11:45

Charmion Pine languished at her desk feeling vaguely, but not dramatically, under the weather. It was the kind of feverish sensation that kicked in just as you sat down for work, not having had the courtesy to warn that you should have stayed home before you’d completed your commute.

The reason she had identified for the chapped lips and croaky throat: the air was dry, too dry. It reminded her of home, and she wondered if she was homesick.

Then there was the symptom that was Raph. Poor Raph - only he was poor no more. Some divine body had chosen to bless him on this day, as a call from the Judgment district station had come in early that morning asking for him - him in particular - to take over the handling of what Charmion believed to be his archnemesis, Bell Hospitality Group’s Sigma. The very person who’d landed him a suspension in the first place.

Charmion had found it hilariously ironic at the time, and relayed the news to Rai. In retrospect, a bad idea. Rai had never seemed like a particularly humorous spirit when it came to work. So maybe the sandblasted eyes, throat, mouth, were her retribution.

She had excused herself from lunching with the usual group, so now she sat alone in the office wing, attempting to moisten her throat with old coffee (another taste she and Rai did not share) and reply to a raft of emails on behalf of her employer, the chief. She smiled as she saw yet another invitation to a fundraising brunch, sent a mere two minutes ago by one of Zu’s ex-generals. Those bored septuagenarians were worse than the clingiest boyfriends. Could they not wait for him to finish the lunch meetup he was already attending?

When replying to old men got dull, she flipped again through the Bell miscellany filed by Rai and his mysterious cohort. All she really remembered was his face, a silhouette moulded from fine shadows and a smile like the moon. A flirt, no doubt - what was his name? Sao, according to the authors’ notes. She made a mental tab and knew she’d probably forget anyway. Charmion had never been great with names. She was terrible at naming things, even when she had the choice.

Perhaps the chief had the right idea, sticking with the numbers. One and three, listen to me - and all that. 

She came to the report Det. Raph had begrudgingly put out after his illicit visit to Bell. She sighed at the very first line. At the Founder's offer I paid a PERSONAL VISIT in which I uncovered NOTHING.... Could he not have at least put in the effort to run a second magic test, something he'd been clambering after for the last two years? Those tests were rife with false positives, and she was quite sure Raph wasn’t as adept at them as he claimed, but still, what a disappointment considering the rules he’d bent to bring himself back to the place.

Even worse, how he dismissed her offers to run the tests for him. Talked as if she were a little girl lost. Charmion wondered again at her sense of humor. Was it too much? Was it the provincial accent? Did she really come across as such a clown?

Another preliminary report was logged while she was turning over that mental stone. She opened the file and frowned. Sigma’s therapist had been found dead in apparent suicide. The photos were gruesome and numerous. For such a square, Rai could be a real gorehound at times. Raph was going to have a field day. 

Charmion paged through her library of music and could not find a tune that really suited the mood, and yanked off her headphones. Her tongue felt like sandpaper. Didn’t the meeting room have a humidifier she could borrow? 

Sipping coffee, she strolled through the empty cubicle rows. The glass-walled meeting room was bordered with tinted glass that bathed the long table in a perpetual violet dusk. The wall opposite the door overlooked the visitors’ parking lot below. The view was not the most exciting, but today, she saw a considerable crowd gathered around the base of the building.

She thought of going down for a look and remembered: a famous actor would be arriving soon. 

Det. Raph was going to have the time of his life. Putting down her cup to unplug the humidifier, she thought about Sigma and found that, despite her familiarity with his case notes as of late, she knew very little about the man. She had never seen any of his movies. Like many characters she only knew via reports, he was practically folklore to her. A collection of stories and secondhand assumptions, many from Raph, a few from Rai. Raph was deeply bothered by his very existence, clearly, and Rai just seemed to look at everything like a potential slasher. That kept his life exciting, she supposed.

She wondered what Sao thought. He didn’t seem like the kind to be bothered by anything.

Charmion licked her lips and thought she tasted blood. She felt a pang of homesickness. Perhaps that was what ailed her - she wanted to be back where the frost lingered on grass in the springtime, where cashmere and thick tights were always in vogue, where the evergreen trees towered and stars flooded the sky, with such sharpness that their gleams cut like claws, so bright and clear they seemed to sprout from where they sparkled, stretching in strips like branches of radiance through the dark coming to fall and with their ironlike tips rake the soft skin of -- whoa! 

