More Horizon Forbidden West Being My New Best Friend

The first half of this rambling review.

kweh

Erend

I’m not going to lie, for a good chunk of this game I strayed. I’ve been shipping Aloy and Erend for five years now, and then Kotallo shows up all ‘That was an unkind comparison,’ and ‘My back is still strong,’ and I started having dangerous thoughts.

Apparently I’m not the only one.

By the end of the game though, I was firmly back on team Aloy x Erend, thanks in no small part to the fact that I’m, like, 78% certain the game itself is also on team Aloy x Erend.

There’s still no romance options in this game, which is how it should be. Aloy is once again racing against time to put together an entire bag of Reese’s Pieces to figure out how to save the world, and then has to go about enacting that plan to save said world. She does not have time for this romance shit. The scene in the beginning in Meridian where Avad is still trying to get in her pants is deliciously awkward because, yeah, he’s a king and she understands that pissing him off is maybe not a good idea, but on the other hand she super doesn’t have the time for this shit and even if she did I think Aloy would have gotten on that space ship to wherever the fuck with Sylens before even considering getting coffee with Avad.

So, no romance options and I’ll actually be pretty shocked if they add romance options into the third game (then again I also thought Varl would never leave the Embrace so it’s not like I have an inside line to the writer’s room or anything). The Horizon series isn’t really the ‘romance option’ type and to have it in the third game would feel like a weird sort of afterthought. If the next game is the final game in the series – and there are apparently reports that Guerilla has always seen these games as a trilogy – what I wouldn’t be surprised by is if they add some sort of budding romance into the plot.

And they’re going to do it with Erend. Here’s why:

  1. By the end of the game, Erend is literally Aloy’s oldest friend.
  2. If they do go with a romance subplot in the third game it would feel pretty cheap to introduce someone new at the last second.
  3. While pretty much everyone she met in Zero Dawn aggressively (and metaphorically!) tried to stick their tongue down her throat within seconds of saying ‘hello,’ I think she reacts the most positively to Erend, even indicating in dialogue that when the current End of the World scenario is over she’d love to come find him and have a drink.
  4. Toward the end of Forbidden West they finally have that drink! She insists on it, even waiting for him to get the ale, and then they get to have a nice moment that could be read as friends pausing before a big battle or a first date. Most notably, this sort of one on one conversation doesn’t happen with any of the other gang members.
  5. In the end scene, this happens:

Picture of Erend and Aloy with their arms around each other.

This woman is so fully terrible at making physical contact with people I tried to take screenshots of when Zo embraced her after the Gemini mission because I didn’t think I’d see Aloy hugging anyone ever again. And yet here she is, celebrating with her friends. Erend casually puts an arm around her and instead of freaking out, she puts her arm around him. Even if they don’t go the romance route, now that Varl is dead it is clear that Erend is the person she trusts the most.

Oh my God. If they kill Erend in the third game I riot.

Okay, thus ends the Tumblr, AO3 section of today’s ramble. Let’s move on to…

The Open World

Leading up to this game’s release, I was way more excited/nervous for the open world than I was for the story line. The story of Zero Dawn got me into the games, for sure, but the world was why I replayed it half a dozen times. And Forbidden West completely lived up to my hopes.

I don’t even know how to write this part because it’s going to be nothing but high-pitched, gushing praise. The world is huge and the biomes are impressive. I fucking love me some deserts, and what does this game give me? A shit load of deserts. Different kinds, too! You come off the mountains west of Plainsong and you get that high desert Nevada feel with the grit and the scrubby bushes, and then you get south of Scalding Spear and there’s motherfucking salt flats and THEN you go even further south and you find dunes! Actual sand dunes! All the while vultures are scrawing and taking off in your face and horned lizards are scuttling around and Aloy is sweating like a motherfucker. It’s great!

There is also so much more to find in the world than there was in Zero Dawn. For all it’s size I couldn’t shake the feeling that world always felt a little empty. Beautiful forests and jungles and ruins but when you went in them nothing to find. Forbidden West puts treasures for you to find everywhere. Even when it’s just a small cache with a couple of shards in it that jackpot feeling of finding something is still there.

And can we talk about the absolute disrespect this game has for it’s own map? The black borders mean nothing, especially the ones in the middle of the map at the beginning. After I discovered that there were entire areas with machines outside the borders of the map I stopped paying attention the black stuff and just kept going until the ‘FUCKING STOP’ message came up. It is ridiculously fun to pave your own way.

I think my own complaint about it all is that San Francisco feels a little underbaked compared to the rest, but otherwise this is definitely a world I’m going to enjoy coming back to on and off until the next game drops.

The Armor

I made an entire blanket based off Aloy’s armor in the last game of course I’m going to mention it. These are some quality outfits and I love pretty much all of them. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not actually very good at video games, and I was a little upset to find out that armor could be obtained from doing the machine fights at the Grove, something I had initially planned on ignoring forever. So I dropped the difficulty down to story and brute-forced my way through everything until I had enough to afford them. The Carja Stalker Elite is perfect for when I’m futzing around the snowing mountains because you know my girl needs some long sleeves.

Yeah, I generally don’t pay attention to stats for these kinds of things. Aloy wears the Carja Stalker Elite and the Oseram Striker in the cold, the Utaru Thresher in the grasslands, and the Oseram Artificer in the desert. I didn’t start paying attention to the protections and perks of the outfits until my husband started playing a month later.

As with the last game, I generally don’t like the look of the headpieces, except the Utaru Thresher where I would actually go to the mild trouble of going into the Settings menu to turn on headpieces because I love it so much.

The dye sets are a fun addition and let me enjoy the absurdity of dressing Aloy in an eye-searing pink and then pretend she’s still stealthy as fuck in the middle of the jungle. Also love the face paints because I’m a completionist for outfits only and Aloy is going to look the part, God damn it.

Related: how the fuck does everyone know Aloy is a Nora? Even the Lowland Tenakth, who have to be a thousand miles away at this point? Is it the hair braids? It has to be the hair braids, because I’ll walk into a cut scene wearing Carja clothes and face paint and someone will still be all, ‘Well, if isn’t the NORA HUNTRESS…’ Like…how? How did you know?

Also, one more person calls Aloy a savage I’m going to tear my fucking hair out.

Photo Mode

Death Stranding, which was made in the same engine as the Horizon games, included the same photo mode from Zero Dawn and gave us a quality of life improvement by including dozens of not only poses but facial animations for both Sam AND the baby.

HEEHOO PINK MAN

I was crossing my fingers Guerilla took that and ran with it and they did. It is SO FUCKING WEIRD seeing Aloy grin, though.

You’re not supposed to smile, woman, stop being happy.

Anyway, the Photo Mode is, as always, on point and here’s just a smattering of the hundreds of pictures I’ve already taken.

In Conclusion

Where’s New Game Plus, Guerilla? WHERE IS IT. GIVE IT TO ME, NOW.

Horizon Forbidden West is My New Best Friend

Have you ever looked forward to something so much that when it finally shows up, you’re sort of scared to begin? Because what if it doesn’t live up to the hype you’ve created in your head? What’s if it’s bad? What if it’s – horror of horrors – not bad but not quite as good as you were hoping for?

What I’m saying is the entire time Horizon Forbidden West was starting up I was clutching my controller with existential panic. Five years of waiting, and it was finally here, and what if I didn’t like it?

Thankfully, I love this game, potentially more than I love Zero Dawn. I honestly can’t remember the last time something I was looking forward to so hard lived up to my expectations. Quick and dirty spoiler free review: 9/10, if you like vast open worlds, offbeat science fiction stories, and shooting at robots with bows and arrows this is the game for you.

Let’s throw up the Spoiler Chocobo and get into it.

kweh

The Story

Last time, in the post-apocalyptic American West, we joined Aloy, Nora outcast who initially only wanted to win a physical challenge for teenagers to prove to the entire tribe that she didn’t need them and would presumably spend the rest of her life with her middle fingers standing at attention, only for said physical challenge to get absolutely wrecked by some cultists trying to destroy the world using a half-crazed AI, leading Aloy to discover that a thousand years previous the world was completely destroyed by an out-of-control flock of biomass eating robots which were then shut down and then the world was completely rebuilt literally from the ground up by another AI GAIA, and also Aloy is actually a clone of the woman who created GAIA. And somehow, the story told in Forbidden West makes this science fiction soap opera clusterfuck look like a tight twenty-minute sitcom plot.

And I am here for it.

I mean, what the fuck else were they going to do with the story? Pull back? She saved the world in the first game but this time it’s a relationship sim leading up to some big party at the Sun Palace? Even if the game had been only the Regalla subplot it would have been missing something, and that something would be Raging Insanity.

