The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 47

[ 47 ]

“HOW DID YOU KNOW IT WAS MISS BEATRICE’S MOTHER AND NOT THE pitbull lady? I mean, with the fire thing. I was trying to keep track, and I couldn’t.”

We were waiting for the fire on the yard to calm before we looted everything. The rest of the Iowa area was about to crash to the ground, and we had maybe an hour to get everything and get off this pile of dirt. As it was, I wasn’t certain how we were going to get down without jumping. We’d already gotten the floor key from the actual corpse, along with the Map of the Stars one always got from city bosses. It showed all the bosses left in the area, and there was nothing.

The cards and what looked like a lumpy, leather bag remained hovering in place right in the center of the trailer, but it was still too hot to get to.

Donut actually had better fire protection than I did thanks to her nipple ring, but we were both exhausted and didn’t want to risk it. We decided to wait.

I was in my chat, warning everybody about this last boss. I didn’t know if it’d be the same for everybody. I hoped not.

I reached up to rub my hair, which had, luckily, only gotten singed. Still, it would probably fix itself. It was weird. I had to cut it if it got too long, but it was one of the few things that repaired itself after battle. They loved giving us horrific injuries, but they didn’t like us to keep them.

Until they did. I thought of Britney and her facial burns. There was no rhyme or reason to it except that which made good television.

“The moment I saw Sam had a death ray, and then my old boss was water, I knew the choices weren’t all random. Sam didn’t mind us calling him ‘Monobrow,’ but he was dating this one girl for a while that hated it, so we had to come up with a new nickname when she was around. He’d suggested ‘death ray,’ which was super funny at the time. It lasted about as long as that

relationship had. And Dick, my boss, he used to have nightmares about drowning. He was afraid of going off shore.”

“Wait. He worked in a boatyard, fixing boats, and he was afraid of the water?”

“Terrified. Worse than you. He was an EDO in the Navy, too. Used to scuba dive for a living, and something happened. It’s not as weird as you might think. He was a strange dude, but he was harmless. It was awful seeing him like this.”

I thought of Asher and the lightning attack they gave him. Of the drawings in his bedroom. Goddamn you.

A wave of sadness washed over me. I finally realized what it meant for someone to be in that hydra. They were all dead. These were all people who’d been collected in the initial collapse. My dad hadn’t been a part of the hydra because he was already gone. I thought of my friend, Sam. I hadn’t seen him in weeks, not since before Christmas. My landlord, Mr. Roth, had lived alone. He’d died alone. Of Asher and his mom. I wondered if they’d still been here, at the trailer park. They were all gone. They’d been gone this whole time. I knew that was the most likely outcome for everybody, but in some ways, knowing made it… I wasn’t sure. Not worse. It was always better to know. Just… final, I guessed.

This was a good thing, I decided after a moment. Not that they were dead, but that it was over with. The dungeon used their likeness, and now it was done. They could finally rest.

In fact, the dungeon was blowing its wad on saved-up relatives, like it had decided to get it over with all at once.

Huh, I thought, thinking more on it. I didn’t know what to make of it.

Carl: Zev, are you still locked out?

Zev: Can’t talk now, Carl. But yes. We’ll have an update soon.

That was ominous.

“But, how do you get fireball from Miss Beatrice’s mother? I would’ve assumed she’d have a psycho bitch ray or a botched plastic surgery ray or something. Why fire?”

“Because she was the only one left. Once I realized the choices were deliberate, I knew my stepmother would be poison.”

“The pitbull lady? How do you know?”

“Because I just watched her poison my father. That’s what I saw in there.”

“Wait… you said she was your stepmother. I thought your real mother was the one who poisoned your dad.”

“She was my stepmother,” I said. “She’d only married him recently. I never met her before.”

“I am so confused. A different person poisoned your father? So, he had two different people try to poison and kill him?”

“Technically she killed him with an overdose. But, yeah.”

“My word. You must be a real piece of work to make someone hate you that much. He’s like the human equivalent of a cocker spaniel. And speaking of cocker spaniels, I’m surprised Angel wasn’t a part of that thing. I hope that means they’re saving her for something else later. Or that she was already dead.” She gasped. “You don’t think she got into the dungeon, do you? If she did, she probably died on the first floor. She was probably busy licking her own butthole and got eaten by a llama.”

“No,” I said. “I saw her in the hallway earlier that day, so I know she was home. She got squished along with everybody else. You and I were the only

two who made it out of the building.”

“Plus Ferdinand.”

“Him too,” I agreed.

We sat in silence for a few moments, both of us still thinking about the fight and all the people we’d met.