She almost dropped the humidifier. There was a thought that had no place in the office.

Still, an actor dropping by - into detainment, no less - was exciting. The imagination flared.

Her late Gramma had been big on actor memorabilia. The family still had that box of autographs and photos she’d sprung on the unwitting actors of her day. Some of the actors the old girl hadn’t even known; she just jumped at the chance for photos. She'd had a passion for the chase. Sigma was an award-winner, wasn’t he? Rai had said something about it (for someone who claimed to know nothing about actors to begrudge his famous family, he knew quite a bit). Charmion could not help but wonder if Raph would kill her if she snuck a snapshot of Sigma during his stay. Raph was probably going to make him stay awhile.

Hefting her axe over her shoulder so she could plug the humidifier in, she thought again of going down for a look.

---

12:30

Sigma sat in the holding room on a steel chair, before a large empty table. He was boxed in by four walls whitewashed to a blinding brightness. High on the back wall was the tiniest possible blue square of window, so small and despairing against the enforced blankness that it should have been left out altogether.

Raph hated the room, but that mood was lightened a little by seeing Sigma pent up in it. “It just isn’t your day, is it?”

Cupping one of the Bells in his hands, Sigma spoke, though not in Raph’s direction. “I’m actually feeling much better compared to yesterday. This room is very calming.” He pressed the rocky shape between his fingertips like an anxious child. “Did you get what I asked for?”

Raph tossed the bottle of bog-colored tea across the table. The hollow thud made Sigma stiffen, his reddish hair twitching, but when the bottle rolled to a halt in front of him, his clouds parted into a smile. Again, not aimed at Raph. “Thank you.”

Raph took a seat. The hollow chairs made an atrocious screech when pulled across the floor. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“Do you?” Sigma finally lifted his eyes.

Raph was reminded of Rai’s smirky assistant. No, that was unfair. Sao's looks probably brought ladies to their knees, but the way he moved and talked and held himself screamed pushover. Even if it was an act, good luck mustering the time and energy needed to start a cult while Rai was breathing down your neck.

“You look preoccupied,” Sigma said, the cap of his bottle snapping open. “Should I be worried?”

“I was asked to assess you personally by the guys who had you in holding. They must have thought the same thing I’ve been thinking, since day one.” Raph crossed his legs. “People like you, your position, cannot sustain themselves. You might think that car crash was a freak accident, not even your fault, but that’s ego talking, the same ego that brought you up that’s also about to take you down, you and the people you care about. It’s a spiral, and someone has to stop you before it’s too late.”

“So you’re here to help me. Please. I’m curious, what should I do? How can I stop?”

Raph narrowed his eyes. He was rattling with words, fluid takedowns and perfect gotchas that he’d been reciting in his head ever since the day the chief had told him never to go near Bell again. But Sigma asking for them outright drained the fun out of rejoinder, and there was a little problem that none of it was particularly good advice. “You being here is a start.”

“And then what? I can’t live in this odd little room the rest of my life. I think that would only accelerate the route to madness.” Sigma laughed. “Of course, it’s like you said. I don’t feel like I’m on the brink of anything in particular, at least, I’m not trying to move in any particular direction. But I feel that things around me...”

“That’s how it starts. People begin to slip out of your control, and you double down.”

Sigma’s smile had the force of a tidal wave. “It’s like you read my mind. And what do you think will happen as a result.”

“You’ll hurt them. All those people you collected. I’d rather have you here, or committed to a place that can… help, before that happens.”

“But the difficult part is, nothing’s happened yet. The police couldn’t very well have arrested your father before there were any bodies in the well, could they?” Sigma stopped, his face blank. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. You know if this makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to stay...”

The words churned like oil, viscous in Raph’s ears, something he could reach out and touch.

“We have no reason to hate each other. We were both betrayed,” Sigma said, his eyes dropping back to the Bell, which he was turning in his fingers like a tiny globe. His thumb traced a route over a distinct blue line on its marbled surface. “The ones who were supposed to care for us, raise us to be good, they did us wrong. Is it any wonder we became what we are?”

“What are you talking about now?”

“Just thinking things through. It’s not often I have such a… resonant space to contemplate.” Sigma reached back and stroked the whitewashed wall. “Have you had lunch yet? You may as well. I can’t make you stay.”

