The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 20

[ 20 ]

DECEMBER 15TH Three of Six Totems Collected.

Time until phase two: eight days, one hour.

“Carl, do you really think we’ll be able to get around the rules of the tiara?” Donut asked as we stepped outside into the ghommid village. She sat upon Mongo’s back. All around, the strange creatures turned and waved jovially at us. The fog that covered the village had dissipated, and the evil feeling of the place was gone, replaced with something wondrous, almost like we’d stepped into a cartoon. “What are we going to do if it doesn’t work?”

“The first step is we’re going to do everything we can to make sure Katia gets to that flower,” I said. “But if that doesn’t work, we’re going to keep looking for a solution. There are always solutions.” I reached over and gave Donut a reassuring pat. I could feel how anxious she was.

“Hey. Look at me,” I said. She had her sunglasses on, and I could see my reflection in them. I tried not to look so worried. “This is a tough situation, but we’re still a long ways away from the end of the ninth floor. We’re working on it. We need to stay focused on this floor for now.”

She nodded. “That reminds me. I unmuted Samantha, and she just started yelling at me. I had to mute her again. The good news is, I think she got pooped out by the spider. But the spider won’t let her go and has her tied up in her web. Also, Prepotente says he wants you to read a few chapters of that Bahamas book to him. He’s all by himself there, and I think he’s really lonely. I’ve been talking to him, but chat isn’t the same as real life. He’s not a member of any guilds or the Desperado Club and he’s not allowed into Club Vanquisher anymore, so it’s just him and Bianca. Bianca is really nice, but

she doesn’t talk. She does hiss a lot.”

“We’re moving toward Samantha,” I said. “But it’s going to be a few days before we get there. I’ll talk to Pony later.”

We only had a few hours before we had to go to our first planning th meeting for the Faction Wars game on the 9floor. Our goal for right now was to start moving southwest through Havana. We had to get out of the city.

We’d collect as many cards as we could. I’d keep a lookout for Sister Ines and a Desperado Club. There wasn’t one in the ghommid settlement.

“Call out all the saferooms,” I said as we stepped out of the village. “And

watch for cars.”

Entering Havana.

There were plenty of floating heads moving back and forth, but I saw no sign of any nearby mobs. There weren’t any cars moving nearby, but I could see there was a big fire burning to the east. I consulted the paper map I’d taken off a tourist earlier, and I turned left, pushing through a group of people walking toward the cemetery’s entrance. A camera and a bunch of cellphones clattered onto the ground.

I wanted to get to the highway and move south. If the road was clear, we could use the royal chariot to move much more quickly. My map also had a train station on it, and I suspected the trains were probably still running, though that would be risky. We’d have to stay in the very back of the train to minimize the risk of us breaking something while it moved. The idea of ever getting on another train made my stomach lurch.

“What are we going to do when we find the catgirl,” Donut asked. “Are you going to let Mongo kill her this time?”

“We’re not going to kill her. But we need to talk to her about what she’s done to Paz. I’ve sent her a few messages, but she hasn’t responded.”

“She’s a Havana brown and a nun murderer. I don’t even know which of those two things is worse. How is this even a conversation? Mongo thinks we

should kill her, too.”

Mongo growled in agreement.

“Just don’t send her any nasty messages. We’ll never get her to talk to us if you start insulting or threatening her over chat.”

The scent of a street vendor’s food cart caught my nose, and my stomach rumbled. So much had been happening, I’d forgotten to eat.

“You don’t need to worry about that. Not anymore. She’s already blocked me.”

I sighed. “What did you say to her?”

“I only said the truth, Carl. You can’t get mad at me for speaking the

truth.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her that what she did to Paz was really mean, and that killing nuns isn’t acceptable. And that she was a disgrace to all cat kind. I might’ve added that we were going to take her cards from her and rip the Paz card once we found her. And that Mongo is very disappointed in her.”

“Goddamnit, Donut. You shouldn’t have said that. She’s going to hide from us. Or worse, attack us.”

“Hardly. Like I’d let a fake cat sneak up on me. And what part of that isn’t true, Carl? You get mad if I bend the truth, and you get mad if I say it how it is. Sometimes I feel like there’s no winning with you.”

While she ranted, I kept an eye on the minimap, looking for threats. My footsteps now appeared on the display. Thanks to my newest boon from Emberus, all of my previous steps would explode in fire if my health got low enough. I thought of all those ghommids running around the village. Would it hurt them if I activated it? I had so many questions. It seemed like an unnecessarily dangerous boon. Donut and Mongo would need to be careful of where I’d stepped. Donut had fire resistance now, but would it be enough?

