The first day of the rest of my life...

So, still healing up...

I'm in charge of The Children now which means all three of us plus one guy who's imprisoned somewhere. Cool... That might change though. The "Vast Emptiness That Brings Peace" is still trying to talk to me so I suppose I might start listening to it... It seems to want me to get more people anyway... So... I'm not really able to move much at the moment, but I sent Sandy out to check on one of the recent names I was given, meanwhile I decided I should try to learn what I can about this organization... So, I had a conversation with The Facet.

"So, this voice that talks to me isn't The Quiet," I told him.

"I know. I'm a Fear I'm aware of things you humans aren't,"

"You know who it is then?"

"Who they are you mean?"

"There's more than one?"

"Well yes in one way and then yes in another way,"

"As your leader I order you to not give me that vague bullshit..."

"I was never much for following orders... But I will say this... The Vast Emptiness is a group of beings... One of whom is itself a group of beings,"

"Oh... Are They Fears?"

"Yes..."

"Which ones?"

"You should have figured that out by now. You tell me?"

"... I was thinking The Choir was involved somehow... I mean I thought about The Rake, but he only whispers to people when they are asleep... At least I think,"

"You are correct..."

"It is The Choir?"

"No I meant about The Rake only talking to people in their sleep,"

"Oh... But it is The Choir right? I mean voices in my head telling me what to do seems like them?"

"Yes it does..."

"You're not going to be helpful at all are you?"

"Maybe try asking them directly?"

"Alright I will..."

"Good. Let me know what you find out,"

"I'll do that..."

I have not done either thing yet... The voices are... kind of creepy and I'm not entirely sure I want to try talking back to them... Not just yet anyway.

Oh and of course even though I've accepted the role of Zero I'm not fucking calling myself zero that's fucking stupid. I'm still The Faceless Bastard... Anyway I'm still suffering a number of injuries and I think I'm gonna take a rest...

Alright, alright alright alrightalrightalright

Okay, so taking stock... The Facet is still alive and has sent me a nice little message. Not the one you may have seen in the comments another one.

It was delivered via phone call. Apparently he assumed I'd be more willing to listen and not try to kill him if he wasn't physically there... He was partially right. I still hung up on him about four times before he managed to inform me, 1 is also still alive. That I never even really came close to wiping out the Children entirely.

Honestly it made a lot of sense and I am surprised I didn't think about it before...

The Archive weren't going to kill him. I mean they might have at one point, but as the probably very soon only remaining member of a new type of servant with strange abilities they weren't just going to throw that away no matter how much they hated him personally.

They instead locked him away to experiment on and learn what they could about The Children.

So, yeah I never really managed to kill 9 or 1. That's 2 failures out of 13 possible.

Still pretty good, but a farcry from my initial goal of 100% success rate. Now you might be thinking I could always just go kill him at the archive, but that's not very likely. The Archive are very very good at dealing with hostile servants and the only advantage I'd have now is the same defense mechanism I personally told them how to get around, so no... I may be good, but I don't think I could kill my way through the entire Archive to kill 1... He's safer there than almost anywhere else in the world and that pisses me off.

So, at current the number of surviving Children is 4... Oh right... That was another thing. Sandy is one of The Children of Nothing now apparently... At least according to 9 and I confirmed she has the defense mechanism... Apparently I unintentionally made her part of it...


So, yeah Myself, begrudgingly, Sandy accidentally, 9 and 1 are the current membership of The Children of Nothing.

Also, you might be wondering why after finding this out I did not immediately kill Sandy...

Well I can't... Not that I'm physically incapable, but I don't want too... I mean it's not some personal attachment to her or anything, but I feel comfortable having her here... She's a tether linking me back to the times when things were simple and I ruled a neighbourhood with an iron fist.

So, I can't kill her... Not until I've returned my life to that at least...

