RE: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Six: Eddelin City]
02-01-2014, 05:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-01-2014, 05:29 PM by Elpie.)
Jen rested her hand on Xadrez’ chessboard. “Don’t.”
The spirit glowered. don’t, she says
forgive me for bemoaning your juvenile sentimentality and thereby fulfilling the stock character role assigned to me but the youths are now grandmasterkin
affecting to ignore the narrative confluence that is bound to carry in their wake would be our first move towards utterly losing control of events yet a sixth time
”I’m not saying we ignore them,” snapped Jen. “I’m saying we let their string out a bit and see where they lead us.”
well feel free to doubt my judgment as the one of us who achieved cosmic metacausal awareness while you were off blowing up the moon
i bow to your feminine intuition
please let’s scatter our every advantage on the wind and go out for coffee hoping to return to find they have sprouted mighty advantageous oaks
which we shall climb straight up to the cyclops’ cloud-castle and slay him with the magic sword you’re letting that enfeebled academic walk away with right now
Koule had, indeed, picked up the sword, though he wasn’t walking anywhere. A constable had briefly been summoned, only to find that the victim in question had vanished into light; the officer now seemed to be debating inwardly whether he might accept this as a boon on his clearance rate or insure against his liability through the requisite paperwork. “Assuming that you can retain control of everything,” ventured Jen, “And then working outward from the thing you want most is the opposite of a plan, Xed. Check your cosmic awareness with a little self-awareness now and then, hmm?”
Eddelin had that kind of energy generally associated with post-nuclear cities--it “moved fast”--and life on the street had already returned to normal. Certainly the young girl in the bright green battledress and the morose-looking spirit in purple weren’t attracting any attention other than mild annoyance on the basis of their occupying space. the observer, offered Xadrez, dead
this is not a motivation i expect to be argued out of
pragmatically, sentimentally, ethically, it is our objective
to deny it is to hasten the moment when one of us kills the other
unless you’re thinking of taking the easy way out and submitting to his terms
”It crossed my mind,” admitted Jen. “Wouldn’t be difficult.”
”What would be difficult for you would be to think for ten seconds
We just saw Kracht win three consecutive battles the last hosted by possibly the most benevolent ‘grandmaster’ who might ever have been said to exist
his ‘boon’ was an infinity of living hells followed by the gift of being slammed to death by a mer-dominatrix
this battle isn’t like your regency you can’t just pop out of it refreshed and jetlagged and ready to report in to work the next week
this is a story that ends in total annihilation or the observer’s blood
Jen sniffed the air. “There’s coffee,” she announced. “I need coffee. Join me.” She practically skipped into an open-air cafe. Xadrez weighed his priorities briefly, marked down the direction in which Arkal’s sons were walking off, and followed his battler.
It seems impolite to remind you though you seem so intent on wilfully ignoring the fact
But I could always simply order you to be a more productive brand of obstinant
in accordance with the life debt you failed so utterly to discharge in the previous round
Jen ordered a caramel-themed beverage before turning to respond. “That’s half a bluff, Xed. You understand the situation has changed.”
Xadrez nudged a chair out of the way and rested his spectral elbows on the table opposite his interlocutor. the rescue of the timeline that enabled our continued existence occurred entirely without your agency
I see no way in which the situation might have changed
”There’s a contradiction now,” explained Jen. “The geas incurred when you brought me back from life was always in tension with the contract of the Battle itself. But that was a minor stipulation back when there were three-odd other foes for us to fight against. Now the life-debt in the battle are in direct contradiction. Cosmologically, I can’t be expected to serve your will and protect your life while we’re also locked into a one-must-live-one-must-die destiny-style thing.”
Xadrez rapped his fingers intangibly against the table. The waiter dropped by with Jen’s coffee.
“So this becomes interesting,” said Jen. “The second you try and issue a command, that will collapse the contradiction and prove one geas to be stronger than the other. Either I’ll be compelled to obey or I won’t. And the battle’s geas is stronger the less leverage we have against the Observer. So I might conclude by that that it’s in my best interest, if I thought you had some intention of abusing my obligations, to keep the round proceeding normally until we have an opportunity to go forward on my terms. Or until I save your life.”
Xadrez’ eye twitched. arkal dead
the two of us standing on the threshold of annihilation
and all you can think of is negotiating a shred of autonomy
are you really so confident
Jen sipped contentedly at her mug and leaned over the table with a wicked grin. “Have you met me, Xed?”
* * * * *
Eddelin City!