Plus, if I activated it myself, would it blow up right behind me? Like, would I set my ass on fire? How big was the explosion? That I had to be near death to test this was alarming.

We walked for a good hour. There were plenty of small, low-level mobs running about, but nothing flag-worthy. There was a zoo, but after a quick inspection, it appeared the animals within were part of the illusion and not mobs. We killed every monster we could find, managing to collect several utility cards we probably wouldn’t end up using. It was dangerous to put too many in your deck because it lowered your chance of pulling totem cards.

Finding a saferoom looked like it wasn’t going to be a problem. They were everywhere. We found a stretch of freeway with no moving cars thanks to a pileup at an exit, and I pulled out the royal chariot which allowed us to cautiously pick up speed, moving quickly south. Donut remained atop Mongo, who ran alongside. The city became less dense, and soon there were cars everywhere again. I had to pull off the side of the road to avoid getting splattered by a massive, rickety bus that came out of nowhere.

We were in the suburbs just south of the city, a strange mix of corrugated

metal-sided hovels, nice homes, churches, apartment buildings, and lots and lots of random shopping places.

Zev sent us a warning that we needed to start preparing for the meeting.

Donut noticed a saferoom one neighborhood over, and we moved toward it, skirting past a horde of little kids running and laughing as they played in the street. Only half of them still wore their clothes, but this area seemed mostly untouched.

I thought about them, playing, ready for Christmas, without a worry in the world. This was recorded three weeks before the apocalypse. I hoped, for their sake, that all of these children were inside at the time.

That was a really fucked up thing to think, I said to myself. But was it?

Was it?

The saferoom appeared to be a random person’s house, which was unusual. We pushed our way inside as Zev talked to us.

Zev: Also, I hate pulling you guys out of the dungeon so much, but Odette has finally arrived in Earth orbit and wants you two in a couple of days. She wanted Katia, too, but they said no on that one. So it’ll be

just you two.

Donut: YAY! IT’S BEEN TOO LONG.

Carl: I can’t wait.

Zev: Guys, she sent notice that she’s going to ask something of you two live on air, and I want to discuss it so you’re not blindsided. We can talk about it face to face before the preproduction meeting.

I already knew what this was going to be thanks to Huanxin. She wanted to be our Adjutant. I still wasn’t sure what that was, but every team had one.

It appeared to be some sort of third-party rule keeper or game guide for Faction Wars.

Inside the house, it was setup like a coffee shop with a bopca proprietor, an angry-looking woman named Vitasy. I had her make me a coffee and bought a pastry while Donut purchased some meat skewers for Mongo, haggling with the woman over the price. The woman’s face lit up when she set eyes on the princess, but she quickly soured when the haggling began.

“I bet we’ll never see her again,” Donut finally said, talking about Sister Ines, like she’d spent the last hour thinking of the nun.

I didn’t answer, just happy that she was distracted from the Katia issue.

“Zev,” I said out loud, not bothering to use chat. “Do we have time to go into the practice arena to play with our cards?”

Zev: No, Carl. You two have five minutes.

“Okay.” I paused by the entrance to our safe space. The bopca woman glared at us sullenly. “Hey, Vitasy is it? Do you happen to know if there are any Desperado Clubs around here?”

She thumbed over her shoulder. “Keep going south, and I heard there’s one a few kilometers down the road.”

“Thanks!” I said, and I flipped her a coin. She let it clatter to the floor.

“I feel as if the bopcas are getting a bit of an attitude lately,” Donut said as we entered the saferoom. “I don’t like that.”

“You guys are back earlier than I expected. Your Charisma is still really high, but the effect on NPCs isn’t immediately as powerful as it once was,”

Mordecai said, coming around the corner, wiping his hands on a towel. “It’s complicated math stuff involving resistances. On the tenth floor, the bopcas will still like you, but you won’t be talking them into extra rations for Mongo, that’s for sure. They’ll be downright surly toward Carl even though his charisma ain’t half bad.”

We barely heard what he was saying. I exchanged a look with Donut.

Mordecai had a little, pink bow plastered to the side of his bald head. And it appeared as if his face was smudged with pink lipstick, Samantha style. It spread across the side of his face like he’d just tried—and failed—to quickly wipe his face clean. He dropped the towel on the table, and I could see it was stained with makeup.

I recalled something I’d read in either the cookbook or in the original description about cyclops. They couldn’t see their own reflections, like vampires. I didn’t know if that weird quirk of mythology was present in the earth versions of these guys, but it was clear he’d just tried to clean himself.

