Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Chapter Ten: The End of the End | Ten Candles: Eclipse

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Forty players. Forty stories. Zero survivors. Our final group goes into the unknown.   This captivating series, based on a game of tragic horror, includes a cast of 40 players, one game master, and zero survivors. Warning: for mature audiences only.   Starring Denise Pantoja, TJ Rotell, Alcuin Gersh, Jake Bennett, and storyteller Ivan Van Norman.   Video versions are available at https://www.youtube.com/geekandsundry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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you are the last four at our table under a red moon This world sucks it's Jake I'm so sorry these two know because they've been watching They've been you know TJ and Denise

You've been behind the scenes just as much as You are in front of the camera now Al Quinn you started this whole damn thing So you have no excuse But Jake you just didn't know it's my standard Of this poor process. I've never, well, I'm very excited, though. Okay, great.

I've never looked forward to dying more since, like, the last time I got food poisoning. So, like, I'm very, like, I'm like, let's do it. Ready to go. Yeah. I don't think you could be in a worse circumstance as far as where the world is right now. Like, they've been worse than food poisoning? It's pretty bad. You didn't have this food poisoning.

It's deviled eggs, wasn't it? No. Okay. They were when they came out. Yeah. You thought they were. The human body corrupts an egg like I wouldn't believe. Sulfur eruptions.

Sulfur eruptions. Right, yeah, because of the Yellowstone Supervolcano. Also devil eggs. Yeah, no, it's not even just the Super Volcano right now, but we've got rock hails. Hale, rock hails that are also rocks. At this point, the title search is. is like, yeah, whatever at this point.

Yeah, that's the easy stuff. That was a couple weeks ago, problem. Yeah, no, the current problems are pretty much the world is blanketed out. There's either rock, ash, or sulfuric acid, literally blocking the sun everywhere, and what you can see is just a moon-stricken horizon. You left out all the cool monoliths.

Well, the monoliths are now pretty much a forever. staple in the world of where we are today. I am impressed at just what has transpired over the course of these 10 episodes and how each group has basically handed some sort of fuck to each person going down the road. It's the official term. Thanks, everybody.

It's in the rulebook. It is the first two letters with a dash and then the last two letters to really get into the deep of it. but it's all in here, and I've written out all of the miserable things that have happened to all of you up to this point. Your little black book of pain. Little black book of pain,

which I'm looking forward to disseminating more when we get farther into the post series wrap-up of this. Some of these are just bad. Some of these are like, my notes are awful. It's like underground. Great. That's good. Yeah, good, good note taking.

But some of them, if authorities found it, you would be questioned. Yeah. Yeah, mostly my favorite one is they are destroying each other. Yeah, let me try to see if there's other ones. Oh, yeah, here we are. Yeah, some of these are just spoilerific, so I don't want to get into them so hard. Oh, this is another one. Yeah, Earth splitting apart.

Yeah, that was pretty, pretty on the point as well, too. Good. So, good odds. Before we get to our final episode, we need to go through the process of defining our characters yet again. As we discussed before we chatted about it a little bit. But we didn't talk too much about your characters,

mostly about the whole what, where, and why, which is vital for something like this. But let's begin with our virtue. Take one of your lovely graphic, photos of you, and then let's pass it to the left. But we don't write anything on it. Not yet, until you get it. And this one's for you.

And this is the virtue. Yep. And what this is, you're going to write the virtue, a virtue that you look up to in someone, something that you want to aspire to be in this lifetime or the next. And it one word or can it just be? A descriptive verb or adverb would be best, please. Adverb, not verb.

You're not passionately doing much. But you are passionate. So, hey, T.J. Hey, buddy. Here we are again. Yeah, I know. We started. So T.J., for those of you who may not see

the International Tabletop Day, inciting incident. Insighting episode. Insighting episode. Insighting episode. But Dee and T.J. Who are producers here, had a production producers here, and basically came on for

International Tabletop Days because it was like, yeah, let's just run 10 candles, because that's a great idea. Real pick me up. Real pick me up on a day of board games. And Alquin, too. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing.

Alquin, you're here. Because of scheduling, we had to switch things around because I think it was originally supposed to be the OG cast. Yeah, with Amy. But Jake came in. Well, sorry to wreck that plan.

As a pitch hitter, you know, so I was so excited to play and then Amy saw your name on the episode, right? Yes. But Amy was one of the episodes. That's one of the earlier episodes. We really wanted to get her back in. So that was the whole point of it. Some more behind the scenes,

curtain attitude. So let's take your virtues and pass them back to the right. And Jake, because you are my lovely outlier. Okay. Why don't you describe it to do yours first? Can you pass this over to Denise Grace? What is yours?

I am inspirational. Inspirational. I didn't know how to be a real attribute. You put a fake one? Has lasers for eyes. What does a tentacillicious mean? I don't know what that. Oh, well.

That means there's more appendages than what you're letting on at this point. Okay. All the fun out now. For where I want you put? It's going to be some levity at the front. Selfless. Selfless?

Yeah. Okay. That's my virtue. You are selfless. I am. That makes a... Okay, how about you, T.J.? Tenacious.

Tenacious. Inspirational, selfless, and tenacious. All right, yeah, it seems like a very aggressive crew today. How about you, Dee? Pragmatic. Pragmatic. All right. You are practical.

No sense is pragmatism. Good. All right, well, let's take another one of your cards, and let's pass it to the right this time. Pass that to D. That happy silver-haired boy. That's what the vice is going on. Yes, your vice.

What would you like to put down that is something that creates more problems than it solves? It's a trait that you hope not to ever bring into your life or have yourself be surrounded by. Impossible to avoid, I would probably say, for it is human nature. to have both virtues and vices, which to live with. We aspire to lift one up while keeping the other one contained. What a disheveled world brings out

in the both of us. Both sides of us. I'm gonna spell this wrong. So I'm just, I'm sorry, I mean. Well then I may not even know what it means, so we'll see. What were you saying, Aquin? I think the post-apocalyptic stuff doesn't, it doesn't show an alternate.

It shows what we really are. Yeah. No, it's a, it is a bullshit stripper. Yeah. You know, as they say. Unfortunately, it causes a lot of it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that was.

This is a vice photo. I've ever seen it before. That's why I used it. Yeah, and my virtue was my graduation picture. Oh, there you go. Well, what's your vice? Oh, we'll pass it back. I have a.

Oh, you're not finished yet. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. The ASMR writing is not complete. For our fans at home. I've been loving hearing people being like, that is a satisfying sound. Sharpies. I wish you could all at home.

You hear the cap come off? I only wish you could smell them. They're great. This is for 4D. Yeah, they're fuzzy. I don't hate it. It's for grip. That's the point is that it's a...

I remember the first couple groups when they were getting into it, they despise. the nail-filed version of these, and I find it extremely comfortable. Yeah. It is very fuzzy. I want some underwear made of that. It's very nice. This one goes back to you, right?

Not of the markers, but yeah. Well, get careful. You're going to have another eruption on your hands. Oh, my God. All right. I mean, I should mark you for that, but we'll leave it big. All right, straight at you. Yeah, so are you good, Dee?

Yes. Excellent. So what is your vice? sir, besides fuzzy markers. That's true. Insistent. Insistent. So in the point of where you will not let it lie.

Unrelenting, I'm proud, yeah. Unrelenting and proud. Yeah. Okay. Far enough. Alquin, what is yours? My vice was addictive. Addictive.

Yeah. Addictive and selfless. Yeah. Oh, that's an interesting blend. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I don't care about myself so much. I just care more about other people.

I think I'm a lost cause. Okay, fair enough. It's amazing that you would have made it this long, not caring about yourself, but caring about others. But there's a world in which that makes sense. Yeah, we'll explain that. Yeah. How about you, Tjay?

Melancholy. Melancholy. That's a new one. Tenacious and melancholy. I like that. Okay. That is unique. Okay, fair enough.

D? Stubborn. Stubborn. Right. to tried and true stubborn. Did I ruin your character? I'm sorry. Oh, no.

No, it's actually interesting. Contradictions are what make the world go around. It's one of my favorite parts of this game, actually. We've seen some really interesting controversy. Yeah, yeah. I love that curveball. I thought stubborn went well with pragmatic. Yes.

All right, well, I kind of already briefly introduced the module, but I'll go through the whole portion of it again, for those of you who have been sticking around, and watching, you kind of know a little bit of what's going on. But monoliths rose three weeks ago and have been pinheading the entire earth. Since then, tidal surges, earthquakes, hailstones of rock,

creatures who have emerged from the ground, creatures who have been roaming around the ground. There have been unexplained tragedies all across the world. No communication has come from any true government official until now. Your story is probably going to begin as you are traveling in a repurposed medical barge that has been one of the few working ships

that have managed to come up since we discussed there was an EMP that flattened everything in the planet but this thing being primarily mechanical and being unhooked to a power source at the time upon giving it a new power source has been a very reliable source of refuge for weeks. And being out in international waters has pretty much saved you from a lot of the,

well, I was going to say binary, but more like basic elements of what the world has been dishing out at this point between both tidal surges and earthquakes. you've been riding the waves as they say that being said i think your story is going to begin we'll get into this before we'll get into our moments and things before we get to the story but i have a feeling that you're going to begin your story after hearing some kind of call somewhere close to the equator and you've been trying to zero in on the signal since then

so with that said let's make some moments things that that you hope to find and create during the story as part of your character in the process. This is for somebody else's character, not us. This is yours. This is yours. This is a moment, so take one of your cards and write upon it a moment.

I will find hope, dot, dot, dot. And it can be anything, it can be in the simple pleasures of enjoying something one last time. It can be something much more grand scheme, such as finding the sick, It can be a very emotionally driven thing, like finding a quiet moment of prayer, or saving an innocent life.

It can even be something small as just experiencing a Twinkie one last time. Oh, man. I haven't any new picture now. I'd go for a zinger. It's a little more frosting involved. Ding dong, yo, ding-dong, yo, ding-dong. Chocolate Jr. Tasty cake.

I'm a little Debbie man. Oh, so I'm Tasty K made. Oh, nutty bars. N.E.A. man. Oh, the nutty bars. I have been pretty much living in the cherry pie category. Really? Yeah.

I can't wait to hear Daryl say, of course, your episode talked about snack cakes. You can, I'm sure when you watch. Oh, you did watch this episode, do you say, right? I did, yeah. So, well, I guess this will just be comeback then. Yeah. You know. It was, yeah, it was a wonderful.

Jake's revenge. Yeah. Revenge of the Jake. Well, in this process, as we explain each other's moments or we explain your moments, I'd also like to know about your character a little bit. So we'll take this time to introduce to the table, who you are, as well as what your moments are. Your moment is. Dee? Oh, hi.

Hello. Good morning. Hello there. My name is Ella Sanchez. Ella Sanchez. Ella? Ella. Got it.

And I am a trauma surgeon. Trauma surgeon. I was part of the group that was put together to go out on this medical barge. Got it. Repurposed medical barge. On this repurposed medical barge. Actually, it wouldn't be repurposed. It would just be recommissioned.

Recommissioned. Yes. To find survivors. Got it. So I saw what happened initially on land and then got on this. this boat immediately thereafter to try and find survivors. What moment do you hope to generate in this story? I am not a real, I don't make great connections with people.

I've tried really, really hard. So I will find hope when I make a meaningful connection. Meaningful moment. All right, great. So why does she disconnect so much? Why is she so easy to dislodge or dissuade people? Or is that something you would like to get into later? Well, I mean, just briefly on the surface, her career has not allowed her to be able to share that part of herself with people.

I see. They haven't been able to withstand descriptions of what it is that's going on emotionally, that kind of turmoil. She's carrying a lot with her and it's between not being available physically. It's been difficult to be available emotionally because of being a trauma surgeon. Yes. Okay. All right. Duly noted. Al Quinn. My character is Carter Portsmouth. He is a caregiver for his old sick mother and also runs a small cat cafe. Got it. And I was on vacation on a cruise, which I didn't really want to go on, but it was insisted upon. My mom won the cruise, but was too ill to take it, so I went myself.

And then when the event happened, you know, there were a lot of problems on our cruise ship, but we were eventually rescued by Ella on her other ship, the ship that we're on now. your cruise ship capsized from one of the more vicious storms as a result of the first week of madness yeah I did manage to there was a lot of chaos when that happened

I did manage to repurpose a cooler into as I have discovered Lola who is a very pregnant very far along cat who I've been taken care of who is in basically a like a like a cooler that I have drilled holes and stuff into to make into a sort of carrier.

It's got little wheels. And she's in there with her blankets and stuff and I've been taking care of her. Okay. There was a bit of a kind of a mutiny thing where a lot of the other people left. Some people weren't really happy with the idea of going out to find what the signal was.

I was one of the people who was barricaded in the bridge with Ella. Which we'll get into because I haven't, I've heard that, but now we can explain that into further. So at some point, your recommission shipped was personnel divided between the discovery of the signal and the people who wanted to go and the people who wanted to leave. So these three, you three plus Ella were the ones that decided the whole opposite. My moment is that I will find hope when Lola has her litter of kittens safely.

You want her to have her kittens. That's all that really matters. matters to you now. Okay. I love you. All right. Glorious. Jake. Yeah.

I am Kirk Upshaw. Kirk. I am a high school history teacher and a football coach. Right. And I went on a cruise because my students and players gave me

like an end of the year gift that they wanted to send me on a cruise. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, I guess it is now. I mean, I was excited about the trip. But your kids and your faculty literally went through the effort enough to go and give you something nice.

Right. Which is the reason you were alive today. Right. And they are not. Right. So, but yeah, life turned out a little differently than I had a little differently than I had anticipated and not just because of this cruise, but so as a result of just some, a pretty big hurdle that happened in my life in college, my moment is I will find hope when I regain the fearlessness I lost after my college injury. So you want to be able to do an extravagant feat that is reminiscent of your college days?

Yes. And it's that mixed with I I find it easy to motivate other people but I find it difficult to motivate myself and I kind of all trace it back to that All right so this is some kind of Because if I'm reading you correctly It's about you will find fearlessness

Which means you will do something fearless And it sounds like if it's based off of your college backgrounds as an athletic individual It is doing some kind of either feed of strength or agility or selflessness to be able to find that to happen. I like that. I think that's fine. You want to feel like I used to.

Glory days. Yeah. One last time. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wow. That's rough.

Being given the gift that is both your life and everybody else's demise as well as what's going on with your mom if you don't mind me digging in a little bit more. Like, what are your feelings now that you know that your mom is not being taken care of because you were on the ship? I mean, at first I was really messed up about it, but then in a way, I felt kind of relieved because she's been, you know, she has dementia and all these other sort of issues. And it's been hard on me watching her deteriorate. Right. And I feel awful that she's probably dead at this point without me being there to care for her. Right.

So on what level I feel kind of guilty about that? Yeah. Then one of the things I was worried about when I went on this cruise was that that would happen. But then I also feel like I've also been spared seeing that, and I don't have that in my memory bank. Got it. It's been something that you've been spared off. I'm kind of grateful for it. And then I feel guilty that I feel grateful for that again.

So it's a bit of a cycle. T.J. My name is Howard Bell. but everyone calls me Howie. I was, or am, was, I guess, is probably more accurate now. The owner and operator of a small game store in a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania. My wife and I started the business together. It was a big dream of ours to do that. Unfortunately, about six months in, there was an accident at the shop, and she slipped while mopping the floor one night and hit her head. and fell to a coma,

passed away a few days later. Oh, wow. Six months ago. Yeah, so, well, that was six months into owning the business. I've been running the shop for about four years after that, keeping it going in her memory. It's rather successful for, or was successful for a small town thing.

But when you're a small town, there isn't a lot to do. So we wanted to give the community a place to come and gather and be a community and have fun and find joy and happiness. Right. And since her death, it's been, you know, my goal to keep her joyous memory alive through the game store. Got it. When everything happened, I ended up on the cruise ship because she'd always wanted to take a cruise.

I find myself now kind of living the life that she would have lived with me. Right. Doing the things that she wanted to do. Right. That's why I was on the cruise ship to try to, you know, once again reconnect with this person I lost years prior. First vacation in four years. Yeah. Kind of a situation.

I finally got the business to a place where I could hire some help. It's just been me. Just been walking. And you walked away from it for a little bit. Yeah, just for a week just to get out of dodge, go try to put some semblance of my life back together. Now that the life we created is stable. Wanted kids, weren't able to have them. That was another bit of a disappointment.

So you got picked up? I got picked up. With these other two. Yeah. I was on the cruise ship. when that all happened. So I've gotten to know these two pretty well. What was a particular,

was there a moment of revelation on the water while you were dangling in the cold Pacific Ocean or either in a life raft or as with many times when you're in a life raft it's not dry? You know, there's some kind of water table that's existing under there a little bit so cold and wet and, dealing with it. Was there something there? Well, yeah, when I was there, I mean, first off,

I only have a few things that really matter to me, and they're all with me. There's, um, uh, my wife's favorite set of polyhedral dice, which I carry with me everywhere, uh, a deck of cards that we, um, on our first date, I got sick and I was going to miss the date, and I felt really upset about that. And she came over and surprised me and we played cards all night. Got it. So I kept that deck of cards. There's a photo. in the middle of that, deck of cards of her. And finally, there is a journal on a pencil in which I've been, we always, beyond the game store,

we thought we would write our own RPG. Yeah. So we started this journal, got about halfway there, and since then I've been slowly adding to it, finishing our world and building this place where we could live. And that on the boat, that's when I realized that that is the most important thing to me. I wrapped in plastic.

Yeah. It was against my chest at all times. It's become my source for life. Is that I'm hearing that this is turning into a moment. My moment is to finish the story, finish the RPG that I'd started with my wife. It's almost there. It's just the last few pages that need to get hemmed up. And then we'll be done.

I hope it's a happy one. It is. Okay, good. Good. Yeah. No grim dark in this RPG, please. Thanks, thanks Stephen Dewey. Okay, great.

Well, then those are all of our moments that we have laid out, and then finally we have the Brinks. So the Brinks are what I will participate with you in this process of putting together. So let's take another card, and let's pass it to the right. So.

Now, Jake. Mm-hmm. Don't say, don't look at me and say my name like that. It's fine, go ahead. Yeah. You're good? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cool, cool. Yeah, I just paid a tiny bit. What are you going to say to me? We get to participate in part of this process a little bit. Good. I get to work with you. And same over here. T.J. knows what's up.

So, Denise is going to write a brink for you. I'm sorry. You're going to write one for you. You're going to write one, Denise. Yeah. So you will be. be writing a, I have seen you, dot, dot, dot, and this is a moment of which you have observed that has been their lowest of low, something that they have resorted to in the most awful way.

At the same time, since I have yours, I will be writing something that they have seen you do. Right? They have seen you, dot, dot, dot, dot. Now, I'm doing this because normally, and I'm sure, some people have noticed by now. Normally brings school to the right, you know? But for this last game, I want to mix it up a little bit and just change because I've been so tired, no offense. But it's mostly about the position of inside of here, too. It's like this side of the table has had an opportunity

to deal with the nastiness that I have dished down. You get to write for them this time around. This is something I've seen them. I have seen them dot, dot, dot. And this can be about the monoliths, this can be about the creatures, This can be about the world, it's going to be about the moon, however you want to lay out into it.

But I decided for this last session. Thank you. I will do something a little different, mostly for my own sanity, if not incorrect, on the rules, sense of things. So. And it's a bad thing, right? It should be a bad thing.

It should be something that is a brink. It is a lowest point of their human nature. It doesn't have to be something that they've done. It can't be that they have done a bad thing. Like that's a pretty common misconception. It's not like you have committed murder or anything like that. It's just a weakness. Like a very strong weakness that has come as a result of your observation.

And, you know, again, a great example they put into the book can be something where I've seen you lose it over this dead dog. That doesn't mean that you killed the dog. It doesn't mean anything other than you just lost it. over this moment that happened. You know, it can be inspired by terrible acts, but it can also just be a weak moment, you know, whatever that means to you. Right.

Spelling is so bad. Like hurting it. You got it? Got it? Okay, good. Believe in yourself. Confidence is not my virtue. In real life or in this game.

This is not bad. all these of those I would do. Oh. It's good, though. It's good, true. Thank you. Malcolm was hard to write for in this one. What is, what is, what is, what is a bad thing that a selfless person does?

Nothing. There's not, it's like a tick. That's great. We're not supposed to read them out loud, right? Nope. Not to everybody else, no. That's great. And the hope goes on the bottom, right?

