About Shhhh! Digital Media

This content is produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and written by Brian Joseph Johns. There is no Shhhh! Digital Media in New York that has anything to do with this Shhhh! Digital Media in Canada, not to mention I've never been to New York.

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Tales Of The Sanctum: The Era Of The Spellbound - Episode 2: Friend And Foe Alike (Updated May 20, 2025 4:30 PM EST) - Written by Brian Joseph Johns

[Spellbound - Siouxie And The Banshees]


Do you like enigmatic characters, engrossing story, magic and the ever atemporal weave?

Play Baldur's Gate 3 [On Steam]


Chapters

  1. Play On Words
  2. Blindness To Sight
  3. Assembly
  4. A Walk In The Park (coming soon)

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World Veterans Federation
The World Veterans Federation is a humanitarian organisation, a charity and a peace activist movement. The WVF maintains its consultative status with the United Nations since 1951 and was conferred the title of “Peace Messenger” in 1987.


I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.

"None can speak more eloquently for peace than those who have fought in war."

Ralph Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize 1950
The Reeve Foundation provides programs for research, uniting Scientists and Specialists from many different fields to find treatments for spinal cord injury translating them into therapies and support programs.


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ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a progressive neuromuscular disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary muscles paralyzed. The ALS society provides a variety of programs to combat this disease and help those with it to survive.


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The Edgar Allan Poe Museum
Because Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I could kill him and bury his heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of Amantillado! 

In all truth, there's a good chance that thanks to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herbert George Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Clive Barker and Pierre Burton (for The Secret World Of Og and his ground breaking interview of Bruce Lee) that all of us are literate. Actually that goes back much farther to the Phoenecians and their first 22 character system of symbols. Literacy is important. Really it is. Literally. It allows us to approach our employer at the end of the week (with a big club) and ask: where my money?! Math important too. It help us count our thirteen fingers and toes.


Wikipedia
The model for what may become the Encyclopedia Galactica, a complete reference and record of history, events and knowledge of humanity and its journey beyond. It is the encyclopedia of all that we know, what we surmise that we've known and will learn in the future. Yes, Wikipedia is a charitable organization of great importance. If you enjoy what I am doing here then please take the time to donate to Wikipedia. Surprisingly only 1% of Wikipedia's users donate yet the site serves pages to millions every day.


Humble Bundle
A video gaming storefront benefiting a vast variety of different Charities in the United States and United Kingdom (hopefully soon to be expanded to include other areas of the world?). By software their software bundles and choose which Charity your money benefits and how much of your money benefits that Charity. See? Gamers can do their part too.


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Shhhh! Digital Media

Brian Joseph Johns



Tales Of The Sanctum

The Era Of The Spellbound - Episode 2: Friend And Foe Alike


A Play On Words

May 19, "Year 13"
Halliford School Assembly Hall
Shepperton, London, England


Neville and Wes sat sixth from the front, to the far left of the assembly hall benches. Students of all shapes and sizes surrounded them in front, back and right, each similarly engaged though not all were doing the same. Some were listening to music while others were socializing before the arrival of the summer break. Some were simply reading while others were quickly writing, perhaps their notes for the remainder of the exams, for this was the end of Year 13 for all in the hall.

"There's one on right! Quick! Get him mate!" Neville urged Wes, using the joy pad in attempt to back away from the advancing boss.

"I'll hold him off while you heal... Hurry!" Wes responded, clicking the joy pad frantically with his fingers.



"What on Aerth are you doing?" asked Nelony, who'd appeared beside them, leaning against the back of the bench after the long hike from her locker on the other side of the school.
"Its Nintendo 3DS. We're playing Final Fantasy Explorers... Quick get back over here! He's almost done and I'm down to like a scribble of health!" Wes answered Nelony, then returning to their game, gnashing buttons in attempt to take down the boss.

"Are you guys playing together?" she asked them, somewhat perplexed by the devices.




"We are playing together, because there are no 'I's in us or 'we'," Wes responded, thinking he was clever.

"That's because there's two of them... get it mate?" Neville responded, thinking he'd been clever.

