The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 57

[ 57 ]

TIME UNTIL LEVEL COLLAPSE: 4 DAYS, 12 HOURS.

th <Note added by Crawler Tipid, 4Edition> It was me or him, and I chose to save myself. I didn’t think. I reacted. I reacted to save myself. Anybody else would do the same. I keep telling myself that again and again. Does that make me evil? No, I don’t think it does, not when I think of it logically. Then why do I feel that way?

I paced back and forth, trying to figure out the last part of the plan while Donut rearranged her deck for sustained combat. I now knew where we were.

We’d actually teleported deeper into Havana, but we were in a small, forested area surrounded by trees with the city just a few blocks away. We were about five kilometers from the church exit and 15 from the capitol building. I didn’t know which one Quan would go to, but I suspected he’d head for the further one.

It was still dark outside, but the sun would rise soon.

I only had half an idea. Think. Think. Think.

Ren: Carl, I gotta say, those teleport traps really fucked us. Khulan isn’t even back yet. We set off those teleports and a goddamned alarm trap that I had to pull into my inventory because it wouldn’t shut up. It was playing a Backstreet Boys song.

Donut: YOU’RE LUCKY HE DIDN’T BLOW YOUR CHEATING ASS UP.

Ren: If he’d blown us up, you wouldn’t have anybody blocking the

door, now would you?

Donut: IT WOULD BE WORTH IT.

“Donut, chill. We need them.”

Carl: There’re more regular teleports outside on the stairs. Best leave them there. Set more of your own traps if you have any. If he’s coming, it’ll be soon. Be careful. I think he can go invisible.

“Don’t tell her where the traps are! Even if they stop Quan, we’re still going to have to fight them. Her meatball wants to eat Mongo. And who the heck is Khulan? I’ve never met a Khulan. Is that a boy name or a girl name? I bet they’re a cheater, too.”

Khulan was a woman, part of Ren’s team. I’d never talked with her, but I’d seen her a few times on the recap along with the rest of Ren’s squad. I couldn’t remember her class, but she was human. She would paralyze people while Ren torched them with her flamethrower. Ren’s regular party was normally seven or eight people, so I didn’t know who the last member was or who her squad consisted of. I knew she’d had a terrible time during phase two, and only three of them had survived.

“We’re not out of this yet, Donut. Take a deep breath. Stick to the plan.”

“What’s the plan? We don’t have a plan yet! I can’t Puddle Jump that far, and my Skedaddle won’t work like that, either. We don’t know where he’s going!”

I reached down and scratched her, trying to calm her. Myself, too. Her eyes were flashing as she quickly rearranged her cards. “Listen.” I lowered my voice, trying to sound soothing. We were in a hurry, but this was important to get out. “Even if we don’t stop him, I have my bone key benefit.

I can still open that door. Imani is our first priority, and our friend. We’re trying to save her. But we are safe for now. Okay?”

“Okay,” Donut said after a moment.

“And Ren is our friend, too. I know you don’t like her, but we can still do this without having to hurt our friends. We’ll do what we can. I will use that bone key if it means I don’t have to fight either of them. You saying inflammatory shit is going to make them not trust us.”

Donut didn’t say anything. She was shaking with fear. She would never like Ren. And she didn’t trust the bone key benefit.

I didn’t trust it, either. I thought of Tipid, and their last few entries into the cookbook. Of the terrible suspicion I had about how that key worked. I didn’t have time to think about it, and I put it in the back of my mind.

I reached down and picked up Samantha with two hands. I brought her up and looked her in the eyes. She was covered in sand and gore. She felt heavier than usual, and there was a slight vibration to her that wasn’t normally there. She still had the Desperado Club logo tattooed on her neck where Katia had tapped it with the poke and stick tattoo kit, but the ink was starting to fade.

“Samantha,” I said. “This is important, so pay attention.”

“We’ve discussed this, Carl. If you want to date me, you must get in line.

Maybe if you fight Louis for my honor I’ll consider it, but not if you mess up his beautiful, squishy face.”

I resisted the urge to shake her. “We don’t have time. You haven’t been honest with us. You have to tell us what you can do.”

