Once upon a time, though not so long ago, and actually so very recent that it may very well be happening at this very moment, there lived a young man named Flak. Flak was once asked to appear on an episode of Star Trek as a guest star, but arrived only to discover that the show had been cancelled for decades. He still scratches his head about it.

The Unbearable Flak of Being

Gueststarring alarivana as Riva.

One inorganic afternoon, Flak awoke from a nap to find that life was a meaningless gaping void that consumed all pleasure and left only heartbreak. He shared this view with his mother, who only told him to stop being so emo. Realizing that no one understood his pain, Flak dressed in black, dyed his hair black, and attached numerous metallic protrusions to his black clothing. This made him feel all the more isolated from his facsist and cruel family who refused to show him love, which of course did not truly exist.

On his way to school the next day Flak encountered Riva, who inquired as to his new fashion and dour expression. Flak informed her that existance itself mocked his every waking moment, and that he could only find solace in the cold embrace of the underworld. Hearing these words bathed in the utterdark blood of tainted youth transformed Riva’s clothing black, her skin and hair ghostly pale, and gave her hideous dark-colored makeup. They then walked to school together speaking depressing haiku.

In his The King’s English class, Flak’s instructor asked him where his homework assignment was. Flak responded that the paper was shredded along with his soul, and the teacher died right then and there, his corpse turned into beatles immediately afterwards. As a result, school was cancelled for the day while exterminators with OCD were called in.

On his way home Flak attacked a tree with his heat vision, which had now become gray beams of death. The tree withered and died, but not before making a twenty-three minute speech on the futility of hope. Flak listened to every word while smoking a menthol cigarette.

Upon returning to his room Flak covered his windows with black construction paper and began writing down the depressing haiku he and Riva had created. After completing them, he flushed each of them down the toilet, knowing the world would never understand the darkness and bile that filled his heart.

It was when Flak had decided to delete all of his anime and replace it with episodes of Charmed and Angel that something strange began to happen. He felt an odd sensation of warmth from inside his head, a sensation that quickly grew into overwhelmingly painful burning. A red hole appeared in the side of Flak’s head, and from that hole jumped a goo-covered Flak. Flak commented how he finally had someone with which to share his sorrow, but the new Flak simply replied by suckerpunching Flak through the window, and then blasting him with heat vision until all that was left were unhappy cinders caught in the wind.

But before being reduced to charred nothingness Flak learned two important lessons. The first was that goth was rarely contagious, and never cool. The second was that no one delete Flak’s anime, not even Flak.

Riva on the other hand was listening to a CD by The Cure.

And here we have it. This is the actual new drawing I made about two weeks ago. I’m rather excited about this one, because it’s a redo of the picture I posted previously. Using the same subject makes for easy comparison. Consequently, the blatant rise in quality is a metaphorical pat on the back and a stroke for my ego.

There’s a rough five year gap between this version of Pax, as the character is named, and the previous installment of him. In game he’s gone through a wide variety of changes, aside from gaining five levels. This urged me to give him a visual update. His most iconic features are the slave belt he keeps on his body, and the tattoos that cover most of his body. Even so the party still mostly just remembers him for the significant arcane punch that he packs. My party tends to overlook visual clues unless we clearly emphasize on it. Had I not expressly dictated that Pax ran through the snow barefooted and wrapped in flimsy rags the first few sessions, protected solely by an Endure Elements, I doubted anyone would have registered.

What I personally feel is the greatest technical achievement about this piece is the improvement in anatomy. I think the proportions are alright, or at the least superior to any I’ve maintained so far. Colours and lighting are a continuous development from the Photoshop painting technique I’ve started using since the Galen picture, and it’s starting to look halfway decent. I should probably try to get the hang of softer colours and lower contrasts, but I like me some dramatic lighting. I can almost claim it to be a personal art style.

Moving even further into the past! I’m taking a ragged knife to my pride and dignity posting this piece, but I’d love for you to fully grasp my sense of progression when I get to the actual new thingy.

This one was made a rough five years ago, and it was poor even by the liberal standards I maintained back then. It was drawn as a quick character concept; something to visualize an RPG character I was building at the time. His name is Pax, a young and mentally unstable wizard/elemental savant of the fire element. He’s been the subject of devil bargains, elemental plotting, wizard order intrigues and sibling vengeance. He has evolved dramatically in recent times and built some interesting relationships with his fellow adventurers. I’m still playing him to this day, and he remains one of my favorite role-play personas. Right now he stands on a crossroad, and the moral choices of my party will pretty much determine whether he turns for evil or will seek out absolution.

