Wandering Warrior: Judge - Chapter 40

Chapter 40

The aura device didn’t seem to bother the Warden as he came down the stairs.  He was forced to deal with the undead trying to swarm him just as much as we were, but his whip sliced through them like they weren’t even there.  It had to be powerfully enchanted, on top of him pushing a hefty amount of mana into it.

“James, I think that’s the guy I told you about!”  Leedy shouted back over his shoulder at me while he fought against a vampire that was using a femur like a club.  “He’s probably the one who hurt the mayor and his family!”

“What’s he talking about?”  Cross moved so quickly that his sword was a blur to everyone but me, clearing some space so we could talk for a few uninterrupted moments.  His job was made harder because his weapon was starting to warp from all the action we were seeing, probably made worse from clanging off the hardened bones of the lich earlier.  “Who hurt what mayor?”

I cast another row of earthen spikes a little farther out on our rear to reduce the pressure on the others while I answered.  “A type of magic informed me that the werebear family we met was injured because of me, so Leedy and I made an educated guess that it was some guy named Greasy.”

“You mean Gleason.  Commander Gleason, the man in charge of the Greendown Division of the White Wardens.”  Cross squinted at the armored man slowly making his way over to us in a storm of violence.  “That certainly could be him.  It… sounds like something he would do, and he does prefer using a whip.”

“Well, you know what I’m going to do to him if he really was the one.  Are you going to be okay with that?  Or are you going to try and stop me?”  We were interrupted when I had to deal with another zombie thrown by a vampire who had been hiding behind a pile of rubble.  Using a bit of mana around the blunt end of my spear, I whacked it away like a gruesome version of baseball.  The vampire wasn’t expecting the line drive to come right back at him, and the pair of undead went down in a tangle of limbs.  “That’s at least a double.”

Cross brushed off the baseball commentary and looked at me seriously.  “James, I…”  He looked down at his stump of a hand for a moment, ignoring the battle around him.  When his eyes met mine again, they were harder than stone.  “I don’t know if I will ever forgive you for taking my hand, but I understand now why you did it.  You brought me low, and showed me the rotten foundations I stood upon.  For that, I thank you.”  He glanced back over to the whip-wielding Warden who was now more than halfway across the basement to us.  “And to answer your question, no.  I won’t help you to fight the Wardens, but I won’t stand in your way.  Especially Commander Gleason.  In fact, I’ll make an exception for that one.  He’s everything that’s wrong with them, all rolled into one person.”

A section of the floor suddenly dropped, cutting off the direct path Gleason had to where we were standing.  The ground shook as a meaty arm flopped onto the ground, and the mother of all super ghouls poked its head out of the hole in the ground.  “Well, shit.  I better go handle that.  Think you can stop mister fifty-shades of gray reject over there while I handle goliath?”

The man never even batted an eye at the movie reference.  That alone sold me that he was well on his way toward developing a sense of humor.  Hallelujah.  Either that, or he was just getting used to me.  Cross simply gave me a sharp nod and started fighting his way over to where he would intercept Gleason as he circled the new pit in the ground.  I sprinted forward toward the giant ghoul, dodging a heavy punch that turned the zombies that were too slow to get out of the way into hamburger meat.  The monster was too big to get out of the pit, but that didn’t make it any less of a danger.  If anything, it made killing the stupid thing even harder.  I would normally hamstring something this big, then take it apart piece by piece.  Since that wasn’t an option, I had to play whack-a-mole with me filling in for the mole.  Every time I dodged a swing, I took a chunk out of the monster’s arm.  It had those annoyingly sharp bone spurs covering up most of its exposed flesh, making the task even more difficult.

Eventually, the ghoul made a mistake.  It raised a hand to crush me, and one of its bone spurs got caught in the ceiling.  The delay cost it an arm.

“Ass whoopins’ for sale!  Only costs an arm and a leg!”  I cackled in glee as I cast an overpowered wind blade and followed up right behind it, using my spear blade to slide into the elbow joint and remove the limb with a pop.  It made with the angry roars of pain, and I danced out of reach while it flailed around.

