I don't know if it took years, but it did feel like weeks or even, perhaps, months.
There was just no way to judge the passage of time, not even with the cycle of sleep like a prisoner in solitary confinement, as I didn't need to sleep at all. Not too surprising as a disembodied soul, I supposed.
Still, I did find treasure pretty quickly. There was a false wall in what appeared to be a simple pantry that led to the complex's main vault. Quite a lot of things were in there, including gold, magic devices and walls of books, but I didn't see anything that would immediately help us escape or deal with the assassins that were making their way to end what would soon be my "life."
I did find some other interesting in other parts of the complex. A number of explosive amulets had been overlooked in the armoury. When you raised corpses to do your bidding, the use of "suicide bombers" became an obvious strategy in warfare, and only certain magic devices required a soul or mind to function.
That gave me the kernel of an idea, but even that would only be a stalling tactic. I had been hoping that I wouldn't need to go down the "thorough" path, but in the end, I did. I examined every item in the treasury and eventually discovered that I could even read closed books if I was very precise about shoving myself into them. It took me quite a bit of time to learn to float so precisely and then immediately still myself so I could read a page, to say nothing of floating forward precisely enough to "turn the next page."
I probably looked ridiculous, especially when books were shelved upside down, and I had to hang in the middle of the air upside down, with part of my spirit body shoved into a book.
Even though, I read everything. Both to look for secrets, as well as my later edification. While some included more general arcane knowledge, most of the tomes dealt with necromancy, curses and ritual magic. Including many things that even Meril's parents weren't aware of. They hadn't been Elders in the coven after all, merely mid-tier members—the kind that got sent out on missions often, so some of it was things she had never been taught.
I was hoping to keep most of the memories. On Meril's last birthday, she summoned a devil and bargained for an improved memory and slightly improved intelligence. The former was delivered through a mental technique called a Mental Palace, and it was something I recognised even from my past life, although I had never heard of anyone that could actually use it.
In exchange for this help, as well as the use of an imp as a familiar, she owed the devil a quarter of her soul or, alternately, the souls of three other people. It was a debt arrangement, and the accounts would be settled when Merildwen died, or she paid off her debt, whichever came first. I hoped the devil didn't think I was obligated to pay her debt like some kind of usurious loan shark, too, but I had the feeling I would be on the hook.
The devil they dealt with was an Erinyes named Oriella, so it could be said that of all devils, they were the least likely to screw one over with a monkey paw deal, but the only way I could object to the debt would be in the Hells after I died. It would be simpler to just pay the debt with evildoers if I encountered some. It might be that I was a little insane now, but that idea didn't bother me as much as I thought it would.
Bargaining with a devil was something akin to a right of passage in Meril's parents' coven, and the entire coven utilised Oriella, so her parents had helped her make as good a bargain as could be expected. From my objective perspective, dealing with devils seemed kind of stupid, although the Memory Palace technique that had been shoved into Meril's mind was very useful.
I had already detected a lot of similarities in the world I would soon find myself in and a certain table-top roleplaying game that I used to love to play, to the point where many of the same spells and tropes existed, but it wasn't set on Faerûn or Eberron or anywhere else I recognised. None of the deity names were the same, and some mechanics were different enough that it caused a bit of cognitive dissonance when I noticed it.
Her deal with the devil was why Meril was wielding the knife, even. The ritual to summon the attention of my pet goat didn't require a soul, merely a murder. Honestly, I didn't think my pet goat really understood what a soul was. It thought so foreignly that I didn't think it understood the distinction between a living person or a dead one, or a human or a cabbage.
Since the ritual wasn't sacrificing a soul, she thought, why not two birds for one stone? The contract with the devil specifically stated she had to collect the souls herself, so she needed to be the one to shove the knife into his heart.
Taken together, it just meant that none of the people around, Meril or her parents, were good people. Still, even if they were evil necromancers, it was clear that Meril's parents did love her, and she loved them too. She hadn't intended to request her personal escape when she had performed the summoning ritual; it had just been a subconscious desire.
Her parents had wanted to help her pay part of her debt as soon as possible and had made the mistake of giving her the key position in the ritual when she wasn't quite ready for it. A more experienced Wizard would have been able to compartmentalise their mind enough that no subconscious should have leaked through.