Soaring architecture. Strange music emanating from alleys. Attractive rich people buying flowers and jewelry from attractive poor people. Just enough diversity to keep things interesting while preserving the seductive mystique of the other. Temperate and sunny.
The city was unwalled but Koule always thought of Eddelin as surrounded by an invisible aura that kept the cynics at bay. One could not spend a night in the Percussion District or take lunch at University East without being overwhelmed by a sense of hope and progress. Here in Eddelin, every conceivable branch of human (er, sapient) achievement and knowledge was being pushed to its boundaries. Thanks to Koule’s work, even the past seemed to be moving forward.
His father was dead. Koule felt like the future had taken an arrow to the gut.
The taxonomy of the sciences at U. East seemed always to be shifting around as its practitioners reevaluated the ways in which the cosmos herself categorized her processes. So it took Koule a few precious minutes, wandering around campus with a sword twice the size of his arm, to establish that his colleague Votchke was now working out of the sub-basement of the “Deep Sciences” department alongside a new hire specializing in marine anatomy and radical ethics. “Dear gods,” proclaimed Votchke over the rim of her micromonocle. “That’s some instrument you’ve got there, Koule. Is this how you pump yourself up before lectures?”
“Votchke, listen,” panted Koule. “I don’t have a lot of time before the talk but I need a favor.” He tossed the sword down on her desk. “Something happened to my father and I need your help to understand what it was. This was the last sword he made.”
“The last--oh gods, Koule.” Votchke cleared off the desk with a crude sweep of her arm and examined the sword. “The last, as in, the most recent, or…”
“He’s dead, Votchke.” Koule pulled up a stool. “I don’t know how. I think this sword might have... changed him, somehow. He was different at the end. Really different. I don’t know--”
Votchke rested a hand on Koule’s cheek, one eye on the sword. “Okay. Listen, Koule. I know you don’t really have the qualifications to understand this, but there’s cutting-edge, and then there’s Arkal of the Silver Anvil. I never really wanted to mouth off to you about how much of an admirer I was, because, I don’t know, my impression is that things were awkward between you, but… he’s a cited figure in a number of fields. Metallurgy, military theory, sculpture. Just as, what, a halo effect from how good he was at what he did.”
Koule searched around for a window to look out of but found only the marine anatomist hunching over a flayed dolphin at the desk adjacent. “He was the best. I know that.”
“And when you’re that good at something there’s always the risk that you’re going to discover something that will change everything, starting with you. Genius is dangerous.”
Koule looked at the sword on the table. “Are you saying you won’t take a look at it?”
Votchke smiled. “I’m just letting you know that I’m taking an extraordinary risk and you owe me dinner, at the very least. I’ll start right away. You should go prep for the talk.”
“I need a few more minutes here.”
“Okay.”
“Work out loud. Just keep talking to me.”
“Okay, Koule. Make yourself comfortable.” Votchke hefted the sword. “I mean obviously the first thing I’m going to say is that this is probably the best sword, ever.”
“It’s light,” added Koule.
“Yeah. It’s light in all the right ways and heavy in all the right ways. I don’t know swordplay but damn.”
“So what’s it made of?”
The deep scientist held the weapon up to her micromonocle. “I’m seeing silver but that makes no sense, on any level.” She scratched at the sword with a fingernail. “There’s no reason to make a sword out of silver and if you did, it wouldn’t be anything like this. Also it doesn’t smell like silver.”
“Smell?”
“Smell. Here, smell.” Votchke swung the sword alarmingly close to Koule’s nose. A rancid, dimly familiar smell hit his nostrils. “That’s a biological smell. So there’s a biological component here. Which isn’t my--”
”Blubber,” said the marine anatomist.
“Pardon?” asked Koule.
The new hire whirled around in her chair. ”That your smelling’s blubber of a baleen whale. Your da’s sword is whale in part. Trust me.”
Koule turned back to Votchke. “Does that… help?”
Votchke sniffed the sword again. “Well, it helps me understand how eclectic an instrument it is we’re dealing with exactly.”
Koule smiled and sighed. “Well, thanks for accelerating our bafflement. I don’t believe we’ve met. You are?”
He blinked and she was in front of him, a slick hand outstretched. Under a thin coat was the smooth, naked skin of some sort of mer. Koule felt his grief roughly drowned in the shallow surf of something between fear and arousal. ”Kath,” she answered. ”Marine anatomy and radical ethics.” Kath pulled a dolphin eyeball out of her pocket and popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly. Five seconds later she stuck out her tongue to reveal an optic nerve tied in a bow, which she pressed into Koule’s hand as though it were the most intimate of gifts. ”And one who’d appreciate a closer look at that sword.”
