in the other, a seven foot long spear.
To his right, he could see the figure of the High Priestess, perched on the weakened grey stone walls. He could feel her eyes on him even from here, and he nervously swallowed as he raised his spear into the air, signalling the start of the attack.
“For the city! For the shrines! CHARGE!” Garvin shouted, spurring his horse to a running gallop as he lowered his spear and led the fifty horsemen of the militia behind him towards the unprepared guards of the Foundation army.
Behind him, Grandmaster Melbrecht followed along with his two hundred Templars and neophytes, running out of the west gate towards the distant camp. Armed with halberds, spears, and shields, their armor sparkled in the nighttime light as they bellowed out their warcry.
Sigurrós watched from the wall as the small force of two hundred and fifty bore down on the sleeping camp of the invaders. Smiling to herself, she muttered an incantation and began to fly, summoning fire with her fingers as she bore down towards the hundreds of tents in the distance.
When she let loose the inferno from her fingers, those who stood in her way had no chance to escape.
She set fire to three tents, then five, then ten. Men who hadn't been awoken by the chaos were burned alive while they slept, screaming as they ran from their tents as scorching columns of fire.
The air was filled with the screams of panic and the smell of burnt flesh as the forces of the City of Shrines surprised their attackers in the night.

“My lord! Awaken, my lord, please!” said a voice next to his ear.
Asser Clef opened his eyes to see his aide, a Doctor named Aelin, beside him.
“What is it, Aelin?” He said, his voice cold and uncompromising.
Aelin gulped nervously before continuing. “It's the defenders, Cardinal. The heretics.”
Asser got up from his bed and took a step towards Aelin. “What about them?”
Then, he noticed the smell of burning cloth and flesh in the air, as well as the panicked screams of the dying.
Aelin stuttered nervously as he replied. “I-it's the witch and her militia. They suddenly attacked us in the night and-“
Asser interrupted him with a slap, sending him to the grassy ground.
He pursed his lips. “Then what did I post guards for, Aelin?” He turned to the rack beside him, and began putting on his armor, piece by piece.
Aelin stayed on the ground, terrified. “I-I'm so sorry, Lord… I truly am. They were on horseback, and the Templars, they-”
“No matter now, Aelin.” Asser replied, donning his chest plate. “Tell the men in the camps to ring the bells. Deliver our message to our friend within the city-”
He took his sword from the weapon rack, taking it from its leather sheath and exposing the dark crimson Scrantonum blade.
He smiled slightly to himself, admiring the bastard witch-sword of Saint Agatha.
“We'll kill the witch and her ilk tonight.”

The Arnven Chronicles
« The Horn Blows Into the Morning | The Siege Looms Heavy (Part One) | The Siege Looms Heavy (Part Two) »


by qntm

Previously

All memetic horror aside, Wheeler thought Site 41 seemed like a pleasant enough place to work, at least above ground. Decently spacious, if unattractive, offices; large windows, plenty of natural light, scenic forest views. Safe.
Site 167 is a hostile, sprawling industrial wasteland, four square kilometres of secure containment warehousing, research laboratories and administrative offices. Wheeler is put in mind of a fossil fuel power plant. The buildings are grim, functional and aggressively unattractive. There is no greenery. The ambient noise in the complex is a harsh roaring — it was built on a flat plain, and the wind races down concrete canyons and past sharp building edges.
Just over half of the site, Wheeler discovers, has been erased from the face of the Earth by an orbital laser strike. There is an edge where the intact buildings and roads abruptly end, and beyond that edge there is nothing but blackened, level wreckage. Wheeler guesses that the laser shut down mid-redaction when the site's antimemetic warhead was triggered, but he can't be sure of the exact chain of events. It doesn't matter. It doesn't significantly harm the odds. What he's looking for is below ground.
Wheeler is at his limit. He has travelled too far, and he has been travelling for too long. He cannot exist in SCP-3125's universe for much longer, sane. It is all still happening, and the fragile responsibility of being the only one alive who can do anything to stop it is like a steadily tightening vice around his skull. He is exhausted, and slowly losing his vision to bright migraines, and dismally lonely. No more detective work, no more Sites. This needs to be the end.
Between buildings 8 and 22E there is a vertical access point, a thirty-metre-wide hexagonal shaft with a yellow gantry crane across its mouth. The shaft was used for lowering construction machinery and materials into the site's extensive underground complex. The shaft is so wide and deep that it has strange effects on the movement of air near its lip. It feels to Wheeler as if it's trying to pull him down. There are metal stairs lining the inner wall of the shaft. He descends, and then follows his map into Site 167's underground complex. Unlike Site 41, this was certainly not a Safe site. There are warning signs everywhere, many of whose symbols Wheeler cannot immediately parse. Very soon, he begins to encounter heavy bulkheads, sealed with electronic locks. Marion Wheeler's security pass opens them, every time.
Containment unit S167-00-6183's airlock is identical to the one he encountered at Site 41, just as the architectural diagrams suggested. The only difference is that this airlock is still visibly airtight — no holes. Wheeler swipes his card through the reader with a shaking hand. The door cycles open, revealing a sterile white antechamber, stale-atmosphered after years of disuse. He stands in the middle, waiting for the second half of the cycle.
This is it.
His heart is pounding. It's not good for him. He doesn't have a heart condition, that he knows of. But how would he know? Every living cardiologist is in hell.
He asks himself the final, worrying question, for the final time.
"But if you're here, Dr. Hughes, and you've built the machine, and the machine works: why didn't you come out?"
He answers himself, as a kind of inoculation against the bad news he knows is coming:
"Because the machine doesn't work. Because you couldn't build it. Because you're dead."
The inner door cycles open.

