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?

Kappa

Maybe I should be the one to explain this.

After all, I'm apparently the one who started flexing his Gaud powers or whatever.

Kappa came after us, as one might expect. I'm sure someone's joked about this before, but Tamaron seems to be working on martial arts movie rules. Only one guy can attack at a time.

Assuming he's also going with the Avatar model (gah), his minions can move any sort of form of their assigned element. So when Garry was having lunch with me in the "living room," he started complaining to me about getting really thirsty. I went to get him one of the water jugs, and when he came back, he was sweating and gasping. He told me he'd never been so thirsty in his life. That was when his sweat started trying to kill him.

Suddenly, all the sweat flashed off his face and formed an undulating sphere of water that just hung in the air. We both stared at it for a second, before it suddenly lunged at his face. Like one of those sickness masks, it wrapped around his mouth and nose. And we knew what was happening.

Garry swatted at the sweat-blob, but it didn't go away--or if it was dispersed, moisture from the air just replaced what was lost. He started panicking--we both did. I sprinted outside...

There he was, just like all the others. Robes flowing as he stared at the house. I couldn't see his face but he was probably smiling. A.S. and Derek told me later that he had started working on them, too--why he didn't lash out at me, I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm the youngest. Or maybe Tamaron wanted him to make me alone, so he could get his sick fun out of breaking me down without any help in the world.

That made me angry.

And my anger reached into the dryness of the air. I know that doesn't make any sense, but I just the impression of my mind as a direction, gaining energies by passing through certain zones of...something. Images, ideas. My mental arrows dipped into the angry fire.

As a fireball flew towards Kappa, I felt my fingertips get singed. We both let out a yell. He shot a ray of water out of his hand to put out the fire, but his hood went down. And I saw he wasn't in fact smiling. He looked scared.

It felt good to make him afraid. And that satisfaction netted me another fireball.

I still don't know how I was doing it, but in the heat of the moment--sorry--it just all came together. I could control Ifrit's powers now. I realized that, and that gave me another idea...

I "fired" another arrow into the ground, and dug deep into the earth with my mind. I tried to imagine Golem. Just as my sweat and the water from the air around me starting drowning me, too, I managed to rip up a spike of fused dirt. He heard it tear itself free, and he turned to face it.

That's when I rammed it through his heart, stake-vampire style.

I'm told that I passed out shortly thereafter.

Since waking up, I was able to explain what had happened. (Everyone was fine, of course--the water-spell broke as soon as Kappa died.) At first, they were disinclined to believe me, until I showed them the spike in his body.

I myself wondered if these powers were just a fluke, brought on by confronting someone who was going to kill my friends.

But I pulled the earth open to bury Kappa, without touching it, and I just heated my ramen without a stove. I can make the broth in the bowl dance...

I guess wind will have to come later. Probably sooner rather than, though.

Golem

Garry was, of course, totally fucking right when he said that Tamaron wouldn't make us fight the strongest first. A guy who spits a few Bic lighter puffs and then gets taken down with a handgun in under thirty seconds? Please. I suspect Frank exaggerated some stuff in the books, but--I'm still not going to fucking underestimate the ingenuity of the guy who's supposed to be existence's First Enemy.

I woke up at the base hearing some sort of plinking sound hitting the wall. Like someone was throwing rocks at us. Well, guess fucking what? That was what was happening. And dumbfuck me didn't realize that I should be scared of that until it was too late. I opened the door all the way and stepped out onto the, uh, "front lawn." (Geddit because we haven't had a proper house since everyone was fucking killed/dismembered.) It's a little sandy out at our current place. But what's sand gonna fucking do? Reach up and form a hardened casing around your body, restricting your movement so a cultist will kill you? Because that's honestly what pretty much happened, minus the killing part. So yes. This...Golem guy, we'll call him, as Garry said, basically was telekinetically holding me in place with fucking sand. Whatever let him move the sand to begin with allowed him to squeeze it so tight around me that it was basically like goddamn diamonds.

