Chapter 45: Priorita's Poisons, Stings and Questionable Things

  I stepped through the portal and endured a heartbeat of nauseating nothingness before solid ground returned beneath my boots. The narrow corridor I appeared in was dark, lit only by the golden glow of the doorway back to the Forward Position. The scent of the Parlay Parlour hit me next—spilled coffee, old beer, cheap cigarettes. The stink of home. After weeks of hamburger rot and alien musk, it was strangely comforting.

  My mud-crusted boots squelched with every step, sinking into a red carpet so deeply stained it had turned nearly black. The walls on either side were layered in graffiti—dozens of scripts I didn’t recognise, scrawled over one another in a riot of colour and profanity. Ariel traced her fingers along the markings, squinting in the dim light before scoffing under her breath.

  “Why do they draw so many titties?” she asked.

  Paddy chuckled. “I’m pretty sure some of these things are alien dicks too. Guess some things are universal, eh?”

  One of those dodgy bead curtains you see in crystal shops separated us in the narrow corridor from the parlour proper. I halted before it, peering through the small gaps at the space beyond.

  Dim light was no obstacle for me, nor was the smoke in the air. My enhanced senses let me pick out individual voices through the music—murmuring, arguing, wheedling. The place was so seedy, so uncared for, it was… so human.

  Lounge-lined booths filled the open space, most occupied by shadowed figures. At one end stood a raised stage upon which a trio of tiny Priorita—no larger than a microwave oven—played alien bagpipes. A long bar lined much of another wall, and it too was staffed by those mini Priorita.

  What the hell is this place?

  I watched cargo zip through pneumatic tubes at speeds I couldn’t track, streaking up and down through the centre of the room, where a spiral staircase pierced the space like a spine and led to other floors.

  “What’s wrong, lad?” Paddy hissed from behind. He tried to peek past me, ducking under my armpit to see through the curtain, but the irishman recoiled almost immediately. I was a big bloke, hairy, and it had been damn hot outside. I smelled pretty ripe at this point.

  “Nothing. I mean, I dunno,” I said, pressing against the wall so he could squeeze in beside me to take a look. The booth closest to us held a single human male, the tag above his head told me his name was Armando Montanari and he was still at level 2. Dressed in a dishevelled business suit that was missing one sleeve, he spoke quietly with a pair of lizard-looking aliens that kept licking their own eyeballs. There was paperwork spread over the table between them. “It looks like they’re having a meeting.”

  One of those metal-skinned Boca-Chica things staggered past our corridor, bouncing off the wall and obscuring our vision for a moment. It had a different-coloured drink in each of its four hands, and I was pretty sure it was hammered. “Or getting pissed at the bar,” I chuckled.

  Paddy ignored both my comment, and the drunken metal man who was now vomiting glitter onto a wall. He remained staring at the human in the booth. “Aye, it does. A business meeting. Bloody weird, lad. And look—there’s another one.” Paddy pointed to another booth just a few metres from the first, where another man, dressed in an identical suit, whispered to a trio of U’l Ciacco, gesturing and tapping at the papers. A moment later, the U’l Ciacco signed where he indicated. It made me uncomfortable, but I wasn’t sure why. “Actually,” said Paddy, “there are bloody loads of them,” he said, looking around the parlour. “Must be two dozen, or more.”

  I squinted at the bloke closest to me, Armando. He looked familiar, though I didn’t think I’d ever met him. It took me a moment, but I realised what he was. With my enhanced eyesight I could just make out the emblem stitched into his blazer.

  “Mate,” I said, staring at the man, who was flashing a wide, white, predatory smile at the lizards. “They’re bankers. They’re all bankers. What the hell are they doing?”

  Shaking my head in disbelief, I reached out and parted the bead curtain, half stepping through until the plumage on my ridiculous jaguar helmet got tangled and I was yanked back.

  “This bloody thing,” I muttered, ripping the helm from my head. My vision blurred and I braced against the wall as the armour set bonus stats drained away. “Who the hell comes up with this crap? I look ridiculous.”

  There was a pause.

  “Ridiculous, lad?” Paddy said slowly. “Have you looked in the mirror? You’re the scariest thing I’ve seen since I saw uncle Rodney sneak off to the barn with old Peg O’Callaghan. I thought you were pulling the piss when you were complaining to Priorita.”

  I let the thing about his uncle go through to the keeper, but twisted the helmet until I could look into the empty eye sockets of the jaguar skull. The long plumes that rose from its bony dome nearly took Paddy in the eye.

  “Yeah, but shouldn’t armour… protect me?”

  “Lad, that is protecting you. I guarantee nobody in their right mind would want to fuck with you dressed like that. Have you even seen your face paint?”