I’m not much inclined to discuss the technicalities of this drawing. It was a quick and dirty sketch of what I had in mind, roughly colorized and heavily layered with lighting to distract from, well, most of it. I never got around to actually cleaning it all up, so it remained as you see it here. Suffice it to say it served me well enough to grasp the general concept of what I wanted Pax to act and look like.

This one’s actually older than the ‘Gallen’ piece by a rough few months, but I think it came out better.

His name is Orsus, a pen and paper RPG character in an AD&D/homebrew system that was nebulous at best. The DM unfortunately gave up his DM ambitions soon after Orsus made its entrée, so his active career was short-lived. He was a simple but noble fighter with an equally simple desire to see some of the world. A general good guy willing to defend the weak and shepherd the lost. He also rolled some awesome stats, so he was damn good at it to.

This is one of the last pieces for which I still used a pencil sketch as basis. Proportions are way off, but for a change this was intentional. I was looking to give him dramatized cartoonish proportions, and to emphasize on his strength I opted to give him massive hands (though admittedly I’m inclined to oversize the hands on every figure I draw). Colours are more accurate, shading is better defined and the composition is near to what I had actually envisioned. It’s a simple ¾ full view, sure, but I was very satisfied with the feel I was hoping to give this character.

Lurker Tax!

It’s a bit out of the blue, but I made a new drawing. No, not the one you see above. This one is roughly two years old. But before I’d go and post the actual new one, I decided it was high time I uploaded some old works that have been lingering on my computer for some time now. They’ll never reach a more refined state than they are in right now anyway.

The drawing you see here is a drawing of a forum RPG character named Gallen. To the DOTQ crowd he’s probably familiar, but I’m adding a description anyway for any new faces reading this. Gallen is (or rather ‘was’; the RPG came to an unfortunate early halt) a plague bearer, and he uses magic to sustain himself. In the setting this character inhabits, using magic to regenerate yourself is inevitably self-destructive in the long run. However, not using the magic would have him die to the plague equally fast. The dramatic balance this persona was walking made him a highly appealing character for me to play, and his affliction generated some entertaining interactions with other characters.

The drawing itself was en experiments for all intents and purposes. It didn’t quite succeed to achieve any of the effects I was aiming for, but it’s still valid as an exercise. The most glaring fault to me is the face, not in that it is misshapen (though I’m sure a more skilled artist might be able to point out why it in fact is) but rather that it looks so very old. Gallen is barely a young adult in his late teens, but as he is depicted here, he looks reliquarian. This has mostly to do with my attempt to make him look skin over bones, malnourished and generally unhealthy. The resulting grey-skinned skeletal visage does not much allude to his youth although it might be argued symbolically that Gallen is very much old beyond his years. The odd colouring and lighting has mostly to do with my unfamiliarity with the particular digital painting techniques I was using at the time. The resulting style isn’t really something I’d intentionally pursue, but it has artistic merit.

We got four entries:
- A Royal Missive by KingCrazyGenius
- City Lights from a Plane by SAKI
- Gravity by Flak
- Houkago Flak Time by kimaguresan

Congratulations to everyone who participated! You’re all winners!

Now… want to be winners again? Or maybe you didn’t have the time to throw something together last time around, and you want to be winners for the first time? In the DotQ Writing Challenge, everyone wins. You can find details on Challenge #4 on the forums. I’ll be running these on a monthly basis from now on (honest, this time). The deadline is February 1st—get crackin’!

I hope that the four pieces entertain, and also that you consider participating in the future, whether you’re a veteran or a newcomer.

Enjoy . . . . . Houkago Flak Time

The room was washed in the orange of the setting sun. Flak and Kima sat at the club table, quietly reading from the day’s selections. In Kima’s case, the blogs that came through on his reader were full of the usual inane stupidity. He wasn’t even sure why he was still reading them but for his minor amusement as he silently made fun of the idiot bloggers who actually thought they knew something about anime.

