"Did you get a good glimpse of the Pope's priestly penis?"
"This is not the time, Karnon."
The Trickster God, his planned dialogue unable to be stopped by the puny barrier of non-compliance, cast a spell and mimicked Henry's voice. "No," he replied to himself in a monotone. "Juvenile Offworlders are afflicted with a sensory curse. It blocks the perception of obscenities."
"Juvenile?" The admission stunned Karnon. "With that haggard, loveless face of yours, you must be, what, 36-, 37-centuries old?"
The imitation of Henry held its tongue, stubbornly refusing to accept the bait.
Karnon, this self-created barrier unable to stop him either, pretended that his imitation had bitten. "You're saying you're only 17 years old?! And you're already as wrinkled and impotent," the God mischievously raised an azure eyebrow, "as Berby's prick? How scandalous. But don't worry, Executioner T, I've brewed the perfect potion to restore the pump to your sad libido. First ingredient: positive-thinking. Second ingredient: a mindslave army. Third..."
Henry proper was listening to this commentary with two minds, one of discomfort at the jarring blend of comedy and death, the other filing information away for later analysis.
He had anticipated the God turning up to ruin these executions. According to his Overdream research, the messages coded in last night's pantsing prank alone wouldn't have convinced him to resume the assassination plan, to trick Ramiro into activating the Legendary class that creates mindslaves and snuffing him permanently with both the spoiled reputation and the perma-death trade-off of Legendary characters. Henry, as one might ascertain from him devoting two decades to researching the dangers, was a bit too cautious by nature. Karnon, conscious of this fact, needed to further build his case. A rational motive had to be provided for his interference - not pranks, not out of loyalty to a 'protégé', something serious, believable. The myriad of doubts over his trustworthiness also had to be cleared.
Making that case might, oddly, be what the God was doing right now conversing with himself about genitals. It was possible that Karnon did have a valid reason for wanting to help with the assassination, only he couldn't express it due to his Zone Guardian restrictions. Therefore, in his mischievous habit of rule-dodging, he was guiding towards the goal in a roundabout way. Many of the pranks he'd been performing—the pantsing, the chest of sex toys, the current distasteful conversation, and perhaps even the orchestrated death of the brother-sister pair—all revolved around a common theme, highlighting it, inviting attention to it.
The genuine Henry, letting the God rant, messaged Caramel about the evacuation's progress. His guildmate responded that they'd emptied out about 65%. Some local Slumdwellers with businesses in the Trading Post had been causing delays by refusing to leave before packing up their stores and workshops. As had been taught to these folk by the monthly Cleansings when the Church purged The Slums with flame, any belongings left behind were belongings destroyed.
For this learned attachment, the slowest of these stragglers would die fairly soon. Henry was feeling increasingly certain about that.
"Come ooooon," Karnon, growing bored of the fake protégé, whined to the real one like a petulant teenager. "The Sadist of The Slums needs to receive his justiiiiiiiiice. With your henchpeople goons taking charge so prematurely, his fanatics will dismiss that journalist pervert's hit-pieces for propaganda justifying his removal. The Scum of The Slums is going to sail away freer than a fly from poop. At this rate, his abandoned maggots," he thrust a finger at the grieving, mortified convicts, "these maggots will never recognise the grotesque truth of their guardian unless it's branded upon their brainwashed brains through an orgy of blood!"
Henry, playing along with a double-entendre there, feigned mild discomfort at his motives being explicated and parodied. "It doesn't matter anymore. Public support would be nice to have, but, ultimately, opinion is subordinate to power."
"But it's unjust! Heroes are owed their fame, monsters their shame. Executioner T, I'm with you on this one to the end. I, too, am a Company man, waving the Company flag!" Karnon ripped off his clothing, displaying a snazzy ash-grey uniform beneath.
"Disrupted an arranged battle in Qannozeni," Henry replied. "Misdirected a trade fleet heading to Bes. Released parasitic snakes in the Enuchibe Public Zone. Incited an invasion of giant seals against the East Zenzukt Colony."
This was a list of 'pranks' the God had committed against The Company just since last night's meeting. Despite Henry's Fleshbag self's attempt at adhering to his malformed image of being an ordinary teenager, he'd slipped up throughout the morning, checking in with the guild repeatedly to monitor incidents.