Still, perhaps without that subconscious flavour, my pet goat would have sent everyone to the cenobite dimension, so there was no telling what would have been better. Not doing the ritual would have been better, probably, as using logic to predict the behaviour of that ... thing was madness. Madness. Madness. Madness. Madness. MADNESS.
I shook myself, or more likely, vibrated my spirit a little. It was best to think about something else... like how I had found a way to escape! I thought I had found everything to discover, but I was still thinking in only two dimensions. A few metres below the large ritual chamber I was tethered to was another similar room, except I had recognised the lines on the floor from a few of Meril's memories. It was a teleportation circle.
Every good supervillain lair had to have a secret escape tunnel, and I thought I found ours. The only problem was that it had already been used. A teleportation circle consumed a fair bit of silver, which had to be inlaid into the runic circuitry on the floor. There were several dozens of small ingots of silver in a cabinet in the room and even a small furnace to facilitate the rapid replacement of silver to bring the system back into function, but there was no way that they'd have time to repair it if we couldn't do anything about the attackers, first.
Nodding, I shifted my perception to the man with a knife in his heart. Perhaps I could be the one to save everyone after all. While I was patient, I also thought I was decisive when I needed to be. I reached out and grabbed Merildwen's hand.
The instant I touched it, I felt a vacuuming force and found myself inside. A second dump of memories hit me, although much smaller, and I instantly compartmentalised them. It seemed to be memories of Merildwen from her own version of "the frozen world." The frozen world of the Grand Mesa National Forest. She hadn't spent anywhere near as long as I had there, though.
The transition wasn't detectable, either. One moment, I was in the frozen world, and the next, I was moving again. My hand was still shoving the knife up, past the man's ribs, further into his heart, just as I had been taught.
I had already wrapped myself tightly with the "clothes" of Merildwen's memories, too. I had practised this many times during my search in the frozen world, and I already knew more or less what to expect.
"My" father blinked and said, "For a second, I thought... did it work?"
My mother nodded solemnly and asked, "Meril, are you okay?"
"Yes, but we don't have much time," I said wearily, trying to get used to using a body again, standing up from the still-twitching sacrifice. I turned to my parents and said, "But I have the knowledge of how to save us, I think. Plus..."
There had been a feeling at the back of my skull as soon as I got in this body, and I frowned. It felt like a new muscle, something I hadn't had before, but I sort of knew how it should work. I glanced down at the ritual dagger and yanked it out of the dead man's chest, with some effort, and looked at it, flexing the unseen muscle.
Suddenly, the dagger vanished, and I was aware that it was somewhere else, and I could call it back. My father's face brightened, and he said, "Oh! An extradimensional space? That's a pretty standard extraplanar boon. How big is it, Meril?"
Meril had been taught about these sorts of things. If a mortal travelled in person to some of the outer planes, there was a chance that the trip would change them. Sometimes for the better, other times not. Boons and banes.
Mostly, whether the changes were for good or ill was a matter of debate, except for a few that were undeniably beneficial. One of these "boons" was what I would consider a hammerspace. I frowned, thinking about it, "Maybe a little more than one and a half by one and a half by two mek." I was using this world's units of measure, and a mek was a little bit over a metre but less than a yard.
"Only a middling boon, then. Still, it is incredibly useful—a great bonus to our hopeful survival. Devils charge usurious rates for a trip to the outer planes, and even then, it isn't guaranteed what you'll get. Perhaps the entity took you to its home plane in an instant before returning you here? Do you remember seeing anything?" he asked.
I remembered. I remembered. I remembered. I remembered. I REMEMBERED.
Someone shook my shoulder, and I snapped back to myself with my mom looking at me worriedly, her hand on my shoulder. I had been rubbing my eyes hard enough to hurt. I shuddered, "Please don't ask me about that right now. I think that entity came a lot further than the outer planes, Dad. I don't want to talk about it."
He suddenly looked solemn and nodded, "For another time, then. What do we need to do?"
"Good news, there is a teleportation chamber directly below this room. The mechanism is over there..." I pointed to a spot outside the ritual circle, "...but the lock is magical. Bad news, the circle has already been used."
Mom frowned, creasing her forehead, saying in a worried tone, "I don't think we have enough time to refresh a teleportation circle. We might not have enough silver, anyway."
