Rising Shards

Oka, Kalei and I were trying to get our void practice in, but we were close to our void monster number goal for the day and were kind of phoning it in. We were wandering around the field of flowers, not particularly looking that hard for more void monsters. We could do a challenge room and be done for the day early, but we hadn’t spotted any challenge room doorways.

”Dalliance. Delicacy.” Kalei said randomly.

”He appears like a swan quasar.” I answer on reflex.

Kalei and I burst out laughing immediately after to Oka’s confusion.

”Wait, what is that? What are you saying?” Oka asked.

I had to sit down from laughing so hard as Oka looked on, desperate for our random words to make some kind of sense.

”It’s from this movie,” I said between heaving laughs. “Kalei just imitated it perfectly.”

Kalei smirked, clearly proud of how hard I was laughing.

”Dalliance. Delicacy. He appears like a swan quasar.” She said again, causing me to start basically scream laughing.

“I don’t get it,” Oka said.

I couldn’t stop giggling, which unfortunately made Oka more frustrated. But Kalei’s impression was so spot on.

”What movie is this? What does it even mean?” Oka asked.

“It’s called You Were the Darkest Darkness,” Kalei said.

“Alright, AND?” Oka said. “What’s it about? Why do they say that delicacy thing? Why’s it so funny?”

“It’s about…” I said, trying to get my bearings back. “Like this gothic poet guy goes to this dreary old timey village and meets this vampire guy.”

“And falls in love with him.” Kalei added.

“Right right, it’s a grim romance,” I said.

“What even is a grim romance?” Oka said. “Do they die or something?”

“Well vampires are technically dead already, I think,” Kalei said.

“Shut up,” Oka said. “Just tell it to me, I feel left out!”

“You have to watch it, I’m not gonna spoil it!” I said.

“Fine, at least explain this dalliance or whatever part.” Oka said.

“Well, Zio, he’s the vampire, he’s hanging out in this bell tower that lets him spy on the village in the daytime. So he doesn’t get exploded, right? Then the other guy, Edwi, he’s the poet, his last name is even ‘Thepoet,’ arrives in his carriage, and Zio sees him and it does this big zoom in thing and his like mental narration is like—”

”Dalliance. Delicacy. He appears like a swan quasar.” Kalei and I say at the same time, causing us both to laugh again.

“But what does it mean?” Oka said. “Why’s it so funny?”

”I don’t know!” I said. “And they act like it’s so profound!”

“It is profound,” Kalei said. “Maybe. I dunno. We’re watching it when we get back.”

“So we should actually try and wrap up, then,” Oka said. “We thinking some more void monsters or try to find challenge rooms?”

As if on cue, we rounded a bend on the path we were on and found three strange doorways, much like the ones in Oka’s void vision. These were unlabeled though. Whenever strange doors popped up like that in our void node, it meant they were challenge rooms, short procedurally generated challenges designed to give us a brief test of our abilities.

“Oh perfect,” Kalei said. “Let’s get these over with so we can watch. Zeta, you take left, Oka right, I take middle, same as usual.”

“One day maybe I’ll see what a left challenge door is like…” Oka said wistfully.

“They’re catered to us no matter which door we go through, so it doesn’t matter. Now scoot.” Kalei said. Whenever we ran into challenge doors in void practice, she was in charge of getting us to go through the doors as quickly as possible, as Oka and I would frequently begin overthinking which blank door to pick.

I stepped through the left door and was greeted with bright lights and blaring sounds of blooping machines. The door behind me vanished, meaning I had to complete whatever challenge this room asked of me, then later write down a short essay explaining what I thought it meant.

The challenge room looked like a casino in LE that I had walked by once and Stella covered my eyes so I wouldn’t see either the X-rated posters on the outside or the gambling machines and be tempted to do gambling. I quickly realized I wasn’t alone.

This happened sometimes; because we were required to split up from our group if we found challenge room doorways, usually in a challenge room I’d end up working with another girl in my grade I didn’t know very well, which was generally an awkward and unpleasant experience. Seated at one of the slot machines was a girl that I hadn’t spoken to yet but had seen around school. Oka frequently referred to her as ‘The weird gremlin child,’ because it was hard to describe her otherwise. The weird, gremlin-like girl kept pulling the lever on a slot machine, plunking coin after coin into it. I wondered if I could complete the challenge without her noticing me.

”You, tall one,” she said, not turning away.

”Who, me?” I asked. “I’m not tall.”

”Join me,” she said. “So we can do this challenge room or whatever.”

I made my way over to her slot machine, which had cartoon drawings of muscular dog Kanibari on them and text that read ‘Volleyball Muscle,’ which sounded vaguely familiar for some reason.

”I’m Zeta,” I said, extending my hand to her.

”Chumbler,” she said.

”Come again?”

”Ny name is Chumbler,” Chumbler said and sighed. ”What is the average IQ in this school? It has to be exceptionally low.”

”Hey, are you calling me stupid?” I said.

Chumbler ignored me and kept pulling the lever on the slot machine. It didn’t seem like she’d won anything since I got there.

