The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 67

[ 67 ]

A GRAPHIC APPEARED AT THE BOTTOM CORNER OF THE INTERFACE. THIS was something new. It showed all the team names. As I watched, a rapid-fire string of miniature, face-down cards appeared after each team with a blip, blip, blip. It was a counter showing how many cards each team had. Donut had 21 cards, I knew. Katia and Li Na both had 20. Imani had 15, and Elle carried 22. The first six cards of each deck were highlighted with a glow, presumably indicating the totem cards.

At the bottom, separated by a space was the name Ysalte, followed by a

row of about 17 cards.

Amayon only had six. All totems.

Our goal was as difficult as it was clear. We had to play offense with Amayon and kill his six totems as soon as possible, which would allow us to talk to him. With the Vinegar Bitch, we had to play defense. We couldn’t hurt the goddess directly, but the moment she ran out of cards, she’d be able to nuke us from orbit with one of her spells. We had to keep her deck from running dry for the next ten minutes.

This was going to be a tough balance, even at five versus two.

Donut appeared terrified, but she was putting on a brave, determined face.

She’d switched back to her sailor cap. It used to look ridiculous on her, especially with her sunglasses, but it seemed more appropriate now somehow, in a way I couldn’t explain.

She hadn’t had time to pull her potions out, and if I pulled my own, they’d turn to vinegar. I pulled a few out anyway, remembering what the debuff said, and I tucked them on the ground behind her.

“You got this?” I asked as I quickly worked.

“I am the current reigning champion Persian cat in the galaxy. I have received more trophies and purple ribbons than anyone alive. And most

importantly, I am a warlord of the Princess Posse Faction Wars team.” She turned to regard me. “Yes, Carl. I got this.”

I gave her a pat and faced our opponents.

The goddess and the demon lord she’d enslaved.

And

Here

We Goooo!

The ten minute timer started to tick down.

Li Na, Katia, and Donut spread out behind us as their decks appeared in front of them. Mongo remained near Donut, as he’d been trained. The music with the heavy guitars rose in volume, rattling my teeth. Me, Li Jun, and Bautista spread out in a half circle as we rapidly talked strategy. Louis was currently hauling ass down the stairs and would meet up with Britney and Tran in the stairwell, and the three of them would continue back to the lobby.

That marked for death symbol was a major problem for him, but as long as we kept the goddess occupied for the next ten minutes, we could push that off to another time.

Samantha remained floating in the room, looking about.

Elle: Oh fuck me. More demons are coming. Trying to come in through the door down here. Your boss battle forced me and Imani to summon our damn decks, so we can’t cast spells. Doing our best to hold them back, but we might be running up toward you.

We had to watch where we stepped. Multiple holes and cracks dotted the flooring, and each time Amayon so much as shifted his position, new fractures appeared. This whole building was going to come down.

For just a moment, nobody moved. We all looked at each other, each one

of us sizing everyone up.

And then, it was on.

Chaos erupted all around me. So much happened at once, it was difficult to clock it all.

Li Na tossed out the first totem, which exploded out onto the ground in a flourish of snow and red sparkles.

Get ready to lose your mind! It’s Xing Tian!

“Oh my god, what is that?” Donut cried as she tossed a card of her own out.

Li Na’s Xing Tian totem was a level 80 creature that was a human

without a head. The large, shirtless man had a wide, cackling face built into the flesh of his hairless chest. He carried an axe in one hand and a large shield in the other.

“Hold and block!” Li Na shouted at her card, who gibbered something back at her.

Donut’s first move was The Thief card, which she cast on Amayon just as he swept out his own first totem. A card—not the one he was attempting to summon—flicked up out of his deck, resized itself, and landed in Donut’s hand.

“Holy wow, look at that card!” she called out.

Amayon’s totem landed with a heavy crash. It was a flaming rock creature. I didn’t have time to read the description before it fell through the floor and tumbled away.

