Re: The Battle Majestic (Round 3 - Oxbow Inc.)
08-14-2010, 07:13 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.
Through a dimly lit doorway in an abandoned corner of the room there appeared a cloaked figure, his head kept well down. Though he seemed to be shuffling slightly, he covered the immeasurable distance between the door and the centrepiece of the room with surprising speed.
His destination was an ostensibly impromptu rig of devices positioned in the middle of the otherwise empty space. They were arranged in an arc so that one could immerse oneself in them fully, with the view of the room’s sole window blocked by the assorted apparatus. Not that the view was particularly distracting; not unless you knew quite what you were looking at.
In amongst the monitors and instruments, settled in a plush office chair, S was fiddling with the dials of an anarchic contraption, grumbling as he did so. Upon hearing the footsteps behind him, he swivelled round.
“Did you get a connection?”
“Not quite, I’m afraid. The bastard had left by the time I’d figured out where the hell he was. The Executive was most displeased.”
“Bugger. I’m going to have to have a word with him, aren’t I?”
“Depends. Are you talking about Vex or the boss?”
With his head in his hands, the gentleman considered this for a moment.
“Both, I should think. Once someone gets round to dying, I’ve gotta go and see the latter anyway… oh, and by the way. You’ve got mail.”
Despite it being something of a non-sequitur, it was an earnest statement. On a recently cleared corner of the desk, there sat what was undoubtedly an sincere attempt at an envelope; crisp white with a neat blue label right placed precisely in the middle. The sender had neglected to dabble in the art of adding stamps, but that hadn’t exactly stopped the message from reaching its intended recipient, a point that Sruix was keen to pursue.
“I’m pretty sure we didn’t use to have a letterbox in the atrium door, but it was there when I passed it not two hours ago. This thing was sitting on a doormat just below it. Heck, before that I’m positive we didn’t have a doormat either. What would either of us need from a doormat?”
“It’s the Organiser’s doing. It has to be. He said he was going to send me a letter and I guess he wanted to take the process seriously.”
“Well, I guessed that much. It was obvious who the author was the moment I picked it up.”
“What led you to that conclusion?”
“Well, for one thing, he’s written all your names on the label. All of them.”
“…I thought he said he was going to write porten- oh. But of course. That’s exactly what he would do, isn’t it?”
”Also, there’s only one fool I know of who chooses to write in lilac ink on blue paper.”
Talis sighed. “He does try. You can’t blame him for tr- hang on. You’ve opened it, haven’t you?”
This remark was cause enough for Sruix to chuck the envelope at his colleague, who couldn’t really be bothered to go out of his way to catch it.
“I’m not very good with this evil malarkey, am I?”
“Well, you could be much better at it if you put a little effort into it. If you could just watch your words a little more and not give yourself away quite so easily…”
Before the squabble could descend much lower into the depths of petty insults, a brief burst of static intervened. Something wonderful had just happened.
On an antiquated fascia below the many monitors that lined the observation deck, there were now six lights, of red or green or blue, flickering away like candle flames. Until a few moments prior, there had been seven.
“Finally. We at last get to show these morosophs the error of their ways.”
This statement prompted a small chuckle from Talis. “That’s a new word for you. Why, that makes, what, maybe a whole hundred you’ve added to your vocabulary in order to sound more like an omnipotent orchestrating prick.”
”Shut it.”
-~-~-~-~-~-~
From paradise blown to infinite black and then to black again; it must have taken a mere second to pluck the contestants from the island and deposit them elsewhere. That second was all it took to crush whatever hopes of a peaceful resolution to the matter anyone might have been foolish enough to consider holding dear. Once more, they were at the mercy of the Gentlemen.
The six survivors each stood in their own spotlight, in a manner not dissimilar to their entrance into the battle in the far-flung past. This time, they were arranged in a perfect hexagon, with one contestant placed in each corner. It was too dark to make out quite where they were standing, but the floor appeared to be well-trodden rubber, despite lacking much in the way of a smell.
A seventh light flickered on in the middle of the arrangement, revealing the duo the contestants so despised. Both wore immaculate grins, though Sruix had let his hair down to obscure his face as per his last two appearances. With this extra light, it was now apparent that every contestant was in their own cell; each occupied a vast hexagonal chamber with walls of glass separating them from both their counterparts and their masters.
“Well, I say. That was quite the death, methinks. I’d have honestly preferred to see one of you guys off him, but there’s no denying that that was simply marvellous. It’s a great pity that most of you didn’t get to see it!”
Sruix had started to clap.
“Oh Vex, you fiend. What a lovely idea you had; an island utopia, where nothing could possibly go wrong. I would dearly have loved to have seen you try a little harder there; maybe things might have turned out alright… oh, but I jest. I think you might have not quite realised what you were trying to do there. See, I’d like to have a word with you all now about a matter I assure you to be extremely important to your continued existence.”