"No. I don't. Do you mean your character in the game has two eyes?" Nelony responded, still confused by the game as much so as Neville's quip, for she knew little about gaming, let alone handhelds or consoles.

"No! I mean like the Nintendo Wii!  There's two "i"s in Wii," Neville replied to her, explaining his joke.

"Don't mind Nev. He's getting kickbacks from Nintendo now..." Wes replied to Nelony, buttons clicking.

"YES!!!" Neville stood from his place on the bench, his hands in the air in victory.

"What happened?" asked Nelony when Neville had finally returned to his seat.

"We just took down like one of the hardest bosses!" Neville replied, a fountain of crystals erupting from the remains of the deceased boss.

"Slide over and give the girl a seat," Wes said to Neville, pushing to the right as far as he could before colliding with another student.

"Where's Shaela?" asked Neville, sliding over as close to Wes as he could tolerate.

"She's on her way. She forgot her notes," Nelony replied as she sat down beside them, wearing a new plant necklace.



Blindness To Sight

May 19, "Year 13"
Halliford School Assembly Hall
Shepperton, London, England


Yes, I know Shaela seems to be holding her makeup a little bit different,
but everything Shaela does is a little bit different.


Shaela stood in front of the mirror, leaning in close as she touched up her lipstick, lining the bottom of her lip precisely after which she examined the eye shadow beneath her brows.
She then pressed her lips together and checked that they were even before replacing her kit in her purse. She then placed the ear buds back in her ears and hit play on her iPod, turning around to leave the bathroom before the assembly started.

As she was about to take her first step, she heard a voice from behind her.

"yoooou bare the sigil..." the voice was hollow and wispy, trailing off into infinity.

She quickly turned around and was met only by her own reflection in the mirror. She looked around, then removed the ear buds from her ears, ensuring that it wasn't embedded in her industrial goth playlist.

"Must have been the shadows..." she said, shrugging her shoulders then turning around to leave again.

"yooou have knowledge of shadows..." this time the voice emanated from everywhere, still hollow and dark.

She quickly turned, trying to catch whoever it was off guard and jumped back when her eyes met the mirror.

Instead of her own reflection, there was a pocket of the deepest darkness she'd ever seen on the other side of the mirror, its silhouette accenting the shadows in the bathroom, while the bright places had grown in their contrast.

She shook her head and in that instant, the phantasm was no longer there, replaced by her reflection once again.

Her heart had picked up pace and she felt the first tinges of fear, as if she were being watched. 

Followed.

She turned and ran for the door, bolting through it without looking, stepping directly into a doorway of darkness of the same enveloping depth.
She screamed as she felt herself falling, hoping that she was still at home in bed, in the midst of a nightmare when her feet suddenly found purchase on stable ground. She suddenly realized that she hadn't been falling at all, but that the wind had somehow tricked her into believing, despite the fact that she could not see a thing.

"a clue for you... there is blindness only in complete darkness or complete light..." the voice returned once again, this time sounding not hollow and lost, but enriching and encouraging.

Shaela pondered the words, staving off the tinges of fear that gripped her, when she realized that the darkness was her.

"that's it... recall the light..." the voice advised her, trailing off into the reaches of the unknown.

She closed her eyes, and concentrated, recalling a trip to a country farm with her father. She was a little girl, running through a field, trying to keep up with him as he tried to corale one of the horses back towards the barn.

She laughed as she watched him chase the beast, which only seemed to be playing with him. It paused long enough to let him get close, and then when he was in reach of the horse's mane, the beast would trot off with barely a slight effort to avoid the tall and imposing man.

On this particular occasion, he'd reached for the horse, which then began to run, twisting away from his grip before he'd established it. Of course by that time, he was off balance and had struggled to recover, running frantically in the hopes his legs would catch up with his upper body. 

Instead, he slipped in a patch of long flattened grass (where one of the other younger horses had chosen to bed down for a short rest earlier) and fell flat on his bottom, much to Shaela's amusement and delight. She laughed at him as he sat there on his petute, he too snickering at the outcome.

"...dad?" Shaela reached out to her father only to find herself once again in the darkness.

