[Preshow] The Lobby & the Park

[Karl Jak]

Players arrive at the far end of the 'Lobby', a grand hallway at the centerpiece of a lavish, modern facility that is connected to four large domes. At the far end of the hallway is an elevator that leads up to the barracks on the top floor. Behind the arrival point is the first of these domes, the Park. The Park resembles Central Park and contains a small lodge where they sell picnic goods and rent athletic equipment. Over the duration of the convention, the ceiling of the Park simulates natural-ish, 24-hour day and night cycles. The stars displayed at night would be unrecognizable to 94% of people at the Preshow Facility.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Skylar closed her eyes as the pulsating flash of violet light engulfed her, the whirlwind caress of teleportation making it impossible to distinguish up from down. An exhilarating sensation of soaring and plummeting all at once consumed her form, tearing away her sense of gravity, until she hit the ground with a jarring thud in an unknown location.

Blinking her eyes open, the pilot whistled low under her breath, taking in the scene before her. She was standing at one end of a long, grand hallway, its walls lined with panels of gleaming, state-of-the-art technology and its polished floor buffed to a near blinding sheen. Employees buzzed about the area in their crisp uniforms with determined strides and animated chatter. A palpable energy surged all throughout the facility, the staccato echoes of voices and hard footsteps ringing off the high ceiling like rifle fire.

At the far end of the hall stood an elevator, beckoning her onward. Skylar took one step in that direction, her boots scuffing loudly against the linoleum floors, then paused mid-stride.

Her head tilted to the side as she realized something important. Something very important.

There was a suspiciously empty mech-shaped spot next to her. What the slag?

Scowling savagely, the holomatter avatar jerked an arm up to frantically tap at the side of the dual horn-shaped headpiece attached to her skull, her violet-painted fingernails scraping against the cold, hard metal. A resounding ping sounded in her mind— reaching out, searching for any sign of her robotic body's location— and an answering ping came shooting back a split-second later, buzzing sharply around inside her skull.

Somewhat muddled by distance, but not emanating from somewhere like, say, another planet entirely. That didn't mean Skywarp had fragged up and left his real body on Cevanti, at the very least, but what it did mean was that someone else had gotten smart and decided to send him someplace else, leaving his hard-light projection behind. Without his say-so.

The pilot whipped around, hot fury radiating off her in veritable waves as she advanced upon the nearest unsuspecting employee, eliciting a startled yelp as she seized him by the front of his stupid purple uniform. With a cruel grip, she hauled him up by his shirtfront until their noses were mere inches apart.

Her iron grip dug into the soft fabric, distorting it beyond recognition as she held him aloft. The man gulped visibly as the tips of his shoes just barely scraped against the floor.

"Where," Skylar hissed out, her voice dipping low and laced with venom. "Is my mech?"

The man, blinking rapidly in the face of the pilot’s wrath, managed to croak out an explanation around her strangling grasp; they'd rerouted her mechanical body's teleportation to the engineering bay, apparently with completely innocent intentions.

"It was easier for us to make repairs that way," he gasped, nervously patting at her arms in a feeble endeavor to make her relinquish her hold on him. "Besides, it couldn't, er, fit in the elevator, would it...? Can you just— put me down now? Please?"

Pursing her lips together into a moue of annoyance, Skylar glowered menacingly at him as she mulled over his words. Finally, however, she did end up loosening her grip and allowing him to stumble back onto his feet.

"Which floor?" she snapped, resisting the urge to tap her foot in impatience. That would be too much like Screamer, after all, and while she was a little worked up at the moment, she wasn't about to resort to glitchy behavior.

Shuffling backwards and out of range of anymore grabbing attempts (stupid, there wasn't a single place in this entire facility where he could hide from Skywarp,) the man pointed towards the elevator down the hall. "Uh, just show them your credentials down there and they'll get you... wherever you need to be going."

