#ew tumblr killed my formatting a bit :<

[phantomdecibel]

I havent named this either lmao whatever not my best work, but at least im done w it now lmao

uuuuuhhhhhhhhh yeah odys is dead here. definetly. poor lil ajax is left to pick up the pieces. ......here we go!

Ajax heard it second hand, at first. Of course he didn’t believe it – it seemed impossible! After ten years of war, after the cylcops, after grabbing Astyanax from the ashes of Troy. For his friends, for his crew, for his son. The Captain couldn’t be dead.

Because that was the rumor, circling the deck like crows over the battlefield. That Captain Odysseus was dead (the fuck?). No – not quite. That the Captain had been murdered, by none other than his second in command. Eurylochus (double fuck, there was no way). Or at the very least – that the man was hauling around his corpse (…at this point, Ajax was convinced he was being messed with).

It was absurd!

Ajax… well, he didn’t want to brag or anything but…

“You don’t know what you’re talking about – Eurylochus would never!” Ajax had been spending a lot of time around both the Captain and his second in command – mostly Eurylochus, admittedly – since departing from Troy for Ithaca. If there was one thing he knew for certain… “Him and Polites love the Captain; they’re his best friends. Plus – there’s no way the Captain’s dead. You’re just making shit up.”

“I saw it myself!” Elpenor exclaimed, throwing out his arms. The poor man looked to be on the verge of tears, with his glassy eyes and red, splotchy face. His outspread hands trembled, and that was the only reason Ajax hadn’t immediately decked him for even joking about something like that, consequences be damned. “When he saw me, he – he gave me this look and I booked it.”

“Then you can’t know for sure!” Ajax snapped back, leaping to his feet. “You didn’t even ask–”

“No, no –” someone else cut in. ajax turned his glare to them, but the newcomer wasn’t fazed. “I heard that too, from Perimedes this morning – he saw it too.”

“What – what about Polites?” Surely he wouldn’t stand for this – this slander!

“Perimedes said he was just watching, this morning,” the man Ajax now recognized as Demosthenes shrugged, wringing his hands. “Didn’t – didn’t seem concerned at all.”

“Then there you have it!” Ajax turned on his heel, stalking off towards the stairs. “If the Captain were dead, then Polites wouldn’t just be standing around!”

And neither would Eurylochus, for that matter, but his point still stood. Still… the jittering anxiety still lingered from just how serious everyone had been – and the rumor had to have been born from something. Ajax would go find Eurylochus, and he’d tell him that the Captain wasn’t dead, where did you even get such an absurd idea? and everything would be fine.

Yeah, yeah. That’s what he’d do.

Go find Eurylochus.

…only Eurylochus wasn’t below deck. He wasn’t by the bow of the ship, or by the Captain’s cabin. He wasn’t even on this ship, by the looks of it which was… odd, but – not concerning! The man probably just needed a change of scenery or something – understandable with all the bullshit going on here.

That still begged the question of where was he, though.

“Hey!”

From the ship across, Nikomachos leant over the railing towards him. “What’s up, kid?”

“Have you seen Eurylochus?” Ajax eyed the distance between the two ships critically. He could jump that, probably, if he needed to.

“Yeah, e’s over here,” the other man lowered his voice, shifting from side to side and glancing over his shoulder. Ajax frowned – that wasn’t a good sign. “But… y’don’t want to be over ‘ere, right now. It’s…”

But Ajax was already backing away, getting a running start to leap the distance and cling to the other ship’s railing. The other man cursed, loudly and desperately, and Ajax felt strong hands wrap around his arm to help drag him on board.

“Fucking Hades, kid!” Ajax winced at the loud voice in his ear, but scrambled upright and gently shook off the steadying hands on his shoulders. “What were you thinking–”

“Where was he?”

“–what?” the man spluttered at the interruption.

“Eurylochus. Where did you say he was?”

“Kid…”

“Whatever,” Ajax glanced around. Where should he look first? “Thank you for your help–”

Leaving Nikomachos behind, Ajax darted off. He could guess why he was being warned away from the second-in-command but… Ajax needed to know.

They were wrong, they were all wrong. They had to be.

 Eurylochus wasn’t difficult to find.

Everywhere he looked, Ajax saw clumps of people, huddled together with hushed whispers and wary glances over hunched shoulders. They clustered at the edges of the ship, presences less frequent the more he moved inward, and so Ajax followed the trail they left through fearful, lingering glances and shoulders turned inwards, away, until there were no more than a handful of cautious lurkers all circling the deck like the rumors in the air. Everyone else avoided the center of the deck like a disease, and that was how Ajax knew he was close. Each step closer landed against the wood of the deck like thunder, and each impact sent lightning down his spine.

This was ridiculous. Ridiculous! Why was he so afraid? There was nothing to be so nervous about; there was no way the Captain was dead. If he was – if he was then there was no way Polites and Eurylochus would be as calm as Demosthenes had said they’d been. They loved the man too much to not… sink the entire fleet with the force of their grief, if the Captain really was… gone. If the Captain were to die it would be in a blaze of gore and glory, not some quiet covered up–

“Ajax!” a cheerful voice broke him from his thoughts making him flinch in shock even as he relaxed, recognizing the voice. Ajax shook himself out and blinked until he could recognize the wood beneath his feet again, before looking up to see Polites making his way towards him, smiling kindly. “What are you doing here, my friend? Last I heard you weren’t on this ship.”

“I need to talk to Eurylochus,” Ajax admitted, glancing back down. “I heard a… concerning rumor.”

“A rumor?”

“Yeah,” Ajax glanced over his shoulder at where another soldier lurked in the shadows, letting the concern in the older man’s voice sooth his fears. “People are – people are saying that the Captain is – is dead and–”

“Oh that,” Polites interrupted, chuckling.

Not an outright denial. With the way he said it, Ajax wasn’t sure if it was reassuring or not, but followed dutifully as the man steered him forwards. “Eurylochus! Someone’s here to talk to you, my friend!”

“They finally worked up the courage, huh?” Eurylochus’s voice echoed back, in a tone that could almost be amused. Ajax took a couple steps away from Polites, towards the voice of his second-in-command.

“Sir?” he called out, wringing his hands. “I–”

Eurylochus appeared, padding down from the Bridge, face as passive and unimpressed as always. It would have been a comforting sight – Ajax had come to get to know the man a bit, since that night with little Astyanax – but this time, his voice stuttered to a halt in time with the man’s appearance. Because–

“Ah, Ajax,” but he couldn’t focus on anything but the fucking body draped across the other man’s shoulders. “What can I do for you?”

“I–” he stammered weakly, choking on his own voice. “What–?”

“Hmm?” Eurylochus just raised one thick eyebrow down at him, ignoring the way Ajax was sure he had begun to sweat and tremble.

“I – I heard the Captain was..?” Ajax trailed off, blinking desperately but unable to finish the sentence. How do you phrase a question like that, when the person you were talking to had a fucking body flung over their shoulders? And not just any body, but the body of the person you were asking about? Dam the gods, this couldn’t be happening. Ajax locked his knees, praying to every god he knew for the strength to stay standing.

“Oh, that. Don’t worry about it,” the towering man shrugged, and Ajax cringed back as he reached up to grab at the arm slung over his shoulder, to stop its owner from slipping.

Oh. Oh gods–

Oh gods.

“Wh– what–” Ajax cleared his throat, eyes fixed on the way the Captain’s head hung limply. “What happened?”

