Published at 24th of February 2024 11:49 am

Chapter 33: The House of Gloom

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

All was dark.

All was black.

All was silence.

I awoke enshrouded in lightless shadows, a pitch-black expanse thicker than a starless night. I couldn’t see anything; not even my own hand. The darkness consumed all.

My body shivered in the cold. I was lying on a stone floor, or at least it felt that way to my numb fingers and rattling bones. My hands fumbled in the all-devouring shadows to no avail. I’d never seen a place so black. Even Mictlan’s bowels provided a measure of ghostlight in the dark.

I remembered the walls of Xibalba closing in on me after I stepped through its gates. The street had pulled me in like the meal of a great beast down a gullet of stone. The city had swallowed me whole.

Was I in its stomach now? A silent tomb hidden underground? A place buried so deep that Tlaloc’s searing light could not reach it?

I struggled to my knees and elbows. I looked at my chest. The baleful flame between my ribs shone no brighter than a small candle in a sea of darkness, to the point I could hardly see it. The shadows dimmed my fire’s radiance until it turned into a mere flicker.

“Mother, are you there?” I called out without expecting an answer. I received none. Worse, my words became muffled the moment they escaped my mouth. My voice became a mere whisper. No echo returned to me either.

I activated my Gaze spell. I channeled the sunlight in my heart through my eyes to pierce through the shadows.

I failed.

The light pouring from my Gaze spell, once radiant enough to dispel any illusion, failed to clear the darkness around me. When I raised my hand to my face, my fingers fumbling to my chin and then to my cheek, I could hardly distinguish its edges when I waved it in front of my eyes. I could not distinguish anything unless it stood within inches of my face.

The wind once whispered to me that there were shadows so thick even the light recoiled from them. Had I stepped inside such a place?

I gathered my strength and rose to my feet, only for my skull to hit a low ceiling. I couldn’t stand with my head high; I had to bend slightly until my shoulders rubbed against the stone. I must have been in a tunnel of some kind. I scrambled forward looking for an exit.

When my eyes started to hurt, I canceled my Gaze spell to preserve my power for later. It hardly cleared anything anyway. My own Teyolia couldn’t even light the way forward.

I was alone in the shadows with no other way than forward.

“I am not afraid of the dark,” I said, both for my sake and that of the Lords of Terror. I had gazed into the Sulfur Flame’s black heart itself. Nothing could shake me more than that. “You don’t scare me.”

Mother said she would await me in a safe sanctuary after I conquered my first house of fear. Was this darkness my first trial? Was I expected to find a way out in complete darkness? This might take a while.

However long this trial would take, I would beat it.

I faced the all-consuming blackness, gathered my breath and courage like a soldier readying to march to war, and then pressed onward. My footsteps echoed on the cold hard floor before being swallowed by the overwhelming silence.

My ordeal had begun.

My war teachers at school taught us that the best way to find one’s way in the dark was to find the nearest wall, keep one’s left hand pressed against it, and then turn left constantly. This lesson was meant to help separated warriors regroup when fighting at night. I could easily apply it to my current situation. Eventually, I was bound to hit a wall. Once I found one, I would keep moving left until I stumbled on the exit.

I had no idea how long I crawled onward, my back bending downward like that of a slave afraid to look at his master. Hours, days, weeks? I knew rationally I should have woken up if my exploration lasted that long, but it still felt that way to me. I fumbled with each step. No matter where my fingers turned to grasp, they only found either a ceiling or a floor with nothing to separate them. No pillars, no walls, no nothing.

I was no architect, but this seemed… improbable.

Eventually, my left hand stumbled upon a vertical structure. I briefly called upon the Gaze spell and confirmed it was indeed a wall of pitch-black stone. So far so good. Follow the left wall. Find the exit. A simple plan. I followed it religiously.

Then my right hand fumbled onto a second wall.

I activated my Gaze spell again to confirm it. A wall on each side, a ceiling, and a floor. Had I stepped into a hallway? Since when? I couldn’t tell whether I should consider it a bad sign or not.

After a moment’s consideration, I decided to continue through that passage. Mother compared the trials to houses; a hallway should henceforth naturally lead to another room. Even if it turned out to be a dead end, I would simply keep turning left.

I quickly regretted my decision.

