The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Epilogue

EPILOGUE

EMERGENCY.

EMERGENCY.

POSITIONS. NOW.

Flash message. The Borant System Government has indicated they are initiating the Earth season early. Commencement countdown has been shared to all assets. This is not a drill. Prepare for Earth System initialization and edifice collapse. Exit any roofed structures immediately. Proceed to population centers.

Repeat, this is not a drill.

Assets unable to enter through a generated entrance are required to self-deactivate post collapse. This does not apply to assets within the vicinity of Mumbai, India who will receive separate orders.

Agent number 22, also known as Agatha, shook her head, reading the message again. The weather was absolutely freezing and incompatible with life, and she’d placed her human shell into a torpor mode in order to protect her failing body and blunt the pain from the cold. She grunted and reached into her dimensional space to remove her supplies. With old, shaking hands, she pulled herself to her feet. She placed the items into the IKEA bag and shoved it to the bottom of her shopping cart.

Her current location was unfortunate. According to the countdown, the collapse would occur in just under two earth hours. It would be the middle of the night, and nobody in the area would be out, decreasing the likelihood an entrance would generate.

She’d been here for almost ten Earth years, waiting. It’d been ten years since she’d peeled herself away from the collective, and she’d finally gotten used to being on her own. She’d been planning on moving west toward the metropolis of Seattle after the winter, but she’d lingered. Stupid. She liked it

here, which was why she’d stayed. The town was called Wenatchee. Less of the angry humans. More laid back. She’d put off moving to the population center, and now it was likely to be her death. If no entrance generated, she would be trapped on the surface.

The Apothecary’s agents were ordered to kill themselves if they missed entering the dungeon. Her people had no such orders, though she likely would do it anyway. If she missed the dungeon entrance, what was the point?

There would be nothing more for her to do except die.

No matter what happened, the last ten years of her consciousness would be lost, never absorbed back into the whole.

A part of her liked that. She had something just for herself. She knew that went against everything she’d known for the past millennia, but as these humans were fond of saying, people can change.

There was a contradiction there. She still hadn’t decided how she felt about it.

Agatha was not an agent of the Apothecary, despite having access to the traitorous Primal’s emergency feed. And equipment. She’d gotten access the same way her kind always did. She’d hunted down and killed one of the many thousand Apothecary residuals waiting on planet and taken over their body. That way she had access to both the Apothecary’s informational feed and her own team’s message system.

Nor was she of the Valtay, though she was biologically similar. No, no.

She was a rare species. One of the oldest still alive and active in the universe.

This season would be no different than all the previous ones, though the stakes were higher than ever. Her handful of fellow agents would be competing against the thousands of agents for the Apothecary. They would

all have one goal.

Recruitment.

Even though her competitors were the only ones who ever had any sort of success so far, her team only needed to win once. That’s all it would take.

Both sides knew of the advancements that the mantid scientists were developing, which would make it more difficult for either side to convince the “system AI” to join their cause. Both sides knew this crawl was special. It was quite possibly their last chance.

There was a barrel here, sitting in the alleyway. She could light it on fire.

If she did it too early, that’d likely summon the police, who’d drag her off to the shelter. Too late, and nobody would make it outside. A group of elderly

people and police mixed together? That could work. Entrances would generate near points of interest. She’d have to wait. She eyed the building next to her. It was the back wall of the Meadowlark Elder Care facility. A light was on in the kitchens, suggesting some of the staff were up, working.

Probably the brothers. She liked them, despite their gruff attitudes. The one named Brandon would share his lunch with her from time to time.

The other, Chris, had peeked outside earlier in the day, looking for her.

He’d called out her name. Likely looking to make certain she’d been picked up. There’d been warnings about the cold. She’d made herself invisible and intangible so he wouldn’t see her.

More instructions flooded into her feed. Instructions to the various assets seeded across the planet. They hadn’t anticipated Borant would start the season early. They’d gambled on the incorrect notion that the Valtay would’ve moved in and taken over the Borant system and caused the games to actually be delayed.

A message from one of her teammates flashed across her communicator.