“If you’re thinking of pulling something, there are two guards on standby at all times. And I’d really rather wait here until the psychiatrist arrives.” Raph’s phone buzzed. It was Rai, still trying to make himself relevant. He dismissed the notice.

“I see.” In a sudden fumble, Sigma dropped the Bell. The sound it made hitting the tabletop was light, almost melodic like a real bell. It rolled across the table and Sigma watched it go. Raph snapped it up.

The thing was solid, and heavy. He gave it an experimental shake. No noise, but its crystalline stripes shimmered and shifted a dozen colors a second, gentle despite the unforgiving lights of the holding room.

The central strip was flecked with what looked like glitter but was probably millions of tiny imperfections in whatever semi translucent material made up the thing, going dark and light at the tiniest change of angle; flickering stars in a night sky.

Stars were painful to regard. The farmhouse where he had grown up had the most glorious view of the galaxy; Central’s greatest museums and observatories held no candle to the real thing. He had laid on the grass beside his mother and the other children and named them, drew out the pictures they made - a bull, a swan, a nude figure - with small fingers.

The stone well, which had stood just a mile away, had no lid. Those who fell to the bottom would also have a view of the skies in their final moments on earth. Or under it. Or were they dead before they hit the bottom? He hoped so. To be able to see something astounding that you could never reach was not something he’d wish on anybody.

Among the constellations that lined his memories, Raph thought he saw one that was not familiar in the least. No, it wasn’t a shape made of stars, but a void in the sparkling sea, like a tree that was blocking the view. A black slash in the sky - then another. And another. They began to close, like a hand, raking his neck and chest, pulling back the skin to rest around and in his grinding organs...

“It’s too bad,” Sigma was saying. “I came all the way here for you. I didn’t have to. I could have just left the station at Judgment. But I thought you’d want to come with me. I'd welcome you with open arms, but you aren't that easy, are you...?”

Sigma had a slight bruise under his eye, as if he’d been punched. His expression was also, inexplicably, wounded. Raph blinked. They were now outside the little yellow room.

“You reached out to me.” Sigma laughed, pulling Raph down the hall. “Do you know how odd that was? We'd only briefly brushed by each other that one night, never even spoke in person, I wouldn't have even remembered you if not for your own urging. I couldn’t just let you go after that. You started with those unforgettably strange calls, two years ago. You kept haranguing me over the phone, even when your job told you not to. I didn’t need to try to get a grip on you, because you had already chosen to hold onto me, without me even showing you the Bells. Not even Delta was like that. Delta took convincing. Kiria even more. But…” Sigma fingered the Bell, the rope attached to it. “I suppose the reason for your obsession is also the reason you ultimately can’t bring yourself to come with me.”

The two supposed guards were awaiting their approach. Though one had his gun drawn, neither moved as Sigma passed on by with a smile, waving them to follow. Raph passed them without a word, and he heard them clomp along behind him.

“And I wasn’t lying.” Sigma’s ponderously red eyes were aimed at the ceiling, as if watching birds overhead. “I can’t make you stay. I can’t force anyone, I can only suggest. Most of the time.”

Raph became acutely aware of a weight in his pocket. A hollow jingle.

“There’s only one thing I can make people do. It’s really too bad. Maybe if we’d had more time to get to know each other....” Standing unfettered in the hall, the bustle of the first floor hall behind one paper-thin set of doors, Sigma turned to Raph and, from what Raph could discern from his limited view, was running his hands down from the top of Raph’s head to his neck. Raph’s shoulders felt oddly heavy. 

“Now, do you have the other thing I asked for?”

---

1:50

Charmion took the fire stairs in an attempt to avoid the bustle of the first floor, which was where all guests and reporters and detainees passed through and tended to loiter. She spared a moment to check her reflection in one of the windows, running her hand through her freshly-grown hair to smooth it over the old tattoos, and giving her brows a bit of spit-shine (definitely no need for anyone on the first floor to see that).

When things were as shipshape as they were going to be, she gave her axe a bit of a shine too and laid it over her shoulder, and pushed the door open.

Standing in the bank of elevators she found Raph slouching, flanked by two uniformed men who weren’t in much better shape. Standing beside them was Sigma, smiling faintly, tip-tapping at his phone and twirling a ring of keys around his index finger.

