by DoctorHepa
By the time we cleared the platform, it was filled with tentacle-covered creatures. I took a deep breath. I kept my eyes on the receding platform. One of the monsters jumped into the channel. Then another. The platform quickly moved away from view. I slowed the train, but only a little. Hopefully these things weren’t that fast. I’d have to keep an eye out.
“Where did Eva go?” Katia asked again. She had an odd, distant quality to her voice. She’s in shock.
Behind us, the door continued to bang.
“She went out the window. I don’t know if she died or not. I didn’t see her when we pulled away.”
“She’s alive,” Katia said. “She’s still in my chat.”
I nodded. Holy shit. It had all happened so fast. Hekla was dead. Hekla was fucking dead. Katia had killed her. She’d gone from level 24 to 37, which was insane.
“Have you seen your level yet?” I asked Katia.
“Have you seen yours?”
Surprised, I checked. I’d gone up two levels to 34. Donut had gone up two to 32.
I suspected while Katia had gotten a lot of experience for being a living battering ram, the lion’s share of that experience that had rocketed her up the ranks actually came from killing Hekla. I still wasn’t clear on how sharing worked, but we probably hadn’t gotten a share of that. But two levels at once was a big deal. Now all we needed to do was get out of this.
“You know, you’re probably the highest-level crawler in the dungeon now,” I said after a moment. “Last I saw, Lucia Mar was 35, and that was just a few hours ago.”
Katia said nothing. The train rumbled over the tracks, riding much more roughly than our trip up here. We were all still covered in gore. The room was filled with it. I looked at my hands, marveling at all of the blood.
Katia turned to look at Hekla’s legs. She put her hand to her mouth and just stood there for a moment. “I didn’t mean to kill her.”
Donut leaped from my shoulder to hers. “When I killed that guy, I didn’t mean to do it either. But he had it coming, and Hekla had it coming even worse. She was going to kill you.”
The door banged again. They weren’t letting up. If anything, their bangs against the door were getting more frantic. I looked nervously down at Hekla’s half-body. The loot dialog did not pop up.
“Hey, did you get the key?”
“I got it,” Katia said. “Not that it matters now.”
I relaxed. They would never get in here. At least not through that door. “True. But we don’t want them having it, either.” I paused, seeing the look in Katia’s eyes. I recognized it for what it was. That moment before the collapse. I reached out and grabbed her arm to steady her.
“Katia, are you okay?” Donut asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m not even a little okay. Nothing about this is okay.” She rubbed her eyes, looking about the gore-filled room. “Goddamn it, there’s nowhere to sit down and have a breakdown in here.”
We all just looked at each other and started to laugh. There was no reason to laugh. None of this was funny. But we laughed. We laughed long and hard. It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense, but we were alive, for now at least, and we had each other, and that was something.
* * *
The moment ended as quickly as it started.
“Carl,” Donut suddenly hissed. “There’s someone in there. In the ManTauR apartment. They’re trying to hide, like they have a spell or a skill, but I just saw a blink on my map. It’s a blue dot. It’s someone small.”
Fucking hell. I suddenly felt so very tired.
“Silfa, is that you?” I called. “Come out. We’re all done fighting. We’re done hurting each other.”
The door to the apartment flew open, and the small fairy burst from the room. She rocketed toward the exit door and tried to unlock it.
Donut leaped from Katia’s shoulder, bounced once off the wall and landed atop the screaming fairy, pinning her to the floor. The fairy gurgled as her head went below the line of liquid gore. The blood in the car was slowly draining away, but there was just so much of it.
“Don’t you fucking hurt her,” someone cried from the other side of the door. “I swear to god if you hurt her I will kill you all.”
“Let her go!” another woman screamed, frantic, banging on the door. “You let her go right now!”
I reached down and grasped the healer. She was bigger than most fairies, bigger than the ones from the second floor and that manager from the Desperado Club, but I could still hold onto her with a single hand. She screamed and struggled. A weak ice spell shot from her hand and blasted down, hitting me in the leg. With my ice resistance, I didn’t even feel it.