Koule felt himself immersed. Sinking.
The spirit glowered. don’t, she says
forgive me for bemoaning your juvenile sentimentality and thereby fulfilling the stock character role assigned to me but the youths are now grandmasterkin
affecting to ignore the narrative confluence that is bound to carry in their wake would be our first move towards utterly losing control of events yet a sixth time
”I’m not saying we ignore them,” snapped Jen. “I’m saying we let their string out a bit and see where they lead us.”
well feel free to doubt my judgment as the one of us who achieved cosmic metacausal awareness while you were off blowing up the moon
i bow to your feminine intuition
please let’s scatter our every advantage on the wind and go out for coffee hoping to return to find they have sprouted mighty advantageous oaks
which we shall climb straight up to the cyclops’ cloud-castle and slay him with the magic sword you’re letting that enfeebled academic walk away with right now
Koule had, indeed, picked up the sword, though he wasn’t walking anywhere. A constable had briefly been summoned, only to find that the victim in question had vanished into light; the officer now seemed to be debating inwardly whether he might accept this as a boon on his clearance rate or insure against his liability through the requisite paperwork. “Assuming that you can retain control of everything,” ventured Jen, “And then working outward from the thing you want most is the opposite of a plan, Xed. Check your cosmic awareness with a little self-awareness now and then, hmm?”
Eddelin had that kind of energy generally associated with post-nuclear cities--it “moved fast”--and life on the street had already returned to normal. Certainly the young girl in the bright green battledress and the morose-looking spirit in purple weren’t attracting any attention other than mild annoyance on the basis of their occupying space. the observer, offered Xadrez, dead
this is not a motivation i expect to be argued out of
pragmatically, sentimentally, ethically, it is our objective
to deny it is to hasten the moment when one of us kills the other
unless you’re thinking of taking the easy way out and submitting to his terms
”It crossed my mind,” admitted Jen. “Wouldn’t be difficult.”
”What would be difficult for you would be to think for ten seconds
We just saw Kracht win three consecutive battles the last hosted by possibly the most benevolent ‘grandmaster’ who might ever have been said to exist
his ‘boon’ was an infinity of living hells followed by the gift of being slammed to death by a mer-dominatrix
this battle isn’t like your regency you can’t just pop out of it refreshed and jetlagged and ready to report in to work the next week
this is a story that ends in total annihilation or the observer’s blood
Jen sniffed the air. “There’s coffee,” she announced. “I need coffee. Join me.” She practically skipped into an open-air cafe. Xadrez weighed his priorities briefly, marked down the direction in which Arkal’s sons were walking off, and followed his battler.
It seems impolite to remind you though you seem so intent on wilfully ignoring the fact
But I could always simply order you to be a more productive brand of obstinant
in accordance with the life debt you failed so utterly to discharge in the previous round
Jen ordered a caramel-themed beverage before turning to respond. “That’s half a bluff, Xed. You understand the situation has changed.”
Xadrez nudged a chair out of the way and rested his spectral elbows on the table opposite his interlocutor. the rescue of the timeline that enabled our continued existence occurred entirely without your agency
I see no way in which the situation might have changed
”There’s a contradiction now,” explained Jen. “The geas incurred when you brought me back from life was always in tension with the contract of the Battle itself. But that was a minor stipulation back when there were three-odd other foes for us to fight against. Now the life-debt in the battle are in direct contradiction. Cosmologically, I can’t be expected to serve your will and protect your life while we’re also locked into a one-must-live-one-must-die destiny-style thing.”
Xadrez rapped his fingers intangibly against the table. The waiter dropped by with Jen’s coffee.
“So this becomes interesting,” said Jen. “The second you try and issue a command, that will collapse the contradiction and prove one geas to be stronger than the other. Either I’ll be compelled to obey or I won’t. And the battle’s geas is stronger the less leverage we have against the Observer. So I might conclude by that that it’s in my best interest, if I thought you had some intention of abusing my obligations, to keep the round proceeding normally until we have an opportunity to go forward on my terms. Or until I save your life.”
Xadrez’ eye twitched. arkal dead
the two of us standing on the threshold of annihilation
and all you can think of is negotiating a shred of autonomy
are you really so confident
Jen sipped contentedly at her mug and leaned over the table with a wicked grin. “Have you met me, Xed?”
* * * * *
Eddelin City!
Soaring architecture. Strange music emanating from alleys. Attractive rich people buying flowers and jewelry from attractive poor people. Just enough diversity to keep things interesting while preserving the seductive mystique of the other. Temperate and sunny.