I glanced over to check on how Cross was doing, eagerly looking forward to the epic showdown.  The culmination of my redemptive efforts.  The proverbial straw that would break the camel’s back of corruption.  The crescendo of my labor to reach one lone Warden for the betterment of humanity.  The snowflake that would unleash the avalanche of change in this world.  I could even hear the orchestral sound track in my head as Vader confronted the Emperor.  Grinning in anticipation, my eyes landed on the two embattled foes.  The grin slid from my face and into the same confused head tilt of a dog watching its owners doing the horizontal mambo.

They were just… yelling at each other?  What is this shit? A domestic dispute?  Did daddy slap mommy at the dinner table?  Get your shit together guys, and make with the stabbing!  I rolled my eyes in exasperation as I dodged another reckless swing from the ghoul, its brain not computing that it was missing a good four feet of the distorted appendage.

“You were always a disgrace to the Wardens, Cross.  But I can’t believe you would deny the Oracle!”  Gleason halfheartedly snapped his whip at Cross, who dodged it easily.  “I’m going to enjoy showing you what it means to betray your oaths!”

“I’m the disgrace?  You’re barely human!”  Cross tried to dart forward, slashing at Gleason’s leading leg with his sword.  His boosted speed surprised Gleason, but the White Warden’s armor easily deflected the hit.  Cross danced back as the whip cracked through the space where he had stood.  “I’ve heard all about the things you’ve done to people.  The lengths you’ll go just so you can hurt someone.”

“That’s because they deserve it!”  Gleason’s whip cracked out, and this time Cross couldn’t dodge in time.  It cracked across his left forearm, scoring a line of searing pain just short of where he was missing his hand.  “I’m the only one willing to go far enough to dig out the corruption you allow to rot!”

Whatever happened next was between the two of them, because I had to deal with a one-armed giant ghoul that figured out it could pick up its own severed limb and use it like a club.  The good news was the wild swings were easier to dodge, and cleared out any interference from the other undead crowding the basement.  The bad news was it got a lot harder to do any damage to the stupid thing.

I had to use another wind blade to cut the back of the ghoul’s wrist as its arm swung past, cutting deep enough that the momentum caused the joint to give way.  It tore its own hand off, sending the heavy arm it had been using as a club into a cluster of zombies near the stairs.  The ghoul watched the lost limb disappear with a forlorn look on its face, so I used the opportunity to throw my spear through its eye into its brain.  I must have hit something important, because it went limp.  That might sound stupid at first, the spear went through its friggin’ brain after all, but the last super ghoul I’d fought had still stepped up to the plate with half its head missing.  Apparently this one wasn’t in the same caliber.  It must have used all of its ‘super-ness’ on getting big instead of tough.  I was also not prepared for it to die that fast, so I didn’t manage to dodge out of the way when it collapsed forward onto me.

“Umph!”  My breath exploded out of me as the heavy corpse squished me to the floor.  I was stuck under its chest and shoulder, with only my right leg and arm sticking out like a squashed bug.  I immediately tried wiggling myself free, but my armor was caught somewhere on one of the ghoul’s bone spurs.

Of course, that’s when a zombie noticed me and tried to take a chunk out of me, the opportunistic bastards.  The undead creature tried to drop down and bite my face off, so I punched it in the chest.  Even without good leverage, the dry and desiccated animated corpse was dusted.  I looked past the crumbling body and saw Cross wasn’t doing so well against Gleason.  It was looking like it wasn’t going to be a clean breakup.  Damn I hated the clingy types.  I hoped Cross learned his lesson well, you never put your metaphorical religious dick into crazy.

The much better armored White Warden was like a bull, charging at Cross and waiting to see where he dodged before cracking his whip at him.  Cross was bleeding from multiple wounds, mostly across his arms and legs.  The black veins throbbing under his skin leaked a dark sludge that was streaked with his blood.  Cross occasionally got a few hits in, but he was overmatched.  His poor Captain’s Sword was getting wrecked against the enchanted armor protecting Gleason, making it even harder for him to inflict any damage.

Knowing that there were going to be more frisky undead trying to get a piece of me, I doubled down on trying to wiggle myself free.  The awkward position I was in made it way harder than it should have been, so I started to carefully raise earthen spikes under the ghoul, being careful not to stab myself or shift more of its weight onto me.  Just as I was about to get free, I heard Cross shouting.  “No!  James, look out!”

