Suchi. The Arts and Crafts Competition.
Yes, Karnon was also here, having already escaped his marital imprisonment. The God claimed to have sedated his wife for a few hours using a romantic technique he'd learned from a Ten-Tongued Anteater.
It could be true. Henry had been unable to contact the Princess to retrieve her unruly husband.
Nevertheless, he had one good reason not to be concerned.
"A Doomreaver sleeps in a mine twenty miles north-east. You set the explosive potions; I'll take care of the rest. Imagine the fun!
Beside them stood an old pygmy woman in a hooded-cloak, with an open book in one hand and a spear in the other. When she heard Karnon's reckless suggestion, she stamped the butt of her weapon in disapproval. "Nope."
That was Nerin, zone guardian of Suchi and Henry's saviour.
He'd anticipated the mischievous God's escape. Thus, he'd arranged for her to protect him from being re-abducted whenever Karnon randomly turned up. The one thing that could trump a God was another God.
It'd been somewhat perplexing that Karnon would continue to stick around. However, as the trickster God had explained himself, solo mischief was less stimulating. Also, apparently, the other deities were giving him the silent treatment for erasing the third moon and messing up the planet's ecosystem.
Henry flattened the coat's sleeve against his wrist. "The colouration of the sherwani doesn't quite suit my skin tone. We could ask the tailor to re-dye it? Hmm...they might consider that vandalising their creation."
Karnon convulsed again, before punching a fist into a palm as if he'd been struck by a trillion-gold idea. "Second moon, let's erase it!"
"Nope."
"You mummified midget, we'll still have one left! Two moons is excessive!"
"Nope."
"Yes," nodded Henry. "I am going to ask. No harm in inquiring."
He approached a desk for customers and had an assistant summon the coat's maker. A short while later, a Balinese woman in her 70s materialised from the clothing racks.
At his suggestion to change the colour, her brow became even more wrinkled.
He decided to buy it anyway.
They went to a curtained dressing stall, where the outfit was adjusted to his proportions. The old woman simultaneously made matching scabbards for his butterfly swords, commanding a swarm of sewing needles to stitch them from layered sheets of magically-reinforced cloth.
During the wait, an assistant brought Henry a warm cup of tea.
The liquid was amber with a glittering film floating on top. From the aroma, he recognised it as being brewed from a tea-tree species grown in one of his plantations along the WBAE.
Sipping away, listening to the rhythm of the needles, he felt at peace.
The Textileworker sensed an old, haggard quality in the way he drank. Infected by this mood, she spun a sombre reminiscence about her real-world career.
She'd started sewing as a child, working in a sweatshop mass-producing cheap T-shirts for the western market. Later, she and some of the other girls pooled their savings to start a business selling finer-quality, tailored clothes to wealthy tourists. They did well for themselves.
Throughout her life, she'd hadn't spared much consideration for why she sewed, merely believing it to be a means of survival. However, when arthritis forced her into retirement, she'd found herself overcome with emptiness, as though someone had stolen half her organs.
Perhaps that was where all the weight had disappeared to when she stepped on the scale, she joked.
"Isn't it silly? In my twilight, this computer stuff opens up the universe, yet here I am again."
Henry murmured in commiseration. "We're funny creatures."
Outside the dressing stall, Karnon had continued to reel off silly prank suggestions.
"Earthq—"
"Nope."
When Henry emerged looking like someone cosplaying a Mughal emperor, the God's trickster gaze fixated on his butterfly swords.
"Crabs! We'll shapeshift into Emperor Crabs, jump into someone's soup, then startle them as they try to take a mouthful of us!"
Nerin remained silent.
Henry adjusted the sash holding the swords to a more accessible position. "That one sounds boring. Got anything better?"
If he could find the time, he wouldn't refuse a harmless prank or two. It could be beneficial to maintain some relationship with the God, who, with his global teleportation spell, had value as a means of transportation.
Rose shoved a pile of white silk in his face, consisting of an ao dai, a Vietnamese silk tunic, and matching pants. Accompanying her was a different Textileworker, who was awaiting payment.
Henry had offered to buy her something in exchange for her booking a session with a shrink. To his shock, she had actually agreed, making an appointment on the spot. He'd confirmed this himself by calling the clinic - it seemed to be real.
Pleased with this scheme bearing its fruits so quickly, he gave the Textileworker an extra 50,000 gold tip. As Rose went to the stalls for alterations, she hummed a guitar riff.
"Madrabies Piranhas! I collect them, you release them into the river, the fish give the students a fright."
