After Crossroads sent her away from the interesting new human, Beauty was at a loss for what to do while she waited for Dix to get to his testing. She could visit some of her friends amongst the other gods and goddesses, but they would ask why she wasn’t working with the newest transfer and she didn’t want anyone else interested in Dix this early. And Beauty was a terrible liar. Crossroads obviously knew about him, but he couldn’t take him as Dix was under his domain already. Not that Crossroads would select him anyways. As far as anyone knew, he had never once chosen anyone. Thinking of the upcoming chance to grab Dix all for herself made Beauty realize there was a perfect place to wait. The viewing room.

Modeled after the idea of something the humans called a theatre, the viewing room was definitely a step up. There was no screen, nor were all the chairs lined up and facing the same way. Gods didn’t use technology to watch things, they used magic. And why bother with a two dimensional image when three dimensional imagery was more natural, and easier. Since they were gods, why bother with a display at all, just have the entire thing sent straight to their minds. In the end there were only two things that could be recognized as being similar to theatres. Gods gathered there, and their purpose in doing so was to watch something. Nothing else was the same.

The theatre seating was gone, replaced by a wildly varied collection of seating apparatuses. There were thrones of all shapes, sizes, and colors, many of which were great golden things encrusted with jewels, traditionally styled and always with a cushion. Others were iron, bone or some elemental existence like fire or water. Benches, bean bags, sand pits, animals, the seating was as varied as the gods themselves. Beauty’s chair was a large, white cat with bird wings. It was positioned such that it appeared to be lying on its back, and had its wings swept forward as the arms of the chair, or even a blanket one could pull to cover themselves. Sitting on it for her felt much like lounging on a cloud, except warm and cuddly.

Upon manifesting inside the viewing room, Beauty immediately ran to her chair and pulled the wings in to snuggle and hide. If anyone did happen to wander in, maybe they wouldn’t see her. The fact that they would sense her presence never really entered her head. Beauty wasn’t exactly known for her brains; sweet, innocent, and, well, beautiful were more her style. She started up the view stream, even though it was currently showing nothing at all. Once Dix started testing, she didn’t want to miss a minute. Most of the others, if they even bothered to show up, wouldn’t show until the final phase. In the meantime, she took a little nap.

After a while there was a little tug at her consciousness, someone asking for a telepathic connection. Waking quickly, she allowed the foreign thoughts in, having recognized the sender as Roanoak. After a brief moment she heard him, “We’re just about done with weapon training if you want to come down to help him along to the next section.”

Beauty was rather confused. “Why is he contacting me? Dix isn’t my responsibility now.”

“What? Of course he is. You grabbed him from the transfer room, right?” Roanoke’s voice thundered back into her thoughts.

“Eeep!” she squeaked. Beauty calmed quickly, Roanoak wasn’t nearly as scary as Crossroads, he just startled her. She quickly passed on the pertinent information. “I thought you disconnected. I’m sorry, but he’s not mine anymore. He died mid transfer.”

“Mid transfer? But that means…” Roanoak trailed off mid thought. After a few more seconds, Beauty started to fidget, before Roanoak’s laughter started booming into her mind. “Oh, Gods! This is fantastic! The grouchy old bastard hasn’t had a transfer in his domain in ages. I can’t wait to see what this one can do. Give me a while to make sure he grabs everything he can. No wonder he didn’t seem tired at all, he’s dead! Kid probably doesn’t know anything about what that really means, and I can’t tell him. Well, maybe I can nudge him in the right direction…” Roanoak trailed off again.

Before he could get back to the conversation, Beauty blurted out, “Are you going to Bid on him?” Then she blushed furiously, and buried her burning face into her fuzzy chair, as Roanoak started laughing again.

“Caught your interest has he, little one? Don’t worry, as much as I would love to have one like Dix is shaping up to be, he’s no crafter, so we’d be a bad fit. No, I’m going to wait until he grabs his class, and proves his worth. Then I am going to craft the most incredible weapons that ever existed in his chosen style and rob someone blind in trade for them. If you get him, I’ll give you a bit of a discount for letting me know what he is. How’s that sound?”

Beauty pouted a little. Had Roanoak actually been around to see it, he would probably crumble and give her the weapons at cost. Not free, he was a god after all, he could almost resist the adorable sight of Beauty pouting. Either way, even the lava centaur started sweating a little when he heard the pout in her voice. “Don’t tease me. Are you sure you aren’t the God of Merchants and Thieves?”