I did manage to yell for help, and I won't make any pretense about it being a shining moment of heroism for me. To be fair, when your only backup might not even wake up in time to save you and themselves from being butchered, your voice isn't exactly the most stable thing in your life.

But Qom and Garry heard me, and were outside in a few minutes. Well, Qom was. A big rock--a boulder, honestly--flew through the air and knocked the door in, and I heard Garry go down. Qom is more spry in his seasoned youth, though, and he was able to make it up next to me. He saw what happened and for a second I thought he was abandoning me--he was going back into the house. But that drew Golem out from the darkness. (I can't say that Tamaron has particularly good taste in minion men. A bear? Really? I mean, I know that the person who moves rocks is expected to be big and bulky, but if the water guy has flow-y hair and the air guy is light on his feet, I'm going to be severely disappointed.)

Qom did return, though, and he had...a bucket of water. Well, it did work on getting the sand off of me, and then suddenly with another arm-whip he put my knife in my hand. Golem gave some sort of cry before Qom smacked him across the face with a bucket, and--I stabbed him in the chest.

I now understand why Garry's entry on "Ifrit" was so short. It does hurt to have to kill someone. And, there isn't really any honor in violence--no finesse. There wasn't a huge martial arts battle where I was jumping off buildings and whatnot. Qom broke the guy's nose with a metal bucket, and I stabbed him in the heart and he died. That was all.

All I have to say to Tamaron, then, is: you're fucking ripping off fucking Avatar: The Last Airbender. But I imagine that show never existed on Earth-13151518, because you fucking murdered everyone there. Moral of the story: don't prevent good TV shows from coming into being, because people from other universes might criticize your indirect rip-off.

...I may be slightly more upset than I'm letting on here. 

Ifrit

We fought the guy who--Frank?--said was the fire spirit. I don't really know what to say about him. I want to say he was someone from around town--a familiar face. But while he was chanting and jeering about burning us to death, we fought fire with fire and shot him in the leg. And this pulse of flame shot out, even as he was screaming. I remember shooting him in the chest, then, thinking just that he was pathetic...

I don't want to think about the fact that it was me who was doing that.

But even when I shot him, I knew that he was just a tease. I saw Tamaron's pattern of sorts in my mind.

We're going to fight elementals, aren't we? People with elemental powers. There'd be four of them, assuming we're going with the Greek thing--fire, water, air, and earth. A.S., God bless him, has already made a Fantastic Four joke. But we don't know...

I killed someone. I've killed several people now. Forgive me, Lord.

I thought he was pathetic.

Now I may have to kill three more.

I don't want to even consider the implications of the whole Marcel/Terry thing. I wish we had more information. But we all knew that Tamaron jumped into Marcel. He truly is dead now, and I'm going to spare you extra melodrama and not tell you exactly how cold I feel.

Qom reacted even worse than I did. He's acting strange now.

Ifrit is gone. Let's just call these hypothetical others Golem, Kappa, and Gremlin--earth, water, and air. 

I doubt Tamaron would send the strongest of them to us first.

You must forgive me i'M sorry. Hands very shakjsey but should be getting better sioon. From reference to handsz, no, I'M not A.S. Just using blauck to typr becausi ts very hard to see in my current state. BUt som of the People I've workerd with before aare offering to heel me, in returnn fro service. Im okay with that-0they're the goos guys.

My first mission is a giod one for yu boys. I have to steal that fusschium pendant from him and take it to you. But beFore I cAn do that yo have to do something for me. Tamaron has an armyn ow. Special Opss. You must teke out these Five operatives before I can sstand a chqnce of getting his crystal. And youll have to movw quick: if he recharges the crysttal before you get it from it him he will escape to Earth-Alpba before hthe proper time. the first minion Will come to you soon. You will now him as a Fire-Spirit.

The Old Man--ze's one of the people I'm workking for now--will prevent the First from seeing thiis post. However we cannot aid you muchh fruther, for now you must beginn your Gaud quest. If you survive you will have many great powers. If you do not

Well, I'm not going to write that. Ive grown fonnd of uou all.