*

The atmosphere in the vault is tropically humid, and thick enough to taste. It tastes unpleasantly organic, like lymph or some other obscure bodily fluid. There are overhead floodlights, of which perhaps one in ten are still shining. There is junk everywhere. To Wheeler's left, there is a rough semicircle of monolithic autofactory units, each six or more metres tall, with piles of fabricated junk around them: furniture, tools, food containers, hard foam bricks, circuit boards, spools of fabric. To his right, stacked, stretching away along the long, concave wall of the vault, are hundreds of empty shipping containers. He would have to walk for ten minutes before he found one still containing raw materials.
Ahead of him is a three-metre-tall wall of steel which curves away to the left and right, enclosing almost all of the vault's floor space. Just visible over the top of the wall, heaving slowly under the weak yellow light, is an immense, sleeping organism. From here, Wheeler can only see the curve of its back, which is a glossy, moist black, mottled with green. It is round, almost spherical, like an ice cream scoop of liver taken from a human two kilometres tall and dumped into this enormous — Wheeler gulps as he makes the association — Petri dish.
Wheeler does not notice the metre-thick pipes which run from the autofactories over the edge of the dish and in, providing various necessary liquids. He does spot the tall towers arranged around the organism, spraying a translucent mist down at it from all angles. Suspended from the ceiling to the left and right, roaring continually, are ventilation units as large as houses.
There is no one around.
Wheeler clears his throat and addresses the room, as loudly as he dares. "Is there a… Dr. Bartholomew Hughes in here?"
Nothing happens. The roaring of the ventilation units continues. The organism continues to heave slowly.
Wheeler raises his voice somewhat. "I'm looking for a machine called an—"
It wakes up.
"—irreality amplifier?"
The thing turns, pushing huge volumes of fluid around its dish, enough that a wave of it sloshes viscously over the side of the wall. It lurches up to the wall. As more of it becomes visible, it becomes clear that there is little more to its body plan than what was already visible. Aside from stubby flippers, it is simply a huge, near-spherical lump of biology. It seems to peer eyelessly at Wheeler.
Wheeler concludes that he does not wish to be here. He turns to leave, and is startled to discover that the airlock door has closed behind him, as silently as it opened. "Ah." The airlock controls are to one side. He does not run, for fear of attracting attention with sudden movement, but he walks over, briskly, and pulls out his stolen security card again. As he's about to swipe it through the reader, a stringy red web lashes out from nowhere and restrains his wrist, preventing him from proceeding.
Wheeler struggles for a second to pull his arm free, but the webbing is gluey and has a freakish rigidity to it, as if there are bones inside it. It won't let him move. He glances back, and doesn't get a good enough look at the organism's body to spot where the web originated. The organism has opened its eye now, a single eyeball tens of metres wide, which must account for a significant fraction of its body volume. It has a vivid pink iris, and four enormous, black pupils.
Its voice isn't truly audible. It arrives in Wheeler's head like maddening static, a mosquito's whine in stereo.
DO YOU HAVE IT
"Have what?"
NO DOCTOR. NO MACHINE
A thinner strand of webbing shoots out, attaching itself to the security pass in Wheeler's hand, plucking it delicately from his fingers. The strand withdraws and holds the pass in front of the organism's eye.
WHEELER
"Ah," Wheeler says. "Yes, it's something of a coincidence actually—"
The strand tightens, lifting Wheeler by his arm. He twirls uselessly, barely able to see what's happening. There is a blur of luminous pink, and he is plunged, screaming, directly into the largest of Bart Hughes' four pupils.

*

The bunker was empty when he got there. His associates were missing. He was forced to presume them dead. And, in a rare lapse of forethought, he had neglected to bite off one of his human body's fingers before fleeing the scene of the shooting. With no human tissue sample to work from, he had no way to clone himself a replacement body. He was, he realised, trapped.
Wheeler had told him that, to protect the cause of the Foundation, he would have to sacrifice much or all of his existence. And she had only been reminding him of something which he had always known, intellectually. Still, he had not imagined this. And even if he had, he could never have imagined what this would be like, to experience from the inside. Several times, he came close to quitting. Dysmorphia alone almost killed him.
But. He had a duty. The problem had to be solved.
He attacked it in his germ form for over a year. He developed tools for himself, computer peripherals and writing implements adapted for his short but dextrous tendrils. He built miniature chair-analogues and other furniture. He developed, for himself, a little life. A fitness plan. Some hobbies, even. He slept in baths of nutrient sludge.
Before the end of the first month, he had proven to his satisfaction that the countermeme he was searching for existed beyond the comprehension of human intellect. A human being's mind would figuratively burst into flame upon contact with it; it was quite possible that their literal body would too, as a violent reaction to the profound, unalterable wrongness of every aspect of the universe around it. To create the countermeme, he would need to start from a human carrier of a suitable, "single-celled" base idea, and amplify that idea artificially using a machine.
By the second year he had designed and built enough of the machine to know that the machine could not be built. Theory and practice were diverging too far. Tests were failing in troubling ways, which pointed to fundamental architectural misconceptions. His machine would not and could not do what it was designed to do. He scrapped all of his schematics. He needed a different approach.
(There is a struggling figure mounted on the back of his retina, drowning beneath yellow pinpricks of focused light, drawing oxygen from his bloodstream and firing back minuscule thoughts. The figure is losing his mind with fear and revulsion, though he is a little more resilient than he gives himself credit for, and he is adapting. "It's you," the little man manages to gurgle. "There's no amplifier. You're the amplifier.")
He sequenced, and then reverse-engineered, his own genetic code. He built life support equipment, and re-architected the interior of the vault — which had always been the plan, if not to this extent. He refactored his physiology, in stages, over the course of years, until his brain was of a size and complexity to think monumental, radical, irreducibly complex thoughts.
("But why didn't you?" the speck asks. "You could have opened the vault at any time. What were you waiting for?")
Once, while exploring human ideatic space, he saw himself. He created a rudimentary memetic descriptor of himself, refined it, focused, guessed a little, and there he was: a complex of brilliant lights in the shape of a man, amid a swarm of similar people, living and dead and real and fictional. It was fascinating, and sobering, to see himself in that grand context, from that elevated perspective. He was tiny. He waved. He waved back.
And when he saw himself, he came to understand what he was; what his role was. He was the mad technical genius, the crazed inventor who architects the final weapon. But he was not the one to wield it. The spark, the base idea he needed to amplify, was not in his head, and was not in the vault with him. Mathematically, it never could have been. That was not the shape of things. It had to be delivered by someone else.
(The speck stops struggling. He has looked, with some effort, to his left and his right. He has now, finally, seen that there are other figures mounted here with him on the retina, older figures who have mostly been interpolated into the membrane, and no longer have independent life or thought. This causes him no small amount of alarm. He says: "…By who?")
Hold still.
(The speck's brain explodes, like a diagram.)