Shortly before he uttered the last word he saw fit to nudge Talis, who merely rolled his eyes at the gesture. Such apathy was short-lived as he adopted a more serious look.
“We received… a complaint. Well, two actually, but for some reason “two complaints” doesn’t have quite as much impact as the singular. The first comes from the very man who has organised this affair, the proprietor of this altercation and the being with the most interest in seeing you scuffle. He is not, I think you’ll find, a man you want to get on the wrong side of and yet it appears that your antics have indeed upset him. Can you guess why?”
In an attempt to imitate cause and effect, Talis snapped his fingers. A little before that, though, the lights flashed on, ruining the illusion entirely. Not that any of the contestants really cared. Those who could were too busy regarding their surroundings in awe.
Outside their prisons, everything gleamed. Their surroundings reeked of the epitome of luxury very surface seemed to have been highly polished, even those that couldn’t possibly have been. Walkways linked each cell to a balcony that encircled them a reasonable distance away, dotted with planters lined with exotic flora. Everything appeared to be made of the most magnificent material that was suitable – brass handrails, marble floors, golden lamps and statues. Six passages continued off the circular space like spokes on a wheel, with glimpses of fountains visible down each of their lengths. But then, beyond the veil of opulence, the walls on the other side of the balcony were in fact shop fronts, albeit the lavish ones of up-market retailers. It seemed that the contestants were standing in the middle of an opulent shopping mall, albeit one devoid of life.
“Each of you stands in one of the many elevators that service the upper shopping district of Aquarius Major, capital of the archipelago nation Nubium. The elevator network here is rather clever; there are six shafts with multiple elevators in each serving six floors a piece, plus one drop-shaft that serves just the top and bottom floors, allowing a patron to travel from any floor to any another in a maximum of three journeys. Not bad when you consider that there are 175 floors, huh?”
With a notable clang, the elevators began to descend. Floor after floor of the same luxury passed the contestants by, each indistinguishable from the previous.
“Now, Talis has asked me not to bore you all with the history, but to be honest it is a little boring anyway. It’s the old story about a down-on-his-luck entrepreneur getting the killer idea over a bottle of booze one day, an idea that could solve the government’s biggest problem, gets his vision realised, becomes a very rich man, lives fast, dies young, gets a lasting legacy blah de blah.”
“Before he becomes unstoppable force, it might be wise to note that you will soon experience a rather curious sensation, comparable perhaps to body-wide pins and needles. You’ll see why.”
“Thank you for the interruption there.”
“My pleasure entirely.”
Rather than continue with his monologue, Sruix steepled his fingers.
“Actually, you were rather timely. I believe it is about to occur.”
Had anyone been capable of counting the rapidly passing floors, they might have noticed that the total was getting awfully close to the cited number, yet the elevator showed no signs of showing down. The balconies gave way to a view of a sprawling plaza that undercut the upper floors, but it too passed in the blink of an eye.
Everything abruptly turned a hazy shade of grey, accompanied by a feeling comparable to body-wide pins and needles. The Gentlemen were showing admirable disregard for the laws of physics. Or floors. Or internal infrastructure. Or ceilings too, for that matter.
The landings were a little less luxurious now, with dappled and pastel shades replacing the earlier golds and bronzes. Each blurred into the next and so their features weren’t really distinguishable, but the shop fronts were definitely gone and so were most of the trimmings that had added to the grandeur.
“Yes, there’s more. But no, I know what you’re thinking – basement residences. Pfft. Something so passé wouldn’t exactly have netted our man fame and fortune. Time to reveal the twist.”
”The big problem an island nation has is understandably space – if a nation undergoes a population boom, you need land to house them, land on which to produce the food that feeds them and so on. This island chain just so happened to be the best stopping point between two continents once upon a time, when the air was unconquered and a big boat was your best bet for getting from A to B. Consequently, this place got pretty overcrowded and building up wasn’t an art this civilisation had yet to perfect. They tried though, but it took an alcoholic to solve the problem by turning it on its head.”
“Aquarius Major is 400 floors of building below ground. Heck, it’s entirely below sea level. It’s an underwater city, carved out of the island. There’s an awful lot of space in a big rock like this. I stopped counting the populace at five million and the square footage when it hit ten digits.”
At last, the elevators slowed, crawling the last few feet so as to allow the six to get a good look at the atrium. Countless passages led away from the elevators, some labelled as stations for public transport, others as residential or industrial sectors. Each warren seemed to continue on for a brief while, then turn off, up or down, left or right. There was a labyrinth behind the carved-out walls that presumably stretched throughout the entire island and beyond.
“You are here for one reason and one reason only. We plucked you from your own pinprick of reality and brought you all together so that you could fight. This battle was instigated for the entertainment of beings more powerful that yourselves; some might say greater, but I suspect you all would have a qualm or two with that. You might also dislike the idea of being enslaved to this fate, reduced to mere pawns in a game played for the amusement of others; a game with genuine stakes. But you can’t do a thing about it.”
