All click, no bang.

Aida shook with relief and anger as she fell away from Ocyl. He slumped back like a man pushing away after Thanksgiving dinner or rolling off after sex.

"Ah, delightful." He sighed. "How was it for you?"

"Dammit, you knew it wouldn't work." She threw the useless weapon across room.

"It never has before, but there's always a chance." He leaned heavily against a pedestal hosting a domed jar over piled white powder and offered an intimate smile. "We always learn so much about each other when someone plays the game with me."

"Never before? A chance? This game? How many people have you pulled that on?" She wrapped her arms about herself, feeling unclean, furious, taken advantage of. It took great effort to not scream at him. "Did you purposely make a gun that doesn't work?"

He smiled, stretching like a contented cat as he glided after the gun. "It worked perfectly in Jutland Reach. I received it as a gift from a man who hated me."

"Because he knew it wouldn't work?"

"Because honor required I kill him with such a weapon." He picked it up and examined it closely.

"You fought a duel with that and survived?" She wasn't sure if she really cared or if she just wanted to distract herself from what she'd just tried to do.

"It killed fine in Jutland." He carried it to the case and placed it gently onto its cushion. "I killed someone important with it in a duel there, yet in no other verse has this weapon produced so much as a spark. The Machine Curse and all that."

"You killing a man in a duel would impress me more if you weren't immortal." She stepped towards the door.

"Immortal, yes. Though we Dynasts do little to discourage the belief in our lessers, your Seneschal fails you if he's not yet disabused any notions of our invulnerability."

"Don't be so surprised. He's failed me every way he can think to do so thus far." She immediately regretted such disclosure to this Dynast. "Disabuse away."

Ocyl mimed what Aida interpreted as a gardener snipping at a bush. "If you trim a few branches, a tree regrows, yes?"

He glanced at the dirty, bloody cloth strip wrapped about Aida's hand. A flush accompanied phantom pain spearing through her missing fingers. She hugged her injured hand close involuntarily, suddenly aware how badly her misadventures had managed to batter, stain, rip, and mangle her dress. Even in its sorry state, at lest she still wore enough clothing to contain her personal bits.

He continued without waiting for her reply. "Groves possesses gnarled, undying trees far older than any living Dynast, yet a child with a hatchet could chop one down in an afternoon. Are they immortal?"

"So we can be killed?"

"Immortal just means everyone else dies first."

Faces appeared before her eyes. The Valeer, White Spiral, Feral lying dead in that alley. Her son and daughter. Mother and father. All three husbands. Her roommate Nancy who had probably passed alone while Aida ran away on this... whatever this was.

"I know this must all be overwhelming as a barbarian, but take heart. All will be second nature in time and quickly after you'll be as bored by it as the rest of us. As for the Jutland pistol, surely your sad, disgraced Seneschal regaled you with the unfortunate Machine Curse the Book suffers?"

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Disgraced how? Actually, never mind." She threw her hands in the air and walked towards the door. "If a sham attempt at assisted suicide and taking over Fallon's job of treating me like a child was all you wanted me for, glad I could oblige. I'll be going now."

"Leaving already?" He slumped against the pistol's pedestal as if suddenly exhausted. "But we've only just met and you haven't told me what you want yet."

Tension took up slack in her muscles like a sailing ship's lines in a squall. "What makes you think I want anything from you?"

"Nothing a Dynast says to another is idle. Every word comes laced with poison and honey. The speaker offers their cock in one hand while a blade hides behind their back in the other." His eyes drifted to her crude knife belt while her eyes drifted down his open kimono, then darted away.

"If I were going to stab you, my knife's right here out in the open." She patted its battered handle. "And I don't have a cock."

He grinned. "Want one? If you know what I mean."

She almost laughed at such an idiotic pickup line from the ruler of a universe.

"Pardon the pun, but I've had my fill, if you know what I mean." She turned, trying to emulate his smooth slide across the tile, using the surprisingly sturdy pedestals to keep her balance.

He laughed heartily. "I like you. Most seeking my audience prefer screwing Dynasts to shooting them. Or trying to screw them over more commonly. Refreshing."

"So glad I passed your little test." She paused at the entrance curtains. "How many Dynasts come here?"

"Oh, a few now and then. Would you like to meet some of our fellows?" He walked back towards the archway he'd entered from, stared at the broken glass glittering across the floor for a moment, then glided to the room's back corner. Only when he pulled it open did she recognize the hidden door, painted to blend perfectly with the wall.

"Can't be much worse than you," Aida mumbled, following.

"How's your Valeer, by the way?" Ocyl halted so abruptly in the doorway that Aida almost sailed into him. "I heard you got a rare one."

"Rare? I don't know, he's the only one I've met." She stared down at the broken rock occupying the display case before her. What she could only describe as a beam of shadow extended from the stone's jagged end. A geode containing darkness not crystal. "He's dead."

Ocyl exhaled heavily, closed his eyes. "Unfortunate. I'll see to it that what of him can be replaced, is."

"Um... thank you?" She frowned, trying to figure out what he meant.

He pushed on without a backward glance, as if he didn't care whether she followed or not. After a long, half-longing look at the curtains, she trailed behind him.

A series of narrow passages. A disorienting, cramped, spiraling wooden stair.

She felt off-balance and not only mentally. Down drifted as they climbed higher, moving slowly to one side even as the gravity's pull grew weaker and weaker. Then they came to a strangely curved hallway roofed in the broad-faceted emerald curve of what couldn't be anything but the outside of the eponymous Jade Eye.

As they strode the up-curving hallway, the direction of down shifted rapidly but always pointed down into the floor where they walked. A moment later, the hallway ended and they entered the massive round spheroid. The deep green light flooding the interior combined with the minimal gravity to inspire a strong sensation of standing underwater.

Outside, traffic had resumed after the god's passing and the Sighted Path streaming above them as busy as ever. Disorientation increased when Aida realized down had moved perpendicular to where it had pointed when she stood at the Spire's ground floor. Up always pointed towards the Sighted Path in the city's center while down became the opposite direction.

The city spread everywhere she looked, distorted by the thick green glass and confused perspective. A round city seen from a spherical room.

The immense space's floor lay scattered with white and green cushions in the hundreds. Distributed here-and-there among them stood long silver poles ending in shepherd's crooks, each dangling a faintly green-glowing, half-meter-long thread. The poles rose from sturdy, glazed clay pots featuring jungle motifs replete with parrots and panthers.

Bone-masked male and female Ferals stood about, armed and armored in a dozen different degrees, styles, and color schemes. Some lounged on the cushions while others regarded each other warily or watched the aerial display. Other servants wearing Ocyl's favored white and green or nothing at all stood about, many holding silver food or drink platters. Every servant wore their platinum blond or red hair loose against pale skin. Not one servant could be called less attractive than pleasant, some bordering on stunning.

Ocyl turned to her, pulling a silky blanket from atop a heap of cushions. "For decorum's sake, we provide these."

With gravity so light, naked couples and groups drifted slowly down through the emerald space or launched upwards, sailing high and leisurely.

"Decorum? What are they..." She realized, heat rising. "Oh."

"One rule." Ocyl grinned at her as she eyed the nearest descending coupling. "New partner arrangement every time you touch down."

Ocyl proved to have dressed perfectly for the occasion and it was Aida who'd arrived improperly attired.

To be fair, no one told her to dress for an orgy.