I stared up at the magazine cut out of a Maxim model that was crudely pasted on the underside of the top bunk. Her pert breast shimmied ever so slightly as Pete tossed and turned above.
She was platinum blonde with legs long enough to wrap around me twice. Or so the camera angle made it seem. I felt a stirring below, that yearning for a woman’s touch… which I hadn’t felt in six years, three months, and eleven days.
I rolled to my side, stifling it. It was the wrong time to seek out an orgasm, and I knew after the release I’d just spiral into self-loathing anyway. I focused on a crack in the cinder block until my eyelids became heavy.
Static pushed the thought of women from my mind as I slipped into sleep. The smell of cigars and oil flitted through my mind in a memory. My dad’s repair shop. The one I was meant to take over, before the arrest…
------
“Aaaarrgghh!”
A cry echoing from somewhere deep within the prison startled me awake. My heart thundered in my chest like a rabbit thrashing against its cage.
I rolled over to see Pete crouching low, his face pressed against the bars.
“What’s going on?” I croaked.
“They’re taking Benny.” He whispered.
“Fuck, really?” I pulled myself to the top corner of my mattress, just enough to peer around the edge of the bars.
Two guards wrestled the young latino onto a gurney as a man in a lab coat watched from a distance. He fought against them but it was futile. Once the straps were locked in he screamed once more, pleading for help.
Dozens of eyes watched from dim lit cells, none of which stirring to offer assistance in the slightest. We knew there was no helping him. We knew what happened next…
His cries were muffled as the doctor jammed a syringe into the base of his neck. Benny’s muscles tensed and pulsed in the fit of a seizure, but then lay still. The cell block was silent once more as they wheeled him down the hall and into the catacombs.
I did a cross over myself but didn’t bother to pray. Once they took them, they never came back.
“A damn shame…” I muttered.
“Yeah, he was a good kid…” Pete stood and leapt back onto the top bunk.
A fire burned in my chest. I wanted to say something. To cry out about the injustice of what was happening to us. That committing a crime shouldn’t damn a man to whatever terrible fate they had instore for us below three feet of steel and a quarter mile of dirt.
But I didn’t… What good could it do? Other than drawing attention to me in a very negative way.
Once they took you to the lab, you were never seen again.
All you could do was hope that your number was never called, and that you got out of here before they visited your cell late into the night.
—-----
87…88…89…90…
My chest was on fire as sweat dripped from the tip of my nose. I couldn’t go back to sleep last night. Kept thinking about Benny.
91…92…93…
So began the push-ups. It was the only way to clear my head.
94…95…96…
My therapy.
97…98…99…100.
I rolled to my back, out of breath.
Three years, six months and change.
So much time left to go.
Benny had only been here for a little over a year. It made no sense…
None of us could figure out exactly why they took who they took. There seemed to be no method to the madness.
Just a couple weeks ago they took old man Tom Finch. He’d been here longer than any of us. A lifer on the account of premeditated murder back in the 70s. But they didn’t come for him until he’d served most of his adult life behind bars.
The red beacon suddenly swirled above. A buzzing sound hummed as the cell doors clicked and slid open.
Breakfast.
—----
I pulled my tray along the bar to be loaded with oats, powdered eggs and bread.
Meager rations.
I grabbed a small carton of milk and made my way over to sit with Pete. He was already nibbling on his toast while perusing a crossword puzzle.
We exchanged nods and I went to devouring the entirety of my plate.
Calories build muscle after all.
Which was something Pete had no interest in. He was a bookworm through and through. Rail thin too. When we’d met, I’d assumed it was from the drug problem he’d had on the outside, which ultimately landed him in incarceration. But come to find out it was just his metabolism and general lack of appetite.
“John…” He whispered.
I looked up from my feast.
He was looking to the corner of the cafeteria and I followed his gaze to see two men in lab coats surveying the crowd.
I grunted and squeezed the handle of my fork until my knuckles went white. The impulse of burying it into their throats was almost overwhelming.
“Their activity has been ramping up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been seeing them much more frequently as of late. They must be close to a breakthrough.”
“Breakthrough of what?” I furrowed my brow.
“Who knows? Whatever it is they are doing down there. They’ve been taking us more often as well.”
Pete sighed at the twist of confusion on my face.
“Think about it… Benny last night, then Tom two weeks before that. Then Eric ten days before that, and Deonte maybe three weeks prior. It’s never been that close together. Until recently, they only came perhaps once every other month. Sometimes only once a season.”
Shit… he was right. I hadn’t realized it before.
“So what does that mean?” I asked, shoving another hunk of egg into my mouth.
“I have no idea. But I’d say our odds of survival have been reduced dramatically.”
—-----
Pete might as well have been an oracle, peering into our grim and desolate future.
Over the next several months we started seeing the lab coats weekly. Sometimes even more often than that.
The prison yard felt empty. Sure there were still plenty of us left, but our population had been noticeably trimmed. One gang in particular only had two members left, which didn’t bode well for them. The others slowly circled them like sharks. I had no affiliation with any of them and kept to myself. But still, I could see their fate a mile away.
Although, despite the business as usual dog eat dog atmosphere, there was an undercurrent of fear rippling through the general pop. You could smell it, like a scent of decay and desperation. Hard faces that had once promised violence, now almost flinched around every corner and jumped at each shadow.
The energy of a couple of hundred men that felt like an animal backed into a corner was palpable.
But what could we do?
I didn’t know but I sure wish someone would tell me… I threw myself into my workouts and Pete hardly ever looked up from a book. Escapism was our only reprieve.
I went to bed with a prayer on my lips, hoping I wouldn’t hear those iron bars moving in the late hours of the night.
—-----
A loud clanking followed by footsteps pulled me from sleep.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut hoping it was the cell next to mine.
But it wasn’t…
Three guards hovered behind a fourth that was unlocking our cell. The bars clicked and began to slide open.
I jumped to my feet and backed up against the wall. I pulled my fists up into a boxing stance, I wasn’t going to go without a fight. My muscles tensed and flexed like coiled steel.
“In the corner inmate! We’re here for your cellmate.” A short and stocky corrections officer barked with his hand gripping the baton at his waist.
Pete squirmed into a ball at the corner of his mat and looked at me with wide, pleading eyes.
I put my face in the opposite corner as instructed. A mixture of fear and relief roiled in my gut, and I hated myself for it. It made me feel like a coward.
“No, no, no, no, no!” I heard Pete squeal from behind as guards flooded the cell.
I peaked over my shoulder and watched as they pried him from the top bunk. Pete tried to resist, but there was nothing to him. A bag of bones that they easily wrestled down.
That same fire ignited in my chest. Anger washed over me, cleansing away the cowardice. For God’s sake, he was my only friend.
All I could see was red.
I spun around bringing the back of my fist across a guard’s face, shattering the bridge of his nose. Blood spurted from it as he dropped Pete’s legs.
With a giant step forward I brought an uppercut into the portly officer’s abdomen, dropping him like a ton of bricks.
I shoved a third into the corner, pinning him there as I screamed for Pete to run. He scampered out the opening and the last thing I heard were his footfalls as a baton smashed across the back of my skull. Everything went black before I even hit the ground.
—-----
I spent a month in solitary.
The room was so small it should have been inhumane to house a human being inside of it.
Still… I made the best of it with dips, pushups and situps. Countless reps of them. It was all I could do.
Some mornings I’d wake up with horrible migraines. I assumed it was a slight concussion from the impact of the baton.
I only hoped Pete could have somehow made it out. But somewhere deep down I knew that would have been impossible. Hopefully he at least gave them some hell before they took him below.
I stopped praying before bed. It didn’t seem like it did any good.
If there was a God, he didn’t exist inside these walls.
We were abandoned.
The unheard.
—-------
When I finally got back to my cell it had been emptied of everything. Pete’s books, artwork from his niece and even my Maxim cutout.
Just like he’d never existed. My heart sunk at the sight.
Later that day I’d learned from others that he had been captured just moments after escaping the cell.
But our actions weren’t wasted in vain.
We were the first to fight back against the abduction and it sparked something in the others.
They started talks of an uprising a few weeks back. A prison riot.
They even had a guard on the inside. C.O. Matthews. He was a very religious man and was just as horrified by what was happening as we were and had been looking for a way to help.
“It’s going down tonight John, just before lights out. Be ready.” Jerry whispered at the picnic table.
I gave a nod that I understood and headed off for my daily jog around the courts.
It wasn’t about getting out. Getting free. That wasn’t going to happen. It was about sending a message.
I let my mind go blank, filling with static as I enjoyed what could be my last day outside.
—------
The beacon swirled overhead in the common area.
“Inmates to their cells. Lights out.” The intercom buzzed.
There were over fifty men in cell block B, and not a single one of us moved.
The voice on the intercom repeated himself angrily as guards began to shuffle in closer. Nods passed like dominoes from one inmate to the next. We were ready.
“Get to your cell inmate.” a guard growled as he clamped his hands down on my shoulders.
I threw an elbow behind me into his groin, he howled in pain as he hit the floor. The other inmates sprung to their feet and flew off from their leaning places to join in the brawl.
Fists, feet and batons flew wildly across the cell block as we engaged in war with the uniformed officers.
I grappled with one until I was able to submit him in a choke until he went limp in my arms.
I stomped another in the face, spilling blood and brains on the concrete floor.
It had looked like we were winning until they sent the special response team in. We formed a line, many of us battered and bloody, in front of the row of riot shields.
We waited for their charge for what felt like an eternity.
But suddenly they backed out from where they’d come and slid the cell block doors closed.
What the hell…
The red beacon swirled once again overhead as a clicking sounded out behind us.
The rear entrance that the lab coats had always used swung open. I spun around to see…
“Mary, mother of God.” I gasped.
It was Pete…
But there was something horribly wrong with him.
His skin clung loosely to his body and had a terrible jaundice looking hue to it. His eyes almost seemed to glow and his hands… they were impossibly large like contorted branches.
I held my hand up to my mouth in disbelief.
A scientist stepped out from behind him.
“As you can see, we have a few kinks left to iron out, but we are making great progress. Would you all care to see what he can do?” He looked into each of our eyes inquisitively.
“If you don’t, head back to your cells now. You have ten seconds and then I shall release him.”
It was so silent you could hear a pin drop. But a violent and hungry energy filled the room, emanating from what used to be my friend.
Suddenly, over half the remaining inmates bolted for their cells out of fear. Not that I could blame them, my knees wobbled and threatened to buckle just at the sight of him.
But I stood my ground, as did a handful of others.
“Very well then. Specimen 3-1-0, engage.”
A growl reverberated through the cell block.
“Everyone rush him at once! It’s our only shot.” I hollered.
And we did, but it didn’t matter. It happened so fast. It was over before I could even comprehend it.
He moved like an animal, picking each of us apart almost in unison.
I lay on my back, unable to feel my legs as I watched Jerry be disemboweled. He was trying to shove his intestines back inside the tear in his abdomen before the creature came back to finish him off.
I did a cross over myself but didn’t bother to pray.
As Pete stood over me, with dead eyes, I knew there was no God.
He didn’t exist inside these walls.
We were abandoned.
The unheard.

Hello fellow 'Scapers,
Just got back in to flipping, which went OK for the first day. Made a quick 5m with 230m cash. However, I would like to invest in some item(s) to easy off and not pay much attention to my main while I play my iron. I figured these items would be good:

• smouldering stone (foresty update, everyone wants to go chopchop for the beaver pet?)
• blood runes (they adressed packs and something for the Scythe while thinking of the economy)
• Some items for DT2 release, I however have no clue what. Ancient staffs?

Please feel free to respond with your opinion about these items. If you have any more suggestions I'm all ears.

Hii! I’m not sure if I have celiac but I feel like I very well could. Since I was young I suffered with issues with eating. Around 12 I would throw up after everything I ate and was always very Ill. My doctor did a bunch of bloodwork and stool samples around that age and found everything normal. I was prescribed anti nausea medication that I became very reliant on. (It didn’t really work but I was young and convinced myself it did.) i was only able to eat small amounts of food. As I got older these symptoms continued. I had diarrhea and constipation, bloating and really bad acid reflux. I went to a gastro when I found blood in my stool and I had a colonoscopy. They found a bunch of hemorrhoids and told me I had ibs. My symptoms have been worse lately. I have been tested for autoimmune conditions due to these symptoms and everything came back normal the first go around besides my ANA and ESR. They thought nothing of it and told me I had fibromyalgia. I began eating nothing but pretzels, crackers and fruit. This seemed to make everything so much worse. And that never made sense to me. I was thinking bland foods should help. But I have never been more bloated in my life. By the end of my day I look 6 months pregnant. I am burping up food and I’m extremely uncomfortable. My latest symptom is muscle pain and pain in my joints. I thought I might have had some type of arthritis but put everything together and thought this could be celiac. I went to my gastroenterologist and he told me black people don’t usually test positive for celiac with a blood test. He told me to go gluten free and check back in after a few months if symptoms are better or stay the same. I requested a endoscopy and he said it’s not needed currently just follow the gluten free diet. It’s been very difficult not knowing what’s going on. And I feel as though I am being turned away because I am a black person. Can anyone tell me if these symptoms sound like celiac. Symptoms include
Lactose intolerant Burping Gas Painful bloating Upper belly bloating Brain fog Orange tinted stool Fatty stool Diarrhea Constipation Tingling hands Joint pain Muscle pain Nausea Burning feeling in joints Iron deficiency Ferritin very low Dizzy/vertigo Fatigue Headaches Eczema Random itchy skin Mouth sores Anxiety Loss of appetite

