Today was the day, and it was going to keep happening again and again.
I slept a couple more hours before waking again and deciding it was time to get to work. I carefully extricated my arm from beneath Aurora without waking her and took a seat before the fire. I mused that it was good that it was a magical fire, since a real fire likely would have sucked all the oxygen from the room by now. I never would have used the bead had I not tested it before, so don’t worry, I’m not stupid.
(Note in the margin: You chose to get up and work instead of cuddling with the beautiful woman. I heartily disagree.)
(Note in the margin: Shut up, Fleur.)
I prepared my spells for the day, mixing utility and combat spells since I wasn’t sure what we would need today. I left a few spells unprepared in case I needed a specific spell later. But right now, I only needed one specific spell.
A few moments later, I entered into my own private workshop in a temporary demiplane. A number of constructs made of magical force were waiting for me. When I cast the spell, the constructs look like robotic geth, but they take whatever shape the caster’s subconscious deems as a perfect representation for a crafter. I’d imagine that most wizards would probably end up conjuring humans, dwarves or maybe even gnomes. I shudder to imagine the hell that would be a workshop filled with gnomes.
Today, there were nine standard geth and a single different looking one. The different one couldn’t do any normal crafting work. Instead, its job was in deconstruction. It could break down any item into base parts, even deconstructing permanent enchantments into useful material.
I handed the machine the mithral head and Aurora’s old armor. “Turn everything into magicite,” I told it.
“Understood, Kyle-Wizard.” It immediately got to work converting the goods.
I should explain what magicite is. If you haven’t already figured out, I was the one who named it, stealing the name from a game. As far as I know, I’m the only one who has ever used this material. In fact, my spell is the only source of the material I’ve ever encountered.
But what exactly is magicite? Put simply, it’s raw crafting potential turned into a physical material. With this spell, I can convert crafted goods and materials into magicite or turn magicite into new crafted goods or enchantments.
As for its physical properties, it doesn’t seem to have any useful ones. It’s metallic, weighs about the same as steel, but isn’t as strong. It conducts electricity, but not well. Its boiling and freezing points aren’t great. It doesn’t seem to alloy with any other materials. It’s only useful in the context of my spell and the more common spell used by wizards to fabricate things from base materials.
Conversion doesn’t allow me to get more value from a material than I could get from just selling the item and buying the materials I need. I have learned how to use slightly less magicite than I should strictly need for any work to get the same results, though this is exactly the same as how I cut corners using normal materials. It’s almost as if some cosmic Game Master has told me that he would allow me to cheat time, but not money at the game that is life. The main benefit of using magicite is that I don’t have to go to a town and buy materials or worry about finding a buyer for valuable loot we find on our adventures. Hell, I can even convert coins into magicite and back again at a static one-to-one ratio.
As for where the idea came from to incorporate this functionality in my spell, that’s a simple enough answer. I figured that if that Thassilonian spell allowed me to convert my blood into crafting materials or magical components, then there must be a way to do the same with other materials. It was a surprisingly simply puzzle to solve.
I had been doing a bit of work – mostly in my head – on understanding the technological devices I’d read about in the copied tome. It had only been a day or so, but I was ready to create not just my first technological marvel, but a Frankensteinian hybrid of magic and machine.
With the help of the geth, it wasn’t too long before I held it in my hand. I grinned as I looked at my first magitech battery. It was like the silver disk batteries I’d read about and much more powerful than anything we could make on Earth at that size, but there was more to it than that. It contained magical properties and would completely recharge itself once per day by siphoning ambient magical energy. As a downside, they were actually a microscopic amount larger than the normal ones. They’ll fit in normal battery slots, but might be a bit harder to get out. Optimally, one wouldn’t need to do so.
In addition to the battery, I crafted another of my own custom designs. In truth, I wanted to craft something from the tome, but I didn’t have the materials to do so. So, instead of making a rifle that fires focused beams of sound for Aurora, I instead made a Submachine Coilgun* for myself. It would be most efficient as a semi-automatic weapon, but if I needed to put out a wall of bullets, it could do so.
(Margin Note: *A coilgun is a weapon that uses electromagnets to fire a metallic slug – usually ferromagnetic material – instead of using an explosive charge.)
