Chapter 2
Elysia and Bartleby

	Ely squinted and cocked his head. He waggled his eyeballs back and forth at the sights and sounds of sex all around him. He closed his eyes and turned his head away, attempting to block them all out so he could think clearly. This bat cub in front of him, a male no less, and probably younger than he was, had just offered him a blowjob in a public place, though admittedly one where no fur would so much as glance at it. What should he do? What would happen if he refused? Would it be some grievous insult, like refusing food from some primitive jungle tribe? If so, or not, what would it mean for him if Ely accepted. He looked back on his life, often staring a bit too long at the cocks or exposed assholes of other students in his school gym locker, or of casually wandering into the gay areas of whatever free streaming porn sites he’d manage to find. He always brushed this off as curiosity. If he accepted, would it be mere courtesy, or would it mean there was more to that past than he’d assumed? He knew for sure he wasn’t gay; fucking Ms. Cameron, after all, was the highlight of his life! Well... it was the highlight of his post-Sipha life anyhow. Would it mean he was bi? From his observations, it seemed everyone here in the Dusty Meat Market was bi, so there would be no judgment. That is, no others would judge him. Ely still wasn’t entirely comfortable with applying that label to himself. But if accepting a blowjob from a little male bat cub was a mere courtesy, would he have to? Ely’s mind ran these thoughts in circles over and over again until—
	“Hello?” a voice asked.
	Ely blinked and looked down at the tiny ashen bat with arms now crossed and a footpaw tapping the dirt. “You’ve been standing there for over a minute.”
	Had he? The idiocy of the situation suddenly dawned on Ely, and he laughed out loud. This bat cub in front of him, a male no less, and probably younger than he was, had just offered him a blowjob in a public place, and he analyzed it like he did the books on theoretical physics that he always read in bed at night! The laugh made his cock twitch again, drawing his long forgotten attention back to it. Ely turned to the side and sneered as he tried to make his dick at least slightly less conspicuous by resting his wrist on it.
	The display slightly unsettled the little gray bat. He uncrossed his arms and stepped back. Bartleby had met many new arrivals since his father killed him over a year ago. But none of them acted so strangely as this wolverine. Who would react to an offer of sex by losing himself in thought for over a minute and then suddenly cracking up without an answer?
	“So, you want me to suck you off or not?” Bartleby asked.
Ely still thought. ‘He does want to suck my cock! What should I tell him? What’s most important right now? I need to compose my thoughts is what’.
	Ely shook his head. “Maybe later,” he grumbled.
	Bartleby nodded, "Fair enough. How 'bout something to eat?"
	"Hell yes," Ely sighed. It wasn't until after he did though that he realized just how hungry he was. His stomach pained him, its occasional rumble easing it for only a few seconds. It was enough though, to send Ely's mind away from its previous thoughts. He put a paw to his stomach and shook his head in confusion.
	"That's not supposed to happen," Ely whispered.
	"What's not?" Bartleby asked.
	"I'm not supposed to be able to feel pain."
	Bartleby huffed. "Well, not in most places, but there’re a few. You don’t have control of your own hunger here for instance."
	‘Hell's Giving Force,’ Ely thought. ‘Some places are less malleable than others. Does that extend to those within?’
	"Is that the Giving Force at work?" Ely asked.
	"The what?!" Bartleby squeaked in confusion. "No! The Giving Force just gives you good stuff! I'm talking about Hell's thoughts. They’re everywhere, and they decide how much control you have over you and wherever you are.”
	“Oh,” Ely whispered. “I was told they were one in the same.”
	Bartleby chuckled under his breath and let his leaf-nosed muzzle fall into a claw. “I don’t know who told you that pal but... actually... that... kinda... makes sense now that I think about it. Hey Ely, who told you that? Ely? Ely?!”
	Bartleby looked around to find that Ely had already headed out into the Dusty Meat Market, leaving him behind. A few seconds of scanning found him beneath an awning, rifling his muzzle through large racks of sausages hanging from bars above a brick firepit filled with barely glowing embers. A nearly nine foot tall, utterly hairless and borderline obese demon stood next to him, four arms cross like a pretzel, yellow skin, horns like a mountain goat, and an apron covered in an almost tie-dye vision of dark meat stains.
	Ely’s nose surpassed a bloodhound’s, and he individually detected every ingredient in every sausage. With eyes still closed, he reached a paw toward a rack of oddly plantain shaped sausages with an even odder purplesque color. He slid a paw up until he counted three and snapped them off from the rack. Those sausages, he smelled, were filled with creole essence and applewood smoke. But they had something more. They reeked of sex, but in a way he couldn’t place. Certainly he recognized the orgasmic hormones, but he couldn’t identify the smells accompanying them. He reached for those particular sausages without even thinking.
	“I was—”
	Ely flinched, and in an instant spun around on the ball of one footpaw to face his surpriser with teeth bared and his sausages held in front of him like nunchucks. He immediately calmed when he saw who it was.
	Bartleby took a step back and waved his claws through the air, “Hey! I didn’t mean to scare you or anything!”
	Ely averted his gaze from Bartleby. “Sorry. It’s a reflex. Don’t ever sneak up a wolverine unless you want that reaction.”
	“I’ll remember that,” Bartleby sighed. “I almost said I was going to invite you to my table since we got a bit more food than we wanted.”
	Ely turned back toward the large yellow demon and handed him the three strange sausages. “Smother them with that coarse hickory mustard you mentioned.”
	“You got it,” the demon answered in the coarse, gruff, and guttural voice embodying the stereotype of an urban cartoon slob. He tossed the sausages on a terra-cotta plate and sloppily poured a thick brown mustard over them from a copper ladle in a cast-iron pot. He handed it back to Ely who followed as Bartleby motioned at him with a claw and trotted away.
	In a minute, they arrived at an antiqued wooden trestle table where Bartleby sat. Ely paused and cocked his head. Dishes covered the table: platters and bowls and tiles and such of terracotta, all filled with unrecognizable cuts and grinds of meat and piles of sausage each having to be a quarter-meter high at least. There was barely enough room for the plates and goblets of the five little cubs who sat at the table, along with another empty terracotta plate and goblet, presumably for him.
	“I thought you said you only got a bit more than you wanted,” Ely grumbled.
	“We did!” Bartleby answered, looking up from a bowl of star-shaped, gold colored steaks. “You can eat as much as you want and not get full until you want to!”
	Ely looked down at the plate in his hand with its three mustard smothered sausages. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that before?” he sighed, and sat at the table’s bench.
	A deep orange fox cub sat next to Bartleby and eyed Ely from behind a bowl of blood red meatballs covered in a green sauce. The fox was barely bigger than—and certainly younger than—Bartleby, and with a just noticeable potbelly. He stared at Ely with wide green eyes and bared teeth that he licked the back of. Ely stared back with a furrowed brow and cocked head, trying desperately to understand just why this fox glared at him so oddly.
	The fox cub elbowed Bartleby in the wing and motioned his muzzle toward the wolverine after grabbing the bat’s attention. “Hey Sweeny, how’d you score such a platinum trophy fucktoy like him, huh? And when can I have him?”
	Ely shook his head at the words. Platinum trophy fucktoy?! He coughed and almost fell off the bench. He shook his head again, looked down, and started rapidly twirling his wrists in front of him when the fox’s second sentence sunk in. The fox couldn’t have been older than ten! Was this really Hell’s culture? Would any whelp—male, female, or other—he happened across ask him to fuck? Only time could tell for sure, so asking was useless. Still, Ely wanted to say something, but could only stare at the ground and twirl his wrists.
	“I didn’t score him actually,” Bartleby answered. “Believe it or not, someone shoved him through a portal and he fell on top of me.”
	Bartleby turned toward Ely and motioned is head toward the fox, “Ely, this is Xander the fox. Xander, Ely the wolverine.”
	“Well, I’m not sure how I feel about being a... trophy fucktoy just yet.” Ely said.
	“When you are, be sure to give me a jingle. You look like you can chew my pseudocock to mincemeat with that muzzle of yours, and I’d love to have you for a day or two. You know I hear wolverines can break bones in their jaws.”
	Ely shook his head again and stared wide eyes and jaw agape at a sand colored, spotted hyena girl in a pink mumu sitting next to Xander, who seemed to be even younger than the fox.