Skylar's gaze darted across the hallway towards where her metallic body should have been standing, still unsettled by this... fleshy organization's casual manipulation of the outlier ability she'd been sparked with. Narrowing her eyes with a sudden and fierce determination, she abruptly turned on her heel and marched toward the elevator, not speaking another word to the man or anyone else.

"Welcome to Dante's Abyss!" the man called from behind her, rubbing at his sore neck. He scowled at her retreating back. "... Fuckin' lunatic."

 

[John Connor]

Kyle felt weird stepping off the transport for the first time without removing his clothing. He felt like kneeling on the device and waited for the teleport to take him supposedly to another time. Seconds past and an annoyed, too cheery man waved a hand in front of the Tech-Com soldier’s face.

Kyle winced as he pushed himself up and blinked “Ugh, what year am I in?”

The man blinked, covering his urge to laugh “You are still in the year 2023 and you are in our Dante’s Comet’s lobby.”

The soldier groaned and muttered something. “Shit.”

The man raised an eyebrow “No, sorry this teleportation device doesn’t take you to 1984.”

Kyle’s eyes bugged out for a second and it made him slightly angry “How the hell did you know that?!”

The man looked bored and placed a finger on the board “Mr. Kyle Baum, right?”

The tall, buzz-shaved head of the man was confused and slightly angry that none of these would help solve his mission before, but this Connor trusted him with his life. He couldn’t let this version of Connor down.

The soldier slightly hissed at the light peeking in his eyes, and it felt like decades, years since he’d seen anything so beautiful. The trees looked like they were in high definition, all the buildings around him were all in decent shape and he smiled for once in his life.

“It’s real, all REAL!”

The man shook his head “What kind of people we getting this year? Do they all sniff grass?”

The solider sighed and ignored the man for a second, taking in the sunlight where maybe the place wasn’t recked by Skynet for the first time in his life.

“So where is my robot, sir?”

The man pointed another way toward a lab “Show your credentials, they should lead you that way.”

The soldier nodded and walked toward the lab.

 

[Shallan Davar]

Shallan had come to the conclusion that civilization was a good thing.

Yes, it came with its own challenges. It disturbed creature populations and was rife with both inequalities and contradictions. And yes, it even required dealing with the endless stream of horrible people that society created. But twelve hours ago, she’d been frostbitten, starving and mired in the residue of what was, apparently, a planet-eating apocalypse. Now she was warm, clean, safe and dry, freshly dressed in a havah that SynTech had provided her.

They’d even paid attention to detail and included a safe pouch on the left sleeve. Granted, the purple color scheme and the noticeable SynTech logo weren’t particularly Vorin in style, but she wasn’t about to complain about the accommodations. It had taken a tremendous toil of self-discipline to not just sleep through the whole day. Well, the whole artificial day-cycle at least. For the first real time since she’d arrived in the Crossroads, Shallan was existing in some measure of actual comfort.

All it had required was signing up for mortal peril and the likelihood of her imminent demise. That little wrinkle was the thing that had ultimately forced her to rouse herself and actually consider her situation. If she was really going through with this then she couldn’t pretend that she was fully prepared, could she? Her fingers played idly off the silver collar she’d been outfitted with. It blocked her stormlight completely, and even her mental link to Pattern had been silenced. He was still there, arrayed on her havah in his usual tessellations, but she couldn’t hear his voice, nor did he seem to respond to her questions. She was on her own out here.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Every now and then she got the occasional ripple of thought from her new partner. It was muted, like trying to describe a picture through several frames of smoky glass. The SynTech doctor had said this was intentional, for “cerebral acclimation” to better prepare them both for working together in the coming trials. The fact that this year’s conflict wouldn’t require her to fight personally was excellent news, but the unknown nature of her partner was a mounting concern. He was evidently something of a personality, but the SynTech personnel had insisted she should prioritize her own recovery before she met him directly.

Oh yes, very easy. Just don’t think about the giant monster we’re bonding to your brain!