So imagine my delight when we meet the Far Zeniths crew, rolling deep into the Faro Proving Ground in their shiny mech suits that repel all danger and give them levitation super powers and oh, yeah, they have another Elisabet clone, and I’m staring at these half-dickhead/half-machine types and I’m like, yeah, these bastards are immortal and they’re the original Far Zeniths. I honestly can’t believe it took Beta telling Aloy for her to figure it out. I guess she didn’t grow up with the tropes I did but come on.

And then imagine my further delight when the end of this game not only sets up the third game, but somehow ups the bugfuck ante with nemesis, the deranged, frothing copy of all of the Zeniths minds melted together and now want nothing more than to kill all the Zeniths and burn down anything remotely related to them, aka Earth and everyone on it.

I was honestly shocked when Sylens made like he was going to blast off into space for a few seconds. The man loves shit-stirring, and there’s an entire insane AI sprinting across space directly towards them with a big spoon in each hand.

10/10 It’s going to be great.

The Characters

Varl

I honestly can’t believe he was so willing to leave The Embrace because he definitely seemed like the sort who wouldn’t be able to let his beliefs go. I was extremely happy he did – right up until I was extremely unhappy about it. Honestly, his death was probably the only thing about the story I didn’t like. It felt rushed, and cheap, and I hate it when characters die in cut scenes and I can’t do a damn thing about it.

Zo

I loved her from the minute she was all ‘The time for asking permission is over.’ I’m 1000% convinced that if the machines hadn’t broken through the Utaru’s wall at that exact moment and the Chorus had sent them away with a firm ‘no’ she would have been planning to scale the mountain to get inside. After Varl’s death I unfortunately called that she’d be pregnant because of fucking course. Ugh, she even said she was ‘with child.’ Just once I want once of these scenes to have the woman say something like, ‘before he got fucked up he got me knocked up.’

Beta

Fascinating to watch Aloy have to learn about nature vs nurture in real time. I was similarly frustrated with Beta in the beginning, but I was also incredibly frustrated at Aloy. This woman makes it her mission to wander around the wilds and adopt every single person who comes to her with so much as a splinter, and now she can’t even find enough patience to deal with someone who spent her entire life in a single room in a space ship with no one to talk to or even to hold her? Do you know how bad it is for babies to not be held? Have you not seen Homelander on The Boys? Jesus Christ, Aloy, she was raised by virtual robots, cut her some fucking slack. All of the frustration was worth it for the ’That’s between me and my sister’ pay-off toward the end, and I am looking forward to more of her in the next game.

Beta

Alva is now also Aloy’s and Beta’s sister and I won’t hear word one about it. Jesus fucking Christ this woman is one of the most adorable people on the planet and I was thrilled that she didn’t go back across the ocean and I hope her crush comes to her so they never have to leave and get to have access to all the Old World Knowledge they want.

Tilda

This bitch isn’t dead, right? The quest goal said ‘Kill Erik’ but it only said ‘Stop Tilda’ or some shit, and we only saw her hand and not her full dead body and anyone steeped in The Tropes knows what that means. I did love her characterization because, honestly, how many of these real world oligarch types have the same sort of rationalization that they’re the good one only getting dragged along by the bad ones to keep the peace? And then she tries to shove Aloy onto a space ship because she still misses her long-dead girlfriend. Tilda, I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Diana: write a sad poem about it in your diary and let them go.

Sylens

Absolutely no notes, king. Please continue to be everything that you are and more. Intelligent, versatile, ruthless, ready to launch into space because it would ‘fucking rule’ (his exact words, I’m sure of it). I hope despite all he’s done he gets absorbed into the Gang in the next game a la Deckard Shaw in the Fast and Furious series.

Kotallo

He’s almost an ‘enemies to lovers’ speed run. He comes off as such a dick at first, yet another NPC who thinks Aloy is some rubbernecker sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong and just wants her to leave. I loved the slow reveal that his attitude has nothing to do with Aloy and everything to do with the trauma of getting his arm sheared off and the Tenakth’s less-than-inclusive attitudes about it. Not only are some of them being complete dicks about it and insisting he’s now worth less without an arm, this is the society he was raised in so he’s having a hard time not believing it. It takes Aloy and the gang, with the help of a sweet mech arm, for him to learn that the real left arm are the friends you make along the way. Also, he could just take a page from Fashav’s book and every time someone gives him shit mush their face in the dirt. It worked for Fashav for five-odd years.

This is getting long, and there’s a bunch of other stuff I want to talk about, including Erend, the open world, the armor, and photo mode, so let’s break here and meet back on Friday.

Field Trip to The Cube

It was field trip day, but none of Mrs. Johnson’s eighth grade class was excited because for the fourth year in a row they were going to The Cube.

Jeremy fidgeted with his jacket on the bus. It was a warm day, and practically stifling with the sun pouring through closed windows, but The Cube was in the middle of a large field next to the Atlantic, which meant however warm he was now, he’d be freezing when got off the bus. He pulled it off anyway, afraid of pit stains. He’d forgotten antiperspirant this morning.

“Are you going to ask her?” Todd asked.

“Don’t stare!”

Jeremy punched Todd in the arm. Todd punched back but at least stopped looking at her.

Ashley Summers was sitting at the front of the bus, on the other side of the aisle, surrounded by her friends. Her jacket wasn’t some third-generation hand me down, but a puffy down coat in a purple that made her eyes sparkle. Her curly hair was pulled into a tight bun, probably to protect against the winds sure to come off the water, and her makeup was perfect, the thick lines of eyeliner making her positively radiant.

Jeremy swallowed hard and counted to ten. The New Freshman Dance was going to be in two weeks. The last week of school. Next year they’d be in high school. The possibilities…Jeremy nearly salivated over them. If he could get Ashley to go to the dance with him at the end of this year…why, by next year they could be exclusive.

“You’ve got to ask her!” Todd nearly shouted.

If Todd fucks this up I’ll break his bike lock.

The bus pulled off the highway a little fast and everyone casually held onto the seat in front of them to keep them from tumbling into the aisle or bashing their head against the windows. Mrs. Johnson stood up at the front.

“I want everyone on their best behavior!” she called out. “No running, no yelling, everyone listen to the tour guide!”

“Why are we going to The Cube again anyway?” Kayson Anders called from somewhere in the middle of the bus. “We’ve all already seen it! Like, two or three times!”

Mrs. Johnson’s lips became a line as she pulled a gym whistle over her head. “It’s important! It’s living history. The Cube has given us so much, and any day now it could speak again and give us more. It’s a different story every year!”

Everyone groaned, even Jeremy and Todd. That’s what all the adults said when they talked about The Cube, but they weren’t the ones who had to waste an entire day parading past it in a windy field. He almost wished he was back at school, until he realized what time it was. If they were back at the school he’d be in algebra.

Maybe a walk past a plain black rock wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

The Welcome Center was exactly as they all remembered it. A brick building in a cube shape, to look like The Cube. Only much smaller. And duller. And covered in graffiti from years of bored children being forced to come here. Jeremy hoped he wouldn’t have to come back in high school.

While Mrs. Johnson and her assistant went inside to buy the tickets the rest of them milled around out front. A few went inside to used the facilities. Kayson and his buddied went around back to find the spot they had carved their names into the last three times they had come.

Jeremy watched Ashley from across the open space. The wind was so strong she already had fly aways. She kept having to pull them out of her mascara-ed eyelashes as she laughed about something with Tina Caruso and Poppy Holliday.

“She’s perfect.”

Todd nudged him. “Go ask her, man! Before Mrs. Johnson comes out.”

But the timing wasn’t right. They were surrounded by people. Tina and Poppy were right there and definitely wouldn’t leave just because Jeremy asked. If Ashley turned him down he didn’t need an audience.

“It’s not the right time yet.”

Todd rolled his eyes. “You’re going to keep saying that until it’s time to leave.”

No. No, I will ask her.

Anyway, Mrs. Johnson came out at that moment with a tour guide and it was time to walk out to The Cube. Jeremy tried to file in close behind Ashley.

“I think I recognize some faces!” the tour guide announced as they started down the paved path. “So I believe we should all know the rules! Stay on the pavement, no running, no shouting, and most importantly, do not try to touch The Cube! Any rule breakers will be sent back to their bus!”

Mrs. Johnson turned around and glared at them all. She’d never had a single incident at The Cube, she’d told them that morning, and today wasn’t going to break her streak.