That bitch Gleason had realized that I was the home-wrecker and I was now trapped ass-up in the dryer, and was about to big dick my general vicinity.  I wasn’t about to go out like that.  I pushed harder at the dead weight with both my strength and magic, a thrill of fear and premonition shooting down my spine.  He yanked a medallion of some kind off of his neck, forcing a simply gratuitous amount of mana into the thing, if the sudden influx of energy I felt was any indicator, and lobbed it underhand at me.  Commander Assbutt just stole a page out of my playbook.  The White Warden had just overloaded a high-quality rune device, and it was going to explode.  It seemed to tumble through the air in slow motion, gathering in power as it flew over the hole in the floor.

The moment drew itself out into a sharp, silver-edged thread, as though pulled by fate itself.  Even the trajectory was perfect, the mana straining the failsafes of the rune sequences, more than sufficient for its grim purpose.  My bulging arms were bars of forged titanium as they strained against the weight pinning me.  But it was the weight of the moment that truly held me in thrall.  I shoved mana into the earthen spike spell, pushing the ghoul off of me and slicing a deep cut across my left hip as the bone spur that had caught on my belt was yanked free.  I’d already known the bitter truth from the time the medallion left Gleason’s fingertips, however.  It wouldn’t be enough.

My mind spun with calculations and angles, the vast weight of personal experience working each possibility in the potential of that one moment–and in the end, came up wanting.  A grim determination settled on me even as my focus never diverted from the four and a half rotations the medallion had made in its flight.  I was going to have to–

The broken, bent, and chipped blade of a Captain entered my narrowed vision like a mandate from the heavens, striking the artifact as if to deny the very gods themselves.  Cross’ bloodied and battered body had made a decisive lunge, his movement so fast that he was blurred, even to my superhuman senses.  Unbowed, he struck at Gleason’s surprise attack while a steely resolve furrowed his creased brow, even as he over extended himself, dropping any pretense of defense.

Stunned, I couldn’t do anything but watch as Cross slapped the medallion away in mid-air with his sword, scoring the already strained runes and causing the artifact to explode.  The blast sent him tumbling head over heels, bouncing off of the torso of the ghoul I had finally forced to the side.  I heard the crunch of bone and tearing muscle as he ricocheted away, and came to a sliding stop a few feet away.  Like a morbid bank-shot on the world's worst pool table, the body of the ghoul was forced closer to the sunken pit it had crawled from by the collision, pitching grotesquely as it slowly dropped back into the hole in the ground, disappearing from sight.  I limped over to Cross and grabbed him before we could be swarmed by more undead, dragging him back to where Jess and the others were waiting.  Gleason was immediately forced to fight off a fresh wave of zombies, led by a regular-sized super ghoul that forced him back for the moment.

“Are you two okay?  That was crazy!”  Jess ran over to help me pull him into cover.  “What was that explosion?”

I checked over the unconscious man, seeing that he was in rough shape.  The impact with the ghoul had definitely broken some ribs, and the whip injuries looked pretty bad.  Somehow, he was still holding on to his sword.  I was genuinely impressed.  “That was Cross, making a choice.  Even with my shield bracelet, there’s no guarantees I’d have come out the other side of that explosion in one piece.  Last time, he dove in front of a spear for me, knowing that the big bad guy had been defeated.  He understood me, even then.  Knowing he would be healed.  This time, he didn’t know how this fight would end.”  My voice began to shift in tone, the patterns of speech becoming something more, something old and resonant with power.  “He chose a Path, even though he knew not the way, he found it nonetheless.”  I looked carefully at Cross, and made my decision.  I might regret giving up so much mana all at once in the midst of battle, but I could make it up with a few minutes of uninterrupted focus with my mana generator.

The mantle of my Judge Profession settled heavily on my shoulders, and I grabbed Cross by his empty wrist.  His eyes snapped open, the sudden pain shocking him awake.  “You were judged for violating your conscience.  You chose an easy evil, a wrong action, insteading of making a hard, good, and right decision.  Hiding behind an organization you were a part of to give yourself the ability to justify murder.”  Cross tried to pull away from me, but I didn’t let go.  “The purpose of your punishment was so you could see the error of your ways.  And while there are many methods to fake true repentance, I believe you truly have seen the error of your actions.”

Cross stopped struggling, and didn’t try to pull away as I bit my inner cheek and spit the blood on his stump.  He coughed, trying to clear his abused lungs.  “How do you know I’m not faking it?  That I’m not pretending to have changed?”

