Rise of the Flickering Woman! This is now a Relationship Consultation Blog!

The trek up Mount Fear was truly a long and challenging one. Well, not for me. My legs were still broken. But Spacefuture Blogger and Overblogger seemed to be having a hard time as they carried me up.

Halfway up the mountain, we came across a small stretch of flat land we could rest on. Such rest was short lived, for only moments after Spacefuture Blogger and Overblogger set me down, we saw the corpse of a sphinx on the ground near us!

“Okay why is there a sphinx here that’s not even the right cosmology for this setting.” Overblogger said.

“I’m more worried about why it’s dead.” Spacefuture blogger added.

“WHO COULD HAVE SLAIN SUCH A NOBLE AND MAJESTIC BEAST?” I yelled out, distraught at such meaningless slaughter.

“Twas I that slayed the beast!” A female voice said, as a woman made of fire appeared before us. “The Burning Bride!”

“How could you kill a sphinx? They’re an endangered species!”

“The sphinx was meant to be one of the trials you would face while ascending the mountain. It was to ask you a tricky riddle, which could only be answered by a truly clever person. But I couldn’t afford for the sphinx to kill you after you inevitably failed its riddle! I must be the one to kill you, and get my revenge for what you have done to me!”

“What I’ve…? I haven’t done anything to you! At least, not yet!”

“Nothing? NOTHING? You ruined my marriage!”

“I… I wha…?”

“The Brute used to be the perfect man! Always filled with such passion, such fire! But he changed after he fought you. Now all he wants to do is volunteer at soup kitchens and help the elderly! This isn’t the man I married!”

“Very well! We shall battle! But know that your fire is no match for the BURNING HEAT OF MY FIGHTING SPIRIT!”

“Fire? You underestimate me, Omega. I am well aware that my fire would be useless against you. But I was a Fear before I became the Burning Bride. Today you face the Flickering Woman!”

Oh no! The master of secret and hidden knowledge! I hadn’t prepared myself for this encounter! But I wouldn’t let myself be beaten! “Bring it on, Flickering-“


Okay, this is Spacefuture Blogger, Omega was out of commission for most of this, I’m taking over for this part. Halfway through Omega’s statement a beam of light came out of the Flickering Woman’s hand and entered his head. He immediately began to scream in pain as an incredibly bright light came out of his eyes. It looked almost like his head was burning from the inside.
“You can brag all you want Omega, but not even your mind can handle all of my knowledge!” The Flickering Woman boasted. “Your brain will burn itself out trying to cope with it all, and at last you will be defeated!”

As she spoke, the light in Omega’s eyes went out, and he fell to the ground, dead. “At last!” She cried out in joy. “My revenge is….” Omega got back up, and immediately resumed screaming again as the lights in his eyes reappeared.

“Um… How…?”

“He doesn’t stay dead.” I said. “Trust me. He’ll come back from literally anything.”

“Well that’s a bit anticlimactic.” Omega died again, only to come back and start screaming less than a minute later. “Although trapping him in an eternal hell certainly has its merits. Oh well. Time to deal with his friends.” The Flickering Woman pointed her hand at me, and the light of knowledge entered my mind.

Nothing happened. “What? How is your mind not crumbling under the vastness of the knowledge I am bestowing on you?”
“I’m from the future.” I said. “We’ve learned how to upload all excess data in our minds to the Cloud.”

“But that doesn’t make sense! Any cloud servers from the future shouldn’t be accessible in this time period!”

“Oh, no, I don’t mean the cloud like a group of servers. I mean literal clouds. We encode data onto water molecules floating in the sky.”

“Fine! Then I’ll just deal with the other!” The Flickering Woman pointed her hand at Overblogger, but hesitated.

“Yeah don’t even try it that’s not going to work on me.” Overblogger said. “Look, Flickering, are you doing okay? It’s not like you to get this directly involved in things.”

“I’m fine!” The Flickering Woman shouted. “It’s just… it’s been hard, since the Brute left. We were so perfect together. It’s not often you’ll find someone who’ll accept a woman who’s constantly on fire. But now he’s gone, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Overblogger nodded sympathetically. “I know that feeling. Sometimes people change, and they leave us behind. But there’s still plenty for you to do!”

“No, there isn’t!” The Flickering woman began to cry. “I’m nothing without the Brute! Just look at my name! ‘The Burning Bride!’ My entire identity is based on my relationship with the Brute! There’s nothing for me to do with him gone!”

“Don’t say that!” Overblogger gently grabbed the Flickering Woman by the shoulder. “Look at this Flickering Woman thing you’re doing now! It’s amazing! And you’re not relying on anyone else for it! It’s all you!”

“R-really? You think this is good? I don’t know, barely anyone wrote about this form before they started using the Burning Bride….”

“It’s amazing! Those writers didn’t know what they were missing when they turned you into the Brute’s distaff counterpart. You don’t need the Brute, you’ve got all the ingredients for success in yourself!”

The Flickering Woman sniffled and wiped the tears from her eyes. “You… you know what? You’re right! Let the Brute go and waste his time at those soup kitchens! I don’t need him! I can be my own Fear!”

“That’s right! You go get ‘em, girl!”

“Thanks, Overblogger. It was good talking with you. You ever want to get in touch, just let me know.” The Flickering Woman looked back at Omega, who was still screaming during his brief moments of being alive. “I should probably deal with that.” She snapped her fingers, and the light disappeared from Omega’s eyes, along with his screams. Then the Flickering Woman vanished.

So apparently I missed some stuff that happened during this encounter, but I doubt it was important. Like so many Fears before her, the Burning Bride fled in terror from me! So great is the reputation of Omega that the Fears are not even willing to try and fight me, for they know defeat is the only outcome of that battle! And with yet another Fear defeated, we continued our journey to the top of Mount Fear.