I have to go heal now. Tey've made a metal mask for my injuries. Good luck too you all--we'll help where we can.

So

This is what we've come to.

Boys, we don't need to fight. I'm a changed man, these days--I am willing to let you live. I suppose that some would consider that a sign that the flesh-lairs I've taken over the years have eroded me--left tiny pieces of their original personae in my mind, even as I've mostly crowded them out. Even after all these centuries I don't know myself. But I have softened. Just as you have in the last few days, I think I've grown sick of fighting.

Initially I wasn't sure why exactly the Shiqquwts revoked the mystic charge of the fuschium pendant they gave me just before I returned to Earth-Alpha. But, in the body of my current host, I was able to determine that this Earth is a very special Earth. Maybe it's even the Earth that my former Master dreamed of, when he looked for a pure host. I think it's relatively safe for me to conclude that Earth-Gamma is in fact the Paradise Earth. A world as close to the "real life" that so many people through this Multiverse of ours imagine. Free from monsters, heroes, and villains. "Normal."

Which is why I'm confused as to how you four came into being.

As I've said, this body of mine has very particular senses and powers. (Including the ability to eventually recharge my fuschium crystal!) And I sense that you four had some rather strange and fascinating births.

As everyone knows, ghosts are the spirits left behind after we die--well, usually. (If someone were to, say, burrow into one's body, and keep it alive, but simply displace the soul within--to my knowledge, that would result in a person simply being completely destroyed. They would die an absolute death. Which is terribly funny.) But what if there were spirits that existed before we were born? Emissaries from the Spirit World, who entered the body before birth, rather than leaving it after death? Some say these inverse ghosts do exist, and they give fantastic powers to those that they enter. I've done some etymological work and found out that the earliest definition of "ghost" simply means "rage." Isn't that interesting? I suppose, then, that inverse ghosts would be...happy? And the Latin word for "joy" is Gaudium. Let's call these spirits--and by default, those who possess them--Gauds. Remarkably similar to the word gods, of course--and I truly believe, perhaps against my better judgment, that Gauds may someday become young gods. I've seen these entities in action through scrying before. Earth-Delta's Amos Berkley, the oft-referred "Manos," was a Gaud, and he was responsible for quite a bit of havoc.

I think you four must be Gauds, to have lived this long in such incredible circumstances.

Why am I telling you all this? Well. I figured I should give you a headstart. A fighting chance. Because let's face it--you may be the "New O'Grady Mob," but you don't exactly measure up to the Old one. And I do like myself a challenge. After 500+ years of existence (I think that's right), my lives have gotten a little boring. I should stay in practice when you and I go to Earth-Alpha and take over the Multiverse. I hope you don't mind if I take all the credit when that happens, though. I am the First Enemy, after all!

And the body I have now is not one of a Gaud. Trust me, I respect myself a lot more than that.

What I have is the body of a sort of God of Monsters. One intrinsically bound up in your childhoods--in a couple of ways. After all, why do you think I'm typing in Marcel's color? It's not just because I like the sight of blood.

Of course, Marcel Vecchio isn't my only new name. If you feel nostalgic, you can also call me Terry. We're one and the same.

The War

We've gotten decently used to fighting in the last few days.

I think deep down all of us knew that we would have to fight like this someday. We grew up with the stories of heroes, and at least A.S. and Garry believed that we'd slowly start to fit the mold. So now, we're taking handguns stolen from the shop in town and using them to kill--who exactly? Townspeople we've known all our lives? Imports from other Earths? (Probably Earth-13151518, since that was where Tamaron was before. He could have kept a few people alive from the nuclear waste and whatnot. Unless they're mutants under those robes.)

We have a couple of cars collected. Don't worry--we've only taken them from the cultists. Guns are more understandable to steal, because we're not fans of them. If there were other ways to fight them we would take them.

Everyone in town seems to be gone. I know there was a curfew put down, but there are never any people caught in the crossfire. The police haven't tried to take anyone on either side. But given the encounter in the hospital--I think we may have cut down the town's police force. I don't know how I feel about that.