I sensed the walls closing in on me with each new step. The ceiling pressed down. I had no other way forward than to move on my knees. Stone scraped against my shoulders, then my thighs. I told myself I would eventually reach a dead end, but the passage just got smaller and smaller. At one point, I realized I would have no other choice than to squeeze forward if I wished to proceed.

And if I did, I would have few ways of defending myself.

I smelled a trap.

Xibalba’s masters didn’t earn the title of Lords of Terror for nothing. According to the First Emperor’s codex, they were ancient nightmares older than mankind. Mother herself warned me that they had refined their cruelty over the eons.

After seeing what the Nightlords could come up with, I doubted a cramped hallway would be my only obstacle. It would be only the prelude to something worse. My instincts warned me of danger ahead.

I tried to turn around, but failed due to the lack of space. With no other option, I took a step back.

I hit another wall.

My back hit a wall. My feet touched a barrier of stone.

That was impossible. I hadn’t turned at any point. I looked over my shoulder and activated the Gaze spell, dispelling the darkness just long enough to find a black barrier standing behind me.

Only then did I curse my foolishness. I’d entered the trap of my own volition long ago.

However, if the Lords of Terror expected me to bury myself, they were wrong. I immediately called upon the Doll spell and manifested talons of shadow strong enough to shatter stone. I had them hit the wall behind me in an attempt to shatter it.

My Doll spell tore apart a spider totem larger than a trihorn and shredded men apart in a single swing. I knew it could break through a wall if I tried hard enough. Yet whatever substance blocked my path proved too strong. My talons bounced off it like bones thrown at granite.

No way out but forward. No other way out than this cramped hallway closing in on me. I stared at the shadows ahead of me, considering what to do next.

Plop.

My spine tensed on its own and caused my head to hit the ceiling. My teeth tightened as I focused on the noise’s source.

Plop.

I heard it in the distance. A faint sound, barely inaudible, but magnified by the heavy silence. The noise of a droplet hitting a solid surface. Water? Was there water ahead? Somehow I suspected the truth would be far more disturbing.

But what other choice did I have? Not even the Doll spell could shatter these walls, and unlike the living world I could not separate my soul from my body to phase through physical matter; I was my soul.

So I crawled on. I followed after the sound, unable to see where I went.

Plop. Plop.

I was getting closer, slowly but surely. The noise sounded more frequent too. Drops after drops.

I felt a slight pressure on my left shoulder.

At this point, I was crawling on my knees to avoid hitting the ceiling. I thought I’d hit a rock, but the pressure did not abate when I squeezed forward. It followed me. I activated the Gaze spell, the sunlight of my soul letting me catch a glimpse of my shoulder.

A hand had grabbed it from behind.

“Look at me,” Mother whispered into my ear.

I almost did it, impulsively. That was Mother’s voice and her hand. There could be no doubt about it.

But it wasn’t her.

The tone was too sweet, too kind, too reassuring. Too motherly. It reminded me of Yoloxochitl’s false gentleness. Mother was cold and distant.

“Look at me,” her voice repeated calmly.

I gulped before asking, “Why?”

“Do you see the candles, Iztac?” the voice replied, ignoring my question. “Look at me.”

A brave or foolish man would have indulged the… creature. I, meanwhile, had faced enough threats to recognize danger. My instincts screamed at me not to turn around, even to just catch a glimpse of whatever was talking to me. Deep down I knew that this thing meant harm to me. To obey it meant to face my own death.

I did not have to look to kill it.

Talons of shadow surged from my body as I activated the Doll spell. I sent them to hit whatever thing lurked behind me and to cut the hand holding me down. The claws failed at the former task, hitting only a wall of stone pressing on my back, but they succeeded at the latter.

No blood dripped onto the floor when Mother’s severed hand hit the ground. I caught a brief glimpse of it crawling away deeper into the tunnel thanks to the Gaze spell. When she vanished into the darkness, another hand grabbed my left shoulder; paler than Mother’s and colder than a corpse.

“Look at me,” the thing behind whispered with Sigrun’s melodious voice.

It was only then I realized a simple truth. It is not the dark that men fear. It’s what it hides.

“Look at me,” the thing repeated, cycling through Mother’s voice and Sigrun the next. “Why won’t you look at me?”

“I refuse,” I said, my throat dry. “Leave me alone.”

