Re: THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN CANCELED [S!1][ROUND TWO: ETA CARINA]
01-21-2013, 09:36 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Sanzh.
Timothy Yessic awoke with a start-- he had somehow managed to fall asleep while hanging off from Alaster's shoulders, and he had only remained on by snags in his robe being caught between plates of armor.
He tugged slightly, freeing himself and landing on the floor. The floor rattled slightly, as though in motion, and Timothy quickly noticed the others that were with him-- the weird avian, the pimply wizard, along with a few others. They were in the suited man's van, Timothy realized. As he stood up, he straightened his frayed excuse for a wizard's robe and tried to recollect what had happened-- everything the eight-year-old had experienced since his arrival in Eta Carina had seemed to blend together into a continuous blur of activity. As hard as it was for his prepubescent mind, he tried to remember. He remembered that he had gone out to a warehouse with Alaster when it was repairing itself, and that later they had headed back and done-- something?
His eyes widened as he remembered just what he was part of-- and that he had slept through the meeting planning out what the suited man had called a 'heist'. Timothy desperately hoped that nothing important had happened while he was asleep.
"Kid's awake." Adric Toleth said, his voice thickly laced with disinterest.
Kriok almost stirred in response, before returning to her work and continuing to calibrate and fine-tune the assortment of gadgets the burglary would require. As callous as it was, she had little concern for the juvenile human-- he had the construct to protect him. While he had been asleep, the avian had memorized all of the countless, myriad details of Montcorbier's plan; her cybernetic mind involuntarily recorded every manifold contingency, regardless of whether or not she wished it. She had an entire world of information readily accessible-- from the information Tick and Adric had collected in preparation, to the planned machinations ready for any eventuality, to the host of other preparations that had been done.
In spite of all of the reassurances to the contrary, Kriok was worried.
A taloned hand reflexively scratched against the bandages wound around her abdomen, reminding her of the stakes of failure-- that was all she could think about. For every mental process that analyzed and guaranteed success, there was another set of heuristics scrutinizing the same circumstances and predicting an inevitable failure. Montcorbier's threat to entice her into offering her services had turned into a premonition of an inescapable future-- she wouldn't escape, she'd be trapped in this gilded labyrinth or forced to continue in the fight to the death; she would never receive the freedom she desperately craved. She would never so much as receive the freedom to die on her own terms, a pessimistic cluster of circuit-neurons autonomically derided.
That thought caused her to pause her work, her fabricator-arm loosening its vise-grip around a complicated device. The momentary lapse into total despair made her realize just how tired she was. There had been no time to rest, no time to waste on an obsolete physiological necessity her body had eliminated. But even without needing to rest, the mental strain of her situation fatigued her. She clicked her beak, trying to push aside the accumulated paranoia and stress. Her work resumed, as the avian desperately tried to distract herself. Layers of cortical circuitry cycled towards the notion that this would be the end-- that after this, she would be free.
Kriok began to speak. "How soon until we--"
"We're already here." Montcorbier interrupted. He stood up, straightening his smoking jacket as he did to an appropriately rakish degree. The thief's face was a mask of utter confidence-- as though they had already successfully emptied the casino's vault and the entire escapade had been completed. He was in his element now, and approached his coming task with utmost certainty.
"I suppose this is where I tell you that you're the best there are at what you do, how--"
"U-um, e-excuse me? What am I going to do, again?" Timothy ashamedly interrupted. His arms were nervously folded together, and he had slightly curled up self-protectively.
"--ever I don't think that needs to be said." He finished.
Montcorbier shifted his attention towards Timothy-- he made sure to mentally remind himself that the child's safety was all that maintained his defender's cooperation. His mask-like face shifted once more, becoming something approximating a paternal geniality. "You just need to stick with Alaster, okay Timothy?" He calmly said-- as much as he disliked children, countless years of experience in manipulating others overrode his petty distaste.
Timothy's clockwork guardian imperceptibly stirred in response to its name.
"Oh. Okay!" The apprentice wizard answered. His face perked up with excitement-- he was about to participate in an adventure, about to relieve his suppressed desire for excitement in the most breathtaking fashion possible. The eight-year old's memories of nearly dying at the hand of a demon-wracked abomination were far from his mind, a faint recollection that was now completely forgotten in light of the escapade to come.
"Well then. Let's get to it, shall we?"
The van rumbled to a stop, its back sliding open to reveal a back alleyway-- the distinction could only barely be made, as the bright lights of the nebula above illuminated it nearly as brightly as the harsh fluorescence the casinos emanated. The crowds of tourists and gamblers that lined the main promenades were gone; the heist team was no longer in Eta Carina's arterial passageways, but instead deep within its capillaries.
Alaster was the first to move, scooping its designated charge into one arm and hopping out of the gently-hovering vehicle. The other, more experienced wizard quickly followed, and soon after the cybernetic alien, burdened with a multitude of tools.
"Alaster, why aren't we all going?" Timothy asked, readjusting to his usual position taken when riding atop his guardian.