This time however, something had changed.

Her eyes slowly adjusted as the contrast of the darkness within and the light of her memory filled her vision, and though the darkness still remained, she could see within perfectly, as if it were day.

She was in another place not familiar to her. It looked neither like the Aerth, nor the lands of any novel or movie she'd imagined or seen. She saw the world around her as varying shades of darkness and light, and off into the distance where mountains lined the horizon, spiky and jagged. 

A dark foliage and bedding lined the surface upon which she walked, though it did not grow from the ground, but rather from a fluffy ball the size of an apple, a half foot above it, reaching downward into it from the air. As she stepped forward, it spread to avoid her step, leaving her a path into the unknown.

She then heard something growling, her fear instinctually peaking at that moment, for she knew that she was no longer alone, and that she'd become prey.

A thing out of the darkest horrors bigger than a horse arose from the dark turf, the kind of which would have sent Lovecraft himself screaming as he ran, perhaps stopping just long enough to admire it before fleeing again. Its head was like that of a large snake, wide and flat, but as it elevated itself from the turf, its head split in two, moving about along a pair of long necks, and Shaela realized that this beast was not one, but two, intertwined. Like some kind of co-dependent life form, it was clearly curious and mostly likely hungry to try her flesh.




It began slowly at first in her direction, picking up pace as it moved along six serpentine legs each with a long sharp spike at its end.
Shaela stood rooted in fear, when something in her screamed at her to run, which she did.

She turned daring not to look back at the advancing horror behind her, but by her sixth step she could already feel its tendrils brushing her back. She pushed herself, turning her head ever so slightly just in time to see that the two headed thing was coming at her from both sides. At that point, she knew it was over and yet she still kept running.

It bore down upon her and when its teeth had barely pierced her school uniform, something of immense ferocity, even more frightful than the two headed thing that pursued her moved the air around her as it leapt, landing nearby.

She closed her eyes and huddled her arms to her chest, bracing herself for the pain that preceded the afterlife.

But it never came.
She waited and waited and waited, and when she'd worked up the courage to open her eyes, she took a peek.

She turned to see what had happened to her pursuer and found that the horror was no longer there. 

Instead, there was something large and dangerous that had already covered a great distance as it moved away from her. The deceased two headed monster dangled lifelessly from its jaws as the beast that had hunted it disappeared into the darkness.

Shaela suddenly found herself nauseous, and as she watched the beast depart with its meal, she backed up, tripping over one of the strange plants and falling flat on her rump in the hall outside of the bathroom doorway.

She found herself suddenly blinded in the light and as her eyes once again adjusted, she recognized the empty hallway of the school. She quickly got to her feet and picked up her purse and her knapsack, and then ran as fast as she could for the assembly hall.

Assembly

May 19, "Year 13"
Halliford School Assembly Hall
Shepperton, London, England


Shaela came running through the assembly hall doors, slowing to a stop when she saw the crowd gathered within, finding herself calmed by the presence of so many people. A very rare thing for such a young woman who enjoyed her solitude.

She looked aft and fore and side to side until she spotted Nelony's familiar blonde hair, seated beside a tall fellow and a shorter one. She stepped quickly over to the benches where the familiar faces of her friends were situated, finding that there was barely enough room for her to be seated.

"Slide down! I just had an experience...!" Shaela said to Nelony, who looked up to her with a look of concern.

"Let me guess, you couldn't find your notes? Fret not, 'cause I can photocopy mine and share them with you," Nelony smiled, already going through her knapsack looking for her notes.

"No. That's not what I meant... Nev? Wes? Could you push down a wee bit for a lady?" Shaela corrected Nelony and then pried the two young men for space on the bench.

"Sure thing, Shaela," Wes put down his Nintendo and turned to the large rotund boy sitting next to him.

"Look mate. Could you just push down a bit please?" asked Wes of the boy, who turned to face Wes with a look of disgust.

"You think with my weight that real estate comes at a premium do ya? Can't do!" he responded with a thick Scottish accent.

Wes turned to Shaela and shrugged his shoulders, as if she'd asked him to achieve the impossible.