“Calm down,” I said. “Silfa. Jesus. Calm the fuck down. Quit wiggling. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Traitor,” she yelled at Katia. “She saved your life. She saved all of us, and you killed her. What are we going to do now?”
“Silfa,” I said. “I am going to let you go, and we are going to talk. We don’t want to fight. We are just going to talk. Okay?”
The fairy stopped struggling, but she glowered at me.
Donut returned to my shoulder. She hissed at the fairy. “If you try something, I will rip you from the air and eat off your wings. I’ve done it before.”
“Okay, everyone chill,” I said again. I let her go, and she flitted into the air, buzzing up to the ceiling and against the wall. She crossed her arms. Blood dripped off her body. The train bumped as we hit something on the tracks, and the healer hit her head and winced. I stepped back, grasped the throttle, and slowed us further. I did not like driving blind. As long as the monsters on the tracks were only in ones and twos, we’d be okay, especially since the train was much heavier now. But still, we needed to keep it slow.
“You’re a murderer,” Silfa said to Katia.
“Katia didn’t want to kill Hekla,” I said. “But Hekla did intend on killing Katia, and I believe she was planning on sacrificing you, too. I’m pretty sure I know why. I’m not mad at you guys. She gambled and lost. It’s done. It is pointless for us to fight now. We’re all on the same side.”
“No, you’re wrong,” Silfa said. “Hekla would never sacrifice me. She was protecting us.”
“Hekla was protecting you. You as a group. She told you to stop healing Katia, didn’t she? And she told you to hide in the apartment. Not leave the car, but to go into that room. She told you to hide in the room if anything went down. Didn’t she?”
The fairy didn’t answer. She just glared. I took that as an affirmative.
“Look, I didn’t know her very well, but someone once told me that she was a very practical person. She was playing this like a game of chess, and she was willing to sacrifice others for what she thought was the greater good.”
“Hekla would never hurt me,” Silfa said. “My girls wouldn’t allow it.”
“But she told you to stop healing Katia, didn’t she? Probably waited until the end to make sure we got through that last horde first, right?”
She paused. “Eva told me to do it. Not Hekla.”
I nodded. That made sense. Eva was Hekla’s fixer. Her lieutenant. Like I thought, the one who did the dirty work. “And she told you to wait in the train car. Not leave.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Don’t you see? You were the bait. Why do you think she wanted you nearby? She wanted Katia to die, and she wanted me to get angry. I wouldn’t have gotten mad at her or Eva. I would’ve been mad at you. She thought I would’ve attacked you. Maybe even hurt or killed you. She thought I was unhinged.”
“You are unhinged. You’re crazy, and everybody knows it. We’ve seen the videos. You get mad for no reason. You laugh when you pick up body parts. Hekla would never have let you hurt me.”
“Just like she wouldn’t deliberately shoot Katia with two of those invisible bolts from her crossbow?” I pulled the broken bolt from my inventory. It remained invisible in my hand. I dipped it in blood and hel
d it up. Its shape appeared for a moment before everything flowed off it. I stepped forward and handed it up to her. She didn’t move. “Oh, just take it. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She hesitantly reached forward and grasped the broken crossbow bolt. Her eyes went big as she examined its properties. I took it back. “This means nothing. This could be yours.” She didn’t sound so sure anymore.
I continued. “She would’ve been forced to kill me if I attacked you. There was probably a whole plan in place, something to distract Donut. It would’ve been quick.”
“Why? Why would she do this?”
I sighed and thumbed at Donut, who remained on my shoulder. “With me and Katia dead, Donut would’ve been all alone. She would have been forced to join you guys. And so would Mordecai, our manager. That’s what Hekla wanted. How many healers do you have in your party? It’s a lot, isn’t it? I saw all the fairies. It was an acceptable trade off. One healer plus Katia, who hasn’t been in the party since the end of the second floor, in exchange for one of the dungeon’s best assets? If it had worked, the party would’ve been better for it. No offense.”
