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Strangeland: Spiritual Following

Chapter One: Glorification

"Pain, without love. Pain, can't get enough. Pain, I like it rough cause I'd

rather feel pain than nothing at all." - Pain by Three Days Grace

Derek's fingers danced along his keyboard as he tried to ignore his groups' loudness. Suddenly, he stopped typing and stood to face the group of people in his basement. Noticing his attention was on them they slowly fell to silence.

"My fellow believers, tonight we are to accomplish something that is of the utmost importance to our cause. You are all here following your destinies. Solidifying you state as grounded, self-reliant, primates. Five of us have completed our spiritual grounding in full. The rest of you will do so as we teach it to others. We have young ones of this town already in our grasp. Yet, we cannot tighten our grasp so soon. For we must also be sure those that attempted to silence our idol will not do the same to us. We must finish the spiritual work he began on them. Only then may we begin our generation's spiritual teaching." said Derek.

"Sir?" asked a young man covered in piercings.

"Yes, Daniel?"

"Where shall we perform these works? Here?" asked Daniel.

"No, brother. We shall perform these on our idol's burial ground. The inside of Xibalba may be ravaged and ashes but the founding outer walls still stand. We shall build it up again and fulfill our destinies on the ashes of our idol. Now, you must make your final decision. Most of you, hopefully all, are loyal and determined to complete this. Yet, I say to you now, any of you that are cowardly and childish enough to leave after tonight, the consequences of that action will be deadly. If you are one of the cowards, stand and walk out now. No one will touch you."

No one moved, or even breathed.

"No? Excellent. Then if you are all with me are you ready to fulfill your destiny?"

"Yes!" came the unanimous resounding answer.

"Are you prepared to be part of something bigger and much more important than all you've ever known?" asked Derek.

"Yes!"

"Are you determined to finish what Captain Howdy started?"

"YES!" came the screamed response. Derek took a step toward Daniel.

"Clear all out and prepare our select few. I'm inviting one tonight for an example." said Derek.

"Yes, sir." replied Daniel, rushing off to certain people.

xxxxxxxxx

"Hey, come check this out." said Stacy. Her best friend Anna came walking over to the computer to see.

"What?"

"There's this guy on here-" said Stacy pointing at a screen name.

"SpiritMan976? What a shit name." interrupted Anna.

"Shut up and let me finish."

"Fine. Go on."

"Well, he's havin some sort of party and invited us. It starts in like two hours. He even gave me the name of other screen names on here that are goin to it." said Stacy, excitedly.

"What? How do we know those people aren't talking about a different party?"

"Come on, Anna. What are the chances of him knowing the name of every other person that is going to a different party?" asked Stacy, annoyed with her friend.

"I don't know!"

"He lives in town. Come on. You owe me anyway." pleaded Stacy.

"God dammit. Fine, but if I start getting weird vibes when we get there we leave. Got it? As soon as I say so."

"Yes! You got it! Let's get ready." said Stacy, jumping up and running to her closet. Anna sat down on the bed and prayed that nothing bad was gonna happen this evening.