Polites laughed, and the noise echoed sharp and piercing behind the ringing in his ears. The grating, sudden noise made him flinch, but Ajax couldn’t tear his eyes from the Captain. Was the man breathing? Could he see him move? Was he imagining the stillness from where he could see the man’s back – or was there really nothing to look for?

“Are you alright, kid?” The question stretched blearily into the all-consuming silence, and he realized that whatever noise had been tearing at his head was gone, nothing more than an echo. Instead, now, everything was too quiet – yet the voice was much, much too loud, too sharp, too–

Ajax turned and ran.

He – he wasn’t really… aware, of running, not really. One moment, Eurylochus had been frowning down at him, and the next each pound of his feet against the deck jarred his knees, and he could barely see, and he could barely breath and he could barely hear and –

Ajax found himself near the front of the ship – curled into his knees and spine pressed against the railing.

Each fall of something wet striking rhythmically against his arm made him flinch, but the tears didn’t – wouldn’t – stop, not even when he pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, scrubbed at them with his wrists.

“Breathe, Ajax,” he muttered to himself, forcing shaky breaths of air through his aching lungs. His ears were still ringing too much to really hear the words, but the way they rumbled in his chest soothed something that screamed in the back of his mind. He hummed, just to feel the way it reverberated in the back of his throat, on and off until he was breathing normally-enough again. Then, he forced a deep breath, tilting his head back to stare at the sky on the exhale.

It was… blue.

It was just, blue. Blue and bright, not a cloud in the sky, for as far as the eye could see. It was… surreal. Ajax didn’t know how to feel about it, if he could feel anything other than the all-encompassing numbness that had consumed him at some point during his flight.

It was too bright, that he knew. The Captain – Odysseus – was dead! Why hadn’t there been some sort of announcement, no, that would have just sparked panic but wasn’t there already panic? Everybody already knew not saying anything wasn’t helping this situation why hadn’t they had a funeral yet–

Ajax closed his eyes.

He forced himself to let go of his arms, let the blood rush back to them, stretched out his legs a bit, uncurling, still leant heavily against the rail. Wind and the occasional splash from a stray wave lashed at his back, and it was cold, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually get up and move.

He opened his eyes again, head still tilted back.

One thing at a time.

There should have been… clouds, or something. Rain, thunder. Nature – no Zeus himself should have been raging, grieving. Ajax should have been grieving.

Maybe he was, in some backwards way, but… truth be told, he just felt – blank. He was crying – but it was like he didn’t know why. The Captain was dead, but it didn’t feel real, like Odysseus would walk up any minute and ruffle his hair, ask him why so blue, kid? and drag him along with the man’s day until Ajax was laughing along with whatever trouble Polites and Eurylochus had started that day.

Polites and Eurylochus.

Gods – how were those two not in – in shock? They were the Captain’s best friends – Ajax would have thought they’d be tearing apart fucking Olympus for… however this had happened – unless…

Had… had they killed Odysseus..?

Sure – Ajax had heard that rumor, too, but–

No.

No.

That was something Ajax refused to believe. As… untouchable as he had always seemed… the Captain was just a man. A squishy, fragile human, just like the rest of them. The idea that Polites and Eurylochus could have had something to do with his death… that was just too unbelievable.

Ajax shook himself out.

His expression didn’t really change, and he couldn’t summon enough energy to pull himself together past climbing back to his feet, but determination still managed to worm its way under his skin. He would figure out what happened.

But first–

Captain Odysseus deserved a funeral.

______________________

Ajax knew he was hunched in on himself, but it was probably the look on his face that made people shrivel up when they saw him. Mostly everyone on this ship had seen Eurylochus and the Captain, knew the truth, but they must have still been… holding on to a sliver of hope, or something. Ajax was one of the closer people to the Captain and his inner circle and people knew it – if he was so… however he must have looked, then the rumor must have been true.

And it was.

“The Captain is dead,” he muttered at whoever had come to stand in front of him. Their hands froze before they could land on his shoulders, and Ajax slunk around their still form.

“What do we do?” someone – maybe multiple someones, but Ajax couldn’t muster up the energy to care who – asked quietly, and maybe a little desperately. A number of people turned towards Ajax, and he wanted to scream.

He was the youngest person here, for crying out loud, with the exception of Astyanax – oh fuck. Astyanax. Where was the kid, who was going to have to tell him–?

Ajax dragged a hand down his face. Leave it, don’t worry about it yet, there was nothing he could do for Astyanax right now. He could ask Polites where he was after…

“We need to… do something,” he muttered, voice muffled from where his face was pressed into his hand. Ajax let his hand drop back to his side, shaking himself out. People were looking to him right now, for whatever reason – he needed to be strong. For them. For Odysseus. “Give… give him a funeral, or something–”

“That’s a good idea,” a hand landed on his shoulder, and Ajax flinched. He didn’t recognize the voice – or maybe he did. Mostly he just… didn’t care. The hand slipped away, and Ajax glanced back at its owner. The man tried his best to smile at him, but – it fell flat. Ajax grimaced back weakly. “The Captain – the Captain is – was – a good man. If anyone deserves a proper funeral out here… it’d be him.”

Ajax nodded gratefully, shoulders dropping. He scrubbed his hands down his face again, trying to focus on the conversation fading in and out around him. Someone might have run off, off to gods knew where. Ajax watched them leave for a moment, before turning his attention back to the conversation at hand.

“We’ll… have to figure out how to get his…” the man Ajax had just been speaking to was saying. He glanced back towards Ajax, who caught his gaze with a dead-eyed stare. “…how to get his body. If we want to give him a funeral.”

“I’ll handle it,” Ajax volunteered. He didn’t want to be part of this conversation anymore. It was beginning to feel too real, beginning to chip away at his mask of numbness, and he… needed to talk to Eurylochus again, anyways. Polites, too – about Astyanax – if he could find the man again. “I can handle it.”

“…are you sure–”

But Ajax was already pushing past them. He – he needed to be doing something, not just, not just standing around. He needed to find Eurylochus again.

…maybe ‘find’ was the wrong word – he already knew where the second-in-command (…was he the new Captain now? Was that how it worked?) was, probably, but the sentiment was the same, and Ajax wasn’t exactly feeling poetic. He hadn’t left the ship, he didn’t think, so Eurylochus was probably still near the bridge.

While Ajax had expected the man to be… close to where he’d last seen him, Eurylochus looked like he hadn’t moved at all. That might have something to do with Polites, who was gesturing widely as Ajax slunk back towards the two of them. Ajax lingered off to the side, forcefully sorting through his scrambled thoughts, as Eurylochus frowned at whatever the other man was saying.

Neither of them had noticed Ajax yet – thank the gods, he had no clue what he was going to say – but the second-in-command kept glancing off, like he was looking for something. Ajax pointedly kept his gaze on the deck near their feet.

Ugh.

Might as well get this over with.

Ajax crept forwards.

He couldn’t resist looking up as he approached, the worried tone of the older men’s voices drawing his attention from the deck. Whatever they where discussing must have been important – the Captain, maybe? What else was there to talk about? – because neither notice as he slunk forward, until he was left fidgeting a pace or two away from their huddle.

“Um,” Ajax muttered, tugging at the hem of his chiton. Polites and Eurylochus whirled towards him, both men relaxing as they realized it was just him. Ajax flinched slightly at the sudden movement, but Eurylochus was already talking before he could continue.

“Hey kid, you alright?” the large man tilted his head down at him, and Ajax glued his gaze back to the floor when it caught on the Captain’s limp form. “You kinda ran off, there.”