“Carl, so that’s what you saw in there? You saw your father die?”

“Yes, but I didn’t watch the end.”

“Oh.” She waited to see if I was going to add anything. I wasn’t. “What was your dad’s name, anyway? I don’t think you ever said.”

“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t deserve to have one. Not anymore. It’s done.”

Mongo had eaten his fill. He now lay on the ground next to us, groaning slightly, like he always did when he ate too much. The vending machine on the other side of the yard crackled as it burned. I idly wondered if we could break it open and get out the tokens we’d already used so we could hand them out to others, but as I thought that, the machine exploded and dissipated into a pile of flaming dust.

Donut continued to clean herself as we waited. “Speaking of killing family members, I’m glad King Croissant timed out before we had to kill him. He was a kitten, after all. Kittencide is a bad look no matter how you spin it. I don’t even know if he is real, but if he does exist, he is family. If you

must kill your own family members, you should have a good reason for it.

Cousin Sugar Cube, on the other hand. I’m glad Shi Maria fellated her to death. She was one of the stupidest cats I’ve ever met, and that includes all the Birmans and Himalayans I’ve come across, which is saying a lot, let me tell you. Did you see how Shi Maria was doing that, though? How she was going down on each of those heads? I’d been wondering how she swallowed Samantha earlier. It’s quite disturbing. She probably did kill her husband. She probably sucked him right up, and he probably enjoyed it.”

I reached up and touched my forehead. It hurt, right there in the center. I was trying not to think about that part, that moment I’d looked directly into that eye, the eye that was supposed to drive me insane.

I will not blind you. Not in the way you’re thinking.

Donut was rambling, doing that nervous-talking thing she did sometimes to burn off the adrenaline after a fight. Her voice was comforting. I looked at the back of my hands. The twin tattoos glowed slightly brighter than before. I had multiple achievements I needed to wade through, but in a separate folder, I had a message from the church. I clicked on it.

Baptism by Fire.

You have grown closer to your god, Emberus.

He is pleased by your suffering.

Your new rank: Devotee.

Warning: because you are not a Cleric or a Paladin, this is the highest rank you may obtain.

This new rank comes with the following benefits: Your Burn immunity has been upgraded. You will no longer take environmental damage from heat or lava environments, such as Sheol. (Note. That does not mean you are protected from direct contact with fire or lava.) You may now cast a level-10 Self-Immolation once a day. Be careful with this one. Remember that little warning you just got about direct contact with fire.

Your tithe amount has moved from 5% to 10% effective immediately.

I laughed. Donut was going to be pissed about the tithe. I’d been immune to Burn, which also came with some fire resistance, and it kept fire damage from compounding, which is what had happened to the hydra. This was slightly better protection.

I hesitantly looked up Self-Immolation, and I was happy to see it wasn’t a suicide spell like Paz’s Self-Destruct. It didn’t need mana to cast, but it had a

long cooldown: Self-Immolation Cost: Nothing. Requires to be in Emberus’ good graces to cast.

Target: Self Only Duration: Instantaneous. Fire burst lasts up to three seconds, which is complete overkill with this stuff.

Cooldown: Once a day. Resets with the obeisance countdown.

Casts a non-static sphere of Sheol Fire around the caster with a 1- foot buffer from all body parts of caster. Fire expands in a distance of .15 meters per level of spell until it reaches level 15, at which time the distance increases exponentially and may be controlled.

At level 10, the fire will expand in a sphere 1.5 meters around your body. That’s up, down, left, and right. So you might want to be careful where you are when you cast this.

What is Sheol Fire? You know how when you were a kid, you’d take a lighter and pass your finger over the flame really fast, and it wouldn’t hurt you? Don’t try that with this stuff. It’s fire with rabies. Wood turns instantly to ash. Rock to lava. Flesh… well. Just be careful. Or don’t, if you’re looking to go out with some char-scented gusto.

Yikes. That was just like Donut’s Bitch, What? berserking spell. It was something I wouldn’t be able to cast with anybody nearby. It sounded good, but if the sphere blasted below my feet, too, that would be dangerous as fuck.

I’d find myself standing in a pool of lava.

The cooldown was interesting. I could cast it once a day, but it reset when the shrine reset, which was generally around the same time as the daily recap episode. With most spells, like my Protective Shell, the cooldown didn’t reset until it was cast.

Donut continued to talk, regaling me with the story of Sugar Cube the cat, who was both her cousin and her half-aunt or something. It was confusing.

