The exhibition hall was laid out at the intersection of three of the palace’s hooped buildings, where the bank-like copper ring and the museum of ancestral ring touched together. They formed a long, and comfortable viewing gallery between them, running in a straight line, north-west to south-east until the two rings parted their separate ways. Leisure hall crossed them both, perpendicularly at the north-west head. At that joined triple-point, the ceiling rose high to a stained glass dome that led to nowhere except the underside of a roof.
The atrium of exhibition hall looked like a warzone, or maybe the downtown streets of a city that had lost a national sports championship.
A sparse dozen soldiers held a cracking line of defense between a trio of rosy marble columns that led towards the inner compound: south-west through leisure. This was not a company of hardened veterans. Most of these guards wore rural colors, and were either too young or two old. They carried light cudgels and wore cheap leather safety pads at their knees and elbows.
The carpenters were hardly better armed, but they assaulted the guards with anything which came to hand.
The first casualties already lay wounded underfoot. Casualties, and then three gobs who had been laid low by the colossal smack of flying, soft comfort support.
The Dreadlung stepped over the fallen form of a dazed joinery apprentice, and picked up the droopy, downy feather-pillow that lay across his chest. He had two now. A floppy cushion hung from either of the giant’s crushing fists, and he whirled them in slow arcs as he advanced.
“Violence is the only language the landed class understands!” shouted a gob as she smacked her wood shaving planer across the face of a soldier. She gripped the handle, prepared to drive it across and shear a stripe off of his skin.
Whump.
She went flying and tumbled into a heap. The Hero stepped over her, adjusting his grip on the cushion. His breath roared like a forge.
The beleaguered soldier bled from a cut along his chin as he addressed his savior. “Thank you, Hero! Come, let us put these traitors in their places b-”
Whump.
The soldier toppled into two of his peers, and they fell into a tangled pile. There was a certain ripple of confusion through the battle lines.
“Hero Irving!” cried a mad, familiar, blood-spattered woman with a long, cruel-toothed saw. “It’s wonderful to see you!”
She was the carpenter from his surgery, the one who’d been ejected. Her face fell into a snarl of fangs.
“But you should have let me decorate your vertebrae!”
She shrieked as her long, wobbling saw swung towards Rhode’s leg; and her blade blurred with the vibrating serration of [Motor Tremor].
Whump.
One of Rhode’s pillows tore open into a storm of feathers as he blocked the saw with it. His other arm whipped around. The second comfortable bludgeon knocked the carpenter off her feet and into a recessed lounge-style conversation pit. She landed there and cracked the central wooden table. Rhode inspected the ruined pillow with a frown. Feathers spilled out generously from the long gash in the fabric.
A soldier raised the face-plate of his heavy helmet and twirled a short stabbing sword. “The Hero is here to save us! Salt and Ash for Sacred, Salt and Ash for the glory of the Second Prince!”
Rhode observed the color of his uniform with a countenance most grim.
Whump.
The homunculus sucked in air, and it whorled in a howling vacuum into his lungs. He scooped a massive handful of loose stuffing out of his pillowcase to his face, and then he blew.
“Ack! It’s in my mouth!” cried a voice.
“Help!” choked another, “I’ve got down in my nose. Ugh, it’s in the back of my throat now!”
A whirling storm of feathers filled the air. Rhode tossed the pillowcase away, and the floorboards groaned under him as raised his remaining, sagging cushion.
“Hero Irving, what are you doi-”
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Whump.
“Collective resistance is the only-”
Whump.
“Goode Warriors! Fulfill your oaths! Fight with honor to your last-”
Whump.
The combatants on either side began to slow down. Nervous sweats broke out over faces as goblins began to back away.
On the other side of the fight, the captain of the Maize-Well mercenaries whistled piercingly, and waved a cautious retreat. “We’re just gonna stay out of this one, Ser Irving. Don’t mind us.”
The homunculus stepped carefully to avoid stepping on the fallen. He thumped aside soldiers and rioters one after the other.
“I’m really not a hundred percent sure what’s going on here,” thundered Rhode, “and I’m feeling a little conflicted! But everybody, calm the heck down until I figure this out!”
