It was fully dark by the time we reached our destination. Bee had started getting tired halfway through our journey, so I was carrying her on my back while she slept. Tina hadn’t paused for a second, displaying the bottomless stamina truly crazy people possessed.
“We’re here,” she announced.
I looked at the fence gate of the enormous water park, above which the sign read, ‘Water Wizard’s Wonderland’. The lights were on, the slides were operational, and the pools were all filled. The water looked clean even after a week of no maintenance.
“I didn’t know this was here,” I said as we entered.
The water park was on the outskirts of Madeville, not too far from some textile factories. It seemed a strange place to put such a thing, but the parking lot outside was filled to the brim with abandoned cars and travel busses, showing that it had been popular.
“A lot of people must’ve been here when everything went down and the children disappeared,” Panda said.
“It was pandemonium,” Tina replied with no trace of irony, stopping so I could catch up.
Panda stared at her with a frown but didn’t say anything.
“Were you here when it happened?” I asked her.
“I was,” she replied. “Michael brought our children here on that day. I’d managed to track him down after escaping from the facility next to the prison earlier in the day.”
“Is Michael your husband?” Panda asked, confused.
“He was,” she replied. “Then he cheated on me with a stripper named Candy and filed for divorce.”
I nodded. I knew this part of the story at least. After Tina had found out, she had stopped taking her meds and gone totally apeshit, burning down the strip club and cutting off Michael’s pinkie with garden shears after breaking into his house. Her ex-husband had gotten a restraining order and apparently also the custody of their kids. Tina had been put in jail for attempted manslaughter, trespassing, and arson, but had managed to escape and track her ex-husband down in Castleburg. The police had caught her and sent her to Calm Springs Asylum before she could exact her revenge, which is where I’d met her.
“Candy is dead,” I said.
“I know,” she replied. “Nina told me.”
“Where is Michael now?” Panda asked.
Tina didn’t reply. She looked off towards the top of a tall slide that was illuminated with floodlights.
“I see Otto,” she then said.
I followed her gaze and noticed him as well. He was a tall brown otter mascot with a comically-large head, and he wore swim trunks with a white-to-orange gradient over his costume.
“Is that a surfboard he’s holding?” Panda asked, looking up at him as well.
Bee woke up where I was still carrying her on my back, trailing a long string of drool from her mouth to the shoulder of my suit jacket.
“Did someone say surfboard?” she asked groggily.
I put her down as I continued looking up at the distant figure. The large waterslide was like a straight tube with the top half cut off to leave it open and its water cascaded down into a large pool. Around the pool stood a bunch of cheering college students. I immediately recognized Logan and Ophelia Maximilian amongst them.
Before I could point them out to Panda, the people started chanting, “Otto! Otto! Otto!”
The distant mascot lifted his surfboard into the air and the crowd roared. In total there were maybe forty of them or so.
Then Otto threw his surfboard down on the waterslide and jumped on. He held his arms out for balance, but it was clear he’d done this many times before, because he didn’t wobble in the slightest and just kept picking up speed.
“Wow, he’s super fast!” Bee exclaimed.
“I can’t wait to add him to the team,” I said with a grin.
When he was about to reach the bottom of the slide, Otto leapt from his board and performed a graceful dive into the pool. The surfboard slammed right down into the water after him before shooting back out and flying over the heads of the spectators.
“Hell yeah, bro! That was gnarly!” someone screamed.
“Oh look, it’s Tanner,” Panda said, pointing at the guy who’d yelled.
“Who?” I asked.
“You know, the water mage who died when you were hunting down Logan.”
“Oh, that guy,” I said.
As Otto climbed out of the water and the crowd cheered for him, Tina, Bee, and I walked over to meet him.
We made it all of two steps before everything froze.
“Ah, shit…” Panda muttered.
He bapped me on the head, but I couldn’t move any part of my body, not even my eyes.
“Listen, Gambit, I feared this might happen, but just let me do all the talking, okay?”
