The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 61

[ 61 ]

th <Note added by crawler Milk, 6Edition> Even though you can sometimes move the platforms upon which the stairwells sit, you cannot put the exit portal into your inventory.

You can’t bring a stairwell into your saferoom. I watched one get hit by an Utter Annihilation wand, and it remained unscathed. I believe that means they are indestructible.

th <Note added by crawler Herot, 16Edition> Milk is correct here about the stairwells. It states in the rules manual that while stairwells may be gated until certain conditions are met, the stairwells themselves are not allowed to be removed from the playing field.

th <Note added by crawler Rosetta, 9Edition> The only way for a crawler to move from one floor to the next is via a stairwell. That’s it. It is an unbreakable rule. There is no skipping floors. At the end of Faction Wars, after the viceroys pulled out their last minute victory, a portal appeared, and several of the

remaining fucks stepped within. It was all of them. The orcs, the viceroys, the operatics, even the nagas, all together, laughing as if they weren’t just bathing in each other’s entrails the day before. It appeared it was taking them to another part of the dungeon. Some sort of nightclub on a different floor for a victory party. They dragged several unwilling NPCs with them, including the librarian elves from the college, whose help was instrumental in our survival. A crawler tried to jump through the portal to save the NPCs, and he was stopped like it was a wall of glass. He tried casting a spell through the portal, but it did not work, though the attempt did catch the attention of the orc prince. The orc stepped back through the glass into the smoldering remains of Larracos, lassoed the crawler, and returned to the portal. The rope pulled itself within, and it cut the crawler in half.

We watched as the orc and his friends laughed, just there on the other side of the glass. It was the last crawler they killed, of the thousands who fell during that pointless game.

Tonight, I will dream of watching them burn. Tonight, I will pretend I was smart enough to find a way to lance them from afar.

Comrades, I hope you help me realize my dream one day.

“IT’S ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS THEY CAN JUST BREAK THE DOORS,”

Donut said as we ran. Samantha, having sent the zombies wandering off in the wrong direction, was looping back to meet us one street over. “How can they even break the stairwells anyway? One of them was on a submarine that got eaten by a shark and then blown up, and it was just fine. It’s not fair! I thought it was always supposed to be winnable. If they make it impossible, what’s the point? It’s cheating!”

We were running toward the church. We would have to skirt past the demon atop the building. We didn’t have time to go the long way. The building loomed. The demon, after being forced to beckon us, had resumed shooting fire straight up into the air. The tornado of demon seagulls grew by the moment. The ground immediately around the building was a sea of red dots, all possessed zombie demons.

I was in the chat with Sister Ines, insisting I was on my way, but there

was no way I’d voluntarily walk into that trap. We had to get to the church before she set her demons to trash the doorway.

I stomped heavily onto a zombie fish, splattering it. We continued on our way, crossing over a massive pileup of cars. Ahead, Samantha appeared, lowering into an alleyway. She’d stolen a shawl thing from a vendor’s booth, and it hung over her head.

I grunted as I stomped another zombie fish. The things were everywhere, flopping all about. “Ines isn’t threatening to break the stairwell. Just the doorway to the stairwell, and the only reason she hasn’t done it yet is because it’s in a church. It’s not a portal, and we know the stairwells are actually right there. We can see them on the map. Just the doors themselves are magical, and the walls surrounding it, too. It’s confusing, but the stairwell chambers themselves are fine. We’re not the only ones this happened to. Did you see Katia’s message in the group chat?”

A group of former daughters who’d ended up in Turkey had managed to kill another crawler and take the key, but the same thing had happened.

They’d fought their battle right in front of the door, and it’d damaged the exit. Their key had disappeared right after they’d gotten it. There were several instances now of crawlers threatening to destroy the doorways if an opposing team didn’t give up their key. Those who’d already gone down had the right idea. It was getting uglier by the moment.

This whole floor had been designed to turn us against one another, to cull us down to nothing. It was working.