I started off simple with the bullets. I had plans for much more complex materials, but for now I would just use steel slugs. With a simple spell, I could craft dozens of them at once from a small block of iron or steel – not sure if I can use magicite with that weak of a spell. Or I could use the Thassilonian spell to turn my blood directly into bullets.
(Margin Note: Blood Bullets? Are we Deadman Wonderland now?)
My work finished, I left the magical workshop. The sun had just begun to rise and Aurora was still sleeping, so I headed outside to the fort’s training yard. A pair of Black Arrows were practicing archery on some wood and straw targets.
“Good morning, my lord,” one said in greeting.
“A bit brisk today,” I said. “Fog’s starting to roll in.”
The other nodded. “Should clear up by midmorning. So what brings you out here this morning?”
“I was thinking of testing out a new toy I just finished. Mind if I join you for a bit?”
“Not at all,” the first said.
As they watched, I aimed the gun and took a shot. Complete miss. I adjusted the sight and fired again. Closer, but only nicked the edge. I continued on this way until I was confident that I had the sights perfectly set.
I learned a lot in about half an hour practicing. First of all, I’m not a great shot. It’s a lot different firing a real gun than it is firing a game gun. I had gotten by with the muzzle loaded pistol due to using it at very close range, but this was an advanced weapon and I had no excuse not to use it at a longer range. So that meant I would have to practice. Either that or make a laser weapon – which would be much closer to a video game light gun – but a laser essentially burns something and there’s plenty of magic protecting against fire. No, that was a weakness I didn’t want to introduce to my primary fallback weapon.
Once the sights were set, the weapon was fairly accurate. On the softer straw target, I could score hits every five or so shots – probably increase chance of hit to one in two if I were a better shot – at about three hundred feet. On the wooden target, maybe one in twenty were managing to penetrate despite having a similar hit rate. This got much better as long as I was within a hundred and fifty feet or so.
Additionally, the sound of firing was much quieter, but there was still sound. After all, the bullets were firing at a muzzle velocity of somewhere around twelve hundred meters per second – I’ve done the math – so it still set off a minor sonic boom.
And finally, it only does about as much damage as a twenty two. But that’s per shot. I could make a bigger weapon, but I’d have to sacrifice either fire rate or make it a two-hander. Neither was acceptable, so it would be fine. I could enhance its damage with enchantments later, or maybe make explosive rounds or something.
“That’s pretty impressive,” someone said behind me. I turned to see Orik standing there. “How do you make it so quiet? Using a different kind of gunpowder?”
I grinned. “Nope. Not using powder at all.”
His eyebrow raised in surprise. “Then how do you fire it?”
“Well, it’s a bit hard to explain. But effectively I’m using artificially created lightning.”
“Magic?”
“Not exactly.” I popped open the gun’s battery casing. “It’s a bit difficult to pull out, let me grab my spare.” I pulled another battery out of my pack. “It uses one of these.”
He inspected it for a moment. “That almost looks like a Numerian Silverdisk.”
That surprised me. “You’ve seen one before?”
“A mercenary I used to run with had one as a lucky charm. I didn’t know they could be used to make guns.”
“They’re what we call batteries. They hold a charge of electricity – which is similar enough to lightning for these purposes. I got ahold of one from a trader for cheap. He didn’t know what he had. I’ve been studying it for months. I don’t know where they came from, but they’re more advanced than what we have back home. Well, I finally figured it out the other day and made a few adjustments to allow it to recharge using ambient magic. And once I had a couple of these, I had to find a use for them, so I made a gun by adapting tech from back home to use these new batteries.”
Yeah, I lied. But I needed to hide where I had gotten the tech from. If the Technic League finds out, there could be trouble. And it wasn’t completely untrue. The coilguns were basically tech I created using knowledge I’d learned back on Earth. I just used alloys and techniques I learned from reading my book to make it work. On a side note, mithral, gold and various trace minerals make for an excellent conductive wire. Just in case you’re curious.
I could see the wheels turning in Orik’s head. “Any chance you could make a bigger one?”
“Big enough to mount on the roof of a carriage?” He nodded. “I had a feeling you might ask. I’ve already designed one. Get me the materials and I’ll make one for you, since we seem to be working together a lot. It won’t be as quiet as this one, though.”
