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.