Update

A long time ago, on the Wiki--yeah, remember that?--I posted some reference to a book that I was writing about Yaubus Redford. He was an artist on our world who ended up writing a really bizarre novel called Kuru; or, the Zombies. In my book, I was going to analyze Kuru as well as other works of Redford's I found. I'm gonna be honest, before everything, I was pretty zealous about this research. I didn't want to share it with anyone, because I wanted to be the first to write about Redford, and so I kept it on the backburner even when during the fights with Tamaron. The last few months have been spent getting this book ready for publication. Because I've had nothing else to do.

Everyone helped me with the cover art (which Derek points out is still genuinely shitty), and Garry took a nice modeling picture for the preview copy. It's nice to commemorate one's accomplishments.

It's a self-published thing, but with the help of a relative of mine, Adam Bezecny, I've been able to link it with a store that also sells the only extant edition of Kuru, plus Adam's own book on Redford, Devil Skull Takes London. You can check out the Yaubus Redford Author Spotlight here.

I tried to put everything at the lowest possible price. Accessibility to this stuff is more important to me than profits. Though a bit of rent money now and then would not go unappreciated.

Oh, how are we? Uh...well. We became roommates, renting a house together in Alberta. Don't know if we mentioned that or had it figured it by the time of last post. I'm on welfare, and Qom is looking at colleges. I keep thinking about editing the blog, as I'm sure it's something of a mess. And every now and then we see what we can do with our Gaud powers. I suppose we still have destinies or something, even after all this. At least, it's what we like to believe. It beats thinking about the job market.

I'd say things are nice.

Wrapping Up

In a week, it'll be exactly a year since A.S. started this blog. I could've waited till then, but I think fifty-one weeks is an acceptable end time. Just because I don't know where it goes from here.

Frank Jenkins met with me one last time after he got out of the hospital. I suppose he exclusively wants to be called Iron Mask now. His old life, when he was an actor on Earth-20181, is behind him. Now he's leaving again to patch holes in the Multiverse--going where he's needed. But he did leave me with a few images that he passed onto me mentally

He is not a Gaud. But he has trained himself in certain psychic arts, I guess, and that's why he and I could communicate.

The first thing he passed on was a little disturbing. Not helped by the fact that it was facilitated by DMT. I didn't take any, but I felt his trip secondhand as he shared it.

It was of a few days ago, on Earth-Alpha. We had the lasting impression that we were somewhere dark and secret. In a voiceover, he told me this was the Tomb of Ska, in Astaroth, Vermont. This had been where Edward Tamaron lost his original body. And we watched as his most recent body--Marcel's--materialized in the Tomb.

I guess maybe Ska and the Tarasque were similar creatures in some way. The same magics that kept Ska in the Tomb also immediately began to act on Tamaron. He tried to fight back, but it was no use, and he slowly began to turn to stone...

We felt his last thoughts as he froze in time. He cursed three things: 1) he cursed me for burning him with Ifrit magic; 2) he cursed the Zom, possibly to curse the fuschium for "betraying" him; and 3) he cursed the wounds Derek gave him, slicing off his wings and carving that "X" into his backside. 

And those curses broke down as he screamed them. Curse the burns, curse the Zom, curse the X. Burns, Zom, X. Burnzomix. Burnzomix.

Then we understood his destiny.

Then we slipped over a slot, to Earth-Beta. Where someone very much akin to A.S. had something horrible happen to him, in a story that hasn't been published yet. (Another splinter A.S., Frank reminded me, lived on Earth-20181, and was the director that Frank once acted for. His story hasn't been told yet either.) Earth-Beta was caught in the Syzygy between Earth-Alpha and Earth-Gamma caused by our story. The Syzygy energies leeched into the soil, and changed the world. There was a deafening pulse of power that a single universe just couldn't take. It had to split, or give birth...

Earth-Beta-2 was born.

But still the energies cascaded down, and not even this new Earth could contain it all. It split again. Earth-Beta-3 came into being, and the power still didn't stop. But it did stop with Earth-Beta-4.

There were certain symmetries that arose as a result of this Syzygy. It wasn't identical to our world. Derek and I were never born, for example. But A.S. and Jacob were. And I can't say what happened to them now. Or what happened on the other worlds. But new stories arose from our one, even as, at some point--they inevitably looked back to their beginning, and regarded us, too...

