I've been battling the "it's probably just stress" diagnosis for so long now. I've got muscle weakness in my arms, legs and shoulders. I've also got shaky arms and legs like all the time and it worsens when I try to use my muscles in physical activities. For instance; my legs and arms start shaking really fast when I excersize or try lifting heavy stuff. Basically my muscles are weak and shaky throughout the entirety of the day and they have been for quite some time now.
I've been thinking of asking my GP for an EMG. But I'm not sure what it will show and if it will be valuable information for me. As in; will it be able to show wether my muscle weakness and tremors are neurologically or nerve related or stress related?
For info: I don't feel stressed, but my body seems to think it is for some reason.

TLDR: Almost every movement cause trapezius activation and extreme pain. That is due to wrong stretching exercise I have been given. Which exercise should I choose to avoid pain, make it stronger? I am not hyper-mobile, but I am more flexible than an average men.
Hi,

Prior to injury and initial situation after injury

I had an injury last year while overhead pressing in a jerking motion. After that, reaching my back with my hand, overhead movements, bench press (I was doing 90+kg bench press without problems), shoulder flexion thumbs down (empty can test), push-ups were painful. Despite those pains, I have modified my exercises and after a month I was more or less in a good shape, but I still had problems with all of the above mentioned topics. At least it was not that painful, I had my strength in most of the exercises, but most probably due to edema, I had pain.
A month later, I had an MRI and it is found that I have a edema/effusion in AC joint.
Since I had a edema in AC joint (no tear in rotator cuff), I had a pain in front of the shoulder. I also had pain in the trapezius area, but from looking today's experience, I guess it is due to modified exercises, i.e. in order to avoid pain in shoulder, I changed my exercises. Maybe they were stressful for trapezius. I had pain in trapezius after training, but 24h later it was gone, always.

Physio therapy, stretching and everything became worse

I was given physio therapy. That is the origin of my worst pain. I guess the physiotherapist were not capable. They told me that I have tight muscles and I need to stretch them. I know I am quite flexible for an average men and later (3 months later) I have been even told from a professor doctor that I am almost hyper-mobile. After those stretching (chest doorway streching, biceps streching wall, trapezius streching neck) everything become worse. Although from a physical appearance my injured shoulder is below of the healthy one, literally the shoulders were not forming a straight line (i.e. the injured shoulder were stretched too much that it became sloped), I had no improvements in pain, actually quite the opposite, more pains in areas that I had no problems before.
After those stretching, my trapezius started hurt more and more, even with a slightest load. I couldn't sit without resting my arm on the couch or armrest of the chair. It just couldn't stand as it is. Since they gave me too many stretching, my SC Joint (the sternum end of clavicle) can go outside, which caused extreme pain.

2nd MRI and result

Fast forward, 2-3 months later I had different MRI, with contrast inside the joint, and there was a slight tear in SLAP. The professor told me that it is not a big deal, that is not even a big tear. I should be back on the field with proper physio therapy. Well, if I had only that, that would be easy. But the stretching from the first physio therapy makes everything worse. Also the professor told me that it is biceps tendonitis (due to empty can test).

Exercises and strength building

It took me a lot of time to build some strength around my shoulder. At least from the outside the shoulders are even. But now, I cannot solve the pain around my trapezius. For example, when I am doing shoulder press, if I let go more than 90 degrees, i.e. the elbow is not on the neck level, but is closer to the chest, abdomen, the trapezius is extremely painful. If I do shoulder flexion, if the weight is too much (more than 4kg), the trapezius compensates and it hurts. If I do side lying external rotation, with 4 kg it is quite good but as soon as I go 5kg, I guess the external rotator muscles (teres minor?) is not enough and trapezius takes it over and again it hurts.
You might say that a doctor might help. Every doctor told me no operation is necessary, because every doctor was looking at a different topic. If you look part by part, nothing is broken, torn, but many parts are stretched (SC joint, Trapezius, currently healing biceps tendonitis). I need to find a correct exercise.

The exercises I have tried

Not all of them, but I tried to cover many possibilities:

• T pose: Can do with 2kg easily. With 3 kg's it was problematic to the biceps
  
• Y pose: 1.5kg - 2kg. It depends on the day. It can be problematic to biceps.
  
• T pose standing, theraband attached to door handle: That is really good actually.
  
• Shrug: No, no no no. If I let my shoulder go down from the relaxed position, not only trapezius but also SC joint is hurting.
  
• Overhead shrug: That is doable, but that did not change the pain.
  
• Side lying external rotation: 4kg is fine, 5kg might be too much and trapezius hurts.
  
• Shoulder abduction: I started with 2kg, and now I am 4kg. If I am not careful, the trapezius hurts.
  

From stabilization perspective:

• Plank position on hands (not elbows): That is doable
  
• Handcuffs with loop band (circles, up and down, etc.) on knees: Up and down movement (flexion) cause problems.
  
• Floor press: If I do an arch with squeezed shoulder blades, the elbow can go further back, and I have trapezius pain, again.
  

Question

What can I do the pain go away? I had no issue with strength prior to the injury, especially with the weights I am using now It became a chicken egg problem.

• Does it hurt because all of shoulder muscles are completely weak, so that trapezius has to do so many work and tired?
  
• Does it hurt because I stretched trapezius and it cannot bear the load?
  
• Something else?
  

Celebrated my marriage and took some edibles, "which I was uneducated on". They were Delta 9. One was 150 and the other was 350. They was a gift from my sister in law. I took both of them. After awhile my heart was beating real fast and then I got this hard weird pressure in the back of my head. Then the right side of my lip started drooping and shaking, then my words were slurred. I could barely talk. Then the right side of my body stared having convulsions. The right side of my body started shaking uncontrollably. My wife had to call 911. I didn't get the high effects until the ambulance came which took 20 or more mins. I eventually passed out. They sent me home and I was high the whole next day. They next week that same pressure returned in the back of my head. Then I started having weird symptoms such as electric shock sensations to my body "mainly legs". I started having numbness to arms and legs, tinnitus in ears, . Then I had got some sort of tremor. Eight months later I started having muscle twitching nonstop. It started only with eye twitching but then after awhile it spreaded all over. Then my muscles started atrophied. Started in legs, now in my arms and neck. Having some swallowing difficulty and weakness throughout the body. Muscle pains all over from the twitching and atrophy. Is it possible those edibles caused motor neuron disease.

CoverVol.1PreviousNextMapsWiki+DiscordRoyal RoadWebNovelTapasKo-FiFandom/wiki
Big update at the end of Part.2, make sure you check it out. It is important.
---
My initial surprise waned as a burning hatred boiled up within me. There was no hesitation in my choice. I dipped my mind into my Spatial Ring and pulled out two syringes; the thick red substance within wobbled with the movement.
I eyed my father and mother, who were faring better against their paladin. We were too close to each other to use a wide area of effect magic, and the stragglers were beginning to gather themselves as a new group of rugged-looking paladins showed up.
Their armor was different, some haphazardly maintained, dented in the shoulders and helmets. Overall, they looked like a band of brigands. The purple articles of clothing and cloaks were thrashed, but the marked-out and desecrated symbols of Amon-Ra were present. They were all members of the Chapter of Despair.
I met my father’s eyes and threw the syringe with all my might. We had talked about using the drugs if things got out of hand. A shadowy hand whipped out from my father and snatched the syringe out of the air. He quickly injected himself in the thigh, and I followed suit.
The effects were almost immediate. I felt my skin get taunt. My veins bulged and pulsed against my skin as my heart thumped in my chest. Sylas’s version of my stimulant was made with purer and higher quality ingredients, as well as being appropriately mixed, which made it all the more potent.
And with it, my emotions exploded out of me.
“Wow, what did you just stab yourself with? I don’t even want to imagine the—”
Alnwar’s words were cut short as he fell to the floor and reached for his own throat, choking on the air around him. The paladins were forced to their knees as well, and all the fighting in the pit had ceased for a moment as the full force of my bloodlust suffocated those around me.
“Alnwar Strongfold. Today is your last day on this planet.”
Power coursed through my muscles and veins as I shot forward like a cannon, aiming straight for the man’s throat. My body became wreathed in golden lightning as white flames danced along my spear’s tip. Alnwar managed to get back to his feet, but he blocked my thrust with shaky hands.
He dodged and blocked my repeated strike, the fear in his eyes and the hesitation in his movements clear. I didn’t give him a moment of respite as I pushed the assault. I swept my spear along his body for a slash and knocked his long sword up into the air.
I repositioned the tip for a thrust to the heart, but the second short sword came up to deflect it. I sent a blast of close-range white fire at him, but he dodged to the side with his tremendous speed. We locked back into a fury of blows, and I continued to push him into a corner. As the fight progressed, the fear of his features lessened as he regained control of himself.
One thing is certain. Alnwar is not a pushover, and judging by his soul, he is at the level of a War God but not nearly at the top like King Maxwell or even a Grandmaster mage like Bowen. This means the stories of him slaying an Exarch must be fabricated lies.
With my heightened senses, I heard the swing and ducked to the side, avoiding the massive war hammer that aimed to crush me into dust. The impact made a crater on the ground, and I went to thrust my sword into the paladin but was forced to react to Alnwar’s attack instead.
I used gravity to force me the opposite way and to the side. My body jerked violently as my equilibrium shattered from the change. It made me want to vomit, but with that unnatural movement, I dodged the attack entirely and went for a counter-attack on Alnwar.
Thankfully, Cerila was right behind to deal with the paladin, and for the first time, her sword came into contact with flesh. The paladin whipped around his hammer with great force that moved the air as blood splattered from a sizable gap in his back. At the time, I also caught a glimpse of my parents.
My mother had left to kill the new Chapter of Despair paladins and allow my father free reign during his battle. A storm of shadows swelled and exploded out toward the paladin, who countered with golden spells of light magic. The intensity of their battle had increased tenfold as it destroyed the land around them, and any unlucky to get caught up in it had their lives snuffed out by tendrils of shadows or bolts of light.
Regardless, my focus remained on the fight at hand as I trusted that Cerila would handle that paladin from here on out. Alnwar had mostly regained his composure and dropped into a low stance. He kept both his short and long sword pointed at me and struck out like a viper.
I had to pay close attention to his body to see which blade would come at me, but I was able to read it with my enhanced body, the increased focus from the combat drug, and years of experience. I went for a leg sweep using my spear as a staff, but Alnwar dodged back out of range.
He shot forward immediately after, and I sent him retreating with another thrust, or so I thought. Alnwar crossed his blades into an x and blocked my spear in the center. He used the momentum to get under and knock my spear up, and instead of retreating like he usually did, he pushed into me.
He shoulder-checked and staggered me, and I watched as the short sword went low and aimed directly at my side. The blade would pierce my side and right into my internal organs.
If it could, that was.
I trusted in Squeak’s and Padraic’s abilities, and instead of backing away, I brought the shaft of my spear down on his head. Alwarn’s grin was disgusting as the blade impacted me, but it was wiped away in a flash as the sound of metal on metal rang out. My spear crashed into his head, and I sent a knee into his gut, knocking him into the air slightly.
With my spear in hand and my body enhanced to its maximum, I pushed Alnwar away and sent him flying into a pile of rubble. I flipped my spear around and pointed the golden horn at Alnwar as I primed a White Fire Lance to end him. It was far easier and faster to cast than a plasma-based spell, and I had already prepared it as he was flying off.
The white fire warped the air as the intense heat boiled off my spear. But within a matter of moments, the spell launched a jagged lance of white flames at Alnwar. However, I sensed an incoming spell core and watched with surprise as a golden hammer sniped the Flame Lance out of the air. The paladin fighting Cerila had taken a brief moment to launch a spell to protect Alnwar.
Honestly, these two paladins are more of a problem than Alnwar at this point.
Cerila was struggling against her opponent. Her movements were sluggish as time went on. She hadn’t slept in a full day, and the long battle was draining her even more. She may actually collapse at any moment.
Alnwar burst out from the rubble and raced toward me, completely unharmed. It seemed even he could use light magic to heal himself. I prepared myself to meet his attack head-on when suddenly Alnwar stopped, skidding to a halt and throwing himself back.
A clump of purple rock collided with the ground making a crater and kicking up a large cloud of debris. There was a thunderous crash to the side as something else impacted the earth by Cerila and the paladin. A massive purple blur moved through the smoke with terrifying agility and speed, and I watched as the paladin swung his war hammer at it.
An armored hand covered in a thick layer of purple crystal impacted the hammer mid-swing and crushed it into dust. The paladin was blown back from the blow, and an armored figure that stood taller than even the massive paladin brought both his hands down and smashed the soldier on his shoulders, forcing him to his knees.
A gust of wind appeared as the crystal figure extended his hands out and back and, with explosive force, went to clap. The paladin’s head and helmet were crushed into a blood mist, his ears touching in the center. The crystal man dragged the body up and hoisted it into the air after.
“Have no fear, for your king has arrived! Let none survive our fury!” King Maxwell shouted into the air, accompanied by his menacing bloodlust.
On cue, there were caws from the air, followed by many blurs in the distance. Spells began raining down from the air on the white robbed assistants and paladins of the Chapter of Despair as Gryphon Riders decimated their ranks.
King Maxwell, covered in his crystal magic, rushed over to me, his face mostly obscured, but I could see the grin on his lips. “Come Kaladin! Let us finish this bastard!”
There was no hesitation as I sprinted to catch up to him. Alnwar scowled and ran full tilt into a group of his allies, but the two of us gave chase. We crashed into the lines of white robes and paladins and began slaughtering them.
With spear and magic, I killed dozens, burning their bodies to a crisp, impaling their chests, and crushing their bones with every swipe of my weapon. King Maxwell made mincemeat of anyone who dared to stand before him. Every punch claimed a life and sent a corpse lying in a sea of their own blood.
The ground was an ocean of crimson as we waded through the corpses of the fallen to Alnwar, who was being healed by a group of priests. His light magic must not have been enough to heal him completely. I sent a Fireball into the group, and Alnwar grabbed and tossed the priest into my spell. The priest exploded as he impacted my spell, his limbs flying off in random directions.
We were just about to attack Alnwar when something changed. My gut twisted into a knot as I sensed an overwhelming power from our side. There was a flash of light from a broken sewer pipe, and something shot out from it. It moved far faster than anything I had yet to see, and I couldn’t make it out at all.
The gust of wind blew past me as it moved straight toward Cerila. My heart leaped in my chest as I sent magic toward it in an attempt to halt its advance; even King Maxwell tossed a disk of purple crystal at it, but our attacks missed entirely.
Cerila was killing off a squad of paladins. Her chest was heaving up and down. Her eyes sunk into her skull, and the signs of intense fatigue all over her. She was late to react to the new attacker.
She brought Hubris up to defend herself, but in the blink of an eye, her entire arm was separated from her body. Her hand, still holding Hubris, spiraled in the air, trailing blood. Time seemed to come to a halt as I watched a knight wearing pristine silver armor jump into the air.
The man was tall but more lanky than muscular. The armor he wore was ornate and shimmered in the afternoon sun. A greenish-white sword that looked like it was made of crystal was clutched in one hand, and strapped to his other arm was an equally ornate shield. It was beautifully crafted, with the symbol of a bright golden sun at its center and white wings coming out from it. I had never seen it in person, but I instantly recognized it, and so did King Maxwell.
An Exarch. The Shield Exarch of the North.
The crystalline sword disappeared into thin air, leaving his hand free. He snatched Hubris out of the air, but the moment he gripped the sword, he was tossed into the ground as if the sword had dragged him. He impacted the ground like a meteor, as King Maxwell and I arrived on top of him.
The Exarch laid on his back, Hubris in one hand, and his shield sprawled out to the side. I thrust my spear down at the fallen man, and King Maxwell went to stomp his head.
“That was unexpected,” the Exarch grumbled in a relaxed tone.
I swore I didn’t even blink, but his shield was suddenly positioned in front of him. I hit the shield with my spear, but it bounced straight off. King Maxwell’s kick was stopped dead in its tracks. A burst of white light flashed from the sun on the shield, and I felt the intense heat and powerful mana, so I dodged back out of instinct.
The magic barely grazed my arm, but I felt my flesh burn, then nothing. I had lost a chunk of my forearm along with my jacket.
An instantly cast spell? From the shield itself?
“Kaladin, stay back. Grab Cerila and take her to Sylvia. I’ll handle this guy,” King Maxwell said in a low voice.
I rushed over to Cerila, who was gripping her missing arm, trying to staunch the bleeding. The Exarach was already back on his feet, trying to pull Hubris off the ground but to no avail. Eventually, he just shrugged and summoned his sword back from his Spatial Ring.
I picked Cerila up and rushed her over to Sylvia. Alnwar might get away, but Cerila’s life was more important. My worry for her overran my seething hatred for him.
I saw that my father had defeated the other paladin. Shadows crawled around him as his purple and black spear embedded into the head of the slumped-over paladin. In the meantime, Sylvia had encased the other three in a sphere of blood and was attacking and killing anyone who approached her.
She cut the head off a white robbed man and looked at me with worried eyes. I handed the moaning Cerila off to her and took over the defense position as spells from the Gryphon Knights rained down.
Cerila let out one final scream before she passed out as her arm began to regrow. I stepped back, let the spells of the knights finish off the last few remaining assailants in this area, and turned my attention to Sylvia.
She pulled away from Cerila’s neck with a frown. “She passed out, but she isn’t in danger anymore.”
“Good, put her in the sphere with the others for the time being,” I requested.
Sylvia nodded, and a tendril of blood snaked out from one of the nearby bodies and wrapped Cerila up, only to crawl itself into a crimson sphere. It was… unnerving a bit, but I had gotten used to it, so there was no reason to be surprised anymore.
Off in the distance, King Maxwell and the Exarch were exchanging blows. Each strike rocked the ground and sent shockwaves across the entire place. Entire sections of the crater were being torn to pieces as the two fought at inhuman speeds.
“So that’s an Exarch…” Sylvia muttered from my side.
“Yes.”
“Can the king win?” Sylvia asked, looking at me from the side.
If Grandpa’s words are to be believed…
“If we threw everything at him, maybe,” I answered.
I was beginning to see what Grandpa meant. King Maxwell, the strongest man on the continent, was not able to land even a single hit on the Exarch. His massive tower shield seemed to move immediately to block and strike, and although his sword was not a Holy Artifact, whenever he swung the blade, it would slice into the King’s crystal armor, taking a massive chunk out of it. Thankfully, it was quickly regrown, but how long could King Maxwell keep up?
My father and mother made their way over to us. The two of them were drenched head to toe in the blood of their enemies and their own as well. Without even needing to be asked, Sylvia immediately healed the two of them.
The three of us watched the two fight, and it was clear that we could not intervene recklessly. King Maxwell was giving it his all, and so was the Exarch. Any slip up would be the end for us.
Eventually, the two men broke apart from each other. Neither of them was winded or wounded. The Exarch stood tall and planted his shield into the ground with a thud.
“It’s an honor to meet the Berserker King face to face. The stories don’t do your strength justice,” the Exarch said humbly.
“Gerimia Foster, the Shield Exarch. Tell me, why have you invaded my kingdom?” King Maxwell demanded.
“All land is equally ours under our god. I have every right to be here. And besides, I think it’s rather obvious as to why I’ve come. But there seems to be an issue…so I’ll be taking my leave now,” Gerimia said.
What? He’s just going to leave?
“What?! We can’t leave now you just—”
Alnwar’s yapping was silenced with a single glance from the Exarch. “I won’t be hearing any complaints from you.”
Gerimia looked up into the sky as Gryphon Knights circled above. “Besides, we are outnumbered, and I don’t intend to wait things out only to starve to death. I’m a defensive specialist; I can’t defeat an army with this many elites alone. We are leaving.”
“As if I’d let you. This hole will be your grave,” King Maxwell snarled.
“No, it really won’t be. But if you want it to be yours, that’s fine with me, Your Majesty,” Gerimia said with a shrug.
King Maxwell shot forward, but he stopped in his tracks. We all felt it. The feeling of dread increased, and the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. And my body screamed at me to run. It was a familiar sensation, and Sylvia was the first to shout.
“Stop him! He is starting a ritua—”
Sylvia’s warning was stopped just with the Exarch’s voice, “I do not permit you to preach to me. You shall all know silence.”
The sun on the shield lit up, and a burst of light flashed. No magic or sudden pain hit us, but there was a definite change. All the sound in the entire crater had ceased as if the world had gone deaf.
King Maxwell rushed forward, but an enormous golden barrier flashed to life. It reminded me of the barrier that Mason erected in Gilcour Thicket all those years ago, but this one was three times as big and covered their entire side in holy light.
“Here all me faithful, I hereby command you, be strong and courageous. Have no fear or dread of them, for your god is with you today.”
Once again, the Exarch’s shield flickered to life. With golden rays, the sun shined, and the wings shimmered, and rays of light streamed out from it. They arced off and danced in the air, and we all watched as they shot down and into the invaders. The white robes and paladins all glowed with a holy light as they began to stand up, examining themselves as if surprised by something.
Even the people who were at death’s door and nothing but limbless corpses began to regrow limbs and stand back up, full of vigor, as they picked up weapons. The only bright side was that the dead stayed dead and did not rise. Even so, we were once again surrounded.
The refreshed mob let out war cries as they rushed us with renewed fervor. Spells from the knights crashed into their ranks just as before, but it appeared as if they were less effective. People were losing body parts from Fire Balls or falling rocks, but they healed almost immediately and got right back up.
The first wave crashed into us, and with Sylvia’s help, the four of us began to fight back. We killed dozens more, and there was a stark difference now. Before, the white-robed people seemed nothing more than civilians, blindly rushing to their deaths. But now, even the weakest amongst them was slightly more robust, which wasn’t much, all things considered, as they still died all the same.
It was also unnerving that we were the only ones that couldn’t speak. Our swords clashing, the cutting of flesh, none of it made any noise. It was only the shouts of zealots and the low hum of a chorus of voices mumbling in sync off in the distance.
Sylvia yelled into the air, like she was breaking free of the silence, and shouted, “Hold them back! They are doing a ritual! I have to try to stop them! Throw the bodies toward me!”
Sylvia jumped back, and blood began to spiral out from the corpses and shoot out into the crowd. The blood pooled on the ground and, like a rushing river, began to flow toward us. The crimson liquid gathered above Sylvia into a massive ball as she quickly mumbled to herself with her eyes closed.
I had no idea what she was doing, but we did as she asked. I thrust my spear into the heart of a woman and tossed her body over my head and into a pile. My mother cut through the hoard with her twin lightning-clad blades as my father used his shadows to launch the bodies backward.
And their souls…they have golden chains around them now…what is happening?

