Our pursuers were quickly closing the gap between us and them. As were their arrows, which whistled through the air as they sailed past us. It wouldn't be long until the riders were upon him and I. However, Z had a plan, or at least I hoped he did. Though, only if he was truly insane would Z lead me off the edge of a cliff and not have thought it through before hand. As it turns out, a plan had in fact found its way into my friend's clever mind. Not to far below the cliff lie a river that the two of us were to fall into after throwing ourselves over the ridge. All we had to do was make it there before Myran's guards caught us... or one of their arrows.

"Come on Ray! Don't stop!" Z called over his shoulder.

Of course I'm not going to stop, you bloody moron. I thought to myself.

We were almost to the edge. There seemed to be only 30 feet between me and my escape.

I pumped my arms, and lengthened my strides.

Only 20 feet.

I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins, pushing me faster.

10 feet.

Z disappeared over the edge of the cliff.

5 feet. Almost there.

A pain exploded in my side.

The ground below me disappeared, and I plummeted after Z.

Keep your feet under you. I could hear Z's words echo in my mind, from a distant memory of cliff diving. Quickly I angled myself so my feet were facing down and I braced for the icy impact.

Frigid water enveloped me as I slipped through the surface, the aggressive current sweeping me downstream immediately, before I could re-surface. Head over heels I spun in the torrent of water. It was disorienting, but my occasional collision with the rocky bottom helped me maintain a solid idea of what was up and what was down. Pushing hard against a large rock I sprung back to the surface of the river, gasping for breathe. For now I didn't care where the river took me, as long as it was away from the riders. My only focus was to keep my head above the water, which was a challenge. Waves of white water slap across my face, threatening to pull me under with a relenting force. I could feel a heavy pressure against my right side, but I had to push it out of my mind. All that mattered was keeping my head up. However, the rush of adrenaline I had felt earlier was beginning to fade, and staying afloat was now becoming a frantic fight for life.

"Keep swimming, Ray! Don't stop!" I could hear Z's strangled voice pierce through the overwhelming sound of waves crashing around me, and pounding my ears.

Stop saying that! I thought, becoming slightly annoyed with the fact that my friend thinks I would actually stop. For a brief moment, I could see the water ahead of us. It was calm, inviting. We were almost there. Our escape was near, almost complete. We would be safe. The pressure in my side increased, but again I pushed it back down into my mind.

"Swim to the shore, Ray." Z shouted, as he started to paddle himself towards the river bank.

With great effort, I managed to drag most of myself onto the shore, collapsing onto my stomach and leaving my legs to soak in the water. "I swear Zander-" before I could finish a sharp cry of pain escaped my lips. Again I could feel the pain in my side. Slowly I dropped my hand to where the pain originated. There my fingers gently curled around a long wooden shaft, which had burrowed itself into the right side of my lower back. It was an arrow.. One of the riders had hit their mark.

In the beginning, no one really took much notice. All the stories were covered by bullshit sources. All the youtube videos were tagged as being staged or edited. No one saw it coming. Years have passed since that ignorant time, all that supposed intelligent media was for shit. It wasn't until hordes of the fuckers seeped in from every directions. Every major city torn down and razed. The fighting was endless in the twilight hours of the infection. Everyone was so stupid, trying everything they've seen in movies, but everything they thought would work, didn't.

They never stop, never give up. Even limbs would scratch and wriggle their way to spread the disease. Nothing stopped it. All we could do was run and hide, but I'm tired of running. I'm tired of falling asleep in abandoned cars. I'm gonna fight, and I'm gonna fucking win.

My name is Zara, and I'm done running.  

Night creeps from the horizon, swallowing the still world in its ruin. The birds fall silent and the wind dies. Distant moans become audible. Crix, my faithful half wolf companion, perks his ears up and places his paw on my knee.

"I know Crix, we'll get 'em. We'll get 'em all tonight." Zara says, ruffling his ears as I stood up. Looks like it's gonna be a long and good night, Zara ponders. Let's hope we can get their pack leader.

Many people don't realize these creepers have a pack leader, who they follow for some reason, take out the leader, and they disperse. Makes them easier to take them all out. The more there are, the harder it is to find their leader. It's like some weird psychological mechanism, bringing them together and following a leader.

The half moon shines bright over the dark woods, creating crawling silhouettes along the ground, stretching far the hordes of the creepers. Crix anxiously waits in the rotting hole of a felled tree, ready to lead the horde in the right direction. Zara waits patiently on the far side of a pitfall, 20 feet in diameter and nine feet deep. It took 9 straight days of work to create this trap. Nine long and hard days. Let's get this right Crix! Zara makes a quick flash with her digital watch and Crix springs in front of the group, barking and gaining the horde's full attention. Crix runs quickly from side to side, constricting the horde into a tighter bunch. Zara lets out a loud whistle, informing Crix to lead them in her direction.