For a moment, Ajax didn’t respond. He pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth, cycling words through his tired mind to think up the right thing to say.

“We’re planning a funeral,” he finally settled on muttering, half-surprising himself at the flatness of his voice. The two pairs of feet in his line of sight shuffled back.

“Funeral?” That was Polites this time – tone soft and gentle and oh so confused as if he had no fucking clue as he took a step closer–

“Yeah. Funeral. For – for the Captain.”

Ajax’s head shot up as a strange noise reached his ears, brows furrowing as he frowned. Polites had a hand clamped over his mouth as he glanced off to the side, practically shaking.

What? Had they not known? That was impossible; Ajax had told Polites why he was looking for Eurylochus and the other man might as well be wearing the Captain’s body like a cape!

He turned from Polites – who was resolutely refusing to meet Ajax’s eyes, shaking more and more by the minute – to Eurylochus. The second-in-command was shaking too, albeit less so than Polites, but when Ajax squared his shoulders and built the courage to glance up at the taller man’s face…

Eurylochus wasn’t looking at him, either, but… was he–

“Are you smiling?” Ajax exclaimed, squaring his feet as he bristled. Wait– “Are you laughing?”

Polites made a noise like a dying whale.

What. The fuck?

…it really did sound like the man was trying not to laugh.

“Are – are you seriously laughing right now?!?” Ajax swiveled on his heels, glaring between the two of them. Their friend, their Captain, was dead, and they were laughing?

Apparently so – as if Ajax hadn’t seen them drag the man kicking and screaming to bed, as if Odysseus didn’t trust them so explicitly with his own safety and the safety of the crew, as if Ajax hadn’t seen Eurylochus take watch shifts for the both of them if they were tired, as if Polites hadn’t near-fatally wounded a cyclops because the other two were in danger, as if they hadn’t gone to war together, as if they weren’t the only reason the Captain had survived said war and vice versa. Ajax curled his hands into shaking fists, nails digging stinging cuts into the palms of his hands – as if it all meant nothing. Eurylochus shook harder. On his shoulder the Captain twitched, jostled by the man’s laughter, and Ajax watched, seething, as Eurylochus’s hand shot up again at the last second to drag the body securely back to its place.

“I–”

“Mwr?”

What–

…With a confused noise akin to something you’d expect after poking a sleeping cat, Captain Odysseus lifted his head.

The angle was terribly awkward with the way he was thrown over Eurylochus’s shoulder… but–

…

…

…

“Did – did you guys seriously think he was dead? Seriously?” Polites howled, bent over by the force of his laughter. Ajax spluttered, unable to deny just how absurd the concept sounded when put like that. Odysseus blinked blearily at the two of them. “I – I thought you were joking–”

How–

“I–” Ajax gaped. Closed his eyes. Took a moment to breathe in and bury his face in his hands – and turned on his heel. “I need a nap.” And also a minute to cry. And something to punch.

Make that two minutes to cry. Maybe three, even.

And definitely that nap.

…on his way back to his original ship, Ajax made sure to let everyone he came across know; the Captain was not, actually dead. Just didn’t know what fucking beds were, apparently, and enjoyed the crew’s fucking suffering.

…

…next time the Captain’s friends needed something he was going to shove them overboard.

 Bonus scene uwu:

“Let me get this straight,” Glancing between his two snickering menaces, Odysseus sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “The vast majority of the crew somehow came to the conclusion that you’d killed me. and you both let them?”

Polites snickered unabashedly while Eurylochus avoided his gaze (though he was still smiling – bastards, the both of them). “I mean… it was pretty funny.”

“Plus, the kid ran off before we could actually say anything.”

Odysseus buried his head in his hands.

“Would anything either of you had to say have actually helped the situation.”

It’s not a question, and his friends don’t answer as if it were one. Polites snickered again, when Odysseus peeked up at him in despair through his fingers, and Eurylochus patted him on the head.

“…at least you had a good nap?”

Odysseus sighed, loud and heavy. Unfortunately, he did have a good nap.

 *euryl is just carrying him around bc odys fell asleep on a ship that’s not the one w his cabin lol, let the poor man r e s t– *TECHNICALLY visibility should be very good across these ships. They are boats. But just… pretend they’re constantly blanketed by Magical Fog or something whenever I need a character to actually search for someone else and it’s convenient for me uwu * return of the elpenor- *n o t happy w this one, but oh well. Didn’t wanna work on it any longer lmao

Shitty doodle :3 euryls gotta carry around his dumbasses lmao

They’re cats now–

…this? one?

I like the perspective even tho it’s not the best lol

AAANNND my favourite :D

This is wear that one poli doodle came from lmao–

OH AND thanks wiki for the extra names bc only like 4 ppl out of odys whole fucking crew are actually named w h y-

OKAY SO

B A S I C A L L Y

@ghosty-crow (once again he was a huge help for this, so thanks!!! :D) and I Decided that since euryl is the tallest of the trio, odys n poli will just fucking climb onto his shoulders whenever they need to see better or dont want to walk or r tired lmao, they’ll just walk up to him and climb onto his shoulders and fall the fuck asleep and thus it has concumsed my single braincell ever since uwu

the first time the crew sees this happen, after fighting the cyclops, they think odys is fucking dead bc none of them have any braincells whatsoever :p

this results in ajax... not having a great time. logically he knows that its really fuckin unlikely that odys is dead but he’s also an anxious lil bean and unfortuanetly the panic won out

I have any things to say abt this. unfortuanetly i cannot remember any of them in this moment.

#my art #my writing #fic #fanfic #the odyssey #epic the musical #odysseus #eurylochus #polites #lil ajax #flower au #ew tumblr killed my formatting a bit :< #…ignore any spelling mistakes it’s 5am okay–

[notsilenced]

What a weird first post. Excuse my formatting; I think I was in high school the last time I used tumblr.

Protecting myself, opening up, being a stubborn bowling pin, and not showering as often as I’d like to.

Let’s just throw that out there as a sort of “headline,” if you will—some words that make people ask, “ew, what the heck?”

I know, it sounds absolutely disgusting, but there’s a reason: every time I get into the shower I want to cry.

Seeing my legs shrink, the hair on my legs and armpits not grow back, and finding clumps of hair in my hands as I try to wash it—it’s hard. I won’t lose all my hair, but I barely had any already. This is me now. This is FH and what I will deal with for the rest of my life.

This is the part where I shrug and say, “well, c’est comme ça.”

It’s extremely possible I told people I’d only be on this immunotherapy for a few months. Well, I lied; I don’t like to make people think this is who I am, because it’s not. I don’t need fake pity. I am not my disease. I am not a product of my disease. I am doing my best to be thankful that this situation isn’t even worse and that I managed over 25 years without a significant heart attack or stroke. The gratitude I have for my life now and the physicians that made sure it won’t be cut short by this disease is immeasurable. But as luck would have it, I’ll need monoclonal antibody immunotherapy the rest of my life.

With that being said, I wish I got credit for even half the strength I’ve mustered up, but life doesn’t hand out participation trophies. As I see my body change, I worry I won’t be able to continue to do the things I love, like downhill skiing, one of the only things that has been a constant my whole life. Sometimes I joke that one would have to amputate my legs to get me to stop skiing, but it’s always me that wishes the pain wasn’t there. It’s me crying in agony. It’s me that just wants to be carried to bed because I just can’t walk anymore.