She just looked at me.

“You mean, like, with my tongue?”

“Goddamnit, Samantha. You teleported an entire beach back to us. You can fly. A while back when we were in the simulation room, you almost cast some sort of attack spell. I can feel how much power you have coursing through you. But I need to know what you can do. What you can cast.”

She opened her mouth and closed it.

“Please,” I said.

Her mouth started to quiver. “I… I don’t know why, but sometimes I feel stronger than usual. Before I was banished to the Nothing when I had my original body, I would get more powerful when someone prayed to me or bought a charm with my likeness or when I melted someone who wouldn’t date one of my worshippers with my Acid Bath. You know, like normal stuff.

But it’s not like that anymore. My father took my power away and my whore of a mother tried to steal my man, and everything changed.”

“Okay, but when you do feel stronger, what can you do?”

“I can fly. I can fuck up anybody who looks at me funny.”

I took a breath. “Be more specific.”

“I can help spells. I can make them more powerful. But it doesn’t always do what I want. Like, sometimes it’s a lot stronger than I thought it would be.

And sometimes it doesn’t work too good. I used to have this dissolve spell that was really great, but I haven’t been able to get it to work. Not on the, uh,

outside. And sometimes my magic does stuff without me asking.”

She suddenly burst into tears. “It’s because of this stupid body. You have to get MaeMae to the next floor so she can get the supplies to get me into that flesh golem. I can do all sorts of good stuff when I have a real body.”

“Other than flying and enhancing spells, can you cast anything on your own right now? Can you teleport me?”

She continued to weep. She spoke through gasped sobs. “Teleport? No.

I’m useless. Oh gods, it’s true. I’m useless!” She turned in my hands. “Don’t look upon me. Now you know my dark secret. I’ve been faking it the whole time. It’s all a lie!” She blew snot all over my hands and started rubbing her nose on me. “I’m a fraud. How can anybody love me? You’re going to tell Louis, aren’t you? You’ll tell him, and he’s going to reject me! Just like my king did when he left me for my mother. Everybody always leaves me.”

“Samantha,” I said, trying not to let my exasperation show in my voice.

“You’re far from useless. You’ve helped us a bunch of times. And you’re getting more powerful by the moment. I’m not going to leave you. You’re part of the team.”

She sniffed and blew out more snot. She grunted and turned herself to face me again. “Really? I’m part of the team?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She sniffled again. “Why do you want to teleport?”

“I need a way to get somewhere fast, but we don’t know where it’ll be until the last minute. It’s one of two places. Somewhere far. I thought maybe since you’d gotten to Shi Maria so fast, you could teleport more than you were saying.”

“I didn’t teleport to MaeMae. I told you what really happened. I hitched a ride. I tried to stop a train and I got stuck to the front, and when the train left the edge of the map, I got squished and bounced away, and I landed in her web. I might have wrecked the train, too.”

“You never told me that.”

“Why don’t you do what that scary lady does? The mean one whose dog got his head popped off by Donut? I know you have some of those traps, too.”

“It’s too late. I have to set those up…” I trailed off, and I blinked. Holy shit. Of course. I jumped into my inventory and searched for the two-part teleport traps. How many did I have? I only needed one set, but more would be better. “Samantha, I could kiss you.”

“I’m not a whore, Carl.”

Mordecai: There’s only one more of the two-part sets for sale on the market. That’s it. They are really expensive. Too bad the Desperado is

still closed.

Carl: I have four sets. Florin?

Florin: Hang on, mate. I’m going in right now. I hate going down this early, but I’ll let you know. Okay. Going through the door right now.

You’re right. It’s a room. About five by five meters with a stairwell in the middle. It’s one of the glowy stairs, not one that looks like a real set of stairs. It’s just like the room with the giant globe from the beginning of the floor.

Carl: Do you have any traps? See if it’ll let you drop one on the floor.

Florin: I got plenty. Dropping one now.

There was a long pause.

Florin: Sorry, mate. Got an error that says, “This area is outside the level. No traps may be set in the stairwell chamber. Nice try, though.”

My heart dropped. For a second there, I thought we’d found a way to avoid any more bloodshed.