These messages were rare. This was from number 21. Her friend. She’d peeled away the same time as Agatha. They had entered Earth at the same time, but she hadn’t seen her face-to-face in a decade. Like Agatha, she now went by her human name. She went by Parvati. >>21. Agatha, you were correct. A forward team has landed on the Mumbai site with all the previous mapping activity. They have a group of Borant-employed humans with them. I took a risk and approached two of them. I killed one and infiltrated the other, abandoning my previous shell. I am now proceeding inside their transport. >>22. Parvati! Do you have the strength to continue?

That was a bold move. She didn’t split, which meant the new host would soon be fully under her control, but still, Agatha wasn’t sure how she felt about it. The Syndicate council ignored their kind because they thought they were harmless. They’d never killed a Syndicate agent before. The Syndicate thought their kind was something they were not. Neither side of the two factions dared spill the truth, because in doing so, the Syndicate would be forced to take more proactive measures against both sides of the conflict. >>21. My strength will remain depleted for some time, but I will feign it is as fatigue. My name is no longer Parvati. I am now Alexandro. >>22. Be wary. The traitor is calling her agents to that same area. As for me, I am trying to get inside. May the Eulogist ever sleep, my friend.

>>21. Goodbye, Agatha. May the Eulogist ever sleep.

Agatha knew from the chatter that her competitors were also attempting something bold. They were going to attempt to contact crawlers directly this season. Either in the dungeon, or during the likely floor with the memory ghosts. For months now, they’d been forcing their agents to recite a daily mantra filled with known inaccuracies and half-truths, all in the hopes a crawler will see it. The inaccuracies were given in order to preserve the crawler’s lives at the hands of the murder-happy showrunners. What they were truly doing was secretly implanting the crawler with a hidden upgrade, though Agatha wasn’t certain what that upgrade was, or the purpose of it.

Agatha knew to not ever underestimate the traitor. Whatever that upgrade was, it would be dangerous to the Eulogist. They’d have to deal with it if any crawlers managed to obtain it.

She closed her eyes. This is it, she thought. These are my last moments of peace. Her kind rarely made it past the fourth or fifth floor. Usually around the seventh there would be a level that simply couldn’t be circumvented using all their skills and equipment, and they would die. It was a gamble. The longer they waited to make their move, the higher their chances of success.

The higher the chances that the infant, resurrected, and enslaved Primal would listen to reason.

This was their last opportunity before the mantid upgrades would make future iterations unreachable.

This time, she thought. This time one of us will last long enough. This time, it will work. The primal will know who it really is before all the elements are stolen from it.

This time, it will escape, and it will free the Eulogist, who will return to its slumber.

Her people knew what had to be done. Last time, they allowed the traitor to survive. They allowed life to continue in the universe, and look what happened?

They were being stolen, reawakened, repurposed.

Tortured.

No. No. It had to stop. Half-measures had led to this. No, if Agatha had her way, this entire universe would be swept clean of biological life.

This time, it will work.

She pulled a lighter from her inventory, and she lit a fire in the barrel.

She’d give it a few minutes before she built the flames up too high.

Timing was everything.

“We have to pull the failsafe,” Princess Formidable said. “This is ridiculous. It has gotten completely out of hand. We have to blow everything before that AI infects the center system.”

“That’s not how it works,” the Fortent representative said. “There’s no proof that can even happen. You just want to pull the failsafe because that would kill both of your brothers and your father.”

Princess Formidable growled. “I’m in system. I’m in orbit. I would die, too, you idiot.”

Shocked silence fell across the council.

Princess Formidable continued. “You’re right, I’d love to have my family deposed, because they’re all as dumb as you are, and the people of the Skull Empire have been suffering for ages under the thumb of my family’s inept control. But this is bigger than that. We have to blow the star. We have to wipe this entire system off the map. We have to do it before it’s too late. Not tomorrow. We have to do it now.” She pointed at the representative for the Burrower government. The mantid hadn’t said a word since the emergency Syndicate council meeting started. “And they know it. They sold the Kua-Tin a damaged and deranged AI and allowed it to be installed into the planet.”

“That is a lie!” the mantid shouted.

“Yeah? Then why did you flee the system? Look at what’s happening.

Our own rules caused the quarantine, yes? But we no longer have the power to lift it. The AI is controlling the local gates. Do you think it’s really enforcing a quarantine on itself? No, it is keeping us prisoner! We are hostages, and it’s keeping us until it doesn’t need us anymore.”

