The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 10

[ 10 ]

“WE DID IT THREE TIMES,” PAZ SAID AS WE WALKED TOWARD THE nearby park, which turned out to actually be a cemetery. “The first time, it was this thing called a Carbunclo. Like a little fox with a gem in its head. It pissed itself and teleported away. The second time, we never even saw it. It died on its own or something. So, we went to medium difficulty, and it was some chimpanzee monster called a Qa. It was level 65. It said it was from China. Yago beat its ass. That seal really can fight.”

“We never did medium difficulty,” Donut said. “Carl thinks we should get more cards first.”

“It is pretty expensive,” Sister Ines said.

Paz laughed. “I was talking to Osvaldo. He says they went into the room, and their first opponent was the Pillsbury Dough Boy. You know that little thing from the commercials? They have some lizard that breathes fire, and it literally cooked it.”

Donut swished her tail. “My friend Katia said her first opponent was an actual teddy bear. And then they moved it to challenge, and they got overwhelmed by a bunch of flying piranhas.”

“The monsters aren’t like I thought they would be,” Paz said. His armor continued to clank loudly as we walked. “It’s like it can be anything from TV or videogames. Not just, you know, real mythology like they said.”

“Yeah, wait until you hear what this one guy named Florin is hunting,” I said.

“What?” Donut asked. “I didn’t hear about it.”

I gave a sidelong glance to Sister Ines and grunted. “We’ll see if he actually catches him before I say anything. It’s a little… blasphemous.”

“It’s all blasphemous,” Sister Ines said. There was a strange intensity to her voice, and I finally realized she was angry. Very angry. She’d been just a

little off all morning. “It is all a mockery of our faiths and legends. They ignore the meanings behind the myths and stories, and they just see the surface, steal it, and use it to make something shiny and pretty and completely devoid of its meaning. And they mix these beloved traditions with modern fictions, things nobody ever believed to be real. It muddies the water of our stories, our histories. They don’t care. These cultures and creatures are holy to people, and they are making jokes of it all.”

I gave her a moment to compose herself.

“It’s what they do,” I finally said. Even the cards themselves—T’Ghee cards—were considered sacred to the aliens they stole the idea from. They were never meant to be used like this.

I thought of Florin and our quick conversation before we headed out. He didn’t yet have any totems, but he had a quest to track and kill or capture a powerful Unique that was terrorizing his region in Ecuador. I shook my head, thinking of it. Li Jun and Li Na were hunting an honest-to-goodness dragon, straight from Chinese myth. Katia was seeking some type of Christmas cat, but she asked me not to tell Donut yet. We already knew from Sister Ines she could be oddly sensitive about that sort of thing.

We approached the large cemetery. The cars around here had all stopped coming, all getting congested somewhere else in the city, though the traffic in this area was normally pretty bad, as indicated by the literal hundreds of naked, ethereal ghosts floating along the roadway, all stopped in traffic, all texting on their non-existent phones or bopping to music I couldn’t hear.

Mongo snapped at a guy pedaling a no-longer-there bike, and the dino managed to pull a gold chain off the man’s neck. We all turned our attention to the large, gothic entrance to the cemetery.

The elaborate, concrete archway guarded the place, which was surrounded by a towering, black and spiked fence that we couldn’t see through. The entrance itself showed a thin road that led into ominous, yeah- this-place-is-haunted-as-fuck fog. Smoke drifted up from the fence line. The whole cemetery was several blocks wide. I watched a floating bus full of people enter under the arch, but they disappeared the moment they passed through. It appeared the entire area was like our starting location. Off limits to the memory ghosts.

“This is not right. Not at all. It’s the Colón Cemetery,” Paz said, looking up at the entrance. “This is one of the largest cemeteries in Latin America.

There are streets all through it. The entrance arch is the same, but this fence is

not supposed to be here. You can drive through, and you can see it from the street. It’s like a park filled with monuments. It needed a lot of renovation, but it was very full of life all the time.”

We all continued to stare with awe up at the carved, arched entrance.

“Full of life?” Donut asked. “I’m pretty sure it’s full of zombies now.”

“My Tito is buried here,” Anton said after a moment.

“Based on the number of red dots moving about, I don’t think he’s buried anymore,” Donut said. “The whole area gives me the willies.”