Part.2 https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/1cfm0im/deathworld_commando_reborn_vol7_ch206_in_ou

CoverVol.1PreviousNextMapsWiki+DiscordRoyal RoadWebNovelTapasKo-FiFandom/wiki
There is a big update at the end of the next chapter. There are two posts today as well, so don't miss them. Thanks, and sorry for the delay.
The smell of burned flesh tickled my nose, but I ignored it as I turned around. It felt like the world was moving slowly as I watched everyone react to the sudden situation. My father was wrapping himself and Dallin in a cloak of shadows. My mother’s lightning-clad hidden blade was through the throat of what seemed to be a regular citizen with a knife.
Sylvia and I were springing forward. I could hear and sense multiple people behind me, but they were of secondary concern. My heart thumped as I watched Cerila protect Padraic from a sword with her ice. Cerila let Hubris fall to the ground and instantly embraced Mila, bringing her close. She tried to defend herself and Mila with a thick layer of ice, but she wasn’t quick enough.
An assailant with a long, thin dagger thrust forward, breaking the blue ice. Cerila twisted her body, and the dagger missed Mila and plunged straight into Cerila’s chest. It was a moment later that my Stone Bullet cracked the dagger-wielding man in the back of the head, dropping him to the ground. I turned to face two people rushing toward me.
Both of them looked like regular everyday citizens, but they had weapons out, and I quickly dispatched them with a torrent of flames. It was pandemonium, and I couldn’t immediately tell who was a regular civilian and who was part of the group of attackers.
Because it wasn’t just us being attacked.
I parried a sword thrust from behind and sent my spear through a man’s chest. I glanced around, and people were attacking others indiscriminately. A mage at a food stand obliterated a group of people with a Fireball.
Thankfully, without a word, my family and I had essentially made a circle around the three non-combatants. Sylvia was already treating Cerila’s wound while protecting us with orbs of blood, shooting out crimson spikes at incoming attackers.
I sliced the head off another attacker and immediately felt a sickening twist in my stomach. Out of instinct and on pure sense alone, I glared out into the panicking crowd and caught a glimpse of someone sprinting toward us. It was a woman, and even though she was covering herself in a cloak, I still managed to see her eyes, the bottom of them a bright red and the rest a dirty blood color. It was a pair of eyes I would never forget.
I moved to send a hellfire of Stone Bullets at her, but the ground began to shake violently. I lost my footing and crumbled down to one leg as the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I could feel the immense amount of mana now that was gathered below us into multiple spell cores. I encased myself in stone, knowing that I could trust my family to protect themselves and others. It was a good decision, as the world around us exploded.
Boom.
—
Sylvia Talgan’s POV.
I wasn’t able to feel anything before the ground grumbled with an unknown power. Even so, I saw everyone going on the defensive and instantly moved the blood under my control to protect Mila first. Whatever happened wouldn’t kill me, so her safety was paramount.
A crimson shield was wrapping around me when the explosion went off, followed by something barreling into me. The air got knocked out of my lungs, and my ribs cracked and broke in my chest. I thought a random piece of debris had crushed my chest, but I was wrong. I flipped around, my ears ringing and my body screaming at me in pain. I tumbled head over heels multiple times, impacting falling rocks and stones on my way until I crashed into the ground.
But the ground immediately gave away again, and I started to fall deeper. I was healing my body as fast as I could, fixing broken bones and giant gashes in my arms, chest, and legs. I even took a sizable rock to my head but resisted the urge to blackout and pushed through the pain with gritted teeth.
The stench of a vile sewer assaulted me as I impacted the ground, and just to piss me off, it was almost completely dark besides the light shining in through the hole I crashed in from. I felt my body break in multiple places again, but I instantly began to repair myself because, beyond the stench and the darkness, my senses were overwhelmed with the smell of blood.
It wasn’t my blood, but the blood of my loved ones at a distance, and right in front of me was the scent of someone I had been looking forward to killing for a very long time. I let burning blood course through me, and even though I wasn’t healed yet, I thrust my arm out and caught a sword with my bare hand.
It sliced into me and cut my flesh but stopped in my bone, just like I wanted. The pain was overwhelming; I wanted to cry out, but those feelings were washed away by the pure resentment and loathing I felt. A pair of crimson eyes looked down at me as a female Vampire I had never seen tried to push the sword further into me.
But it never budged. I wouldn’t let it. And even though I had never seen her, I knew exactly who she was.
She was the Vampire that crippled Kaladin and hurt Mila. And she had finally come to die.
With raw strength, I stood up and pushed back against the woman, and the sword embedded into my hand. Her eyes lit up with shock from underneath her hood as I forced her back and summoned my sword from my Spatial Ring and into my free hand.
I thrust forward, and she backed off, ripping the sword out of me with her own strength. She didn’t give me any time to gather myself and immediately launched into another straightforward attack. I knew what she was doing, and I decided to let her do it.
The sword pierced my shoulder, and she immediately opened her mouth wide to sink her fangs into me, but she abruptly stopped. The blood on the ground, by my will, had formed into a spike that impaled her through the leg.
I immediately took control of her body and backed away from her, letting my wounds heal completely. My hearing came back to me, and I could hear fierce fighting from above; spells and blades clashed over and over again, and I could smell the fresh blood being spilled.
“Wha—what did you do to me?” the Vampire said with a pained gasp.
She was trying to fight back and regain control of herself, but she was too weak and couldn’t stop me. I glared down at her, reached into her body, and controlled her. She reared up from her knees with her sword in hand, twisted it around, and sent her own blade through her stomach.
I went face to face with her as I gazed straight into her fearful eyes. “You are lucky I don’t have time to make you suffer the same way you made them. So kill yourself slowly and watch all the blood drain from your body, wench,” I spat.
“No! Wait—gah, I—!” she tried to resist, but she continued to take her sword out from herself and stab herself in the stomach again and again.
She would slowly drain herself of blood and die a pitiful and agonizing death as her body healed itself. It was the most fitting end I could give her.
I felt the muscles in my legs expand, and I kicked off the ground, jumping straight up and out of the hole I had come in from. I had a fight to join and a family to protect.
—
Kaladin Shadowheart’s POV.
I was fighting, completely deafened and battered. After the explosion, a giant sinkhole had formed, and we fell into the center of what looked to be the city’s sewer system. The people were pouring out of the tunnels and ruble like ants. The White-robed assailants were supported by groups of what looked to be Amon-Ra paladins and priests. The white-robed people weren’t an issue.
They just rushed to their deaths with a zealous fervor, and judging by their open mouths and reddened faces, they were coming at us on suicide missions. I had killed dozens at this point, probably at least fifty people with magic and my spear. The real problem was the paladins.
They were highly skilled and most, if not all of them, wielded some type of magic. All of them were also properly geared, wearing full armor and using high-quality Cobalt or Dwarven steel weapons. They came at us with calculated strikes and often in groups of two or three. So far, I had only managed to kill four of them entirely.
I forced many of them back, even impaling one through the chest with my spear, causing a grievous wound. But they would retreat to the support of a priest who healed them while a group of the white robes would swarm in to protect them, forcing me to fight them instead—the priests, when not healing, sent light magic spells at us.
I dodged or cut them down in the middle of the frenzy. My father and Cerila focused on protecting Mila, Dallin, and Padaric, while my mother and I went on the offensive. Sylvia was nowhere to be found at the moment, and I didn’t have the luxury of looking for her, lest I be overwhelmed by the tide of paladins and white-robed assailants.
Another two-man group of Paladins pushed me as I cut down a white robe with my spear. The first one swung his warhammer wide, and I dodged just out of its range. The second one, in coordination with the first, swung his great sword down at me, and I deflected it with my spear.
The bones in my arm vibrated painfully from the powerful strike, but I forced his sword up and thrust my spear into his knee so he couldn’t escape me. The first one stepped forward and blasted me with a gust of wind magic, but I countered it with a wall of earth magic.
I pushed through the earth wall, while the first one tried to drag the second one away, but we needed to start to kill the paladins if we were to have any chance of making it out of here alive. A hammer of light flew at me from across the hole, ripping the arm off of an unlucky white robe that was rushing me. I cut it at the spell core and followed through, hitting the surprised greatsword user in the chest. He let out a yelp of pain and, with a foot encased in stone, I crushed the warhammer user’s head. A Stone Bullet ended the other in a flash.
Why didn’t they just attack us in an orderly fashion? Why send randomly armed civilians at us?
I sensed someone running up behind me and was relieved to see a familiar face. Sylvia thrust her estoc into the back of a paladin which exploded into a ball of crimson. I cut down a few white robes that were between us, and without a word, she sank her fangs into my arm. I felt my broken ribs knit back together, along with all the smaller gashes and cuts on my body. My hearing returned shortly after.
I wanted to ask her what had happened and where she had been to have such a dark look in her eyes, but this wasn’t the time or place. We needed to make some headway.
“Take over defending the others so we can push the enemy back,” I requested.
Sylvia nodded, and both of us pushed back to the center where my father was. My mother, upon seeing us, decided to regroup as well, and we quickly and efficiently changed guards. I saw Mila and Dallin, both of them completely mortified, but that could be remedied later as well.
Before we launched our counter-attack, I summoned multiple orbs of white fire that sailed into the air. They broke off into thin streaks and crashed into the ground in fiery explosions. I aimed for the mages and priests in the back in hopes of knocking as many of them out as possible.
The four of us rushed into the dazed groups and began slaughtering everyone. Now that my mother and I were no longer alone and overwhelmed, we could efficiently kill even the paladins as they could no longer retreat to safety with ease. The white robbed assailants were no longer as zealous and eager to rush to their deaths. As my father, mother, and Cerila cut down people left and right with blades and magic, even the paladins began to hesitate.
As we pushed through, it seemed I had killed or displaced a large chunk of the mages and priests as the paladins, still putting up a fight, were collecting more wounds. With white fire wrapped around my spearhead, I sliced and thrusted my way forward. It felt as if we were finally making headway when a bolt of light whizzed past my head.
I used my Soulsight and saw two enormous blobs of light moving through the crowd at a rapid pace. Two large men in golden and Cobalt armor broke through the ranks, each wielding massive hammers. They were the pontifex’s personal guards.
They aren’t even pretending anymore. This is basically a declaration of war.
We launched spells at them, but they shrugged off the weaker of the spells, and my Stone Bullets had no effect on them. Cerila’s ice lance was crushed with their hammers, and despite being so big, they even dodged my follow-up Lightning Bolt.
The first of the two launched himself at Cerila, while the other came for my father. I was about to send a plasma-based spell at them, but I couldn’t risk hitting my family in the process, so instead, we split off; I went to help Cerila while my mother helped my father.
I formed a combination spell core and released it. The white flames on the tip of my spear condensed and warped into a blazing blue, only to be still like glass after a moment. I thrust at the paladin, and he deflected my strike with the shaft of his warhammer. He sent a golden spear of light magic at me, which I dodged, and Cerila followed up with a blast of ice magic directed straight at his head.
The paladin dodged her attack and swung his massive hammer at me. I decided to block it with my spear but instantly regretted it as my hands went numb momentarily from the concussive force that vibrated my bones. It felt as if I had hit a brick wall.
Cerila and I swung and thrust our weapons, each changing our tactics and trying to out-maneuver the paladin, but he was fighting against the both of us with ease. He was clearly a veteran, and his skills showed. He never let my plasma-clad spear get close to him, and he always opted to keep Cerila’s Hubris away from him with a swing.
The man was in full plate armor, but he moved with a deftness that was beyond that. He was at the level of a War God, maybe not as powerful or devastating as King Maxwell, but these two were a cut above the previous paladins. So, it was time to switch things up.
Cerila and I pushed him at the same time, and he blocked both of our strikes with his giant hammer and the gauntlet on his armor. Cerila’s sword dug into his armor, and he used the head of the hammer to knock her away. I destabilized the ground underneath him with earth magic, and Cerila tried to freeze one of his hands, but the paladin simply stomped through the ground, maintaining his posture, and broke free of the ice by crushing it.
Cerila and I both backed off and began launching spells directly at him, trying to overwhelm him with the magic. It was a howling storm of ice alongside the thunderous booms of yellow lightning. Our spells made craters in the ground and kicked up tons of debris. Stray shots that didn’t directly hit the paladin’s location flew off only to hit a random white robe or destroy the walls.
I didn’t need the dust to clear to see that the paladin was unharmed. With my Soul Sight, I could see that he had protected himself with a shield of mana, which must have been light magic, which left me with only one choice.
I wanted to hold onto this, but I can’t afford to ration my mana in this kind of situation. Even eliminating one of the pontifex’s guards would free us up.
I started forming the triple spell core with gravity, fire, and lightning for a railgun shot. I hadn’t used this spell since I killed the Chaos Dragon, as it consumed a large swath of my mana and did almost just as much damage to me. I was nearly finished when I had to abruptly stop and defend myself from a sword aimed at my chest.
I blocked the sword strike, and my eyes met the eyes of a young man I hadn’t seen in years. His brown hair fluttered, and he grinned at me as his second shortsword plunged itself into my side. But it was his first mistake, assuming I was defenseless in close range. I thrust my hip forward and yanked the arm on his first sword.
So I tossed Alnwar over my shoulder and onto the ground.
I thrust my spear down at him to end his life, but I was forced to block a hammer swing that sent me flying back. I used gravity magic to jerk myself to a halt in midair and land safely.
The paladin pushed Cerila back as Alnwar stood up and wiped the sweat from his brow. He threw his arms wide and chuckled.
“Wooow, I didn’t expect that move. Here I was, thinking I’d get a sneak attack in when you were your most vulnerable. But I suppose I shouldn’t expect anything less from my most prized possession.”