"They Are Required Elsewhere." The automaton replied. Its stride remained uninterrupted by the child's question. The machine was set in its objective now, prepared to do what was required to permanently ensure his safety-- away from the threats of Eta Carina.
As they walked, Kriok noticed a faded purple crescent painted above one of the doors. After Adric walked through that door, the avian's manifold layers of neural circuitry and quantum microprocessors made an abrupt, nigh-instantaneous realization: she was about to steal from The Traveler's Rest.
---
"She did what?" Maria incredulously questioned. Trepidation marked the receptionist's appearance, from the lines creasing her face to her nervous pacing back and forth as she struggled to collect her thoughts. Yaelja stood opposite her-- her normally neon skin had taken on the shade of a mournful violin dirge. She offered a soft whisper of inky shades, confirming what she had said. The alien's language-- as riotous and disruptive as it was-- painted a very specific connotation in Maria's mind; any alternative interpretations were quickly brushed aside, leaving only the grim reality.
"I-- I see." Maria quietly said, sitting down.
It was nearly too much to take in-- that Kriok had become involved in the heist she had heard rumors of. The alien was far from being a friend, but she still wanted to see her safe. She could offer Kriok a job at the Rest, assist her with making arrangements with Owen, something-- the receptionist didn't know the circumstances that would have prompted her to take up larceny, but she was unquestionably certain there was some alternative. Maria stood up again. She had to try to persuade the cybernetic avian to reconsider. In their past encounters, she was driven by logic-- a twisted, paranoid logic, but her actions were nonetheless spurred by a cold, alien rationality. There was nothing rational about deciding to risk her life, and reminding her of such undoubtedly would be enough to convince the alien to reevaluate.
"I'm-- I'm g-going to find her. Can you tell me where she is now?" The receptionist asked, her uncertainty fading as she spoke.
Yaelja responded with a gradient of indigo hues.
"No. No no no. She's here?"
---
Tschichold disdainfully regarded the rumpled pile of a suit occupying his room. The garments reeked of corporate attitude.
The past day had been miserable for the painter-- at first, he had delighted in the authority vested in him, but his authoritarian delight had burned out quickly. Whatever joy could be extracted from ordering around the crews of artists and decorators had faded as he realized that, no matter how much direction he gave them, they would never truly produce art-- only the dilute reproductions of teams of sellouts. It was all so overwhelmingly mainstream, even under his direction. The entirety of Eta Carina's artisans-- the shallow, capitalistic assholes that pretended to be artists-- would never produce so much as a infinitesimal scrap of art. Two minutes of angrily vented invective punctuated the room's silence, as Tschichold gave a voice to his stream of thoughts.
"My god, I'm-- I've... I've gone corporate." He finally sputtered out.
The realization, as plainly manifest as it now was, startled Tschichold. He wasn't aware of it at the time, but the very act of accepting a wage for his labor compromised every principle he stood for. His glowing eye squinted, trying to focus as his mind struggled to work through its drug-addled haze and remember just what were the principles he had violated. A hoofed foot irately tapped against the floor's synthetic wooden paneling, as Tschichold's lines of thought were lost in a sea of overblown, melodramatic irritations. His violent despondence only magnified and reverberated as he thought about how petty his actions had been; he had compromised everything he stood for and the most he had done as penance was bitterly complain to himself.
He wished his paints were stored, if only to have the pleasure of ruining his stock of supplies-- and even as he thought that, his mind pessimistically taunted him for his best thoughts of revenge being nothing more than some minor property damage.
The nebula and sparkling edifices of Eta Carina glistened as Tschichold turned his attention to the window. Even in his perpetually-bewildered sensory state, the view was pleasant enough that he could push aside the mental notion that it was all an extravagantly-constructed capitalist mockery of true beauty. As he stared out, one of the countless glittering spires caught his attention-- nothing about it seemed immediately striking, it was just as impossibly tall as every other one of the towers. The only distinguishing feature it had was the violet crescent on its facade, it shouldn't have interested him as it now did.
Tschichold realized just how offensive the building was-- its architecture was that cultivated, corporatist design intended to be as benign as physically possible. The painter imagined the no-doubt countless hours spent with focus groups designing a building that would not alienate any prospective customers. Art was supposed to be offensive, not something like the innocuous, soulless spire of silver and glass he now saw in front of him.
In an instant, Tschichold stormed out of his room. He had every intention of doing something about the towering offense to his vision. Whatever parts of his mind that had the foresight to consider consequences were drowned underneath the thoughts of revulsion as the painter inexorably marched towards The Traveler's Rest.
---
"This was not what I had in mind." Jill Traynor indignantly whispered.
"Yes, well, you wanted a better part. Blockbuster forced my hand, and now here we are." Montcorbier shot back, his voice an unnaturally precise murmur.
Gamblers, socialites, staff and attendants-- nearly all were watching the pair as they walked across the casino floor of The Traveler's Rest. Between Jill's status as a famous starlet and a new-found awareness of Montcorbier's larcenous history, they had attracted an unhealthy degree of attention. In any other circumstance, this would be disastrous, but Montcorbier saw how it was an advantage-- as the miscellany sensory organs of Eta Carina's populace expectantly watched him, the heist would go unnoticed. It was a shame that he couldn't put his skills to use, but his service as a distraction was far more beneficial.
