The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 38

[ 38 ]

ENTERING MONROE COUNTY, FLORIDA. thIt is December 24.

Time Until Level Collapse: 6 days, 22 hours.

The Key location has been marked on your map.

You have 46 hours remaining to collect your key.

“Monroe County?” I muttered as I appeared in the dark, old house. The room was lit by Donut’s Torch spell, and it gave everything a ghastly hue, like sallow skin. The dead corpse of Robert the Human remained there across the room as Mongo gleefully pulled him apart. Blood splattered as the dinosaur dove into the corpse like a pig at a trough, making loud crunching noises. There was a door leading off to a safe area, another leading outside. A third door led to a restroom.

“Carl, it’s broken!” Donut cried. “The game broke, and we won’t be able to get a key!”

She now wore the sailor hat on her head, and it looked ridiculous on her.

She jumped up and down, her tail straight up. She ran up to me and started weaving in and out of my legs like she used to do when I came home from work.

“Okay. Calm down. Tell me what you mean.”

She took a breath. “It only gave us a few choices of places to go, but they all had labels on them. One of them was Iowa! Another was the Bahamas and another was Ibiza. It said one of them is Miami, and I picked that one, but then I got a message that said there was a problem with the location, and it was sending us to Iowa instead! But I got here, we were in the house, and we’re in the Miami area, but we’re at the bottom of the map. We’re really in

the Florida Keys! The area is big, bigger than we have in Cuba. But it was quite strange because the location thingy said Iowa when I first appeared.”

“Really? It said we were actually in Iowa? That is really weird. It said Florida for me.”

When we’d gone on Shadow Boxer, Rosetta gave us two different secret messages. One was about the yam. But the other was when they’d shown Donut the different television shows on the screen. Every single one was a program set in Miami. I had no idea why they would want us here specifically, but they’d gone to a lot of trouble to give us the message. It was something only a person who was obsessed with television would notice. I hadn’t noticed it.

I’d never been to Florida, let alone the Keys. Nor had I ever been to Iowa.

I moved to the window and looked outside. It was the middle of the night, but I could see the distinctive form of a palm tree. Plus it was warm. There was no way this was the American Midwest in December. If this was somewhere in the Keys, we weren’t actually that far from our original location in Cuba.

Why would they say it was Iowa, then?

“Carl, look at the map. They said the key location is marked! But the key

is still in Iowa!”

“Oh, fuck me.”

I pulled up the map. Sure enough, we were at the very southern tip of Florida. The distinctive island shapes were clear, and we were plopped right in the middle. I zoomed out as much as I could, and I didn’t see the marker at all.

I started to form a message to Zev to bitch, but I paused at the

notification.

Please wait.

There was a pause and a flash, and the ground rumbled with a small earthquake. The map rearranged itself. The key was suddenly there, only a handful of miles west from our current location.

Thank you for your patience. You may resume normal activity.

I relaxed.

“It looks like it was a glitch, but it fixed itself.”

“I don’t like glitches, Carl. They make me nervous. Oh, oh, but do you see that dead guy?”

Mongo was grunting happily as he pulled out a line of intestine.

“He’s a little hard to miss, Donut.”

“The fight was really short! Mongo killed him before it even started. He only had two totems, and they were both stuffed animals. A person and a disgusting toy dog. It was quite an easy fight.”

“Good job.”

Donut continued to bounce up and down as I examined the house. It was th just an old, Victorian-style, mini-mansion from the 19century with creaking, wood floors. There was a light switch, and I flipped it. It worked, and the room lit up. There was a Christmas tree in the corner, but it didn’t appear as if anyone was living here. The tree itself was generic, with only blue and silver ornaments and no lights. I could smell and hear the ocean.

Donut was talking rapid-fire, like she did when she had too much energy.

“The fight was scary! His deck wasn’t very good. Mongo chomped him before he could play hardly anything. It was quite spectacular.”