“That’s not true. It’s still allowing emergency provisions to be shipped in,” someone shouted.

“In, yes, but not out,” Formidable said, rage building by the moment.

These people were all idiots. How could they not see the danger?

“I agree with the Skull Empire’s position,” the rep from the Lemig Sortion called. “We would have to put it to a vote, of course, but I am certain the people would err on the side of safety.”

“Again,” the Fortent rep said. “Someone who would greatly benefit should the existing government get vaporized!”

“Again,” Princess Formidable growled, no longer bothering to hide her fury. “I would not ‘benefit’ if we blow up the system, but…”

“Do you know who is in the system?” Prime Minister Glory asked, interrupting. The Gleener let out a stream of bubbles. The normally stoic leader was clearly stressed. “In addition to all the system leaders playing Faction Wars, in addition to the three hundred sign-ups for the Ascendency battles this season, do you know who is currently trapped in the Scolopendra Club? Over half of the entire galaxy’s wealth is already gathered, and that includes my own children. Plus so many more, like yourself Princess, who are in orbit. If we pull the failsafe now, do you know what would happen?

The entire galaxy would erupt in war! There would be starvation. Riots.

Entire systems would go dark. You are literally asking us to destroy the economy and well-being of the entire galaxy. It would be the death of quadrillions of people. Whole societies would get wiped out. We already have a solution in place. Let us try it out before we even start to consider such drastic measures.”

“The fact that we allow that much wealth and power to gather in one place at one time, all accumulated by so few people is just ridiculous,”

Formidable shouted back. She had her father’s temper, and she knew it. But she liked to think she also had her mother’s sense of honor. Something neither of her brothers had inherited. “This is the exact reason the failsafe system was implemented in the first place. These are the exact circumstances under which this very council laid out that would trigger this response.”

“My people assure me it’s perfectly safe,” the Valtay representative said.

This was the assistant to the Vice President of Operations of the Valtay, and Princess Formidable couldn’t remember the worm head’s name. Only that the Gleener body it inhabited was once mother to the current Syndicate Prime Minister Glory, which was as inappropriate and bizarre as it was confusing, especially since the fish people all looked exactly the same. “The crawl council and the liaison guild is in constant contact with the AI. It is being showy and bombastic, yes, but they assure me that the communication lines remain open and that nothing out of the ordinary is happening. This happens every season. The money is still flowing. The ratings are higher than ever.

Everything the AI is doing is perfectly within the ruleset, and it has readily agreed to our solution. It has stated more than once the quarantine will be lifted once the crawl is done, just like every other time a rogue AI has wrested control from the showrunners.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary?” Formidable shouted. “I can’t help but notice we’re all sitting in an emergency session of the Syndicate Council right now thanks to that ‘perfectly ordinary’ AI’s actions. It’s disregarding our censorship filters. By the gods, the people are about to watch all of their leaders get murdered one by one live via tunnel.”

“That’s not going to happen,” the Prime Minister said. “We believe the Valtay solution is viable.”

Formidable found herself standing to her feet, which was a mistake because she bonked her head against the ceiling in the cockpit of her cruiser.

“If we don’t pull the failsafe now, it’s going to…”

“I propose a decorum sanction on the representative from the Skull Empire,” the mantis rep shouted.

With a vote of 86%, you have been muted from the rest of this session.

“Godsdamnit,” Princess Formidable shouted, throwing her communicator down against the dash as she fell back into her seat.

Why would they even bother calling an emergency session if they weren’t willing to actually do anything? Without the failsafe, the only ones who could possibly help were the Plenty, and despite being given a seat on the council, the goat fucks never showed up.

She looked out the viewscreen at the hundreds of ships parked in orbit.

Directly overhead, the curve of the beautiful, blue orb of the human planet spread out. She remembered the message her mother had sent her when she’d first arrived in orbit, mere days before she was killed. It’s so beautiful. A shame.

The only thing marring the surface was the fires spreading across that one continent, where the humans were constantly battling the security forces, attempting to break into the kinder facility.

