Speaker 1: M follow the production of My Art Radio. This episode
Speaker 1: contains depictions of strong violence, drug use, and sexual coercion.
Speaker 1: The second oil mage, I'm a mild case. As long
Speaker 1: as you don't get in my way, you're not my problem.
Speaker 1: I'm sort. History is a weapon, your pay is a weapon.
Speaker 1: Not suffer you to be tempted above that we are able,
Speaker 1: but will with the temptation also make a way to
Speaker 1: a safe that he may be able to beast. Now
Speaker 1: tell me, tell me erth I did. She pried me,
Speaker 1: first with pleasure, then with pain, until the difference no
Speaker 1: longer felt distinct. My left arm burned, and I feared
Speaker 1: some other interrogation failsafe might have activated in my body.
Speaker 1: But then the next wash of sensation crackled through me,
Speaker 1: and all I could do was giving me oh. Toward
Speaker 1: the end, she crouched by my side like a harpy,
Speaker 1: her blood swollen eyes unflinching, her smile pure sadism as
Speaker 1: she reached into my mind with her waves, at least
Speaker 1: until I told her about Veil and about the shifting
Speaker 1: thing that looked like her. Only then did she relent.
Speaker 1: Without another word, she rose and backed away from my
Speaker 1: crumpled body. I watched her through the crook of my
Speaker 1: arm as she walked over to the Triton observer, its
Speaker 1: silhouette like that of a horned king in the shadows.
Speaker 1: They touched foreheads for a moment, exchanging some communication. I
Speaker 1: could only guess at it had to be something about
Speaker 1: veil or the thing that wore her face. It gave
Speaker 1: me time, but for what. I ran fingers over the shackle,
Speaker 1: up the sutured wound in my leg, to the throbbing
Speaker 1: in my arm, just beneath my old fashioned skull tattoo.
Speaker 1: I felt something move beneath the skin at the touch
Speaker 1: of my fingers, but she was already approaching me again.
Speaker 1: Someone told you, told me what whispers of the void walker,
Speaker 1: the shapeshifter in your midst No one told me anything.
Speaker 1: You've held them better than expected. Imagine if you had
Speaker 1: your black drug and your vile marks, you wouldn't need
Speaker 1: no much to craft a lie. I wounded it. The
Speaker 1: blood was amber. If you're telling the truth, your crime
Speaker 1: is even more repellent because it means you helped the thing.
Speaker 1: How could I know what it really was? It was
Speaker 1: pretending to be her. They don't pretend to be anything.
Speaker 1: They take. They wear masks of pilfered consciousness, but there's
Speaker 1: nothing underneath. It became her to finally reach us, and
Speaker 1: you let her in. I thought she was harmless. No,
Speaker 1: that's not true. I thought she was right about what
Speaker 1: the world My people tell a story of two tridents
Speaker 1: on an ancient shore who glimpsed Man's first imperial towers
Speaker 1: rise towards the sun. Let's end it now, the first
Speaker 1: one said, raize waves against their walls and drown them
Speaker 1: to the last poor child before they ascended too high. No,
Speaker 1: let us watch, the second said, and see how they
Speaker 1: might grow. Will tutor them, cultivate their growth. So we
Speaker 1: let you spread across the earth, and we remain below.
Speaker 1: But never did we forget our choice and what we
Speaker 1: could have wrought. As you laid waste to world and kin,
Speaker 1: bloodied sea and sky and air, as you pursued the
Speaker 1: voice and vision of your early mind through faith, tinged
Speaker 1: horrors viler than anything we've ever dared to dread. Till
Speaker 1: the last you are incapable of seeing beyond your horizon.
Speaker 1: You abhor the law change near as much as them.
Speaker 1: She raised one hand and signed to the triton It
Speaker 1: retreated into the gloom. But your survival is ours too.
Speaker 1: Now we are no longer suppert species, and if all
Speaker 1: you say is true, there is even less time. I
Speaker 1: need to be sure I told you everything, not about
Speaker 1: the ones who made you, the ones so adept at
Speaker 1: countering our infiltration. We need to be sure there's no
Speaker 1: complicity between Apathus and the outer darkness. There's nothing left.
Speaker 1: I need to go deeper. That's when I began to
Speaker 1: feel the numbing trickle of ice water across the cavern floor.
