by DoctorHepa
Donut: MY CHARM ISN’T WORKING ON HER.
Mordecai: There’s probably an anti-charm spell working in the area.
Carl: Plan B it is.
“Is that how it is in this town, then?” I asked. “As long as the victims aren’t Skyfowl, they can just go screw themselves?”
She looked at me as if I was something she’d just regurgitated. “Do you want the short answer or the long answer to that?”
“The long answer,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s how it is in this town. It was like this when my late husband was the Magistrate, and it’s like that now with Magistrate FeatherFall.” She looked down at her bento box and sighed. “But please, feel free to leave a note describing the situation, and if it warrants further investigation, we’ll get back to you.”
“And what about the evidence we collected? Should we leave that here, too?” I asked.
“If you must.”
I pulled the dead hooker from my inventory and splatted her on the eagle’s desk. The corpse’s legs, still stiff with rigor, upset the line of Beanie Babies, tumbling them off the edge of the desk one by one, like a line of synchronized swimmers diving into the pool.
I’d been afraid the system wouldn’t let me pick up and store the corpse, as it wasn’t something we’d tried before. I’d been surprised to find it did let us. It had even helpfully labeled the body as Quest Clues in my inventory.
The eagle made a strangled noise, leaping from her perch. Her back hit the wall, and it upset the bottom two shelves, cascading more of the beanbag creatures to the floor. For a moment the only sound was the plop, plop, plop of the figures as they slid and tumbled.
“Guards,” Miss Quill croaked. “Guards!”
The two swordsmen at the base of the stairs clunked their way up toward us. They both unsheathed their swords as they emerged, rising up like metallic beasts. I remembered the announcement from a few days earlier, that their strength had been “slightly” increased. I really hoped this worked.
“Capture these two! Do so immediately,” Miss Quill demanded.
The mute suits of armor looked back and forth about the room. Neither of them moved.
“Oh for the sake of the gods,” Miss Quill said angrily. “Look at my desk, you fools.”
The moment we found the dead prostitute this morning, with that gruesome note scrawled onto her flesh, I’d called one of the swordsmen over. I pointed to the corpse, I pulled the Gate Pass—the get-out-of-jail-free pass from the town magistrate—and showed it to the guard. Then I took the corpse into my inventory. I hadn’t known for certain that actually did anything. But I knew if we were going to be waving a dead hooker around, odds were good the town guards would get involved. Mordecai said they had a collective mind. And if they’d already seen me with the body and had, in their odd way, endorsed my ability to have a dead hooker in my possession, then the act of me simply tossing the corpse onto the desk wouldn’t be considered a crime.
Hopefully.
Without a word, the guards turned and walked back down the stairs.
“You useless, worthless, piles of junk,” Miss Quill called after them. She returned her gaze to us.
“How do they get up here anyway?” I asked. “Also, how do all those workers in the shops get up here? Is there a secret elevator? We looked for like an hour for an easy way up and couldn’t find one.”
“Take that with you right now,” Miss Quill said. “What is wrong with you?” She squatted and began gathering up the fallen toys in her wings. But she had nowhere to put them. Not until the shelf was fixed and the dead woman was removed from the desk.
Donut leaped from my shoulder and sniffed at the ground. “This one is getting really dirty,” Donut said, looking at a rat-faced beanie that looked suspiciously like Mordecai’s first form. “And I think the label tore on this one. Carl, stop stepping on them!”
“Stop! Stop it right now! Please, just take it away.” The elderly eagle appeared to be on the verge of tears.
“Take her away,” Donut corrected.
“Let us talk to him, and we’ll bring the evidence to him directly,” I said.
“He’s not here, okay,” Miss Quill said, frantically piling the toys in the corner. She picked one up with her talon and frantically rubbed non-existent dirt off it with her wing. “Look what you’ve done, look what you’ve done.”
I glanced at the closed door near her desk. The door was large, metal, and foreboding.