We broke off, then, and went back to just talking. Discussing the final wrap-ups. The scars--Derek has his, on his face and chest from wind guy. A.S. will always have lines all over his body. But at least the fuschium gave him his writing hand back. A bittersweet ending. He joked to me that he would've screamed if it'd been his left, but through sheer will he kept his right. Garry and I are pretty okay. Just some trauma in the head.

We're not looking forward to what comes next, when Gaudium and its God comes for us. But that will be later.

I mentioned the fuschium. Well. After getting out of the hospital, I went out to the woods, and whispered one last request to it. "I wish you would destroy yourself and leave no trace." And it did--shattering, with the shard being sucked into themselves, vanishing forever. It's better that way. Our world was never meant to have stories like this. I couldn't leave the temptation for myself and I doubt any of the others would feel differently. And I couldn't just leave it in the wild--too many assholes to chance upon it, and activate it with a stray thought. I guess it was also a fuck-you to the Shiqquwts, who brought Tamaron to our Earth in the first place.

We debated what exactly the whole Paradise Earth thing meant. Frank's theory was that Paradise Earths are worlds that are immune to big stories in some ways. I mean, yeah, we still had terrors and dramas galore. There must be some sort of "prime pattern" that establishes a routine timeline for most universes. Despite being inoculated against "big stories," we still had World Wars and Crusades and all the infinitesimal ups and downs of the lives of the billions of people who have lived all throughout our history. But there are even larger things. Crises. Alien invasions. Time travel and magic and monsters. We were supposed to never get those, until Tamaron siphoned away the energy and changed our timeline. (The Multiverse is so ridiculous that it needs barriers to stop this stuff from coming in. Mindwarping horror and unimaginable adventure is something that's passively transmitted. It takes action to keep things "normal." I don't know what to say about that.)

Presumably there are other Paradise Earths. You may live on one (though if your world's like what ours used to be, Paradise is probably little more than a mistranslation). Or maybe your fantastic new fiction hasn't happened yet.

And what's happened to us, in the wake of all this?

Well, I already said that I'm scared of what happens next. So are the others, trust me. But our bond is stronger than ever. We came out as brothers, as a family that can never be torn apart. Even if a lot of our togetherness is trembling from the nightmares this has all left us with. I don't know who to thank that I'm not alone, even if it means my loved ones suffering with me. Misery does love company, after all. But it's more than that. We always grew up together, but I feel like now we have truly "grown up" together. You'll notice we weren't the kids we were at the start of all this. In-jokes have faded. Worlds have passed away. I just hope we haven't gotten old before our time.

Maybe we need another story, to assure us that it's all going to be okay.

And the barriers separating the universes are weaker than they've ever been. So I think I have a new beginning, here, at the ending.

And I can hear a new song playing.

The Day of Last Judgment

Derek was the one who got the notice from Tamaron. He figured it was probably part of Frank's old assertion, that one day he will lead us. Out of the blue, he knew that he had gotten an email, and sure enough, there it was:

THE TIME CAVE.

WE WILL END THIS NOW.

And sure enough, we all knew it was time. All four of us loaded up. Even me. We all had a role to play--we sensed it in Gaudium.

Since I guess I'm the leader, I drove us there. I didn't and don't feel like I've led any of this. A.S. started the site, and Qom is the only one who realized his potential before this fight. I'm just the fucking token queer, and I don't feel like there's any point to me. They're trying to tell me now that I'm the center of things, just as Garry is the ground, Qom is the sword, and A.S. is the one who tells the story, but I don't ever think that's been well conveyed. Who knows what our story has lost. We've had a lot of red herrings--which almost seems like a pun given what Tamaron appropriated from Marcel--and things that are still vague, or things erased from the record by the Syzygy. This really is just the beginning. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was the one in charge of weapons when we went to confront them. To be honest, we never learned much about the Tarasque, and as such I didn't really think the weapons would do anything. But still, it was worth a shot to bring what was left of our guns--and that's a pun. I guess I was sort of praying that something would happen and we'd finally be realized entirely as Gauds. I don't who I was praying to.

