#just another year away global argh

[lizalfosrise]

Ines’ Theme // Squad Unknown

It’s no catastrophe

when you run from me

all the rumours that surround you simply atrophy

It don’t matter how dark

I feel the heat in your heart

and it’s screaming like a beacon, now you’re on my radar

[johnny-writes]

Dr. Danny’s Unlucky Day

(meme source; with cameos from muses from @neet-lucifer, @mors-resistis, @rachel-of-slaughter, @refined-silva, @savagewolffury, @thenarratorsgalaxy)

Danny’s plan of global domination had succeeded. Now he sat on a throne of gold, adorned with sculpture of eyes; a flag of the planet having an eye flaunted the wall of his castle. Right above his throne, Rachel’s head stood there, like a hunt trophy, with her lifeless peepers preserved forever.

“Can I go now, doctor?”

“No.”

The hall entered, with the news: Dr. Danny crowned President of Empire Earth and sexiest man alive.

“I’m such a lucky guy.” Danny said. The moment he said it, the chandelier that hanged above his throne, with candles shaped as eyes, fell over him.

“Ah!” When he returned to his senses, he saw her was on his bed and his Christmas globe, which had an eyeball instead of anything Christmas-related, fell on his head, breaking into it, wetting all of his bed. The shards didn’t hurt him much because they were low quality.

“Such bad luck, all those wonderful images were all just dreams…” he grumbled and went to the bathroom. He dried himself with a towel and brushed his teeth.

“Ouch!” he brushed too strong and his gingiva started to bleed a bit. He ignored this and went to wear his work outfit. He didn’t realize there was a huge mark of iron on its back and didn’t notice the hole under the shoe.

He went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, drinking from the bottle like the slob he is.

“PFFT! The milk is spoiled!” He said, spitting the rotten contents. He looked for more in the refrigerator and realized that it wasn’t cold – the refrigerator had broken so everything was spoiled and nasty. He was so hungry, he went to his cupboard and grabbed some stale bread.

After that he went to check his emails. He was sad: his article had been rejected from the journal, after two years and without possibility of resubmission. Science cried that day (not really).

He heard the doorbell ringing. Again, the mailman didn’t wait for him and just left his package. Dr. Danny smiled and said, “Ah, the Birth of Rachel has arrived and…WHAT?”

Rage couldn’t describe what Danny felt when he saw the crude doodle. “I pay a good money and that’s how he pays me back, AAAAHHH!”

The walk to his work was even worse, from being pelted by water balloons to being attacked by vultures. Dusting himself from the vulture feathers, he arrived at the jail. Only to find Yuri and Silva waiting for him at the door.

“Oh, so, you changed your mind and now will allow a professional take care of your brother?” He asked, in a rather smug tone.

“You mean, former professional.” Yuri replied, his arms crossed and a stern expression on his face. Silva said nothing, but kept a slight frown on his face, and tried to copy Yuri’s stance by crossing his arms.

“What do you mean?” He said, and realized that some workers were removing his stuff from the office.

“I told you I’d look for another medic,” Yuri explained, “And, after a long sidequest, our party discovered you committed fraud in your grades.”

“Everyone does that.” Danny huffed, a grimace starting to form at his face, making Silva clutched to Yuri tighter.

“And we also discovered you didn’t pay your monthly register to the medical association for three months and, for that reason, you’re getting kicked out.” Yuri said, with a ghost of a smirk forming on his face.

“You bastard!” He cried, although he knew he was forgetting something.

“Geostigma.” Silva said, stepping in front of Yuri.

“AAHHH!” The Earth magical spell erupted under Danny, sending him flying away.

“This day is boring.” Zack said, while eating a piece of jerky in an alley he found in the trash (luckily for him, it still had its wrapper). At that moment, he heard something falling into a garbage can. The garbage can tilted aside and rolled to him, revealing a battered Dr. Danny.

“Now this is my lucky, I get to beat up a nerd!” And then Zack started to trounce and whack Dr. Danny, like a bully hitting a nerd in a stereotypical high school setting.

“And I just don’t kill because you’re a piece of shit and that’d be a way too nice thing to do you.” Zack said, giving him the middle finger and leaving.

“Argh…today isn’t my lucky day,” he said, bruised, with his glasses broken, his clothes dirty. He walked away, using the wall as a support. He started to notice the wall had the consistency of paper. It was just posters placed in that location. But when he turned to see, he felt he was to burst a peeper.