“I would never have joined with Hekla if she’d killed you, Carl,” Donut said.
I thought about that. “Maybe she would have sent Eva to kill me. Or those two mages she had posted right outside. And once that was done, she would’ve had them killed, too. Or banished just to keep you happy, Donut. Who knows? She was a shrink. She probably had some big plan worked out. I don’t know the details, but I think I’m right.”
“I still wouldn’t have joined her,” Donut grumbled, though not as loud.
“Is Eva still alive?” I asked Katia.
“Yes,” Katia said. “I don’t know where she is. I think maybe she got back on the train. I sent her a message, but she’s not answering.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” I said to Silfa. “Ask Eva if she was supposed to protect you from me. I bet she was. Maybe Hekla was planning on sacrificing her, too.”
“It wasn’t Eva,” Silfa eventually said. “My daughters, my real daughters, were standing guard right outside. Hekla told them if anything went wrong to kill you first. Damnit. I shouldn’t be here. I own a bakery. I just want my girls to be safe. I just want to go home. I shouldn’t be here.”
“Your daughters are the two right outside?” I asked. They were the two mages who’d jumped into action once the shit hit the fan.
She nodded.
“Go to them,” I said. “Tell them what I told you. Tell them I said we’re sorry about what happened, but this is on Hekla.”
“She was protecting us,” Silfa said. “When she died, it automatically made Eva the party leader. People don’t like her. They’re leaving the party. Brynhild’s Daughters is no more. We’re nothing without Hekla. We have hardly any equipment. We don’t have a personal space anymore. We all have sponsors, but most of us have the same one as Hekla, the crab ranch, and they’ve never sent us anything. We have nothing. What are we going to do?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. There’s a whole train of people out there. I’m sure someone would love to join up with a healer and two mages. It won’t be us, though. We’ll never trust each other, and that sucks. It really does. It’s exactly what they want to happen, and it breaks my fucking heart.”
* * *
I opened the door just enough for the dejected fairy to slip out. I snapped it closed and locked it. On the other side of the door, I heard the three women start to sob.
I leaned my back against the door. The train shook violently as we hit something, but it soon settled. Christ, what a day. The more I thought about what Hekla had attempted, the more it angered me. Is this what we’ve become? Is this who we really are? I refused to believe it.
I thought of Bautista, who was still walking toward the abyss with a group of people who wouldn’t be able to get to a stairwell.
You can’t save them all.
Fuck you, Mordecai, I thought.
“How did you know?” Katia asked. “About Hekla?”
I shrugged. “I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting that sort of thing.” That wasn’t true at all. If Odette hadn’t warned me, I’d likely be dead right now. I sighed, looking at Hekla’s half corpse.
“It’s too bad about that crossbow,” I said.
“Oh, you mean this?” Katia asked, and the massive, repeating crossbow formed in her hands.
Holy shit. She’d done it. She’d looted one of the most powerful weapons in the game. My anger fled.
“Katia, I am going to kiss you.”
She laughed. She sounded just as exhausted as I felt. “Not without taking a shower first you’re not.”
“Can I see it?” I reverently took the weapon from Katia’s hands. When fired at full auto, I remembered thinking this thing was like a ranged chainsaw. It was lighter than I expected. It appeared to be made of gold, but it felt almost like plastic. It was inlaid with carvings of a vulture creature.
I received a nasty notification the moment I touched it.
Warning: You have a dick.
“Thank you for the information,” I said to the ceiling as I examined the weapon’s properties.
Enchanted Repeating Crossbow of the Scavenger Mother of Mothers
This is a unique item.
This is a repeating, ranged weapon. It has the buffet enchantment, meaning it will not run out of basic ammunition. You may load and fire additional ammunition types to use with this weapon, though any special bonuses will only apply to the stock ammunition.