“He’s really not here?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “He only comes out at night nowadays. Oh my gods, what is that liquid?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not blood. They’ve all had their blood sucked out of them. But their bodies still leak. And smell. It’s really gross.”
Her wings were full of beanies. “Please, please,” she said. “Just take it away. Take her away. I’ll tell him you were here. I promise.”
I reached over and picked the dead woman back up, returning her in my inventory. A milky-white stain of fluid covered Miss Quill’s desk.
“I’m going to be sick,” the receptionist said.
“You better get some paper towels or something,” I said. “My grandma collected these things, and they sucked in moisture like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Don’t you touch anything,” she said. She gently placed the beanies held in her wings into the corner pile. She rushed toward the stairs, yelling that she needed a shirt or a towel.
We only had a minute, maybe less. I rushed to the door to Featherfall’s chambers. It was locked. The moment I touched the door, a notification popped up.
This door is locked. Magically locked. It’s almost like they don’t want you going in there.
“Shit,” I muttered, looking around.
My eyes focused on the top, undisturbed line of beanies sitting above her desk.
* * *
“Just tell him we came by,” I said to Miss Quill as we went back down the stairs. “And you’re welcome for fixing your shelf.” She ignored us as she frantically cleaned off her table.
“That was disappointing,” Donut said. “Do you think he was actually in there?”
“I don’t know. Mordecai seems to think he lives in there, but who knows?”
“We don’t even know for sure he has anything to do with it,” Donut said.
“Nope,” I said. “That’s why I wanted to talk to him when he was in his office. I figured if he’s some evil, crazy boss, he wouldn’t go all Freddy Krueger on us in public. And if he’s not the bad guy, surely he’d be able to point us in the correct direction. But I don’t think it’s that complicated. This quest is only a silver one. Plus look at the clues. He’s a black cleric? He only comes out at night now? It has to be him.”
“So we’re coming back tonight, then?” Donut asked. “Or did you want to find the 201st Security Group headquarters first?” She paused in front of a store selling robes made for Skyfowl. “Would you look at how pretty that is.”
“It’s magical silk,” the young, elven woman said. “It allows Skyfowl to stay aloft almost indefinitely.”
“It’s beautiful. I’d love to learn how to fly. Can you imagine that, Carl? Me flying?”
“We’ll be back,” I said, turning to look over my shoulder. I pulled the rope from my inventory. It’d only cost five gold for a thirty-foot length. We’d have to use it to get back to the street. “We’ll talk to him one way or another.”
* * *
We still had two hours before our interview. Zev said if we were fighting or in the midst of something, they wouldn’t allow us to get transported, which was why she preferred us to be in a safe room when it was time. Still, we had two hours, and I decided we should use the time wisely.
So we left the city and traveled west, searching for mobs to kill. A few other crawlers were about, but we avoided them. I kept a wary eye for those with player-killer skulls over their head. I hadn’t forgotten about Frank Q and Magg
ie My. I wondered what race they’d chosen, or if they were even still alive.
I didn’t yet have any proper non-explosive ammo for my xistera, but I had two dozen hob-lobbers. The fuses on the bombs were between six and seven seconds, which was perfect when I was tossing them like they were grenades. But when I was hurling them at 250 mph at a mob, six seconds was a little too long. So instead, I pre-lit ten of them, which took two and a half seconds off the fuse. Both Mordecai and Donut were mortified by the idea of me walking around with lit bombs sitting in my inventory, but it was pretty much the only way I could properly do this with the equipment I had.
We walked past a row of especially-decrepit buildings. This particular neighborhood appeared it might’ve been slums before the cataclysm. Donut sat upon my shoulder, and Mongo walked beside us, randomly growling. I’d been alarmed at first, but there didn’t seem to be anything out there. We hadn’t seen anything for fifteen minutes. Then I saw the X on the map, and I realized it was the corpse of a neighborhood boss. This area had already been cleared by someone else, probably a few days earlier.
“Damnit,” I grumbled. “What a waste of time.” I sighed. “Let’s go get the neighborhood map.”