“Do you know why we’ve brought you here? There are three reasons: the first is merely a little piece of trivia that might just be worth noting.”
With a flourish, Sruix pointed at a point somewhere between Jacob and Steven, beyond the confines of the elevators and presumably even the gateway space.
“1217 miles in that direction, give or take a little perhaps, sprawled between two headland peaks, is the seaside town of Cydonia. 40 miles north of that is a much larger city, the capital of the nation, I’ll have you know. Both of those locations have something special in common; until recently, they were the respective homes of two men, the names of whom are not important. Now, however, they are two more pawns, tangled up in situations similar to yours. One of them, bless him, has gotten rather far, but that is not the point. The point is, people, that you are part of a widespread tradition and that your strife is but one of many. In the numerous iterations, there have of course been attempts to usurp those in charge, to break the game and free themselves and their comrades.”
The lights dimmed once more and for a few moments the combatants were alone in the darkness. As they flashed on once more, they found themselves standing on a station platform, with no sign of the elevators they had previously been standing in. The area was enclosed in a manner similar to a subway station, with the only access a flight of stairs on the other side of the tracks. It appeared to be the end of the line, with the lines stretching off into the distance one way only.
“Blergh, my timing’s all out. I do apologise.”
“It’s quite alright. The train won’t be here for a while yet, I take it?”
“Three minutes.”
Behind the façade of hair, Sruix’s grin appeared again.
“Where was I? Ah yes, the futility of escape, for you see, in the myriad of battles held throughout the whole and space of time, nobody has ever succeeded in defeating a grandmaster or derailing a battle. It cannot be done. It appears that you either do not realise or do not respect the strength of your superiors or the jurisdiction we have over you. So then, reason number two for bringing you here; to try to make you understand.”
“Everything you have seen so far and all that you are about to see has been carefully crafted; whole worlds have been created, the first for you alone to destroy as you saw fit, the second as a favour for another that we then adapted and here, the third world, to house an entire civilisation. The society that created this frivolous settlement was let loose upon this ball of rock to build for themselves such monuments, to take the crazed daydreams of the maddest of men and turn them into reality. But why? Let us look at this from another angle. More specifically, the angle of my good friend here…”
“You all must, at one point or another, have had at least one of those little whims, the ones that are a little leftfield and probably not at all wise. You know the type; those innocent “what if?” ideas that are good for a laugh. Sometimes you come out the other end feeling a little guilty and regretting you even thought of them in the first place.”
In the grey distance, a subtle rumbling sound began to creep towards the platform.
“Do you know what happens when a god gets one of those whims? This.”
The tunnel’s lights flickered and for a few moments the faint auras of headlights could be seen painting the walls.
“This is our playground. Well, it’s mine technically, but Talis was responsible for it all making sense. The eccentricity that is an underwater city was an idea I personally envisaged and then went about creating. Ideas were planted into the heads of those most fitting and though I must admit it was not my hands that built this, it was my will that made what I desired reality. I might, if you like, take you to some other examples sometime; I could rattle off a list, but we have a train to catch. If you think that’s quite a hollow statement, then I assure you; you’ve seen adequate proof that there is basis for me to brag. But regardless, I should say this; you’ve seen what we can do to a world. Now think what we could do to you.”
“Reason number three; we don’t want to have to intervene. We want you guys to do what you are here to do; we want you to fight. We don’t want to have to make you to do that; forced combat is nowhere near as entertaining, I would say, as freeform conflict. But there are of course limits, and you are beginning to test them. Peaceful resolutions and escapist whimsies are intolerable. We could naturally make your lives living hells, torturing you, perhaps, to force your co-operation, but where would be the fun in that? So we have brought you here to give you one last chance by providing you with a backdrop that will doubtless provide manifold opportunities for you to carry out your duties in a manner most amusing.”
On that note, a unremarkable train pulled into the station. The frozen contestants found themselves boarding it without quite willing themselves to do so. Once all were onboard, it set off again in the direction from which it had come.
“I do apologise once more for the long-winded manner with which we are shipping you to your arena, but we figured we had quite a lot to talk about and so it was better off not having you all distracted. Whilst we are in transit, I do believe I have yet to tell you about the second complaint. It is directed at you alone, Vex, and is a collective objection from many a soul with interest in you and this battle. It is quite simple.”
From an inside pocket, S procured a folded sheet of paper. Opening it to himself, he made sure he had Vex’s attention and then flashed it at him. No one else saw the words that had been typed onto it bar the demigod, who recoiled for a split-second before regaining his composure.
“Now that’s all out of the way, I think we oughta tell you where we’re going, yes?”
The train changed direction all of a sudden, deviating from its previously straight course to head off at an angle, but also descending further into the rock.