Sigma looked up. Raph, strangely, did not.

“You’re letting him go?” Charmion asked.

For someone who’d started the morning with the biggest, meanest smile on his face, Raph now appeared to be nursing a headache. Sigma leaned close to him - too close, Charmion thought - and muttered something. Raph's eyelids fluttered, like he was seizing.

“Raph,” Charmion said, hoping the fact that she was balancing an axe on her shoulder wouldn’t give anyone ideas. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. No,” Raph muttered. His throat sounded waterlogged. Sigma jerked away from him as if electrocuted. “Charm,” Raph said, louder. “He did something. Stop him. Stop him!”

At the other end of the hallway, a small group returning from lunch had gathered. Charmion smiled stupidly, her go-to in times of trouble, not that it ever helped. It was then she noticed one of the guards had his gun out.

“You shouldn’t be drawing your weapon in the-” Charmion began, before thinking better of it and launching herself back into the fire escape before the first shot rang out.

---

“How did Raph take the news about the therapist’s death?” Sao asked, watching the trees inch by. Midday traffic toward Central was brutal.

“No answer yet,” Rai said. “Must be having too much fun. He doesn’t have time for the likes of us anymore.”

“I suppose. Sigma being taken to HQ is everything he could have wanted. Though I have to wonder...”

“No you don’t! I didn’t wait twenty minutes to let you cut in front of -- augh!” Rai banged the dashboard with such force Sao wondered if the airbags would deploy. “You were saying?”

“Not much. But I think the latest developments are important for him to know, if he’s in charge of the case. He may want to be more cautious...”

“If he’s hacking away at Sigma, it’ll be awhile before he thinks about anything else.” Rai shook his head so hard his hair whipped the car’s already-worn interior, tearing a small hole above the driver’s seat. “Even if he ain’t having fun, Raph’s not the kind to let up. Try calling Charm again.”

Charmion picked up on the third ring.

“Hello, Charm-” Sao began.

“Not now. Raph’s in trouble.” Her voice was half whisper, but sharp as diamonds. Sao thought he heard firecrackers, glass shattering. “Guys,” Charmion said. “They have guns. Don’t come into the building. I repeat, stay at least--”

“What’s going on?” Sao asked. “Is it Sigma?”

Rai’s rant at the car in front of them cut off mid-word.

“Charmion,” Sao said, the image of the armed soldiers, bloodied halls and bodies flashing before his eyes. “Sigma may be armed. The Bells - it’s a theory, but they might be a weapon-”

“What? Just don’t come in. Don’t come in!”

The call ended. Sao stared.

---

Did gunshots create static electricity?

What a stupid thought. But god, the dryness. The skin of her hands were practically cracking apart at the knuckles.

Somewhere in the chaos, Sigma and Raph had vanished. No, Charmion growled to herself, people didn’t vanish, Sigma didn’t snap his fingers and warp out, the bastard went down in an elevator, obviously.

But how had Sigma turned the guards? And more importantly Raph, who seemed to have shaped his entire identity around combating anything resembling a cult or cult leader? Had Raph been the mole all along? But there being a Bell mole in HQ had been his idea, why would he have even made the suggestion?

A bit of backup had arrived, and more was supposed to come, but what they were hoping to achieve by swapping potshots with the men in the elevator hall, she did not know. They were keeping the turned guards distracted from her presence, at least.

Charmion dusted glass off her axe and saw her reflection pouting. She forced the goonish expression away and tried to think instead. Holding up the axe to the shattered window, she saw reflected on the blade (a trick sprouted from one of Rai’s recountings of a slasher film) that one of the guards was down, his leg bloodied.

What a relief. Well, no, it was terrible to think anyone had been shot at all. And the idiot hadn’t even given up the fight, he was still waving his firearm while squirming across the ground, a slimy red trail in his wake.

She could try to jump at him; he was past the door now and if she was quick, perhaps she’d be able to restrain him. Of course, he still had a gun. Charmion wasn’t particularly well versed in physical combat. There was the axe, but it wasn’t exactly going to save her from point-blank bullets.

The Bells might be a weapon. Was it Rai who had just said that? No, the voice had been entirely too gracious upon picking up the call. It was probably Sao. She smiled bitterly; of all the times to remember someone’s name.