	“Pseu-pseudo-pseudo-pseudocock?” Ely stuttered.
	The hyena girl shrugged and cocked her head and brow. “Actually, it’s a six inch clit,” she said, and pointed toward Bartleby. “But it’s great for sodomizing little gray bats.”	
Bartleby giggled at the comment and rubbed his chest with his wings. “That’s Lexi,” Bartleby told Ely. “And those two stuffing their faces are Gillian and Crystal. Crystal’s the one made of toothpaste.”
Ely looked to the end of the table to see two more female cubs, one looking about thirteen, and the other nine. The older was a white calico cat with blotches of orange and black. She wore a sky blue shirt with bluejean shorts and a pair of rimless wireframe glasses. The younger was a nude vixen—who really was made of toothpaste! She seemed to be only a clear, oily membrane in the shape of a little vixen girl, filled with glittery blue gel. The only normal things still left of her were the bright blue eyes. They both shoveled meats into their faces, barely chewing before swallowing, and chugging from their goblets when they swallowed more than they could fit. Ely glared at Crystal in morbid fascination as he saw the chewed meat passing through her neck into the area that would’ve otherwise been her stomach before it dissolved and disappeared. Gillian the cat wiped scraps of meat from her muzzle with the back of her paw and threw it to the ground.
“You really gotta try eating Crystal out some time,” Gillian said. “She cums mouthwash!”
“And whatever you do, don’t ever eat out Gillian,” Crystal said. “She cums garbage disposal gunk.”
“Hey!” Gillian shouted, “I’m perfectly capable of cumming normal girl-juice when I want to!”
Crystal snorted, “Yeah, and how often does that ever happen?”
Ely stood suddenly and almost fell over from dizziness. Cumming garbage disposal gunk and mouthwash? Girls made of toothpaste? Assfucking boys with a six-inch clit, and then wanting him to chew it into mincemeat? They flung too much information at his face at once, and none of it made sense. Perhaps this would not have been a problem for most cubs, who tend to simply accept whatever presents itself without needing to make sense of it. But Ely did need that. His brain swam with a jumble of stammers and word salads in some desperate, hopeless attempt to intuitively understand what could’ve only been described as life imitating abstract expressionism—creativity existing only in the act and moment of chucking paint onto canvas, with the ultimate result meaningless and valueless. Ely could do nothing but bury his face in his forearms, hold his breath, and rapidly twirl his wrists above his head. At that moment, he scarcely even knew where he was.
All the others, Bartleby, Xander, Lexi, Gillian, and Crystal stared in confusion at the bizarre display, as if Ely was in the midst of some kind of consciously controllable seizure, which in a way he was.
“Did we break him?” Xander whispered to Bartleby.
Bartleby shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know, but he is a new arrival. Maybe we shouldn’t have hit him with all that at once.”
“I think I know how to fix him,” Lexi whispered. “Ely? Ely, come here and sit down. Let me explain everything.”
“Explain everything?” Crystal asked. “How’s that gonna fix him?”
“He’s autistic Crystal,” Lexi answered. “You can tell by the way he spins his paws like that. All he needs is a really long and really complicated explanation. He’ll be fine after that.”
“And you’d know this how?” Gillian asked.
“One of my best friends was autistic... when I was alive that is,” Lexi answered. “Ely, please sit down. Let me explain everything.”
Ely began to breathe and slowed the twirling of his wrists. He heard every word said, and understood them on some basic perceptual level, but on a deeper level the words passed right through him, leaving him to continue to run his thoughts in circles that only became more jumbled and incoherent each time through. But one phrase repeated itself over and over again, and stood out among the others as something he could understand. Ely slowly came back to the here and now on listening to this phrase over and over again.
“Please Ely. Sit down. Let me explain it.”
Ely lifted his head and looked around. Where was he? It looked like some cartoonish caricature of a great city street market from Arabian Nights, complete with sandy ground and amber sky. How did he get here? And why did so many furs suddenly cease their sexual activities to look at him as if concerned for his safety?
“Sit down Ely. Let me explain.”
Ely turned to look at the five familiar cubs staring at him in worry that they might have done something horrible to him. He huffed and blinked as in an instant, everything came back to him, from the moment he arrived in the red box, to this moment.
“Sit down. Let me explain.”
Ely comprehended only those words. He obeyed them instinctively, and sat down at the trestle table, staring with wide, unfocused eyes at the cubs around him.
“That’s good Ely,” Lexi said. “Now what do want to know?”
Ely looked down and then up at the sky. It took him some time to come up with a question. “Why are you all talking about crazy fetishes so casually?”
“Let me answer that one,” Bartleby said. “Do you know exactly where in Hell you are?”
“The Dusty Meat Market in Hell’s second level,” Ely answered. “It serves as a food court and a place for tamer sexual activities. Hell’s omnipresent pseudoconsciousness augments this by removing one’s ability to control one’s own hunger in this area.”
“The dude sounds like a textbook,” Xander whispered to Lexi.
“Autistic furs usually do,” She whispered back. “And sometimes you gotta talk to them like one.”
“Uh... okay,” Bartleby replied to Ely. “Hell’s second level, as you call it, is usually just called the ‘Naughty Level’. This is where every fetish you could ever think of is... well, everywhere! Any fetish you could ever think of in a million years is everywhere you look and no one you’ll ever meet thinks any of it’s bad, if they even notice any of it that is, and a lot of them don’t.”
Razielphustar left out all this information. Did he simply forget, like so many other things? Or did that squirrel leave it out purposefully, knowing he probably couldn’t handle such an overload of craziness? ‘Don’t speculate!’ he thought. ‘It’s not rational. Just ask him next time you see him.’ Ely closed his eyes and wriggled his fingers while focusing solely on the information just given to him. Explained so simply, he could start to understand what they told him. ‘Naughty Level’ was obviously colloquial, and if this was an exhibitionist’s heaven for every fetish imaginable and not, it was obvious why that name was chosen. It all started to make sense. Still, Ely needed more information.
“What kinds of fetishes?” Ely asked.
Bartleby looked up and rested a claw beneath his chin. “Let’s see, there’s cub yiffing, snuff, vore—“
“Bestiality, piss and scat—“ Xander interrupted.
“Transforming, inflating, exploding—“ Lexi added.
“Incest, orgies, filth—“ Gillian said.
“Swapping body parts... I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head,” Crystal finished. “But three things you gotta know is: there’s no such thing as inappropriate here. Any fetish you want you can just make like you made your own room, and every fur’s got a fetish. And I know you gotta have one. The only bad thing would be if you don’t share it. So we’ll share all ours, and then you tell us yours. I’ve got a very special demon I love yiffing more than anyone else. He’s a seven foot tall wolf who’s got a thirteen inch long cock with a seven inch wide knot, and he’s billions and billions of years old! That’s what I love more than anything else.”
“I like garbage,” Gillian said. “My room’s a dump, literally! And I love crawling through it and getting filthier than shit. And I, ooooh, I love having fuck parties in my landfill. Twenty little boy and girl cubs all yiffing and climbing through trash and filth? It’s the best.”
Lexi smirked and nodded. “I’m not sure I can pin just one down since I got so many. I guess if I had to it’d be piss and diapers. Well... no you can’t really call that a fetish cause it’s not about sex for me, just going limp just not caring anymore. Okay scratch that. What’s a fallback? You know, I am a pretty big bestiality fan. Especially the giraffes, cause they can suck me off and eat me out at the same time. Actually, maybe I should get back to you on that one.”
“For me it’s all snuff, vore, impossible size queenage,” Xander rambled. “The bigger the cock, the more it belongs in my asshole. I’ve taken killer whales even! I’ve had my insides split open more times than I can count and that’s always awesome. Pretty much anything involving being hideously slaughtered is for me. You know, come to think of it, I think I just get off on being invincible.”
“That just leaves me,” Bartley whispered. “I never thought about it until now because I’m into a little bit of everything. It’s hard to come up with an answer because I just go along with whatever... wait, that’s it! I think I’ve actually got a fetish-fetish, or maybe a submissive fetish, or, no. I think I just like letting other furs drag me into their fetishes. I guess you can call it a follow-the-leader fetish... if that makes sense.”