“Because, Cross.  You’ve seen both sides of the coin now.  You have judged people in the past, been judged yourself in turn, and didn’t let it break you.”  I drew a circle across the top of his stump with my palm, smearing my blood and spit.  Water and life.  “Then, you did something that showed what is hiding inside yourself.  When you described Gleason, you said ‘he’s everything that’s wrong with them.’  Meaning, you don’t count yourself among ‘them’ anymore.  You went and fought him, giving it your all.  Then, when you were given a choice, you picked the wellbeing of another over yourself.  I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t sound like you belong with the Wardens anymore.  And it just so happens I know an organization that’s very low on members that you can join.”  I waited a moment while he processed what I told him as I readied the ritual.

My eyes were lodestones that gripped and held his, even as the magic took me–the words ancient and not wholly my own.  “Alexander Cross, former Captain of the Western Wardens, the Judged and Redeemed, the Crippled, Lich-Touched, and now, the Worthy.”  I had never even known his first name, the knowledge was suddenly there, provided by the magic of the ceremony.  The mantle of Judge throbbed with power, the swirling ambient mana of the region ebbing as it coalesced around the two of us.  Magic gathered into a primal Working, outside my control.  It was a function of the Old Ways–a magic so fundamental and primordial that its roots ran into the very core of each world I had been sent to.  It was a power so old and deep that the scraps of information I had gained on ancient tablets and sources tucked in dusty corners of elven libraries had hinted that it came from the same place as the gods themselves.  That power–no, that Power–now gathered around Cross in a shroud, and called to him as it had called to me all those years ago.  There weren’t words, but it was a contract and a commandment all the same.  It was a Covenant wrought in the very foundations of existence itself.

I held up my right hand.  “Do you so swear to uphold the tenets of righteousness and justice?  Do you swear to defend the weak and the oppressed, to show grace and mercy towards the innocent?  Do you swear to Judge their oppressors and the unrighteous, and to take up the heavy burdens of responsibility?  Alexander Cross, do you accept the Office of Judge, and all of the inherent authorities, requirements, and privileges therein?”

His eyes widened when he realized what I was offering.  A chance to become a Judge.  The words came to him, the same way they did me.  From elsewhere, and everywhere.  “I make this blood oath of my own free will.  I swear to be a defender of the weak, a guardian to those unable to defend themselves.  I swear to be a warrior for good, a bulwark against those who wish darkness upon the innocent.  I swear to punish the unjust, fairly and without bias.  I swear to balance the scales.  I swear to be a Judge.”  He gave me an almost imperceptible nod right before the mana I had called–but didn’t fully control–rushed into him, flooding his body with healing energy.  Time seemed to slow as I undid what I had before, changing it so his hand could regrow.

The majority of the gathered mana funneled into Cross and broke into uncountable threads that wove their way through his body in a way I couldn’t hope to understand.  The Old Ways were making a Judge.  I focused my attention on what I could control.  His healing.

At first, everything was fine.  His broken bones and various wounds acted normally.  I tried to heal the rest of him while I was working, but the black veins didn’t want to cooperate.  There was immediate resistance from the necromancer’s energy, and I found it impossible to push it out of his body.  As his hand regrew, the dark magic left the rest of his body and funneled into the regrowing flesh.  No matter what I did, I couldn’t force the foreign power from him.  Instead of spending more time duking it out with the black energy, I formed a shell of energy to block it from reentering the rest of Cross’s body, and ensured his own mana would keep it powered.

Figuring out a more permanent cure would have to wait.  As I released him, the still moment that had been created burst like a soap bubble, and I pulled him to his feet as we both had to immediately defend ourselves.  The brief lull was over, and the two of us fought furiously for several seconds before we could speak again.

“What did you do?”  Cross held out his new hand.  It was a solid dull black, as if it drank in any light that touched it.  A perfectly straight line divided normal healthy tissue from the black flesh right below the bend of his wrist.  “It feels cold.”

“I don’t know what happened.  The lich’s power wouldn’t leave, but I managed to lock it all away into your new hand.  Can you use it?”  I watched as he tossed his mangled sword back and forth from one hand to the other, without fumbling it.  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“There’s no sensation.  It’s numb, but I can still move it.”  Cross rushed forward to kill three more enemies that got into his range.  I noticed his speed wasn’t what it was a few moments ago, but it was still more than normal.  When he came back, he was shaking his new hand.  “It’s going to take some getting used to.”