*

There is a forest.
There is a nice big house in the forest, and a garden behind the house, a trimmed lawn encircled by tall conifers. There is a rough circle of chairs on the lawn, and about twenty-five people seated or standing around or chatting in groups, with drinks and burgers, and there is a queue for the barbecue. There is a tall column of smoke rising from the barbecue. It is an outstandingly beautiful day, and nothing terrible is happening at all.
Adam Wheeler knows he is broken now, because he can't accept the scene. It's too sudden, and too pleasant, to be real. He feels normal, clean and healthy. He gasps and almost cries when he realises that his hand is back.
Someone walks up to him, offering a handshake. "You must be Adam. It's a pleasure. Bart Hughes."
Hughes is a very youthful fifty, short and skinny, with thick-lensed, thick-rimmed glasses and a flurry of wild, greying hair. Wheeler shakes his hand, more or less automatically; in his other, he has a bottle of beer. "I work at the Foundation," he says. "Obviously. Containment architecture, biomemetics, a whole mess of odd jobs."
"Hughes," Wheeler repeats. "I was— er, looking for you."
"You found me," Hughes says. "Good job."
"…What is this?"
"I didn't think you'd remember. This is where we met. Originally, I mean. Briefly. We shared about ten words, maximum, and I don't remember a single one of those words, and I barely remember you either, no offense. But I remember the barbecue, and I definitely remember that I met you at the barbecue. So, I figured it would be a more agreeable setting for the conversation we need to have."
Wheeler does not recognise the scene, either the location or any of the people. "This is your memory?"
"Yeah. Come on, let's talk."
Hughes leads Wheeler across the lawn and selects a pair of chairs in the sun. He sits, and gestures for Wheeler to sit across from him. Wheeler does so, uneasily. Hughes rests his elbows on his knees, and gathers his thoughts before he begins speaking.
"Adam, you don't have the idea we're looking for. The seed for the countermeme. You're the wrong guy.
"You would know if you had it. It would be impossible not to know. You would feel electrified by it. Driven forward by the high ideal it represented, every waking moment. It's what should have brought you here. I don't know how you made it here without it."
"…I didn't know I was supposed to bring an idea with me."
"There's no way you could have known," Hughes reassures him. "Nobody exterior to the vault knew. I didn't know it myself until I was already locked in. This is normal. We form these plans, and something unexpected happens, and the plans go out the window. And, under great pressure, we are forced to demonstrate creativity."
Wheeler takes a deep breath. He squares his shoulders. "Alright. Where is it? I hope it's in North America. I don't want to have to go all the way back to Site 41. But I will. If you can wait that long."
Hughes is shaking his head. "You can't do it. Even if it was that simple, and there was just a place I could send you to collect it, like takeout… you can't carry an idea like this. You've never had that capability. You don't believe. You've never had to. You're the wrong guy."
"…So where does that leave us?"
Hughes turns, looking meaningfully toward the barbecue itself. Wheeler follows his gaze. There is a woman tending it, with her back to them, chatting with the people in line for food. She seems to be the centre of attention.
"Marion," Wheeler says.
"She had it," Hughes says. "Well, to speak accurately, there's no singular it. It's a massively diverse phase space of possibilities. Millions of people in the world had different ideas which could have worked. But she was one of them."
"Was," Wheeler says.
"Yeah. She died."
Hughes turns back to face him. He hesitates, drinking some more beer while he chooses his words. He is not a medical doctor. He does not have anything which could be considered a bedside manner.
"Adam," he says. "I've been examining your brain. There are layers and layers of damage there, and a lot of it looks deliberate. Some of it may even be self-inflicted. You have had memories suppressed, and restored, and falsified and erased again, and on top of that you've survived what should have been fatal exposure to SCP-3125, and you've been through a great deal of completely non-anomalous trauma. So… you would be forgiven for not having worked it out by now. The hole in your life."
"No, I know," Wheeler says.
With some caution, Hughes asks, "What do you know?"
"She and I were married at one point. Right?"
Slowly, Hughes nods.
Wheeler says, "I got there eventually. It felt stupid and obsessive at first, to draw that conclusion. Self-absorbed. But there were all these facts, and they all fit. At the end of the day, I had to accept it."
Hughes asks, "And how do you feel about that?"
Wheeler interlocks his fingers, distractedly. He doesn't know. He doesn't know if he wants to know. He's afraid to know. "So what if we were married? What does that give me? It's over. It's all gone."
"…Could be," Hughes says.
"What was she like?"
Hughes holds something out to him. It is an autoinjector pen, a stubby, luminous orange cylinder with a pointed cap concealing a needle. There is a fat black Z printed on its side. Wheeler recognises it.
In fact, he recognises it as his own. But he finds himself not able to recall where he acquired it. Or for how long he has been carrying it.
This drug, he knows, will kill him. It will make him remember everything — everything. And this will kill him, as it does everybody.
But he will remember.
There is a kind of singing in his ears. The sunlight in the garden is blurring, smearing out. He catches Hughes' eye, and Hughes is smiling ruefully, and his eye has lit up, a scintillating gold-white point of light.

*

This needs to be the end.
There are long, long months of fearful migraine wandering. There is the face-to-face back in the school, mediated by the late Daisy Ulrich, so brief and extraordinarily painful that it registers like a gunshot. And then he is enmeshed within SCP-3125 again, complicit and actively engaged in a darkened, metallic hell. The drug makes it impossible to not think about what happened, to not stare directly at what he did. Time in there is dilated, stretched to subjective breaking point by the anomaly's mass. It seems to last tens of years. And then, the chisel.
And after that, for two years, he is vacant. He is a suit wrapped around a torn, ragged-edged hole. And then there is Marion, at last, placidly tearing herself out of his life and him out of hers. And then it's hours earlier than that, the very worst moment, his awful sinking realisation that she no longer knows who he is.
And then it's two days before that. It's six-fifteen in the morning, October, pre-dawn and freezing cold. Marion is at her car door, about to leave for work but distracted by something important on her work phone, and Adam is lingering on the porch, seeing her off. He has a work trip of his own, tonight and tomorrow night, so this is the last time they'll see each other until—
This is the last time they'll see each other. This is it.
He digs his heels in, dragging the regression to a straining halt. He calls out, "Marion!"
She puts her phone away. She turns around.
It's her, the whole of her. She is precisely the way he remembers her. She is the memory, iconic and brilliant. She smiles at him, for a long, ridiculous moment.
She says, "Do you get it, now?"
"Why you kept me away from all this? Yes." He goes to her, and they kiss, and it's a classic, it's perfect, it's everything either of them remembers. He holds her tightly, and she hugs him back, head heights as mismatched as ever. He sniffs.
"You've had a hell of a time," she states. It is a simple fact.
"I needed you," he says. "I didn't even know how badly. I didn't need you to help me, I just needed to stand aside and let you do the job instead. Marion, your job is lunacy. I one hundred percent understand why you tried to keep me out of this half of your life, for so long. And I will never ask about it again."
She looks up at him. It looks like she's about to say something, but the pain in Adam's brain makes itself known again, and he has to break off. The pain is forcing its way forward, into the back of his eyes. The rate of regression is increasing again. Different memories from all parts of his life are clamouring at him now, and their combined volume is increasing, and it is becoming difficult to think clearly. Marion, though, is part of most of the memories. Not a constant — she has evolved and grown, over years — but a common thread. He focuses on her.
"I don't have a lot of time to bring you up to speed," he manages. "This isn't real. We're both sharing Bart Hughes' mind right now. I don't know how much you know—"
"There's an (anti)memetic monster called SCP-3125," she says. "It killed me, and the Division, and the Foundation, and now it's occupying our whole reality. It ruins humans. It's the worst thing that's ever existed. There's no one left but you and you can't stop it. You can't even look at it. Hughes needs an idea to amplify, so you took a lethal dose of biochemical mnestic to reify me properly, because I was the best idea you had. Does that cover it?"
Adam grins weakly, with great relief. His wife has caught up characteristically quickly. "Just about. We live in ridiculous times."
She steps back from him. She looks at him, and at herself, and at their fictional little scene, steadily brightening as the Sun rises.
She looks "up", at the unimaginably gigantic memeplex which she has to kill. Inside its maw, human existence, all humans and all things humans have ever done, said, thought or been, are burning alive. SCP-3125 is, in large part, the lie that SCP-3125 is inevitable, and indestructible.
But it is a lie.
She feels it, now. She knows in her bones that she is irreal; an animate memory; an ideal, an abstract. When she started to exist a few moments ago she was mostly realistic, but she can feel flaws and complexity being stripped away from her. She can see the shape of the idea complex which Hughes is assembling around her. It looks familiar. It looks like a heavily reworked slice through the concept of the Foundation itself. The Foundation's noblest intentions and achievements, at least. The best purpose of its existence: to protect people. To swallow up all the horror, to manage it and understand it, to keep it under lock and key, so that people don't have to be afraid.
"Adam," she says, looking up again. "It's going to work. I can see all the way to the end from here."
"That's good," he manages. "It's been a long time since I had good news." He falls to his knees. His skull feels as if it's splitting open. She kneels with him, taking one of his hands.
He is seeing things, and the things he is being forced to see are hurting him. SCP-3125 has been hacking away at his and her lives for far longer than he knew. They'd lost so much by the end. He had no idea. And it's not just him, he realises. It's everybody. He needs to multiply this feeling by billions. "You've got to end this thing," he says, the pain rising to a flashpoint. "It has to be today. No more."
"Adam, listen. It's a different kind of existence up there. I've seen glimpses of it before, but I've never been there. I don't know what it's going to be like, but I know I won't be a human anymore. I'm already not real. I won't be able to come back. I love you."
There is a burning, corrosive sensation crawling across the surface of Adam's brain, a crackle like cellular automata. "I know," he says. "It's okay. There's going to be no one to come back to. It was good to see you. I love you."
STAND BACK
She stands back from him. She flexes what could be wings.
"You used to sing," Adam says. "All the time. It's the first thing it took away from us. But I remember."
The launch window opens. There is a kind of ignition. And Marion Wheeler's perspective shifts, and everything seems to shrink, and she is on the ascent.

