Madness interactive

Sorry for how long this post is - just want to see if anyone can relate and definitely venting.
I feel crazy for feeling the pain I do. I don't know anyone else who had a parent who was undiagnosed autistic while they were neurotypical. Most people I know just know autistic people through their social circles.
My mom was great, but my dad and his entire side of the family are/were undiagnosed autistic.
I have been extremely low contact with him for years now, and I want to talk to him someday, but I feel absolutely repulsed by him. I feel guilty about that. He's not a bad person, and I know he loves me, in the sense that he loves whatever flawed concept he has in his head of his daughter but I do not believe that person resembles "me". He completely financially supported me throughout my schooling and beyond and I'm deeply grateful for that.
But he treated me like shit socially growing up, probably largely although not entirely due to his undiagnosed autism.
He never listened to me growing up, literally called me hysterical and crazy repeatedly and got others in my family for being angry at him. I hated interacting with them because he talked over me, never responded to any of my social cues, and continuously talked about himself and/or whatever he was are interested in. I would shout at him to shut up, and the response was that I was rude and he continued talking. I was expected to shut up and listen since he didn't get to "be himself" anywhere else.
He and my sibling both were this way, and my home was a safe space for them. But apparently, since I was female and apparently neurotypical, I was expected to put up with this without complaint. I complained a lot and was emotionally punished by all of my family members for years for complaining and being upset and reacting angrily.
My dad and my mom didn't get along very well and they both got very angry at each other all the time due to arguments. When I threw a tantrum in response to him emotionally mistreating me, I was suddenly the problem, because I was too loud about it.
The thing is, my dad works in a highly paid, specialized field, and he was perfectly functional on the outside and especially outside of the home.
My sibling is autistic but was undiagnosed growing up. They ended up great, thank god, thanks to my mom's parenting. So I know not all autistic people are like this, but I still feel really uncomfortable interacting with people that remind me of my dad and his side of the family.
I'm emotionally sensitive, probably more sensitive than most people, but definitely basically neurotypical and definitely not autistic.
Sometimes I feel crazy for feeling deeply hurt and sometimes I feel completely justified. I mean, all he did was gaslight me for years into not trusting my emotions and reactions to his behaviors and constantly having to cater to the emotional needs of a grown man but I turned out fine. And I knew that it wasn't normal, probably, and I spent most of my teenage years avoiding him even though I wasn't low contact until after college. My mom always wanted me to have a relationship with him, and believe me I tried tons of times in my childhood but he usually made me feel like shit because interacting with him felt like it purely for his benefit and not for mine. I was supposed to feel good that I was interacting with my parent, regardless of whether I enjoyed it. All I wanted was to get away from him.
He chewed with his mouth wide open during dinner and I begged him to stop over and over and over again (probably a hundred times or more), but he refused. I was so grossed out and felt like it was a small thing and him refusing meant that he didn't love, care about, or respect me. He was also unhappy when finally, after many, many years, I refused to eat any meals with him. Whatever, fuck him. I wanted to eat with my family, but eventually, I couldn't take his behavior anymore. Soon after I was finally able to move out permanently.
Interestingly, after years of my family being complicit in his treatment of me and kind of mad at me for being constantly upset at my dad for seemingly no reason - "he's just difficult but he's trying" - had been the usual response, my family had a reckoning and most of my nuclear family, including my autistic sibling, understand and at varying levels support my estrangement from my dad. Their response is quite validating. But somehow I can't validate myself as I need to.
The biggest issue I have is that on paper, it doesn't seem that bad. It just led to me not trusting my own emotions and reactions to situations and to this day I habitually question if I'm over-reacting to situations since I was constantly told my emotional responses to many situations were largely uncalled for.
I believed (still, sort of) that I was too much for another person to handle because my dad couldn't deal with me growing up. Honestly also probably led to me having terrible relationships (platonic and romantic) for years because I was desperately trying to get the love I needed from him growing up and was trained to not only accept, but expect, bad behavior from other people and especially men.
I have a wonderful neurotypical boyfriend who is thankfully proving all of this shit wrong, but it's still inside of me and I wish I knew of someone who went through something similar who didn't grow up with me.
Did anyone go through something like this? I can explain this to others but I feel like they don't really get it. Most of them just interact with autistic people at parties and don't understand what it's like to get your reality and emotions warped for years like I did. It's especially hard because sometimes I feel insane for feeling as hurt as I do, because again, all he did was ignore me and talk over me and make me feel crazy for getting angry.

Hi! Please help me.
I [25y/o gay male] was diagnosed with HSV1 and HSV2 on June 7 2024. I first noticed symptoms on May 26 I suspect I was exposed/infected on May 7/8. I was tested on June 6. Results came June 7 showing an HSV2 Igg index of 4.44 AND a HSV1 Igg index of 6.13 (how tf ?!?!?). I have never had an oral outbreak in my life, and have had one primary genital outbreak which was relatively mild (between 4 and 6 traditional vestibules/ulcescab/healed on the base of my cock where the shaft connects to my body lol) with minimal lymph node swelling and pain. I did not get a swab in time before the outbreak healed because I was scared and in denial (and frankly busy). I now realized that kind of fucked up my investigation and leaves me with more questions than answers.
I was not expecting to be positive for both HSV 1 and 2. I am so confused and have so many questions that it seems like are beyond the expertise of Planned Parenthood nurses/practitioners (lol no hate). I have been deep in this forum and in published studies on HSV, and feel like I could really benefit from some educating from the real experts — those who have HSV and are well informed on the topic (i.e. the collective in this forum). I have several questions that I am hoping to get answered, as well as general topics that I am either having trouble finding resources on or do not a full working understanding of.
I have started Antivirals (400 mg Acyclovir 2x daily) and supplements (1000mg Lysine, 1000mg Vitamin C, and 1 spoonful of raw unprocessed honey 2x daily) for suppression. I drinks over 120oz of water daily (3 fill ups of the hydroflask) and run 2 miles a day.
So here are some of the things that I am struggling to understand or figure out: - How tf did I get both HSV 1 and 2? Is that common? - What are the risks of transmission from male to male intercourse (I’m a top if it matters)? From receiving oral from a negative person? - What are the risks of transmission to different parts of my body? Example: Am I going to get HSV2 on my face from using one towel after my shower? - Someone people allege you will die/get fucked from kidney issues if you take antivirals daily, others say it’s harmless unless there is some underlying condition and the responsible thing to do for a sexually active HSV positive person — what is the truth? (Asking here because I have gotten conflicting answers from different doctors) - Is it possible for Igg index for GHSV2 to be the level I have from an interaction that occurred less than a month before testing? Is it possible for one or both test results to be false positives?
I know this post is mad long, so if you’re still reading this — thank you. I’d really appreciate any answers, information, personal experience, or direction to applicable resources that anyone in the forum can provide. I am a young hot and successful nice guy — always looking for pen pals. Thank you 🫶🏽