“Can you cast magic again?”  I saw the realization hit him that his magic might be available to him once more.  He just shrugged.  “Well, try it out.”

“I don’t have my gauntlets.”  Cross saw the look on my face and his mouth closed with a click of teeth, immediately giving up on getting his old gear back.  He flicked his wrist, casting what I recognized as his slapping spell.  The nearest zombie that was trying to make its way between earthen spikes got folded like a paper airplane, dropping to the ground with a crunch.  We both looked at each other with pikachu-surprised face.  “Yes, I can do magic again.”

“I’d say so.  Looks like someone got an upgrade.”  I looked carefully at Cross’s hand, and noticed that the pristine line separating the dark and light skin wasn’t quite as defined.  Him using magic must have disrupted the power keeping it separated from the rest of his body.  “Although, you might want to hold off on too many spells until we understand for sure what’s going on with you.”

Cross immediately saw what I was talking about and quickly agreed.  We then had to fight off another group of zombies and one more vampire.  I looked back and saw that Leedy and the others were looking tired, but they were still in the fight.  After healing Cross, my energy levels were barely below a quarter, right at the threshold of where I wanted to be to handle the lich.

The undead I could see still numbered in the high hundreds, but the piles of corpses were making it more difficult to tell.  In that regard, the lich was actually helping us.  His eldritch power would occasionally flash out, devouring the defeated to empower those still able to fight.  If he hadn’t been doing that, we might not have been able to move just from the sheer weight of bodies.

The White Warden was dealing with that exact issue at the moment.  He was bogged down less than fifty yards away, but couldn’t get any closer due to how crowded it was around him.  His whip was certainly effective at taking down the undead.  That didn’t make it a bulldozer capable of pushing stuff out of the way.  If I was going to fight Gleason myself, I would have to go to him.

“Cross, take this.”  I handed him my spear.  His sword was barely better than a strip of dull metal by this point.  “Try not to break it.”  He gave me a nod and I turned to the others.  “Hey, I’m going to block off your side.  You three come help Cross hold this side while I fight the other guy.”

A quick spell later and we were all bunched up on the only open side of a cube.  Everyone was amazed at Cross’s new hand, but there wasn’t time to explain much.  Jess grabbed me by the arm before I could leave the relative safety of our little fort.  “James, be careful.  The White Wardens have a reputation of being tough for a reason.  You saw what he did to Cross.”

“I’ll be fine.  You just hold the line.”  I pulled free of her grip.  “This won’t take long.”  I planted my foot against an earthen spike and drew both my ninjato and mace.  The familiar weight of the weapons felt comforting, and mana unconsciously danced along the mace before sparking over to the ninjato where it was absorbed.

I used the earthen spike as a springboard to launch myself toward Gleason, bowling over the undead in my way.  My shield bracelet almost immediately overloaded, shattering at the multitude of impacts.  The gap I had made closed up behind me, but I was already within striking distance of Gleason.  It took him a moment to comprehend what had just happened, which gave me enough time to hit him with an uppercut from my mace.  It caught him in the breastplate, flipping the Warden onto his back with a heavy thud.  His breath exploded out of him, and he struggled to get back to his feet.  “Commander Gleason, I presume?  You and I have a few things to discuss.”

That was the exact moment the flickering aura finally gave out completely.  The undead rushed me with a vengeance, and I was forced to defend myself with my full concentration.  Just because I was super strong and fast didn’t mean I couldn’t be overwhelmed by huge numbers.  The strongest human ever was still only an even match for an average vampire.  While I had broken the shackles of the strongest human, I still had limits.  The prolonged fighting was beginning to wear on even my enhanced strength and endurance.

I lost sight of Gleason for a moment, until the Warden erupted from the crowd with a flurry of sweeping whip swings.  He managed to catch me across the back of my left arm with the tip of his whip on a backswing I underestimated, and I almost dropped my sword from the sudden shock of pain.  His weapon packed a real punch.