At the very least they had several colors of distraction available for her. Different curiosities competed for supremacy as her hand hovered over the elevator buttons. The recreation floor would likely be as full of delightful chaos as her time in the carnival, but Shallan wasn’t really feeling like bright lights at the moment. The more practical side of her was screaming that the library would be the place to find answers. So many of the Crossroads denizens seemed to just accept that people ended up here from so many different places. From so many different worlds, even. Surely she couldn’t be the first one asking how, could she?

In the end she ended up choosing neither. The park would be the right place to clear her head. Maybe draw some of the passers-by. It wasn’t refusing to plan, it was preparing her mental state for the appropriate future endeavors.

 

[Eszter]

After the atrocity that Syntech’s scientists had excitedly presented to her, Eszter didn’t think she could stomach one more second of looking at the cold steel walls and unfeeling machines that confined her former self. Stomach still turning in knots, the dragonkin stormed into the nearest elevator and slammed the buttons hard enough to deform the panel.

If she couldn’t stand being around the clinical halls of R&D, the obvious solution was to head to the exact opposite location: the park. A good walk through the hinterlands (which often devolved into a physical confrontation with some random adventurers) always helped clear Eszter’s head when she was seething with rage. Maybe this would be close enough.

The elevator doors slid shut, giving the demi-dragon an unhappy reminder of the sliding blast doors that poor Karakul was locked behind. It broke her heart like nothing else that she was so helpless to do anything about her condition. Were she a younger whelp, no doubt she’d have broken down in tears by this point. But she was older now, tougher. She didn’t get sad and cry.

She got angry.

Before long, the doors slid open and Eszter stepped out into the lobby, murder in her eyes. Unphased, a handful of interviewers and paparazzi began to swarm around her, buzzing with questions about her identity and how she felt about the competition. The vermin were quickly silenced when she snatched one of their microphones and crumpled it into a mess of scrap and wires with a bare hand.

The dragonkin’s demonstration got her to the park unbothered, at which point she was able to give her judgment of the place.

Meh.

It certainly looked like a forest, but there was a certain sterilised feeling that was seemingly increasingly common for Syntech as she continued through the facility. Everything was too ordered, too curated. It looked how your average Joe expected a forest to look rather than how a forest would actually look. It was the forest of someone who wanted to avoid a lawsuit.

Eszter couldn’t help but huff at the situation, crossing her arms under her chest and grinding her teeth a little in frustration. It was a surprisingly far cry from the Hinterlands she called home, which only served to exacerbate her annoyance.

Sensing herself beginning to spiral, the demi-dragon stopped herself and took a deep breath.

“At least give it a chance.” she hissed internally. “Maybe those Syntech guys know what they’re doing. Maybe they have some spreadsheet that tells you how to maximise relaxation in your parks.”

Glancing around skeptically, Eszter picked a random trail and started walking. Though there was some signage, the difference between the ‘scenic trail’ and the ‘nature trail’ was lost on her to the point where she didn’t even bother to check which one she was taking.

Admittedly, the dragon queen was not going into her stroll with an open mind. It probably wouldn’t have been untrue to say that she was being unfair to the work of the poor horticulturists who put all their time and effort into creating and maintaining the park.

Unfortunately, Eszter wasn’t really in the mood for self-reflection. From the first step she took down the trail, all she could focus on were the faults of the park, perceived or otherwise.

“There’s got to be, what, two species of tree here? Maybe three?” she complained to herself, either oblivious to or unconcerned by her own lack of arborist experience. Perhaps both. “And look at how well-lit it is here. You’d get maybe half this light in the hinterlands.”

Then, abruptly, Eszter ground to a halt and clicked her tongue irritably. This wasn’t working. If anything, it was only making her more irritable. What she really needed to vent her anger was to break something, anything. The demi-dragon briefly considered hurling herself at a nearby tree until it came down but she had a feeling that Syntech wouldn’t take too kindly to that.