Hey folks. Long story short my wife said she wanted a divorce back in October and we have been separated since then with a lot of interaction. I often end up making some encouraging remarks about how we can make it through this (I know, probably dumb) and she responds with a list of reasons why I’m so terrible. One thing that comes up over and over again is a situation that happened 7 years ago and I’m looking for feedback and on how move forward.
Back in 2017 my stbxw’s mom lived five minutes from our house and we were pregnant with our first. We were super excited that grandma was right around the corner as we knew the help would be great and the baby would get to spend time with family (my family all live thousands of miles away). Unfortunately a few months before we were due her mom decided to move thousands of miles away to Hawaii. Her mom and step dad said they would get a condo near us and split their time, but that never happened. Eventually they told us that her mom was terminal with cancer. They bought an amazing house but in a very remote area with limited access to healthcare. The nearest hospital was 45 minutes away on a good day. To make matters worse there was a public health crisis due to rat lungworrm. When they moved, without asking, they left a mountain of trash in our driveway. I had to load up my truck and take it to the dump and pay $80 to get rid of it. The money wasn’t a big deal but I was annoyed that nobody asked and I did say it was annoying to my wife, but that was about it. Then I just took care of it and moved on. They also left a car at our house with no plans on what to do with it. It just sat, needing to be moved every week for street sweeping to avoid a ticket, which sounds easier to deal with than it was. It always required shuffling cars since we only had a two car driveway. After a few months I started asking what they were going to do with the car. Eventually the battery died and replacing it was not straightforward. It was even difficult to get into the car. The step dad got mad that I couldn’t take care of it myself, used the opportunity to make me look like an idiot with my wife, and reluctantly called someone to fix it. Then finally sold it.
Her mom came to visit only one time, when the baby was first born. The visit was rough too. She was supposed to stay with us and she did for one night but her husband didn’t want to and he stayed somewhere else. So after the first night she went and stayed with him. I don’t think he liked me much and I suspect that was the reason he didn’t want to stay. My wife and I still got along great at this point. But after two weeks or so they returned to Hawaii and never came back again. Instead, they wanted my wife to go to Hawaii.
Initially, I was a little stressed about that because of the remoteness of the area and the lack of emergency care when our child was so young (just weeks/months old). We went on a couple of trips there and she went on a couple of them alone. When I was there I went out and did some things alone to give them time without me in their way, but not much. We also took a night or two to go to hotel and take some vacation time together which was great, but I know the step dad wasn’t happy because he thought she should be spending that time with her mom.
Anyway at some point the step dad sent a long email saying that every time she visited it took her mom a long time to recover and that it’s best if she doesn’t visit anymore. This upset her and she was initially mad at him but I guess at some point he suggested that she come and stay there until her mom gets too sick. No one knew how long that would be. At the time my wife was still on maternity leave but it was ending. She talked to her boss and worked out a deal where should could work remotely. She came to me excited that her boss would let her do it and that she wanted to take the baby and go to Hawaii until her mom was too sick. She knew I couldn’t come but she said I could come visit. I told her I was very uncomfortable with her taking our months old baby away for an undefined period of time and that I was not ok with it. I told her to take two weeks trips if she needed to but that I couldn’t miss out on our only (at the time) baby’s life. I even suggested that if she must go she leave the baby with me (which wasn’t practical though since she was breastfed - I think I was trying to get her to see things from my perspective). Her mom ended up living more than 6 months so it wasn’t like it was a matter of weeks.
This initiated a giant devaluation of me and things were never the same. I only recently learned that she talked to all of her friends about how angry she was, including an old male “friend”. She didn’t speak to me about it and I had no idea she was talking behind my back to so many people. The male friend was going through his own divorce at the time and she discussed divorcing me over this with him. She started hooking up secretly with this same “friend” the second she said she wanted a divorce.
I tried to be as supportive as I could during that time. She as always emotional and from my perspective I was always there for her. Now, when she speaks about her resentment she says I was “horrible during that time” and I “fought her every step of the way”. That I was terrible for pushing back on the trash and the car. I feel like there was nothing I could do to make it better. I didn’t even realize how upset she was or that she would resentment me for years over it.
The really odd part is that before her pregnancy she and her mom weren’t that close. She used to tell me about things her mom did that she didn’t like. That her mom would adopt whatever her boyfriend’s personality was and she told me about it her mom cheating on her dad before she divorced him with a complete loser. Ironically, when I mentioned that incident last year she told me that her mom never cheated her dad. Ok, weird. But after the pregnancy they became really close which is great. But she now idealized the same person that she had resentment for and changed details of what happened I guess. Super weird.
Anyway, I realize maybe I’m just being gaslit but I really think this Hawaii situation holds such deep resentment for her. Was I out of line to express minor disappointment about the car and the trash? Or to have been worried about the safety of the trips with the infant? And of course was it reasonable to push back on her taking the baby for an unknown period of time?
I felt like her mom made the decision that was best for her and I respect that but she chose the island life over being close to her only grandkid. That was her choice and she chose what was most important to her. But my family shouldn’t have had to be torn apart because of that choice. At least that is how I see it.
Now my own mom is sick with cancer and also thousands of miles away. I wanted to take my kids to say good bye for just two days and she threw a fit. She said my mom is a dramatic and is probably seeking attention (she ended up in the ICU). Then she said I couldn’t take them and then eventually offered to come along with us. When I accepted her offer she told me I was manipulating her into going. She did go though and I was thankful. But she complained a lot and I just let it go because it is inconvenient and I know that and I respect some minor pushback. But Recently she told me that she waited years for me to “get what I deserve” and now that it’s here she can’t even let it happen. I was really surprised by that level of anger and resentment.
I wish I could tell her side of the story since I know there’s always two sides but I can’t. Shoot, I wish she would tell me her side of the story instead of just telling me she “feels” that I wasn’t supportive without going into any details. To me this is all part of trying to understand my contributions and reflect but it leaves me totally confused and trying to understand what I did and didn’t do wrong.
Any comments are appreciated!

My boyfriend and I were talking about random things and suddenly I had mentioned how when I was younger (prior to him) I would get a lot of guys who would want to talk to me. I told him how that made me feel uncomfortable. I told him how one time a guy at a party kept trying to talk to me over and over again after I had given clear signs that I didn’t want to talk. I would either respond straightforwardly without any open ended questions and looked annoyed then I’d leave and he continued following me to keep talking to me. He mentioned how he remembered doing that with a girl he knew in college because he liked her and didn’t know what to do to get her attention.
When he mentioned that I got so pissed and mad at him. I called him a creep and pathetic for having done something like that. He said that he learned to never do something like that again as he got older and it was rather something embarrassing he had done. I told him that that was disgusting of him to make women feel uncomfortable and to go find that girl he kept bothering and to leave me alone. I did get jealous about her even though it was back then when we weren’t even together.
I’m not sure if I overreacted or if I should break up with him because he was a creep in the past before we got together. He said he was just very shy around girls, so maybe that came off as creepy.
My bf is the sweetest guy I know and always has been to me to me, so I do feel bad for calling him pathetic and creepy. It’s just hard because I just know how he has treated me and not how he has treated other women back then. I don’t know how he treated girls back then because I wasn’t there at that time. I also worry that those same girls that thought he was a creep or something now look at our relationship as a joke and say things like “oh yeah he’s a creep, she should get away from him or what a fucking weirdo” or just mean things about our relationship that don’t look good for us.
I don’t know what to do.
Tl;dr: my bf admitted to being creepy in college by wanting to talk to girls that clearly weren’t interested in him. He said he was dumb and stupid and that he’s learned a lot ever since and that he just acted that way because he was shy and didn’t know how to interact with women specifically.

My boyfriend and I were talking about random things and suddenly I had mentioned how when I was younger (prior to him) I would get a lot of guys who would want to talk to me. I told him how that made me feel uncomfortable. I told him how one time a guy at a party kept trying to talk to me over and over again after I had given clear signs that I didn’t want to talk. I would either respond straightforwardly without any open ended questions and looked annoyed then I’d leave and he continued following me to keep talking to me. He mentioned how he remembered doing that with a girl he knew in college because he liked her and didn’t know what to do to get her attention.
When he mentioned that I got so pissed and mad at him. I called him a creep and pathetic for having done something like that. He said that he learned to never do something like that again as he got older and it was rather something embarrassing he had done. I told him that that was disgusting of him to make women feel uncomfortable and to go find that girl he kept bothering and to leave me alone. I did get jealous about her even though it was back then when we weren’t even together.
I’m not sure if I overreacted or if I should break up with him because he was a creep in the past before we got together. He said he was just very shy around girls, so maybe that came off as creepy.
My bf is the sweetest guy I know and always has been to me to me, so I do feel bad for calling him pathetic and creepy. It’s just hard because I just know how he has treated me and not how he has treated other women in the past. I don’t know how he treated girls back then because I wasn’t there at that time. I also worry that those same girls that thought he was a creep or something now look at our relationship as a joke and say things like “oh yeah he’s a creep, she should get away from him or what a fucking weirdo” or just mean things about our relationship that don’t look good for us.
How do I move on?
Tl;dr: my bf admitted to being creepy in college by wanting to talk to girls that clearly weren’t interested in him. He said he was dumb and stupid and that he’s learned a lot ever since and that he just acted that way because he was shy and didn’t know how to interact with women specifically.