The event with the zombies wasn’t just happening here, either, though it seemed we had the worst of it. The demon eviction event was worldwide. My entire chat was filled with people dealing with zombies all over all the coastal regions, which in turn meant they were having to deal with demons, too.

Donut said she’d already received a string of swears from Prepotente, who blamed me for this.

“Does that mean we can dig through the rubble, and the stairwell might be down there?” Donut asked.

“Maybe. I doubt it, but that’s what I’m hoping. The daughter team are digging now, looking for it. If they find it, they’ll let everybody know, and we’ll do the same thing if we can. Maybe we can blow up the building ourselves, and the stairs will just be there, open. Like when we couldn’t get through the magical door during the Remex quest on the third floor. We just blew up the building to get inside.”

“If that does work, I bet Ren would feel really stupid about bowing out

early.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” I said.

“I suppose you’re right. It took literally dying for her to finally admit she was wrong.”

I had serious doubts digging for the chamber would work. That seemed too easy. The keys were the way out, and losing them was pretty much the same as dying. Donut had a point about it not being fair, but like Mordecai had said so many times, the dungeon was self-balancing, and it messed with the rules to keep the drama ratcheted up. We’d skipped an entire floor. There were more crawlers alive at the beginning of this floor than they’d been expecting.

It was an uncomfortable thought. When we’d started this floor, there’d been over 38,000 crawlers left alive. Mordecai hadn’t said anything about it, but sometime in the past few weeks he’d turned off the surviving number of crawlers from displaying in the personal space. I deliberately didn’t look at it when we entered regular saferooms. I didn’t want to know.

We’d been dying off faster than usual up until the start of the sixth floor, which was usually one of the deadliest. That was when we’d really started working together and had turned things around. Without anyone actually dying on the seventh, the dungeon had some catching up to do.

I wasn’t certain what our survival count was at the moment, but I did know what the numbers were for several instances of previous seasons at the start of the ninth.

The average number of crawlers who stepped onto the ninth floor was just south of 8,000. I knew of one where it was only 500. thWhat was worse, less than 1,000 crawlers usually made it to the 10. th Sometimes, it was zero. For the 11floor, the average was less than 10 crawlers. Very few chose to push on instead of making deals.

There was an essay on this in the cookbook, written by Herot, who posited the focus of the fans shifted once Faction Wars finished. While top tier crawlers would have diehard followers, much of the attention shifted to the intrigue and scheming and positioning of the individual elites preparing for the Ascendency game. The crawlers themselves were treated more like sands in an hourglass. The moment the last one died or took a deal, the Ascendency game would start, and the timing of that moment could change everything.

No, I decided. Those of us without keys were pretty much already dead.

All of this stuff with the demons and zombies was just a way to make those deaths interesting.

The temperature was now sweltering. We were only two blocks from the tall, wide building that housed the snake atop it.

“What is that thing doing?” Donut asked. “Isn’t that snake thing supposed to be a water goddess or something? Why is it shooting fire into the sky?”

“No clue,” I said. I leaped past a street vendor cart, but my foot caught it, and it tumbled over, spilling what smelled like coconut cookies everywhere.

“Samantha, do you know what he’s casting?”

“He is fighting the charm spell,” Samantha said. “He’s not as strong because he’s in the body of that snake lady. He’s probably really embarrassed that he’s being controlled like that. The ladies in the harem will probably make fun of him. It’s a bad look. Do you like my new headband?”

“It is quite lovely,” Donut said. She shot a magic missile at a zombie crab, and it exploded before it could warn the others.

“So, you don’t think Sister Ines has full control over him?” I asked. “The fire is because of the charm spell?”

“He is casting a spell to get home. It’s a portal. They try casting it a lot in the Nothing, but it doesn’t work there because he needs to suck a lot of souls in for it to work. It’ll probably work here, though.”

Oh, shit. “A portal spell? Like the ones the other demons cast when they touch people?”