"Nope."
"You petrified pipsqueak, the fish will die from starvation within a week! There'll be no permanent ecological impact!"
"Nope."
"Professor T., Maz, did you hear how disrespectfully she spoke to me, Karnon, Zmog, a fellow faculty member? Dismiss this stinky shepherd at once and join me in the expansion of our souls! Listen!" As the God cast a spell, the air trembled with a scream that rapidly grew louder, creating a sound-illusion that a giant pterodactyl was swooping down to snatch them up. All festival-goers around them dove in terror, half-naked customers exposing themselves in the gaps under the dressing stall curtains. "The students are screaming of boredom!"
"Don't do that ever again," commanded Nerin.
Henry was mildly irritated, too. "Could you try to be less conspicuous? The Empire connecting me and you will botch the timing of the pay-offs for the ongoing Ramiro scheme."
"My bad," the God apologised. He was being sincere, too. It was the sixth tenet of Karnonian prankcraft to support each other's schemes. To interfere in a schemer's schemes, that was even worse than bedding their woman, which was sometimes permissible if part of a sche—a chance! "Bury a Globe of Eternal Winter under The Church's chapel or daddy's gonna snitch."
"Nope."
"I'm not that invested," replied Henry. From his perspective, the plot sat four decades ago in the past and, with Mohon handling the case now, any revelation shouldn't alter the final outcome. "It's just a preference; spoil it if you want."
The Textileworker who'd gone with Rose returned, alongside the girl herself, shuffling coyly behind.
The tight fit of the silk cloth accentuated her athletic form. With the dress's whiteness and the purple-gold Byzantine-bandanna folded in her hair, one felt as though they were glimpsing a flower blossoming in the snow. A splash of pink was added to the scene by the blush in her cheeks.
"Gorgeous!" yelled Karnon. "Professor T., isn't she beautiful?"
Henry feigned astonishment.
-Henry Flower: Dive into the stall beside you. Don't hesitate; don't ask why.
One of her eyebrow's climbed a dozen millimetres in confusion.
The trickster God, seeing his cue, snapped his fingers, dispelling an illusion he'd cast during the pterodactyl distraction.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Rose gazed at her limbs, which were now draped with wet bandages. The pieces clung to her skin like spit-soaked toilet paper.
She stormed off without a word.
"Hehehehehehehehehehehe," Karnon snickered with glee, "hehehehehehe—" He stopped, instantly switching to a serious mood. "Professor T., were your human eyes sharp enough catch where I placed the original?"
"Up your bum."
"Wrong! It's under the Textileworker's tophat."
The woman frowned. She wasn't wearing a...oh.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
It was only after two more repetitions of the exact same prank—no variation—that Rose finally got her clothes.
The three of them plus Nerin continued to wander around the Textileworker exhibits. Karnon meted out pranks upon unlucky festival-goers at an impressive rate of 15 hijinks per minute. Henry, meanwhile, soaked up the diverse sights of rugs, bags, curtains, shirts, and pants. All this he was storing in his digitally-expanded mind for later Overdream conquests.
Occasionally, they passed festival-goers from Central City, who'd been granted access to The Slum's events due to a certain someone's efforts to undermine The Empire.
One group of Kiwi lads recognised Henry from the stadium.
"Yo, HF! We're about to check out the bikini contest. Yous wanna come for a quick perv?"
Karnon's eyes became wider than two moons he'd yet to erase. "Bikini contest?"
"NO!" Nerin stamped her spear so hard a spiderweb of fissures radiated from the point of impact.
Cathy was waiting for them outside an area restricted to normal festival-goers. Here, the Textileworkers were busying themselves with last-minute adjustments for their competition entries.
Holding a silk-wrapped package, she was wearing a superhero outfit sewn from a spandex-like material. It had the basic design of 1950s-style costumes, employing a simple two-colour palette. Tyrian purple had been used for the shirt and a pair of tights that made her chubby legs look like overstuffed sausages. The stockings, skirt, gloves, eye-mask, and cape were bright gold. Her chest was emblazoned with the letters' TFF'.
When she caught sight of them approaching, she gave Henry a sympathetic smile. "Who are your new friends?"
He shook his head vigorously in disagreement. "Not friends. They're stray kooks who've clung to my coat-tails along the way. This is Zhangmei, Byzantium's newest Villager; she doesn't speak much because she has autism. That's Kevin, he has an intellectual impairment which causes him to act crazy – ignore him; attention only exacerbates the problem. The grandma is Kevin's handler."