Roanoak laughed again, before he replied, “We’ll see how things work out. Go back to your nap, and I’ll take him when it’s time. I’ve got to put this kid through the ringer.” Beauty smiled, and went back to sleep after saying her goodbyes.

Quite some time later, Beauty woke and languidly stretched in her cat chair, rather like a cat herself, kneading her fingers into the fur. The hand blatantly groping her butt startled a scream from her, and she tried to jerk out of reach. She succeeded, but ended up on the floor doing so. The sultry voice that spoke out didn’t calm her much at all. “Oh, lovely, you don’t need to run from me. I won’t hurt you. Permanently. Why don’t you come back up here and snuggle with me?” The voice belonged to the Goddess of Lust. Or God. It was hard to tell with her. Lust was difficult at the best of times, and enjoyed flirting with every god and goddess around, changing her gender and form to suit their tastes. Many took her up on he frequent offers of sex of all types. Nothing was out of bounds for her.

Beauty was always nervous around her. She didn’t really know how to react to the flirting and groping. She enjoyed it in an abstract way because she was a Goddess of Beauty, and it was an admiration of that trait. However, it was so overtly sexual that it scared her somewhat. And she really didn’t find herself comfortable with it. Lust was obviously aware that she made Beauty nervous, but she still pushed every time, it was, after all, her nature. Thankful for her nap restoring her energy after a rough day, Beauty managed to muster up her courage once again, and stood to confront Lust.

Currently Lust was appearing in the form of a tall redhead human woman in a shimmering red dress. She had obviously oversized breasts, a tiny waist, and a large plump bottom. Had Dix been there, he would have instantly recognized the non-animated version of a certain rabbit’s wife. And then immediately fainted from blood loss. Her chair in the viewing room was perhaps the most disturbing of all for Beauty to see. It was a wooden plank with leather wrapped around it, and an iron ex for the back. The whole thing was covered in chains and thorns. The adaptors for the chair that were included were a mind boggling array of autoerotic devices, most of which Beauty simply couldn’t comprehend as they were made for non humanoid races.

Crossing her arms in a useless attempt to hide her very existence from Lust’s hungry gaze, Beauty unsuccessfully tried to imbue her voice with anger as she asked, “Why are you here?”

Lust’s chuckle sent shivers down Beauty’s spine. Smiling at the effect she had on the other goddess, Lust responded, “Why, for the same reason as you. I wanted to watch the new transfer. I’ve been looking for something special for centuries, but they’ve all been so… mediocre. I always come early and watch the first testing. Many may seem impressive by the time they reach the final testing, but I find the results to be lacking something. Of course half of those who reach the final testing have lost their minds, and most of the rest take non combat roles. No, what I need can only really be found in the first testing. And so, time after time, I come here to watch, suffering endless disappointment. But in all those times I have come here to suffer again and again, one thing I never saw here was you.” Suddenly the almost wistful air she had about her towards the end of her little speech vanished, to be replaced with a fierce, calculating gaze. This time the shivers her voice raised were from fear, not nerves. “So, tell me, Beauty. Why are you here?”

Beauty wasn’t shivering anymore, she was shaking. It wasn’t as though Lust could hurt her, but she was scared of her anyways. She always thought that Lust would corrupt her, and she wasn't sure what that would do to her. But here and now, it wasn’t about her. She couldn’t tell Lust of all people why she was watching Dix, the woman would want him for herself. And if she was being honest about looking for something special from the new transfers, well, Dix was definitely that, no matter how you looked at it. Died mid transfer, awoke from death on his own, laughed at the whole situation, poked his finger into his wounds, and flirted with her within moments of his revival? Yes, Dix was something special indeed.

But how to protect him from Lust? She couldn’t stop the other goddess from watching the stream, so she would see him for herself soon. Attacking her was right out. Beauty couldn’t win, and she didn’t want to get that close to Lust anyways. Maybe a way to get her out of the viewing room? She was actually contemplating trying to lie, something she was utterly terrible at, but she didn’t really have any other options. Her mouth opened and closed as she struggled to find the words to make up something convincing.