We only had two days to get the key. That seemed easy. Too easy, which meant it would be an epic pain. No time to rest. We had to get moving even though it was the middle of the night.

I had a few blinking notifications, and I pulled them up now. The first was from Emberus.

Quest Update. Find out Who Killed my Son.

It appears the primordial goddess Nekhebit has returned to the halls.

She holds an ancient grudge against my family, especially Apito. Find a temple of Nekhebit and question the priestess, see what she knows. Do not be gentle.

I waved that one away. It was a headache for tomorrow, if we made it that far. My heart stopped in my throat as I pulled up the next message. This is what I was looking for. It was a note from Huanxin, using the spider quest chat.

Eileithyia: I watched your performance. I am not one to be forgiving of failure, but I acknowledge this was out of your control. Odette did not ask to be your adjutant like I told you she would. This is my fault. I shall honor our agreement, but if it becomes clear that you’d warned Odette about our understanding, I shall crush everyone you know and love, starting with sweet Katia and ending with that cat.

I let out a long stream of breath. Relief flooded me.

Quest Complete. Spiders.

Proceed to a temple of Eileithyia to receive your boon.

“Carl, we finished the spider quest!”

“I see that, Donut.”

“Well, that was the easiest quest ever. We barely did anything.”

But then Donut started to grumble when she saw we had to go to a temple to collect our reward. With her unable to access Club Vanquisher, that would be difficult. I doubted we would be getting anything anyway, as the whole quest had been so Huanxin could send me messages through Eileithyia. Since she didn’t need us anymore, we’d been cut loose. That was okay. thBut now I was more worried than ever about sending Katia off to the 12 floor.

Carl: Katia. We should be good. But we gotta talk.

Katia: Can’t right now. Things got messed up during the selection.

They only gave me one choice. Ukraine, but when I got here, it was actually Vietnam.

Carl: That seems to be going around. Ping me when you’re safe.

I moved to the door to the outside to take a better peek at where we were.

Zev: Donut, Carl. I apologize for that glitch. I know in the coming hours it’s going to look intentional. Believe me, it was not. At least not on our end. Things are just hectic. You should have only received three choices for a new location. One chosen by us, one by the AI, and one randomly selected spot. You received four, and we don’t know why. It wasn’t just you guys. Some crawlers had four choices. Some only had one. A few didn’t have any at all, and one squad leader had the whole globe to choose and dropped herself into the middle of the ocean for some reason. We’re still scrambling to fix it all. Talk soon.

Donut: I’M JUST GLAD IT DIDN’T KEEP US IN IOWA. DO I LOOK LIKE SOMEONE WHO WOULD VOLUNTARILY VISIT IOWA? THAT’S ALMOST AS BAD AS DELAWARE.

Zev: Uh, yeah. Maybe you should look outside when dawn comes.

We’ve had to fudge a few things to keep from breaking the game.

“There’s nothing wrong with Iowa, Donut,” I said as I pulled open the door. “You’ve never even been there.”

“I have most certainly been to Iowa. It’s cold, covered with weird billboards, and it smells like potatoes. Plus, Carl, it was where I was robbed of a purple ribbon. One doesn’t just forget such a vile insult. It’s because the judges were racist against their betters.”

“I’m pretty sure that was Idaho, not Iowa.”

“That’s practically the same thing, Carl.”

I took a step outside into the humid, night air. The temperature was similar to where we’d just left. We were on a sidewalk in some narrow beach town. A two-lane road spread before us, lit by sporadic streetlamps. There were no cars. Still, despite the late hour, the road was moderately busy. I caught sight of memory ghosts floating back and forth along the road. The fact the cars were already gone suggested this area had crawlers in it for part one of the floor. Beyond the road was beach, though I sensed it more than saw it in the dark. I knew the other side of the narrow island was pretty close behind us.