“Yikes,” I agreed. Inside, peeking over the fence line and out of the fog were several buildings. It was like a small city within the city. “This has boss chamber written all over it. So, you think the mobs are zombies?”

“I’m not sure. There are lots of human-sized ones all over the place,”

Donut said. “They’re moving slow like zombies, thank goodness. I don’t think I could handle Train to Busan zombies. Night of the Living Dead ones aren’t so bad as long as you don’t get caught in a swarm. But there are bigger and smaller dots, too. There’re lots of different kinds. There’s a church in the center that doesn’t have anything around it. I think there might be a spell keeping me from seeing inside.”

“They are all definitely undead,” Sister Ines said. She started striding toward the entrance.

“Hey!” I called. “We need to walk around the edge and see if there are more clues about what’s inside before we go in! That’s a giant boss chamber.

We don’t know how strong it’ll be!”

“We can handle it if you’re afraid,” Sister Ines called. She didn’t stop.

“Uh,” Paz said, looking between Sister Ines and me. “Maybe we should listen to Carl. What if we get locked in?”

“Of course we’re going to get locked in,” Donut said. “That’s the whole purpose of the giant gate and fence. You know what this reminds me of? We once had to fight a boss that was a giant ball of pigs all rolled up. Only this place is a lot bigger.”

“Come on. Don’t be such a woman,” Anton said to Paz. He moved to follow the nun. Paz sighed and rushed to follow, clanking like some malfunctioning android.

“That’s quite offensive, Anton,” Donut called.

“Those idiots are going to get themselves killed,” I said.

She looked at me. “So, are we going to get ourselves locked into the death cemetery? If we don’t go now, we’re going to lose our chance.”

“Not if they die,” I said. “The gate will open again when they’re dead.”

We watched as they reached the entrance. Sister Ines peeked inside through the gate, but paused. Paz was talking animatedly, gesturing at us.

They didn’t enter. After a moment, they turned and waved us forward.

I sighed and approached.

“We do it your way,” Sister Ines said. “We circle the outside and then we go in.”

“Take that Skedaddle sheet music and make sure you have it handy,” I said. “Puddle Jumper, too.”

“I already did, Carl. But it’s not going to let me leave if we’re locked in.”

“This place is big. We can still use both inside to get away from a swarm.

With Skedaddle, we can jump twice. As long as you sing it in key.”

“What is that supposed to mean? You said my performance at the masquerade was flawless.”

I reached up and gave her a pat. “Also, we stay near the other guys. Paz is a paladin, and Sister Ines is a cleric. Both will be good against the undead.”

I went into my own inventory and readied several of my spider automatons. I also took a few of Mordecai’s holy gooper grenades and moved them to the ready position. I only had six of the healing potion and Emberus blessed holy grenades. I had fifteen spider automatons, but ten of those were already “armed” with regular explosives, which meant they’d be useless if the mobs were non-corporeal. The other spiders I could arm with a holy grenade or just a straight up healing potion. I also had several healing potion-infused smoke curtains, which I hadn’t yet tested but would supposedly mass-kill undead. I looked at my holy curtain supply worriedly. We really needed to get to a Desperado Club for a shopping trip.

“Let’s do this,” I said, cracking my neck. “Keep Mongo back until we know what we’re facing.”

We’d circled the entire park a few times, having to deal with more of those Duende mobs on one side. There were no additional clues as to what was inside. It was a large, rectangular park several blocks wide, and it was absolutely filled with red dots. There was a chapel in the center, and nobody could get a read on anything there. Sister Ines had an ability that let her know if a mob was undead or not, and she said all of them were.

I used one of my dwindling supply of levitate potions to get a better view from above. The entire area was filled with roiling fog, and I couldn’t see a damn thing. But I could see the wide expanse of dots from this height.

The mobs appeared to move aimlessly, leading credence to Donut’s zombie theory. I was reminded of the trainyards from the fourth floor. Those hadn’t been zombies, but ghouls.

I was starting to suspect that the entire area wasn’t exactly what we thought it was. The temple in the center of the square was a familiar spire. A Club Vanquisher. And I noticed a bathroom in the area, too. I’d never seen a bathroom in a boss room before.