A door opened in the air in front of us, kind of like an elevator. It revealed the beige-ness of the cosmos, with stars, planets, and strange floating creature swimming about. Heavy fog spilled out from within the open portal and swirled around the four of us like an obscuring ball.
Then a figure appeared in the doorway before stepping out into our world. The door shut behind him and vanished.
The newcomer wore a dark-grey suit over a white shirt, and his tie was blood-red. His body was mostly human, although his skin was a deep purple color. His head, however, was out of this world. Literally. It was an upside-down pyramid covered in eyes and supported on a thin neck. It too was covered in purple skin and all the eyes had blood-red irises.
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Pressure emanated from the figure and the stasis on our bodies was lifted. I stumbled back a step under the brutal assault of the creature’s aura, but Tina and Bee both immediately collapsed to the ground, knocked out cold.
I tried to form a fist, but the sheer presence of the being made me unable to properly move my body. I ground my teeth in frustration as I looked down at my incapacitated friends.
The eyes atop the pyramid head fixated on me and it felt like tiny needles raked along my ear canals, causing blood to well forth. Something also poked the back of my eyeballs, producing an itch I wasn’t able to scratch. I could’ve sworn I heard a shrill and staticky aria coming from the entity’s suit, almost as if the jacket was woven from the same material as a Dungeon Barrier.
SALUTATIONS.
I AM CALLED:
“THE AXE THAT SPLITS TIME INTO MOMENTS AND JOURNALS HISTORY WITH A QUILL DIPPED IN BLOOD”
BUT PLEASE CALL ME “AXE”.
The disturbing entity ran its eyes along my body and up to where Panda sat.
I blinked and somehow triggered my Appraising Eye passive.
[Appraisal x ]
Level ???? — ‘Axe’ — Adjudicator-in-training
“I UPHOLD THE RULES.”
Job: GREAT GAME Adjudicator-in-training
Affiliation: Dispute-Resolution
About time one of these guys showed up!
Wait…
Ah, shit, they sent a fucking intern…
Your world had the concept of internships, right?
Well, lil Axe here is an up-and-coming fresh-eyed Adjudicator-in-training. He’s been studying the cosmic laws of balance for eons and is finally ready to put his theories into practice.
He was the brightest of all the young Adjudicators-in-training, but he’s got fuck-all experience with the work, so all he knows are the overly-rigid theories that don’t take the complexities of reality into consideration. Axe is basically the Dunning-Kruger effect incarnate and thinks he’s hot shit because his teacher stoked his ego a bit too much.
Of course, most new graduates end up like this. It’s just a phase of life and part of growing up. Unfortunately, entities like Axe are incredibly long-lived so this period of being certified shite lasts as long as the lifespan of some solar systems…
Anyway, he’s not meant to be handling shit like this, since he’s not ready.
Normally, every Region or collection of Regions get a fully-fledged Adjudicator to oversee them, but the one in charge of Castleburg is not available right now.
What I’m trying to tell you here is that this guy is about to fuck your world up in a bad way.
He hopes his manager will be pleased with his performance today.
This guy was definitely trouble.
YOU MUST BE AWARE OF WHY I HAVE COME, [REDACTED].
Panda crawled onto my head to be eye-level with the guy and said, with a frown in his voice, “Where’s Breezy? He’s normally our Adjudicator.”
“THE BREEZE THAT TRANSCENDS MOMENTS AND GATHERS COSMIC DUST UPON A WEIGHING SCALE OF BONE” IS BUSY RIGHT NOW, AND THUS I WAS SENT TO YOUR REGION TO HANDLE THIS UNUSUAL MATTER.
“Well, we’re only dealing with him,” Panda said stubbornly.
I had no idea what they were talking about or what was happening here, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were totally fucked.
UNDERSTOOD.
Axe lifted his right arm towards us, palm out, but I quickly stopped him before he could do whatever he was planning.