Katia and Ysalte also made their first moves, both summoning totems at the same time. Katia summoned her scary-ass bird creature, followed by a consumable utility card called Timeless, which would keep the bird summoned forever.

The bird landed upon Katia’s shoulder with a fanfare that looked like colorful, burning embers and dancing baby pacifiers wafting into the sky, which would be odd as fuck if I’d really had time to think about it. The totem was a large, cat-sized raven, but its head was a skull of an infant human. The skull was punctuated with little holes filled with teeth. I’d once seen an infant skull before and knew that’s what they really looked like, but seeing it in real

life was terrifying.

Annie – Útburður. Level 80.

Katia leaned in and started whispering instructions to the totem.

The Vinegar Bitch’s summon was a familiar one. It was the first totem I’d helped Sister Ines’ team capture. Yago the monk seal. He was the same thing as our Geraldo.

This version of Yago, however, was different. He was now 25 levels higher than his regular 70. He crackled with obsidian-colored energy and was wider than he’d been before.

Yago – Monk Seal of the Earth Order. Level 95.

He’d been buffed with some sort of extra Earth magic. His headband had changed, and it was black with a red swirl.

“Oh, oh yeah, a bunch of bitches to fight.” He pointed a flipper at me and did a hop, waving his fins with karate noises. “Time for a rematch. Time for

Yago to go to poundtown on your ass!” He started flipping directly toward me, shouting “Yip, yip, yip!”

Crash! The seal crunched right through the floor, and he also plummeted away, screaming.

Ysalte grunted with annoyance. “You! Seal! Find him!” She bellowed down into the hole in the floor. “Find that one with my mark upon him, and kill him!”

Donut: LOUIS LOOK OUT A MONK SEAL IS COMING FOR YOU.

Elle: Come to us, Louis. We’re coming up the stairs!

Louis: A rock monster thing that looks like Chris is fighting us already! It’s level 120! It crashed through the ceiling!

Imani: We’re coming!

As that was happening, three more totems appeared. These were all from Amayon. He only had totem cards, and he was emptying his hand as rapidly as he could. The ground rumbled as they appeared all at once in a cacophony of overlapping explosions and fanfares. Two were the same thing, though they had different names. The third was entirely different.

Gallu – Level 100 Inferior Demon.

Mavet – Level 100 Inferior Demon.

These first two were tall, fat, winged demons with wide, evil faces, each carrying a whip and covered with leather and chains like they’d just stepped out of an underworld biker bar. They were small, male versions of that Slit demon who’d attacked us on the fifth floor.

Samantha screamed at the sight of them and flew across the room directly for them.

Gallu the demon reacted with surprising speed. He cracked his whip, and Samantha spun off, screaming about his mother as she ricocheted away.

The third newcomer was a ridiculously, over-the-top sexy looking, human-like, female demon with outrageously large breasts. Not quite Odette- sized breasts, but pretty close. They floated on their own in front of her, each

defying physics and gravity.

Naamah – Level 120 Succubus Nest Queen.

“Hello, boys,” the succubus called after Samantha’s screaming waned.

She waved across the hallway at us. She pointed at me. “I choose you, stud.

Let’s dance.”

“These are not true representations,” Amayon rumbled, his voice

physically painful to listen to. He didn’t have any cards in his hand. He would automatically draw his last one soon.

To my right, Bautista was spamming stuffed animals everywhere, ripping off tags left and right as the creatures flew from his hands. Several were the grulke frogs, but armored versions I’d never seen before along with other monsters, from trolls to small dragons to other things covered with claws and teeth. Bautista shouted, and they, as one, all turned on the twin inferior demons. As they surged toward the monsters, a few fell through more holes in the floor, screaming as they disappeared.

Louis: Tran is down! Britney and I are running! Oh god. It’s the seal.

He’s here.

Tran: I’m not dead! I fell down to a different level. My wheelchair is sparking. I think it’s going to blow! I’m stuck!

Imani: We’re almost there. There are demons surging up the stairs behind us.