The thing ignored me. “Look at me, Iztac,” it repeated, calmly, sweetly, gently. “Look at me.”

Since I could neither harm it nor turn around, I simply pushed on. Sigrun’s hand held onto my shoulder, but it hardly slowed me down. I barely crawled a few steps when I sensed another weight on my other shoulder.

“I am right behind you, Iztac,” Eztli’s voice echoed in my ear. “So why won’t you look at me?

I felt no weight behind the new hand, nor an arm to support it; it felt as if it had appeared out of thin air. I sensed no heavier creature leaning against me from behind, but a presence loomed nonetheless. An entity that tried to mimic humanity the way a parrot might repeat words without understanding the meaning behind them.

I gritted my teeth and pushed on. I squeezed through the cramped tunnel. New hands held on to my thighs, to my legs, to my back. I counted dozens, some gentle as a lover’s caress, others with fingers of bone.

“Look at me,” the thing spoke with Guatemoc’s voice, its tone noticeably colder than before.

I ignored it, but the hands’ grip soon began to tighten. While I could safely ignore them, now I had to struggle to push forward.

“Look at me, insolent slave,” the Jaguar Woman’s voice ordered me. “Look at me.”

It only made me more resolute to continue.

The entity lost patience at this point. Instead of simply impairing my progress, the hands outright started to pull me backward. I snarled in rage as I called upon the Doll spell. My talons sliced through a dozen hands and hundreds of fingers, but more came to replace them.

“Let me go!” I snarled. “Let me go–”

A flash of pain coursed through my torso.

I grunted in surprise and agony, then collapsed onto my elbows. A searing hot liquid dripped on my skin and immediately caught fire. A surge of light briefly illuminated the tunnel. I heard screeches behind me and a few of the hands let me go. I smelled burning blood.

My blood.

A glance at my belly. A pale bone knife stuck out of it, the blade halfway through my stomach. A pale finger—one of those that held the weapon seconds ago—wriggled as it turned into smoke on the floor. My burning blood consumed it like chocolate in boiled water. A meager consolation.

“Look at me.” The entity no longer bothered to mimic anyone’s voice. It had become deep, angry, and inhuman. It did not request anything anymore. It simply commanded. “Look at me.”

Another surge of pain followed, this time in my right leg. I swallowed a scream as I felt a blade twisting in my flesh.

“Nothing exists in the dark.” the voice repeated with a coarse and alien tone deeper than a bellowing beast. “Look at me. Look at me.”

The hands grabbing my legs pulled me back with inhuman strength. I answered with kicks and snarls and the Doll spell. The phantasmal limbs dragging me into the dark vanished whenever my talons threatened to touch them. It offered me just a long enough reprieve to drag myself forward before they returned.

I attempted to cast a Veil, to wrap myself in the same shadows that obscured the monster from view. An immense weight of disbelief instantly dispelled my illusion. My flesh grew cold with dread as I sensed a thousand observers looking at me from all directions. Left, right, up, down… Everywhere all at once.

The darkness had eyes.

I used all my strength to crawl through an ever-tighter tunnel, struggling against the pain of bone knives lodged in my flesh. I sensed their blades shrink inside my flesh as my burning blood dissolved them.

More hurried to take their place.

The pain raced through my back and my spine, sharp and terrible. Blades sliced through my back and my legs by the dozens. They appeared out of thin air, slipping through my talons and peeling my skin.

Whatever intangible horror stalked me had given up on forcing me to turn my head around.

It had settled on trying to stab me to death instead.

I shrieked as I attempted to repel the onslaught, to no avail. A hundred hands descended from the ceiling, pressed on my wounded back, and then forced me head-first to the floor. My shadow talons struggled to stop more blades from slicing into me.

I can’t move! The hands’ grip was too strong. They pressed me against the floor, slowly squeezing my bones. Think! There has to be a way out!

But what else could I do? I would have crushed it with the Doll if I could, but how could I fight something I could not touch? The Veil could not hide me, the Gaze could not see it, the Augury would not help me! All I had left was the Curse and–

Wait.

When I activated my Veil, the weight of disbelief came from everywhere at once. Not just from behind me. The entity didn’t hide in the darkness. It was one with it.

And for a Curse to work… I had to place one of my feathers inside a target’s shadow.

My grunts turned to cruel laughter.