I was Having a dream about Ethan and we were care free running and laughing, joking and it felt so real. I woke to my 5 year old yelling from the hallway "mom Ethans here!!" The confusion of sleep slowly lifting as my mind processed and the reality slamming back into me with the absolute weight of the world as I realize the light in the hall is just flickering again. I don't say much about this, and I haven't because there are no words and nobody wants to hear it. But I do want to get into it a bit on a different level. We look at people and think they look like they have these perfect lives, they look happy. You don't see the problems just under the surface. I had an older gentleman at the gas station hold the door for me- he had to have been about 80. His face a map of where he had been, kind eyes that smiled with his mouth. I'm sure I looked shell shocked, a blank expression on my face, in a daze and there was no way he had of realizing I had just held my dead son in my arms and seen his brains through the top of his head and his chest loosely stitched together. I'd had to sign a waiver to see him, but I had to. My brother had asked to go look first and asked me to not go myself if he thought it was too bad. I let him go in first and heard him beg me please don't go when he walked back in the room. A marine war vet who I'm sure had seen worse, yet his face looked pale, his lips pressed tightly together and his eyebrows were furrowed together and his eyes wouldnt quite meet mine as he came out imploring me no, "Ethan would not want you to remember him like this please, dont go in. Just trust me." I asked my brother if it was bad- was his face gone? Thinking about a 45 hollow point entering someone's head and just decimating it. He shook his head and said his face was ok. I remember needing to see Ethan, it still wasnt really real to me- i mean maybe they had a mistaken identity or he wasnt really dead or it was all a sick prank. I just had to see and nothing would have stopped me from walking in the room and actually seeing it was him. It was finally my turn. When you are ready i was told. I thought to myself, when would i ever be ready? Who wakes up and says they are ready to see the little boy that they rocked to sleep, that they watched take their first steps, say their first words, smile for the first time, who could be ready to see them dead. I was not entirely sure what i was about to see. I started to walk through the door and he was there on the other side of the empty room. The room was bigger then the one they gave you at other viewings and he was against the opposite wall laying on a gurney with a blood drop splattered sheet covering him up to his chin. I think of it and the feelings come rushing back to me. The way my knees almost buckled and the way I felt dizzy with bile coming up in the back of my throat. The way I could only choke out the words "oh, bubba.. what did you do?" As i felt the oxygen suddenly sucked out of my body. The room suddenly hot, the air too thin the silence so loud you could hear it. I walked over to him reaching out to smooth his hair off of his face. His head seemed oddly misshapen and his eyes were sunk into his head. I remember hearing a sound that sounded like a hurt animal as i stared down, into the sight that greets me now everytime I close my eyes. vaguely being aware that I was making the sound and willing it to stop. Then I just felt overwhelmed knowing that absolutely nothing I could say or do, could get him to stand up and smile at me. That I was helpless and this was definitely my child. There was no mistake. I could see the top of his skull was gone and tried not to look at the gore where the top of his head was missing. I saw bone and brains yet, I didn't feel grossed out as I touched him. Just helpless. This was a booboo I could not slap a bandaid on. I flashed back to a few days before he died when he had come to work with me and cut his finger and i teased him as i put a bandaid on my brave little guy at the same time i had been grossed out and couldnt look at the scratch. He had laughed and looked at me semi amused and semi appalled. I walked around searching and not seeing the entry wound on him so I when a mortuary employee came to check in on me i asked her if she knew. she knew right where it was and reached out and turned his head and I was honestly kind of shocked because I thought dead people were always hard after rigor mortise set in- I'd touched dead people before but never tried to move them. His head turned with kind of a rubbery, heavy, unnatural look and there it was. Smaller then the hickey next to it he had had that last day I saw him. The size of the tip of my pinkie and pretty anticlimactic to what I'd thought it would be. Just a tiny almost bruised looking dot- having done less damage at the entry site then the exit. Pulling the sheet down a bit and seeing him loosely stitched across his chest and seeing the image of sewing a chicken breast back together when cooking (just add the jalapeños and cream cheese and cranberries and stitch it closed then bake at 350).... The rest of the visit is really between me, him and God. But back to the guy at the gas station.. who while well meaning, told me smile, it's not that bad. And it's funny because I in no way, feel that I am alone. I know so many of us have had moments that just rocked their universes. So many of us have had moments whether it be personally, or while at war, that just broke us. Yet, on the surface looking people would never know. This stranger just trying in his way to spread happiness had no idea that yes, it was that bad. For me today, yes it was that bad and worse. It's been several months, but my suffering didn't end there. I still had to watch the news reports read the comments of strangers opinions that didnt know me, didnt care if his family read their judgements, still had to field phone calls from the detectives, the Investigators. Still had to watch the video of my son dying (obsessively over and over trying to find a clue). I still had to receive his clothing he wore (and im slowly working on opening each of the 27 bags of evidence i was given), read reports and cremate him and make his urn, go to the scene where he died that was poorly cleaned up with chunks of blood and flesh strewn around (in a very public spot so that people were walking and stepping unknowingly on chunks of him that had been missed , read the autopsy report where it described cutting out his tongue and calling after hours to the coroner for about the 25th time, crying and questioning.. for the love of God, why? And choking back rage- how? How did you get it out? Did you give it back? Doing full on obsessive research learning our eyes turn black shortly after we die, watching cremation videos and staring at the clock as he was being burned and mashed up and then trying to process it all. Past that the dreams. I dont dream often that i remember, but the dreams lately are frequent and vivid. But on the flip side I have not had one day off to grieve. Not one full day of help with the kids to process. Not one full day of my phone not ringing for work or not having to make dinner and take care of 4 smaller kids who are counting on me. Honestly, things are compounding and the more time goes by, the further I am withdrawing and shutting down. The ability to deal with small stressors and something as simple as my phone ringing is throwing me back to the beginning where the voice on the other end started this nightmare with "ethans dead" . Logically I know that's not the case but I hear messages beep across, I hear it ring and anxiety and dread fill me and I just can't look. Nothing can force me to look. But it's funny how we have to be OK. NO one knows or wants to hear because it's too much, or they don't understand or it's been a week, a month... aren't you better yet? I see other people out there and know they've dealt with the same, and it changes you. You WANT to be OK. You would trade your life to have that particular situation not have happened. And I do. I want to be OK. I want to be the person people think I am. I want to be able to run my business or answer my phone but I can't be. I'll never be again and the dreams, nightmares and that hope as I wake up that it's not real, that will never fade. In some western cultures, after a death they will wear a black arm and to signify they are in mourning. I almost think it would be easier if we did that here. Then, maybe people would not be so quick to judge. You never should assume that just because someone looks normal that there is not a whole lot of trauma boiling up, I want to apologize to all my clients who haven't been able to make it through, that I haven't communicated well with and that don't or can't understand. This isn't a choice. This isn't what I want. This is what is pushed upon me and no words can change the fact that I am Stilll tired and confused and shocked at the loss of my son, and I am trying to be whole, I am trying to put on a smile and answer my phone and be the business people need but is it ever OK to be not ok? The answer I'm seeming to get is not during peak season its not! I'm processing kind of a lot and granted, I obviously need to work to pay my bills so am grateful for the work, on the flip side getting screamed at from a lady that our mow guy is a day late because it rained or the crew is not at their house we had said wed be there in the afternoon and its now 3:15, that compounds into me just staring blankly at the phone as it rings wondering how I can keep running a business if these small stressors are so debilitating right now, thinking of the past few years that my son worked for me as I realize I'm short staffed and how I started this company because of him. With him wanting to earn money so we shoveled together then he had people wanting weeding while he was at school so I jumped in and it went from there. So I am wondering what life I have now when such a huge piece of me is dead and I do blame myself because I didn't realize it at the time but my actions, parenting style and reactions had everything to do with his death and even though what I did made sense looking back- instead of calling the police on him when he showed me he had a gun- and knowing he'd run from his sober living, I just lectured him and told him I knew he'd make the right choice. I had a truck I wanted to give him but didn't because he had a gun and had run from sober living. If I'd given him the truck he would not have stolen the car. I could have traded gun for truck. If I'd called police they would have taken him to jail where he was safe. My version of natural consequences didnt factor in that I'd be the one alive to suffer them not him.

So, I'm a first time DM and we're having lots of fun so far. My players entered Barovia (I used the Vistani messenger as a hook) and after discovering the real letter decided to carry out the last will of this unfortunate soul (one of my players is a Minotaur which has 2 homebrew abilities and one of them is to once a day discover the last will of the dead creature).
They carried the letter back to the gate. After putting it down near the gate, they had a brilliant idea to also write a note and hang it in front of the gate too, to warn any other adventurers of the danger inside....for some reason they decided to write the note in blood of one of the players. As soon as they hung it up and looked away for a moment, it disappeared (I was just going for spooks, but hey, that's a pretty handy thing for Strahd/anyone else to be scrying on them)
Some time later they are going through the Death House. At this point they hate evil Devil Strahd (they only heard the opinion of the Barovian people about him so...) but have no clue as to how he looks apart from him being a vampire.
They got into the House's dungeon and had an encounter with the Statue. They decided to burn it down, fought 3 shades, after which the Statue snuffed out all of the flames. They are creeper out with it.
And in this situation my Minotaur player decides it'll be an amazing idea to impersonate the statue with his newfound wolf companion.
He stands up in the exact same way, his hand on the wolf's head while the other is reaching out.
I'm thinking "Hey, that's neat, I should do something fun with it". I describe how as he does so, he sees something shine under the Statues cloak.
Our Wizzard hands him his sphere to make the impersonation even more successful.
The shining intensifies.
Our Paladin puts his cloak onto the Minotaur, completing the image.
The shining disappears. A second later the Minotaur notices he now has a ring with blood-red gem in it on his hand. Whenever he tries to remove it, he succeeds, only to find it back on his hand a second later.
He decides to use his other homebrew ability - touch his ancestors necklace to seek their wisdom about this precarious situation. Yet this time instead of a mighty Minotaur in his peak form he sees the person looking exactly like a statue appear. That person scans the group with his gaze, looks at the minotaur (still in a cloak and with a wolf and a sphere), smiles and disappears.
That player can "seek guidance" with his necklace only once a day. And I'm thinking Strahd could be interested in someone trying to impersonate him so hard. Besides, that sounds fun as hell!
So, I'd like to ask for YOUR wisdom, o mighty spirits of Reddit, what would be an interesting way to handle this ability from now on? I was planning to make it a way for me to provide party with tips on how to best some monsters without breaking immersion, but now... Well, I could still do that, but asking for Strahds help? That should never be a trivial thing or a mere "tip". I want his presence to be intimidating and powerful.

The world was gone. Veris paid no attention to the raised voices that echoed around him nor the hunched figure of his father kneeling in front of the men that crowded the tent's opening. None of that mattered.
This thing wasn't his mother. It couldn't be. It was impossible. Its lips were bruised, purple, and bloated. Through its small mouth gap, Veris saw Cracked and smashed teeth daggering into its gums. He almost fell back at the bloody sight. His mother's smile could warm their entire tent in the winter. His mother's skin was soft and flawless, not like the beaten leather draped across a shattered resemblance of a lady. The wrist snapped into the wrong position. Chest caved in. Thick, Raven hair ripped out in patches and dyed in blood. NO. She wasn't this cruel to look at. His mother was the sunshine, the first warm summer breeze that traveled with the smell of sugar plumbs and Perfumed silk. His mother was alive, not this destroyed, dead thing splayed out on his kitchen table.
This was one of the Abara boy’s tricks, an illusion meant to scare Veris into believing something that couldn’t happen—ringing filled Veris's ears. His Tears felt like oil running down his face. He fell from the chair, collapsing on the hardened dirt they had for a floor. How could this happen? She was just going out to get food. How could this happen?
"Tell the boy to rise," shouted a commanding, unfamiliar voice. Veris raised his head and locked gazes with the speaker. A light-skinned Tusta caste soldier dressed in a crisp white uniform adorned with silver bells. Three other soldiers stood beside him, their uniforms tinged with shades of grey denoting their lower rank. The justice of Tylansi had come to Veris's home—sudden and brutal. Veris was ensnared, lost in the man's cold and ruthless eyes. He was like a demon from the scriptures given flesh. Solid shoulders and a great, black beard that swallowed his face. He was tall and muscular, not like a hero, but like the stories of trickster devils that stole wives out of their husbands' beds that Veris’s mother read to him.
"His name is Veris. The almightly himself blessed him with it. Tusta or not, you will not disrespect his god-given dignity." A voice Veris knew well chastised the soldier. It was humbleman Nara, the village's holy leader. The elderly man was wrapped in a sheer gossamer robe interwoven with strings of blue and green. The colors of the Acaska caste. The lowerest within the Tylansi sovereignty. Veris had rarely seen the kind man raise his voice at anyone. Let alone a man of a higher caste.
A gray-clad soldier darted towards Nara with his hand on the strap of his gun holster. " Watch your tongue—Acaska filth. You are in the presence of your lords. Mind yourself under the almighty's watchful eyes." Shouted the man, only inches away from Nara's face. Nara tried to stay firm, but Veris noticed a shaking in the older man's frame.
"We are here for remuneration, not the execution of holy men. Begone Cosia. You are not needed in this matter." The white-clothed soldier looked to the other. "Yes. Sir. I'll secure the area. Some of these Acaska are as sly as snakes," The young man saluted to his leader. Turned, spat in Nara's face, and marched into the village. Nara displayed no emotion, but his shaking lessened.
His father's thin form hobbled to the side of Veris and stared down at him. Veris met his father's amber eyes with twins of his own. He would never have imagined a gaze as lost and helpless could ever belong to his father. His father stabbed his skeletal fingers into Veris's thigh. The boy jerked up at the touch. His dress robes were smeared with dirt and grime. The stitched design of a dragon his mother had sowed onto it fell off as he rosed. Veris raced to catch it but was stopped by his father's firm grip.
"Get up, little bear. We have to welcome the Lords to our home. They are here for judgment." Glaris Al'dan, Veris's father, spoke softly into his ear. Veris sprang forward and wrapped his slender arms around his neck.
After the village famine began, his father rarely spoke to him. "You look them in the eye when they ask you a question. Veris. This is serious. They have to believe your words. okay?" Glaris patted Veris on the back and gently pushed him toward the entrance.
"What about Mama? Are they here to help her?" Veris asked shakily. " Hush now, my brave little bear. Your mother is in the hands of the Almighty. She's singing in his divine choir and spreading your name throughout the heavens. We must protect ourselves now." Glaris spoke. Veris wiped away the new tears that tracked down his face. He wouldn't give the devils a chance to bottle his tears.
Five feet away from the soldiers, they halted. And just as they had practiced before, they did the honorable position of submission when addressing a higher caste. Hands-on knees and head bow to the waist.
" Veris Al'dan, are you aware of the crime brought against you and your family on this almightly day?" The white leader asked. The voice was dead and cold.
" No, my lord surpeme. I was woken up from my sleep by my father's cries. My mother said she was going to the village over to barter for food, " Veris said in a voice laced with pain. He knew
" Your mother was found attempting to steal bread from a Tusta-owned bakery. When confronted, she attacked the owner and ran. The owner's sons caught her. She has paid for her transgression against the law.” The white soldier stated with

See the previous posts: https://www.reddit.com/JurassicPark/comments/1419mpy/jurassic_world_the_hegemony_of_biosyn_dominion/ https://www.reddit.com/JurassicPark/comments/142b35e/jurassic_world_the_hegemony_of_biosyn_jwd_rewrite/