Derek took us to the cave, and I helped A.S. move as well as I could. We descended into the ravine, and that was when we saw it. Or him, I suppose. Edward Tamaron, in Marcel's body. He just didn't look like Marcel anymore. You saw the picture--he had no eyes, ears, nose, or hair to speak of. Just a perpetually grinning mouth. He was taller than Marcel ever was and Marcel was a big guy. He was wearing the Abbey's robes, an extra large set, which must had cuts in the back to accommodate something I never saw in the pictures. He had wings--sickly, leathery ones, that weren't even like bat wings because bat wings could never be so ugly. It wasn't until we were close that we saw that he was even less like a person and more a tree. His feet were bare, but they weren't feet at all--they were roots, reaching down into the Earth. I at least felt Ether sucking up into him. It must have been the energy that made our Earth, Earth-Gamma, into the Paradise World. The same stuff that charged the fuschium that I brought with us.

He said he had been waiting for us.

He didn't talk anymore, though. His voice, ringing red, just sort of hissed in our minds. And I think we all felt that the Tarasque was something bestial--a physical and brutal incarnation of the Zom that created the fuschium. We'll never know why Marcel was born in a Tarasque's body, if there was a reason. But it was a creature beyond any of us, except for maybe Qom. And feeling its voice slither in our heads was doubtlessly one of the worst things about everything that's happened.

I didn't fucking know what to say. You don't look into the shiny-smooth face of some sort of demon (behind which swirls the ungodly fucking soul of a man so old he's basically a demon himself) and come up with a shitty one-liner. Not this time. The jikininki, we trounced them, it's safe to say. But I was just a guy with a knife and a handgun. And I raised said handgun, and shot the motherfucker in the face.

I'm pretty sure the bullet just vanished before it hit him. Or it did hit him, and was just sucked into him. And his smile got wider. The snake voice then burst out into this goddamn Satanic cackle.

And he raised his hand, which were not Marcel's hands now but these monster claws with long-ass fingers.

We all heard him say "bang," before a flash of white light went for my head.

I stopped it with Fire, but I already knew the elements weren't going to be enough. Still, I felt Ether in what he shot, and I knew then I had to take the Paradise energies away from him.

Through our connection--a Gaud-link--I knew what Qom was going to do. I had two of the stolen guns, and so I let the fucker have it. I saw something that was too quick to see when Derek shot him--the Tarasque body was swirling around the bullets like smoke. But in changing his body's form like this, Tamaron didn't see what Qom was doing. He ripped the earth away from him, and suddenly his vine-legs were no longer soaking up the ether.

Of course he took this opportunity to lunge at Qom. Still smiling. The same smile he doubtlessly had when he murdered Jacob. I remembered what his men did to my family, but also to me--to my skin, to my hands. And I used the last weapon I had, as Qom's burning winds dispelled him in his lunge. (I knew he was after the fuschium.) "Where the fuck's your cult?" I asked him. "Or did we kill everyone you had left?"

No.

I did. Drank their souls deep to give me even more Ether. So that when I rip the fuschium from your corpses I can leave this world instantly.

I tried to say something about how alone he was. But he only laughed at that.

I need no one.

I will be the only Enemy.

I will shred the Time King and the Emperor until all that remains is my Sorcery. And I bring down the Heavens and gut the Multiversal Architects, and rule the ruins so that none can ever oppose me.

"Like the way Yulmer Purrlzig opposed you? Or the Prince of Space? Or the O'Grady Mob, and all those children you butchered on Earth-13151518?"

And he screamed again, but in frustration more than anything else. And the Tarasque's scream blew us back. I didn't need hands to know my nose was bloody, but I felt like I had cut him just a little. What I did next was stupid.

"We know you keep killing because..."

Because why?

"...because you're still pissy that Sincodemius tricked you into murdering your own family."

And he was on Amos then. And those claws tore out his heart, his lungs, and his entrails. All the time, he was screaming so loud the rocks around us split.

But I screamed with him, as I jumped onto his back. Magic flesh feels fucking weird and tingly and shit. I had my knife and I sliced those goddamn wings right off his back. Not even ether could stop that. And I kept fucking cutting, slashing diagonals right across his non-spine in a giant X. His shriek turned to pain, and I was fucking loving it.

Derek floated into the air, and was slammed against the ground next to A.S.'s pulped remains. He was still breathing but that was still in Tamaron's plan.