Long story! TW: death
TLDR: In 2021 my mom died, then in 2023, my closest friend died. Between then, I fell in love with my closest high school friend, it didn't work out. Now my high school best friend wants me to be the maid of honor to her wedding but my deceased best friend hated her because of how she treated me. She hid a relationship from me the year before. Looking for perspective/advice on how to best move forward.
So I'm a 27 yr old female, currently wrapping up my degree, all while recently coming out of the top 2 tragic events of my life. In late 2020, my Mother got diagnosed with terminal illness. I took off grad school and went home to be her primary caretaker. These were the most profound 6 months of my life. Her and I always got along, but she raised me to be independent, I left home at 18. This time brought us together closer than I thought possible, and for that I'm forever grateful.
My Dad cheated on her during the last months of her life. I still haven't fully forgiven my father for abandoning us during that time. He was completely absent, emotionally and physically. Never in my life did i have so much stress on my shoulders, but knowing that I was able to provide her the environment to pass in peace means everything to me. As crazy as it was, it has also made me more grateful than ever for my close friends since my family is dysfunctional.
During that time I basically lost contact with everyone except my closest friends. My high school best friend, Liz, was one of them. We always kept in touch throughout the years. Looking back, it was always me who was reaching out, always me who was going to visit her place, and I didn't mind the amount of one sided effort because she was always glad to see me and we always enjoy our time together. Liz lost her sister when we were 16. So, during the time I was taking care of my mom, she offered me some pieces of advice that I took to heart immensely. Her words are what kept me together during some of the toughest moments of that time, and although I had always looked up to her, since those moments I value her deeply. She's also one of the only friends I have who even met my mom.
I made a great friend in my first year of grad school, Ali. We clicked as besties immediately. He had lost his father early on in graduate school, and so when I lost my mother, he one of the few people I felt really understood me. Before and after I came back to graduate school, he was my anchor.ll
Over dinner with Ali in spring of 2022, I said I think I'm in love with Liz, and it wasn't the first time I'd had those thoughts over the years. Ali gave me practical advice: asking if I'm sure, what I'm going to do about it if anything, telling me I plan as if I'm expecting her to say no, and I totally agreed. I told him I wasn't even sure if I was making it all up in my head or not. Liz and I saw each other about once a year since high school, and maybe I was overhyping our perceived chemistry.
I ended up going home for a cousin's wedding and stayed at Liz's apartmemt for most of it. Liz has pretty much always been in back to back relationships since high school. It'd been a few months since Ali and I started talking about my feelings towards her. I told him everything about her, and by the end of the summer I had also told all my local friends, who supported me throughout all this.
Prior to that week, in a previous conversation, Liz said she wanted to end her then current relationship soon. But during that week, I just wanted to get my head straight so I just focused on having fun. I felt more sure of my feelings for her after our time together. At one point we talked about what we're looking for in long term partners, and I even felt like I fit the bill of what she was describing. On the last day before going to back to grad school though, she called me drunk and told me she wanted to confess something. I felt my heart stop, but then she said she wanted to marry her other best friend/roommate, Emily, in some years. I asked her for more info, but she just said she's drunk and hung up.
Emily and Liz had grown up together but Emily had moved out the area during high school and that's when I originally met Liz. Point being, I only know Emily through Liz. They had been living together since college, Emily also came out later in life, and I guess I thought that if something were to happen between them it would have already happened as they've been single under the same roof before. I also felt like me and Liz had a type of chemistry in our interactions that I never saw between her and Emily. After that week, I go back and tell Ali about the phone conversation. He tells me that it sounds like one of those "if we're both single by x age let's get married" type deals. After all, Liz was still dating someone else still, so I really just put it in the back of my mind.
Come Fall of 2023, around October, Liz and her previous partner split up. I asked Emily if her and Liz were getting married after all. Emily said that she didnt know if any that was serious, but, that if anything happens, that I'd be "the first to know".
We're all into cosplay. It's a hobby I got into through Liz. There is one convention that happens around valentines day every year. Liz asked me if I would go with her & her friend group, and I knew right away I wanted to use the oppertunity to confess to her. I figured until she tells me otherwise, I have a shot.
For context, anytime I would call Liz between the previous summer until I confessed, I would make an effort to pask her if she was interested in anyone else, even asking if she had lingering feelings for any exes from time to time. She never indicated even the slightest interest towards anyone (other than the drunk call). I have a side hustle in astrology, so a month or two after Liz's initial break up I told on our mutual friends I'd give them a free reading if they told me anything they know about Liz's love life. They said they didn't know anything, but that she always speaks highly of me, and rooted me on when I told her I'm confessing to Liz. I also told another one of our mutual friends, who spends more time with Liz, and they also cheered me on when I informed them of my intentions.
I took this confession very seriously. I thought my chances were looking good when not even a minute after new years, she called me. We went on about how much we mean to each other & how long we've known each other. Unfortunately, she forgot all about my birthday less thab 3 weeks later and that crushed me. It was really embarassing for me, becuase I always make sure to remember her birthday and have been sending her cards and gifts for years.
I started worrying that I had been putting this all in my head. In the weeks leading up to the convention, I asked her straight up what was going on: if her and Emily are dating. She told me "it's complicated" and said it's easier to talk about it person. I knew at that moment that my odds of her liking me were not good. She wouldn't tell me any more about it. I decided I was going through with the confession anyways, just for my own closure. I had been gearing up to this all year.
I made her a personalized valentines day gift box. I put things I knew she'd like in it, and 2 necklaces. One was one of those "besties" necklaces that comes in 2 peices for if she rejected me, and the other was a nice one with the first letter of her name on it. I had picked out a really beautiful card I thought she'd like when I visited Japan earlier that year, a country she wants to visit someday, and I wrote a heartfelt note telling her I love her, and we should talk about it. The convention happens the weekend after valentines day. I was going to fly in on thr 15th. I wanted to get the package to her on the holiday and then talk with her the next day, ideally.
Well... the weekend was really something. Her and Emily recently moved to a new apartment building so my package was left at the bottom of the stairs in the complex. The 1st night, I quietly snuck downstairs and moved the package into the apartment. The next day she sees it, and she yells "Hey Emily! OP got us something for valentines day!" I panicked and told her "its really just for you, you shouldn't open it now'". She took my panicking as me being bashful, insisted that its fine, her and Emily sat down in the living room to open it. I immediately took the card from her and threw it into her room, telling her not to read it.
Emily was visibly upset. She was apologizing for not getting Liz anything for valentines day. Liz loved everything I got her, which was sweet, and I think the bff necklace made the gift pass as nothing too suspicious in the moment. Emily kept saying how she needed to get Liz something now, and I just started texting my friend Ali figuring out what to do. He told me to talk to Emily one on one and find out what's up. So Emily and I go to run an errand together, and while at the car wash, I ask her if they are dating. She pauses and says "I don't know, I hope so" to which I almost screamed in frustration. I asked what she meant but did not get any more of a clear answer.
During the weekend, one of Liz's closest exes & I ended up talking. I asked them if they knew if anything was going on between Liz and Emily. They told me "no way" and laughed. When I told them that I wanted to confess to Liz, they said that they see me bring out the best in her, and that they're rooting for me. Liz, Emily & I shared a bed, with Liz in the middle. I usually hug my cat or a pillow at night and reflexively woke up having my hand on her waist. She teased me for it in the morning and I felt terrible/think I pushed a boundary too far.
We get back to Liz & Emily's apartment on Sunday. Liz finally reads the letter I wrote her while Emily is out and we have a talk. Liz tells me that she's sorry, that her and Emily are dating, but thanked me while apologizing. I was hurt and sort of pissed off by the whole thing because I dont understand what was so hard about telling me that over text weeks ago. I went outside to walk it off, Ali was the first person I called and cried to. It was a long night. The next day Liz had to work, so Emily took me to the airport. Emily seemed oblivious to my feelings for Liz she actually thanked me for being such a good friend and bringing them (Liz & Emily) together. I guess all my meddling got them to make it official. I told her I'm happy for them and said our goodbyes.
I had a lot of pent up emotions towards Liz following the trip. I typed out a timeline of events into a Google doc, because my confession clearly caught her off guard but I wanted her to know how much thought I had put into it.
She told me she'd call me to talk things over more, but then I didn't hear from her for an entire week. No text or anything. When I reached out, she told me she had simply forgot. I was hurt, but I appreciated the honesty. All that came out of this conversation was that we both value our friendship above all else. I told her I'd need time to get over this. She said she understood, but she then said that she was mad at me for "invading her privacy" by asking our mutual friends about her love life. I told her I find it weirder that she didnt tell anyone in her life about her feelings/relationship with Emily. I think it's normal to talk to your friends about personal things like that, she thinks otherwise. Talking with Ali and all my other friends after, they all told me they think she was crazy for not telling me or anyone else about their relationship. I told them I'm definitely taking a step back from our friendship. I was upset that she didnt feel like sharing any thoughts on of her situation with Emily to me over the past year. I probably called her once a month and check in with her, so I felt blindsided overall.
Fast forward to the end of the summer in 2023. One of Liz's exes, the one I spoke to during the convention, and I start casually flirting back and forth for a few weeks. This is Liz's ex from 2017, from over 4 relationships ago, for context. This is not a recent ex, and they're still good friends with each other so I didn't see a problem with it.
My sister was getting married over the summer. I had originally asked Liz to by my plus one before I confessed to her. She agreed, but I formally invited her and Emily to come since Liz does mean a lot to me and I wanted her there after it all.
When I looked out at the crowd during the wedding I didn't see them there. They showed up late, missed the ceremony, and when I walked them back to their car at the end of the night her ex's name came up organically in conversation. I told her I find them attractive, and I asked her for insight on them.
Liz flipped out. She said we wouldn't be a good match, but wouldn't elaborate why, and even Emily was joining in saying it's a bad idea without further reasoning. I just let it go, but I ended up staying with them later in the week for 2 nights. One night 1, Emily informed me that her and Liz were going to take a shower together and they did. I dont know why she felt the need to announce it to me, but I just took a long walk to ignore it. I dont know any couple that does that when having company over. The next day I asked Liz about her ex again, and told her it's nothing serious but wanted to know why she wouldnt tell me anything. Again, Liz was dodgy, she still seemed mad about the whole thing and said she didn't want to talk about it.
Here's where things take a turn. I get a phone call from her about a week later. She says that i was being "inconsiderate" of "her feelings" by talking to her ex, that I should know how bad that looks, and espeically considering "where I started" the year I "should know better". I was pissed off, becuase I don't think she considered my feelings at all that year. I something slong the lines of "What? You mean when I confessed to you 6 months ago? What do you want me to do! I've been dating around all summer, I've been trying to move on, and your ex knows that, so no one is left in the dark here. We're just casually talking it's not that serious." She called me back some days later, apparently after talking to her Dad she realized she was being jealous, and apologized. I said its alright, and I didn't ask for any clarification on what she meant. But by the end of it, she said that I really am her closest friend. She also said she wants to do better about opening up about her life.
Fast forward to December 3rd 2023. Ali dies, my whole world is flipped upside down... again. He was the closest friend I had.
All of my close friends were reaching out to offer me their condolences and support. I hear nothing from Liz all month. I was very hurt, because she definitely heard the news, liking a post I made about it. But she never reached out. I figured she must be going through her own thing, and tried not to think about it too hard. Well around the 19th she called me and we started catching up like normal. Key word: normal. She didn't indicate that anything big was happening in her life, at all (spoilers: there was!). When I brought up Ali passing, she apologized for not reaching out sooner and admitted that she forgot to, but meant to. I told he it's fine, I understand. Honestly though, that hurt. We talk for a grand total of 10 minutes. I asked her what's new, how things are going, how Emily is doing, all the usual. She says everything is buisness as usual.
Now 3 days later I get a text from her. She sent me a zoomed in picture of a ring in a box. No context, no follow up text, her hand/face is not in the photo, it looks like a Google stock image for all I, or anyone I've shown the photo to, can tell. It was the middle of the day and I just assumed she didn't mean to send it to me. Well around 5pm I open up Twitter and I see Emily posting that they're ENGAGED! I felt my heart drop. I didn't know what to think. Why wouldn't she bring this up when we talked 3 days ago? Why didn't she call today? Why was I finding out through social media?
I texted her congratulations, and threw in a 'why didn't you tell me!' She said she was waiting "for me to reply to the pic" that she sent. She then texts me "You're the maid of honor, just so you know". I was hurt beyond words. Espeically as her 'best friend', I don't understand why she wouldn't have said something to me earlier. I still had lingering feelings for her, but I support their relationship and want her to be happy in all.
However, I couldn't believe she would think that I would be OK with any of this. Considering that less than a year ago she didn't even know if she was dating her fiancé. I can't imagine proposing to someone without consulting my best friend. If any other friend told me they're getting engaged to someone they only dated for ~10 months at our age I'd be concerned. I get that they have lived together for a while, but romantic relationships are a whole different world in my view. My friends were even more pissed on my behalf, asking me if I even want to go to the wedding, or keep being her friend, considering the way she's been treating me.
I told her I wanted to call and talk about detials. She said she would call me the next day, but she never did. So I end up calling her a few days later on Christmas eve. After initial congrats, I started grilling her on why she wouldn't say anything to me as nicely as I could.
She said it's not her fault, that it was a spontaneous, spur of the moment decision. I told her you don't just a ring from nowhere. She said she was walking in the mall and saw this gorgeous ring on sale and just had to get it. She proposed to Emily while they were making dinner. I honestly felt mad on Emily's behalf, because if I knew my fiance got a ring on sale and proposed to me without much thought, I would be upset. She said that she was going to wait, but then decided it'd be better to ask before Emily went home for the holiday. I told her I needed to have a serious word with her, because none of this was OK with me.
I said that while I want to support her and be there on her wedding day, I can't believe she'd ask me (or tell me, really) to be the maid of honor considering I confessed my undying love for her less than a year ago. She said it's because I'm her best friend and that just pissed me off more. I told her that considering she didn't give me an inch of thought regarding Ali's death, forgot my birthday,, and didn't tell me she was going to propose, on what grounds are we best friends? I said I can't be the maid of honor, at least not right now, I told her I need a break away from all this. This sucked to hear right before the holiday. She said she understands and "not to worry" about it. I laughed and told her I'm still not 100% over her how, could she say something like that? But I told her it'll be fine.
She slowly got more upset as she realized how shitty of a friend she's been. Liz said she didn't think about it, she doesn't know why she didn't reach out to me sooner, that she's sorry for not telling me things and that she's so sorry.
When I asked her when they were looking to get married, she also said that they're not getting married for another 3 to 4 years. That hurt me badly too, because if that's true then why the hell did she have to propose now? I just felt like this was just a very raw wound to get carelessly re opened by my 'best friend', and to know that she has never been considerate enough to ever think about me made it that much worse.
It's been 6 months since. She called me on my birthday this year, with Emily on the phone too, and told me how she threw out the valentines day box I initially gave her. I don't think I expected her to keep it, but I don't know why she'd tell me this. They both said happy birthday and I got off the phone as quick as possible.
Since then it's been silent. I'm looking for advice on how to move forward from here. I'm not really sure where to put her in my life. She called me her best friend but has no regard for me, and although I miss her badly I'm starting to think that I have to let this friendship go. Her birthday is coming up soon, I usually call her but I don't know what I'd say to her right now. Since Ali passed I've been struggling to connect with people, and I'm lonlier than I ever thought possible. I could use a best friend again, but I think she'll hurt me again. Ali hated her after hearing about how she showered with Emily when I stayed over, and said I should forget about her until she apologizes/changes. I'm struggling to find peace on everything.
Do I even go to this eventual wedding? Her parents love me and know me well. Her Mom joked about us getting married when we were younger & says things like 'You're the favorite' when I'm talking to them. I'm scared they'll ask me why I'm not the maid of honor if I go. I doubt she's told them anything. I don't even know what she's told Emily. There is no date set yet, so I'm really just fretting and thinking in circles. Thank you to anyone who bothered to read the whole thing. It's taken me months just to be able to coherently journal it all out, lol. Saving up money for therapy.