*

The part of SCP-3125 which was capable of communication has had its brains blown out. There is no longer anything to reason with. There is no quip. There is a song, but it's a song she sings for herself.
The thing is titanic in its structure, brain-breaking in its topology. It comes from a space where ideas exist on a scale entirely beyond those of humans. Its wrongness and its self-consistent evil are so profound that it hurts to comprehend. At first, looking directly at it causes stinging actinic flashes in Marion's eyes, like ionising radiation.
But her perspective is still shifting, because she's still ascending. And as she ascends, ceasing to be human, she sees through the adversary, and comes to understand, instinctively, how it is structured, and how it is faulty, and how those faults can be attacked.
It turns to face her.
When they meet, what happens is less a fight than it is mathematics, an equation settling at the end of a long, painful stretch of working, a blizzard of cancelled terms. In the presence of WILD LIGHT, vast tracts of SCP-3125, thought to meaningfully exist, prove not to. It is, in the new context which WILD LIGHT provides, an ancient irrelevance. It folds up, limb after branching limb winking out of existence. It releases its grip on everything human. The mathematics is good. It happens in exactly the way Hughes modelled it, back in the bunker, using the memetic equivalent of fluid dynamics equations, taking thousands of processor-years to simulate.
After the finger limbs are gone, a livid red/green eyeball remains. The Foundation/Wheeler/protection abstract punctures it, lasering straight through it from front to back. A colourless shockwave spreads through the eyeball interior, another quiet cancelling-out, leaving bright vacuum behind it, not even particles.
And all that is left from the collision is the balance: a final wild photon, outbound to the deepest limit of ideatic space, never to return.

Epilogue: Champions Of Nothing


Chapter II.II

It was another Sunday morning. The meeting was in some hours from now. I couldn't go back to sleep, so I sat up on my bed and wondered what there was to do with my time. I eyed my computer, and thought of how much preparation I could be getting done, which made me wince. That can wait, I assured myself. There has to be something else to do.
My eyes scanned the environment.
My room wasn't much bigger than my office. Well, my previous office, anyways. The rectangular sliver, to the left of the shed; there was a tiny hallway when you came in, to the left of which was a door to my bathroom. Past that came a bedroom you could tell was just the left half of a large storage room at some point. Some of the insulation was visible, the wooden floor looked cheap. My bed sat next to the tiny window on the left wall. On the right was a TV on the drawers where I kept my clothes that didn't need to hang. To the left of that was my desk, which I used for whatever work I could do from home. On the far wall was my closet, built into the wall with sliding doors. It wasn't a prestigious room.
But it was my room, and just being in my room was an instantaneous relief. These walls were shields between my world and their worlds. I sighed, and my body sighed with me. Home. Privacy.
Privacy. My mind clung to the word. Oh, I realized, right. There was something I was supposed to be doing, which I had been putting off doing, which I had been trying not to think about how I'd been putting off doing it. Something that required seclusion.
I winced again. Really? I tried to search for an excuse, but the only thing my eyes came back to was the computer. Work. Before lunch? No, I wasn't going to do work on a Sunday. Fine. I stood up, and breathed through my teeth. It was something to do.
Despite the feeling of privacy, to make this room actually private would be a real hassle. The first things to do would be to turn everything off, so I went to my desk and shut down my laptop. I followed that up by pulling my phone out of my pocket and powering that down as well; I then stuffed both inside a drawer with my socks and underwear, partially burying them before closing.
Those were the most obvious devices I could think to be suspicious of. For good measure, I also draped a blanket over the television, closed the curtains to my room (who knows what vantage points there were), and turned off the light. I learned at some point that the Supervisors had bugged my mom's house in San Diego all those years ago. Knowing what I did, I wasn't as upset about it as I probably should have been. I understood, on a level, the objective. But that didn't make me any less paranoid.
Alright, I thought to myself, that should do it. I slid open my closet and pushed some hanging dresses out of the way to locate a cardboard box. My (somewhat) secret stash. I kept it right next to the ventilation to keep the chocolates cold in summer, stubbornly refusing to simply use my fridge for something so special. It worked… for the most part. I grabbed the entire box and brought it to my bed, pulling it and myself under the covers. I fished a flashlight out of my pocket that I had grabbed from the kitchen (it was only recently that I had started wearing jeans again; in the past seven years, I had shunned them, but something changed recently and I wasn't sure what).
I opened the box, dug through the truffles, and located the letter.
The letter in the yellow envelope, with the curly purple writing that read: Open Me at your Earliest Convenience. I frowned slightly. This was definitely not my first and earliest convenience, not to mention that this wasn't the most private location, though I'd done my best. I was lightly curious why I hadn't been more eager to open the letter before, but I pushed that feeling out of mind as I began to tear at the edges of the smooth paper.
As the gum of the envelope parted, a smell began to spill out into the tent I'd made around myself with the blankets. It was something I couldn't place rightly, but it was something smooth, creamy, and outdoorsy. Sandalwood, I thought.
As I pulled the folded letter out, the aroma became stronger. I was struck by how fancy the presentation was; it felt and looked like tissue paper. My flashlight passed right through it. As an opposite to the envelope, it was purple, and was written on with what might have been literal gold ink. The penmanship was so beautiful I took a moment just to appreciate it.
But the moment was brief.