Other than the memory ghosts, I didn’t see anyone. No dots of crawlers, NPCs, or mobs anywhere on the map. All I could see was the shining marker indicating the location of the exit key a little bit to the west.

I looked in that direction and saw nothing but black.

“Donut, what level is your Torch spell?”

“It’s stuck at 14. It has been for a while now.”

“Send it up there and make it as bright as you can, will you?”

She waved her paw, and the light shot into the air and zipped away from us like a fast-moving drone. It got impressively high and then light burst forth, illuminating the entire area like a stadium.

“Holy shit,” I said, covering my eyes.

“I know, right?” Donut said. “It takes a lot of mana to keep it like this though, so I can only keep it going for a minute.”

I looked west and did a double-take. At first I thought it was some weird artifact of Donut’s spell, or the edge of the map. A sheer wall of crumbling earth stood in the distance, like a cosmic dump truck had just upended its load over the island. It was a pile of earth, climbing into the clouds. I couldn’t see the top. It reminded me of the Temple of Anser from the bubble level, only more chaotic. I was pretty sure the pile was wider than the island. Dirt cascaded off the side as I watched.

I blinked a few times, trying to figure out what I was looking at. I consulted my map. The exit key was somewhere at the top of the pile. At least I hoped it was on the top and not buried there.

Carl: Zev, did you guys just rip the key location out of the ground in Iowa and plop it here to Florida?

Zev: Not my department, Carl. But, yes. It was the only way to do it

without breaking anything further.

I just shook my head.

Carl: You might want to explain to your folks about the differences in sea level. Is that thing stable? This is a cay. It’s an island built atop a reef, and half, if not most, of that pile is in the ocean. It’s going to be washed away in a day.

Zev: Yes, Carl. We’re very busy right now. We’re aware of the situation. We’ll intervene if the key location becomes inaccessible.

I took another step toward the road. Donut jumped to my shoulder as Mongo padded out behind us. His face was completely covered in gore.

“Nice dixie cup, by the way,” I said, looking up at the white sailor hat sitting cockeyed on Donut’s head. “You look like you’re in the navy.”

“Oh, isn’t it divine?”

She looked absurd, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “I like it, but if you wear it, you can’t use your new Hover skill. Plus you lose 10 intelligence points.”

“I already talked to Mordecai about this, and I’m going to wear it until I run out of cards, and then I’ll put my new dragonfly tiara back on. This one lowers the card draw countdown by two seconds! Plus it’s quite jaunty. I do love jaunty.”

“Really? Huh. I didn’t know they’d have magic gear specifically for the cards.”

Donut reached up and made the cap sit even more sideways on her head.

It looked like it would fall off at any moment. “So it’s called a dixie cup? I love it. It’s not too Donald Duck is it? Did you wear one like this?”

I grunted. “No. I wore a ball cap. We used to mock the poor bastards who had to wear those things.”

“A baseball cap? You were in the military, and you wore a baseball cap? I feel as if that’s a lie, Carl.”

“Did that Robert guy have anything else on him?”

“Just the rest of his uniform, but it was ruined. And the token.”

“The token?” I asked.

“Yes, Carl. Didn’t you hear the announcement?”

“No, Donut. I wasn’t here. Remember?”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, it’s quite simple. You have to collect nine tokens before you can fight the last guy for the key. There are less monsters, but they’ll all have tokens and card decks on them. Wait, I see a red dot.” She pointed with her paw. “It’s that way, toward the mound.”

“Okay,” I said, cracking my neck. “Let’s see how this really works.”

“We’re fighting in the dark? It doesn’t let me keep the spell going when I activate my deck!”

I shrugged. “There are streetlamps, and I have a ton of torches. Time is not our friend here.”

“Okay,” she said skeptically. “Do we want to go get some of the boys to

help us?”

“The boys?”

“You know. The Penis Paraders. Stevie is a troll for goodness sake. He’s great at bashing stuff, and he can balance his club on the tip of his finger for ten seconds straight. Oh, and Gluteus can break things with his butt! You get a mob’s head in there, and it’s game over.”