Samantha was suddenly chewing on one of those coconut cookies, and she had crumbles all over her face. “Yeah. Same sort of thing, but he’s a big boy and big boys need big doors and lots of souls. Plus it’ll be in the sky above, not the ground, and it’ll suck everything up like that cute but sad metal guy you have floating in your house that slurps up bags of potato chips and cleans when Mongo tinkles on the couch.”

I looked up at the sky, and the red cloud from the fire was right above our head and was growing slowly. Uh-oh.

“He’s trying to cast the spell, but Sister Ines is controlling him also? I don’t understand. Is she making him cast this?”

“No. I think the Donut-looking lady isn’t strong enough to control him. I think she’s trying to stop him, but he’s casting it anyway. She’s not strong enough to even be doing what she’s doing now, so she’s gotta have some help. She probably worships another god.”

“She doesn’t,” I said. “We just fought her, and I would’ve seen if she worshiped a new god. She’s not going to willingly do that. It’s a thing for her.”

Imani: Holy crap, Carl. One of the ram guys and a mantaur just came out of the temple and tried to fight one of the pleasure demons. I watched the whole thing. The demon cast something, and it pulled all three of them down and away. The demons have a ranged hell portal attack. It left a hole in the ground the size of a hot tub. The portal is still there. It’s sucking everything around into it like it’s a black hole. It’s a one-minute portal, and it says “Entrance to Sheol, Floor 15.” It’s literally pulling bricks off the walls of the building. Wait, something is

happening.

Carl: Fuck me. Keep me updated.

“We need to be extra careful,” I said to Donut. “The full-strength demons don’t need to touch you to drag you to hell. They also have a portal attack. It sounds like it’s wide, too, so they don’t have to be super precise. The hole hits the ground and sucks everything in.”

“Oh my God, Carl. So we have holes flying around everywhere? Holes on the ground and a giant vacuum in the sky? How are we supposed to fight against that?”

“We can’t. We have to get them to suck other NPCs or mobs away first.

The demons go away if they also bring something down with them.”

“All the NPCs are dead! It’s just zombies! Do those count? I haven’t seen a real NPC since we got into the city!”

“I’m pretty sure regular zombies and undead don’t count. They have to be corporeal NPCs or crawlers. We gotta find some somewhere.”

“What about the ghommid village?” Donut asked. “It’s just two blocks over!”

“They’re undead,” I said. “It won’t work.”

Imani: Okay. Another ram cleric came out and avoided the first hole, but another demon attacked. That one opened a second portal and sucked the new cleric in, but the demon is still here. He’s shouting at the entrance of the temple, demanding someone else come out and face him.

It says “One of Two” over the second portal. He hasn’t seen me yet. He’s waiting right outside.

Carl: It sounds like the bigger demons need to banish two souls in order to return. Don’t risk it. Stay in the saferoom.

Imani: I wonder how many the giant one needs?

I was just wondering the same thing.

Carl: How many demons are left in the church?

Imani: Just one inside, and there’s more outside. They’re congregating in the area outside the church, and I can only see so much from my position here. I can’t tell how many. It’s not a whole lot, but it’s more than five. It still says they’re minions of Sister Ines, but they’re obviously jumping at the chance to use their portal skills to escape back th down to the 15floor.

Carl: Okay. I have an idea, but you gotta do it away from the exit. A while back I, uh, locked the stripper guys in the training arcade. They’re probably pretty pissed about it by now. They’re helping me with something for the next floor. Mordecai will catch you up, but as soon as you see what I did, you’ll understand. That should get rid of the demons.

It’ll hopefully clear up the church area.

Imani: I’m on it.

While I waited, I pulled up the group chats, and they were full of people dealing with an influx of demons. This was even happening to people away from coastal regions. In typical dungeon fashion, it’d spread over everything faster than really possible. I scanned until I saw the information I was looking for.