I (19M) got rejected by a (18F) in college about two months ago, i handled the rejection pretty much well, i already knew the answer deep inside of me, so i just wanted to tell her, take the rejection and move on. She left very clear that wasn't interested in me anyway, because she always left me on double check, ignored me on social media, etc.
I am focused on other goals recently, i finally have the motivation to seek new talents and improve myself again, i even managed to meet other people, including girls.
Well... the thing is that since i moved on i started to cut conversations with my former crush and avoiding her as much as possible, of course politely and not giving a single hint of me being angry or mad at her, i just don't feel like she's worth as a friend anymore mainly because my ego was bruised, and she has equally the right to reject me as I to reject her friendship.
The thing is that her friends, (my friends too) confront me very often about the situation in front of her, which is very uncomfortable, the first time was funny but about the third time one of my crush's friend called me 'entitled' in front of her for avoiding her and her conversations. That particular comment was the worst of all, and i'm starting to get mad at all of my crushes friends for not respecting my decisions. I'm not being rude at her, i'm just trying to interact as little as possible with her to keep my dignity untouched.
What should i do?

Paradox, Viciate, and Lorenzo continued on their descent into the castle to the Well of Wisdom. A sacred place bestowed on the Alphaverse since its creation. A well that possess the most valuable wisdom from across the Megaverse. Paradox had his group stop in one of the chambers for he assumed his prisoners will be awaking from the poison soon. He then had his chains wrap around King Alexander, Venessa, Cross, Tray, Selena, Malissa, Lucrest, Leoped, and Phonix. Viciate deployed several drones that aimed their weapons at the chained prisoners with Paradox standing resolute holding the Matrix of Eternity in his hands. The prisoners eventually woke up one by one and were greeted by crude words and jeers directed towards them. The chains that bound them prevented them from utilizing their powers to break their bonds and even if they did, the bullets from the drones will prove extremely lethal to their weakened state. Paradox ordered the prisoners to be placed in a line on their knees as he snapped his fingers which summoned imps and more infernal warriors to act as guards. King Alexander, "You can't restore the Matrix in the Well of Wisdom, it will shred you to pieces." Paradox smugly, "Maybe, but that's why I'll have each of you go in for me and see who can withstand the Well." Malissa, "He's going to sacrifice us! Where is Joan? Did she escape?" Paradox, "Oh I believe Tray knows the answer to that." Everyone turned wondering where Tray could be until he finally spoke, the others were shock at his new appearance for he appeared otherworldly to them. Tray did not lift his eyes towards the group, but rather hung his head low. Paradox's eyes beamed with sadistic delight as he spoke, "I guess one can say your sister is now very OPEN MINDED!" It took a few seconds for this joke to register in the minds of the prisoners, but when it did, all of them violently shook the chains in order to be free. "Go ahead use all your powers to break those chains, it only transfers your power levels into my soul. Lockjaw was right, all of you are complete fools in underestimating these accursed chains!"
He grabbed Phonix as his victim but stopped when what seemed to be an earthquake began to shake the foundations of the castle. The earthquake only intensified the longer it went, Venessa, "Does anyone else hear bass boosted music?" In a spectacular explosion of dazzling lights and rifts across space and time, Diamond's glowing body appeared in a giant hole in one of the castle's walls while blaring Hit Me Baby One More Time. Everyone was left speechless when they saw Diamond, believing it to be a ghost. "PARADOX!!!!!" In terror Paradox began to back away, "Impossible, I scarred you for life! HOW ARE YOU EVEN STRONGER THAN BEFORE?!" "It is not for you to know the circumstances that brought me here before you today. Regardless I am back. AND THIS TIME THERE IS NO POWER IN THE MEGAVERSE OR THE NETHERWORLD THAT IS GOING TO STOP ME!" Paradox ordered Lorenzo, Viciate, and the rest of his minions to dispose of Diamond as he journeys deeper to the Well of Wisdom. Viciate used his powers to generate clones of his allies as he slowly approached Diamond. Observing this, Diamond began to smile, "How about I even those odds." After finishing his sentence, 20 identical clones of Diamond manifested themselves behind him. Unlike other clones or copies, these 20 were able to act independently as a collective hive mind. The original Diamond attacked Viciate head on while the duplicates attacked the other clones and others attempted to free the prisoners. Viciate attempted in drawing his sword to strike Diamond in an exposed position, but Diamond's intense senses was able to prevent Viciate from using his sword. In a matter of seconds, Diamond punched Viciate to a bloody mess before leaving him stuck on one of the walls.
His abilities alerted him of several imps closing on his position, and in a swift motion, Diamond created a new Sword of Light, which was far longer and sharper to simultaneously decapitate all of the imps that circled around him. While watching all of this unfold before her very eyes, Selena could not help but smile at seeing Diamond restored to his former self, "He's back." A clone of Diamond randomly appeared next to her, "Nice to know I'm no longer on house arrest." The clone was able to free Selena from her chains and started to free the rest of the prisoners. After freeing them, he gave the group a new set of orders, "I may not know all of you, but focus your abilities in taking down those devilish warriors over there. I'll handle Paradox." The clone soon vanished alongside the other copies leaving only the original Diamond left. Just when Diamond started to follow Paradox's trail, Lorenzo used his acidic whip to suspend Diamond in place. Lorenzo was successful in his attack and used this advantage to expel fatal toxins into Diamond's lungs. "Ugh. Dude, you got some serious oral hygiene problems. Here take a mint!" Lorenzo's mouth was open due to him being stunned seeing his foe unphased with his lethal toxin. The supposed mint landed on his tongue, which resulted in a strong electrical shock being sent all over his body causing him to black out. "Nice whip though, I'm for real going to take this for my collection." Diamond bent over and collected the whip before resuming on his mission to destroy Paradox. Paradox was nearly at the entrance of the Well, but felt his body frozen in place, no matter how hard he tried to move. He finally realized he was frozen by Diamond's soul manipulation, yet when he made this realization, Diamond was already floating horizontally whispering into Paradox's audio receptor, "I think I am going to show off my newfound abilities."
Paradox tried to slice Diamond with a chain along his back, but Diamond vanished before he could land a hit. He reappeared behind him and with a simple flick, Diamond sent Paradox crashing through the castle's walls and ceilings. Paradox regained his stance as he morphed into Astros as he stopped a punch from Diamond which sent shockwaves, shattering any neighboring glass. Paradox kicked Diamond at his shin before hitting him with brute force across his face. He summersaulted backwards a few yards as he morphed into the Ice King. He then summoned several frozen daggers and sharp projectiles as he sent them flying towards Diamond at light speed. Diamond noticed the projectiles flying towards him as he achieved speeds that made time around him slow down several seconds. It was if things were occurring to him at a quarter speed, so with a wave of his arm, he took control of the projectiles and had them float around him before resuming time and sending them back to Paradox. Paradox moaned loudly as the projectiles lodged themselves in tight crevasses of his body and interfering with some of the vital mechanisms. The two teleported away from the castle into the depths of the grand city where they continued their battle. Paradox changed into Shen the disgraced Shogun as he desperately tried to slice off Diamond's limbs and head. Diamond casually dodged each attack with ease he summoned the Sword of Light which has grown longer and sharper to reflect his reunion with the Light. The two blades collided with each other, but Paradox was no match for Diamond's swordsman skills.
Diamond noticed Paradox's right arm malfunctioning from one of the ice projectiles and taking advantage of this weakness, he punched Paradox repeatedly in the chest before kicking him to the floor. He then created a revolver from his nanites and fired four bullets consecutively into his weak spot. He knew his bullets succeeded in wounding his opponent, for the sound of loose air began to hiss from broken wires and Paradox's arm glitching by morphing into many different appearances before changing back to its default appearance. Diamond smiled smugly as he released that Paradox was truly terrified in that moment, "Where has your self-confidence gone? Are those appearances not making you comfortable in your mechanical body?" "SHUT UP!" Paradox then changed into Mecha-Diamond as he was able to grab Diamond by his throat and threw him into multiple buildings. The two eventually landed on top of a commuter train before Diamond could free himself. Diamond sliced his opponent's arm to free himself and used his thrusters to fly backwards as he observed Paradox's body shifting gears to re-forge the missing arm. While in the form of Mecha-Diamond, Paradox had four mechanical tentacles grow out of him, which resulted in Diamond activating his suit to grow tentacles of his own. The two opponents had their tentacles wrap around each other as they fired their blasters at each other. Diamond tried to create two clones of himself, but Paradox's tentacles grabbed him and tossed him into one of the train carts as the civilians screamed in terror. He gradually regained consciousness as he prepared to find Paradox, but for a long minute, he could not sense Paradox. It was not until a lady screamed of a large spider approaching them from the other end when Diamond released it is Paradox crawling on all fours with great speed. Paradox shifted back to full height in a most grotesque fashion as his body spun in different ways before his head shifted back to its normal size. Diamond yelled at the passengers to run to the other cart as he dealt with Paradox. While the passengers fled, two extra mechanical arms began to form on Paradox's appearance of Mecha-Diamond as all four of arms ignited red plasma blades. "Attack Diamond!" The four arms began to spin in opposite directions of his body in quick movements as he rapidly approached Diamond that it was impossible to strike him above or behind.
Confused on what his next move should be, Diamond noticed parts of Paradox's chest plate were loose as it was glitching in and out. Out of options, Diamond swung at Paradox which he swiftly blocked with the four blades, but Diamond was able to have his nanotech grow on Paradox's arms as he then had the nanites send an electric shock on the foreign host, which granted him an opening in tearing off the chest plate and firing two blasts from his repulsers into Paradox's chest. This stunned Paradox as Diamond charged at him and began to tear all the vital wires, buttons, and controls that operated Paradox's mechanical body. Paradox's voice box became affected as it began to shift into different tones and voices as he tried to speak, "No, I will.....not.....be bested a.....second......time." Paradox was able to gain control of his arms as he threw Diamond out of the train cart out into the city's skyline. Diamond was able to shoot a grapple around Paradox's legs as he pulled both of them out into the air as his body began to glow golden with pure Light. Paradox descended towards him with chains around his body as he prepared to strike fatal blows on Diamond's body. Diamond closed his eyes as he extended his right arm while having his fingers form a finger gun. He whispered silently with firm conviction, "Through the power of Heaven's Light all things are possible......grant me the power to send this foul demon of a man back to the infernal depths where he belongs." Diamond then fired a large blast of pure Light towards Paradox as his enemy screamed in anger, "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" The power caused from this blast was so strong and hot that it started to melt the metal on Paradox's body and causing any remaining circuits to fry.