Next

I have been taking lithium for years now and I will say it’s always come to my rescue every time I have an episode. I like to keep my levels around a .8 and I feel great . But my only issue is it causes me to have tremors in my hands. At times they make life difficult which puts me in a bind but for some reason I continue to take lithium because it’s the only thing that work. No matter what as long as the side effects if there bearable. I’ve accepted I’ll be on lithium for life . I also take lamictal which makes a great combo.

I've gotten to the point where I can easily tremor without doing any warm up exercises. So now I just do it whenever I feel like it. Which it turns out, is often. Sometimes I'll even start tremoring without even realizing it.
Am I doing this because I'm noticing some great benefits? Not really. Maybe my sleep has improved but haven't noticed much else. On the other hand I'll sometimes overdo it and get headaches, muscle aches and brain fog.
So why am I doing this? Why do I keep doing this? I guess it feels good, though I can't really describe how it feels good. I'm not even sure that it does. I just feel compelled to tremor. I must tremor. I will tremor. This is my life now.

We,as a collective, have tics. Very small, pretty much unnoticeable tics, like head jerks, muscle tensing, clicks of the tongue, etc. Our tics used to be much worse, like full body throwing, hitting, biting, whistling, etc. We have an alter which seems to have them worse? I mean its amplified. They also have a thing that we do that is like cataplexy, but more like a tic? Our body kind of loses strength and flops down, but comes back instantly. As I said we all do it, but this alter seems to have it more often than us? Maybe its a incredibly stressful front as they are new, and it caused it to amplify, or they are just a tic triggering alter? Anyone else have this problem at all?

F20, 120lbs, 5'7.
Over the past four years I have been experiencing symptoms related to adrenaline secreting tumors. At first it started off as sudden bouts of extreme anxiety that would spike my blood pressure, cause intense sweating, palpitations, pallor, nausea and tachycardia. I thought it was just extreme anxiety and pushed it off for around two years. However, it progressed every day to the point that my HR would be 180 when walking and bp would always be around 140/95. I wasn't seeing any physicians at the time outside of psychology who I started to see for said 'anxiety'. They were somewhat concerned for my blood pressure as I was active, ate healthy, and was of a healthy weight. However, right after that I experienced an extremely stressful situation that kicked my symptoms up to a ten. I have been practically disabled since then. For around six months my blood pressure would spike to 170/110 for around four hours at a time every day. When this first happened I went to my local hospital because of the blood pressure being so high. However, they said that I was having panic attacks. I tried to tell them that I have had panic attacks prior to all of this starting and they felt nothing like what I had been currently experiencing. It felt like I had been injected with adrenaline. My hands and feet went completely cold and I could feel my aorta and heart thudding. It felt like a hot thick line running up my abdomen and after a few hours, my aorta and heart would start to hurt. It felt like someone was squeezing them. You could see my veins in my hands and feet shrink and my aorta moving my abdomen. I would be perfectly fine emotionally relaxing at home and all of a sudden it would start. At this time my GP started me on propranolol and over the next six months these episodes started to decrease both in frequency and intensity. However, when my symptoms started to become less episodic, they became more of an all the time thing. It has been around a year and a half since I had a day where I experienced no symptoms. Keep in mind I have been practically confined to my home, so outside stressors like work and social anxiety are not factors. Also, the propranolol that I was on was not lasting long enough in my system so my cardiologist switched me to Nadolol and since then, my HR has been fairly regulated. My current symptoms include:

• Blood pressure surges when I am doing nothing - it will swing minute to minute from the normal 100/70 to 130/110 - usually lasts a few days up to a month when flared
  
• When I get stressed my diastolic will go up 20-25 points - it is usually my diastolic that is the issue my systolic stays fairly regular unless I am stressed
  
• Extreme palpitations
  
• I have developed long qt over the past year and I have recurrent bouts of hypokalemia. To combat it I consume around 4,500 mg of potassium every day and my potassium still usually ends up low to the point that I end up going to the hospital for treatment around every two to three months.
  
• I developed intense full body tremors where my muscles lock up - they are exacerbated when stressed. Also my muscles feel like they always want to tighten and curl in on themselves
  
• Intractable headaches - I was admitted to a larger hospital once due to a physician seeing papilledema. However, by the time the ophthalmologist saw me, five days later, it had disappeared. I was also admitted numerous times to the same hospital for these headaches due to the pain. I received nerve blocks multiple times for them and it did nothing each time. I was also prescribed gabapentin and was on it for six months and that too did nothing for them. As a result, I don't think they are caused by nerve pain. Also, I feel them mostly at the occipital and C1 region as well as the front of my face (particularly around my forehead cheekbones and upper lip- kind of like when you exercise too hard and your face goes numb)
  
• Vision changes - decreased peripheral fov and double vision - I was diagnosed by an ophthalmologist with enophthalmos - Also, the brightness levels increase and decrease all the time like someone is taking in up and down on a slider
  
• Feeling of extreme jitteriness all the time - similar to a sugar rush - it has been months since I haven't felt this
  
• Feeling a rising sensation in my abdomen. However, I think it comes from my neck and goes down my chest to my abdomen. Sometimes it's accompanied by a dropping sensation in my gut - like when you go over a speed bump. When this happens is when my blood pressure surges. My HR also then goes up and I get that aortic and heart thudding that I experienced before. My face also then gets really hot and it feels like someone is squeezing my throat.
  
• The only thing that I have noticed that helps me is drinking a lot of water throughout the day. I will drink around a gallon a day and still be thirsty and have chapped lips. However, that jitteriness felling decreases a little from maybe a 9 to 7 when I drink water.
  
• Hot flashes and bouts of sweating
  
• Tinnitus - non-pulsatile
  

Anyways, now that the background has been covered, I have had the following tests done: catecholamine, frac (random urine) and metanephrine, fract. LC/MS/MS, 24 hr urine. All results came back normal. Metanephrine was 90 mcg/24h. Normetanephrine was 240mcg/24h. Metanephrines, total was 330mcg/24h. Dopamine was 234mcg/g. Creatinine, random was 59mg/dL. However, I was somewhat confused about my epinephrine level. My norepinephrine was 46, and my calculated total (E+NE) was also 46. Please correct me if I am reading this wrong, but wouldn't that mean that my epinephrine was zero. I am just confused on how I have so many symptoms of high adrenaline but the calculated total is showing it as zero. Also, I was curious as to if there are other tests that would have been more specific in diagnosing an adrenal secreting tumor or if the tests done are accurate enough. Lastly, if you have any idea as to what else could be causing these issues please let me know. Living like this has been a nightmare. Really any input would be much appreciated. Thank you.

“Deadly Attractor” (TOC)
by P. Orin Zack
[2003]
 