The attack came just as I was about to descend into an abandoned, used-to-be indoor swimming pool. This building had been the Over City’s version of a YMCA, though half of the structure was gone. The empty swimming pool sat mostly outside, exposed to the air. The rotting corpse of a two-headed sea creature sat within. The thing had the body of a whale, but with two long, Lochness-monster-like heads. Apparently the street urchins steered clear of boss corpses. The boss was a level-17 monster called The Divider, and it had been killed by a crawler named Daniel Bautista 2. The boss had multiple, manhole-cover-sized holes in it. The monster’s body was massively bloated, despite the multiple holes in it. It looked like a balloon from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
Just as I stepped into the shallow end of the empty pool, the world around us went dark. A dozen red dots appeared on the map. The dots were pretty far away, two sets on either side of the street. They started to close in.
We’d left the inn at sunrise, and we hadn’t yet hit whatever this world’s version of noon was called. The virtual sun blazed directly above us just moments before. We’d gone from day to night so quickly, I thought I’d been struck blind. I stepped back from the pool, putting my back against the wall. The dots remained out there on the street. They creeped slowly and cautiously, almost as if they thought they were sneaking up on us.
Donut immediately cast Torch, shooting the light high above the street. The bright light was like a star in the sky. The torch blazed, but it didn’t fill the darkness like it should, as if the murk was resisting it.
A moment later, a green bolt shot from one of the red dots, and it crashed right into the torch, snuffing it out.
“Well that was rude,” Donut said.
“Shit, they have an anti-magic attack,” I said. We needed to come up with a plan, and fast. I pulled two regular torches from my inventory, lit them, and tossed them ahead of me. They skittered out onto the street. The darkness did not budge. It pushed in on the twin torches, surrounding them like the very air was made of ink.
Down the street, something moaned. It sent chills through me. Mongo let out a half growl, half whimper.
Still, the darkness wasn’t absolute. I could still make out shapes in the gloom. I couldn’t see the mobs, which were still a good 100 feet away, but I could sense the outlines of buildings. A wall of rubble blocked our exit through the gym and to the next street, and there was no passage across the other way. We were boxed in.
Still, the monsters moved slowly. That made me nervous. Slow mobs were usually the type you didn’t want anywhere near you.
“Two of them are city elves,” Donut quickly said. “The furthest dot on each side. I don’t know what the rest are, but they’re big. Should we do Slime Time?”
Of all the predetermined plays we’d come up with so far, Slime Time was Donut’s favorite. And for good reason. It was fucking awesome. But now wasn’t the time. Plus, I wasn’t so sure it’d work. Not here.
“Negative,” I said. “Wait one second. Let’s see if this does anything.”
I stepped away from the wall and pulled a lit hob-lobber into my hand as I extended my xistera. I couldn’t see the mobs, but I could sense them there. Moaning and shuffling toward us. Were they zombies? Jesus. That was a terrifying thought. I spun and tossed the bomb as hard as I could directly at the far dot of the city elf, the one who had cast the anti-magic spell.
The sizzling bomb flew with satisfying speed, rocketing out of my xistera like a cannonball. It hit something fleshy, about twenty feet from the city elf. I’d aimed so it would fly over the slow-moving monsters, but apparently I hadn’t aimed high enough.
Bam! The presumed sound of raining gore slapped into the street.
One of the dots turned into an X. But only one. My bomb had seemingly sunk into the monster. I now had a clear line to the elf. I spun, hurling a second bomb at the fucker.
This one hit home, perfectly timed. I really wished I could see it. The hob-lobber blew just before it reached the elf, but the fragmenting explosion ripped through him. There wasn’t even an X left after that.
The other monsters groaned, now only forty feet away.
The darkness didn’t flee.
I could now hear the sound of shuffling, like feet on the floorboards. Holy shit, these were zombies. They had to be. Giant zombies.
No more screwing around. I retracted my xistera and pulled two sticks of goblin dynamite from my pack. “Run into the pool,” I called as I lit them both, tossing one in each direction.
