The fifteen contestants stood around the circular table, their eyes drawn up to the incarnation of the Earth System. It looked like a man aged to the point of androgyny. Withered as a raisin and pale as the dust in the corners of a tomb. Every aspect screamed of weakness as it slowly spun inside the leather harness that kept it hogtied and suspended above the wheel.
What powers could it give? Zoe had no idea. For if she compared her life now to what it had been before the apocalypse, she never felt the impact of a system, at least, not directly…
The Gambler’s words echoed her thoughts.
[In terms of magnitude, it is barely a system, definitely not by the scales and terms of our glorious and eternal Crimson Armada, yet it ruled the minds of 7 billion apes! What secrets, what power lies within its glorious flesh? My brother and I have deciphered some aspects. Rather than attributes, it gives Wealth — a perception of value — and rather than titles or abilities or holy Skein; it gives Epiphanies… but I point at the ease with which we conquered this world as a proof of their so-called power]
The crowd laughed as the humans looked amongst themselves with bewilderment. Some latent pride urged her to defend the husk, but she found no words, no thoughts, with which to do so. What had that desiccated system ever done for her? And though her mind reeled at its introduction, her very worldview turned upside down, it couldn’t erase the fact she stood so close to multiple people who wanted her dead.
And vice versa.
[There are several feuds at this table, and by the end of the game, they will either be resolved, or at least the imbalance between them shall be adjusted. It’s hard to say what will happen when chance rules the fates of mortal and immortal alike…]
The crowd leaned in with bated breath as the Gambler smirked.
[Our contestants will soon discover! If they spin and land upon a white space, they will gain a body part from Earth’s former system! It is theirs to eat, and eat they shall in front of you glorious watchers! If they land on the red space, they shall lose their body part and feed it to the god before them. The game shall end when either Earth’s system is consumed down to the very last scrap, or when Earth’s system — crippled as it is — gains enough power to escape the bonds and join us in the Crimson Armada!]
The Gambler’s eyes whirred. His smile of gold flashed like a dragon’s hoard.
[Prepare yourself for the Feast of the Gods!]
###
The crowd cheered for long enough that Zoe could stare at the table and try to think of a way to tilt the game in her favor.
She had no ideas.
It sickened her.
Made her hunger howl.
This game had no skill, no strategy, no nothing but chance and the Gambler ruled all risk and rewards in this universe. Was this even a game? His eyes glinted. He knew her thoughts; he knew all their thoughts; he was their thoughts, just as they were him… that was how he explained it to her on their first meeting.
So what even was this for him? Some perverse act of self-mutilation? Of self-pleasure? She couldn’t unravel such a mind, and she didn’t have time.
[Our former champion shall start this round off]
Even though Zoe hadn’t won the first part of the Feasting Game with the Barbeque pit, she had won the last round with the Mubilashi. She sighed as countless eyes fixed on her.
Time to spin.
A buxom, gold-wrapped Gambler bent at the hip like an awkward puppet.
[And what body part will our first contestant gamble?]
The regular voice of the system chimed inside her mind, soothingly sterile after the Gambler’s ingratiating tone.
[Please select a body part to gamble:]
* [Left Hand]
* [Right Kidney]
* [Nose]
She said that last word with a literal purr.
[A reminder, to our defiant champion, that you specifically cannot gamble hands or feet, since you have already lost them]
Zoe snarled at the reminder. The pain of severance was still locked away somewhere in her mind. Something to deal with at a later date. She glared at the Gambler.
“I gamble my…” She was about to select nose, since it was only flesh, and she had helped repair noses, but something lurched up inside her, some power-craving curse that wanted the larger prize that came with a larger risk. “...kidney.”
Her eyes widened as her hunger put words in her mouth. She hadn’t wanted to say it, but now that the word was out there she had no choice but to stand by it.
If she wasn’t in control of her words, of her thoughts, and she wasn’t in control of the results… then what even was this game?
The Gambler rubbed his fingers together.
[An excellent choice, and exactly the behavior I would expect from Zoe Chambers. Go big or go home am I right or am I right, folks?]
[You're right]
[So right]
[Now spin, Zoe! Spin like you want to win!]
Feeling as though she floated outside of herself, Zoe leaned forward. She tried not to look up and failed. The Earth System’s eyes twitched and roamed, and a familiarity ached in her heart when they met hers — like walking through a kill shelter and saying no to the puppies.
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She spun the wheel. Even with her advanced strength, the wheel felt heavy. It was like a massive slab of stone grinding against some hidden resistance. But she got it spinning. It blurred, red and white strobing into pink, and slowed and she held her breath as the candy cane colors gradually drew closer to her fate.
Bella gripped her arm, but Zoe didn’t even notice the tight hold. The spinning wheel entranced her.
Pink.
Red.
White.
Red.
She expected to feel fear or rage or hate or anything, but she just floated further outside of herself as a large carving knife shimmered into existence beside her. It stood, half-stabbed into the surface of the table. Her hand twitched as she reached for the blade.
[Now Zoe, please cut out your kidney and place it in the mouth of the Earth System]
The buxom Gamblers appeared behind her in flashes of gold. One held her down against the table. Her friends swarmed to her aid, but the other clone shoved them back. Their human might was as ineffectual against the incarnate system as a match against a firehose. Zoe still held the knife. Her heart pounded. Her eyes were wide, and she could see them reflected in the knife.