Carl: Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. We’ll have to do it the hard way.

Florin: I reckon after what you did with the bubbles on the fifth floor, they ain’t too keen on letting people teleport their way out of trouble anymore.

Carl: Mordecai. My trap master skill lets me put traps on non-static items. Will that work? Like, if I put it on the back of an automaton, and it walks into the room with me?

Mordecai: I really doubt it. Sorry, kid. The rules regarding stairwell chambers are even more strict than those surrounding saferooms. And even if you could, we only have a couple of them amongst us. I think that Lucia kid buys them up the moment they appear on the market.

Florin: She does indeed. Teleport traps and alcohol are the only things she purchases.

Carl: Damnit. Okay. Sorry for making you go down early, Florin.

Florin: No worries, mate. See you on the other side. Keep your head up. Do me a favor. If you get word of Lucia, send me a message. She has

good days and bad days, and it’s been more bad than good lately. Li Jun says she just took out half the squads who don’t hold keys, and they’re holding back, hoping they don’t have to fight her. Any message you send I’ll get when I pop out onto the ninth floor.

Carl: I will.

Florin: Looking forward to tearing it up again with you.

Samantha was still in my grip, turned upside down with her jagged, latex stump facing up at me. I remembered that badger bartender guy who’d gotten his arm stuck in there. It’d had an acid effect. He’d eventually been ripped in half by Minge the demon, but when Samantha had discharged the rest of him, the flesh had been burned off. I hoped the small, fist-sized spider automaton would be okay. It had the anchor half of a teleport trap affixed to its flat, top surface, designed specifically to hold such things. Samantha insisted that it would be okay, that her “Juice” would only burn flesh.

I took a breath and shoved the little spider inside. It pushed easily into the latex. The small robot made a scared, disapproving noise as it disappeared.

My fingers did not burn. I had the impression that it took a minute for the acid to start working.

Samantha bit me on the hand as I shoved it in. I grabbed the second, red- painted automaton, this one with the trap Donut had set. I was careful to only touch the sides of this one. Donut didn’t have the trap master skill, and she couldn’t use the two-part traps at all, but thanks to the hunter battles at the end of the previous floor, she was now level five in the Automaton Pilot skill, which also allowed her to affix some other traps to the back of the little robots. This one was also a teleport trap. A rarer one, actually, but one that required a lower level to use. It easily slipped in with a little slurp noise.

“Samantha, how many of these can I fit in here?”

“I can take anything you got.”

I shuddered as I slipped two more automatons in. These were the same as the first.

Samantha stifled a giggle. “This is just like…”

“Don’t. Please, no. Just make sure you pop them out the moment you land, and tell me when you do. The last thing either of us want is me teleporting directly into, you know.”

A new chat popped back up. It was just Mordecai.

Mordecai: You need to quit trying to help everybody else and focus on saving your own ass. I think you’re onto something with the teleport

traps, but I don’t see how it’s going to work for anybody else. In order for those things to work, you have to set up both halves yourself. You can’t set the trigger half and have someone else set the anchor. If that was the case, you’d be able to just teleport around at will using the guild rooms to trade trap anchors with other crawlers.

As we talked, I dropped Samantha and started moving through the clearing, arming the trigger half of the three teleport traps. The first I set to only be tripped by myself.

Carl: But we can do that, and I hadn’t even thought of it. At least I can. I can teleport if we use the automatons. We’re doing it now. I can set the anchor on the back of the automaton and give it to someone else, and I can go wherever I want. After this, I’m going to make sure Donut trains up the trap ability so she can do it, too. We might not be able to teleport directly into a stairwell chamber, and it won’t do us any good to zap into an area with more keys than squads, but if there’s someone out there with an extra key… But first we need to save Imani and Ren’s squad. We’re just waiting to see where Quan shows up first. Donut is preparing to activate the aggro of the duendes. There’s like a hundred of them out there, so she can keep the battle going for a while if she has to.

She stays here, and I go in.

Mordecai: Okay. Assume you get the keys. What then?