Chapter Fourteen
 
“Your honor,” the portly senior Counsel for the Complainant said, rising to his feet. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m sure you are all saddened by the tragic events which began in this courtroom on Thursday last.”
After pushing his chair under the table, he paused to look at each juror in turn, lingering finally on Frank. “Having a critical witness succumb to some mysterious, and as yet unexplained, malady, one that first struck him unconscious in the midst of testimony, and then placed him under the most extreme MedCenter care available, would have been quite enough.”
He stepped to the geometrical center of the open area between the judge and the tables from which Counsel for each side mounted their respective missions to convince the jurors that their version of the truth was superior to that of their opponent.
Frank continued to watch the young man sitting between Carlita Gutiérez and Allan Wylie. From where he sat, he could see only part of the man’s right hand, but enough to catch a glint of reflected light off whatever it was that he was holding.
Counsel took a step towards the jury. “But then to learn that, while being transported to Kübler-Ross Hospice Center, against the stated preferences in his MedNet file, he was first placed at risk in what could have been a fatal airway collision, and then abducted by terrorists posing as a security team, that is too much to ask of us to accept as being unrelated to this case.”
Frank squirmed uncomfortably at the accusation, hoping that nobody would notice his reaction. Inwardly, he heard Cynthia’s voice, telling him to be calm, reminding him that she was watching.
Carlita’s mysterious ally smiled subtly, and shifted his gaze to the speaker, who had taken another step towards the jury.
“Clearly,” said the Complainant’s counsel, warming to his ploy, “what our witness had to say, what Dr. Apuérto was going to tell the court, was important to someone besides our clients.” He glanced back towards his table, where a lone representative of the group that had filed the case sat between two other members of his team. “Important in a way,” he continued, “that induced someone to prevent him from testifying.”
Frank drew a slow breath, and looked instead at the portly Counsel, who had just taken yet another step closer to the jury.
“Nevertheless,” the lawyer said, now close enough to place a hand on the jury box railing, “what he had to say was in no way stopped by these acts. We will continue laying out the trail of evidence with the assistance of a senior member of the administration from the Dartmouth MedCenter in Halifax, Dr. —”
A resounding crack from the rear of the courtroom stopped the Counsel in mid-sentence. The heavy doors had been thrown open, and bailiffs turned to respond.
“That won’t be necessary, your honor.” The courtroom first fell dead silent, and then erupted in chatter, as people first recognized, and then told their neighbors that it was Dr. Miguél Apuérto, apparently none the worse for his hospitalization and abduction, who had spoken.
Frank watched Dr. Apuérto walk past the rows of spectator seats, but his gaze stopped as it crossed a welcome sight: Mara and Alex were in the courtroom as well. When he caught his wife’s eye, she smiled and nodded gently, then glanced beside her at Alex. Frank followed her cue, and knew in an instant that something was seriously wrong. He’d never seen Mara’s brother wearing a scowl before, and knew that for someone as intensely full of life and energy as Alex, inducing one would have taken some doing. But whatever it was, it would have to wait.
Judge Bennigan ordered silence, and asked both counsel to approach the bench. After a brief discussion, she sent them back to their tables and addressed Dr. Apuérto. “We’re all pleased to see that you are well. Since neither counsel has objected, you may step into the witness box and resume your testimony.”
He nodded. “Thank you, your honor.”
Once Dr. Apuérto had reaffirmed his oath to testify fully and truthfully, and Counsel for the Complainant had had a moment to confer with one another, their senior member rose and walked over to the witness box.
Frank and the witness looked at one another briefly. He then glanced at Carlita, and noticed that the man beside her was whispering something to Wylie. Before Frank closed his eyes and prepared to re-establish the link, he wordlessly asked Cynthia, ‘What about the sprite?’ Since she didn’t answer immediately, he reached out psychically and felt for the administrator’s sense of self. Finally, he focused on the memories racing through the man’s mind, and waited.
“Dr. Apuérto,” Counsel began, “we were discussing how your facility’s attitude that patients should be treated immediately, regardless of whether they can be treated at a Hospice Center as successfully and for less cost, satisfied the requirements of the jurisdictional rulings that define the proper roles of MedCenters and Hospices. The court has been waiting since last Thursday to hear your answer.”
The witness nodded. “Yes. Well, when we first evaluate a patient, especially in an emergency situation, we have a lot of things to consider. For example, not all of the patient’s symptoms are immediately evident, yet sometimes the more subtle problems are actually the more serious ones, and must therefore be given a higher priority.”
Counsel leaned against the witness box railing. “I would imagine, then, that although one of the patient’s problems might be squarely in the MedCenter’s jurisdiction, another could be in the gray area, or even in the Hospice’s jurisdiction. Is that so?”
“That is correct,” Apuérto said, and fell silent.
“Thank you. Now tell the court, sir, if this is the case,” Counsel paused to look around the room, “then how can you possibly comply with the jurisdictional rulings?”
Apuérto smiled. “We can’t, not in the way the lawyers envisaged it, at least.”
“What do you do, then?”
“The only reasonable solution,” Apuérto said, “is to start with the premise that I laid out last week, the idea that promptness of treatment is paramount, and treat what we can as soon as we can, and that means keeping the patient at the MedCenter. Anything else would be irresponsible, and I suspect would cause a lawsuit of a different sort.”
“Objection, your honor,” opposing Counsel called out. “The witness is not filing suit against himself, is he?”
Judge Bennigan looked at Apuérto. “Please restrict your comments to answering the questions put to you.”
It went on like that for nearly an hour. By the time his questioning was finished, Counsel had laid the foundation for a logical attack against the legal basis of the jurisdictional rulings themselves. During it all, Frank maintained his link, and did not observe anything that would suggest that Apuérto’s answers were either fabricated or based on a distortion of the facts as he understood them. On the other hand, because of the kinds of questions asked, and therefore the variety of memories elicited, he also did not encounter any additional incidents involving the mysterious person sitting between Healer Gutiérez and Allan Wylie.
When Counsel for the Complainant thanked the witness and started back to his seat, the jury’s Foreman, whom the other jurors now knew as Rick, requested the floor. Once the Counsel for the Respondent sat back down, he stood beside his seat, giving those in the room a better view of his formal powder-blue outfit, the glow from which gave him a theatrical illusion of power. Frank looked across the other jurors at him, and wondered what he had in mind. After all, they hadn’t had any time to discuss a plan prior to entering the courtroom.
“Welcome back to court, Dr. Apuérto,” he said graciously. “We have listened with great interest to your explanation of why patients are kept at the MedCenter for treatment. Logically and practically, it is a thoroughly admirable solution to an intractable problem. Something about it, however, bothers us, and I was hoping that you could clarify it.”
Apuérto sat quietly, waiting for a question.
“If you could, sir, please help us to understand the position of the evaluating physician. As you’ve explained, a patient with multiple problems places your staff in something of a quandary. Assuming that they have a rough idea of what problems they are dealing with, how do they evaluate the relative importance of each one?”
Apuérto nodded. “Are you familiar with the concept of triage? It’s a method used to rank the relative importance of competing requests for a limited resource, such as staff, equipment or supplies. It can also be used to decide which of several problems is to be treated first, or which one to choose if there is a conflict of treatment regimen. We use this method to determine how to proceed. There is ample evidence that it works.”
The Foreman considered briefly, and glanced at both sets of counsel. “Thank you. Is it possible that, among several competing problems presented by a patient, the one that, according to the rules of triage, is more life-threatening, should actually be treated at a Hospice Center?”
Apuérto shook his head. “No sir. Not in my experience.”
“Well, then, how about in the experience of your emergency evaluation physicians?”
Apuérto thought for a moment, during which time Frank was bombarded with a torrent of memories, most of which involved evaluation reports, statistics, and boring meetings in hot, stuffy rooms. He found the meetings the most interesting, because several of them featured a familiar semi-transparent figure standing in the shadows at the edge of the room.
“As far as I can recall,” he said slowly, “in all the time I’ve been monitoring evaluations, we haven’t had that situation come up. Not even once.”
The Foreman nodded. “I see. This is where we have a problem, though. If your staff are expert only in the kind of treatments that are offered at your facility, how then can they judge the importance of a problem in a field in which they have neither training nor experience?”
“Objection, your honor.” The counsels for both sides were on their feet, and a murmur washed across the spectators.
“Sit down, both of you,” Judge Bennigan said. “This is between the jury and the witness.” She looked over at Apuérto. “Answer the question, please.”
He sat motionless for a few seconds, looked down at his folded hands briefly, and then out at the crowd beyond the tables where both parties to the case sat. “That’s um—,” he faltered. “That’s a good question. We, um, we actually rely on the advice of a special consultant in situations like that.”
The foreman crossed his arms. “A consultant?”
“Yes, sir. One provided by the Global Directorate, a member of the agency that provides some of the funding for—”
When Apuérto thought about the MedCenter’s GD consultant, two things happened.
First, as Frank watched, the man’s memories of the consultant were offered up for review. Each one of them had been altered to reduce the chances of it being recalled, and the image of the consultant was replaced by a pasted in construct, a placeholder intended simply to eliminate the problem that a hole in the memory might have caused.
Second, the bundle of memories that Frank had built, the ones containing a distorted image of their adversary, were presented. This meant that Apuérto’s memory processing system had just realized that they were of the same person who had attempted to kill him in the flyway. Yet, without a clear image, he still didn’t know who the man really was. But because Frank was worried about the man, because he’d seen his face, and because they were linked, Apuérto somehow managed to acquire the missing piece.
Apuérto’s sudden rage broke Frank’s link with him, and Frank opened his eyes, just in time to see their adversary whisper something to Allan Wylie. A second later, Frank jerked in his seat, straining against a sudden constriction of his throat.
 
EV knew exactly where Apuérto planned to take that thought. He’d ridden the crisis like a monster wave from a barely perceptible ripple, and was now poised at that exquisite moment just before events would yield to gravity and come toppling over in a spectacular denouement with the power to destroy everything his organization had built up over the years. It was an event worth tweaking up close, so he could watch every beautiful moment of it; the long-awaited payoff for having delayed so long before defusing the situation; the adrenaline rush that made his job the most extreme sport imaginable.
The people he’d permitted to set up the situation had done their part well. They had proved a worthy adversary, but when he was finished here, they wouldn’t know how close they had come to succeeding.
He glanced down at the device in his hand and pressed the symbol etched onto its surface. As the fields stabilized, and the courtroom faded slightly into the familiar fluid imagery he’d been trained to work with, he reached an imaginary hand into the nearby turbulence and used his palm to divert a tiny bit of the flow, just enough to prevent a small tributary from enhancing the strength of the developing channel he wanted to weaken, just enough to turn the tide.
Subtlety was important to him. It was a mark of the expertise he’d developed, both in his job and in the more conventional sports that he enjoyed, sports that took him to places like the peaks and glaciers of New Zealand. In this situation, it meant thwarting their plan by eliminating their pawn, leaving them frustrated at their inability to control the situation, and more importantly, to control him. Satisfied, he released his thumb and settled in to watch the results.
 
Covertly poking around inside people’s minds and memories had only become a normal part of her life after Cynthia’s reputation was trashed and she’d had to go underground. Since then, she’d used it for a lot of things – extracting pass phrases to get into secured places, finding out whether she’d been spotted, even the occasional memory rewrite, but monitoring Frank while he linked to witnesses was something else again.
She’d sneaked through the courthouse’s service entrance, using faked biometrics records that Lenny had placed in the system, after Frank was safely past the more formal security screening at the main entrance, and found a cozy spot on the lower level. From there, she carefully reached out with her psychic sense of self and waited just outside his energy field. In this way, she could observe his condition without giving away her presence to any third party.
When Apuérto’s reaction broke Frank’s link with him, Cynthia saw it as an energy wave, a kind of virtual tsunami that sheared the tenuous extrusion of aura through which Frank had reached out to the witness. As the energy knot of Frank’s consciousness snapped back, and his normal energy patterns reasserted themselves, though, something else happened.
As she watched, in a single violent slashing motion, a bolt of energy shot across the room and penetrated deep into Frank’s field, then just as quickly vanished. Cynthia used the momentary afterimage to track it back to its source, and tapped in just far enough for a name: Wylie.
Turning back to Frank, she found that his energy field had suddenly turned murky and turbulent. Reaching inside, she felt around for the insubstantial energy membrane separating Frank’s own field from whatever it was that had clamped itself around the meridians through which chi flowed through his neck, and pulled it away.
The sprite slithered through her grip, gathered itself together, and wavered like a cobra preparing to strike. She spread her sense of self wide, in an animal-like display of faux size, while watching its reaction. The sprite hesitated, seemingly unable to recognize her now as a threat, then turned back towards Frank’s meridian and seized it again. She lunged after the sprite, this time surrounding it. Prevented from moving, unable to escape, the sprite withdrew into itself and hung motionless, quietly vibrating in the midst of Frank’s energy field.
 
Frank gasped for air. Then, just as suddenly, the constriction released, and he relaxed.
‘Wylie… triggered the sprite,’ Cynthia said inside his mind.
Frank peered at Wylie. The man had closed his eyes, lowered his head. Clearly, this wasn’t over, but for the moment, at least, he wasn’t feeling anything. The question was why.
“…provided some of the funding for—” Apuérto repeated his thought, and then stopped. He blinked a few times, blankly looking into the distance, as though he was casting about for an elusive memory. While the moment dragged on, and the witness continued to hang on the edge of lucidity, Frank decided to act. Intent on helping the administrator expose their adversary, he closed his eyes and reached out to re-establish their link.
In an instant, he knew that something was wrong. Instead of finding Apuérto’s familiar knot of consciousness energy floating amid the dark expanse of his personal space, he found what appeared to be two of them, one nearly superimposed over another, and slowly drifting apart. One of these knots of consciousness, however, was a ghostly apparition, rapidly growing more substantial, while the second was beginning to fade.
This was something new to Frank. Not only had he never seen such a thing, he’d never heard about it either. Under the circumstances, though, he was certain that their adversary, whoever he was, had caused it. If the man’s intent was to somehow alter Apuérto’s consciousness, to prevent him from finishing that thought, then he needed to preserve the fading one and destroy the other.
“…funding for…”
As Apuérto struggled to recall the government source of their consultant, a murmur flooded the courtroom.
Psychically seizing the ghostly consciousness knot, Frank felt for the source of whatever was strengthening it. Instead of finding some influx of energy, some external agency filling it with controlling power, though, there was only a feeling of dreamlike unreality, as if this secondary version of Apuérto was being drawn out of the DreamTime to become associated with the consensual reality in which the court case existed. Only this dream version of Apuérto knew nothing about their adversary, because in that dream, he’d never been taken from the MedCenter, never been probed by Frank, and never had learned that the ‘student’ in the hallway kiosk was in fact manipulating events and people at the MedCenter.
Intense pain shattered his attention, as the muscles in his back abruptly tightened, forcing him out of link. The cracking of stressed vertebrae hit his ears at the same time the bright overhead lights hit his suddenly opened eyes. Then the spasm released, and he heard Cynthia’s soundless voice saying, ‘I’ve got it, but it’s struggling. Can you force a recess?’
Breathlessly, and still in pain, Frank nudged the Apprentice Juror, sitting beside him. “Call a recess. Now.”
While Sala arranged for the recess, Frank looked out at the spectators, and found a very worried looking Mara leaning forward in her seat. Alex had balled his left fist.
Frank shuddered as a sharp pain tore through his gut. A moment later, it stopped, and Cynthia silently said, ‘Middle detention room, lower level.’
Once Judge Bennigan had again gaveled the room to order, she instructed the spectators to remain in their seats while the bailiff escorted the jurors across the hall. Before they rose, he leaned close to Sala, who had already started mouthing a question. “I have a problem to deal with,” he said quietly. “I’ll meet you in the jury room when I’m done.”
She whispered back, “All right. Are you okay?”
He rubbed his back and shook his head. “Not really.”
Shakily getting to his feet, Frank followed the other jurors out of the courtroom, but rather than continuing across the hall, he turned and hobbled towards the elevator. While he was waiting there, Mara and Alex flanked him.
“What’s going on, Frank?” she said, tipping his face towards her with a finger on his nose.
“There’s an energy sprite in my field,” he said. “It was put there to deal with my attacks, but now it’s turned on me.”
She straightened. “A what? Who put it there?”
He shook his head. “Long story. The people who put it there are in the courtroom, along with the guy that arranged Apuérto’s flyway scare.”
Alex mouthed the last words, and then said, “G’danic. That flight.”
The elevator tone sounded. While several passengers exited, Frank raised a finger. “What?” Before he’d had a chance to ask what his brother-in-law meant, Alex turned and headed back towards the courtroom.
As Mara helped him into the elevator, Frank said, “What’s he talking about?”
“From what we’ve been able to find out,” she said, “G’danic’s construction accident was impossible. Then, we were nearly killed flying to his home in Lambarene. And when we got to his apartment—”
Frank looked at her. “Lambarene?” They’d reached the lower level. After leaving the elevator, he glanced at the floor map on the opposite wall, and they started towards the detention rooms.
“Yeah,” Mara continued. “After Dartmouth MedCenter managed to kill him — another highly improbable accident — we decided that G’danic must have stepped on someone’s toes. Since he was dead, all that was left was the book. Alex had access, so he checked G’danic’s data files, and didn’t find any sign of it. So we flew to Lambarene to check in his office and apartment.”
He stopped near the door to the first detention room. “Back up. You said you were nearly killed?”
She nodded. “Unexplained turbulence or something. Fortunately, the pilot flew manual craft as a hobby, so we made it through. Not that it mattered. There weren’t any copies in Lambarene, either. And his apartment was trashed, just to be certain. So now he’s dead, and so is his book.”
Frank continued towards the middle detention room. “But why?”
“Remember that conspiracy sheet?” she said. “We figure what G’danic was doing with the OAN, and what he said in his book, wouldn’t go down too well with someone in the GD. And it seems like whoever that is has the ability to do some pretty nasty, pretty unexplainable things.”
He huffed. “You’re right. I’ve seen him. And now he’s after me.”
She shook her head. “But why?”
As they reached the middle detention room, Cynthia opened the door, pulled them in by the wrists, and slammed it behind them.
Mara freed her arm and stared at the strange woman. “Who are you?”
“Call me Cynthia. Right now I need to get Frank on that table.”
“It’s okay, Mara,” Frank said, heading towards the table. “Trust her.”
“What I need you to do,” Cynthia told her, “is to keep that door sealed. Make sure nobody gets in until we’re done.”
“All right.” Mara nodded and went back to the door.
Frank sat on the table, swung his legs up, and lay down.
Cynthia stood beside him, held both hands several inches over him, and closed her eyes.
“How can I help?” Frank asked quietly.
She opened her eyes and lowered her arms. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been a patient, Frank. I’ve trapped that thing in your field. Now we need to get rid of it. How do you think you can help?”
He shrugged. “I really don’t know. What?”
Cynthia tapped his chest. “Just lie quietly. That thing was set up to react to changes in your energy state. Wylie triggered it, and I’ve isolated it from him. Since this room is shielded – nice surprise, huh – we’re safe for the moment.” She looked over at Mara. “As long as the door stays shut, anyway.”
Frank closed his eyes and waited. Soon, he felt a presence, a sense that he wasn’t alone. Cynthia had established a far more intense link with him than he’d set up to monitor the witnesses. The sensation of psychic closeness gave him a claustrophobic feeling of being in a small airless space, and he began to push against her.
‘Easy, Frank,’ she said silently. ‘I need you to remember a dream, one you won’t mind losing.’
Obviously, that wouldn’t be his recent dreamside tryst with Mara. He ran through a number of dreams, finally settling on one he could do without — more of a nightmare, really. He’d had it after interviewing at Cibola Hospice in Albequerque. It was an odd dream, too. He’d fallen through some kind of backdrop, and landed in a small room. Everywhere he looked, he saw the same kind of corporate logo subliminals that the Hospice wanted their employees to use, like the outfit Korn wore.
 