Ely narrowed his eyes and rested his muzzle on his laced fingers, elbows propped up on the table. Bizarre it was, everything he was told, but presented so systematically that even in the moment he could understand it. 'I assure you, nothing bad can ever happen to you on level two.' Razielphustar said that, and only now did Ely realize what his words truly meant. It certainly meshed well with finding exquisite pleasure in being boiled alive. More and more Ely suspected Razielphustar held back to avoid overburdening a purely analytical mind with nonsensical information. It was still speculation though. He’d still have to ask.
“So what’s yours?” Crystal asked. “What’s your fetish?”
“Blood!”
Ely shouted the word before even thinking it. He only realized after he said blood, that he had actually said it. It was a bad habit of his, as he often couldn’t consciously chose the words that came out of his mouth. But if Hell’s naughty ‘Level Two’ really was the fetish paradise these cubs described, there’d be no reason not to elaborate as much as possible. A torrent of desire flowed through Ely and he blurted out blood fantasies he never even had when he was alive.
“I want my wrists slashed open so I can drench my lover with blood. I want to cut my tongue open so she can drink my blood straight from my mouth. I want to slash her wrists open so she can bathe me in her blood. And I want to stab her nipples so I can nurse blood from her tits instead of milk.”
Wonderful, warm and tingly feelings spread up and down Ely’s body as he said those words, forcing him to twitch his whiskers, wriggle his fingers, and curl his toes. His second opposable large toes picked dirt up from the ground and held it in the pads of his feet. Ely smiled ironically in a pure innocent joy from expressing his fantasy that would be thought sickening on Earth. Then he looked at his new friends, and the icy psychosomatic pain stabbed his gut again.
Barlteby, Xander, Lexi, Gillian, and Crystal stared at him, motionless, with eyes wide and jaws agape. The fear set Ely’s nerves on fire and he could not stand to look back, looking at the ground instead. He dug his claws into the wood of the table and his fur stood on end while his nose went numb. Those stares! Those wide eyed, gaping jawed, motionless stares! He’d seen them too many times while alive, and every time it meant the same thing. They thought he was a freak! He’d went too far in spilling his guts and alienated the only friends he’d made thus far, and the most friends he’d ever had at once. But why would they think him so horrific if they ran around committing bestiality and vore... unless. They lied to him! They said all those things just to trap him! And then—
Xander beat a fist on the table. “That’s fucking awesome!” he shouted. “A wolverine with a blood fetish? It’s like something out of a comic book!”
Lexi grinned and scratched the back of her neck. “You know, that actually sounded pretty tempting Ely. I wouldn’t mind trying that with you one of these days.”
The others had nothing to say: Bartleby, Gillian, and Crystal. Instead they smirked and clapped at Ely’s tell all. Ely looked around and several other strangers clapped for him as well. Ely realized at that moment that he’d victimized himself yet again. All of his emotions would eventually submit to logic and skepticism except for fear of rejection. When he felt that, it took over and the purely analytical mind disappeared, replaced by paranoia and despair. But now that had passed, and Ely leaned his head against a paw, arm propped up on the table, and understood. He belonged.
Ely smiled and took one of his strange, sexually smelling sausages in his fingers and took a bite. The taste was incredible. It was ground, spiced, smoked, and grilled to absolute creole perfection. He took a drink from his terracotta goblet—ice cold and fresh cranberry juice, his favorite. ‘The role of the observer taken to its furthest extreme’, Ely thought. He then more than understood; he knew he belonged. He sighed in contentment, holding his curious sausage in front of him.
“What is this thing?” Ely asked.
Xander took one look at it, instantly recognizing it as one of his favorites. He reached over and grabbed it from Ely’s paw and took a bite. He spoke as he chewed, humorously spitting out tiny pieces.
“They make it from ground dolphin pussy,” Xander said. “And the casing’s the skin off a dolphin’s cock.”
	Utter shock froze every muscle in Ely’s body for some odd seconds before he simply didn’t care any longer. He grabbed a second ‘dolphin pussy sausage’ from his plate and ate with one paw while he reached with his other to pile more meats onto his plate.
Xander continued rambling. “Go to any aquarium and the dolphins are just the sluttiest nonevs you’re ever gonna find. They practically line up for shit like this!”
Bartleby, Xander, Lexi, Gillian, and Crystal ate and drank and chatted until sunset about whatever crossed their minds, most of which was more than suitably naughty. In the end, Ely would remember none of the conversation past the point of ‘shit like this’, but he knew he enjoyed every minute of it.

Chapter 3
Elysia and the Tournament

A cloudless night had fallen. Ely stood front row among a crowd of furs of all species, genders, ages, and costumes—or lack thereof. He stood just behind an ellipse the size of a medium conference room, say twelve by eight meters. Red velvet stanchion rope, hooked to gold posts, sectioned it off. Ely gripped the rope with both paws.
Meeting with Bartleby that evening was quite fortunate, as that’s what allowed him to stand up front. It made him wonder though, if this was mere coincidence, or Hell’s giving force at work. If it were the later, why would it give him the opportunity to stand up front while over a thousand other furs had to watch from bleachers surrounding the ellipse? Certainly they would love to be so close. Ely’s only conclusion was that either it was coincidence, or Hell’s Giving Force had something in mind beyond this event. Ely accepted that small bit of speculation, as it was a foregone conclusion, but refused to go further.
Within the roped off ellipse was ground of newly cleaned cobblestone so evenly carved and set it was almost totally smooth. Six wrought iron tiki torches made to look like wizard staffs, or something, surrounded the cobblestone ellipse. An oblong table of glazed porcelain stood in the center, almost eight meters long and six wide. Bartleby sat in a red leather wingchair at one end of the table. A tiny aardvark cub in a purple mandarin suit and coke-bottle glasses sat in a blue leather wingchair at the other. Both Bartleby and the aardvark had gold fountain pens tucked behind their ears and gold rimmed leather folders in their paws.
	Ely still wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. An albino rat boy in silver pajama bottoms and a silver tee shirt falling down to his knees stood beside Ely. He looked older than Ely, probably fifteen, but the species difference still made him far smaller. Ely leaned over and whispered to the rat.
	“What’s going on?” Ely asked.
	The rat looked up at Ely with one brow raised. “How long have you been here?”
	“In hell?” Ely replied.
	The rat nodded.
	Ely shrugged. “Three days, but I’ve only been out of my room since this afternoon.”
	“That would explain it,” the rat whispered to himself. He nodded and pointed to the porcelain table. “We’re still waiting for the ref, so that leaves plenty of time. We’re watching the D-Class Battlefield championship.”
	“The what?” Ely asked.
	“Battlefield,” the rat answered. “It’s hell’s version of chess, but, uh, way more unpredictable.”
	“Could you explain it?”
	“I was just getting to that!” the rat growled back. “And don’t interrupt me. Now there’s a bajillion themes and rule-sets for battlefield. This is medieval battlefield using advantage rules. Now each player starts with ten thousand points they can spend on building their armies. Each fighter, weapon, and mount costs points. But the basic units are peasants, scouts, fighters, and knights. Scouts cost five points. They got leather helmets and chainmail. They’re really fast, but not well protected. Fighters have metal helmets, scalemail, and arm and shin guards. They’re not as fast as scouts, but they’re way better armored. They’re ten points. Knights wear full plate armor. Their slow, but they can take a hell of a beating. They’re twenty points. Peasants are only one point. They’re as fast as scouts, but they just wear plain clothes so they get cut down like marshmallows. You only use peasants as disposable units. Now advantage rules means a coin flip’ll pick whose gotta build their army first, and in plain sight. You don’t want to have to build your army first—”
	“Because your opponent can design his army to counter yours,” Ely interrupted. “So whoever goes second gains the advantage.”
	“What the hell did I just tell you about interrupting me?” the rat snapped back.
	“Sorry,” Ely whispered.
	“But you are right. Anywho, you build your army on one side of your folder, and you give them orders on the other. The whole thing plays like one of those real time strategy video games, only just about anything can happen since it simulates an actual battle.”
	“Now what did you mean by D-Class?” Ely asked.
	“Oh, that’s leagues sorted by skill. There’s E, D, C, B, A, S, and SA. Beginners start out at E and work their way up by winning class championships. They’re classic elimination tournaments. There’s lots of other matches all around hell going on right now. That bat there, his name’s Bartleby. He won the E-Class championship just a week after he started the hobby. That was three months ago, and now they say he’s one of two contenders here to graduate to C-Class. Not many players ever get passed C-Class.”