“Now, The Cube came to us nearly one hundred years ago today, June 24, 1925. At least, that’s when we first noticed it! Journals and newspaper articles from that era claim it was simply here one morning. You’ll notice when we get close there is no impact crater, no drag marks, and at the time it was reported there were no footsteps or signs anyone had put The Cube there. It simply wasn’t until it was.”

Jeremy was only half listening. Most of his attention was on Ashley, and anyway, he’d heard it all before. Several times. The Cube showed up, sat there for a few years unmoving, blah blah blah, couldn’t blast it away, blah blah blah, revealed secrets of the universe, coveted by other nations, blah blah blah. Unless it could get Ashley to say yes to going to the dance with him he didn’t care.

“Man, kids who live in, like, literally any other state are so lucky,” Tina muttered. “They don’t have to go to this stupid windy field every year.”

Jeremy tried to laugh hard enough that the three girls would hear him, but not so hard Mrs. Johnson and the tour guide would notice. Poppy shot him a weird look, but he otherwise failed.

The path took them up over a hill covered in grass. The first thing he noticed coming up over the top was the ocean. The second thing was The Cube.

It was exactly thirty-two feet and five-point-three inches in every direction, the darkest black known to mankind, something about a magnetic field, and one corner pointed perfectly north. The tour guide last year, who had been much funnier than this dud, also pointed out that even though they were close to the water, and thus the air was filled with screaming seagulls, none of them ever seemed to poop on The Cube. Or, if they did, the poop disappeared.

Jeremy had to admit it was cool to look at. The pictures in textbooks or online didn’t do it justice. From where they were on the path, still a quarter mile away, you couldn’t see any dimensions to the cube. It was so black you couldn’t even make out the corners or the edges. It looked like a hole in the universe. It was only as you got closer that you could make out the square shape. It looked the same no matter what sort of light was shining on it, like it absorbed it all.

It was cool. For a few seconds. Then he was back to thinking about Ashley. Once they got to The Cube they’d be able to circle around it. Then he’d get her alone.

“The Cube hasn’t spoken in three years, so we’re expecting something big soon!” the tour guide announced. “As we approach, remember to stay behind the railing, don’t reach for The Cube, and try not to make any sudden movements or loud noises. We don’t want to disturb it!”

‘Disturb’ it. Sure. They’d all been here enough to know that a bunch of unruly children weren’t enough to ‘wake it up’ or whatever. If it really was some alien or cosmic god or whatever the cults said it was, Jeremy didn’t think it would care about a bunch of shitty thirteen-year-olds.

The guide went on and on with facts to an audience that consisted of Mrs. Johnson and the two kids who had moved here recently and had never been before. The rest of them had spread out as soon as the path did, surrounding The Cube on all sides and, once they were out of view of Mrs. Johnson, ignoring it.

“Touch it,” Chris Reed said.

But Kayson only shook his head. “You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m touching that thing.”

They were all bored of The Cube, and didn’t think it cared about them in general, but they all knew better than to anger it. Kayson and Chris went to the far end of the pavement and started picking up rocks to chuck as far as they could.

“Jer, look,” Todd whispered.

Jeremy’s heart stopped.

Tina and Poppy had gone off to the other side of the cube, leaving Ashley alone while she checked something on her phone.

“It’s now or never, man,” Todd said, and pushed him a little.

He’d punch Todd for that later. For now, he was right. It was sort of romantic, if he thought about it the right way. Asking a girl out to a dance in the shadow of a mysterious cosmic cube.

“H-hi, Ashley,” Jeremy said.

Ashley looked up at him and smiled. Smiled!

“Hi, Jeremy. Pretty boring, right?”

“Oh, yeah, totally. This is my fourth time here.”

Ashley rolled her eyes. “This is, like, my tenth time, I think. Yeah, every time family comes in Mom insists on bringing them to The Cube, and for some reason I have to go, too.”

“Oh, man, that totally sucks.”

He looked over his shoulder to look at Todd. He waved his hands at him impatiently: Don’t look at me, look at her!

“Listen, uh, Ashley. I was wondering…see, I’m going to go to that dance in a couple of weeks, and, you know, people go together, so I was wondering if you wanted to go together. With me, that is.”

He was looking at The Cube the entire time. It seemed easier that way. When he dared to look at her, his heart sank. That was not a ‘yes’ face she was making.

“I’m sorry, Jeremy. Kayson already asked me, and I already said yes.”

“Oh, yeah, right, totally.”

“But we should definitely hang out at the dance, like, as a group?”

“Cool, yeah, I’ll…I’ll find you guys.”

Ashley gave him a final smile before slipping past him. Probably to find Tina and Poppy and laugh about the loser asking her to the dance. He could only hope she didn’t tell everyone.

“Oof,” said a voice behind him.

Jeremy looked but saw no one. Unsure, he looked at The Cube.

“That sucks,” said a voice from The Cube. It was a perfectly normal voice, except Jeremy could swear he was also hearing the winds of eternity at the same time it spoke.

“Yeah,” Jeremy said.

“But, you know, you put yourself out there, and that’s the hardest part. Keep your chin up, kid, you’ll find someone to dance with.”

“Uh…thanks…Mr. Cube.”

But The Cube was silent once again.

There was a sign at the Welcome Center instructing all visitors to report any words spoken by The Cube, but Jeremy wasn’t sure if this sort of thing mattered. Also, if he told them he’d have to give context, and since that context was getting shot down by his crush, Jeremy walked by the Welcome Center to the bus and kept his mouth shut.

Pasodoble

Sylvie sat straight up in bed, heart racing.

Why?

Just a few seconds ago she had been asleep. She could still feel the lines pressed into her face from the pillow. Could still remember some of her dreams, although they were fast turning into broken threads. Something about a mission to Mars. And Rocco Morris, her favorite Hollywood leading man. He’d been there? Or they’d been going to rescue him? Ah, it was all gone now.

Why was she awake? Sitting straight up in bed. Something was giving her the danger sign.

There was no sound. The room was still. Early morning light, gray and weak, cut in through the gaps in the curtains. Nothing was out of place.

Except Nate was also sitting up in bed. He looked just as half asleep and confused as she did. They looked at each other.

“What was that?” Nate asked in a soft mumble. It was barely past seven. They had left the abandoned coffee shop and come back to the room just past midnight, not turned off the lights until one. Sylvie didn’t know what Nate’s plan was, but she figured she was going to sleep most of the morning. She wasn’t hungover, exactly, but had had enough of that terrible light beer the teens had hidden to make her mighty tired.

“I don’t know,” Sylvie said.

Nate lay back down and pulled the covers over his head. Whatever it was that had woken up Sylvie and scared her shitless had only barely woken up Nate. “Sounded like-”

A scream. From outside, not near but not far either. High pitched. Unmistakably made out of fear. Nate sat up again in bed, this time looking the way Sylvie had felt the first time. Sylvie was already out of bed, pulling her jeans on. She ran out the door, leaving it open behind her, hearing Nate scramble to catch up.

She couldn’t see anything going on in the motel. All of the doors were still closed, although there were four different faces peering out of windows. Her breath fogged in front of her and goosebumps popped up all over her arms and shoulders but she didn’t even think of going back in for another shirt.

“What was that?”

Asche was below, shirtless, jeans on but unzipped, showing black underpants. His hair standing in every different direction there was.

“I don’t know, I don’t…the Two Step.”

She was running for the stairs before Asche could ask any questions. He hadn’t bothered, though. By the time she reached ground level he was already halfway across the street running.

Once they were in the parking lot they could hear hysterical sobbing. Treat was where Sylvie had seen her from the balcony, sitting on the front end of Errol’s car. Her head was in her hands, her back heaving up and down. Sobbing, yes. Also trying not heave. Anymore. There was already a pile of something that vaguely resembled eggs on the dirt in front of her.

“Treat,” Asche said as he reached her, careful not to step in the mess. She didn’t even look up. Just pointed. Back, around the side of the Two Step. Sylvie and Asche glanced at each other, then made for whatever was ahead.

Coco was standing near the back of the building, one hand keeping her shawl closed around her, the other holding a cigarette. Her eyes were watery, but she was holding herself up, back straight, firm resolve. She gave them the tiniest of unhappy smiles as she saw them approach.

“I figured Treat would have alerted somebody with that caterwaul,” she said. Her voice was thin and sounded far less cultured than it usually did. “It would seem we had a death in the Pasodoble last night.” And she pointed her cigarette around the corner.

He was dead, all right. What was left of him. He lay in a crumpled heap up against the side of the building. His head was caved in on one side, destroying the eye and covering the rest of his face with blood. Huge pieces of him were missing, chunks torn out of his side, his upper arms. His left leg was just clean gone at the hip, bright red muscle visible through the torn jeans. The pool of blood he was sitting in seemed large enough to include every drop that should have been in his body. He was only recognizable as a man because of the large boots. And the belt buckle.