Angela felt a lot more comfortable doing this sort of thing in the psychic silence of their shielded room. Until yesterday, she hadn’t seen the inside of a shield room since she’d left Australia. And while working in all the psychic noise of a city like Los Angeles was good practice, the subterranean psychic roar made it nearly impossible to do some of the more subtle work, like the sleight of reality that she contemplated doing to that sprite.
She’d left the thing tied up in a topological loop within Frank’s field. Inside that loop, it was free to move about, but because it couldn’t tell that it was trapped, it floated happily in its own little bubble of reality, waiting uselessly for signs of the energy imbalance that it had been trained to correct.
As Frank recalled his dream, the orientation of his consciousness altered, and the fine tendrils of chi that connect us to our dream-selves started to emerge from the subtle background consciousness to which we ourselves are just dreams. If Frank was aware of this greater sense of being, it was only as a kind of noise, perhaps a shimmering dance of color and pattern that was only evident in the moments between waking and sleeping.
Once his dream had become substantial enough in Frank’s mind, a portion of his knot of consciousness extended into that alternate world, giving him a sense of having been there. This was the moment Angela had been waiting for. Very gently, she nudged the topological loop she’d created towards the dream. In order to do this, she also had to change the orientation of her own reality towards that dream. As she did so, the world of the courthouse detention room slowly began to seem less like a solid reality, and more like a partially forgotten dream.
At about the halfway point, where both versions of Frank, and of the world he lived in, seemed equally real, she pushed the sprite’s topological energy prison towards the dream she’d asked Frank to recall. As it got closer to that other reality, she reached towards it and unraveled the knot that kept the sprite inside, then pulled away from it so she would not be noticed.
The sprite slowly emerged from its energy bottle, and headed towards the version of Frank’s being inside the distant dream. As it disappeared into that reality, Angela snapped the tendrils of consciousness that tethered the sprite’s new reality, and watched it disappear beneath the subtle signs of the vast consciousness within which our own reality lay.
 
While Frank struggled to recall his dream, the sense of closeness abated, then he suddenly realized that he didn’t know what he was thinking about. The next thing he knew, Cynthia was flicking his ear with her finger. “It’s finished, Frank. You can get up now.”
He sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the table. “Thanks, Cynthia. Now what?”
“Before you get to that,” Mara said from beside the door, “how about telling me what this is all about.”
Frank went over and hugged her. “It’s a really long story.”
She laughed. “Okay. The short version, then.”
“I had a neural attack the day I interviewed for the jury job,” he said. “But because Jerry was laid up, I spoke with Carlita Gutiérez, a new Healer at Kübler-Ross. She set up an active energy pattern — you could call it a sprite or an Elemental — in my field. Later it was tuned by an associate of hers named Allan Wylie. Well, it turns out that they’re both working with whoever it is that tried to kill Miguél Apuérto, administrator at East-Side MedCenter. The three of them are in court today. I saw our mystery man whisper to Wylie just before the sprite attacked me. Cynthia fought it off through a link, and just got rid of it.” He looked at Cynthia. “How did you do that, anyway?”
She took a breath. “That thing might have been intended to counter your attacks, Frank, but under Wylie’s control it had the ability to block the energy flow through your body. Your organs may have been affected indirectly, but it was easily enough to have killed you.”
He nodded. “Thanks. I owe you my life. But how did you do it?”
“Watching what you found in Apuérto gave me the idea, really. Our adversary has some way of altering reality, of choosing which variation to keep, and which to call a dream. That’s what he tried with Apuérto’s consciousness. It failed, by the way. Anyway, I bluffed it into thinking that your dream self was its host, then disconnected you from the dream, trapping it. I hope you don’t mind losing that dream.”
He chuckled. “So that’s what I was trying to remember.”
She indicated the door. “Time for you to get back to the jury. I better get out of here, too.”
 
(TOC)

I got a Thai deep tissue massage where the masseuse did a little stretching at the end. During one of the stretches, she bent me backwards with her knees in the middle of my back while I sat criss-cross applesauce and I felt a sharp pain in my tailbone. It was so painful I jerked her back and have been having increased lower back pain since. Sometimes after work I can't fully stand up straight. I'm not sure if this could be the beginning to my current symptom(s) but I started developing a split stream since then. I get the occasional discharge maybe? Not sure really, it's hard to say. And maybe there's an itch in my urethra after I pee sometimes. All of this makes me very anxious when I think about it but anyways, I went to go see a urologist.
He did a std test (gono, chlam, HIV, syph, trich, hsv 1 and 2). All negative except I came back positive for hsv 1 and 2. Not sure how accurate, never had a breakout anywhere. I do get canker sores tho but from my understanding (the Internet), that's different than hsv 1?
He also did a cystoscopy. Everything looks healthy to him except he said I was tight and that I was holding on to the camera where he could barely go in. So my urologist gave me flomax (tamulosin) and said my split stream is probably due to a pelvic floor issue. The tamulosin made my penis bigger while it was flaccid causing my split stream to be even worse, a side effect I would have been happy to welcome if it didn't cause my pee to stream in two directions. Because of this I stopped taking the flomax.
My questions are, does this sound like a pelvic floor thing? Could the masseuse have damaged my pelvic floor muscles? Should I go back on the flomax?

33f 67kg 163cm No smoking or medecin The last year I have had a lot of weird symptoms like nerve pain, muscle twitching, memory issues and tremors. My doctor hasn't figured it out yet. The only thing I know I have had problems with before is B12 (not vegan). We did a blood test 4 months ago and it was in the normal range (166 pmnol). Lately I also started to get more petechiae. I have had them for years but now I'm getting more and in different places then before. When I started to get them I went to a doctor he said they were normals so I didn't pay much attention to them untill now when they are increasing. It made me think and now I'm wondering about a bruise I have had over 10 years. I never thought of it much, just assumed it was fine because it doesn't hurt. But apparently it should have disappeared years ago?
It's a red/purple mark under my skin in the palm of my hand. It''s about 1 cm long and 0.5cm wide. Don't remember how I got it. Anyone who know why it would not have gone away by know?

hi! so i’ve been diagnosed with epilepsy/focal seizures for 5 years now. originally, my focal seizures went like this:
my left eye would roll to the side, my neck would tense and flex and my lips would twitch, and i would have blepharospasm eye reactions. i would have them daily, numerous times a day.
i’ve been seizure free for over a year now, my eegs coming back normal and my neurologist saying i grew out it (im an older teenager).
recently, my blepharospasm came back. this was the first warning sign, but we ignored it. today, after work (where i do a lot of walking), i suddenly started having uncontrollable, extremely uncomfortable eye spasms, and my entire upper body, mostly my neck and shoulders, would jerk, flex and move involuntarily. my brain was scrambled— i couldn’t think and was stuttering and slurring my words. it lasted over an hour and i went to the er, where they called my neurologist who confirmed it was probably a seizure. i was given IV keppra and they sent me on my way.
i’m really confused, as i was told i grew out of my seizures and they’ve been gone for so long. they were even planning to take me off Lamictal, and lowered my dose from 200 to 100 (then to 125 bc of the blepharospasm.)
is the seizure i had stll considered a focal seizure?it was both sides of my upper body, not just the left like when i was first diagnosed. i’m really confused yall. anyone have any ideas?

Hi guys, Haven’t been on here in a while, but I had a question so I thought I’d send it out to see if anyone can relate. Sometimes I’ll be sitting or doing something, just living my life and I’ll feel very ill, specifically like I’m going to have a seizure. Most of the time I’ll even have little tremors. Usually my head hurts and I’ll feel slightly nauseas and I get the feeling like I’m about to blink out of consciousness and begin to seize, but at the last second it’s like my brain catches itself. It feels like I’m on the brink of one for 20-30 mins but it never happens anymore since I started taking lamictal. Afterward I feel like I faked the whole thing because no seizure happened. Does anyone else experience this?