	Ely nodded, out of politeness not mentioning he already knew Bartleby. “How many get to SA?”
	“Most versions of Battlefield got no players in SA. And in all of em put together I’d say there’s less than a hundred. Ah! Here comes the ref.”
	A female ring-tailed lemur unhooked a stanchion rope from its pole and re-hooked it as she entered the ellipse. Her eyes showed eons of age, but her body seemed only in its late-thirties, and made Ely’s mouth water. She was very tall and full figured with wide hips and c-cups tough as pure muscle. Beneath her form fitting black trenchcoat she wore only black lace lingerie. But there was more. Her eyes were blood red and her fur jet black where it should’ve been silver. Two small, fang-like horns sprouted backwards from her hairline, and she had a red-scaled pair of tiny batlike wings. Her plastic nametag read, “Hi, my name is: KAPHIREZ.”
	Ely squinted and cocked his head. This lemur shared many of Rzielphustar’s features. Could she be a concierge like him? Something gripped Ely’s arm tightly, but slowly enough to not startle him. He looked over to see the rat boy kneading his arm and staring at the lemur with glassy, unfocused eyes and his tongue nearly hanging out. Ely squinted in curiosity. The lemur smiled and winked at the rat.
	“Kaphirez,” the rat sighed.
	“Who’s that?” Ely asked.
	“My Hellguardian, and the best fuck in all existence,” the rat whispered. “She’s the reason I’m here. You should try her sometime. Nothing else’ll ever come close.”
	That was an irrational statement if there ever was one. More likely, the rat was simply in love with Kaphirez, as were no doubt many other furs. Even though Ely had learned long ago that pointing out such a thing usually only let to trouble, he still had difficulty holding his tongue. Fortunately, he had something else to focus on.
	“Hellguardian?” Ely asked.
	“Okay, now you’re playing stupid,” the rat groaned. “Don’t tell me you didn’t have a hellguardian to concierge your death.”
	“Oh him!” Ely said. “Yeah I did. But he just called himself a concierge. Although he did say he was distracted.”
	“He must’ve been full time then,” the rat whispered. “Name’s Jimmy Hicks by the way. What’s your fetish?”
	Ely briefly took Jimmy the rat’s extended paw. “Ely Rosenberg. And blood. Yours?”
	“Cosmic orgies,” Jimmy said with a grin.
	“What the fuck are cosmic orgies?” Ely asked.
	“Heh, heh, heh, you’ll find out. Now shut up, the game’s about to start.”
	Kaphirez the lemur hellguardian slinked up to the porcelain table, waving her ass and tail from side to side and grinning as it attracted more than a few whistles. She approached the table and ran a paw across it. Ely cocked his head as a miniature landscape suddenly began to grow out of the table just like crystals growing in time-lapse footage. They formed into a winding river basin on Bartleby’s side, sloping up toward the aardvark’s into a canyon, and eventually a plateau. Yellowed grass covered everything save the red cliffs and boulders.
	“The first match is between Bartleby fletch and Baxter Sparks,” Kaphirez said.
	Kaphirez took a large coin from her pocket. Bartleby’s face was minted on one red side, while Baxter the aardvark’s face was minted on the other blue side. Kaphirez smacked the forearm of her coin-holding paw with her other, and flipped the coin high into the air with a loud ping. The coin landed in her paw red—Bartleby—side up.
	Kaphirez pocketed the coin and pointed to Bartleby, “Bartleby takes first formation.”
	Kaphirez’s voice was a deep, nasally, and slow contralto, practically dripping sex. Both Ely and Jimmy shuddered at hearing it, as did likely many others, which no doubt delighted her. Ely then considered the situation.
	“The aardvark’s got the high ground and the second turn.” Ely said.
	“Bartleby’ll still win,” Jimmy said. “That aardvark barely even qualified for this tournament.”
	Jimmy’s words showed. Despite being handed a double-advantage, the suited aardvark shifted back and forth in his seat all the while as Bartleby, calm and smooth, took the pen from his ear and wrote in his folder. A small army of five centimeter tall gray bats in full plate armor, painted bright red, appeared at his end of the table. They carried quarter-cylindrical shields as tall as they were and flanged iron maces.
	Bartleby nodded to Kaphirez.
	“Bartleby’s army consists of one line of one hundred knights with wall shields and maces,” Kaphirez said.
	“What the hell is he doing?!” Jimmy said, leaning forward and grabbing the ropes.
	“What?” Ely asked.
	“Those units cost forty eight points apiece, and they’re not useful as anything other than battering rams.”
	“But if he only made a hundred of them, that means he spent less than half his points,” Ely responded.
	Jimmy stood straight and his eyes went wide. “He can still introduce new units in the middle of the fight.”
	Baxter shifted in his chair again and hesitated some time before grabbing his pen and writing in his folder. At his plateau, several lines of five centimeter tall aardvarks appeared from puffs of smoke. The rear line was two hundred aardvarks in plain blue tunics, trousers, and sandals, all holding longbows. The second was another two hundred aardvarks in blue painted chainmail, leather helms and boots, and carrying round shields and wooden clubs. The front line was another two hundred aardvarks in blue painted scalemail and barbute helms with iron tipped spears twice their height.
	Kaphirez pointed to the Aardvark, “Baxter’s army consists of three lines of two hundred troops each. The front line consists of fighters with pikes. The second line scouts with round shields and clubs, and the rear line consists of two hundred peasants with longbows.
	“Now if that’s not the most stock formation ever,” Jimmy said. “And the most useless.”
	“How so?” Ely asked.
	“Pikes can’t do shit against knights, and arrows can’t do shit against wall shields. That first line’ll get slaughtered, and only the second is any threat. Like I said, the aardvark barely qualifies.”
	Ely and Jimmy turned back toward the game.
	“Go!” Kaphirez shouted.
 	Bartleby and Baxter the aardvark scribbled fast as they could on the opposite sides of their folders.
	Bartleby’s red army quickly formed a line twenty bats wide and five bats long. The frontmost bats held their shields forward while each successive line held their shields above the heads of the ones in front—a classic phalanx formation. The shields overlapped like scales and the line of bats marched forward at a sluggish pace.
	Baxter’s blue army held their ground. The pike-aardvarks in front kneeled and held their pikes forward. The club and shield aardvarks tensed and bent their joints, while the peasant archers in the rear fired continuously, rather than in volleys. The arrows did not touch the red bats. None could slip through the mesh of wall shields protecting them.
	For a time, neither Bartleby nor Baxter wrote anything in their folders. Baxter continued to shuffle nervously in his seat while Bartleby sat relaxed with his legs crossed and leaning and elbow against his armrest, resting his head in a claw.
	The bat army now climbed the hill toward the plateau and the aardvark arrows could not even hit the shields at such an odd angle. Baxter continued to shuffle in his seat as Bartleby still sat motionless and unblinking with a slight smirk. When they were nearly at the top, Bartleby took pen to paper and scribbled frantically. The bat army suddenly changed its formation. They narrowed from a line twenty wide and five long to a column five wide and twenty long. Each row of bats held their wall shields out front, and the column suddenly charged forward.
	Baxter gasped and grabbed his snout before scribbling just as frantically in his folder. The pike-aardvarks charged down the hill and thrust their pikes at the bat knights charging up. The pikes bounced off the wall shields, and many broke. Baxter scribbled more. The pike-aardvarks spread out and tried to attack the bat knights from the sides, but the column of knights did not engage, and simply kept charging, bashing through the pikemen and into the club and shield aardvarks. The pike-aardvarks who could attack from the sides in that brief time had their pikes mostly slide across the knights’ plate armor. A few lucky shots at the joints took out only five bat knights.
	The column of bat knights collided with the club and shield aardvarks but again did not engage, trying instead to bash through them as they did the pike-aardvarks.
	“What’s he doing?” Jimmy whispered.
	“Trying to get to the archers so he can take them out before using the rest of his points,” Ely answered.
	“Wow, makes sense.”
	The club and shield aardvarks put up a sturdier barrier against the bat knights. But while the clubs could knock the wall shields off balance, they could not break them. Only strikes to the body could harm the bat knights. The bat-knights’ maces however, could break the aardvarks’ round shields. Still, the club and shield aardvarks killed almost twenty bat knights, while the pike-aardvarkes killed another five, attacking from behind.