WHERE'S JENKINS.

I NEED THE REST OF HIS SKIN TO JOIN HIS FACE ON THE GROUND, ROTTING.

And I was curious about that myself. My mind had been wandering even as I fought off Tamaron's smoke-form...

I saw something. A flash of a metal mask. And the words "Saaamaaa."

I started to get a good picture in my mind, but I needed a distraction. I sent my vision of said distraction to the others.

ALL OF YOU LITTLE SHITS. WASTING MY TIME ON THIS WORLD.

I WILL USE THE FUSCHIUM TO WIPE YOUR ENTIRE UNIVERSE FROM ALL EXISTENCE. TAKING TIME TO MAKE SURE THAT AS YOU WORTHLESSNESS EVAPORATES, EVERY LIVING BEING ON EARTH-GAMMA IS SLOWLY DISSECTED IN WHAT TO SEEMS TO THEM A MILLION--A BILLION--YEARS.

Derek was up again, and even with broken bones still drove his knife into Tamaron's arm. His anger was blinding him, and he was staggered. I had him in my sights again, even if I was low on ammo. But there was another one of those scream-pulses, and I was knocked aside. Qom was staggered next to me, but didn't fall down. I saw that he was crying, but he had the fuschium in his hands, and he whispered to it. He said: "I was Amos Slimechap Berkley was still alive."

And A.S. was back up again too. The next part of Qom's plan went into motion, as Qom hurled the purple crystal at A.S. He caught it. With his new hands.

Then he whispered to it also.

Something unbelievably stupid happened. A.S. triggered his stupid Gaud powers.

I guess A.S.'s Gaud self is a stupid fictional god, from one of his idiot movies. Because now he was yelling about "Manos, God of Primal Darkness." Even as his new hands were creating these glowing red energy-hands that seized the Tarasque.

I don't what else he was planning to do, because even when he transformed into Manos of Gaudium, he wasn't a match for Tamaron. He was still repelled back, against the cliff face of the ravine. The energy hands melted away, as did the crackling power--or melodrama--that the ravine was filled with in his presence. Tamaron was just a little bit further away from us now, close to that goddamn cave. Anything that "Manos" gave us in the way of hope was replaced only by Tamaron's unstoppable fucking rage.

My mind kinda vanished when I turned into Manos, so when I came back, I was being throttled against the canyon wall. I lost sight of everything as my eyes blurred. The power the fuschium gave me when I held it was gone, and my new hands lost all feeling. I realized that the smudged look my eyes saw through was tinged red, probably because I heard my skull fracture when I hit the wall. All the same--I could see the others slowly turn around, and I tried to see what they were looking at. Even with my eyes probably being filled with blood, I could tell who it was. His face--or what was left of it--was hidden behind an Iron Mask. It was Frank Jenkins.

"Guys," he said. (His voice was a little screwed up.) "Follow me in what I'm doing. Qom will brief you on the lyrics."

There was a sort of hymn in the air, then.

A hymn to trap the Tarasque.

Frank's mind was in mine, and together we sang the song of the Saaamaaa Ritual.

Around Tamaron, a magic circle began to form. Something that would bind him and prevent him from draining more Ether from our world. But also something else, because it was Ether that formed that vortex when the Prince of Space killed him and destroyed his ship when he was Krankor--and when he, as the Homunculus of Akinos, was torn apart on Earth-20181. We were building another such vortex to banish him. It was all we could do--and Frank told me it would destroy yet another one of his bodies. Perhaps in the void between the worlds, his spirit would finally die...

The last words of the Ritual were almost impossible to say. But the Heroes of Gaudium are more than human, and we realized our potential in that moment.

Yet things did not go as we intended.

The Cave behind him opened its gateway. Whether it was our misuse of magic, or Tamaron's own power, I don't know. We all sensed at once that the Syzygy was closing, and so the Multiversal gateway was opening onto the world we were joining with. Earth-Alpha.

And before we could do anything--the vortex dragged him not into the interuniversal void, but into this gateway.

There was a flash of light as the Syzygy broke, and we saw the Cave collapse. Before all went black, and the music of the hymn stopped.