Hello,
I think you will find this letter uniquely sparse, and for that I apologize, but there are simply other considerations. Considerations of privacy, I mean. In case this falls into the wrong hands, it would be nice to not have names attached. I'm sure you'll agree.
For now, all I am here to do is tell you how to establish a more private contact between us. And, as proof that you are who you should be, I'll give you something only a select few can decode. It's a bit of a drive, but it's bushwhacked. I believe someone called it their "thinking spot." I'm certain you know who, and I'm certain you know where, and I'm certain very few others do. It might not be the best code but it should be good enough. Write a letter with any questions you may have, bring it there, and you'll know what to do with it.
Sincerely,
Someone Mysterious
P.S. I really don't mean to be obtuse, but as long as we have to, it's fun to play into it, isn't it? I think so. So while we're playing it up, you might want to burn or otherwise destroy this letter as soon as you have all the necessary details memorized.

That was annoying, but replaying everything I had to do to feel safe even reading it, I couldn't stay upset too long. I stuffed the letter back into the envelope, and then the envelope back into the box, and grabbed two white chocolate truffles.
I got out of bed, put the stash away, pulled the curtains open and the blanket off the TV, replaced my phone in my pocket and my laptop on my desk, and then turned the light back on. Alright. If they really did have surveillance of my shed, that would have looked terribly suspicious, but I wasn't sure if there was anything they could do about it. Confront me? The Supervisors were certainly not supposed to be monitoring us at this point. Not so closely, anyways. They would only be able to have their suspicions, and that was all I was going to give them.
A knock at my door startled me.
"Breakfast's ready," Anders said.
"Coming."
At the table, I took few bites. I was trying to write my response in my head.

The cafe was small, brown, and had that strong local feeling that made me trust any business more. The squeaky floors, the unpolished corners, the waiters without perfect manners, whose smiles were genuine or weren't there at all. Something made it more human than Starbucks or Dutch Bros., and just by being human they could serve the same things and have them taste better. I sipped at an iced chai latte, my feet dangling off of the tall stool by the bar.
Alex sat next to me, with his dimpled cheeks and boyish face. His age was enigmatic. My best way of describing it was that he looked like a teen who looked older than he was, except that he was just as old as he looked. (Except, that couldn't be fully true, because then he wouldn't look like a teen. That's what I mean by "an enigma.") Brown eyes, black hair, and a thick black mustache. He once had pale skin, but he'd been tanning due to how much time he spent outdoors. He met my eyes, and grinned a bit, before sipping his coffee. He wasn't a black coffee type. His was actually a mocha — chocolate, sugar, cream, the whole thing. "Coffee tastes best when it doesn't taste like coffee," he once told me. I didn't like coffee to begin with, so I guess I understood.
"Big move, then, huh?"
"Big move," I responded. I'd just gotten out of the meeting which penned me in as Tim Wilson's successor, the new executive director. The turnout was larger than the meeting of the previous week — jack-of-all-trades Hagimatsu Yufuyu showed up, as well as our Head of Communications Gary Harp, a good number of the Castaways, and even Alex Molina if only to show his support. Noticeably absent was Robin… and noticeably unenthused was Dr. Yana.
"How does it feel? Any different from before."
I sipped my chai. "It does feel different. But, somehow, not by… much. I mean, as they said, I already was doing most of the job. I'm just official now."
"Yeah. Seems like a big leap in responsibility, though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but before that was mostly by choice, right? Now, it's going to be your job, as in, what you get paid for. That's different."
"It's different," I agreed.
"Kind of exciting though, right?"
"Mmm…" I thought for a moment. "Exciting? It's, well, it means I'm going to be spending a lot more time at the Shelter. I'm probably going to get to know a lot more people, I'm going to be required at every meeting. I'm going to have to memorize the Boring Agreement. On the other hand I'll get paid better. Actually I'll get to decide what I get paid so that's nice."
Alex smiled. "Gonna upgrade from the shed?"
"I don't think scraping that much off the top would be in the spirit of a non-profit."
He chuckled, and I smiled back at him. "I dunno, feels like you should get a house at some point."
"Do I need one, really? My house is a bed and a fridge."
"That reminds me, you and I should learn fencing from Alice."
"As I've said before, I love that idea, but when? I didn't have much free time before, and now I'm going to have even less."
"Well, how about doing that instead of going out for coffee?"
I pouted a bit. "But I like our coffee dates."
"Heheh," he looked out the window opposite us. "I like them too. I, uh," he took my free hand I had on the counter, "I remember when I first asked you out to go on a coffee date. You said you didn't like coffee."
I chuckled. "That wasn't very polite of me."
"No," he laughed with me, "it wasn't! But, I pushed and, well, here we are, the very same cafe."
"It's a nice cafe."
"It is! But, you know, I'd like to change things up a bit, right?"
I took a sip. "No more cafes?"
"Not no more cafes, just, less cafes."
I nodded, silently mourning the loss of the cafe regularity. "Alright. I'll ask Alice if she'll teach us tonight."
Alex smiled, and rubbed a thumb into my palm. He then turned back towards the window, and took a drink of his mocha. We sat in comfortable silence, looking at the cars passing by, and admiring the distant treeline, thanking the room temperature for allowing me to have an iced chai and him to have a hot mocha without either of us feeling uncomfortable. For this reason, separating winter drinks and summer drinks never made sense to me.
"Umm, speaking of Alice… how's everyone recovering?"
"Recovering?" He only raised his eyebrows at me. "Oh, right. I think we've reached normalcy. It's been over a month, you know."
"I know."
"Alice was the first to get back on her feet. I think it must have something to do with her 'rituals'. Chanting, meditating. Oh, and ritual as in routine. Like fencing. Or jogging. She's become a lot more active recently and that's definitely a consequence of Tim. But she runs the library fine, and she smiles, and she's gotten back into her habits."
"Smiles?" Alex asked, and I let out a huff of amusement.
"Yes, she does sometimes. You see it more often when you live with her. After that, Anders followed suit, though he was a lot less…" I fished for an appropriate word. "A lot more… no, what I mean to say is that… I expected it to affect him. It didn't affect him more than I expected it to. He just showed it more than I expected."
"Oh mhmm."
"I thought he'd be the type to try and push on and pretend nothing happened. So that came as a surprise. I would say Robin is still reeling a bit. That brings us to the present."
"What about you?"
"Hmm?" I fiddled about with my cup.
Alex let some time pass. I didn't respond.
"How are you feeling?"
"Oh. I'm alright."
Alex looked uncomfortable. He returned his gaze to the window, but didn't bring his cup to his lips. He just sat there. I stared at him for a bit, and then joined him in gazing. Someone outside was walking a dog. Looked to be an untrained puppy, the way it jumped and gazelle'd about. The lady was having trouble keeping her hat from getting taken by the wind, but combined with the dog dragging her this way and that, it looked like a cartoon.
"Fae?"
"Mmm?"
"We haven't talked much recently. Since your dad died, I mean."
"Mmm." I sipped at my chai.
"I know you must have a lot of strong feelings. Alright? I mean, when my great uncle died, it was… maybe the worst three months of my life. I know people grieve differently. But I want to let you know that I'm here. Always. Okay?"
I looked him straight in the eyes, but waited.
"That's all I wanted to say. I'm here. If ever you need me."
I looked down. "Thank you."
"No need for… yeah, you're welcome, is what I meant to say."
I scooted the stool close to him and pulled him into a hug. Into his unkempt hair, I said: "If I need to talk to anyone, I'll talk to you."
"Thanks." He swallowed. "Alright, and if you don't tell me, tell someone, alright?"
"Alright."
I pulled away, and sipped at my chai again. It was sweet. It was caffeinated. It was all I could really hold onto at that moment. Well, and Alex. I thought he was very sweet too.
"Are you looking for company the rest of the day?"
I always appreciated how forward Alex was. "No, I think I'm going to go home and while it away somehow."
"Alright." He flashed me a smile, but it disappeared as he turned to look out the window again. I decided it would be best to ignore.