Act III - The Gathering of the Clouds

Mia Everett
Visually confirming Rainn's revelation, Victoria is shown in a cage inside Amelia Everett's lab, within Biosyn's Citadel. Mia does her best to comfort the scared and depressed Achillobator and her motivations are explored shortly after. It's revealed that due to her experience within the team who made the Indominus and the Indoraptor, Biosyn tasked her with reviving InGen's IBRIS program by breeding raptors with high obedience potential. However, none of the achillobators cloned by Biosyn proved to be trainable enough for the program's ambitions (even though they attempted to mimic Owen's experience by having keepers being there at the animals' birth), which displeased Dodgson and the other higher-ups, who are now favouring another research team, who focuses on a more intrusive way of controlling dinosaurs. Basically treated as a second-class researcher amidst a rather toxic work environment, Mia became desperate enough to hire poachers to capture Blue, which she intended to breed with their achillobators in order to finally have trainable individuals. As Victoria is not sexually mature, Mia is in front of a considerable setback and fears that Dodgson will pull the plug due to her lack of results, especially in this troubled period for Biosyn.
The tying noose
The next day, the intel collected by the UN agents (people involved in the Black Market, Biosyn's connections with it) are sent to the nearby countries, including Italy, where an arrest warrant is launched against Kayla.
On his side, Isaac Gibbon is contacted by Bigelow who tells him about the debacle of their mission in Malta, saying that Claire and Owen saved the grey guards from disaster. He orders her to stay in Italy for the moment and wait for new orders. Shortly receives, he receives a candidate for a desk job in the DSD: It's Franklin. Gibbon tells Franklin he heard about his bravery during the 2019 incidents and his past connection with InGen (Before the DPG, Franklin worked for it as an IT Technician), before asking questions about Claire as he is aware that she collaborated with him not only on some occasions in the past few years but also in the 2019 Costa Rican incident, where Franklin was the couple's companion while they were running from InGen's agents and the authorities.
Dubrovnik
The inhabitants and tourists of the Croatian seaside city of Dubrovnik are surprised when a Biosyn Quetzalcoatlus descends upon the old town and starts attacking people. As a joke similar to one in TLW with the Japanese businessman and his reference to Godzilla, some extra could yell in Valyrian "I left Westeros because of this!" or "By the Seven, not again!" (Dubrovnik was one of Game of Thrones' filming location).
Ramsay's email
In a manner similar to the Hawaii attack scene in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla, the Dubrovnik scene cuts just as the Quetzal swoops on the bystanders and we are now in the bar of Biosyn's employee village. Wu is watching the news of the Dubrovnik attack on the TV (there is even a declaration from Zoe Murdoch, in which she denies the pterosaur came from Auronzo's Sanctuary and was probably created by a rival company who somehow put their hands upon Biosyn Quetzalcoatlus DNA. In the bar, someone whisper that one of their Quetzals did escaped from the valley thanks to the temporary deactivation of the invisible fence system and that Dodgson has launched an investigation to know who's responsible) when he receives a mysterious email from Ramsay, which includes the name of some woman. Wu search it on the internet and ends up on IMDB where he discovers that the adult "Charlotte" on the videos is actually an actress who lives in London.
Arrest
In Rome, early in the morning, Kayla is arrested in her flat by the police as she is accused of illegal smuggling.
Viscontini
Following all the incidents in the Alps, the clash in the Sabine Hills and the recent Dubrovnik attack, people gets pissed at Biosyn and protests occur in several locations, including Rome. In the Italian Ministry of the Interior, Viscontini has an argument with Pazzi, declaring that they need to take severe actions against Biosyn but the minister retorts that taking large-scale actions against the corporation might trigger a whole deal of undesirable consequences, including deteriorating US-Italian relations due to the close ties between Biosyn and the US government. He won't risk that just because of some rumours, weak proof and small incidents. Viscontini retorts that soon, Biosyn might have an angry mob showing at its gates with the goal of driving it out of Italy.
Following Vuillier's instructions, Claire, Owen, Nyamu and Dougal leave Malta the same day and fly to the Eternal City, where they have to meet Viscontini in the AISI headquarters. There, they have a video call with Vuillier. He and Viscontini wants to send the trio of WDMC agents to Auronzo Valley so they can infiltrate Biosyn's facility, find compromising information and transmit them to the Italian authorities, hoping to finally convince Pazzi and the rest of the government to take action against Biosyn. However, one of the agents points out that they will need an entrance ticket as one doesn't simply walk into Auronzo, since the borders of Biosyn's lands are guarded and monitored while some people disappeared after going too close from the Sanctuary (anti-Biosyn activists, reckless adventurers, Grendel Corporation's spies, others from the AISI's and Austrian government). Viscontini declare they might have that ticket.
We cut to Kayla in her prison cell. The guard announces she has visit and she is brought to a room where Viscontini and Dougal waits for her. The head of the AISI and the WDMC agent then negotiate with her: In exchange for her freedom, she will bring Dougal, Claire and Owen to Biosyn's Sanctuary. However, Viscontini precise he'll have her hunted down if she ever betrays them.
Kayla raises the fact that she can't show up at Auronzo like this and needs a motive. Viscontini and Dougal then talk about the animals seized in Malta's black market.
Theo's Mission
That day, Wu summons Theo, explain the whole issue with the fake Charlotte and ask him to go to London, find the actress and question her about the videos so they can have proofs to show Maisie, who started to really become insufferable because of Dodgson's bad influence (in that part of the story, one of the few scenes where she's likeable is one where she and Drummond bonds over the common passion for dinosaurs). The ex-mercenary soon leaves Auronzo, taking a bus for Venice in the nearest village while Wu explains to Pellegrino and Dodgson that Theo had urgent family matters to deal with in the UK.
Leaving San Francisco
Desiring to supervise the Dolomites Crisis more closely, Vuillier fly to Italy.
Nine containers
As evidence of Biosyn's possible connections to the Maltese black market has been discussed on the news, Dodgson knows it's a matter of time before Vuillier, the Italians or the Austrians send people in Auronzo and expose Biosyn's misdeeds.
We then follow Pellegrino's POV as she oversees the exit of nine large mysterious containers from the Citadel and their departure from the airstrip just outside the valley. One of her subordinates asks what's inside and she answers that she has no idea, with Dodgson only giving her a series of instructions. They watch the containers being flown abroad.
The following day, Pellegrino speak about it to Wu and other employees with anti-Dodgson sentiments like Drummond. She notices that Wu is uncomfortable as they talk about it and realize he must be hiding something. Ramsay, who just arrived from the US in preparation for a big corporate event in the Citadel, almost surprise their discussion. As they're not sure if they can trust him or not, they pretend it's nothing. Wu then phones Theo and asks him about his secret mission's progress.
London
In London, Theo finds the actress from the videos and initially posing as a reporter, filming her in an interview, he then ask her questions about the videos and after some hesitations, she concedes to give him answers and reveals among other things that the shooting occurred a few months ago in some local warehouse, that the director of those videos is none other than Colin Trevorrow (who, desperate for a job after the debacle of the Jurassic World film, accepted to participate to that project, oblivious that Biosyn was behind it since a dummy company took care of the production).
AISI
Vuillier arrives in Rome and meets with his agents, Nyamu and Viscontini in one of the AISI headquarters' conference rooms, where a map of Auronzo Valley and its surroundings has been laid. Kayla is also there and offscreen, our characters talk about the plan.
At the end of the meeting, everyone but Vuillier and Viscontini leave the room. Both have a secret conversation during which the Italian say that the Grey Guard's Mediterranean Company, supported by the Austrians and secretly by him (as he fears that Biosyn has informers within the Italian government), are deployed in one of the villages near Auronzo, and is supposed to act as a Plan B should the Claire-Owen-Dougal trio fail, by taking a secret path through an old mine and a mountain pass before breaking into Biosyn's citadel. The WDMC agents don't know that and when Vuillier ask why, Viscontini answers that it's better that way (should the agents be captured ant tortured, they won't tell Biosyn that there is a second team) and that the secret path isn't safer as one of his spy was killed by some creature after taking it and arriving in sight of the valley. He thinks that a small dozen of grey guards have better chances surviving the pass' guardian(s) than three civilian agents.
To the Dolomites
The next day, in the middle of the morning, Kayla is preparing her plane in some airstrip near Rome and the seized creature from the black market is loaded in the hold (I have no idea which species to choose). Equipped by the Italians, Claire, Owen and Dougal say farewell to Vuillier, Nyamu and Viscontini. The Frenchman tells Claire that it's time to unleash the She-wolf upon Dodgson but Claire correct him by saying "Not the She-wolf. The Dragon." (in this AU, she has a particular connection with the dragon-like Indominus), implying she'll get the mission done whatever it takes. He and the other two men wish them good luck and the trio of WDMC agents climb aboard the plane. They soon take off.
Biosyn's aerial defense
Kayla's plane arrives in sight of the mountains which delimit Biosyn's Sanctuary. Informed of their mission by Vuillier and Viscontini, one of the grey guards is watching the plane through his binoculars as it passes over the village where they are staying.
Kayla is soon contacted by the Citadel's control room as they detected the aircraft on their radars and they ask her why she's coming. The pilot answer that she collected an animal which might interest them (she told the WDMC agents and the Italians that Biosyn doesn't have this particular species in their Sanctuary) and ask to land on their airstrip. While the Biosyn employees discuss, the plane is about to enter Auronzo Valley by the east, as that part of the sanctuary is the furthest from most of the buildings (while the airstrip is in the northernmost parts of Biosyn's lands, beyond the mountains with the frozen dam lake) and thus where Claire, Owen and Dougal has the best chances of landing unnoticed. The trio of agents take their parachutes and prepare to jump, but at the same time, Dodgson, who heard that Kayla was arrested by the authorities just a few days ago, fears that her plane is a Trojan horse and decides to activate the valley's "aerial defense". On the screen of one of the room's monitors, we see a group of dots heading straight towards the plane. It's actually a group of pteranodons, from the same toothed variant as those who appeared in Jurassic Park 3 (there is even at least one black male identical to the scrapped one from Johnston's film), and they just collide with the plane, crashing against the cockpit and getting turned to shred by the rotors' blades, damaging the plane (the scene is partly inspired by a cutscene from the Ninth Mission of Paraworld's campaign). Owen wonder why those pteranodons behave in a suicidal manner. Suddenly, the pteranodons retreat and as their window is shrinking, the agents know they have to jump now (they've reached the middle of the valley and their trajectory deviated northwards, towards the mountain dam). Claire jumps first but as Owen is about to jump in his turn, the plane is attacked by a Quetzalcoatlus and the Raptor Whisperer sees another and a few pteranodons chasing her fiancée, whose parachute opened. Claire shakes the pterosaurs off by disappearing into the valley's dense forest. As they will be grabbed by the attacking pterosaurs as soon as they leave the aircraft, Owen, Dougal and Kayla stay inside it and brace for the crash. The plane crashes down at the surface of the frozen lake by the mountain dam in the northern part of the valley.
Back in Rome, Vuillier, Nyamu and Viscontini are worried as they heard the agents and the pterosaurs' screams (they had an open channel all that time with Kayla's plane). They hope the agents will survive this ordeal and activate the beacons they were given before their departure.
Note: The fate of the animal they took with them is still unclear for me. It really depends on the chosen species. If it's something large and potentially dangerous, Kayla would probably want to drop it in the valley in order to have a lighter plane and not deal with it after crashing. But if it's a creature about the size of a small dog for example, they could free it as they leave the wreckage.
Gigantoraptor
We then cut to Claire hanging in the trees but instead of a Therizinosaurus (which already appeared in TRQ. Moreover, Claire had a small arc with this species in that story), she is threatened by a Gigantoraptor. The scene plays out much like the Theri scene from Trevorrow's version, with Claire hiding in a pond etc.. Once the Gigantoraptor walks away, Claire gets out of the pond and sees the fumes from the plane's crash in the distance, behind the mountain dam.
The dam lake
Before it sinks in the lake, Owen, Dougal and Kayla leave her plane and step on the ice. Under it, they notice a large shadow and know they better move away from the lake. They notice a ladder by the dam but as they head towards it, a Quetzalcoatlus or a Pteranodon lands on their way. They step back, moving towards an opening on the lake's surface. Suddenly, a giant 9-meters long temnospondyl (based upon an unnamed and fragmentary genus from Lesotho) burst out the water, almost killing one of the characters. Ensue a scene where our three protagonists have to evade both the pterosaur and the amphibian. The pterosaur ends up being dragged underwater by the temnospondyl but other pterosaurs arrive and to escape them, our trio climbs on the dam and rushes to its elevator, going down in the valley. Down at the dam's base, they notice it's dilapidated and Kayla tell her two companions that Biosyn sell some of its power to the nearest villages.
Note: The main doubt I have about this scene is having a temnospondyl living in the icy water of a mountain lake. It might be too much of a stretch so if you think it's not realistic at all, it will be scrapped from the scene (and perhaps be replaced by a juvenile Baryonyx or something like this, an animal which could be also the one our characters brought with them in the plane.
Plan B
Since the agents lost their beacons during the pterosaurs' attack and the crash, they couldn't tell Rome that they were still alive. Vuillier and Viscontini fear the worst and send a message to Laurenzo Cesare.
Droppings
Meanwhile, Claire started walking towards the dam, hoping to find her companions on the way if they made it out alive from the crash. When she hears a racket in the woods, she hides and a Biosyn tyrannosaur arrives. But it's not on a hunting mode and instead, it just leaves some droppings on a log near Claire's hiding place. After the predator leaves, she approaches the log and smears her face with the droppings, remembering her "Walk in the Park" with Owen when they searched her nephews during the Fall of Jurassic World (the droppings hide her smell, dissuading the other animals to investigate her).
Argument
An argument bursts out between Owen, Dougal and Kayla while they're walking south. The first wants to find his fiancée, the second says that their mission is more important, and Kayla is mad at both men since she lost her plane (and livelihood) because of the WDMC's mission. And unsure about her intentions, the two men distrust her but she tries to reassure them by saying that Biosyn can fuck off since they are also responsible for destroying her plane.
However, the Sanctuary's denizens remind them that they better be united or else it will be the failure of their quest.
At some distance, in the middle of the fog, they see the recognizable silhouette of a sauropod, that of an Argentinosaurus (the species was seen in the distance and mentioned earlier in the story. Instead of Argentinosaurus, it could also be another large titanosaur). However, this herbivore has the particularity of having a symbiotic relation with some small carnivore species within Biosyn Sanctuary (I'm more thinking about a pterosaur or a flying/semi-arboreal theropod than a strictly ground-dwelling predator. For now, the baboon-sized Variraptor is my candidate), with the Argentinosaurus letting those carnivores eat its parasites and the insects flying around it while the carnivores will let out an alarm call shall a large predator approach. It could be illustrated in a scene where an Acrocanthosaurus (the one from the Drive-in scene) is spotted by the carnivores as it passes by. The Argentinosaurus turns to face the larger predator, adopt a defensive posture, and as the acro hasn't yet moved, the smaller carnivores take off from the sauropod and flies straight to the acro's head. Harassed by those creatures, the Acrocanthosaurus retreats. Thus, if those small carnivores (which we'll call the Argentinosaurus' suite) are brave enough to attack a megatheropod, our three protagonists know they're not safe and that they better move away.
The Sanctuary's true nature
While still heading north, Claire's path crosses that of a bull Shantungosaurus. She move out of his way and stay still. She and the audience recognize the animal as he was already in the JW rewrite and TRQ (in the first story, he gained some scars after a fight with a few Metriacanthosaurus), where he was a secondary "character" (and a threat in a few scenes). Both have a peaceful scene where they make eye contact but that quiet moment is shattered when a gunshot resounds in the forest and the hadrosaur flees, badly wounded. Claire hides and in the distance, she sees a hunter, accompanied by a couple of Biosyn security guards and another employee which she presume is some sort of supervisohunting guide. Watching how the hunter is dressed and how he behave in the wild, she knows he's not a professional hunter but just a rich hobbyist and then realizes the Sanctuary's true nature: It's a hunting reserve. As the Shantungosaurus escaped them, the hunter express his discontentment at the guide, which promise to find him another quarry. They leave and following the blood trail left by the hadrosaur, Claire finds him by a stream. His wounds are too grievous and he's too weak to lash out at Claire, who kneels by his head, trying to comfort him in his last moments, up until his last breath. Watching another of her former park's animals dying fills Claire with not only grief, but also anger. She change her plans and heads back south instead of continuing northward, following the hunting party's track.
Note: It doesn't necessarily have to be a Shantungosaurus in the role of the animal shot by the hunters, but it have to be a recognizable animal from the previous installments for emotional impact and Claire's development (another candidate could be the Therizinosaurus from TRQ)
She later finds another hunting party. One of its members, a Biosyn guard, pulls out an item she recognize: a raptor resonating chamber. The guard use it like a bird call and soon, an Achillobator, arrive, believing it heard one of its kind. The poor animal is shot by the hunters, who scream in satisfaction before taking a picture with their quarry. They then brings it to the Biosyn vehicle waiting nearby but before they leave (after having a short conversation during they mention that another team captured the rex and is bringing it the paddocks), Claire deliberately attract the attention of one of the guards, the same one which used the resonating chamber, and he say to his companions he won't be long. He move away from the road and deeper in the woods, he fall into Claire's ambush. She kill him, loot some of his equipment (including the resonating chamber), hide his body and leave. Worried for his colleague, the other guard with the hunters orders the guide to drive them back to the lodge, and search his friend. But he too is murdered by Claire, who takes a small metallic box on him. Activating the box, she realize it's a sonic weapon she has seen before, in the hands of InGen Security's elite troops during the fall of Isla Nublar (it's like a weaponized version of the box Dodgson and his companions have in Crichton's TLW). She turns it off, take it with her and follows the hunters vehicle's tracks on the road, towards the lodge.
However, Claire ignores she's being watched, and not by human eyes...
Over hill
Cesare and his men leave their accommodation and head for the frontiers of Biosyn's lands. Leaving their vehicles near a ruined fort, the grey guards start their trek while the sun is setting behind the mountains ahead of them.
A bed in the trees
As walking through the valley at night would be too dangerous, Owen, Dougal and Kayla decide to find a resting place and climb in a tree. From it, they have a panorama on a nearby lake and notice they are approximately halfway between the dam and the Citadel. At this moment, we also have peaceful scenes with the valley's denizens at dusk (Pelecanimimus fishing in the lake, herbivores drinking nearby, the same Spinosaurus from the report at the beginning peacefully sitting on the bank like an oversized duck...).
Theo's peace
In the evening, just a few hours before his flight to Venice, Theo also passes by his former home, which he left years ago before joining Ken Wheatley's mercenary company. His ex-wife still lives here and noticing that she started a new life with another man and seems happy, he walks away in peace, leaving behind him the last picture he had of himself and her (earlier in the story, Theo is seen looking at said picture).
The secret path
Back in Italy, the grey guards find the entrance of an old mine and enter it, taking the path that will allow them to pass under the limits of Biosyn's lands.
Mercenaries
Mercenary troops land in Biosyn's airstrip and their leader is brought to the Citadel. He has a discussion with Dodgson behind closed doors.
Foes... or allies?
A few hours after nightfall, Claire finally finds a large old chalet with typical Tyrolean architecture: The Hunting Lodge (it's implied that it was built way before Biosyn bought those lands, when the area was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before WWI). Claire remarks it's surrounded by an invisible fence (identical to the one from Jurassic World Evolution 2's Biosyn DLC) which prevents the animals from getting too close. Aware that the lodge wouldn't be a shelter for her and that its occupants probably outnumber her, she turns away from it, continuing to wander in the woods. But just a few minutes later, she hears sound in the nearby bushes. Aware she might be hunted, she is ready to use the ultrasound box and fight for her life. A pack of Achillobators shows up, menacingly walking towards her. At the same time, it starts to rain.
Claire first thinks of using the box and running away while the predators would be bothered by the sound but she knows it will be useless in the long run as they could track her all across the Sanctuary. She then remembers the reports she read earlier in the story, and especially that of the 2001 incident on Sorna, where Alan Grant and his companions walked out alive and unharmed from a close encounter with raptors.
In dire straits, she makes up a desperate plan and carefully, she pulls out the resonating chamber she stole from the Biosyn guards. She uses it and due to their bad experience in the sanctuary with the resonating chambers' usual users, the raptors get agitated but their pack leader tells them to calm down as Claire doesn't seem to be a Biosyn guard or a hunter. The pack leader walks alone towards Claire and sniffs the dried blood on her hands and clothes, realizing it belongs to other humans. Nothing happens for a moment and then the pack leader lets out a bark. Behind Claire, two raptors move aside. Slowly walking backwards, watching carefully the raptors' moves, Claire exits the circle made by the surrounding predators and continues doing so until she's at a respectable distance. At the beginning, the raptors just watch her but as she's heading towards the Hunting Lodge, she hears them following her. However, she is aware that they would have already pounced on her if they wanted to eat her and knows that they're more intrigued. Meanwhile, the rain intensifies (there could also be a storm).
Claire reaches the invisible fence, crosses it, and searches for its power source. But as she's sabotaging it, the Lodge caretaker (a gnarly-looking old local man) spots her and frightened by her look, runs away towards the building. She is forced to catch him and, after a short struggle, kill him with her knife before he can raise the alarm. After showing some trouble due to killing a probable innocent, she resumes her sabotage and the fence is deactivated. The raptors cross it and see Claire entering the lodge. Near its entrance, she finds a sword hanging on the wall as a decorative element and noticing it's still sharp, she takes it along with its sheath and heads for the rooms. Behind her, the raptors open the door and silently enter in the lodge. In the hallway which leads to the rooms, Claire stays still when the raptors walk past her as they head to the rooms and grin as her audacious plan is working. Claire enters one of the rooms, raises her sword blade over a sleeping hunter and when the time comes, thrust it into his body. Meanwhile, the raptors open other doors and entering the rooms, they rush on the sleepers. Slaughter ensues and only those who locked up their doors have the time to wake up, grab a weapon and fight for their very survival. Some of the lodge's occupants offer some resistance in the lounge but there, Claire activates the sonic weapon she stole and an ear-piercing sharp sound comes from it. While the raptors back off behind her, their common enemies kneel and scream in pain and Claire (who put on some earplug) slashes their throats, deactivate the weapon, and let the raptors tear the hunters alive while she raids some items (stuff like snacks, water, a first-aid kit, a map...) and leave, disappearing in the woods.
A bit later, she finds a small cave whose entrance is high from the ground and rest in it, sleeping until mid-morning.
The mountain's pass
At the end of their night-long ascent, the grey guards arrive in a pass/cave where they found human bones, which they presume to be those of the AISI's spy Viscontini told them about, and the remains of a Biosyn drone. Soon after, they are attacked by the guardian animal(s) the corporation left there to kill any trespasser coming from that direction. (I haven't chosen any species yet). They manage to defeat it (or them) and dawn break out as they arrive at a vista point which overlooks the valley. The grey guards observe it, the eyes of Cesare stop on the Citadel for a moment, and they retreat back inside the mountain to rest a few hours before descending into the valley. They send a message to Vuillier and Viscontini, telling them that they're inside the Sanctuary.
Traces of a slaughter
During their early morning patrol, a security team discovers that a massacre occurred during the night in the Hunting Lodge. They find clues indicating that someone helped the raptors and participated in the killings. The control room check the Lodge CCTV footage and fear spreads like wildfire among the staff when they discover the culprit is a sinister-looking black-clad hooded woman. Seeing that one of the figure's hand is a prosthesis and that the other wear a silver ring with a red gem, they realize it's Claire and Dodgson pretty much start to crap his pants (partly because one of the hunters was a very wealthy and powerful foreign client whose disappearance won't go unnoticed). Since she made it out alive from the plane's crash, Dodgson fears that the other WDMC agents might have too. When asked about the slaughter itself, Dodgson orders his staff to cover it up for the moment, as he don't want to worry the board of directors who are set to arrive later that day for a big event he planned in the evening.
Theo's return
Theo returns to Auronzo and Wu, who just learned about Claire's presence in the valley, tells him that they must get Maisie out of the facility as soon as possible since disaster tends to follow Claire like a shadow.
Taking the gloves off
However, Maisie has meanwhile discovered that the videos were another lie, by recognizing one of the scientists from the video, who also work at the Citadel (and who didn't aged, even though the adult Charlotte's video was supposed to be taken fourteen years ago). Aware that the gentle method is no longer considerable, Dodgson decides to use the hard one and Doctor Lesser locks Maisie in a cell within her lab, to which Wu can't access. Lesser reveal that it wasn't Wu who told Dodgson that she was a clone but the spy he has among Lockwood Manor's employees, and that the only true part in the video was the one about the genetic disease: Charlotte did had it, just like her mother Elizabeth before that (she died in 1993 and it was because of her Lockwood and Hammond fell out), and had the car accident which took her life didn't happened, the disease would have killed her a few years later. As he wanted Maisie to have a long life, Benjamin Lockwood asked the scientists he hired (there is a whole subplot about what they became in TRQ) to cure it and they did find a way. As the scientists' notes were accidently destroyed, the solution is now within Maisie's body, and Dodgson wants it so he can put new drugs on the market.
Before it's too late, Wu and Theo, with Ramsay's help, start organizing Maisie's evasion. The geneticist mentions a secret trail from WWI in the northeastern mountains: It's their escape route. He then heads for his lab, planning something else.
Tracking Claire
Curious about Biosyn's movements around the Hunting Lodge, Owen, Dougal and Kayla investigate it after the departure of the security troops. They discover evidence of Claire's passage and Owen tries to follow her fiancée's tracks. Kayla and/or Dougal make comments about the slaughter of the hunters.
Bigelow's last chance
Isaac Gibbon gives Jessica Bigelow a new mission: Go to Auronzo and ensure the evacuation of Lewis Dodgson and Biosyn's most important research. The agent ask her boss why and he said that he just received news that Biosyn is compromised. He also precise that it's her last chance after the Malta fiasco. Bigelow leave her safe house in central Italy and goes north.
Shady preparations
Continuing south, Owen, Dougal and Kayla see mercenaries positioning some sort of moveable antenna on a ridge which overlooks the road which connects the Citadel to the valley's northern continue, as finding Claire and entering the Citadel is more urgent.
The gathering of the clouds
One of the control room's employees ask Dodgson to come. He shows him footage from the Biosyn lands's southern gate, near the employee village.
Before the gate, a group of Carabinieri stand, showing to the guards and the security cameras a search warrant: The government finally decided to act against Biosyn. But Dodgson refuses to open the gates for the Carabinieri and orders the mercenaries who arrived during the night to intimidate them. The Carabinieri move away from the gate, with their leader warning against the consequences of such an action. At a respectable distance from the gate, Vuillier, Viscontini and Nyamu watched the scene. Soon, other groups of Carabinieri are deployed along the other entrances to Biosyn's lands. The siege of Auronzo has started.
Hearing about the siege's situation, some employees leave their post and head for the metro (which connects the Citadel to the village. Another loop also connects the Citadel to the various facilities across the Sanctuary, including the seven towers and the dam), in order to go to the village and then hoping to be able to leave Biosyn's lands before things starts to get too ugly but Dodgson's has the metro's station locked and commands them to go back to their posts. Seeing their CEO starting to act like Hitler in his bunker, they are afraid.
​
End of Act III.
See you tomorrow for Act IV

