If you have time to have an opinion on this question, take a minute to also read about Dina and Ahmed Alanqar. Ahmed was an accountant in Gaza before the genocide began. He and Dina now have four children, the youngest a baby born on June 24. Their home was destroyed, and they have been displaced repeatedly, so they live in a tent with little food, water, or medicine.
The good news is that their campaign to raise money to enable them to escape to Egypt is now over 90 percent funded:
Hello,,
I'm Ahmed Alanqar, 34 years old, married to Dina Alanq… Abdallah Alanqar needs your support for Helping Ahmed's Family: Escaping
Their campaign is vetted by Palestinian bloggers (see the Vetted Gaza Evacuation Fundraiser List, line 264). As of 07:30 GMT on Sunday, October 27, 2024, they're up to €69,379 of their €75,000 goal. That means they have just €5,621 left to raise to reach their target.
Even if you can't afford to donate, please share and reblog.
When I said that the last moments of my second life were nightmares, I wasn't being poetic. These images began haunting the person who was my third incarnation weeks before I fully woke up.
This is the first life I have that I have a name to put to: Stefaan Bouras. This life was one of the more signficant not just for being the first one that I regained full knowledge of who I was, but because it also demonstrated just how fucked up this "curse" that Ragradia had brought down upon me was.
Having my being ripped from me, bonded to a human soul, then cast into the endless reincarnation cycle meant that I could be born as anyone. Anyone.
When I woke from being Stefaan Bouras, I found myself in a tiny village temple dedicated to Ceiphied.
And I wasn't there just to attend the meetings. I had been the village priest; the one conducting those meetings.
--
As a boy, Stefaan was sent to the Basilica in Pirdellen, the center of Ceiphied's church. He was sent to learn to read and write the runes that formed the language in which the texts had been written; to study those texts. Sent to serve the Flare Dragon in His Church.
That was my life. Only just behind Magnus ascending to the position of Arch Prelate in irony.
His education included the typical things: Art, history, science, maths, philosophy, theology, etc etc etc. It wasn't a bad life, just it galls me thinking back on it. Fortunately it was the only time I had to suffer this sort of thing.
Eventually, he was given the assignment as village priest in a small town on the other side of the world; a town perched on tall cliffs that overlooked the ocean, about as far east as you could go. In a town for which the stories of a great battle between the Dragon Gods and Dark Lords were just that: Stories. Insulated by its remoteness and time, the people in this town were unconcerned by events that happened in what was essentially another world.
There Stefaan Bouras lived a relatively uneventful life—right up until it became eventful.
--
Needless to say, I was pissed.
In what would become a regular occurrence for me, at first I was disoriented. Confused. And for a brief time, unable to access my power and therefore vulnerable. It was like waking from an extremely vivid dream, that feeling of confusion, not knowing what was real and what wasn't. I was standing in front of my "congregation" and they were looking back in horror as their kindly priest began raving like a madman. By the time I started tossing the precious manuscripts to the floor and tearing at the tapestries, they were on me, trying to drag me from the temple, convinced that I'd lost my mind.
Imagine their surprise when the man in their clutches suddenly changed form, becoming larger, taller. Even in my crazed state of mind, I remember how they cowered away from me in terror as I loomed above them, my hair loose and dancing around on the psychic winds that accompanies our power. They pleaded for their lives, tried to escape, begged for mercy.
Did I grant them mercy? I did not. I called my sword to my hand, slaughtered the lot of them, as well as every other inhabitant of the village. The ones that came running at the sound of the screams. The ones that tried to flee. Some attacked me, others fell as they ran. Still others I rooted out from their hiding places and sent them all to Phibrizzo.
Then I burned the place. The temple, the houses, the entire village. I used the power that came flooding back to me to eradicate the place. The soil burned away to rock, and the heat from my fire turned that into molten slag. I burned it so completely that the name of the place was lost to history. It's possible that there's some record of it deep in the archives of Ceiphied's church at the Pirdellen Basilica, but it was eradicated from living memory that day.
--
By that time I was no closer to knowing what had happened to me. As far as I was concerned I had just fallen in battle, but...this wasn't Kataart. There were no frozen waves, no Magnus, no battle, nothing. Just this town that no longer existed.
Not just that, but I could not feel my full power. I could barely access the Astral and my true form. The power I did have was a fraction of what it had been. I tried to teleport away and failed.