“That cunt! The Whore of Babylon, the peeper destroyer! Why do my enemies prosper? This is bad luck!” Danny lost it when he saw a poster, with the date of a show of the new rising idol star Rebecca, with a photo of her in a beautiful idol uniform; she smiled, while holding a microphone close to her mouth, as if singing. He hated Rebecca. He hated her so much that he tossed his glasses against the ground, shattering into a thousand pieces.

“Oh, I needed that…” he lamented and sighed. When he was ready to leave, he stepped on a shard of glass and it hurt because he stepped with his shoe with a hole.

“AAAHHHH!” He cried, jumping around in pain.

More vultures attacked him (it was a local problem that time of the year) and made him run headfirst into a tree in the middle of a park. It was an old tree, so when he crashed it fell over him. It was enough to ward off the vultures, but he was stuck, the tree had fell on his legs.

“You have fallen…”

“This voice,” he turned his head and saw his savior, “Rachel!”

Lifeless eyes stared at the doctor. She just stared at him, immobile, like a doll in the cupboard.

“Save me again, Rachel!” he begged, with his tongue outside his mouth.

“I could kill you now.” She said, while getting out of her bag a grenade. Where did she get it? Have no idea.

“You won’t, I need you, Rachel!”

“I don’t really need you,” she said, while still holding the grenade on the level of her head, with her finger ready to take its pin out.

“Your peepers, they’re so beautiful…”

“You are nothing to me, Doctor Danny,” she said, her voice cold, as her eyes, “But I promised that I wouldn’t kill you.” Her finger relaxed, “You are a pain, but I decided I want to be human and-“ Before she could continue, something interrupted her.

“Ah, that was the wrong turn!”

“Get out of my face!”

A portal appeared, revealing a small fairy holding onto the face of a person wearing a trench coat and a hat. She latched to their face like a facehugger. They kept walking in circles, complaining about how each other was messing their interdimensional trips.

They both accidentally hit Rachel and entered through a portal as if they were never there. But they were there and made Rachel accidentally remove the pin and drop the grenade. The grenade rolled right to Dr. Danny, who stared wide eyed at the explosive.

Rachel just blinked twice and ran away as fast her legs could, far away from the explosion.

“RACHEEEE-” A loud explosion followed. Not even Dr. Danny could survive that.

After a while, Danny woke up in a hellish landscape. Everything was fire, he turned around and saw a certain demon sitting down in a chair, behind a table.

“Hey, fellow angel.” Danny waved.

“Shut up!” Hanzo said, “Let me get this straight to the point, so I can return to my videogames: you died and I have to decided where you’re going!”

“No, I can’t be dead, I’m too awesome and…wait, aren’t you too lazy?”

“Look, I hate you so much that I temporarily stopped being NEET to decide your fate: you can either go to the Second Circle of Hell or become a god, there’s a planet that we need someone to be a god.”

“Oh, of course I want to be a god!” He said with a smug smirk on his face.

“Good, I expected you’d choose this, Daniel Dickens, God of the Peeperland!” He said, and he slammed a button on the table.

“I love the name!”

In a blink of eyes, Danny was transported to a barren world. The sun was too far and there was nothing but the dark night. Humanoid creatures roamed the planet, but something in them made Danny scream.

“Where are their peepers?”

“I don’t know, ask Darwin,” Hanzo’s voice called from a cellphone, “This is a solar system stuck in the middle of a cluster of black holes. It’s on a sweet spot, so it won’t be eaten by them for a billion years, but the gravitational pull is so strong that nobody will ever want to go there. The black holes also make this place invisible, so you’re stuck here for a while, o Lord God of Peeperland.” The cellphone turned off and immediately turned on, “Oh, you didn’t pay the celestial cellphone bill, so now you’re completely cut off from every place in the universe. Have fun!”

“NOOO, A WORLD WITHOUT PEEPERS! IMPOSSIBLE! AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

Such bad luck. This is so sad, Alexa play VITAL.

[cryptswahili]

Five New Year’s Resolutions to Improve Your Crypto Life in 2019

How was 2018 for you? Think you can tweak your life to make 2019 better? We here at Bitsonline are no self-help gurus — you won’t find any fitness tips, diet or relationship wisdom, or coke-induced affirmations here. But we can throw out a few suggested new year’s resolutions for 2019; tidbits of useful advice on how to improve your bitcoin and crypto-holding existence over the coming year, and further into the future.