Since Season 1 of the show, Jim has been trying to search for answers. Like a rational human being trapped in a seemingly Silent Hill hellscape dimension.
Him and Jade spent a ton of time using their technical minds to create a communication tower. Which clearly lit a fire under others who maybe stopped trying for awhile like your Boyd's and the Priest who started looking for answers themselves. It all went to hell, but Jim got a response. Rationally he assumes it might be human. Sure it could be the monsters, it could be a lot of things. But the point that leads him to a completely rational thought of being watched like lab rats is the fact that they knew their names and exactly what his wife was doing.
Get to season 2 and NOBODY wants to talk about it. Tabitha as far as I remember has just kept all her info from Jim, and has been tunnel vision (no pun intended) about these dead children she keeps seeing and what went down in those caves/tunnels.
Jim tries to talk to Donna who is the only other person that actually heard it. But she at least told him that she didn't want him to stop, but basically she has her hands full with keeping bellies full, and now dealing with this sudden blight in the crops.
Boyd completely shut him down because he was tripping over his blood worms and the ballerina he keeps seeing. Then kills Smiley, and didn't even tell it to one of the few people like Jim or Jade who are as eager for answers themselves about it.
Jade seemingly doesn't care about this tower anymore and just wants to figure these symbols he keeps seeing. Tunnel vision like Tabitha.
So fast forward to Jim wandering around town lost in thought because nobody wants to just bring their minds together and ask some questions like a team. Skinhead Randall is just flying a kids drone around right over Jim's head.
So now Jim who has had no interaction with Randall since the collapsing house, didn't see any of his childish tantrums as far as I remember. Figures, "well I can thank him real quick and see if maybe I can borrow his help with that drone to get the only flying device in this hell and try to make contact with whatever I spoke to again".
Because I'm sure if the monsters wanted to chat, Jim would sit by the window and ask a hundred questions. But all they do is say the same things "you should come outside" "you should open the doowindow", but whatever or whoever was on that radio, sounded like someone in charge, or at least can see what is going on. He may not get them to let them go, but if he can get some kind of answer as to where they are, and what is going on. It's something to go off of as he searches for his next clue. Clue's that could be for everyone if they all just worked together!
Randall seeding the idea of a double-agent is obviously going to cause some friction, whether it's true or not. But it's also not a bad question to ask when there a plenty of oddly complacent residents who are making no effort to figure things out as far as Jim can tell since nobody wants to talk about things, and when you have a random voice on the radio tell you they know exactly who you are and what you're doing. It's not insane to think that either
A. There must be hidden camera's or something all around us. Microphones, something!
B. Someone here, who knows our name, and what we've been doing in the house, is relaying this back to whoever is pulling the strings in this Lovecraft nightmare.
So Jim has been completely fine, compared some characters who are succumbing to their hallucinations and trauma so badly they don't even want to talk to most people or any. Jade and Tabitha have basically been turning into Victor's, lost in thought, scribbling on paper, and talking to people less and less.
Randall sucks, but he's also got something Jim needs, and is literally the only person talking to him. It wasn't a drink at the bar and tell me about your thoughts on politics conversation. Randall probably isn't long for this show unless they want to make him a continuing thorn in the side of these characters.

I must be completely fucking dumb because I've never been more confused. Is today a damn blood moon or something? Multiple people, independently of each other, in the middle of a normal conversation, pulled a complete 180 and went off on me. Nobody is willing to clue me in. I feel like there's some kind of big joke I'm missing.
Anyway it's been a shit day. I genuinely try to be fucking nice, or at the very least polite. People like this are the reason we can't have nice things.