The matter at hand, though - the Bells - those were the little rocks Sigma carried around, weren’t they? 

There were a few photos of them in the files. They reminded her of the little metal balls, painted with pretty marble patterns, which her mother had rolled around in her palm to exercise her joints. Charmion doubted that Sigma had made his way out by threatening to bludgeon someone with a couple of those. Besides, they were associated with the little dead aliens he supposedly worshipped. Made of their bodies or something similarly morbid…

Weapons and bodies. The pieces fell into place.

She braced against the door for a second look. The hallway was a mess.

Was it possible, though, for a weapon like that to do this much damage? She shook her head. It was infuriating, humbling, but as always, a thrill to behold. Charmion had always had respect for such craftsmanship.

Even if the owners were less than savory.

Holding her axe aloft, Charmion nudged the fire exit open, quietly, emerging slowly with the door shielding her from view. Aside from the guard dragging his way along the tile, there was the other one further up, and whatever alliance had come to face them, now just calling out negotiations over a loudspeaker. Good, a ceasefire.

Charmion felt the sparks forming under her fingertips and pulled, stretched, bound them into place. The flow of power ran like static - ah, well, that explained the dryness, should have known - and the edge of the axe gleamed with light that could not have come from simple reflection. She gave the handle a little twirl. Ready, Gram?

With a short breath, she squatted to a level where the blade’s arc would be able to meet its floorbound target, and swung. 

---

2:00

In the concrete arena that was Police HQ Parking Complex A, Raph watched Sigma drive up the ramp and recede into the sunlight, the start of his long, long journey home and beyond.

He felt exhausted, like hadn’t slept in years, everything was a blur except the stars. Faintly, he wondered if this was how Rai operated daily. No wonder Rai gave him hell; Raph was totally inadequate, he was a coward unprepared for the transcendence of dimensions and species and time. At least he was aware of those faults now.

He’d been left behind, as Sigma said, by his own choice.

It had been the least he could do to lend Sigma his keys - well, Raph thought, I probably won’t be getting them back. But he hadn’t been left empty handed.

There was the tightness around his neck, and the cold, steely weight in his hands.

Raph pressed the barrel to his temple, experimentally. He did it quickly to avoid second thoughts, but did not touch the trigger just yet. When the time came, he wouldn’t need to push himself, Sigma had assured him of that. But the pose was something he’d always wanted to try. It was like a movie. Don’t come any closer. And if that stopped them, well, it meant they really cared, didn’t it?

His skin felt like magma, bubbling and shifting constantly out of place. He was sick. They had both been sick. Born to a sick world, touched by poison in the guise of people. But Sigma had places to be, someone important to find, while Raph no longer had either such purposes.

A box the color of dirt edged into his vision. It wheezed with a sound nearly humanlike, elderly. It was a beat-up car, a patchwork of welding and mismatched doors. Had it been there from the start? Raph took a small step away. For something so pathetic, the thing seemed magnified, larger than a car of that state should have been.

When the door opened he realized why the car looked bigger than usual - it was to accommodate its driver, an enormous human being.

The elevator pinged behind him with flawless comic timing and Charmion emerged along with a posse of gawkers, and a few officers.

On the opposite side of the floor, the driver of the car had stepped out and closed the door, all without a sound, and was staring with two dark eyes in which tiny flares of red flickered, like dying stars. Despite being a good distance away, the man towered. A breeze flowed through the lot, but failed to so much as rustle the bulk of his massive trench coat.

“Chief,” Charmion said. “You’re back.”

“What’s this?”  His voice was like thunder; the rumbling, not quite the crack that came with lightning, but prophetic of it.

“There was an attack - it looks like a trance. If I get close enough I can cut him out of it, but -” She spotted the weight hanging from Raph’s neck and froze. “The user was an illicit transfer, a guy called Sigma. Raph was down in the holding cell for an hour with the guy.”

“A trance,” the giant repeated.

Raph listened, enraptured, and cocked the gun as Charmion made a move toward him, her axe swinging over her shoulder. At the click she stopped dead in her tracks and instead made her way toward the giant. The reclusive chief. Raph smiled, he’d never seen the guy from so close up.