“I’m thinking we’ll keep them back until there’s an emergency. We want them fresh for the next floor.”

“Okay,” Donut said. “They’re all probably experience hogs anyway.”

As we started to move in that direction, keeping a wary eye for others and traps, Imani sent a message, demanding everyone check in. Only a few of us had experienced glitches. Florin was in eastern Nigeria. He wasn’t partied with Lucia Mar, so he’d lost contact with her. Li Jun and his crew, which included Chris, were still in China, but further into the mainland.

Elle and Imani were separated. Elle’s squad ended up in Belgium. Imani was only given one choice. Detroit, and that’s where she was. Everyone else was equally scattered.

After some prodding, we learned Prepotente was somewhere in northern Italy.

Like with my area, Katia’s region was a mix between Ukraine and Vietnam, though she warned us of something that made me wary. The Vietnam portion of the area where they’d ended up was in a city called Da Nang. It was where Tran was from.

The key location was in an apartment building where both his ex-wife and his estranged mother lived.

Detroit, Imani reluctantly offered, was where she grew up, and she would never have picked it if she’d been offered another choice. Her key location was also in the home of somebody she knew, but she didn’t elaborate.

Elle: I don’t know anybody in Belgium, thank god. You all try to keep your wits about you. These are just memory ghosts. And if they’re going to make us fight loved ones, remember it’s not really them. Don’t let them fuck with your heads.

“Carl,” Donut asked as we walked. “Do you know anybody who lives in Florida or Iowa? I most certainly don’t.”

“No,” I said, and I hoped against everything that it was true.

Our first opponent—Donut’s second—was a type of mob we’d fought before. The creature was just sitting there off the side of the road in a pool of light of a parking lot, waiting for us to approach. This setup wasn’t anything like we’d seen so far in the dungeon. This was more like something out of a real video game. It stood there, doing nothing while it waited for us to come closer. A circle of clothes from the memory ghosts lay piled all around it, implying the thing had been standing there for a while.

The parking lot featured both a saferoom and a Desperado Club, but the map indicated the club was “Closed for emergency renovations.”

The last time I’d seen one of these guys, it’d been on the fourth floor, and they’d been suffering from a condition called the DT’s. It was a baboon/human hybrid creature called a Babababoon. I couldn’t remember what level they’d been on the third floor—probably around 17 or so—but this guy was level 45.

The wide-faced man wore a Santa hat and had a t-shirt that featured a wrapped present on it with the caption, “I have a huge package for you.” He started grunting and jumping up and down as we approached, like he’d been

paralyzed until the moment we appeared.

Combat Started.

I pulled a sticky hob-lobber into my xistera and tossed it across the way.

It splotched against his chest and exploded, killing him before he even drew

his first card.

Combat Complete. Deck has been reset.

“Carl, you blew up his hat!” Donut complained as we moved to investigate the corpse. The guy had been turned into paste. Mongo grunted and started licking it up.

A group of twenty cards appeared floating in the air. None were exciting, but he did have a consumable flee card. He’d had three totems. Two more babababoons like himself and a rare, level 80 Skunk Ape. We could only examine the information on the face of the card, which was only part of the whole. While I was curious about that one, we’d have to literally give up one

of our totems to try it out, which we weren’t willing to do.

He also had a token, which was just a poker chip-sized coin with the number two etched on it.

“Does the first token have a one on it?” I asked.

“It does,” Donut said.

“And what level was that first guy?”

“Level 40. Also, I see another red dot down the street. And another way past there. There’s a path of them leading to the dirt mound, all off the side of the road.”

“All right,” I said, looking west. I couldn’t actually see anything. Now that we were past the houses, it was just palm trees and bushes and the occasional business on either side of the road, with the sound of the ocean waves in the distance. “Come on. Let’s try this again.”