Diamond floated towards the ground as he stared at a ball of fire fall towards the ground as it created a large crater. He stepped forward and saw Paradox's mangled body as his soul still held possession of it. Paradox was still able to manipulate his body to change into whoever he chooses, and as a last resort he changed to Diamond's mother. "Trevor.......how could you do this.....to me......your own mother.......after all your father and I have done for you this is how you repay us?" "Quit your bull you pathetic character of a soul. If I had the power to judge you in the afterlife, I would create a separate place for sadistic manipulators such as yourself so all you scoundrels can do nothing more than hurt yourselves for your sins!" Diamond then used his power to lift Paradox in the air and was about to crush his body and seal his soul permanently, but as he did so a blazing portal appeared as a pitch-black arm reached out and snatched Paradox before Diamond had time to react. Dumbfounded, Diamond de-activated his suit and left his Light form in order to process what happened. Realizing there was nothing else to do he traveled back to the castle. When he arrived, he saw how the group of heroes easily defeated all of the devilish creatures and were tossing all the dead bodies into a giant pile. Only one thing concerned him, the fact Lorenzo and Viciate's bodies were both missing from the battle. He reasoned they managed to escape, but with the injuries they sustained, it would be a long while before they would show themselves again. After making this assumption, Diamond's family greeted him with open arms and hugs, yet even Diamond did not recognize Tray's new body. Tray had to explain his entire story again to Diamond so he would understand why he looked like "A living glowstick." Hearing Tray's story about Joan made Diamond sorrowful and offered to help in making sure Joan's body receives a proper burial. King Alexander and Diamond hastily organized the funeral and gave Joan's family time to grieve and remember their youngest member that was stolen from them.
While the mourners were conversing with themselves, the king wanted to lead Diamond through the many rooms and wings of the enchanting castle. He wanted to show Diamond the inner secrets and history of this castle, so he very discretely led him down a flight of stairs into an older section of the castle where even most of the king's court were not allowed to enter. The two stepped through two enormous emerald doors and continued on through the darkness. The king ignited a turquoise flame from his hands and led Diamond to a large wall. King Alexander, "Stare at these murals Diamond. Notice the story they tell." Diamond stared at the murals and paintings on the wall trying to understand the history behind them. He saw what appeared to be angels directing two races. To the right were humans with their leader baring a resemblance to Alexander with folded hands in prayer as their eyes gazed at the Heavenly specters, in addition it appeared that swords and shields were descending towards them. To the left were the ancient race of Enders who also had their gaze towards Heaven, but descending towards their hands were scrolls with quills, signifying their role to write and document. At the front of the line of Enders stood none other than Ranfus, although significantly younger. Diamond continued down the wall as the next scene involved the leaders of the humans and enders being coronated with the two leaders' hands being locked in agreement. The next scene depicted what was either a battle or war where many humans and enders were dead, brough to their demise by rebellious humans. It depicted how after the battle Ranfus took the remaining enders away to a place that could supervise the entire Megaverse free from human interaction. The last scene showed the battle worn king of the humans siting on his throne with a tear in his left eye, while his right side remained stoic. His left arm pointed downwards to a decree while his right arm pointed upwards with a grand castle and city floating in the palm of his hand. "The Enders used to dwell with you?" "Indeed, for you see, the king in those murals is actually my great-grandfather. Time goes by very slowly for us here, not only that but we tend to live for thousands of years. Originally, after the first man and woman were created and fell into sin, we were created in the aftermath of that event. We bear the same weaknesses as other humans after the fall, but we were created to protect the Enders, who would document the shifting tide of Creation across the Megaverse. Our special duty connected us more in tune with the messengers of Heaven and we strived to live up to our mission of acting as the second example for the Megaverse, the Main Omniverse being the first. Yet, a few of the humans of my great-grandfather's time were seduced by the powers of evil for the many fallen angels, now turned demons, preyed upon their fallen status and sparked division between human and ender. Eventually a genocide broke out where rogue humans wanted the power of the Enders to themselves and would slaughter anyone who opposed them. My great-grandfather and Ranfus ultimately triumphed, but the damage had been done for the Enders no longer trusted us and collectively agreed humans everywhere were unpredictable and destructive. Ranfus left this Omniverse with the survivors of his race, thus leaving us as the sole inhabitants of this realm. From the ashes of the old kingdom, my great-grandfather led the creation of a new one as you can see here, but the reason why his left side is sad is the fact he did not kill the leaders of the rebellion. He did not want to take their lives, so instead he banished them to the wildness of the Megaverse. After casting them out of this Omniverse, he placed a ban where no one will be able to enter or leave. Using his divine gifts, he was able to practically make it seem like this Omniverse was erased and could not be discoverable unless him or another king wills its borders to open up once again."
"And what happened to the exiled ones?" "Most of them died across the Megaverse but their main leader, Mek'el continued following the path of evil and grew stronger in the powers of darkness. This granted him an unnatural talent of cheating death, but when an event in Omniverse 63,745 occurred when that Omniverse's Celestial had an offspring with that Omniverse's name for an angel, Mek'el sensed the potential of such an offspring." "Hold on, that's the Omniverse the Megaverse Council and I had named Evangelion. Yeah, those creatures they call angels are definitely not real angels, but you mean to tell me that this Mek'el influenced The Devourer?" "No, Mek'el BECAME The Devourer. He transferred his soul into the newborn soul of the deadly offspring, completely fusing with the new soul. In response to this, my great-grandfather on his deathbed, ordered my grandfather to create a device that could end Mek'el once and for all. That device was the Matrix of Eternity. It was hastily crafted before my grandfather sent it to Omniverse 63,745 hoping it could destroy Mek'el there. Unfortunately, it did not fulfill its original purpose due to Mek'el fully becoming The Devourer and traveled across the Megaverse eating the Core of whatever Omniverse he entered. His travels would take a long time to reach his next destination, but nothing could stop him. The Matrix continued to grow with wisdom in Omniverse 63,745 before an apparition of an Ender ordered a singular person to send the Matrix in the direction of the Main Omniverse. Eventually, the Matrix landed in your Omniverse, but was kept hidden for a long time with only glimpses and rumors of such a treasure of untold power being passed on from dimension to dimension. Finally at last, you found it in 2021 just as The Devourer arrived in your Omniverse. Little did you know, but upon his defeat when you unleashed the power of the Matrix, it sent shockwaves across the Megaverse. Myself along with my people celebrated when we felt the destruction of The Devourer, finally knowing a dark piece of our history has been put to rest." "When I traveled to Omniverse 63,745 last summer, it was promoted that they created the Matrix of Eternity." "Their leaders simply changed the story and wiped our part out of their history books, for the select few who told you it was their ancestors that created it are not at fault. For they too believe this error, this is simply a mistake on their ancestor's part and nothing more. Come along now, let's head back up a few stairs back to where there was an intersection, there is more I need to show you."
The king led Diamond to a room with many floating orbs that had different colors symbolizing a different Omniverse. "I am aware that you and the Megaverse Council have a broad idea to all the soldiers at the disposal of our enemy. But I want to show you some specific souls that are.......unique. The person known as The Ageless managed to recruit several corrupted versions of the strongest beings in your Omniverse's hierarchy. Among them consist of a fallen Omniversal Tribunal, Protectors, Insanity Trio, Bad Time Trio, many alternate timeline versions of you, and other powerful individuals from the Megaverse. The Ageless and Demonic Council calls this elite group the Bad End Friends. King Alexander brings forth an orb that displays the souls of those fallen humans. This reveals the true thoughts of their soul and what their soul really says." Diamond leaned forward to hear the cries of their souls and was surprised to hear their souls cry out in unison. "We just wanted to heal but now our nightmares are real, and we'll never wake up for we're torn apart! We want freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" Diamond could not believe what he heard, for it caused him to step back to avoid their cries. "Secondly, I want to briefly touch on the Ageless' story. Thousands of years ago lived a man born with unnatural gifts, he could enter into violent places and leave with minor bruises. He was able to kill the celestials in his world with his mere hands and crude weapons. Yet, he was not satisfied, he wanted more power and more entities to kill, for he enjoyed the bloodlust. This led to him being sought out by the fallen Seraphim now named Black Hat. He offered him more power and an entire place beyond his imagination to live the rest of his days as a butcher. The man agreed and henceforth became an unwavering servant directly to Black Hat. Eventually, he earned a reputation by parading himself as a savior wearing polished white and gold armor, in order to win the trust of many defenders who protected their native Omniverse. Once he won their complete trust and learned their secrets and fears, it would be too late for that Omniverse. For it would be a matter of time before complete carnage would be unleashed on all the helpless souls in that Omniverse. Thus, he was given the title Harbinger of the End.......a human who is an undisputed champion in gladiator battles with a mind to match his muscles.......a man always youthful, laughing at the hands of time........The Ageless."
"The last thing I want to reveal to you is the location of our enemy's base. The Megaverse Council has discovered it and that is Omniverse 6,666,666. That Omniverse had so many events that ran parallel with your Omniverse it was almost an exact copy. However, before your Omniverse was assaulted by Black Hat's forces in 2021, they won a resounding battle in that Omniverse. Everything that could have gone wrong in that final battle, did indeed go wrong." King Alexander used his powers to generate a vision of that fateful day. The scene pans to a bloodied and defeated Diamond with a shattered Sword of the Omniverse with Black Hat towering over him. The two listened intently when Black Hat spoke, "The Initiative has fallen. Its members......lost. You have been deceived......betrayed.........purged." The vision hovers over countless bodies of Initiative members that had died in the battle with some of their corpses disfigured and mutilated they were unidentifiable. "I can feel you are scared of judgement day. You led millions of souls to their grave. Your lukewarm faith shaken due to your pleas and petitions being ignored. So, I offer you a choice. Join us and postpone the judgement day, have all the pleasures of the world handed back to you, and avoid living the life as a failure!" The defeated Diamond raised his teary eyes and spoke, "I......accept!" The crowd around him chuckled as Black Hat stepped away with Alastor taking his place, "It's a deal!" The defeated Diamond shook his hand and became controlled and a vessel for Alastor until his original body could be restored. After this moment a large echo of thunder echoes across the battlefield with a bright light shining in the distance. The Ageless, "What is that?" Black Hat, "The veil of the Main Omniverse has been lifted. We are no longer kept out! We must seize this opportunity before it's too late." Ageless remain here with Alastor's vessel." "Why?" "If things go sour for me and my forces in the Main Omniverse, I want us to still have a strong foothold here in the Megaverse. This Omniverse will be perfect. I will be taking half of our forces with me." "What of the few people who survived this battle, should I find them and use them as prisoners and entertainment?" Black Hat had a sadistic smile, "There are no survivors!" The vision then played the sounds of screams with Diamond begging Alexander to end the vision. "That's enough! I cannot watch nor listen to this vision anymore! Please end this nightmare!"