In northwestern Greece near the village of Zotiko, outdoor enthusiasts were fishing the banks of the Acheron. Their line became tangled in debris on the murky river bottom and wouldn’t come free. After tugging a bit more insistently, a large piece of wormwood was dragged to the surface. Upon closer inspection, it became clear the handcrafted wooden plank was very old and part of a sunken watercraft. Since Greece has a long history of civilization dating back over four millennia, the fishermen excitedly hoped the lost vessel held valuable artifacts or treasures.
Imagining the potential wealth a lost shipwreck could bring, they tried to handle the complicated salvage operation by themselves. They quickly realized it was too extensive of a task to complete without professional expertise. Not to mention, the severe legal penalties they stood to receive from the Greek antiquities board for not reporting such a find to the authorities. They are understandably protective of domestic historical sites.
The men sought legal advice on their rights to potential financial gain from the shipwreck they’d stumbled upon. Since it was discovered in a Greek waterway and not in international waters, they came up with a big old ‘goose egg’. Any proceeds or treasure uncovered at the site would go directly to the Greek government. They’d be lucky to even receive a finder’s plaque on the museum wall.
Meanwhile, the authorities were quick to assemble a full team to excavate whatever remained of the ancient ship. Initial soundings by divers revealed a ten meter long ferry-style barge immersed deep in the swampy river mud, with only the uppermost portion of it expose. Curiously, there were numerous large stones and boulders piled on top of the deck. As luck would have it, the poorly-placed rocks protected the ancient ship, masking it from wear and the elements. Radio carbon dating placed the construction to around 2240 BCE.
While rocks surreptitiously served to preserve major portions of the wreck, their reason for being piled on the deck was baffling. Any competent ferryman or barge captain would realize their weight at the top of the boat would sink it immediately, and yet they were obviously placed there to do so. The mystery widened. After suctioning out tons of river silt and removing the giant stones which sank it in the first place, the divers bore underneath the ferry and ran inflatable hoses through the holes.
Once a climate-controlled structure was fabricated to protect it from the sudden shock of being exposed again to the air for the first time in forty centuries, they began the arduous task of lifting the brittle wreckage from the bottom. The excavation foreman was excited to see that not only was the ancient vessel surfacing in one piece, but a massive cache of silver coins spilled out the side of the hull as it was raised from the water. The mysterious captain of the ferry had been rich, apparently.
The coins were sent to the University of Athens where they were identified as ‘Obols’. Literally ‘Ferry coins’; according to the associate professor who researched them. It made sense. The ferryman apparently stored his riches down below and had so many he used them as ship ballast! If so, there was an immense folly in his financial success. Greed apparently led to the unknown shipwreck on the Acheron river bed.
The team watched in breathless fascination as the ancient relic was finally dredged from the murky river. Countless layers of mud and debris were carefully removed from the waterlogged carcass. What lay underneath was eerily hypnotic. Its imposing structure was immediately overshadowed by the horrific stench of a slaughterhouse emanating from the bloated wormwood. The majestic ferry boat retrieved from the Acheron river held a sinister aura for all who beheld it. At the time, none of them could articulate why but the truth came soon enough.
At that moment, an unexpected storm struck the valley. It temporarily broke the bewitching spell over the hapless onlookers ensnared by its unexplained power. Mother Nature’s wrath caused the excavation workers to make a ‘mad dash’ for safety. The wreckage hovered just above the surface of the river on its crane riggings, like a phantom vessel stalking its prey.
——————
Other than minor surface rot around the top of the decking and cabin area, the rugged vessel was in remarkable visible condition. The authorities viewing the photos remotely via a web link could hardly believe their luck. They were thrilled about being able to offer the oldest known sailing ship raised from water. While nowhere as ornate or impressive as the Vasa flagship of Stockholm harbor, it was infinitely older. It also predated the Viking longboat in Oslo by at least three millennia; and was even older than the reconstructed Spartan warship raised from the Aegean Sea.
Condition-wise, it was even more impressive than King Tut’s afterlife sailboat. That ancient watercraft was buried in the tomb with the boy king. It had been shielded from the elements and time. This was the real deal. It was unquestionably more impressive as a tourist attraction. Well, except for the hideous, uncomfortable grip it held over all those who gazed upon it in person; AND the unbearable stench which made your eyes water and your knees buckle. It was mankind’s end personified in the wretched form of a wormwood ferry barge.
Both ‘tiny little drawbacks’ warranted avoiding the ungodly relic at all costs. Unfortunately the curator couldn’t grasp the magnitude of its horror from his monitor, 200 kilometers away. The excavation foreman desperately tried to explain the reality of the situation but it was one of those visceral things you just had to witness for yourself. All but a couple members of the crew quit out of fear or lingering illness. It was like being exposed to a deadly plague and they wanted no part of it. They abandoned the malodorous site in droves. Then, after experiencing the menacing hold it placed on those who came near it, no replacements could be found to take their place, either.
In growing frustration, the museum chairman telephoned the university antiquities department looking for volunteers. There he hoped to locate some history students willing to participate in preparing the discovery for final transport to the museum as an exhibition centerpiece. The head of the department answered the call. The learned professor listened to the curator’s tale of frustration and woe before excitedly interrupting.
“Where exactly did you find this sunken shipwreck? It wasn’t the Acheron river valley, was it? My associate Professor showed me the silver Obols your team extracted from it. He was only partially accurate in what he told you about them. Those silver coins weren’t used for ordinary passage on a regular ferry boat. They held great symbolic importance to our ancestors in their funerary traditions. Obols were meant to be presented to underworld ferryman Charon; which is actually a corruption of the word for ‘carrion’. The dead were buried with them over the eyes or in the mouth. It was the currency of HIS realm, and the price he required to transport the restless souls down the Styx to the land of the dead. Later, that river system was renamed: Acheron.”
—————-
Another fierce tempest rolled into the valley. It pelted the swinging relic with torrents of blood rain and typhoon-level gales. Darkness and evil reigned supreme. Brooding terror lingered like an endless burial procession, and made the previous thunderstorm seem like a gentle afternoon sprinkle, in comparison. The sinister corpse-man of Charon materialized on the deck of his ferry, as he surveyed the transforming apocalypse. His skeletal face bore no hint of emotion. Only his flaming eye-sockets betrayed the eternal rage within his blackened heart.
“Coin!”; he screeched with a rotten tongue to the excavation foreman. Though his Greek was an ancient dialect, the meaning was clear enough. The foreman and other mortified souls nearby cowered at his unholy presence. The void in the ship’s hull began to heal itself but the ferryman’s considerably amassed wages were lost. There was rowing to do, and passengers to transport to Hades.
In a moment of clarity, the foreman finally understood the reason the heavy rocks were placed on the deck of the ferry. It was to stop Charon. As if sinking his barge to the underworld would prevent death itself. It certainly hadn’t. Perhaps that explained the strife and civil discontent prevalent worldwide. The dead were no longer able to be transported to their final destination because of a misguided attempt to end death itself.
The natural order of things was lost. The dead could find no peace or rest. The accumulated wrath of countless departed souls wandering the Earth had leached into the world for the last four thousand years. They were lost and furious. It created a bottleneck of spiritual darkness which needed to be righted to rebalance the system. The lost souls needed their ferryman, and the living needed them to finally have closure. To live is to eventually die. It was the only way.
The hole in the hull of Charon’s ferry was almost gone. The foreman knew what had to be done, for the benefit of mankind. He went over to the master switch on the crane and lowered the festering wreckage back down to the water’s surface. A vortex appeared in the middle of the devastating storm clouds, leading off into the horizon. An endless line of impatient travelers appeared beside the Acheron’s bank to book their long-delayed passage.
They had an essential journey ahead to the promised land, and were weary from the delay. The foreman himself was grateful his own time to travel to Hades hadn’t yet arrived. With the dead finally receiving their justice due, he hoped the Earth would soon see the end of wickedness and war. When he himself was finally called down to the great below, the foreman would present the ferryman with his shiny Obol. It was Charon’s price for services to be rendered.

In northwestern Greece near the village of Zotiko, outdoor enthusiasts were fishing the banks of the Acheron. Their line became tangled in debris on the murky river bottom and wouldn’t come free. After tugging a bit more insistently, a large piece of wormwood was dragged to the surface. Upon closer inspection, it became clear the handcrafted wooden plank was very old and part of a sunken watercraft. Since Greece has a long history of civilization dating back over four millennia, the fishermen excitedly hoped the lost vessel held valuable artifacts or treasures.
Imagining the potential wealth a lost shipwreck could bring, they tried to handle the complicated salvage operation by themselves. They quickly realized it was too extensive of a task to complete without professional expertise. Not to mention, the severe legal penalties they stood to receive from the Greek antiquities board for not reporting such a find to the authorities. They are understandably protective of domestic historical sites.
The men sought legal advice on their rights to potential financial gain from the shipwreck they’d stumbled upon. Since it was discovered in a Greek waterway and not in international waters, they came up with a big old ‘goose egg’. Any proceeds or treasure uncovered at the site would go directly to the Greek government. They’d be lucky to even receive a finder’s plaque on the museum wall.
Meanwhile, the authorities were quick to assemble a full team to excavate whatever remained of the ancient ship. Initial soundings by divers revealed a ten meter long ferry-style barge immersed deep in the swampy river mud, with only the uppermost portion of it expose. Curiously, there were numerous large stones and boulders piled on top of the deck. As luck would have it, the poorly-placed rocks protected the ancient ship, masking it from wear and the elements. Radio carbon dating placed the construction to around 2240 BCE.
While rocks surreptitiously served to preserve major portions of the wreck, their reason for being piled on the deck was baffling. Any competent ferryman or barge captain would realize their weight at the top of the boat would sink it immediately, and yet they were obviously placed there to do so. The mystery widened. After suctioning out tons of river silt and removing the giant stones which sank it in the first place, the divers bore underneath the ferry and ran inflatable hoses through the holes.
Once a climate-controlled structure was fabricated to protect it from the sudden shock of being exposed again to the air for the first time in forty centuries, they began the arduous task of lifting the brittle wreckage from the bottom. The excavation foreman was excited to see that not only was the ancient vessel surfacing in one piece, but a massive cache of silver coins spilled out the side of the hull as it was raised from the water. The mysterious captain of the ferry had been rich, apparently.
The coins were sent to the University of Athens where they were identified as ‘Obols’. Literally ‘Ferry coins’; according to the associate professor who researched them. It made sense. The ferryman apparently stored his riches down below and had so many he used them as ship ballast! If so, there was an immense folly in his financial success. Greed apparently led to the unknown shipwreck on the Acheron river bed.
The team watched in breathless fascination as the ancient relic was finally dredged from the murky river. Countless layers of mud and debris were carefully removed from the waterlogged carcass. What lay underneath was eerily hypnotic. Its imposing structure was immediately overshadowed by the horrific stench of a slaughterhouse emanating from the bloated wormwood. The majestic ferry boat retrieved from the Acheron river held a sinister aura for all who beheld it. At the time, none of them could articulate why but the truth came soon enough.
At that moment, an unexpected storm struck the valley. It temporarily broke the bewitching spell over the hapless onlookers ensnared by its unexplained power. Mother Nature’s wrath caused the excavation workers to make a ‘mad dash’ for safety. The wreckage hovered just above the surface of the river on its crane riggings, like a phantom vessel stalking its prey.
——————
Other than minor surface rot around the top of the decking and cabin area, the rugged vessel was in remarkable visible condition. The authorities viewing the photos remotely via a web link could hardly believe their luck. They were thrilled about being able to offer the oldest known sailing ship raised from water. While nowhere as ornate or impressive as the Vasa flagship of Stockholm harbor, it was infinitely older. It also predated the Viking longboat in Oslo by at least three millennia; and was even older than the reconstructed Spartan warship raised from the Aegean Sea.
Condition-wise, it was even more impressive than King Tut’s afterlife sailboat. That ancient watercraft was buried in the tomb with the boy king. It had been shielded from the elements and time. This was the real deal. It was unquestionably more impressive as a tourist attraction. Well, except for the hideous, uncomfortable grip it held over all those who gazed upon it in person; AND the unbearable stench which made your eyes water and your knees buckle. It was mankind’s end personified in the wretched form of a wormwood ferry barge.
Both ‘tiny little drawbacks’ warranted avoiding the ungodly relic at all costs. Unfortunately the curator couldn’t grasp the magnitude of its horror from his monitor, 200 kilometers away. The excavation foreman desperately tried to explain the reality of the situation but it was one of those visceral things you just had to witness for yourself. All but a couple members of the crew quit out of fear or lingering illness. It was like being exposed to a deadly plague and they wanted no part of it. They abandoned the malodorous site in droves. Then, after experiencing the menacing hold it placed on those who came near it, no replacements could be found to take their place, either.
In growing frustration, the museum chairman telephoned the university antiquities department looking for volunteers. There he hoped to locate some history students willing to participate in preparing the discovery for final transport to the museum as an exhibition centerpiece. The head of the department answered the call. The learned professor listened to the curator’s tale of frustration and woe before excitedly interrupting.
“Where exactly did you find this sunken shipwreck? It wasn’t the Acheron river valley, was it? My associate Professor showed me the silver Obols your team extracted from it. He was only partially accurate in what he told you about them. Those silver coins weren’t used for ordinary passage on a regular ferry boat. They held great symbolic importance to our ancestors in their funerary traditions. Obols were meant to be presented to underworld ferryman Charon; which is actually a corruption of the word for ‘carrion’. The dead were buried with them over the eyes or in the mouth. It was the currency of HIS realm, and the price he required to transport the restless souls down the Styx to the land of the dead. Later, that river system was renamed: Acheron.”
—————-
Another fierce tempest rolled into the valley. It pelted the swinging relic with torrents of blood rain and typhoon-level gales. Darkness and evil reigned supreme. Brooding terror lingered like an endless burial procession, and made the previous thunderstorm seem like a gentle afternoon sprinkle, in comparison. The sinister corpse-man of Charon materialized on the deck of his ferry, as he surveyed the transforming apocalypse. His skeletal face bore no hint of emotion. Only his flaming eye-sockets betrayed the eternal rage within his blackened heart.
“Coin!”; he screeched with a rotten tongue to the excavation foreman. Though his Greek was an ancient dialect, the meaning was clear enough. The foreman and other mortified souls nearby cowered at his unholy presence. The void in the ship’s hull began to heal itself but the ferryman’s considerably amassed wages were lost. There was rowing to do, and passengers to transport to Hades.
In a moment of clarity, the foreman finally understood the reason the heavy rocks were placed on the deck of the ferry. It was to stop Charon. As if sinking his barge to the underworld would prevent death itself. It certainly hadn’t. Perhaps that explained the strife and civil discontent prevalent worldwide. The dead were no longer able to be transported to their final destination because of a misguided attempt to end death itself.
The natural order of things was lost. The dead could find no peace or rest. The accumulated wrath of countless departed souls wandering the Earth had leached into the world for the last four thousand years. They were lost and furious. It created a bottleneck of spiritual darkness which needed to be righted to rebalance the system. The lost souls needed their ferryman, and the living needed them to finally have closure. To live is to eventually die. It was the only way.
The hole in the hull of Charon’s ferry was almost gone. The foreman knew what had to be done, for the benefit of mankind. He went over to the master switch on the crane and lowered the festering wreckage back down to the water’s surface. A vortex appeared in the middle of the devastating storm clouds, leading off into the horizon. An endless line of impatient travelers appeared beside the Acheron’s bank to book their long-delayed passage.
They had an essential journey ahead to the promised land, and were weary from the delay. The foreman himself was grateful his own time to travel to Hades hadn’t yet arrived. With the dead finally receiving their justice due, he hoped the Earth would soon see the end of wickedness and war. When he himself was finally called down to the great below, the foreman would present the ferryman with his shiny Obol. It was Charon’s price for services to be rendered.