I pulled a banger sphere and decked the succubus as hard as I could. The metal ball bounced off her head with a splatch. It barely did any damage. She grinned at me with a mouth full of sharp teeth.

“Someone who likes it rough. I can respect that.”

She hissed and lunged, flying across the area at ridiculous speed, like she’d been launched from a gun.

I cast Talon Strike on my foot and did a snap kick as hard as I could at the speeding creature. She oofed with pain, and she took some damage, but it didn’t stop her momentum as she slammed into me. My health flashed as she hit me with the force of a bus.

We hit the ground and slid, tumbling as we flew between Katia and Donut, barely missing the hole in the ground for the stairs, and sliding into the area that had once been the service hallway.

The creature had vampire fangs, and she moved to chomp directly on my neck just as I activated my new tech-based shield. She bit down and cried out, her teeth sparking and then shattering like broken crockery against my neck. She screeched in outrage as I cast Wisp Armor on myself, attempting to shore up my shield. I instinctively clicked on a healing potion without even

thinking.

A terrible taste flooded my mouth.

A Kombucha! Achievement flashed as I remembered the vinegar debuff.

Normally potions had no taste when used via inventory, but food items

did.

I cast Heal instead.

I was on my back with the pissed-off, shrieking succubus pinning me down. She grasped onto both arms. Her hands sparkled where they came in contact with my flesh. My shield was rapidly losing power. The demon wasn’t huge, but she was clearly stronger than me. She bodily picked me up and slammed me down against the floor over and over again, squealing angrily.

A tentacle wrapped around the woman’s waist and yanked, pulling her up off the ground. I gasped in pain as my shield sparked out, and her nails ripped into the flesh on my arms. She was dragged away into a fulminating, gorilla- sized shadow of black clouds with dark tentacles ripping in and out of it. The demon woman was pulled into the cloud. She let out a scream from within the darkness, followed by a spray of blood.

I started scrambling back until I saw the monster had our flag over it. This was the card Donut had stolen from the demon.

Banjo – Level 120 Hell Scrub.

I jumped back to my feet and returned to the fray, dodging holes in the ground.

Li Jun and a human I’d never seen before were fighting side-by-side, battling a ghommid strongman. The human was a Legendary Master, and it was one of Li Na’s cards. She kept tossing speed buffs onto him.

The ghommid was just a regular NPC that Sister Ines’ must have flagged, but he had an Oak Champion buff after his name. Li Jun was literally walking on air, dancing and kicking, trading blows. Alongside him, the legendary master was a blur. In moments, the ghost creature was down.

I growled in frustration. We needed to keep Ysalte’s totems alive. On my interface, she was down to just ten cards, and barely a minute had passed. She was discarding her own cards when she could.

Katia had a female, spoon-wielding troll I’d seen before summoned along with a pair of twin boys, also trolls, dancing on top of the two Inferior Demons who were half dead, surrounded by stuffing as Bautista continued to toss out an alarming number of his beanie animals. The entire group of them tumbled away as the floor broke. A moment later, a plink, plink indicated the two demons were dead.

Amayon’s row on my interface now only contained two cards. One was facing upward, showing the rock monster was still active. The demon had the

last card in his hand, and it appeared as if he was struggling to play it. He was growling in frustration, but his claw wouldn’t move. It was Ysalte, I realized.

She was trying to keep him from playing his final card. She knew he’d be free to cast his spells once he was out.

“Donut” I called.

“I’m on it!” Donut shouted. “Watch this!”

Donut tossed out Force Discard. Amayon’s last card disappeared with a Poof! graphic.

“Ha! Suck it, bitch!” Donut shrieked as the kaiju-sized demon let out a satisfied grunt.

That was it. He was out of cards. We just needed to kill that first totem he summoned.

Carl: Does anyone know where the rock creature is? He’s the last

piece!

Yoink!

“Hey!” Donut cried.

Ysalte had tossed out a card, a unique mystic called Raid Stash.

Five cards came flying at the goddess and entered her hand. It was a card from each of us, including Imani and Elle downstairs.