Rezan: By god. Masoud is dead! He got touched by a zombie polecat that was possessed by a demon! It just touched his foot, and it tried to pull him away through a portal. The demon went through the hole, but Masoud exploded when he touched it! He blew up just like my mother did when she went into the bathroom on the first floor!

Mandla: If it’s like the bathrooms, you don’t explode when you touch the portal. All of your equipment is sucked through, but you aren’t allowed to pass, and everything you’re wearing passes through you to get into the hole. It’s like a portal trap. If it’s caught in the portal’s pull, it’s th going through. But it’s a portal to the 15floor, and we’re not allowed to go down there, so we get stopped, and everything behind us gets pulled through anyway, hence we explode.

Rezan: I wasn’t asking for a science lesson, you turnip. It doesn’t matter how you explode. You touch it, and you’re dead.

Mandla: Not if you’re naked.

Rezan: So you’re saying we fight the zombie demons naked?

Mandla: That’s what I’m doing.

I stopped dead in the street. I didn’t really know either of these crawlers, but I had met them both once long ago. Their conversation triggered something. A memory of Katia and Louis and Firas, and something that had happened on the fifth floor aboard the Twister. That plus a few entries from the cookbook. I jumped into the conversation.

Carl: Rezan. What happened when the portal closed?

Rezan: What do you mean what happened? He blew up like someone shoved a dynamite stick up his ass. Some of him is in my teeth. He was a prick, but what a way to go. He’s everywhere. All his gear got sucked into the hole, and he exploded so much I can’t even loot his inventory. He had most of our gold, too. The rest was in the saferoom. He was the one who bought the saferoom, and now it’s gone. I’m really in trouble here.

Carl: But the demon still went away? And the hole went away

immediately?

Rezan: It sure did.

Carl: It only took the stuff the guy was touching?

Rezan: Yes. Holy shit, any more questions? I’m running for my life here.

I looked up at the giant demon. If they were zombie demons, they only needed one soul. They touched a person, a portal opened, and the demon returned home. The portal closed immediately. If they were the full-powered, level 140 demons, the portal lasted a minute or two, sucked in everything nearby, and they needed two souls in order to punch their ticket home.

The demon stuck in the body of the possessed city boss loomed over us, still pouring fire upward, several hundred, perhaps a thousand feet in the air. I still didn’t know what Sister Ines had to do with any of this, but an idea started to percolate.

“Carl, can we not just stand in the middle of the street?” Donut asked as she fired another missile, this time at a zombie seagull.

“Hang on,” I said. “I’m thinking.”

“Think faster!”

Sister Ines: I am losing my patience, Carl.

My heart thrashed. What had Ren said? Three out of four teams hadn’t gotten a key? I’d been wrong before. The game was trying to balance the unfairness of the doorways breaking. I saw it now. It was just doing it in a really, really fucked-up way.

Carl: Everybody who can hear this. Quick, let me know if you’ve been getting any of those Build Trench scrolls in your inventory. I’ve

gotten like 50 of them.

Mandla: I have a ton of them, too.

Louis: They’re like the bandages and torches on the first floor.

Carl: Katia, I don’t have a direct line to the former daughters stuck in Turkey. Is there an update?

Katia: They said they found the chamber, but the stairwell is contained within. It’s just a big, rectangular, room, and they can’t get inside. It’s almost like a shipping container, but when the magical door broke, it just left a straight wall and no way to get inside. One has a Hole spell like Donut’s, but it didn’t work. Another tried a Phase Through Walls spell, and it didn’t work, either. It’s like the walls are made of the same stuff as the magic doors.

None of this matters. Quit wasting time. Imani is going to get rid of the demons, and you can send her down the stairs. Then you can use your bone key benefit. It’ll be done. You can be through.

Three out of four teams. Thousands of people.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Imani snapped me out of it.

Imani: Carl, what the actual fuck is wrong with you?

Carl: Yell at me later. How many are there?