	The bat knights pushed a hole through the center of the aardvark army’s second line, and Bartleby briefly scribbled in his folder. The sixty something remaining bat-knights charged and scattered amongst the aardvark peasant archers, who could not fight back, and killed each with a single blow.
	Baxter sweated and panted. He scribbled in his folder and the peasant archers retreated to the cliffs of the canyon, but by then less than a dozen remained. Baxter and Bartleby continued scribbling. The bat knights and club and shield aardvarks faced and charged each other, clashing in a mele battle that in spite of the bat-knights’ wall shields and maces, the aardvarks were winning due to superior numbers.
	“Now he’ll bring in reinforcements,” Ely whispered.
	Bartleby took his pen to the other side on his folder and wrote calm and slow. At his edge of the table, a wall of smoke blew upward. When it cleared, a long row of blue scalemail and metal helmet wearing bats stood atop nonev horses draped in blue scalemail. The mounted bats held longbows.
	“Bartleby has entered new units,” Kaphirez said. “eighty six fighters with longbows and scale-armored mounts.”
	Baxter pulled at his ears and wrapped his prehensile tongue tight around his snout before going back to his folder writing while dripping sweat onto the paper. Bartleby remained utterly calm. He wrote in his folder, no longer even looking at the battlefield.
	The pike aardvarks turned and charged the line of cavalry bat-archers. But the cavalry did not charge back. Instead they split into two groups and climbed the cliffs on either side of the canyon. They held at the canyon and fired continuously at the pike-aardvarks below, killing them in droves.
	The aardvark peasant archers stopped to fire at the cavalry bat-archers. Their arrows killed many bats and horses. But as they had stopped, the bat knights caught up with them and killed the remaining aardvark peasant archers.
	The remaining bat-knights formed protective lines around of the remaining sixty or so cavalry bat-archers, who by then had killed all the pike-aardvarks, and turned their attention toward the club and shield aardvarks on the plateau. They fired nonstop from both sides of the canyon as Baxter simply dropped his folder and buried his face in his paws. Soon, the entire aardvark army was dead.
	“Baxter’s army has been destroyed,” Kaphirez said, and pointed to Bartleby. “Bartleby wins with sixty one percent of his units remaining.”
	The crowd applauded, those on the bleachers standing as they did. Bartleby opened his eyes and glanced down to see all the writing on both pages tucked in his folder fade and disappear. He looked up to see Kaphirez slink up to Baxter, lean over with her cleavage stuck in his face, and scratch behind his ear with a single claw. Baxter couldn’t help but squeeze his eyes shut and tense his body. The applause dimmed, soon replaced by whistles and hoots, which Kaphirez responded to by lifting her tail and slowly waving it back and forth.
	“You lost. You have to go now,” Kaphirez whispered in the tiny aardvark’s ear. “But don’t fret. I’ll make it to you soon.”
	Baxter’s ears perked and he blinked rapidly.
	Kaphirez stood and stepped back. Ely squinted at her in curiosity as she spun her arm in front of her and drew a black circle in mid-air with a claw, which filled into a black disk. Baxter hopped out of his seat and grinned as he stepped through the disk. The audience calmed and silenced. Those on the bleachers sat back down.
	Ely cocked his head. ‘Must be another shape of portal,’ He thought. ‘I wonder what it’s indicative of.’
	“Lucky son-of-a-bitch,” Jimmy grumbled.
	Ely flinched. He looked at Jimmy who smirked with half closed eyes and nodded his head while clutching the stanchion rope.
	“Kaphirez is gonna fuck his brains out for at least six hours,” Jimmy said. “That fuckin Aardvark’s not gonna know up from down after she’s done with him.”
	“You are rather snarky,” Ely responded.
	Jimmy laughed. “That snark’s gotten me in deeper shit than I can remember... when I was alive. Only the furs who didn’t know me said I was the nicest guy in the world.” Jimmy looked up at Ely. “Why do you think I’m here at Naughty instead of Really Quite Nice?”
	“Is that what they call level one?” Ely asked.
	Jimmy nodded and turned back to the ellipse. Bartleby’s red army melted into metallic black liquid, along with the rest of the virtual landscape, and absorbed into the table until only the porcelain surface remained. Ely’s eyes fixed on the phenomenon. Nothing he saw any longer surprised him, but much still awed him.
	“Anywho, I told you that aardvark barely qualified,” Jimmy said. “But you seemed to know what was gonna happen the whole time. How’d you do that?”
	“As a norm I dismiss concepts like intuition as mere superstitions. Unlike rules however, norms have exceptions, the greatest in my case being games of strategy. Though for how gifted I am at predicting games of strategy, I am utterly incompetent at playing them.”
	Jimmy stared up at Ely with a squint, sneer, and cocked head. “Anyone ever tell you ya sound like one of those narrators on Discovery Channel?”
	Ely turned toward Jimmy and blinked, “I‘ve never heard that exact comparison, but many things to that effect, yes.”
	Jimmy nodded and turned back to the ellipse. “Well, just so long as you get the idea, it’s all good. Ah! Here comes the next player.”
	Dressed in a suede jacket, bare chest, bluejeans, and bare feet, a middle-aged—in appearance at least—male green iguana stepped through the black disk. The disk faded into nothing as he straightened up and stuffed his paws in his jacket pockets.
	“Now that guy’s pretty good,” Jimmy said. “He’s can plan better than any D-Classer I’ve ever seen. But he’s not too good at making things up as he goes though. He doesn’t lose very often, but when he does he just gets the shit kicked out him like a three year old k-fry drag queen at a Klan rally.”
	Ely stepped back and looked down at Jimmy with a deeply furrowed brow and gaping muzzle. How does this rat improvise such lines? Or had he simply been waiting for an opportunity to use that one?
	Jimmy smiled back at Ely, “The snark’s one good thing is the wit that comes with it.”
	Ely thought for a minute. Though his expression was deadpan, he felt somehow lonely. Wit had always eluded him. Small talk, as it was called, was thus something he could never do without being struck speechless at every other turn of his to talk. As small talk was a fur’s main weapon in acquiring friendship, Ely always had very few friends, and often none. His thoughts drifted to Sipha. It dawned on Ely then why he’d called her name to escape his Regression. Sipha was the best friend he ever had. He never needed to talk to her. His presence alone was enough. The audience briefly clapped as the green iguana sat in the blue wing chair. Ely remained silent with his head down and eyes closed, and wept, until Jimmy nudged his arm.
	“He still won’t beat Bartleby,” Jimmy said. “He can’t handle unorthodox tactics since he relies so much on planning and zilch in improv. And Bartleby's never done anything orthodox as far I know.”
	Ely briefly looked at Jimmy and back at the ellipse.
	“How many matches for the championship?” Ely asked.
	Jimmy shrugged. “Sixteen.”
	“That means there’s sixty five thousand five hundred and thirty six players in the championship, or rather thirty two thousand seven hundred and sixty eight now that the first round has ended.”
	“How the fuck would you know that?” Ely asked.
	“Two to the sixteenth power players are needed for a sixteen round elimination tournament.”
	“Uh... I’ll take your word for it.”
	Kaphirez approached the porcelain table and ran a paw across it. A new landscape grew far faster than the previous. It was completely flat. At first it appeared to be a patch of jet black wasteland, but many kinds of grass and reed grew until the ground vanished completely beneath them. They grew three centimeters tall, which in life would probably be a little over a meter.
	“Why is the field different?” Ely asked.
	“It’s generated randomly for each match,” Jimmy answered.
	Kaphirez raised her arms and the little noise the crowd still made disappeared. “The second match will be between Bartleby Fletch and Roman Alvarez.”
	Kaphirez took the coin from his pocket, this time with the green iguana’s face minted on the blue side. She held the coin on a fist and smacked its forearm with her free paw, sending the coin flying into the air. It landed in her open paw red side up. She pointed to Bartleby. “Bartleby takes first formation.”
	Bartleby looked with a tight, intense gaze at the field while rubbing a claw across the miniature grasses and reeds. He brought it back to find his fur damp and dirty, and smelling faintly of sulfur and patchouli. He rested his chin on the back of the claw.
	“Master Fletch?” Kaphirez asked.
	Bartleby looked up at Kaphirez, “yeah?”
	“You have first formation.”
	Bartleby nodded. “Right.”