Looking back at my life, I have overcome so much—unthinkable and unspeakable things. When the glass is half empty, those memories make me feel like the glass is actually completely broken. When the glass is half full, I remember this is not my most difficult struggle and probably never will be. Inevitably, there’s more to come. The past and all of its catastrophes have made me who I am: a strong, sassy young woman that accepts zero nonsense and is on a mission to get my life back to where it should be (but even better).

…Not everyone sees it that way.

I’ve been told that everything I’ve been through is “God’s will”. If that’s what you believe, whatever god you worship sucks.

I’ve been silenced and told I shouldn’t talk about my life. That’s a bit difficult when it’s your life. I’m sorry that I’m not sorry for saying this: I’m not censoring my life so that others can think I’m someone that I am not.

All of this being said,

I think it’s time for me to put my foot down. I am the narrator of my own story, and if you don’t like it, I’m not holding a gun to your head and forcing you to care. (I could see myself acting that way about the war in Ukraine, minus the gun, but that’s because so many of my people are being tortured and killed, yet all that people seem to care about is their own little world and getting what they want.)

I care about myself, and that’s enough for me. As much as I want to be understood, I have to seek understanding of my own body and mind first.

But let me promise one thing: even if I end up with a withered body, or if I lose a lot of hair, or if the world turns its back on a woman that has had the audacity to stand up for herself and what she believes is right, I’m not giving up.

That’s the beauty of being a bowling pin that’s constantly knocked down—you’re always pulled back up and set straight. I make a pretty decent bowling pin.

#fh #immunotherapy #heart #strength #chronic illness #chronically ill #ukraine #ukrainian #health #healthcare #life #c’est la vie #this is depressing #not giving up #nope #not to be that person

[certainempatheticturkeymuffin]

Age of Calamity Review

Hey! I wasted three hours of my life writing this in Arlo's comment section and part of it had to be cut out because of Youtube's word limit, so y'all get to suffer with me.

Here's the video that I wrote this on, give him some love, his opinion is a great juxtaposition to my own!

There are a few weird formatting errors because tumblr wants me to make new paragraphs, but there's no missing words as far as I can tell.

_

I like it, but I like the first one better, mainly for the appearance. I don't know why, but the pop ups are hard for me to see (by pop-ups I mean the challenges and weak point meters, the out of battle menu is actually pretty good, though I admit the text is a little small on the opening screen), and the lack of saturation makes it hard for me to see. Actually, that might be it, I just don't like the paler color palette in this context, since for a fast paced game I kind of need to be able to see, which I can't because I'm partially blind, and glasses have a glare that's an annoying trade off. Compare that to the original Hyrule Warriors, the weak point meters are brightly colored and change color the more you damage it, which is good for those with visual impairment who need some extra feedback to judge their next actions. The menu was also this aged tan color which provided a great contrast that wasn't the blinding white on top of dark blue, which wasn't bad at all, but the buttons and text were always big enough for those with visual impairment to see, though I will admit that the little pop ups with all the people crying out for help have a bit of the same issue as AoC. I think I just like the more vibrant colors of Hyrule Warriors in the context of a faster game, rather than the pale beauty of BotW, since my eyes can't really see what's going on if the colors aren't at least comparable to what you'd find in Minish Cap or Triforce Heroes. I can see fine in BotW during the day time, but at night, well, I just run and hope for the best, trying not to get killed by an electric keese, which is also a problem in AoC, mainly Zora's Domain; I could barely see a thing and it negatively impacted my experience.

I've got hundreds of hours in HW, and maybe five or ten in AoC. It's mainly because I just don't like how it looks. I've heard a lot of people say that it looks pretty much exactly like botw and...I have to disagree. A lot of areas are pretty perfect, but some, like the tower, are just a little off in a way I can't describe. That's a personal irrelevant nitpick though, but it negatively impacted my experience, so I thought it was worth a mention, the tower on the opening screen always annoyed the crap out of me, every time I see it I just want to exit the game because ew.

The gameplay is fine, and thank goodness for the addition of the meditation room, there's not a feature like that in the original, so I had to play the first stage over and over again to figure out new combos, I think Mipha is my favorite hero that I actually unlocked (though I've been wanting to play more just to see if I can control Revali and Teba like I can Fi (which makes her insanely good since her wide area of movement is the only thing you need to account for)), and I think Zelda is my least favorite, since she's a little clunky for my taste (Daruk is too, but his rolling makes that more bearable). I was a little disappointed with Impa, but her seal thing is kinda like Zelda's and Fi's thing in Hyrule Warriors (there are probably stronger connections, but I'm not experienced with every single hero), and I think it was just the hype that she got. She's not the type of character I like to play, since Zelda and Fi are my favorites, speedy and nimble area clearers (Sheik and Marin are cool too, I just have less experience using Marin, and Sheik is always a B pick since I find them a little harder to control with less area of impact), which meant that Mipha, a character I admittedly was never attached to, became one of my favorites in the game. Impa wasn't an area clearer for the most part, she had a few moves that could do that, but she was mainly a boss-killer to me, Mipha though? She's great, set up a few waterspouts and everything dies.

I do like that they've lessened the kind of ridiculous amount of items that were in HW, and that they didn't try to strong arm fairies in, because that system was the most annoying thing in the world and so poorly explained that I had to watch the same tutorial three times over about once a month because it was so convoluted.

I do hate the runes though, I just, couldn't seem to use them right. It might just be me, but I found trying to use them weird. It's a little hard to explain, but it's probably just a me thing. Not only that, but I found the inclusion of the rods on top of the runes annoying. The rods were entirely unnecessary if you were going to use runes. They just added another layer that was thin at best, not to mention that I found them hard to use as well. I hated the weird controls of the targeting system. I don't think there's anything wrong with a basic hack and slash, and if you're not going to have the excessive amount of items, runes were a good idea i think it might've been a me issue, but rods? It seems a bit excessive. It's probably just a "you'll get better with practice" kind of thing, which, fair, most people can't use Fi like I can, so that makes sense. I figured it was worth a mention anyway since the runes were a constant source of annoyance and I used the rods twice before never bothering again because I hated them so much.

I do like the addition of healing from food drops whenever you want though. In the original if there was a dropped heart but you were at full health, sucked to be you, going back for it when you need it would waste time. The plot is still as weird as ever though (from what I've heard from other videos and such), which is fine, since I tend to play my favorite levels over and over rather than actually do anything plot relevant (can you believe that it took me over a year to finish the story of HW because I kept getting distracted by letting Fi and Zelda mow down everything in the Adventure maps and challenges? I literally got the boomerang like six months after

getting the game. It's perfect for people with ADHD I swear) though I am extremely disappointed with the fact that they took the cheap way out, it's a kid's game and a nintendo game, what did I expect? For them to let everyone actually die? Nope...though honestly, I can't comment on the overall amazingness of the plot they went with because...er....I only did Mipha's and Daruk's stages before just losing interest, so I'm not the person you want to ask about any story criticism, because that would be pure conjecture and utterly pointless.

The customization of heroes, now that's great. It's a weird system that I needed to google a lot for, but it's absolutely brilliant and I love it. Sure, getting the specific seals I want is a little annoying, but it's a great mechanic and I love it.

I probably should've said this earlier, but I'm comparing it mainly to Hyrule Warriors rather than BotW because AoC's a Warriors game and thus plays more like Hyrule Warriors than BotW, and BotW has a different set of standards due to being an open-world game. I'm still salty about the plot though, so I guess there's your comparison.