Settling for second best, the dragonkin began to search around for a nice rock to break. Sadly, everything she could spot in the immediate area was the size of her head or smaller, nothing satisfying to smash. Grumbling to herself, she continued on the trail until she found a reasonably sized boulder, about a quarter of her height. She couldn’t help but note that this boulder was in a substantially less deserted spot of the park than the others, though she found it difficult to care.

Striding over to the stone, Eszter knelt down before it and grabbed it in both hands, gritting her teeth furiously. The dragonkin took one deep breath, pictured the rock as Karl Jak’s smug face, and then released her inhalation as a wrathful scream. She then promptly brought her head down like a mallet on the rock. If her shout hadn’t drawn the attention of the few people milling around, trying to enjoy the park, then the sound of bone slamming against rock certainly would.

“Fuck! You!” she spat, head butting the rock again and again, accenting each strike with a word. “Piece! Of! Shit!”

Each blow formed more and more fractures on the rock until, with the last expletive, she cracked it like an egg, leaving nothing but rubble and dust in her hands. The dragon queen knelt there for a few moments, panting hard to catch her breath.

Ok. Now she was feeling better.

 

[Shallan Davar]

The park was a wonderful contrast of colors. It seemed that most plants here in the Crossroads were the lazy and sluggish kind. They left their leaves exposed at all times, fearless of any storms that might be coming. It left the world very green to Shallan’s sensibilities, but it wasn’t unpleasant to look at. Unlike the sterile, artificial feel to the gardens she had come across on Inverexe, there was a… healthiness to the air here. If spren existed in the Crossroads, she had no doubt the green lights of lifespren would be crowding the area.

And the sunlight! Yes, it was artificial or filtered or something. She hadn’t been familiar with many of the terms that were used during the explanation. But fake sunlight or not, it felt outstanding! Shallan spent more than a few moments just wandering the clearings, soaking in the scenery. It was such a welcome change to the cold dead stones of the hollow moon.

Eventually she settled down on a riverside rock, not far from one of the main roads through the park. She glanced about with an almost greedy eagerness as she pulled her sketchbook from her satchel. There were so many options for drawing around her here. As a warmup, she began to sketch one of the nearby trees. Its branches hung loose over the waters like tumbling hair. It was so unnatural! A strand that long would be torn free by any highstorm that passed by, no chance it would be strong enough to support that weight.

Jasnah would have kept her attention focused on a single goal, that tree was already worth studying alone. Shallan’s interest had already shifted, however. An eddy in the riverbed was accumulating a growing collection of swirling leaves, with a nice array of yellow-green colors. Correctly capturing the glisten of the river proved difficult for her with just a charcoal however. After some time spent struggling with the sketch, Shallan pronounced it done for her own sake and cast about for her next subject.

A small chicken alighted on the branch of another tree nearby. It was one of the brightly colored ones, black with two bold red stripes upon its wings. This particular chicken’s song was a wonderful trill, and Shallan simply listened to it for a bit, watching as it moved about with amazing precision. Shallan blinked, capturing an image of the chicken since it did not seem the least bit inclined to pose for her. It was warbling eagerly, bobbing its head this way and that as it examined the world from its vantage. She began a rough outline sketch of the chicken’s plumage, and had just started to work on defining the branch under it when a series of loud noises started the chicken into flight again. Thanking the heralds she’d already taken an image while it was stationary, Shallan blinked again. This time to remember some of the chicken’s motion while it was airborne.

With her future sketches preserved, Shallan turned her attention to the source of the disturbance. A strange red woman knelt not too far off glowering over the rubble of a shattered rock with satisfaction that left Shallan little doubt as to who had broken it. Almost before she had realized it, Shallan was walking over, an inexplicable curiosity had taken hold of her. She was too close now to be discrete in her observations. The boulder-shattering woman had already spotted her coming and her eyes narrowed. The rock had been shattered to pieces, but the woman did not seem to have any tools to have caused such destruction. Was she that powerful?