The breaking of the Syzygy also shattered certain barriers over our story. Continuity, it could be said, was cracked in that instant. Because we were no longer in the Cave. We were in the hospital A.S. went to after what happened to him, and that scared me for a second. But I remembered that Tamaron destroyed the Abbey of Serpentis himself, and that we were free.

Our families were there. They had been gone such an unrealistically long time because they were held back by the Syzygy--just as many of the people of Alberta had vanished so as to not interpret our--quest? Our fiction? I don't know. A.S. was sobbing so hard that he couldn't explain his scars. His parents were almost screaming. I'm guessing they were talking about Jacob. Garry, meanwhile, was trying to balance his parents while also pulling Derek close--because no one came for Derek. As Garry babbled Derek was just staring forward, his eyes empty, and his breath shallow.

Somehow I got someone to bring me a computer. And once everything was calm again, he put this all together.

It's over.

There are some other developments, but this is getting long enough as is. It's also getting late. Maybe not on your Earth but I think the Syzygy has enough traces where this will show up on some other worlds for a time. But I'll finish it ASAP--our last testament, on this. A day that seemed like it was the last in the history of our world.

Time and Space

Derek and Garry are in town getting more supplies. A.S. is asleep. I'm not going to hide this post from them--how could I?--but...well.

In my dream, I began to understand things. About my powers. And about just how big the Multiverse is. I heard names like Ska, who I know Tamaron lost his first body to, and Tzaa, who did something horrible to A.S.'s alternate self on Earth-Beta, which we Syzygy over. And I saw the eye of Awwb-Zow'Cnaadm, who whispered to me that he is the God of Gaudium. But that's too much for me to talk about for now. I'm not sure we'll live to fulfill our Gaud-quest. In any case I don't think it's right to tease a story as big as his for now. Let it all start small. Even this has already gone beyond all of us.

Ether is a lot of things, and one of them is space. The ancients assumed that Ether composed the space between worlds, and now that in my dream I've stepped outside of Universe-Gamma, I can see that's not true. There is Diesel between the universes, and that means something to me in the future. But digging into Ether's control over space, I was able to reach outward. And I did something very important. But first I want to say what I did with time.

I wouldn't have gotten the Five Spells if it hadn't been for time. Ether let me lunge backwards into my past self and trigger my change to a Gaud early on. I just wasn't aware of it, and I respected that when I made the change from the future to begin with. Now I'm aware, and I am Rostam of Gaudium. I don't know if it was my destiny to have my powers manifest as control over the elements, but the time loop I just created is...sacred, in some way. So maybe it is what I've meant to have all along. I'm not going to reject it.

I tried to unlock the Gaud powers of everyone else, but I couldn't. I'm guessing because it's not meant for me to bypass their quests. In time, though, they'll become like me.

Once I came to these realizations, I decided to do the space-reach I mentioned.

And I loved seeing Tamaron's face--whatever of it there is--as I stole his fuschium pendant. And when I woke up, it was in my hands. That wasn't a dream. None of this was.

I stole it right at the moment that it was finished charging with the Paradise energies. Just at his moment of triumph. I defeated him. And that means he'll be after us now, in a much less game-like fashion. But I don't care because we have his power. I don't know how precisely destiny does work, but we'll stop him. This is where he dies. He'll never return to Earth-Alpha. I swear it on my life.

Everyone's waking up or returning now, so I'll stop talking in melodrama. If anyone's reading this, you know the drill. There's nothing else to say on the matter, and soon it will all be over.

Oir

All of the words I'm about to write are going to hurt my head.

Qom is passed out now from last night's battle. It was a full moon. Maybe not to you, but you may be from Earth-Alpha. Remember that our dimensions are shimmering together, creating inconsistencies. It's weird.

Argh. See what I mean?

Oir attacked us, if you couldn't tell from the title. There are only five classical elements. Plus five of us, counting Marcel. (Frank was our Tamaron, I guess. If that's not been said before.) So I think he's out of jikininki. But his pendant must almost be charged...

The battle. I should try to write that down as best as we could.

Under the full moon, Oir got bigger. His pelt was thin but it made him shine grey like a silverback gorilla. He didn't really have magic, but he was strong and quick and he could rip us apart. I'm trying to remember his words, but I don't think I could forget.