Cathy, who'd done a first-year paper on mental disabilities as part of her Early Childhood Education studies, gave the two a warm but firm handshake to show that they were no different from you and me.
"Your outfit is beautiful, Zhangmei!"
"Mhm."
"Kevin, I love your blue hair!"
"It is!" Karnon, maintaining the grip on her hand, turned it over and laid a slobbery kiss on top that didn't stop until Nerin speared him through the kidneys.
Henry kicked the God in the shins. "A superhero?"
Ignoring his comment, Cathy shoved the package at him. "For you! They'll fortify your bones and invigorate your skin."
Inside were several dozen pills that Qi Masters used to harden their skin in lieu of armour. Even if he'd had the proper class, the pills were fake.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome! Don't worry. I asked the pharmacist if they were supported by science, and he told me that they'd been backed by many studies. Peer-reviewed, Henry, that's the best a..."
Much to Rose's displeasure, the nagging Cathy threaded her arm through his, before leading them away.
The area was cluttered with piles of cut-up fabrics and stressed-out Textileworkers hurrying to meet deadlines. The group had to be careful where they stepped because the isles between workstations were flooded with hundreds of grade-schoolers outfitted in animal, fairy, wizard, viking, and other costumes. One kid sprinting with a glass of chocolate milk tripped behind Henry, throwing their drink at his back and almost ruining his new outfit. Luckily, though, he'd been tracking their footsteps with his ears attuned by Tunnelling Cowmole Claw and managed to activate bullet-time to side-step the splash.
They found Brian testing heroic poses before a mirror, while Anderson lay on a hammock, his arm dangling over the side with the slackness of bohemian painter conked out on opium. Around them were strewn several failed superhero costume designs. Both were decked in the final selection, the same style as Cathy's, and on another rack were three more, including one in Henry's size.
"No," Henry stated flatly. "That's beyond my limits."
"H..." intoned Anderson, not opening his eyelids which were weighed down by exhaustion. "A painting can't be completed without putting the paint on the canvas. End my struggle, let me rest."
Yesterday, Team Friendship Forever! had voted on team uniforms, with Anderson volunteering to design and create them. His primary class was a Textileworker, Accompanist being a secondary role.
"Son, we live in a democracy." Brian, speaking in a gravely voice, span around, flourishing his cape and thrusting forward the cloth-padded groin of his superhero undies. "New Zealand is a democracy. Byzantium is a democracy. Team Friendship Forever! is a democracy. And everyone in a democracy has to do what the majority of voters decide, whether or not it embarrasses them. Otherwise, it's not a democracy."
"Call me a rebel."
Anderson peeked at Henry through his lashes, sizing up the South Asian outfit in a glance. "Not your style. Should be more lowkey."
"Lowkey like a superhero costume?"
Anderson, too tired to engage in repartee, waved his hand as though fanning out a cloud of noxious fumes. "Your comrades?"
Henry repeated his earlier introduction. Intellectually-impaired Karnon approached the costume he'd refused to wear, shapeshifted into his body shape, and equipped it, before joining Brian in testing poses.
While the others were being amused by the God's antics, Cathy took Henry aside to speak to him alone.
She gave him a grumpy stare. "I heard an interesting piece of news earlier. From our friend Abby. Do you know what she told me?"
His eyebrows shot up innocently. "The cookies? She seemed tired, so I baked her a rejuvenating pick me up."
"Henry, I'm disappointed in you. Getting people hooked on addictive substances to blackmail them into enduring your training regime, this is inappropriate behaviour. It might have been acceptable when...elsewhere, but, with friends, absolutely not."
Stupid snitches, he thought. Let's see how Abigail liked it in the future when she didn't get a bite of his other supreme dishes.
"Don't scowl. Abby was not the one who meddled willy-nilly with a friend's stomach. What is the motto of Team Friendship Forever!?"
"The ends justify the means."
"To cultivate the miracle of friendship through fun and more fun! Where in our motto does it read, 'get our friends addicted to our baking'? Is that your idea of fun?"
He resisted the urge to say it was, a wee bit. "They're plain cookies...flour, sugar, butter, chocolate, vanilla, berries. How could I have predicted that the recipe I unearthed in that Aionian ruin would have blended these ordinary ingredients into a dangerously-perfect combination? That's unthinkable."
Cathy placed her arms sternly on her hips, a gesture intended to be intimidating but which, combined with the superhero costume, resembled a power pose.
"Cure Abby's cookie addiction or I'm going to contact your grandmother!"
"Alright," he sighed, lowering his head in defeat. "I'll formulate an extinction schedule to wean her off..."