“Are you with the staff?” She gestured to the Syntech logo that had been emblazoned on the clothes they’d provided Shallan. “You’re really going to tell me I’m not allowed to break a rock?”

“Oh! No no. Not honor-bound, merely branded.” Shallan brushed off the accusation with a smile, “Our host seems to be quite fond of his own name. Quite a bit of vanity, if you ask me. Well, vanity or insecurity. A toss-up between the two, really.”

The small red woman snorted, “Alright. What do you want, then?”

Shallan winced inwardly. A few sentences and she was already letting insults fly. The boulder-breaker didn’t seem to be fond of Syntech, but even so Jasnah would be supremely disappointed with how Shallan was going about this. Shallan dropped into a brief curtsy.

“Shallan Davar. Lost daughter of Roshar and appreciator of mmm… let’s call it high impact sculpting techniques.”

“Eszter…” The woman responded, glancing back at the rubble in case she had accidentally created some art with her destruction, then brushed some dust from her hair.

Storms, had she head-butted the thing?

“Well, you’ve certainly proven your method significantly faster than the river at crumbling stone. Though I can’t imagine the headache that must have caused.”

“Didn’t feel a thing.” Eszter stated with some measure of pride, “Just had to work some things out.”

“Was the rock the thing that needed to be worked out? Or your head?” Shallan quipped before she could stop herself.

“I’m sorry. Rock-splitting headaches aside, I assume that boulder was a stand-in for someone significantly more fragile…?”

“Yeah, but they’ll get what’s coming to them.”

“I’ve no doubt, it seems like a message to be personally delivered. Are those real horns?” Shallan interrupted herself with an eager interest. That must surely have been the reason she had been so suddenly curious upon noticing Eszter, “Or rather… How are they real horns? You don’t slouch, aren’t they storming heavy?”

“What? Yes they’re real horns! They are proof of my lineage and birthright as dragonkind!” Eszter scoffed.

Shallan felt a ripple of interest flow through her. No… it wasn’t her, that word held no meaning to Shallan. The interest was just in her mind. Was it her bond that had spurred her into conversation with Eszter? The woman certainly seemed disinclined to company at the moment.

“You’ll forgive my astonishment then! I’ve seen boulder’s broken before, but usually they’re accompanied by torrential rainfalls and screaming winds. I don’t believe I’ve seen so much destruction in a… Well, I’ve not seen someone of your kind before. If you don’t mind indulging my curiosity, what exactly is a dragon?” She glanced again at the boulder then up to the woman with a smile, “Aside from headstrong, I suppose.”

 

[Eszter]

Eszter silently regarded Shallan for a long moment, staring at her with a mix of disbelief, skepticism, and curiosity. Having gone your whole life without having even heard of a dragon, it was just unthinkable. If she was telling the truth, she couldn’t help but pity the poor girl.

“Are-” the dragonkin started before stopping herself, resting her hand over her mouth for a few more seconds as she continued to try and process what she was hearing. “You’re not kidding, huh?”

“No, no I’m not.” Shallan replied, shaking her head with a mystified look on her face. “Is it really such a surprise? Perhaps, in this world, every house comes with a roof, a door, and a dragon?”

“Tch, wouldn’t that be something. Just leave out the vermin living there and that’s the dream.” Eszter muttered, keeping the latter half under her breath. Well, if this Shallan girl was truly clueless on draconic matters, then it was her responsibility as queen to educate her. Dusting off her hands, the demi-dragon rose to her full height, looking the stranger over. Shallan seemed a good few years younger and a good few inches taller than Eszter. This irritated her, as most things did, but it was at least on the shorter end of annoyances.

“Right, well, dragons are headstrong, sure.” the dragonkin nodded. “And strong, and beautiful, and majestic, and-”

“And humble?” Shallan ventured, the corner of her mouth quirking up into a small smirk.

“Humble?” Eszter repeated, raising an eyebrow as the jab sailed over her head. “Dragons are the most incredible creatures in the world. Humility is… unnecessary.”