“We are heading to the primary research facility of Oxbow Inc., a conglomerate corporation of research groups, originally involved in figuring out the science behind an undersea community. Naturally, it’s come by an awful lot of money over the years and it keeps dishing out the goods, so to speak, so profit keeps coming its way. It diversified as well into other areas of research, all of which were water based, I do believe, and so eventually it was deemed necessary to have a much larger facility than what they’d used previously. So two of the old tunnelling machines were brought out of retirement and programmed to produce-“
The sought-after explanation was unexpectedly interrupted by a repeated series of beeps emanating from another of S’s pockets. With a curiously concerned look on his face, he retrieved a miniscule device, presumably a meter of some description.
“Bugger. We don’t appear to be able to time anything right today. Forj ‘s little surprise has arrived a tad earlier than I’d anticipated.”
For a few seconds none of the contestants could quite comprehend what that meant. Well, all bar one, who could feel that fuzziness seeping into his stomach again. As the pain sharpened, the whole carriage shook slightly and the crescendo of a peculiar sound, perhaps the crackling of a flame, began.
Before anyone could look too bemused, the entity that was previously Wolf appeared to fold in on itself, or maybe it was evaporating, or exploding, or something different entirely. Certainly there was a wolf there one moment and a curiously two-dimensional shape there the next; a dark brown slice of something floating in midair.
Then it exploded.
By the time the searing light had diminished enough for shapes to be distinguishable once more, it was quite apparent that Wolf had seized to exist. Most of him, anyway. For some inexplicable reason, some indiscernible organ of his was lying on the floor, just sitting there at the feet of… well, it was a she. The sort of she that, had they not been rendered motionless by the Gentlemen, most of the contestants would have been agape at. They were certainly pretty stunned, irrespective of their ability to show so. Entities that unexpectedly materialised from out of nothing generally never bothered with clothes.
With his teeth tightly clenched, Talis proffered a brown paper parcel that had previously been sitting inconspicuously on a seat.
“I am supposed to pass this on to you. I’d say we would all turn round to let you preserve your decency, but, well, I’d be amazed if there was any of it left…”
The lights were dimmed regardless to offer some sort of privacy. Iris nodded in thanks and tore back the packaging to reveal a long black dress, the uncovering of which briefly raised her eyebrows. Out of courtesy alone she turned around, somewhat oblivious to the frozen state of her compatriots, and clothed herself as rapidly as she could.
“There, much better. Now men, this is Iris, I believe. It appears that our lupine friend was storing something of a surprise that I’m afraid we were only made aware of after it was too late to do anything about her. Too late to get much of a resume, either. I believe she has some summoning abilities and a little medicinal prowess. I am also reliably informed that she and Vex are going to get on like a house on fir- ah. We have arrived.”
With his patience worn so thin, Talis didn’t bother to walk the contestants out of the train. Instead, there was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it transition between the generic carriage interior and… and…
…well, it was big. Very, very big. Very much the sort of big that was best measured in hundreds of whatever unit you so desired. Putting superlatives to one side, it was best described as a squashed sphere, reminiscent perhaps of the Bubble from the first round, but by no means the same. The contestants stood on a balcony, a circular protrusion from a terrace that stretched all the way around the facility, as far as one could tell. There were about a dozen terraces that had been hewn out of the bedrock, stacked one above the other like paddies on a hillside, creating the effect of the space being a coliseum, each terrace a row of seating with the floor far below.
The edges of each terrace were difficult to define – it was tricky to say they were there at all. Buildings sprawled between layers, tanks and pipes crossed multiple floors and there were many extensions jutting over the lower layers to provide extra space for their sector, just like the ones the combatants were standing on now. There were also countless doors in the terrace walls, some human-sized, others built to allow unseen machinery to pass through, implying the presence a network of rooms behind them, just like in the atrium. The race responsible for this madness, it seemed, were incapable of wasting space.
But then, once you’d accounted for the hodgepodge that covered the floors, you looked up. And up. And up.
The ceiling was not much of a ceiling at all – rather, it was an enormous glass dome, stretching right across the whole span of the laboratory, through which the contestants had a view of the hundreds of metres of sea that were above their heads. The water was not totally clear and so the sky remained obscured, but with a little squinting the glimmers and flickers of shoals were distinguishable in the deep blue. The rigs and beams that straddled the dome from which lights and sprinklers were hung, were mere specks of dust against it and detracted little from the experience.
“I told you it was large. Have fun wrecking the place. Oh, and here’s a modicum of friendly advice; we’re about 800 fathoms down, so keep Sen away from the Hydroponics department. It’s sector Q17, I think you’ll find. Goodbye!”
And with that, the contestants were ensnared in the carrier orbs that were beginning to become familiar and split apart. As they floated away, Sruix turned to Talis and exposed his mischievous grin.
“Don’t bother closing up the passageway ‘twixt here and the platform. I can see where this is going and I dare say keeping things open might make for quite the climax, if they choose to co-operate with us this time…”
“Of course it’s going to be spectacular. That message will only serve to guarantee he won’t stop trying.”
“Quite the design of it.”
He retrieved the note from his pocket once more.