In truth, I had designed four coilguns. The first is my little Pizzicato, the one handed SMG. It fires smaller ammunition – all ammunition I’ve designed is a proprietary size, from O’Halloran Coilgun Projectile(OCP) Small to OCP Large – than any of the others and is the only one hander I’ve made. I designed it to look like an M-9 Tempest from Mass Effect because I could. The second is the light machine gun, which I’ve dubbed “Crescendo”. I designed that one to look like a futuristic version of the Thompson and it uses OCP Medium which it can only fire on full auto.
The last two both use OCP Large. The first is the Tremolo, which is effectively a larger version of the Crescendo that can only be used mounted or at least on a tripod. It burns through the belt fed ammunition at an amazing rate – at least on paper. The final one is the Martelé, which is designed to be a semi-automatic weapon with a longer range and more stopping power per round than the other three. And, of course, I designed it to look like an FN P90 because it’s a weapon of war, meant to KILL your enemy.
(Margin Note: You realize no one’s going to get that reference, right?)
“Put together a shopping list for me and I’ll get everything for you as quickly as I can.”
“Actually, the materials I need are fairly hard to find. I’ve made contact with a trader who can get the materials fairly quickly through his network of contacts. Get me the gold to buy them and I’ll have him pick them up.” Again, that wasn’t true. But gold and other valuable metals convert to magicite extremely efficiently, so I’d be able to get what I needed that way.
“Contact your trader and find out how much you’ll need. I’ll see about getting it as soon as I can.”
“Will do. I’ll show your spellcasters how to make more of the bullets from steel ingots sometime between now and then.” I knew exactly how much I would need, but I had to wait at least a day to let him think I was looking into it. He couldn’t give away information he didn’t have.
I spotted Geo as I headed back into the building. He had fresh surgery wounds. If he didn’t want to tell me about it, I wasn’t inclined to ask. It did bug me that I couldn’t recall what the tattoos his visitor had meant. But I had too much on my plate at the moment. I’d figure it out later.
Paulie was trying to sell something to a soldier when I ran across him. He spotted me as I walked by and gave me a wide grin. “Tell me, can I interest you in a wonderful new product?” Great. Apparently he was Billy Mays again.
“Not really. We should start getting everyone together so we can head out.”
“Excellent! Are we going to go back to Turtleback Ferry to hunt down Lucrecia?”
I sighed. “No. We’re going after the fort’s commander in the Shimmerglens.”
“We can make that work. We can sell a lot to a customer who feels indebted to us. Also, I doubt Lucrecia is where I saw her yesterday.”
“What.”
“I told you all about it, but you were more worried about the dam.” When had he told me about… oh. Fleur swore. In the water. She was the snake in the water he had been talking about.
I flagged down a nearby Black Arrow. “Go find Jakardros and Orik Van Caskerkin and send them to me immediately.” The urgency in my voice must have shown. He ran at a dead sprint.
It took less than five minutes for both to reach me. “What is it?” Orik asked, looking annoyed.
“I just learned that Lucrecia was spotted at Turtleback Ferry last night. I need someone to go check on the town.”
Jakardros nodded. “I don’t think my people are up to it yet. I understand if you need to go, though I was really hoping you’ll be going to the Shimmerglens to look for the captain.”
“I’d really rather not put that off any longer,” I agreed. “Orik, can you and your people check into it? There’s a thousand gold coins in it if you can bring me her head.”
“We’ll look into it.” I could almost see dollar signs in his eyes as he took his leave.
“Meanwhile, we’ll need a couple Black Arrows to go clean the corpses out of the river,” I told Jakardros.
“We can handle that.” I turned to leave, but he stopped me. “Actually, a merchant arrived early this morning. Hoping to make a few gold coins selling us supplies.”
“Do you know the man?”
“Yes. He’s a generally okay person, though I’d keep an eye on your wallet while he’s here.”
“Let’s see what he has.”
The merchant had an eye patch, a hook hand and a peg leg. Yarr. Okay, so not the peg leg. But he did have the eye patch and the hook hand. Which begs the question: Is the hook hand directly at fault for the eye patch?
Jakardros introduced me to the merchant, Phileris. The man had brought a number of weapons and tools, but nothing I was interested in. What I did find myself interested in was his selection of horses. He had several horses to choose from. Most were work animals, but there were a couple fit for bearing riders on rough terrain.