Also, I absolutely ADORE the fact that you can track materials. Not having to google which stage gives me which material is just the best. And the fact that the side quests have little blurbs, absolutely fantastic. We didn't get that in HW, but then again, once you finished the main story, the rest was just, Have Fun and Kill Everything, which is great, and I love it, but adding in a weird ingredient fetching quest with a nugget of lore is kinda cool. I don't wish we got it in HW though, since, as aforementioned, there was no way to track which material came from which stage, so that would've made it a nightmare.

The Divine Beasts....I hated them, they were literally just time wasters, and, granted I only did Rudania and Ruta before dropping the game, I just hated them. The UI was horrendous and even Ganon's Fury was better, and I absolutely DESPISE Ganon's Fury. Once I finished them, I was just happy for them to be over and never bother with them again. I hated their controls, I hated the cramped paths, I hated how I couldn't really turn and see anything, and honestly, I commend the champions for being able to control these bulky slow and absolutely horrible machines.

On the music, I think it's good. I loved BotW's soundtrack, I loved Zelda 2's soundtrack, I loved Wind Waker's soundtrack, I loved Cadence of Hyrule's soundtrack, I loved Hyrule Warriors's soundtrack, I loved Minish Cap's soundtrack, Triforce Heroes, Spirit Tracks (you're lying if you say otherwise, this soundtrack is a bop and I will actually fight you), etc etc, and this one is no different, though I will admit it did a pretty good job of having me ignore it, though that may have been more due to my frustration at the rods and runes and Zelda and Daruk more than actually having an unimpressive soundtrack.

Personally, it didn't do much for me, I can't get over the color palette, the mechanics, the divine beasts. I had pretty average, maybe a bit high, expectations, but they weren't quite met. I played it for a few hours one day, dropped it, picked it up again a few months later, then remembered exactly why I dropped it. I think the original Hyrule Warriors is just better visually for me, even if the plot isn't great or it's a bit fanfictiony, it had depth in combat that didn't absolutely annoy me, and the annoying battles were usually optional, and the bosses had variety, which is a fault mainly of BotW and was just an inherited problem for AoC, and I'm not a completionist, I don't want to have to complete anything with Darunia or Cia, so I don't unless I have to to progress something, which means that I don't stress about the gargantuan amount of content in HW.

IN SUMMARY: I've never had problems with frame rate (though I play docked due to visual impairment), and if you're visually impaired, wear anti-glare glasses because the pale colors aren't going to help much. I haven't found an option to make text bigger. The soundtrack is good,

there isn't much boss variety (not AoC's fault, but it's still there), the meditation room is great, the runes take a bit of getting used to, as do the rods(i never got used to them), Divine Beasts tank performance in all aspects and are just disappointing, you actually know which stage drops which item, and there's no My Fairy (which is definitely a positive).

To slap on an arbitrary rating that only means something to me: 4.5/10

It's a good game if you can get passed the issues that bug ME to no end.

And there we have it. There goes....holy crap I spent three hours on

I wanted to like this, I really did, and I'm glad others enjoy it, but as it stands, I'll let y'all move on to Age of Calamity, and I'll stick to my handy dandy Hyrule Warriors ice cream with a dash of Breath of the Wild, a sprinkle of Cadence of Hyrule, and a Zelda 2 cherry on top. It's not like I have to wait long for Subnautica; hopefully that doesn't disappoint me too much, I preordered this one. Actually, I get Pokemon Snap today too, hopefully it isn't a SwSh level disappointment, AoC is magnitudes better than SwSh at a 4.5

this????? Three hours of my life. Gone.

#age of calamity #loz #hyrule warriors #review #game review #zelda botw #age of calamity review #hw aoc #aoc #botw #aoc spoilers #legend of zelda #breath of the wild #late review #like several months late #who cares #visual impairment #gaming

[ouijasurfboard-blog]

a very first-drafty sample chapter from the middle of EACAG

Chapter 39: A Blanket Fort of Nonsense

(because of tumblr formatting, things previously in italics may no longer appear as such. gee, that sucks. hopes it still reads okay thanks for reading

)