I tossed a potion ball filled with a fine healing potion into the midst toward a dense of patch of red, and I managed to kill three of the mobs, whatever they were. They died easily and soundlessly, but the amount of experience I received was pretty low, indicating they weren’t powerful.

Relieved, I lowered myself back down and said we were good to go.

The moment we stepped through the gate, I saw my theory was correct.

That didn’t mean this wasn’t dangerous. In fact, I knew from the cookbook

this could be a real pain in the ass.

Entering Medium Ghommid Settlement.

Warning! This town has been corrupted. You may not claim or repopulate the town until the rot has been eradicated.

“It’s a town!” Donut said. “A town inside a town! I see a saferoom! It’s way over there.”

“Is this like a corrupted temple?” Paz asked worriedly, looking about.

“Uh-oh,” Anton said.

“It is,” I said. A corrupted temple meant there were mobs inside. That was obviously the case with this town as well. I’d read a few depictions of places like this. Both corrupted temples and towns worked the same way.

An unholy screech filled the area, coming from all corners. Howls, trills, and screams filled the massive, fog-filled cemetery.

“Not again,” Paz muttered.

“What?” I asked.

Warning: The presence of a Santero has aggravated the already- unsettled dead.

“Some types of undead creatures don’t like my class,” he said. He banged on his breastplate. “That’s why I got this stuff. Holy armor. I draw their aggro, and they will only attack me and nobody else. They’ll follow me

wherever I go, even if we run.”

“Wait,” Donut said. “You knew this was going to happen? We really need to work on our communication skills, Paz. Maybe you should’ve waited outside.”

“No,” Sister Ines said. A white ball of flame appeared in her hand. “He also gets a temporary strength boost each time an unsettled is killed. I do, too.”

Before I could respond, the gate behind us slammed closed. No music started, but a magical glow emanated from the gate, meaning it was magically locked. Over our heads, a half-translucent glow filled the area, indicating we

couldn’t fly out of here, either.

“Shocking,” I said.

Another notification came.

New Quest! Pueblo de los Olvidados.

This is a little obvious since you’re locked in here, but this is a compulsory quest. You can take your time with this one, but you ain’t getting out until it’s done.

Isn’t this a cute little town? It’s just so quaint! Too bad the entire populace was turned into a gaggle of horrific, undead monsters who now want to devour your delicious souls.

This place used to be populated with a race of creature called a Ghommid.

Have you ever looked through a microscope at a drop of seawater?

It’s really disturbing. There’s all sorts of weird shit in there. Honestly, it gives me nightmares.

Anyway, that’s kinda what you get when you look at a Ghommid village. A “Ghommid” is a sort of catch-all term for just your regular, run-of-the-mill other-realm creature. Visitors to this world from the land of the dead. There are all sorts, and many of them are one-of-a-kind.

And like all those weird bugs and microbes in that drop of water, they do different things. Most are harmless. Some are cute. Some are angry.

Some will give you explosive diarrhea just for fun. They often settle in areas where the veil is thin. Like cemeteries.

The problem with spirit creatures is that there really are all kinds. A settlement like this is bound to eventually implode. This was inevitable.

In this case, a spirit showed up, and for whatever reason turned everyone in the village into a ravenous, unsettled, I-want-to-turn-your-

flesh-inside-out-and-party-with-your-intestines monster.

You must find and eradicate the source of the sickness. Removing it from the area will likely cure the populace. Or, who knows? Maybe they’ll all go berserk and try to kill you even harder. I don’t really know.

I’m not nearly as omnipotent as those sadistic assholes think.

Quarantine? They already know it doesn’t work. Not when they want to keep their precious enhancement zones humming. They’re in for a big surprise one of these days.

Reward: Well, you can leave the town. That’s a good reward. Plus, the town will revert to a working settlement, and all the shops and structures will become activated again, assuming any of the workers are still alive. And why not? We’ll also throw in a Silver Quest Box.

“Carl,” Donut said. “I barely understood half of that. What does it mean by quarantine and enhancement zones?”

“What do you mean?” Paz asked, sounding confused.

I copied and pasted the quest text into my notes like I always did, and sure enough those lines where the AI was talking about itself were gone. It wasn’t the first time that had happened.

I rewrote the strange note from memory.

“So, it’s going to be like any other town,” I said after a moment. “But the NPCs are all monsters, and we need to find and kill the head bad guy. The bad seed. I don’t think the monsters are going to be traditional zombies.