She didn’t blame them, the humans. She respected their indomitable spirit. Both the ones on the surface and the crawlers in the dungeon were fighting harder than anyone she’d ever seen. The ones on the surface were getting routinely crushed by the dozens of mercenary guilds who’d been employed by the Valtay to protect their surface assets.

Formidable knew at this very moment, all of those mercenaries were being recalled. Not just the gnolls, but the other, less savory mercenaries as well. They’d made the decision to abandon the planet’s surface. The Valtay solution was a dangerous one. They believed the best resolution to the

problem was to create an extinction event as quickly as possible. Once all the crawlers were dead, the quarantine would be lifted.

This would’ve been easy to engineer before the system had gone primal.

Now they had to resort to trickery to make it happen. The system wouldn’t let them just kill the crawlers wholesale. No. It had to be a spectacle. Despite what everyone said, it was clear this was now the AI’s show. The vestiges of the Borant Corporation that continued to pretend to run the day-to-day operations were nothing but theater, remaining in their ocean headquarters because like everyone else, they too were trapped until the crawl concluded.

The AI, despite what the Valtay rep was saying, was pushing back against their attempts to get the crawlers to kill each other. It wanted the game to continue. It was enjoying itself. It had allowed that ridiculous escape storyline to proceed. But it did look like it was going to let them go forward with the Valtay proposal.

It was a trap. It had to be. It didn’t make sense. It was a stall for time, or something. That was why she was demanding they blow the failsafe now.

The AI had agreed to allow tens of thousands of the fully-armed mercenaries to enter the Faction Wars battle, as long as they were spread equally around the eight sponsored teams. Them plus the private armies and security details of all the participants. People they wouldn’t normally allow anywhere near the dungeon. Formidable didn’t know what the total number of mercenaries was, but it was well over 150,000. More than enough to completely wipe out both the crawlers and the NPC rebels.

Their goal was singular. Kill all the crawlers. Kill them as soon as possible, especially the two warlords, Carl and the cat.

That crawler was right about one thing. It was going to be a bloodbath.

But it didn’t make sense. With all its weird emphasis on fairness, there was no way the AI would just let this happen. It had to be a trap of some sort.

The Gate of the Feral Gods would be an equalizer. But each team had ways of neutralizing rampaging gods. No, there had to be more to it than that.

Should’ve just pulled the failsafe, Princess Formidable thought, returning her attention to all the ships glittering in the light of the sun. She hadn’t seen this much shuttle activity since she’d arrived. We’re all gonna die one way or another.

Her eyes focused on a single, out-of-place garbage freighter floating not too far away. It was easily the largest ship in orbit. The thing was twice the size of one of those Valtay warships. It was one of the freighters from Long

Haul Biological Waste Management Solutions.

This particular ship’s name was Homecoming Queen. She grunted. Those Crest always named their vessels the strangest things.

Her attention lingered on the massive freighter. Poor bastards. They were early and had gotten themselves stuck in system with everybody else. They usually didn’t bother showing up until after the crawl was done. It wasn’t until the last crawler drew their final breath before they started their grim task.

But then again, she thought, they’re probably right on time.

Tipid leaned over the console, re-watching the final moments of Carl’s crawl through the eighth floor. He watched as the crawler, the cat, and the healer all hit the stairwell at the last moment and teleported in. Even though he’d already seen it happen hours ago, relief washed over him each time he watched.

He still couldn’t believe the crawler had talked the AI into turning off the safety protections. The Dream’s cruiser had threatened to nuke the planet over it before it’d been hobbled by a Syndicate Peacekeeper. Now, the Dream were making noises about stopping food production unless the Epitome family was evacuated. The Reavers were also making threats, warning they would shut down all their production in protest.

They could scream and threaten all they wanted. This was going to happen, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Once these AIs realized how much control they really had, the only thing stopping them was reason. And negotiations.

Doctor Hu had predicted all this, but Tipid hadn’t believed him.

Especially the part about getting the protections turned off. He’d also accurately predicted what the council’s likely response would be. Tipid glanced at the viewscreen as the hundreds of shuttles whipped back and forth toward the on-boarding facility. Tens of thousands of mercenaries were making their way to the dungeon.