Of those, there was one that immediately caught my eye. There was something about the horse that felt immediately familiar. It was a mare with very light tan – almost a pale yellow – coat. She seemed to be hiding from us behind the rest of the horses.
“You have a keen eye for horses,” the merchant said to me. “But she isn’t going to be very good for your purposes. She’s never let anyone ride her and is very nervous around new people. She’s incredibly brave otherwise though. Never seen a horse stare down a snake.”
“You’re joking,” Jakardros accused.
“Absolutely true. Snake just calmed down and slithered off. It’s too bad she’s just no good around people.”
“I have a good feeling,” I said. I motioned over Aurora, Disney Princess extraordinaire. “I need your help with this horse,” I told her, explaining the problem.
“I’m sure I can convince her to let you ride given a few days,” she said.
I grinned. “I think I can do better. Jak, you guys have any small animals? Chickens or something?”
“Shalelu caught us some rabbits, which we’re breeding for meat.”
Rabbits? Perfect. “Aurora, would you go get me a rabbit and bring it here, nice and calm?”
She returned a few moments later with a snow white rabbit. I sat down on the ground and had her hand it over, then got some vegetables from the merchant. Then, after having everyone back away from me, I began feeding the bunny and singing softly to it.
It took a couple minutes, but the mare began inching her way toward me, curious. A few minutes more and she was right beside me. Without looking up at her, I gave her a carrot and gently patted her muzzle. The horse actually laid down beside me to get a closer look at the rabbit, who regarded her warily. I held it forward so the two could get to know each other.
Within ten minutes, I was fairly certain the horse trusted me completely. “See, Fluttershy?” I said. “People just need to get to know you better, don’t they?” I put a saddle on her back and hopped up. She looked at me and calmed when she realized it was me. “Let’s do a lap around the yard and see how fast you can go.”
After the lap, she let Aurora feed her an apple. All animals perceive Aurora favorably. She would have made a good druid. Meanwhile, I perused the merchant’s magic stocks. It was mostly mundane stuff, healing potions and the like, but he did have a scroll of a spell that would turn an animal into a stone figurine. I bought that to add to my spellbook in case I needed it.
As we led Fluttershy to the rest of our horses, Aurora stopped me. “What spell did you use to do that?”
“No magic,” I said. “Just intuition. She reminded me of a fictional horse I know, so I went with my gut and acted like I was trying to befriend that horse. I think she has a role to play in the prophecy, based on my vision.” I didn’t tell her that I was starting to suspect that this was going to end with six dead horses and that trying to prevent it would fail or, even worse, might result in us failing to stop a much worse result.
She didn’t seem to believe me. No one understands me.
We headed out into the Shimmerglens and were immediately struck by the signs of decay. I’m not sure how to describe it. Swamps are pretty ripe normally, but they’re alive. This place was very much not so. The only life present was insect life. The plants were dead. The fish were dead. Even the snakes were dead, not that I was complaining.
We might have wandered for hours, but then the pixie found us as we were walking our horses through some muddy terrain. He was about two feet tall, which is larger than I imagine when I think of pixies. His hair was blue and spiky – anime hair, really – and he had large blue butterfly wings. “Humans! Help, please! Mistress in trouble!” His voice was high pitched and annoying, but he’s a pixie, so that’s a tautology.
“Of course she is,” I said. “Just once, I want to show up somewhere, have people rush out and offer to help us with our problems instead of begging us for help with theirs.”
Aurora gave me a look that said, “Be nice.”
“Tell us about your mistress,” Geo said. He thought about it a moment. “Actually, what is your name?”
“I am Yap.” Yap? Really? God, I hate pixies. “My mistress is the nymph Myriana, Princess of the Shimmerglens! She is very ill! Death would have been better! Her sickness is infecting the land. You are friends of Lamatar, her human lover, yes? Please, he would not want her left like this! Have tried everything to cure her forlorn heart! You must do something! I will take you to her!” He said all of this without stopping to take a breath.
Well, that was where we were going. We could use a guide. “We might as well,” I began to say, but only got as far as “We mi-“ before Lenn reached out and grabbed the pixie by the ankle.
Lenn sniffed the now upside down pixie and licked it. He made a disgusted face and tossed it aside. “Gross! You wouldn’t make very good sausage!”
