Chapter 97 + Map (Patreon)

Hekla’s body peeled off the wall and collapsed into a heap.

System Message. A champion has fallen. A bounty has been claimed. 

The door to the train flew open, and the two mages and healer burst in. More of the daughters crowded in behind them, screaming and crying. 

“Katia, what did you do? What did you do?” Eva cried.

Carl: Mic Drop. Platform. Get ready. Wait for my signal. Katia, grab her crossbow!

Donut: WON’T WORK. TRAIN WALL IN THE WAY. WE NEED TO GET OUTSIDE FIRST!  

A magic missile blasted me in the chest, and I fell back against the open window. I almost tumbled outside. It felt as if I’d been hit with a sledgehammer. My Wisp Armor spell was still active. Still, the spell had taken almost a quarter of my health away.

At the same moment, Eva lunged at Katia, swords flashing. Hekla reached up and caught one saber in her hand. The sword sunk into the soft flesh, splitting her palm in two. The other sword bounced off the Amazonian’s breastplate as she pulled herself to her feet, ghoul gore showering off her. Eva was so shocked that she recoiled back in surprise, dropping that first sword, which splashed onto the train’s floor. A second Hekla appeared and picked up the cowering snake woman by the neck and tossed her through the window just as a third Hekla rose to her feet. Eva cried out as she disappeared. I heard her crash onto the track below. 

The other daughters scattered back, confused and crying out.

“Holy shit, Donut,” I said, scrambling forward. She’d cast Second Chance on Hekla’s corpse, and then she’d cast Clockwork Triplicate on the minion, creating three Heklas. It was brilliant. It was fucked up, but it was brilliant.  

“Don’t, don’t hurt them,” Katia cried, finally recovering. “Not the other daughters. They don’t know what’s going on.” 

“Push them back,” Donut yelled at the three Heklas. The daughters started to recover from their shock, howling in outrage at Donut’s desecration of Hekla’s corpse.

“Clockworks first!” I yelled at Donut. “Keep the real Hekla back. We need to loot her damn corpse!” 

One of the clockwork Hekla’s heads exploded. Sparks and little electronic pieces showered as it was hit with a second electrical bolt, cast by one of the daughters. The other two Heklas continued to push the others back and out the door into the gangway and then to the next car. In addition to the remaining daughters, at least a hundred other crawlers filled the car, which was packed to the brim. They yelled as one, confused and afraid at the sight of one of the dungeon’s most famous crawlers lurching toward them. I chased after the minion. I tried to pull the crossbow off Hekla’s back, but it wouldn’t come. As I pulled, I looked down and saw the square access panel in the gangway’s floor.   

“Katia, we need to get the Vermillion key from Hekla’s corpse. It has to be you since you killed her. Get the key first. And then everything else you can grab. Hurry.”

“Why?” Donut asked. She shot a magic missile past undead Hekla’s legs. One of the daughters fell back, crying, grasping her knee. “Why do we need the key?”   

Katia, to her credit, recovered quickly. She rushed forward. “Where’s Eva?” she cried as she reached for the undead Hekla. 

We’d blocked open the doors to the two engine cars so we didn’t need the keys, but if I wanted to disengage this car, I still needed it. My first instinct was to take this engine and get the fuck out of here. Hopefully somebody else would have presence of mind to get to that other engine and pull it out of the station.

A part of me screamed, this is a douche move. You’re abandoning 1,000 people. They needed to know how to disengage the slave mode to pull the train. Surely someone would figure it out. It was just one button. Still, I thought. What if they didn’t?          

Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

“It doesn’t let me loot from her while she’s a minion,” Katia shouted.

The second clockwork Hekla exploded after it was speared in the chest. Donut leaped to my shoulder. 

Out on the platform, the last of the crawlers retreated into the train. A trio of monstrosities leaped down the stairs. Holy shit, what were those things? They had blinking, red exclamation marks over their heads. Those are stage three monsters. We needed to go.  

“Katia, the very moment that minion dies, get the key. Then get her crossbow. Then loot the shit out of everything you can.”

One of the monsters jumped at the train, bouncing off the wall of the passenger car. It looked like it’d once been a skull-faced, bear-sized monster. The DTs had transformed it. Tentacles erupted from its back, reminding me of the mold lions from Grimaldi’s circus. But those tentacles had been thinner, parasitic. This was different. The tentacles were a part of the creature. Very… Krakaren-like.  

Fuck. We don’t have time for this. 

The original plan was to disengage the drive on this first engine car, walk all the way to the back of the train and re-engage that second engine, turning it into the primary one. In theory, however, with that second engine still in slave mode, we didn’t need to do that. The train would work fine from this cab no matter which direction we went, though we’d be driving blind. 

I didn’t have a choice, not with a thousand people suddenly on the train and in imminent danger. We needed to stay here and drive the train backwards. That’d be difficult if we were dead.  

“We need to close the door!” I cried.

At that moment, the Hekla minion collapsed, having been hit with a spell. She tumbled in the gangway, blocking the door. Donut fired another missile at a woman, who rocketed back, health halfway down. 

I jumped forward and grabbed the Hekla corpse by the legs and pulled it back into the cab. “Close the door! Close the door!” Katia grabbed the sliding door, kicked away the block, and slid it closed, locking it, just as it rocked with a pair of spells. I knew from experience nobody would get in without a key, not in an engine car. Hopefully none of the other daughters actually had keys. 

I looked down with horror to realize Hekla’s body had been ripped in half. All we’d dragged into the car was her legs and half of her torso. Her glowing breastplate, and more importantly, the crossbow that’d been slung over her back, was on the other side of the wall.   

The train rocked again as one of the monsters slammed against it. The creatures’ tentacles grasped at the doors to the passenger cars. I jumped up and to the controls. I pushed the train into reverse mode, and I added power to the throttle. The train vibrated ominously, and I feared it wouldn’t go, or the back cars would smash together like they had during that last crash, but the train started to move. Slowly at first, but then it gathered speed. We left the station, moving back down the track. Behind me, the door banged and crashed as the daughters desperately tried to break it down. 

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 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 up 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. Even that second time before she was killed. Right?” 

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 held 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 thing?” 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 the floor. 

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.

I told all of this to Li Jun, who nodded thoughtfully. 

“The monsters will likely come at us from all sides just before the stairs open, even if we do prevent the wrath ghouls from forming a boss monster.” 

“Probably,” I said. “The whole thing is designed to push the monsters toward the stairwells. We all have to work together to survive.”  

“Why do we not go to station 24?” he asked. “That station also has stairs but no ghouls.” 

“We still have three days,” I said. “It’s too late to stop the monsters from becoming a boss at station 48, but if we can prevent it from happening at 36, it’ll be our best bet. We don’t yet know what sort of monsters form once the creatures suffering from stage three die. But it looks like they’ll head to 24, and it’ll probably be something terrible. At least with station 36, we know what we’re facing.” 

He nodded. “Okay. What will you be doing?” 

“We have some more friends who are trapped all the way at the end of the line. We’re going to save them all.”

***
This information may be important soon. We're almost done with the floor. 

Also, in case you don't visit RR anymore to look at the Toby pictures, I had a link where you can download a free Advanced Reader Copy of Dungeon Crawler Carl that'll hit Zon on October 2nd. You may find that here.  Hopefully, I'll have cover art for Book 2 soonish, and I'll get ya'll that too.

Thanks everyone for your support so far. We'll see how this goes.