Cody burst from the shadows and into the streetlight, clothes sodden and dripping, thinning hair pinned to his face. His left eye was squinted by a swelling purple bruise and his lip had been torn open. His hands were bloody, half of them clutching his ribs. Furthermore, and most importantly, he’d lost his glasses. “The hell happened to you?” He stumbled forward, gathered himself, and put a hand on the streetlight to keep steady. “Ellie—have you been following me?” There was stagger in his voice as well as his balance. “Dude, no, I—” “Stop following me! God! I’m never alone! Why is everyone obsessed with me? It’s like, ew, I can feel you staring. Sorry. We were having a good time, and then I threw up on you with words. I’m so sorry.” He hunched over and vomited off the curb. “Ew. Anyway. It’s cool that you were following me. I get it. Sorry for freaking out. You’re like… my cool, wacky mom who’s younger than me.” My idiot son wasn’t done vomiting. I moved closer. “Cody, buddy, baby, your glasses—” “Sooo, here’s what happened. Did I interrupt you? Sorry. Don’t care. I mean, I do care, but, like, oh right, so, my glasses. So here’s what happened to my glasses. I was out with the boys.” Cody definitely met all of these boys no more than eight hours ago. “And we were at this club, then the song comes on, you know the one, and then I sing along, and everyone’s like ‘woah Cody we didn’t know you were bleeblerhblerhwhatever’ because I don’t, anyway, so this girl is like, ‘blerhblerh hey youuuerrr good singer me and the ladies going to a karaoke bar’ and I was like, ‘hell YEAH’ so I get in this van, and they’ve got like beads and shit and erm-ermpheta-amphetamines and at first I’m like, ‘naaaw dude’ but then they’re like, ‘yaaaw, dude’ and so I’m gonna, but they, so like, my badge, my fake badge, ‘aaagh oh shit a cop’ so I get the SHIT kicked out of me by this old guy and these three girls and this HUGE guy, and I’m coughing up blood but THEN the BOYS show up, drag me back to the first club, and then I’m like, to uh, the bartender, ‘hey can I a doubleblerhblerhblerh’ and she’s like ‘duude yourr fuckin face go to a mirror’ so I go to the bathroom and my face is straight fucked to shit, Ellen, and, uh, like, my glasses, where are they, not on my face, that’s where, but it’s party time let’s go beast mode so I pound a few with the boys and then they’ve got this shit that’s on fire but the fire’s purple but so like what the fuck and I get something called a curb stomp and that might be where I went wrong but anyway so me and Ian are outside wrestling and I’m punching him and he’s punching me and I punch him in the face and I hear this crack and I’m like oh shit I just fucked up his face forever bye so I’m running and the boys are chasing me and I think I lost them a few blocks ago? Who knows anyway I missed you.” His whole body began titling forward, and I put a hand on him to keep the pavement from flying upwards into his already sufficiently fucked face. “So, how many boys are there, total?” He counted on his fingers, muttering names to himself, lost count, swore, started again, and answered, “uhh… six?” Whilst contemplating my ability to somehow arrange the inconspicuous deaths of six people, what I had previously disregarded as over-vigorous rainfall turned to be foot steps fast encroaching. A man came into view from behind Cody, looking only half as frazzled but thrice as bloodthirsty. “HEY YOU! DEPRESSING HAIR GUY!” Cody’s eyes went wide as insert tired simile. He grabbed me by the shoulders. “I AM GOING TO DIE.” I took his wrist and bolted. I made it about five steps dragging him as a sack of half-blind whining meat before realizing we wouldn’t get anywhere. That he had managed to evade anyone at all was a miracle. The man tore Cody away from me and forced him against a wall by his neck. It all happened at once: I went for his eyes with my fingernails, he booted me in the shin, I took his ear in my teeth, he dropped Cody and kicked me in the ribs, I fell away with a bloody ear in my mouth, air having departed my lungs entirely. I thought sadly to myself, whoops Cody was right on this one. I clutched my ribs and curled up on the pavement. This massive pug-looking guy raised his foot to stomp the life from me when Cody’s fist emerged from the shadows like a hairy angel and, at the very least, distracted him momentarily. He recoiled his fist in pain, probably having shattered something if his agh! was any indicator. “I’m sorry. I’m very drunk and nerdy and skinny,” he said, wincing with every breath. Cody got himself socked in the gut. “Why are you doing this? I thought you didn’t like Ian.” “Your face annoys me. It’s a real punchable face.” Cody sighed. “Okay. I get it. So—” He stopped mid-sentence to vomit. The man raised his fist. “Nononowait! Just… thirty seconds. Oh my god. So, yeah, sorry about your shoes, and sorry about my face. It just came this way. And… you can punch it until it isn’t annoying, but please don’t hurt my dumb friend Ellen.” “Dude! She bit my ear off!” “Yeah, she’s really, really dumb. She’s so dumb that I bet she learned her lesson just from those ribs you broke. You don’t even need to break her legs or kill her. Also, she, like, only has one hand and stuff, and she’s like, super super short, so it wouldn’t really be a fair fight.” “You think I care?” Cody glanced down at me. “Ellen. Bernie. You gotta—” He was interrupted by another blow, but I took his meaning well enough. There was a scared little kid in danger out there, and this jowly cunt wasn’t going to stop me from finding him and then subsequently hugging him and never letting go again. I forced myself off the ground, drawing attention away from Cody long enough for him to just kick this dude right in the balls. He recoiled only just very briefly, which was nearly enough time to evade him, but not quite. He kneed Cody in the groin. I was on my feet and this point, and with a stroke of luck, managed to once again kick this dude in the balls before he plunged his fist into my gut. Everyone involved, at this point, was very angry and in pain. Unfortunately, drunk Cody lacked the manic superhuman strength of heroin Cody and even the admittedly subpar coordination of sober Cody, so our combined force didn’t amount to much. Fortunately, pug-boy’s testicles seemed to be in a pretty hefty state of distress, and I saw his determination begin to falter. Unfortunately, the pain only made him angrier, and the anger only made him punchier. “I’LL KILL YOU!” he screamed. I tugged Cody away. “You gotta run, dude,” I told him, as though it would persuade his balance to be more compliant. He tried his best. He really did. The large and shouting man was ever on our heels. I dug my fingers into Cody’s ridiculous flannel shirt and held on for (his) dear life. He stumbled on every slight abnormality in the sidewalk. Every bump, every crack, every shred of litter was a hurdle. In the seven years that we’d known each other, Cody had lost his glasses twice. Once after passing out at an otherwise underwhelming party to find them two days later sunk in a half-eaten nutrient slab, and the second time after accidentally leaving them at his then-girlfriend’s cell to retrieve them the following week when she finally found them behind her desk (one of many small unfortunate happenings that ultimately culminated in their breakup). Both times, their absence had put his life on halt. I swerved around a corner, dragging Cody, who’d become a tearful limping disaster. This wasn’t really the place to admit that I’d forgotten where I was. The hotel was definitely on the same plane of time and space as us, and if we were lucky, within the same ten mile radius, too. Finding it again was a matter of endurance and favour with our respective personal deities. Cody and I scrambled wildly from street to street, looping around familiar sign posts sometimes deliberately but sometimes definitely not deliberately and ultimately just getting ourselves more lost in an effort to lose slobbery hulking pug-boy. Cody was panting and heaving like he was in labour. I expected him to collapse at any moment, and I wasn’t entirely confident in my ability to lug around one hundred and twenty-four pounds of bored astigmatic stoner over my shoulders whilst also running for my life. As was to be expected at this point, a dumb idea occurred to me. I swerved into an alley, optimistically refusing to check over my shoulder, and flipped up the unfortunately crusty lid of a dumpster. “Hop over,” I said to a barely lucid Cody. His immediate reaction was to take advantage of the sudden interlude in our running to throw up. He had the good sense to wipe his mouth afterwards, at least. “What?” I slapped my hand against the dumpster in frustration. “The dumpster! Get it the dumpster!” He nodded slowly. “Dumpster… yeah… good thinking, Helen.” His eyes fluttered closed. I shook him by the shoulder. “I’m gonna boost you up, okay?” He nodded vigorously. “Boost me up, Scotty,” he said, drooling and struggling to keep awake. I clumsily took his foot with the one hand and propelled him upwards with all the strength of five determined meerkats. He tumbled into the dumpster like a sad domino made out of jelly. I followed after him and let the lid clatter shut over our heads, pinching my fingertips as it closed. “It’s dark and smelly in here,” whispered Cody. It was reassuring to hear that he hadn’t