We know what you did back there. Don’t push your luck, mate.
Through a dimly lit doorway in an abandoned corner of the room there appeared a cloaked figure, his head kept well down. Though he seemed to be shuffling slightly, he covered the immeasurable distance between the door and the centrepiece of the room with surprising speed.
His destination was an ostensibly impromptu rig of devices positioned in the middle of the otherwise empty space. They were arranged in an arc so that one could immerse oneself in them fully, with the view of the room’s sole window blocked by the assorted apparatus. Not that the view was particularly distracting; not unless you knew quite what you were looking at.
In amongst the monitors and instruments, settled in a plush office chair, S was fiddling with the dials of an anarchic contraption, grumbling as he did so. Upon hearing the footsteps behind him, he swivelled round.
“Did you get a connection?”
“Not quite, I’m afraid. The bastard had left by the time I’d figured out where the hell he was. The Executive was most displeased.”
“Bugger. I’m going to have to have a word with him, aren’t I?”
“Depends. Are you talking about Vex or the boss?”
With his head in his hands, the gentleman considered this for a moment.
“Both, I should think. Once someone gets round to dying, I’ve gotta go and see the latter anyway… oh, and by the way. You’ve got mail.”
Despite it being something of a non-sequitur, it was an earnest statement. On a recently cleared corner of the desk, there sat what was undoubtedly an sincere attempt at an envelope; crisp white with a neat blue label right placed precisely in the middle. The sender had neglected to dabble in the art of adding stamps, but that hadn’t exactly stopped the message from reaching its intended recipient, a point that Sruix was keen to pursue.
“I’m pretty sure we didn’t use to have a letterbox in the atrium door, but it was there when I passed it not two hours ago. This thing was sitting on a doormat just below it. Heck, before that I’m positive we didn’t have a doormat either. What would either of us need from a doormat?”
“It’s the Organiser’s doing. It has to be. He said he was going to send me a letter and I guess he wanted to take the process seriously.”
“Well, I guessed that much. It was obvious who the author was the moment I picked it up.”
“What led you to that conclusion?”
“Well, for one thing, he’s written all your names on the label. All of them.”
“…I thought he said he was going to write porten- oh. But of course. That’s exactly what he would do, isn’t it?”
”Also, there’s only one fool I know of who chooses to write in lilac ink on blue paper.”
Talis sighed. “He does try. You can’t blame him for tr- hang on. You’ve opened it, haven’t you?”
This remark was cause enough for Sruix to chuck the envelope at his colleague, who couldn’t really be bothered to go out of his way to catch it.
“I’m not very good with this evil malarkey, am I?”
“Well, you could be much better at it if you put a little effort into it. If you could just watch your words a little more and not give yourself away quite so easily…”
Before the squabble could descend much lower into the depths of petty insults, a brief burst of static intervened. Something wonderful had just happened.
On an antiquated fascia below the many monitors that lined the observation deck, there were now six lights, of red or green or blue, flickering away like candle flames. Until a few moments prior, there had been seven.
“Finally. We at last get to show these morosophs the error of their ways.”
This statement prompted a small chuckle from Talis. “That’s a new word for you. Why, that makes, what, maybe a whole hundred you’ve added to your vocabulary in order to sound more like an omnipotent orchestrating prick.”
”Shut it.”
-~-~-~-~-~-~
From paradise blown to infinite black and then to black again; it must have taken a mere second to pluck the contestants from the island and deposit them elsewhere. That second was all it took to crush whatever hopes of a peaceful resolution to the matter anyone might have been foolish enough to consider holding dear. Once more, they were at the mercy of the Gentlemen.
The six survivors each stood in their own spotlight, in a manner not dissimilar to their entrance into the battle in the far-flung past. This time, they were arranged in a perfect hexagon, with one contestant placed in each corner. It was too dark to make out quite where they were standing, but the floor appeared to be well-trodden rubber, despite lacking much in the way of a smell.
A seventh light flickered on in the middle of the arrangement, revealing the duo the contestants so despised. Both wore immaculate grins, though Sruix had let his hair down to obscure his face as per his last two appearances. With this extra light, it was now apparent that every contestant was in their own cell; each occupied a vast hexagonal chamber with walls of glass separating them from both their counterparts and their masters.
“Well, I say. That was quite the death, methinks. I’d have honestly preferred to see one of you guys off him, but there’s no denying that that was simply marvellous. It’s a great pity that most of you didn’t get to see it!”
Sruix had started to clap.
“Oh Vex, you fiend. What a lovely idea you had; an island utopia, where nothing could possibly go wrong. I would dearly have loved to have seen you try a little harder there; maybe things might have turned out alright… oh, but I jest. I think you might have not quite realised what you were trying to do there. See, I’d like to have a word with you all now about a matter I assure you to be extremely important to your continued existence.”
Shortly before he uttered the last word he saw fit to nudge Talis, who merely rolled his eyes at the gesture. Such apathy was short-lived as he adopted a more serious look.