“Wait! Hold on a second!” I exclaimed. “What the fuck is going on, Panda!?”
He bapped me on the forehead with his fingerless arm. “Isn’t it obvious? They’re mad that we went back in time and changed things.”
INDEED.
THE SHOWRUNNERS INVESTED TIME INTO EVERY REGION OF YOUR WORLD IN ANTICIPATION FOR THE GREAT GAME’S INITIALIZATION.
YOU HAVE SLAIN TWO FIGURES THAT WERE OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO THEM AND PROVIDED INSIDER INFORMATION TO SEVERAL KEY PLAYERS.
YOUR PRESENCE ALONE DESTABILIZES THE CAREFUL ALIGNMENT OF THE SCALES UPON WHICH ALL THINGS ARE WEIGHED.
I HAVE BEEN SENT TO FIND A RESOLUTION TO THIS IMBALANCE.
I couldn’t help but think that the ‘resolution’ would be my complete and utter annihilation, based on what the appraisal had said.
“Fuck your imbalance!” Panda shot back. “The Flayed Lady has already interfered way beyond what is fair! It’s hardly my client’s fault!”
THEIR INVOLVEMENT IS REGRETTABLE.
HOWEVER, PLAYER GAMBIT IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE FLAYED LADY’S INTERFERENCE.
“Bullshit!” Panda retorted. “I bet she’s interfered in other places too because of something other people did or will end up doing.”
YOU ARE CORRECT.
THOUGH THIS IS UNRELATED TO THE MATTER AT HAND.
FURTHERMORE, IF NOT FOR YOUR GUIDANCE, PLAYER GAMBIT WOULD NEVER HAVE REACHED THIS POINT IN TIME.
I SHOULD THINK THAT YOUR ERASURE WOULD SUFFICE TO ALLEVIATE THE IMBALANCE, SINCE PLAYER GAMBIT WILL BE LOST WITHOUT YOUR GUIDANCE.
OF COURSE, I WILL HAVE TO REMOVE ALL HIS GREAT GAME RELATED POSSESSIONS, SKILLS, AND LEVELS FIRST.
“Screw this!” Panda exclaimed and pulled something out of thin air. It was a cylindrical device made of stone.
“I didn’t realize you had an inventory,” I said.
He ignored me as he started squeezing the device and mumbling into it.
Then it dawned on me what he was holding. I had only seen it once, back before the first Game Event when the ants and beetles had been seeking mediation about what to do with Bee and me.
A pillar of light appeared next to Axe, burning away part of the fog that encircled us.
Then a figure appeared in the light before the pillar quickly dimmed and disappeared.
It was a large upside-down pyramid covered in skin, with eyes and tentacles dotting its surface. Above its flat top floated a sphere with a mouth within which was an eye.
It was Breezy.
Before Panda could say anything, the Adjudicator zapped Axe with a black energy beam that made him vanish, then his eyes fixated on us, and he announced:
APOLOGIES, I AM QUITE BUSY RIGHT NOW.
YOUR ARRIVAL TO THIS DIMENSION HAS CAUSED QUITE A LOT OF PROBLEMS THAT MYSELF AND OTHER ADJUDICATORS HAVE TO RESOLVE TO PROTECT THE INTEGRITY OF THE GREAT GAME.
I WILL RETURN LATER TO RENDER MY JUDGEMENT ON YOU, BUT UNTIL THEN PLEASE REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE.
I was about to thank him for his intervention, but then the large eye in the mouth on the sphere shot a black beam at Tina, turning her translucent as a ghost. He next shot Bee, also turning her see-through.
“Wai—!” I exclaimed, but it was too late.
A black beam of energy struck me.
WARNING!
You have been Phase Locked by a GREAT GAME Adjudicator!
Time remaining:
Expires once the GREAT GAME begins
“Fuck!” Panda cursed loudly.
I couldn’t even comprehend what had happened before everything went dark.
Look forward to chapter 10 when the GREAT GAME begins anew!
