I think I am here.

Great game! This was really fun! And to all who are wondering, yes. I did finally manage to collect all of the horcruxes and avenge my father.

The Haunt was here. He - it - couldn’t blow things up. It couldn’t lift tables and throw them across the room. But it was invisible. Incorporeal. It could cause havoc. And havoc it would cause. “Fear us,” it said. It sounded like it was a hushed statement, like it was whispered into the ears of everyone in the tavern. “Fear us!” Drinks started floating and shattering. The Haunt could only control light things, and even that exhausted him. He floated and invisibly charged himself against a stool, knocking it over. He flew up to the lights and messed with the circuits slightly, dimming the light. Dust from every corner of the tavern started to fly around in a circle, forming a shape. Intimidation was key. If he was ignored, he... he would be done. As long as they kept their attention on him, as long as he wasn’t ignored, forgotten. Maybe then he could prove he existed.

A random civilian was shocked to see an armless man banging against the gate. “Bro....” he said. “You need help?” *** Max saw as the walls closed and the assassination began. Lusk did too, though he made no movements. “Already fought enough today,” he mumbled as Max summoned Sethramir. But it was too late, the illusion revealed. “Well, shadows,” Lusk said.

“The Deepness approaches,” De Itiah au Powerful monologued in the camp, in his standard dramatic fashion. “And we are saviours, of the world. Vanquishing the evil, and bringing forth prosperity!” He paused, then wrote something in his notebook. If he was ever going to be casted for stageplays, he needed to have a range. But if course, with impending evil around the corner the entertainment industry, if you could even call it that, hadn’t exactly been booming. “We must save the world,” he announced. “And bring the chosen hero to his destination!”

I think they’d regress their oaths, and then would have to make a new third oath.

Max smiled. “Well, it did look scary, so you were right in that regard. But I’d love to teach you how to wield a weapon.” They finished talking and Althea walked away to talk to other Council members, and Max smiled, and looked around the place he was in. When he remembered where he was, his gut clenched and he suddenly felt powerless, alone. His eyes widened, but he tried to control it, control his emotions. It was something he’d learned from Althea. He straightened up, and concentrated, tried to banish the thoughts. But everywhere he looked, there were flashes. Bodies. Dead. Screaming. The same walls now rebuilt he saw as they were a year ago, broken and shattered, people dropping to the ground like flies as a city screamed in riot. A Riot he’d created. No. He hadn’t created it. It had been the other Max, the man with the turquoise armour and Aonic sketchings, the man with the forcefeilds of green and a cape with a single glyph emblazoned on it. Max had been healed, he had a wife, he was not... that, anymore. He felt like he was alone in the city, isolated to its gates and its insanity, lingering into his head. The Phoenix above. A city of nightmares. But, no, it was being rebuilt. It was different, just like he was. He rubbed his eyes and tried to fight back, against his distressing emotions. *** Lusk watched as the kid was brought up to a podium where he was guarded. The man who claimed to be Hellbent was talking, and signalled Lusk up. Lusk nodded, hobbling upwards, using his cane for assistance. No weapon was hidden in it, no secret purpose. Just a normal wooden cane for an old man past his prime. He walked up to where Hellbent has pointed. “Yes?” He said. He’d also called Amber up. The other Council member with a cane, coincidentally. Lusk looked to the audience, so all who were here. As all of the other Ghostbloods lined to the sides as Hellbent said, Lusk looked at each of them. Tena, and Silas. The Righthand, and Max, who looked a little shaken but took his place on the sides as instructed. Looking up, the Rioter looked at Lusk straight on, and Lusk deeply considered ignoring his deal with Althea, to just smile and wave, but instead he looked away without a word or gesture, already sensing Max’s confusion.

“Agreed,” Alask said as he watched the boy run away, then closed the door. But, Laonin has always seemed to have a knack for character. “Newcagos a pretty important place,” Alask said to Amon, refocusing on what the boy said. “If he’s really there with something as big as a Union, the Queen’s going to be there, which will mean a bigger audience. But if the Queen is there, then the DA might be there, and then...” he began to frown as he sat on a stool and he looked up at Amon again. “Amon,” he said. “We’ve spent more than a year, our little group, trying to fix this place up. And we’ve been doing fine. Do you think, maybe with all this fancy talk of a Union, the Guilds would get involved, and then,” he hesitated, then continued. “You know, wouldn’t that take us back to square one?”

A small glass alcohol on the bar bench-top suddenly toppled onto its side like it’d been pushed, the liquid contents spilling out across the top. The flow outwards stopped, and the spilled alcohol began shaping itself in to words, like someone was directing the liquid with an invisible finger, drawing letters. When it was done, the lettered alcohol read: The Haunt is here. Suddenly the lights began to dim and flicker slightly as glasses of drinks from people (NPCs) all around the tables began cracking, then shattering. A chill, barely perceptible, hung in the air.

What’s this, the lefties are rebelling? Quick, get the binder books and can openers! -This thread is now under control by the Right Hand Regime. Please hand over any left hand scissors immediately and embrace as the Vorin church re-educates you -

“Well, real helpful,” Lusk said, looking at the boy, measuring him. “Hey, your too young to be skulky,” he said skulking. “That’s and old person thing. The storms are you doing, just lurking around here? You’re not Council, as far as I can tell.”