It is said that the long-forgotten goddess Nekhebit is both jealous and terrible. When the elf mothers chose to abandon Nekhebit and instead worship Apito, the Oak Goddess, it is written Nekhebit grew enraged. The mighty vulture goddess blamed the male-dominated high elf court for causing her worshippers to stray. As a result, she cursed their seed, thus creating what is today known as the Fae Diaspora. There are dozens of elf and fairy breeds, all of whom may trace their lineage back to the early high elf court, whose cursed offspring sowed the universe.
This crossbow is rumored to have been given to Nekhebit’s last warrior guardian as a gift for remaining true to her faith.
This item may only be wielded by a female.
For every female in your party, up to thirty, this item’s damage and firing speed is increased by 25 percent.
Your strength+level increases base damage 1.5X more than a standard crossbow.
+15 Dexterity when wielded
+10 Strength when wielded
Casts Birth Defect on monster types who generate or birth additional monsters.
“Wow,” I said. It wouldn’t be as powerful or fast in Katia’s hands as it was in Hekla’s, but I was already thinking of ways to maximize the unique weapon’s strength. No wonder she had surrounded herself with women.
* * *
“It’s good to see you,” I said to Li Jun. The Street Monk clapped me on the shoulder.
He looked distastefully at his hand, which was now covered in blood. “You too, Carl and Donut. You’re a little, uh, dirty,” he said.
I laughed.
After we’d freed Silfa, we’d decided it was best to keep the door closed just to head off any further misunderstandings. I moved Katia to the small Engineer’s apartment so she could rest for about a half hour. The room had a bed, a table, and a long, thin toilet designed to be used by a ManTauR. Heavy metal posters from earth covered the walls. I went through and looted everything not bolted down before I returned to the main room of the engine car.
A few minutes later came a knock, and Li Jun’s familiar, halting voice wafted through the door. I quickly let him in, though he stopped dead at the sight of the gore in the train car. Most of the liquid had drained away, leaving piles of body parts and bones throughout. Donut had let Mongo out for about thirty seconds before I made her put him away again. The dinosaur had gone crazy, like that fat kid in the Willy Wonka book who started eating everything in sight.
Li
Jun looked sick to his stomach as he took in the room, but he quickly recovered and grinned widely up at me.
I examined the man. The last time I’d spoken to him was on the Maestro’s show. He remained human. He was a level 28 Street Monk, which I assumed was some sort of melee class. He didn’t carry any weapons. He didn’t look much different than before. The Chinese man had deep acne scars on his cheeks that hadn’t gone away with the transformation, but when he smiled, it lit up the room, despite the gory surroundings. He’d been on the top 10 list, but he’d fallen off. I was glad to see he was still alive.
“Your sister? Zhang?” I asked, suddenly concerned that he was here alone.
“They are fine,” he said. “They are in the cargo near the front, and we can’t get to each other until the train stops. We have a group of twelve people now. We have been saved, again, by you. I have come to pay my respects.”
I nodded. We fist bumped so I’d have him in my chat.
“Now that you’re here, I need to show you how to drive this train,” I said. “We’re going to stop at station 75 and detach this car from the rest. From there, you can drive the train back to station 36. Get the people off there. That’s where we’re going to make the stand. Station 36.”
I’d already confirmed with Imani that her station 36 also intersected with Vermillion 36, which was good, though not surprising. It sounded like she had almost a hundred different colored lines that intersected with that particular station.
Imani and crew were already dealing with an increasing wave of these wrath ghouls—which I hadn’t seen yet. The ghouls were coming from almost every platform, making it difficult to keep it free of monsters. But with these reinforcements, Imani’s plan of keeping the ghouls from transforming further might just work. Especially since we had several nearby stations with saferooms where people could rest and recharge in shifts. There were no ghouls in the “hidden” railway where we had the Nightmare parked, so people had easy access to the rest areas, the closest being stations 37, 41, and 43.