passed out. “It sure is, buddy.” “We have to find Bernie.” I took this matter very seriously. “Or die trying.” He patted his hand around until it landed on my shoulder. “Don’t die for a goat, Ella.” I shrugged. “Gotta die somehow.” He withdrew his hand. Time crawled by at a drugging pace. There wasn’t a comfortable way to sit in a dumpster. I waited, distracting myself with memories and hypotheticals, occasionally nudging Cody to make sure he wasn’t dead. After my awkwardly-positioned legs and the odd metal shape jutting into them became completely unbearable, I decided it was as good a time as any to leave. “Time to sneak out, huh?” It was hard to draw a coherent image of what his non-verbal cues might’ve been in the dark, but I assumed he was shrugging. “I guess,” he said. I slowly raised the dumpster lid. Cody’s arms flailed over the side and he dragged himself out, limbs moving in a fashion more akin to an octopus than a think-piece writer. “Oof,” he muttered, tailbone hitting the pavement. I followed after him, stopping to help him to his feet. “We’re good, right? Yeah. We’re good.” I glanced around, scanning every detail of our surroundings that wasn’t obscured by darkness. Maybe we weren’t good. There wasn’t really an effective metric by which to tell. “We’re so good,” I reassured him, making the mistake of patting him on the back. He shrunk away. “Agh! My ribs,” he whelped. “I’m so sorry. Oh my god. Are you okay?” He seemed stunned that I cared. “Uh… I guess I’m good.” He evidently was not good. “Like I said! We’re good! Totally good!” Cody pouted, lip trembling. He folded his arms and stared down at his feet. “I wanna go to bed,” he said, voice straining as is its wont before one breaks down into sobs. “I really just wanna go to bed. Where are we?” He sniffled and wiped his nose. “Everything hurts.” He kicked his toes into the side of the dumpster, biting back a sharp gasp of pain as the joints in his foot staggered and crunched. The dumpster didn’t seem to mind, much, at least. “I got beat up by so many different people. Is my face really that punchable?” Cody fixed his eyes on mine, waiting for an answer. His features were crusted with blood and tightened in just, like, the saddest frown. His already prominent eyebrows were spiked in odd directions by the fray and beaded with raindrops and sweat and blood. His busted lip had stopped bleeding but promised a scar that wouldn’t be, I don’t know, pleasant. The rainfall and the brawling had done nothing for an already unfortunate hair situation. The spots above his temples and on the back of his head where his hair had begun to abandon him entirely weren’t quite as obscured by the eccentric volume of the rest of his hair, having been flattened and soaked. The real essence of his punchability, I decided, came from his facial hair, which crawled all the way up his cheeks and down his neck and always looked vaguely unkempt in a flippant I don’t even care, I’m just so cool and aloof and stuff kind of way that really miffed some people. He just looked smug. And as long as we’re bashing Cody’s appearance, his ears were a little on the big side. On top of it all, he was naked without his glasses. Truly, the man who always resembled a sad, hipstery less-hairy ewok had become the saddest, hipsteriest less-hairy ewok ever to ewok sadly. He didn’t really need to hear all that. “Not at all.” Not to me, at least. “You’ve got a super normal face.” You’ve got weird eyebrows. I mean, I like ‘em, but, buddy… And your eyes are kinda sunken. “Don’t worry. You’re cute.” “I’m cute?” “Yes. Absolutely.” He sniffled. “But, like, just nerdy cute, right?” “Yeah. It’s the glasses.” “But I lost my glasses…” “That’s okay. You’re still stoner cute.” “Stoner cute isn’t a thing.” “Uh, yeah it is.” “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Just, like, take a finger and fix your eyebrows.” He nodded and tried to smooth them into place. “Cool. Better.” I mean, his face was still bloody and swollen in places, but, eh. “Cool.” “Cool.” He sighed. “But, I’m not, like, hot, right?” “Eh.” He straightened his shirt. “Cool.” He swallowed another heavy breath to stop his quivering. “Cool cool.” Still unsure about his balance, I walked carefully and close so I needn’t reach far should he just, fuckin, like, fall right the fuck over. The buildings weren’t so unfamiliar now that they were more than just a blur in my periphery. We had made it more than a few blocks away from the hotel, but we hadn’t gotten ourselves as hopelessly lost as I had feared. We were just normal lost. “How bad’s your vision?” I asked. He looked down at me, face pale and still a little shell-shocked. “Like, bad.” “’Kay, but, like, bad bad or just straight fuckin blind.” “Uhh… I can’t read, can’t do details or things that are far away or things with small parts or operate machinery or coordinate well or grab things or write… uh… Actually, I probably could read if the letters were really big, but, uh, yeah. That’s it.” He would periodically reach to adjust glasses that weren’t there, dropping his hand sadly upon being reminded. Finding them became more immediately imperative than whatever other bullshit we were up to. Something to do with an organ harvester? Who knows. Bottom line was that Cody was, while not useless and still better company than no company (sixty percent of the time, at least), in very desperate need of his dumb thick-rimmed trendy-ten-years-ago glasses. “Can you still contact your optometrist guy?” “Optometrist? Dude, no, okay, shut up, it’s a good story, though, listen. So, I was walking… this was like, twelve years ago? Oh shit, I’m old… so, uh, I was walking… I already had glasses at this point, by the way. The school counsellor got me these shitty ones… anyway… So, I’m fourteen, walking on the docks, and there’s this bucket, and I’m like, oh a bucket, but then I got closer, and I was like, oh shit, this bucket is full of glasses. Mostly broken ones, right? So I’m trying them on, ‘cause, why not, and this guy starts yelling, ‘hey kid uuhhh so, like, that’s my bucket’ and he’s a scavenger, right? Because there’s like, also a bucket of shoes lying around and a bucket of tea strainers and whatever… So, I’m just grabbin a handful of not-broken glasses and running away because, like, I’ve just been coasting by at this point by cheating in school and I hold papers really close to my face… anyway… So, one of the pairs, like, work, I know, what the fuck, ayy, Mazel Tov, Cody can see. And, uh, yeah. I kept ‘em. Duh. The end. How have you not heard this story?” “I don’t ask you about—” “You don’t ask me about myself as much as you should,” he finished for me. He scoffed. “I dunno why, I’m preettyy interesting.” This wasn’t entirely true. The uh, me not asking him about himself part, not the him being interesting part. Actually, never mind, neither were entirely true. I felt like I knew more about Cody than anyone should know or care to know about Cody. There was a filing cabinet inside of my brain labeled ‘bullshit nonsense about Cody’s life’ take took up a vacancy once occupied by, who knows, how to negotiate a pay raise or how to budget properly instead of just hoarding money like a sad(der) Smaug. “You sure are, Cody.” “I bet that’s why I got beat up.” “Because you’re interesting?” “Because I’m interesting.” I nodded in agreement. That put a dumb short-lived smile on his face. He must’ve had some faith that I knew where I was going, since he didn’t seem to question it much. I was confident, perhaps (probably) over-confident in my sense of direction. It’s a finite space, I reasoned, and we can’t possible be getting further away. We could. In large, square-ish letters, the sign read INTERIM GARDEN HYPOTHESIS WAREHOUSE HOLE, flashing pink and accented with gold baubles. The door below was an archway woven with flowering vines and patterned ribbons, among them a smattering of just the most pretentious butterflies. The building itself was robed in an elaborate mural depicting a panel of dapperly-clothed animals seated at some sort of senate, all gathered below a three-eyed goat. The goat was crowned and sat upon a throne at the head of the senate floor. I felt viscerally unnerved. Cody squinted at the sign. “Yeah, don’t worry, it’s some Noam Chomsky magic realism boho nonsense,” I assured him. We’d arrived in some sort of strange hellish Halsey-esque plaza where the stores were either barren and abandoned à la zombie apocalypse or teeming with aesthetically-bohemian taken-back-by-the-earth-and-also-Portland life. Roses crept down from windows and thistles jutted upwards from cracks in the pavilion. Entrances were attended by delphiniums and hibiscus sprouting beneath fern umbrellas. Ventilation shafts sighed baby’s breath into the corridors and blew nettles amongst the ghosts and husks of furniture. Christmas bells hung from streetlights and lilacs pooled amidst a collapsed fountain. Geraniums and lavender and ominous oleander waved us towards the Warehouse Hole. It was all very eco-chic. Cody ventured further into the flowery nonsense strip mall. “The colourful stuff is flowers, right,” he said, unimpressed. Pink light glittered against the blood and rain that painted him. “This is dumb. Like…” He gestured wildly at everything. “This is dumb. Are we lost?” Yes. “Pfft. No.” “We’re gonna find my glasses, right?” he said, talking to a mannequin. “It’s our number one priority.” He stumbled