The brink goes into the bottom. Oh, yeah. What's, what's the war? order of these, how should they be stacked up? You can put them in any order you wish of moments, virtue and vice, the brink must go in the bottom. Brink on the bottom. Okay.

Of those four, though, our character stuff goes on the bottom. Your character, your last, Blinkwin can just be off to the side, yes. But the order of these is important because. Right. The hope goes in the stack too, yeah? Or no. I don't remember.

The hope does go in the stack. Goes up. Yes. I think how much thought you're putting into it. You got to min-max this. The bring. Final episode, right?

Go for broke. That's right. We're going to break this game. We're going to win. That's right. It'll be different this time. Yeah. Easily.

Yeah, we've done this before. Let's ask the other 36 how that went. I did not prep any Kleenex on this one. The first one. This is a red shirt. Yeah, I'll just blubber into. Oh, yeah. That's fine.

This is thick. It's nice. We'll be mutual blubs over here. On that one shot, literally, I mean, it's like, I don't think anybody could see it, which is probably good, but there was like, there was mucus coming out of my nose. I was frying so much. The snobble. Great. Yeah, that shirt, you just throw that shit out of.

Tear it up, maybe use it for paint. Yeah, well, I told her before, this used to be white. That's why I wore that shirt. It's been a long time on that cruise ship. Yeah. And all your other clothes are red. Yeah. Al Quinn, at this table, you've sat with Ivan the most.

Do you still get nervous? Because I know. I'm a little nervous right now. You know, I used to, but, besides, if you don't, we're actually one for one. I have killed Ivan in a game we played together at Jen Con. Oh, good for you.

Yeah, so that's a, that's a bucket list, did that. And you killed me in the International Tabletop Day 10 candles. So we're actually even so far. Hi, Diana. I choked you to death. I was a synthetic. Oh, that's right. Yes.

Yeah. That was the last thing in that game. I choked the life out of you. We went back and forth rolling and injuring each other. Yeah, that was awesome. Let me ask you, what do you think is more frightening and unpredictable, sitting at a table with you as the Game Master, or sitting at a table with me as a host?

Honestly, and I mentioned this a few times before, but I'm, I am terrified as a player. I do, I have a tough time playing. So I, uh, I literally am, sometimes my decision making, uh, capacities will sometimes fall apart when I'm at a table as a player, but this, it's fine. How you doing? No. I'm fine.

That's you. That's okay. It's fine. We're fine here. How are you? Tasty? Tasty? the last one. I like it. There you go. I like it a lot.

Cool, cool, co, co, co, co, co, co, co, co, co, co, co, co. Being a producer of the show is actually comes in handy sometimes. I'm not saying I didn't intentionally sit myself next to Ivan, but when it was suggested I didn't have to, I went for it. Yeah, thank you. Sorry, Jake. What an honor, Jay. What? Who said that? To be the exception. Yes. Today's a good day to die. Yeah. Great, I'm just writing down the brink. I mean, I've actively chosen to be sat in fifth chair or next to Ivan or other things like that.

So you should look danger in the face and laugh. That's right. Fearless. That is my moment. You've already hit your moment. Sitting at this table. I only put that first. Got some hope time.

Let's do this. Starting with 15. Yeah, context for the choking me out. So Alcoen did. I don't think you need to qualify that. No, no, it's just it's fair. We did the alien RPG. Yes.

Yeah, which is what that was. Which I went and pre-ordered immediately. afterwards. Yeah, and it is a wonderful game, but that was a situation in which in the story he was revealed to be the synthetic, and I revealed him. So he decided to reveal himself by just like, just putting you up against the wall. Well, Alex was scanning for the synthetic on the derelict ship, not me, they're synthetic. Yes. I popped up and we were in the room together. It was one of those like, sir, sir, because I was the captain, it's like, sir, the synthetics in the same room as you. And you were like blowing my face off.

Like you were shooting me in the face and I'm a synthetic so I'm just standing there, you know. It's like putting a gun. A singular purpose. Putting a gun in his ribs and just unloading the clip. Anyway, that's not this game. Hashtag synthetic life. Or is it?

That's what you all know. The power of role playing games, y'all. I put mine in order upside down and then I flipped my order. I was like, whoops, that's not how that's full. That is yours. So I think we're going to begin your story, as I mentioned earlier, very shortly after you discovered there is a repeating signal. And you've at this point traveled into the middle of the Pacific Ocean,

knowing that the more out and away from the water you are, the less difficult the waves are. And, you know, there's been so much tremors and aftershocks at this point. You're able to ride out most of the major surges that are coming in. But as soon as you get too close to the shore, that's when the water breaks and just starts making it a real tough time for the boats. And this is something you've learned through trial and error, unfortunately. Are there monoliths out in the water in the open water?

100%. Okay. Yes. They are pinheaded, like I said, all over the world. Are they like a grid? They're in like a geometric formation? Since you were out in the water, you would see that there is absolutely a regular pattern. Okay.

Yes. So geometric, it would be hard to see unless you were observing it from space. Yeah. You know? But they definitely are consistent. Like, wherever you look on the horizon, there is one, if not a couple. And whenever you feel like you're past one, there's another one right. on the right in front of you.

And they're like the size of skyscrapers. Are they featureless in any way? Featureless, black, sheer-facing things. They're just like big rectangles. And in this circumstances, what you've been seeing is that the modelists have come up. And it doesn't matter how deep the ocean is. They all are pretty consistently the same size. Okay.

Above the water? Right. That's terrifying. And I think your story will begin shortly after you have heard through the crackle of static, which has been mostly prevalent this entire time and the occasional terrifying hum of creatures or voices singing inside of the radio. You've managed to pick up one repeating signal that has given you coordinates and has ostensibly just said the last. Refuge, the last stand is here. Come to us, and this is the last opportunity for you to find safety.

Nowhere else is safe. And this has been on a repeating signature for most of it. You picked up the edges of it through the static, and you have been trying to hone in on it. Because unfortunately, navigation has not been accurate or good for you, because no stars. Yeah, to deal with. So rather than trying to pinpoint it directly of where things can be,

you've been just in trying to get to where the signal is strongest and go towards that direction as much as you possibly can. And shortly after the discovery of this signal, your other fellow refugees on the boat, I think we discussed, decided that they didn't want to go to such a thing. Yeah, they unified under this guy Hooker, who was used car salesman, I guess, or something. But apparently they all thought that he had a better idea of how to run a ship than Ella did. Well, our crew tried to hold them off because they tried to take over.

Yeah. They tried to rush the bridge. A lot of them didn't make it, and we barricaded ourselves inside the bridge. and with nothing left to do, they decided to just steal the last of the life boats. And flush off, with all of your supplies. Yes, so now it's just, is it just the four of you? Is there anyone left on the boat?

We might not be totally sure. Not that we know of. But you know that it's just the four of you in the bridge. Well, five, counting Lola. Conan Lola. It's the four of you on the bridge with a very bent, and very nasty looking rail that has been shoved inside of the door leading out from the main hallway into the bridge.

And that's where we're going to pick up our story. So what would you like to do? We've seen the lifeboats break off. Right. It's gotten quieter. The bang has stopped. Yep. We should search the ship.

Yeah. Yeah, make sure there aren't any of them still left on the ship. All right, so you want to search the ship for anyone who may have stayed. Yeah, yeah. And do what if they're here? Well, we need to figure out what their purposes. Who else is on the ship and why they're still here and not with the other guys? Are they staying to throw us off so they can call, I mean, there'd be no way to call their friends.

but we didn't see the boats leave, so they could just be right, you know, right behind us, for all we know right now. So what I would actually like to do is grab the captain's key and go into his room and get a pistol he keeps in his lockbox. Okay, roll for that, roll for the acquisition of said pistol and lockbox. One success and two ones.

Two for me, one for you. too early for me to roll, so by all means take narrative results. Okay, so the captain was one of the last to go down. We had drug him back in with us onto the bridge. Okay. So I will lean over and close his eyes. Okay, so he died. He died.

Yes. How did he die? He was bashed in the head by one of the... Mutineers? Survivors. Okay, all right. So he was unfortunately, yes, he was killed in the mutiny.

All right. So you, sorry, continue. You close his eyes. I'll lean over, close his eyes and grab his, the key to his, what are they called? Chambers? Quarters.

Quarters? Quarters. Quarters. Yes. Key to his quarters, yes. which also includes a key to the lockbox where I know he kept his pistol. Okay. So you go and you get a very antique-looking service revolver like Colt 1911 kind of attitude that's in there.

It's a very just old-school, like issued in World War II kind of revolver. And not even a revolver, it's like a slide pistol. So, and you grab that, and it has its clip, and nothing else. I think it's a 10 shot. 10 or 12, yeah. Yeah, so we'll call it 10. Okay. Of course you would call it 10.

Thank you. So you go and grab the service revolver. Service, right. Tistol. Is there anything else in the captain's quarters we might be able to turn into a makeshift weapon, like the bar that's holding the door shut and maybe keep that with the ESCES. You can probably still grab that out. I mean, it's bent to hell, but you could definitely still have it.

And after you've claimed this, you see that the captain's going, he's been on this thing three weeks. He's kept it tidy as a captain to do. You know, when you are a part of the Navy, you are literally meant to make everything immaculate all the time. So he has a lot of his rituals and regularities that you see inside of it, but mostly maps, navigational charts, all which you have learned recently have become useless

now that you have the sky is constantly being shrouded, and even when it is clear enough, nothing looks like what it showed up in the sky. But we do have a way to navigate to these coordinates from the transmission, right? As best as you can, which is mostly just been by blurring the radio. Strength of the signal. Are there any blueprints to the ship in the...

the quarters. Yeah, let's see how they're looking. Oh, man. The name of the game is, I know. I want to do a thing, you'll roll some dice. And it'll have some bad in the good. There you go. All right, there's one. Two, at least. Two. One for you. One for me. Great. Let me see if I can take narrative control.

Shit. Wow. Two six is for me. Ties go to the GM. You still succeed, but I gain narrative control in the circumstances. So as you go into the captain's corridor, you can very much see that the map of the recommissioned to medical barge is available. It would actually, you'd probably have a model of the ship with its name on it and then probably a plaque that would have some of its layout interior inside of it. It's not too bad.

You've been on this ship for a while. Like two weeks is not a small amount of time to get used to, you know, you know, this kind of a barred. So most of the mid-deck is laid out in, like, large, like, trauma centers. You know, they're like, I won't call them, like, cargo warehouses, but, like, basically above-deck is meant to do crowd control. And then in the mid-deck and the lower deck are all large areas where you can put beds. It's a mobile hospital, is what it is.

So there's lots of treatment rooms, and there's lots of supply rooms, which are more to the four part of the ship. And then the aft is mostly meant for like logistics, supplies, like supplies on a boat side, not supplies on a medical side. And you're definitely familiar. The difference is that to your point of being able to have a map or not, you would absolutely be able to have a map of it. It's just laid out in the most technical kind of jargon.

I didn't know if there was something on the map that shows. an area we maybe don't know about or recognize. Oh, I would definitely say that looking at it now, since the captain has kept this relatively to themselves, that you have noticed that there are a lot more supply depots, like little supply centers than you originally were told or even... We're privy to. We're privy to.

And to be fair, that wasn't something that was mostly dished out through the... Oh, man, what do they call the logistics officers? I forgot. Not a quartermaster. A requisitions officer? Thank you. Yeah.

So that's the long short of it. Well, I mean, one of us should stay here and make sure they don't retake the bridge if there are people here on the boat. Should just one of us stay here? I mean, I don't know. I mean, you've got your cat. So if you want to stay behind with the kitten in case... I feel like that's the safer bet.

She decides to go into labor. That's probably... I mean, she's breathing pretty heavily, but I think it's just general nervousness. Okay. But, I mean, I think if I have a physical barricade, I'll be safe or will be safe from anybody else. So we'll leave the pipe behind them.

But then the rest of y'all, I mean, don't split up. I've seen horror movies. That's always when something bad happens. The rest of you just stay together. And at this point, the boat is doing, and this is pretty common nowadays, like you are not on a flat sea by any, chance. You are constantly

dealing with rolling bulges every time. And so you are in that position where you're constantly shifting your weight and even moving from deck to deck involves like a lot of grabbing a hold of the rails and trying to walk as

stable as you can. So thankfully you've all gotten the sickness out of your system days ago, but even then it's still nauseating. It's scary too. if you're not used to it. Yeah, it just is moving.

And it's weird, too. It's almost like everything feels like almost every once in a while, you feel like that point in which have ever been in like turbulence in a plane when it just, you just will kind of lose weight because it just drops so suddenly. Yeah. Like it seems like everything is so, well, light that sometimes when the bulges will lift you up, it's almost like you're up and then you'll just fall down and get this, this, you know, controlled fall.

and we'll just come out of nowhere. The ship makes a lot of noise, too. Like, it's an older ship, and it creaks, and there are lots of ticks and little sounds of metal straining periodically. All right, so who's going where? Well, I know the ship. You got the gun, you're calling the shots. And is there some way for you to communicate,

for us to communicate? Yeah, can we look for walk. Are any walkie? Short-range walkie-talkies or something they would have used. bridge, there would be like an intercom system. So someone in the bridge could speak out. Okay. We'd have to reply on a wall.

Close circuit wall. Okay. Okay, yeah, okay, cool. So that's how we'll communicate. All right. So I guess if you see anything, any ships come in or anything in the distance, let us know.

And do I have any way that I can view anything that's going on on the ship? Are there any closed circuit cameras or anything like that up in the bridge? No, no cameras. But you would, if you went out onto like the four deck, you would be able to go and get a span of whatever the hell is you're in the middle of right now. Okay. I mean, I have a set of binoculars. They just haven't been too useful.

Right. Because a lot of time there's just nothing to see. There's nothing to see. That's the point. So in that way, this is interesting, but it's also eerily quiet. What's our visibility on the water? Awful. this far as like it just being dusty

and you know usually you if you're out this far in international waters you would have pretty clear visibility for miles across but between humidity clouds and dust which is there just seems to just be this weird ashen dust everywhere and it was kind of up at the top seen it's kind of rolled in after some time

especially as you head farther south and the only reason you were able to see the giant cloud to the north-east of you up towards where the Americas are is because you saw a completely different color cloud kind of up in its giant mushroom-like shape. And it was like a weird color. It was like green or something?

Yeah, yellowish-green. And it's like a so in that way, it's like you have a squall of ash coming from the south, and then you have this greenish-ish-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y. orangeish like cloud that will eventually

turn into a squall once it starts hitting the water line that's to the northeast of you and then of course monoliths piercing out.

Right, so you'll have to keep an eye out for monoliths to make sure we don't hit them. It's one of those things where they are far enough apart from each other

that it's not like you're having to dart around them obviously. Yeah. But if we're on that particular course. Now are we,

before you all leave are we, have we plotted a general course towards where we think this signal's coming from. And I just have to... Metal detector the tone until it hit. You've basically been hitting on a south-easternly direction. Okay.

For... I'm southwestern, sorry, south-west. I won't change our course unless we need to avoid something. Yeah. So based on, like, seeing her come out with the gun, I'm going to ask her if the captain had any other, like, wartime relics, like a bayonet or one of the swords they issue you. Like, is that...

Is there anything else in there that might be used as a weapon? Do I'm going to roll for that? Yeah, probably. I'm looking for either, like my grandfather's in the war. I have an idea. You get what I'm after. Right? A dress uniform sword on the wall or something like that, you know.

Two ones and one six. Well, let me see if I can gain some narrative control. There you go. Nope. Why don't you tell me what you find? Sure. So she brings me in. to the captain's quarters.

And on the wall, he does have, like, his, like, plaques and things, his stars, all the medals and things he's won. And where the gun was kept is also, like, a vintage World War II bayonet. Like, the ones that you could, not just the ones that go on the end of the gun, but the ones that have the handle, that you can actually just use it as a... As a sword. As a knife. Yeah.

It's about a foot-long blade. Got it. Right. So you find a long bayonet that has both a handle, but could also be... fit it onto the end of a rifle if it wanted to. Yeah. And you grab that. The gun itself is actually there, but it's so rusted.

Even the bayonet's not in the best of shape. It's seen combat, so it's roughy. But it's pointy. Yeah, that's basically. Pointy, it's got a little bit of an edge on it. And I'm going to take that plaque because one, it'd be nice to have a map to those rooms we haven't seen. And two, I don't have a weapon.

So I'm going to hit someone if I have to hit someone. Yeah. That's fair. So you three are basically heading out to the midship, if I'm hearing you correctly. So you kind of go down into the patio. And the first thing you notice upon when opening the door out is just how thick the air is. It smells like right now with the wildfires, you know, or the brush fire. It just smells.

It's not so bad that you're coughing and choking from it, but it has that very, distinct smell of burning. Yeah. That just hits you when you first come out into the air. And you also can see, and you really, you hear it before you see it, but you kind of, as you're walking out to the midship, you hear as the ship is rolling and kind of tumbling, you kind of hear the, of like weight being shifted to and from. and you look out and you see the lolling bodies of people out on the deck who seem to just be rolling and thudding against the rails from the left to the right

as the ship is kind of tilting and making its erratic move across the water. We have to check the bodies. Right. For any survivors. What are you checking the body for? See if anybody's alive or pretending to be. That's fair.

Okay. I will. Wait, there's two ones. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm stubborn. Stubborn. And I'm gonna re-roll those two babies. So how are you applying stubborn in this situation?

Well, you know, let's say the guys don't think it's a problem, but I know people. I've seen the worst of people. And you can, you wouldn't be surprised as some people play dead. Yeah. And you want to make sure that's a problem. not the case before you just start knocking bodies overboard.

Absolutely. And I'm built to save people. So if there's a chance, I have to take it. Oh! All right, one six. Let's see if I can rest narrative control from you. I have one six. Tye goes to the dealer.

At least he didn't get two more. Yeah. No, I didn't get two more. There you go. Several people who are not dead, but are mortally injured, whether they have been, no one's been shot. You, for whatever luck you want to give yourself, you have the only gun on the ship,

but there is lots of de-placerations bleeding out. some people are absolutely unconscious and there's a few people who you recognize from the cruise ship who are just as soon as they hear the tang tang tang as soon as they even they flutter their eyes open and kind of

look at you they just they just lose it they just start breaking down like just moaning and upset and crying just not even sure if they should even ask for help. And one person asks, just asks you, says,

just says, don't, don't, no, I'm done. Just toss me overboard with the rest. So one is not interested in staying around. I would say there are at least five mortally injured people on the deck. What do you want to do? Look, you're the surgeon here. How bad are these people? Yeah, what do we need to do?

Are they done? At first glance, I mean, this is not exactly a surgical setting. At first glance, things are not looking good, but we need to get them into the medical bay so that I can look them over. What about our friend who doesn't want to go on? He's the one who's also, I should probably be more specific, But he's the one who, after closer observation,

hasn't lied on it, but he's basically pulled his body up, and you can see he's bleeding from his legs, but he's kind of lifted himself up to the rail, and he's kind of pushing himself up to the midline rail. And as you start walking towards him, he kind of looks at you and goes, nope, no, no, it's not worth it. It's not worth it.

And once one of the bulging of the items start coming down, he kind of tumbles backwards as he hits his head on the back and just kind of falls, you hear a sploosh as he takes himself into the water with him. So, yes. Well, that solves that problem. So three of you, five bodies, you'd probably make two trips, if not several.

I'll go. Should we grab Carter? If we're moving to the Met Bay, or at least tell them where we're headed. We should find a calm system and tell them what's happening. Well, before we sweep the boat, though, should be alert everyone that might still be on board to the location we're about to be in? No. We're not too far away.

I can jog over. You just go back up the rails. And let them know where we're heading, what the plan is. Okay, so we're, how are we going to steer the ship from down there? Well, I'm just letting you know where we are. We don't want to announce. our location yet. Oh, gotcha.

So if something does happen, you know, on the map, here's where we are. Okay. Here's where we will be. Okay, so you run back down through the main line. At this point, Kirk's already kind of just trying to get one person in a position. You can carry them. Every little adjustment you make is just a scream in the top of their lungs,

and you can kind of see that this person you're holding onto has one arm across their their waist as they're trying to hold onto your other arm. And you can tell that if they didn't have their arm up where they are right now, they would just be losing their intestines all over the floor. Okay, stop, stop, stop. I will go get some supplies and bring them up here. Okay. Look for, you know, like lifeguards, have the boards that they'll carry people

from the crest of the beach to the ambulance, something like that, like the manual ones. Look, I'm not the doctor here, but maybe we should just be grabbed. grabbing some morphine. I will grab everything that we need. In any case, I'll put a little kit together, I'll be right back. So you are going to run down to where one of the trauma stations are and just start grabbing a gear that you can bring up to top side. Yes, but I will be taking my, not my time,

but I will be carefully going around corners and seeking. Seeking. Yeah. So, yeah, by all means, Let's see how it goes. I'm rolling again. Yeah, this is a conflict. Ew.