A pair of goblins struggled on the floor with a knife. Their fight was so intimate, and so dire, that they hadn’t paid attention to the rest of the room. The soldier on top had lost his helmet. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was singed, and a cut dug into his scalp. The two of them sneered at one another, close enough to kiss, but the knife they were fighting over held the two apart. The body weight of the soldier pressed down, giving him the advantage, and the point of the blade sunk lower. Skin parted between the carpenter’s ribs. Fear knit into her brow.
Whump.
Rhode stabbed a finger at the soldier as he rolled into a barricade. “Stop, man. Don’t be a jerk.”
The freed carpenter gasped for breath on her back. She clutched at her side, and then dove for the fallen knife. She squeaked as a homunculus’ foot landed on her back.
“I swear, I will sit on you. Stay down and drop it. For real,” Rhode scolded.
The ranks of either side of the fight were in shambles. Groans of dismay rose from the conquered. Rhode hung his head and steeled his heart. The stitching in his pillow was tearing: he would have to make this last swing count.
A lesser squire of Illuminance of Bronze circled Rhode around his left. Fine chains held a net of runed copper beads in place over the half-elf’s body (he wore it over his knightly colors), and he held a rod of power that ended with a mirrored disk. On Rhode’s right, prowled the union boss with his mallet and chisel. So swole was he that Rhode began to doubt whether he could win.
“Creature, you are no Hero. Your actions speak to treason this night,” growled the squire.
Rhode scratched the side of his head. “I dunno what you mean, man. I’m just trying to level up [Berserk],” he lied.
“You fool,” cried the union-man, “by choosing to preserve the illusion of peace, you only serve to enforce the interests of capital! Civility only exacerbates the inherent negotiating imbalances between labor and their managerial overseers!”
“Yea, well. I already feel bad about this, OKAY!?”
Rhode’s pillow swung in a tremendous and devastating arc. Glittering lights flashed as the squire’s runic armor dampened and dispersed the force of the impact (this was surprisingly ineffective against a pillow). But his swing carried through, dipping low as Rhode spun on the toe of his slipper.
The bitter edge of a chisel reached towards Rhode’s throat in a moment that seemed to slow down time. But then there was a plush –
Whump. And the muscle-bound goblin was smacked in a tremendous and body-shaking upstroke that caught him in his chin.
Rhode’s pillow flopped open and dumped its contents gracelessly onto the floor. Two bodies crashed, one after the other as they landed. The Hero let out a shuddering breath that shook the glass of nearby lanterns and chandeliers.
“Okay,” he roared, “let’s get some medics or something.”
Splintered boards crunched as he lumbered over the wreckage.
“I feel like I probably gave that dude a concussion. That guy there – he’s actually been stabbed. Hey, buddy, are you dead? Okay. Well, like, just move if you’re not dead. Actually, dang. A lot of y’all are looking pretty messed up. Captain Corn, come here. Can we get this sorted, real quick?”
The mercenary Handsome Fent coughed. One of his subordinates jabbed him forward with an elbow, and he stumbled. Then he stood alone in front of Rhode. The homunculus tapped his foot impatiently.
The captain raised his [Relay] fork and a tinny voice rose out of it. Rhode grabbed his hand and pulled the device up to his face.
----------------------------------------
The riots had spread across the palace, and each flashpoint took a different shape. Too much had been mismanaged. Too many rumors had gone wild, and discipline had been unevenly enforced. The lockdowns? They had only been the spark that lit ready tinder. But even then, even here, even among goblins, none of those things should have been enough to stoke a fire like this.
At some point, you had to consider the causes you could not see. And you also… had to set an example.
Lord Ser Reliance Habk sheathed his sword. A white-hot line of blasted ash cut up the wall in front of him, and smoke was beginning to billow up from it as wood caught fire. Five blackened shadows marred the purity of his stroke as the only remaining sign of the rebels he’d silenced forever. Tonight had been a mess.
Then his communication device vibrated at his side. Curious, he picked it up between his forefinger and thumb. The strange tool was an invention of the Translocationist, and Habk regarded it with suspicion. So far, it had caused more trouble than good.
It's prongs hummed suddenly, and a voice came through: clear and deep and rasping.
“Hey, sorry team. I beat up all your guys in a fit of blinding rage. I guess we’re in… exhibition hall? Send some doctors please. On the bright side, I bet I’m closer to leveling [Spite].”