Multiple people started shouting at once.

“Oh, crap!” Katia called. “They stole an inactive card from my inventory!

It’s one of the totems we were forced to take after the key boss fight! Oh shit, it’s Tran’s mom!”

“Watch out,” Li Na yelled at her brother. “She has the Zhe totem!”

Elle: Guys, holy shit. Head’s up. She stole a totem from me and some junk card from Imani.

“Carl, Carl!” Donut called. “She took the …”

Ysalte tossed four totems out at once. Three humans and a sasquatch thing. All four crash-landed in front of us, one by one. These were all the stolen totems.

The sasquatch along with one of the humans—a large, elderly Asian woman—both roared and jumped down through the same hole in the floor that Yago caused. The other human, also an Asian woman, but much younger, said something to Li Jun, who screamed in outrage. “You’re not my cousin!”

I only had eyes for the fourth one. This was the card she’d stolen from Donut’s inactive deck. The only inactive totem Donut currently carried.

Leveled-Up Frank. Sober Edition. Level 100 Night Elf Blood Assassin.

“Hello, Carl,” Frank Q called as the floor rumbled. “Fancy seeing you here. Where’s your ring?”

“Go get him, Mr. Whatever you are!” Donut squealed at the cloud of tentacles. The Hell Scrub made a clicking noise and started floating toward Frank, who pulled a red sword from over his shoulder.

Both Katia and Li Na tossed more cards out as Donut also summoned Geraldo the monk seal, who crashed onto the floor and almost fell through.

A distant explosion shook the entire building. One of Katia’s trolls cried out and plummeted away.

Amayon let out a whoop of triumph, and he lifted his massive arms into the sky. In doing so, he knocked a corner of the building, causing everything

to rumble even more.

This building is going to collapse.

Tran: I got the rock bastard! My wheelchair blew a hole in his chest!

I need a healer.

Imani: Where are you? The floors are collapsing in on each other!

The world froze. The countdown stopped.

What the hell?

We had seven minutes and 27 seconds left. Had it really only been two and a half minutes?

I took in the scene. Frank was in the process of slicing his sword through a tentacle. The young woman—Zhe, who was apparently Li Jun and Li Na’s cousin—had a bloody, squirting heart in her goddamned hand. She’d just pulled it from the chest of the Legendary Master. It appeared the master totem had gotten a memory ghost’s shirt stuck on his face, which had momentarily blinded him. Li Jun was in the midst of a backflip. Katia’s skull- headed bird thing was flying through the air, aimed directly at the Frank totem. Li Na’s Xing Tian was about to time out already.

Samantha was finally on her way back, her glowing form just visible as she rocketed toward us. She was off the northeast edge of the building, perilously close to the massive demon, having blown a hole through the tornado of demon birds. She’d been tossed so far away, she had seaweed in her hair.

Ysalte was in the middle of tossing something else out. She couldn’t move, but she was like us, conscious of the pause. She started to shout

insults.

And behind it all loomed Amayon, who had a new look of outrage on his demon face.

Quest Update! The Missing Piece Part One!

Demon Lord Amayon is trapped! The very demon eviction event that allowed him to come to this realm is his undoing! Now that he’s taken his true form, he does not have enough power to cast his spell! And what’s worse, there aren’t enough souls left in this dying world to even trigger the spell anyway. Everyone and everything is mostly dead!

If only there was a way to replace the souls that had triggered the event in the first place.

The same type of souls. The same flavor of chowder, so to speak.

Refill the world with souls. Then power Amayon up before the timer runs dry.

Oh, and the demon may attempt to cast an alternative spell before you buff him up. You’ll either have to stop him or convince him to wait.

Match resumes in thirty seconds.

“What the hell does that mean?” Katia shouted from behind me.

“Are you kidding me?” I shouted. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Oh my god, Carl,” Donut yelled. I couldn’t turn my neck to see her.

“Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Is he in your hand?” I asked.

“No!”

“What about Midnight Express?”