The moment I tossed the second stick, the line of red dots surged forward, rushing at me. I watched, in horrified slow motion, as the flying stick of dynamite rebounded off a massive shape, at least twelve feet tall. The stick didn’t yet blow, but it bounced, hissing and spitting and rolling toward me, much too close.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck!” I hopped backward into the empty pool, not bothering to gauge exactly where I was standing. I had no time. I just jumped. I prepared to press my Protective Shell spell, but I wanted to be closer to Donut and Mongo before I did it.
Unfortunately, I stopped falling much sooner than I anticipated. I landed directly on the spongey, rotting corpse of the Divider.
And that was the last thing I remembered.
What happened next was later relayed to me by Donut, who was the only one of us to stay conscious for the remainder of the fight.
Both sticks blew, killing most of the remaining monsters and the remaining city elf. I’d fallen far enough to be protected from that blast. However, I was not protected from the bloating corpse of the boss monster, which in turn blew like a goddamn potato in the microwave, either from me falling into it, or from the shockwave of the dual explosions.
The moment the second elf died, the lights snapped back on. The first thing Donut saw was me sailing up in the air like I’d been ejected from a catapult, spinning like a pinwheel. I landed upon the roof of the building across the street.
The detonation of the Divider’s corpse did no damage to either Donut or Mongo, though it showered both of them with a blizzard of stinking, gooey gore. Donut grabbed the neighborhood map, leaped out of the pool, and she finished off the last three of the monsters, all of whom had barely survived. She hit two with magic missiles, and she set Mongo on the third. The dinosaur went about his task with practiced glee.
Donut then leaped to the roof of the building I’d landed on and used a heal scroll to bring my health back up. I remained unconscious for another three minutes, despite being healed.
I awakened, staring up at the sky. I’d gone up a level to 19. My brain took several moments to reboot. I’d landed on a pile of rocks, and they dug into my back. I groaned, rolling over, and I almost plummeted through a hole in the ceiling into the floor below. I had no idea where I was. What had happened
?
I heard the thwump of Donut’s Magic Missile, and I abruptly looked up.
“Good morning, Carl. I haven’t seen any more of the elves, but the meat bags keep coming,” she said. She fired another missile. “They’re pretty easy to kill if you hit them in the right place. Mongo is having a field day. He’s already gone up to level 12.” She leaned over the edge and yelled. “Good boy, Mongo! Mommy is going to kill the next one, and you get the one behind him.” She fired once again.
“What is happening? How did I get up here? Whoa, Donut. What the hell happened do you?”
I’d seen Donut covered in gore before. But this was the next goddamned level. After we’d fought the Juicer on the first floor, she’d been caked in blood and guts. I’d never thought we’d get her clean. That was nothing compared to this. She had to have three inches of red, stinking viscera attached to her fur. She was covered like a piece of extra-crispy fried chicken.
“Later,” she said. “They keep coming from that direction. They’re really slow until they get close, but then they get fast. Watch Mongo kill this one.”
I was also covered in gore, but mostly on my back. I felt it slide off of me as I sat up. It was as thick as mud.
I peered over the edge and gaped at the sight. I swallowed. I’d never seen anything like it. I’d had porridge for breakfast, and I regretted it now.
In every direction was splattered, sticky blood and body parts. The swimming pool was filled with red, and much of the viscera was currently spilling into it, filling it deeper and deeper. Hunks of flesh, some pretty big, lay strewn about like boulders. The white shock of bone stuck up everywhere, giving the sense I was looking at the zoomed-in view of a wound, and the bones were actually grubs.
And the smell. Oh god, it hit me all at once. It was the stench of a sewer and the contents of a refrigerator at a restaurant that sold 99 cent tilapia, cracked open after an extended period with no power. My head swam.
“Fucking hell,” I said. “What the hell happened down there?”
“You did it,” Donut said. “You really need to be more careful, Carl.”