The city was unwalled but Koule always thought of Eddelin as surrounded by an invisible aura that kept the cynics at bay. One could not spend a night in the Percussion District or take lunch at University East without being overwhelmed by a sense of hope and progress. Here in Eddelin, every conceivable branch of human (er, sapient) achievement and knowledge was being pushed to its boundaries. Thanks to Koule’s work, even the past seemed to be moving forward.
His father was dead. Koule felt like the future had taken an arrow to the gut.
The taxonomy of the sciences at U. East seemed always to be shifting around as its practitioners reevaluated the ways in which the cosmos herself categorized her processes. So it took Koule a few precious minutes, wandering around campus with a sword twice the size of his arm, to establish that his colleague Votchke was now working out of the sub-basement of the “Deep Sciences” department alongside a new hire specializing in marine anatomy and radical ethics. “Dear gods,” proclaimed Votchke over the rim of her micromonocle. “That’s some instrument you’ve got there, Koule. Is this how you pump yourself up before lectures?”
“Votchke, listen,” panted Koule. “I don’t have a lot of time before the talk but I need a favor.” He tossed the sword down on her desk. “Something happened to my father and I need your help to understand what it was. This was the last sword he made.”
“The last--oh gods, Koule.” Votchke cleared off the desk with a crude sweep of her arm and examined the sword. “The last, as in, the most recent, or…”
“He’s dead, Votchke.” Koule pulled up a stool. “I don’t know how. I think this sword might have... changed him, somehow. He was different at the end. Really different. I don’t know--”
Votchke rested a hand on Koule’s cheek, one eye on the sword. “Okay. Listen, Koule. I know you don’t really have the qualifications to understand this, but there’s cutting-edge, and then there’s Arkal of the Silver Anvil. I never really wanted to mouth off to you about how much of an admirer I was, because, I don’t know, my impression is that things were awkward between you, but… he’s a cited figure in a number of fields. Metallurgy, military theory, sculpture. Just as, what, a halo effect from how good he was at what he did.”
Koule searched around for a window to look out of but found only the marine anatomist hunching over a flayed dolphin at the desk adjacent. “He was the best. I know that.”
“And when you’re that good at something there’s always the risk that you’re going to discover something that will change everything, starting with you. Genius is dangerous.”
Koule looked at the sword on the table. “Are you saying you won’t take a look at it?”
Votchke smiled. “I’m just letting you know that I’m taking an extraordinary risk and you owe me dinner, at the very least. I’ll start right away. You should go prep for the talk.”
“I need a few more minutes here.”
“Okay.”
“Work out loud. Just keep talking to me.”
“Okay, Koule. Make yourself comfortable.” Votchke hefted the sword. “I mean obviously the first thing I’m going to say is that this is probably the best sword, ever.”
“It’s light,” added Koule.
“Yeah. It’s light in all the right ways and heavy in all the right ways. I don’t know swordplay but damn.”
“So what’s it made of?”
The deep scientist held the weapon up to her micromonocle. “I’m seeing silver but that makes no sense, on any level.” She scratched at the sword with a fingernail. “There’s no reason to make a sword out of silver and if you did, it wouldn’t be anything like this. Also it doesn’t smell like silver.”
“Smell?”
“Smell. Here, smell.” Votchke swung the sword alarmingly close to Koule’s nose. A rancid, dimly familiar smell hit his nostrils. “That’s a biological smell. So there’s a biological component here. Which isn’t my--”
”Blubber,” said the marine anatomist.
“Pardon?” asked Koule.
The new hire whirled around in her chair. ”That your smelling’s blubber of a baleen whale. Your da’s sword is whale in part. Trust me.”
Koule turned back to Votchke. “Does that… help?”
Votchke sniffed the sword again. “Well, it helps me understand how eclectic an instrument it is we’re dealing with exactly.”
Koule smiled and sighed. “Well, thanks for accelerating our bafflement. I don’t believe we’ve met. You are?”
He blinked and she was in front of him, a slick hand outstretched. Under a thin coat was the smooth, naked skin of some sort of mer. Koule felt his grief roughly drowned in the shallow surf of something between fear and arousal. ”Kath,” she answered. ”Marine anatomy and radical ethics.” Kath pulled a dolphin eyeball out of her pocket and popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly. Five seconds later she stuck out her tongue to reveal an optic nerve tied in a bow, which she pressed into Koule’s hand as though it were the most intimate of gifts. ”And one who’d appreciate a closer look at that sword.”
Koule felt himself immersed. Sinking.