In northwestern Greece near the village of Zotiko, outdoor enthusiasts were fishing the banks of the Acheron. Their line became tangled in debris on the murky river bottom and wouldn’t come free. After tugging a bit more insistently, a large piece of wormwood was dragged to the surface. Upon closer inspection, it became clear the handcrafted wooden plank was very old and part of a sunken watercraft. Since Greece has a long history of civilization dating back over four millennia, the fishermen excitedly hoped the lost vessel held valuable artifacts or treasures.
Imagining the potential wealth a lost shipwreck could bring, they tried to handle the complicated salvage operation by themselves. They quickly realized it was too extensive of a task to complete without professional expertise. Not to mention, the severe legal penalties they stood to receive from the Greek antiquities board for not reporting such a find to the authorities. They are understandably protective of domestic historical sites.
The men sought legal advice on their rights to potential financial gain from the shipwreck they’d stumbled upon. Since it was discovered in a Greek waterway and not in international waters, they came up with a big old ‘goose egg’. Any proceeds or treasure uncovered at the site would go directly to the Greek government. They’d be lucky to even receive a finder’s plaque on the museum wall.
Meanwhile, the authorities were quick to assemble a full team to excavate whatever remained of the ancient ship. Initial soundings by divers revealed a ten meter long ferry-style barge immersed deep in the swampy river mud, with only the uppermost portion of it expose. Curiously, there were numerous large stones and boulders piled on top of the deck. As luck would have it, the poorly-placed rocks protected the ancient ship, masking it from wear and the elements. Radio carbon dating placed the construction to around 2240 BCE.
While rocks surreptitiously served to preserve major portions of the wreck, their reason for being piled on the deck was baffling. Any competent ferryman or barge captain would realize their weight at the top of the boat would sink it immediately, and yet they were obviously placed there to do so. The mystery widened. After suctioning out tons of river silt and removing the giant stones which sank it in the first place, the divers bore underneath the ferry and ran inflatable hoses through the holes.
Once a climate-controlled structure was fabricated to protect it from the sudden shock of being exposed again to the air for the first time in forty centuries, they began the arduous task of lifting the brittle wreckage from the bottom. The excavation foreman was excited to see that not only was the ancient vessel surfacing in one piece, but a massive cache of silver coins spilled out the side of the hull as it was raised from the water. The mysterious captain of the ferry had been rich, apparently.
The coins were sent to the University of Athens where they were identified as ‘Obols’. Literally ‘Ferry coins’; according to the associate professor who researched them. It made sense. The ferryman apparently stored his riches down below and had so many he used them as ship ballast! If so, there was an immense folly in his financial success. Greed apparently led to the unknown shipwreck on the Acheron river bed.
The team watched in breathless fascination as the ancient relic was finally dredged from the murky river. Countless layers of mud and debris were carefully removed from the waterlogged carcass. What lay underneath was eerily hypnotic. Its imposing structure was immediately overshadowed by the horrific stench of a slaughterhouse emanating from the bloated wormwood. The majestic ferry boat retrieved from the Acheron river held a sinister aura for all who beheld it. At the time, none of them could articulate why but the truth came soon enough.
At that moment, an unexpected storm struck the valley. It temporarily broke the bewitching spell over the hapless onlookers ensnared by its unexplained power. Mother Nature’s wrath caused the excavation workers to make a ‘mad dash’ for safety. The wreckage hovered just above the surface of the river on its crane riggings, like a phantom vessel stalking its prey.
——————
Other than minor surface rot around the top of the decking and cabin area, the rugged vessel was in remarkable visible condition. The authorities viewing the photos remotely via a web link could hardly believe their luck. They were thrilled about being able to offer the oldest known sailing ship raised from water. While nowhere as ornate or impressive as the Vasa flagship of Stockholm harbor, it was infinitely older. It also predated the Viking longboat in Oslo by at least three millennia; and was even older than the reconstructed Spartan warship raised from the Aegean Sea.
Condition-wise, it was even more impressive than King Tut’s afterlife sailboat. That ancient watercraft was buried in the tomb with the boy king. It had been shielded from the elements and time. This was the real deal. It was unquestionably more impressive as a tourist attraction. Well, except for the hideous, uncomfortable grip it held over all those who gazed upon it in person; AND the unbearable stench which made your eyes water and your knees buckle. It was mankind’s end personified in the wretched form of a wormwood ferry barge.
Both ‘tiny little drawbacks’ warranted avoiding the ungodly relic at all costs. Unfortunately the curator couldn’t grasp the magnitude of its horror from his monitor, 200 kilometers away. The excavation foreman desperately tried to explain the reality of the situation but it was one of those visceral things you just had to witness for yourself. All but a couple members of the crew quit out of fear or lingering illness. It was like being exposed to a deadly plague and they wanted no part of it. They abandoned the malodorous site in droves. Then, after experiencing the menacing hold it placed on those who came near it, no replacements could be found to take their place, either.
In growing frustration, the museum chairman telephoned the university antiquities department looking for volunteers. There he hoped to locate some history students willing to participate in preparing the discovery for final transport to the museum as an exhibition centerpiece. The head of the department answered the call. The learned professor listened to the curator’s tale of frustration and woe before excitedly interrupting.
“Where exactly did you find this sunken shipwreck? It wasn’t the Acheron river valley, was it? My associate Professor showed me the silver Obols your team extracted from it. He was only partially accurate in what he told you about them. Those silver coins weren’t used for ordinary passage on a regular ferry boat. They held great symbolic importance to our ancestors in their funerary traditions. Obols were meant to be presented to underworld ferryman Charon; which is actually a corruption of the word for ‘carrion’. The dead were buried with them over the eyes or in the mouth. It was the currency of HIS realm, and the price he required to transport the restless souls down the Styx to the land of the dead. Later, that river system was renamed: Acheron.”
—————-
Another fierce tempest rolled into the valley. It pelted the swinging relic with torrents of blood rain and typhoon-level gales. Darkness and evil reigned supreme. Brooding terror lingered like an endless burial procession, and made the previous thunderstorm seem like a gentle afternoon sprinkle, in comparison. The sinister corpse-man of Charon materialized on the deck of his ferry, as he surveyed the transforming apocalypse. His skeletal face bore no hint of emotion. Only his flaming eye-sockets betrayed the eternal rage within his blackened heart.
“Coin!”; he screeched with a rotten tongue to the excavation foreman. Though his Greek was an ancient dialect, the meaning was clear enough. The foreman and other mortified souls nearby cowered at his unholy presence. The void in the ship’s hull began to heal itself but the ferryman’s considerably amassed wages were lost. There was rowing to do, and passengers to transport to Hades.
In a moment of clarity, the foreman finally understood the reason the heavy rocks were placed on the deck of the ferry. It was to stop Charon. As if sinking his barge to the underworld would prevent death itself. It certainly hadn’t. Perhaps that explained the strife and civil discontent prevalent worldwide. The dead were no longer able to be transported to their final destination because of a misguided attempt to end death itself.
The natural order of things was lost. The dead could find no peace or rest. The accumulated wrath of countless departed souls wandering the Earth had leached into the world for the last four thousand years. They were lost and furious. It created a bottleneck of spiritual darkness which needed to be righted to rebalance the system. The lost souls needed their ferryman, and the living needed them to finally have closure. To live is to eventually die. It was the only way.
The hole in the hull of Charon’s ferry was almost gone. The foreman knew what had to be done, for the benefit of mankind. He went over to the master switch on the crane and lowered the festering wreckage back down to the water’s surface. A vortex appeared in the middle of the devastating storm clouds, leading off into the horizon. An endless line of impatient travelers appeared beside the Acheron’s bank to book their long-delayed passage.
They had an essential journey ahead to the promised land, and were weary from the delay. The foreman himself was grateful his own time to travel to Hades hadn’t yet arrived. With the dead finally receiving their justice due, he hoped the Earth would soon see the end of wickedness and war. When he himself was finally called down to the great below, the foreman would present the ferryman with his shiny Obol. It was Charon’s price for services to be rendered.

In northwestern Greece near the village of Zotiko, outdoor enthusiasts were fishing the banks of the Acheron. Their line became tangled in debris on the murky river bottom and wouldn’t come free. After tugging a bit more insistently, a large piece of wormwood was dragged to the surface. Upon closer inspection, it became clear the handcrafted wooden plank was very old and part of a sunken watercraft. Since Greece has a long history of civilization dating back over four millennia, the fishermen excitedly hoped the lost vessel held valuable artifacts or treasures.
Imagining the potential wealth a lost shipwreck could bring, they tried to handle the complicated salvage operation by themselves. They quickly realized it was too extensive of a task to complete without professional expertise. Not to mention, the severe legal penalties they stood to receive from the Greek antiquities board for not reporting such a find to the authorities. They are understandably protective of domestic historical sites.
The men sought legal advice on their rights to potential financial gain from the shipwreck they’d stumbled upon. Since it was discovered in a Greek waterway and not in international waters, they came up with a big old ‘goose egg’. Any proceeds or treasure uncovered at the site would go directly to the Greek government. They’d be lucky to even receive a finder’s plaque on the museum wall.
Meanwhile, the authorities were quick to assemble a full team to excavate whatever remained of the ancient ship. Initial soundings by divers revealed a ten meter long ferry-style barge immersed deep in the swampy river mud, with only the uppermost portion of it expose. Curiously, there were numerous large stones and boulders piled on top of the deck. As luck would have it, the poorly-placed rocks protected the ancient ship, masking it from wear and the elements. Radio carbon dating placed the construction to around 2240 BCE.
While rocks surreptitiously served to preserve major portions of the wreck, their reason for being piled on the deck was baffling. Any competent ferryman or barge captain would realize their weight at the top of the boat would sink it immediately, and yet they were obviously placed there to do so. The mystery widened. After suctioning out tons of river silt and removing the giant stones which sank it in the first place, the divers bore underneath the ferry and ran inflatable hoses through the holes.
Once a climate-controlled structure was fabricated to protect it from the sudden shock of being exposed again to the air for the first time in forty centuries, they began the arduous task of lifting the brittle wreckage from the bottom. The excavation foreman was excited to see that not only was the ancient vessel surfacing in one piece, but a massive cache of silver coins spilled out the side of the hull as it was raised from the water. The mysterious captain of the ferry had been rich, apparently.
The coins were sent to the University of Athens where they were identified as ‘Obols’. Literally ‘Ferry coins’; according to the associate professor who researched them. It made sense. The ferryman apparently stored his riches down below and had so many he used them as ship ballast! If so, there was an immense folly in his financial success. Greed apparently led to the unknown shipwreck on the Acheron river bed.
The team watched in breathless fascination as the ancient relic was finally dredged from the murky river. Countless layers of mud and debris were carefully removed from the waterlogged carcass. What lay underneath was eerily hypnotic. Its imposing structure was immediately overshadowed by the horrific stench of a slaughterhouse emanating from the bloated wormwood. The majestic ferry boat retrieved from the Acheron river held a sinister aura for all who beheld it. At the time, none of them could articulate why but the truth came soon enough.
At that moment, an unexpected storm struck the valley. It temporarily broke the bewitching spell over the hapless onlookers ensnared by its unexplained power. Mother Nature’s wrath caused the excavation workers to make a ‘mad dash’ for safety. The wreckage hovered just above the surface of the river on its crane riggings, like a phantom vessel stalking its prey.
——————
Other than minor surface rot around the top of the decking and cabin area, the rugged vessel was in remarkable visible condition. The authorities viewing the photos remotely via a web link could hardly believe their luck. They were thrilled about being able to offer the oldest known sailing ship raised from water. While nowhere as ornate or impressive as the Vasa flagship of Stockholm harbor, it was infinitely older. It also predated the Viking longboat in Oslo by at least three millennia; and was even older than the reconstructed Spartan warship raised from the Aegean Sea.
Condition-wise, it was even more impressive than King Tut’s afterlife sailboat. That ancient watercraft was buried in the tomb with the boy king. It had been shielded from the elements and time. This was the real deal. It was unquestionably more impressive as a tourist attraction. Well, except for the hideous, uncomfortable grip it held over all those who gazed upon it in person; AND the unbearable stench which made your eyes water and your knees buckle. It was mankind’s end personified in the wretched form of a wormwood ferry barge.
Both ‘tiny little drawbacks’ warranted avoiding the ungodly relic at all costs. Unfortunately the curator couldn’t grasp the magnitude of its horror from his monitor, 200 kilometers away. The excavation foreman desperately tried to explain the reality of the situation but it was one of those visceral things you just had to witness for yourself. All but a couple members of the crew quit out of fear or lingering illness. It was like being exposed to a deadly plague and they wanted no part of it. They abandoned the malodorous site in droves. Then, after experiencing the menacing hold it placed on those who came near it, no replacements could be found to take their place, either.
In growing frustration, the museum chairman telephoned the university antiquities department looking for volunteers. There he hoped to locate some history students willing to participate in preparing the discovery for final transport to the museum as an exhibition centerpiece. The head of the department answered the call. The learned professor listened to the curator’s tale of frustration and woe before excitedly interrupting.
“Where exactly did you find this sunken shipwreck? It wasn’t the Acheron river valley, was it? My associate Professor showed me the silver Obols your team extracted from it. He was only partially accurate in what he told you about them. Those silver coins weren’t used for ordinary passage on a regular ferry boat. They held great symbolic importance to our ancestors in their funerary traditions. Obols were meant to be presented to underworld ferryman Charon; which is actually a corruption of the word for ‘carrion’. The dead were buried with them over the eyes or in the mouth. It was the currency of HIS realm, and the price he required to transport the restless souls down the Styx to the land of the dead. Later, that river system was renamed: Acheron.”
—————-
Another fierce tempest rolled into the valley. It pelted the swinging relic with torrents of blood rain and typhoon-level gales. Darkness and evil reigned supreme. Brooding terror lingered like an endless burial procession, and made the previous thunderstorm seem like a gentle afternoon sprinkle, in comparison. The sinister corpse-man of Charon materialized on the deck of his ferry, as he surveyed the transforming apocalypse. His skeletal face bore no hint of emotion. Only his flaming eye-sockets betrayed the eternal rage within his blackened heart.
“Coin!”; he screeched with a rotten tongue to the excavation foreman. Though his Greek was an ancient dialect, the meaning was clear enough. The foreman and other mortified souls nearby cowered at his unholy presence. The void in the ship’s hull began to heal itself but the ferryman’s considerably amassed wages were lost. There was rowing to do, and passengers to transport to Hades.
In a moment of clarity, the foreman finally understood the reason the heavy rocks were placed on the deck of the ferry. It was to stop Charon. As if sinking his barge to the underworld would prevent death itself. It certainly hadn’t. Perhaps that explained the strife and civil discontent prevalent worldwide. The dead were no longer able to be transported to their final destination because of a misguided attempt to end death itself.
The natural order of things was lost. The dead could find no peace or rest. The accumulated wrath of countless departed souls wandering the Earth had leached into the world for the last four thousand years. They were lost and furious. It created a bottleneck of spiritual darkness which needed to be righted to rebalance the system. The lost souls needed their ferryman, and the living needed them to finally have closure. To live is to eventually die. It was the only way.
The hole in the hull of Charon’s ferry was almost gone. The foreman knew what had to be done, for the benefit of mankind. He went over to the master switch on the crane and lowered the festering wreckage back down to the water’s surface. A vortex appeared in the middle of the devastating storm clouds, leading off into the horizon. An endless line of impatient travelers appeared beside the Acheron’s bank to book their long-delayed passage.
They had an essential journey ahead to the promised land, and were weary from the delay. The foreman himself was grateful his own time to travel to Hades hadn’t yet arrived. With the dead finally receiving their justice due, he hoped the Earth would soon see the end of wickedness and war. When he himself was finally called down to the great below, the foreman would present the ferryman with his shiny Obol. It was Charon’s price for services to be rendered.