I nodded, "I need to buy us some time." It would take too long to explain this to them. I knew where to find everything I needed, but they would be fumbling in the dark. I needed something that would work as an extension of my own body, though.
I glanced down at the sacrifice victim, who was still twitching slightly and held out my hands. Animating the dead, like most magic, generally required knowledge, somatic, verbal and material components. However, if you murdered the victim yourself, then you didn't need any material components at all. Plus, it made the spell much easier to cast and more potent, even. It made necromancy a very cost-effective and potent form of magic if you didn't have any morals.
To be honest, though, the material components required to animate the dead were cheap, anyway. The real boon of ritually murdering the target of the spell was it increased your comprehension of the spell for that single casting.
Merildwen wasn't actually at the level of casting a third level Animate Dead as a standard casting. She could do it as a ritual if you gave her an hour, though. But now? I held my hands in the appropriate form and spoke the words, casting Animate Dead on the corpse.
It shambled to its feet but remained silent. Skeletons were a little smarter than zombies, but I wasn't strong or wise enough to animate an undead with any kind of intellect—I didn't want that right now, anyway. I mentally controlled the zombie, and it started walking off quickly. It wouldn't start to hobble and be slow until rigor mortis set in later.
I could control it like it was one of my own limbs and see through its eyes like they were my own for at least half a kilometre... or kilomek, which was way more than was necessary right now.
My dad was already inspecting the area where the stairs were hidden, but my mom was standing next to me. I nodded at her, "There are a handful of explosive amulets that weren't discovered in the armoury. I'm having the zombie grab them and take them to a specific part of the tunnels. There, he will explode them all. I am almost certain that will cause a localised cave-in. It will take them hours to move that much rock safely—if they even try. Plus, there are silver ingots in the room downstairs."
This caused her to brighten considerably, "I'll have the spectres check after we hear an explosion. But that does sound like a good idea, and we can definitely melt and recast the teleportation inlays in a couple of hours, even if there is no furnace and we all have to sit casting fire cantrips at it."
She frowned, turned to her husband and asked sweetly, "Dear, how much oxygen does an elvenoid consume per hour?"
"An adult?" he clarified absently and then paused as if to consider, "About 15 cubic lek per hour, sweetling."
She nodded, "And consciousness cannot be supported at less than one and a half part in ten oxygen." She bit her lip and shook her head, "I have potions of water-breathing but nothing for a truly oxygen-deficient atmosphere. I don't know the Air Bubble spell, either." She sighed and then shook her head, "Knowing this doesn't even help unless I knew how large this cave complex is anyway, but it is a bit difficult for me not to be a bit anxious when our plan involves entombing us here."
Meril's mom was a bit claustrophobic, which was kind of amusing since she had lived in secret hideouts like this for at least a decade before I, or rather Meril, was born. I did know how large the cave complex was. Approximately, at least, but while I wasn't an expert, I thought carbon dioxide buildup would kill us quicker than the lack of oxygen, so I didn't mention anything. Besides, we could survive for days, anyway. Far longer than we'd be in here.
Also, this world didn't have enough knowledge of biology and chemistry to understand that. The literal translation to this language's word for "oxygen" would be "vital air."
Many Wizards and other scholars knew there was something in the air that most life needed and even knew the relative percentage available in normal air. But they didn't precisely understand the mechanism and biology of respiration. I couldn't claim to entirely understand it either, but at the same time I thought that every submariner was concerned about what would happen if the air got stale, so I knew enough.
But the people here? Since it was the same thing that fires needed, they had mostly considered it some sort of fire animism. They'd explain that a living thing needed oxygen to fuel the fires of life, which was both close to correct but also an explanation that ruined further inquiry.
A couple of minutes later, my zombie arrived at the correct spot. He didn't need to trigger all of the amulets—they were explosive if they were damaged, so I just had him hold two of them and push the buttons as close as possible simultaneously. We could feel the rumble and hear the explosion from here.
"The tunnel is well and truly fucked, princess," Mom said so soon after that she had to have had her spectres following the zombie, but she used an Elvish word for the expletive instead of the Common we were speaking, "Forget hours; I think it might take days or a couple of determined dwarves. Certainly longer than I'd want to stay here." Then she reached into her pack and pulled out a mirror, speaking the words to a Clairvoyance spell.