"Missed a fifth," Karnon gloated. "But all those minor mishaps are meaningless. Bank Pobtsuas will compensate you, as they always do."
Caramel countered. "Your homeland is almost bankrupt."
Hence, when Henry and the God had visited Sarff's Rest, the guards for the local king had been so desperate to track Karnon down. Paying off the penalties for his catastrophic activities was destroying the Togavian economy.
Karnon clapped at a genius solution. "Karnon's divine wit, I've got it! Inspired by The Company's example, I've invented a new genre of prank: 'Nation Rebuilding'. In order to fix the national debt, we'll take my islands and combine them into a new, unrecognisable country. Then, when the debt-collector calls, we'll say, 'Um, excuse me, as you can see from the unfamiliar land-formations, this is clearly a different nation whose financial health is not in shambles.' Engineer T, let's do it. Let's save Togavi! First, to haul that much dirt, we'll be needing plenty of labourers. Maybe a mindslave army's worth?"
Henry, considering resuming his spellfire at the convicts, felt a pebble thump against his helmet, a reminder of the God's previous obstruction.
He sighed in his soul. "Look, I've analysed your involvement from dozens of angles, none of which have proven favourable. Unless you can produce irrefutable evidence to negate the mountains of crap you've been serving me thus far, my decision is fixed."
"'Evidence'?" Karnon's interest was piqued. "I haven't committed a prank in that zany genre in over four centuries." He paced away from the two of them, stroking his blue beard in an exaggerated show of contemplation as though his move hadn't already been plotted out. "Yes, I could polish off the old playbook of reasoning and persuasion."
Arriving at an empty patch of courtyard, he spun here and there, using a hand like a seasoned carpenter to guestimate the available workspace. Then, nodding in approval, he whistled, summoning a concealing blanket of mist.
From out of the haze followed a noise-medley of wood being sawn, nails hammered, a fake bird squeezed to squawk, a thumb stubbed, a curse hurled.
The clearing mist revealed a life-sized puppet of Karnon seated on a throne at the head of a banquet table. This doppelganger-prop had been dressed in an ornate gown woven of tulips, each flower added by the perfumed fingers of a different highland maiden. The table it oversaw was occupied by flagons of warm floral wine and covered serving dishes crafted from metals extracted from Togavi's remote mines.
A wind-gust picked up Caramel and Henry and conveyed them into a single giant seat at the opposite end of the banquet spread.
-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: What's this?
-Percy Maynard Brady: Formal Togavian ceremony for convincing a potential mother-in-law to give you their daughter. The groom, held to a vow of silence throughout, invites two character witnesses to speak on their behalf.
-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: Ooh, today's mystery guest?
Instead of a mystery guest, though, Karnon himself crawled out from under the table. Having adorned a costume of a stodgy, white-haired bookworm, he groaned with the pain of one unaccustomed to moving their body as he clumsily rose to his feet. He wiped the dust of his academic robes and plucked a couple bird feathers that'd been lodged in the two-dozen bead-necklaces he'd equipped.
"Volefan!" guessed Caramel.
Karnon, inspecting his surroundings with a scholarly disinterest, answered without glancing at her. "Originally, Offworlder. Although my base of operations has since been transplanted to The School of Karnon, where I head the Department of Abstract Prankerpretive Dance. Due to a temporary shortage in enrolees in our courses this semester—for Karnon knows what reason—the displeasure has fallen upon myself to attend this conference in this third-prank country and speak in defence of our institution's Chancellor. Doctor Khiyaanee Akhrin, at your immense pleasure." In a greeting, he swung his hips with the grace of a librarian in a night club. "Please remember the title."
Henry—guessing, from the more informed point-of-view, that this charade of Karnon speaking indirectly in his own defence was designed to emphasise his censorship—checked on the convicts, who were becoming increasingly distressed by the prolongation of their execution and the proximity of the dead sister's dismembered leg. "We're not watching you dance like a clown. Defend yourself with words. Sensible ones."
Karnon guffawed with a trace of disappointment. "Hah! I never intended on profaning the noble manoeuvres of the joy-filled body in expressing these trivial refutations. No, Offworlder, I'm merely an empty avatar to relay the 'words', which you so naively prize, of the Chancellor himself, who's been bound to a code of silence by this ridiculous Togavian observance."