Anyway... The point is... My vow is now completely impossible to perform... I don't think killing The Facet will actually be possible. My one shot to do so already failed me and it won't work again. 1 is outside my reach, I don't want to kill Sandy just yet at least and I'm certainly not killing me... So, considering the impossibility and the continued threat of Nathan... Why don't I accept The Facet's proposal...

Honestly I've thought about it... A few times now... It's kind of a win win... I'd get rid of Nathan, I'd be in charge of something I could rule with an iron fist again and it would really really piss off The Convocation. I mean I haven't had much time to think about it, but I hate them... I hate everything about them. They ruined my life. I've been too busy to really think about my revenge, but I'm thinking about it now. Pissing off The Convocation is top of my list now.

Anyway sorry right... So given all those benefits, why wouldn't I accept the proposal...

Well there's one con that balances against all those pros and tips the scale in the cons favour...

 and here it is...

 FUCK THAT ARROGANT PRICK IN HIS SMUG FACE! I am The Faceless Bastard. It doesn't matter who the enemy is I don't need some smarmy fuck to help me out. I'll kill Nathan with my own hands and then... MAYBE! MAYBE we'll talk about the future of The Children of Nothing.

Got it?

Good...

Journey to The West

Is a movie I have never seen. Nor do I intend to. So, it's been a bit... I was traveling via plane, because I don't want to risk going through the domain again.

Who knows where I'd end up. I brought Sandy with me...

Anyway I'm back in Canada. Nothing else of interest has happened just yet, but I'm sure it will.

Meanwhile I figured I'd tell you about a few things.

Some of you out there reading this or printing it out putting it in a blender and then injecting the liquid result into your eyeballs might have a care for fine details.

So, allow me to fill you in on some fine details. First of all...

Sandy. How has she been reacting to things... The answer. Surprisingly well. I don't know what happened to her after she was removed from my care the first time, but whatever it was has acclimated her to the supernatural quite quickly. She barely seemed confused when one minute we were at her house then a terrible void and then Germany. She acted like it was something normal. Also again apparently she knows German now, so that might be part of it. She says she doesn't remember what happened to her. Hopefully The Facet can answer that question as well.

 Also The Facet. I didn't leave my normal angry comment in response to his so you might not know exactly how I felt upon seeing he's still alive. I'll give you a hint... It was the reason I didn't leave a comment.

The fact that bastard is still alive had me so angry I could not formalize a rational response and instead immediately just dragged Sandy to the airport to get a ticket back home... Unfortunately the only flight was the day after so I spent some time impotently seething. Speaking of... I'm not going back there to hear him out or anything. I'm going back there to kill him. I know what you're thinking as well...

Nathan is probably still there and he will find me again if I do this. Don't care The Facet has to die. I am going to kill him.

Lastly for anyone wondering about logistics such as how did I get on the internet in Germany. Where did I get money for plane tickets and how was I possibly able to get past airport security?

The answer to all three is people died and if you continue being a nitpicky jerk you'll be one of them.

Anyway back home. I'm fairly sure I know where I'll be able to find The Facet. I'll be going to see him as soon as I finish having a nice rest. Jetlag is a bitch. 

Conversations with Things that don't exist...

So, there is so far no sign of Nathan. Which is good. As I said I had things to think about. Mostly what I had to think about was what just happened. I've never seen a completely blank domain. I mean I don't believe that was The Quiet's domain, because and this is going to sound weird... It existed.

Like I don't think that place was as blank as it felt. I feel like I was being lied too... I think The creature just didn't want me to know what Domain I was in... So, it's one of the Fears potentially? A fear pretending to be The Quiet for... What purpose? I mean It's not usually a great idea to try and figure out the motives of The Fears, but... This feels like a puzzle and I really want to figure it out. I feel like it's important especially since whoever this is is now trying to get me to do things for them. I kind of want to know what fear I am serving even if I am serving rather unwillingly.

Also Sandy speaks german apparently... Which is... Strange... I mean it's not impossible she's learned german at some point, but I've always assumed she was just kind of an idiot and that doesn't jive with the idea of someone who knows a second language... I mean I know two languages, but that is because I lived in two different countries... I know for a fact Sandy was born in Canada and her parents aren't German...