One for me, one for you. All yours. Ah. Okay. It's clear. Nobody's in here. I have to do it one-handed because I'm not gonna let go with a gun to be taken off guard.

Start shoving things inside of bags as much as you can. Anything to. to stop any bleeding that I can stop. And yes, also morphine if I need to. So you can tell that supplies have definitely been raided. Like there are just stuff and, you know, packages are tumbling across the ship just as the bodies were on the upper deck.

But no matter what, like this is a ship meant to service thousands of soldiers, injured soldiers. Like they just could not take enough to run you dry at this point. So you put together a kit, you shove it all in, and you run back up. I mean, maybe you can even just bang a gurney along the way, just dragging it

with your satchel. And you head it back up to the screaming and wailing injured on the main deck. I will go to the most vocal first. All right, well, that would definitely be the man. That would be who I'm holding. Yeah, the who you've laid down at this point. He kind of is grasping onto your shoulder.

You can feel his nails are digging. He goes, oh, God, it hurts. Just, God, just do anything? Do you just, God, they just were awful. We told them, we told them, they've told them that they can go, just don't do anything. And they, I tried to get on the ship. The lifeboats, they were all full.

Some people literally tried to jump off the ship onto the boats. And when one of them knocked the boat over because they landed onto it. They just started stabbing anyone who got too close. God, how could you fucking leave us up there, man? I'm sorry. Look, we'll just... Hold on.

Squeeze me as hard as you need to squeeze me. Do not close your eyes. Like looks down and like, oh, God, I can feel it. It's fucking coming out of my goddamn guts, man. What's coming... Ella? While they're having this conversation, I'll be checking the situation out, and they are, as you said, all mortally wounded. They are, mortally wounded would be very tough to tell on here. They all have major injuries.

I mean, you have a treatment center. You could all technically do what you needed to do to treat them, but at this point, it's man hours and lives saved at this point. No one's walking off of this ship for weeks. Right. Is this something I can do on my own with no other real medical assistance to save him? So with, I'm going to probably get reality checked here, but with a gut injury like this, it's if his insides weren't cut and he's currently septic or anything like that.

You'd have to sew them up. You'd have to dose him up on morphine the entire time. You'd have to recover. You'd have to clean it real good to make sure there's no infections there because he's been sliding across the deck for minutes. He is months away from any recovery

even in a hospital. I will lean over. What's your name? James. James. God. James, James. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's nothing I can do for you right now. You're a fucking surgeon. What do you mean? There's nothing you can do. All of your friends took a lot of the stuff that I needed. But what I can do is I can put you to sleep. Is there anything that you want to say? He can't make eye contact with you. and he's processing this image while his pain is still subsiding.

You can start to hear that now that voices are coming up in here, that other people are starting to stir and wake a little bit. But he lists his head up finally and doesn't look at you, but instead just kind of looks up in the sky and just goes, I was really hoping that, you know, when you run a marathon and you run really, really hard, it hurts the entire, time and you just keep going because at some point you know there's going to be a gatorade stand right there and you get to drink it and you put a little water on yourself and you can keep on running

and at some point the marathon ends it sucks but at some point it just ends it's just just i just was hoping it would be around the next bend you know it just wanted to be done how long can it go on how long can the pain in the sun suffering go on. Yeah, James, you ran a hell of a race, buddy. And we've got a little gatorade for you here now. It's okay to rest. It's okay to take a break.

Kind of leaned himself back at this point. Kind of just like, Seidel's up, and he just, he doesn't say anything. He just kind of looks at you and just gives. the shrillest of nods and just kind of leans back and just. Kirk, hold his arm. I'm going to have him, I'm going to tell him, hey, James, look at me, bud. We're going to do something right now, okay? Take your mind off this.

We're going to make a character for a game that I play, okay? Fuck you, man. Come on, listen to me, listen to me. Focus on me, okay? Do you want to be a human or an elf? Huh? Human or an elf? A elf.

You want to be an elf, okay. I don't want my last moments on this earth to be making a fucking game. Just let me look at the sky or something, okay? Or just need this, okay? All right, Janet. All right. And I will give him a lethal dose of morphine.

Yeah. As he kind of like slowly starts to fade into consciousness. He puts his arms up and as his eyes begin to kind of flitter and doses his head back is he's gonna go into unconsciousness, he kind of like has his moment, he's looking at you and goes, Elf would've been fine.

And then he drifts off into nothingness and never wakes up. I write it in my game book. James the Elf. James the Elf. And at this point you continue to go look at some of the other people who are on the midship. I mean, they're not nearly as bad

as he was with it laid out. And many of them, I'd say three of the four are still definitely unconscious. But the other, well, I guess the question is, is do you want to give the same treatment to the other four? You know, there are three who could not give you consent right now even if you want to wake them up. And one more that you could potentially have that discussion with.

Is anyone or any of these people in good enough shape to maybe make them comfortable, put them in a, I don't know, medically induced coma for lack of better word until we can get to the sanctuary. Maybe there are better equipment there. I think we can just stabilize some people in the med bay and then just keep them comfortable until maybe more help arrives

or we can get to some help. The problem there is the supply. We currently, just at a first glance, don't have a whole heck of a lot left for those who are left. and who didn't try to kill other people. I mean, I have seen the worst of what humankind does to each other. And obviously, this being the end of the world,

steps it up a notch. Even after trying to attack us and kill us, that guy had the nerve to blame him and to blame us and to give us shit for it? Like... I mean, I thought you were a doctor, right? I am a doctor, and I save. And I save those who can be saved as much as I can.

But I also have to make the difficult decisions when they can't be. I also have to make the decisions whether or not we can afford to do it. So it's decision-making time then. Are you in a position where you want to hold people, up inside of the bay and lay them up because that will take gurning them all down or are you going to make the decision now?

All I'm saying is you don't have to make the decision. If you don't have to make the decision right now, all any of us have at this point is the opportunity for a little more time. If you want to give them a little more time, let's give them a little more time. If you want to end it now, we will help you end it now. I will help you end it now. But if you want to give them more time, we have the means to give them have the means to give them a little more time.

Do any of them have a shot at all? I mean, can any of them... I mean, do any of them have a shot? In a normal world? Sure. In normal circumstances, yeah, in this one. Yeah, but normal might be at the end of that radio signal, that some semblance of normalcy might be there.

Do you... I mean, we don't know how far away this is. Yeah, but we got to make it to normal first. I know. So Carter, at this point, you're up with Lola, with the cat at this point, and you are definitely seeing that the area in front of you, like, as you're driving the ship forward, and you're dealing with the lists. I mean, I'm honestly not paying that much attention to that.

No, it's... I am not doing a very good job with the job that you gave Carter. Right, you're mostly just petting the cat. I have her makeshift carrier open on the captain's bed. Yeah. and I'm singing to her. I'm trying to make up songs, but I don't know any songs about Lola.

Okay. So I'm just mixing a bunch of other songs together and just singing to her, and I've got the carrier kind of open, and I'm telling her, like, this is the captain's bed. You can have this whole bed for yourself. Like, this is all yours, Lola. And I'm trying to cheer her up, you know.

And at this point, you do feel, and you'll feel it too as well, too, since it's all the same ship, but you'll feel the four of the ship rise very suddenly. as if it just hit a really large swell, and then you'll kind of feel that, again, that thing I described earlier where you're all weightless for a moment

because it just, like, back down, and you'll all kind of have a moment where you're on the Tower of Terror, where you just, uh, that lurch. Lurch as it just hits, it just hits the bottom of a cascading wave. Does it seem like it's, it's been like this for a while, right? It's not unusual.

That one was a particularly huge, I've got my hand on Lola so she doesn't go airborne. Yeah, yeah. And it's to the point of where you do all lift out of your seat for just a second enough to where you feel the impact as your body hits rigid against the bottom of it. And everything, at least in the cabin's court, is bolted down. If anything isn't bolted down, basically scatters and kind of just falls. So did we go up and then down a little?

Yeah. And I assume the bodies in the ground also just did that? Yes. Has the landscape changed? Have we lost anyone that was near? the edge. We'll get to that in a second because I want to see if Carter's interested in seeing what the landscape of the water looks like. I'll gently pull the sort of crocheted shawl that I've had Lola wrapped up in. I'll put her back in the cooler and close up one end of it. And then I'm

going to sort of use like a sort of thing to strap it so that it's not going to shift around. Right. And so she should be relatively okay. No one will bump into her or any other kind of stuff. and so I'm like, shh-sh-sh, and I kind of try to calm her down, and I'm going to go out of the captain's quarters, into the main bridge with the big opening, and look at this roiling... Roiling water, yeah. So what you notice at some point is the one that you hit to you hit right against the ship.

So the bulge, like the ship was pointed into the bulge, so it kind of went up and down, so in that way you like rowed the way above before it fell back down again. Yeah. And you can see there's another one coming up. But what's more important is you can see a wave or a bulge. Yeah, a swell. A swell that is to the left of the ship,

and it seems to be just twice as high as the normal swells that you've been seeing. Okay. So I don't know. I don't know a ton about boats, but I mean, I feel like anything that big could capsize us. I don't know if that's the word for it, but all right, I'm going to get on the intercom. And I start letting people know I'm like, okay, you know that last one wave?

That was pretty big, but there's a much bigger one coming. I don't know. Is there anything I can do to keep us from sinking? I'd feel a lot better if one of you who knows about boats and stuff were up here and not me. Can we see it from the deck? Yeah, so soon you're on the mid part of the deck,

you can actually see as you look, and it was behind you, since you were all kind of facing as you look behind, you can see, because it's dark, you can just see the dark kind of growing onto the side of you, and this is definitely like, it's not clipping into a wave at this stage yet, but it is huge, it is going to ride you. It's like a crater-sized wave.

That's just directly to your, it's like hundreds of feet, basically, right? It's huge. It's huge. And if you do not go directly into it, it is most likely going to take you down. Okay, I'm gonna run over to the comm. Right.

And tell them to aim straight for it, and I'm gonna tell these guys, run, run, run. We need to get inside. Want me to steer into it? Like perpendicular? Okay, okay. That's this one, right? Yep.

And you just start turning the helm right into it. to dive directly into it. One for me. One for you. And one for you. Six for us. So I pretty much saved everybody now. Two sixes for me though.

Yeah. More well today. Yeah, seriously. Okay, so Carter, in some kind of like talking through or maybe just pure dumb luck as you start moving this thing forward to go perpendicular, you can kind of feel as the boat just kind of shifts and meets head on

with this just monumental swell. And you see that it's also just like clearing some of the ash out as you're kind of into it just because there's so much humidity in the air as it just flashes forward that you manage to get into it and you all feel the beginning of a roller coaster as it clicks you up and you just are looking up into a huge rolling tired of water, and you're just praying, praying that you don't see that little bit of white that comes with just rolling in on top of each other, right?

Where it breaks, but you're just writing this huge swell and you're feeling it as it rides up, and all of the bodies, everyone that you were working on, and yourselves too, you basically have to just go on all fours to hold on to whatever you can. And everybody that was on the main deck just kum, kum, kum, and a Titanic before it starts diving down deep,

you just watch as they just fling off of the back because you're now taking a 90 degree, if not greater, angle straight up. We're being pulled up the wave. You're being pulled up the wave right now. And you get onto that top, and at that point, you reach to the top of the swell, and at that point it actually clears out for just a moment.

You can kind of see through the ashen fog, and you see a sea, literally, but also a sea of monoliths that have all pressed up, and in the horizon, you can see the red moon just kind of persing through, and it is blood red at this stage. and it is filling the entire skyline. You can actually see a lot of the major landmarks of the moon, like some of the major craters,

and they are as big as dinner plates, where you can hold your whole hand up in that it's an entire crater of one of the things you see on the moon, and you can just see it. But you also see from the bright, blood, red light that is basking across the sea right now, you can see shapes are just moving through the water, almost like it's just a sea of, of giant,

ain't tuna, you know, or tuna-sized creatures that are just flitting in the water. It's never just tuna. And they are... This is Ivan Van Norman. This is never just tuna. It's tuna. But they all seem to be going in one direction, you know, almost like the writing the swell with you.

Is it the direction we're going in? Well, right now, which is the way you're pointing as you're going on the swell. Oh, right, because we went off of our... You told me to do that, though. Of course. Just... Ella, I'm just doing what you told me. But at that moment where you feel like, you know, when you're...

you're on a swing set and you go as high as you can and you're as most vertical as you are and you just know that if you win any farther, you would just fall backwards straight onto it. That's where you feel like you are before you finally crest over the swell and you just all just fall forward as the four of the ship just points directly down

and you are now on the bottom part of this roller coaster tumbling down into the water. So, yeah, you're at least you navigated it. So you got through it. Yeah, I'm going to go check on Lola, make sure she's not too. Good girl, good girl. Literally, it just did nothing. It just kind of bopped.

It went to one side of the bed, and then went to the other side of the bed. I mean, she's doing this general sort of panting thing that, that's just going to hack up a hairball? Well, no, just when they're kind of nervous. Yeah. Like they'll kind of drool sometimes or they'll just like huff. Huff. So I'm just making sure that it's just normal and that it's not like she's in labor. Lola's learned a long time ago that leaving this thing is not something that is in her plan ever.

She likes her house. Until she delivers these kittens, she has zero interest in going anywhere. Yeah. I'm a little worried that she's getting hungry, though. It's been six or seven hours, I think, since I last fed or something. It's been a while. Yeah. So I'm so sorry.

We've ridded this wave out. Unfortunately, the issue that you did have about the bodies seems to have resolved itself at this stage. So at least as much as you can tell, unless there is an opportunity for you to try to save someone as they were cascading down into the cold water. I believe that that wave was probably too big for any of us to be able to react properly

before getting our own bearings. Kirk Howie, do you feel the same way? Yeah, I mean, we knew it was coming, so I don't know what we would have had a chance to grab, but I feel like if there was something to grab, we could have. But I mean, what's your upper body strength if you're at a vertical base? Like, what do you, like, how are you, can you hold? And then when it crashes back down, where do you go?

Right. Like, short of, like, finding something to, like, pilot seat against and, like, brace that way, I don't think. That's a really good point. Once you hold on as much as you possibly can. Yeah. Nope. Yeah, no ones either.

Okay. If you fall out of the boat, you might find a floating door that's only big enough for you. Yeah, definitely. It was not just big enough. It was big enough for both of them. Clearly. All right.

Nine candles. We are back to nine dice. We have some truths of which to speak. This cresting wave, and it sounds like, Howie did not have enough upper arm strength in order to hold onto it in this vertical position. But you do have the benefits of having the first truth.

First truth, when I lost control and lost my grip, I slammed against a wall of something, like another cabin or something, and cracked a rib. Okay, so you impacted after you slid all the way down, into the mid-jured. Yeah, like you know the corner of a wall? It hit me right here and cracked a couple ribs right here. All right, so we're going to be a little harder to breathe now,

a lot of pain. So this is the smaller of the upcoming swells. This is the smallest of the upcoming swells. That wasn't the only gun on the ship, but it was the only loaded gun on the ship. There's another gun on the ship? Mm-hmm, but no ammo for it. Got it.

I do know about those extra store rooms. I was the lead medical on the ship. Okay. And I have the keys. So you have the keys to the extra supplies. Great. Now we've crested over this smaller swell, I only catch a glimpse of it between that

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in density and proximity to each other and we're being carried towards that by these swells. Okay. So you are, there are less monoliths where you are going. We're trying to get to less monoliths, but the swells are leading us into a more dense kind of forest on the water. you move forward, you're going into an area, but behind you is more. Great.

So that's one, two, three, one, two, three, four, five. So you're six. When I impacted against the wall, I did so on my back. And when I looked up on the wall there was hanging one of those lifesavers. Yeah. With enough rope to throw it overboard to pull someone in. So I don't know a couple hundred feet, however much rope it would be. Okay, yeah.

Okay. That now exists. Okay, great. You were able to toss the life ring over the side, and you heard the satisfying twang of someone grabbing a hold of it and managing to at least at the point of impact make it taught. Sir? You're eight.

Someone or something is causing problems with the engine. And nine. One of those things jumped out of the water, like a dolphin. And I saw it. Awesome. So it jumped, you watch it go. Kind of flipped up and went down again.

Great. I would also go so far as to say that in this, hitting, like coming off of the water, you probably all got a big wash, like onto the main ship. In fact, even at jumping out of the water, I think you probably saw it flop on the deck for a moment before it managed to roll back into the water. And it definitely is, you saw, it's a long, almost eagle-like creature, but it's huge. I mean, it was almost as long as the deck was. It kind of came in and kind of went in there, and you heard it shriek for a second

before it, like, managed to roll back into the water as it just kind of came in. But it was like seeing a, like seeing a 10-foot long, 15-foot-long, more eel just flop onto your deck before it rolled back into the water. So it sounds like we'll pick up. up our story immediately from when you impacted into the plunge and you felt all of the water cascade onto you

and then you managed to stabilize. Not sure if what you saw was real or not, this thing kind of come onto deck and then flop back into the ocean. What do you want to do? Well, kind of building on what you'd said where I threw the life thing over. Can we say that when I hit the coil of rope was there

and I actually got I'm the thing counterweighting. Yes. It's tied up in me. Yes. And I kind of in that moment recognized it and just went, and I'll deal with the circumstances of this later. Great, okay. So you grabbed the hold of it and you can feel the rope pressing on.

Yeah, and I'm just like it's in me, but I'm using its tangled web to just hold myself basically to be the rock that's going to keep it there. And it is not going anywhere. No. It's not comfortable. No. You know, it's probably, if I've exposed arms and then it's probably grating a bit and causing some irritation. Yeah, and salt water.

Yeah, fun. But yeah. So you have it, for sure. That is a truth that we will lay out as part of your truth. But, yeah, more importantly, what do you want to do? I would just start screaming, guys, help, help, help. Yeah, I'm going to run over and check on Howie. Yeah.

All right, yeah. I'm on the intercom and I'm saying to people like, okay, there's another big one of those coming. I really think if you're all okay, please come back. Let's at least get everybody under deck. Great. But we're not going the way we want to. The sea isn't letting us.

There's another big wave coming, and it's taking us, there's so many, so many of those big monoliths. I'll tell him, there's someone on the other end of the rope. Help you pull up the rope. So Carter and Ella, you run over to where Howie is, and you grab a hold of this rope, and you take the tension off of him as you pull up as much with your power

as you possibly can. to try to get this, whatever's at the end of it. Huh, well, that's interesting. But. One one, one. I'm going to take a shot. I'm very insistent. Insistent.

I'm going to pull whatever the hell this is. Okay. Over whatever it takes. I'm going to get this thing over the... Let's see how it is. Well, it was worth a shot. Oh, that was the... I mean, we've had some quick scenes.

This has never happened. I think we're around. Yeah. What happens when you help other people. Yeah. No, it's great. Important liflers in here, kids.

Don't help people. So, just let them go overboard. Oh, wow. That's fine. EO. Eight dice. Eight truths. Kirk, you'd start with the first truth, man.

And it was a failure. No, yeah, I know. I know. I hate to go on this, but I do have a suggestion. Uh-huh. But it is yours, of which you wish to take. Well, I'm curious what your suggestion is. How about this, I write it down for you?

And then you can make that decision or not of whether you'd like to use my suggestion or if you'd like to do your suggestion. Pretty good deal. And the last game was an hour and 30 minutes. Yeah, yeah. Hey, the world is very dark right now. Yeah.

The world is dark. The world is dark. The world is dark. Yeah. That's kind of what I was thinking. That's what you were thinking too. High five. All right, it's one of them on the other end.

That's what I didn't mind to. Me too, yay! We'll pick something else. Great, great. All right, awesome. Ella. As he is pulling it up, I see it and shoot it.

You see it and shoot it, okay. Fair enough. Go ahead, Carter. the glass on the bridge is starting to crack. Okay. And I just absolutely know that when we hit our next swell... It's going to come right through. It's going to come in, so this is not a safe place.