The God rummaged deep inside a pant's pocket, his search pulling out noisemakers, fake foods, and other gag props. His foraging eventually unearthed a book larger than his entire lower body. Grumbling as he heaved the whopping the great tome, he dumped it on the banquet table for support and pivoted it to make its cover-title visible. It read, 'The Pranking of Nations'.
"'Prankonomics'," commented Karnon derisively. "What a boorish subject. These so-called scientists of the prankonomy have swallowed up a quarter of the annual budget by fooling the board that they're not in the same category of fabricated arts as the rest of us." He channelled his dejection at the pranknancial woes of Abstract Prankerpretive Dance into a hip swing identical to the earlier greeting. "Anyway, on the matter of the trustworthiness of the Chancellor's character, I'd draw your attention to an exculpatory passage in chapter 94." Opening the book, he flipped quickly through its pages, which were scrawled with nothing but illustrations of animals in coitus doodled during the miserable shopping trips with his tornado wife. His search stopped on a page with two snails going at it. "Here, we have a discussion on the best practices for investing in 'JPs' - Joint Pranktures. Please read the third and fourth sentences of paragraph eight, whose content should, despite their lack of material or intellectual value, settle any doubts about the reliability of the Chancellor's moral constitution." His finger poked a snail's 'appendage' and ran down its length as though along a line of text. "'I, Chancellor Karnon, swear that I will never, ever, ever ruin the prank of my protégé, Executioner T. Therefore, he can feel free to trust me with the mindslave army 100%.'"
Caramel groaned. "An anti-joke...how lame..."
Henry noted the choice of animal. "If you're going to stall without providing any new information, I will log off and have someone else finish the job."
"You're unpersuaded." Karnon cranked a smileless dab, knocking his white-hair toupee off-centre and exposing the blue beneath. "That's understandable. I did warn the Chancellor that inviting a character witness whose employment was dependent on garnering his favour might sow some doubts. Alas, he wasn't exactly elected for his prudence or wit. Very well. Let me invite someone a bit more impartial: today's 'mystery guest'."
The God spun a deft ballerina twirl, and a cluster of vines dragged him into the earth.
Henry considered whether he could exploit this break to finish the executions. Most probably, Karnon would make another mock—a shower of pebbles rained down on him, immersing him up to his neck.
Caramel laughed. The convicts didn't, having read the implication.
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Henry disintegrated into a gust of wind, flowing out through the gaps of the pebble prison. By the time he'd reformed outside and swapped The Cloak of Wind and Stone for its fire-water sibling with a separate cooldown, Karnon had returned.
Accompanying The Trickster God was a female Shaman, his mystery guest.
The woman wore a unique shawl of tied-together finger bones, and she clutched a bunch of herbs she'd been in the midst of harvesting. Her expression at being unexpectantly abducted was of confusion, annoyance, and anger. To an observer who'd perceived Karnon's nature, she was also, like most Zone Guardians in his presence, deathly afraid.
Karnon flourished his hands at the woman like a game-show host presenting a prize mule. "The Chancellor's disgruntled ex-wife, Lady Donnera. This one despises him. Therefore, if she's willing to vouch for his trustworthiness, he must be good." He covered his mouth and whispered at the woman in a perfectly audible volume. "Go on, Donnera. Tell them I'm dependable. Four days, prank free. Five if you slip in the epithet 'Karnon The Reliable'."
Donnera responded to this request with the loving gaze unique to the ex-wives of habitual cheaters. "Karnon, you Soul-Scourge, to imagine a single favourable utterance a—" The ranting Goddess was dragged back into the earth.
Henry, a transmuted puddle, streamed out of a second pebble pile to welcome Karnon's return.
In the brief trip away, The Trickster God had performed a costume change, switching to his ex-wife's clothing. Her finger-bone shawl bunched around his neck like a scarf, failing to fit over his giant shoulders, and a skirt that'd draped down to her ankles rode above his bare, azure-haired knees.