This couldn’t be happening.
Sweat made her grip slippery as the Gambler strode up toward her.
[I didn’t expect to have to assist a surgeon like this, but if I must]
He wrapped his long fingers around her knife-clenching fist and plunged the blade into her side. Zoe screamed. With quick, perfect incisions, he cut her open and severed her kidney. Blood poured onto the floor as the Gambler reached inside her and pulled out her organ.
A mockery of surgery, and all she could think of was how she had removed the cores from the followers of the One-Eyed Crow. Half had lived. What would become of her?
She collapsed. Numb, even as her Vitality stopped the bleeding and closed the impossibly clean wound.
This was wrong.
The Gambler reached over to the suspended Earth system and pulled the apple from its mouth.
Words spilled from the old, withered lips.
[Worth is measured by the measurer and they apply wealth as they see fit to give themselves mastery over —]
The kidney slipped into his lips and choked out his words, but his lips kept moving, teeth kept shifting as he chomped down on her organ. Blood and bits slipped onto the red and white wheel beneath as Zoe slumped against the counter.
Inside, impotent, her hunger raged.
[Our next contestant is Team 3…]
Despite the Gambler’s voice booming through her mind, the haze of pain washed out any sense of coherence. Zoe watched as the punk man with the pink pompadour spun the wheel. She wasn’t sure what he gambled, but she watched as his grin slipped from cocky to terrified, a nervous rictus all teeth like a baboon trying to scare away a lion as a knife shimmered into existence beside his hand. No faulting his bravery as he reached up to his head and sliced off an ear punched through with safety pins.
He fed the ear to the Earth system before he fell to his knees and puked.
And so it went.
The man in the button-down shirt and hyena cape spun.
Red.
He quivered as the buxom Gamblers lifted his foot onto the counter. Blade parted bone and tendon with the precision of a butcher. Blood spouted out across the wheel as he screamed. His hyena hide shivered and laughter spread out into the air, so infectious it curled even Zoe’s scarred lips. His wounds closed, and Zoe could tell from his eyes that he felt no pain — only felt the loss, the deep loss, as they fed his feet to the suspended Earth system.
The trussed-up manlike thing drooled blood as it muttered and murmured, though Zoe couldn’t hear the words. His belly hung distended and full of sacrificial flesh.
It wasn’t until the Gambler pointed at Rue in his silvery magnificence that Zoe’s mental fog popped like a balloon on a bed of razor blades.
[What a fateful day that the illustrious Rue, conqueror and killer of worlds in my name, shall deign to spin a wheel, and play a little game]
She couldn’t tell if Rue forced his smile.
“Oh, I deign?” he said. “Far be it from me to sit out of such a wonderful opportunity.”
[It is wonderful, isn’t it? Now, you have your choices, but won’t you speak it aloud for our salivating crowds?]
Rue nodded, and his eyes took on that slightly distanced look of someone examining the words inside their head. Curious, how some things remained the same no matter the level.
He smiled.
“You know… I never thought this day would come, but come it has, and so I say without reservation… I gamble my left hand!”
The audience gasped.
[My word! The very hand that slayed Garbalotrix of the Unicorn Dominion. Five fingers thrust into his five eyes. What a brutal piece of history and an event that led to the coffers of the Crimson Armada tripling in size. Let it be known, that wealth is no substitute for true power!]
The knife shimmered into existence beside Rue’s hand. He glanced at it contemptuously before he leaned forward to spin the wheel. His powerful grip closed around the wooden frame until his knuckles whitened. Zoe feared — hoped? — he might tear the wheel away and rebel, but he merely spun it with such strength that the colors blurred.
The wheel spun for a full minute, and the crowd watched in awed silence as Rue awaited his fate.
Red.
White.
The wheel slowed.
Red.
White.
The wheel crawled.
Red.
White.
Red.
The crowd sighed, and Lorilla gasped, and Zoe felt the urge to cry out in triumph as Rue took up the blade. He glanced at it before tossing it over his shoulder. One of the Gambler’s big-breasted clones lay in its path and she dodged by bending at the hip completely unnaturally.
“I need no blade,” Rue said as he raised his hand.
All present felt the concentration of will that condensed the air into a razor edge around his wrist. A thin line of blood encircled his skin, and the hand fell to the table like a lump of clay.
One of the Gamblers swooped, but Rue gestured them away. He maintained his composure as he stood and picked up his left hand with his right. Back straight, gaze steely, he proffered his hand to the gnashing, wrinkled lips.
Shock and horror roiled inside Zoe’s mind as she watched the system, her former system — though did she feel any connection? — feed upon her mortal enemy.
Was she happy? She should be… right?
But each nerve running through her trembled as the Earth system’s eyes rolled back into its head until they were pale trembling orbs. The whispering lips opened and stretched wider and wider beyond the point of sane biology. The lustful gorging reminded her of a pig in a pen with molasses-sprayed feed.
It reminded her — with horrible sympathy — of the hunger branded upon her lips.
[we accept as we capitulate that desire is greater than the destination and only the — gawk — gurgle — gak —]
The lips closed around Rue’s pinky and slurped it like spaghetti. The throat bulged. Zoe’s nose wrinkled at the smell of blood and saliva. She gagged as Rue’s twitching fingers stretched against the skin. The emaciated stomach swelled as the Earth System choked down the hand of an alien God.