"I have drunk the fuschium balm, and worn the fuschium pelt, and urinated fuschium in a magic ring. I was at Gevaudan, Bedburg, and Bray Road. I am the vargr (?), Fenrir, Crocotta (?), and more." Derek's hands were shaking when he called him pretentious. I myself don't know how "ether" translates to "werewolf," but maybe ether just represents something beyond fire, water, earth/bile, phlegm, blood...a paradigm of something that can't be contained in binaries or even in a four-part system. Which in this case, at least for Oir's purposes, was a fusion of human and animal.

And he called himself a leader of the Abbey of Serpentis. Abbot Oir. Derek freaked the fuck out over that. Even against magic he hates shitty puns. And he charged forward, to what I knew was his death. The slash in his torso he got from the air guy wouldn't stay closed. But then a cone of wind yanked him back.

Qom stepped forward, and at once, four of the five elements were unleashed. Air shoved Oir back, against a tree; earth trapped his legs; fire burned his jaw away; and a stream of water started forcing itself into his lungs. Qom was...a monster. A worse monster, in a way, than Oir himself.

But ether strength broke the stone holding him, and his fist swung at Qom after a jaguar lunge. He made what looked like a wall of wind, and behind that, a slab of rock to stop the punch--but it broke through both and sent him back. He was out, but his ferocity was...addictive. You guys know by now that I don't violence, but--the myths we're trapped in felt stronger then. We knew this guy was the last. We weren't going to die if he was the final barrier before Tamaron. One last chance not to care about what this guy represented. Even if werewolves are the oldest monster, if that cave painting, The Sorcerer, is any indication. (Did Tamaron end up in prehistoric times? Doubtful, but chilling to think about all the same.)

I screamed something stupid about the O'Grady Mob, and shot all the bullets I had into the creature. A.S. did the same. Once we were out, Derek took out his knife again, and I was willing to break my bones beating Oir to death if I had to. If I had to do it to save my friends. If I can get personal, that's what the O'Grady Mob meant to me--even if I'm the only one calling us that.

Nothing worked. But we bought time for Qom to wake up.

And suddenly, something happened. Something impossible. We know he's been absorbing the magic of all the jikininki we've killed, but he seemed to grow like Oir did. Like he had Oir's ether powers, sent back in time. But if ether is anything from the beyond, maybe he was taking his powers from the future. I don't know.

One of Oir's own punches went through him. Qom tore his heart out, and that seemed to be something even he couldn't come back from. He died cursing us, but Qom looked down on him as he said them. And his eyes did all the talking. He became a master of magic, and that meant he could throw curses away from us.

Then he passed out. Oir did the thing that werewolves do in the movies, but in reverse. He slipped down and became a wolf. So we just threw his carcass away. No one will find it suspicious, even if he's a big one. We're all too tired to dig a fifth grave.

Don't know what's next. But Qom has started ranting in his sleep. I can hear him talk about the Saaamaaa Ritual, which we mentioned once, I believe. One of the books that was a vision into our collective futures. 

I don't know what else to say now. Well. Besides this: that I never dreamed I'd end up on the side of magic, even though I always wanted to believe in a secret world.

I can't say I look forward to what comes next. Magic is far more shadowy that I could ever have imagined. And the shadows--they aren't as fun as they were when we were kids.

That's a weak ending for this post, but as far as everything goes, I think this is just the beginning.

Dreams

I shouldn't be using the blog as a dream journal. But to be honest, it's sort of fallen to shit. All of its brightness was originally meant by Amos to show off how bright his memories were of us all growing up. Now it just seems garish and...I don't want to say ironic.

I had a dream about that canyon that Derek talked about.

In the dream, I was someone else. Another Sam. His name kinda rolled around in my mouth but now that I've woken up (I have woken up?) His Enemy was there, in that cave at the bottom of the canyon that all of Derek's alternate Slimechaps swirled around in. The King of Time. The Second Enemy of the Multiverse, wearing red robes with just void inside. (A dream version of Amos said he looked like he was from a comic book. Trust me, I don't know which one, but it also had something to do with Time.) The cave had to be a gateway to the Multiverse--a relic of something on our own Earth-Gamma.

He--the Time King--started talking to me, "even though," he said, "you've caught some of the good Doctor's emanations." Some of his words stuck to my head better than others. I remembered him saying something about "syzygy," "invasion," "Dieselworld," and "fox." Those words were heavy. (I don't know what I mean by that.)