What. I pinched the bridge of my nose in an attempt to stave off the aneurysm Lenn was leading me towards. “Lenn, buddy…we really shouldn’t make sausage out of sentient beings. That’s how ogres do things and we don’t want to be like them, right?” I didn’t mention that I was willing to consider making an exception for Lucrecia. After all, I was considering making boots out of the scales on her ass as sort of a symbolic thing once we found and killed her.
At the word “ogre”, the big guy pulled out his axe and looked around. “GIANT!” he roared. “WHERE?!”
If there had been a table nearby, I would have banged my head on it. Instead, I just sighed and went with it. “Sorry, my mistake. It was just a tree.”
He put his axe back in its harness. “Try not to be so stupid. Trees are not giants.”
“Remind me again why we hang out with him?” Fleur asked.
“Name me one person who can hit things as hard as he can,” I subvocalized.
“Chuck Norris.”
“We’re just trying to kill a few bad guys, not destroy reality here.”
“Oh, good point.”
We followed the pixie through the swamp, making decent time. We would have gone faster, but the pixie didn’t seem to understand that he needed to take terrain into account. I kept getting these urges to pull off his wings to make him understand. Naturally, I didn’t do it, or even say it, but I thought it real loud.
For the most part, the swamp was boring. I’m not a biologist, so there wasn’t much for me to see. The only point of interest is that the swamp didn’t seem healthy, but that can only keep you interested for so long before the delusional projection of your alternate personality starts sounding like a little kid on a road trip. Or maybe that’s a problem only I have to deal with. #JustCrayCrayThings or something. I dunno.
Okay, so there was one interesting landmark we ran across. I saw it and just stopped Fluttershy. “What.”
“That is certainly interesting,” Geo agreed.
“How long has that been here?” Aurora asked Yap.
“As long as I can remember.”
“Okay, I’ve seen maps of the region,” I said. “We’re at least a hundred miles from the nearest shore.”
“Right,” Aurora replied.
“That sounds fairly close,” Geo agreed.
“Okay, so would anyone like to explain to me where the hell that came from?”
“No idea.”
“Magic?”
“I’m not saying it was aliens,” Fleur said. “But it was probably aliens.”
“Alright,” I said. “I’m going to go investigate the ship. Anyone coming with me?”
Yes, you heard me right. There was a ship just sitting in the muck of the swamp. It looked old, but at the same time it was more advanced than anything I had seen around Golarion in the time I’ve been here. In fact – and I’m only basing this off of knowledge gained through a weekend on the net after watching Pirates of the Caribbean – but it looked a lot like an early nineteenth century Dutch frigate.
The ship had been mostly picked clean of any treasure, but it seemed otherwise remarkably well preserved. I was curious what kind of chemicals they used to treat the wood, but I lacked the tools to analyze it, so I didn’t bother grabbing samples. The captain’s cabin was the only room of any real interest, since it was the only room with anything in it.
Inside the relatively spacious room was the skeletal remains of the captain, seated at a decaying remains of a harpsichord. The tattered remains of his uniform didn’t give me any indication as to his origins, but the harpsichord held some clues. It was carved with an elaborate scene of a battle between demons and angels, but that wasn’t the only interesting feature. “It’s made of darkwood,” I said. So, not Dutch after all. I wasn’t sure whether I was disappointed or relieved.
(Margin Note: Disalleved, maybe?)
(Margin Note: No, I think that’s what they call it when you get your stomach pumped after trying to commit suicide by naproxen overdose.)
(Margin Note: I hates you, Toki. Seriously.)
“Is it salvageable?” Geo asked.
“No, it appears to be rotting. Probably not worth the effort.”
“What about these?” Aurora asked, holding up several sheets of paper.
I took a closer look. They were sheets of music, slightly faded but otherwise remarkably intact. I read through the score, playing the notes in my mind. “These are amazing!” I said, pulling out my violin. “They’re masterpieces by any point of view. And I’ve never heard any of them. We may have just rediscovered music that time has forgotten.” I played the first song. It was a challenge even for me.
“Valuable?” Aurora asked.
“Priceless, but I’m sure I can sell these to the White Grotto for a fair amount of coin.”
Geo looked out the dusty window. “We should get going before Lenn decides to eat Yap anyway.”
I put the music pages in a protected pocket of my bag and nodded. “And before Paulie starts trying to sell him catsup to make the pixie more palatable.”