In northwestern Greece near the village of Zotiko, outdoor enthusiasts were fishing the banks of the Acheron. Their line became tangled in debris on the murky river bottom and wouldn’t come free. After tugging a bit more insistently, a large piece of wormwood was dragged to the surface. Upon closer inspection, it became clear the handcrafted wooden plank was very old and part of a sunken watercraft. Since Greece has a long history of civilization dating back over four millennia, the fishermen excitedly hoped the lost vessel held valuable artifacts or treasures.
Imagining the potential wealth a lost shipwreck could bring, they tried to handle the complicated salvage operation by themselves. They quickly realized it was too extensive of a task to complete without professional expertise. Not to mention, the severe legal penalties they stood to receive from the Greek antiquities board for not reporting such a find to the authorities. They are understandably protective of domestic historical sites.
The men sought legal advice on their rights to potential financial gain from the shipwreck they’d stumbled upon. Since it was discovered in a Greek waterway and not in international waters, they came up with a big old ‘goose egg’. Any proceeds or treasure uncovered at the site would go directly to the Greek government. They’d be lucky to even receive a finder’s plaque on the museum wall.
Meanwhile, the authorities were quick to assemble a full team to excavate whatever remained of the ancient ship. Initial soundings by divers revealed a ten meter long ferry-style barge immersed deep in the swampy river mud, with only the uppermost portion of it expose. Curiously, there were numerous large stones and boulders piled on top of the deck. As luck would have it, the poorly-placed rocks protected the ancient ship, masking it from wear and the elements. Radio carbon dating placed the construction to around 2240 BCE.
While rocks surreptitiously served to preserve major portions of the wreck, their reason for being piled on the deck was baffling. Any competent ferryman or barge captain would realize their weight at the top of the boat would sink it immediately, and yet they were obviously placed there to do so. The mystery widened. After suctioning out tons of river silt and removing the giant stones which sank it in the first place, the divers bore underneath the ferry and ran inflatable hoses through the holes.
Once a climate-controlled structure was fabricated to protect it from the sudden shock of being exposed again to the air for the first time in forty centuries, they began the arduous task of lifting the brittle wreckage from the bottom. The excavation foreman was excited to see that not only was the ancient vessel surfacing in one piece, but a massive cache of silver coins spilled out the side of the hull as it was raised from the water. The mysterious captain of the ferry had been rich, apparently.
The coins were sent to the University of Athens where they were identified as ‘Obols’. Literally ‘Ferry coins’; according to the associate professor who researched them. It made sense. The ferryman apparently stored his riches down below and had so many he used them as ship ballast! If so, there was an immense folly in his financial success. Greed apparently led to the unknown shipwreck on the Acheron river bed.
The team watched in breathless fascination as the ancient relic was finally dredged from the murky river. Countless layers of mud and debris were carefully removed from the waterlogged carcass. What lay underneath was eerily hypnotic. Its imposing structure was immediately overshadowed by the horrific stench of a slaughterhouse emanating from the bloated wormwood. The majestic ferry boat retrieved from the Acheron river held a sinister aura for all who beheld it. At the time, none of them could articulate why but the truth came soon enough.
At that moment, an unexpected storm struck the valley. It temporarily broke the bewitching spell over the hapless onlookers ensnared by its unexplained power. Mother Nature’s wrath caused the excavation workers to make a ‘mad dash’ for safety. The wreckage hovered just above the surface of the river on its crane riggings, like a phantom vessel stalking its prey.
——————
Other than minor surface rot around the top of the decking and cabin area, the rugged vessel was in remarkable visible condition. The authorities viewing the photos remotely via a web link could hardly believe their luck. They were thrilled about being able to offer the oldest known sailing ship raised from water. While nowhere as ornate or impressive as the Vasa flagship of Stockholm harbor, it was infinitely older. It also predated the Viking longboat in Oslo by at least three millennia; and was even older than the reconstructed Spartan warship raised from the Aegean Sea.
Condition-wise, it was even more impressive than King Tut’s afterlife sailboat. That ancient watercraft was buried in the tomb with the boy king. It had been shielded from the elements and time. This was the real deal. It was unquestionably more impressive as a tourist attraction. Well, except for the hideous, uncomfortable grip it held over all those who gazed upon it in person; AND the unbearable stench which made your eyes water and your knees buckle. It was mankind’s end personified in the wretched form of a wormwood ferry barge.
Both ‘tiny little drawbacks’ warranted avoiding the ungodly relic at all costs. Unfortunately the curator couldn’t grasp the magnitude of its horror from his monitor, 200 kilometers away. The excavation foreman desperately tried to explain the reality of the situation but it was one of those visceral things you just had to witness for yourself. All but a couple members of the crew quit out of fear or lingering illness. It was like being exposed to a deadly plague and they wanted no part of it. They abandoned the malodorous site in droves. Then, after experiencing the menacing hold it placed on those who came near it, no replacements could be found to take their place, either.
In growing frustration, the museum chairman telephoned the university antiquities department looking for volunteers. There he hoped to locate some history students willing to participate in preparing the discovery for final transport to the museum as an exhibition centerpiece. The head of the department answered the call. The learned professor listened to the curator’s tale of frustration and woe before excitedly interrupting.
“Where exactly did you find this sunken shipwreck? It wasn’t the Acheron river valley, was it? My associate Professor showed me the silver Obols your team extracted from it. He was only partially accurate in what he told you about them. Those silver coins weren’t used for ordinary passage on a regular ferry boat. They held great symbolic importance to our ancestors in their funerary traditions. Obols were meant to be presented to underworld ferryman Charon; which is actually a corruption of the word for ‘carrion’. The dead were buried with them over the eyes or in the mouth. It was the currency of HIS realm, and the price he required to transport the restless souls down the Styx to the land of the dead. Later, that river system was renamed: Acheron.”
—————-
Another fierce tempest rolled into the valley. It pelted the swinging relic with torrents of blood rain and typhoon-level gales. Darkness and evil reigned supreme. Brooding terror lingered like an endless burial procession, and made the previous thunderstorm seem like a gentle afternoon sprinkle, in comparison. The sinister corpse-man of Charon materialized on the deck of his ferry, as he surveyed the transforming apocalypse. His skeletal face bore no hint of emotion. Only his flaming eye-sockets betrayed the eternal rage within his blackened heart.
“Coin!”; he screeched with a rotten tongue to the excavation foreman. Though his Greek was an ancient dialect, the meaning was clear enough. The foreman and other mortified souls nearby cowered at his unholy presence. The void in the ship’s hull began to heal itself but the ferryman’s considerably amassed wages were lost. There was rowing to do, and passengers to transport to Hades.
In a moment of clarity, the foreman finally understood the reason the heavy rocks were placed on the deck of the ferry. It was to stop Charon. As if sinking his barge to the underworld would prevent death itself. It certainly hadn’t. Perhaps that explained the strife and civil discontent prevalent worldwide. The dead were no longer able to be transported to their final destination because of a misguided attempt to end death itself.
The natural order of things was lost. The dead could find no peace or rest. The accumulated wrath of countless departed souls wandering the Earth had leached into the world for the last four thousand years. They were lost and furious. It created a bottleneck of spiritual darkness which needed to be righted to rebalance the system. The lost souls needed their ferryman, and the living needed them to finally have closure. To live is to eventually die. It was the only way.
The hole in the hull of Charon’s ferry was almost gone. The foreman knew what had to be done, for the benefit of mankind. He went over to the master switch on the crane and lowered the festering wreckage back down to the water’s surface. A vortex appeared in the middle of the devastating storm clouds, leading off into the horizon. An endless line of impatient travelers appeared beside the Acheron’s bank to book their long-delayed passage.
They had an essential journey ahead to the promised land, and were weary from the delay. The foreman himself was grateful his own time to travel to Hades hadn’t yet arrived. With the dead finally receiving their justice due, he hoped the Earth would soon see the end of wickedness and war. When he himself was finally called down to the great below, the foreman would present the ferryman with his shiny Obol. It was Charon’s price for services to be rendered.

In northwestern Greece near the village of Zotiko, outdoor enthusiasts were fishing the banks of the Acheron. Their line became tangled in debris on the murky river bottom and wouldn’t come free. After tugging a bit more insistently, a large piece of wormwood was dragged to the surface. Upon closer inspection, it became clear the handcrafted wooden plank was very old and part of a sunken watercraft. Since Greece has a long history of civilization dating back over four millennia, the fishermen excitedly hoped the lost vessel held valuable artifacts or treasures.
Imagining the potential wealth a lost shipwreck could bring, they tried to handle the complicated salvage operation by themselves. They quickly realized it was too extensive of a task to complete without professional expertise. Not to mention, the severe legal penalties they stood to receive from the Greek antiquities board for not reporting such a find to the authorities. They are understandably protective of domestic historical sites.
The men sought legal advice on their rights to potential financial gain from the shipwreck they’d stumbled upon. Since it was discovered in a Greek waterway and not in international waters, they came up with a big old ‘goose egg’. Any proceeds or treasure uncovered at the site would go directly to the Greek government. They’d be lucky to even receive a finder’s plaque on the museum wall.
Meanwhile, the authorities were quick to assemble a full team to excavate whatever remained of the ancient ship. Initial soundings by divers revealed a ten meter long ferry-style barge immersed deep in the swampy river mud, with only the uppermost portion of it expose. Curiously, there were numerous large stones and boulders piled on top of the deck. As luck would have it, the poorly-placed rocks protected the ancient ship, masking it from wear and the elements. Radio carbon dating placed the construction to around 2240 BCE.
While rocks surreptitiously served to preserve major portions of the wreck, their reason for being piled on the deck was baffling. Any competent ferryman or barge captain would realize their weight at the top of the boat would sink it immediately, and yet they were obviously placed there to do so. The mystery widened. After suctioning out tons of river silt and removing the giant stones which sank it in the first place, the divers bore underneath the ferry and ran inflatable hoses through the holes.
Once a climate-controlled structure was fabricated to protect it from the sudden shock of being exposed again to the air for the first time in forty centuries, they began the arduous task of lifting the brittle wreckage from the bottom. The excavation foreman was excited to see that not only was the ancient vessel surfacing in one piece, but a massive cache of silver coins spilled out the side of the hull as it was raised from the water. The mysterious captain of the ferry had been rich, apparently.
The coins were sent to the University of Athens where they were identified as ‘Obols’. Literally ‘Ferry coins’; according to the associate professor who researched them. It made sense. The ferryman apparently stored his riches down below and had so many he used them as ship ballast! If so, there was an immense folly in his financial success. Greed apparently led to the unknown shipwreck on the Acheron river bed.
The team watched in breathless fascination as the ancient relic was finally dredged from the murky river. Countless layers of mud and debris were carefully removed from the waterlogged carcass. What lay underneath was eerily hypnotic. Its imposing structure was immediately overshadowed by the horrific stench of a slaughterhouse emanating from the bloated wormwood. The majestic ferry boat retrieved from the Acheron river held a sinister aura for all who beheld it. At the time, none of them could articulate why but the truth came soon enough.
At that moment, an unexpected storm struck the valley. It temporarily broke the bewitching spell over the hapless onlookers ensnared by its unexplained power. Mother Nature’s wrath caused the excavation workers to make a ‘mad dash’ for safety. The wreckage hovered just above the surface of the river on its crane riggings, like a phantom vessel stalking its prey.
——————
Other than minor surface rot around the top of the decking and cabin area, the rugged vessel was in remarkable visible condition. The authorities viewing the photos remotely via a web link could hardly believe their luck. They were thrilled about being able to offer the oldest known sailing ship raised from water. While nowhere as ornate or impressive as the Vasa flagship of Stockholm harbor, it was infinitely older. It also predated the Viking longboat in Oslo by at least three millennia; and was even older than the reconstructed Spartan warship raised from the Aegean Sea.
Condition-wise, it was even more impressive than King Tut’s afterlife sailboat. That ancient watercraft was buried in the tomb with the boy king. It had been shielded from the elements and time. This was the real deal. It was unquestionably more impressive as a tourist attraction. Well, except for the hideous, uncomfortable grip it held over all those who gazed upon it in person; AND the unbearable stench which made your eyes water and your knees buckle. It was mankind’s end personified in the wretched form of a wormwood ferry barge.
Both ‘tiny little drawbacks’ warranted avoiding the ungodly relic at all costs. Unfortunately the curator couldn’t grasp the magnitude of its horror from his monitor, 200 kilometers away. The excavation foreman desperately tried to explain the reality of the situation but it was one of those visceral things you just had to witness for yourself. All but a couple members of the crew quit out of fear or lingering illness. It was like being exposed to a deadly plague and they wanted no part of it. They abandoned the malodorous site in droves. Then, after experiencing the menacing hold it placed on those who came near it, no replacements could be found to take their place, either.
In growing frustration, the museum chairman telephoned the university antiquities department looking for volunteers. There he hoped to locate some history students willing to participate in preparing the discovery for final transport to the museum as an exhibition centerpiece. The head of the department answered the call. The learned professor listened to the curator’s tale of frustration and woe before excitedly interrupting.
“Where exactly did you find this sunken shipwreck? It wasn’t the Acheron river valley, was it? My associate Professor showed me the silver Obols your team extracted from it. He was only partially accurate in what he told you about them. Those silver coins weren’t used for ordinary passage on a regular ferry boat. They held great symbolic importance to our ancestors in their funerary traditions. Obols were meant to be presented to underworld ferryman Charon; which is actually a corruption of the word for ‘carrion’. The dead were buried with them over the eyes or in the mouth. It was the currency of HIS realm, and the price he required to transport the restless souls down the Styx to the land of the dead. Later, that river system was renamed: Acheron.”
—————-
Another fierce tempest rolled into the valley. It pelted the swinging relic with torrents of blood rain and typhoon-level gales. Darkness and evil reigned supreme. Brooding terror lingered like an endless burial procession, and made the previous thunderstorm seem like a gentle afternoon sprinkle, in comparison. The sinister corpse-man of Charon materialized on the deck of his ferry, as he surveyed the transforming apocalypse. His skeletal face bore no hint of emotion. Only his flaming eye-sockets betrayed the eternal rage within his blackened heart.
“Coin!”; he screeched with a rotten tongue to the excavation foreman. Though his Greek was an ancient dialect, the meaning was clear enough. The foreman and other mortified souls nearby cowered at his unholy presence. The void in the ship’s hull began to heal itself but the ferryman’s considerably amassed wages were lost. There was rowing to do, and passengers to transport to Hades.
In a moment of clarity, the foreman finally understood the reason the heavy rocks were placed on the deck of the ferry. It was to stop Charon. As if sinking his barge to the underworld would prevent death itself. It certainly hadn’t. Perhaps that explained the strife and civil discontent prevalent worldwide. The dead were no longer able to be transported to their final destination because of a misguided attempt to end death itself.
The natural order of things was lost. The dead could find no peace or rest. The accumulated wrath of countless departed souls wandering the Earth had leached into the world for the last four thousand years. They were lost and furious. It created a bottleneck of spiritual darkness which needed to be righted to rebalance the system. The lost souls needed their ferryman, and the living needed them to finally have closure. To live is to eventually die. It was the only way.
The hole in the hull of Charon’s ferry was almost gone. The foreman knew what had to be done, for the benefit of mankind. He went over to the master switch on the crane and lowered the festering wreckage back down to the water’s surface. A vortex appeared in the middle of the devastating storm clouds, leading off into the horizon. An endless line of impatient travelers appeared beside the Acheron’s bank to book their long-delayed passage.
They had an essential journey ahead to the promised land, and were weary from the delay. The foreman himself was grateful his own time to travel to Hades hadn’t yet arrived. With the dead finally receiving their justice due, he hoped the Earth would soon see the end of wickedness and war. When he himself was finally called down to the great below, the foreman would present the ferryman with his shiny Obol. It was Charon’s price for services to be rendered.

My mom was recently put on humalog after a stay at the hospital…we can’t seem to get her blood sugar under 300. We live in Los Angeles and every endocrinologist in town is NOT taking on new patients. Have no clue what we’re doing. The Hospitalist basically told my mom to take a few units and then eat…so now my mom thinks she needs to eat every time she takes the insulin. Any advice? or does anyone know of specialists I can reach out to for a referral. Thanks!

TIA for your response!

• Male, 30, 6’1”, 275lbs
• Conditions: high blood pressure, GERD, mild chronic gastritis
• Meds: omeprazole, atorvastatin, ezetimbe, losartan, hydrochlorothiazide
• Last blood panel was in Jan — all was normal

A few years ago, I had very weird, achy leg pain. Did blood testing, including a d-dimer, everything came back fine. Was written off as anxiety and muscle spasms. Then, a year or so ago, went to the doc for abdominal pain and bloating. After lots of testing, an ultrasound showed a somewhat-large liver, and a colonoscopy and endoscopy showed mild gastritis — that was all.
Diet changes, lost some weight, eliminating triggers as best I can — abdominal pain still comes and goes. Achy legs comes and goes. But now it’s also my arms and shoulders at times as well.
A month ago, added flank pain to the mix. Doc thought it might be kidney stones (despite urine sample being fine), but haven’t passed any and the pain persists.
Over the weekend, was dealing with what felt like a cold. Lots of mucus and wet cough. In the last 24-48 hours, I’ve felt improvement — the cough still somewhat persists (it’s not Covid). The flank pain seems to have intensified a bit. Also dealing with some mental fog.
My health anxiety has led me to congestive heart failure, kidney failure — the whole gamut of life-threatening conditions. Am I just dealing with bad anxiety and 30-year-old body aches? Or am I justified in thinking there’s more going on?

TIA for your response!