Imani: You infected over a dozen mercenaries with a disease that causes them to leak punk rock slugs every few minutes, and you locked them all in a room for almost a day. You locked them in a room where they die and get regenerated. How many do you think there are? There’s hundreds of them, including some slugs that are as high level as the mercenaries themselves. The entire room is filled with blood.

Carl: They’re not punk rock. They’re Sluggalos. And I only infected one of them. Doctor Bones. He has the same Super Spreader spell as I do, but his is better. I can only do it on one person once per hour. He infected the others all at the same time, and then he cast a spell on the slugs so they’re not so hostile after they come out.

Imani: Yeah, that part doesn’t work so great. They’re still pretty aggressive, especially the big ones. I opened the door just in time to see one swallow Steve whole. There’s way too many here to keep for the next floor. Carl, some of these things are huge! One of them has a damn

hatchet growing out of its head.

Carl: The Conscript spell is far from perfect. It makes them fight on our side, sort of. It doesn’t really change their attitude, and they can be rebellious. It’s kinda like turning them into totems. We’ll probably have to kill the highest level ones, but the rest are going into our infantry. For right now, since they were born in the arcade, you should be able to send the lowest level ones out the door toward the demons. Keep sending them until the demons are gone. If I can make it to a saferoom before the floor collapses, I’ll buy the barracks upgrade so we can keep the most powerful ones we can control. In the meantime, bring Doctor Bones with you if you have to. I don’t think you can let him go outside because he’s technically my mercenary.

Imani: He’s a member of the guild mercenary barracks. I can “borrow” him.

Carl: Huh. I didn’t know that. I still wouldn’t let him outside. I’m pretty sure if any of the stripper guys die outside of the training arcade, they die for real. Only some special types of mercenaries can regenerate.

Imani: Yeah, Carl. Speaking of regenerating. I had to cure the mercenaries of the slug disease. The room healer refused to do it. She and that Bucket Boy kid said you told them not to.

Carl: Wait, you can cure that stuff?

Imani: Yes, Carl. I am a healer. It’s what I do.

Carl: Good to know.

With that problem settled, I moved back to the messages I was composing. I sent out two separate ones. The first went to Prepotente, who was back in the Bahamas, meaning he was the closest crawler to us outside of Cuba.

Carl: Prepotente. Answer me fast. Please. Has the sky changed color over there? Is anything happening to the environment?

Carl: Mordecai. Quick. Give me the short, fast version of the Sheol

storyline.

Mordecai answered first.

Mordecai: It was set up a long time ago, but nobody has ever gotten that far, so it’s been running on its own for seasons and seasons with very little input from the outside. The demons get pulled out and used for quests and fights all the time, but we never get to see Sheol itself.

There’s no tourist activity at all on that floor. From what I understand,

there’s a queen, who’s in charge, and she has four sons, the princes, one of whom you’re dealing with right now. The queen and four sons are pretty much the same as gods. The four princes used to share a massive harem of demons, but one of the brothers banished them all to the Nothing, and there’s a bunch of intrigue going on within there, as you’ve already seen. And below them, there’s a whole matriarchal culture of demons with a multitude of other storylines we hear about but never see.

That’s it. We’ve never met the queen. That guy you’re looking at is one of the biggest bad guys in the whole dungeon. He shouldn’t be here this

early.

Carl: Okay. Thanks.

Prepotente: There is a red, sunset-like tinge to the sky coming from your area. Are you attempting to screw things up even more? The zombie event ended up killing all of my opponents before I could even get to them, I’ll have you know. That blood is on your hands.

Carl: Let me know if the sky changes. I’m trying to figure out if what’s about to happen is just here or if it’s going to be global.

Prepotente: If you’re involved, I’m quite certain it’ll be global. And not in a good way.

Carl: Eat my ass, Pony. Just let me know if the sky gets redder or if it starts to get hotter.

Prepotente: I will let you know if I notice any changes.

Carl: Actually, you’re the smartest guy I know. Let me run something by you really fast. Here’s the thing. I don’t want it to be local.

I want it to spread over the whole world. I need ideas.