I pulled into the driveway, parked, and exited the car. It was a warm August afternoon with a bit more cloud cover than expected. The Wilson's house is big, brown, and unremarkable. While it itself is tied to no farm, it was clearly meant to be at some point. It is sandwiched between a field of corn and a pasture of sheep. The shed I lived in was on the sheep side, and they had come close to the fence where I could reach them through the chainlinks. I strode over, and scratched at the wool behind their ears.
"Welcome back, Fae." Alice's nasal alto came out muffled from somewhere behind me. I turned around, and saw her outfitted in fencing gear; the beekeeper-like mask, the white plastic armor, and her purple lamé.
"Hi Alice. Is all of that necessary?"
"Tournament coming up. I have to practice in the suit."
"Aren't you hot in there?"
"Sweating like a pig."
I took myself from the fence and walked closer to the dummy she was practicing on. "How much practice can you really get out of a dummy?"
"Not a ton," Alice admitted while shoving her foil into the center of the thing's chest. "Takes a good deal of imagination. For right now, I'm trying to imagine he's backing away from me while I lunge. That's why I'm lurching forward so much. I'm practicing my balance."
I watched her demonstrate the very thing she just described several times. From an untrained eye such as mine, her movements seemed fluid, her footing well placed. Her foil hit its target — even if said target was absolutely stationary. After a minute or so of observation, she lifted her mask, and looked at me.
"Why the sudden interest?"
"Mmm? Oh, Alex was talking about fencing today."
"Alex?"
"My partner."
"What about it?"
"Uhh…" I stood in place for another moment, trying to sort my thoughts. "Just general interest."
She raised the foil at me, its pointed end nearing my chin. "Tell him I'd be thrilled to have a sparring buddy." In true Alice style, she didn't sound thrilled. She put her mask back on and returned to her lunges at the dummy, whose base was twisted with overgrown grass.
"He doesn't have any practice."
"Not a problem. I love winning."
Alice grinned at me briefly, and then resumed her routine. I shrugged, and turned to walk inside through the glass sliding door into the dining area.
"Oh, and congratulations."
Alice's voice made me pause, but only for a moment. Then, I walked inside, and found Anders cooking again.
"Hey, brother."
He turned around and smiled at me. "Hi Fae."
"Cooking again?"
"It's the new norm. And I'd like to repeat what Mom said. Congratulations."
"Thanks."
"Life's turning a new page, and the Shelter is getting new management. It's kind of exciting, isn't it?"
"Well, you certainly seem to be in good spirits."
"I'm just looking forward."
"To what?"
"No, just looking forward. Seeing the future. The rest of life. How did your date go?"
I sidled into the kitchen, and pulled the open recipe book towards me. Without taking in the actual dish, I looked through the ingredients and made note of everything that needed to be chopped or diced. I pulled a bell pepper towards me, took a knife off the rack, and started to work.
"Our date went very well, as always."
"Thanks for the help."
"No problem. Your good mood is contagious."
"Anxious about work tomorrow?"
I shrugged. "Not particularly."
"I'm sure that will change."
I continued to dice the pepper in silence, as Anders put on a pot of water and poured olive oil into a skillet. I don't think it will, I thought to myself. Aromas filled the kitchen as onions began to fry, dusted with several spices, the strongest of which I could pick out as cumin.
"Speaking of change, Robin said to bring the dinner up to him."
"He's not going to eat with us?"
"No."
I put the pepper aside, and began to peel a cucumber. I didn't have anything I really wanted to say about that so I elected to say nothing. Anders respected my silence for the moment, but turned to me while stirring the onion, spices, and recently dumped-in peppers.
"I think you ought to talk to him."
"Mmm," I responded.
"He's really upset that neither him nor I got the job. I'm sure you caught that." Time passed. "Ever since Dad made the Shelter, it was sort of assumed one of us was the next one up to bat, right? Family businesses and all. You weren't in the picture at the time that we, as teens, put two and two together."
"Are you upset?"
"Not at all. You're the best person for the job."
I avoided eye contact. The cucumber was a perfect excuse; ribbons of dark green skin flaked into the trashcan to my right.
"I've already tried talking sense into him," Anders continued at a low volume, "I just think reaching out, you know, closing the distance between you and him could be good. For the both of you."
I nodded, but it served the same purpose as a shrug would. Acknowledgment. In reality, I sorted out the request, and filed it somewhere in the back of my head, but I didn't care to remember under what heading. Into a cabinet it went. The drawer pushed in, and suddenly everything was flush against the wall again. With each nod, a stray paper clip tink-ed against a metal corner in the maze of information.
Anders smiled at me, and then turned back to stirring. I looked over my shoulder at him and paused. A deep breath passed through me like a draft swings through a cave. I finished peeling the cucumber, cut it into slices, and then put the knife down.
Dinner was uneventful, if a little bit quiet. It took effort to forget that there was one less voice.