We're currently camped out at an abandoned gas station. I don't care if they know where we are now. At this point, honestly, we're getting sort of heated. I think we want Tamaron himself to engage us directly. Like we can just shoot him or something. Or we have a death wish. I don't know.

Explanation

I know what you're all thinking. What I did was unspeakably wrong. I should not have resorted to such open violence.

But these people have killed our families. They have maimed Amos, and they were perfectly okay with butchering him in his hospital bed. They murdered Marcel and Frank. They will stop at nothing to hunt down and kill us and all of our allies. We know that Edward Tamaron is still alive, and if it somehow enabled him to accomplish his goals he would disembowel and eat a baby.

I would not have done that if I had not completely confirmed that these guys were Abbey members. We have talked and agreed--I will never do that again. But I felt I needed to send a warning to Tamaron. Satan knows he's sent enough to us. Let's see how he reacts when he takes a loss.

Vengeance is never the answer. War is never the answer. But I will not sit idly by and watch my friends be executed. So I'm going to deliberately give the wrong answer, and I don't want anyone out there to admire me for it. Seriously. The four of us are about to become killers.

We discussed it, and--the four of us have a new banner to rally under. A.S. is the brains (the "crippled genius," he calls himself), and we're his three hands in a street war against the Abbey of Serpentis.

Call us the motherfucking New O'Grady Mob. Garry's name.

Listen to this.

"Police were called to the scene of an unusual crime in Alberta today when the seven owners of the Laundromat with No Name, a long-established business, were found brutally slain in front of the ruins of their store. The wreckage of a white automobile was found having been driven through the glass storefront, and at least two of the Laundromat owners were consequently pinned under the car.

"The remaining five were then shot to death at close range by a handgun, presumably wielded by the driver. The police have issued a comment saying that attempts to track the killer based on the bullets recovered from the victims' bodies have been unsuccessful. They advise Alberta citizens to stay in their homes for the duration of the emergency.

"Curiously, the seven owners were found clad in black robes of a religious kind. Currently it is believed that the killer placed the victims in these robes, though there are several contradictions to the possibility of such an act."

I saw the crime scene. They were right. The killers laid where they fell after being gunned down, and the guys under the car already had their robes on.

Goddamnit, Derek.

The Chase

The last nine days have been...well. There aren't a lot of words that are good at describing it. At least I can't really find any. That's why Qom and Garry are going to help me write this post. They're here with me now, and we have A.S. He's alive--barely. And we don't have Marcel, leading more weight to the idea that he's...well. Anyway.

Now when I say that the other three are with me here, you'll note I'm not saying where "here" is. That's for reasons I'll get to in a moment. Alberta is not safe anymore. If you've seen this--regardless of what Earth in this "Syzygy" you're from--and you're on our side, please don't come to help us. There's nothing you can do.

I should just start. Garry decided it would be nice if the three of us went somewhere to eat, in Alexandria. I wanted to go shopping (yes, I am a homosexual male who enjoys shopping) too, as shitty as that makes me come across as. I may have just said I had that desire to make things seem like they were before. Of course, now that the others are literally reading this as I write it, I don't know why I'm being all secretive and mask-y. We were shortly outside the town limits when Qom noticed something off the side of the road.

It's still snowy out here, even if it is warming up a little. But I noticed something off the side of the road that was, while pale, a different color than the rest of the snow. I told Garry to slow down and we saw it was a body.

I guess we've all sort of been desensitized already to this stuff. Once you find out your friend's face was cut off and used as headgear, finding a dead body off the side of the road only makes your throat tighten a little--not enough to give you a neck-ache. But the body wasn't dead. What's more, it was A.S.

Like Derek said, the guys are watching me type this, so I'm not going to try to hide what they already remember, that I screamed. I think it was because I did really think he was dead. I mean, we'd all taken it for granted that he was, but seeing the state he was in, I just...didn't want to think about what they put him through. I still don't.