“Hey, Donut,” I said, remembering something from the fight. “What did you mean when you said Bea had gotten Sally fired? How do you even know who she is? I couldn’t remember her name until I saw it at the fight. We worked together for a while, but I barely ever talked to her.”

“I knew everybody from that fight. I recognized every head except your stepmother, who I just saw for the first time today. That Sally lady sent you a

message on Facebook asking you out to get drinks once.”

I just blinked at Donut.

“No she didn’t. I never even went on my Facebook.”

“Oh, believe me, I know. Miss Beatrice was always on it.”

“Wait, Bea was on my Facebook?”

“Yes, Carl. She even got your notifications on her phone. You used that same Megatron12 password on everything. I’m sure we’ve discussed this before.”

“We absolutely have not discussed this!”

Donut shrugged. “Well, that lady sent you a friend request and asked you out once. So Bea told her to fuck off, blocked her with your account, and then she sent a message to your boss from her own account and demanded he fire

her because she was stalking you.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Oh, yes. Miss Beatrice and her friends all thought it was the funniest thing ever. And then your boss was all ‘What are you going to do for me?’ and she had her friend Tiffany—you know the one with the lip fillers and that godawful fake Chanel bag—send him her boobs, though they were really just some random boobs from the internet, and he fired her that same day. Bea made him promise not to tell you. They called it ‘Operation: Slut Stomp’ or something. They all thought they were quite clever after that.”

My opinion of Dick had suddenly soured. My opinion of Bea was already in the toilet, and I knew all of her friends were just as awful, but I had no idea they were that bad. Cheating was one thing, her just being immature, but this… This was cartoon villain territory.

“That woman, Sally, she was a single mother. I thought…”

I trailed off, a sudden, sinking feeling overwhelming me. I felt cold.

I wrote you, and you never answered. I needed help. Look what you made me do! Look what you made me do!

“You said you recognized all the heads? Even the boy?”

“Yeah, that was a weird one. I forgot about him. I’ve seen him a bunch of times, but I still don’t really know who he is. Miss Beatrice had his picture on her phone, and she was always talking about him with her mother. His name is Asher. I think he was her nephew or something. I missed that whole drama, but Miss Beatrice’s mom said to just ignore it. It was strange they put him in the hydra.”

I nodded. “He wasn’t her nephew. He was my half-brother. I didn’t know

he existed until just now. Today.”

“No, that’s not possible, Carl. That would make him the pitbull lady’s child. And then…” She trailed off. “Oh my god. So that’s what the AI meant.

And Miss Beatrice knew you had a brother, and she was hiding it from you?

That’s… that’s something Georgina would do!”

I swallowed. I was so suddenly overwhelmed, I didn’t even ask who the hell Georgina was.

Goddamn you, Beatrice. Up until that moment, I realized I’d never been mad at her. Even after all the cheating, all the lying, I hadn’t been angry. I was just pissed at myself for being so stupid and naïve. Not until now. Now that it was too late.

I knew what had happened. Tami-Lynn had written to me, probably on Facebook. I hadn’t seen it, but Bea had. But why wouldn’t she tell me about it? This was different than a woman hitting on me. Was it because she didn’t want me knowing about my own brother? Why? What was there to be jealous of?

She didn’t want me leaving. That was the only explanation. I would’ve come here, to Iowa, and she knew it. I felt sick. Still, though, a part of me—a small part—wanted to give Beatrice the benefit of the doubt. That was ridiculous considering all I now knew, but there was always part of me that desperately wanted there to be good somewhere. In everybody I met, despite them showing me the truth over and over. Maybe, just maybe, she thought she was protecting me. Protecting me from my father.

This doesn’t matter. This is done. It’s in the past, and it’s blinding you.

It’s making you weak. It’s what they want. They’re trying to break you.

“Carl,” Donut asked. “Do you think we’re done, now? With the card battles?”

I reached over and patted her on the head. My chat was starting to fill with one horror story after another. People were, indeed, facing hydras similar to the one we’d just fought. People were running. They were dying.

They were refusing to fight.

“No, Donut. I don’t think we are. Not yet.”

“Very well,” Donut said. “Come on, Mongo. I think it’s safe now. Let’s find out what sort of loot they left us.”

A whole deck of cards spread out, floating in the air over the spot in the burned-out trailer where my father had died. Donut moved to investigate them. The hydra had only managed to summon two totems, but it had four in the deck. Alpha Carl. King Croissant and two more.