After a moment, she nodded, "They're at the blockage. They're talking. And... they're leaving." She turned to her husband and said archly, "They're quite wroth with us, dear. How quickly they abandoned poor Jim." She glanced at the spot in the circle where Meril had stabbed him, "I don't think they liked him much. They're going to post guards outside the cave and an observer at our rented house. What a bother, there's quite a lot of things we're going to be leaving behind."
"Better our lives than our things, snookums! Besides, we have most of our valuables on us," my dad remarked brightly before saying, "I think I'll have this open in a jiffy."
"I will truly miss Hector the Spectre," my mom said wistfully. That had been a wraith that my mom had been nurturing for years, almost to the point where it was regaining some level of intellect. It was also incredibly dangerous, and hated all living things with a passion, including and especially us.
It also served as the lynchpin of a number of magical defences they set every time they moved to a new location. The magic of the wards relied upon him but also fed him so that he would persist almost indefinitely. I felt very, very bad for the landlord we had rented that house from or anyone he tried to rent it to next. They'd have to call in a wizard or a cleric from some god, and even then, they'd have to first deal with the wards and Hector themselves.
I smiled, "About that. The knowledge I gained was knowledge about everything in this cave system. That includes a secret vault in one of the food pantries. There's quite a lot of loot inside, including a whole bookshelf full of arcane texts and grimoires. Most cover advanced necromancy and ritual magic."
The secret area used purely a mechanical mechanism, probably to hide it. Detect Magic was almost required when looting a den of necromancers, but purely physical mechanisms combined with anti-divination wards might be missed. And I had spent long enough with my head in the wall examining every piece of it to know precisely how to trigger it without also triggering the deadly traps.
Both adults froze, with my dad turning to stare at me. As what might be described as a mid-level journeyman necromancer, you couldn't just go to the Institute of Higher Necromancy to get lessons because, of course, such places didn't exist. At least not in the country we were in. I had no doubt that many arcane academies secretly studied and kept all manners of tomes on the subject, but that was likely out of the question, too. Necromancy was one of the primary ways wizards had to extend their lives, after all, so I was sure it was studied carefully, if quietly.
So, the promise of advanced instruction, even if it was only from books, in the school of magic that they were both focusing on was literally more valuable than the book's weight in gold. And the books were heavy! Meril's mom started clapping and said, "Yay!" Then she did a little dance and flashed me a pair of finger guns.
I didn't even know why that hand gesture existed in this world since there were no guns at all, not even "handgonnes" that I would have expected in Eberron. Finger-crossbows, I suppose it must be called, but Meril had never really known. It was just a gesture that her mom liked to do like a goof, sometimes.
Advanced necromantic knowledge was especially important to Meril's mother. People studied necromancy for all sorts of reasons, but for Serinre, it was for one purpose alone. Extending the life of the man she had fallen in love with. An elf falling in love with a human was the basis of many tragic stories, but Meril's mom didn't intend for her husband to die. Ever. He was also of a similar mind. As such, she focused most of her time studying necromancy that affected souls, spirits and how necromantic energies affected the still living body.
There were numerous ways to extend someone's life, but most of the accessible ones involved some necromancy, even ones that didn't involve transformation into some sort of undead creature. The magic of death could be turned in on itself to push death away, if you were wise enough.
Of the books I had read detailed two. The first was easier to do but involved taking over someone else's body, turning yourself into a type of possessor entity. That kind of hit home for me, because that's exactly what I felt like, and made me a bit uncomfortable with the prospect.
The latter was much more challenging to do and expensive, but it involved creating a clone that your soul would transfer into in the event that your body died for any reason, including old age. I didn't really understand how to accomplish either, even if I had the texts of both books committed to memory, just like I didn't understand how to build a rocket in my past life despite reading books about it and knowing sort of how it worked.
"Wait, wait... I want to go with you. Let me get this hatch open first, though," the dad said. I glanced down at my hands, which were covered in blood and made a distasteful noise. My robes, which were stereotypically black as hell, were also covered in and around my breasts, which was also something a bit new to me and, more or less unwelcome.
Sighing, I wiped my bloody hands all over the pitch black robes I was wearing, cleaning my hands as much as possible. Then, I cast the cantrip that, in my last life, I would have called Prestidigitation. Here, it didn't have that name. It was just called the Apprentice's Cantrip because it was mostly used by those learning magic to practice control. Still, it cleaned off all of the blood from my robe instantly. My hands, however, I would still have to scrub manually later.