Flak pored over this month’s writing entries for his writing challenge. It was the usual fun that he read every month. He enjoyed the creativity he was able to elicit from his circle of friends. Kima’s entry was different from the usual he submitted and Flak wondered what illustration would fit best with the little dwarf and his counting stones.

Kima chuckled and said, “Man, did you read this shit on Ano Natsu? It’s amazing to me that these idiots really liked this dumb show.”

“Lol, yeah. You should write something instead of reading that junk.”

“Fuck it, I’m unfollowing all of these asses.”

“Good for you.”

Unfollowing

Kima punched a few buttons on the pad in front of him, and with that the timeline of blogs shrunk to near zero. “So what do I read now?” Kima threw the pad on to the table and got up to look out the window. The sun warmed his face and reminded him of life’s simplicity, where the pad on the table represented complexities of a life he didn’t want. Kima sighed and went back to the pad and folded it back into the breast pocket of his blazer.

“How about some tea?” Kima asked.

“I’d love some!” Flak said.

Kima made the tea he usually made and placed a cup in front of Flak. Kima pulled the pad out again and looked at it once more, checking for messages he hoped he would not see.

Flak looked over his shoulder and saw Kima stealing a look at his pad once again. “You still worrying about ‘that?’”

“I don’t mean to, but the people in my class project just make me feel dumb. It feels like they don’t get me.”

Flak interrupted, “Man screw them, let’s just go, let’s get out of here, to that place.”

Kima nodded, folded up the pad, and put away the cups from tea.

The two friends wordlessly packed up their bags, and locked the door. The pace to the teachers’ room was brisker than usual. Key to the club room dropped off, the two stepped out into the evening air. By now the orange was giving way to the deep purples of night. Orange tinged contrails cut the sky into segments as the glint of light from the airplanes reminded the Flak and Kima that they were still on earth.

They reached the crest of the hill that overlooked the town and raised their fists to the world.

Laughter echoed down the hill as they enjoyed the perfect moment.

“Well, I gotta go to work tomorrow, so it’s time for bed.” Kima sadly typed.

“Okay man, good night.”

“Good night.”

The sunset faded, the town melted, and the school buildings disappeared. Kima closed his laptop and rolled off to sleep once more.

Gravity

One month ago, the sky was blue, and so was the ocean. The sun glimmered in a million spots, and the sand was bright and yellow. Santa Monica glistened in the indian summer heat.

“Enough about me, Alex. What’s new with you?”

Alex leaned on the railing, hunched over, chin up. Gazing out at the ocean.

“I’m still waiting.”

“How long, now? Two years? Three?” Russ shook his wrist, swirling the dregs of a can of Mountain Dew.

“And many more to pass.”

Seagulls screeched excitedly as they fought over morsels on the midday beach. A strong wind rustled through the palm stands. One particularly supple tree threw an intermittent shadow over the two. Alex’s tie fluttered in the breeze.

“How long are you going to play this game?” asked Russ. “Listen, lunch break’s almost—”

“Maybe I’ll quit.”

Russ snorted. “Good one.”

“I’m serious.” Alex stood straight, stretched, and cracked his neck.

“Yeah, and then what’ll you do? Go soul-searching?” Russ snickered, then chucked his drink at the nearest blue recycling bin. The can bounced off the rim and onto the pavement.

Alex walked over to the discarded can, picked it up, and deposited it in the bin. He turned back to Russ and shrugged.

“What do you call someone who waits? A waiter?”

“I call him a dumbass.” Russ put his hands in his pockets and began walking back toward the office. “C’mon, daydream hour is over.”

Alex tucked his shirt in and followed him.

Yesterday, the sky was white, the ocean gray.

“You should get lunch with your colleagues more often,” said Russ.

Alex raised an eyebrow. “I’ve always had lunch with a colleague.”

“I don’t work here anymore.”

“You’re still my colleague.”

Russ smiled and rolled his eyes.

“Very funny. You should eat with the people you work with. Socialize, network…”

“Lunch anywhere else would feel weird.”

Next to the blue recycling bins, overlooking the beach below a man-made cliff. The railing was rusty, the cement of the parking lot darkened with mist. A Subway sandwich bag blew by the bumpers of a line of cars.

“Man, if only they’d fired you instead of me,” sighed Russ. “I could use the income; you look like you could use the break.”

The roast turkey tasted like sawdust to Alex, so he unwrapped it and deposited it on the ground for the seagulls.