Also read: The Three Watershed Moments in Crypto in 2018–And No, They’re Not What You Might Think

Subscribe to the Bitsonline YouTube channel for great videos featuring industry insiders & experts

Argh, New Year’s Resolutions Are Stupid!

Yep, it’s that time when we use some arbitrary number on a calendar to reflect on the year that’s ending and make grand plans for the next, most of which we’ll never keep. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t — a year is still one complete Earth rotation around the sun, and most people get fewer than 80 of those. Arbitrary number or not, we can still put that cultural signpost to good use by looking at the bigger picture.

So here we go — five new year’s resolutions you can make for better living through cryptocurrency. We’re not saying they’ll make you rich or more attractive (hey, same thing) but you’ll probably end 2019 closer to crypto-nirvana than you started.

Guess which one of these three is watching price charts all day?

1. I Won’t Lose Sleep Over Daily Price Movements

This one’s an old chestnut, isn’t it? And also the resolution we’re most likely to break. Sure you could profit on daily (or hourly) price fluctuations — if you knew exactly when they’d happen. But no-one ever does, and you can easily lose big by panicking, overreacting, or being hasty.

Even not trading on the latest price movements can be anxiety-inducing, especially if you feel you’re missing opportunities. Our advice is to leave 24/7 chart-watching to the pros (many of whom will also blow up at some point) and keep a more casual eye on price movements. You may not cash out at every high or dodge every train wreck, but you’ll probably live longer to enjoy what you have.

This lifestyle choice is sometimes called “Hold and Forget”. That doesn’t mean forget completely though, so read on…

2. I’ll Keep a Better Eye on Projects I’m Invested in

“Hold and Forget” is good advice if you want to reduce your daily stress levels, but warehousing your stash with no maintenance at all can be costly too. At times we’ve bought into a blockchain project with a promising vision and talented team, only to find out too late that its price has imploded. Some fatal flaw in the concept revealed itself; that talented team splintered in a hellstorm of differing visions and social media attacks; a new regulation squashed most of its use-cases; something better came along with better marketing or technology, etc.

So it certainly helps to monitor current developments in any project you have a stake in. Keep an eye on the crypto news, look through your project’s Twitter feeds or hashtags, find out where the most relevant discussion on the project is happening. It could be Telegram, Twitter, Reddit, Slack, or even IRC. Also remember that you can miss good news just as easily as bad — missing an opportunity to capitalize on a sudden price jump.

On a similar note…

3. I’ll Be More Rational About the Coins I Buy

This one’s common sense, but who really has as much of that as they think? Mr. Spock was pure rationality, but he was also only half-human. So remember, every time you’re getting excited about buying into a particular blockchain project, that you’re not Spock and probably don’t want to be. You’re a human who’s going to make irrational choices without realizing it at the time.

One prudent resolution would be to become more aware of common hype signs. Does a new coin have a charismatic celebrity promoting it? Do articles on it use the word “revolutionize” a little too much for comfort? Do its promises rely too heavily on dislodging powerful behemoths, or on gaining mass appeal before working at all? (Building a better Facebook is easy, but getting billions of regular people to use it is less so.)

Be aware of your own limitations too. What seems like a hot new idea could simply be an old investment scam, with blockchain. If you’re not an experienced investor, one version of this resolution could be to study it more. In 2019 you’ll have a whole decade of cryptocurrency news to read — and some of it is gold. We recommend looking back through those years of everything from Ponzi schemes to real expert predictions, if you want a laugh at others’ expense.

4. I’ll Stop Listening to Mainstream Media About Crypto

OK, we’ll admit a bias here. And we’ll also caution that even “independent” and specialist media sources aren’t inherently free from hyperbole or vested interests. But how many times have you seen some mainstream media report proclaiming some coin as a “bitcoin killer“, gushing over yet another teenager who became a multi-millionaire thanks to bitcoin, or warning you that cryptocurrencies are doomed to fail because they have no intrinsic value (whatever that is) or are only useful to criminals? (If something’s useful to criminals, it’s probably useful to others as well.)