“Normally, I’d have my sidekick/minion with me,” Chumbler started. “But they don’t let us bring our partners in, stupidly.” Chumbler looked me up and down. “So you’ll have to do.”

“What exactly to we have to do here?”

“What I crave.” Chumbler said quietly.

“Huh?” I said.

”I crave gamble.” She said, staring me down despite being a good foot or so shorter than me.

”O-OK...” I said, really wishing I could be working with someone I knew. 

Chumbler kind of reminded me of Roux. But while Roux seemed relatively harmless, there was a mad glint in Chumbler’s eyes that made me terrified at what she was really capable of. 

Chumbler slapped the top of the slot machine.

“I’ve figured out this is the only one that works,” Chumbler said. “I tried all the others already.”

There had to be at least two hundred other gambling machines in there. How did she have the time to try them all?

“Oh, I’ve been at this for a long while.” Chumbler said, seemingly reading my mind.

“Wow…” I said.

“Right?” Chumbler said, before adding some words of self-praise that included too many swear words for me to ever want to repeat.

“But besides my awesomeness,” Chumbler said, pounding on top of the slot machine much harder this time. ”I think we need to win the $500 prize. Get it?”

”I don’t...”

Chumbler raised her little hands in the air as if she couldn’t believe that I wasn’t following her latest bizarre tangent.

”500 dollar is a lot of money, what’s not to get!”

“Wow, 500 dollars,” I said. “I could buy so much Raina merch.” I blurted out, then instantly regretted as Chumbler started to get really upset for some reason.

”500 doolllarrr!” Chumbler said in a weird tone that was like yelling, but also like not, all drawn out and slowly spoken. “Do you get iiiiiiit? A lotta monneeeeeeyyy. And more importantly, it allows me to gamble.”

”We don’t get to keep money that’s in here, do we?” I said. I remembered how things brought out of the void didn’t last in the real world.

”Shut up, that’s not important!” Chumbler said.

”I just—”

”Shut up!”

“Fine, whatever, what do you need me to do?” I said.

Chumbler pulled on the slot machine lever again and didn’t get a prize. She groaned, put another coin in, and repeated that a few times without answering me.

“Chumbler?”

“What?” Chumbler said.

“I just…what do you want me to do here?”

“Just stand there, whatever, who cares!”

I sighed and sat down. I had done some dumb challenge rooms before, but this was even stupider than the one where I had to try to hook up a DVD player upside down.

Chumbler continued to pull the slot machine lever and continued to lose. I thought about asking her where she was getting the coins from, but I knew I’d just get a weird and rude comment in response. I wondered what I was even supposed to do here. I actually got out my bloodsaber and cleaned it, something I never had bothered to do so far.

“Only a one blader, huh?” Chumbler said.

“What?” I asked.

Chumbler pointed (with her non slot lever pulling arm) to her bloodsaber, which appeared to be two bloodsabers taped together at their handles.

“Oh, yeah, I guess,” I said. “Why is yours…like that?”

“Cuz it’s badass, you know?” Chumbler said. “I designed it with my best friend/minion/lackey/etc.”

I stopped myself from blurting out “You have a friend?” Which was good, because Chumbler seemed actually happy to talk about her friend, who was apparently named Z.O.K. She didn’t tell me what the initials stood for, but she actually brightened up as she talked all about her friend, how they met, what shoes they liked, placed they’d gambled, and more.

“You know, you’re not a bad listener,” Chumbler said.

That actually got me a bit red faced. Maybe Chumbler wasn’t so bad.

“Aw, thanks, that’s actually nice to hear—”

“You’re like a dumb cat, or a plank of wood with a tail.” Chumbler said. “I think it’s the tail that makes me think that.”

“Sure, yeah,” I said. Maybe Chumbler was that bad.

Somehow, after what felt like hours, Chumbler got the $500 prize on the slot machine and we could finally leave. I don’t know if it was some time distillation thing in the void, but only forty-five minutes or so had passed by the time we got out. Oka and Kalei were waiting for me in the front area of the building where we go in and out of the void (which was tragically actually named that now, as Principal Penteldtam had proudly added a sign to the front of the building that said ‘The Building Where We Go In and Out of the Void” and made us sit through a long, long presentation explaining why and how he chose the name the week before).

“Alright, movie time,” Kalei said as I approached them.

“You guys weren’t waiting too long, were you?” I asked.

“No, we just got out,” Oka said. “I had to play this game.”

”Yeah, and?” Kalei said.

”I’m not gonna explain it anymore since you didn’t explain the stupid delicacy movie thing.” Oka said.

Oka saw me looking in Chumbler’s direction. Chumbler met up with her friend, a Kanibari girl who must have been Z.O.K. I wasn’t entirely sure if she was real from Chumbler’s description, so it was good to confirm she was.

“I had to do my challenge with her,” I said.

Chumbler looked my way and waved.

“Did you actually make friends with the weird gremlin child?” Oka asked.

“Apparently,” I said, my mouth a bit dryer than I was expecting.

”Hey, we’re friends now, got it?” Chumbler called over in a weirdly threatening way.

I nodded as I waved back, not wanting to tempt fate any more than I already had.