  I ignored him, drawing the scrambler and igniting it just long enough to shave all the crap off the top of the helmet. Should’ve done that sooner. Victor’s watch sparked as soon as I ignited the sabre and I gave it a questioning glance, but it didn’t talk to me this time. I rammed the animal skull back over my head, suppressing a shiver as my stats boosted back up, and parted the curtain to enter the parlour.

  The moment I stepped through, a deep thrumming beat kicked in, playing to the tune of the WARGAMES! theme. Priorita let out a little trill of excitement as she made an announcement. I cursed and tried to back up, but bumped into Paddy, who’d followed me through.

  “Welcome to the infamous Parlay Parlour!” said Priorita, effervescent with excitement.

  I gestured and we fanned out against a wall to wait out the announcement. The last thing we needed was Priorita yapping, distracting us while we explored an unfamiliar space.

  “Established thousands of years ago, the Parlay Parlour has become a recurring favourite of WARGAMES! It allows our wonderful contestants to interact separately from the battlegrounds that cover the planet. Think of it as a place to blow off some steam and get to know the civilisations you’re trying to doom to extinction!” She giggled, but I didn’t react. I was getting used to her snark. “Within the parlour, inter-civilisation trade and negotiation is enabled—I’ll let you figure out what that means! But don’t give away too many of your secrets. They just might use them to kill you!” She switched to her schoolteacher voice. “And in case you were wondering, no you can’t use the parlour to assassinate each other. This is a non-combat zone, where an active Bromley-Conduit invulnerability field keeps you impervious to harm. So save it for the battlefield, you little murderers!”

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  A wireframe map appeared in my HUD without me opening it. It was mostly blurred out, except for one of the central floors where little red figures with our names floating above them indicated our position. After a moment, icons and the names of all the contestants within eyesight appeared too. I wasn’t sure whether it had been triggered by Priorita’s announcement, or if my watch had done something. There was a commotion on the other side of the spiral staircase, but I couldn’t see what was happening and the map didn’t reach that far.

  “This is a duplicated, situationally generated space, folded within a pocket universe of our own invention… so don’t worry—your aren’t all packed into a single parlour! Gosh, could you imagine what a mess that would be? Each instance holds up to one thousand randomly selected contestants. But, if you’re looking to meet somebody in particular, you can dial into a specific instance of the Parlour. See the tab in your menu for details.”

  She paused and made a motherly tut. “Oh, what’s that, dear? Too much information at once and too many big words in a row? Now your iddle brain is hurting? That’s okay! Grab something from the bar and relax. We have recreational poisons, and stinging insects from over a thousand worlds!” She giggled, and then her voice dropped low and husky, raising the damn hair on my arms. “Or…I have it on good authority that, for the right price, other… entertainments can be had.” One of the microwave sized, mini-Priorita slimed past me in an odd, swaying motion. She had a little bow stuck on the flat top of her cube and as I looked, a smartphone sized screen appeared within and string of emoji flickered across it.

  ??????

  I looked away quickly.

  Yeah, fuck that.

  Priorita prattled on about the history of the parlour, referencing events and people I’d never heard of and didn’t care about. I stopped paying attention, studying my surroundings instead, but grunted every few minutes so she’d think I was listening.

  I knew how important keeping the psychotic game-show host on my side was.

  The commotion at the stairwell raised in volume and I could just see the tops of some golden helmets as a group argued with what I assumed were security.

  Victor’s watch let out another few sparks, it felt like the momentary ignition of the sabre had charged it. Tiny electrical impulses now ran from it, up my arm and into my brain. I focused on the sensation as Priorita yammered on, trying to figure out what it was working on.

  A moment later, I had my answer as the parlour map flickered open and closed a few times. Each time it opened more details appeared—ten floors, hidden passages, back rooms, the whole place packed with icons and contestant names in a confusing jumble of red.

  A voice mumbled at me in a language I couldn’t understand.

  “Couldn’t you colour-coordinate them?” I muttered. “This mess will give me a damn headache.” The map flickered again, and when it reopened, each species had its own colour, with a key pinned to the corner of my HUD.

  Interesting. Another advantage I was pretty sure I wasn’t meant to have.

  I checked the stairwell on my newly enhanced map and saw a squad of gold icons, with ridiculous long names full of apostrophes and umlauts facing two black ones simply listed as ‘Parlour Protectors.’

  Priorita’s announcement ended with the usual fanfare and fireworks, I put them out of my mind as we set out to explore the parlour.

  “I need to barter for an atomiser,” Ariel said immediately, moving in beside me as we walked between booths. Paddy sidled up to an occupied one, leaning casually and trying to listen in without making it obvious.