“Mordecai, darling,” Donut said. “I’d like to ask you an important question, and if you don’t want to answer, that’s fine, but…” She let it hang.

“What are you talking about, princess?”

Donut jumped to the table and started to lick her paw. “I’m not one to

pry. Really. I’m just curious.”

“About what?”

“Again, I’m not one to judge. Believe me, I am an ally. But if you need tips for proper application, I’m just saying I am available. I spent many an

hour helping Miss Beatrice put her face on. I’m sure Samantha can help, too, once we retrieve her, though her application is a little… loud. Carl, please.

You must compose yourself. It’s rude to laugh.”

I hadn’t been laughing until that moment. I burst out.

“Oh, damn,” Mordecai said, reaching up to touch the bow on the side of his head. He peeled it off and dropped it on the counter. He sighed. “I forgot about that.”

“You left a little,” I said, indicating his face.

“Fuck,” he said, picking the towel back up. “I hate it when I’m a cyclops.

No depth perception plus I can’t see my own reflection.”

“Do you see the makeup just floating there in the mirror?” I asked. “Do you see your clothes?”

“No,” he said. “There’s no reasoning to it. If it’s attached to me, I can’t

see it.”

“That’s really weird,” I said.

“So,” Donut said. “Let’s circle back. How long has this been going on?

Honestly, if this is how you feel about yourself, I am glad you’re finally starting to explore…”

Mordecai held up a hand, his fat, sausage-like fingers spread out.

“Princess. Stop. It’s not what it looks like.”

“Well, it looks like you were dragged face first through the makeup aisle at the dollar store,” she said.

My eyes caught the cleaner bot, zipping down to pick something up off the couch. An empty bag of chips. I observed the television, the one we hooked the game systems up to. I saw that Bomo and Sledge’s large-sized hand controllers were replaced. One was the original and another was strange. I hadn’t made it, so it must’ve been engineered by Mordecai. It was split into two left/right pieces and propped up on the floor at a 45-degree angle. There was a small pillow in front of it.

I finally figured it out.

“Are you really allowed to hire a room attendant, or is that something you made up? Is this something we’re paying for?”

He deflated and lowered his head. “I can have an attendant. I took up the slot. But, you have five more attendant slots, and I put them in that. You’re

paying for it.”

“So there’s six of them?” I asked.

He nodded. “It’s all the system would let me.”

“How much are we paying?”

“What?” Donut asked. “What is this?”

“Combined, it’s a little more than 1,000 gold a day. I’ve been paying myself with the money you’ve been giving me for supplies.”

“What?” Donut asked again, looking back and forth between us.

“What’re you talking about? And that’s not the proper definition of ‘paying for it myself,’ Mordecai. That’s called embezzlement! Wait, you’re stealing from us? I’m so confused. What are you stealing?” She gasped. “Drugs? Is it drugs? And you’ve turned to prostitution? Is that why you’re dressing like that? You’re going to have to get much better at your makeup if you want to earn enough to pay us back.”

“I know Bonnie isn’t one of them,” I said, ignoring Donut. “She’s on the ninth floor. So are the bear cubs and Skarn. So it’s Ruby and the rest?”

He nodded. “Just the ones with compression sickness,” Mordecai said. “It was so dangerous at the end of the last floor, and they’d had a rough time even getting from the changeling village to here, I didn’t think they’d survive the fight at the end of the last floor. So, I hired them in all the available slots.”

“You know, if you’d asked me, I would’ve said yes,” I said.

“Ruby? The little girl with no arms?” Donut asked. She turned to look at the game controller on the floor. “She’s your attendant? How can you have an attendant with no arms, Mordecai?”

“There wasn’t time,” he said. He raised his head, straightening himself.

“But I stand by my decision.”

Ruby was a little changeling girl orphan NPC. We’d met her on the fifth floor. She was part of the whole storyline with the camels and the changelings. She was suffering from something called compression sickness, a birth defect that was caused by the parents not getting proper nutrition on their new world. She could change form like most changelings, but when she did, she was always missing parts. When she was in human form, she had no arms and a sunken-in head.

At the end of the previous floor, the changelings had come to our saferoom in preparation of the taking of the High Elf castle. The remnants of the castle, and all of the surviving changelings, were now on the ninth floor.

But several changelings had died during that terrible fight to take the castle.

Mordecai had made the right call to keep the most vulnerable out of the fight.

I still wasn’t sure why he felt the need to hide this from us.

Zev: Transferring in one minute.

“We’ll discuss this when we get back,” I said.