The pressure lessened on my back for a brief second. The entity appeared surprised by my reaction. I immediately seized that opportunity by summoning a feather in the palm of my hand; one so black it appeared indistinguishable from the shadows around me.

“I Curse you…” I poured all my hatred, all my malice, and my bloodthirst into my feather. “My blood shall set you ablaze!”

My cursed feather merged with the darkness the moment it came alive. My power coursed through the air. It reverberated like an echo, shaking the entire tunnel. My sorcery spread through the shadows like poison in a pond of water.

A shining purple light surged behind me; the same hateful glow as the one fueling my heart. A hundred voices screamed in the dark. Eztli’s, Sigrun’s, Guatemoc’s, all the people I’d met, along with countless strangers, all at once. The smell of burning flesh reached my nostrils and smoke filled the air. My burning blood, which my unseen attacker had shed so carelessly, now threatened to set it on fire.

A tremor shook the ground. The walls that pressed on me trembled and moved away from me. Whatever belly of stone that threatened to crush me had retreated back into the shadows. The darkness swallowed my fires and the screams of my foe. A heavy, overwhelming silence muffled all noise.

The hands were gone, alongside my unseen assailant.

I lay on my back, gasping for air even though I did not need to breathe in the Underworld.

The good thing about burning blood was that it quickly cauterized my wounds. Still, I had lost a great deal of it. A dozen knives remained embedded in my back, and I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. My arms felt weak and deprived of strength. I could hardly muster the strength to cast the Doll spell anymore.

If I were ambushed again, I doubted I could fend off my attacker.

Plop.

That noise again. It was close this time. Very close. I focused on it and crawled towards its source. My arms pulled my wounded body across the floor with no walls to stop me. Had I traded a tunnel for a hall? I had just enough strength left to power the Gaze spell once more, maybe twice.

I had to get out of there.

Plop. Plop.

I heard muffled voices the closer I approached the source of the noise. I recognized the sound of men struggling against gags. It suddenly occurred to me that since Xibalba welcomed all sleeping minds undergoing nightmares, I might not be the only one trapped in this dark hell.

I heard laughter behind me, far in the distance.

What remained of my spine tensed up. I was used to that particular kind of laughter. Not a laugh of joy and happiness, no, but the cruel giggles of children happily throwing stones at the outcast among them. I heard at least seven different tones singing a strange lullaby.

“You’re fleeing,” they said cheerfully, so far away I could hardly understand the words. “They’re crying, we’re starving…”

Such reassuring words. Nothing ominous. Nothing at all.

Plop. Plop.

I crawled away from the laughter and closer to the droplet noise. Eventually my hand splashed against a puddle made of a warm liquid. I immediately recognized it.

Blood.

Of course it was blood. Couldn’t it be water for once?

Knowing the source would be close, I activated the Gaze spell to catch a glimpse.

I immediately regretted it.

Blood could only come from one place so I had mentally prepared myself beforehand and I still held back a wave of nausea.

Twelve human torsos were tightly lined up in a corridor leading to nowhere, six on each side. Each of them was nailed to a wood post, their eyes plucked out, their mouths stitched together to muffle their screams. Blood dripped from their severed thighs drop by drop onto the stone floor. Their arms were missing. Their heads banged against the wood in fear and agony. They sensed my presence somehow. They called me for help the only way they had left.

Few sights could disturb me anymore after weeks of dealing with the Nightlords, but this… It took all of my willpower to glance at the familiar owl masks on their faces.

They were Tlacatecolotl. Owl-fiends.

These were the sorcerers who had failed the trial.

This was the fate awaiting me if I couldn’t escape this place. To lose pieces of myself until all that remained were a wriggling head and its torso. An eternal trophy, unable to die, unable to move, unable to scream. A nightmare I would return to each time I closed my eyes to sleep.

The children laughed in the distance, their song echoing in the darkness.

“We’ll hang him, we’ll stab him, we’ll burn him…”

The lullaby was growing louder.

No.

Closer.

Damn it. Should I use the Curse again? Would it work if I couldn’t perceive my target’s presence? Should I transform into an owl and try to fly away? I doubted I had the strength left to reach the ceiling.

Think, Iztac, think. There had to be a way out. This was a trial, not an execution. These demons had given me time to prepare. To figure it out. There had to be an exit. What did that creature say again? Nothing exists in the dark?