Speaker 1: You can go to Canada, you can go to Australia
Speaker 1: without all lonely gets you so far. See, it's a
Speaker 1: global agenda people, that's beyond question at this point. Especially
Speaker 1: soup filled baked goods. The kids these days are drinking
Speaker 1: it with a straw. That's eating like a fish. Ask
Speaker 1: any theologist, any ex theologists just inhaling it disgraceful. Plus,
Speaker 1: real soup is thick, hearty, beefy, and chunky. A real
Speaker 1: American choose is soup? You could choke on it? Next caller, Hi,
Speaker 1: this is Chris from Oregon. Welcome to the show. Chris,
Speaker 1: Thanks for calling in from the front lines. What's on
Speaker 1: your mind. You've spoken before about the threat posed by undocumented,
Speaker 1: recombined people in our society, and I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't believe you. I didn't believe you, but
Speaker 1: I just left. I just left a job at a
Speaker 1: major technology corporation, and I definitely encountered unmarked our CEOs.
Speaker 1: It's not that they even looked like us. They were beautiful.
Speaker 1: They were breathtaking. They could just look at you and
Speaker 1: make you antasize and do things. I had a family
Speaker 1: and they they two of them joined the company in April,
Speaker 1: and they've already manipulated their way into high level, influential positions.
Speaker 1: I'm talking corporate partnership, decisions, international policy, you name it.
Speaker 1: And this was just one company. Just think what they're
Speaker 1: accomplishing around the world at the highest levels of government.
Speaker 1: I looked into their eyes and all I saw was Chris.
Speaker 1: Chris from Oregon. Chris. I was really feeling that way.
Speaker 1: Are you Chris? Come back to me? Chris? We lose him.
Speaker 1: Tonight on Dress Wars, the epic showdown continues. Daphne Carlos
Speaker 1: slip its with only two episodes remainings. One Dress shall
Speaker 1: Rule them All, But who will be the master. I
Speaker 1: didn't come here to make friends. I came here to
Speaker 1: make dressing. Just when you thought the sticks couldn't get
Speaker 1: any higher, Trial by dress returns, plus there's even more drama,
Speaker 1: and the Dress Bunker as an infamous competitor from season twelve,
Speaker 1: pops in for a visit. You've seen dress Some people
Speaker 1: would not belief Dress War seventeen, bursting at the scenes,
Speaker 1: tune in only the salt water trickled around my fingers
Speaker 1: and flooded the grooves in the stone. It was rising.
Speaker 1: I looked up at my tormentor, clad in a skin
Speaker 1: suit of Triton biotechne beautiful, like an animate corpse. Where
Speaker 1: was she originally bound? I wonder service aboard Atlas, a
Speaker 1: chance to fraternize with landsfolk before ascending, manipulating her way
Speaker 1: into some key position. It was what they did. It
Speaker 1: was the whole reason for a pathos. But instead here
Speaker 1: she stood unfinished, a creature suspended between worlds, the loneliness
Speaker 1: of demigods. I rubbed my fingers over the pain in
Speaker 1: my arm, and I felt the sting of movement once more,
Speaker 1: like graphink part calls stirring beneath the skin, only larger
Speaker 1: our abilities work better through the medium of water. I'm
Speaker 1: more useful to you alive. So far, you've only proven
Speaker 1: useful to it. If it's really veil Veil's mind, then
Speaker 1: I can speak to her, Maybe I can reason to
Speaker 1: what end? She's just a mask there. It was a
Speaker 1: fleeting look of doubt in her expression. But you're not sure,
Speaker 1: are you? You might be able to kill it. But
Speaker 1: what if I could get her to talk? What if
Speaker 1: the mass can feel the face beneath it? Clever? What's
Speaker 1: more valuable than intelligence on your enemy? It's impossible. They
Speaker 1: only walk. You can't know. I winced as the thing
Speaker 1: in my arm ruptured through the skin, thankfully shielded from
Speaker 1: Thetis's view. A narrow shaft, slick with blood, emerged from
Speaker 1: the rapidly coagulating wound. A hilt. We will provide for
Speaker 1: you a weapon. Perhaps I could have pressed her, talked
Speaker 1: my way out of it. The cracks were there, but
Speaker 1: a pathos recruited me for my weakness, not my strength.
Speaker 1: I slid my fingers around the hilt as the water
Speaker 1: rose to my shoulders. We're wasting time. I felt the
Speaker 1: psionic waves even before her fingers found the base of
Speaker 1: my neck. She shoved my head beneath the water. The
Speaker 1: knife came free into my right fist. She pressed down
Speaker 1: on my back with all her weight, holding me beneath
Speaker 1: the waves. She wrapped her arms around my neck in
Speaker 1: a choke hold and pressed her forehead to the back
Speaker 1: of my skull. Waves exploded through my mind. I felt
Speaker 1: her inside me, prodding, leaking into the plundered corners of
Speaker 1: my psyche, the boarded secrets. I barely recognized the black
Speaker 1: halls of a pathos, the gutters of a Guang Jo
Speaker 1: fort show show. I stabbed the knife back into her thigh.