Karnon gave a formal nod at the empty site from which he'd introduced himself. "Thank you for the accurate introduction, Doctor Akhrin. Yes, everyone, it is I, Lady Donnera, who in a phase of disinformation regarding certain libidinal proclivities was afflicted by the Misfortune of comingling with Lord Karnon. In today's debate about his Reliability in regard to the application of the 'mindslave army', I, whose prejudices could on no account be adduced in favour of his repugnant personage due to the turbulence of our former relations, have nevertheless prepared a presentation for a case in support of the affirmative position: Yes, Lord Karnon is trustworthy and the Mind-Slave Army should be unleashed according to the initial plan. The forthcoming discourse will explore components of Lord Karnon's Life-History, the clarification of its changing shape, the Souldrama of how he earned the title, 'Karnon The Reliable', and the philosophical ramifications inducible therefrom. At the core of my voluntary explication is a Dialectical Cyclicist analysis of superseding Notions of Heroism, according to whose genealogy it will be argued that Lord Karnon has attained to Insights into the Curvature of the World-State highly pertinent to his critic's hesitancies vis-à-vis the Mindslave Army prank."
-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: Never met Donnera. Is she really this wordy?
-Percy Maynard Brady: She's ethnically Mangerish.
-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: Ah.
"A visual aid might contribute to the Word-Weight of my argument. Behold." Karnon, plagiarising a signature ability of his ex-wife's, raised one of the pebbles he'd been throwing earlier to his lips and blew into it. Like a ball of molten glass on the end of a blowing pipe, the pebble expanded into the size of a car, and its surface mutated to resemble a planet in miniature, with continents, oceans, and white clouds swimming around a self-contained, functioning atmosphere.
His fingers then became a blur. The dance of his hands provoked the planet into a fury, volcanos spewing out plumes of lavas, thunderstorms setting forests ablaze with lightning strikes, earthquakes stirring the seas into tsunamis. From this climactic fracas, he pulled out strings of excitable elements. These, he stretched like taffy and, in the manner of a sculptor, worked into little, shin-height figurines.
The first to form was modelled after Karnon himself, as a young adult around Henry's age, circa The Togavian Liberation. He was shorter than now, his build wiry, and he had a face free of the azure beard. The antlers, smaller, grew out of the prongs of a royal crown.
Upon completion, the sculpture came to life, a spirit-breath animating its form. The golem crooked its head in curiosity at the giants observing it. Seeming to size one of them up, it produced a chair and shapeshifted into a brown bear. Copying an exaggeration of Henry's flat, humourless posture, the bear, sighing, attempted to take a rest in the seat, which collapsed under its weight. As the creature tipped and fell back, its transformation cancelled and the young man recovery-rolled into a standing pose, gesturing for their applause.
"Here," Karnon continued narrating in character, "we have a replication of Lord Karnon in the playful epoch of adolescence. In the depicted stage, he may be conceived of in the Position of the Hero-After, the Hero who has already confronted his chosen Enemy-Bear, the subjugation of his compatriots by a foreign force, vanquished it through the Deed, of national rebellion, and received the Hero's-Owed-Chieftanship, in this case a close approximation in the form of nomination to kingship. The consequent settling of the World-State into an economic and martial quietude, i.e. a void of Enemy-Bear-lessness, signified to the Hero-After's teenage reckoning the cessation of any further cause for the maintenance of his Position, for the Movements towards Heroism of the preceding years. The Hero must battle an Enemy-Bear; when he slays it, he slays also himself. Believing this astigmatic conclusion to have some correspondence with the flux of the World-State, Lord Karnon transposed the aim of his Movements from the pursuit of Deed-Striving to more peaceful Directions..."
-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: Huh?
-Percy Maynard Brady: 'Enemy-Bear' is a Mangerish symbol for a destined enemy, like the opposite of a soulmate. The golem is Karnon from a period before his lunacy, shortly after liberating Togavi from the 'Enemy-Bear' of foreign control and retiring.
-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: There was a time when he wasn't crazy?
-Percy Maynard Brady: A couple centuries. Maybe. He was still getting married to animals in that period.
-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: So still crazy.
The tiny trickster golem was soon joined by others recognisable as members of The Laughing Sons, like Alchemist Tshuaj in his women's dress and their honorary monster member, Sarff. At the command of Karnon, weaving out landscape backdrops, the golems enacted a rapid montage of scenes. The Sons cavorted through the carefree years of wine: riding through the oceans, taste-testing alcohols, opening mines and cities, parading at an anniversary.