So when that swing, actually when you impacted into it, you actually heard rocks like just... Yeah. ...and just the impact from... Place where I am is not going to... Yeah. It's be safe. It's spiderwebbed a little bit. Yeah.

All right. So that's your... It's going to be, let's say, 15 minutes until the next wave. Okay. Man, you're all so awful to each other. It's like one of those random games. I thought it was going to be like 30 seconds. I'm very happy with that.

You see land ahead. Do you, Kurt? We can see a shape on the land that looks like a lighthouse. and suddenly a light comes on. There's a light on the land. Seven, Ella. Did I resolve that whole shooting thing? I meant I shot and killed it.

Did we, are we good then? No, your new truth is you kill it. I killed it. Okay, great. And that would leave you with the last one, Carter. Eight. Okay, another truth. There's another voice that's got

on to the comm system. Oh, onto the comm system. Okay, did it say anything or just another voice? On the radio or the ship's comms? The ship's, the ship's comms. Oh, shit. There's another person on the ship. They got on the PA and they say,

the only safe place is in the bilge. In the bilge. Yeah. All right. Great, eight candles, eight trues. Ella, as you watch as Kirk is pulling this thing up, you see as a lamprey-like mouth just lifts its head up with teeth just laid out of the way.

It kind of looks at you and it lifts up one of its tentacles to try to like just grab it, Kirk with one of its appendages, and that's when you just, you just shoot it and you watch as it just jerks as you watch each bullet kind of just, enter and then exit it as you watch its exit wound and splatter just kind of come across each side of its body. Is it just, and it kind of hangs dead as Kirk, you drop the damn thing.

And actually, unwinding Howie, I would assume. This point is that you're helping Howie unwind you just kind of watch this thing just like slop down dead on the main deck. And a part of its body is just kind of hanging off the edge of the ship and you can see it's at some point, the weight's gonna counter enough where it's gonna slide into the ocean.

So. And then Carter used you through the spider webbed glass. You kinda see the swell coming up, but even before the swell, which you can notice is coming in a very similar direction to where the first one was. Yeah. But to your right, which is, I'm terrible

with nautical left and rights. I'm trying not to get it wrong. Porter's Darward. no help you here. Yeah, sorry. But I believe. We were going southeast. You were going southeast, which means it would be...

So if you were going south east, it would be to your... You're going south. Southwest is where you're going. I mentioned you're going down. And then which way did we have to turn into the... True south? To south in order to go into it. So this would mean it would be to your east was where you see land.

Okay. Yes. And is that the general direction of where our radio signal was from to? Yes. Okay. So I want to try to, I'm going to basically turn the ship to be on that heading. And the controls lock in that position, right? Right. Okay.

So I'm going to leave them locked. I'm going to turn the heading so they would face us the correct way. Yeah, but you will not be facing directly into where the swell is coming now. But that's what we did last time too, right? That's how we survived the last one? You survived the last one by going head on, by going head on into the street. by going directly to the land, you will now have it kind of behind you

and slightly to the left. Do we have any type of idea of how far out that is? That is an excellent question, which will involve someone who is better. I know so little about ships and stuff, and in the moment, I think I would have just set the course for the land and turned it, not knowing that that would potentially be bad.

Oh, yeah, I would not know that. Yeah, I think you would know that. Yeah, you've done it from the land. And then, yeah, so I turn it and I lock that up, and then I'm going to go grab Lola's container. Right. And I'm going to try to head below decks. Okay. But before I head below decks, that's the last thing I want to say on the comms is I'm heading below decks.

I don't think the bridge is going to be safe up here. I set the controls for heading towards the land and signal. I saw land. So who knows, we could be good very soon. As soon as you hear that click off, you kind of see Carter with his, just come down the steps as you're still unwinding howie from this

and that's at some point shortly after while you're coming down you hear the comms come on and you hear a gruff almost like just really low-pitched voice say at the same time goes if the bridge isn't safe

then the bilge will be if we're going to... I'm so glad it was not a pirate voice I thought it was going to be like err! Sticky Joe I recognize this I mean, it's over the comms. How does an excellent question.

Do you recognize the voice? Yes, you do recognize the voice. It is. It's one of the officers that was serving on the ship, who has been missing for weeks now. And initially you thought that he went overboard as part of the whole, you know, getting through the squalls kind of a situation.

But he's been, yeah, this is the first time you've heard his voice. You thought he went overboard. I recognize that voice. Who, the guy that just came on the intercom? Yeah, he's an officer. We thought went overboard. Is he missing? Is he trustworthy?

Would he lie to us? Is anybody anymore? No, I don't think he would lie to us, but he's been missing. We thought he was dead. Should we go to the bill? like he says. What the hell's the bilge? I don't know what a bilge is.

Yeah, I don't know either. But I assume it's down, right? The bilge is the area on the boat that's below the water line, and it's usually in the area where you kind of... It's... Do I still have the plaque?

Yes. Oh, let me look at this plaque. It's the area below the water line. Yeah. I mean... Good thing you grab that. My character wouldn't know this, but if anybody knows anything about ships,

it's an area where they can change the height of the boat in the water sometimes by pumping water into or out of this chamber. The more water you put into it, the more stable it is on the seas, but then the faster it is if you put it higher above the water line. So, yeah. Right. Am I right there? Yeah, pretty much.

I mean, basically, if that person is in the bilge, hopefully it's not full, and it's at the bottom of the boat, it should be relatively safe. Yeah, I'll coil up the remaining rope. Okay. And take that with us. You're going to take the whole donut with you too? No, I'll cut the donut off.

Okay, cut the donut off. And as you're kind of doing this last little bit, so you kind of watch as finally with the rough and tumble seas, you kind of watch as the creature just slops into the water and you hear it unceremoniously like bang against the side of the boat a few times before it just hits the water and you kind of watches the splash, kind of just splinters off into the middle of the dark sea. So, yeah.

Also, I'm in a pretty good amount of pain. You see me breathing a little more shallow and I'm grabbing my side. Once we get to the bilge, I'll check your situation. Smaller problem for a different time. Time out, are we going to the bilge? Where those, like that's closer to where those things are. With the ship separating us.

But further away from where that is, and I point to the giant wave, coming. It's all about time, man. And I mean, if the ship flips over, I feel like that's going to be where the most of the air is trapped anyway. I don't know. I don't know ship stuff. I hate guessing.

Let's just have their first. He is a knowledgeable. Yeah, it doesn't sound like this is a very exciting prospect for you. What's going on in your mind right now? I mean, no, it does. I just came face to face with that thing. Right. In my head, even though there is steel between us,

I'm closer to whatever the hell that is. Right. And that prospect does not thrill me. Got it. But I don't have a better idea. Right. How fast can this thing go? So it's, sorry.

Yeah. I don't know. For probably a recommissioned, A medical freighter, I'd say it probably tops out it. God, I'm gonna get, so many nautical nerds are just gonna slap me in the face. No matter what you say, you know it's wrong. Pause for Googling.

Probably going to say 12 knots. Great. Eight to 12 knots. It's like 12 knots, like full, full speed. If we've been playing it safe to conserve fuel, we see the land, we see the target, we should gun it. Especially, yes, especially to do it.

I already gunned it as much as I could gun it. Okay, so we're full steam ahead right now. Do the three of us, have we seen the land? I think. Or just him. I'm the only one who saw it. Right. Between.

And at this point, he would have pointed you towards it. So unless you would have looked out, you know, off the side of the ship, you probably would have to literally go back to the bridge or go to the four deck and look out in front in order to probably see it. And ain't nobody got time for that. Well, wait, if you're down here, who's steering the bridge? the ship, where are we going? I pointed it towards the land.

The controls just lock. How's Lola? Oh, she's great, actually. Thanks for asking. Good. Good. Okay, let's keep going then. See, Lola? Howie likes you. Okay, it's okay. Locked ship into the bilge.

It doesn't take long. It's not a big ship. Just a few minutes, really, to go through the whole process. I assume there's some degree of, right, like outsides of ships need maintenance and things. I assume there's some degree of oxygen tanks about in the boat. I'd like to see if any of the, yeah, like any of the rooms we pass along the way would contain such things. And because the story we're telling, I'm going to say if I do succeed here, we find one. We'll have to share it if it comes to it. Great.

No, we're giving it. There we got. Yeah, that's... Yeah, no one. Oh, wow. Excellent. So take the top. And since you're ready declared the outcome, the outcome, yeah, you find one maintenance scuba suit,

which is mostly meant for, you know, checking on parts of the ship, lower down into kind of a situation. I mean, it's a tall ship. It's not like anyone's going, boom, and then ducking down over the side. But, yeah, you find a scuba suit. It's a little awkward carrying around an oxygen canister. There you go. That cold metal's pressed up right against that. Well, and you could feel it too.

It's about half full. Cool. Like it's a little lighter than it would be full. Great. You probably got what? 20 minutes? Maybe. Yeah.

20, 25 minutes? Yeah. I mean, I'm not a scuba guy, but I've cooked on a grill before, and I know what a full propane tank feels like. And a full, and an empty one feels like. Yeah. Sounds great. So this is a little lighter than it should be,

I'm glad our lives are hanging in the balance based on your grilling knowledge. It's a grill master, always a gruel master. As you kind of go down the steps leading into the bilge, you slowly start to hear the cracking and the groaning of the ship, which is a lot more apparent down here where water pressure is bending and moving the ship in awkward ways, especially when the currents are twisting against each other.

How many rounds do you have left in that gun? By my count two. No. I'm counting the cacaws of you shooting it earlier. I mean, he cacod four times. Okay. But I would also like to argue I am a pretty damn good shot because I've been alone this whole time. Sure.

I've taken self-defense. I've taken shooting. How many bullets would you like, Ella? Did you kill it with one? Out of the ten. No, I didn't kill it with one. Okay. I'm not unreasonable.

It was a big old eel. It was a slippery little sucker. I'll say it took three. Three shots, so seven to the clip. So seven left. Great. Write it down. You're that gun nerds.

You gun nerds and your boat nerds. Yeah, they're also yelling. It's called a magazine, not a clip. Oh my gosh. Actually, my business partner yelled to me that too. He's actually the most angry when they interchange it. When they use both clip and magazine in the same piece of fiction or the same story or whatever. It's like, pick one.

I'm just worried about the lamprey nerds, the ones that are going to be able to. Those are clearly conger eels. And the scuba, and the scuba folk. Yeah. Okay, we're touching lots of touchstones at this point. And I don't have a full suit, by the way. I just have the harness with the tank. The harness with the mask, yeah.

So as you continue to go down into the water line of the ship and you go into where the bilge is, you can hear as the sounds of the water are pressing upon the boat in a way that is just, it's just eerie is what it is. and it's dark as hell down here. The only service lights you have are small little, like, you know, fluorescence that are little hang-ons, and most of them have been busted up or broken at this point

because of the water, either sloshing in or just clanging against sight, even in little metal cages. But you do occasionally get small brisks of light as you walk in through. So you kind of go into it, and you hear is mostly just the sounds of your own footfalls clinging against the metal catwalks as you kind of come along to the side of the ship.

And you almost feel like you can see the metal just like moving into it. It's just, you know, this thing is just holding on for what it's worth. And yeah, you're in the bilge. What do you want to do? I want to leave. Hello? Are you down here? I heard you on the intercom.

I'm... Robert? You kind of hear a loud, kind of coughing. Hi, Ella. Robert, where? What happened? You've been missing. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't like people so much. You know? I hear you, buddy. But you just disappeared. Yeah, I will. when we started taking on all those civis, those people from the crew ship,

and it decided I would bide my time and wait rather than, well, deal with what it looks like you all had to deal with, which was a whole lot of everybody killing each other. That's what it sounds like. I decided staying down here was easier. We're trying to get to land. I saw it from when I was up above. Yeah, yeah.

There's a real big wave coming. I don't know if you can feel that. Did you buddy, huh? Yeah. Just, see, oh. Listen, but you're not helping, okay? I'm trying to help you. I'm just trying to share my information.

You don't need to get sassy with me. Yeah, well, I'm not the one holding on to a pregnant cat right now. Okay, all right. Let's try to just all calm down a little bit. Yeah. You don't like people or cats. We're not totally sure about you, but we're all in this. together now okay this is this is this is a team let's treat it like one okay why is it safer down here

can i ask you something yeah you a bad person am i bad person have you done bad things yeah i'm human everybody's done so the worst thing you've ever done the worst thing i've what's the worst thing you've ever done on this time on this planet i i you want me to be honest with you yeah i want you to Tell me to ray it out. Why would I ask the question if I didn't want an answer? I gave up. I gave up. I gave up.

I gave up. And I just let life happen. I didn't try to live it. And, and, and, and, and,

and, and, and, and, and, with, with the cat guy and, and, and,

and, and, and, and, and, it's why I'm here right now. That's, that's the worst thing that I've done.

I can trace it all back to that. What's the worst thing you've done? Oh, I've done far worse than that. And I can tell you, there might still be a chance for you yet. But you found land, you said? I mean, I saw it, which I feel like that's an accomplishment in itself. You can't see shit out there.

It's all dark on dark. Well, let's make for land then, shall we? That's the current plan. Great. Well, can we get there faster? Aye. We've got some big waves coming our way and unfortunately they're going to hit us from the side.

Is there anything you can do to stabilize us down here? At that point you actually hear the, the, like, engine start to shudder a little bit as you suddenly feel more than anything, the vibrations of the ship as you just kind of hear Robert, shall go, shit. That's the engines, that's the engines. He runs off and basically kind of leaves the four of you behind.

He starts heading towards the back of the ship. So, the aft. Somebody help him? Run after him. Right, Ellie, you run after him, Carter. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if we shouldn't stay together at this instance. I feel like we should probably, I mean, he said the bill just safe.

We're in the bilge, but I mean, certainly make sure you're always holding on to something. I'm not sure he's safe. You still have that bayonet. Hold on. Well, I don't want to leave her. Well, she's run alone with him. Yes, I'll be going to go. Yeah.

So you kind of all stumble off and you see Robert is expertly navigating this part of the ship, as is he's been down here for a while and kind of continues to move and jump forward. And you can see at various points he has to. get into areas that are flooded, like up to your waist, at least, in water. And he kind of, at this point, he would normally take a securitus route, but he just kind of opens the doors up,

lets the water just rush right by him as he just continues to make his way as quick as he can up until the back of the engines. And by the time you catch up to him, he's kind of looking at this thing. And he sees the two giant motors, because it's the ships, ships motors on this,

They take up whole rooms. Yeah, they're big, right? You know, and there's two major parts inside of it. And you can see that there's definitely a water level below it, but he's kind of around, and he can see he's got a flashlight, and he's kind of looking into it, and he's looking around for him and goes, fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. He's just cursing.

What are you looking for? If you tell me what it looks like. Why the damn engine stopped. Are you still, did you run to? I came along. I mean... Oh, okay. I think everybody came along.

Yeah, we just were behind you. Holding Lola up. in her carrier so she doesn't... Yeah. I mean, it floats, but I'm not taking any risks. Right, I'm just did. Yeah, the run after her has winded me more than it would normally, and I've, I mean,

as, like, you said the water is about knee high? Waste high-ish. Waste high-ish. Yeah, I'm, like, leaned and bent over, like, face right above the water, getting as much crouching as I can to just be like, uh-huh, uh-huh, right.

And so Howie is definitely legs behind at this point. Robert just seems to be sussing over this thing as he's looking over the engine and goes, oh, he's, hell, is there anyone else on this ship? We were gonna search it, but we didn't get to search the whole thing. Fuck, he just kinda turns a line and goes, you can see he's doing some math in his head, he goes.

No, no, no, no, no, we're not gonna make it. What do you mean? We're coasting right now, off of whatever this, our engine's race, able to give to us. If you said there's land, the soonest that you could see it is before the swell is actually going to hit us. So we either need to get this engine moving and up and running or we're going to capside right into that swell. I felt it. We went, I even, I've never felt something that literally lifted someone up and dropped us down, not in all of my times.

Okay, okay, so we believe you, what do we need to do to fix this? What can we do to help? What are we missing? He takes some time to look over. and it goes, well, someone's clearly taken a major part inside of here, and he points towards this little part of the engine. It looks like he literally looks like someone grabbed it and ripped it right off. So either it's somewhere around here in the bills or they took it top side.

So we need that part or we need to get a replacement part from the extra supplies, which are in... Can you describe what it looks like? He gives you a description of it. It's without getting... two into the details here. It's a spangle jammer. It's a spangle jammer.

The old spangle jammer. But it's ostensibly a major part of the wiring, not the wiring, of like the fuel injection or something. Well, if it's a steam, if it's World War II, it would be a steamer, like an oil steamer, probably. God damn it. I hate being wrong in this circumstances. It is a vital part to making the ship run. Yeah. That's the information we need. The McGuff and Span.

Spangler. Robert tells you that there's a part of, well, the gear system inside of the engine that either has been ripped out or has been removed. And he can't tell quite how or what. But there is definitely spare parts in the ship, probably being stored not terribly far from where you are now, but your window is likely closing to be able to get it together. And then hell if anyone can even try to install it. Like him and or Ella is probably the most qualified to be able to install it.

I have keys to everything. I've got the captain's keys. I am going to, I will go look for the piece. He's described it to me, right? And I will, like, if anybody wants to come with me as backup, because obviously if somebody took that piece, they might still be here. They might not have made it off with the other group.

Right. I don't know. Part of me feels like you need to stay with Robert because he trusts you more and you know him. But I know where I'm going. I know what I'm looking for. I have the keys. So does anyone want to stay with Robert?

I can stay with Robert. Is Robert staying in the boat? Like he's staying with by the engine? In the engine room. Robert, will you stay here in the engine room while I go grab the piece? If that bulge or if that swell is coming, don't take your time. I won't. I'm a liability.

I can stay with Robert and Lola if you want. Oh, okay. Oh, shit. Then I'll go. I'm moving at about half speed right now with my ribs. so I'll stay with Robert, keep him company. We'll wrap those as soon as we get this evening. I'll give him the bayonet.

So you've got it. So Kirk, you have the bayonet. We're beyond not trusting Robert at this point. Yeah, we don't have time. I'm not worried about the guy trying to fix the boat. I'm worried about the guy that took the piece. I'll give you the bayonet to have. And I'll take Lola and keep the, I'll try to,

I'll get up on something that I can and open the lid and pet Lola. What are you, what are you, what are you, what are you, what are you, what are you, what are you rolling for? Go get the piece. Go get the piece. Okay. And we're both going with you, yeah? That's the point.

Okay. Oh, I thought you were staying. Okay. You guys are making me nervous. Yeah, Howie's staying instead. There we go. Okay. One and one. One and one. That's all we need. Howie you're feeling great.

So, looks like we have. Going on, feeling strong. Right, that's the first die rule, which means I don't have anyone to counter with. Ella, so tell me what happens. I've been on this boat long enough, and we did a tour of it, so I can traverse, you know, all of the pieces sticking out a little more easily than they can. So I'm running up a little more quickly, a little more ahead. And there's a couple of turns outside the bilge, you know, a right, then a left, and then a right before I get to the storage area.

Got it. it's going to take me a few seconds fumbling with the keys because I have a lot of them. So many of them. And obviously timing is of the essence. And then I'm just going to calm myself down like I do when I have to perform surgery. Remember that I am in control of my physicality, of my mental and emotional being. and I look at the keys, and I realize they're labeled.

Get the right one, and I open the door. All right. And as soon as you feel the latch turn and you hit the latch open, you feel as the door just slams against you with huge amount of weight and it throws you against the other side as water just starts pouring out over and over again as the flooded room just kind of cascades. And you feel that kind of weight of water press up against you as you see as small parts and things just start flooding out

with the water everywhere as it starts laying out all across and you see something languid and huge, just as it's kind of coming inside and it's being flown out with the water at the moment as just everything is around. And Carter, it's going to try to lash a tentacle straight towards you as it is flooding that side of the building. I'm going to try to block it.

Yeah. See if it, keep it from reaching anybody else. Okay, go for it. A little bit against you. I mean, if it's going to get me, it's going to get me. I can keep it from getting my friends, though. Not today. Nice.

Sixes and zero worse. Not today. Not today. Not today. Konger more. I don't think there's, I mean, there's no way I can beat it because I only have one dice, but you take narrative control. All right.

So this thing is swimming on the tide of stuff as it poured out of this room, as the water level. And it's not a giant 10, 15 foot one like that fell onto the deck. It's a much smaller one. It's about six feet. Okay. So I'm wrestling with it. There's a sort of small staircase off to our side in this very narrow area around the bilge.