He said that the cave was faulty in some way--the gate it offered was stuck flickering between worlds, too fast for even Tamaron to use it. Someone walking in there would be thrown to a random world, with no guarantee of an easy return. But with fuschium, impregnated with the energies of our world's status as the Paradise Earth, he could stop the flickering and choose the world he walked to. He would return to Earth-Alpha and fulfill his destiny.

The fuschium had a special significance to me. The Time King showed it to me and it was exactly as I envisioned it. I don't really know how to say this, but it was suddenly like I was wearing "magic goggles." Reality became psychedelic, almost, like when Frank used drugs to walk into Earth-Gamma. I saw that the fuschium had a place that it had been taken from, when it had been given to Tamaron by the Shiqquwts. It had been crafted by a race of beings called--shit. A.S. had a name for them. The name of that Zodiac guy.

Zom. The race was called Zom. They were like genies because they created the will-reactive fuschium. Just like Zom of the Zodiac. (Of course they turned out to be something--just like Terry was Marcel, and Marcel was the Tarasque. And now Marcel is Tamaron.) They want to help us fight Tamaron, because he's an ally of the Shiqquwts. I would assume that means that the Zom and the Shiqquwts are at war.

And the Zom started speaking to me then. Again, I can't remember everything that was said, but there was something about us four Gauds. Four Gauds to fight five jikininki.

In Japanese mythology the jikininki are hungry ghosts. But the King of Time took over to show me this next part. He took me to the diesel-scented void between worlds, which I saw at once was the astral plane, or one of them at least. Back in time, we came upon five souls suspended in space. They were members of Cyrus Sincodemius' cult, and it was Tamaron's magic from back when he was in his first body that was keeping these souls here. They were incubating in the swirling not-fluids of wherever we were.

Then, many centuries later, the souls were entangled in living bodies on our Earth.

Each of the five were aligned to different elements. Fire. Earth. Water. Air. And Ether. Four of these jikininki or jikininki-holders (like how we are not technically Gauds, but Gauds exist in our bodies) are now at rest. Their hunger is ended, thanks to us...

I realized that just before I woke up.

I'm sorry, none of this may make any sense. It may have just been a dream, but...

I kinda got chills down my spine when the last words of the dream pressed hard into my brain.

"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?"

Gremlin

Qom is being a good friend and transcribing this for me. (This is A.S. He said that he missed the feel of writing and so we all want to pitch in and give him at least a simulation of that feeling again.) Because it's a transcription, I'm going to be very brief. In any case, I don't like praising myself for my accomplishments and so I don't want to talk too much about what happened.

Gremlin attacked.

Our theory that each foe is deadlier than the last is definitely right. You'd think air isn't that bad to fight, but it is. As soon as he appeared we were ready. I was upstairs in our, uh, "home," when I say Garry and Derek take the offensive. As they always have before.

Cue sharp winds coming in. Really sharp. So sharp they slitted Derek's cheek right below the bone, and his torso beneath the ribs. I heard his screams and my blood went cold. I felt helpless like I did the last fucking three battles. So I got into position to do something, anything. (Use italics for emphasis, Qom, you asshole. I know you do it in your own posts.)

Tamaron must be aware of the fact that strangulation or drowning or any loss of air (there you go) is the most agonizing way to die. Because after slicing Derek up, he started taking away Garry's air. Garry's track record isn't good in turns of drowning. (It's true.) But Qom was up with me. And I gave him instructions on what to do.

While he got to work in drawing the guy closer to the house. Meanwhile, I got to work--as much as I could, with my stumps--at rending the rotten boards of this place. And pushing my bed close to the soon to be removed wall.

Qom got him below my room. Close to the house. I don't know how he did it exactly since the guy's ranged abilities are more obvious than the others. Maybe he was just really fucking arrogant. But in any case, my upper arms are still good enough to make the wall snap outward.

I heard Gremlin say "Huh?" as he heard the crack.

And then the bed was on him.

So that's my contribution.

Qom has air magic now. I don't know how else to say that. Comedic frankness being my thing (I think?), I guess it's appropriate.

So that's it, then! All four elements, brutally murdered by a pack of wilderness-dwelling young adults. What's next?