Henry paid careful attention throughout the demonstration, searching for any clues in the form of figures that didn't belong, ahistorical adjustments, unusual event sequences. Everything thus far, however, coincided with the chronology he'd reconstructed.
Karnon bestowed a conceited glance upon the merry scenes. "The error in the dissolution of his Heroism would be apparent to anyone versed in the Dialectical Cyclicist mode of World-Reading. Although the Enemy-Bear has been vanquished, the vanquishing is only of an Enemy-Bear inhabiting one Now in between a succession of repeating Enemy-Bears threaded through the revolution of eternal Nows."
Tragedy befell the celebrating golems. They were ambushed by assassins, several perishing, including the cross-dresser. A chilly tempest wind settled upon the scene, tossing and dispersing the remaining golems in various directions. One by one, each fleeing in terror from an invisible foe, they were shattered, until a single azure-haired golem remained standing amongst the destruction, wallowing in his solitude.
Karnon paused there, the golems freezing before the subsequent period of terrorism and massacres. "These incidents and their repercussions induce a clarification to the Hero-After for the meaning of True Heroism. The Hero, properly ascertained, is the vanquisher of Enemy-Bears across Cycles; on the one hand, their opponent is an Enemy-Bear or a Situation-Personified-as-Enemy-Bear; on the other hand, the opponent is, regarding the Cyclical Dialectic, the Position of the Enemy-Bear defined in respect to the Position of the Hero inhabiting the current moment or Now. This is where the multiplicity enters. We see that the Hero has two adversaries: one is the Enemy-Bear-Now, the second is the Enemy-Bear-Eternal, a disindividuated Position occupiable by Others-As-Becomable-Into-Enemy-Bear. The two Enemy-Bears appear in the first encounter to be indistinguishable, i.e. the Hero employing the Deed to vanquish the Enemy-Bear-Now vanquishes also their total conception of the Enemy-Bear-Eternal, but this is only according to a faulty conception limited to a First Now and in ignorance of the many successive Nows awaiting. As is shown in the anecdote of Lord Karnon's relaxed vigilance in retiring post-liberation, the Deed—in reality, a Deed-Now—in its so-called completion, merely opens up a temporary vacancy in the Enemy-Bear-Eternal that is filled anew by the Enemy-Bear-Nows to come. And with the return of later Enemy-Bear-Nows, the Deed-Now corresponding to the First Now is vanquished with its own vanquished Enemy-Bear-Now; both are demoted—one to a Deed-Bygone, the other, an Enemy-Bear-Bygone—and their abandoned shapes are gradually erased through the reappropriation of their Movements upon the World-State by the Removements of future Nows. Likewise, the Hero-Now also fades in this march of Cycles to the Hero-Bygone. So the recognition of the Cyclical Dialectic then births the more accurate categorisation of a True Hero, viz. a Hero-Eternal engaged in a continuous program of replenishing Deeds and revanquishing Enemy-Bears. Or, in other words, the True Hero stakes a claim to existence only while assuming the active Position of the Hero, and the relinquishment of this responsibility at any Now, from the perspective of the World-State's Then-Now, is identical to a concession to the Enemy-Bear by a Hero-Absconded."
-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: Translation.
-Percy Maynard Brady: Having fought an evil in the past doesn't free you from the duty to fight one now. Moronic lecture against retirement.
That would be the initial reading of Henry's Fleshbag self, dismissing most of what Karnon was saying as a mere parody of his wife and the abstruse Mangerian interpretation of The Cycle as a series of archetypal roles repeated across history.
At a deeper level, though, Karnon had provided a sincere defence. Through the convoluted parody, in which he pretended to use the example of himself to illustrate a silly, indirect point about Henry's duty, the God had actually made a logical, direct point about himself. The 'Hero' and the 'Enemy-Bear' were not pure abstractions; Karnon might be describing quite literally his own motives in Suchi – or at least the motives he would have you believe he had.
From another angle, the articulating of Donnera's cosmology, even if in jest, could be a set-up for a later important suggestion of the God's.
Henry refuted the first reading. "You're in no place to be lecturing about sustained commitments - you've left Togavi in ruins for almost two thousand years."