Jill glared at him. "I was expecting--"
"--Expecting what? Blockbuster was the one who recommended your, mm, assets was the phrasing he used." He dismissively interrupted.
The gentleman-thief reflexively looked over his shoulder, as well as up towards the net of security cameras protecting the casino. There was only one opportunity for the heist-- and more importantly, only one opportunity for footage. The hacked network of cameras, along with a handful of invisible eye spells Adric had cast, would provide more than enough material. His walking stopped at an empty table. One hand flicked out a stack of chips as he sat; a dealer responded with a suspicious glare as he dealt a hand to the thief. Jill followed his lead, successfully managing to hide her disgust with Montcorbier.
It was then that Tschichold entered the casino floor, paint still following him with every pigment-drenched step forward.
Montcorbier immediately took note-- he had skimmed the collection of dossiers enough to recognize him as a former contestant from the show Blockbuster had demanded he included-- and that was enough to recognize him as a liability. He passively sorted through the hand of cards he had been dealt, his attention clearly fixated on the shadowy silhouette stumbling through the building.
Tschichold's glowing eye twitched, both with anger and the constant influence of his hallucinogens. "Who--"
Just as his diatribe was beginning, he immediately interrupted himself with an angry shake of his stubby, clawed fingers and an accompanying splatter of paint.
"--is responsible for this." He irately finished, gesturing at the entirety of the casino.
There was no response-- the staff were too busy watching him from a safe distance, their already-high tensions from the rumors of a heist amplified and magnified by his bombastic, furious presence.
"No one?" Tshichold yelled back to his silent audience. With each of the painter's steps came a faint after-image-- a series of half-animate phantasms and shades, clinging to the walls and floor of the inn and only barely visible. Below the threshold of any physical sensation, the hotel roiled and subconsciously shook with the rising fumes.
"Get ready to run." Montcorbier whispered. Being immortal, free from the risk of death from old age or disease or any of the countless petty threats that plagued others, virtually guaranteed a horrible demise-- be it in some form of accident or the deliberate work of another. Montcorbier had only survived as long as he had on a well-honed sense of danger, and the part of his millenniums-old mind that was attuned to calamity knew that their confrontation would not end well.
"Are you telling me that no one is responsible for this crime against art? That no one is responsible for this tasteless example of soulless, corporate decadence?" He vociferously cried.
"Didn't we just arr--"
"Get. Ready. To. Run." He repeated.
Even as the group of nervous attendants kept their distance, the wafting psychotropic fumes spread out, away from Tschichold's corrupted body to fill the casino floor. Even as it spread, diluting itself amongst the myriad gases of Eta Carina's atmosphere, it still remained just barely concentrated enough to maintain its psychedelic properties. All it would take was one sniff, one inhalation and a person would experience the paint's effects.
It was only a matter of time before one of the inn's inhabitants inhaled-- and began to hallucinate.
The inn was a curious building-- where other buildings had brick and mortar, its building blocks were those of dreams. The now-hundreds of sleeping occupants present were used to give it both form and function, giving it a means to shape and transform itself. Through the aggregated dreams of Eta Carina it had shaped itself into a slender spire of silver and glass; through the subconscious thoughts of its gamblers and socialites it had grown and expanded into the sizeable, prestigious casino it now was. But with the introduction of the toxic hallucinogen into the minds of its dreamers, the dreams the building was sculpted and pruned from were polluted and poisoned. The countless subconscious moments-- fleeting and ephemeral as they were-- the inn came from now were laced with the hallucinations of its dreamers; their apparitions and phantasms were no longer solely locked within their minds, but made real.
The vague sense of anxiety and alienation of the inn's inhabitants soon became manifest-- flitting, translucent images, half-formed yet somehow real reveries haunted the casino floor as the effects of Tschichold's psychedelic paints began to set in. The effects of the psychedelic drugs were normally enough to terrify, but to now see their hallucinations as being something real, something substantial, was just enough to gradually push the dreamers into collective insanity.
A few of the awake inhabitants of the inn-- those not asleep within its myriad, branching corridors-- urgently checked their designer drug cocktails, wondering if hallucinations were amongst the intended effects.
The sudden, shared disconnect from reality, the already-latent apprehension-- for the subconsciousness of the inn's dreamers, the hallucinations were enough to tip an already-fractured collective mind past its breaking point. A handful of minds sunk into unrelieved terror-- but that was all it took, as their psychotropic, toxin-afflicted minds projected their fears. What was the inescapable horror of one mind was now that of every mind, and with each negative thought an even worse horror became reality; every new fear and primal instinct repeated, reverberated against another mind and became real.
In seconds the inn's facade had fallen apart, recreated into the ever-descending nightmares of its now-terrified collective unconsciousness.