Lust, on the other hand, was greatly enjoying herself. She knew she made Beauty nervous, but she couldn’t help herself. The girl was just so innocent she made Lust hungry. And amused. The girl was just so incapable of understanding that it was all just a teasing joke for her. She would never ravish someone without permission. Yes, her aspect had that possibility to it, but she was the Goddess of Lust, not some poor mortal unable to control themselves. If Lust couldn’t control herself, the entire messed up pantheon of gods would have devolved into a giant orgy long ago. Only a couple of the others had any idea that she was amongst the most powerful of the gods. She preferred it that way. She liked that the others constantly underestimated her, and thought her so obsessed with her perversions that she was incapable of the plotting and planning that the others engaged in all the time.

She hadn’t been lying at all when she told Beauty why she came here for the first testing. She did leave something out though. The other reason she came to the first testing was that no one was ever here for it, which would give her and her allies a great deal more time to prepare for the Bid than the other gods would have if the transfer turned out to be someone they needed. Because they truly were looking for something special. And maybe Beauty being here was the sign that they may have finally found it. She really was too innocent for all of the intrigue and power games that the gods played, which was why most of them either ignored her, or treated her like a child. For the moment she was just watching the emotions and thoughts play across Beauty’s face. Lust could read everything going through that pretty little head of hers.

Just to speed up the process, and see what would happen, Lust decided to push a little. “I’m waiting. I answered when you asked, now it’s your turn. Why. Are. You. Here?”

Beauty drew in stuttering breath and tried to speak, “I.. I… Um… I…”

Abruptly, it no longer mattered, the testing had started.

One of the oddities of the system that they used for monitoring the transfers during the testing was that it tracked every thought in the transfer’s head, and it started before the testing did. So when the stream started, it didn’t actually begin at the testing. Instead the first thing they saw and felt was Dix murdering Tuti, and then rushed forward to when he walked into the cave, becoming the live feed. As gods, they could handle that amount of information dumped into their minds at once, but most of the gods were completely unaware that this happened. It was the first time Beauty had experienced it, but Lust? Lust came for this specific moment. Connecting to the stream later would only allow you to rewind back to the beginning of the testing itself, completely wiping out any of the pretest view. So the only way to actually catch all of the thoughts and actions of the transfers before the test was to be in the viewing chamber, and connected to the stream, right as it started.

Lust wanted it for a reason. She enjoyed seeing the brief snippets of Earth that people would often think of, and quite enjoyed them reliving the last time they made love to whoever it was they had left behind. But the real reason she was here for this was to see how they thought, and how they handled the change in their lives and circumstances. For what she had planned, normal wouldn’t work. They would need someone borderline crazy. And from what she experienced reliving the last several hours of Dix’s thoughts, she had finally found what she was looking for. She quickly bundled up the collection of Dix’s thoughts and actions, then sent it out to her allies, then linked them into the stream even though they were not in the room. Too many people here so early would bring too much attention to Dix, and they couldn’t afford for that to happen. Her allies still needed to see Dix in action. Just because she was convinced didn’t mean they would be, and they all had to agree before she could move forward. He was still only the second person she had ever shown any interest in since the start of this little conspiracy of theirs.

Leaning back into her chair, Lust looked over at Beauty, trying to figure out what to do with her. She wouldn’t really be useful for her and her allies, but Dix did seem to have at least a passing fondness for her. She could, perhaps, be useful in recruiting him to their cause if the Bid didn’t do that for them. Or she could just be a distraction. There was absolutely no chance that Beauty could out bid them, so she was safe on that front at least. While it looked like Beauty was just infatuated with the human, Lust was still going to dig for more information. You could never be too careful after all.

Returning her attention to the feed brought a bit of a shock to her. Dix had just sliced through the first goblin as easy as breathing. The shock wasn’t that he had done so, but that he had done it without any emotional issues. No fear, no disgust, no bloodlust. Dix truly saw the act of killing a monster as much like work as a carpenter did hammering in a nail. She had seen his thoughts as he recollected what he had done to the thugs he tortured and killed, but she thought the lack of emotional impact was due to how long it had been since he had done that, not realizing how recent it actually was. Her next shock was him sitting down to stab himself. Great way to get pain resistance? Sure. It was just that no one else ever thought to just sit there in pain and then meditate it away.

Glancing at the skills list that accompanied the feed showed that he had gained a number of weapons skills, the basic movements, pain resistance, and meditation. The first two sets were fine. But meditation wasn’t available until the third test, and pain resistance shouldn’t be available in the testing at all. What was going on here?

Lust didn’t know what made Dix able to gain skills he shouldn’t have access to yet, but she had a very good idea who to ask.