After all these years, 99bitcoins’ “Bitcoin Obituaries” is now an institution in the community. Compiling mainstream media pessimism about Bitcoin and crypto, it reports in December 2018 that Bitcoin has now “died 337 times”. Notably, 2017 saw the most obits — proof the media loves to peddle fear and drama, even in the middle of a mega bull-run.

The “MSM” doesn’t always cover complicated topics in enough depth. Its global, mass-produced message must satisfy corporate backers, politicians and advertisers — whose interests often run counter to the anti-government, anti-central-banking spirit that created Bitcoin in the first place. While there are definitely some insightful commentators who happen to work for large news outlets, they often take a back seat to the more drama-prone hype/crash producers, who only care about how many people are watching.

5. I Won’t Sit Too Hard on Any Fork Prongs

Uh, sorry… what?

Let us explain: say your favorite cryptocurrency has just hard-forked. Contentiously. There are now two versions of the coin competing for market value (congratulations) and attention. As a fan, the temptation is to pick a side, take up a pitchfork, and fight for what you believe is the worthier version. Oftentimes, this will involve attacking people who chose the other side, whether they be its corrupt leaders or clueless fans on social media. By showing them to be the morons they are, your side will win. Right?

Don’t be one of those people. Not only are you unlikely to convert others, you’re likely to drive away curious outsiders who want to learn more about cryptocurrency but find only bickering and trolling over points they don’t understand. They’ll walk away or choose some other crypto-item of value, reducing the value of both fork “prongs” in the longer run. Rather than look like noble warriors, you’ll end up looking like the proverbial two bald men fighting over a comb.

Flame wars, like twitch-trading, will also likely impact your mental and physical health over time. Just as literally sitting on a fork will cause much butthurt and little pleasure, so will fighting too fiercely for your favorite blockchain. Prefer one fork prong over another? Better to vote quietly with your money — if you’re right, you’ll still win.

Do you agree with our new year’s resolutions, or do you have some better ones of your own? Let’s hear about them in the comments. 

Images via Pixabay, KnowYourMeme.com, CNBC

The post Five New Year’s Resolutions to Improve Your Crypto Life in 2019 appeared first on Bitsonline.

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

[kevlin-on-the-weekends]

Retribution (Working Title)

  “I told you a thousand times already – the more you try to kill me, the more dangerous I get.” Efavirenz sighed as three bullets broke through his skull. His body made a loud thud as he fell on his back.

  After what seemed to be the longest minute of their lives, three Peacekeeping agents rushed in to where the young man laid. Efavirenz “the Ruthless” remained motionless as blood gurgled out of the gunshot wounds.

  “The fucker’s head’s still intact,” exclaimed one of the soldiers. “Got any theories for this, Tom?”

  “I won’t have any if you keep blocking my bodycam,” replied Tom via the intercom. “Sheesh, why’s there so much blood –“

  “Bodycam, you say?” the limp body asked. Startled, the soldiers jumped back, but were held down by what appeared to be hands rising from the red puddle and bracing their ankles. “I’ve heard about some of the newfangled things this century has devised. Make sure you get this, Tom, is it? Maybe your sacrifice will convince whomever sent you to leave me in peace.”

  The hands gripping the boots of the agents slowly descended into the crimson slick, to the captives’ horror as well as those watching them via their live webcams. A few eyewitnesses have told stories of people being pulled under pools of blood, their mangled corpses unearthed beneath the ground. The soldiers screamed in pain as they tried in vain to pull themselves away from what appeared will be their red, watery death.

  “’As the land cried in horror touching the blood of Abel,’” began Efavirenz, “’thus shall you howl to the heavens when his blood taints yours.’”

  Amidst all the wailing, a voice crackled through small speakers on Tom’s fatigues: “Efavirenz! Stop this madness immediately! What do hope to gain by killing our men?”

  “Oh dear,” sighed Efavirenz, “I’ve said it a thousand times already. Look, I’m so tired of people not listening to me, so here is what I’ll do. I may just let one, two, or all of your pawns go, depending on how well you answer my question.”

  “Which is?”

  “What have you learned so far about me? What have I revealed and explained so far to those who’ve seen and heard me?”

  “But everything we heard so far is preposter-“

  “Are you sure those are the words you want to be saying right now? Choose your words wisely, and better speak up – your boys are only going to get louder over time.”