They’re spirit creatures who’ve gone crazy.”

“Undead is undead,” Sister Ines said. She sounded angry. Strangely angry.

“Traps,” Anton suddenly said. He held his monkey crossbow at the ready.

I went to a knee. “I see ‘em. Nobody go forward.” Even through the fog, dozens of lights flashed, indicating the area was littered with a bunch of strange traps I didn’t recognize. It seemed they were all the same kind. There was a pair of them straight ahead side-by-side. We had red dots around, all drifting slowly toward us thanks to Paz. They’d become visible in seconds. I

quickly examined the closest trap.

Spirit Box Set Trap Effect: Roots target in place. Lowers spirit resistance, and a random non-corporeal entity from the area is summoned to the location and will attempt to possess you. Or eat you. Or just melt your face off and put the

goo on a spirit corndog or something.

Target: Corporeal dumbasses who step on it. That means you.

Duration: You will be rooted in place for sixty seconds. If you end up possessed, that’s pretty damn permanent.

“Damn,” I said as I quickly disarmed the trap and took it into my inventory. I didn’t have time to disarm the second one as three monsters shuffled out of the fog and moved toward us. Mongo screeched as Donut released him from his carrier. She jumped upon his back.

Combat started.

All three creatures were different. All were bipedal and human sized, and all three were level 30, but the similarities ended there. The first was a thin, naked and flesh-colored creature covered with mouths and nothing else. It was just a person made of dozens of mouths. All the teeth were black and rotten. The mouths moaned, zombie-like. I swallowed, transfixed by the horrendous creature.

The second looked like a regular, long-haired high elf, but he had a ridiculously long chin. The tip of it lowered down to his belly button area.

The guy wore a green robe that seemed to be sprouting hair.

The third was an anorexic-thin humanoid wearing a loincloth with a distended, roiling belly. The bald, hairless creature wore a headband covering its eyes. Blood seeped from under the headband. It had one long arm, and one short and withered arm, clutched against its own chest.

All three moved slowly, shuffling forward. All three groaned like zombies. They moved straight for Paz, who stood right next to me.

Sister Ines tossed a white bolt, which she threw like a baseball, and the elf-like creature exploded into mist. At the same moment, Anton fired his crossbow at the one covered with mouths. The magical bolt stuck into the creature’s chest, but it kept coming.

“Ew, ew, Carl, I don’t like this!” Donut cried as she fired a Magic Missile at the third creature. It staggered. “These are like the monsters from The Nightmare Before Christmas! But way grosser!”

I examined the thin ghommid just as she fired another missile.

Kipper – Unsettled Ghommid – Level 30 This is a non-corporeal monster.

This guy is normally the dishwasher at the Dirt Nap. He really liked that job, too. Now he just wants to eat you.

Kipper the ghommid fell and dissipated into sparkly dust. Paz cast

something and killed the one Anton had shot with the crossbow. Dozens and dozens more of these things emerged. I saw all shapes and sizes, from toddler-sized minotaurs to a naked, massively obese man with Dumbo-sized ears walking on his hands. His ears dragged on the ground and were on fire.

I grumbled. Paz’s presence had summoned all of them. All of them. This was going to suck. We were going to have to run and fight.

“We need to get to the saferoom and formulate a better plan,” I called. I cast Tripper, causing all the Spirit Box traps to go off. I wanted to farm more of them, but it was too risky to run with these all over the place. Mongo would likely set one off at any moment.

Thousands of horrific wails rose into the night sky. Several of the ghommids disappeared, having been summoned to random traps throughout town. But more and more were coming by the moment. A literal horde of zombie spirits.

A monster that looked like a human-sized owl popped into existence right in front of me, right above the second trap. It faced away. I instinctively punched it in the back of the head, but I hadn’t summoned my gauntlet yet, and my fist passed right through the monster.

Crack! A blue sheet of ice covered my arm, all the way up to my shoulder, and I suddenly couldn’t move it. It felt as if it had suddenly been

placed into a clamp.

You’ve been frozen!

Warning: Your arm will shatter into itty little bits if it sustains too

much damage before you thaw.

“Gah,” I cried.