The belt buckle in the shape of Tennessee.

“Oh, God,” Sylvie said, squatting next to the body. “This is Dixie.”

“What?” Coco asked, her voice high pitched, at the same time Asche asked, “How can you tell?” His voice didn’t sound very strong, either. Sylvie only pointed at the belt buckle.

“What’s going on?” Nate rounded the corner and came into sight before Sylvie could tell him not to. He stopped, looking at the mess with a halfcocked look, squinting eyes. “What is that? Is that a scarecrow? Oh…oh, no.”

Nate took a few steps back but, to his credit, didn’t seem close to throwing up.

“What on earth did this?” Asche asked no one in particular.

“Looks to me like an animal attack,” Coco said. “Probably a wild cat came in off the desert. They get bold when the food runs low.”

“Have to be a really big cat,” Sylvie said, trying to gauge the size of the chunks taken out of the man. Out of Dixie. Shitfire, who was going to tell Errol?

“Oh, dear,” Coco said mildly. “It would appear Nate is taking this about as well as Treat.”

Sylvie looked up from the body to Coco, and then to Nate. Except Nate wasn’t standing there anymore. He was behind her, running back to the motel, already hitting the stairs and taking them two at a time.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he hasn’t seen a dead body before,” Coco said. “This one is particularly terrible, I must say.”

For a few seconds Sylvie considered letting him go back to the room and works things out for himself. Probably he was running back to the room because he was too good for just throwing up in the dirt, no, a man of his intellect needed to toss his cookies in something porcelain. She wanted to stay with the body until the authorities showed up. Maybe it was just a big hungry cougar. Maybe it was something closer to her level. Maybe it was a job.

Like Nate was a job. She inwardly sighed.

“Coco, can you-”

“Go,” she said, waving at him. “I and this strapping young man will take care of this.”

Sylvie smiled a thank you at her and ran off.

Behind her, she heard Asche asked, “When you say take care of this, do you mean call someone or get a couple of shovels?” She was too far away to hear the answer. Either of them were possible.

The front door to their room was standing as open as it could possibly go, straining against the hinges even, but for a few seconds Sylvie thought Nate may have just run right past and gone somewhere else. The room was silent and still, not even the mini fridge humming in its corner. Sylvie waited a few seconds, listening, and finally heard. Hitched breathing coming from the closet in the back.

Once the door was pulled open she found him. He was sitting in a ball on the floor, knees to his chest, arms around his knees, head down. A stream of unintelligible muttering was winding its way up and out. Ever so slightly, just a little bit, he was rocking back and forth. All told, Nate was locked in a weapons-grade panic attack.

Sylvie sat down next to him, moving slowly, unsure of exactly how to get him out of this.

“Nate.” She kept her voice soft. “Nate, breathe.” That seemed stupid. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

She didn’t think it was going to work. Slowly, though, his mutterings got loud enough that she could make out words.

“…animal attack…she said it was an animal attack…it looked like an animal attack…animal attack…”

Sylvie didn’t understand. Then she did, and felt ashamed for not understanding immediately.

“Do you think you did this?”

Nate flinched at the words.

“I could have. It was an animal attack…I….It…What if I did what if I ki…what if I did that what if that was me…”

“Nate, look at me.”

Sylvie waited a few seconds. When he kept muttering, she put her hands on his and squeezed them.

“Look at me.”

Slowly, still muttering he lifted his head, eyes squeezed shut, hair falling forward. It was good enough for now.

“How many nights since the last full moon?”

“I don’t know…can’t remember…maybe it was last night…oh, God…”

“It wasn’t last night, Nate. Take a breath and think. You can remember. When was the last full moon? Don’t say that. Just think for a few seconds.”

Maybe he was thinking, maybe he wasn’t. Sylvie couldn’t tell. He kept his head up but he was still rocking a little and his eyes were tight. She gave him time.

“Twenty-three.”

“What?”

“Twenty-three nights…twenty-three nights, twenty-three, the full moon was twenty-three nights ago, Christmas, twenty-three.”

“Right. Twenty-three. And how many nights are between full moons?”

“Twenty-nine,” he said. “Sometimes thirty.”

“But never twenty-three,” Sylvie said. “It couldn’t have been you, see? Last night wasn’t the full moon.”

The muttering had stopped. So had the rocking. But his eyes were still shut and his arms were still wrapped around his legs, so tight.

“Nate, open your eyes and look at me.”

He did. They were half crazed and terrified.

“Tell me. Tell me why it wasn’t you.”

“Twenty-three.”

“What about twenty-three?”

“Last night was twenty-three nights since the last full moon,” he said between hitching breaths. “The moon isn’t full again for another six nights.”

“Good,” she said, patting his knee. “Now, say it until you believe.”

Nate nodded. It took a few times, but by the end of the fourth time his breathing had slowed and his grip on his legs had lessened. The wild look in his eyes was just replaced by exhaustion.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said.

“No, you didn’t,” Sylvie agreed.

“But it could happen,” he said. His voice was climbing in register. Tears welled in his eyes and almost immediately overflowed. “Promise me you won’t let me kill anyone. I don’t want to kill anyone.”

She hugged him, patting his back, shushing him, doing all the things instincts told her to do for a crying person. To her surprise, he hugged her back, gripping her like she might fly away. Sylvie didn’t try anything more to get him to calm down. While still hysterics, these sounded like the kind that could only be fixed by letting them run and run until there was nothing left.

A Hero Reborn

Daunte woke up.

And then he was pissed.

He had to dig himself out of his own grave, so he could add that to the pile of ‘Experiences He Never Needed to do Again and Also Didn’t Want the First Time.” At first, there was so much dirt on top of him he didn’t think he’d be able to move at all. Heavy dirt. Old dirt. Full of roots. And, thankfully, a couple of tunnels from some ground rodent or another. Punching into the pockets of air was enough to get some traction going. He clawed through, forcing dirt under his fingernails until it hurt, but he kept going. Now that he was alive again, he had to breathe, and even the Savior couldn’t do that under pounds and pounds of soil and grubs.

Cool breeze brushed past his fingertips. With a final, monumental push he erupted out of the ground like some sort of overgrown, cursed daisy. He drew in air too soon, his lungs grabbing onto dirt particles, but he hardly cared. As he rolled around on the ground, coughing and wheezing and sputtering and also trying to get fresh air into his chest at the same time, he tried to notice if anyone else was around and if he needed to be on guard. It was really hard, though. Because of all the dirt in his lungs.

Finally the hacking lead to puking – nothing but bile seeing as how he hadn’t eaten in what he assumed was centuries – and finally he spit a few times and sat on the recently-upended dirt and tried to catch his breath. As he sat there, he took stock of himself and his surroundings.

It was an okay day. A real ‘whatever’ sort of mood. It was cloudy, and the clouds were a little heavy but not heavy enough to threaten rain. There was a certain humidity to the air, like it was raining somewhere, but for now he was dry. Felt like morning, but with the cloud cover he couldn’t be sure. Late spring, maybe early summer based off the warmth.

As for himself, he was a fully intact and alive human being as far as he could see. Dirty, of course, who cared about that? He wasn’t just bones. He had skin and muscle and hair and – he assumed – internal organs. Nothing was rotting. Nothing smelled like almonds. Even his callouses and scars were back. His hair was blowing in the breeze. Breath came in and out, heart went lub and dub and then lub again. Daunte was surely alive again. And for that, he was going to make them pay.

When he was sure he could stand without falling, he did. When he was sure he could walk without tripping over himself, he did. Apparently, he had been buried without shoes. That sucked. The occasional twig or stone dug deep into the soft underbelly of his feet, and every time it made him angrier.

After walking in one direction some ways he began to understand where he was. The Wide Plains north of Seluton. It was all a little bit different. Trees a little bigger and older, ground around stones worn away, a few villages on the very edges of his vision he hadn’t remember being there. But it wasn’t different enough. He hadn’t been dead very long at all. Daunte would bet money it hadn’t even been a thousand years.

Those pricks.

He didn’t head for the villages. If he was in the Wide Plains than less than a day’s worth of walking would get him to Seluton proper. If it wasn’t the capitol for these parts anymore, he’d figure out where he had to go from there. Hunger took him. Thirst too. He found the Mariposa River and stopped to wash the dirt off, then went up stream and drank heavily. He would not stop to hunt, nor would he stop for more water. Because while hunger and thirst were burrs stuck to the sides of his socks, his anger was a splinter shoved straight up his urethra. And he was going to let them all have it.