We didn't have to wait long. He got the hatch open, and we briefly stepped into the teleportation chamber. Meril's mom asked affably, "Princess, would you create some light?" While we all had Darkvision, Mom and I naturally, while Dad had a magical item, it wasn't great for seeing details.
Although I was in the body of their beloved daughter, I was still barely more than an Apprentice, and it was normal, both for an Apprentice in Magic and for a child, to get scut jobs. I nodded and walked along the edge of the wall slowly. As I made a circuit of the octagon-shaped room, I slapped the wall periodically, casting the Light cantrip multiple times.
This was also different from my expectations, as normally, the DM would say that recasting the Light cantrip would cause the first light to extinguish. Here, you could do it as long as your magical stamina lasted. The light would only last a couple of hours at most, but the room was brightly lit for that time.
"Oh, how interesting. How did you get the light to come out so brightly white?" asked Meril's dad, glancing at the pure white orbs hugging the side of the wall. I winced internally. Normally, this spell created a warm orange light, like a torch. However, I was thinking that the cantrip might create a brighter light if I didn't focus on a specific wavelength or colour, and sure enough, it came out as a pure white light.
I doubted that was a particularly innovative creation as playing with the colour of the spell was one of the first things someone would try when they were learning it. It was that I had done so with the idea of what the visual spectrum and light were, so I had a little better success. Even with that, I was sure people had done it before.
"Instead of thinking of a specific colour, I had the idea to think of all colours, and it came out as a white light," I said, tilting my head to the side as if I was curious too. The state-of-the-art knowledge about light in the world and of optics was on the level of Isaac Newton and his experiments with prisms, so it wasn't as though the concept was that shocking. Actually, I was pretty sure that most Illusion school masters knew a lot more than that, but that wasn't a school of magic that my dad studied. Merildwen did, though.
"Hmm..." was the reply, as he tapped the wall himself, creating a similar white light, if a bit dimmer, before nodding. Then he walked over to the cabinet where the silver ingots and forging supplies were located, "Give me a moment to get this furnace going. It's going to take most of this silver, so we'll only have one shot at this."
After he got everything going, I led them both to the pantry in question. I conjured a Mage Hand and had it perform the series of actions that I had carefully identified that would cause the secret door to open. I had spent a long time looking at the mechanism as a spirit, but even then, I was a bit leary to do it with my real hand as there were a number of traps, mostly involving darts that were obviously poisoned.
The vault itself was locked, but it only had a mechanical combination lock, which puzzled Meril's parents. I quickly dialled in the correct combination with the Mage Hand, and we stepped in.
A lot was missing, but a lot remained.
Possibly, more than we'd be able to carry out, even with a teleportation circle to help us. Both adults went straight to the wall of bookshelves in a corner and hummed, peering at titles. After a few minutes, Merildwen's mother asked worriedly, "You said you have all of the information in these books in your head? Are you okay? This tome will cause madness if you're not careful." Her eyes had the bright blue glow of someone performing divination magic.
I looked at the one she was pointing at. It was one of the books on ritual magic, and while some of the rituals in there were obscene and vile, it wasn't anything more to me than distasteful. I nodded and then thought about it. If that were truly the case, and the tome was slightly cursed, then I thought I must have developed something of a resistance to purely memetic-based info-hazards due to...
I managed to stop myself before I thought about it, which pleased me. Progress! Still, what I had seen made even the most vile description of ritual seem like an inventory of radishes in a storehouse. The very fact that I wasn't screaming my head off was impressive, although I suppose I had done enough of that while I was disembodied. "Yes, I'm fine, I think. That book has some really vile things in it, though. Like necessary reagents created from the tormented souls of infants level vile."
Mom scrunched up her face and shook her head, "Some manner of ghost foetus based sin ritual, I suppose. How disgusting. The Cavern of Lost Souls eradicated a small sect that specialised in things like that. A bit much for even us, you know? The Elders claimed they destroyed all of their research notes, but perhaps not." She shook her head before asking, "Is there anything in it that isn't just beyond the pale?"
I thought about it, but finally, I nodded reluctantly, "Yes, only a few of the rituals in there are really disgusting."