Montcorbier didn't have time-- time to see Jill Traynor pop off her high heels and attempt to escape the inn as reality buckled around her, time to react outside of the shock of seeing something unknown to his millennia of experience-- time to have anything more than half-formed fragments of thoughts as a cloud of malevolent nightmares descended upon him.
In a single, violent instant, the master thief was dead.
Tschichold didn't so much as notice the thief's demise. He was far too busy running, moving deeper and deeper into the inn to try and escape the nightmare-- and he was completely unaware of the trailing cloud of psychotropic fumes that he carried along with him, and how every step into the inn affected more of its populace.
---
"This is definitely not going according to plan." Adric said, his voice strained from over-exertion and fear in equal measures.
Kriok cawed tetchily in response-- but even as she did, the avian couldn't deny that this wasn't what they had planned.
Synthetic nerves struggled to analyze her now-desperate situation, to put the sudden changes in their environment into a heuristic framework that made sense. What had been a sterile, unoccupied maintenance hallway had nigh-instantaneously become a knotted labyrinth of corridors, changing in shifting even as they hopelessly ran forward; walls formed and reformed from fragments of lines and colors in indescribable, malevolent patterns. The walls were getting closer, growing spikes and barbs, threatening to crush them in this inescapable maze. Kriok tried to think, to force herself to apply logic and rationality to their state of affairs even as she perilously stumbled forward, but her cybernetic mind couldn't think-- primal instinct and terror clouded her judgment, made anything more than thinking about the next harried steps impossible.
"A-Alaster? I-I'm scared." Timothy whined, clinging to his perch on the clockwork automaton's back.
"It Will Be Alright." The machine clanked in response-- but even as it did, the limited faculties for free thought within its memory core strained and faltered, trying to gauge if there was any truth to the assurance. It adjusted and fixed its helmeted gaze on the others, silently judging them.
"Alright, stop." Adric panted out. Sweat drippeds in heavy beads down his forehead-- occasionally dropping free with the grinding shake behind them as the inn's corridors closed behind them. The noise grew louder, echoing from every direction, the shifting walls crushing together in the distance as they worked their way closer and closer to enveloping the party. The teenager's clammy hands reached into a pocket, withdrawing a thin wand. "I didn't want to use something this expensive, but it's our only way out." He said-- a quick flick and a portal opened against a wall, leading outside and away from the nightmare the inn had become.
"You want us to give up." Kriok chittered back as her taloned feet stopped. The distant grinding grew louder, reverberating against the increasingly constraining walls.
"I want to live, gods-damnit. I don't know if you noticed, but we're unprepared for whatever this is and if we don't get out we will all die. The heist is over." He shot back-- it was plainly manifest that the wizard was past the point of exhaustion, and was only now conscious from a stubborn spike of adrenaline.
Run-times, processor cycles-- nearly all of the manifold layers of Kriok's mind stopped with his statement.
Adric's assessment likely correct-- not worth staying. I'm sorry, Kriok. Her communication interface buzzed to her-- although Tick had not been physically present, the invalid hacker had still been able to provide support, monitoring the situation from a universe away.
The avian's stunned mind slowly refreshed itself, trying to accept what they had said-- that she wouldn't be able to escape, that she wouldn't receive compensation for her efforts with the fulfillment of the one desire she had left. Isolated processes seethed with anger, impulses of circuit-nerves flooded her memory stacks with simulated rage at the injustice, the humiliation of being so close-- and just as quickly her mind reasserted itself, nerve-cycles shifting back and forcing her back to dispassionate logic. It still might be possible to escape.
"Alright. Let's g--"
Kriok was interrupted as the hallway suddenly stretched and tore, like an overextended ligand or tendon-- she could only briefly see the rest flee into the portal, away from the fraying ends of a corridor suspended over an endless abyss before she had fallen into a new nightmare.
---
"Alaster! A-Alaster, we have to go back. We have to help her, we can't leave her there!" Timothy wailed, his half-curled fists pathetically pounding against the mechanical knight's armor in between futile sobs. The apprentice's face was red, swollen with tears that continually streaked down his cheeks, occasionally pattering to the ground when he paused his weak strikes against his guardian. The rest of the world was a blur to him-- all he could think about was how they had abandoned the alien; even though she hadn't been particularly amicable towards him, his eight-year-old mind knew that they couldn't just leave her there.
"I'm sorry, kid-- your friend's as good as gone." Adric said, making a half-hearted attempt at consolation.
"No, she's not! She can't be, we have to save her!" Timothy retorted back, his voice cracking against the tears and anger welling throughout him. "Alaster, she needs help!"
"It Is Too Late." Alaster buzzed in response-- the machine remained motionless, not even responding to Timothy's strikes against its metal carapace. The memory core nestled deep within knew its priorities rested with protecting the child-- it could not risk the apprentice's life against what lay within the casino on saving someone, no matter how important or how piteous his pleas were. All the clockwork machine could do was watch-- watch as the casino flickered and shifted, its form indeterminate and wavering with every second as its nightmares-made-real struggled to escape their confinement and go out into the reality surrounding them, as crowds gathered from across the main promenade and innumerable alleyways to watch the newest spectacle being offered.