The evil had been defeated. He had mounted and led a campaign that had taken literal years to pull off. Planning. Cautious defeat of the Dark Lord’s henchmen and middle managers. Countless friends and allies lost. Witchcraft, wizardry, men, elves, dwarves, all races had come together and sacrificed countless numbers to create a better world.

Daunte’s sacrifice had been the greatest of all. That nefarious bit of magic had been discovered toward the end, only months before the final showdown. A twisted needle and thread that had bound Daunte and the Dark Lord together in ways neither of them had expected. If one died, so did the other. To kill the Dark Lord, Daunte would ultimately kill himself.

He didn’t tell anyone this, knowing it would dishearten them, but by the end he was ready for it. He had barely been out of childhood when the Dark Lord had started making moves. His life had been nothing but conflict. Any dreams he’d had of a regular life in his little seaside village, fishing and herding and building a home and having more kids, had been shattered early on. He gave up fishing nets for swords and thoughts of a cozy home for ones of violence. There had been no other choice. And after nearly a decade of it all, he was through. If he died killing the Dark Lord, then death would only bring him peace.

And it had. Quiet, earthy, dark nothingness was not the life of a fisherman, but it also wasn’t the life of a prophesized Chosen One, so he was fine with it. There was another part of that magic. A part he honestly didn’t think would ever become a problem. After all, once everyone had come together to defeat a great evil, who in their right mind would bring that evil back?

Daunte stalked into Seluton, mildly pleased to see it hadn’t changed much. Oh, sure, the buildings were taller and made of stone and there were plenty more people about, but the city was laid out the same as it had been. He didn’t get lost once marching through the streets to palace. He didn’t stop until he was directly in front of the king, surrounded by half a dozen guards with spears and an annoyingly large number of lords and ladies. He went to speak, found dirt still laid in his throat, and spat on the tiled floor.

“Which one of you absolute chucklefucks woke up that Dark Lord piece of shit?”

Strange Reality, 5

Hours ago, Alina’s arm woke her up by slapping her in the face. She’s finally getting close to some answers.

Was it Alina’s imagination, or did the man look…disappointed when she asked? Almost hurt?

Whatever it was, it was gone in the next instant. He stood up at his full height, over half a foot taller than Alina, and put his gun back in his holster.

“We have to get off the street.”

Several steps later he finally stopped, realizing Alina wasn’t following. She could see now short black hair shaved down at the sides, a round face with the sharp cheekbones and gaunt cheeks that were the inescapable feature of hunger, and a little nick cut out of the top of his right ear. He was glaring at her.

Alina crossed her arms, pretending she wasn’t shaking as she did it. “I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.”

The man rolled his eyes. “I will give you all the answers you want, but we have to get off the street first. Do you want Officers Fang and Pain to come back? Or are you waiting for the bureau to roll up and finish their job?”

Dreg.

He was right. Alina still had no idea who he was or what was going on or why he wanted her arm, but he was right. She hated it.

“At least tell me your name. So I know who’s going to knock me out and steal my kidneys.”

They were ill-placed statues in the middle of a nowhere alley. Staring at each other. Waiting for the other to break.

The man glanced up at the end of the alley and huffed air through his nose.

“Park, okay? My name’s Park. Can we please get off the street, now?”

Alina sniffed. “Only because you asked so nicely.”

Park stalked off again, not waiting for her. This time Alina followed. Honestly, she wanted to get off the streets as much as he did. She just wasn’t going to let him to jerk her around all day.

“What if they can follow my arm?” she asked him, following.

“They could. Not anymore. We turned that off once we found you. That’s what alerted them. Come on. Questions later.”

It was a maze of alleys. Every time she thought they couldn’t possibly get any deeper without reaching a street, Park would zag left or right down an even smaller passageway. If she looked straight up, between the buildings, she could see the bright blue of a sunny day. Eighty stories up. Down here, it was all shadow and dank and grime. And a hustling man in a gray coat, occasionally turning to make sure she was keeping up. He only stopped when he found it.

A nondescript door in the middle of nothing. Park knocked twice, paused, three times, paused, and then rapidly hammered at the door.

“This is the Wallflower?” Alina asked, glancing at the nothing that surrounded them.

“The what? No. We were never going to the Wallflower. I needed you in the vicinity.”

Alina shifted, and was about to ask all of her questions at the same time when something behind the door buzzed. Park pulled on the door and led her into the darkness.

She wasn’t expecting the stairs, and fell into his back. He steadied her with surprisingly gentle hands, not letting go until he was sure her feet were fully on the stairs again.

“Sorry, I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” she asked.

Park shook his head. “Never mind. Come on, we’re not far now.”

There was something going on here Alina didn’t understand. Obviously, she didn’t understand any of it. But even beyond the basic stuff, she was starting to see there was another layer. The things she thought she understood didn’t seem right, anymore. Something about this man, about Park, was…it was hard for her to explain, even to herself. Was she remembering something? Feeling something? Disassociating? What? What?

Down they went. The stairs ended at a long hallway. They crossed the distance, hopping between pools of thin red light, only to get to the end and find another stairway. And another hallway. And just as she was about to question if they were descending the stairs into hell, Park found another door.

Alina never would have found it. To her, it was like he stopped in the middle for absolutely no reason. She gripped her fists, ready for him to come for her organs. Instead, he ran his fingers along the concrete until he found what he was looking for, and pushed. The a tall rectangle of the concrete broke, swung inwards, and Alina followed him in.

“Park! Did you…”

There were four people in the little room, scattered amongst tables covered high in mod parts and bean bag chairs and kitchen supplies. Another man with dark skin and wide eyes. Two women, each so covered in brightly colored hair and tattoos it took Alina a couple of seconds to realize they were identical twins. And another woman. The one who has spoken and suddenly stopped, standing in the middle of the room. Looking at Alina like she was looking at a ghost.

They all were.

“Everyone, this is Alina Chavez,” Park said, gesturing. “Alina, this is…everyone.”

One of the twins, this one with purple hair and bright tattoos on her arms, chest, and neck, looked at Park. “So, she doesn’t…”

“No.”

“I don’t what?” Alina asked. They all stood where they had been, frozen in time, staring. She felt naked. And completely out of the loop. “Look, I’ve had weird night, and I think I deserve some answers. I don’t know what you people did to my arm, but you’ve torpedoed my life and I just want it back. If someone doesn’t start talking, I’ll leave. I’ll leave and take my chances out there with the police and the bureau.”

“You could,” the woman in the middle of the room said. She tossed what she had been working on and crossed the distance between them. A few years older, taller, wide shoulders, stronger. A scar across her eyebrow. She should have been scary. All of them. Landers. Criminals. Alina should have been terrified. She only felt the sort of annoyance generally reserved for…well, for family.

“You could go back out there,” the woman said again. “Turn yourself into the police, who would turn you over to the bureau. They’d probably just repeat the process. Put you back in your life none the wiser.”

Repeat the process.

“They…they’re not after the arm, are they?”

“No. They’re after you, Gogo.”

Previous Next

Detective Story

In a glowing city of neon-lit skyscrapers, covered in glittery advertisements and all attempting to out-tower each other, Natalie Winsome had discovered the way to stand out. The W Tower was a central beacon of darkness, a hole in the world of light. It wasn’t the tallest building, but it was where the eye went first. The W covering the upper windows on all sides could be seen during the day, but where other CEOs would have made them shine all night, Natalie let them stay dark. She didn’t need attention to thrive. Only success.

Or, she hadn’t needed the attention, Detective Margot Lewis thought as she rode the elevator up to the penthouse office. She hadn’t seen the body yet, but generally when someone called in the dead body of a CEO they weren’t playing around. Maybe if she’d had a bit more attention she wouldn’t have ended up dead in her office.

The elevator slowed, a chime went off, and the doors smoothly disappeared into the wall. The office wasn’t exactly how Margot imagined. These ‘pioneers of industry’ types usually had the same tastes in decorations. Sterile. Gold studded leather. Glass joined with stainless steel. A bookcase or two, filled with books with stiff spines and the same dozen or so tchotchkes: vintage globe, model of a racing car, old school pen and ink well, you get the picture. She’d seen the pictures as each CEO was featured in Lyncis Monthly on rotation.

Ms. Winsome’s office wasn’t quite so different, but the subtleties were there. The couches surrounding the coffee table were a soft velvet, the coffee table itself a dark wood. The tile of the floor was covered with plush rugs. The books on the shelves had visible lines in the spines, and there were no large tchotchkes taking up space. Her desk, by the windows of course, didn’t look like some set piece set up to impart the impression of working. Papers and folders were spread out in front of the monitor in the sort of haphazard way that only occurs naturally. Too bad they were all covered with blood.

