>>6906Beside you, an enigma took advantage of the group's distraction to pilfer all the food at hand, dozens of Venus flytraps choking on snacks. Cookies, pastries, canapés, and even a particularly appetizing centerpiece disappeared with green, crunchy snaps. A constant rain of crumbs spattered your clothes as the plants jealously vied for the food.
Venus: Friend, friend, god friend, are you going to eat that?
Several carnivorous plants emerged over its shoulder and simultaneously pointed at a slice of cake. Two others had already moved ahead and were observing the target with the concentration of snipers awaiting authorization to fire.
Venus: Because if you're not going to eat it, I could take care of it. It would be a favor. A sacrifice, even. I have sworn to dedicate my life to eradicating world hunger. Mainly my own.
One of the flytraps was already salivating. Another had begun to visually measure the distance to the cake.
Venus: I hate seeing food wasted.
It paused.
Venus: I also hate seeing food used correctly, but that's another matter.
Venus prevented you from hearing the vast majority of Aurelia's introduction, getting straight to the heart of the matter.
Aurelia: In practice, any means are permitted to survive and win. Every person can be evaluated. Every relationship, analyzed. Every weakness, cataloged for use.
I enumerate with three of its four amphibian fingers.
Aurelia: Like every year. The last one standing in this very place, within 876000 hours. Will be crowned with a wish sponsored by the God of War of the afterlife himself, Zajard Kain Vash.
Talking about Gods of the afterlife to masalines is the equivalent of shaking a bunch of keys to entertain a baby. Of course, the most skeptical rich people didn't swallow a word; in their view, this competition was a rudimentary population culling in the efforts of the league and the neonodine authorities to monopolize violence and predict events like those of a decade ago. Nevertheless, the prize was real; a wish of free will would be granted to the winner. And that's an opportunity no one would generally pass up. Not all the money in the world can buy you eternal life.
The curtains behind Aurelia parted in two. And the first lot appeared. The auction began.
Aurelia: Cliché among clichés! Orphaned bloodline, captured and charged by Libra for interrogation purposes. 104 years old, in his mischief-making prime.
The octopus-woman pointed to a random spot in the audience and unleashed a bidding war.
Aurelia: We start with a sense of smell! Who bids more?!
The bloodline kept grumbling and whispering, cross-legged, silenced by a muzzle tight around his face. A constellation of runic engravings orbited precariously around him, ensuring that ill-temper remained his only tool.
Nothing particularly stood out about him; not his scars, nor his build, nor even his ability to inspire fear. His features were the most ordinary among his kind. It's no wonder he was a coward who escaped the family massacre only to end up captured by government agents. A kind of incompetence difficult to teach and even harder to match.
The bids were just beginning to gain traction when a murmur swept through the room.
Then another.
And another.
Heads began to turn in the same direction.
A second item had just been restrictedly placed in a rectangular, industrial-looking capsule. The chamber lacked runes, seals, or mystical artifacts. It didn't need them. The engineers had simply altered the internal gravity to pornographic extremes, preventing it from liquefying, compacting, or manifesting a functional orboid field.
Orboid: NO, no, no, NO, AS IF HELLOU! I AM A CELEBRITY! I was trending for three years straight! My n-n-name made men and women wet their pants, read my lips, bitch: you can't do this to me.