• Male, 30, 6’1”, 275lbs
• Conditions: high blood pressure, GERD, mild chronic gastritis
• Meds: omeprazole, atorvastatin, ezetimbe, losartan, hydrochlorothiazide
• Last blood panel was in Jan — all was normal

A few years ago, I had very weird, achy leg pain. Did blood testing, including a d-dimer, everything came back fine. Was written off as anxiety and muscle spasms. Then, a year or so ago, went to the doc for abdominal pain and bloating. After lots of testing, an ultrasound showed a somewhat-large liver, and a colonoscopy and endoscopy showed mild gastritis — that was all.
Diet changes, lost some weight, eliminating triggers as best I can — abdominal pain still comes and goes. Achy legs comes and goes. But now it’s also my arms and shoulders at times as well.
A month ago, added flank pain to the mix. Doc thought it might be kidney stones (despite urine sample being fine), but haven’t passed any and the pain persists.
Over the weekend, was dealing with what felt like a cold. Lots of mucus and wet cough. In the last 24-48 hours, I’ve felt improvement — the cough still somewhat persists (it’s not Covid). The flank pain seems to have intensified a bit. Also dealing with some mental fog.
My health anxiety has led me to congestive heart failure, kidney failure — the whole gamut of life-threatening conditions. Am I just dealing with bad anxiety and 30-year-old body aches? Or am I justified in thinking there’s more going on?

Imagine walking into a burning building, and everyone laughs and tells you the fire’s all in your head. When no one believes you, are you going to stay to burn up with them? Every passenger in that crowd waiting to embark on the luxury cruise was already dead—they just didn’t know it yet! I stared through the windows of the terminal at the magnificent Seastar, at the broken glass and spatters of blood that only I could see… and then I fled.
Without warning a single soul.
What would have been the point? My name is Cassandra—I see death six days before it happens, and can feel it if I shake a cold hand—but no matter what I do, I can never, ever prevent it.
My flight took me as far as the escalators before a flash of purple brought me screeching to a halt. Lily Tsuki? No—it wasn’t the purple-haired musician who’d given me with cruise gift card. But suddenly I remembered how I’d been looking forward to hearing her performance aboard this very vessel…
Oh God…
It was one thing to turn my back on doomed strangers. Terrible as it sounds, it’s a bit like reading about a catastrophe in the news. Quite another thing to abandon somebody I knew! Could I really leave her to become one of the bodies putrefying in the belly of the Seastar? Every time I ordered a drink at my favorite bar, I’d remember I hadn’t even tried to save her!
“Fuck!” I cried, fumbling for my phone. “Oh, fuck me sideways… how much time…?”
Ninety minutes.
Ninety minutes to get on board, find the musician, and… what? Convince her to disembark?
How?
And yet my feet were already turning toward the gangplank—because as it turns out, I would rather plunge headlong into a ship full of the rotting dead than face an empty piano bench and the guilt that no amount of alcohol would ever drown. But to have any chance at persuading Lily, I’d need to know how the passengers died. This meant that in addition to finding a purple-haired needle in a Titanic-sized haystack, a horrifying task loomed ahead of me. I was going to have to do something I had not done in a very long time—plunge directly into my vision. Walk into its very maw and face whatever gruesome horrors lurked at the source of that nauseating odor.
I was going to have to find the bodies…
… and whatever killed them.
Boarding
The stench was so overpowering after crossing the gangplank that I dropped to my knees and dry heaved. The flow of passengers moved around me past the concierge desk. I must have looked exceptionally sick, because a pretty girl in a suit skirt approached, asking if I needed assistance. She reached out a hand to help me up—cold!
I staggered away from her and inside. Then—because I felt I might throw up—quickly found my way out to the promenade deck and the blessed breeze.
Lifeboats hung overhead. Beyond the rail, the sea sparkled in the afternoon sun. Cushioned loungers lined the deck. None were in use, presumably because the pool, patio, spa, and other amenities on the upper decks had much more attractive areas for lounging. I leaned against the rail and gulped the air, listening to the waves splash against the side of the boat, noting blood spatters further down—but nothing signifying the cause of the blood. Just vague signs of violence.
After circling the entire promenade deck and spotting only the occasional bloody spatters, I gritted my teeth, pulled my shirt collar up over my nose, and plunged into the nearest door.
The Seastar’s interior had the atmosphere of a luxury hotel. People milled about the restaurant and shopping area, buzzing with excitement, talking about cabaret shows and fine dining, while perky crew members answered questions, all perfectly oblivious to the putrid sweet rotting stench. I’d most likely find Lily Tsuki at the piano lounge, but since I didn’t yet have any plausible explanation for what had happened to the passengers, I continued wandering, entering a bustling café overlooking the ship’s grand staircase. Stepping over an enormous blood stain on the carpet, I passed the counter, nauseated by the fancy pastries behind their glass cases, peering among the tables and chairs. Paused when I spotted an eyeball in a teacup. No trace of how it got there. No body with an empty socket. Just the eyeball, swirling in a congealed bloody jelly at the bottom of the cup…
I scurried away, snatching a cloth napkin to cover my nose.
The interior darkened as I ascended the central staircase. No electricity, I noted as I clutched the railing. Why would the power be cut? A storm?
But storms don’t scoop out eyeballs with a dessert spoon….
Coming onto deck 6, I peered down a long, dim corridor lined with passenger cabins. To passengers coming and going, the hall was illuminated by electric lighting—but since I was seeing the ship six days in the future, the narrow hallway vanished into blackness. With no way to enter the cabins, and nothing much to see here or in the other dimmed halls of the passenger decks, I ascended until I reached the pool.
Pool Deck
Deck 9 opened to wide panoramic windows, dining, a spa, and of course the pool. I emerged outdoors with relief, removing the napkin from my nose as the sea breeze gave some respite from the odor.
Around me, people partied in bikinis and beachwear and suits, sipping all manner of drinks around the sky-blue swimming pool. A young woman stretched on a blood-spattered lounger, oblivious to the gore beneath her tanned figure. A few bodies floated among the swimmers, bloated and discolored. My vision shimmered briefly as a teen boy swam right through one of the bodies, splashing as if it were not there. My heart lurched when I realized that it was his own, albeit dressed in different clothes—
“Oof!” I grunted as a small figure bashed into me, her arm grazing mine.
“Sorry!” cried a little girl in a pink swimsuit, bolting by as her mother yelled at her to watch out for people.
I tried not to think of how cold the little girl’s arm felt. Counted the bodies: eight in the pool. One by the towel bin, head caved in. I made a circuit of the pool, occasionally brushing against people—cold, cold, cold.
No survivors, it seemed.
But why?
That was when I spotted a shirtless old man sitting at a table under an umbrella. I froze, goosebumps prickling along my skin. Unlike the floaters, there was no obvious reason for his death. His back was to me, the bare skin of his shoulders gray and blotchy. In his hand he held a broken drinking glass. He was positioned in repose… so what killed him?
My heart quickened as I moved round to the front of him.
His mouth hung open, shards of glass and a mangled tongue lolling out, crimson trailing down his shirt front. The source of the chewed glass was obvious—the cup in his hand was broken, its jagged edges bloody.
He’d died choking on the glass.
“What the fuck is happening here?” I whispered.
Forward Stairwell
The jogging track and the sundeck—decks 10 and 11—offered a stunning bird’s eye of the pool and ocean, but I did not stop to take this in as I circled to the bow, opting to take the forward stairs down, rather than central.
The stench hit me like a cloud.
I had to stop as I descended into the dim stairwell, clinging to the railing, doubled over, gagging. It was so so bad. My eyes watered. My stomach bucked. And it was dark. Thank God for my phone’s flashlight. I fumbled it on and, napkin firmly over my nose, plunged down into the depths… The phone’s thin illumination flashed along the carpeted stairwell and the hall of the first of the passenger decks. I kept descending. Paused at an unidentifiable slick red mound. I was examining it under my light when a crewmember jogged up to me and asked, “Lose something, miss?” “Just my marbles,” I muttered, shooing the crew member away and inadvertently brushing his hand. Cold. I turned my attention back to the mound.
A slimy pile of intestines on the stairwell… trailing down to a disemboweled body.
Intestines… eyeballs… eating broken glass… nothing about this makes sense! I swiveled the beam to check further downward.
That was when I found the source of the odor.
My path down was obstructed by a mass of bodies. The ones underneath seemed to have been trampled, but the ones on top… I squeezed my watering eyes and retched against the wall. Some of the bodies bore horrible mutilations—fingers bent and twisted, joints out of alignment, faces smashed in and jaws torn open. Many more appeared to have been crushed in the press of bodies. Best guess, there was a wave of panicked people rushing upstairs from below, colliding with a wave of others fleeing down from above.
Why this staircase? What was near this part of the ship?
The cabaret lounge, I realized. No electricity. No elevators. This was the nearest stairwell to the auditorium.
Closer. I was inching closer to uncovering the fates of the passengers. And yet, I still had no idea what the passengers were fleeing from. Who were the attackers? Or… I thought of the eyeball. The glass chewed and swallowed.
An icy pinprick at the base of my skull whispered the question I didn’t want to ask…
Why? Why did some of the passengers go mad, and do it to themselves?
Piano Bar
I took the long way round to the cabaret theatre, going all the way back up the stairs and coming down on the central staircase, only to detour on hearing the notes of a piano. I found myself in a cozy lounge and spotted a purple-haired figure at the keys. And just in time—the ship was due to depart in less than half an hour!
“Lily!” I rushed over.
The musician’s face lit. “Oh it’s you, friend! You made it!”
“You’ve got to get off the ship!”
“Off the—”
“I know it seems crazy but you’ve got to! Everyone on board is going to die—I’ve seen it because I’m psycho!” I heard it a second later and smacked my forehead. “I mean—psychic! PSYCHIC!! I can see the future.” At her scrunched eyebrows, I burst, “Look I know how I sound, but I’ve been able to see things since I was a little girl, and I am telling you that this ship is going to go dark! The engines will cut out! People are going to flee and trample each other on that forward staircase…” Launching into a rapid-fire recounting, I was just getting to the eyeball in the teacup when she interrupted:
“You’re afraid of some sort of terrorist attack?”
“No, no! No! It’s almost like… a kind of madness, a contagion, that spreads through the ship—”
“A zombie apocalypse?”
“Not zombies…”
“Poltergeists? Possession?” She played a riff from a horror movie. “Should we call an exorcist?”
“We should leave!” I checked my phone. “Quickly!—"
“What an odd duck you are! I can’t imagine any sort of catastrophe as big as you’re saying. You know this ship has tons of safety protocols. And even if I did believe some disaster were drawing near—do you really think I could abandon crowds and crew?” She looked at me over her glasses, shimmering purple lips curving in a smile. “Listen friend, if this were the Titanic and I was the only one who could see the iceberg, I’d stay to steer us right, not run off leaving everyone to die!”
Icy fingers raked along my spine. Even if she wasn’t taking me seriously, she was right—I did have a moral obligation to save people. An obligation I’d been trying to fulfill ever since I was a little girl, until the attempt killed my brother, and even after, I kept trying for years and years…. until at last I realized that there is no way to change anything. That is why I call myself Cassandra. For the Greek prophet doomed to predict the future but never be believed. Try and prevent what I’ve foreseen? You might as well try and pluck the stars from the sky!
Every hand I’d touched was cold. Everyone on board would die.
My fists balled, fingernails digging so hard into my palms they bled. “You really have no idea what you’re asking of me…”
“Oh, I’m not telling you to stay. I’m just explaining why I have to. Besides, I’m under contract.” She winked and focused on her playing as guests entered and sat at nearby tables.
She had no idea! None whatsoever! If I thought there was even a sliver of a hope, I wouldn’t abandon people! Oh, if this happy-go-lucky musician understood the futility!!
But she will, came another, darker thought. She will know the full depth of the horror coming…
“No,” I whispered.
“Huh?” She shouted, “Wait—friend, where are you going?”
But I was not listening. The cabaret theatre—was the answer there? The reason for the crush of bodies in the forward stairwell? I rushed past the cafe with the eyeball in the teacup, through the grand doors into the cabaret hall—
—but the cabaret hall was surprisingly quiet, save for a light touch of classical music. A few passengers mingled here or there, unnoticing of the cadavers draped on chairs and tables. The stage itself was pristine, the wood smooth and polished in the fading orange light through the windows. Apparently, the origin of the panicked flight up the forward stairwell was not this grand entertainment venue—nothing here supported that theory.
Nonetheless, I gave the place a thorough search until my phone’s battery ran low, and then I returned to the grand staircase.
In one direction lay passenger cabins. In the other, the gangplank back to the port terminal and safety.
“It’s not too late to be a coward, Cass,” I said. “Run from the ship, run from the empty piano bench at the bar, find a different, cheaper hole in the wall to crawl into like—like the cockroach you are…”
Always the survivor, eh…?
Or… or, I could try just one more time. “‘Hope,’” my brother always said, “is the thing with feathers.”
And look what happened to him! flashed through my mind. My heart slammed against my ribcage. I’d just die too, unless I left in the next—how many minutes? I checked my phone, but it was dead. Like I would be if I stayed.
A horn sounded the Seastar’s departure. A distant cheer rose up from the upper decks and balconies. I felt a brief panicky impulse to run back out on deck and throw myself off the ship… but in truth, my fate had already been decided before the ship’s horn blew. I hadn’t been paying attention earlier, but I’d been rubbing and rubbing my hands, and finally realized they were cold. Probably had been since I’d boarded. I shuffled leaden feet toward the passenger cabins, guided by my phone’s light to the brass number plate for 4044—my cabin. Reached for the knob and stopped.
That smell—dread squeezed my intestines like a wet rag.
Smoke. Burnt meat.
I wrinkled my nose and opened the door.
Orange rays shone through the window, the sunset so vivid it almost gave the illusion that the room was on fire. The walls and ceiling were charred. The edges of the mattress and sheets a smoldered ruin. But the worst damage was the small sofa by the coffee table. Broken bottles scattered round. And there on the sofa—
My fingers went limp on the door handle as I stared into melted sockets of a body charred beyond recognition. A dark line encircled its wrist. The blackened remnants of a charm bracelet.
My bracelet.
While the man on the pool deck swallowed glass, I would succumb to the insanity here, dousing myself in alcohol and flame—
—immolating myself.
[Part 1]

i notice it every night but it happens during the day too sometimes. and often i’ll notice one of my nostrils feels clogged when i have chest tightness (i think it changes sides but i usually notice on the right nostril). i’m guessing it’s either anxiety or acid reflux but i’m not sure. sometimes it feels a little better when i lay down flat on my back.
i often feel lightheaded, always feel tense, and have headaches a lot too. and maybe bloating but i could just be fat idk
my doctor guessed it was acid reflux and i was on omeprazole for a few months with no difference. i’ve had heartburn before rarely and this feels different than that.
i do have an unhealthy diet. i have arfid and eat the same foods everyday to avoid getting food poisoning or stomach aches (it’s not rational but makes sense in my head.) frosted flakes every breakfast, chicken noodle soup every lunch, and either chicken nuggets and fries or fettuccine alfredo for dinner. i hate what i eat but eating anything else is even worse. eating anything kinda makes me nauseous, especially before dinner time. i’ve always been a picky eater but it has gotten worse over the past few years. i drink a lot of water though lol
i’ve been meditating and doing breathing exercises everyday for over a year and they seem to make my chest tightness worse. i don’t know how i haven’t gotten used to it by now i might be breathing wrong. this is what leads me to think the chest tightness is anxiety cause it gets worse when i’m aware of my breathing. i feel like i can’t breathe in and out fully
i have big boobs and am kinda convinced they could be causing chest tightness but don’t know if that’s possible. maybe my bra could be but idk. they feel too big and i don’t know if sensory issues can cause chest tightness or something but being aware of my boobs makes me feel like i can’t breathe as well.
my blood pressure is normal my blood oxygen levels are normal and my pulse is normal so i don’t think it’s heart related
if it’s allergy related i take allergy meds they don’t seem to do anything
sorry about how neurotic and disorganized this is