Natalie Winsome was sat in her desk chair, her top half collapsed on her desk. One arm across the papers and keyboard, the other dangling at her side. She looked a lot like her press pictures. Even in death her hair was up in a tight bun at the crown of her head and her makeup was impeccable.

Margot looked up at one of the uniformed officers, standing only a few feet from the desk. He was looking out the window at the city and hadn’t seemed to notice she was there yet.

“Murkowski?”

The officer jumped, whatever spell he had been under broken. He looked at her sheepishly.

“What do you got?” Margot asked.

Murkowski pulled his notebook and squinted at what he’d written.

“Cleaning service found her at about ten. They said she goes home to work around seven so they knew something was wrong as soon as they realized she was here. They swear they haven’t touched anything.”

“They still here?”

“Yeah, down in the security office. Officer Aglis is down there with them, checking security footage.”

Margot glanced up at the cameras, one for each corner. They weren’t hidden. In fact, they stood out. Ugly, obvious things that ruined the flow of the office.

“Why these cameras?” she asked. “She could afford cameras we’d never find without help.”

She turned her attention back to the body. The way she was slung over the desk didn’t look natural. Almost as if she had been posed.

There was basically nothing wrong with the body. Margot bent down next to the dead CEO expecting to see a stab wound in the belly or the chest, a nearly hidden entry wound, a twisted neck. Anything.

Nothing. No holes in her clothes. Nothing obviously bent in the wrong direction. If it wasn’t for the small pool of blood that had dripped from her mouth and nose, it wouldn’t even be obvious the woman was dead.

“Poison?” she asked.

“Hmm?” Murkowski asked, turning away from the window. “There wasn’t any food or drink near her when they found her.”

“Could have been something that took a while to work,” Margot mused. “Guess that’s the medical examiner’s job.”

Margot stood back and looked again. There was something…off…about the way she had died and she couldn’t get it out of her head. Almost as if she had been posed. Almost, but not quite. Margot tried to imagine sitting in the chair, the desk in front of her. Something starts killing her. Kills her quick, and she flops down on the top of the desk. Face on the desk. Arms to her sides…

She fixated on the arm on the desk. It didn’t make sense. Why would her arm be like that, up and over her head. Had she been reaching for something? There wasn’t anything to reach for. And her hand. Fingers and thumb curled in except for the first fingers. Straight out.

Like she was pointing at something.

Margot walked around the desk and knelt until she was eye level with Ms. Winsome’s hand dangling over the desk. She was pointing forward, into the rest of the office. Not quite directly across at the elevators. A little to the left. At a small shelf.

This is ridiculous. A murdered CEO managing to point at something significant as she died? What was this, some Agatha Christie novel? Margot wasn’t Poirot. She was a city homicide detective with too much overtime and a frozen mac n cheese and a bottle of red wine waiting for her when she got home. Natalie Winsome was a powerful woman who had no doubt made enemies. There probably was a gunshot wound she just hadn’t found yet.

Still, Margot walked across the office. The shelf was a simple round table, barely bigger than a dinner plate, and holding nothing more than a bronze statue of some sort of cat. It looked undisturbed, sitting directly in the middle of the shelf.

Face pointing directly at Ms. Winsome.

With a sigh, indicating to the universe how silly she felt, she picked up the cat statue.

Nothing.

See? It’s a coincidence, not a clue.

Relieved, Margot looked under the bottom of the cat without thinking. A habit.

The bottom of the cat was carved out.

Something was sitting in the cavity.

Eyes wide, Margot pulled out a small leather bag, tied at the top with a thin bit of rope. There was a collection of odd shapes inside, and the whole thing had a smell to it. Almost patchouli, almost incense, not quite either.

“The fuck. Hey, Murkowski, come look at this. Murkowski?”

The officer was still standing at the window, staring at the view. With an eyeroll Margot put the cat statue down and crossed the office. Trying to shake the feeling of someone staring at her the whole time.

“Officer?”

“Gah!” He jumped at the sound of her voice only inches away. Red creeped into his cheeks, and he smoothed the front of his uniform. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“What’s got you glued to this window?” she asked, peering out.

He swallowed. “I don’t know, exactly. I guess…well, every other high rise I’ve been in is covered with lights and ads, right? This one isn’t.”

Margot looked out the window for the first time and realized he was right.

“You can see everything.”

To be continued.

A Place of Honor

Polo sat in the shade of a leafy tree and watched as the scholars debated. From the way their arms were beginning to move above their heads and the snatches of words that were reaching him, it was apparent the debate was getting very heated. As usual, Polo was relieved that wasn’t his job. He hated most regular conversations, let alone fights.

“What are they still talking about?” Nert asked. As the debate got more and more…involved, Nert had gotten equally agitated. He was now pacing around the tree and Polo quick enough to kick up dirt. Polo knew this was only going to get worse and hoped the scholars would hurry the fuck up.

“It’s a big sign, Nert,” Polo said. “And it’s not a language I’ve seen before.”

“Of course you haven’t seen it! You’re a fucking hunter! They should have figured it out by now!”

“Nert…”

Polo stopped his pacing and rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry, Polo. I just get so worked up! We found a whole new ruin! We should be the talk of the community! We should be in there already, looting anything worth taking and destroying the rest of it, followed immediately by a solid of week of eating, drinking, and fucking anything that moves. Instead, we’re stuck out here in the heat watching a couple of nerdlingers doing a bunch of what they do best. Talking.”

“I fucking hate talking,” Polo said.

“I know!” Nert said, waving a hand at him. “A rational reaction! Who the fuck wants to sit around and make mouth sounds at each other all day when they could be making fist punches and knife stabs?”

“Nert, you’ve got a point, but we still have to wait.”

Nert began his pacing again, faster this time. He was practically at a light jog.

“Minutes, Polo, I am giving them minutes! And then I am walking past them and taking what is rightfully mine!”

It was an impressive looking ruin, and Polo had to admit that he was fairly desperate to get inside, too. Not out loud. Never out loud. If he admitted it out loud the next thing that would happen would be Nert launching himself over the scholars as he gave them the bird.

“IT’S FINE.”

“YOU’RE INSANE. IT’S A GOD DAMNED WARNING.”

“YOU’RE A GOD DAMNED WARNING.”

Nert stopped pacing again to exchange a look with Polo. All four eyebrows raised. Neither of them had ever heard a scholar talk above a muted cadence, let alone screaming into each other’s faces from two inches away.

“Maybe we should-”

“Fuck yeah.”

Polo had to run to keep up with Nert. One of the scholars, this one with three green lines across his forehead, saw them coming. His face turned pale as he held up his hands in front of him.

“Stop! Stop! We can’t get any closer!”

“Don’t tell them that!”

“We can’t.”

“We both need to sign off on this, Dole. And I don’t.”

“Well, maybe you can go in. I doubt you have much of a brain left to cook, anyway.”

“Fuck you, Dole.”

“Fuck you, Redrick!”

“Okay, pause.”

Polo held up his hands, fingertips to palm, to call time. He could tell Nert had been inches away from using the scholar’s spat to run past them. It would have worked, too. In almost thirty years of life he’d never seen scholars angry like this. They had almost come to blows.

“What is going on?” Polo asked.

“Yeah!” Nert got between Polo and the scholars and stalked back and forth. “It never takes you eggheads this long to decide something. I was hoping to be inside the ruin covering myself in shiny necklaces and shit by now.”

“This is an unusual case,” Dole said.

“No, it isn’t,” Redrick said in a singsong, rolling his eyes.

“Hey!” Polo put a hand between them before they could begin fighting again. “Explain.”

Dole shot a look at Redrick, who made a buffon’s bow to indicate Dole could talk. Dole scratched at his cheek with his middle finger as he talked.

“The signs outside this ruin are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. But I have heard of it.”

“It’s a legend. A tall tale.”

“Can I talk?” Dole asked. Redrick held his hands up. “It’s not written in any ancient language we’ve ever seen before. As far as we can tell, the sign was made in a way that was supposed to outlive language.”

“Outlive language?” Polo asked.

“Languages aren’t alive, stupid,” Nert said. Redrick snickered and high fived Nert.

“Okay, no, don’t do that,” Polo said. “Don’t encourage him. Don’t encourage each other. Dole, right? What’s the message say?”

“Basically, it says ‘do not enter on pain of death.”