“Mired in the filth of the plague of undead?  It’s no wonder why the Oracle wants you dead.”  Gleason cast a spell that was enhanced by his armor, and his speed doubled.  He blurred forward, but his long whip was hindered by the surging undead.  My shorter weapons didn’t have that problem, so I stabbed at his leading leg with my ninjato as my mace blocked his swinging arm.  Surprisingly, the magic-eating sword didn’t penetrate right away.  “Just as the disgraced Captain Cross learned, you are no match for the ancestral armor of the Gleason Family.  It has been improved for generations, and–”  The tip of the sword finally ate through whatever was blocking it, and the strength of my arm allowed it to puncture straight into his leg.

“I’m going to make you pay for what you did to those werebears, asshole.”  I twisted the sword before ripping it free, tearing an even bigger hole in his armor.  He staggered back, where a super ghoul was waiting to grab him.  It tried to bite through his neck armor, but Gleason’s family actually had done a good job at reinforcing it.  I killed a vampire and some zombies that tried to grab me as well, just in time for Gleason to break free of the ghoul and kill it with his whip.  I set myself, flinging gore off of my weapons.  With a growl, the two of us rushed at one another, and light flashed in the darkness as his whip cracked.

Trying to trap Gleason, I held my sword out from my body to make it an easy target.  He took the bait, his whip snapping out and wrapping around it as he tried to yank it from my grip.  Lightning danced along the edge of the blade where it met the whip, and he quickly pulled it free before his weapon was destroyed.  He was an idiot, anyway.  Anytime you’re in plate armor, you should be more concerned with blunt weapons.  Like, say, a mace.

I could tell Gleason had been trained to use a shield, because he reflexively lifted his arm to block my mace.  He wasn’t using a shield, so my hit crunched into his elbow hard enough to move his whole body sideways about six inches.  The sudden pain and whiplash stunned him, so I hit him again, this time aiming for his thigh.  I really put some mustard on it, and I heard his femur snap as his armor buckled against my full strength.  The runes seemed to be more for magical and piercing attacks than blunt damage, so I took full advantage.

He dropped to the ground with a scream of agony.  To give the guy some credit, he managed to whip me across the face in his fall.  It caught me right under the chin and followed my jaw line all the way to my ear.  The cut burned like it was on fire, but my Vigor stat was already fighting against it.  A twisted and malignant magic infected the cut, making the pain spike excruciatingly.  It was a disgusting use of magic that could only belong to a sadist.  I swiped a finger across the wound, concentrating as I cast a quick spell that cut off sensation around the wound, undercutting the magic at its foundation and not giving the spell any handhold to execute its dark work.  His whip being imbued with this spell in particular reaffirmed Gleason’s position as a bug that needed stepping on.  It also made me want to rip his head off with my bare hands as I imagined its use on the mayor and his family.  A healing spell later would make sure I didn’t have a scar.

I had to kill some more undead that had closed in before I could do anything else, but when there was another brief lull I stood over the top of Gleason and met his eyes through the gap in his helm.  “I would normally go through a long spiel about how I’m a Judge, and it’s my job to punish those who do wrong.”  My mace rose and fell, crushing the femur of his other leg.  His scream of pain was cut off when I slapped him with the flat of my sword blade.  “Considering the situation, I don’t think all of that is necessary.  I’ll just skip to the end, where I sentence you to death for being an absolute piece of shit.”  Two more quick blows and both of his forearms were shattered.  “I should leave you like this and let the undead finish you off, but I don’t have the time to make sure they do it right.”  I stood up and readied my mace to crush his skull, which was more merciful than the little rat deserved.

“No!”  Gleason flailed around, trying to stop me.  “It can’t end like this!  I was meant for more!”

“You were meant to be a protector, fuckstick.  Instead, you became a nightmare to the people you were supposed to protect.  Try to do better in your next life.”  I raised my mace over my head, but before I could swing it down the floor under him gave way.  Meaty tentacles from some undead abomination reached up from the sub basement, forcing me to scramble back so I didn’t join him.  His screams disappeared as he was dragged away into the darkness below.  “Okay, I guess that works too.”  I gave a shrug and my mantle faded into the background.

More cracks were forming, showing the places where the sub basement had been dug out by the undead.  Over by the stairs, I saw a group of White Wardens fighting.  They weren’t making much progress, and seemed to have a denser mix of vampires than my group did at the rear of the basement.  It was definitely time for us to get out of there.  This was no place for the living.