https/youtu.be/VB2F16cQ_7Y this is just a playlist of techno music to set the mood, I guess?
Chapter 14: Decisions
After getting licenses for all three horses (Arthur didn't feel right about getting a license for Lilly), Arthur let the mounts go out to the edge of town to the horse corral where others left their horses. After signing them in and receiving a suspicious look from the corral owner, Arthur made his way over to the saloon where the others were waiting for him.
"Find anythin' out?" he said lowly.
"Not much," O'Callaghan said with a frown. "It's hard to know what questions to ask without my seer eye."
"We didna have much luck, either," Lugh whispered. "Should we try askin' in here?"
"Yeah. I guess the head honcho Prince Valentine owns this," Arthur said, pointing at the building. "I don't know where he ran off to, though."
"Was he nice, at least?" O'Callaghan asked.
"He seemed okay."
The group walked up to the saloon doors. "Just tah forewarn ya, Sasanach, the interior of these buildings are uh...different," Lugh said.
"Whatchu mean?"
Lugh pointed at the saloon doors with a smirk. "Just go in."
With a slightly annoyed expression and a shake of his head, Arthur pushed the doors open. He was immediately bombarded by darkness, red fog and very strange sounds.
Play music here
"What the hell?" Arthur said out loud once his eyes adjusted to the changing in light.
It was still dark, but odd colored flashes of light paraded around the room without thought or reason as to where they would go next. There was a long, rectangular bar with people wearing different colored dragon horns on their heads standing inside the space. They were dressed in very little clothing and Arthur gulped at some of the women. Above the bar were mirrors on the ceiling along with long, brightly lit dragon horn displays, the horns twisting and turning in different directions. People were sitting at circular tables with drinks and what Arthur could only assume were drugs.
"Brigid is gonna kill me fer being in here," Lugh chuckled, his eyes wandering to the women walking around with most of their flesh exposed to the cool, club air.
"Luckily, she isn't here right now," Darrach said. "She's helping make arrangements for Cahira's arrival tomorrow...but Tora said she'll tattle if you keep letting your eyes wander."
Lugh proceeded to merely stare at the floor. "Hopefully we'll be done with this mess by then," Arthur mumbled, his eyes studying the shades of blue, green and red inside the bar.
People sat at stools, sipping on their drinks and laughing away as they talked to others. The room was a lot bigger than the building was and in the back there was an elevator.
"It would seem the theme of this place is...futuristic," Darrach pointed out. "Not what I expected five hundred years from now, but...it's not bad."
"I'm gonna do all my drinkin' at home if the future looks and sounds like this," Arthur remarked.
"I believe the genre of music is called techno. Or is it electro? Is it both?"
"This is music?" Arthur laughed in a hushed but surprised voice.
Darrach laughed. "Yes. It's typically for techno enthusiasts...and based on what I'm researching...heh heh, this "internet" thing they have is just lovely...oh. Ooh. Interesting. Could uh, could you wonderful gentlemen scour out the place for where the music is coming from?"
Arthur knew Darrach was up to something, and based on the look on Lugh's face, he knew too. They both looked at Sir Jack, who seemed oblivious, then at each other. "I think one of us should search for the...music...while the rest of us try to get people talkin'," Arthur offered.
"Good idea!" Lugh said before slapping Jack on the leg, considering as a Duckworldian, he was a lot shorter. "Ya heard our fearless leader. Go find the source."
Sir Jack narrowed his eyes at Lugh before walking away and mumbling something under his breath. "Spread out," Arthur said.
The three parted ways and Arthur searched through the party room, people ignoring him entirely as they were in their own little world. The music was starting to give Arthur a headache. In one of the corridors, he leaned a hand against the wall and grasped his head with the other hand.
"Are you alright, Lord Morgan?" Darrach asked in the ear com.
"I think so," he grumbled, his eyes squeezing shut from the amount of pain in his head. "Just...this god damn music is-"
With his eyes still closed, Arthur saw images of Lilly being tortured. In her wolf form, she struggled in chains as crows came and pecked at her eyeballs, inside her ears and at her throat. An even bigger swarm of crows, their eyes almost burning like fire, swooped down and attacked the rest of her body. Arthur watched in horror as she yelled and cursed, blood speckling everywhere as a random crow plucked a whole eyeball out and flew to Mallacht to place it in his hand. The king smirked in devilish delight as he approached the wolf.
"Thoughts?" he asked her calmly.