Alaster stood by and watched as Eta Carina began a steady descent into anarchy.
Timothy Yessic awoke with a start-- he had somehow managed to fall asleep while hanging off from Alaster's shoulders, and he had only remained on by snags in his robe being caught between plates of armor.
He tugged slightly, freeing himself and landing on the floor. The floor rattled slightly, as though in motion, and Timothy quickly noticed the others that were with him-- the weird avian, the pimply wizard, along with a few others. They were in the suited man's van, Timothy realized. As he stood up, he straightened his frayed excuse for a wizard's robe and tried to recollect what had happened-- everything the eight-year-old had experienced since his arrival in Eta Carina had seemed to blend together into a continuous blur of activity. As hard as it was for his prepubescent mind, he tried to remember. He remembered that he had gone out to a warehouse with Alaster when it was repairing itself, and that later they had headed back and done-- something?
His eyes widened as he remembered just what he was part of-- and that he had slept through the meeting planning out what the suited man had called a 'heist'. Timothy desperately hoped that nothing important had happened while he was asleep.
"Kid's awake." Adric Toleth said, his voice thickly laced with disinterest.
Kriok almost stirred in response, before returning to her work and continuing to calibrate and fine-tune the assortment of gadgets the burglary would require. As callous as it was, she had little concern for the juvenile human-- he had the construct to protect him. While he had been asleep, the avian had memorized all of the countless, myriad details of Montcorbier's plan; her cybernetic mind involuntarily recorded every manifold contingency, regardless of whether or not she wished it. She had an entire world of information readily accessible-- from the information Tick and Adric had collected in preparation, to the planned machinations ready for any eventuality, to the host of other preparations that had been done.
In spite of all of the reassurances to the contrary, Kriok was worried.
A taloned hand reflexively scratched against the bandages wound around her abdomen, reminding her of the stakes of failure-- that was all she could think about. For every mental process that analyzed and guaranteed success, there was another set of heuristics scrutinizing the same circumstances and predicting an inevitable failure. Montcorbier's threat to entice her into offering her services had turned into a premonition of an inescapable future-- she wouldn't escape, she'd be trapped in this gilded labyrinth or forced to continue in the fight to the death; she would never receive the freedom she desperately craved. She would never so much as receive the freedom to die on her own terms, a pessimistic cluster of circuit-neurons autonomically derided.
That thought caused her to pause her work, her fabricator-arm loosening its vise-grip around a complicated device. The momentary lapse into total despair made her realize just how tired she was. There had been no time to rest, no time to waste on an obsolete physiological necessity her body had eliminated. But even without needing to rest, the mental strain of her situation fatigued her. She clicked her beak, trying to push aside the accumulated paranoia and stress. Her work resumed, as the avian desperately tried to distract herself. Layers of cortical circuitry cycled towards the notion that this would be the end-- that after this, she would be free.
Kriok began to speak. "How soon until we--"
"We're already here." Montcorbier interrupted. He stood up, straightening his smoking jacket as he did to an appropriately rakish degree. The thief's face was a mask of utter confidence-- as though they had already successfully emptied the casino's vault and the entire escapade had been completed. He was in his element now, and approached his coming task with utmost certainty.
"I suppose this is where I tell you that you're the best there are at what you do, how--"
"U-um, e-excuse me? What am I going to do, again?" Timothy ashamedly interrupted. His arms were nervously folded together, and he had slightly curled up self-protectively.
"--ever I don't think that needs to be said." He finished.
Montcorbier shifted his attention towards Timothy-- he made sure to mentally remind himself that the child's safety was all that maintained his defender's cooperation. His mask-like face shifted once more, becoming something approximating a paternal geniality. "You just need to stick with Alaster, okay Timothy?" He calmly said-- as much as he disliked children, countless years of experience in manipulating others overrode his petty distaste.
Timothy's clockwork guardian imperceptibly stirred in response to its name.
"Oh. Okay!" The apprentice wizard answered. His face perked up with excitement-- he was about to participate in an adventure, about to relieve his suppressed desire for excitement in the most breathtaking fashion possible. The eight-year old's memories of nearly dying at the hand of a demon-wracked abomination were far from his mind, a faint recollection that was now completely forgotten in light of the escapade to come.
"Well then. Let's get to it, shall we?"
The van rumbled to a stop, its back sliding open to reveal a back alleyway-- the distinction could only barely be made, as the bright lights of the nebula above illuminated it nearly as brightly as the harsh fluorescence the casinos emanated. The crowds of tourists and gamblers that lined the main promenades were gone; the heist team was no longer in Eta Carina's arterial passageways, but instead deep within its capillaries.
Alaster was the first to move, scooping its designated charge into one arm and hopping out of the gently-hovering vehicle. The other, more experienced wizard quickly followed, and soon after the cybernetic alien, burdened with a multitude of tools.
"Alaster, why aren't we all going?" Timothy asked, readjusting to his usual position taken when riding atop his guardian.
"They Are Required Elsewhere." The automaton replied. Its stride remained uninterrupted by the child's question. The machine was set in its objective now, prepared to do what was required to permanently ensure his safety-- away from the threats of Eta Carina.