Alexander ended the vision as the two were brought back to reality. Alexander spoke with sympathy to Diamond, "I did not show you that vision to torture you. I revealed it, because you need to understand exactly what to expect from our enemy and take deep root in your faith." "Why did the pleas and petitions of that Diamond go unanswered?" "Truthfully, that Diamond did not pray for deliverance, he instead wanted more glory and praise. When he was in public and prayed, it was for show, and he was not sincere in the words he said. Even at the last moment, he received a message from Heaven begging him to repent from his prideful ways and deliverance would come. Yet, in that last moment, he refused with his soul saying no it has to be my way and I do not want to change the life I am living and that's final. It was his fault no Heavenly aid came, now he has no one else to blame other than himself for his misdeeds and wickedness." Diamond's body had a series of goosebumps when King Alexander finished speaking. He always wondered what would have happened in the final battle for his Omniverse if there was no intervention, now he wished for this catastrophic example to leave his mind.
After this event, King Alexander led Diamond to a sacred place called the Veil of the Celestial Plane to speak with his angelic friends. Along the way, King Alexander explained to Diamond the difference between True Balance and Perfection. How True Balance is the perfect imperfect form of Perfection, because as mortal creatures that are finite with flaws no person alive can reach True Perfection. He explained how demons fear True Balance and how the demons only focus on temporal goals not eternal, for all that awaits them in eternity is eternal punishment. (This is a footnote, because at the end of this post in the comment section I will share the entire conversation in greater detail, for some reason the Sub-Reddit automatic rules count it as a rating post no matter how hard I rephrased the dialogue. Very weird that happened because it never happened before, but hopefully I will be able to share that conversation in full under this post, because it took a lot of effort in composing the dialogue.)
Filled with courage and zeal from their conversation, Diamond entered into the Veil and soon found himself in a vast empty white plain where numerous figures of light floated around him before manifesting themselves as angelic beings. He observed how each of the nine choirs of angels were present. "The Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. All present here at this very moment." A Seraphim spoke up, "Why do you wish to commune with us?" "I am here seeking advice from my Heavenly friends in these trying times. I'm sure all of you are very much aware and can sense in the Celestial Cosmic Plane that the forces of evil are growing ever so powerful. I can feel it within my being that soon a final confrontation may happen." Saint Michael the Archangel, "You already possess all that you need. You know the prayers for deliverance and aid. Furthermore, you know how your enemy thinks." "With all due respect, this time it is different. Different than the way it was for the fate of the Main Omnvierse. This....is the fate of the Megaverse....of everything that had exist, currently exists and will exist. Please there must be some advice all of you may be able to bestow upon me." A Virtue floated towards Diamond's soul to speak, "These particular demons feast on fear, chaos, and revenge. They want nothing more than to see the righteous fall, yet their common weakness is the sin of pride." Uriel intervened, "Pride, that ancient sin which was the sole root that led a third of our former brothers and sisters into disobedience. Fully rejecting the True Love of the Father and willingly following the arrogance of the fallen light bearer, who now brings darkness and death to everyone." Azrael quickly followed up with Uriel's statement, "When they fell from grace, they still retained their position and powers. Now with their leaders nearly having their bodies restored before their fall, through the power of The Seed, they are more of a threat to the Natural Order."
Diamond came to a sudden realization, "With Cloaked Shadow having control of the Dark and shadows in general, does that mean he was a Power before he fell?" The choirs nodded as Diamond responded with his hands near his mouth deep in thought. "I see, well if pride is their weakness than surely arrogance is a key factor in their personalities. Perhaps if the Matrix of Eternity is re-loaded with the knowledge accessible from the Alphaverse, it could overwhelm them." A Cherub, "Yes! The knowledge from the Alphaverse can restore the Matrix and used to harm the demons!" Saint Gabriel the Archangel, "Do not be afraid in this next step in your journey, Trevor. Since the fall of man, the Devil and his minions have actively been at war with mankind, searching for ways to snatch souls from Heaven. Yet, in the history of not only the Megaverse, but your own world, you know that God conquers all, even in the darkest times. From the persecution of the early Christians under the rule of the Mad Emperor Nero, deadly heresies, scandals, political and religious wars, the French Revolution, Napoleon Wars, Russian Revolution, Mexican Revolution, World Wars, down to the present. The demons worked through man to not only bring ruin to the face of the Earth, but to attack the Church. However, both the Earth and the Church have endured and will continue to endure until the end of time when God will come in all His splendor and glory and reward the just while punishing the wicked. For they will receive their reward." A Throne, "There is one more thing that will surely turn the tide of the war, but only as a last resort." Diamond, "What is it? Please share." A Seraphim, "The hypothesis of you being able to fuse with your friends Ben Tennyson and Xavier is true. If Xavier is fully in tune with his scarab and enter into his phase known as Sacred and Tennyson into Alien X, you three will become the singular most powerful entity in the entire Megaverse." Saint Michael the Archangel, "Be warned for this should only be used as a complete last resort. For there can be no going back when you three become a singular entity. There might be potential for you three to separate from this final form, but if there is, it will be certain death for no mortal can yield that much power. Arise young warrior, take courage, and have total faith on the Lord, He will hear your prayers. Remember we are at your side and every warrior in the final battle will have their guardian angel with them at all times."
The Heavenly beings once again became balls of bright light, which slowly blinded Diamond before he awoke from his vision back in his own body just before the Veil of the Celestial Plane. King Alexander stared at Diamond before helping him to his feet. Diamond, "I know what I must do. I must re-load the Matrix in the Well of the Megaverse." Alexander, "That's suicide. For you to be exposed to so much power and knowledge, it will vaporize you." "Believe me, it will work. Just help me recover the pieces of the Matrix and I will reforge it with the nanotech from my suit." Diamond sprinted with great haste through all the flights of stairs Alexander had them take, back to where the pieces of the Matrix laid. He had Alexander hold the pieces together in their proper position as the nanotech from his suit crawled around the broken pieces and fused the Matrix back together again. During this time the other heroes caught up to Diamond and Alexander and decided to watch as Diamond would enter the Well of the Megaverse. King Alexander led the group to the entrance of the Well where everyone wished him good luck. Diamond transformed into his Light form and entered the Well. This form allowed him to withstand the pressure around him as he opened the Matrix to collect wisdom from all corners of the Megaverse both the good and bad. When he did this, thousands of images and lifetimes flashed in his mind causing him to scream, in order to avoid his mind from overloading he constantly switched to different forms and phases every 30 seconds. Everyone waited anxiously outside after hearing Diamond's screams and began to fear for the worst, but just when their hope wavered, a silhouette started to walk towards them. From the depths of the Well emerged Diamond holding the restored Matrix of Eternity firmly in his right hand. King Alexander, "Welcome back Diamond!" "Thanks. With the Matrix restored and the new alliance your Omniverse has made with the Megaverse Council, hope for our victory has reached an all-time high." The heroes only stayed for a few more hours at the Alphaverse before returning back to the base of the Megaverse Council. Upon arrival, the Council members were stunned to see the return of their leader, and with swift orders, Diamond once again regained leadership of the Megaverse Council.
Epilogue
In a desolate place with abandoned buildings in Omniverse 3. "Volxi, can you head downstairs into our storage to bring some refreshment to our party?" "You got it sis!" Volxi entered into one of the chambers to find a spare stash of spiked beverages but was startled when she heard a voice echo in the darkness. "Time's running out Vol." She leaned over to view where the voice was coming from until her eyes landed on a glowing dark green warrior. She gasped as she recognized it was her old friend from Omniverse 8. "Cayden what happened to you?" "That name no longer has any meaning for me." "You look so different. Your skin is green and your eyes black. You look like......" "A ghost? Phantom? Condemned Soul?! Truly a miserable fate I have fallen into. Given a body constantly degenerating and repairing itself, allowing me to phase between matter but how painful it is feeling my cells destroy themselves before regenerating and repeating the process all over again." "Is this a dream?" "No." "I thought not, if it was there would be something to replenish my throat." Cayden hands Volxi a bottle. "Thanks mate. I still have a cup on me. Here it's on the house." Cayden took a long sip before speaking. "We haven't seen each other since the destruction of your people's original home. A lot has happened since then. Last year a terrible event plagued the Megaverse and I tried to stop it. I made my own device that enabled me to visit other Omniverses. I could sense something sinister causing many Omniverses to die. I took my weapons and went to who I thought was responsible. That man was so strong and talented, he mortally wounded me without taking our fight seriously. I thought at that moment when I laid dying that I would give anything to get a second chance at life. To see my friends and family again. My requests were answered by a figure in black business attire and a top hat."
Volxi groaned for she knew who he was referring to while Cayden continued on with his speech. "I accepted his offer and became what you see before you. The only part that was positive is in our contract, I managed to still own partial control of my soul. Perhaps it is through this partial ownership that causes me to experience great pains and desperately seek liberation." "And you came back to your friend for aid huh?" "No, I came as a messenger." Volxi stared at him with concern. "You struck a deal with him too, Volxi. A deal before your home, the ninth Omniverse was destroyed, causing you and all the survivors to wander throughout the Megaverse." "I forgot all about that deal. It can't happen this soon, he did not even stay true to his promise." "Is that really a surprise?" "DANG IT! Alright I'll wager my way out of it. I always do." "You can't talk to yourself out of this one!" "How long do I have Cayden?" Cayden stepped close to Volxi where he was only a few inches away from her face. "That name has no meaning for me, I'm The Shameful now. You have only a few hours. He will send his terrible leviathan to drag you, your sister, and this entire Omniverse along with you! Already his army sets their eyes on this world, drawn by ravenous hunger, by the one who bears the crimson scar." The Shameful laid his hand on a piece of Volxi's face that was not covered by cybernetics. "Make peace with your losses and may it only be a swift end and not a contract of servitude. Alas, he always comes to collect what is his." In that moment The Shameful vanished from her sight and without a moment to lose, she started running back upstairs into the settlement screaming for everyone to pack their things and prepare to leave. Her sister, Val stopped her, "Did you fall down the stairs giving you that slash across your face? What's coming after us?" Volxi stared deep into her sister's soul, "We need to run as far as we can and get our people to safety before it's too late." From a few hundred yards away The Ageless stood waiting for the perfect time to strike with Maestro Zorro summoning the nightmarish Leviathan.