And I'm just wrestling with it back and forth. It's like noodling. Yeah. And I just grab it and I shove its head like in between two rungs of some steps. Yeah. And I can hear like bones in it breaking and stuff like that. It's more cartilage. And yeah.

And I basically wedge it in there and hold it until it stops moving. As you hold it in there, you can feel as like it's segmented body. It's like thrashing. It's kind of thrashing around and you can hear whispers. Like human whispers? Human whispers. Okay. It seemed to be just radiating from it.

And as it just kind of continues to kick and move around, you kind of feel as it, as you wrung it in there. And it doesn't have a neck. Uh-huh. So it's more that you just, or holding into place, and you can kind of feel it's, it's, I mean, it's like a, you're wrestling with a boa, like a giant anaconda at this point,

and its tentacles are trying to wrap around your neck, and they've been around your arms, and you've gone into it. But, I mean, you're holding it there. If you want to kill it, someone's going to have to kill it. Yeah, I'm holding it. Someone else is going to have to kill it. Do you have the bayonet?

Do you want to gut it? I do have the bayonet. Did you hear, did you hear those voices, like human voices coming from it? Do you have, you have a gun? I'm not. I've been thrown up against. That wasn't in my head, right.

The door hit me. So I'm a little. Disoriented. Disoriented. Yeah. And we're, how many feet away from each other are we at this point? I mean, you're right. I think we're all right there.

Yeah, yeah. We're all next to each other. I'm going to throw you the gun as I see the piece. Bayonet. Oh, you see the piece to swim by? Swimming by, yeah. All right. Okay.

Okay. So I, well, that seems like the most immediate conflict is it rolled into it. You've got a hole on the thing at the moment. I want to see you die for the piece. Okay. We're handling the eel situation. Come on.

We got this? Nope. Oh, shh. But I do have a one. You do, do you want to burn it? Yeah. Okay. Yep. I'm very pragmatic and I don't want a cap sign.

You toss the gun and you go for it. Oh, come on. Roll well. Oh, okay. So close. That ends that. Seven candles, seven truths. The world is dark.

Most importantly, Ella, you weren't able to grab the peace in time as it just is following the current downwards is just out of your reach. But that being said, you have the first truth. will swim under to catch up to the piece and grab it. Is it that much water or not that much? How about let me, do you mind if I adjust just a little bit?

So the idea being that you will follow it and as it dives into a pool of water where the bilge is, if you would like your truth to be, you will dive head first into. That sounds very dangerous. Well, dive into the water to where the bilge is. is in order to get the piece, just to follow it. Like if you're going to jump, you basically would have to leap off of, what I'm trying to interpret your truth is because there's a consequence, because grabbing it was a failure.

If you want to jump from the level you're onto, into the bilge water in order to grab it. Is that why I'm hearing from you? Well, the way I set it up, it was like we were just on the same level, turning different corners. But now that situation has changed. So what is the situation? now.

Sure, yeah. Yeah, I'll jump in the water. Are you sure? Okay. And grab it. Grab it. Grab after it. Well, okay.

Can't do that? You're going to jump for it. Oh, fuck. Okay. You can't resolve a failure with the truth. Oh, okay. Sorry. That's just the name of the game.

It's actually called 10 candles. Yes, thanks. Thanks, Anthony. Speaking of which, Carter, you're the next truth. the next truth is Lola is starting to go into labor Oh, there we go. I don't know that because I'm not there.

Of course not. But I mean, Howie would probably notice. Howie. I noticed this and have that panicked moment of like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, my God. But when I do, and my blood burst starts going up and I start breathing heavy in Heather,

that pain gets real intention. I start coughing and I see blood. And I'm actually that, it's not just a crack ribbed. It did in fact puncture. It did puncture something. Yeah, I punctured something. And it's not a lot of internal bleeding, but I'm bleeding.

But you're bleeding. Okay, yeah. This is not a good thing. You're bleeding internally. When coughing and getting the blood onto your hands, you drop Lola and the igloo onto the ground. Go ahead, sir. Lola is not preys.

Oh, my God. Oh, dude. No way. Okay. Thank you so much. Oh, my God. Ella. Legend of her.

That was legendary. Well, Jake just ruined my life. Hard truths. Oh, God. Name of the game, hard truths. What Jake said is a lie. I don't just say. She's triple pregnant.

Can I resolve it now? Can I find it now? Sure. If that's what you want. If that's how you want to get into it, then you say you find the piece. If that's what you want, the easy way out. I do.

I want the easy way out. I find the piece. You find the peace in the water. Then Carter, last truth. The last truth. There is, even if we get this engine going again, in between where we're going,

and where we are is a monolith. Great. There's a monolith on the way. On the way. Right. All right, seven candles, seven truths. Some people are still in the deck, but Ella, you've dived down back into the bilge and have managed to grab the piece

with not so much as maybe a head bump across the bottom of the ship or somewhere, but you are definitely banged and bruised up as you try to lift yourself back up to the railing. railing and pull yourself up. Kirk and Howie, or Kirk, you're basically, are you following Ella or from where she is because she kind of dove into it, or are you handling Carter and the eel situation right now? Could he used your truth for that, you a bastard. No, you had to make my cat into a host or something. I thought it was beautiful. It was more fun

that way. It was always take the more fun route. Yeah. Go ahead. Serve the story. You monsters. Serve the story. Oh, man.

I'm going to try to shoot the eel. Great. Shoot it. Shoot the lamprey eel-like thing, which is at this point, definitely has its tentacles wrapped around Carter's neck and under its arm, and it's trying so hard to rip it off. right now. Uh, close your eyes.

Okay. Hey. All right, one for me. And, uh, you may take narrative control. Okay, so I look back and see that Ella has gone down into the build, so I at least know where she's going. But to me, the immediate concern is getting that the eel or whatever the hell it is. Right.

Off of Carter. So without thinking too much about it, I just turned. I steady myself. I aim as close as I can to what might be its head without putting him in danger. And I just unload the gun. You unload the gun. I unload it.

Oh, it's so loud. It's echoing. And you can hear both of you. It's just like your ears are ringing at this stage as you just unload all seven shots directly into this thing. I let go of it and it starts to drift away from me. The water is still sussing out from the main supply room. So it kind of gets caught into the wave and you watch as it kind of like bounces off of the staircase.

As it just go go down and that whispering that you kind of heard while you were so close to it and holding into it, it just fades away as it fades away. Down onto the staircase and just crashes against the catwalk. Yeah, I was kind of squinting my eyes as it went away. I didn't want too much detail. I was like I was afraid I was going to see a face in it or something. So you just closed your eyes. I didn't close them, but I kind of narrowed them enough that I was just enough to see what its general silhouette was

or that it wasn't alive and still going to attack me, but I'm very scared of it. Even in death, Ella, you grab the piece and you meet up back with Carter and Kirk as you head back into the main area where the engine is and how at this point you can see that, that Lola is just like yowling

and that's kind of writhing inside of its egg glue to the igloo's floating on the little body water we have in the oil room it's actually just kind of it's actually more I would say that's right

because I did say it fell it kind of like fell and tilted a little bit and so you kind of watch some of the quilting like you said of stuff kind of poured out and Lola kind of rolled

onto her side kind of rolling out of the iglo a little bit onto the grading of the metal area. That's right there and she's just kind of like her has her arms up as she's kind of riding on her back a little bit and she's just yowling as loud as she can as she is just, well, a cat

that is screaming. I'm gonna give the piece to Robert and hear and notice this. I had a cat and being a surgeon, have some knowledge of the basics. We can hear this yowling. We're back in the room now. Oh, okay, the minute I heard yowling,

I'd be running for her. Yeah, right. And I'm like, this is not right. Yeah. And so as you bend down, Carter to kind of like comfort. It's okay, baby. She just takes her teeth and just sinks them straight into the meat of your thumb.

I just let her. I just let her. It's okay, just, And she kind of holds her. Get it out. Get it out. She just kind of scratches and she is pulling onto you and she lets go again, but she's still yelling. It's okay, sweetie. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine, honey.

Right. Ella, as you kind of get closer to her, you can see she's twisting and contorting her body in like a way that, by your medical profession opinion, she doesn't seem to be regular for a cat. Is she okay? This is not right. We should get her to the med bay. Robert, can you put this piece back in?

Robert hasn't even paid attention to this process at all. He's already putting the piece back in. Great. Okay, I want to run to the med bay and put her under... Scoop the cat up? Yeah, I'm going with her. And you take it to the trauma bay? Yeah, I'm carrying her in my arms, basically. The first patient of this process,

and you're scratching you and just... I don't care. I don't care. She can shred me up. And then you just get her onto the table, and you know, you can see she's still just... She's not even paying attention to kind of... of where her equilibrium is. She just seems like she wants to fall off the table more than anything else.

Yeah, I'm just holding her to keep her position. You're holding her. And as you're holding on to her, you can feel movement in her belly. You can feel something just pressing up against her skin. Oh, the joy of life. Just literally pushing up against her.

That is just... Oh, a little sweetie. And you can see distension as small parts of her skin are being pushed out. You have a lot of little babies in there. Maybe she's got like five or, I want to put her under and perform surgery. All right, so you want to put her under.

I could probably do it with an injection. I know you're a doctor, but is it one of those things where, like, if you know doctor stuff, you also know? I also. She's going to be okay, right? I also had cats. I don't know. This is not a normal birth. I have to go in there.

She's in distress. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. So I'm going to watch as she goes to put her under. Is it successful? Are we all up there right now? Except for me otherwise.

Except for Robert? Okay. Yeah. I would have needed a little help from you to get up. Right. So I would have helped you up. I want to go check on Robert to make sure the parts back in. Sure.

So we can get this thing going. Sure. So. Do you want to stay down there? When she starts to put Lola under, I, What I'm going to do is I'm going to give him his bayonet back. And I'm going to go down and check on Robert.

Okay. Robert's almost done putting in the piece at this point. L is your forming surgery on this thing. Can't handle it. I know the silence is definitely. It's awful. Oh, man. Oh, no.

I want to peek inside his head. It's good if you find. It's good if you find. This is fixable. Mm-hmm. Super fixable, buddy. Yeah. Ella, as you lay this cat down and you can see this distension as this thing is writhing back and forth and Carter, you're comforting every little bit that you can. You put the mask on her and you kind of watch as Lola just drifts into just unconsciousness.

It just goes right out and goes into her and you take the scalpel and you just carve it, rattle. along the front of her belly, you watch as an arm just lifts itself right out of her tiny belly. And you can see it has long spindly fingers as another arm just pulls it and it splits Lola's belly open as it presses its head out and it has a humanoid face onto it like a skull with the back.

And it slowly starts to pull itself out but it has long, long, long arms and it seems to have dark, just black eyes. It just lets out a screech just as it slowly pulls its legs out and it's pushing. It's taking the mane of this cat and it's just like wrenching it open as it's pulling up its wings. And then suddenly you see just two pairs of wings, two pairs, that's four wings, just kind of lift up at its side as it starts to flutter and it just kind of lops itself off as it goes into a gallop on the grating. of the floor.

I don't have enough time to react to that? I'm just telling you that it's wrenching itself out. How do you react to that? I would, I mean, because I'm right in there with a scalpel. I scalpel right up in the fucking right through your, right through here. You just right into its face. It escalated so fast. I'm like cupping Lola's head in my hands.

Is she still alive at all? She's dead. Oh, God. I'm just sobbing then. I'm freaking out. So you scalpel, oh, I'm, you take it, see if I can. Ew. So you scalpel this thing, and you kind of lift your blade

straight up into its mouth and it kind of screeches as it takes one of its, it kind of screeches as it takes one of its claws and rakes it down. And it takes your hands right where your scalpel is, and you feel with an incredible amount of strength, just push your hand down with the scalpel into it as it lifts its head up, but then it loses that strength. It goes right back into its head again as it kind of

flops down. Yeah. Do you hear the engines are now starting to kick back up and rumble again as you're holding this thing like a kebab. I've got Lola's body and I'm wrapping it up in her shawl from her thing and I'm just holding her and I'm on the steps and I'm just rocking back and forth, and I'm just crying.

I'm going to go over to you and ask to hold her. She didn't deserve this. How did this happen? I don't care if anything happens to people. This is probably all our fault anyway. But like, she deserved better than this. I know. I've never been able to.

really find somebody I could connect with. And this whole time, all I've been worried about is my cat, Athena. That stupid brat is all I ever cared about. And I know she's gone. You don't know that. I mean, I ran a whole... Everybody's gone. No, I mean, the humans probably are.

But, I mean, she probably got out, and she's... Who knows, the world gone? Maybe the cats will be the next ones to evolve, and they'll do a better job of it than we did. But I mean, part of me was hoping that, like, that this was just something that was affecting our civilization. But if they can be born out of other animals, then this is it.

We fucked everything up. This is all bad. Yeah. And I don't... She was the only one who was ever there for me. So I know how you feel, and I'm sorry. I mean, I've only known her. I met Lola on the cruise ship.

So, you know, like... And I met her days after you and look at me, so... Yeah, yeah, but we need to... I know this is going to sound dumb, but I really just, I want to just keep her. Can I just keep her until we can decide what to do? I don't...

I think whatever was in her that was bad is gone now. You look back to where whatever that thing was, and you see that it's gone. Son of a bitch. The body's not there anymore. The body of the creature. Howie, did you see where it went? Howie's passed out.

Oh, gosh. Between, not like, he's not a coma, but between the intense amount of pain from humping his way up here and all that, all the exertion that took, and then seeing that, it just, the lights went out for a second. Okay, I'm gonna run over to Howie.

He's bleeding. He's, uh, bleeding without a puncture wound. You can see that there's a bulge, kind of right where his ribs are. It seemed to be pressing out his skin a little bit, and you can definitely see the light speckle of blood on his lips.

So, Kurt. Well, I'm gonna tell Robert. That's right, you went back with me with Robert. Right, and so you actually were there at the moment when Robert came in. Just put the thing back up and you saw as the motors was starting to rumble and kick back up again. He kind of pats this thing and goes, you have a chance, you know. Of all those assholes upstairs, this one included, you're maybe the one who could have a chance.

What? I'm just telling you now, if you see an opportunity, just don't hesitate, all right? Don't hesitate. And he kind of leaves you with that cliffhanger as he starts walking up towards the main deck up to where the cabin is, where the, not the cabin, the infirmary. Not even the infirmary goes back up to where the bridge.

Yes, wow. Well, we do have a, I mean, I'm out so I don't know this, but we know that there's a monolith coming. Well, sure, but that's the point, is Robert's going to at least to where. where the bridge is at this stage, and we'll resolve that when it's time. Okay.

Robert, where are you going? To the bridge, to maybe get us to one point in which we can die on dry land. Okay. I won't be far behind because we think there's still someone on the ship. So let me go tell the others.

We got it up running and we're heading to the bridge. I'll meet you up there. You do that, Kurt. Okay. So I run to the door. of the surgical bay, and I see him passed out, I see him holding a dead cat, and there's blood everywhere.

There's blood everywhere. And I come in excited because we've got the engine going, I'm like, hey, what the fuck happened in here? Kirk, I need you to help me get Howie up on a bed. I need to fix him. Okay, so I go over and...

Lift him up. Place him down. Ella, it's time to... bleed him. A lot of pressure. Oh, six one for me. Do you, oh, I get a chance for this actually. Not for me, so it's for you.

Okay, I'm going to clean up, clean the area and feel around for the issue, because we never really got to talk about what happened. Yeah, the issue is that he, He's been walking around with something jutting into his side. And with as much running as he's been doing and not staying still, he's aggravating some kind of internal injury. So I'll have to open him up.

Yep. And you drain it. You basically let the blood that isn't going anywhere. You give it a place to go to and you kind of let it out, but you make sure it's sterilized and clean. You use the supplies that are readily available there to patch him up with a bit of a and wrap them ribs till the day is long. Wrapped them ribs till the day and

fresh pressure. It's not gonna feel great. Yeah, but that's, yeah, he's a, he's a little mummy now. So, you know. Howie would you like to wake up from consciousness at this point while she's working on you? Sure. All right. Yeah.

You kind of flutter awake as she's finishing up the bandages. So as I flutter awake, the last image I saw was the horror was coming out of Lola. And that's my first reaction of like, like you're coming out of like, I immediately try to fight my way out. But the pain and it's just like, oh, like I almost go out again,

but I catch myself and I'm like, where is it? Where did it go? Right, Kirk, forgot to mention. There's a four-winged monstrosity that came out of Lola, and I thought I killed it, and now its body's gone. Sure. Okay.

Yeah, we're like in a really terrible 80s B horror movie. Horror really good one. I guess that depends on your perspective. Is he okay? Are you okay? Is everybody okay? I'm never going to be okay. I'm good enough for now.

I've given him a little bit of morphine, but not enough that he can't react and move. So just there, just to keep, like you said, keep the edge off. So as you kind of finally finished bundle up, you can hear Robert coming up on the comm into the main goes. Ella, you have a small problem here. I need to come to the bridge over. On my way out, I'll press the comm.

Should I go if he's got a medical problem? I'm good. She's stabilized me enough to get back up on my feet. I'm just in pain. Okay. Between the morphine and the bandages and the bloodletting, I'm about as good as one could be in the situation. Okay.

Come on, Kirk. Let's go to the bridge. Yeah. I'll grab a crutch if there's one handy. Okay. Maybe to give myself a little bit of. Carter, I'm so sorry. The moment that you were hoping to create in this situation

has been perverted in this circumstance. Yeah. I'm honestly willing to honor the, circumstances in which Lola gave birth as the moment, but the question that I have to ask you is, did it give you hope? Can I pull him aside and talk to him? Absolutely. Yeah. You're still holding. I'm like rocking in place and like holding her body, basically. You head up there. I'll see you in a second. I'll go up with her. Um, Carter. Um, I'm so incredibly sorry.

What if it was, I mean, I heard those voices from the eels. What if I did this to her? Maybe me taking care of her is, why she got in this situation. No, Carter, we're all in a pretty bad situation here. And I just, I thought if I could just take care of her, that that would be something, that I'd have some control over,

and I couldn't even fucking do that. But Carter, you did. Man, you did. You did take care of her. Look at her. I know, but... Look, sometimes... Sometimes the final score is not...

What's as important as knowing that you did your damnedest to win. And in all this shitty, shitty mess, you found a bright spot in it. In this world with no light, you found one. That's something to, that's something to revel in, man. And I don't think you need to feel bad about what happened because this kind of thing

is happening to everyone, everything, but... Is that supposed to make me feel better? I don't know if it's supposed to make you feel better. I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but I think I just want to, I think I just want to be alone. I think I just want to die here.

I think I just, I think this is it. I think this is it for me. I don't think I've got anything else left. I don't know. I can't help anybody. I can't even help a fucking cat. It's the only thing I'm good at. I can't help people.

Carter, you've already helped us. You helped us earlier? You steered the ship into the wave, which if you hadn't had done that, none of us would still be here for that. We wouldn't have the hope that we have. But we do, because you fought for Lola, you fought for us too.

And you've done your best. That's all any of us can ask for. Okay. And you don't, it's not, you don't have anybody. You have us. So what are you going to do? Like what happens when we find this, this signal? Well, what's the next thing?

I need, I need a goal. I need something I can think about. That if I can just get this thing, I just, I need a new goal. I feel like. I mean, geez, is it dumb? Is it dumb to want to bury her?

No. On land? Not at all. That's what we're doing. We're going to get our ass to land and we're going to give her a proper burial. Okay. All right?

All right. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a drag on any of the sort of stuff, but it's just, this is... No, I understand. You've, that's a,

you've suffered a tremendous loss. We all have. We all liked Lola. She was very sweet. She was very sweet. She used to do this thing. Like, You know when, like, you can see that they're smiling?

Like, I know they're not really smiling, but she, like, she would smile at me. She smiled at me. Yeah. And I can't get out of my head what her face was like at the end. Like, she was scared, and I wasn't there. And I just, I got to get that out of my head. I got to just, I want to replace that with her smiling face. You know, and I, okay, okay, I'm fine.

I'm fine. I'm good at I'm fine I'm like I don't even I can't even be mad Like whatever that thing that came out of her Like it's probably just another animal Like maybe that's like the next form of life or something I can't even

I can't even get revenge You know like it's All right Okay we're gonna bear here We're gonna barrier And it's gonna be as good as it can be Yeah Okay

Thank you Yeah man Let's head back up to the bridge Alan Howie, as you make your way up to the bridge, which is still spider-webbed from the crashing swell earlier, you can distinctly see that what is in front of you is a giant monolith, and it is taking up a huge portion of what is the main visible front at the moment. And on the edges of its profile, you can see the small crust of land that are laid out in either way. But Robert kind of breaks it to you as soon as we get and goes. So the swells behind us.

