MINI-GRAND 8801: ROUND ONE - GRIMEWORLD

Crimson shades fluttering in the wind wave merrily, mindfully, gaily, slightly, readiness ruddiness realizing Ravi Reeves was revolving in space in the center of a room with walls just out of arm's reach, the wooden planks worn and weak. Weeks, months, years must have passed in the time since another human eye set foot in this place. Naturally, this didn't count the inhumanly large orb embedded in the wall closest to Red's revoluting body, tendrils of pink flesh blending with knots in the gray wood. The pupil, roughly the size of Red's fist, dilated and contracted from a pinpoint so small he could barely see it to a black maw so large he could see the optic nerve terminate at the far end, over and over. A voice crammed its way into his mind in a way that would be terrifying if he had been new to voices in his mind, which he wasn't. Not by a long shot.

YOU ARE THE TRESPASSER. YOU WILL BE PROCESSED. YOU DO NOT BELONG. YOU-

HAIL! IT IS I, THE GREAT NOSTALGIO! WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR A STORY TODAY, CHILDREN? Red clutched his head in pain as his own psychic extrusion rose to meet the psychic intrusion, throwing off the bedcovers and waving the psychic equivalent of a psychic blunt razor. Red's own feelings on this front were not relevant.

WHAT? The eye grew visibly bloodshot, and the giant pupil darted from side to side.

I HAVE TALES APLENTY! YARNS TO SPIN! NARRATIVES TO CRAFT! 'EYE' THINK PERHAPS YOU MIGHT LIKE TO HEAR OF THE KINDLY OPTHAMOLOGIST? OR MAYBE A CLASSIC?

YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO-

THE FANGFALL PERHAPS? MAYBE THE STORY OF A LOST LAMB, THE ANCIENT 'MARY', WHO WENT TO SCHOOL, AND GAVE BIRTH TO JESUS, WHO HAD FLEECE AS WHITE AS SNOW?

The eye's movements grew more erratic under the unexpected onslaught. The walls of the room itself shook, and Red saw the planks themselves move, retracting one plank at a time. Underneath the floor, he saw chittering creatures with shiny carapaces flowing like horrible water, abandoning clutches of mysterious eggs to cluster close about the retreating eye. Between the fresh gaps in the walls, he saw now, was no place like he had ever been before. High above him, beyond a ceiling that was falling to bits - no, it was more creatures, plank-shaped creatures, chasing after their optical master - was the bottom of a gray-brown canopy stories high, interrupted with columnar trees as wide as mansions that pierced down to an almost unbelievably littered ground below. Rotting leaves, all various shades of black to brown to gray, rusting shards of metal that might have been machines once, even the occasional picked-over bone-white bone, too large to be human, too small to be fakery. There were no birds and no birdsong, but everywhere there was eggshell, spattered clutches of broken and calcified hollows in the moldering dirt and grime that might have passed for nests in the pale, thin light.

He fell to the ground with a thump as the eye's retreat passed some threshold, and smashed a few of the eggs under him. He caught a glimpse of some small, wriggling thing, a cross between a coin and a spider, thoroughly unlike anything he'd ever envisioned for the Untold World.

...this was the Untold World, right? The place of which no stories had yet been made? It had to be. Otherwise, his existence was meaningless. He was here to learn the story of this place, he decided right then and there, since it was the route that involved less screaming in his brain, and return triumphantly home. Or return home, at any rate.

"Kill..." Yes. That had been what was asked of him, in return for safe passage home. He knew how to do that. Many, many stories dealt with how to kill, and how to do it well. Red reached down and picked up the half-formed coin-spider. Its legs twitched, pathetically, and it was lighter than he expected. Perhaps just a spider in the shape of a coin, he surmised.

It tasted fine.