“We received… a complaint. Well, two actually, but for some reason “two complaints” doesn’t have quite as much impact as the singular. The first comes from the very man who has organised this affair, the proprietor of this altercation and the being with the most interest in seeing you scuffle. He is not, I think you’ll find, a man you want to get on the wrong side of and yet it appears that your antics have indeed upset him. Can you guess why?”
In an attempt to imitate cause and effect, Talis snapped his fingers. A little before that, though, the lights flashed on, ruining the illusion entirely. Not that any of the contestants really cared. Those who could were too busy regarding their surroundings in awe.
Outside their prisons, everything gleamed. Their surroundings reeked of the epitome of luxury very surface seemed to have been highly polished, even those that couldn’t possibly have been. Walkways linked each cell to a balcony that encircled them a reasonable distance away, dotted with planters lined with exotic flora. Everything appeared to be made of the most magnificent material that was suitable – brass handrails, marble floors, golden lamps and statues. Six passages continued off the circular space like spokes on a wheel, with glimpses of fountains visible down each of their lengths. But then, beyond the veil of opulence, the walls on the other side of the balcony were in fact shop fronts, albeit the lavish ones of up-market retailers. It seemed that the contestants were standing in the middle of an opulent shopping mall, albeit one devoid of life.
“Each of you stands in one of the many elevators that service the upper shopping district of Aquarius Major, capital of the archipelago nation Nubium. The elevator network here is rather clever; there are six shafts with multiple elevators in each serving six floors a piece, plus one drop-shaft that serves just the top and bottom floors, allowing a patron to travel from any floor to any another in a maximum of three journeys. Not bad when you consider that there are 175 floors, huh?”
With a notable clang, the elevators began to descend. Floor after floor of the same luxury passed the contestants by, each indistinguishable from the previous.
“Now, Talis has asked me not to bore you all with the history, but to be honest it is a little boring anyway. It’s the old story about a down-on-his-luck entrepreneur getting the killer idea over a bottle of booze one day, an idea that could solve the government’s biggest problem, gets his vision realised, becomes a very rich man, lives fast, dies young, gets a lasting legacy blah de blah.”
“Before he becomes unstoppable force, it might be wise to note that you will soon experience a rather curious sensation, comparable perhaps to body-wide pins and needles. You’ll see why.”
“Thank you for the interruption there.”
“My pleasure entirely.”
Rather than continue with his monologue, Sruix steepled his fingers.
“Actually, you were rather timely. I believe it is about to occur.”
Had anyone been capable of counting the rapidly passing floors, they might have noticed that the total was getting awfully close to the cited number, yet the elevator showed no signs of showing down. The balconies gave way to a view of a sprawling plaza that undercut the upper floors, but it too passed in the blink of an eye.
Everything abruptly turned a hazy shade of grey, accompanied by a feeling comparable to body-wide pins and needles. The Gentlemen were showing admirable disregard for the laws of physics. Or floors. Or internal infrastructure. Or ceilings too, for that matter.
The landings were a little less luxurious now, with dappled and pastel shades replacing the earlier golds and bronzes. Each blurred into the next and so their features weren’t really distinguishable, but the shop fronts were definitely gone and so were most of the trimmings that had added to the grandeur.
“Yes, there’s more. But no, I know what you’re thinking – basement residences. Pfft. Something so passé wouldn’t exactly have netted our man fame and fortune. Time to reveal the twist.”
”The big problem an island nation has is understandably space – if a nation undergoes a population boom, you need land to house them, land on which to produce the food that feeds them and so on. This island chain just so happened to be the best stopping point between two continents once upon a time, when the air was unconquered and a big boat was your best bet for getting from A to B. Consequently, this place got pretty overcrowded and building up wasn’t an art this civilisation had yet to perfect. They tried though, but it took an alcoholic to solve the problem by turning it on its head.”
“Aquarius Major is 400 floors of building below ground. Heck, it’s entirely below sea level. It’s an underwater city, carved out of the island. There’s an awful lot of space in a big rock like this. I stopped counting the populace at five million and the square footage when it hit ten digits.”
At last, the elevators slowed, crawling the last few feet so as to allow the six to get a good look at the atrium. Countless passages led away from the elevators, some labelled as stations for public transport, others as residential or industrial sectors. Each warren seemed to continue on for a brief while, then turn off, up or down, left or right. There was a labyrinth behind the carved-out walls that presumably stretched throughout the entire island and beyond.
“You are here for one reason and one reason only. We plucked you from your own pinprick of reality and brought you all together so that you could fight. This battle was instigated for the entertainment of beings more powerful that yourselves; some might say greater, but I suspect you all would have a qualm or two with that. You might also dislike the idea of being enslaved to this fate, reduced to mere pawns in a game played for the amusement of others; a game with genuine stakes. But you can’t do a thing about it.”