The first trans-mystical experience I had was ego death. This experience, occurring multiple times throughout the past four years, has allowed me to realize that my ultimate identity is not physical, not emotional, not mental, and not individual. If this claim about human identity does not constitute “trans-mysticality” for the reader, then I apologize; however, I believe that many people would regard me as crazy or insane to believe this. The first time that I experienced ego death was while having a lucid dream, which is a dream in which one realizes that one is dreaming. Acknowledging the dream for what it was, I realized that literally everything constitutive of this experience was “not real,” meaning “not physical” or “not waking-state phenomena.” I realized that literally any aspect of the experience that I could perceive or identify was not real. The dream-sensations were not real, the dream-emotions were not real, the dream-thoughts were not real. My dream-body, the experience of myself as an individual, was not real. Yet despite the fact that all my experience was unreal, “I” still existed—but absolutely nothing perceivable constituted this “I.” I existed as the source of perception, but not as the objects or phenomena I perceived. I was simply pure being. Subsequently, I realized that if I am pure being, most fundamentally, then my ultimate identity could not be conceptually or linguistically reduced to any limitation or thing. Several other experiences while meditating invoked the same authentic realization concerning identity. While sitting in stillness/emptiness, I realized that I still am, despite not thinking anything. I realized that I am not a mind or thinking thing, because I still exist even when that “mind” and the thoughts constituting it disappear for uncertain stretches of “time.” Another trans-mystical experience and realization includes that of seeing light auras, ranging different colors, engulfing people’s bodies. I do not know if these auras are the invention of my mind or if my mind is recognizing an inherent category of reality. However, this perception is very real for me, aside from its epistemic normativity beyond the scope of first-person inference, exclusively. For several years now, I have also been able to focus my perception on certain areas of my body and, in doing so, “activate” a noticeable amount of energy or “subtle sensation” concentrated and limited to that specific location. For instance, if I sufficiently concentrate on the space between my eyeballs, then, suddenly, I feel a slight tingling or prickling in that top-middle region. The perception gains intensity as I further realize and experience a certain rotation or spinning of that energy activated. I have tried to see whether I can create the same experience on any bodily location rather than the areas to which my phenomenological success has been limited. However, this attempt has proven to be unsuccessful, showing me that there must be something quite special or significant about the particular locations allowing me to activate such energy. The amount of second-person information about trans-mysticality to which I have access is significantly greater than the amount of first-person information. The following individuals have each been important parts of my life for the past two and a half years. I could not have more respect for any of them given all their credentials of which I am aware. The amount of trust that I have for four of them is equivalent to the amount of trust I have for my closest family members and friends, while the amount of trust that I have for the other three is equivalent to the amount of trust I have for my closest professors and instructors. In this section, I shall describe my specific relationship to each one and then I shall list all of his credentials along with all of the trans-mystical claims that he has given me reason to believe constitute epistemic normativity. Two years ago, I met Michael Richardson. Richardson played Division I college basketball at Wright State University before transferring to Georgetown College. While studying ethics at Oxford University, he realized that the path he was on did not align with his authentic self. This realization moved Richardson to shift away from a focus on medicine and to earn a degree in English and to become an ESL teacher and student of Zen Buddhism in Japan. After graduating, he went to live by himself on his family’s farm in Kentucky for five consecutive years, without contact from anyone else, only meditating and writing. During the fourth year, Richardson claims to have experienced kensho, which is a Zen term that denotes sudden awakening to nirvana or nothingness. This realization prompted him to burn all twelve hundred typewritten pages that he had accumulated to that point while living by himself on the farm—symbolizing for Richardson that, after this authentic awakening experience, every single word in the English dictionary literally had a profoundly different meaning for him. He then went on to write a poetry anthology titled Suicide Dictionary, which was published by O-Books later that year. As of now, he stewards Globalish. My relationship with Richardson led me to connect with his good friend and entrepreneurial partner, Doc Barham. Barham works as a “transformation expert.” Since March 2010, he has been my mentor, life coach, and dear friend. Barham has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Psychology Today, the History Channel (Ancient Aliens), Business Insider, the Huffington Post, as well as PBS. His client backgrounds include Zappos.com, Playboy, NASA, NFL, Oprah.com, PGA, CMA, the Oprah Winfrey Network, NBA, World Series Poker, NASCAR, and the NCAA. Specifically, Barham’s individual clients