Karnon waved this infantile rebuttal away. "It seems that an error was committed in omitting the introductory establishment of a shared Notion of 'Hero'. Contrary to inherited paradigms of moral assessment, the Essence of the Hero, observed by the higher vantage of the Soul, is contained elsewhere than in the dull—"
"Ridiculous. I'm still getting rid of my 'Enemy-Bear' - only with a collectivised, more controlled, safer method. That's the argument, here. This isn't a vague, theoretical discussion of a dialectical struggle between good and evil. It's, specifically, whether the already chosen path of good warrants the inclusion of a mindslave army factoring in the added risk of your potential interference, a danger you've yet to provide any persuasive point against."
Karnon was annoyed by the outburst. "The moment of Soul-Insight was coming, but the axioms of argumentation between men must first be grounded in a robust logical foundation before the conceit of Compass-Finding the ideal Direction of Movement. However," he inhaled against two fingers as if taking a drag from a cigarette, causing the elemental golems and the mini-planet to be sucked back and condensed into the former pebble, "however, I realise now that this forum advertised for those professing an interest in the mutual exchange of Evidence and Ideas is, in fact, a jungle infested with monkeys' debating' through the chest-thumping of faeces-filled fists. Karnon, you're on your own with these ones, your compatriots in ignorance and Self-Ruin!" He addressed the puppet of himself with scorn, before offering a closing remark to Henry and Caramel. "I believe my ex-husband has marshalled an assemblage of baubles for the enticement of your simian eyes."
Dropping the ex-wife act, he jogged over to the puppet at the banquet table. In an odd decision, he traded clothes with the thing manually. Groaning and grunting as he lifted it from its throne, he shimmied it out of its tulip robes and tossed them over his ex-wife's attire. Then, discarding the puppet to the side, he assumed its seat.
Karnon gave a thankful but apologetic wave at the spot from which his 'ex-wife' had addressed him. In silence, he rose to his feet, lifting his arms with the lofty pomp of a king of kings. In response to this action, the covers floated off of the banquet dishes.
Their magical flight revealed a spread not of food but of immaculately-crafted weaponry, armour, jewellery, and other miscellaneous curios – all Legendaries.
Karnon strode along the smorgasbord of priceless artefacts. Selecting first a woollen mitten, he waved it at Henry, Caramel, and the still-waiting convicts to exhibit its authenticity and craftsmanship. In a demonstration of the artefact's function, he summoned a massive spear of light a dozen-metres long and possessing such a destructive heat as to ignite the surrounding air. The spell, imbued with the God's full Tier-11 power, could easily sunder a reinforced castle wall. Karnon directed it against the mitten. The spell disappeared without a trace, without singeing a single fibre.
Depositing the mitten back on its former dish plate, he winked suggestively.
The next demonstration was for a sword forged, from blade to handle, entirely from one chunk of pear-green metal. Karnon, applying a full-strength
Continuing in this way, the miming God exhibited these artefacts collected over his millennia of adventuring and pranking. Throughout was being offered an unspoken deal: for the small price of resuming that little mindslave prank, the choice would be Henry's of any one amongst these beauties.
At least, that was the superficial explanation of the God's actions.
-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: Huh…so he did end up stealing your Legendaries. That's…alarming...
These were actually items that Henry, the supreme cheat magnet, had collected over his adventures, stashed away in what should have been unknown caches. His guildmate recognised several items from the morning's presentation, when he'd shared their existence and potential usage in the God's modified assassination - the mitten and sword were both key in conducting the kill. Henry'd also warned the God might distribute the items to The Company's enemies for their annihilation. (The last part should be unlikely, as Henry’d taken the precaution to store the items in various Starting Zones, where deities were supposed to be incapable of interference as overt as stealing Legendaries. Then, again, a huge part of Karnon’s shtick was devising mischievous workarounds to these barriers.)
The Trickster God flaunted the stolen arsenal and Caramel, faced with the items laid out before her instead of in the abstraction of a slideshow, reconsidered the stakes. Henry, meanwhile, found himself being drawn to one Legendary that didn't belong with the others.
The item's features were unremarkable compared with many of the more dazzling on 'offer' - a shirt sewn from a kind of reptile scale, with a sapphire gemstone for its collar-button. Nevertheless, it stood out to him immediately. Its presence absorbed his entire attention, and, for a brief instant, the world, the moaning and sobbing of the convicts, vanished from his mind.
This shirt...it'd been a while since he'd last seen it.
A long, long, long while...