There were these red lines over his body and face, like strips of licorice. Mixed in with these were these huge blotchy bruises, bruises put over bruises. But he was still deathly pale. His skin was cold when Garry and Derek picked him up, and he'd probably been in the snow for a few hours. He was naked, I should say, which instantly put a lot of images in my mind that--

I'm just glad A.S. did tell us what happened when he came to. As weird as that sounds.

And they took his hands.

They took his hands, as in cut them off. There were burnt stumps where they should have been, which seemed to be an attempt to cauterize his wounds. We were told, upon getting him to the hospital, that this attempt may have worked, but we're keeping an eye on everything because of what did happen in the hospital. The doctors treating him were able to ensure he was stabilized, and after awhile they even managed to wake him up.

Over the course of a few sessions of consciousness he was able to tell us what had in fact taken place. In retrospect, having the nursing staff around was a bad idea, because they were probably the reasons why the events of later that night took place--just because we mentioned that we also had the password to this blog. Plus it explains why they were so goddamn ready to say that A.S. was hallucinating. I can't believe none of us thought it was weird that none of them wanted to go to the cops.

On the night that he disappeared, the Abbey of Serpentis broke into A.S.'s house. He figured that they considered him the easiest target since he was always alone. We've been sharing houses on and off throughout these last few months, but A.S. was in fact by himself at his parents' house on that night. They kidnapped him, actually using chloroform, and blindfolded him like they were taking him to the damn Batcave. But it was effective. He doesn't know where Tamaron is hiding now, or if the person interviewing him really was Tamaron. He was wearing a hood and had a different voice but if it's him in a new body--that makes sense. (Though why the hood?)

They didn't even interrogate him. They just starting hurting him, with the hooded "Master" giving instructions on what they should do. They started by binding him to a chair not with rope, but with barbed wire--all around his body. That's where the cuts came from. And they beat him, bringing in a big guy named Oir to do it. (Why is that name familiar?) At one point A.S. asked if they were going to question him, but in response the Master merely suggested that Oir cut out his tongue. He didn't but A.S. cynically wondered why they didn't.

They starved him over those days, but kept him alive almost absentmindedly with a little bread now then. They mostly just beat him. A.S. is asking me to say that he's just happy he's weak, because it enabled him to pass out often. That's the only thing he's said about the experience aside from a flat description and obviously we're not going to press him further.

On that last day--the day where we found him--they decided that they were going to finally kick him out in the cold and leave him to die. But, in the words of the Master, they didn't want to leave him with the ability to resist any further. And so Oir took an axe, and separated A.S. from his hands.

They burned the wounds closed, as we've said, and then took him on another ride. He'd been naked for a few days now, and he figured they were going to throw him outside to freeze, like what really happened. But that was his last thought before he passed out. He woke up in the hospital with us next to him. Like you can probably guess he couldn't talk for awhile. All of the pain that he'd built up just sort of exploded from him over the course of a half hour. It was one of the painful things I've had to watch. The number one worst thing was watching him after what happened to Jacob.

After he told us everything we told him to rest. And we weren't going to leave that room even if they called the police on us. The nurses were very insistent at first that only family members could stay, to which we replied we all were family. One of them made a crack at me, saying something about having to be the adopted one, but I was too tired to lose my shit. I want to say that in the course of the debate Derek threatened to kill people if he wasn't allowed to stay, and even Garry stood by that. In any case, we spent the night watching as A.S. uneasily slept.

If we hadn't, they would have killed him.

That brings us to why Derek offered to type up my parts for me. I myself had started to nod off as it got later in the night. But Garry was fully awake. And so when the figures in hoods began to walk into the room, an angry scream jolted me awake.

That same scream made the Serpentis guys charge for A.S. They had knives and given their numbers they must have been dispatched to kill all of us, not just A.S. They really had guessed wrong when they figured that A.S. had been the only one who could access the blog. (Which really means that they haven't been checking it lately. But I completely doubt we have that liberty now.) We all lunged up, and, as a reflex, starting struggling with the hooded figures. There were three of them at first, after Garry and I took out two we saw there were more. I shouted for Derek to get A.S. out of here. Garry managed to hit the third guy in the stomach, which dropped him. But the door was blocked now, and we could all see it.