As they walked, Kriok noticed a faded purple crescent painted above one of the doors. After Adric walked through that door, the avian's manifold layers of neural circuitry and quantum microprocessors made an abrupt, nigh-instantaneous realization: she was about to steal from The Traveler's Rest.
---
"She did what?" Maria incredulously questioned. Trepidation marked the receptionist's appearance, from the lines creasing her face to her nervous pacing back and forth as she struggled to collect her thoughts. Yaelja stood opposite her-- her normally neon skin had taken on the shade of a mournful violin dirge. She offered a soft whisper of inky shades, confirming what she had said. The alien's language-- as riotous and disruptive as it was-- painted a very specific connotation in Maria's mind; any alternative interpretations were quickly brushed aside, leaving only the grim reality.
"I-- I see." Maria quietly said, sitting down.
It was nearly too much to take in-- that Kriok had become involved in the heist she had heard rumors of. The alien was far from being a friend, but she still wanted to see her safe. She could offer Kriok a job at the Rest, assist her with making arrangements with Owen, something-- the receptionist didn't know the circumstances that would have prompted her to take up larceny, but she was unquestionably certain there was some alternative. Maria stood up again. She had to try to persuade the cybernetic avian to reconsider. In their past encounters, she was driven by logic-- a twisted, paranoid logic, but her actions were nonetheless spurred by a cold, alien rationality. There was nothing rational about deciding to risk her life, and reminding her of such undoubtedly would be enough to convince the alien to reevaluate.
"I'm-- I'm g-going to find her. Can you tell me where she is now?" The receptionist asked, her uncertainty fading as she spoke.
Yaelja responded with a gradient of indigo hues.
"No. No no no. She's here?"
---
Tschichold disdainfully regarded the rumpled pile of a suit occupying his room. The garments reeked of corporate attitude.
The past day had been miserable for the painter-- at first, he had delighted in the authority vested in him, but his authoritarian delight had burned out quickly. Whatever joy could be extracted from ordering around the crews of artists and decorators had faded as he realized that, no matter how much direction he gave them, they would never truly produce art-- only the dilute reproductions of teams of sellouts. It was all so overwhelmingly mainstream, even under his direction. The entirety of Eta Carina's artisans-- the shallow, capitalistic assholes that pretended to be artists-- would never produce so much as a infinitesimal scrap of art. Two minutes of angrily vented invective punctuated the room's silence, as Tschichold gave a voice to his stream of thoughts.
"My god, I'm-- I've... I've gone corporate." He finally sputtered out.
The realization, as plainly manifest as it now was, startled Tschichold. He wasn't aware of it at the time, but the very act of accepting a wage for his labor compromised every principle he stood for. His glowing eye squinted, trying to focus as his mind struggled to work through its drug-addled haze and remember just what were the principles he had violated. A hoofed foot irately tapped against the floor's synthetic wooden paneling, as Tschichold's lines of thought were lost in a sea of overblown, melodramatic irritations. His violent despondence only magnified and reverberated as he thought about how petty his actions had been; he had compromised everything he stood for and the most he had done as penance was bitterly complain to himself.
He wished his paints were stored, if only to have the pleasure of ruining his stock of supplies-- and even as he thought that, his mind pessimistically taunted him for his best thoughts of revenge being nothing more than some minor property damage.
The nebula and sparkling edifices of Eta Carina glistened as Tschichold turned his attention to the window. Even in his perpetually-bewildered sensory state, the view was pleasant enough that he could push aside the mental notion that it was all an extravagantly-constructed capitalist mockery of true beauty. As he stared out, one of the countless glittering spires caught his attention-- nothing about it seemed immediately striking, it was just as impossibly tall as every other one of the towers. The only distinguishing feature it had was the violet crescent on its facade, it shouldn't have interested him as it now did.
Tschichold realized just how offensive the building was-- its architecture was that cultivated, corporatist design intended to be as benign as physically possible. The painter imagined the no-doubt countless hours spent with focus groups designing a building that would not alienate any prospective customers. Art was supposed to be offensive, not something like the innocuous, soulless spire of silver and glass he now saw in front of him.
In an instant, Tschichold stormed out of his room. He had every intention of doing something about the towering offense to his vision. Whatever parts of his mind that had the foresight to consider consequences were drowned underneath the thoughts of revulsion as the painter inexorably marched towards The Traveler's Rest.
---
"This was not what I had in mind." Jill Traynor indignantly whispered.
"Yes, well, you wanted a better part. Blockbuster forced my hand, and now here we are." Montcorbier shot back, his voice an unnaturally precise murmur.
Gamblers, socialites, staff and attendants-- nearly all were watching the pair as they walked across the casino floor of The Traveler's Rest. Between Jill's status as a famous starlet and a new-found awareness of Montcorbier's larcenous history, they had attracted an unhealthy degree of attention. In any other circumstance, this would be disastrous, but Montcorbier saw how it was an advantage-- as the miscellany sensory organs of Eta Carina's populace expectantly watched him, the heist would go unnoticed. It was a shame that he couldn't put his skills to use, but his service as a distraction was far more beneficial.