Lilly actually managed to chuckle. "Well, uh, it is a bit painful!" she shouted, straining against the chains that bound her body to the ground, the crows still pecking away at her in a blood thirsty frenzy. "And...grrr, heh, losin' an eye is a nice touch!"
As the crows flew away, Mallacht approached Lilly and put her eye back into its socket. "There we go," he said, removing the chains with a snap of his fingers and pulling out a clipboard. "On a scale of one to ten, one being not painful at all and ten being so painful that you want to die, how would you rate this torture scenario's pain level?"
Lilly shook herself and grumbled, narrowing her eyes at Mallacht as her body started to heal. "Maybe a three."
Mallacht looked up at her in shock. "Maybe a three? Really?" Lilly nodded with a hum. "Interesting, but," he chuckled as he wrote something down. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You have a remarkable tolerance for pain."
Lilly cocked her head to the side, still glaring at him. "What exactly is the point of askin' my opinion on all this?"
Mallacht blinked before grinning at her, holding the clipboard with both hands behind his back. "Let's just say I have visions of grandeur for my future. Now," he said, turning and walking. "On to the next scenario!"
Lilly rolled her eyes before trotting after him. "Somethin' tells me I should not be playin' along with this."
As Lilly and Mallacht wondered out of the area, Lilly in her human form approached Arthur. "I ended up bein' right about that, unfortunately," she said, looking at Arthur with sad eyes. "Hello, my love."
Arthur reached out for her with a sniffle, actually being able to touch her face. "Are you really here?" he asked.
"No. I'm just a memory infused with an...experimental type of prayer. I had no idea if it even worked or not. Well, now I do," she chuckled. "Or at least this version of me knows. Therefore, you can ask me questions but my responses will be limited, unfortunately."
Arthur pulled her in close, wrapping her up in a tight hug. "I'm so sorry, honey," he said softly.
Lilly kissed his cheek. "Don't get stuck in the mud, mo chuisle. I need you to be strong for me right now, okay? Can you do that? For me?"
Arthur quickly wiped his eyes and nodded. "Yes," he mumbled softly.
Lilly held his face in her hands. "I need you to listen very carefully. You're gonna get a lot of memories, and some of them are gonna be real bad, so you have got to make a decision here."
"What decision?"
Lilly sighed. "At the point in time this was recorded, I...I took a gamble and I lost. I made a horrible," she took a deep breath, "horrible mistake. One that I don't think you'll forgive, so...you have the option to...to give up on me."
Arthur scrunched his face up, grasping her face gently. "Whatchu mean give up on you? I will never give up on you."
"You..." she paused with a frown. "You may feel differently once you find out more about what went on down here. The things I've done to...to try and get back to you...I...I'm afraid you won't understand. I'm-"
Arthur shut her up by kissing her feverishly. She moaned against his mouth before clinging to him, their limbs becaming practically entangled with each other. "Baby, I don't give a damn what you did. Whatever you had to do, you did it for a reason. There ain't nothin' you can do that I won't forgive. You understand me, woman?" Arthur breathed.
Lilly disappeared and Arthur abruptly found himself back in the club. "Arthur! Talk to me!" Darrach yelled.
Arthur took some deep breaths and sunk against the wall. "I'm here, I'm here...just...gimme a minute," he huffed, leaning his head back as he began to process the information he was just given.
"Okay, it was kinda the same for O'Callaghan. Mallacht wanted feedback. Did he do the same with Rose? Does he do it with everybody? What's the point?" Arthur sighed and rubbed his face. "I ain't gonna figure that out. Lilly said she did somethin' she thinks I won't forgive. Probably somethin' that goes against our code. What did she do? Did she torture and kill innocent people? Slap a kid in the face? Kick a puppy?" Arthur asked himself.
"Where are ya, Sasanach?" Lugh asked.
"One of the corridors to the right from where we came in," Arthur muttered, hissing as he tried to stand. "I had another prayer, sort of, but it was mixed in with a memory of Lilly gettin' tortured."
"Oh my," Darrach said shyly. "Was it gruesome?"
"Yeah but there's more." As Lugh came waddling up to his side, Arthur burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, I can't...I can't take you seriously when you walk like that."
Lugh stuck his tongue out of his duck bill and blew a raspberry. "Shut it," he grumbled. "Ya know, I kinda like this music." Lugh began waving his duck arms in the air while shaking his tailed rump. "It makes me wanna dance."
Arthur laughed even harder at Lugh. "You look like a damn moron!"
"What was in the prayer?" Darrach asked.
Arthur sighed. There was no easy way to say this.
XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX
"So what's the deal around here?" O'Callaghan asked, her purple Asari skin practically glowing in the dark as she sat at a table with a man and woman clad in revealing latex outfits. "I mean, what is this place?"
The man with blue dyed spiky hair smirked at O'Callaghan. "It's a place to let loose, have fun and enjoy music," he replied before taking a sip of his drink. "And to get high and have lots of sex."
O'Callaghan arched a brow. "You can't do that at home?"
The woman sitting next to the man laughed, her long red and orange ombre hair bouncing over her shoulders. "Of course we can! But doing it out in public, higher than a damn kite? It's exhilarating! Especially with a sex doll!"
"Uh...a sex doll?"
The man grinned. "Yeah, Prince Valentine makes these machines that look like people. Androids, he calls them. Some people call 'em robots, others call 'em Build-A-Bitches, whatever. Point is, they do whatever you want and act however you want them to. They fill your every sexual need, ones you didn't even know you had. You'll find plenty of them on one of the dance floors"
"One of the dance floors?"
"Yeah. This place has multiple floors. You just take the elevator to get to them."
"Huh, okay," she said, looking around for the elevator. "How many floors are there?"
"Um, thirty two, I think?" the woman said with uncertainty. "Each dance floor has its own music genre and theme. Other floors are a restaurant, hotel rooms, a royal suite, Prince Valentine's personal apartment, things like that."
"Wow. So everything is bigger on the inside?" O'Callaghan asked.
"Yeah, like a TARDIS."
O'Callaghan giggled. "Oh wow! Doctor Who fan, are ya?"
"Guilty," the girl said with a shrug and a wink. "Gregory hates the show, though."
Gregory rolled his eyes. "I don't hate the show, I just don't like why they changed The Doctor into a female! The Doctor has always been a male and all of a sudden, there was a...a barrage of gender and race switching characters that came out of fucking nowhere during that time period in other entertainment! It became a meaningless trend and it was dull."
Jennifer clicked her tongue. "It was not a trend, it was a movement. You have to start with ripples in order to make a wave."
Gregory groaned in frustration. "That makes no sense at all."
"To your small mind, it doesn't," she hissed, downing her drink.
O'Callaghan's eyes widened, realizing how uncomfortable the conversation got as the two glared each other down. She slowly moved out of her chair and cleared her throat. "Um, it was lovely to meet you both, but I should really get going," she said nervously.
O'Callaghan slipped away quietly and huffed, shaking her head as she looked around for her companions. She spotted her father by a really big black device were the music was coming from. As she got closer, she could feel the music vibrating throughout her body, getting stronger as she got nearer. Jack was laughing his ass off with his hand on the device.
"This is bloody great!" he cackled.
"Uh, Dad?" O'Callaghan shouted at him to be heard above the noise.
He turned his head, still laughing as he motioned her over. "C'mere, put your hand on this!"
O'Callaghan did as she was told and was taken aback at the intense vibrations running through her body. "Wow! Haha! That's so...it's like being hit by lightning, but it doesn't hurt!"
"Ya both gotta get over here!" Sir Jack said into the ear com. "With Scotty and O'Callaghan by the elevator."
Eventually Lugh and Arthur came strolling over, Arthur looking rather grim but Lugh looked fascinated. "What is this thing?" he asked as he stared at the device.
"I believe it's called a speaker," Darrach replied through Scotty. "It's a machine that is used to play music very, very loudly."
Lugh put his palm on the speaker and laughed. "I can feel it through me whole body! That's insane!"
"Hey!" someone yelled from behind the bar at the group. "Could you please not do that?!"
Jack, Lugh and O'Callaghan all removed their hands. "Sorry," she said meekly.
"We should try tah find this Valentine guy," Lugh said. "See if he knows anything about Rose and the others. Or at least see if any information he can give us will give us a lead."
"Agreed," everyone else said.
"He might be on one of the dance floors," O'Callaghan said. "Or maybe he's in his apartment. The elevator can take us to the floors."
Arthur smirked at her before putting an arm around her shoulders. "Leave it to the women to get the good gossip," he chuckled before walking with her to the elevator, being followed by the others.
The black doors opened and everyone stepped into the spacious carpeted box. O'Callaghan studied the buttons on the panel of the elevator with a hum. "Country, RB, Rock, Heavy Metal, Pop, Techno...oooooh, these must be the different genres of music those people were talking about," she said before pressing on one of buttons, the door closing them in.
The doors dinged and opened after they went up a floor and everyone gaped at what they saw and heard.