That's in front of us. Land is behind it. And the math doesn't add up. If we go around, the swell's going to hit us. We can't go through because it's right in the way. If we can get around behind it,

won't we have cover from it? Won't the monolith block some of the way? Won't break the swell around it? Assuming we get behind it in time. Well, let's do that. Let's stop talking about it and just do it. I'm going straight ahead, but, you know, we lost a lot of time with the engine.

So it's going to literally be at the very last minute. I mean, can we throw some more stuff overboard to get lighter? I mean, what's going to help? That's actually a great idea. No, that's absolutely. It's toss off or anything that's extra weight

so we can get a little extra speed. Even one knot will make a huge difference. Okay. Okay. Let's go. I'm going to run down to the... All hands on deck. To the deck.

Yeah. Start throwing shit over. Yeah, I'll push through the pain for this. Throwing pool chairs. Be. Through the pain. Go easy, man. Yeah.

Go easy. I have Lola wrapped in deletable. We can't perform surgery again if we're. Yeah, but I've got my hands roast up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Up deck. Yeah, I mean, when I say push the pan, I mean like a pool deck chair is gonna weigh 10 pounds.

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I don't even know if I can carry the oxygen tank anymore at this point, you might have to take it or you might have to take it, but yeah, I'm trying to help. Still, helping hurts. Let's see how it goes. Oh, two six is one.

Wow. All right. You want a challenge? As always. Nope. It's all you, man. Yeah, so, yeah, so I just, you know, like I'm on a crutch,

whatever I can grab with a hand is what I'm currently dragging, or throwing over the side, just, but with every move, it's excruciating, even with the morphine. It's like, it's gone from a very sharp pain to a very dull pain, but it's still pain. Right.

And it hurts, you know, it's taken a little bit more wind out. But you do contribute. I do. And you get it out. And easily at this point, you know, the pounds out up, 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 50 pounds, 100 pounds. As the minutes tick by,

you throw off everything that you possibly can that's not bolted down at this stage. We can just see this thing looming growing behind us. It's just, it is. It's like a slow, just like a wall that's just slowly just moving closer and closer. And at this point, you can look up and you can still barely see the top of it.

And it's, you know, it's punctuated, by this ashen red sky because of the moon with its color right now. It just basically looks like this blue-red blood tide that just wants to just smash down upon you. And as you occasionally toss things over, you can see moving at the same speed as you are. You can see that these things are just alongside with you and the dolphins going alongside the boat.

Not a far analogy at this point. it would be lovely if they were a dolphins. But instead you just see these like wiggling worms of just things and they seem to just be surrounding you at this stage just falling alongside the boat. So you make it right to where the model is. And you begin to make that curve.

You begin to turn. I want to try to throw one of the anchors it's got like a chain winch thing to give us a little bit of drag to swing around to make a tighter turn behind the monolith. Into the shadow of the model. Oh, like the Batmobile

shooting the grappling hook out. Okay, cool. I'm thinking mainly it'll just drag us and make it easier for us to make a tighter turn. There they are. I think they're a roll. That's a roll.

There you go, buddy. He's too bad ones. Keep him like that. Keep him like that. Did his moment count? His moment counted, but I think the important question of did it bring hope?

Okay. I think despite the pep talk, if that moment for him didn't give him hope. And I still, you did not answer the question yet. So I'm willing to ask you again, did that moment give you hope? I think I still have, he was able to get me back on, like, having some sort of purpose and stuff. So yeah, I guess I think it did give me hope, that I could at least accomplish that. Okay, you know.

Because in that circumstance, then, I can give you the hope dice. And he already got the one out of that one. Yeah, so I give you the thing. Is your moment on top? Was your moment on top? I'm so sorry, was your moment on top? It was not. No!

I need it back. Your moment needs to be on top for it to be fulfilled. Oh, okay, so I don't need the die. Yeah, so unfortunately, since the moment was not on top. All right. Yeah. It's fair. It's fair.

Yeah. Oh, oh, oh, one for me. Wow. Sorry, sorry, y'all. Narrative control. Two sixes. Yeah, you got it. All right, so you, with this babusa,

you kind of like, I mean, it's one of those points. You're not going to lift the anchor up and drop it down at this point. What you're going to do is you're going to go over and hitch out the release. Yeah, the manual release. You're going to hit this big lever

and kind of hear as it just and as soon as it hits the water at that kind of speed, you kind of, feel as the whole boat just just like bends and you hear actually the weight of the metal just as it bends forward and you hear

Robert go on the comms go, what the fuck did you just do down there? Helping with a turn a bit. You're going to literally snap the boat in half with that kind of a drag. Just all it's done, get up here. And you kind of hear it's like you go down and you and everyone who wasn't standing or lurching at one point just got shun.

shifted off to the left as they felt kind of weight, just press into it. I mean, you're already in a lot of pain anyway. But you too, as you're tossing things over, like, Kurt, you were tossing something over when it suddenly went in, and it was barely, you just holding onto the railing that you didn't topple over for the moment

while you were trying to chuck stuff overboard. But, yes, you are making that sweet right-hand a little hook. that hook, that anchor drift. Yeah. You know. So is the boat in the shadow of this monolith now? Absolutely.

It's been in the shadow for a while. Let's see if we can. And Kirk, as you begin to bend around the side of the monolith as you look towards and at this point, you had to cut, I mean, you didn't want to take a wide berth around it. You needed to get as close to it as you possibly can in order to minimize your, the,

time and yeah the time to go into it so you're almost alongside the monolith when you start getting into this kind of drift around this you know hundred story hundred story building that's like easily just you know a hundred by hundred you know size so as you're going around it kirk you see something at the monolith you see something that is eyeline perfectly with you And you look at the monolith and you see a yellow light and a doorway. That just seems to just be right there. And it wasn't there when you were looking for a moment. But as soon as you turn your head back, you see it's a bright yellow door

just laid out along the slick pathway of the monolith. So you crest along. Does he the only seen that? Does anyone else save this door? I'll pop up. What the f- Do we? No.

No, we don't. All the three of you, only Kirk sees the door. What are you talking about, man? There's a door. It's like a yellow, just seriously, do you guys see that? No, man, did you swallow, did you hit your head? Did you swallow a lot of water?

No, I'm like, it must be, the monoliths must be trying to trick us. I mean, we know the monoliths are connected to these monsters to apocalypse or whatever. If you're seeing something there, I think it's trying to lure you in, man. Well, you said you heard something, right? I heard whispers from that eel,

like human whispers. So we've heard whispers. Did you hear those whispers? No, I didn't hear any whispers. Okay, you're hearing things, you're seeing things. You really don't see that? Really don't see that. Can I call up to Robert?

Oh, Robert's in the bridge still. Yeah, can I call it? up to him. Yeah, on the calm. Yeah, Robert, do you see this light on the monolith next to us? No. And he says it in a voice that seems very commanding

and very bitter almost. No. He seemed real sure about that. The wave, did it come? Did it break around us? Oh, that's right. The wave's literally right behind you guys, yes. So you can actually feel as you're starting to get around

and you're seeing this thing, Kirk, as it's kind of coming up, the bottom of the swell is starting to lift you up as you're running around the monolith, and you're actually at the point of where, if you can imagine, it's like tilting itself, bending the, you know, the top of the boat

towards the monolith as it's kind of cresting around. And for a moment, you're actually looking at the monolith if it's like above you more than it is like to the side of you because the swell's pushing you in such a way. And it's just banking around, the monolith as you're just edging along the opposite side of it. You can just tell that you're just right there. Can we see any of the intended land now that we're on the other side of this monolith?

Yes. Yes, you can. But I think I'm trying to decide. Because Robert's driving the boat right now. So yeah, it's basically Robert is getting to decide whether we're going to stop. and try to go into this monologue or keep going. He wants us to keep going, right? He wants to keep going.

He's just driving the boat as quick as he can. But he does yell, Kirk. It's now or never, man. What is he talking about, Kirk? I don't know. How close are we to that? How close are we to it? For narrative purposes, I will say that you could jump for it.

I mean, we only got one chance for this. Kirk, I trust you. If you say you saw something there, I mean, we're not gonna get out of this alive anyway. Maybe at least we'll learn something. I still have the gun. Yeah, it's empty. You empty the clip.

I want to throw it at the door. And I want to see what it does. One die. You watch as the gun just clatters along the side of the monolith and just kind of, just like falls down and makes an unceremonious splash as it falls into the water. as you bend around the side of the monolith.

And you are now on the other side of the plinth. Six dice, six truths. Kirk, you get the first truth. It's not the last time I'll see that door. Or a door like it. Great. First truth. Ella, second truth.

There are no people. on the other end of that signal. Carter. I can see the door now. On the monolith. You can see the door. I can see the door. Right.

Howie. My book only has one sentence to write left. The remainder of this swell. Oh. I know what my truth is. Now that you've passed this swell, you can see a large gray rock dipping from the heavens in the water.

From the sky? From behind the swell that you just saw come on the other side, you can see the moon inside of the ocean several miles away. Last one. Robert knows what's in that door. Great. Six.

Candles. Six truths. You cut across the side of this monumental, just monument. And the swell, I mean, this is a size of a wave, and you can see it, it's like the water is cresting all the way to the top of it, almost even eclipsing it. But it's just making,

runway on either side of it as it just acts like a perfect break for the wave that's coming into it and it doesn't even look like it cares you hear no snapping you hear no pressure you see no strain on this thing at all and it just stands like a perfect bastion against this monumental colossal I mean, extinction-sized wave that you've managed to get right behind. And more than anything, it now generates a backflow that just pushes you. It's forward at double, triple the speed you were going to

now that you've made it along the other way. And you ride this bitch all the way to land. As you hold on for dear life, the last thing that you all remember before, you black out from unconsciousness, is hitting the bank of the island with such force that you all are slammed in front of wherever you were,

despite bracing on, and like getting into a car accident going 30 miles an hour, you just whack straight into whatever you're holding on to. and you wake up to the sound of seagulls. What's the ground like that we're on? Are we still on the boat? You're still on the boat.

Okay. I mean, one of you may have been flung off the ship if you'd like to take that position. Have we heard animals in this last few weeks? Nope. Yeah, I actually wake up thinking I've died because the seagulls are such a foreign sound to me at this point that the only logic

my brain can come up with in this state is that I've died and I'm, I've moved on. Like, like, it doesn't make sense that I'm hearing the sound. Right. I assume it's some kind of like rope swinging or something that's causing a creaking sound. I don't hear, you know, bird's chirping. I think it's metal rubbing against metal because I'm the same way. I'm like, there's no way. I can say I was the one who was flung from the ship.

So I get up and I check sand all covering you. I check Lola's body. Lola's body's still there. It's mangled and broken even more than it was beforehand, but I mean, it's good that she's bundled up. Yeah. And this is, does it seem like normal sand or does it seem like moon sand? It is a black-gray sand.

Okay. Yeah. And if you take a moment to put your hand and rake it, you will see gold and sand underneath. Okay. Land Ho. I'm gonna get up and check everybody.

We're missing Carter. But does everybody just seem to have superficial injuries? Yeah, everyone seems to just have bruises, bumps. Robert is gone. Oh, shit. He's gone. He is not on the bridge.

He is gone. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm used to getting hit like that. I actually take them, like scuba tank and turn it on and take some oxygen. Help with my breathing. Yeah, well, it is pure oxygen. Well, it's a good mix. And that feels good.

For a second, that feels good. Then I'll shut it off. Yeah. I'm going to start yelling for Carter. Carter. You hear your name yelled out. I'm down here. Just give me a moment.

I got to finish something. I got thrown off the ship. Are you okay? Yeah, I'm good. There's sand down here. We're on land technically. Okay. You've got the rope to maybe help pull us down. Yeah, I mean, you could tie it off. I mean, you went in at 30 miles an hour. You went into inland. So at this point, wrapping it would just allow you to all repel down.

That's what I, that's basically. I would actually like to go to the stores that I have the key to and pick up some emergency food and medical. Let's see how much is left. Is the thing we killed edible? It did all slop off. Ooh, okay. Me. And it begins.

So you grab a hold of medical supplies, enough that you can fill at least a bag of which you can carry with. And some dried food. Rations, MRIs or something, all of it. Great. Can goods. I've been digging.

I've been digging a grave, basically. Right there on the beach. Yeah. Great. And at this point, I've gotten down below to the golden sand. Yep. And I go until I've got about maybe two feet deep or so. And then I want to place Lola's wrapped up body in it.

And then start methodically, just wordlessly, just putting all the sand back on top of it. As you kind of put Lola back onto the sand, you kind of lay her kind of broken, in misshapen body onto it, and you start pushing the sand on top of her to kind of have this makeshift grave. And there's still that conflicting concept of why, you know,

and it's so hard to get the image of what came out of her, out of your mind. And at that point, you do hear whispering just that same kind of sound that you heard when you were so close to that eel. And there's something

that's just permeating your brain and I'm going to write to you what you hear. I had a narrative idea of what I might hear, but I like, let's see, Maybe I'll guess. Maybe it'll be like to be you guys. We'll see.

Oh, man. I know. I thought it was rad. It was a phenomenal story choice. That is a, it wasn't, it wasn't. I hate you and love you for it. John Carpenter's the thing. I saw that thing bust out of there, and I know exactly how this looks.

You just broke my and my character. Jonesy's supposed to make it, okay? None of us. Yeah, but then they, It just removes all of that in the second movie. You mean the third movie? Third movie, of course, yeah. Even poor Bishop had to be in pieces.

Rough. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen it. You've had a few years. Is that what you were thinking? Not at all. Really? Yeah. Oh, boy.

Do you want to write to me what you were going to thinking and we can have a discussion about it secretly? Yes. All right. You didn't bring enough for the rest of class. While this is going on, I am going to try to look for, just something, anything really,

scrap a board, anything that we can tie the rope to once we're down there and use to, like, pull the oxygen tank behind us, so one of us doesn't have to go. Oh, I see. You want to make a little makeshift. Yeah, just a sled, basically a sled. Because we're on sand and as long as we're on sand. Well, do you want to use one of those boards?

One of those. Don't we have the gurneys? Yeah, the gurneys. Oh, yeah. To just strip the mattress off of it and use the bayonet punch holes. on it? Sure. And make a sled.

So the first thing you notice when you kind of get down onto the water is that you do notice that the island looks like it was just hit with a tsunami. Like, troken trees are everywhere, and things are just snapped and moved around, and it's basically just foliage is just laid out all across whatever's left of this little island. And you do, you can definitely tell that you are, I want to call it like a deserted island. but you are definitely on a small island, not far. I like them both. Yeah, they're both good.

I think literally you hear both on top of each other. Okay. Yes. But the voice that was telling me your thing is not the voice I'm described. No. You hear the one that you wrote. Okay. But you also hear the one that you wrote.

that I wrote. Okay. Yes. So let's just merge them. Yeah. Is that cool with you? Yeah. Because it serves both purposes in my mind.

Okay. As far as what it is. So, yeah, you see me stand up after finishing, patting this makeshift grave down, and I look like there's some sort of hollow kind of look in my eyes. Like I just look like I'm completely, you know, just, I'm not really there. Yeah.

But to answer your question, I mean, it's a broken world and this desert island. It definitely looks, it doesn't look like the ashen destroyed, like, continent that you left and knew of when you went into it. It looks, besides being hit by a major natural catastrophe, it is still land. And even though you seem to be a little higher than you would ever intend to be, It is still works. Great. Are we in danger of another wave hitting this island? No, all you see is the giant celestial body inside of the water.

That seems to be closer every single time you look at it. So it's like a reflection of the moon, but it's a place we can actually go. Is that what it seems like? I think it's the moon. I think it's the actual moon. Yeah. I think it's impacted. The moon is in the ocean.

Literally. Literally in the ocean. Like the bottom part of it is touching the ocean? It's breached our atmosphere. Yeah, not in the horizon, but in the planet. In fact, what you can see as you kind of look towards it, is you do see that the area that was above you, that ash and colored rock that was around.

You can see, like, amongst it is like a halo of, like just broken and like floating rock. That just seems to be around it. So it almost has this dust cloud that occasionally obscures it, but is just like a halo of dust around it. So yes. But that is somewhere we can go.

Yeah. Or try to go. But the moon's behind us. Yeah, in the ocean. A miles behind us. Yeah, we're at the what we know. we know as the radio tower. So if it wasn't abundantly clear,

and there's a lighthouse. When the moon impacted the sea, it created these giant waves. Oh, that's what made the waves. Which pushed you all in, and now it's just moving in the water. Coming towards us at a slow pace or something? It's hard to tell.

Too big? It's huge. It's too big, the top of the movement on it. I'd like to look around for the seagull. that I haven't heard in weeks. You look up and you see that the island that you're on does have a... It does have a little bit of a mountain

that is laid out inside of it, and there does appear to actually be another monolith that's just piercing out straight from the mountain. I won't say it's doing that thing where it's like coming straight through the mountain kind of a situation. Yeah. But it's definitely through and up,

but you would have to climb up the rock face in the mountain in order to get to it. Because it can't ever be easy. And the seagulls are on the mountain? You can see a couple of them are just kind of like... Circling? Like birds do. Just kind of floating around the mountain

where it is. Just for what it's worth. Well, I'm kind of looking around too, and I see the lighthouse. Oh, the lighthouse we described as well, too. Yeah. Which looks like it got the shit kicked out of it. Right.

Yeah. And that's when I see the light come on. The light from the monolith? No, from the lighthouse. The lighthouse. Oh, the lighthouse. It was a truth that you had determined earlier. Yeah.

Oh, I see. So it was the light that you described earlier, but it's, okay, yeah, I would be surprised if a lighthouse could withstand that kind of a title wave, but for the purposes of the story, yeah, you could see it with light on. It might be a fancy annihilation lighthouse. The point is, as you look at it,

you can see that despite having, you know, crumbled and kind of broken from the impact, it's still standing even if it's at a bit of a tilt and you watch as the light turns on and you actually see it start spinning in a kind of an oblique angle. So an odd axis. I know you all think I'm crazy with seeing lights, but everyone does see that, right?

See the lighthouse light that just came on? Oh, wow. Okay, good, because nobody saw the light coming from the monolith, but everyone sees this now? Yes. I saw it. Not when I first looked, but I saw it. I saw the light on the monolith, too.

You saw it? Yeah, not at the start, but then while we were passing it, yeah, I saw it. You threw your gun at it. Are you hearing the voices, too? I'm not hearing voices. I'm not hearing voices. In a world where monsters rip out of cats and things from the ocean are trying to eat us, I'll believe anything.

Sure. If you saw a door, hell, you saw a door. If you're hearing voices, man, I don't doubt it for a second. That's a thing that the voices are not people. They're people I know who I know are not here. What? Well, one was. I mean, it doesn't matter.

This is more evidence that both he and I are losing it than anything else. I don't hear voices though. Yeah, but I'm seeing stuff and you're seeing stuff. People aren't seeing those things. It is dark. We can't tell, right? Because there's no sun. It is dark.

The world is dark. Maybe we're just further along than these two are. Did anybody react? Do any of the monsters react to the lighthouse coming on? Ooh, good point. Let's do this. As you guys are having this discussion and kind of talking about who's losing it and what's losing it.

You can start to hear the regular waves that are coming in, but you also start to hear just the sounds of footsteps. Oh, hell not. As you look behind you and you see hundreds of creatures breaching the water, and they're not running, they're not going fast. They just are kind of, and as soon as they get out of the water enough, they lift themselves up onto their own. upper segments and you watch as these centipedal kind of legs start to slowly move forward.

Some of them stay low and are moving on all of their small little legs, but you can watch as just they are coming out of the ocean and once the first one's breach, you see more of them and it becomes its own sea of creatures cresting out of the water straight into the land. Fucking run. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really care one way or the other, but if we want to go to the lighthouse, you might

as well go now. How close are we? That's the closest structure, I assume. It's closer than the mountain. We got to go to the White House. Sure. Fine. Howie, your heart still.

Yeah. Sure is. Two six and one. Oh, all right. All right. Why don't you describe to me what happens? So I see this coming and I'm like sleds, oxygen tanks, just like the boat. We need to shed some weight.