The monster turned its head 180 degrees to face me. The owl had swirling, black eyes, as big as chicken eggs. My frozen arm was suddenly in its mouth, my hand piercing all the way through its head . The creature opened its sharp beak and chomped down. Crunch! Flecks of ice shot away.

A health bar appeared over my own goddamn arm, and it was already in the red. The flecks turned to blood.

But that wasn’t all. A heavy wave of nausea swept over me.

You are being drained!

Mongo reached over and chomped the owl across the midsection, and the creature exploded and disappeared with a puff of electricity, damaged by the dino’s magical teeth caps. My arm remained frozen. A twenty second debuff timer appeared, but the debuff disappeared and the ice melted away as Sister

Ines cast something on me.

“Thanks. Both of you!” I still felt exhausted. Christ, that had been close.

“There’s too many!” Anton cried. His crossbow made little monkey noises each time he fired it. Sister Ines lobbed her white balls, one after another. Donut cast Wall of Fire, which crackled bigger than ever thanks to her new nipple ring, and a pair of clockwork Mongos appeared. They tore through the mobs. I tossed two of my infused smoke curtains. The mobs groaned and died and moved away from the smoke.

“The saferoom is that way!” Donut cried, pointing toward a mass of creatures. I pulled a holy gooper and tossed it, clearing the way. I tossed

another curtain to keep the path open.

“Move!” I yelled.

“Carl! None of my psionic attacks work on these guys!”

Both Paz and Sister Ines glowed with yellow light as they marched forward toward the pub. My own soul bar slowly filled with a swirling black, a different color than the sickly green of the duendes we’d just killed, mixing together. Tombstones rose on either side of the wide street as we pushed forward. I looked for ghommids that were higher than level 30, but I didn’t see anything. None of these guys were worth flagging.

None of the ghommids cast any spells, but they were relentless. The moment the smoke dissipated, they were there, filling the gaps. Their slowness didn’t matter when there were so many of them. I formed a fist, and thankfully my gauntlet worked. A single punch killed them, but I knew if I touched them at all with my flesh, I’d get frozen again. I suspected my bare foot would also work, especially after I activated Talon Strike, but I didn’t dare try it. We waded the half block toward the room before we got too bogged down. Donut cast Fireball, and it tore through them, cleaving them away like a snowplow. But the moment they fell, more came and filled the gap.

We were soon surrounded, and I was out of my smoke curtains. The

saferoom was still 100 meters away.

“Donut,” I yelled. “Shortcut!”

“We’re going to teleport!” she shouted. “Everybody stay close.”

She cast Puddle Jump, and we reappeared just outside the saferoom. It wasn’t a real building, but a crumbling, marble, gothic-style crypt with a little neon sign hanging on it that read “The Yellow Zone.” I had no doubts this hadn’t really been there in the real version. The three others moved into the

room as I turned to face the crowd of zombies, now fifty feet away. They all slowly turned and shuffled toward us.

But then, I saw him. I paused, my hand on the door as Donut and Mongo rushed inside.

He emerged from the fog, walking casually, not shuffling like the others.

The barefoot man walked toward me. He wore some sort of straw headdress that completely obscured his face. It went all the way down to his waist.

The ground around him crackled with odd, black tendrils everywhere he walked. He had some weird stick thing in his hand, like a fat wand, and he pointed it at me. I didn’t wait to see what that was about before I dove into the saferoom and slammed the door.

Combat Ended. Your deck has been reset.

“Did you see that guy,” I asked, breathless.

“No,” Paz said, also breathing heavily. Sister Ines paced back and forth, like she wanted to go back out there right away. Anton was at the counter, which was, thankfully, manned by a bopca. He was ordering a drink. The room was much bigger on the inside than the crypt had appeared. It was a regular, medieval-style pub. Donut was clucking over Mongo who was covered with dust.

“I’m pretty sure that was the boss. I didn’t get a chance to read his description, but he was level 130!”

“He’s probably still out there,” Sister Ines said. “Open the door. He can’t hurt us in here.”

I remembered the rage elemental we’d had to face on the second floor.

She was right. I hesitantly reached forward and pulled the door open.

“Christ,” I said, jumping back.

“No,” the monster said. “Not quite.” He stood right there, blocking the door, as if he’d been about to knock on it. His dot remained red on the map.

He stepped right into the room.