If that included the exit, then it meant that I would find no doorway until I managed to banish the darkness. A blackness so thick not even my Gaze spell could pierce its embrace. I had to produce light.

My burning blood could banish the shadows for a few seconds, but I doubted it would unveil an exit. But it could start a bonfire if I had the right fuel.

“Do you see the candles?”

The creature’s words resonated in my mind as my eyes looked up at the trapped torsos.

“We’ll beat him,” the children sang, each word louder than the last, “we’ll eat him, we’ll slice him…”

“Do your worst…” I replied. I raised my arm close to my mouth, then bit into my veins. My wrist shone with purple flames. “Let there be… light!”

I sprayed my burning blood at the nearest tortured totem post. The fire spread swiftly and soon reached its nailed victim’s skin. The poor sorcerer let out muffled screams as flames consumed his skin and flesh.

I crawled toward the other pillars and repeated the process. Time and time again I set their prisoners alight, ignoring their panic and their silent screams. I did not hesitate. In their current state, these people would welcome death. It would be a mercy.

My candles soon burned with bright purple flames. A corridor of fire stretched before me and unveiled a passage hidden at its end: a pale doorframe of wood etched in the darkness itself, leading to nowhere.

I crawled towards it with all my strength. I heard the echo of footsteps behind me, alongside the sinister shriek of blades rattling against the floor.

“You’re bleeding,” the children sang, so loud I assumed they were a spear’s throw away from me, “they’re burning, we’re laughing…”

If I look back, I’m dead, I told myself as I frantically crawled on a puddle of human blood, observed by the burning dead and hunted by demons. If I look back I’m dead.

I reached for the doorway.

It pulled away from me.

My eyes widened with rage and terror. I crawled one inch forward, then two. Both times the doorway moved back just out of reach. Whether the distance between us lengthened or the door could move on its own, it made no difference.

“Here we are!” I heard voices giggling a few steps behind me. “Here you are!”

My heart would have sunk in my chest, if I still had one. The baleful flame in its place burst with anger instead.

Using my hands to pull my body forward, I bit my tongue and spat blood at the doorway. The burning liquid hit the wood frame. A deep, terrifying noise erupted from the door as my flames set it ablaze.

It did not run away this time.

I pulled myself through its threshold while sensing a blade’s edge graze my back.

I fell into a hole whose bottom I couldn’t see. I ran out of power to fuel my Gaze spell and thus descended into the dark. I fell, and fell, and fell, waiting for a fatal impact that wouldn’t come. I tried to transform myself into an owl and fly, to no avail. I was spent. Exhausted.

However, when I saw the light at the bottom, I knew that I was victorious.

The glow from below was no stronger than that of torches on a moonless night, but I had grown so acclimated to the darkness that I squinted. An invisible power slowed my fall until I softly landed on something moist and wet; a bed of squirmy ropes of flesh bound together in a vast floor. The putrid smell of bile and rot made me want to puke.

Intestines. I’d landed on a pile of intestines.

I lay on my back, too tired to move, too weak to struggle. A ring of floating torches surrounded the floor of flesh on which I rested. I could only see darkness beyond that barrier, and the blurred features of dreadful figures watching over me.

I counted eight of them: a great and lanky humanoid twice taller than any man alive, and seven smaller horrors. The former wore ancient black robes and a hood that failed to obscure two sunken pits of malevolence burning where the eyes should have been. The latter had the shape of children when observed from afar, but that was all they were: vague shapes, outlines separate from the shadows and yet strangely blurry.

“Remarkable,” the tall one said, its ancient voice laced with amusement. His words wormed their way inside my skull without touching my ears. “No one has tried to Curse the darkness before. Bold. Very bold.”

“He’s crafty,” the seven children sang joyfully, all seven of them, all at once. “He’s funny, he’s worthy…”

I observed these ancient nightmares in silence. Their oppressive presence, so similar to the Nightlords, loomed over me like clouds. I knew I sat in the presence of the Lords of Terror, the masters of Xibalba.

The taller figure moved closer to the ring of fire, rattling with each stride. I caught a glimpse of a staff of petrified snakes in his hands, of a belt of skulls around his waist, and of a terrifying face of putrefied flesh under his hood.