It’s a crisp Thursday morning, the kind that hints at the edge of summer with just enough warmth to make you forget about the winter past. Our private investigation office, a modest second-floor space above a bustling café on Magazine Street in New Orleans, is alive with the usual morning chaos. My wife Reine and I are in the midst of showing Abbey, our new secretary, the ins and outs of our, let's call it, "unique" filing system.
Abbey, a young woman with bright blue eyes and an infectious enthusiasm for detective work, nods vigorously, taking notes on her pad.
"So, you see," I start, holding up a file, "each case has its own color code. Red for ongoing cases, blue for solved, and green for... well, let's just call it 'active investigations.'"
Abbey nods, her eyes scanning the rainbow of folders on the desk. "And the glitter stickers?" she asks, pointing to a file adorned with sparkling unicorns.
I glance at Reine, who's trying to hide her smirk behind a cup of coffee. "That's... Reine's system. You'll have to ask her about that."
Reine leans over, her voice laced with mock seriousness. "The glitter is crucial, Abbey. It represents the mystery of the case. The more glitter, the deeper the intrigue."
Abbey looks between us, a flicker of confusion passing through her eyes before she catches onto our jest. "Got it. Glitter equals mystery. I'll remember that."
"And remember," Reine says, pointing to a large, overly complex calendar on the wall, "if someone asks for an urgent meeting and the calendar looks full, just tell them we're consulting on a case in Baton Rouge. It buys us some time."
Abbey nods vigorously, taking notes on her pad. "Got it, Baton Rouge. And if they ask for details?"
I glance at Reine with a mischievous grin. "Then you say we’re undercover, and it's a matter of national security. They rarely ask after that."
Just as we're wrapping up our impromptu tutorial with Abbey, there's a sudden, sharp knock at the door, cutting through the relaxed atmosphere of the morning like a knife.
I stride over and pull it open to reveal a woman in her early forties, her poise teetering on the edge of despair. She introduces herself in a voice that carries a weight far beyond her years. "Hello, Detectives Asher and Reine Tran? I'm Astrid Everly. I believe I have an appointment for a consultation."
I nod, remembering a conversation over the phone last week, though the specifics elude me. "Of course, Mrs. Everly, please come in. Abbey, could you pull up the Everly file on the desktop, please? Should be under 'E'."
Before Abbey can even turn to the computer, Astrid interjects, "There's no need for that. I'm here because I suspect my husband, Zane, of... infidelity." Her voice falters for a moment, the facade of calmness cracking.
Reine sets her coffee down with a soft clink, her expression shifting into one of professional empathy. "We understand how difficult this must be for you, Mrs. Everly," she says gently.
I motion for Astrid to take a seat. “You've come to the right place,” I begin. “We handle matters discreetly and efficiently."
Cheating spouse investigations might not be glamorous, but they are the bread and butter of our business. And in our experience, the truth, however painful, is what our clients need most.
As I gesture towards the worn but comfortable chairs, Reine busies herself with the small coffee maker in the corner of our office. "Cream and sugar, Mrs. Everly?" Reine calls out.
Astrid nods, a grateful smile briefly crossing her face. "Just cream, thank you." Her composure, momentarily lifted by the gesture, seems to falter as the gravity of her situation resettles around her.
I sit across from Astrid, my posture open, inviting her to share her story. Abbey, sensing the shift in atmosphere, quietly retreats to her desk, giving us space.
"Mrs. Everly, can you tell us why you suspect your husband might be unfaithful?" I ask, my tone gentle yet earnest, signaling that this is a safe space for her to vent her concerns.
Astrid exhales a shaky breath, her dark brown eyes glistening with unshed tears as she starts to unravel the thread of her story. "It's the little things, really," she begins, her voice a whisper of despair. "Zane has always been a loving husband and father, but lately, he's been distant. He comes home late, if he comes home at all, and when he does, it's like his mind is elsewhere."
She pauses, collecting her thoughts before continuing. "Then there's his phone. It used to be just another gadget, but now... now it's like an extension of himself. He guards it jealously, never leaves it unattended. And if I so much as glance in its direction, he snaps at me, saying I'm invading his privacy."
Astrid's hands clench tighter, the knuckles whitening. "But what really convinced me was the perfume," she adds, a note of betrayal creeping into her voice. "I found a scarf in his car, one that definitely wasn't mine. It was drenched in a perfume I've never worn, a scent that now seems to linger on him constantly."
The room falls silent, the weight of her pain palpable in the air. Reine hands Astrid her coffee with cream, offering a small, comforting smile.
"I confronted him about it," Astrid continues, her gaze dropping to the cup in her hands. "He denied everything, of course. Said the scarf must belong to a coworker he'd given a ride to, and that the perfume was probably from a client he'd met with. He said I was being…”
Her voice breaks, a lone tear escaping down her cheek. “He said I was being a ‘paranoid bitch’!”
Reine and I are both shocked at Astrid’s raw emotion, the harshness of the words used against her clearly wounding deep. I reach for a box of tissues, sliding it across the desk towards her, while Reine’s comforting hand finds its way to Astrid’s shoulder, a silent gesture of support in this moment of vulnerability.
“There’s no excuse for anyone to speak to you like that,” I say firmly, my distaste made clear.
Astrid accepts the tissue, dabbing at her eyes, a shaky breath indicating her struggle to maintain composure. “We’ve been married for 15 years,” she whispers, her voice gaining a semblance of strength. “We have two beautiful children. I just... I can’t believe it’s come to this.”
Reine leans forward. "Mrs. Everly, you're doing the right thing by seeking the truth. No matter how painful it may be, knowing will give you the power to make informed decisions about your future."
“There’s something else...” She hesitates, as if weighing the risk of sharing more. “It might sound odd, but there have been... occurrences. Things I can’t explain. At night, I’ve felt a presence, something unsettling, watching over us.”
The mention of a presence catches both Reine and me off guard. It’s a departure from the infidelity case we thought we were dealing with, hinting at something deeper, perhaps even darker.
“You mean, like a stalker?” I asked.
Astrid nods, unable to produce the words.
"Stalking is a very serious matter," Reine says, the detective in her surfacing with a palpable intensity. "Are you sure about what you've felt? Have there been any signs, any tangible evidence of someone physically stalking you or your family?"
Astrid looks uncertain for a moment, then nods, her resolve firming. “At first, I thought it was stress, but then…”
She pauses, her hands trembling as she fishes her phone out of her purse.
"A few nights ago," she starts. “The kids were at my sister's, and Zane... Zane was out, as usual." She navigates through her phone with deliberate taps, opening an app connected to her home's security system. "I installed a Ring Cam last month, just to feel a bit safer, you know?"
With a few more swipes, she turns the phone towards us, displaying a video captured by her Ring Cam. The footage is grainy, typical of night mode recordings, but what it reveals sends a chill down my spine. It shows Astrid's front porch bathed in the eerie glow of the security light.
Then, without warning, something darts across the screen—a blur of motion too rapid to decipher. It's there and gone in the blink of an eye, leaving behind an unsettling afterimage that seems to hover in the night air. The motion is too swift, too large for any common animal, and there's an odd, almost deliberate evasion in the way it avoids the light, slipping into the shadows with an ease that suggests intelligence, or perhaps something more sinister.
"I thought it was just a stray animal at first," Astrid says.
Astrid's fingers shake slightly as she swipes to the next item on her phone. “I found this the next morning,” She said, handing the phone over for us to see.
The image that greets us is deeply unsettling: a tangled mess of what appears to be intestines and long, straight black hair, left in a sickening pile on her doorstep. I've seen enough in Iraq to recognize the unmistakable look of human intestines.
"I... I didn't know what to do," Astrid continues, her voice shaking. “Of course, Zane dismissed it. Said it was just something the cat dragged in.”
Astrid's face is pale. "I had hoped it was some sick joke, maybe kids playing a twisted prank, but..." Her voice trails off.
"My kids," she whispers, her voice fraught with fear. "What if whatever did this comes back? What if they're not safe?"
Reine and I exchange a glance, both of us understanding the gravity of the situation. This isn't just a case of potential infidelity or even stalking; we're potentially looking at something far more dangerous. This is the kind of case we live for.
"We'll take your case, Mrs. Everly," I say, my tone conveying not just our acceptance but our commitment to seeing this through.
"We'll do everything in our power to get to the bottom of this,” Reine says, echoing my resolve.
Astrid's shoulders seem to drop ever so slightly at our words. It's clear she's been carrying this weight alone for too long.
"Thank you, detectives," she murmurs, her gratitude palpable.
—
The sun is already high in the sky, when we begin preparing to set up additional security measures around Astrid Everly's house. It’s imperative that we work discreetly, ensuring that neither Zane Everly nor the stalker notice our presence. With Astrid's kids safely away at school and Zane presumably engrossed in his daily routine, we have a narrow window to operate under the radar.
Reine and I arrive in our nondescript SUV, our trunk filled with the latest in surveillance technology. We have compact cameras that can be concealed easily, motion sensors that are no bigger than a pack of gum, and a couple of high-definition night vision cameras to cover the darker corners of the property. While I focus on finding the optimal spots to place the cameras, Reine meticulously checks for any blind spots in our coverage. We communicate in low tones, a silent dance of efficiency honed by years of working together.
Once the equipment is in place, camouflaged amidst the everyday, we retreat to our makeshift command center — the back of our SUV, screens aglow with feeds from the newly installed cameras. Everything appears serene. But we know better than to trust appearances; the true nature of the threat still eludes us, hidden in the shadows of uncertainty.
Our next move is to keep a close eye on Zane. Tailing someone without drawing attention requires a blend of patience and subtlety. We follow him as he moves through the streets of New Orleans, our steps shadowing his with careful precision. He seems to be following a routine, visiting places that one would expect a man of his standing to frequent — the office, a local café, and a series of meetings that appear mundane on the surface.
Yet, our focus isn't just on Zane's whereabouts. We are equally attentive to his interactions, the pauses in his day, the way his gaze lingers a touch too long on certain individuals. It’s a delicate balance, observing without engaging, collecting pieces of a puzzle we’re still trying to understand.
As the day wears on, the mundane nature of Zane's activities begin to paint a picture of a man ensnared in the trappings of a double life. The evidence is subtle, hidden in the nuances of his behavior, yet unmistakable to the trained eye. He’s cautious, perhaps too cautious, with his movements and communications, suggesting an awareness of being watched or, at least, the possibility of it.
Zane's path leads him into a quaint flower shop nestled between a bookstore and a bakery. During a momentary lull in our surveillance, I pull out a container of Chinese takeout—cold sesame noodles and spicy orange chicken, our stakeout meal.
As we eat, Reine turned to me, a mischievous glint in her gray eyes. "Hey," she said, her tone light but carrying an undercurrent of seriousness, "you'd never cheat on me, right? I mean, with all this infidelity we see, you haven't gotten any ideas, have you?"
I can’t help but chuckle at her question, the absurdity of the thought mingling with the gravity of our current case. "Cheat on you, em?" I start, leaning closer to her, our knees touching in the cramped space, “And miss out on Friday night stakeouts and takeout with my incredibly sexy and talented partner?”
Reine giggles, the tension easing between us as she nodded in agreement. "Good answer," she said, her gaze softening.
"Your turn," I say, nudging her gently with my elbow. "You wouldn't cheat on me, would you?”
“Bon Dieu, non!” Reine utters, feigning indignance. “I would never consider such a thing!”
“Really?” I ask with a grin. “Not even if Brad Pitt decided he was in need of a private eye with your... extensive expertise?"
"Well," she drawls, the corner of her mouth ticking upward in a smirk, "if we're bringing Brad Pitt into the fantasy, I suppose I'd have to at least... consider the consultation fee."
“As long as it's just a consultation," I quip, winking at her, "I guess I can live with that. But just so we're clear, if Scarlett Johansson comes knocking, I expect the same courtesy from you."
“Do you expect us to work that case together?” she says, her voice dripping with innuendo.
“Two heads are better than one, right?” I ask with a grin. “Especially when it comes to... thorough investigations."
“Right, it's all about the team effort." Reine laughs, shaking her head.
Our lighthearted banter is cut short as the screens flicker with movement. Suddenly, the flower shop door swings open, and Zane steps out, cradling a bouquet of roses that seems almost too delicate for his broad hands. The sight snaps us back to the task at hand.
We start the car and follow him at a discreet distance. Our route takes us through the heart of the city, past the colorful facades of the French Quarter, and eventually into Marigny, a neighborhood known for its bohemian atmosphere and tightly knit streets.
Zane pulls into the parking lot of L'Etoile du Nord, a boutique hotel, a place that prides itself on discretion and privacy.
Perched in our vehicle across the street, we watch Zane through binoculars, the lens bringing him into sharp relief against the backdrop of the hotel's understated elegance. He waits by the entrance, the bouquet of roses in hand, the casual stance of a man comfortable in his surroundings.
Moments later, a woman approaches. She's strikingly beautiful with high cheekbones and a delicate, structured jawline. Her eyes, a deep brown, are alert yet hold a hint of mystery. Most distinguishing is her straight black hair that cascades down her back—hair unmistakably similar to the tangle left on Astrid's doorstep.
The air between them is charged, their reunion marked by an intimacy that leaves little doubt of their relationship. They embrace, a greeting that quickly deepens into a kiss, a confirmation of suspicions we didn't want to validate. Reine, with a camera in hand, captures this exchange, the shutter clicks a silent witness to the betrayal unfolding before us.
Zane and the woman make their way to their room on the third floor. We watch in silence through the balcony window as they undress each other, their movements fluid and intimate.
I’m left with a deep sense of discomfort, feeling the urge to look away. But as I’m about to pull away and give them their privacy, I catch a glimpse of something unsettling.
As Zane and the woman are locked in a passionate embrace, her head detaches from her body with a surreal ease that defies all logic. Her body slumps to the floor, but her head... her head remains suspended in mid-air. Internal organs dangle grotesquely from her neck, swaying slightly as if caught in a gentle breeze that does not exist.
Before Zane can even begin to process the nightmarish turn of events, the woman's floating head lunges at him, teeth bared. She's not just biting his face—it's more vicious, more savage. It's as if she's trying to consume him, her teeth tearing into his flesh with a ferocity that's both shocking and horrifying.
Reine and I exchange a glance that carries the weight of a thousand words. It’s a look that says, "Did you just see what I saw?" and "We need to move, now." Without a word, we leap into action.
I grab my Beretta from the glove compartment, checking the clip in one fluid motion, while Reine does the same. Our footsteps are a rapid, synchronized rhythm against the pavement as we sprint towards the hotel’s entrance, bypassing the startled doorman who shouts after us, questions hanging in the air, unanswered.
The lobby blurs past us, a mixture of luxury and confusion as the receptionist begins to protest, but the urgency in our strides silences any further inquiry. We take the stairs, two at a time, the sound of our boots echoing off the walls.
Reaching the designated floor, we move down the hallway, guided by the cacophony of a struggle that grows louder with each step. The numbers on the doors blur past until we find the one that matches our frantic search.
We come to a skidding halt outside the door where a cleaning lady stands, paralyzed by fear. The sounds emanating from within the room are nothing short of chilling—a cacophony of snarls and screams that seem to seep into the very marrow of your bones. Her eyes, wide with terror, dart between the door and us, as if she's caught in a nightmare she can't wake up from.
"Open the door, now!" Reine commands.
For a moment, she hesitates, her hand trembling so violently it seems she might drop the key card. I lock eyes with her, my gaze imploring her to trust us. "We're here to help. Please."
With a shaky nod, she swipes the card, the soft click of the lock disengaging sounding almost deafening in the charged silence that follows.
"Get somewhere safe and call 911. Tell them we have an... emergency," I instruct her. She nods, her face drained of color, and scurries away.
I cautiously push the door open. The scene that unfolds before us is one ripped straight from the darkest corners of the unimaginable. The headless nude body of the woman lies crumpled on the floor.
The room is drenched in the overpowering scent of an exotic perfume, the same one Astrid had described, a fragrance that now seems to cling to every surface, saturating the air with its cloying sweetness.
But it's Zane that captures our immediate attention. His back is turned to us, and from the neck down, he looks entirely normal, if one can consider any part of this situation to be so. But where his head should be, there's nothing recognizable as human. Instead, an undulating mass has taken its place, pulsing and writhing as if it's burrowing into his body, consuming him from the inside out.
Reine and I edge forward, our weapons drawn and aimed squarely at what remains of him.
"Zane Everly, turn around slowly with your hands up," I call out. The words feel surreal, as if spoken by someone else.
He responds, but not in the way we expect. The movement is unnatural, a series of jerks and spasms that suggest the thing wearing Zane like a suit is unfamiliar with the body it’s inhabiting.
The parasitic mass where his head once was pulsates with a sickening rhythm, tendrils flailing, seeking, as if searching for a new host to infect. Eyes, if they can be called that, shimmer with a malevolent intelligence.
"Jésus Christ," Reine mutters under her breath.
My stomach turns, the scene defying logic and sanity. But it’s not just the horror of Zane’s condition that heightens the tension—it’s the realization that the body of the woman, the one we had just seen, is not where it should be. The room, though chaotic, lacks her presence.
“Reine, where’s the—” My question cuts short as a cold grip tightens around my wrist.
I whirl around, my heart pounding, to face the headless, nude body of the woman. Her grip is iron-clad, her strength unnatural. In disbelief, I see the sinew and muscle of her neck twitch and pulse where her head should be.
I try to level my pistol at the headless torso, aiming to neutralize the threat. But she's too fast, too strong. With an unexpected force, she twists my wrist painfully, causing my shot to go wide. The bullet, meant to stop her, punches a hole into the plush carpeting of the hotel room.
Reine, quick as ever, tries to make a move to help me, but before she can get close, the amorphous head attached to Zane's body detaches itself and launches in her direction. It's like something out of a nightmare, a living mass with tendrils that act almost with a mind of their own. As it flies through the air, the tendrils extend, reaching for Reine.
It wraps its tendrils around her with a precision that betrays a malicious intent, disarming her in a single, fluid movement. The gun clatters to the floor, a sound harsh against the eerie silence that envelopes the room.
Reine struggles against the creature's grip, but the tendrils tighten, constricting like boa constrictors. They wind around her neck, her torso, squeezing with a strength that is both terrifying and otherworldly. Reine's face contorts with pain, her eyes meeting mine, a silent plea for help written in her gaze.
"Reine!" I shout, desperation lacing my voice. My partner, my wife, the person I've faced countless dangers with, is now inches away from death by this unimaginable foe.
I yell at the creature. "Let her go!”
For a fleeting second, the tension in the room ripples with the uncertainty of the thing's response. Then, in a voice that is eerily calm and chillingly clear despite its formless source, the creature responds. "Stay out of my way. I won’t warn you again."
Then, abruptly, the entity's grip loosens around Reine and drops her. Reine gasps for air, her face flushed from the constriction.
As the headless woman releases her vice-like grip on my forearm, I rush towards Reine as she stumbles back into my arms. I catch her, my relief palpable. We both regain our footing, keeping wary eyes on the creature.
As we watch, stunned, the head slowly drifts back towards the woman’s body, reattaching itself to her neck. The seams where flesh meets flesh knit together in a spectacle that's both horrifying and mesmerizing. Within moments, the transformation is complete, and the woman stands before us, her appearance as flawless and composed as when Zane first greeted her outside the hotel.
In the chaos of the moment, the entity undergoes yet another grotesque transformation. A pair of dark, leathery wings unfurl from her back with a sinister grace. They're massive, spanning the width of the room, knocking over furniture as if they're mere obstacles in its path.
With a powerful flap, the woman launches herself towards the balcony, shattering the glass doors in her haste to escape. The night air rushes in, mixing with the stench of decay and the iron tang of blood, creating a maelstrom of senses that leaves us momentarily disoriented.
We rush to the balcony, just in time to see the woman disappearing into the dark sky. Her flight is erratic, a sign of its newfound form, but she quickly gains altitude and vanishes into the night, leaving behind a trail of questions and a palpable sense of dread.
Part 2
Part 3

Last summer I woke up and half my eyesight in both my eyes had gone. Tunnel vision being the best way I can describe it. I have been seen by an eye specialist, who can't find anything wrong within my eye, and says it's possibly my brain isn't processing the images correctly, but there is no obvious reasons for my vision loss. I've also got other symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, muscle weakness, aching muscle after simple tasks, hand tremors, loss of grip in both my hands, sensitivity to sound, as well as pins & needles and electric shock pain like sensations in my hands and fingertips, which can be so bad it can keep me up at night. (I have since been diagnosed with an essential tremor, and mild carpal tunnel syndrome). Some of these symptoms started as long as 5 years ago now. I have had eye scans, blood tests, brain MRI's and MRI's of the top of my spine which have all come back clear. I've also seen the Dr, ophthalmologist, my neurologist who all say they can't find a reason for my symptoms. I have had functional neurological disorder mentioned too me before. I'm not sure if that's just the name they give neurological symptoms with y visible cause on scans? I have also been quite a stressed person, my sister was very unwell last summer. I don't know if that stress could be the cause too any of it? As I'm not really stressed anymore and haven't been for months. I have wondered if maybe these are normal symptoms which I'm just reading too much into? I'm just really wondering if anyone has had any experience like this before? Could it be something else which can't show up on scans?

Species: Canine
Age: 10.5/11ish years
Sex/Neuter status: FS
Breed: GSDx
Body weight: 58lbs
History: Dog has history of allergies and receives heska drops and cytopoint shots. Dog has arthritis and takes vetprofen. She has recently been having muscle tremors in her legs, front and rear, and has been seeing a K9 PT, that combined with starting vetprofen has helped a lot. She also has a joint supplement and daily purina calming care probitoic. Blood work done in January was all normal. She is overall healthy and active, hiking or going on runs a few times a week.
Clinical signs: 2 months ago we noticed our dog licking/scooting and then saw blood on her bum, so immediately got her into our vet as am urgent appointment.
The vet said one of her anal glands was filled with pus and blood, but expressed easily so didn't seem to be blocked. She flushed the gland and added antibiotics to us. She gave us oral antibiotics and said if she was interested in her rear or seemed to have discomfort to use them, but if she seems comfortable we didn't need to. She was fine. We went back for a recheck one week later and everything was normal.
Today I noticed her licking and scooting, so I expressed her anal glands. One was empty, but the other was VERY full with a thin bloody seeming fluid. It was dark red with a tinge of brown and did not seem to be the normal anal gland fluid colors I've seen. Her gland expressed easily with very minimal pressure.
I do have experience with expressing anal glands. My previous dog was a chiX that needed regular gland expression, and I also spent about 2 years working as a vet tech/went to school for animal sciences, but this was a long time ago.
Duration: 2 months
Your general location: USA
Obviously we have a call into our vet and will hopefully hear back Monday. I'm just wondering if anyone has insight into what could be causing just one gland to do this, and if there is any thing I should specifically ask my vet about.
Thank you!!

When I first starting following this subreddit I started making a list of the kettlebell programs often mentioned.
I was trying to figure out mainly: What exercises are in this program? And can I try it out or at least see what it involves without committing to a purchase?
It was for my own reference but I'm posting it here in case anyone else has similar confusion. These are basically in order of how often I see them mentioned.
Please feel free to add or correct anything you see here -- I understand that I know very little!
One thing I learned quickly is that programs are strongly associated with a particular guru/influencer and it's not possible to understand the space without starting from these personal brands.
Long Chain and Armor Building Complex are technically complexes and not programs. I include them in this list because as a beginner I needed the same clarification for them.

Geoff Neupert

Dry Fighting Weight DFW (free?)

• cleans, presses, squats

King-Sized Killer ($40)

• snatches

The Giant ($20)

• clean and press

Kettlebell STRONG ($100)

• clean and press, double swing, squat, high pull, snatch

The Wolf (free)

• squats, cleans, presses, double snatches

Muscle-Building Master Plan (free)

• press, squat, swing

Dan John

Armor Building Complex (free)

• EMOM:
  • Double Clean x 2 reps
  • Double Strict Press x 1 rep
  • Double Front Squat x 3 reps

Double Kettlebell Easy Strength ($15, part of Easy Strength book?)