... I didn't research her or anything... The Convocation gave me a dossier on her when I was told to watch her and I read it when I was bored... Actually I don't have it anymore to check, but I'm fairly sure it didn't mention anything about her learning German either...

I'm not sure why I'm focusing on this... Oh right I know why... I'm trying not to think about my big problems...

I still have no answer to what to do to Nathan. I have The Children's Defense now, but I managed to figure that out and I'm sure Nathan won't take long to figure it out either and then it's only a minor advantage and also I'm frankly not entirely sure I can kill him. I am quite legitimately worried that stabbing him in the throat might just make him angrier...

Even that isn't my real problem. With all of this I haven't had much time to think about it in the proper terms since, but I still have a vow that demands I kill myself.

I can't forget that even as other things keep distracting me.

All of these questions will need an answer... Well maybe not the Sandy thing, but all the others will need answers.

I don't yet have an answer for any of them...

The vast Emptiness that... Failed to hide me from this crazy motherfucker!

So, Nathan has found me. I knew he would, but not this fast. Especially not with the whole Quiet thing.

I guess even a godly being who can hide from other godly beings couldn't fucking hide me from Nathan. Seriously Nathan... What the hell are you?! How do you do these things?! Anyway...

I was out getting food for myself and Sandy and I get home and find Nathan just sitting outside Sandy's house on a lawn chair. He's got a can of soda and waves to me as he drinks it. I thought about just running, but I'm The Faceless Bastard... With a Face... Still! I do not run. I do not run from anyone!

So, I approached.

"S'up?" I asked.

"Not much. I see your injuries have healed. That's good. Should make this more fun," he said and I had to ask.

"You loved your sister right?"

"Of course," he answers.

"So... What's with the laid back attitude... I mean it's cool and all. Scares the hell out of me, but you're not just here to kill me on a job or something. This is personal? Why aren't you all angry and wrathful? How can you be so calm and... Professional?"

He leaned forward and placed the can down. "I loved my sister more than anything in the world. She grounded me. Kept me human. Even as the world around us became less and less human she kept me sane. Now she's dead and with her all emotion is gone too. I'm going to kill you and it is personal, but I'm not angry at you. You're nothing. I'm going to kill you because she wanted me to kill you. Once you are dead I'll kill others. I will kill everyone. I will kill until I die. You aren't something important. You are just the designated target of the monster you created when you killed her," he explained.

Well that's... Uncomfortably familiar in a way. I think I might actually kind of like this guy. You now if he wasn't so fucking terrifying.

I nodded. "Fair enough..." I said and then he suddenly tossed the can at my head... and missed. The can sailed past my head about 2 feet off target and he looked as surprised and confused as I did.

Regardless the fight was on. I didn't have my weapons didn't have the birds anymore. I was not about to fight this guy in hand to hand. I wasn't even really sure what my first move should be and then he tackled the air.

Again he sailed right past me and it occurred to me I knew what was going on. It was The Children's defense mechanism... He couldn't see me anymore. He was seeing a decoy. I took advantage of this and ran into the house. Didn't want to waste time unlocking the door so I simply threw myself through the front window. Luckily the windows weren't like reinforced or anything. I should have grabbed my weapons, instead I ran to the basement. I heard the front door break as I ran into the basement grabbed Sandy and a thought occurred to me as he appeared at the top of the stairs. I needed to get Sandy out of here and I realized... I'm a servant again... I have powers... Does The Vast Emptiness have a Domain... and then we vanished.

We floated in darkness and then we were lying in an alleyway in a town I would later learn was in Germany. Apparently I had travelled us across the ocean... It probably won't take Nathan long to track me down. I wouldn't be surprised if he showed up within the next few hours.

Although that trip gave me some things to think about... Hopefully I'll have some time to think before he shows up.