Alright I( F26 ) don’t know I really need some opinions I feel like im over exaggerating here and I get bothered by things but I can’t help what bothers me! I just stay quiet. But it eats at me. Anyways the issue here is I ’m deciding whether or not to say something to my boyfriend( M30 ) about something “small” which it is but it feels big to me
He has this friend he was causally seeing never became anything serious a few (1-2) years back but they were fairly close as she helped him through hard times in his life. Which is amazing! That’s a great friend and I wouldn’t be bothered if they had been JUST friends but they weren’t. Knowing she knows that deep part of him and he defends it makes me feel like he doesn’t count on me to be there for him but he probably still depends on her on the low.
She’s taller than me. Closer to his height. And closer in age by months. He and her have much more in common. She can play the guitar, she collects vinyls, they like the same music, and she can draw etc.. they have a lot in common.
I’ve told him before him reaching out to her first bothers me. He’s always looking at her social media posts and I don’t think he knows that social media will show you the profiles you interact with most out of others and hers is usually the first one… even before me lol. Now he’s snapped at me saying he’s not doing anything that he’s doing everything with me not with her or anyone else to the point where he gets mad and says I can think whatever I want. So I’ve stood quiet seeing how mad he gets. I can’t help but feel like if I wasn’t in the picture they would be linking together and I only feel this way because they had reconnected when we had first started going out she looked him up and messaged him saying she was just thinking about him and was hoping he was doing well. I shouldn’t think people have ulterior motives but being a female myself I’ve been in one to many situations where I’ve witnessed how much of a fu** they do not give when a man is taken or not.
Well anyways the issue at hand.. I noticed he liked her recent picture (oh wow that’s it?) yes. and it makes me feel icky every time I see the post he liked. I wouldn’t be bugged but he doesn’t even like my selfies or pics unless he’s in them. And I’m his girlfriend lol. He knows how I feel about her so it bothers me even more that he would do that! I have no idea if I should tell him it bothered me that he did that because I’m scared of him not understanding where I’m coming from once again and trying to flip it on me making me feel bad for feeling the way I do. Or if I should just let it go. It’s just a like after all
On a side note I hate social media and the negative impact it has on me emotionally/mentally but the irony is that I want to work in social media HA