Carl: I’ll give one to Imani and one to Ren using our flee cards. If we can’t find someone with an extra key, I’ll use the bone key on myself. We have options now.

Mordecai: Saving Imani, I understand. But I wouldn’t count on there being any extra keys floating around. First, you’ll only have a few days to get Donut’s trap skill up high enough. And you need to rethink removing one of your bones, potentially a vital one, to save that other crawler. Plus you’ll lose your jacket, and all the benefits. It’s a shitty trade off no matter what you do.

Carl: It’s three other crawlers. Good people. We need everybody we can.

Mordecai: Everybody else needs you more. Donut needs you. It’s stupid to risk it. You don’t know if the teleport trick will work. I’ve never even heard of this bone key benefit before. I have seen other magic keys, and they don’t always work as advertised. Self-preservation is not being selfish. You have to take care of yourself first.

Carl: If I have to, I will make the tough decision. But I will be damned if I’m not going to do everything in my power to prevent it first.

I almost made that mistake already on this floor, and I would’ve lost everything. I’m not going to do it again. Not until it’s the only possible

choice.

Mordecai: What does that even mean?

I ignored him as I spray painted an arrow on the ground, pointing to the third teleport trap. I looked at Samantha and had a thought. I pulled one more of the two-part teleport traps out. My last, for now. “Samantha. Come here.

I’m gonna place one more inside of you.” I put the other half, the actual trap part, back into my inventory.

“Oh boy,” Samantha said as she hopped into my hands and presented her neck hole. It wriggled like the butt of a puppy.

“Please don’t do that.”

“I can’t help it. It does it by itself when I’m excited. You can put it as deep as you…”

“Stop,” I said as I shoved this one into her. “Keep this one inside you.

Can you control what you keep in and what you, uh, expel?”

“Of course. That’s what kegels are for, Carl.”

A new chat popped up.

Ren: He’s here. I think he may have disabled the teleport traps by the entrance. He’s invisible, but Chuluuna can see him. He’ll reappear once the fight starts. He hasn’t come in yet. Being cautious. We’re hiding and will confront him if he gets in. Get your ass here if you want to help.

Carl: I’m on my way. My aim kinda sucks, and it’s about 15 kilometers away, so it’ll take a few minutes. Hold as long as you can.

“Donut,” I said as I pulled the head tosser extension out. “It’s time.”

I now knew who all three members of Ren’s team were. Chuluuna was also a human, but he had a strength-based class that allowed him to turn his skin to stone. He was Ren’s main tank—at least he was until she got that pet —and he could withstand her flamethrower. He was also husband to the third crawler in their group, Khulan. I prayed Donut was wrong and we wouldn’t have to fight them.

I carefully side-stepped my trap as Samantha hopped into the head-tosser.

I really needed to practice more with this thing, but I was already getting better at hitting a target. The problem was, I couldn’t see the capitol building from here. I had to get her over most of the buildings in downtown without

over-shooting her into the ocean.

Deep breath. You can do this.

I spun and tossed. Samantha rocketed away.

“Carl,” Donut said as we waited. “What if they don’t fight at all, and he gives his second key to the dog lady?”

“He can’t just give up a key. They have to fight. It would require him to use a Flee card, and he won’t do that. It’s too risky. I don’t think he can choose which key he’d lose, so he’d risk having to fight Imani and possibly us again. He went to the further stairwell because he’s probably hoping we haven’t talked to the people there and warned them of his tactics. He’ll try to fight and will go straight to the stairs the moment he gets Ren’s team to teleport away. He’ll take the other key with him. Now go start your fight with the duendes. Be careful. Mongo, keep her safe, but don’t kill them too fast.”

Mongo screeched and then turned toward the woods and started stalking toward the red dots. The tiny mobs were all over the place, swinging through the trees, chattering angrily.

“Don’t send them into the teleports until I say so,” I said. “Make sure you’re protected first. Make the best combo you can.”

Donut was clearly nervous. “Don’t let that meatball eat you.”

Samantha: THAT WAS A GOOD THROW! I’M ACROSS THE STREET! I QUEEFED OUT THE SPIDERS!

“Here we go,” I called as I stepped forward into the first teleport trap.