Jill glared at him. "I was expecting--"
"--Expecting what? Blockbuster was the one who recommended your, mm, assets was the phrasing he used." He dismissively interrupted.
The gentleman-thief reflexively looked over his shoulder, as well as up towards the net of security cameras protecting the casino. There was only one opportunity for the heist-- and more importantly, only one opportunity for footage. The hacked network of cameras, along with a handful of invisible eye spells Adric had cast, would provide more than enough material. His walking stopped at an empty table. One hand flicked out a stack of chips as he sat; a dealer responded with a suspicious glare as he dealt a hand to the thief. Jill followed his lead, successfully managing to hide her disgust with Montcorbier.
It was then that Tschichold entered the casino floor, paint still following him with every pigment-drenched step forward.
Montcorbier immediately took note-- he had skimmed the collection of dossiers enough to recognize him as a former contestant from the show Blockbuster had demanded he included-- and that was enough to recognize him as a liability. He passively sorted through the hand of cards he had been dealt, his attention clearly fixated on the shadowy silhouette stumbling through the building.
Tschichold's glowing eye twitched, both with anger and the constant influence of his hallucinogens. "Who--"
Just as his diatribe was beginning, he immediately interrupted himself with an angry shake of his stubby, clawed fingers and an accompanying splatter of paint.
"--is responsible for this." He irately finished, gesturing at the entirety of the casino.
There was no response-- the staff were too busy watching him from a safe distance, their already-high tensions from the rumors of a heist amplified and magnified by his bombastic, furious presence.
"No one?" Tshichold yelled back to his silent audience. With each of the painter's steps came a faint after-image-- a series of half-animate phantasms and shades, clinging to the walls and floor of the inn and only barely visible. Below the threshold of any physical sensation, the hotel roiled and subconsciously shook with the rising fumes.
"Get ready to run." Montcorbier whispered. Being immortal, free from the risk of death from old age or disease or any of the countless petty threats that plagued others, virtually guaranteed a horrible demise-- be it in some form of accident or the deliberate work of another. Montcorbier had only survived as long as he had on a well-honed sense of danger, and the part of his millenniums-old mind that was attuned to calamity knew that their confrontation would not end well.
"Are you telling me that no one is responsible for this crime against art? That no one is responsible for this tasteless example of soulless, corporate decadence?" He vociferously cried.
"Didn't we just arr--"
"Get. Ready. To. Run." He repeated.
Even as the group of nervous attendants kept their distance, the wafting psychotropic fumes spread out, away from Tschichold's corrupted body to fill the casino floor. Even as it spread, diluting itself amongst the myriad gases of Eta Carina's atmosphere, it still remained just barely concentrated enough to maintain its psychedelic properties. All it would take was one sniff, one inhalation and a person would experience the paint's effects.
It was only a matter of time before one of the inn's inhabitants inhaled-- and began to hallucinate.
The inn was a curious building-- where other buildings had brick and mortar, its building blocks were those of dreams. The now-hundreds of sleeping occupants present were used to give it both form and function, giving it a means to shape and transform itself. Through the aggregated dreams of Eta Carina it had shaped itself into a slender spire of silver and glass; through the subconscious thoughts of its gamblers and socialites it had grown and expanded into the sizeable, prestigious casino it now was. But with the introduction of the toxic hallucinogen into the minds of its dreamers, the dreams the building was sculpted and pruned from were polluted and poisoned. The countless subconscious moments-- fleeting and ephemeral as they were-- the inn came from now were laced with the hallucinations of its dreamers; their apparitions and phantasms were no longer solely locked within their minds, but made real.
The vague sense of anxiety and alienation of the inn's inhabitants soon became manifest-- flitting, translucent images, half-formed yet somehow real reveries haunted the casino floor as the effects of Tschichold's psychedelic paints began to set in. The effects of the psychedelic drugs were normally enough to terrify, but to now see their hallucinations as being something real, something substantial, was just enough to gradually push the dreamers into collective insanity.
A few of the awake inhabitants of the inn-- those not asleep within its myriad, branching corridors-- urgently checked their designer drug cocktails, wondering if hallucinations were amongst the intended effects.
The sudden, shared disconnect from reality, the already-latent apprehension-- for the subconsciousness of the inn's dreamers, the hallucinations were enough to tip an already-fractured collective mind past its breaking point. A handful of minds sunk into unrelieved terror-- but that was all it took, as their psychotropic, toxin-afflicted minds projected their fears. What was the inescapable horror of one mind was now that of every mind, and with each negative thought an even worse horror became reality; every new fear and primal instinct repeated, reverberated against another mind and became real.
In seconds the inn's facade had fallen apart, recreated into the ever-descending nightmares of its now-terrified collective unconsciousness.
Montcorbier didn't have time-- time to see Jill Traynor pop off her high heels and attempt to escape the inn as reality buckled around her, time to react outside of the shock of seeing something unknown to his millennia of experience-- time to have anything more than half-formed fragments of thoughts as a cloud of malevolent nightmares descended upon him.