They were both very happy with all of the books, and we started looking at the general loot. There was some currency, but most of the valuables were items or weapons that were different or unique enough not to be stored in the main armoury.
"Oooh... a Netherjade Pearl amulet," Meril's mom said. I mentally paused. I was just going to stop referring to her in the third person. It wasn't doing me any favours and might get me in trouble if I stayed with them in the future.
My mom pulled an amulet from a shelf and held it out, smiling. Then she pulled off a somewhat similar-looking amulet from her own neck and held it out to me. I took it and peered at it. She said, "This is substantially worse than the Netherjade Pearl, but both amulets increase one's affinity and capacity for controlling and raising spirit-type undead, Princess. Here, you can have my old amulet."
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Her amulet was one of the most expensive things we owned, and in addition to increasing affinity with ghosts, it also contained a small dimension that could store ghosts in. It could store either one wraith or eight shadows, and it was also the way we carried Hector with us from place to place.
I put it around my neck, feeling a slight chill suffuse into my being. It wasn't uncomfortable, though. My mom, like myself, specialised in ghost-type undead. My dad wasn't even, technically, a necromancer. His most accomplished school was Enchantment, followed by Necromancy.
I found a few other things to take that neither my parents wanted—some material components for my pouch, a dark short bow and arrows that my dad said was of Drow-make, and a wand that could cast the first level spell Flay twice a day.
The latter could be used as a weapon, but it was more useful to necromancers as a tool. While it would only perform a slashing-type attack on a living thing, if used on a corpse, all of the "meat" bits would be removed from the bones cleanly.
A lot of necromancers didn't like zombies for a lot of reasons. I agreed with them. They smelled! Skeletons were also smarter, so skeletons were generally preferred, and this was likely a tool used to help process corpses.
I also got another hand-me-down, this time a ring from my dad that could cast Ray of Enfeeblement once a day. It had already been used today on poor Jim in order to help Merildwen overpower the man during his ritual sacrifice, though.
My parents carried the money between them, but I grabbed a small sack of coins too and eyed them defiantly, which caused my dad to ruffle my hair. Then, I spent the next half hour running back and forth, using my hammerspace to transport all of the items out of the vault and into the ritual chamber.
After the silver inlays were repoured in the teleportation room and cooled, we transferred all of the loot downstairs. The heaviest items were the books, which numbered over thirty. I asked curiously, "Have you ever performed a teleportation ritual?"
"Well... no," he said, finally. "But I'm fairly confident. Still, we'll want to stand as close to the centre of the circle as possible."
We rearranged the loot to put the most valuable items closest to us, just in case. And both my parents grabbed the books they found the most interesting and placed them in their personal bags. My hammerspace was about half full, so I filled the rest of it with miscellaneous items that were on the periphery of the circle.
"Alright, the circle is activated," my dad said, glancing down at the slowly energising circle that he activated. Arcane light could be sensed flowing through the circuit over and over, building in strength with a repeated clicking noise. "Timing loop is working correctly, and capacitors are charging. I have a destination in mind. Be careful not to touch each other."
I held my hands stiffly at my side, and he grinned, "Here we go—wait, fuck..."
I widened my eyes and opened my mouth to say something. My mom looked upset, and I could feel her casting a temporary telepathic link. It was the simple Message cantrip. A person could send a short message, and the recipient could reply. They had used this spell to communicate while plotting to betray Jim. I felt the spell settle over my mind, and then, with a flash, I was gone.
Blinking, I found myself alone in the middle of a forest. It was kind of ironic, as that was how I started the day back in Colorado.
The voice in my head only had time for a brief message after I arrived. Message had a very limited range. Using it right before a teleport when you thought you might be separated was something I would have expected out of a munchkin if this was a campaign, so I was pretty impressed. I sent back,
I didn't have any sense of direction or distance before the link disappeared. I also felt the lingering connection between me and Merildwen snap like a rubber band. I had learned a little bit about her plans back in Colorado, and although it made me a bit uneasy, it wasn't as though I could blame her. I didn't have time to think about it right now, though.
I looked at my feet. There were a few items that came along with me, but nothing particularly interesting. Still, I would try to gather everything. When you were in a survival situation, you never knew what might prove invaluable.
For now, though, I just sat on a log and let the mental "clothes" of Merildwen's personality recede, becoming more myself, and let out a loud, "What the fuck!"
It had been a day.