	Bartleby wiped his dirty claw on his open vest, forgetting for a moment in his deep thought that he could simply wish his claw clean. He opened the leather folder on his lap, took the pen tucked within, and began writing.
	A massive army of five centimeter bats appeared spread out in a line along his edge of the table. They all wore blue chainmail, leather helmets, and swords fully six centimeters long. Round shields no bigger than pot lids were strapped to their wrists, allowing them to grip the swords in both paws.
	“Bartleby’s army consists of five hundred scouts with dual wrist bucklers and two handed swords,” Kaphirez said.
	Jimmy grabbed his ears and whispered, “What the fuck is he doing? It’s suicide making an army like that!”
	“No it’s not,” Ely said. “Bartleby felt up the field and seemed fairly intrigued by it. His opponent didn’t do that. Bartleby knows something about the field that the iguana doesn’t.”
	Roman Alvarez, the green iguana, lounged back in his seat and crossed his legs. He thought for a minute with his claw resting on his snout before taking the leftover folder, with pen tucked inside, from between the armrest and seat cushion and writing within. On his edge of the table appeared two lines of red armored iguanas. The front line was a sizeable row of iguanas with metal helmets and scale armor carrying weapons that seemed to be halfway between axes and swords. They sat atop horses covered in blue plate armor. The rear line was more than twice as large, and consisted of iguanas in full blue plate armor carrying ten centimeter halberds.
	“Roman’s army consists of two lines. The front line is of sixty fighters with bardiche on plate mounts, the second of one hundred and thirty three knights with long halberds.”
	“That’s it,” Jimmy sighed. “Bartleby’s gonna get his ass handed to him.”
	“No he’s not,” Ely growled. “Bartleby’s thinking of his environment, not his opponent. The field will do in the iguana, not the army.”
	“I’ll bet you my next fling with Kaphirez on that. Lose and you gotta be my bitch for the next week.”
	“I’ll take that bet.”
	There was no possible way Bartleby could lose this match. Ely was sure of that. Jimmy hawked and spat on his paw before grabbing Ely’s, who pulled his paw away from the rat’s with such strength that he nearly pulled Jimmy over, and would’ve if Jimmy hadn’t crashed right into him and pushed himself back up by Ely’s arms.
	“The fuck are you doing man?” Ely shouted. “I’m just sealing the deal.”
	Ely rubbed his paw on his hip fur. “A verbal contract is adequate for me.”
	“Fine, fine, fine.”
	Ely and Jimmy looked back at the table. Kaphirez lifted her arms and the crowd hushed.
	“Go!” Kaphirez said.
	The crowd tensed, as did Ely and Jimmy, and even Kaphirez to a certain extent. The excitement over the match was palpable and—nothing happened! Bartleby and Roman the green iguana sat motionless, still in their former poses. The bat and lizard armies started to shuffle in position as if impatient.
	“What’s happening?” Jimmy asked.
	“Roman doesn’t want to go first,” Ely answered. “He knows Bartleby’s pulling some kind of trick so he’s just waiting.”
	Some minutes went by. The bat and iguana armies shuffled more and became more restless until Bartleby yawned and put pen to paper. The bat-swordsmen began to march forward with almost no formation and holding their swords casually. Roman squinted at Bartleby’s army. It marched as slow as it reasonably could. Murmurs sounded throughout the audience. Roman twirled his pen between his fingers as his own army began murmuring in impatience. Ely smirked. Only he knew what was happening.
	Roman sighed and began to write in his folder, pausing and looking up after every word at the sluggish army moving toward him. By the time he finished his sentence, the bat army had already crossed a third of the battlefield.
	The Bardiche wielding Iguanas on plate-armored horses charged forward as Roman looked in his folder, pondering his next action. A collective gasp from the audience drew his attention back to the battlefield. The horses sank into the ground up to their chests and panicked. They thrashed in every direction, making the ground suck them further down. Bartleby scribbled a single line in his folder and his army stopped marching. Roman stared squinting and sneering at the action, and the murmurs from the audience grew louder.
	“Just as I thought,” Ely whispered.
	“What the fuck’s going on?” Jimmy asked.
	Ely nodded and pointed to the table. “Bartleby goaded the iguana into using horses and  knights because he knew the field was a bog. The horses are sinking into the mud, and the more they struggle, the further they sink. The mud will form a vacuum seal around the knights’ plate armor, doing the same. But Bartleby’s scouts in their leather and chainmail can easily wade through the it.”
	“But so could Roman’s fighters. He could just order them to get off their horses.”
	“He won't think of that. You said yourself that Roman can’t improvise.”
	Roman shook his head and scribbled in his folder. As predicted, his fighters stayed on their horses. Instead, his second line of knights marched toward Bartleby’s army. But they too sank into the mud. Panicking, the knights struggled as well, only to cause the mud to suck them down to their waists where they could no longer move. Roman scribbled in his folder, and his knights tried to crawl through the mud, but it sucked their gauntlets and arm grieves into it, and soon most couldn’t even grip their own halberds. Roman growled, hissed, and gripped his muzzle in his claws.
	Bartleby waited another minute or so, until some among the audience began to laugh, drawing further growls and clenched shut eyes from Roman. Bartleby glanced at the crowd and lazily wrote on his folder. His army marched once again. Their footpaws sunk into the mud, but it did not cling to their leather boots, and their chain leggings prevented any suction that could occur.
	The bats steadily made their way toward the still struggling horses, who by now had sunk to their shoulders. They surrounded and kept their distance from the fighters atop, batting away at their bardiche until the fighters either lost their grip, or were too disoriented to wield their weapons with any effect. Bartleby scribbled again and his bats closed the distance, again batting away the bardiche and jamming their swords into the fighter’s necks. After that, the horses died at the bats’ leisure. They spent all the time in the world tracing the tips of their swords over the horses’ plate armor until they found weak joints, and stabbed through them.
	Bartleby gave one more command, and the bat army marched toward the half-submerged knights. Few could still wield their halberds, most with arms and legs stuck in the mud. Those bats who could threw their swords behind them and grabbed the Halberds on the ground. They stepped in front of those still wielding swords and hammered away at the immobilized knights until they died en-masse from blunt-force trauma. The few knights still holding Halberds swung them, but unable to move, the bats easily parried and pulled the enemy halberds away.
	Once all knights were disarmed, Bartleby wrote one last line and stuffed his folder between his seat cushion and armrest. The remaining, sword wielding, bats joined the slaughter, hammering at the knights until all lay dead from blunt impacts.
	Kaphirez raised an arm. “Roman’s army has been destroyed! Bartleby wins with one hundred percent of his units still remaining!”
	The audience from the bleachers stood and cheered along with the already standing audience around the ellipse. Ely clapped softly, though his face showed no expression. He clapped only because he knew he was expected to, and was the first to stop. When all applause faded, Ely looked toward Jimmy, who pulled at one ear while staring wide eyed and jaw agape at what just happened. Jimmy shut his muzzle with an audible snap and turned toward Ely.
	“How the fuck did you do that?!” Ely shouted. “You son-of-a-bitch! You cost me my night with Kaphirez!”
	Ely remained deadpan in face and voice. “You gambled even after being told the odds were stacked against you. Now you act surprised that you lost?”
	Jimmy sighed and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and middle finger. “Well, I’m never betting against you again.”
	Roman sat with one bare foot on his chair. He rested his forehead in his paw, elbow propped up on his knee. A paw on his shoulder barely startled him, and he looked to the side to see Kaphirez staring at him with sad, upturned eyes and a weak smile. “Lo siento por su derrota. Si lo desea, puedo hacer que valga la pena.”
	“¡No!" Roman almost shouted. He put his arm out as if blocking Kaphirez. “No me compensa. Fue mi culpa. Tengo que aprender a observar más.”
	“Como quieras,” Kaphirez replied with a nod.
	Kaphirez stood back and drew a black circle in the air with a claw. Blackness filled it. With a huff, Roman stood, brushed off his jeans, and walked through the portal.
	Jimmy leaned toward Ely. “I told you. That guy doesn’t slam often, but when he does he slams hard! But still, I’ve never seen him slam that hard before. Not a single enemy killed?”