“I could use the break.”

Russ chuckled. “Tired of waiting?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll quit.”

“You’re serious this time, aren’t you?”

“I was serious a month ago, I’m serious today. Let’s just take off somewhere, Russ.” Alex looked at Russ’s face. “Let’s do it.”

Russ smiled and squatted down to take an olive from the sandwich.

“Let’s do it.”

This morning, the sky was black and the ocean was invisible. The light of the city hid all but the brightest stars, and the moon was a sliver in the corner of the world.

“Where are we going?”

“As far as this tank of gas takes us.”

Russ sighed.

“We’re really doing it, huh.”

“Yep.”

“Just, going.”

“Yep.”

“And then?”

“You should know better than to ask.”

“Of course.”

“Of course!”

Alex drove onward, chasing his headlights up the Pacific Coast Highway. The two said little as they cleared Malibu. They were in Ventura when the sun rose, Russ sleeping in the passenger seat. Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations played softly on the car stereo, sometimes obscured by the road noise.

“We’re going to the ocean,” Alex said.

Russ turned over in his seat. He mumbled. “I thought we left the ocean.”

“We did.”

“Mmm.”

The music stopped and Russ opened his eyes.

“We’re here.”

Theirs was the only sedan parked in a huge lot; the only other vehicles were a couple SUVs. Through the windshield, they could see dark spots in the water, the earliest of the early bird surfers.

“C’mon.”

Alex got out of the car and opened Russ’s door. Russ slowly unbuckled his seatbelt, letting the entire length slide across his hand before shifting his weight forward. The air was chilly, the wind invigorating.

“Where are we?”

“Santa Barbara.”

Alex stood at the edge of the lot, gazing critically at the waves. Russ passed him, then turned back.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Do you like this beach?”

“It’s fine.”

“Hm.”

“You wanted to stop here, right?” Russ pointed toward the sand, the water. “Let’s walk around.”

“Okay.”

They stepped out onto the sand and walked along the shore. An old burly surfer with a big mustache greeted them. Russ replied cheerfully. Alex stared at the water. It roiled blue, green, and gray and faded to white in the distance. The tops of the Channel Islands peeked through the fog, a deep blue with a touch of pink residue from the sunrise.

“Let’s get back on the road.”

“Where next?”

“The ocean.”

“You’re kidding,” laughed Russ.

“Let’s go.”

“Alrighty, man. You call the shots.”

Alex had the engine on before Russ even opened his door. Glenn Gould came back on automatically, and Alex silenced him.

“What do you feel like?”

It was Friday.

“Gotta get down,” said Russ.

“Perfect.” Alex smiled and handed the Zune to Russ. “I leave it to you.”

They bopped back onto the highway and continued driving north. Russ DJed—when Rebecca Black stopped singing, he moved on to Gaga, Tiësto, Haddaway, Hanson. Alex smiled at each pick. The two took turns singing along, sometimes seriously, sometimes in mockery of the music. Sometimes both.

“So where are we headed?”

Russ turned down the volume as he asked his question. Alex turned it back up using the master control in the steering wheel.

“The ocean.”

The road curved right, to the northeast, following a convex bend in the shoreline. Everywhere around them was ocean. To the north, to the south, to the west. A blue sheet dancing in the mid-morning sun. The divide between their car and the ocean was comprised of one lane for southbound traffic, a flimsy metal barrier, and a few shrubs and sharp rocks.

“We’re here,” said Russ, switching the song to U2′s “The Ocean.”

“You think?”

“Yes, I think.”

“I want to get closer.”

“Alex. The only way you’ll get closer is by driving into it.”

“Sucks for you,” said Alex.

“You’re kidding.” Russ didn’t laugh.

“Yep.” Alex glanced at Russ, burst out laughing. “Don’t worry, man. We’ll figure something out.”

“Something as in…?”

The song, a mere minute and a half in length, came to an end, and Russ hit the pause button.

“What’s next?”

“Answer my question.”

“You’re seriously spooked,” chuckled Alex. “Don’t worry, man. What’s the next song?”

“‘A Day Without Me.’ But I wasn’t planning on running through the album. I was trying to make a point.”

“Both songs make fabulous points.”

“Focus on the road.”

Russ flipped back to Lady Gaga as the road curved inland.