trying to follow my voice. “Okay. Cool. Good.” “Are you gonna be okay?” “Who knows? Maybe.” I brushed my hand along a white bouquet of Star-of-Bethlehem. “You know what? Not a fan.” The flowers looked to be watching me leave, which was the opposite of an appropriate flower activity. “It’s bright, it’s spooky… not a fan. Uh, not on board with this one.” Cody lost his balance on a root curving up from the pavement, catching himself on a wayward clothing rack. “Haha. Walking: hard mode.” He puked into a corner of unsuspecting irises and daisies. Regaining his footing was a matter of crunching a broken window beneath his sneakers and nearly becoming impaled upon an unfortunately-positioned upturned signpost. “Ellen, uh, seriously, where are we?” Interim Garden Hypothesis Warehouse Hole. “A blanket fort of nonsense.” He staggered away from the broken glass. “Oh. I hate blanket forts.” Drawn by the flashing lights, he veered towards the entrance to the Hole. “Yeah, I don’t think we’ve been here. We’re lost, aren’t we? Uugggghhh, Elleeennn…” “We’re not lost! You can only get lost in the desert and in the ocean because everything looks the same. Everywhere else you can just backtrack.” “WE DON’T KNOW WHERE WE ARE!” “YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE!” “I’M LEGALLY BLIND!” I filled my lungs with pollen-dusted air, raising my hands in a calming arc, and sighed, ultimately doing nothing to lessen the tension. “Let’s just… go back the way we came, and figure it out from there.” “We’re going to the hotel, right?” “Hotel. Yes. Sleep. Then glasses.” I turned by back to the flowers, not without a pinch of regret that I wouldn’t sate my curiosity as to what the hell, I mean, just, like, what the hell, right? What’s going on here? The mural? What? Cody and I fumbled our way free of the Warehouse Hole pavilion. There seemed to be more flowers surrounding the exit than there’d been when it was our entrance. Watchful irises eyed our escape. The feeling of being spied upon lingered on the back of my neck. “Spooky, right?” “I don’t know, Ellen, my vision is shit right now, call back at a less shitty date, thanks.” The sign read ‘Zlotys St.’ but there was nothing zloty about it. A strange mingling of sprawling weeds and rain-freckled trash bags and masonry stained by a dazzling selection of mystery fluids coagulated, as it were, to form the district before us. Confused seagulls squawked overhead from the buzzing heads of streetlights. The first establishment past the plaza was a barber shop called Snippy’s which was attached to a laundromat called Swishy’s that itself was followed by a family-owned deli shop called Slicey’s. What humour! While the quirky fixtures of the city were as delightful as they were smelly, they remained unfamiliar and were of no help when it came to finding our way back. “You know, I should’ve bought a map,” I said, padding along, ducking beneath the odd awning to evade the rain. “You’re an idiot,” said Cody, who had had enough of life. “Nothing idiotic about being reflective of one’s past failings, amigo.” “You just never turn it off, do you?” “It’s called a coping mechanism, Cody. Look into one some time.” He sighed and picked up his pace, hand clutching his ribs as to, I assume, keep them from falling out of some open wound whose existence I wasn’t yet privy to. I caught up to him. “Are you good?” I asked. He remained visibly in pain. “I don’t know. No? Probably not. I just, ugh, I want to sleep it off, okay?” I frowned in pity at him. Whenever something adverse befell him on our dumb stupid completely necessary endeavour, I couldn’t escape my share of the blame. I was most worried in this moment that he’d finally gotten himself into a truly lethal pickle with those fisticuffs. Obviously, whatever happened, it was the boys’ fault, but obviously, it was really Cody’s own fault, but obviously, it was more than a little bit my fault for dragging him out here in the first place. “I know you’re gonna die no matter what and whatever, but I’d be pretty bummed if you died… soon…” “Thanks, I guess.” “So, please don’t die as a result of your injuries. The guilt would eat me alive, and it’s hard to effectively find a small, defenceless goat after you’ve been eaten alive.” “If you say don’t die or I’ll kill you, I will actually punch you.” Through the darkness and the downpour, it was hard to discern anything glaringly off about his appearance from the bored and tired norm. It was similarly hard to discern buildings we’d passed from ones we hadn’t. You could see the source of my predicament. I toyed with the prospect of returning to the Interim Garden Hypothesis Warehouse Hole for little reason beyond that it remained nearby and intriguing. “So, those flowers, huh?” I brought up out of nowhere. Cody scowled. “Hippies.” “But it was kinda neat, right? It was stupid—” “It was dumb as hell.” “…but kinda neat, though, right?” “I WANT TO GO TO BED.” I sighed and tugged my lips in a sympathetic smile. “Bed it is, Codes. Maybe tomorrow—” “Uugggghhhh, tomorrow suuucks.” “… after we find your glasses, we’ll, uh, we’ll pop by the warehouse.” The three-eyed-goat from the mural lingered on the back of my eyelids. Anything goat-related, at this point, seemed worth investigating. We turned a corner and Zlotys Street became a vaguely familiar cobbled road marked by a signpost that read Hellspring Rampart. To the right of us were brick-and-mortal buildings that stood as one long, undivided stretch of masonry, separated by interior walls rather than alleys. To the left was nothing but ocean. The sidewalk metamorphosed into the halfhearted suggestion of a pier underfoot. The black sky had waned into a dim grey and dawn loomed far off upon the waters. I knew Hellspring as the rickety cousin to the main docks where we’d arrived. I was confident that we were closer, now. “So, Codes…” “Ugh.” “What was the name of the club where you, uh… where you went?” “Uugghh… Uh… Okay. It’s called Boys Only Club, but it’s liiike, just the name. It’s not actually boys-only, right.” The whole situation was ruthlessly atypical of Cody. It was beyond strange for him to go out partying with strangers, let alone strangers of overbearing and loud masculinity. That was, until now, strictly my dominion. Of course, it was more than probable that the night’s unfortunate happenings had extinguished whatever curious appetite he might’ve had for the sort of debauchery he’d found. “How’d you end up there?” He scratched his head. “I probably walked.” “Yuh-huh. How’d you find, uh, the boys?” He made a sound that might’ve been a laugh, in a past life. “I have no idea!” His foot took a wrong turn and he nearly swerved into the ocean. I pulled him by his sleeve to my other side so I might act as a buffer between his shit balance and the sharks. “And what about, uh, those karaoke girls? What bar did you go to with them?” He gave me a long, condescending stare. “You think I know?” His glasses were lost as fuck. The brick buildings parted into the first alley we’d encountered for an irresponsibly long distance. It appeared as a long blue gash in the red walls. Banners and triangle flags and paper lanterns dangled on sagging strings overhead. A sign bolted in the bricks read LONG ALLEY. If you squinted, smaller letter inscribed below read *Beware rats; they’re not more afraid of you than you are of them. Quite the opposite, actually*. I shrugged at the warning. The end of the alley was bright and bustling, and the pier reached a dead end not far from where we stood. I decided on chancing the rats. Long Alley carried a thick, sickly, cinnamonny flavour in its breeze. Pipes coursed as veins along the walls, rusted and dripping. Cody trailed a hand on the bricks as he walked to keep from tripping again. The bricks soon gave way to doors and beaded archways into shops and things categorically near enough to shops to make no difference. Freckles of orange began to tinge the grey sky. “Hey Ellie,” said Cody with awkward, slow syllables. “What?” “You know what’s dumb?” “Probably.” “Well… I’ll tell you anyway…” He stopped, took hold of a low-hanging pipe, and threw it an accusing finger. “I can’t see or stand so good, but that is definitely a rat, and it is definitely following me.” The good and bad news was that he hadn’t been hallucinating from blood loss and exhaustion. The rat, a grotesque snow-white red-eyed creature of unusual size, glowered hungrily at Cody. It stood hunched on the rusted pipe, undaunted entirely by our presence per the foretelling of the sign. “Ohh, that’s a creepy baby right there,” I said, twiddling what few fingers I had in its direction. The rat stood still and stoic as a Buckingham Palace guard. “I don’t like you, pal. Don’t like those eyes,” Cody told the rat. “Go eat a cheese, ugly.” The rat wasn’t moved by his insults. “This is a nasty boy, Ellen. Let’s leave.” Cody shot the rat a venomous, knowing squint before shuffling along. The rat scurried across the pipes, following like a magnet. As we drew nearer to the end of the alley, more rats began to spring from the pipes and cracks in the mortar. Cody kept to the middlemost point between the walls, arms crossed crossly. Soon flowers began to wind down from the cracks as well, one for every new rat that bounded into view. My skin crawled. The alley spat us out into an overgrown pavilion bathed in the flashing pink light of INTERIM GARDEN HYPOTHESIS WAREHOUSE HOLE.