“Ohhhh, sure,” Redrick says. “Now it says something clear and simple! What about all that gibberish you spilling the entire hour you were reading this thing? ‘What is here is dangerous and repulsive’ this and ‘this message is a warning about danger’ that and ‘the form of danger is energy’ the other thing.”

Nert snorted. “Energy? What the fuck does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Redrick said. “I don’t see any of it. It’s not in any language we know, therefore we can’t read it.”

“It’s…in…pictograms!” Dole said, gesturing toward the sign. “It’s all pictures! You can see it, plain as day!”

Polo squinted at the sign. He wouldn’t say plain as day, but it did seem like pictures. And they didn’t seem like happy pictures. There were lots of little shapes under a line. Then that line was broken. Then the little shapes were everywhere.

“It sort of looks like they buried something. And they don’t want us to disturb it,” Polo said, scratching his head.

Dole clapped his hands. “Yes! That is my belief also. This is not a good place. Something terrible was contained here, and the old ones are trying to warn us that if we even were to walk near it we would be in terrible danger.”

“I don’t see it,” Redrick grunted. “Right?”

He was asking Nert, but Nert was squinting at the sign. Polo could see the strain of concentration on his face, and he felt proud that Nert was putting that much effort into something that wasn’t snapping a wild beast’s neck with only his hands.

“You know what? I do see it,” Nert it. “Something is buried here.”

Redrick’s jaw dropped, and he turned a bright red. He was outnumbered. Polo was disappointed, but there was something spooky about that sign. He didn’t like. He wanted to leave, and he was relieved-

“I bet it’s treasure.”

“What,” came from both Dole and Polo. Redrick pumped a fist.

“Yeah, this is all lies. The old ones lied, liked, all the time. There’s treasure down there they don’t want us having. We just have to dig it up.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Dole said, burying his face in his hands. He took a long sigh and when he came up for air, Polo could see it plain on his face: Dole was fucking done. “You know what? Fine. Go dig up your buried treasure. Just you and your friend here.”

“I’m not going in there,” Polo said.

“Fucking not cool man,” Nert said.

“I’ll take your claim!” Redrick’s arm jerked up above his head, waving around like Polo might not have known you said that.

Polo sighed. “Take it.”

“Good,” Dole said. “You two. And only you two can go in there. No coming back until you find something!”

Giggling like school children, Nert and Rodrick ran past the sign toward the ruin. Polo and Dole watched them go.

“Sorry,” Dole said. “They’ll probably die.”

“I know. At least he’s going to go out how he wants: thinking he’s important.”

Fantastic Beasts and Oh, Wait, No, I’ve Just been Informed These Movies Are About Wizard Nazis

The Elephant in the Room

I, personally, don’t think a discussion about J.K. Rowling, or Joanne as I will be dismissively calling her this entire time, can be had without setting boundaries. And the boundaries are as such:

Trans women are women.

Trans men are men.

Trans people who are agender, non-binary, genderfluid, or any term I am ignorant of are valid.

As a cis woman, I have never once in my life believed that trans women diminish my experiences.

The things Joanne tweets about trans people are disgusting and objectively false, and doing real harm to real people, and I really wish she would just fuck off forever.

All the way back in 2016, which was either seventy years or three days ago depending on the mood, Joanne announced that there would be five movies in the Fantastic Beasts series. Recently, there has been a lot of speculation about whether all five will actually be made given that Joanne seems set on being nothing more than a hate-spewing gargoyle, Ezra Miller is apparently a violent shithead, and Johnny Depp…I’m honestly not sure what’s going on there. It seems to me like him and Amber Heard were both shitheads to each other, but I’m not going to offer any definite analysis because that’s beyond my scope. Joanne is definitely exposing further layers of her hatred every time she tweets, though.

I’m not going to talk about whether these last two movies actually get made, because I stopped caring after the last one. What I really want to know is this: when they decided they were going to make five of these things, did they also plan out all five?

If yes, follow up question: what the flying fuck, Joanne?

That First Movie Doesn’t Even Feel Real Anymore

Remember that? I actually liked that first one. I didn’t love it, it’s not fantastic or anything (yuk yuk yuk) but I thought it was cute. Solid B- work. Jacob and Queenie were each great on their own and had adorable chemistry. I was so, so disappointed when Colin Farrell turned into Depp because Farrell’s performance as Obviously Grindelwald Come On Guys, Keep Up was super fun and I just wasn’t interested in Depp’s interpretation. And there were beasts! Actual cute and fun beasts!

And Newt Scamander…actually, hold on.

Newt Scamander is a Fantastic Leading Male Character

Yuk yuk yuk

You almost never get male movie leads like Newt. First off, he’s just an adult trying to do his job. None of this ‘boy wonder’ shit and we don’t have to suffer while people try to teach him spells and he ignores them all and continues to focus on putting enough power into ‘expelliarmus’ to yeet an elephant into orbit.

Secondly, he’s an introvert and he stays that way. There’s no arc where he has to learn to talk to people better or put himself out there or whatever other nonsense extroverts are constantly saying. He is who he is and the people he befriends in New York like him because of it, not in spite of it.

Third off, he’s a soft man who constantly expresses his caring and empathy in traditionally feminine coded ways. Men in Hollywood pictures aren’t supposed to care, and if they do care they have to sometimes be literally tortured to reveal any of it. Meanwhile Newt is out here living his best life, calling himself ‘mama’ to the animals in his care, making an ass out of himself in front of other people to bring some of his animals home and not giving a shit what other people think of it, and using his actual words to tell another man he likes him.

Fourth off, that last thing again. There’s an actual scene where the leading man of a Hollywood movie looks at another man and says, ‘I like you. You’re my friend.’ Like…he just says it. They don’t punch each other in the arm or talk around it in metaphors, he simply tells another man that they’re friends because that’s the kind of person Newt Scamander is and it’s fucking great.

That First Movie Doesn’t Even Feel Real Anymore

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them finds New Scamander, magical zoologist, on a trip to the US to return one of his beasts home. Hijinks in New York City pull him into a case he has some authority on: a wizard or witch in the city has turned into an Obscurus, and they need to either be saved or stopped before they essentially blow up the city.

This is exactly the sort of plot I expected from this movie. A little more aged-up from the Harry Potter movies but still family friendly. Some serious themes for the adults in the room and niflers and dragons and Eddie Redmayne prancing around a CGI rhino for the kids. Based off this – and, you know, the fact that the first two words in this series is Fantastic Beasts – you’d think that this series of movies was going to be all about Newt and his new friends, traveling the world and getting into magical animal-based adventures. That’s certainly what I expected from a series of films about the guy who wrote one of Harry’s textbooks.

Despite being generally good, the problem with this whole series is already there. The movie is tonally uneven, with the family-friendly stuff consistently punctuated by a lot of dark, weird shit. We just had half an hour of fun adventures capturing some of Newt’s adorable escaped beasts, now it’s time for the US magical government to sentence Newt and Tina to death and that death sentence is carried out by people Tina has worked with for years, calming walking the two of them into the death room, pulling a happy memory out of Tina’s head and then letting her get smothered to death while she’s gorked out on happy juice!

wtf.jpg

The thing of it is, almost if not all of these out of place dark moments have a single thing in common, which I think is the main problem with these movies.

The Grindelwald Of It All

Gellert Grindelwald, aka Wizard Hitler, aka Wizler, was really nothing more than part of Dumbledore’s Tragic Backstory ™ in the main Harry Potter series. A seemingly-born-evil dude who started some global wizarding war because he wanted to let the wizarding cat out of the wizarding bag and subjugate all muggles ‘for their own good.’ Dumbledore being young and stupid (and supposedly horny, according to Joanne’s Twitter but not according to any actions in the books or movies) falls for the ‘greater good’ part of this shit and does terrible things he’s ashamed of and that led to personal consequences, but ultimately became a building block for the great man and wizard he was by the main books. Or whatever. I don’t know, personally I think Dumbledore sort of sucks but that’s another article.

In the first movie, Grindelwald is merely a subplot. And I, foolishly, thought he’d never be anything more. Just a further way to tie Newt into the greater lore of the Harry Potter universe. Remember that time this magical zoologist got caught up and almost killed by Wizler? Wacky!

The second movie makes it abundantly clear that, no, Grindelwald is not a throwaway subplot. In fact, Grindelwald and his wizarding war is going to be the main focus of these movies, complete with a young Dumbledore everyone is already treating like Wizard Jesus, aka Wesus, come back to life.

Wait a second. A series of ill-advised prequels centered around a brief mention in the original series of a large-scale war that features over-emphasis on a character that fans love but that in-universe characters shouldn’t necessarily give a shit about yet?

Does this make Jacob Jar Jar?