So Derek did a thing I'll always praise him for, which is odd given the nature of what he did. He took A.S.--a sick, injured torture victim--and jumped out of the hospital window with him.

But they both made it, and miraculously, they made it without Derek breaking or twisting anything. He's telling me now it's because of that incident where his sister shoved him into that crevice--he's really good at heights.

Garry and I screamed for Derek to run, but we didn't need to. He took off into the night, while we tried to follow him.

We were a lot more cautious than Mr. Fuller, of course. We edged out onto the ledge beyond the window and tried to climb down from there. Inside, I heard the cultists say that they were going to go down the usual route and try to cut us off. We gained a small head-start due to not getting off on the ground floor. We were about three floors up, it should be said, so we just went down one and got off from there. As soon as we landed I took out my phone and called the police. That would turn out to be a mistake.

The cop on the other end told us to head to a certain crossroads and hide behind some of the bushes there. As soon as I heard that, I called Derek and told him to do likewise. So we were all reunited. A.S. had woken up through part of this, and Derek had explained as best as he could.

But when the cops--two of them--did show up...

They took out their guns. And aimed them right at me.

I realized that it probably wasn't because I'm Iranian. They weren't wearing badges or IDs of any kind, and had sunglasses on at night. These sunglasses basically took the place of their robes.

And that's how I got shot in the arm. If I hadn't given another scream and flinched, it would have been in the heart.

And so that's how we figured out not to trust anyone in Alberta or otherwise.

We did still manage to get away, though. And again, we're not saying where. But I can assure you we are safe, and Garry's gun knowledge fortunately extends to bullet wounds. I am in hideous pain, but I am not dead. So A.S. and I are in a similar situation. It'll be some time before we're able to seriously move again. We need to think of a strategy. Garry's joked about forming the New O'Grady Mob--you know (unless you're from Earth-Alpha), the Mob run by Gregory O'Grady in The Life of Mocata. They fought against Tamaron and so it makes sense that he'd joke about us being in a similar outfit. 

I guess I'm not laughing now, though.

I have taken the liberty of contacting our families and having them get the fuck out of town. Of course, for all we know, they may be Abbey members too, but who can really say. I can only say what I have said, because I myself don't have a family. Joy.

There was another reason why I didn't contribute much to this post. It's because I'm literally fucking shaking right now. A lot from fear, yeah, but also a lot from...rage. I don't have words that can properly express how I feel little else aside from this soulless animal hatred. I want to just go outside and scream and scream, but of course that means they'll fucking find us.

Hey, Tamaron? If that is you, that is to say, and not a coward in a hood pretending to be you. 

We're still alive, too.

And we're going to slit. You. Open.

I don't know about these others, but you've hurt one of my best--my only--friends in the entire world. And I promise you--in what's coming, I will fight to the death if I have to.

Please

Amos is missing.

We and the police have been searching for three days. The police seem particularly disinterested despite the fact that, y'know, his brother was fucking MURDERED not that long ago. No word from his parents. I don't blame them. I don't know what we can tell them.

Until his possible return, I am now the de facto blog manager. As if there's much to fucking update given that all of our friends are dead.

Garry, Qom, and I basically live together now. We've taken to sleeping in shifts. We don't know who might go missing next.

...I don't believe in a God and I don't care what God your word goes out to, but if you believe in something--pray for us.

What to Do

So try as I might--I can't take down that image. I am so sorry.

We have no leads. No idea where Marcel is. He's probably dead, like Frank, and. We just have to deal with that. In our way.

I wish our way was one of revenge but without leads I don't know what we're supposed to do.

I'm so fucking useless. We all are, but I am in particular, being the youngest.

I don't expect forgiveness from Frank. Or Marcel. Or myself, also. As if I can think about myself.

We may be done.

Happy New Year.