“Ok…” Shallan nodded, unimpressed by the praise Eszter was showering on herself. “But that doesn’t really tell me what a dragon is.”

The demi-dragon stopped in her tracks, realising just how carried away she had been getting. She would have gotten more carried away given the opportunity, but she begrudgingly decided to answer Shallan’s actual question.

“Well…” Eszter began, already knowing where this conversation was going. “Dragons are really magical, so their exact appearance varies a lot, but generally they’re huge reptiles with horns, claws, sometimes wings, and the ability to exhale some destructive force like fire or lightning.”

A heavy silence hung in the air after her description as Shallan stared at Eszter and Eszter stared at Shallan.

“Did you leave the claws at home?”

“It’s complicated!” the dragon queen wailed before the girl was even finished, ready for the comments. “My past selves were proper dragons! But the vermin on Erde Nona can't go ten minutes without trying to kill a dragon and my essence faded until I could only reincarnate like this!”

Shallan blinked, opening her mouth to voice a smart comment but finding that she had none to give. There was a lot to unpack there. Not only had this (dragon?) girl been hunted down and killed several times, but it had caused her to turn from some big winged lizard into a person?

Curious.

“What was that like? Do you remember your past lives?” Shallan asked excitedly, leaning in a little further. “Were you born like this? Were your parents-”

“Whoa, Ok, Ok.” Eszter replied, her anger being overcome by her surprise at Shallan’s intensity. “I can’t remember my last lives, and my parents were elves… Er, basically graceful humans with pointy ears…”

The demi-dragon trailed off a little at the end, wondering if elves existed in Shallan’s world and forcing herself to explain what they were in humans terms. Truthfully, humans were more like blunt-eared, clumsy elves to her, but that would have done little to help Shallan.

“So… you didn’t come out of an egg then?”

“No.” Eszter shook her head. “I was actually born completely normally for an elf. No dragon traits. It sucked, looking back at it.”

“Did they grow in then?”

“Yeah. Puberty was rough.” the dragon-kin winced, gently rubbing the bases of her horns. “Oh, and no, they’re not that heavy. Not to me, at least. I’m pretty strong.”

“Interesting.” Shallan murmured, rubbing her chin lightly before chuckling lightly to herself. “Maybe one day your claws and wings will grow in too.”

“That would be nice.” Eszter sighed longingly, looking at her decidedly blunt nails before glancing up at the younger girl, squinting at her skeptically. “Wait, are you taking this seriously?”

“Hmm? Of course!” Shallan said, raising her right hand innocently.

“Hmph. You better be.” the demi-dragon sniffed, crossing her arms. Yet another long silence hung over the pair as Eszter gazed off into the distance, deep in thought. Grinding her teeth a little, she raised a leg and gently placed her boot against a tree. Anger brewing, she lightly pushed against it and pictured herself smashing the thing in two. Then, without turning to Shallan, she broke the silence with a question. “So, you’re a competitor. Met your bond yet?”

Then, before she could answer, the dragon queen tacked another thought onto the end of her sentence, throwing ‘proper’ etiquette to the wind.

“Let me tell you, mine is a fuckin’ doozy.”

 

[King Ghidorah]

Rory waddled through the lobby, webbed feet slapping softly on the polished tile. His beaky face was mostly unreadable, but in all honesty he was a little disappointed. Were these swank digs? Absolutely. They were the swankiest digs. He could not have asked for swankier digs. – but they were also corporate digs. Was the domed parkland behind the teleport -banks impressive, expertly manicured and tended to, and doubtless a triumph of both engineering and horticulture?

In a word, Yes.

Was Rory going to spend any time there? Pfft. Fuck that noise. Rory knew the score: if he stayed in the more commercial parts of the convention center, someone would eventually try to sell him a t-shirt, and he’d end up selling them a t-shirt, and eventually he’d get in trouble because he’d hacked too far into Syntech’s public-facing retail operations.