This afternoon, the sky filled with clouds but the ocean stayed blue.

“We’ve been sitting here for three hours.”

“Yep.”

“For some reason, I thought we’d go farther.” Russ drained the last few sips of Mountain Dew from a bottle they’d purchased at a gas station.

“So did I.” Alex’s pick-me-up, a bag of beef jerky, lay practically untouched in his lap. He held between his teeth the first and only piece missing from the package.

“Is this it?”

“I don’t know, Russ. Do you like this beach?”

They sat on the hood of Alex’s car, facing the water at Pismo Beach.

“It’s fine.”

“Hm.”

“You asked me that in Santa Barbara.”

“And your response was the same back then.”

“Is there a problem with that response? You know I like beaches.”

“I guess.” Alex hopped down and stretched. “Well, we’re full on gas and sunshine. Shall we get back on the road?”

“Three hours in silence, that question, and then we’re back on the road?”

“You can take the wheel if you want, Russ.” Alex held out the key. “We can drive back to Santa Monica. Or further south. Neither of us has anywhere to be.”

“You’re the better driver.”

“But I’m not so good at destinations.”

Russ chuckled, slid down the hood, and threw away his soda bottle.

“Whatever.”

“Whatever?” Alex asked. “Okay, then. The ocean it is.”

Russ shook his head as he got back into the car but said nothing.

The ocean pulls me close.

This evening, the wind blew the sky and ocean away, leaving only billowing fog and rocking waves. The Berkeley Marina was desolate save a young woman walking her pug.

“Can we even stop here?”

Alex was already on the passenger side, opening Russ’s door. “We’re not going to get a ticket.”

“Fair enough,” said Russ. He stepped out and turned his collar up against the wind. The waves broke on the rocks, flinging spray across the walkway at the two. “Man, this isn’t even a beach.”

“Is that weird?”

“After eleven stops at eleven beaches, yes, Alex, it’s a bit weird.”

“I just felt like it.”

“You’ve been going with your gut all day.”

“Is that weird?”

“From you?”

“I guess.”

“I mean, this is great and all, but what do we do now? Enjoy the scenery? I can barely see anything in the dark. You know that.”

“We didn’t need to go on a trip just to see the ocean, Russ. We see the ocean every day.”

Russ didn’t bother asking for an explanation.

Alex kept talking.

“I didn’t quit, Russ. I just took a day off. I need to be back in the office on Monday. Until then, though, this is your road trip. What do you want to see?”

Russ took Alex’s hand in his.

“You’re cold,” said Alex.

“I think,” said Russ, “I think I get it.”

Alex laughed. “There was nothing to get.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Hm…” Russ squinted into the darkness, savored the spray on his face. “Oh! It just occurred to me, Alex.”

“Yeah?”

“We missed lunch today. Didn’t do our little ritual.”

“Indeed.”

“So—how’s the wait?”

“I think I’m done waiting.”

“Huh. What were you waiting for, anyway?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

City Lights from a Plane

The stars keeping her company tonight are real, the whole hemisphere of them. It is unsettling for them to be at eye level, but they are comfortingly constant and unmoving. Throughout the entirety of her cross-country vigil, she keeps an eye on a line of them, five sharp points at the center of her window. Three of them, she thinks, are Orion’s belt, and the other two a continuation. Orion’s belt extension.

light-gazing

If only the scratched plastic sheet she is leaning her forehead on doesn’t have to exist. The stars don’t seem to lie on a curved plane; they have depth and if she isn’t confined in a metal box with wings, she would make her home amongst them, hang a hammock from them and watch the world turn and turn beneath her.

The world. Stars are one thing; city lights are another. The stars’ piercing points of illumination are mundane in comparison to the hints of habitations under them. As far as the eye can see are lights, dense and stretched across a never-ending expanse, a more orderly and geometric version of the celestial scatterings. Sharp, precise, they form golden veins through the unidentifiable blackness. A mountain range, body of water, desert, forest, or a blacked-out city? The shapes of the light formations tell her nothing about their geographical context.

As the night wears on, the view from the small plastic rectangle becomes more and more like that from a car on the freeway. Except for the clouds. When the clouds start to obscure the cities from view, the lights blur into smudged, eddying pools of illumination, like ghosts in a swamp bottom. And when the vapor thickens, the glow finds its way through regardless, morphing from peaceful puddles into ominously pulsing pits of apocalyptic hellfire.