Shaela folded her arms impatiently.

Wes thought carefully about how he could solve the situation, looking out of the side of his eyes at the rotund boy, suddenly noticing that he had an expensive collection of pens in his breast pocket.

Wes went into his bag and found his writing utensil bag and dug through it until he found a folding felt-covered box. He opened it and within was an expensive pen that had been gifted to him by his father for his grades in math and computers. He turned to the boy once again, and tapped on his shoulder.

"Look mate, this is reeeally important. If you can coax the rest of the bench to move down, I'll give you this pen. It cost my da more than a few quid," Wes offered, holding up the elaborately embossed pen.

The rotund boy looked at it, squinting for a moment and then took it from Wes' hand, examining it closely before he answered.

"That's a fine one it is. Deal!" he responded, turning to the people sitting to the right of him and coaxing them down the bench.

"Come on ya lot! Make way or make for the door!" he urged them all to shift down by not one space, but two.

Wes and Neville quickly took up the slack and Nelony followed suit, sliding down a couple places for Shaela, who then sat beside her, pushing close enough to discuss her previous experience.

"I just had another... how can I say it? It was like that time with the supply teacher. When he tried to take Wes... but horrific... I was in another world..." Shaela explained to Nelony frantically.

"Where?" asked Nelony, now very concerned.

"I don't know. It was like a world made of shadows..." Shaela answered her.

"No, I mean where did this happen?" Nelony elaborated on her question.

"Just outside of the bathroom near my locker. It was like a doorway into another world!" Shaela exclaimed, drawing Neville's and Wes' attention.

"Look, could you keep it down!" Neville exclaimed to Nelony, trying desperately to signal her, pointing to the front of the assembly hall.

"Are you a complete chad! Shaela just had a traumatic experience again!" Nelony stood for effect, suddenly realizing that the occupants of the entire assembly hall were staring at her.

As she looked to her left, a woman with long flowing black hair and a stylish pink dress sat in the space beside Shaela at the end of the bench. She looked to Nelony and just like Neville had, pointed to the front of the room, a look of cautious amusement on her face.

"And who are you to take our seat?" Nelony suddenly felt defensive, addressing the new arrival, who this time gestured to the front of the hall, nodding her head in its direction.

Nelony turned to the front of the assembly hall to see the school Principal standing at the podium, the spot light on him as he peered over the rim of his bifocals at Nelony.

"Are we interrupting your meeting, Miss Ardbloem?" Mr. Boseford looked to her as the rest of the auditorium sat silently watching her.

The stage fright hit her like a wall. She tried to speak but found herself unable to form any words.

That was when the young Japanese woman who'd sat beside her stood and spoke up:

"I'm so sorry Mr. Boseford, it was my fault. They were expecting another friend when I sat in their place. Being the good friends they are, they tried to coax me to move. What can I say, I'm difficult sometimes," Mila spoke, projecting her soft and quiet little voice remarkably well.

"I suggest that you both sit down and remain quiet so we can start this assembly," Mr. Boseman urged the two women with a serious tone.

The two of them sat down, Shaela between them, who leaned over to Nelony.

"That went pretty well... all considered," Shaela said to her quietly.

"No thanks to you," Nelony responded.

Mila, leaned over towards Shaela and passed her a pile of four hand painted origami blossoms.

"One for each of your friends. You see? Just like mine," Mila tapped to the one pinned to her dress.

Shaela looked to Mila, and then to Nelony, passing the other three to her. She put it on her shirt and gave the other two in Neville and Wes' direction, who smiled and nodded at her.

"Thank you," Mila said to them.

"Whatever for? We should be thanking you," Shaela responded to the soft spoken woman.

"For preventing me from being a liar. I'm Mila Ren Dubel, and I would say that at this moment, we're going to become good friends," Mila smiled to them.




They thought about it, and then understood what she'd meant by her offering.

"Looks like our friend did arrive," Nelony smiled from the other side of Shaela, the four of them quietly exchanging names with each other as the assembly began.

To be continued...

Credits and attribution:

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, Borderline Obsession...

DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Special thanks to Bandcamp

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

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