“I think it’s the thing on his neck - it’s some kind of weapon, one that forces the illusion or a trance, either way, it’s messed up two guys upstairs.” She bit her lip. “Rai and his assistant were looking into some suicides related to Sigma, and some artifacts they were calling Bells. That’s one of them.”

Chief Zu had drawn his own axe. It was less than half the size of Charmion’s and looked like a child’s toy in his vast, gloved hands. “This is severe.” Where Charmion’s axe had a bladed edge, Zu’s axe appeared to be all blade; edges and handles all moulded from a single slab of burnished silver metal.

Charmion’s eyes widened. “Careful. He seems pretty deep. The other guys passed out when I cut them out. I’m not sure what Sigma told him to do, but...”

“I see. A danger of relapse.” Zu frowned, his browline so heavy it was like seeing a cliff collapse. “Gradually, then.”

The chief approached, and yet wasn’t even looking at him - he seemed to be polishing his axe, of all the times to do so. Raph lowered the gun, just slightly, so he could keep an eye on him.

“Wipe any enchantment first.” Zu said to the pockmarked metal. “Then extract. There may be another. Slow.”

The blade caught a shaft of light, and distorted it like softened putty. The reflections on the chrome surface curved and split, Raph thought he saw several slits in its surface open, like eyelids. Zu raised the axe. Raph braced for the lightning strike, but Zu only tilted his head toward the blade and whispered, with horrific tenderness. “Five, ten. Bring him back.”

The words ignited the air. A shockwave blew through the concrete lot, so intense that Raph was astounded that he and all the others weren’t ripped off their feet, thrown aside along with all the pillars and cars. Insanely, Charmion, the Chief, and all their cohorts were actually completely, still, not a hair out of place, unmoving, unblinking, unbreathing. Through his watering eyes, he realized they were frozen and fading out, being consumed by light the same way Sigma had, then all around him was nothing but claustrophobic blankness.

It was closing in, nibbling at his skin, eyes, clothes. He was next, the last to be smothered and swallowed. 

No - he wasn’t quite alone, there was still the plane Sigma had introduced him to; if he looked up he could still make out small dots of light amongst the nothing, more sensation than sight; the otherworldly stars. And that meant the creeping shadows were still somewhere in there, the long piercing fingers that blotted out reason and feeling. He couldn’t move. The monsters had retreated under his skin, but that wouldn’t save them, the void that was closing in would demolish them all from the outside in. Raph wanted to laugh. Knowing that their end was nigh, their gouging movements had been reduced to a mere tickle. A receding itch. Then nothing.

What followed was an incredible, mindrending silence. There was nothing to be aware of but his breathing. Then his fury at Sigma, coming back in like riptide. But even that was overwhelmed by his need to breathe. The light faded on his fifth gasp, and he was back in the parking lot.

His muscles slowly began to move again, starting with tingling in his toes. The slow crawl of sensations from the ground up was anguish. He just really wanted to lower his hand, god forbid the gun went off while he was stupidly pointing it at his head. Not a single person had bothered to utter anything like stop, don’t do this, we love you, but then, what the hell had he been hoping for?

Finally, he was able to fling the damned thing away. At the same time, his knees gave out and he dropped to his ass beside it. He was tired. Real, acute fatigue, not the dreamy sleepiness he’d felt when talking to Sigma. He didn’t want to rest on the grass of his childhood and see stars. He wanted to throw up and crawl into bed.

Near the rust bucket the chief had driven in on, Charmion’s hair was standing on end, frizzled with static alongside with the pom-pom earrings she always wore. Raph grinned, sorely.

A mountainous shadow cut into his vision and for a moment his gut clenched. The Greys had returned, they had survived - but no, the shadow was too square, too dense to get under skin, and it was not dark shadows he saw but ugly brown tweed - it was just the chief, who engulfed the discarded gun in one oversized mitt, and then reached for the Bell. Raph didn’t have the energy to help. As if it too had been hollowed out, the twine holding the little pouch crumbled like ash.

Raph watched it go. In the dimness of the parking garage, or perhaps how it compared to the blinding void from which they just emerged, but the Bell had lost much of its luster.

Then Rai’s sedan came screeching miserably down the ramp, narrowly avoiding the crowd of onlookers, and Raph managed one croak of laughter before bursting into a torrential nosebleed, and passing out. He hit the concrete with a blissful, dreamless thump.