So I take one last big breath of the oxygen. Yeah. I throw it. Boom. We go. All four of you just book it. For the lighthouse. Do we still have the bayonet?

Yeah, I've got the bayonet still. So you run up to the lighthouse. And like the leaning tower of Pisa, you can see it's been pulled up from its foundation a little bit as the water. hit it and kind of tilted it towards the water. So you have to go in and the door is actually slightly in the foundation a bit. And as you wrench it open, you can kind of see that everything's on a bit of a tilt.

But you, you know, it is a lighthouse. And besides being recently flooded, so everything's kind of scattered and moved around, it seems none the worse for where. What do you want to do? Go. Go up. Go up.

Go up. So as you... Yes. Yes. As you close the door behind you, you run up to the lighthouse and you get up to the oblique angle and you can see it,

just continuing to kind of spin at its weird oblique angle. From the top, you get a much better vantage point of where the monolith is on the, if the lighthouse is facing towards the ocean, if you turn the other way to look towards land, you can see the monolith. behind you and you watch as all of the creatures kind of come close to the lighthouse and some stop right at the base leading into the ocean and then some fan out and they leave they leave just they don't surround the whole building they just kind of stop at some point and almost like the wave with the monolith kind of breaking the wave the

The lighthouse almost breaks them as they line up like a procession, just across with a clear pathway leading straight into the mountain. They all just stand there. They're rolling out the welcome wagon. And at that point, you kind of watch as some of them lean their head back and they tilt their torsos

at Ford and they begin to sway in a perfect, synchronous manner and they begin to sing and they admit this song this piercing wailing sound that is awful to your ears kirk it is awful it is awful it sounds beautiful it's lovely odd hat says such harmony, the swaying emotions together as they come into it. The voices get loud. As you look down, you can see these three all dealing with the sound. What do I hear? Yeah, how does it sound to tell you?

I never wanted to hear in your life. Carter, you, um, as you're watching Howie kind of ache and pain and Ella. All three are transfixed for a moment. And you, uh, you hear the voices getting louder in your, head. I need to go. I need to be away from the rest of you. What do you mean you need to go? Where are you going to go? The voices are telling me. They're telling me that this is your fault. This is whose fault? Your fault. I know they're not real. They can't be real. I have to be... How can you leave? These creatures... They're telling me, they're telling me, they're trying to push me to hurt you.

These horrible creatures. And I'm not going to do it because I know, I know in my right mind that you've, You've all tried to help me. Everyone else sees the road that they've made us, right? No one else is confused or curious about why in God's name these things. Just don't swarm this. The sheer magnitude of them can probably knock this lighthouse into the ocean right now. Why aren't they doing it? So we just, what?

Walk out there in the middle of them? My God, I wish they would stop. Whatever that noise is. Why? Why? They're making such beautiful music. No, they're talking. They're telling me that it's your fault.

that... Oh, it sucks. It sucks like nothing I've never heard. Oh, my God, I've heard before. My mom's there, too. What? Yeah, she says it's dark. She says it's cold there.

I think they're trying to, I don't know, beckon us to some sort of afterlife or something. We may already be dead. This might just be all in our heads. I'm going to pull out the book. Yeah. And I'm going to open to the last page where,

where, like I said in my truth, there's only one thing left to write. Right. And I kind of shake off the noise for a second and I focus on tapping you. Yeah, it's there. It's like just trying to get, trying to focus on the book and trying to focus on what I have to write. And it's just in my head and I just write the last words are, and they lived happily ever after. And I sign my name and I sign her name in the book and I close it. Yep.

And get it. Close that book. complete that oh wow nothing and nothing nothing straight straight neutral that's it's not on the top it's not on the top

okay all right so you write okay how do we resolve this because you write it it's not like that can be denied of you but you what I'm intending to do is close the book

and follow the path okay all right I'm already Like, you got it? I know what it is. Okay. So here it is. Howie, is you grab your book to finish the project that has taken you most of your life since your wife died to end.

You pull it out and you... The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors. Fivers claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time.

And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the eight. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter? Some lighter music here. Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries? the show that jumpstarted all of our love of true crime. I'm Ellen Marsh.

And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime campy TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry. You'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people, mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday, you can listen to our true crime rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week.

So come and join us, wherever you listen to your podcast. Know that you're going to write this last sentence before you walk into that pathway, but you open the book to find that it is completely waterlogged and stained, and everything has the ink has been smeared and air. Every page is ruined. Nothing is left except for the last blank page in which you write and they lived happily ever after and you sign it and you put the book down

and you place it in the edge of the lighthouse table. Five candles, five truths. This is the part of the game. game in which things get dangerous. Howie, we start with you. You lost the candle, so it is your first truth. Even though my eyes see that the book is destroyed and empty, my memory of the book stays indoors. So it's not, even though by the dice it was a failure, to me, it's, I still get to take this, when I go will be a theoretical object to. to be and go into whatever afterlife I'm met with to be with my.

That's a perfect use of a truth to help against the dice. So, awesome. Ella, you will never see the store. Kirk. Carter does hear his mom. Carter does hear his mom. Ella. The singing is the only comfort I've had since this all started.

Last one. The moon is changed directions. and is now pulling away. Is that something I can say? That's a truth. The truth is a truth. Yeah. But you're saying,

but if I hear you correctly, you're saying that the moon is not heading towards, he said it's now heading away. Yeah. And I can even say that this door, which I can see, is flickering now. Like I know there's a limited time window,

I get you, I get you. Like we're passing into some new phase. I see what you're saying. The moon, and at this point, none of you, I mean, you're not close enough to them, I'll have to see the door or anything, but I think I can accept that the moon is changing its course. Okay.

Because if I hear your intent of your truth, if it's that you want to say that the time frame of whatever door phenomenon is adjusting. Yeah. But I will tell you that the moon has nothing to do with it. Okay. So if you want, you can say that Carter can see that the door in his mind is flickering

and it is fading. And this is the- the door that's on the mountain that's in the direction of this path. Yes, the pathway that it's being laid before you. I'm like, we need to go. The choice has been made for us. You just have to follow along. I'll give Ella the bayonet and say, hey, you're going to be a lot more,

this is going to be a lot more use to you than me. I don't even know how much more time I got left. I'm just going to stay here a while and listen to the meeting. All right, and I give it to, at this point, everybody gets to make their own choice, and I respect that. Howie has been about time,

the time, and he, how he didn't finish the book because he wanted every second, but looking out in front of him to what he sees, he understands that he's out of time. So he makes that final act

to tell himself it's okay. Whatever comes next, it's okay. So I'll hand him and I say, you still got a little fight left in you? I'll give him the bandette, and I'll go, let's go see what's in that monolith. Kirk, Howie, Carter, you make yourself out of the monolith or out of the lighthouse and you start walking.

And you weren't far when you were mentioning a procession. As you stand out of the lighthouse, you can see they're just lined up, making a perfect wall on either side of you. And you can see, they aren't making a direct pathway, but they just seem to be splitting in a way. And if you were to bother enough to get on a step ladder and look out over, you could see that they are extending all around. but really all you see is the cold bodies of these creatures just swaying together. Most of them lifting their heads up and just seem to be swaying.

And at first you can, the ones that are closest to you as you first lead into it, you can hear the sounds of whispers and I don't know if you even want to look at them or if you would just rather keep your head down and forward. but it's eerie. I mean, obviously, it's painful for the people who I've described that it is painful for. Yeah, I'm just looking dead ahead.

I'm trying to, trying my best to keep my composure as this. Because obviously, if it was loud in there, it's dead. It's very loud. Yeah. So it's like white noise almost at this point. You're like ringing. So I'm just trudging forward with the noise. The only thing that's helping is the gunshots that probably have given you a little bit.

Yeah. Tonitis. Yeah. And you've stayed behind. And Ella, you... So before we leave, I'll give her a hug and I'll say, good luck. Yeah.

Are you sure this is what you want? We've been a team so far. And the team's made it this far. I don't know if we should split up now. It's just so beautiful. I just want to sit here and listen. You can listen along the way. I'll put a little smile on my face,

a little smirk. So Ella, as you leave with Kirk, as you come down the steps, and he convinces you that whatever you can do, we can all do together, as you come down and you walk out the door, and you start to step away from the lighthouse, you can feel them, you can hear the impacts of the ground as they close in behind you. and you can feel the pressure almost, just the presence of them, just filling the void that you are creating when you step forward. And every once in a while, you can occasionally feel a soft,

just tentacle, just brisk your hair on the back of your neck, or slightly shove your shoulder and knock yourself forward a little bit. Upsetting that they are doing nothing other than just fucking with you, pushing you and prodding you. And everyone else, since you seem to be the one in the behind at the moment, they just press and push

as you move towards the mountain, Carter. You begin this. begin this walk with the three others. And I've mentioned that the voices are loud, and I don't need to say that to you again. But does Carter have long hair like you do? Sure. You can feel something, Carter.

And when you attempt to move some of your hair back away from your ear, you can actually feel something like a large, pull your hair back. You feel and you hear hand bumps into something. And at first you worry that maybe it's one of the tentacles that have been prodding and prodding and poking at Ella, but you feel a tiny hand grasp a hold of your finger for a second. As I try to brush it away.

So you try to brush it away and it kind of grabs your hand and it holds onto your finger and kind of keeps close to your neck and it goes, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. You're wasting your time. I'm the worst fighter out of any of these people and I don't have any weapons. But you know you could. you have the advantage.

No, I don't. Just Lola just was ripped apart. You need to get better at this if this is your temptation game. I don't particularly care about any of these people that much, but I don't want to hurt them either. I'd say that you're a liar. Everything you ask me

makes me think about what are your motivations? What are you going to get out of it? You want me to hurt these people, so therefore I don't want to hurt them. It's opposite today, okay? And you kind of hear as the presence disappears for a moment as you walk away and you feel as it kind of flutters out of your existence. And at that point, Ella, you feel as a tentacle wraps around your neck and it shoves you back down onto the ground and throps you right onto the floor. And you gl as you feel air just pull out from front of you as you feel your body slammed down onto the ground.

and you all three here and turn as Ella is just laid there. Nothing has laid onto her. Nothing has pulled her in yet. They are just using, and there's several of them that just seem to have their appendages all just clasp around her, and they just seem to be strangulating her with all effort.

Let's help her. I'm done with these guys. I'm running and sliding over to her, and I'm just going to hold the bayonet against one of their tentacles as a third. threat for them to fuck off. I'm trying to actively uncoil the tentacles. Yeah, I'm grabbing the crutch and trying to pry anything I can off with the crutch.

Okay, pry everything off with the crutch. Let's do... Probably screaming at this point because the noise is so loud. It's so loud. It is so loud. I'm just kind of glazed over while I'm doing it. I'm not particularly emotional, but I'm... Right, so, Kirk, you're the one that's trying to say something, right?

It sounds like it's just you want to threaten, you want to cut one of it. these. So let's have you go. No one's, one six. So, all right. You, um, what do you want to say? Give me that one. No, I'm just.

Um, I run over and I baseball pop up, slide, slide along the ground, come up to one knee, have my hand on her shoulder, she's laying down, and I just put, put the bayonet right next to the tentacle. and I don't say anything. Yeah. It knows that I'm pissed off.

Right. And knows that I'm done with this shit. I don't have to say anything. I just look at them and the tentacle that I'm threatening. Yeah. Slowly releases. Slowly releases. And at that point you can hear, and it's not even a secret at this point,

you can hear it, and it seems to be coming from a thousand mouths in a thousand different directions all around you. And it's just. says, she's not today, not right now. This team's not leaving anyone behind. Ella feel that the one that he threatened pulled away a little bit, but these creatures have not let you go by any stretch of the imagination, but they do begin to walk with the three of you together.

And you've uncoiled enough to where it's not clasping around her throat, but you feel as if your whole body has been wrapped inside of cloth and you're just being dragged. And occasionally you'll get your feet up from underneath you to make a step, but you are being dragged in the dirt along this pathway. So I'm trying to help her stay standing. Yeah. All this is all going on. I'm like, wow, these, uh, the new management is not really good about boundaries. Yeah. Let's just keep going.

Yep. Let's pick up the pace. Maybe they want a bit brisker of a walk out of us and I kind of look at the group of them and a bit of disgust and then drop the crutch down in the sand and just keep moving.

They don't want us to all get there together. They want, they open this path. They want at least one of us to get where we're going. But they don't want all of us there. Right. They don't want all of us there. So let's make sure it's all going.

Okay. You continue to move and you continue to do the walk, and they continue to be incredibly rough with Ella as they move kind of forward up into the mountains, and you don't feel much more resistance from them as you continue to climb up and up and up. And Ella, at this point, you're getting bumped and bruised, What's going on in your mind?

You're, you're, if not what is happening with you at the moment, like being dragged through, like these three are with you, but what's going on in your mind right now? Well, I'm trying to reconcile these horrible creatures who made this beautiful music that comforted me and are now abusing me. and parading me around like a rag doll prisoner. Uh-huh.

And it's snapping me out of that haze I was in listening to the beautiful music. Right. And I think that I'm starting to hear it for what it is. Sure. Okay. You sing through the veil of the song a little? Yeah. Right.

Do you want to know what it sounds like beyond the veil? It is the wailing of voices. It is the screaming of agony, dressed up like a Sunday choir. It is not the irritating, baleful sound that they hear, but it is just the voices of those in agony behind a beautiful voice. I can even hear voices I've heard before.

Several. People whose family members I may have lost on the table. Everyone, you, I won't say it's everyone you've ever known, but you know that they are sounds that you have been through. And it is with that you are taken up to the mountainside. You're presented. in front of the monolith, and at that point, you look and see that the mountain, the pillar in front of you,

is just still close, but also so far away. And at that stage, you can feel the ground begin to shake, and you can begin to feel as just the building, the building, the actual island itself is starting to crest as an earthquake of like you have never seen in your life just begins to shake and move around you and the creatures begin to wail and move and they begin to slowly kind of push

almost like a mop that's losing control at the moment just begins to kind of shove and push you all forward and at that point you can hear the crunching and the cracking of cartilage and bone as you look behind you and you can see as rocks just begin to cascade and fall as you look down onto the beach of which you were not terribly far down much earlier, is now just cresting as a giant gray wall,

pockmarked and cratered with all of what it continues to be, which is the moon is moving at the speed of a jetliner, They're just crunching straight into the sea. And you can see it's already on the beach and you're watching as like bodies are being lifted up in front of it and being thrown away like so much ants as someone's putting a shovel to it as they're being flown up in every direction

and you, Ella, lose your balance and feel as the creatures begin to start tugging on you anew as they're, desperate flee in different directions is drawing and quartering you at the moment. 1-1-0-6s, do you have anything left to burn? It's starting to feel. Kirk, Howie Carter, as you look around you,

you begin to just see as the creature is now the best-eal side of them just starts to kick in as they all just starts scattering in every direction. And at that point, you hear Ella scream as you look towards her and see that several creatures have attempted to move in different directions. And the one that has most of its tentacles around her pulls away from one direction. But you see as one of the creatures just as like turned away, almost of it as it doesn't want to go in the same direction.

Yet it pulls itself. And Ella screams as you hear the tearing of muscles and clothes. and skin as Ella, you feel your body ripped and torn. And that is the moment in which the veil is pulled back and you can hear the curtain for what it is. The agonizing screams and the whales that you understand are behind this song and your own screams of agony

are mixed alongside of it as you feel first the joint pop out from your arm and then you feel the muscle tear. as your arm is pulled off of your shoulder and you can feel your leg being pulled apart as these creatures are laying into you and Howie Carter and Kirk, you can only watch in horror as these creatures

you're just trying not to get trampled at this moment but this silhouette of her being drawn and quartered or pulled apart as finally her head just pops right off and all of the creatures just scatter as the just tension is pulled away and you are left trying to ride the wave as these creatures are scuttling all around you. Ella Hugh, we'd discuss this curtain,

but they say that when the head separates the body, that there is a few moments in which blood and electricity still flow through the brain, enough for a passing conscious thing. thought, what is the last thing that goes through her mind as life is parted from her. I hope I see Athena where I'm going. Denise, thank you for playing. It's all over now.

No more. It can all stop. All right. Thank you for all of your hard work and all of your efforts. You've made it this way and you've got to see the end. So thank you. We'll see you soon. Yeah, we all will.

Four candles, four truths. Ella would normally be able to speak the first truth in this circumstance, but since she is no longer with us, we will speak it for her instead. The moon reaching the shore of this island has slowed its pace. significantly. Kirk.

Something here wants to speak to us. Carter? I'm really drawing a blank. Yeah. There's a lot going on what we are. Yeah. Certainly coming to an end clause. What in your mind serves Carter's best story

on the pathway it's taken? It sounds like Carter has made a decision about what the intent of these things are. Yeah, well, I don't, yeah, I don't know, I don't know what they want. I just know that I don't want to help them. I want to be defiant. And what does defiance look like in Carter's mind for, that can speak itself into a truth? How can you continue this story of hope and defiance?

Okay, well, here's the truth, is that no matter what this thing that wants to speak with us or this meeting that's being set up with us, I've already made up my mind. that I'm gonna deny it. You've made up your mind that you will deny whatever it's asking of you. There's absolutely nothing it can say that I will agree to. Great.

Howie. We are the last three human beings on Earth. Four candles, four truths. The rodeo around you of the bulls just continuing to just purse around you, it's enough to stay up on your feet to have these things crawling and moving inside of you.

And you can see just a wall of dirt and water and dust is just being kipped up in front as if unlike when your ship breached ground. Think of that on a planetary scale. At least as far as you can see water just shoring up all around. on either side of the island, but when it begins to hit dirt,

you can actually see as just dirt is flying everywhere. It's just the monumental force of this celestial body digging into the crust. It's just insane. I mean, I'm not running. I'm moving almost at a sort of spitefully... Slow pace? Yeah, I mean, I'm not going any slower than these two,

but I'm certainly not putting any hustle into this at all. Then attempt to not get trampled by the creatures around you. Okay. Yeah, it's not my biggest priority, but so. Oh, holy shit. I did get three sixes and a one. Nicely done. Although three sixes does not traditionally vote well.

Oh, was that bad? No. No, I'm just impressed. Just metal? Yeah. It's metal, yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait. too much metal for one hand.

Oh, did. Carter, I imagine you and I imagine you are just like a calm and a storm. You're walking forward. I'm kind of like just almost like despondent or like just I'm just kind of limping forward

like with my arms at my sides. I'm almost just kind of like just dragging myself there. There's no emotion or anything. Great. Howie and Kirk. are you like running with the bulls, so to speak? Yeah, that's, I mean, I'm like, at this point, I'm...

I'm helping him along. Yeah, and I'm using whatever crutch I can. Like, if something, because they're not actively attacking us, but if something gets in the way, I'm just whacking it out of the way at this point, trying to move as fast as we can to get out of the rodeo, basically. So you're heading, still moving straight towards any break that you can create, and you do kind of see that there is a bit of a canyon divide of where things can go alongside the mountain

or they can go up more and you can see that some creatures are doubling back around but more importantly there's just this fissure that is that you could ostensibly get on top of that's a little too tall you could climb up it if you wanted to just to get away from most of the creatures who are taking the path of least resistance by taking a path of more resistance

you'll be able to get up yeah at this point I would rather and I don't know if you guys would rather, but I would rather take my chances climbing a mountain than surviving in a sea of monsters. I'm going to have to agree with that. I do still have the rope. Do you want to, someone want to make the first climb

and then use the haul rope up? I mean, I can go up first. Yeah, I'm not going to be good as a point man on this. If anything, I should probably take the tail in case I should fall. I don't pull anyone with me. Go and climb up the mountain side. as the ground is shaking around you,

as the moon is pushing itself straight into the body around you. Okay. Nope. Okay. Inspirational. This is an inspirational moment. And for the record, for the record, this is a hell of a feat. It is a selfless act of athleticism, if an extraordinary feat.

So not only will this get rid of two ones, but if this succeeds, I damn near think this might be a qualifier for your hope dice. You got this, you got this. Yeah, buddy. I believe with you. Yes.

I can't stay to the candles. What did it get? Six and a three. Yeah, buddy. And a three. Motherfucking Kirk! All right, man. Coming in clutch with the half-time speech.

Please, please. Holy shit. Nary to me how this moment goes down. So I'm trying to. to climb up these rocks so I can get in position to throw the ropes down. Right. But I slip. Yeah.