	A twenty something female mountain hare in plain bluejeans and a black tee shirt stepped through the portal before it vanished. She sat at the blue chair and the match began. She put up a much greater fight than either of Bartleby’s earlier opponents, dragging on the match for over an hour, and leaving him with little more than a third of his army remaining. Next was a male ferret, then a male coyote, and so on until Bartleby had fought and defeated fifteen opponents, many with ridiculous ease, and some just barely.

	Dawn came, but the sun, halfway up the horizon, still hid behind the many buildings of the dusty meat market. The orange sky in one distance faded to purple and a few remaining stars in the other. In a snow capped jagged mountainside, an army of female mink, mostly archers, lay dead. Only a few dozen bats survived, fighters armed with pikes and large shields. The eleven year old—in appearance at least—mink girl in red pajamas gained a decisive early advantage, until Bartleby surprised her by revealing that pikes could not only be thrusted, but also thrown.
	She grit her teeth in her chair, clenching her folder with her claws and weeping slightly. Bartleby turned his head away and looked at her from the corners of his eyes, biting his lower lip. He felt actually ashamed of defeating her. She’d gunned for C-Class for almost ten years, and this was her first major chance. He had to give something back to her, but that would be a whole other story.
	The scenery on the table melted again into a flat, porcelain surface. The mink girl set her folder and pen atop it. Kaphirez knelt beside the mink with one arm around her shoulder and another inside her pajama bottoms, with one clawed finger scratching the inside of her little mustelid pussy. She sucked on the girl’s ear before letting go and whispering into it.
	“I understand,” Kaphirez whispered. “Ten years is a long time to wait for someone who only arrived eleven years ago. But I promise I’ll do everything I can to make it up to you. Even so, you have to go now.”
	The mink girl nodded and gently stepped off the blue leather wingchair. As she did, Kaphirez pulled her claw back and sucked the moisture off the tip of her finger. With her other arm she drew a black circle in the air which filled with black, and gently pushed the mink through.
	Neither Ely nor Jimmy knew what the mink just went through. Ely stared into space with his usual droll, unfocused eyes while Jimmy folded his arms and huffed.
	“Lucky little bitch,” Jimmy grumbled. “Kaphirez is gonna fuck her brains out for at least six hours! That fuckin mink’s not gonna know up from down once she’s done with her.”
	Ely blinked and refocused his eyes. He looked at Jimmy rolling his eyes and tapping his foot in irritation. The sheer idiocy of what he just said boggled his mind.
	“You have repeated those exact words about every single opponent Bartleby fought so far, save the Iguana,” Ely said. “Are you so sure Kaphirez has the stamina?”
	Jimmy gave a stupid, muttered laugh under his breath and put his hands on his hips. He looked up at Ely. “Fuck yeah, she’s got the stamina! She’s gotta spend four hours every evening at a cosmic orgy and cum at least forty times or else she can’t sleep at night! She’ll bathe in hot cum, boy or girl, every day if she gets the chance. There’s no one alive in all existence who’s more of a fuckaholic, or who can go at it more rounds, than Kaphirez. Believe me. I know.”
	Ely sneered and shook his head. He’d lost count of just how many irrational statements this rat told him. He had to bite his tongue until it bled to stop from correcting the rat, and likely starting an argument. But as he tasted the blood leaking from his tongue, Ely calmed and sighed as his cock twitched from the taste. He closed his eyes and let it fill his muzzle until a drop fell from his lip.
	“Are you alright man?” Jimmy asked.
	Again, Ely blinked and refocused his eyes. He swallowed his mouthful of blood and scraped this tongue against the sides of his teeth, closing the wounds. He wiped the drop from his lip with the back of a paw and nodded. “I’m fine.”
	Jimmy shrugged his shoulders and looked back into the ellipse. A teenaged capuchin monkey stepped through the portal, which disappeared behind him. He wore a tieless blue velvet suit and red cowboy boots. The audience cheered for the final match as the monkey sat in the blue wingchair.
	“The final match is between Bartleby Fletch and John Gamble,” Kaphirez said.
	Jimmy nudged Ely and pointed to the monkey. “Remember I said Bartleby was one of two contenders for C-Class? John’s the other. That guy’s been reading books on Battlefield for the past hundred years. But he’s only been playing for two weeks, smashed his way through D-Class on his second day. When it comes to by-the-book playing, I’ve never seen anyone better. It’s just that, by-the-book is the only way he does play—the only way he knows how.”
“And you say Bartleby has never used an orthodox tactic?” Ely asked.
“Well I’m sure he has, I’ve just never seen it. That’s why this match is so heated; they’re like total opposites. Alright, shut up, it’s starting!”
John sat in the blue wing chair and crossed one leg over the other. He grabbed the folder and pen from the table and opened it. Kaphirez took the coin from her pocket and balanced it on her thumb, when suddenly—
“I yield second formation,” Bartleby said before Kaphirez could flip her coin.
Kaphirez and John both stared with furrowed brows at Bartleby. Murmurs and gasps echoed through the crowd, and Jimmy fry pulled both ears back in his paws, his jaw hanging open and his eyes almost bulging out of his head. Ely looked, brow furrowed and biting his lip, back and forth between Bartleby and Jimmy. He nudged the rat in the shoulder. Jimmy yelped and almost fell over before regaining his composure and facing Ely.
“What just happened?” Ely asked.
“Bartleby just volunteered to build his army first.” Jimmy said. “He gets an extra five thousand points for it, but it’s still suicide! John Gamble’s never lost a match with second formation! He’s only ever been beaten when he goes first.”
“But you said John always does everything by the book,” Ely replied.
“Yeah, but he’s so good at it that with second formation it doesn’t matter.”
“Would you like to wager on that?”
“No!” Jimmy shouted, stepping away from Ely. “I know better than to bet against you.”
“Fast learner, aren’t you?” Ely said. “Bartleby is counting on the fact that no matter how polished, John’s actions will always be orthodox.”
“Don’t lecture me man! I already know you’re right.”
The conversation ended just as the ruckus began to die down. Ely and Jimmy looked back into the ellipse as Kaphirez looked around at the crowd and then at Bartleby.
“Are you sure about this?” Kaphirez asked.
Bartleby nodded.
Kaphirez nodded back and pocketed her coin. “Very well. Bartleby takes first formation.”
Kaphires ran a paw along the edge of the table. Like water bubbling up from the ground, sand welled up from the porcelain. The sand grew into rolling dunes, wrinkling into classic wind ripples, before turning red and shrinking, as if it had all suddenly compacted. The table became a dense, red-sand desert.
Bartleby squinted and tapped his pen to his head for some time before snapping the fingers on his other claw and writing in his folder. Lines of five centimeter bats in red scale armor and barbutes appeared from smoke, holding ten centimeter halberds and small lid-like shields strapped to their wrists. John stared with one raised eyebrow at the standing bat army, softly chewing his tongue and squeezing his pen. There was no need to hear it. He already knew what Kaphirez would say.
“Bartleby’s army consists of an unformed mass of three hundred and seventy five fighters with halberds and dual wrist bucklers.”
“No... it’s not possible. No one would be that stupid,” Jimmy whispered.
“What?” Ely asked.
“He put nothing on the field except pikemen, and some of the most expensive pikemen you can make. That… doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Ely replied. “What’s the easiest way to kill a pike army?”
“With a bigger pike army.”
“Why?” Ely asked.
“When two pike army’s clash, their pikes sort of get tangled together and then you get what’s called push-of-pike where the two armies try to knock each other over. Whichever pike army falls over gets slaughtered, and it’s always the smaller one that falls over.”
“Not this time,” Ely whispered.
“Errr... I’ll take your word for it.”
John Gamble blinked and shook his head. He put pen to paper and a wave of smoke billowed over his side of the table. After fading, an army of capuchin monkeys over three times the size of Bartleby’s stood at John’s end. They wore red chainmail and leather helmets, and carried ten centimeter spears with iron tips. Murmurs and gasps again echoed through the audience as they saw what happened. Even Kaphirez looked bewildered at what appeared before her. For a moment she wondered if Bartleby had forfeited the match. She huffed and raised a paw, silencing the crowd.
“John Gamble’s army consists of one thousand scouts with pikes,” Kaphirez shouted. She lowered her paw. “Go!”
Bartleby and John both scribbled in their folders as fast as they could. Their armies gathered into unformed rows of roughly equal width, and charged across the desert. But upon reaching a third of the way through the desert, Bartleby wrote another line in his folder. His bat army stopped suddenly on the downward slope of the field’s largest dune, and held their halberds poised to intercept John’s pikes.
