Phoenix Apprentice

Chapter 19 has been put up! 
          
          I'm still trying to get better. I saw a doctor yesterday who said my lungs are sounding good. The main point of concern is now malnutrition. I lost a lot of weight really fast, and I was already barely above underweight. I've had issues putting on weight and keeping it my whole life, but for a while my diet and exercise habits aligned so that I was healthy for several years. Now I'm not again. My BMI is too low by two points. So it's not the end of the world, but the suddenness of the weight loss is causing my body to freak out a little bit. I wore a sweater outside when it was 70 degrees because staying warm is a chore lately, and I'm really, really weak (loss of all my hard-earned cross country skiing muscles ). 
          
          Still haven't been able to go back to work, so sorry I haven't had any updates from the Arcom. Hopefully I'll get back into it soon. They've been surprisingly understanding.

Hello everyone,
          I put up chapter 17 last night and chapter 18 today. Hopefully we'll be back on a regular update schedule from now on. Being sick with norovirus and pneumonia at the same time for the last two weeks really wrecked me. I've never been so sick in my life, not even with COVID. I've missed two weeks of work and I don't anticipate a speedy return. I can barely keep myself awake during the day, my muscles have slightly atrophied from how long I laid in bed, and my lung capacity is greatly reduced. But I'm at least well enough again to keep working on writing. Mostly I'm just really, really tired of bedrotting and want to get back to my usual routines.
          
          Anyway, that's what's going on. I've never had pneumonia before so this has been quite a venture. Especially since I'm normally extremely athletic and go exercising at thousands of feet above sea level (cross country skiing and hiking). To have my lungs so thrashed like this where I can hardly walk around the block is really upsetting. But hopefully my athleticism will pull me back to normal.

Chapter 15 is up. More time with Talael. Hope y'all had a good week. I have no updates on the job, but last night my D&D party nearly killed the BBEG. They just made a few mistakes that allowed him to get away. Bad news for them! It was pretty gratifying for me as the DM to watch them cut it so close. What an intense session.

Chapter 14 will post today and we'll go back a little bit to what Emily has been up to!

Chapter 13 will post later today!
          
          Another job update for y'all. Something else weird I've noticed about the Arcom--sometimes I find inky cat footprints on the ground. Only in certain sections. Not in any of the public spaces, but in the employee spaces they're sometimes all over the place. Jared (who is the janitor) just kind of cleans them up without saying much about them. I mean, it would feel more normal if there was a cat who lived here. There is no cat. There are no signs of cats ever having been here, either. No hair, no flecks of litter, no cat food. I can't imagine they'd really want a cat in an archival space that's supposed to stay relatively clean. (I say relatively because this place seems to be falling apart--last week a water pipe broke and flooded out the entire fanfic section, undoing all my previous work to organize them. Sigh.) 
          
          But, yeah, again, it's probably more hazing. The weird thing is they also made me watch a training video that expressly forbade bullying, hazing, harassment, and other things like that. And, despite this place having opened in 2005, the video looked like it was out of the 1980s--and it was specifically filmed for the Arcom, at the Arcom! Did they really go through all the effort to film it like a cheesy 1980s training video? I guess that is pretty funny. Anyway, more updates in the future.

Chapter 12 will post soon. I was busy this morning so couldn't get to it until now!
          
          Things still going strangely with my strange new job, as they ever are. At least Judy has laid off the dairy this week and has been in a better mood. I feel bad for Jared (he's the janitor).

Chapter 11 will post tonight. Part 3 begins next week, and we'll see a slight shift in perspective as we visit with another character for a while!

Chapter 10 will post tomorrow! I've got a lot to do tomorrow so best to get it all done today.
          
          As for an update on the new job, my coworkers are pretty cool. There's Micah, and Jared, and Lany, and Hector, and they all seem to know something that I don't. I think I'm being hazed. No, of course I am. I've been looking into the whole magic thing I mentioned in the last post, and as it turns out, it doesn't actually exist. I think they've all got this thing going on where they perform magic tricks just to psych out the newbies. It would make more sense if you all could see the Arcom and what it looks like on the inside. Something about it fosters a sense of spooky weirdness. The building is evidently old, cracks and bad insulation and secret hallways and no central heating, yet I've been told it was only built in 2005. Another hazing tactic? Probably. Anyway, I've been released from my fanfic prison and have moved on to submissions of unfinished books. I'm getting the insistent sensation that Judy's going to want me to finish them. But for now, categorization is all that matters. This place is a wreck.
          
          What a weird job.

Uploaded Chapter 9 today as I've got quite a bit of stuff to do tomorrow--a D&D session and possibly a ski trip (if I'm not too tired from the one I went on yesterday). It'll post at the regular time! Thanks everyone for reading!

Chapter 8 will post tonight! I'm still investigating the situation at my job, the, uh, the "magic" situation and all. So far, all I've really done is read about 800 pages of bad fanfics and work on my books. I think I've annoyed someone, and because of that I've been assigned to this particular section of the fiction archives. Probably Judy. She seems like the kind of vindictive, passive-aggressive sort of person, from what I've seen. When she's not violently ill from consuming sticks of butter. I mean, I think that would make anyone sick, let alone someone whose digestive tract literally can't process half a teaspoon of the stuff.
          I guess I can't complain, though. I'm being paid to read and write, basically. That's what I've always wanted.