In true prequels fashion, then, the next question becomes…

Why The Fuck is the First Movie, Then?

Again, it was announced at the beginning of this venture that they wanted to make five of these movies. I really have to believe that at the time they had a general idea for where they wanted the series to go. Five is such a weird number for a movie series, why put a number on it unless you know exactly what you want to do with your time? Which means Joanne and Yates always knew the real story they wanted to tell was about Grindelwald and the Wizard Wars.

So why the fuck did they couch it in this Fantastic Beasts idea?

This is ultimately where I’m so confused. If they wanted to tell the story of Wizler, just tell the story of Wizler. I can understand wanting to create a new character to become the POV for the audience, but I can’t understand why they chose Newt. He’s a magic zoologist. More than that, he’s a gentle, empathetic guy who doesn’t like making eye contact. He’s not an auror, he doesn’t want to be one, and the things he’s an expert on have nothing to do with Wizler. It’s not like he can be the specialist dragged into the fray because he’s the only one with the necessary knowledge. Wizler isn’t out here killing people by siccing beasts on them. He just avada kedavra’s their shit and moves on with his day.

And then there’s the tone stuff again. The plot shit surrounding Newt is very family friendly, and the plot shit surrounding Wizler…isn’t. He fucking kills a baby in Crimes of Grindelwald. It makes the sudden left turn into Wizard Nazi Town that much more jarring.

I’m guessing all five movies will still have the Fantastic Beasts tacked on at the front, and the further we go the more ridiculous it’s going to get. I mean, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald already sounds like a mistake. What’s the fourth title going to be? Fantastic Beasts: Wizler’s Death Camps?

Oh, that brings me to my final, bonus point:

What The Fuck Are You Talking About, Joanne?

These are seriously the movies you want to make? You want to take your fun wizarding universe and shove it into World War II? You want to directly correlate the actions of your wizarding world stand-in of Adolph Hitler to actual Adolph Hitler? You want to tell everyone that the reason your Nazi stand-in did the things that he did was to try and stop the things the actual Nazis did?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Why would you do this? This is supposed to be a fun universe primarily for kids. You take the kids to Orlando and buy them robes and wands and let them drink butterbeer and take a picture of them on the train. What are they going to do, add Wizler as a character you can take a picture with? “Come on, kids, if we hurry we can catch the weird hate-leader wizard and take a picture of him standing on your muggle backs!”

Why would you do this?

‘Why didn’t the wizards stop World War II’ is a fun question for stoners on Tumblr, not an actual issue you have to address in your world. What’s next? A series of stories supposedly about the founders of Hogwarts but really it’s about how Salazar Slytherin was committing war crimes during the Crusades?

In different, better hands this could be an interesting concept for a story. A piece of shit with magic who already wants to subjugate and kill people who don’t have magic sees the atrocities of the Nazis and nuclear weapons and uses that as fuel for his own hate-filled fire. Done by someone else, and not in an already established kid-friendly universe, I would read the shit out of this. But it doesn’t belong in the Wizarding World and it certainly shouldn’t have been the switch to The Adventures of Newt Scamander’s bait.

These movies shouldn’t have been made and Joanne needs therapy.

Strange Reality, 4

Alina found Quinn Street. The cops found Alina. Seconds before the cops can run her down, a stranger pulled Alina off the street.

The police lev whispered past, through the spot she had been running through three seconds ago. She saw their faces fly by even as she was being pulled deeper into the alley. The lev went right past the alley, and she heard it straining to spin to a stop.

Whoever had grabbed her still had her by the wrist. Alina didn’t have time to try and pull her hand back before they were spinning her, whipping her around.

Directly toward the alley wall.

Alina winced and almost screamed. Before she could even make the sound her face hit the wall. Went through it. The rest of her followed. Then the person who had grabbed her. Painless. It hadn’t been a wall. It had been a hologram, covering up a divot in the building. A small divot.

She and her mysterious savior were squeezed together, face to face.

Even as close as she was, she could only make out a few features in the burgeoning dawn. Gaunt cheeks. Beads of sweat above the eyes. Eyes so brown they were nearly black. A warm but brief feeling she couldn’t quite identify but felt like…coming home?

The doors on the lev slammed shut, making her jump. His face grew hard and he put a hand over her mouth.

Don’t need to tell me twice.

The holographic wall worked both ways. All Alina could see to her left was dark, reflective glass going up, up, up. But she could hear them.

“Where the phlox did she go? She was right here.”

“Climb down off that ledge,” said another voice, her voice glass. Smooth. Cold. “She couldn’t have gotten far. Work down the alley.”

Footsteps. More boots. Heavy and even. The woman was closer, Alina could tell her steps weren’t quite as pounding as the other pair. Smaller stride, too. Barely. She had to be a tall woman. The man, heavyset. His steps practically shook the ground with their authority, and she could hear the tinge of a wheeze on his breathing as they walked by.

Wait. How do I know all this?

Something about the man in front of her was splitting her signal.

Splitting my signal? That’s lander talk. But how do I know what lander talk is?

The officers were on the other side of the hologram. Vaguely, Alina realized she was clutching the man’s arm. Probably enough to hurt. He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes stayed on the hologram. His hand stayed on a holster at his side.

Holster. Energy weapon. No…no, that’s a gun. He’ll kill them. He can’t kill them. Every cop has a dead man alarm. They die, the rest of the city lands on top of us.

She put a hand on his and shook her head slowly. He was a lander, he had to be. Didn’t he know about the alarm?

When he looked at her, she shook her head ever so slightly. The man squinted at her. Like he was trying to decide something. He let go of the gun.

The police had stopped. Not directly in front of the hologram, from the sound of one of their shifting. A little beyond. Looking up, maybe. A fire escape. Down, for a misplaced manhole. How common were these hologram walls? Would they start running their gloves hands down the alley, eventually punching through?

If he killed them we’d have time to run away.

Whose thought had that been? It couldn’t have been her. It sounded like someone else. She didn’t want anyone to die! She was a dock worker! She’d never been in a fight in her life! Whenever a couple of punks had started dreg on the elevo she’d moved to another car!

“Sir!”

They both jumped this time, the man’s hand going back to his weapon.

“We have the target, sir,” the woman on the other side of the hologram said.

She can see us. She can see us!

A hand on her shoulder was the only thing keeping her from losing her cool. If he hadn’t been there, if she had been hiding by herself, she would bolted. Maybe done something really stupid, like trying to climb. He looked at her, those confusing dark eyes piercing into hers, and somehow took the panic away.

“Coroman,” the other man said in disgust.

The woman sighed. “What I mean is…we did have the target. Sir. We do not currently have eyes on her.”

The officer must have gotten closer to the wall as she took the call. Alina could hear a tinny, screaming voice at the other end of the officer’s communicator.

“The whole city is looking for this woman! She’s the bureau’s top priority! And she got away?”

“I’m sorry, sir, it won’t happen-”

“You bet your ass it won’t happen again. You and Burns get back to the station, I need a full report. They’re clawing out my ass over this one, and I won’t be the…”

The two officers were walking away. Back to their lev.

The whole city?

Phlox, the bureau. Why the hell would the bureau want me?

Not her. The arm. It was all because of this stupid arm.

And the man standing in front of her.

The lev whirred off down the street, leaving them in the early-morning quiet.

The man directly in front of her opened his mouth to say something.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said first.

Alina half stepped, half fell through the holographic wall. Once her adrenaline had found a chance to slow down her hangover had come back with a vengeance. Roiling inside of her, it was her stomach’s turn to be the random body part that called the shots. Further down the alley, near the other wall, was a grating leaning to the sewer. She barely got to it, scraping her knees along the ground, before everything she had eaten in the past twenty-fours, all the alcohol she had drank on the elevo, and enough bile to burn through the roof of those police helmets came heaving out of her. Somewhere in all of that she became aware of the man standing behind her. There wasn’t an inch of space in her mind to give a shit. Not a single neuron capable of caring. All of this was his fault, she was sure of it. He’d sent the messages through the arm. Hell, he was the reason the arm was…whatever the phlox it was. Whatever was in the arm that the bureau (she heaved extra hard) wanted had been put there by him and his lander friends and he was going to answer all of her questions but only after he stood there patiently and watched as she emptied out her stomach over and over.

“You good?” he asked when the retching had slowed.

Alina hawked and spat. Her throat and sinuses burned. Her stomach growled and threatened to push again, but in the end only turned over and went back to sleep. Just like she wanted to.

“No.”

He offered a hand for her to stand up. Alina ignored it, standing up on her own shaky terms. “Who the phlox are you?”

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