Jimmy blinked rapidly while scratching and shaking his head. “No… no that’s not… why is he stopping on the low ground?”
“I don’t know,” Ely said. “Not even I can figure this one out.”
Anxiety did show through Bartleby’s smirk, but he still seemed confident in success. Even John scratched his head, wondering if Bartleby was throwing the fight, or leading him into a trap. He responded the only way he knew how. He wrote another line in his folder and his army sped up its charge, over the giant dune, and down toward the waiting bat army. The pikes clashed with the long halberds. The mass of the three times greater monkey army bearing down on them from high ground forced the bats onto their knees to keep from falling over. The bats clenched their teeth and groaned in pain as the monkey army pushed its weight down on them. They began to lean back. The monkey army began to lean forward. If the timing was not perfect, Bartleby’s plan would fall through. He waited until the bat army pained itself and bent backward just to remain upright. Only moments would pass before they’d fall over. Then Bartleby wrote one more line, ‘all units retreat’.
The bat army pulled its Halberds away from the push-of-pike and clamored down the massive dune. Many tumbled over, and many others could not unclasp their halberds from the monkey pikes, both groups died quickly. But roughly half the bat army managed to pull their halberds from the clash, get to their feet, and run away. The monkey army, pushing so hard against the bats, fell not only over, but down the dune, tumbling over each other, over their pikes, which snapped and impaled many of their own holders. In that instant, the audience let out a single gasp of shock, which Kaphirez shared.
Bartleby wrote one last line on his notepad, ‘all units charge.’
By then the bat army had run safely past the massive dune, and the monkey army lay in a pile, tangled in their own mostly broken pikes at its bottom. The bat army turned and charged the mass. They swung their halberds down again and again onto the floored monkey scouts who could at that point barely move. Only a few monkeys could stand up and fight back, but the bats outnumbered them over four to one. In less than a minute after its retreat, Bartleby Fletch’s army slaughtered John Gamble’s.
The sand and armies melted and absorbed themselves back into the porcelain table.
Kaphirez stood speechless for a moment before shaking her head and raising a paw. “John’s army has been destroyed. Bartleby wins with forty one percent of his units remaining.”
The audience stood up on their bleachers and applauded, clapping, screaming, and whistling, louder than any time before, at the most shocking victory most of them had ever seen. Jimmy Hicks, wide eyed and slack jawed, almost with his tongue hanging out, jumped up and down with his paws above his head, clapping. Ely clenched his teeth and plugged his ears at the distressing noise. Such violent applause had always pained Ely in life, and still did so in death. Even though he wished it not to, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, it still did. Something inside him still hated the most fervent of applause, and that made him hurt.
Kaphirez held up both paws and the audience silenced and sat. She lowered her paws and spoke in a blasting, echoing voice, similar to Razielphustar’s when he’d halted the growth of CastleVania, “Well now, that was quite a surprise. Having won the final round of today’s D-Class championship of Medieval Battlefield with advantage rules, Bartleby Fletch will now move on to the league’s C-Class. Bartleby Fletch, may you grace us with your words?”
Bartleby raised his head, surprised by the sudden request. He looked to the side and held his muzzle in a claw for a time before coming up with something. He stood on his chair and talked. “If I’d ran a split second later or earlier, I’d have lost. So winning this last match was actually a dice throw for me. Now I’ve always thought outside of the box, it just comes naturally to me. As for John Gamble, you can’t expect him to learn to do the same in just two weeks. But when he does, I’ll bet he’ll surpass me pretty quickly. Along with all my opponents, and my first fan Jimmy Hicks, I’d like to invite and my friends Xander, Lexi, Gillian, Crystal, and Elys to the party.”
The audience applauded one last time, but far more subdued. Ely raised his head and furrowed his brow. What did Bartleby just say? Ely was his friend? They’d just met last evening. How could Bartleby already consider Ely a friend on the same level as the others he named if they’d known each other such a short time? Suddenly Ely smiled. He looked at Bartleby. Perhaps he is merely the kind to give away his heart to whomever he meets, Ely thought. I’ll have to ask his Hellguardian should we ever meet. Though it was only supposition, the thought still sent an overwhelming wave of fondness through Ely’s body, and he sighed in contentment. But something was missing. He had fondness, but there was no yearning like Ely had for the few friends he gained in life, or for Sipha. The fondness was alone, and seemed somehow empty.
Ely looked down and felt his wrist. He had no pulse. 'Is this part of having no heart?' Ely asked himself. 'I will have to ask Razielphustar. If it is, I don’t want this. Sipha, when can you give me a new heart?'
The applause died down, catching Ely’s attention. Jimmy glowered at Ely, still and silent, until Ely finally noticed and looked.
“You’re Bartleby’s friend?” Jimmy asked.
“It’s how I got front row,” Ely answered.
Of all the things Jimmy did so far, Ely least understood what came next. Jimmy jumped over the stanchion rope and ran up to Kaphirez. From the other side of the ellipse, Xander, Lexi, and Gillian had entered as well. Ely presumed he was expected to do so, but still hesitated and laid one paw on the stanchion rope before Barteby beckoned him with a waving claw. Ely nodded and casually stepped over the stanchion rope.
Jimmy grabbed one of Kaphirez’s sleeves and pointed to Ely. “That son-of-a-bitch cost me big time! He bet me our next fuck that Bartleby would beat Roman Alvarez, and now he’s got you instead of me!”
Kaphirez yanked her sleeve from Jimmy. She looked to Ely, squinted, and cocked her head. “Is this true?”
“Partly,” Ely said. “But Jimmy actually made the wager.”
Kaphirez looked back to Jimmy and raised a single eyebrow.
“Okay, okay,” Jimmy shouted. “So I wasn’t paying attention to what the fuck I was saying, but he still cost me! And he’d better damn well make it up to me somehow! He owes me compensation, and since you’re what’s being compensated for, you’ve gotta get him to do it!”
“Keep up that attitude and next time we fuck I’ll leave you hanging on the edge for six hours instead of getting you off every ten minutes,” Kaphirez said.
Jimmy squealed and ear piercing, shrill metalic sound, making Ely wince. He backed away from Kaphirez, waving his paws and shaking his head at her. “You know what? It’s all cool. I’ve only got eternity to enjoy anyway. Might as well let someone else have all the fun at least once, you know?”
“That’s what I thought,” Kaphirez whispered.
“Well where are we going to have the party?” Xander asked.
“My room is fairly large,” Ely answered. “I’d think it more than adequate.”
“Define, fairly large,” Xander said.
“Well... I’m not sure how big it is. I spent two days exploring it and I don't believe I saw more than the slightest nook. My concierge claimed my ‘hyperbolic imagination’ created it.”
“You’re a guru?” Kaphirez asked.
Ely nodded.
“What’s a guru?” Bartleby asked.
“It’s what they called furs with Asperger Syndrome during the lost age,” Ely answered.
“Have the party at his room,” Kaphirez said suddenly, pointing to Ely. “Rooms built with Hyperbolic Imaginations are the most intricate and amazing places in all of hell. Do you have a name for this room by the way, and what’s yours?”
“Elysia Rosenberg,” Ely answered. “And my room is named CastleVania.”
“Wait a second, you mean like the video game, CastleVania?” Jimmy asked.
Ely nodded.
“Holy shit dude! This is gonna be the most fucking amazing party ever! We’ve gotta have the party at his place and... hey wait, where’d Kaphirez... oh no, not again.”
Ely and the others looked in the direction of Jimmy’s gaze. Kaphirez sat in John Gamble’s lap with her legs over one side of the blue wingchair, and her arms wrapped around his shoulders. Ely noticed John’s expression to be similarly deadpan as his own usual. It was very strange.
“I can imagine how hard it must be to come so close to victory and then be swept aside,” Kaphirez whispered in John’s ear. “But I can make it all worth your while.”
“Don’t,” John said. He shook his head. “I knew I’d lose the tournament before I entered. I did it only because I wanted to put myself up against things the books don’t tell you. And I got exactly what I wanted.”
“As you wish,” Kaphirez said. She stood up from the chair and approached Ely. “I’ll go get Bartleby’s other opponents. Once I have, please open up a portal to CastleVania for us.”
Ely nodded.