“Do you know why we’ve brought you here? There are three reasons: the first is merely a little piece of trivia that might just be worth noting.”
With a flourish, Sruix pointed at a point somewhere between Jacob and Steven, beyond the confines of the elevators and presumably even the gateway space.
“1217 miles in that direction, give or take a little perhaps, sprawled between two headland peaks, is the seaside town of Cydonia. 40 miles north of that is a much larger city, the capital of the nation, I’ll have you know. Both of those locations have something special in common; until recently, they were the respective homes of two men, the names of whom are not important. Now, however, they are two more pawns, tangled up in situations similar to yours. One of them, bless him, has gotten rather far, but that is not the point. The point is, people, that you are part of a widespread tradition and that your strife is but one of many. In the numerous iterations, there have of course been attempts to usurp those in charge, to break the game and free themselves and their comrades.”
The lights dimmed once more and for a few moments the combatants were alone in the darkness. As they flashed on once more, they found themselves standing on a station platform, with no sign of the elevators they had previously been standing in. The area was enclosed in a manner similar to a subway station, with the only access a flight of stairs on the other side of the tracks. It appeared to be the end of the line, with the lines stretching off into the distance one way only.
“Blergh, my timing’s all out. I do apologise.”
“It’s quite alright. The train won’t be here for a while yet, I take it?”
“Three minutes.”
Behind the façade of hair, Sruix’s grin appeared again.
“Where was I? Ah yes, the futility of escape, for you see, in the myriad of battles held throughout the whole and space of time, nobody has ever succeeded in defeating a grandmaster or derailing a battle. It cannot be done. It appears that you either do not realise or do not respect the strength of your superiors or the jurisdiction we have over you. So then, reason number two for bringing you here; to try to make you understand.”
“Everything you have seen so far and all that you are about to see has been carefully crafted; whole worlds have been created, the first for you alone to destroy as you saw fit, the second as a favour for another that we then adapted and here, the third world, to house an entire civilisation. The society that created this frivolous settlement was let loose upon this ball of rock to build for themselves such monuments, to take the crazed daydreams of the maddest of men and turn them into reality. But why? Let us look at this from another angle. More specifically, the angle of my good friend here…”
“You all must, at one point or another, have had at least one of those little whims, the ones that are a little leftfield and probably not at all wise. You know the type; those innocent “what if?” ideas that are good for a laugh. Sometimes you come out the other end feeling a little guilty and regretting you even thought of them in the first place.”
In the grey distance, a subtle rumbling sound began to creep towards the platform.
“Do you know what happens when a god gets one of those whims? This.”
The tunnel’s lights flickered and for a few moments the faint auras of headlights could be seen painting the walls.
“This is our playground. Well, it’s mine technically, but Talis was responsible for it all making sense. The eccentricity that is an underwater city was an idea I personally envisaged and then went about creating. Ideas were planted into the heads of those most fitting and though I must admit it was not my hands that built this, it was my will that made what I desired reality. I might, if you like, take you to some other examples sometime; I could rattle off a list, but we have a train to catch. If you think that’s quite a hollow statement, then I assure you; you’ve seen adequate proof that there is basis for me to brag. But regardless, I should say this; you’ve seen what we can do to a world. Now think what we could do to you.”
“Reason number three; we don’t want to have to intervene. We want you guys to do what you are here to do; we want you to fight. We don’t want to have to make you to do that; forced combat is nowhere near as entertaining, I would say, as freeform conflict. But there are of course limits, and you are beginning to test them. Peaceful resolutions and escapist whimsies are intolerable. We could naturally make your lives living hells, torturing you, perhaps, to force your co-operation, but where would be the fun in that? So we have brought you here to give you one last chance by providing you with a backdrop that will doubtless provide manifold opportunities for you to carry out your duties in a manner most amusing.”
On that note, a unremarkable train pulled into the station. The frozen contestants found themselves boarding it without quite willing themselves to do so. Once all were onboard, it set off again in the direction from which it had come.
“I do apologise once more for the long-winded manner with which we are shipping you to your arena, but we figured we had quite a lot to talk about and so it was better off not having you all distracted. Whilst we are in transit, I do believe I have yet to tell you about the second complaint. It is directed at you alone, Vex, and is a collective objection from many a soul with interest in you and this battle. It is quite simple.”
From an inside pocket, S procured a folded sheet of paper. Opening it to himself, he made sure he had Vex’s attention and then flashed it at him. No one else saw the words that had been typed onto it bar the demigod, who recoiled for a split-second before regaining his composure.
“Now that’s all out of the way, I think we oughta tell you where we’re going, yes?”
The train changed direction all of a sudden, deviating from its previously straight course to head off at an angle, but also descending further into the rock.