The day, though not as mysterious than the night, is no less beautiful. Above the oppressive grey, the sky is infinite blue and white—an incredibly detailed tundra of clouds, complete with half-frozen rivers, chunks of ice slowly floating downstream, and glittering monoliths dotting the flat, flat landscape. It is endless, the kind of endless that challenges her to prove otherwise.

The unfettered sun watches over all of this, patiently, almost at a standstill. If only she could know all the places she passes over, know what it is like to exist there and to have had a life there, to know the idiosyncrasies, the things considered mundane. And if only she could know the sky just as well—if only she could learn the patterns of weather, learn the skyscape and make it hers, make the sun start and stop at will, choose when it is day and when it is night. If only she could learn everything.

She no longer takes the time to change her watch to match the timezone. It is morning when she is rested and alert, and when she is tired and no longer functional, it is cool night in her nest of velvety black, lined with her stars and city lights. When she yearns for solid ground under her feet, it is there, and she steps out to look and to absorb and to contemplate. To “write as the grass grows”, or to try. Everything has a meaning, everything down to the smallest detail, and understanding that meaning is crucial to understanding one’s place in life, or so she thinks.

She watches the aircrafts take off one after another, with almost no time between each liftoff. The lights on the wings, large at first, then smaller and smaller, become indistinguishable from the other lights in the night sky. The seven planes that left before her fan out in all directions, toward the stars, into the stars, becoming stars themselves.

She watches the grey batting of clouds above her. The damp sheet is no obstacle for her craft, despite its apparent thickness. She breaks through it into her haven of sky and soaks in the warmth of the light.

She watches the stretch of dunes, dust, and lion colored debris. It looks as endless as the clouds used to, but she knows now that nothing truly is. More mountains, plateaus, sand pass by, and a long and dusty highway, devoid of vehicles. She relishes the inhospitality before it gives way very sharply to a dense and determinedly busy city that continues beyond her line of sight. Rows and rows of hot buildings. Rows and rows of hot cement.

The throbbing of an engine is there, and then it is not. Somehow, silence transitions in without her being aware of the transition. It wasn’t sudden, she knows that it wasn’t, and that it had been fading in and out for some time, but it feels sudden in this moment. The thought echoes in her head, along with glimpses of faces, a snowy trail, rough voices in the cold and the jangling of collars. At the same time, she is wrapped in a blanket of nonperception, and when she blinks and tries to get a better look at what is around her, there is nothing. Absolutely nothing, and an alarmingly unalarming lack of things, feelings, meaning, existence. The blackness of supposed nothing comes before and after this oblivion. She gives up thought and action for a little while and waits for the nothingness to end.

She watches the darkness lap against the similarly dark rocks and listens to the repetitive, sharp slaps of breaking surface tension. Particles of mist fly about her face, but not enough to obscure the vertical streaks of light reflected in the waves, painting a picture of a mile-deep chasm lined with columns of gold, a chasm that itself stretches for miles away from her, toward the mountains on the other side of the bay. She can almost see the angels coming out of the pit, the torches along the single visible wall, maybe the wall of a ballroom? The nearby crunch of gravel against asphalt and the vibration of an engine registers through her thoughts. She stands up, ready to move on to her next destination.

With more darkness comes the multi-colored static and the inwardly-moving concentric circles. Colorful circles, always vivid though dark, spiraling inward and inward, impossible to follow. Purple and green, now red and green, with streaks of yellow making their way in. Sometimes the darkness is threatening in a way, the emptiness almost aggressively hallucinatory. At other times, it is a benign lack, interspersed with repeated thoughts and snatches of details. The marble counter-top of a hotel bathroom. Tan, brown, and veins of beige. The pastel-like printing on a cardboard box lying on a plastic rosewood-patterned soap dish. The peculiarly saturated red wings of a bird that maybe ought to have been a grayish-brown.

She watches all this, and wonders what time it is as she adjusts the position of her head against the frame of the window.

Chasing the sun. What a fantastical idea. But there’s no fighting her circadian rhythm. Her days are as long as she wants them to be, but after the initial binge of sunlight and then the reactionary binge of darkness, the cycles evened out to twenty-five hours or so anyway. Still, the illusion of control satisfies her, and she revels in the breakdown of technicalities.