Back in Bl- Well mostly beige I guess... My outfits aren't very stylish.

I mean I got kind of a grey hoody on and like beige or tan cargo pants I guess... My mask is white... My hair is like a dirty blond... Really nothing about my outfit or appearance is black...

I'm getting off topic. So, I've been busy for the last little while. First I got caught up in some dumbass game of life and Death where I needed to use my wits to survive and I know what you're thinking... Yes I have wits.

But anyway that happened and you can find it all here: The Dying Game

after that I spent some more time just... Relaxing... Letting my injuries heal. Hiding because Nathan is undoubtedly still after me and I am really really not ready to fight that guy again... But anyway my wounds are healed, I've found a pretty safe place to hole up and nothing of interest has happened... OH WAIT NO RIGHT SOMETHING OF INCREDIBLE INTEREST HAS HAPPENED!

I found Sandy... Oh right and The Quiet is talking to me... Or I guess I should say The Vast Emptiness That Brings Peace or whatever that insistent phrase The Children used was.

Jack said it wasn't actually The Quiet, but I don't know what else it might be. Not yet anyway. I have some potential theories, but I can't really be sure just yet.

Anyway it's telling me that as the last remaining member of The Children I am de facto taking Zero's place as it's messenger. I told it it could go fuck itself. It didn't seem to hear me. It continues telling me to do things and telling me about people to go recruit. I'm ignoring it, however one of the people it mentioned was Sandy. It told me where she was so I went and found her. She was so happy to see me. She practically cried tears of joy. She is again a proud resident of my basement... Although I guess it's not my basement... This time it's actually hers. Apparently she got herself a little house and it's now my base of operations and I'm being nice and letting her stay here under our previous arrangements. The house is protected by "The Quiet" so, the birds won't find me here and I doubt Nathan will either, but who knows with that guy.

Why did I kidnap Sandy again? I don't really know.

Familiarity in troubling times I guess? Feels good to have her around again. Feels almost like I can just close my eyes and be back in my old house in my neighbourhood before everything got all complicated... Anyway I should go feed her... Bye for now. 

A note to a certain Mr. WereMagi

I spelled your name right this time. Happy?

So, I didn't have anything to do today and I spent the day just... well... Reading that other blog you found on my account. You'd think I'd be surprised to find that apparently I wrote an entirely different account of my life. Well... I'm not. I mean I've never really heard of this happening before, but the existence of other universes is basically a known factor when you work with The Gods and so obviously this is just me from another world and somehow WereMagi tapped into a version of my account that exists in both worlds. Stranger things have happened.

My alternate universe self sure had a strange life and an unhappy death, but that's what happens when you do stupid shit. I do not intend to be him. I am not going to sacrifice my life to save the world. Besides The Brute is already a thing in this universe, so I doubt that will ever be necessary. Actually that's not the only change... There were a few fundamental changes I found... One slightly more troubling than the rest.

Harold Ardy... Alternate Me's arch nemesis. I knew a Harold Ardy once...


I knew him fairly well... I only knew him for a while, but he was a part of my family...

Quite literally in fact... See my alternate universe self... I'll call him Eyeholes, never mentioned his wife's name, but I assume his wife wasn't the same as mine. See my wife's name was Maria Ardy.

Harold was the name she gave my son... So, that's pretty damn weird.

Also in case anyone is wondering we split the last names among our children. She named the boy and I named The Girl. My daughter's name was Tamara Korchaviv.

Anyway that weirdness aside... Things have been fairly simple around here. Apparently the empty house next door was bought while I was gone and the new additions to my lovely family will be moving in tomorrow morning so that will be fun. I'll have to meet them and introduce them to the way things work around here. Sandy has been surprisingly compliant by the way. I mean I figured it was just shock at first, but no... She's seemingly perfectly happy to just stay in the basement. Hell I've even rewarded her for her good behaviour by letting her come upstairs to use the facilities as opposed to my initial plan and so far she hasn't tried to capitalize on it. She's the best house guest I've ever had.