And I fall pretty hard. Yeah. And I hit my shoulder on a rock. Okay. And I dislocate it. This doesn't sound like a success. Oh, but wait. We're getting ready for it.

I know. That's just the drama. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Of that two conflict. This isn't the first time being a football player. I've dislocated my shoulder.

So in pain, I put my arm back behind my head, and I grab my wrist and pull it to the other side and pop it back in. Amazing. And I shake it off. I'm used to playing through the pain. I grab that rope. I wrap it around my good arm, and I get. my ass up the side of that mountain.

And for once, in a long time, you looked at something and you said, I'm not gonna give up. I'm not going to quit. And I'm gonna do something that is despite the fear going to allow me to succeed. So that's for you. It succeeds on a five or six moving forward. Nice job.

Your moment has been fulfilled. So Kirk, you get up and you lash this rope across whatever spire of rock that you can put together. You can still see the mangled corpse of Ella, not far from where you left her, where it was. And you also see Carter and Howie below you as well too as you throw the rope down in you too, while still feeling the impacts of creatures,

just doing everything they can to get out of the way of what is coming. Just climb up the rope. And you, from a vantage point, you can definitely see that the rock wall and the dirt that is just moving forward in the darkening cloud that is your horizon now is, I mean, even if you wanted to, you couldn't go any other direction,

but just straight ahead at this point. It's not unlike an all-consuming dark wall. Hmm. You, uh. All right, well you go up next, bud. Yeah, or are we up? Yeah, they're all up. His success allowed everybody to go up.

The rope. So, and you get up to the top, and you begin to climb as you get close to the monolith. And as you begin to look around You see there's occasionally a creature who will just, you know, is confused and kind of running around, but they do seem to be more like that harmonious kind of cynicism that they were doing earlier just seems to be all be gone now. And every once in a while, you'll have to hide behind a rock as one of them will just

then skid along as it continues to move across. They're in a weird, like, frenzied kind of state. Just in a frenzied state. So, in fact, Howie at one point you actually are moving across is you're kind of slowly, sneakily, just trying to make your way from cover to cover to cover, trying to make sure that you don't get caught by one of these things now that they seem to just be all hell's broken loose for them.

And I think these two probably have to remind me to duck at various points because I'm... Maybe the old... A lot of my self-preservation has just kind of gone out the window now. I'm just kind of apathetic. So, Howie, what do you want to do at this stage? What do we look like? So the monolith is in front of us.

That is what we were walking towards. Yeah. And you can tell that it's in the mountain side, but there is definitely what looks to be some cave systems that maybe it could take you into the mountain to get closer to where the plinth is, you know? You guys don't see that door anymore, do we? Not where you are immediately, no.

Well, I guess we should go into those caves. Yeah. All right. Looking a little woozy. Yeah, you are. So how we, I think you're the one that needs to make sure to not get caught and make it. While Carter's self-preservation is in place, as you're kind of moving from rock to rock, you kind of stick your head up,

and you can see that one of them is just kind of just like a, entry, just whipping its head every once in a while, and you can see that it's looking with human eyes. Can I ask, are they, are the ones up here in place to guard the monolith, or are they just there as now natural and happening? These ones feel just like chaotic, just creatures that are trying to either attack anything that could get in its way or self-preservation. And how far from the entrance to the cave are we?

I mean, you can make a mad dash for it at this point. Or you could sneakfully trying to go into it if you want. So what do you want to do? I would like to take the crutch. Yeah. And with everything I've got from behind a rock, just try to create a distraction and chuck it in the opposite direction. Chuck it, chuck it, chuck it, chuck it.

Ew. Pop a candle out. All right. Dess is. Oh, boy. It's all right. I know what goes on. Howie, as you chuck this thing, you kind of watches it, clatter, clatter, clatter,

comes across, and you all three just run for everything you're worth, and you just move and you hustle it as you go into it and Howie at some point. Oh, wait, can I burn something? There was no ones. Oh, God, you're right. Yeah, that's been my unlucky. That's why I have all my pictures. That's way because no ones at this point.

But as you've been running, you kind of feel as your gut just like it finally is just so much pain and you double over and you kind of crumble down on to your knees, Kirk grabs you and he pulls you up, but not before the creature who kind of looked back towards you after hearing you crumple down and now is kind of upon you. You all three run for a time and get into the cave systems, but you can see this one is right on your heels, right behind you and at some point you see,

well, you see the monolith. in front of you. Kirk, you are, your fall has left you. We'll leave those for the truth. You get there. The failure is

that you get there, but the creature is hot on your heels. Okay. All right. Three candles, three twos, the world is dark. The world is always dark. Howie, you do have the first truth

since it was your dice that failed. They see the door. Yes. and it's a truth. Robert is blocking the door. Kirk, you're up. Last truth. Robert's one of them.

Three candles, three truths. We begin this story, the beginning of the end. As you run towards the monolith and what it's seen as is, you see the black plinth in front of you, just the sheer black. face in front of you.

And two creatures are on either end of what is a broken spire of just rock laid into it. And Robert is there. He's standing in front

of a glistening yellow doorway in which the both of you see. And Robert turns and he kind of looks to all three of you and how you rush in with this thing

hot on your heels and as you kind of are coming forward you feel a tentacle just wrap around your leg and lift you up like a plucked chicken and similar to Ella just kind of wanders into the area right in front of you and as you look ahead

Carter you see just something on Robert's shoulder and you recognize it it is the thing that came out of Lola just standing right there on his shoulder and he looks to you well this is a familiar sight

his voice has completely changed it's now dark and resonant and it seems to echo on itself as he is speaking from several directions all in one place. Is this your big villain monologue? Is this where you tell us what this was all about, how you've remaking the world in your image

or some stupid shit like that? I'm gonna tell you right now I don't give a fuck. All this is all a waste. Not only that, you hurt my fucking cat. So you're gonna kill me? Fucking do it. You're wrong. I'm not going to kill you.

What is it, Greg? Do you see the door? I don't know. I'm currently suspended, getting dangled by the leg upside down, with a bunch of blood rush into my head. What the hell's going on here, Robert? Are you Robert? Is that even your name? No, it's not my name. What's going on is that you are the last three humans on this entire earth. millennia of decisions have come down to these last moments. It's something I was quite looking forward to being here myself for, frankly. You could say that this is a bit of a going away party for me.

So thank you for being here. No, Carter. Was this all for your own pleasure? Do you answer to some other higher power? I don't feel like I have to answer that, Carter. And isn't that the greatest question that mankind has been asking for its entire existence? What do you think? I don't care anymore.

I just want you to fail. All right, then. He takes a step to the side and looks towards the door and looks towards you, Carter. Then go ahead. Go in. What's that supposed to do? He gives you the same shrugging look that you gave him as he mentions towards the prospect.

Why don't you go through first? So, Shelby. And you kind of watch as he turns around and takes the creature from his hand, looks at it, puts it on his other shoulder, and walks directly into the yellow light. I don't know if this is one of those things where he's expecting us to kill each other

or those only last of us left rules over whatever the new world is. Who knows? It could be all sorts of things. But I just, I don't want to give him the pleasure. And what do we do? I am still suspended by a tentacle. Yes, you are. Absolutely still suspended by a tentacle. But I mean, it hasn't killed me.

No. It has simply dangled you like such meat. Yeah. As it's holding you up. I want to call back out to Robert. I want to see if he comes out. You crawl out to Robert while Howie, I'd like to think

that you're slowly turning in like a circle at this. Yeah, like a cartoon character. It never really settles. It just always slowly rotate. It's always slowly turning. Yeah. And you crawl out to Robert

and you hear no answer. You hear no answer at all. I mean, I'm geez, I'm breaking down the possibilities here. We could kill him. ourselves, although saying it out loud,

it sounds like not a very good idea. No. And to be honest, I'm kind of scared. If the afterlife is anything like this, then... I'll yell out to Kurt and Carter, like, can't be worse than what's going on here. Go for the door. You kind of...

Isn't that what he wants us to do? is to go through this door? Is there only one? Is there just one? There's the one that's holding him. Uh-huh. And there's two that are flanked on either side of the monolith right now.

Okay. And what is the distance here? I would say, let's make it a perfect triangle. Okay. So one, two, door, center, howie creature. Okay. Can I see the door now, or am I still without door vision?

Do we have door sign? Yes, you can see the door. For what it's worth. You're not crazy. I could see the door. Whoa. Well, hold on. If it is a thing where

going through makes us like the rulers of the new world or whatever, Kirk, I think you should go through first. Unless you don't want to. I mean, if you want, I'll go first. If I'm going through that door, it's I'm going through with both of you. So we need to get him down. Okay.

I still have the bayonet. Do you hear that, Robert? We're going to come through your stupid door, but we're coming together. So tell your tentacle bros to back off our friend. That'd be nice. Nothing happens. The creature stays there.

In fact, it seems to be agitated by your words. all right, can you help me we gotta cut this tentacle off I'd love to like do a sweet sit up and unravel this thing My thought is that I'm gonna have to Yeah, I got no core strength

I'm gonna do run and jump And wrap myself around the tentacle And use my weight to try to bring it down You use the bayonet to try to chop through it Okay Chopping or wrapping Yeah what's What poison?

Or getting at You know Like I'm rolling for him I'm wrapping? No, rolling for you, chopping. For me chopping. Oh, I'm great at the wrapping, as you may know, if you pick up my mixtape. Got it.

Nice. Not even a single one. So you feel as... This is nervous laughter, by the way. I know. If you've ever been around me in times of crisis, this is how I get, like, a crazy person. You wrap, bear hug this tentacle as you kind of drag it down to the... the ground and Kirk you just take the bayonet and just like cutting a piece of string you just like

just cut it right and slip it and you feel as it just like falls down to the ground just slides around and off of how he just starts flopping onto the ground the creature just lifts its head back as if it was doing nothing up until you cut it and then you feel as its other appendages just lift up and it grabs a hold of both you and Carter and pulls you in and attempts to just ingest you with its terrible, terrible lamprey-like jaw. All right. Oh, not great.

Two-fives and a two. Fuck. And I can't burn one of these, right? Because those are only getting rid of ones. Fuck. Okay. That's it. I mean, I was wrestling with it.

So I kind of deserve what I get. You did good, man. Thank you. Howie thanks you. You kill me a goddamn cat. Yeah, I'd have done the same thing. Dave Garder. This trance-like state of this creature

just seems to just be just shocked out of whatever reverie that it was in. And it just seems to come in with a new nature, even though you've cut Howie down from this. It grabs both of you. But at some point, Kirk, you're pulling it off, but Carter, it grabs a hold of it, and it just with one fell swoop,

it pulls you in directly into its lamprey-like mouth, and it just kind of takes you in waist first in one single hit, as it just pulls onto you, but you have both of your hands on either side of its teeth, as you kind of feel its teeth just grating, not piercing you, not puncturing you, or ingesting you, but just grabbing you, like so many little tendrils and fingers pulling you down,

and at some point you feel and hear flutter more than anything, as this thing lands onto your shoulder again. And you hear Robert's voice just lay into you as you're going into and goes, how does it feel to be right, Carter? How does it feel to be right, but so wrong at the same time. You had your chance, and now you get to be collected like so many others. Your choice is made. Now bathe in it.

As you feel each little muscle punctuate, you feel as your body is just, you feel as your body is just, ingested in one fluid motion as you are sucked into this thing the creature that is with you I mean this is not a instantaneous thing this process of which Howie and Kirk is howie falling down from the ground but Kirk more worried about picking up Howie at this point than even not even noticing and going into it I I mean, Carter, you say with spite in your heart that you want this thing to fail. What is it? And why do you hate it so much?

I feel like it's a manifestation of my own. Like there's things I see in it when I look at it. And like even the way that Robert talks. Yeah. It reminds me of like that voice in my head telling me that like I'm not good enough. or, you know, no one cares about me or any of that kind of stuff. So it has that voice of my own, like, self-doubt. And I hate that because I hate that part of myself.

All of your hopes and despair wrapped up into one single four-winged creature with the voice of self-deprecation as you were pulled into its maw. Good luck, y'all. Thank you, sir. Bye, bye. I got eaten. Bye bye. You got eat it.

Bye bye. Uh, yeah. Well, Kirk. He, Kirk. How are you, me, bud. Two candles. Two candles, two truths. Carter would normally speak.

Instead, I will just say the world is dark. And only one of you may go through the door. Who gets the last truth? Kirk. someone comes out of the door and it's not Robert. And it's not Robert. It's not Robert. Okay.

Do you want me to say who it is? Because I have someone in mine. How about instead of saying, as part of your truth, truths are like genius wishes. You need to be phrased in a certain way to become true. So you could say so and so comes out the door. Okay. Do you want me to do that?

If that's how you want to phrase your truth. Okay. Howie's wife comes out of the door. Oh man, don't you think. Come on. Okay. All right. It is a truth.

Two candles. Two truths. We are still in the situation that was right before Carter was consumed. And Howie and Kirk, you do notice as, Howie, you were picked up off of the ground and lifted up by Kirk. You hear the scuttling of the legs. as the creature that was holding you, Howie, acts out of the cave and folds into darkness

so that only you two and the two guardians are left. And at this point, the rumbling of the land has been almost a passive element at this point. But you know that the moon is coming, and it is not far from your destination where you are now. The light of this monumental place was originally illuminated by a small break in the ceiling, which gave you a little bit of natural light. But now the actual structure of the moon itself,

is so high above that whatever little starlight that you had as part of your guiding or whatever natural light is still left in this dark, awful world is now only being lit by the yellow light of the doorway. How we get both of you a few moments to stare at this thing. Yeah, I just, I have to come, I have to let the blood

rush back down from my brain, like I'm a little disoriented coming down off that. But if I'm seeing what he described... Your wife walking through the door? I can't, like, in my current state, it has to be trauma. That's what's going through my head. Like, this can't be real. She died years ago. Like, she didn't, she wasn't taken.

And she died. And she, you hear her voice before you actually see her, before you see this body step through. and it is a voice that is soft and comforting and familiar. And it is, she says, Howie, Howie, you've done so good. You made it. You made it. You got all the way to the end of your quest.

Kirk, thank you. Made a choice. And now you have to make another one. One of you gets to come with me, and the other one gets to watch the world end. Do you... Do you know her? That's my wife.

You can see her? I dropped to my knees. She kind of walks up to you, and she puts her hand out, and when she takes yours, you can feel that it is well and truly real. There is warmth

behind these hands that are touching her and she looks to you, Kirk, and says, I'm so sorry for everything. These things aren't simple and the game is never always fair. You've faced every challenge at this point

and you have never deviated from what is right and what is wrong. You've never had malice and you've never had spite in your heart. You've never been vindictive and you've never killed or taken an innocent life.

There is only room for one of you left. Everyone else is here. Everyone else is waiting. so there is one last sacrifice to be made. I know. It's not a choice. I can't ask you to stay here and watch the world and demand. You're not going to have to.

What does that mean? I'm staying. No. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, part of him wants to go, but he, he, uh, man, as much. which is how he would, and I'll tell you right now,

if he were at full strength, he'd fight you about it. Like, he would physically try to overcome you to put you on through that door. He does not have the strength to do. Close enough that you could do exactly what he's describing to him if you want to. I'll fight it every inch of the way. Roll it.

You said it yourself. You can't fight it. You're weak. you are one in one. They have seen your heart is pure and invite you to join your friends. This is the best, worst brink because the brink is normally

when you are at your lowest, but this is when you are at your best. to re-roll all of them, all of them, even the hope dice. Kirk is you, grab a hold of Howie, and you look towards his wife and you look towards him. You take his body and you shove him against the side of the monolith and how he grabs the edge for all of its worth and he holds on to the barrier with everything. he's got and you can feel both of your muscles cord intense as Howie is just

using every ounce of strength that he possibly can imagine as he pushes and holds against it and Kirk you do something you do something you've never done in your life you've never even thought of

this before but you grab a hold of Howie's head and you wrench his head back and you punch him right in his damaged ribs, in his bleeding, and how you double over in pain as he pushes you through into the doorway and you tumble into nothing.

Look. At this point, the last thing I will tell you is that you, last thing you see before you fall into the yellow light around you is you see the look on Kirk's face, which is both grateful and sorry at the same time. And that's the exact same look he sees back in mind. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Thank you. One candle. One truth. The final scene is Kirk having shubbed Howie straight through this yellow gate. You watch as both the guardians sitting on either side. of this monolith, just crumble and turn to ash. You look at them and they're there one moment and they're gone the next.

And you can feel the ground beneath you rumbling as you walk out of the cave leaving the monolith behind you. The yellow door turned to black as soon as Howie went through. And as you come out of the cave entrance from where the second to last human on earth left. You go out and you see this giant celestial body just cresting into the area above you.

And you can start to feel the dust and the wind and the rock just starting to roll. around you and you know that you are the only person in the world ever to have witnessed such a phenomenon like this is one for the annals of history whatever that means Kirk what is the last thought of the last human in the last moments that this world has to offer. I know I'm in the right place because for the first time, in a long time, it was my decision to be there.

And that is the purest intonation of free will that one could describe upon the face of two celestial bodies coming together to merge into a single form and the dust envelops you. And there is no more story to tell. Thanks buddy. Before we get to the last messages of our dearly departed characters, I just want to say one last thing is that hope is a beautiful thing. Hope can carry you through the darkest of times and can turn everything into something. There is a world in which, if there is no hope and there is only despair and hatred

and bitter emotions that we all have towards each other, that we will fall upon each other and consume each other and turn this world into nothing. But with hope and with perseverance and with drive, wonderful things can happen.

Every corner is a new opportunity to find the light and go towards it. And as they say in so many books and stories that the night is darkest just before the dawn. And with that, he will listen to the messages of our dearly departed characters. Hi there. My name is Howie Bell and I am, well, I was,

a proud owner of a small game store in an even smaller town in northeastern Pennsylvania. It was one of my wife and I's dreams from the day we met. Own a game store, write an RPG, and have three kids. Turns out kids were never going to be in the cards for us, but we did get to check the game star off that list. What a time that was. Life was perfect, and then she was gone. I'm not quite sure how much time I've got left, how much time any of us have left, but with the time I do have, I'm going to make good on that one last dream. I'm going to finish our story, baby. It's almost there.

And when it is, I'll come find you, wherever you are. And we can play together. Forever. I love you, Bex. I'll see you soon. The goal without a plan is just a wish. That's something my old high school coach used to tell us all the time. And when you're just a dumb high school kid,

you think it's nothing more than some kind of fortune cookie Jedi mind trick. They sell you just so you practice harder. after seeing a massive explosion back towards home, it reminded me another quote. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. I sure did, but I took a hiccup in my life and I turned it into a hurdle. And it got to a point where it was easier for me to motivate other people than it was to motivate myself. Look, I know things suck right now, and they don't seem like they're going to get any better.

And they may not. They may not. But, damn it, you got to try. Find something deep in yourself and make yourself better. They make everything else around you better. And that can be hard to do. But sometimes action requires bravery. Sometimes it requires thought.

But life requires action. Because if you don't, the goal without a plan is just a wish. There probably isn't anything left to go back to, right? It's been weeks now. without our meds, without power. Mom is dead, right? At least Lucy would try to make a hiding spot for all the cats from the cafe. I mean, plenty of them were fresh off the streets anyway.

They'll settle into their patterns and live through this. Lola here. She needs help, though. She didn't mean to be stranded on this boat, and where kittens will be here soon. I'm glad the other passengers left. They might have taken most of the resources, but I won't miss them. They were loud and impatient. It's so obviously selfish. I get it.

We have a drive to survive. Have some dignity, though. I'm as scared as anyone, but I'll keep that inside. Willa doesn't need anything more to worry about. I just want her to have her kittens somewhere safe. We'll take it from there. Ella Sanchez. Apparently the only one left running this medical barge.

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Until they found out we were going to pick up survivors who were sending out a beacon, which was something else. In this day and age, things aren't working. Anyway, there was a bit of an argument, and the crew fought off. the survivors we had picked up. Most of them didn't make it. And then the survivors took off with our last lifeboats. There's just me and a few people left, heading towards a signal.

I don't know where we go from here. I'm not great with people, I'm great with medicine. I've tried relationships. No one could ever understand what I was going through, or hear the most depraved things human beings could do to each other. To the innocent, defenseless, best friend I ever had was my cat, Athena. She just listened and never tried to fix. Now I don't know where she is.

Son of a bitch, the only thing I care about is her. In the end, the one I miss most is my damned cat. All I know is that I was put on this earth to save. and save I will until someone stops me.