She has always wanted to sleep under the stars in the desert; she decides that tonight is as good a night as any, or maybe even better given her current proximity to a promising expanse of sandy plateau. And when morning comes, she’d be off to the snow to find the northern lights, or to the east to delight in the brilliance of the sulfurous pools, or to the pampas to inspect the ombutrees…

She watches the clerk count her currency before taking the change and her supply of food. She pauses at the exit to wipe the moisture off her brow. It is wet and hot, much wetter and hotter than her last stop. The greenery from her window was a fair warning, but it was an invitation as well. Humidity and strip malls abound, highways that go on and on and loop around and split off into three or four different roads that split off into even more roads, all surrounded by the scent of pollen and flanked by inane billboards (inane, except for the ones with three-dimensional cows falling off them), all leading into or through one forest or another, and ending at warm, wide rivers, more strip malls, brick mansions hidden away in the trees, sunny neighburhoods with brilliantly white sidewalks lining the courtyard and kids screaming with chalk on their hands, the City, corporate skyscrapers, residential skyscrapers, or another state altogether.

The Southern night is warm and breezy, and as the sun sets around her, she finds herself in bliss right where she is. In the parking lot of a Szechuan restaurant, in short sleeves and a skirt, with the cool but not chilling wind against her skin and in her hair and the distant whistle of a train echoing in her mind, she finds the understanding she has been pursuing. The glimpse of infinite knowledge and perfect inner peace she once felt at home. Perhaps it is the juxtaposition of the ideal and the unideal, and the impossibility of conciliation that is life for everything and everyone everywhere. Whatever it is, for this ephemeral blink of time, everything is as it is, unvalenced and real and there, to be dealt with or not to be dealt with.

She struggles for a moment to articulate to herself what it is that she has learned. But understanding of the understanding is not for this moment. Perhaps it is for another story to explore.

A Royal Missive

A ROYAL MISSIVE FOR THE EYES AND CONSIDERATION OF HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY, MAY HER GLORIOUS DOMAIN SPREAD TO THE ETERNAL SHORES AND BEYOND, AND HER MOST WISE AND AUGUST COUNCIL. TO BE DELIVERED TO THE ROYAL CHAMBER OF DELIBERATION WITH THE UTMOST HASTE.

In my previous correspondence, as you no doubt recall, I explained that I had spent a sufficient amount of time moving unseen amongst the objects of our attention, and that the time had come to begin hiding in plain sight, so to speak. With a minimal effort, I have infiltrated their ranks, posing as one of their own, under the guise that I am a young traveler from afar. While I initially believed that this explanation would be met with criticism, and indeed I was adequately prepared to provide proof of my alibi, this proved entirely unnecessary, as I will explain below.

The first and most important thing to consider when it comes to human civilization is that there is hardly such a thing. While certainly each individual grouping within a certain geographical context has a shared culture, my growing understanding of the situation is that the customs, practices, and even the gods of each group of humans varies wildly, depending on where you go. These are no dwarves, who in all places ring their forge hammers in praise of their Moradin. One may attribute this lack of unifying culture to their short animal lifespans; they live a full century at best! I believe, however, that there is more to it than simply a dearth of ancestors to hold them accountable. Rather, humans have a strong independent streak, not just from population to population, but even within their settlements. Many seem to outright reject any notion that the fate of their neighbors may be their own.

More than anything else, I believe this is their greatest weakness, and one that must be exploited to its full extent. I shall elaborate, and please forgive my disregard for custom in writing of what I am about to write. When, centuries ago, our people made war on the dwarves, our mistake in doing so was failing to gather sufficient information. Namely, we had little idea that there were other populations of dwarves, let alone that many do not even live along the shores. When this became clear, what happened next was obvious; the dwarves from further inland banded with their cousins on the cliffs and repelled our every attack. We were unprepared for numbers such as these, and were forced to retreat and cut our losses. From this loss, however, we learned much of the other races, and of the surface world in general, but allow me to get to the core of my argument: humans are, again, not dwarves. The are highly unusual in that they lack any sort of unity in their kind. There are human populations who ally with elves over their own kind, and even groups who happily make war amongst themselves. It is of course necessary to bury the volcanic vents of rebellion, but these are groups in whom no prior unity existed.