As I stood there, wondering just what the fuck had happened, I felt something wet upon my hand. When I held it up it was covered in blood. Red, human blood seeped from a wound on my palm. I must have cut it at some point, but I could not remember how. There was pain, but it felt like no more than a scratch.
Then it hit me: This blood was coming from a wound on my hand. Warm, wet blood that had always belonged to those on the other end of my sword. While it dripped upon the stone at my feet, I became aware of other things: My chest moved as I breathed; I could feel a heart beat within.
There is no way I could even begin to describe what I felt upon this realization. Abject horror doesn't even come close. Even now I can still feel the sheer panic that gripped me. I couldn't catch my breath and my chest felt as if it were being crushed. My vision went black around the edges and I felt faint.
I admit that I fell to my knees and screamed. I damn near strangled myself trying to pull my dragon voice through a human throat. If I hadn't already destroyed everything in the immediate area, I would have destroyed it then.
Trying to channel the power of a Dark Lord through a frail human body isn't too healthy for that body. By the time I finally stopped, too exhausted to continue, my efforts had taken a toll on that body. I was weak, barely able to keep myself upright, delirious, out of my mind with rage at what had been done to me. And I still didn't know what had happened.
At that moment, not knowing what else to do, I called out to my brother for help.
The last thing I remember before dying was collapsing at the foot of the ice that had imprisoned Lei Magnus. Wounded, in so much pain. Pain like I'd never felt before. Rage at what had been a sure victory being snatched from us at the last possible moment. And the cold dark as it swallowed me.
The first thing I remember was, again, pain. Pain and the darkness that was closing in on me, but this time filled with fire; fire that would not respond to my will. And rage.
I remember only images, brief glimpses, jumbled and incoherent. Among those was a glowing forge, coals spilling onto the floor and setting the place ablaze. Racks of tools made of iron, hammers of varying sizes and shapes.
I remember snatching one up at random and swinging it about me with all the strength I could manage. The feel of the hammer impacting something soft and yielding. The feel of bones shattering. Blood slicking my hands and causing me to lose my grip.
Then there was more pain. Something struck me low to the side over my hip. It staggered me and in horror I watched as red blood poured from the wound.
A blade pierced my chest; another bit into my shoulder. A ring of frightened faces surrounded me as the fire burned and threatened to consume everything. Faces splattered with blood, their weapons red and slick with it.
I remember reaching for my power and feeling...nothing. There wasn't even emptiness where it had been; it was as if it had never been. Nothing but this too small shell of a human body that was already becoming nothing more than bruised and wounded meat.
And it was then that I realized the screams I'd been hearing were my screams. Rage filled me and I tried to slash and claw at my attackers, but my arms were heavy, And then suddenly--nothing.
I have these memories but they are little more than nightmare images. Fleeting memories that seem more like the nightmares they induced than actual memories.
By my reckoning these are the memories of the last moments of my second life as a human. It wasn't until some time later that I was able to compare the amount of time that had passed and determine that there was enough time for two human lives.
Time that for me is just...gone. I have no recollection of the first incarnation, and the second is just this nightmare. A little over a century that is nothing but a hole in my memories. The only evidence I even have that I'd existed at all is the fact that it happened again and again. Groundhog Day except it wasn't the same day playing over and over but that I was the one getting reset each time.
The first one is forever lost to me, and there's very little else to be known about the second. The brief glimpses that I'd gotten of a forge and tools suggests a blacksmith's forge. But was I the blacksmith or was it just there that I suddenly woke ? Became aware and disoriented? I can only guess based on later experiences that my memories returned, and upon finding myself in such a place, surrounded by humans, knowing only that just moments prior I'd been battling Ragradia I must have reacted in typical Chaos Dragon fashion: Rage and the desire to burn everything.
I don't even know where it was. Where had I lived all those years? Was it a place under the Barrier or out in the greater world? Did I have a family or what? Who were these people that attacked me? I wish I knew because fuck them. I hope the fire burned down the entire town or village or whathaveyou and that they all burned in that fire.
It's easy for me to be objective about this now, so far removed from the events, but that wasn't always the case. I hated the idea that I'd been someone and I have no clue as to who or what. I'm still—"weirded out" is the best way to describe it—at the thought.