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Seesa 05/01/07 (Tue) 02:48:52 #479152

Devil's Garage

In 1965, Josie Laures and Antoine Senni — two French cave explorers — partook in an experiment that would test the effects of extreme isolation on the brain. The subjects would attempt to outlast each other, stationed in separate caves and deprived of human contact for months. Total isolation, complete darkness, and nothing to occupy themselves beyond the capabilities of their own minds. Laures emerged after 88 days in her cave, while Senni lasted 126. The results of the experiment were reported in vague and almost mundane fashion, amounting to little more than a lost sense of time and temporary color blindness in both subjects. As such, Laures and Senni faded into obscurity, their ordeal's legacy being a string of clickbait articles on pop-science websites, and a few casual citations in mid-60s research papers. It never sat right with me. How could an experiment that pushed the brain to its limits, that forewent our inherently social nature, and tested extended isolation in an unprecedented way be swept under the rug so easily? Were the results just that inconsequential, or was there something more to the story? Something horrifying, wading beneath the surface of every mind, warded off only through the fulfillment of the regularities of life — of color, of conversation, of the presence of another being. To deprive onself is to lure the starving beast from its den. To face it is certain death, and make no mistake, in a contest between ones wits and ones mind — you will be consumed.
My grandfather was involved in the Laures/Senni experiment. He kept a log of Senni's dietary habits. I was 7 when he first told me about the study. It stuck with me, interloping my two biggest fears at the time — the dark, and caves. The first of which sprung from an incident involving a neglectful teacher tasking me with retrieving a paint bucket from the storage loft of my middle school. I was trapped there for 3 hours, surrounded by boxes of theater props and spare textbooks. My fear of caves originated in my own backyard, when I would explore the woods behind my house. There was a particular hole, located near a rock formation a mile out, we used to call Devil's Garage. Yes, Devil's Garage is a terribly un-scary name, but to someone who couldn't sleep without a nightlight, it worked well enough. To think someone would willingly put themselves in a situation that was the epitome of my fears like Laures and Senni did was insanity to me. I think it also inspired me, made me more daring. If someone could last months in a cave all alone, what did I have to fear? I started exploring the tunnel system found in the woods, quite recklessly too. Eventually, I had a significant portion of Devil's Garage mapped out entirely in my head. It wasn't until I was 19 when I became involved in the local caving community, and I realized how many times I could've gotten myself killed down there. For fun, I would turn my headlamp off, and try to find my way around the cavern, armed only with a walkie-talkie, with my exploration team on the other line. I was enamored with the dark, with being surrounded by the earth. I couldn't get Laures and Senni out of my head, knowing that I could do exactly what they did — and I planned on doing it.
My occupation was relatively versatile, meaning I could spend an entire month in a cave and not have it affect my wallet significantly. I talked to my friend Rob, who had been caving with me for the better part of the decade, about my plans. I told him I needed someone to keep an eye on things while I was down there, and surprisingly, he agreed to it — under the pretense that I would cover his pay for the month he would have to spend away from work. When it came to location, I had to pick somewhere off the map. Even the 'undocumented' cave systems in the area were routinely explored, and I didn't want to scare an unsuspecting caver stumbling upon my isolation den. I knew the perfect place, completely uncharted and away from public eye, but still suited to my needs — Devil's Garage. No one explored, let alone knew about Devil's Garage, sans the neighborhood kids, of course. It's a dangerous cave system located in an obscure, Pennsylvanian town with a population of about 500. I doubt it would be a popular caving spot even if it weren't unknown. Devil's Garage also offered me a sense of closure for my strange relationship with childhood fears. This was full circle, the culmination of everything that led me to this point, coming together in the same place it began.
Two backpacks full of non-perishable foods, five cases of waters, 24 portable waste bags, and a walkie-talkie to Rob with fresh batteries. I had a spot picked out not far from the entrance, and not deep enough where moving my supplies down would be an issue. Devil's Garage is a small descent that opens up into a spacious foyer, before twisting into a tight-ish squeeze that reaches into the cave's dark zone, an area unable to be penetrated by surface light. Just beyond that tunnel is a cavern, big enough for my experiment, and my new home for the next month. Rob helped me move everything down, and wished me luck. He reminded me that he'd be staying in a camper near the tree line, and that if I needed him, to use the walkie-talkie. I gave him a trademark 'all good', and shut my headlamp off. Rob left, his silhouette being the last, fleeting connection to the outside world I would have for the indefinite future. I held on to that image for as long as I could.
The mind is a malleable, impressionable thing. I was surprisingly able to keep myself alert and conscious for an extended period of time, not long after Rob left. My thoughts chained together, thinking about eating breakfast with Rob that morning, to my first professional caving expedition, to Devil's Garage itself. I remembered the stories, typical local legend fare passed around between children, of cults conglomerating in the forest and wild men occupying the tunnels. None rooted in any sort of truth, obviously. I remembered how this place used to scare me, unnerve me. I remembered the uneasy aura I got when exploring the tunnels for the first time. I remembered how that feeling never went away. I remembered the silence. I stopped remembering. Black. Damp. Cold. Breathing. Dread. The initial calm had been swept away, and only the permanence of my situation remained. I was alone.