Since each human population could very well be considered entirely on their own, it is important that we adjust our strategy as such. When attacking on settlement, we must ensure that no nearby settlements have reason to fear us or come to the aid of the other humans. After expanding, it would perhaps even be prudent to make peace with nearby land dwellers and use wealth to control them instead of coercion. Though it would take decades instead of moons, this would prevent losses on both ends, ensuring no orphans among our kind and plenty of slaves to choose from. So long as they see us as merely wealthy and ruthless but ultimately fair, rather than their masters, too few will ever oppose us to make a difference.

Like their myriad of cultures, languages too differ by region. While deciphering the most common tongue among them was easy enough, I have also encountered a number of more distinct languages. I have reason to believe that as many as a dozen may exist among the humans of the world, but it will take time to study this further.

Now, on the subject of their anatomy, as you had previously requested, I have gathered but a few subjects to test our theories on, but I believe I have learned much from them. As you had already surmised, humans are indeed unable to survive long periods of time in the water. I have tested subjects of both sexes (like us, they are of two distinct genders, though with a greater differentiation in height than our own people between the males and the females) and of varying ages, and none lasted more than a minute or two beneath the water. This of course means that slaves taken into our own cities must be so enchanted as to survive, but this of course provides yet another measure of control. They may not even require enchantments to stay complacent, as their fear of dying from a lack of their air will be more than sufficient. They are also easily injured, weak, slow, and inflexible, though they recover rather quickly. I believe that those who remain in our surface colonies can be controlled through the pain response. The young in particular are easily motivated by injury. On a related note, they are not savory creatures, and while they would no doubt serve as adequate sacrifices to Our Lords Below, I would not recommend dining on them yourselves.

Human features vary by their location. While the ones I have studied the most seem to be largely of brown coloration, I have encountered some who are notably paler or darker, and with different colorations and textures of hair. The eyes too vary widely, even within specific groups.

Though I think it is nothing more than an aberration, I did encounter one specimen who was not so easily coerced. He refused to participate in my examinations, and was completely unresponsive to both the threat and infliction of injury. He was also notably stronger than my other subjects. While I am reasonably certain that he would also have survived longer without air, I was unable to to test this hypothesis, as I was forced to destroy him before he could cause me any problems. As I said before, however, he was no doubt an anomaly among their race. None of the others resisted with nearly as much intensity. No doubt an freak and outcast whom will not be missed.

On the topic of the human’s knowledge of the arcane sciences, and I know this was one of particular concern, I am pleased to note that they do not seem to practice them. While they are no doubt aware of its existence and usefulness, I have yet to encounter even a single practitioner. As the settlement I am currently investigating is a rather sizable one, with a population well over two hundred plus many more working and feed animals, it seems quite reasonable to assume that humans have simply never learned the arcane sciences for themselves. Perhaps there are a few who have been taught by rogue elves or the like, but I doubt they are of any real potency. After all, they only live a century. I am without a doubt the most powerful arcanist in this region, which, as a mere servant of Her Imperial Majesty, fills me with a small measure of mirth.

I mentioned before that the different regions of humans each participate in their own religious beliefs, complete with differing gods. While I have not researched this phenomenon as thoroughly as other human behaviors, my initial findings show that these gods of theirs are unlikely to exist, and are nothing more than idols created by clever craftsmen, or dim memories of notable humans of the past. If any humans do worship any true gods, I have seen no evidence of it. Like the existence of human arcanists, I think it would be premature to dismiss their existence without further research, but I doubt there are any in significant numbers. When we conquer the humans, what few gods they do have will quickly be devoured by Our Lords Below.

In summary, my experiences with the humans have proven most fortuitous. They are numerous, weak, easily controlled, and even more easy to fool. It has been an absolute pleasure to serve Her Imperial Majesty in researching these creatures, and I am most gracious for the opportunity. I am no councilor, but while the humans of course merit further research, I would not think it particularly unwise to move forward with the next stage of the plan. Research assistance would be most desirable, but they may be ultimately unnecessary, for it will be all too easy to overthrow the leader of this place and establish it as a staging area for further conquests. Though I do not wish to sound arrogant, a mere handful of warriors would be enough assistance for me to lay claim to this settlement in the name of Her Imperial Majesty.

I eagerly await your response,

Apprentice-Arcanist Nayos val Salduth

Nayos val Salduth