"Wow, a real high roller we got here, boss."
"Hm. Luck has found another of our patrons today," a deep voice muttered.
"No, I mean...a real high roller. He's on a damn streak."
Mr. K, as the enormous syrynykk was known, offered the Thirteenth Room as a chance for the lowly to break free of their bounds. In person, he was an imposing figure with a steely gaze, tempered with a color of red like blood. He towered over other syrynykks at almost nine feet, and his build was broad and solid. His voice reflected his intimidating size, seeming to boom forth like the shell blast from a Crusader tank. Yet, it always maintained its even, business-like tone. At the moment, his temperament was being sorely tested.
"Craps? Swap the dice. Cards? Check the sleeves. Swap decks," Mr. K muttered.
The man he spoke to, one of his assistants, nodded and whispered into a headset mouthpiece.
"Aha! Come to me, my little ones...and my big ones...and whatever I just happened to win on the last turn of the wheel!" the leather-donning syrynykk shouted, dancing wildly at his table. The man behind the roulette wheel, nicely dressed in black and white dress clothes, vest, and polished wingtips, frowned slightly and looked up at a shiny black circle in the ceiling. His job was slowly vanishing before his eyes, along with the stack of chips on his side of the table.
"Seventeen chips on red. The rest on 13!!!" the syrynykk shouted, casting an affectionate glance to the painted woman beside him and then back to the small wooden tool ushering chips back and forth. The wheel spun, a clicking sounded from it, gradually rising to a droning tick. It slowed, clicking past the number 13. The air stilled around the syrynykk and his winnings and the growing anticipation of his loss rose to a pitch. Then, a low snap sounded somewhere nearby and the roulette wheel spun back in the other direction.
Back in the dark room where Mr. K resided, one of the men in tuxedos stared up at the large syrynykk. A pair of red eyes looked back at him ... and narrowed.
"I don't see...I mean, it shouldn't have...um...hm."
"Exactly. Get him."
"What are you doing?" Ed asked in communn, watching the syrynykk continue to add to his supply of chip fragments, carefully arranging them in towering stacks, trimmed claws leaving furrows in the felt surface.
"Playing roulette, of course. Look, you just guess which number the ball lands on," the fatespeaker said. "And you can bet as much money as you want!"
"Oh. Are you having fun?" Ed asked, crossing his arms frustrated.
"Why, yes, I am," the syrynykk responded, smiling quietly.
The black-tuxedoed men cut a path through the interested onlookers. One put a hand on the shoulder of the syrynykk who seemed to be at the center of this attention. The syrynykk merely smiled and willingly followed them.
Ed trailed quietly behind, before slipping around a burly guard and up next to the syrynykk, who put an arm around his shoulder and grinned, hefting the chips he won in a leather pouch and tucking it into his loincloth. The two were lead through a series of locked doors and twisting passages before one of the guards whispered into his headset and led them through the door to stand before an oversized syrynykk wearing an equally large tuxedo, polished silver buttons gleaming with an orange tint in the light. His eyes almost matched, blazing with an equally furious intensity, yet his voice issued forth just as evenly as before.
A guard drew his pistol and pointed at the back of the winner's head.
"Kill him."
The hammer clicked before Ed had time to react. Nothing happened. The guard who held the pistol cocked once more and fired again. Once more, nothing happened other than the lone sound of metal upon metal and a grunt of frustration. The guard turned and took a gun from the man standing next to him, cocking and firing at the fatespeaker. He tried once more. The guard turned and took a pistol from the next closest guard, cocking and pointing it at the syrynykk before firing and throwing it to the floor in frustration.
"Hey, Tuckerr, throw me your auto," the guard shouted.
"Hey, man, you know what kind of a mess that's going to make? I don't know about you, but I just got this suit back yesterday," Tuckerr whined.
"Stop," Mr. K boomed, maintaining his usual composure.
"But, Mr. K, what's up with that? I thought you wanted us to bump this guy off," the exterminator said.
"You have no idea. Those bullets would probably ricochet off of the walls and land in your foreheads," Mr. K growled. He turned to look at the still smiling syrynykk before him, nodding politely. "I did not expect to find you here."
"Fate has brought me here," the smaller syrynykk responded.
"Speaking about yourself in the third person still?" Mr. K asked, letting out a rumbling chuckle.
"It is good to see you, Korogg," Venexx said, his smile still beaming steadily.