Journeys – Part 4
Ahsael stared at the small display screen. It was low-tech, perhaps more complicated than could be found on a feral world, but certainly not the sort of thing he'd have expected to see on a hive world. The device was simple enough that producing it in the numbers he had seen would be child's play, but still more advanced than was necessary for its intended purpose.
Said purpose was currently be enacted, as Selene's small fingers worked at the buttons of the brick-shaped device expectedly named 'Gamebrick'. Ahsael himself was planted in front of her, trapped by her arms that hugged him to her as she 'showed him how it worked'.
It was an entertainment device for children, Ahsael had determined. Selene had understood how to operate it like she'd used one all her life, faster than even Ahsael had deduced how it functioned. He assumed it was a new production, as he had never heard of such devices being produced, so either the child was far cleverer than he'd given her credit, or something else was going on here. He suspected the latter.
The games on the device were easy to understand, each being able to be selected from a menu that appeared after pressing a button labeled 'home', with each game having different symbols to mark them. One was a game where various shapes made of cubes fell down to the bottom of the screen, where the goal was to form horizontal lines across the screen to win. Another had the goal of bouncing a ball from one's own moving platform across the screen towards an opponent's side with their own platform presumably controlled by a simple machine spirit. If the opponent was unable to deflect the ball, a point was scored for the user. If the user was unable to deflect the ball, the opponent scored. The reasons behind these games being named 'Tetris' and 'Pong' respectively were unknown to Ahsael, though he suspected they might be the words of some xenos language.
There were other games as well, all of roughly similar levels of complexity, but two had stuck out to him not just for their relatively more unusual gameplay, but also for their names.
The first that had stuck out to him was called 'Super Space Marine'. It allowed the user to control a very low-resolution design of what was possibly a Blood Angel, moving them from side to side and allowing them to jump. The game was a puzzle, with the user jumping from platforms and over obstacles. Some of those obstacles were enemies, each of which had a different way they could be defeated, some simply being bounced atop of, others requiring certain tools that could be picked up within a level of the game.
Ahsael had noticed, with some confusion, that many of the enemies within the game had appearances similar to Tyranid bioforms and Necron automatons, albeit very much simplified for the very simple display screen. The game's icon within the menu was said Space Marine, squashing what seemed to be the final enemy of the game, a Hive Tyrant. Ahsael noted how unlikely it was for a single marine to be able to defeat a Hive Tyrant by himself, let alone by jumping on it.
The other game was even more confusing. It was called 'Tarot Arcana' and it was a card game. It also was easily the most complicated game within the 'Gamebrick' and its menu icon was a blue dragon with white eyes.
The game was strange and confusing and Ahsael wasn't sure how it worked even after watching Selene do so for nearly an hour. She occasionally would make mention of 'spell cards' or 'effect monsters', which seemed to be rarer than 'normal monsters', but he still wasn't sure. Not understanding a children's game, normally, would not have bothered him.
However, it was the fact that Selene understood it so readily while he did not that was grating to him. She was a child, an actual child, and she had taken to this game like a fish took to water, while he had taken nearly thirty minutes to determine the goal of the game was to reduce the enemy player's 'life points' to zero.
She was already stronger than him physically, but he'd always thought he had the edge mentally, yet now even that was being challenged! He could not allow this!
True, it was probably the Malum Entity's fault. Selene occasionally drew pictures of strange and far away places, something he suspected to be the enigmatic being's influence as much as everything else about this strange place was. Nonetheless, Ahsael's pride could not take any more damage.
He watched Selene's game closely, ingraining the effects of each and every card and how they played together, trying to burn it all into his mind. He would get this.