In a single, violent instant, the master thief was dead.
Tschichold didn't so much as notice the thief's demise. He was far too busy running, moving deeper and deeper into the inn to try and escape the nightmare-- and he was completely unaware of the trailing cloud of psychotropic fumes that he carried along with him, and how every step into the inn affected more of its populace.
---
"This is definitely not going according to plan." Adric said, his voice strained from over-exertion and fear in equal measures.
Kriok cawed tetchily in response-- but even as she did, the avian couldn't deny that this wasn't what they had planned.
Synthetic nerves struggled to analyze her now-desperate situation, to put the sudden changes in their environment into a heuristic framework that made sense. What had been a sterile, unoccupied maintenance hallway had nigh-instantaneously become a knotted labyrinth of corridors, changing in shifting even as they hopelessly ran forward; walls formed and reformed from fragments of lines and colors in indescribable, malevolent patterns. The walls were getting closer, growing spikes and barbs, threatening to crush them in this inescapable maze. Kriok tried to think, to force herself to apply logic and rationality to their state of affairs even as she perilously stumbled forward, but her cybernetic mind couldn't think-- primal instinct and terror clouded her judgment, made anything more than thinking about the next harried steps impossible.
"A-Alaster? I-I'm scared." Timothy whined, clinging to his perch on the clockwork automaton's back.
"It Will Be Alright." The machine clanked in response-- but even as it did, the limited faculties for free thought within its memory core strained and faltered, trying to gauge if there was any truth to the assurance. It adjusted and fixed its helmeted gaze on the others, silently judging them.
"Alright, stop." Adric panted out. Sweat drippeds in heavy beads down his forehead-- occasionally dropping free with the grinding shake behind them as the inn's corridors closed behind them. The noise grew louder, echoing from every direction, the shifting walls crushing together in the distance as they worked their way closer and closer to enveloping the party. The teenager's clammy hands reached into a pocket, withdrawing a thin wand. "I didn't want to use something this expensive, but it's our only way out." He said-- a quick flick and a portal opened against a wall, leading outside and away from the nightmare the inn had become.
"You want us to give up." Kriok chittered back as her taloned feet stopped. The distant grinding grew louder, reverberating against the increasingly constraining walls.
"I want to live, gods-damnit. I don't know if you noticed, but we're unprepared for whatever this is and if we don't get out we will all die. The heist is over." He shot back-- it was plainly manifest that the wizard was past the point of exhaustion, and was only now conscious from a stubborn spike of adrenaline.
Run-times, processor cycles-- nearly all of the manifold layers of Kriok's mind stopped with his statement.
Adric's assessment likely correct-- not worth staying. I'm sorry, Kriok. Her communication interface buzzed to her-- although Tick had not been physically present, the invalid hacker had still been able to provide support, monitoring the situation from a universe away.
The avian's stunned mind slowly refreshed itself, trying to accept what they had said-- that she wouldn't be able to escape, that she wouldn't receive compensation for her efforts with the fulfillment of the one desire she had left. Isolated processes seethed with anger, impulses of circuit-nerves flooded her memory stacks with simulated rage at the injustice, the humiliation of being so close-- and just as quickly her mind reasserted itself, nerve-cycles shifting back and forcing her back to dispassionate logic. It still might be possible to escape.
"Alright. Let's g--"
Kriok was interrupted as the hallway suddenly stretched and tore, like an overextended ligand or tendon-- she could only briefly see the rest flee into the portal, away from the fraying ends of a corridor suspended over an endless abyss before she had fallen into a new nightmare.
---
"Alaster! A-Alaster, we have to go back. We have to help her, we can't leave her there!" Timothy wailed, his half-curled fists pathetically pounding against the mechanical knight's armor in between futile sobs. The apprentice's face was red, swollen with tears that continually streaked down his cheeks, occasionally pattering to the ground when he paused his weak strikes against his guardian. The rest of the world was a blur to him-- all he could think about was how they had abandoned the alien; even though she hadn't been particularly amicable towards him, his eight-year-old mind knew that they couldn't just leave her there.
"I'm sorry, kid-- your friend's as good as gone." Adric said, making a half-hearted attempt at consolation.
"No, she's not! She can't be, we have to save her!" Timothy retorted back, his voice cracking against the tears and anger welling throughout him. "Alaster, she needs help!"
"It Is Too Late." Alaster buzzed in response-- the machine remained motionless, not even responding to Timothy's strikes against its metal carapace. The memory core nestled deep within knew its priorities rested with protecting the child-- it could not risk the apprentice's life against what lay within the casino on saving someone, no matter how important or how piteous his pleas were. All the clockwork machine could do was watch-- watch as the casino flickered and shifted, its form indeterminate and wavering with every second as its nightmares-made-real struggled to escape their confinement and go out into the reality surrounding them, as crowds gathered from across the main promenade and innumerable alleyways to watch the newest spectacle being offered.
Alaster stood by and watched as Eta Carina began a steady descent into anarchy.