He wouldn’t be able to help himself. Businessd00ds gotta business, d00d.

Messing with the Carnivale was one thing – the Man in Red, fathomless douche though he might be, was a scoundrel and a showman. Karl Jak, for all his charm, was another matter entirely. There was a deep well of intrigue there that reminded Rory far too much of The Old Days.

So, instead, the penguin was proceeding briskly down the causeway, pausing occasionally to appreciate a fire-and-exploding-text Dante’s Abyss XIV hologram or to admire his nametag, on a little lanyard about his neck, which he felt had really captured a flattering likeness.

Rory didn’t actually know much about what the competition was going to be like this year, other than that it involved giant monsters and robots, and that he’d gotten in by advertising something else he actually didn’t know much about – the connection that he and probably at least 40% of the Penguin-presenting population of his far-flung native cosmology shared to ancient tentacled bullshit from beyond the intergalactic void.

It really, really didn’t come up much. It was one of those pieces of general knowledge a person might have about themselves that didn’t actually have much information attached, like knowing that your family used to be famous for making pies: it didn’t mean you knew the recipe, or even necessarily what kind of pie, or whether or not the pies were actually any good at all. Maybe people in the old country just had really shitty taste, right? You and all your cousins could know about the pie thing, without actually knowing anything at all about the pie thing.

Being a little bit Eldritch was Rory’s pie-thing, and it had suddenly become important that he find out more about it. Fortunately, according to the little pamphlet he’d retrieved from a convenient rack beside the teleport docks, there was a solution close at hand.

Rory was going to the library.

 

[Shallan Davar]

There was only the briefest of hesitations before Shallan shook her head in response to Eszter's question. She quelled Veil’s murmured warnings about revealing information to the enemy. She didn’t know enough about how this all worked to be that guarded. After all, the Death Game had allowed cooperation, this could be a chance for her to make an ally.

Friend, she corrected herself.

“Not yet. They wouldn’t let me. Something about mental fortitude and easing me into it. They seemed under the impression that letting me stew in curiosity was the better way for me to prepare.”

“Well, screw that noise.” Eszter replied with a snort, picking up a small rock, and crunching it with her fist.

Shallan relaxed again. This wasn’t the Alethi courts after all. Sometimes people were merely asking questions because they were curious, not to gain leverage over the one answering. And besides, Eszter didn’t seem like the type who would be prying for information nefariously. Honestly, it would be a pretty good approach for her to use as a disguise if she needed to in the future.

Making a mental note of that idea, Shallan sat down on a nearby, non-pulverized rock.

“What’s the problem with your bond, then?”

Eszter’s mood darkened again at the question.

“What do you know about this little contest they’re arranging?”

“It’s dueling, on a colossal scale.” Shallan shrugged, “It’s not particularly pleasant but arenas like this have been popular among many civilizations throughout history. It’s not very-”

“About the theming of this contest specifically.” Eszter hissed, stopping Shallan short. She had been trained for these kind of conversations though, and she only missed half a beat before she continued.

“Every one of the contestants is receiving a bond, either a mechanical construct or a monster to direct in the fighting ahead.”

“Monster…” Eszter repeated, “And just what makes something a monster? The opinions of vermin who do not understand what they’re beholding?”

“It’s… quite a subjective word, I would say…” Shallan admitted, “I’ve met people in the guise of monsters, and monsters in the likeness of a person. To say that-”

Which one are we?

The thought appeared in Shallan’s head unexpectedly, emerging from the depths of her memories that she pretended not to remember. There was the faintest buzz of warning from Pattern.

Shallan blinked.

“Sorry, I mean…” Her words faltered slightly. Eszter was looking at her. How long had she stopped in the middle of a sentence?

“I… think that monsters can come in many shapes.”

“Like those that disturb the bodies of the dead?” Eszter growled, “Vermin that would dare to distort something greater than themselves for their own ends!”