• Hinge: 10x Deadlift or 100x Swings Squat: 10x Squat Press: 10x Press Pull: 10x Batwing Loaded Carry: 100m Farmer

Pavel Tsatsouline

Rite of Passage

• clean and press, swings or snatches, pullups
• included in Enter the Kettlebell

Simple and Sinister S&S ($10-23)

• Turkish get-ups, swings

Quick and the Dead

• pushups, swings

Long Cycle LC

• clean + jerk. Repeat for 10min

Joe Daniels

Kettlebell Only Muscle Gain ($125)

• presses, squats, long cycle, snatches, + variety of other exercises

Keith Weber

Extreme kettlebell cardio ($20)

• swings, cleans, presses, squats, lunges, Turkish getups

My partner and I have been together for a year, and we don’t live together,l. We live about a 10-15 min drive from each other, he doesn’t drive but I do. We both are disabled for mental illness, and physical health issues that affect us differently (he has limited mobility and a lot of pain due to a neurological disorder, I have nausea, muscle tremors and weakness, headaches, and insomnia that is yet undiagnosed).
[EDIT] a super important detail I’m realizing I missed: he had stayed the night last night. I was vomiting overnight, but didn’t wake him. In the morning, he was at my place when he found out I was sick. So I woke up, he found out I was sick, and then he left to apparently go home to do his necessary morning routine, but didn’t actually go home. Going to the social centre isn’t part of his morning routine, and then it was when he was on his way home insisted I come to his place.
In the middle of the night, I started vomiting, and vomited a few times into the early morning. He wakes up really early in the morning typically, and recently has been getting really agitated if he’s not in his own space in the morning. He says it’s because he’s realizing his morning routine is crucial to his mental health, which requires him to be in his space. So even though I’d vomited recently, he left me alone. I thought he was going home, and I went back to sleep. Instead, he went to a place he frequents called The Social Centre, it’s funded by mental health and substance use system.
He called shortly after I woke up, saying he was heading home, and that he wanted to take care of me. However, to do that, he wanted me to come to him and couldn’t do so in my place because it’s too uncomfortable, he can’t “putter around”, basically it sounded like being in my place negatively impacts his mental health.
I’m really really upset. He has been less caring to me and more impatient lately, and I don’t understand what’s going on, what’s changed. I wanted to be cared for by my partner so I spent an hour packing up my things as well as his things he couldn’t take with him this morning. I haven’t eaten or drank anything at it’s 3:30pm, and I’m parked outside of Subway crying and paralyzed. I started feeling like I was the one being unreasonable somehow? But ultimately I don’t think I am.
Who is being unreasonable? How do I address this?

This is my attempt to summarize this research study (PDF): "Identification of the Biomechanical Response of the Muscles That Contract the Most during Disfluencies in Stuttered Speech" (2024). This brand new research came out 7 days ago.
It takes me a lot of time and effort to make these research summaries. I'm hoping that I will be the spark that inspires others to join me on this journey of extracting tips from recent research studies, as this is my main goal.
If you type in google: "research" "stuttering" "conclusions". Then you will see that there are just way too many recent research studies (which is good). But it seems that no one on Reddit (or social media) takes advantage of the chance to extract tips from such recent research studies.
I see posts every day where people express their desire to improve their stuttering. So, instead of waiting for a cure.. let's start a movement where - the people in this subreddit - support progress towards stuttering recovery. Like Joe Biden and Obama say: Failure is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable. The future rewards those who press on, we don't have time to complain.
Goal:

• Researchers of this research study examined five muscles in the face and neck while people spoke. They focused on two main things: the strength of muscle signals (amplitude) and the frequency of muscle activity
• Understanding the biomechanical responses of orofacial muscles during stuttering. By comparing individuals with and without stuttering, the study aims to identify patterns of muscle activity associated with speech disfluencies

Research findings:

• People who stutter showed stronger muscle signals (higher amplitude) in a muscle called the zygomaticus major, which helps with facial expressions like smiling. This could be linked to emotional arousal or increased stress
• Even in people who don't stutter, there are disfluencies. During these moments, they found stronger muscle signals in another muscle, the depressor anguli oris, which helps move the mouth's corners down, like when you frown
• These differences suggest that stuttering is linked to how muscles in the face and neck work together during speech
• The study could lead to new ways of using technology (like biosensors) to understand and help people with stuttering. This technology could track muscle activity to find patterns or offer feedback; and could inspire new treatments or strategies to improve fluency
• The study found greater activity in the sternocleidomastoid muscle during blocks, suggesting a connection between neck muscle tension and physical stuttering manifestations

Intro:

• Researchers think stuttering could be linked to language learning
• People who stutter often experience abnormal muscle tremors and increased activity right before stuttering
• Biosensors can be used to track various physiological responses during speech, allowing therapists to identify stress triggers
• The study revealed significant differences in muscle activity between the two groups: Group A: adults who stutter, and Group B: those who do not stutter
• Depressor Anguli Oris: This muscle's amplitude was significantly lower in disfluent speech samples from Group B compared to fluent and disfluent samples from Group A. This contradicts earlier findings that suggested greater muscle activity during stuttering. Group B showed lower amplitude compared to Group A during disfluent speech
• Zygomaticus Major: In Group B, this muscle had higher activity compared to Group A. Suggesting that certain muscles like the jaw, lips, and larynx are more active in people who stutter. This could indicate a unique role for this facial muscle in the timing (synchronization), coordination and emotional aspects during stuttering, rather than overall muscle amplitude

Tips: (from the research)

• Use biosensor technology for speech-related interventions - by identifying the most active muscles during stuttering and analyzing their neuromuscular patterns - to detect and quantify muscle activity. These biosensors can be used in two key ways:
• (1) Diagnostic Tools: It helps stutterers and speech therapists assess stuttering severity and patterns
• (2) Therapeutic Devices: Biosensors could be integrated into treatment protocols, providing personalized feedback
• Integrate machine learning algorithms with EMG data from biosensors - for personalized treatment strategies and real-time monitoring devices. Continuous data collection from these biosensors allows for tracking of stuttering progression and the effectiveness of various treatment methods

Tips: (that I extracted)

• Identify patterns of muscle activity (orofacial muscles) associated with speech disfluencies
• Identify the strength of muscle signals (amplitude) and the frequency of muscle activity
• Lower your emotional arousal or increased stress - to address the stronger muscle signals (higher amplitude) in a muscle called the zygomaticus major
• Address the greater activity in the sternocleidomastoid muscle during blocks - to reduce neck muscle tension (which is greater in people who stutter according to research findings)
• Address the excessive physiological responses or internal conflict due to language learning (or linguistic factors)
• Address abnormal muscle tremors and increased activity right before stuttering (at the moment that we haven't even initiated speech) (which tend to occur in people who stutter)
• Use Biosensors to track physiological responses during speech - allowing you to identify stress triggers
• Understand that disfluencies don't cause greater muscle activity (like the jaw, lips, and larynx). Because this research study found that non-stutterers don't experience this problem during disfluencies. Understand that - in people who stutter - there is unnecessary muscle activity due to the unique role of excessively managing/controlling the emotional aspects, speech timing (synchronization) and coordination rather than overall muscle amplitude

38 year old female here, Caucasian, non smoker. History of roux en y gastric bypass and full bladder removal. I had Type 2 diabetes before my surgery and now it’s resolved with diet and exercise plus major weight loss, of course. I take nexium, Zoloft 40mg, Lamictal 50 mg, Buspar 10 mg twice a day, and occasional Flexeril for muscle spasms and 1x weekly marijuana use. Might have a glass of wine a month.
Lately I’ve had weird symptoms. It took me a lot of time and thought to even piece it all together. The first thing I noticed was lightheaded feelings and fatigue. Heavy feeling in legs. This went on for awhile and I just kind of ignored it. Then I started having urinary symptoms - a little incontinence, mostly feeling urgency or feeling like I had to pee but couldn’t. I also have heart palpitations here and there. I just thought that was anxiety. I also have a lot of weird diarrhea and constipation that alternates, but that’s been going on for years. Then yesterday I was driving and felt that weird tired lightheaded feeling and my vision was blurry. I pulled over and figured it would pass but for 10 minutes or so, it persisted and I noticed double vision. I went to urgent care and they did an EKG and tested my sugar- it was 240- which is weird. They also sent me to the ER. I did not want to go but they were concerned about the blurry/double vision, so I went. They did another EKG and gave me a heart monitor to wear for 2 weeks. They also did orthostatic vitals. I didn’t notice a big difference between positions and my blood pressure. I just cannot fathom what could be going on here. It’s so many different bodily systems. I feel like I am just a crazy woman and a hypochondriac (my parents always gaslighted me when I was sick so I question myself) but these symptoms are real. I didn’t even put it all together until yesterday honestly.

[YA/AF] This is a prologue to a young adult/adult fantasy story that I have been working on for several years. Would love any feedback or opinions.
The Huntress
Bryce Newsom Special Thanks to: Logan Newsom
Prologue
The fresh scent of pine and smoke wafted through Sherwood Forest, and Lissa welcomed the crisp air that filled her lungs. She felt a kinship with the flames that danced before her eyes, for they echoed her wild and restless spirit. Deeply inhaling, Lissa’s eyes closed as her keen nose caught the smell of roasting herbs drifting up from the stewpot. For as little as her family usually had, for sake of charity, they did extremely well for themselves. This gratefulness for the blessing of nature was interrupted by the incessant grumbling of Lissa’s stomach. Looking around the small, cozy cottage that her family fondly called home, she noticed that her daughter was nowhere to be seen. Lissa called out for her only child to come in for dinner. “Corrine!” No answer was given to Lissa’s shout, which made her nervous. “Probably with Dad again…” she thought to herself. Corrine, even at the young age of sixteen, was a deadeye archer who could compete with the best archers in the camp. This was largely due to her accompanying her grandfather everywhere he went. He was the legend named Robin of Locksley, more commonly known as Robin Hood, and he was attempting to pass on all of the knowledge that he could to her. Lissa sighed as she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder: the tender yet powerful palm of her husband, James. His touch always managed to relax her, but James still felt some of her stress remaining. He had learned to gauge her mood by her body language after all these years of loving her, and to him it was plain to see that his wife was feeling pensive. “She’s going to outshoot the both of us by the end of the year if she spends much more time with him.” James chuckled as he tried to rub the tension out of his wife’s shoulders. “Yes,” Lissa said, “she will, but at what cost? You’ve seen how sore she can be after a day in the fields.” She looked back at her husband, who was gazing wistfully into the distance, his eyes, as blue as sapphires, gleaming brighter than any jewel she had ever seen. “You know, I seem to remember a certain mother who used to be this way as well!” he exclaimed, reaching to her slender waist and tickling her. James, in all his goofiness, never failed to lift the spirits of those around him wherever he went. He had managed to pass his clownishness down to his daughter, and was exercising it on his wife, as usual. At his tickling, Lissa cackled in joy, and took off towards the practice range to fetch her daughter.

 ------------------- * --------------------- In a field nearby stood two birds of a feather: the slender, athletic, spry figure of Corrine stood sixty paces away from her target; next to her stood the salt-and-pepper-haired Robin Hood, her grandfather. A cool fall breeze blew through the air, but being the archer she was, this did not bother Corrine at all. She kept attacking the target as though exacting revenge on it for a crime yet to be committed, with precision unmatched. *Thwip.* *Thwip.* *Thwip.* Arrows zipped through the air, one after the other. Corrine was letting loose, firing her bow so rapidly that her arrows seemed to be chasing one another. She was unable to observe any of them hitting their mark, but Corrine was able to judge by the crowd’s reaction that each was landing perfectly. She felt as though she was one with their pointed tips as she watched each one slam into the target. If archery was an art, then Corrine was a master; the bullseye, her canvas. She caressed the feathers as they left her fingers, feeling certain that each one was going to land exactly where she wanted. Calluses that numbed the pain from the strings had formed long ago on her rather small hands through much blood, sweat and tears. Feeling cocky at this point, Corrine looked back and winked at her companion. At the same time, she let the last arrow fly, and it pierced straight through the bulls-eye. It was muscle memory for her, for she had let thousands of arrows fly from her supple bow. Laughing, she said “I can do this all day with my eyes closed, Grandpa!”. Robin called her out, saying “I’m willing to bet that you can’t. Tell you what; if you win, you can have my best bow. If I win, you have to stop teasing me about my hair!” Corrine doubled over in laughter at this preposterous wager, and accepted, saying, “You should know better than this, old man! Brace yourself and your grey hair before it falls out!” She closed both eyes and turned away from the target, aiming directly behind her. She felt the wind slightly change direction towards the north, brushing gently against her tan skin, and as such, she altered her aim to account for this. She felt every sinew in her body grow tight as she drew her bow taut, breathing deeply to relax them. She remembered the very first lesson he had taught her, so many years ago: one singular, smooth, steady motion, as though she were made of water. “Now!!”, she thought. The bowstring snapped forward, and for a moment, all went silent. 