When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.

When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.

For starters, I (23m) must open by saying I haven't been the best roommate, more recently but also extensively, towards 1 or 2 of my roommates needs (I have 4) compared to how they have been great towards mine. Specifically they're social requests and food policies (I took some of one of my roommates (24m) food a few times, Specifically him because of his open pantry policy which I took too far). Chalk up the more recent struggles I've had, like medication changes or a death in my family, but im now in the process of trying to rebuild trust with him and hopefully undoing some of my past misactions.
The biggest thing though is that he almost never says when hes upset and when we're addressing a former problem or something, he says he's not mad about it, like he's trying not to repell me. But it's fairly clear that he is having problems, even if he doesn't identify them as irritability. Some things are very clear, like he says no more using his food and that can be settled, but there's also the fact I know he's a social person and wants more interactions, or feels a bit closed off recently that he doesn't feel comfortable with. So while I'm trying my best to try and patch things up, it's hard to do so when they have such an adversive communication style.
So with that, I seek advise. Anyone else have/has had a roommate who is adversive or passive in addressing problems in the home?

When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.

I'm sure this has been brought up already but...
What is the cool down time for the rituals for the new rift? I swear people beat me to them every time and I'm so mad because I just want to upgrade my stuff. I saw someone said you don't actually have to shoot anything but you can stand in the right spot and it will allow you to hold the interact button to start, but I haven't had any luck. Any help would be appreciated! Do they respawn? What's the cool down time?
Thanks ily!

When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.

When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.

When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.

When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.

Everyone I come in contact with gets hurt.
I fucking lie, I fucking steal, I fucking manipulate,
I’m just the scum of the earth.
In my life I live as if I’m the main character, im the leader of everyone around me in some capacity.
My brother- im his source of motivation and someone I’m constantly trying to fix
My mom- I give her hope that she can accomplish anything that she puts her mind to.
My Dad- I give him hope that I can revive his dead business, and maybe he won’t die a failure.
My-Ex- she lives with me and I give her hope that she can win in life if she puts her mind to something.
But really, im a fucking mess.
I lost all of my money, due to failed business decisions, and degenerate behavior.
I use my charm/intelligence to manipulate women and fuck them.
I’m talking to 7 different girls at the same time. Telling them “we aren’t serious” but then charming them to fall in love with me, and then I gaslight them when they get mad for me not showing them any attention.
My mind is a rocking fucking boat, one tip, one fucking tip and I’m sinking.
Trying to maintain this fucking image, that I manipulated everyone to believe.
Even when I’m honest there’s an angle.
I tell myself I want to be better so bad.
I literally copy my text messages into AI chat bots to make sure I’m being moral. I’m trying a million different ways to make money. I’m lifting weights till my muscles tear. I’m eating the CLEANEST I ever have measuring every morsel of food that enters my mouth. I’m trying to be open and honest to every sexual partner. I’m trying to be present and forthcoming with every person I interact with. I try to motivate and inspire everyone to follow their dreams.
But…
Im still a piece of shit, every positive turns into a negative.
It’s 3:53 pm right now, last night I drove to this girls house I’ve been talking to for a couple months and telling her sweet nothings on her bday, she was there with her friend. This girl turned out to be very overweight, but her friend was very attractive. I flirted with her attractive friend all night, attractive friend flirted back but rejected me because her friend liked me, so I just fucked the initial fat friend, and was so repulsed at myself. I ruined her birthday, because she knew she was just the second option. She told me off today, saying although she wanted it, I’m a piece of shit for ignoring her all night, and then fucking her after I couldn’t fuck her friend.
So what did I do?
I lied. I tell her she’s crazy and I wasn’t flirting.
I tell her, she was the one being quiet all night and her attractive friend was just the fun one, that’s why I spoke to her more.
I tell her, I didn’t initially want to cuddle with her because I didn’t want to rush anything.
In reality? I really wasn’t attracted to her and tried to get with her friend.
And guess what? After I left her house at 8am (didn’t sleep), I went to another girls house right after to kiss her and be sweet.
That’s why I say all of this “self improvement” fumes I’m huffing and puffing, is just cope.
Im still sick in the head, and if everyone saw what was beneath the cover they’d fucking run.
What if this idea of deciding to be better is just cope?
I just feel like a fucking fraud and that there’s a massive weight on my chest.

I lived in relative peace with my NPD husband until we had our first child four months ago (as peaceful as things can be with a volatile egomaniac).
I only recently have accepted that he has NPD. When we were dating I agreed that if we ever had a child, he could stay home (I'm the breadwinner by a lot) and the child wouldn't have to go to daycare but then I saw how he actually parents. The poor baby just gets put in his baby Bjorn or he will hold him while playing PlayStation but there is a total lack of quality interaction.
I demanded at least part-time daycare under threat of divorce and not financing his lifestyle anymore. We ended on a schedule where he works 4 days a week, I work 3 (12 hour shifts) and two days at a really nice nursery school.
It has been hell in our household since. He is livid; the insults are neverending and have escalated in their cruelty. He has doubled down on his drinking. He leaves me alone to manage the baby every weekend. He has stopped cleaning. He makes frequent passive aggressive comments about me to the dogs and the baby. It is driving me mad and I have worked very hard to not engage but have admittedly not been perfect at that.
I can't stand the idea of not seeing my baby everyday so I can't leave yet. Is there anyway I can use his NPD to try and make living with him more tolerable in the short term? Has anyone else been through similar? My maternity leave ends tomorrow and he starts a 12 week paternity leave and the anxiety is killing me.