Shallan frowned, “That does sound like a monstrous act, yes…”

“It is an atrocity. And they will burn for it.” Two statements, both made with definition as Eszter crouched, clearly still seething, “They could not leash a healthy incarnation of Yucatan. So desperate for power. They’ve done the same to your own bond, no doubt.”

Shallan had to stop herself from laughing out loud.

She started, confused as her own revulsion at the horrors Eszter’s words described was met in force by a surge of prideful scorn.

Come and see!

“Come with me then.” Shallan spoke, her tone deadened slightly by the effort to normalize her emotions.

“What?” Eszter glanced up with minor confusion.

“You know where they are keeping the bonds, right? The Syntech doctors told me to wait, but I don’t feel like it after hearing this. If they’re keeping us apart it might be for their own benefit, not mine.”

Shallan grinned eagerly, hoping to her feet despite the havah dress.

“Let’s see what they’re hiding!”

 

[King Ghidorah]

The Forbidden and Esoteric knowledge which had settled into Rory’s brain like it was subletting his occipital lobe had some very definite ideas about how the next part was supposed to go. There were things which Rory needed in order to achieve his final form – a tarnished crown, a cracked orb, a twisted scepter, and a broken sword.

It was supposed to be a whole thing. He was supposed to quest across the cosmos, driven to progressively greater heights of frenzy and eschatological madness as the weak-minded flocked to his avian shadow, purchasing whatever overpriced home-shopping-channel garbage he wanted to sell them as they persecuted a grim crusade across time and dimensions in search for the keys to the increasingly-sinister penguin’s terrible destiny.

Prior to his ascension to the Terminal Throne he was supposed to become a figure of horror and religious ecstasy, dragging his broken chains across the stars in pursuit of Final Imperium.

It was pretty metal, and Rory had always wanted to be important, had never known when to stop. He wasn’t necessarily opposed to the idea…as long as his old boss didn’t find out.

Bringing about the end-times was all well and good, but as a businessperson Rory well knew that there were some d00ds you just didn’t annoy if you could help it.

The Forbidden and Esoteric Knowledge was confused, however, because it could intrinsically sense that all those things that Rory was supposed to chase, becoming a dark and twisted unliving parody of himself along an inverted heroes journey, the touchstones of a preparatory gauntlet to craft the perfect instrument of the End, all seemed to be conveniently gathered in a little box in a basement under the convention center.

Some asshole had collected the keys to an ancient and terrible lock and gift-wrapped them for a penguin who, lacking the context of a dark and violent aeon spent searching, wasn’t really ready to be the thing they would turn him into. Or at least, not in the way the authors of this nihilistic prophecy had intended.

Rory was fine with that, too: Given the choice, he’d much rather be in show-business. Being a dark messiah sounded too much like government work, and he’d sworn off that racket years ago. So, following the thread of a severely disappointed web of occult intention, the penguin proceeded back along the lobby, waddling along the tile until he reached an escalator attended by a burly Syntech employee wearing an understated suit and a bright-blue pixy-cut wig.

“Only contestants beyond this point,” they rumbled.

Rory flashed his nametag, lanyard dangling from his flipper. ”That’s me. I’m a commodity, d00d!”

The man crouched down and squinted at the ID, then squinted at Rory. The gears in his head were visibly turning.

“You promise that’s you in the photo?” the guard said, giving up on his attempt to differentiate one penguin from another.

Rory put his lanyard back on, and rummaged around in the satchel he wore at his waist, producing a 1:4 scale figure of himself out of the bag. He pressed a button on its back.

“It’s totally me, d00d,” said the figurine. “My likeness is a copyright nightmare!”

The guard straightened up, nonplussed as Rory returned the figure to his bag, and unclipped the velvet rope. “That was the smoothest surrealist shit I’ve ever seen – so I’m just going to assume you’re the only talking penguin on the asteroid. Go on in.”

“Thanks d00d!” said Rory, and rode the escalator down into the dark.