She held her release as the wooden shaft spun ever forward towards the straw target, splitting the air cleanly. She refused to watch her shot fly, because she knew what was about to happen. What she proved via this one shot was that she didn’t even need eyes to be the best archer among the Guard. She heard the sound of wood splitting, but kept her eyes shut. Crack. Thunk.
Silence reigned over the camp for what seemed to be an eternity. Still, Corrine refused to turn. Instead, she straightened and smirked at her grandfather, standing still and dumbfounded. When he came to his senses, Robin stared in shock at the target. He rushed over to the straw pad and pinched himself, as to confirm that he was not dreaming. He began to cry tears of joy and put his hands over his mouth, as his granddaughter had not only met his challenge, but had upped the ante on herself. The first arrow that she had hit the bulls-eye with had been split clean in half, just as he himself had done so many years ago. Pride swelled within his chest, as he sprinted over to his granddaughter and wrapped her tight to himself. “You split it!” he exclaimed, as applause arose from around the camp. As Corrine looked towards her parents, who had arrived only moments before she fired, both of their eyes watered and they clutched her as well. Corrine laughed weakly and strained out “You’re wringing me like a dishrag!” before being set free. Corrine observed the target for the first time, and her jaw dropped. Gesturing towards the target, Corrine giggled and said “Does this mean that I win?” Robin laughed with his entire being and nodded emphatically, saying “Let’s go fetch your bow before dinner!” The four of them turned towards Robin’s house, the nearby huts emitting the smell of freshly baked shepherd’s pie and grilled venison, wafting through the practice range and all the way to the barracks at the entrance of the camp. Corrine looked at her father with extreme confidence, exclaiming “Bet you can’t beat me home, Dad!” James eyed her up and down before solemnly agreeing, but Lissa recognized the playful glint in his mischievous eye. She had seen it far too many times before and braced herself for what was going to happen next. “Father and daughter alike, line up 100 paces from your finish line!” Robin proclaimed, borrowing his granddaughter's bow to fire a shot directly into the famed oak tree that housed his humble abode. He then used the tip of the bow to draw their “finish line” in the dirt thereabout. “The first person to retrieve the arrow shall be the winner!” proclaimed the renowned bowman. Lissa chuckled as she observed the intense look of Corrine, ferocious determination lining every part of her youthful face. Both competitors took their place at the starting line, and Robin began the countdown: “Three...Two…” but before he could reach one, James quickly reached over to his daughter and tickled her, taking her by surprise and leaving her breathless, before he took off in a dead sprint towards the house. His blonde hair shimmered in the evening sunlight as he took a moment to glance back at his family. A brief expression of fury covered Corrine’s face, but it was soon replaced by amusement as she attempted to catch up to her father. As Lissa stood there watching the race between the two greatest loves of her life, she smiled warmly and turned towards Robin. “She reminds me so much of you, you know? Nearly an exact copy. Confident and playful, passionate and fiercely loyal.” A troubled look crossed Lissa’s face. “But she also becomes angry so easily. Rage can lead one down an incredibly dark path. I worry that her passion will get her into trouble one day.” Robin nodded with wisdom, as only one who has had experience with such matters can, and responded firmly, “If that day ever comes, we will be there for her.” Upon arrival, Lissa and Robin were greeted by the sound of Corrine and her father arguing whilst the beautiful maid Marian observed the scene from the balcony above.“There was foul play, Dad! I deserve that arrow!“ Corrine cried, punching her father in his muscular arm. James held the arrow far above his head, laughing and saying “Is that so? Come take it from me, then!” She tickled him back and he dropped the arrow in self-defense, immediately snatched up by Corrine, who ran away. Meanwhile, Robin climbed up to his house to fetch the promised bow for Corrine, showing off the strength and agility that had made him famous. Lissa was worried his knees might give out, saying to him, “Be careful Dad, you’re not exactly in perfect shape anymore!“ Robin turned and gave his daughter a wink before retorting, “These knees have been through wars, I’ll be darned if a rope ladder is the end of me!” He finished climbing up and embraced his wife Marian, who was waiting for him expectantly, spinning around with her in his loving arms. Marian chittered loudly, saying “Put me down, Robin!” and caressing his face. He gently set her down, as one would a china doll, and ducked into the treehouse. In the den he spotted it hanging there on the wall: a simple, rugged wooden bow that appeared to be decades old. As he took the weapon into his hands, he greeted it as he would an old friend. This bow had seen many great battles, just as many failures, and had watched Robin grow from being a simple outlaw to the leader of an entire village hidden in the trees of Sherwood Forest. Without warning, he suddenly sprang up onto the table and, tilting his bow to the side, pulled the mythical string back towards his ear. In his mind, he was no longer a grandfather reliving days gone by; rather, he was there again in the rotten Sheriff of Nottingham’s castle... Robin climbed carefully up the side of the castle, so as to peer into the skylight. Being that it was nighttime, no one noticed when he silently cracked the window in the ceiling and so slipped in. He crept down the ropes suspending the chandelier, hand over hand, and finally settled on top of the glorious centerpiece itself. Trapped inside the grand dining hall, guards surrounded the sly rogue on every side. The Sheriff himself held Robin’s beloved Marian captive at swordpoint; he had anticipated this. From an outsider’s perspective, the situation appeared hopeless. But Robin just smiled. He had already won. “Oh, Jooohn!” Thud Thud One could hear what sounded like footsteps from the other side of the thick gate. With a thunderous crash, an absolute behemoth of a man stormed through the front gate, fire in his eyes and a steel mace in his hand. Every eye in the room turned to him; exactly as Robin planned. As John began to decimate the crowd of soldiers singlehandedly, Robin made his move. He leapt from the chandelier and landed inaudibly behind the Sheriff, who was staring in shock at the sheer brutality playing out before his eyes. Robin slowly lifted his bow up and threw it over the head of the Sheriff, pulling that string against his windpipe. A gasp escaped the lips of the Sheriff as he looked up at where Robin had been standing mere moments before; “What is this sorcery?! He was above us mere seconds ago, I’m sure of it!” he thought to himself in a panic. Fortunately, Robin was as quick as lightning with feet that were lighter than drops of dew on grass blades in spring. The Sheriff was desperate now, and Robin was quite cocky, believing himself to be superior by far. Not afraid to fight dirty, the Sheriff dealt a low blow to Robin, freeing him just long enough to flee. He then reached towards his personal table on the balcony and grabbed a handful of salt. He tossed it over his shoulder and into Robins eyes, both for good luck and to blind his opponent temporarily. Robin reached for his eyes, and the bow flew from his hands. The Sheriff dashed towards Marian, as she closed her eyes to prepare for what she was certain were her final moments, a single tear dropping to her cheek. However, throughout the hall rang a resounding bang. She looked up hesitantly; there stood Robin, arm outstretched, and a gruesome sight on the wall nearby: the former Sheriff had a mace implanted in his skull, dead as could be. Cries of joy went up from the Merry Men as the remaining guards (having no strong sense of loyalty) fled the castle. The Sheriffs reign of terror had ended. Meanwhile, in the present, Marian watched her husband leap from table to shelf to floor, reenacting that day from so long ago that had set them on this path. She grinned and enjoyed this moment of nostalgia. His face could have been forty, with only a few smile lines showing his age. Nostalgia washed over her like a wave as memories of Robin as a young man sneaking into her father’s castle to see her swept through her mind. She still had all of the features that had made her famous as “Maid Marian,” such as her fiery red hair and high cheekbones. Her emerald green eyes were a trait she had passed down to her daughter and granddaughter, piercing the resolve of any man they met. Her figure seemed to have not aged a day since she and Robin had met. Marian swayed over to him, wrapping her smooth arms around his broad chest, the familiar smell of sweat and wood filling her nose. Robin leaned back into her, stroking her arms gently, nearly afraid he would break her if he were not careful. Marian said “Let Lissa know that I will join you as soon as I can.” He pulled the bow off the wall, smirked and kissed his wife’s neck, then ran out his door, jumping down and landing on his feet. Turning around to face Corrine, Robin grinned and slowly gifted her the fabled weapon. She observed its subtle curves and leather grip, running her fingers up and down the smooth yet strong body, her sparkling green eyes admiring the simple beauty and craftsmanship. She composed herself, dabbing at her eyes and thanking her grandfather, saying “Thank you, Grandpa. I’ll never let it leave my sight.” Robin reflected her smile, whimsically replying “You’d better not; otherwise you’ll be making me a new one!” As Corrine and her family lived very nearby, it was not a far distance for them to walk. This was a grace to Corrine, who was exhausted from her performance. After they arrived, the happy family washed up, and seated themselves at the table. Corrine’s parents began to eat as she and Robin discussed the events of the day. “What did you think of the shot, Grandpa? I did everything exactly how you taught me to.” Corrine said with a look of pride, gazing at Robin. Robin laughed loudly and retorted “Of course you did, why would I have been wrong? I shouldn’t have taught you so well, now I’ll have to hear about my hair until it all falls out!” James chimed in, “You had to know she was never going to stop teasing you anyway!” Corrine rolled her eyes and scoffed at her father. “I would have! I just would have found something else to poke fun at.” Corrine chittered at the ongoing conversation as Lissa and James resumed eating. Looking around, Lissa noticed that her mother was missing from the table. She was always punctual, where could she be? “Where’s Mom, by the way?” Lissa asked her father. “She said that she will be here as soon as she can be, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Robin explained. This eased her mind, and she continued to enjoy the fruits of her labor earlier that evening. Glancing down, Robin observed a tremor in his drink. Small enough that none but his eyes could pick it up naturally. His trained ears pricked up, and he heard cries for help near the other end of camp, which were quickly cut off. He turned to warn Lissa and James, but noticed that they were holding their throats, fighting for breath. Corrine had risen from the table, pale as a ghost and mouth agape. Robin ran over and knelt beside his daughter while Corrine fell at her father’s side, clutching his arm as her tears fell uncontrollably. James’ face was slate grey, his grimace a clear indicator of the agony he was experiencing. When he realized that his precious daughter was holding on to him, the storm within his soul settled. At least he would die surrounded by those he loved. He reached up to caress his daughter’s face and surprisingly, chuckled his last breath, proud of her. She recognized that even now he was attempting to take care of her. All he had ever wanted was to see her smile; not even imminent death could take that away from him. Before she was ready to say goodbye, Corrine felt the strength leave James’ hand and his smile, which had brought light to her heart since the day she was born, slowly faded from his face. Corrine felt as though something within her died as well. Next, Corrine slid over to her mother, determined to be there for her as well. She took her hand, caressing it as one would caress a child’s hand; as she had done for her so many times before. Lissa asked her, “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Caught by surprise, Corrine finally responded, “I’m okay, Mom, I’m okay.” Catching a glimpse of her father, Lissa was now at peace, knowing her daughter was in the right hands. Looking around the room, Lissa said to each of them, “Though my life comes to an end, I live on in the memory and souls of the two of you. I am with you always; both of you.” Lissa grabbed each of their hands, smiled, squeezed them tight, and placed their hands in each other’s. As she did this, Lissa’s tearful eyes, the same eyes as Robin’s beloved wife, caught his as she drew her final breath. Just as her eyes lost focus and glazed over, Robin’s head fell to his chest, and his body began to shake. His hands hit the ground, and the most terrible sorrow he had ever felt wrought havoc upon his heart. He let the tears fall, painting the ground as though he were intending them to. Just when he felt as if he would die alongside Lissa and James, he looked up from the floor to his granddaughter who was still frozen in place beside her parents. His love for her seized his body like electricity, flowing from his chest to every part of his body, energizing every atom and nerve pathway with a surge of power that was nearly supernatural. Robin’s resolve was restored, and internally he made a vow: “I will protect Corrine no matter what. Even if it costs me my life.” He got up off the floor and prepared for battle, arming himself with a log from the pile of firewood nearby. Corrine simply sat there in shock for moments that seemed to last for eternity. “It can’t be,” she thought to herself. Corrine was forced to mature in that moment, and her pupils overtook those glimmering green irises. She was so filled with rage that both of her eyes appeared to be deep black pools of tar, desiring to swallow all that stood in its path. During this process, a monsoon of emotions threatened to possess Corrine, and she screamed in horror, shaking to the point of convulsion over her parents bodies and pleading, bargaining with Death itself. “You can’t leave me! Not like this, please don’t go!” she cried, weeping over their bodies. Robin began to establish a defensive position within the house, barricading the door and windows. Unable to assist in this, Corrine hugged her parents close to her, not wanting to release them, considering that a sign of defeat. If she were to let go, then they would truly be gone. Corrine began to rock back and forth, humming the lullaby that her mother had always sung to her as a child. Robin pondered what could have been the cause of this catastrophe. He and Corrine had just been talking when everything fell to shambles. Then he realized: “The food.” He and Corrine hadn’t eaten any just yet, too caught up in bantering. Robin stepped over and observed the meal. This was his wife’s recipe, which he had eaten for so many years now; he would know if there was a foreign ingredient. He lifted the bowl and inhaled deeply, smelling for anything out of place. His eyes widened in surprise, and he sniffed again, just to confirm. He caught a whiff of it, yes: “Hemlock; of course.” Lissa and James had left their food unattended too long, and someone had poisoned it. He assumed that it had been meant for him, as most people did not even know of his family’s existence. Which could only mean one thing: this was an inside job. With what seemed to be the least of effort, the built-up barricade imploded as its supports flew across the floor. Into the room strolled the giant of a man ironically named Little John, Robin’s best friend and leader of the Merry Men, who were Robin’s group of talented mercenaries. Where had Robin seen this before? Little John was wearing a long cloak, which barely covered his tall frame. His black hair blended in with the cloak well, hiding him quite effectively. Beside Little John was Marian, who conveyed only one word with her expression: “Help.” Robin saw John and shot to his feet, acknowledging the titan of a man and explaining the situation. After informing John of Lissa and James deaths, John gave a knowing nod. This made Robin extremely suspicious, and put him on his guard. He and John had battled through their fair share of arguments and disagreements in the past, but nothing so serious as this. They had always managed to find some way to manage those situations appropriately. Robin inquired of Little John, “What the devil is going on Joh-” before being clutched at the throat by Little John’s giant hand, which wrapped all the way around Robin’s throat. Little John narrowed his eyes, lowered his head, and began to chuckle. “You really don’t understand, do you?” Little John rumbled; his voice could have been mistaken for the growl of a bear if you weren’t listening for it. “I have been waiting for this moment since the day we met. Your cocky attitude was never going to take you very far, Robin of Locksley. Not only that, but the entire camp guard is tired of your guerilla warfare. We want structure, a system, something real. But that is not even the worst of your crimes. No, Robin, you are guilty of a felony far worse than arrogance and mismanagement: you stole the love of my life!” He exclaimed. He glanced over at Marian lecherously. “I have always loved Marian, even before you were married.” Robin gritted his teeth, a look of rage entering his eyes; he kicked his feet in a futile struggle, as Little John only squeezed tighter and stars appeared in front of his eyes. The more Robin struggled, the tighter John’s grip became. At this, Marian screamed in horror. Looking towards her,, Little John continued, “I never stood a chance, of course. She was destined to fall for the dashing, daring Robin Hood, the hero.” He turned back to face Robin again, expounding on his point: “Leader of the Merry Men. Ruler of Sherwood Forest. How could I compete with that? Tell me!” John’s emotional outburst was followed by a swift punch to Robin’s temple that left even more stars spinning around his line of vision. “Little” John reared back his fist, ready to perpetuate the abuse of his former friend, but stopped before the blow could land. He took a deep breath and gathered himself before continuing.“But that is besides the point. This has been a long time coming, old friend. It’s time for a change. Little John is no more; from now on is the reign of the Judge. And I sentence you to execution.” Marian, gripped by courage not unlike her husbands, leapt up and grabbed Judge’s arm. “If this were a real trial, he would get his last words!” Judge knew she was only trying to buy Robin time to find his way out of this life threatening situation, as he always had before. But his love for Marian overpowered his natural instincts and he sneered, “This is true. What say you, Robin of Locksley? Not that it matters; nobody will ever remember your name.” Robin knew what Marian didn’t: that his time was short, there was no way out. The death grip of Little J...Judge was crushing his windpipe.As he hung helpless above the ground, his eyes felt as if they were about to pop out of his skull as he sought out his granddaughter. Robin smiled bravely, telling her, “Look inside your heart. You’re more than what you think yourself to be.” He looked at Marian and said “I love y-” before having his neck snapped with a simple flick of the Judge’s wrist. The Judge dropped Robin’s lukewarm corpse and looked at Corrine, nearly with pity. “I know what you must be experiencing, and I am honestly sorry for it. You shall not perish for your grandfather’s sins...however, your sentence has the potential to be even worse.” Judge walked over to fire and snatched up a log, burning on one end. “Restrain the girl.” Marian jumped up to defend her granddaughter, but had multiple fingers broken by the guards, which sent her sprawling away. “How could you possibly do this, John? After all we’ve been through!” At this, the Judge punched the third guard, for he had not obeyed his commands. The Judge ordered two of the guards standing behind him forward. They grabbed Corrine, and she wrestled against them, but could not break free of their grasp. “No, Uncle John! Please!” Corrine begged. Judge stepped towards the young girl, empathy in his eyes which soon turned to malice. Raising the log, he simply looked at her and said without a note of compassion in his voice, “Long live the Hoods.” He then breathed in, and pushed the burning end of the log into Corrine’s eyes, one at a time. For a moment, there was nothing but white for Corinne.

Then came the pain. 

Corrine’s world exploded into constellations of ashes, incinerating right in front of her, as she could do nothing but try not to pass out from the agony. The pain was as though she had flung herself face first into an exploding supernova, and her sadness and anger knew no bounds in this calamitous moment. She screamed and screamed until her throat was raw, though she knew no one was coming. The world disappeared before what was once her eyes.
She was all alone.

 Judge released the log and started out the door, ordering the guards to bandage her eyes and take her to the edge of the camp, setting her free and ordering her never to return. Corrine smelled fire as she was carried through the camp, and she mourned the loss of everything she had ever known. She was deposited at the edge of camp and pointed towards a nearby field. She fumbled her way through the weeds, emotions swirling inside of her stomach. The Judge felt satisfied with himself, feeling that justice had been served in Sherwood today. His nemesis had finally been defeated after all these years, and his legacy would be destroyed. He wouldn’t have any descendants to pass it on, nor any friends to carry it. He would be forgotten in the throes of time; just repayment for all the wrongs he had committed against the community of Sherwood Forest. He watched as Corrine felt her way through the dark towards a nearby field, and wondered what would happen to her or what she would do. Judge wondered if she would even survive the night, but he did not care enough to continue thinking about it. He turned his back on her, his feet thundering towards the camp. That night, as Corrine lay in that field by herself in the dark, something awoke in her; she resolved to have this “Judge” stand a trial of his own. 

He was going to pay for the cruelties he had committed.
So sayeth the Huntress.