Taking it easy.

So, I'm basically recovered now. It wasn't a bad injury or anything and my body does seem to be more resilient than usual anyway.

I'm actually not entirely sure what the extent of my new resilience is... Maybe being shot with that shotgun wouldn't have even killed me. Not really intent on testing it and of course, despite it being information that might be very helpful to me in performing my job, the birds still aren't answering my questions.

Also, The Convocation haven't been telling me off for bringing Sandy here so, I'm just gonna keep her in the basement. There's plenty of room to sleep down there and I can toss some food down there every once in a while. I'll even put a litterbox down there if she complains. No one can say I'm not kind.

So, since she's in my house now I suppose I can just relax as I continue my watch on her. So, that's what I'm doing. Laying back on my couch and just relaxing. I found a bunch of new fun blogs to monitor.

The first one is called... Um... I have the name here somewhere... Puppies and Joy... Oh god really?

Well now I feel like killing a puppy in front of a small child...

Anyway it's run by my new bestie Fien. She seems like a swell Girl woman (HA did it) and she's obviously in love with me. Can't wait to talk more with her also can't wait to find out what horrible thing she did to the owner of the book. Bet it's gonna be wondrous.

Another fun blog is I am a- Ha ha oh god... I'm just really reading these names for the first time and I just can't... Okay... Okay... It's called I am a Creature of Darkness... Sounds like a song, by one of those trashy emo bands, but regardless it certainly is interesting, mostly because it seems like unbeknownst to the writer... It stars me! At least somewhat... Poor bastard seems to be having dreams about me. I knew someone was... Still, unfortunately not eligible for the contest as it wasn't a dream about me murdering them.

Oh speaking of me murdering people there was another blog I found interesting. This one is by some guy with an Edgar Allan Poe obsession. I doubt it will be much of a fun read in general, but apparently he had a run in with me once and I killed his girlfriend. So, that's cool. After he brought it up I remembered it pretty clearly. That was a fun time. I didn't have my neighbourhood back then I wandered around, sometimes far from home. Just wandering the world killing on The Convocation's say so. Good times good times. Also looking back at his blog to find out it's name (Once Upon a Midnight Dreary, by the way. Can you say obsessed?) I found he replied to my comment about how fun killing his girlfriend was with a death threat to my person. How fun. I do so hope he tries to follow through. 

There were also a few other blogs I noticed, but I'll probably mention them when and if they do something interesting.

More noticeably, I showed remarkable restraint today. See, I didn't bother to inform anyone I had come back yet and you'll never guess what happened. I emerged from my house today to find that the bastards in this neighbourhood were having a party without me. Now, you're probably thinking I killed all of them. Well you are wrong. As I said I showed remarkable restraint. Only one person died and I wasn't the one who killed them. I made everyone else kill them.

See, I come out and see these people... These people I had treated so well having a party in my honor without me. I say in my honor, because they were celebrating me not being there. Obviously I was fairly pissed at this betrayal. They had taken all the love and compassion I had shown them and threw it in my face. So... I showed up. The party died fairly quickly. A few people even tried to run back into their houses like that would save them. I told them not to panic. Well more accurately what I said was "Next person to take a step will be fed their families fingers one by one and if they don't have family their own fingers." that got everyone to stop. I then told them they shouldn't stop their party on my account and they continued the festivities... Well they continued after a bit of urging. Seemed much less festive afterwards, can't imagine why.

The party continued and I must say, they certainly had a wondrous party planned. I will definitely give them that. They know how to have a good time. At the end there was cake and a pinata. I destroyed the pinata with one swing of my machete. However, I thought that wasn't very much fun was it. Everyone else should have had a turn.

So, I set up a new pinata. I used one of the smaller children. A 6 year old I believe. A nice young boy. Probably would have grown up to be a great man. I let his mother get the first whack. She didn't hit very hard so I let her have a few more. Then everyone else got a turn until everyone had gone and by then so had he. After that we had the cake. Strangely enough no one else felt like eating, so I enjoyed it by myself. I gave a piece to Sandy as well.