include NBA All-Star Elton Brand, along with ex-president of digital media for Oprah.com and the Oprah Winfrey Network, Robert Tercek. The latter figure remarks that: "Doc has been my personal professional career coach for several years, and he has helped me achieve great results. I give him my highest recommendation. In 2005, I worked with Tony Robbins, and after that I did a project which involved more than 200 professional coaches, so I had the opportunity to meet several excellent coaches. In my experience, Doc Barham is the best coach I’ve ever worked with." Barham has also experienced remote viewing, kensho, and subtle-realm masters. Furthermore, he claims to experience any chakra (supposed energy vortexes connecting one’s physical, emotional, and mental bodies) at will. He also claims to have communicated with extraterrestrial beings while dreaming, a week before experiencing several UFOs hover several hundred feet over his vehicle for several minutes while near Area 51. One of Barham’s mentors and friends is a chi gong master named Master Jo. I have not yet met Master Jo digitally or physically, but have heard about him from Barham and saw a video demonstrating his abilities featured on Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Jo has known kung fu since age seven and chi gong since age sixteen. In the video demonstration, he raises a towel to near-boiling temperature without even touching it. The ability is shown using infrared camera technology. It is affirmed by Dr. Michael Upsher, a well-known MD who has experienced Jo’s energetic healing treatment and who claims to know that it is real. Another acquaintance of Barham, his meditation teacher whom I have not yet met but respect and trust, is Dr. Shinzen Young. Young, a longtime Zen master, authored The Science of Enlightenment series.6 Young’s own teacher is over one hundred years old, making him the oldest living Zen master on this planet. Aside from Young’s experiences of spiritual enlightenment, perhaps even more astonishing is his claim of profound visionary experiences for several consecutive years while studying under a “Taoist wizard” in his mid-twenties. These experiences were such that he saw blatant and coherent subtle/psychic phenomena merged in his everyday physical settings (e.g. perceiving nonphysical visions of beings from greater dimensions while sitting awake at his home)—which, if interpreted by conventional psychology/psychiatry, would constitute schizophrenia. Yet, like all of these second-person sources of trans-mystical knowledge, Young seems not only extraordinarily gifted intellectually, but also equally wholesome both emotionally and morally. With Barham, I also met Mick Quinn (digitally) in July 2010. We have remained in regular contact since that time. Quinn used to be a serial Wall Street entrepreneur. After experiencing kensho more than ten years ago, though, he realized that maximizing his personal development in all areas of growth mattered much more than merely making money. Quinn coauthored The Uncommon Path of Awakening Authentic Joy, which reached number one in its Amazon category of Consciousness and Thought. He regularly appears on the radio with Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and star of The Secret, along with Dr. Deepak Chopra, who Time magazine named among the top one hundred most influential people of the twentieth century (as the “poet-prophet of alternative medicine”). Quinn now works in a Guatemalan slum with his wife teaching Integral Theory to students and helping increase food, power, and stability. During a Facebook discussion that involved numerous participants concerning the reality of chi gong—namely, a video that displayed one master’s supposed ability to ignite newspaper without touching it physically—Quinn claimed that his old master, now dead, was not only spiritually advanced but also energetically powerful such that he could (telekinetically) knock down objects from across the room. The last person with whom Barham connected me, beginning in the spring of 2011, is his own mentor, Dr. Pete Peterson—who started working for the government before age thirteen as an inventor and engineer. According to Peterson, not only has the government been suppressing information about trans-mystical/paranormal phenomena since the early twentieth century, but he himself has invented technology of fantastic proportion, which has been suppressed by government powers, but which—for instance—reverses gravity, or allows any message to be communicated anywhere in the universe instantaneously.9 Barham and Peterson together claim that he has three PhDs and decades’ worth of independent research spent with dozens of Nobel Prize winners. Aside from his credentials, among Peterson’s other trans-mystical claims are that he used to throw “spoon-bending parties” during the 1970s, and, perhaps even more unbelievably, that he is permanently awake—meaning that he always lucid dreams and that his experience of time relative to the dreaming state is equivalent to hours and even days relative to the waking state. According to his description, Peterson lives not just one life, but many lives/roles simultaneously, continually experienced during his perpetuated state of lucidity while dreaming. For instance, one of these dream worlds that he experiences/visits each night features several family members who have been dead relative to the waking state—yet, according to Peterson, he visits these alternate realities each night, lucid the entire time, experiencing a reality that is as meaningful and complex as the reality that one experiences while awake. He also claims to know individuals whose energetic power is such that they can literally fly—meaning they can levitate their own bodies at will.