“Don’t you have that, axe and spear thing?” He asked. “A halberd! But I’d love to anyway,” he said as they disappeared.

Lusk hobbled inside, looking to the kid. “Hey,” he said. “There happen to be any coffee machines in here?”

Wes nodded back, then stood up, and took a deep breath. There was a reason he’d been third reserve for the seat, of course. And a reason he’d always appeared so weird in normal conversations. It was because he sucked at normal conversations. There was only one thing he was good at. And that was politics. “I propose we start work on discussing the inclusion of a justice system and talk of an organised police force to enforce the rules. As for laws, I say we use a base set of laws that we can all agree on, maybe something from Earth, with an addition of Investiture based laws such as the Allomantic Agreement of ‘94 added in, taken from their respective planets where such Investiture is common. As for a police force, the Precursors have been throwing themselves to the role and I believe they would do a fine job.” He paused. “So, uh, how does that sound? I hope I didn’t bite you, because, like Cerrobend, that’s bendalloy in case you didn’t know, I can be a little bland.”

Max kept the hug then slowly stepped back and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. A new city. With all the rebuilds, it was practically a new city. Nothing to remember about it. The thought made him feel better, and slowly he smiled again, wrapping an arm around Althea. “And I’m sure he’ll love you,” he said, remembering the positives. Devaan was alive.

Alask went downstairs and was greeted by Laonin. The older man talked about getting a new mattress and going to a meeting for a Union which could help them and Alask just nodded. He didn’t need a mattress, but a Union was amazing. It meant they could do more, with more help. Just as long as the guilds kept out of it, he thought with a frown. As Laonin left Alask walked around, and made himself breakfast. A simple cereal would do. After a while he heard a knock on the door. Seeing how no one else seemed to be available, he went over. “Bad feeling,” Shez whispered and Alask nodded, slowing his footsteps and opening the door quickly. It was just a kid, with some sort of message. “Hey,” he said.

Max saw Althea walk towards him and he smiled. She looked a bit tired though, where had she gone? “Yeah,” he said, she asked if he wanted tell him something, overjoyed. “Devaan’s alive. He’s alive!” His smile faded to nothing but emptiness as he remembered. Remembered what he had to do. “Thea,” he said in quiet urgency, touching her shoulder. “I’ve been called. I need to go to Oasis as well.” He hadn’t been there since... what had happened, but he’d been summoned there, and he had to go.

Wes raised a shaky hand. “Uh, guys?”

I like all of those Epics. But I think I like Overlord the best because of how awesome he is.

I would like to change my name from ‘Itiah the Powerful’ to ‘De Itiah au Powerful’, his French cousin and the only way I thought of making it start with D and keep my naming pattern

It would be cool if there was an Epic with the psychic ability of making everybody think they were incredibly powerful and godlike, when in reality that was their only power.

Alask set the leatherback book he was reading down as looked out of the window from his room. The book was titled Speculation on the Nature of Nahel Bonds, and he got up and slotted it into the lone bookshelf in his room along other books of similar name. “Interesting,” spoke a meaured, steady voice in his mind. The Shade. “You don’t know what that word means, Shez,” Alask said, smiling. “No,” it said, like it was contemplating each word as it said them. “I ‘guess’ I do not.” It, the Shade, Shez, whatever had started to progress from growls to words about four months ago, but it had taken a while and a lot of study on Nahel Bonds to turn that into a way for them to communicate. “Last night,” it said. “Pleased me,” Alask raised an eyebrow. “We only took out two criminals last night, that’s the lowest all week.” It had become their ritual. Each and every night, to walk around the ruins of AlleyCity, to walk around what their group had fixed. Almost always there were criminals, shedding blood. He and Shez took care of those fairly quickly. They’d even started calling him a name. The Shadebent. The Hunter Shade. Vigilantism might have been frowned on by the police force, but it kept the area around the ruins clean, at least for a night. “Let’s go down to see Laonin,” Alask said as he got out of his room and walked down to the bottom story.

I want this to be true, because it would be such a twist when we’re expecting it to be Autonomy or something and an insane splinter of Honour sounds awesome. But other than that, I can see some parallels, however tenuous. Paalm is a Kandra, who all have sworn by the First Contract not to kill. When she has the spike, boom. Starts killing people, breaking the vow and going insane as a result. Of course, there are other reasons she did this, but it’s interesting. Hemalurgic Chimeras are the monsters made from one Trellium spike and a human. Unlike other Spiked creatures like Inquisitors and Kandra, they are completely feral. Even the Koloss have more intelligence and can speak, understand coins. Chimeras are none of this, despite being made from humans and having the least amount of spikes from all of them. One could say they’re insane. To what oath they’ve broken, I don’t know.

Rolls off the tongue. Some I’m Itiah Tmwtecwnlhaec, and both of them are acronyms

I got a name for myself too. The man with the existential crisis who no longer has an existential crisis. Seems workable.