Now... We've had a few laughs on this blog and I've had a few laughs at the expense of others, but allow me to be serious for a second. I am a very kind person. I feel great compassion for others. All I ask is that that kindness and compassion be returned. Actually not even that. I ask only that it be accepted. If my kindness is rejected or, worse yet, thrown back in my face... Well I get a little angry. Young Bradley has learned that quite well and I think he will pass on that message to his fellows... even if indirectly.

Also that is why this post is a little bit later than usual. Goodnight friends, especially you Fien, Catty and... Weremagi? Dream about me? I hope you will.

Masked crazy people.

So... Watched the girl at work today. I did not in fact try to enter the place. Well at least not alone. I listened in on the various gossip as people got their hair done and mostly was bored out of my mind. I unfortunately wasn't paying too much attention when the car drove up. This guy got out wearing a clown mask and that's when I started to pay attention. I started to move when he took the shotgun out of the back seat. He kicked the front door, which since it was glass caused it to shatter instead of opening, but I guess that was effective enough... Made him look pretty foolish though. The people inside, however were apparently far easier to intimidate than I was expecting.

Even after such a failed stunt they all started to panic. I will give the guy one thing though. He was fairly ruthless. Most people see a panicking crowd during a heist and they try to yell it down or they fire the gun into the air to make everyone shut up. This guy turned his gun and blew one of the screaming hairdressers away. That got everyone's attention. Mine included. I kind of wanted to see where this went. The police would probably be coming soon and as much as I wanted to get involved as long as my target wasn't in immediate danger it was probably a better idea not to get myself involved with the police. The man placed the gun to the guy in the chair, the now deceased, hairdresser had been working at and probably made some demands... I couldn't really hear most of it from where I was.

It seemed like this was going to wrap itself up without my involvement until my vapid idiot of a target apparently decided to say or do something that got a shot gun shoved in her face. I still hadn't been given any other orders and so for now it was best to keep her alive. I moved in.

I would like to preface everything that happened next by saying I hate all of you normal humans. You are all so god damn stupid. I walked in as quietly as I could, slid my machete out and... had him immediately alerted to my presence by some dumbass crying out loudly about "another masked man" Sir... Can you not recognize a hero when you see one?

Regardless, the clownfaced criminal immediately turned to see what was up and I now found myself facing down the barrel of a shotgun. I suppose I should have been happy that it wasn't facing my charge now, but personally I consider myself more important than the mission usually. Now... part of me expected him to just shoot me like he did the hairdresser, but either that was only a single bout of intelligence and brutality or something about me really fascinated him, because he simply told me to drop my weapon. So, I did. Then he told me to take off my mask... So I did. As the torrent of birds flew out, he fired off a shot that luckily only grazed me, but still hurt like hell... I fell to the ground clutching where the slugs had left searing marks along my... already burned and therefore not all that altered flesh. As I lay there on the ground, birds filling the place even as it was also filled by the screams of everyone inside, I found myself thinking... When the convocation gave me back the ability to move my body... was reinstating my ability to feel pain actually necessary. The pain eventually subsided and by then so, had the carnage. The screams had stopped and were now instead filled with the sound of sirens arriving. I got back to my feet, placed my mask back on and grabbed my machete and then turned to see my charge crouched down on the ground, seemingly in a state of shock. I probably could have left her there... I probably should have left her there, but since the birds hadn't killed her, despite killing everyone else I guess she's probably important. So, I staggered over to her, grabbed her by the hair, pulled her up to her feet and brought us both to The Convocation's domain. I'll tell you about it later, but suffice to say I am now back at my place in my neighbourhood and I have a woman locked in my basement. The place where the slugs grazed hurts on and off and is flaring up again so, I'll cut this short here.

I'll probably feel fine by tomorrow.

Oh and I am very disappointed nobody had dreams about me last night. Shame on all of you.