Donut scoffed at the third totem. It was a level-70 Belly Acher named Bam-Bam. The round, meatball pet was the same type of pet that was owned by Donut’s nemesis, Tserendolgor. It had been one of the choices when we first picked Mongo. The tagline on the card was, “I eat dinosaurs. Yummy- yummy.” I remembered watching Ren’s pet fight during the Butcher’s Masquerade, and these things were badass.

The fourth was Leveled-Up Frank. That was what it was called. It was crawler Frank Q. Husband to Maggie My and father to Yvette. He’d been long dead, killed by a Maggie-controlled Chris way back on the Iron Tangle.

This wasn’t really him just like Alpha Carl really wasn’t me. He was a level-90 Blood Assassin Night Elf, and I was glad the hydra never had a chance to summon him because he would’ve been a fast, tough opponent.

That, and he would’ve had a ton of stupid shit to say.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, examining the totem. The existence of Frank as a card opened up a new, horrific possibility I hadn’t even considered. I hadn’t seen a single instance of this in the cookbook, of them bringing back dead crawlers. There were a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to handle that. Before I even examined anything else, I sent out a message to everyone.

Carl: Remember, it’s not really them. Especially not the cards. Don’t let them get under your skin. Don’t let them break you.

Not everyone was fighting the hydra. Elle reported her boss was just three trolls, and they’d killed them easily. Li Na and her team had to fight some cyclops tiger/fox hybrid thing. Katia was facing down a hydra right now, and I was waiting for an update. Imani was in trouble. Her team still didn’t have all the tokens. We hadn’t heard from either Prepotente or Florin in a while.

I moved my attention back to the cards. In addition to the four totems, there was a single Steal Totem mystic card, which was ridiculously powerful even though it was consumable. There were also two of the Cripple snares, which were also consumable. The protection utility card Donut had stolen, called Temporary Shield, only protected a totem from a single snare, but Donut had used it to great effect the last battle. The hydra also had a mess of the regular utilities, including several Time Extend and Heal Totem cards.

In the end, while the last boss’s deck had been strong, ours was clearly

stronger. Much stronger, and it had relied on the hydra itself to win the fight.

I hoped the secret to killing that thing would help others who were facing it now.

“Fuck,” I said, examining the other object sitting next to the pile of cards.

It was a bulky, leather bag containing several items. The bag itself was decorated with the same boxer pattern as our team flag. I couldn’t actually grab it as I wasn’t the squad leader, but I could read the description: Champion Pack.

Offered only to those who have defeated the keymaster, the champion pack contains the following items: Backup slot: Allows space for two extra totems to be kept on reserve.

With this pack you may now carry a total of eight totems, but you still may only keep six in your active deck.

A champion trophy to display in your personal space.

A cooler filled with yellow Gatorade in case you want to do that dump-Gatorade-on-your-head-in-celebration thing.

Two Flee cards.

Warning: Flee card mechanics will change during the final phase.

Listen for the upcoming announcement for details.

Donut gasped after she finally examined the champion pack. “Carl, we got a trophy! We’re going to need a trophy case!”

“Yeah, that’s great,” I said. “Listen, Donut…”

“So, which of these four totems should we keep? Obviously Alpha Carl would make a great bench warmer.”

I sighed. “The Tummy Acher and nobody else.”

“First off, absolutely not. I will not have a disgusting, Mongo-eating meatball in my deck. And we certainly aren’t going to keep King Croissant.

We only get to keep two, so Alpha Carl and Frank are the best two choices.”

“Frank probably would be a good card, but no. He was an asshole, but he was a person, one of us, and I’m not going to let them use him like that. No, Donut.”

“But it’s not really him. You said so yourself. It’s just a stupid card made to look like him.”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to draw the line somewhere.”

Donut looked like she was going to object, but then thought better of it.

“He probably wouldn’t listen to me anyway. But what about Alpha Carl? He does have great hair.”

“His hair was just my hair slicked back! And no, Donut.”

“Well, we’re not taking the meatball.”

“All right,” I said. “We won’t take any of them. We can save the empty slots for the next time we fight.”

“Okay,” Donut said after a moment. She turned to flip the floating totem cards up in the air. “Goodbye, King Croissant,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I never got to know you, little brother cousin.” She flipped up, and the card dissipated into dust. She then flipped Bam-Bam the Tummy Acher away.

“And I’m perfectly happy never having met you, Mr. dinosaur killer.

Disgusting.”

The last two totem cards—Leveled-Up Frank and Alpha Carl—blinked

and disappeared on their own.

“Hey!” Donut cried.

I groaned. “They added themselves to your cards, didn’t they?”

“It says we can’t rip them until we get another card. So I guess we’re

stuck with them for now.”

“Great,” I muttered.