“Are you cold, Iztac?” the figure asked me, his breath carrying flies and locusts.

The bed of intestines provided a meager warmth, but yes, I was cold. I had lost much blood, and the fire in my heart cried out.

“I am,” I rasped, my voice a dry rattle. My tongue still hurt in my mouth.

“Good.” The tall figure stomped the ground with his staff, a ripple traveling through the lake of intestines. “I am Hun-Came, ‘One Death,’ and they are Vucub-Came, ‘Seven Death;’ oldest among the fears. When the first man looked into the night and feared the unknown, we were there waiting in the shadow of King Mictlantecuhtli, ancient and unknowing.”

The old man leaned closer to me, his sunken eyes shining with malice.

“Did you enjoy our House of Gloom?”

I glanced at my wounds. I hadn’t faced such dangers since the first nights of my journey in the Underworld.

“I’ve seen…” I coughed. I was too tired for lies. “Warmer welcomes.”

“Pain keeps the wits sharp,” Hun-Came replied, unsympathetic. “Fear too. Men fear the leash more than they love their pleasure. The twelve fears keep the world turning. Which of them do you think we are?”

“You are… the fear of death,” I guessed, since it was the oldest of them. I squinted at the children and briefly wondered if they embodied the fear of darkness, before remembering what truly frightened men. “And you… the unknown.”

The children laughed and clapped. I glimpse at hints of black, bloodied mouths full of teeth when they giggled, but only for an instant.

“We are the first nightmares and we shall be the last,” Hun-Came said with an air of finality. “When you first plunged a knife inside your heart and were seized with dread, I came to you. Now you come to me. Why is that, clever bird?”

I thought over my answer before answering truthfully. “I want to teach the Nightlords the meaning of fear… before I destroy them.”

Hun-Came laughter was like a door rattling in the wind. “They already learned to fear a long time ago,” he said. “All vampires used to dream. They try to forget the time when they feared their inevitable death, but we? We remember. You will find their fears hidden in the House of Bats. If you are bold.”

The opportunity of learning how to hurt the Nightlords appealed to me, but knowledge was useless without the power to exploit it.

“I need… magic,” I rasped, struggling against the pain. “I seek… power.”

“Power?” I glimpsed a grin beneath Hun-Came’s hood. “Do you not gain power when you triumph from your fears? I say you are stronger than you were a night ago.”

I silently glared at the Lord of Terror, the flame in my chest burning brighter than the torches.

“What fearless hatred you possess,” Hun-Came commented with delight. “It burned our sacrifices so cleanly… Such a baleful glow. Its embers shall set alight so many nightmares, Iztac. A mighty demon you will become.”

“Let him build a house of fear,” Vucub-Came sang with seven bloody mouths. “With walls of bones and rattling doors…”

“I suppose a successful trial warrants a reward.” Hun-Came rubbed his staff with a cadaverous hand. “Very well, Iztac. We shall teach you the most powerful spell in the world.”

My eyes widened with excitement. “The… most powerful?”

“We bestow upon you the Tomb spell, to raise your own house of trials.” Hun-Came chuckled darkly. “Did you know that you haven’t moved an inch since you arrived? You’ve spent days crawling in the dark.”

“Days?” My eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Impossible… I would have woken up.”

“Space and time are at our mercy in our fair city. An hour in the waking world becomes a day here, or a second.” Hun-Came waved a hand and a field of door frames appeared all around us. Hundreds of passages stretching as far as my eyes allowed me to see. “The Tomb spell lets a sorcerer create a closed domain born of their own soul. A trap that closes its jaws on the caster and their prey. A house with walls but no door, with a ceiling but no windows; a nightmare that only ends with the caster’s death or surrender.”

“A domain?” I glanced at the strange realm in which I was now a prisoner. “I could… trap a Nightlord… inside such a place as this one?”

Hun-Came confirmed my question with a slow nod. “A Tomb reflects its caster’s fears. It is the house of the heart. A land of teeth, a realm of fire… to each their own frightful sight.”

So long as it would consume the Nightlords.

“To know is not to master, Iztac,” Hun-Came warned me. “You will need practice before you can cast this spell, let alone sustain it. Once you do…”

A vile, snakelike tongue slithered between his rotten teeth.

“You will remind the vampires,” he said, “how to fear the night.”

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