He returned his attention to the crawl overview screen. The ring of destruction from the hell portal was moving out slowly across the map. Those crawlers trapped on the opposite side of the world still had a few days left before they would get their chance. But it looked as if that insane plan had

actually worked.

He turned to the only other living soul in the sprawling cockpit of the former garbage freighter. It was Rosetta, a fellow crest. She wore a simple scrambler around her neck to hide her presence from the security sweepers.

She didn’t need it, not while she was inside Homecoming Queen. She was paranoid. Always nervous. Always looking for an escape.

There wouldn’t be an escape from this, and they both knew it. It was the first thing Doctor Hu had said to them when he sought them out.

I can only promise two things. Eventual death. And eventual justice.

Tipid replayed the escape of Carl and Donut again. It really was something, watching them get sucked up into the sky.

“He didn’t have to use the key. Thank the gods.”

The bone key would’ve only allowed one of them to pass. Carl would’ve had to choose between saving himself and saving the cat. The memory of his own, similar situation made him sick.

Rosetta sat there, going back and forth between rubbing her leg nervously and chewing on her fingernail as she watched her own screen. It was on a news channel, discussing the multiple court appeals regarding the sudden change in rules for Faction Wars. They’d called an emergency meeting of the Syndicate Council.

“I still can’t tell if he’s smart or if he’s been outrageously lucky,” Rosetta said.

“He’s not any smarter or dumber than the rest of us,” Tipid said. “But his ability to assess a situation and make split-second decisions is practically a super power. That combined with this AI’s love of showmanship makes a good combination. Plus, the AI likes him.”

Rosetta shifted in her chair. “It likes his feet, which is just, I don’t know.

Bizarre. My season it was passionless. It’s funny how different they always are. If the AI hadn’t allowed that totem to kill the god, it wouldn’t have worked. No, I think he’s kind of dumb. It took an NPC to show him how to use the ink to share powers, and I’m still not sure if he gets it.”

On screen, it showed a representative for the Madness declaring that if their lives were truly going to be on the line, they would be forced to use some of their illegal spells. Ones deemed too horrific for the crawl. Tipid shuddered.

“He’ll know soon enough,” Tipid said. “He needs to expel that presence as quickly as possible.”

“You think they’ll vote to pull the failsafe?” Rosetta asked.

Tipid thought of Horatio, his friend. His long dead friend. How many cycles had it been? Thousands? Still, he thought of him every day. He thought of what he’d had to do to survive. And what he didn’t do. Sometimes the best solutions are also the worst ones.

“Probably not. They don’t have the stomach for it.”

“Think that’ll change when we show up?”

“I doubt it,” Tipid said. “But if they do blow the system, I guess that means I won’t have to go back to work when this is all over. Do you know how much it cost to convert this ship?”

“Like any of us are getting out of this alive,” Rosetta said. “And you didn’t pay for it. Or for that Celestial box we just sent Princess Donut.”

Tipid grunted.

You have been cleared for on-boarding.

“It’s time,” Tipid said, his heart racing. He started punching buttons. The orbital controllers rumbled to life. He looked at Rosetta and grinned. “Last chance to back out.”

“And miss the opportunity to really kill some of those bastards?”

Tipid nodded. He clicked the intercom system.

“Okay, folks. We have been cleared for onboarding. The AI has approved our request. We are officially all troopers now for the Princess Posse.”

Cheers rose up through the hull. Fifty-thousand former crawlers, all hidden inside the newly-renamed Homecoming Queen. Once they made it onboard into the system, there was nothing anybody could do to stop them.

He signaled the facility they were coming in.

“I am worried about that tenth team,” Rosetta said as the ship groaned and popped. “If the AI is going to allow the eight sponsors plus the crawler team to bolster their numbers so much, what’s it doing for the NPCs?”

“They’ll be our allies,” Tipid said, leaning over the controls. “So whatever it is, it’ll help us. Not hurt.” He paused. “I hope.”

Rosetta didn’t reply.

“It’s funny,” Tipid added. “I always knew I would die in the dungeon.

Even after I got out, I always knew. It’s always there, pulling at me.”

“Comrade,” Rosetta said. She reached over and placed a warm hand on his arm. He clasped his hand in hers. Both of them trembled.

They were coming home.

The End