"AND I expect you to give Abby an earnest apology."
"OK..."
"Great! It takes a lot of bravery to admit your wrongdoings. I'm very proud of you!"
As she closed in for a hug to dissipate any remaining hard feelings, his lips curled into a sly grin.
Of course, the optimal path to sobriety always incorporated a bit of exercise.
Rose, who'd been eavesdropping from behind a rack of fursuits,
Before Henry could register this intervention and its meaning, his hands were locked in an iron grip by another.
Karnon was kneeling in the dirt, having also overheard the conversation about the cookie with his enhanced God ears.
So began the idiotic monologue: "Professor T., how is it that in the long expanse of our auspicious acquaintance you have kept hidden the sparkle of this gem embedded in your heart? As I observed your growth from sapling, to protégé, to fellow board member of The School of Karnon, never once, NOT ONCE, did I dream that you possessed a talent! And how befitting this singular talent is! This must be what we call Destiny."
The God's eyes shimmered with tears and mischief. "Did you know, when I was a boy wandering through the forests of the west, I first dreamed of an occupation very different to my current teaching role? Burning the wick of my youth, I practised for this dream, I bled for it, I hunted down the luminaries of my day to receive their guidance for it. Alas, these hands! THESE WRETCHED HANDS!"
The God stared with misery at his hands, which he'd shapeshifted back to their regular, giant's size, the fingers having burst through the superhero gloves. "My senseis told me, 'You're handsome, Karnon, you are well endowed, you are the smartest person I've ever met, and your footsteps are destined to shake many realms, but not this one, your dream, for your hands are simply too large.' And so I let my dream become just that...a dream. I changed Paths."
It this most hopeless of moments, when the God's soul was about to be broken upon the bottom of despair, it was suddenly inflated by a golden hope appearing on the 'morrow's horizon. Grunting, he heaved a kneeling leg onto its foot!
"HAH! Who could have known that that secondary Path, that ugly, settled-upon wench, might one day bring me back after countless centuries of anguish to my first fling, might unite me with someone who could carry on my lifelong dream, whose hands...HAH!" He lifted the other leg, rising tall, his back as taut as a bowstring, then gave Henry's still-captured hands a pat. "...were comparatively smaller? I'll be back later."
The God sprinted away, Nerin chasing after him.
"Bless his heart," said Cathy watching him leave with a tender smile.
Henry guessed the God was going to try convince him to bake something?
Pulling out a Communication Stone, he attempted to contact Princess Pateela.
The line was still dead.
At least, he'd loaned Nerin a Legendary relic for tracking deities, so it shouldn't be too disastrous.
There were a few more minutes before Abigail and Dan would arrive and their group could head over to join the other Byzantines at a fighting pit.
Henry used the time to continue checking out what the youth were making, while Cathy tagging along gibbering away. Karnon's kiss had reminded her of inappropriate scene in a movie she'd taken her younger siblings to watch that afternoon. She was considering filing a complaint with the censorship board.
He was saved from listening to bulk of this rant when Walker, Byzantium's Head Villager, briefly stopped by while doing the rounds visiting their Village's competition participants.
In a chirpy mood, the man congratulated Team Friendship Forever! for their top 3% placement in yesterday's dungeon speed-runs, their group harvesting the second most Slum Points of the Village's teams. This wasn't due to TFF being talented but rather everyone else being trash.
Walker inquired whether Henry'd visited the Scholar section. He hadn't. The dominant literary forms in Suchi were clones of Silver Wolf's low-effort, diary-form adventure stories and slam poetry. Neither appealed to him.
After that, the Head Villager moved on, but not before leaving them with a cryptic hint that they would meet a special person at the fighting pits. An increase in the animation of his face betrayed this as the source of his chirpiness. He warned, only half-jokingly, that she was considering signing up for Byzantium so they should put on their best front.
Was this one an enemy spy? Henry wondered, his confidence eroded after the mistake with Rose.
They could also be from The Empire, who might have already deduced from his appearance at the stadium that he'd sponsored its construction. If Walker had been privy to such secrets, no hints were detectable in their conversation.
Oh well, he would find out the truth soon enough, because Dan, Abigail, and the monsters had finally appeared, Abigail flicking him a self-satisfied wink.
At Cathy's nudging, he apologised for the cookies. Donkey Bro found this hilarious, breaking into a machine-gun rattle of hee-haws. Handsome Dan asked if he could have one.
With the gang gathered, the rest of Team Friendship Forever! suited up and marched off to battle.