   “ARGH!” yelled Tom, “I can feel it in my veins! Vaughn – get your plasma sabre and cut us loose NOW! Vaughn? Vaughn, can you hear me? VAUGHN!”

  “Your comrade passed out from the pain,” sighed Efavirenz, “but he is still alive. Barely.” Efavirenz approached the limp man’s sinking body, apparently looking for something. “There you are,” said Efavirenz as he stared at the camera. “Believe it or not, I can now see you as you can see me. Let’s just say that you’re not the only ones with fancy eyes. Now that I have your attention, I must tell you that my blood has seeped through their skin and is now slowly creeping up their blood vessels. Some say it feels like they are burning without flame. Now, whether or not any of you survive is up to you.”

  “All right, Efavirenz, we’ll talk – just spare them! From what we’ve been told, decades-long wars abruptly end whenever you walk across battlefields. You’ve been known to bury combatants and non-combatants alike across radii ranging from a block to a mile. According to eyewitnesses, you’ve told them that you don’t control your powers, and that it is triggered by the actualization of ‘killing intent.’ If someone tries to kill another in your presence, that person is swallowed up by the ground, regardless of whether or not his intended victim died. However, if you yourself gets hit by lethal force, be it from a bullet or a missile explosion, the one who pulled the trigger dies, even if you were only hit accidentally.”

  “Makes you feel stupid now, sending these boys to kill me.”

  “You are a TERRORIST who’s killed thousands of people!” shouted another voice. “You and your guerilla bandits are a scourge that has to be wiped off the face of this planet! My city of Serulea is one massive graveyard because of you!”

   “Because of ME? Guerilla bandits? What nonsense are you spouting? I was sealed and sleeping peacefully in your catacombs for centuries. I wasn’t the one who dropped an explosive cannonball on my head. As I have explained to countless others, my power casts its curse in proportion to how deadly the force I experience is, and my curse can be just as indiscriminate. Why does this seem to surprise you – am I not in your history epics anymore?”

  “Pardon my colleague,” said the first voice, “but it seems that I answered your question well enough. Now, can you let go of our soldiers? Those soldiers had no knowledge of who you are or what fate would befall them once they tried.”

  “But, good sir, it appears that you did.”

  “We are men of science who attributed those fantastical stories to the delirium of war. Based on the intelligence we had that we did not deem absurd, we surmised that you are a terrorist who led a cell that grotesquely buries people as a form of retribution. For this reason, our generals decided to take you out in the name of national security. Never would we imagine that the truth would be so much stranger than fiction! Seeing what we are seeing now, it appears that our best course of action is to rescind the warrants for your death and encourage every other government to do the same.”

  “So much killing. It’s a good thing Lamuvidine didn’t come out – otherwise she would be melting the frozen continents and drown the lot of you, just like in Noah’s time.”

  “Lamu…vidine?”

  “Lamuvidine the Pristine – don’t tell me you’ve lost all of your oral history. If you think that I’m terrible for your kind, wait until you see the cataclysm she brings. First, you’ll lose your coastal towns to the rising sea. Soon, even the highest mountain will be covered in water. Come to think of it, I have heard this thing… global warming, was it? I don’t know much about that, but it sure sounds like you’ve already woken up my eldest sister. Anyway, forgive me, I can talk a lot. If any of you have a sword that’s fresh from a bonfire, I can cut your soldiers legs below the knee and cauterize the wound. Otherwise, my blood will just pull their blood into the pool. If that happens, then there is nothing more I can do. They’ll be doomed.”

   “One of them has a plasma sabre. Lieutenant Tom, point to Vaughn – it’s the oval tube attached to the wrist clasp on his right arm”

  Tom gingerly pointed his forehead to Vaughn’s direction. He didn’t want to loosen his grip on his calf out of fear that the loss of pressure would make Efavirenz’s blood gush up to his thigh.

  “I got the oval tube,” said Efavirenz. “Then what?”

  “Point the tapered end away from you, then do a slashing motion, just like how you would flick blood off a sword.”