“We are heading to the primary research facility of Oxbow Inc., a conglomerate corporation of research groups, originally involved in figuring out the science behind an undersea community. Naturally, it’s come by an awful lot of money over the years and it keeps dishing out the goods, so to speak, so profit keeps coming its way. It diversified as well into other areas of research, all of which were water based, I do believe, and so eventually it was deemed necessary to have a much larger facility than what they’d used previously. So two of the old tunnelling machines were brought out of retirement and programmed to produce-“
The sought-after explanation was unexpectedly interrupted by a repeated series of beeps emanating from another of S’s pockets. With a curiously concerned look on his face, he retrieved a miniscule device, presumably a meter of some description.
“Bugger. We don’t appear to be able to time anything right today. Forj ‘s little surprise has arrived a tad earlier than I’d anticipated.”
For a few seconds none of the contestants could quite comprehend what that meant. Well, all bar one, who could feel that fuzziness seeping into his stomach again. As the pain sharpened, the whole carriage shook slightly and the crescendo of a peculiar sound, perhaps the crackling of a flame, began.
Before anyone could look too bemused, the entity that was previously Wolf appeared to fold in on itself, or maybe it was evaporating, or exploding, or something different entirely. Certainly there was a wolf there one moment and a curiously two-dimensional shape there the next; a dark brown slice of something floating in midair.
Then it exploded.
By the time the searing light had diminished enough for shapes to be distinguishable once more, it was quite apparent that Wolf had seized to exist. Most of him, anyway. For some inexplicable reason, some indiscernible organ of his was lying on the floor, just sitting there at the feet of… well, it was a she. The sort of she that, had they not been rendered motionless by the Gentlemen, most of the contestants would have been agape at. They were certainly pretty stunned, irrespective of their ability to show so. Entities that unexpectedly materialised from out of nothing generally never bothered with clothes.
With his teeth tightly clenched, Talis proffered a brown paper parcel that had previously been sitting inconspicuously on a seat.
“I am supposed to pass this on to you. I’d say we would all turn round to let you preserve your decency, but, well, I’d be amazed if there was any of it left…”
The lights were dimmed regardless to offer some sort of privacy. Iris nodded in thanks and tore back the packaging to reveal a long black dress, the uncovering of which briefly raised her eyebrows. Out of courtesy alone she turned around, somewhat oblivious to the frozen state of her compatriots, and clothed herself as rapidly as she could.
“There, much better. Now men, this is Iris, I believe. It appears that our lupine friend was storing something of a surprise that I’m afraid we were only made aware of after it was too late to do anything about her. Too late to get much of a resume, either. I believe she has some summoning abilities and a little medicinal prowess. I am also reliably informed that she and Vex are going to get on like a house on fir- ah. We have arrived.”
With his patience worn so thin, Talis didn’t bother to walk the contestants out of the train. Instead, there was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it transition between the generic carriage interior and… and…
…well, it was big. Very, very big. Very much the sort of big that was best measured in hundreds of whatever unit you so desired. Putting superlatives to one side, it was best described as a squashed sphere, reminiscent perhaps of the Bubble from the first round, but by no means the same. The contestants stood on a balcony, a circular protrusion from a terrace that stretched all the way around the facility, as far as one could tell. There were about a dozen terraces that had been hewn out of the bedrock, stacked one above the other like paddies on a hillside, creating the effect of the space being a coliseum, each terrace a row of seating with the floor far below.
The edges of each terrace were difficult to define – it was tricky to say they were there at all. Buildings sprawled between layers, tanks and pipes crossed multiple floors and there were many extensions jutting over the lower layers to provide extra space for their sector, just like the ones the combatants were standing on now. There were also countless doors in the terrace walls, some human-sized, others built to allow unseen machinery to pass through, implying the presence a network of rooms behind them, just like in the atrium. The race responsible for this madness, it seemed, were incapable of wasting space.
But then, once you’d accounted for the hodgepodge that covered the floors, you looked up. And up. And up.
The ceiling was not much of a ceiling at all – rather, it was an enormous glass dome, stretching right across the whole span of the laboratory, through which the contestants had a view of the hundreds of metres of sea that were above their heads. The water was not totally clear and so the sky remained obscured, but with a little squinting the glimmers and flickers of shoals were distinguishable in the deep blue. The rigs and beams that straddled the dome from which lights and sprinklers were hung, were mere specks of dust against it and detracted little from the experience.
“I told you it was large. Have fun wrecking the place. Oh, and here’s a modicum of friendly advice; we’re about 800 fathoms down, so keep Sen away from the Hydroponics department. It’s sector Q17, I think you’ll find. Goodbye!”
And with that, the contestants were ensnared in the carrier orbs that were beginning to become familiar and split apart. As they floated away, Sruix turned to Talis and exposed his mischievous grin.
“Don’t bother closing up the passageway ‘twixt here and the platform. I can see where this is going and I dare say keeping things open might make for quite the climax, if they choose to co-operate with us this time…”
“Of course it’s going to be spectacular. That message will only serve to guarantee he won’t stop trying.”
“Quite the design of it.”
He retrieved the note from his pocket once more.
We know what you did back there. Don’t push your luck, mate.