Speaker 1: I stabbed again, and her grip slipped. I drolled the
Speaker 1: back of my head into her face with enough force
Speaker 1: to crack bony. The waves dyed. I gasped for air
Speaker 1: and glimpsed the triton observer moving in with terrifying speed.
Speaker 1: I submerged once more. I jammed the blade into the
Speaker 1: chain link that connected the shackle and twisted. I resurfaced
Speaker 1: amid roaring, blood tinged waters. The triton surged across the
Speaker 1: flooded room, the siphons of its twin tentacles propelling it
Speaker 1: on jets of pressurized water. It reared back one of
Speaker 1: its great webbed hands to strike, but the knife had
Speaker 1: already flown from my fingertips. It cut clean through the
Speaker 1: creature's brain an instant before its body barreled into me.
Speaker 1: I surfaced and gasped for breath, broken ribs exploding with pain.
Speaker 1: The fallen triton floated to one side, shaking and its
Speaker 1: death throws. The scaled body fluctuated with golden bioluminescence. I
Speaker 1: scanned the room for Thetis, expecting to see her pale
Speaker 1: face breaching the surface of the water. But I didn't
Speaker 1: see her, I didn't hear her, I didn't feel her
Speaker 1: awful presence in my mind. I tried to swim, that
Speaker 1: the pain in my side was too much. I slashed
Speaker 1: and stumbled through the half flooded chamber, back towards the
Speaker 1: proteus hewn tunnel I've marked earlier. I followed it up
Speaker 1: out of the flood. I shivered along its twisting course,
Speaker 1: bloodied and numb from frigid waters. The chatter of my
Speaker 1: teeth echoed through the halls everywhere, the insane whorls of
Speaker 1: mindless excavation. I followed it through stretches of complete darkness,
Speaker 1: feeling my way, stumbling against the wall. The only lights
Speaker 1: were those within my mind. The dark writhed with hallucinated images,
Speaker 1: the shadowed saints, sulfurous breath, basilisk surging from the depths
Speaker 1: of the earth, the rumble of the proteus in the
Speaker 1: tunnels below. Mindless and unceasing, boring chasms in the dark.
Speaker 1: For what I could not guess, some megaproject of you,
Speaker 1: Decks or Triton, some desperate hole in the world. I
Speaker 1: pressed on, grunting through the pain, fleeing sounds real and imagined. Finally,
Speaker 1: the light ahead told me I was near, not the
Speaker 1: purple glow of Triton Biotechni, but industrial led a metal
Speaker 1: platform with an air lock set into the spiral embossed rock.
Speaker 1: Twin plexiglass chambers, clearly intended to house pressure suits. One
Speaker 1: of them stood empty, and Jack's waited beside it. You.
Speaker 1: She raised the squid gun as I moved into the light,
Speaker 1: but I was already sprinting. I jerked my head to
Speaker 1: one side and narrowly dodged the first squid. The second
Speaker 1: flew wide, and I locked the forearm into her skull.
Speaker 1: Jack stumbled back, blood leaking from the suture, jelled gash
Speaker 1: in her face, but she recovered her footing. She swung
Speaker 1: the gun at me like a club. I ducked and
Speaker 1: tackled her hard to the gritted steel beneath us. Her
Speaker 1: hands found my throat and mine hers. She had every
Speaker 1: advantage over me, weapons, clothing, a mind and body that
Speaker 1: hadn't been ravaged by a goddamn nariad. But I was
Speaker 1: on top. I had butted her hard enough to break
Speaker 1: the skin. Her fingernails gashed my throat, but I tightened
Speaker 1: my grip. I tightened it till I realized I was
Speaker 1: the only one screaming. The second oil Age was produced
Speaker 1: by Robert Lamb, alex william Slowing, Voberbaum, and Josh Stain.
Speaker 1: This episode featured en Jel masters a Sinold Pond, he Mean,
Speaker 1: Lloyd Esthetis, Annie Reese as Jack's, Noel Brown as tex America,
Speaker 1: and Christian Sager as Chris from Oregon. Additional voice work
Speaker 1: by Alexander Williams and Nicholas Takowski intro altro, and supporting
Speaker 1: music created by the Weirding Module. Learn more at Module
Speaker 1: five dot band camp dot com. M from more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iart Radio, visit the irt radio app. Bapple podcasts
Speaker 1: or women We listen to your favorite shows.