People recognize Light once in a thousand years. Usually, they confuse wisdom with Darkness and curse it. I am here to keep it alive, even if no one remembers me.

There have been twenty-five of us since the secret was forced underground. All of us are women and we have preserved three names for centuries, alternating each generation. Amata, Sophia and Ysabel. Each name speaks of the light we carry. I am Amata Sophia. My daughter will be Sophia Ysabel. Hers Ysabel Amata. But enough of this, I am always talking when I should be gathering supplies for our next tour.

We leave for Arles tomorrow. It’s the first time I will visit the area and from what mother knows, we will keep to ourselves. There is a sickness in Arles that has yet to run its course. People are dying without symptom or reason. Rich and poor alike have been infected and no one has a cure. We learned about it during evening prayers at our usual place atop Canigou. It was so clear.

Normally, mother leads the chants and recites the ancient words, “The Rose, beloved, fruit of heaven, stands within the Light. Show the way, empower her flesh to bring relief. Protect the blessed.” This night, she handed me the wild rose along with the pear and stepped back.

I had known the words since childhood, but this was the first time I was asked to speak them.

One of my earliest memories was watching an orb of light roll down the sky and envelop the rose, then my mother in a golden cocoon. And myself, as I was bound to her body. I couldn't have been more than a year old. It was warm inside. It hummed. Just a pure tone that seeped into my flesh until it felt like I was a sound. When mother tells the story, she says that I laughed. “Your voice was so clear, I knew you would heal with music.”

"If a cat bites a mouse does the mouse turn into a cat?"

"No." She snorted at the ridiculous question.

"Then why would a human turn into a vampire?" He retorted.

"What about your teeth" she asks "do you grow fangs or something."

"No." He looked at her with mild irritation

"Well then how do you eat?"

"Like this." He grabbed her wrist and turned it over she tried to pull away when she noticed she was bleeding.

"How did you?" He turned his hand around showing a needle protruding out of his ring.

"It's very sharp and enters very quickly. Can't feel a thing."

Her heart began to race as she stared at the blood pooling out of her wrist. He smiled and threw her a towel.

"Put some pressure on it."

"You're not going to eat it?"

His eyebrows pinched together "Do you eat every time someone puts food in front of you?"

"No."

"Either do I. Besides I prefer vegetarians. Meat makes the blood too gamey."

"Can you go out during the daylight?"

He shrugs "We are designed to be nocturnal so our eyes and skin are a bit sensitive to light but it won't kill us."

"So do you go out during the day?"

"I try not to. It gives me a headache and the smell is nauseating."

"Smell?"

A twinge of a smile came across his lips "We have more sensitive noses then you." He leans in closer "In any given group of humans you have the smell of cologne, sex, sweat, dirt, food, piss, and shit. Not exactly something that gets the appetite going."

"So do I stink to you?"

He smiled. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

She shrugs. "So can you have sex with a human?"

"Why?"She felt heat flush her face but before she could answer he continued "I can stick my dick into anything that has a hole in it. That doesn't mean I want to."

"So you don't find humans attractive?"

"Would you?"

She shook her head and shifted on the bed. She had to change the topic before he thought she wanted him. "So can you drink another vampires blood?"

"You can but it's the equivalent of having unprotected sex. It's just not worth it."

"So you can't get human diseases?"

"Nope. "

"Then couldn't you use that to cure disease?"

"Who says we haven't. But there are limits. We have laws. We can't do anything that would draw attention to the fact that we exist like kill a human or mysteriously find the cure to every known human disease at once."

"What about me? You're telling me about all of this stuff. Isn't it against your laws?"

"Maybe. But if you tell anyone it isn't like they will believe you."

Given her current predicament that was likely true. "So nothing that the movies say is true?"

"Not really. It's not like we are immortal. We can die we just have quicker reflexes and faster healing capabilities. I don't mind garlic in fact some food needs it."

"You can eat normal food?"

"Of course, you can eat grass can't you? It's a bit harder to digest but it gives me energy. "

"What about churches and crosses?"

"Lies, as is the holy water, silver, and the other rubbish they make up"

You noticed another slave, younger than you, cleaning a window in short, jerky movements, trying to get done as fast as possible and not trying to clean efficiently. When you helped him and taught him that perfection takes a while, Master whipped you a long time, telling you not to make others take longer.

You haven't spoken a word since then. Not even to Her. She smacked you around a little Herself, but after a total of twelve hours and not a word from your lips, She gave up.

It's been three years. You don't remember the sound of your own voice. Your hearing has grown dramatically, as has your sense of smell, and you have to admit, you're happy...well. As happy a slave can be.