  “I see. It’s been millennia since I last held a sword, but…” Efavirenz swung the rod, and out came a short, fiery blade that looked and sounded like an emergency flare. “Incredible – now, to see how this cuts. Vaughn, is it? I’ll tell you to say goodbye to your foot, but you’re knocked out, which, come to think of it, is all for the best. Three, two, one…”

  Efavirenz slashed Vaughn just beneath his left knee, then pushed him away from the blood puddle. The cut was clean; and the stump sizzled and smelled like sirloin being grilled. Efavirenz then approached another soldier who had two feet gripped by blood hands. He too was standing unconscious and barely breathing. In two quick motions, Efavirenz slashed his legs and pushed him aside.

  Efavirenz then tilted his head to look at Tom. “Oh my, you’re still conscious? In any case, since you can hear me, I’ll need you to let go of your leg – unless you want to lose your hands, too.”

  “I… can’t,” Tom replied, “I’ve kept the blood down–“

  “Well, if you’re fine living without hands, it’s your choice. Three, two, one…”

  Out of sheer instinct, Tom released his grip as part of a dodging maneuver ingrained in him through years of training. He felt foreign blood surge up his thigh before Efavirenz cut his right leg just below the knee. Tom fell back, writhing in agony as his blood vessels visibly squirmed beneath his skin.

  “Oh dear,” Efavirenz sighed.

  “Efavirenz,” the speaker crackled, “what’s happening to Lieutenant Tom?”

  “Oh – can you see him? He has some of my blood trapped in his body. He will most likely die, though even if he were to survive, he will wish for death because of the pain he will suffer every second of his life.”

  “This is madness – can’t you stop this?”

  “The curse I carry acts on its own accord – and if you’re asking me to end his suffering by killing him, I can’t do that. My curse kills by redirecting the karma of murderous intent unto others, but I myself have no desire to kill. However, there is one way to ease his suffering.”

  “Whatever it is, please do it! Despite his flaws, the lieutenant does not deserve such a cruel punishment!”

  Efavirenz waved the sabre, shutting it off using sheer intuition. “Let it be known that Efavirenz the Ruthless can also render clemency. To release you from my blood curse, I claim your blood and body as my own. By the power vested in me by your superiors, I claim your earthly form and dub thee Tanofivyr the Merciful! As my sister Lamuvidine bequeathed her power upon me, I now impart power upon you. You shall share with me both my undying fate and my deathly curse. You yourself can never kill, yet you will watch our curse bury the maleficent! Rise, Tanofivyr! If you wish for freedom from the command to kill, kiss the tears of mercy off my cheek and follow me to the ends of this Earth!”

  As Efavirenz continued his incantation, Tom felt the pain subside, allowing him to hear the former more clearly. As he listened, he felt as though invisible hands were propping him up towards Efavirenz. As he drew closer, he saw tears flowing from Efavirenz’s eyes. He heard the words ‘tears of mercy,’ but Tom did not see Efavirenz’s eyes as merciful. They were lonely. This was the man he was ordered to kill by people who treated him like a dispensable pawn. As he was fighting for his life against Efavirenz’s blood hands, he never felt malice from Efavirenz himself. Instead, he felt that Efavirenz was faintly sorry for him – that he was tired of seeing a gnarled form of justice play out in front of his eyes over and over. Now, those eyes are crying. Tom felt the entirety of his aggression dissipate. It was his turn to feel sorry for Efavirenz.

  “Tanofivyr – you shouldn’t be hurting by now. Therefore, you can and must choose out of your own free will, without the fear of a painful death. You can let my curse take you to restful sleep now, or you can take my tears and pledge subservience to the commands of Mercy. Know that the first choice makes you wish for more life, while the other may make you wish for death, but neither wish can ever be granted–“

  Tom interrupted Efavirenz by kissing him on the cheek and tasting salty tears on his lips. He has never kissed another man that way before, much less swallow another man’s tears. As a soldier, he has faced many life-or-death situations before, but he never felt more afraid of death than when he was pulling his leg from the blood hands. However, as his lips glided over Efavirenz’s face, there was no trace of fear in him.   The pain on his stump was gone. Efavirenz let go of him and backed away; and Tom expected to fall on his face from the lack of support. He did fall forward, but to his surprise, something stopped his fall. His right foot grew back and felt the grass beneath it. Tom looked up and saw Efavirenz stare at him as if innumerable thoughts are running through his head. But his mind was clear. Without shifting his gaze, he dropped down to one knee.

  “Lieutenant Thomas Corpus of the Fifth Peacekeeping Battalion is dead – I am Tanofivyr the Merciful, vassal of Efavirenz!”