  “An atomiser?” I said, “you mean, like a spray nozzle? Crikey, kid. I know I stink, but I don’t think perfume is going to help.”

  She rolled her eyes, “Oui. Like a spray nozzle.” She said ‘spray nozzle’ in a mocking, shitty impression of my Aussie twang. “I need a dozen—more if possible. And non. They are not for au de toilette, though it is true you could do with a shower.”

  I frowned, wondering what the hell she needed them for, but I knew better than to ask. It’d have something to do with her dodgy communications with Earth and, no doubt would be used for something horrible. As long as I wasn’t the target, I was fine with it.

  “Where the hell are we supposed to get atomisers?” I asked. “We’re stuck in the era of swords and shields and animal-skull armour, remember?”

  “You know the Shii, right?” Ariel said. “You killed one on the previous stage.”

  It took me a moment to remember the ghillie-suit-wearing, dagger-chucking thing I’d murdered back in the jungle.

  “Yeah. I remember them,” I grunted, rubbing my arm where one of their throwing daggers had stuck me.

  “Well, back on their home world, they like to poison each other with primitive gas traps. We aren’t allowed to barter for the blueprint, but we should be able to buy the modules themselves. You have a lot of BP, oui?”

  I glanced at my BP menu, and at the ridiculous number of points I’d harvested from corpse piles in the hidden boss room. “Yeah, I’ve got a few.” I said, cautiously, wondering if she knew that you could harvest BP from dead contestants.

  Did Victor know?

  I was searching the map for the nearest Shii when Paddy wandered back over. A glowing neon-blue drink in his hand. He took a sip and flashed a grin—his teeth glowing like blue coals. It reminded me of the Lumivorous Evolution I had taken at level 10 and the way my own eyes and teeth now glowed.

  “Lad, you won’t bloody believe what they’re doing. The bankers, I mean.” He fanned a handful of documents at me. “They’re getting aliens to sign up for loans. It’s some real predatory shit. I don’t think some of these civilisations even had banking before this. Or loans. Or are they particularly good at math.” He laughed, but it sounded sour. “Compound interest and indenture clauses for non-payment.” He shook his head. “These dumb bastards are going to end up as slaves.”

  I looked to Ariel, who gave a tight nod.

  So she’d known.

  I felt a brief pang of sympathy for the aliens. Most Aussies were essentially slaves to the bank, stuck on fifty year mortgages that the UE made us take out at 21 years of age and we paid til we retired. But the pang passed quickly—it was us or them, and there were no such things as human rights, or war crimes in this game.

  Anyone who lost wouldn’t live long enough to become a slave.

  My musing was cut short by another announcement. The earlier one had been specific to us, triggered by our entry to the parlour, but by the way that everyone in the Parlour froze and cocked their heads to listen I could tell that this was a global message.

  “Event time!” Priorita squealed. “Believe it or not, there is less than one week remaining until the forcefields come down. Oh gosh, isn’t that just so exciting? Aren’t you just itching to start killing each other?! Well, it’s time to see how well you are preparing.” There was a drumroll, beneath which I could hear her breathing heavily. “Starting at midnight tonight, and running daily until the war phase commences, monster waves will attack your castle! These monsters will be worth extra EXP and BP and will put your defences to the test. This is an incredible opportunity to grow stronger, so don’t let it go to waste.” She paused as the theme song blared, “Have fun!”

  I massaged my temples as the headache grew. What had they done while I was away? There was nothing we could do about that now, but it reinforced the need to get back to the castle so I could offload the vault rewards.

  We were on a timer.

  Paddy and Ariel were talking over the top of each other. I raised a hand to silence them. “Right then, we need the atomisers,” I said, “Does anyone else need something from here before we hit the road?”

  The tension was getting to me, heart thundering, headache throbbing, I waved one of the mini-Priorita over and ordered a beer. The 0.00% stuff I’d been prescribed back on earth had always helped me relax after a shitty day, surely the real stuff would do an even better job.

  “I do,” said Zephyra, surprising me. I’d almost forgotten she was with us. I glanced at her and almost didn’t recognise the elf. She had donned a long, black cloak with a deep hood that hid her face. “There is somebody I need to meet.”

  “Yeah?” I replied. “Is it one of this lot?” and nodded at the squad of six Lutantha—tall and elegant in matching golden armour—that had pushed their way through the security at the base of the spiral staircase and now marched toward us, scattering everyone in their path.

  She pulled her hood lower and said something in that Russian-sounding alien language. I was pretty sure it was a curse.

  “Look alive guys, this mob look like trouble.”