Yap led us to his mistress with little incident, but he hadn’t prepared us for what we’d find when we arrived. I had been expecting a beautiful nymph. What we found was an undead horror. There was nothing between her shoulders and forearms. And she was translucent.
What I’m saying is that she was a ghost.
“Yap!” she screeched. “Who are these you’ve brought before me?!”
“They’re friends of Lamatar’s, mistress,” the pixie responded, terrified.
“Is this true?”
“It’s very close,” I said. “We were sent by his friends. They would have come themselves, but ogres killed many of them and injured most of the rest.”
“OGRES!” she howled. “Ogres did this to me! Then they dragged off my Lamatar! He is dead! But when I tried to reincarnate him, the lamia’s foul magic prevented it! I demand that you find his corpse and return it to me!”
“Did she just say Lamia?” Fleur asked. Aurora’s eyes asked the same question when our gazes met.
“Maybe the spell didn’t work because he isn’t dead,” Paulie said.
“LIES!” the ghost roared. “Lamatar would have returned to me if he was still alive!”
“I’m just saying that ogres like to torture people for a while before killing them. We can bring him back alive! And if we don’t, I’ll throw in two free bottles of this powerful cleaning potion and the scrubbing pad absolutely free!”
I grabbed the cat man. “Paulie, you’re not helping! Just be quiet for a…Paulie?”
His expression had gone completely blank. “What is wrong with him?” Yap asked.
“Don’t worry,” I replied. “He does this sometimes.”
A few moments later, a new expression came over Paulie’s face. He took a look at the ghost. “Far out, man. But your chakras are all out of alignment. You should sit down with me for a while and meditate so we can bring your chi in balance.” Okay, so that’s not an exact translation. But it’s close enough.
“What…is wrong with him?” the ghostly nymph asked.
“Well, that’s a subject for the ages. We could discuss it all day, or you could point us in the direction of where the ogres took your love so we can get him back to you sooner rather than later.”
“I do not know. To their den, perhaps.”
“Do you recall what they looked like?”
“Like ogres.”
This was getting nowhere. “You mentioned a lamia?”
“Yes! She was commanding the ogres. She was the one who set up the ambush!”
Lucrecia then. “Then he’s likely been taken to the Kreeg stronghold on Hook Mountain.”
“We’ll need reinforcements,” Geo noted.
“Right. We’ll go get Orik and head up. Best if we can make it during the day. Don’t want to fight ogres after dark.”
“Then you will return my Lamatar to me?” The tone of the ghost’s voice nearly broke my heart.
“We will. But I want you to promise me two things.”
“I will listen.”
“The first is that you won’t take out your anger on any people traveling your lands.”
“I will restrain my anger long enough for you to return him to me. If you do not do so, I make no promises beyond that.”
It would have to do. “Second, if that Lamia comes back into the Shimmerglens, promise me that when your subjects kill her, you’ll send her head to the fort as proof that she’s finally dead.”
The look on her face was terrifying. “I make no promises that there will be enough left of her face to be identified.” I liked this ghost, even if she had just given me a new nightmare.
We teleported to Turtleback Ferry and found Orik and his people helping out with some cleanup. He spotted us and motioned us over. “The townspeople tell us that you all are secretly angels in disguise? And you’re apparently the Angelic Aspect of War?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I said ‘God of War’. They can at least get their story straight. Also, it’s going to blow their minds when they see what Lenn can do.” He gave me a perplexed look. “Don’t worry about it. Just suffice it to say magic was involved and the ‘God of War’ thing was a taunt to our foe.”
“You’ll have to tell me all about it later. So, what brings you all down here? You find the fort’s commander? Wait, why does the look on your face tell me that I’m not going to like the answer?”
“Ogres dragged him off to their stronghold in the mountain. Gonna need some backup to get him back.”
“He’s probably already dead, you know.”
“Yeah, but the nymph’s ghost – don’t ask – wants him back even if he’s dead. Besides, I’d bet there are an awful lot of scalps to be had up there.”
Once more, I could almost see the dollar signs in his eyes. “Good point. Let’s swing by the fort, pick up whatever reinforcements we can and go kill some ogres.”
From somewhere behind me, I heard Lenn roar. “OGRES! WHERE?!” I turned and saw Paulie trying to give him a headband he’d woven from nearby wildflowers.
Will someone please tell me what the hell I’m doing with my life?