Seesa 05/01/07 (Tue) 03:14:31 #479166

A prisoner's cinema is a hallucinatory phenomenon involving colored, flashing lights, appearing to those deprived of light for extended periods of time. I was fully prepared to hallucinate, or at least I thought. I'm not sure how long it took, as my sense of time was slipping, but I never got used to them. Things started happening after I fell asleep for the first time, whenever that was. Shadows visible in the darkness, whispers, white noise among the silence, they didn't bother me at first. I knew what they were. This transitioned into the light shows, bits of reds, purples, greens, all blinking in and out of reality. You know those brief bits of color you see when you close your eyes? Imagine those, but way brighter. They soothed me, continuously lulling me in and out of sleep. I watched the dancing colors, the way they swirled and faded. I felt myself slipping, getting lost in the constant, vivid displays of color. The reds melted into the blues, and the yellows flew across the greens, swirling and molding themselves around the purple outlines that took shape. I saw shapes, and I was calm. I would dream, and the colors were still there. I gave in completely, shutting everything around me down. The shapes turned into figures — bright, white, illuminating figures. They whispered to me, and I was nourished.
How long had I been down there? I didn't know, and didn't care. I passed in and out of consciousness, never moving, and always fixated on the lights. I didn't eat, drink, or use the bathroom once. They gave me everything I needed. The white figures became brighter, and a single voice spoke to me with the magnitude of a thousand. One voice. Beckoning me closer. I remember what happened with total clarity and acuteness. I left my body. I was myself, and the light was separate of me. We were not the same. A single mass of light. I touched it. Only black now. I faded.
I saw warm light that stretched on in every direction, but I didn't wince. Like a painting. A structure in the center of my field of vision, infinitely tall. I knew to go toward it, but I couldn't walk. I focused, and I was at its base. A modern tower, with distinct components. Hundreds of windows, hundreds of protruding rooms. Sharp. Commanding. Calming. I focused into a room. Gray everything. No lights, but perfectly lit. Completely empty. I knew I was alone. There were others here, but they were not me. For hours, I explored the building. I moved through countless featureless rooms. Vacancy without unease. I could spend an eternity in union with this structure. I came to a staircase, and I ascended.
I came to a room, a hallway without end. I walked, and felt the presence of the colors, of every color. No sound. Just color. The hallway opened up into a spacious balcony, exposing the horizon. Massive, circular structures in the sky, turning and spinning. Like giant, golden rings, turned on their side. I felt so many emotions at once, it was overwhelming. The white figures reappeared, hundreds of them. Small components of a larger machine, working in tandem. I understood now. They ran into each other, colliding into a single, glowing mass. I knew to look away. I looked down, and I wanted to cry. I knew what I was in the presence of. I was told to think, and I couldn't. I was called forward, and the mass touched me. I saw patterns folding into each other, snapshots of the history of unfamiliar peoples, strange structures in dream-like landscapes, the sun, the universe's expansion, the intricacies of the smallest quark, the invisible functions of time, and the feeling of life's creation. For a brief moment, I was in union with this being. It was too much. The mass touched me again, and I felt relieved. The line between us was not meant to be breached.
I was touched again, this time by a new part of the mass. I saw a billion lifetimes all intertwining and connecting, a man toiling in the fields for his king, a woman brandishing a blade to defend her state, a joyful tribe partaking in a coming-of-age ceremony, my dead mother's embrace, an isolated theologian writing scripture, and a scared little boy in the dark. I felt every moment of happiness and every feeling of pain ever experienced, one after another. I lived them. In seconds, I lived them all. I was incomprehensibly whole.
The mass outstretched itself once more, and I was given a choice. I could either approach the mass, with its wealth of secret knowledge and unspeakable understanding, or I could accept my existence and kneel. I knew my purpose was to kneel, to experience reality and every sensation it brings. An act of creation is inherently separate from its creator. Acceptance of my mortality was to be my theosis. I thought about what I saw, what I experienced ― and I didn't listen.
I walked towards the mass. I couldn't forget what I saw ― what I now knew. I entered the mass, preparing myself for union. It overtook me. I was completely consumed by its presence, of overwhelming visuals, forbidden words, and new sensations. I was spat out, and the mass disappeared. The structure around me crumbled, and the sky turned black. Every cloud and color was slowly drained from my surroundings, until it was a colorless void. I gazed into a featureless void, and I faded back into perceptible reality.

Seesa 05/01/07 (Tue) 03:32:88 #479189

Suddenly, I was alert again. I was a man, alone in a cave, and I was very, very afraid. I felt a presence that I hadn't felt before, like I was being watched. Something was with me. I scrambled for my walkie-talkie and told Rob to get me as soon as possible. I reached for my headlamp, but I couldn't bring myself to turn it on, in fear of what I'd see. I sat, completely motionless, and utterly vulnerable for what felt like hours. Rob's initial greeting startled me, and he put a pair of goggles over my head to protect my dark-attuned eyes. He guided me out of the cavern, assuring me that he would go back and move my stuff out once I was brought to the surface. Turns out, I made it a total of exactly 7 days. I wanted to explain to Rob what I saw, and why I called him to come get me, but I couldn't even process it myself. When we crawled out of the entrance to Devil's Garage, I couldn't see anything. I knew my eyes would have to take time to adjust to light again, but it was complete darkness — like I never had left. I sat on the step of Rob's camper while he retrieved my belongings, waiting for my vision to return. Once we were all settled, Rob brought me back to my house, where he offered to stay with me, giving well-deserved company after what I had gone through.
Curiously, I didn't use any of my supplies during the week. Even back at home, I wasn't hungry or thirsty. Even though Rob told me I looked fine and that my weight didn't change, he wasn't convinced, so he decided to cook for me. I noticed Rob kept pressing questions about how I occupied myself. Eventually, he told me that the walkie-talkie gave off nothing but white noise about 3 days in, and stopped an hour before I called him down. I told him I'd explain myself when I collected my thoughts, and that I wanted to focus on interaction instead. We ate, talked, and played music. Any sort of noise was the perfect distraction to take my mind off of things, ignoring the fact that I still couldn't see anything. By the end of the night, my vision still hadn't returned, and I began to fear for the worst. I had Rob bring me to the emergency room, where I was told to wait out another day, and to come back if I still couldn't see. I stayed up the entire night, and Rob stayed up with me. I couldn't sleep, and I was afraid to be alone. If it wasn't for the talking and music, I would have felt like I was still in the cave.
A day came and went, and my vision still hadn't returned. A day turned into three days, and then a week. I began to tell Rob about what happened down there. It's still hard to verbalize certain aspects, but I think I have most of it down. In fact, Rob's typing this out for me, as I believe it's a story Parawatch needs to hear. Rob…doesn't know what to make out of it, pinning things on a combination of hallucinations and dreams, possibly with the influence of increased exposure to a gas emission from the cave, which isn't unheard of. Being the avid Parawatch user I am, I'm not so convinced. I've heard of DMT trips and similar phenomena resulting in visuals and feelings akin to what I felt, but that doesn't explain why I feel shame. I should've knelt, Parawatch.
I thought back to Laures and Senni. Is this what happened to them? Were the results of the experiment covered up? I needed answers. Rob and I visited my grandfather, and I told him my story. By the time I finished, not a drop of color was left in his face. He told me that both Laures and Senni experienced a form of sensory loss following their experiences. Laures suffered anosmia, and Senni a complete hearing loss. As the researchers struggled to figure out why, the funding for the experiment was pulled, and the entire team was laid off. Apparently, a new team came in, and everyone was left in the dark until the banal conclusions started showing up in research papers a few years later — without any mention of the sensory loss, of course. Rumors began circulating among the old research team, about Laures and Senni eventually going comatose. My grandfather never believed them.
Whenever I'm alone anymore, even when Rob leaves for a minute, I feel guilty, like something's staring at me, and it won't look away. It's only getting worse, and quite frankly, I'm more scared than ever.
Why? Because ever since I woke up this morning, I've lost all feeling in my hands.