Book 7, (Everly) Chapters 16-17 + News Items and Title Drop. Plus a question at the very end. (Patreon)

Everly

“You,” Everly hissed, pointing her leg at one of her two remaining mercenaries. He was an ogre with pinprick eyes and an oversized, crushed nose on his damnable, emotionless face. He’d spent the last several moments holding up the rock ceiling as sand poured in from all sides. The mantis didn’t know why, but the sight of the ogre standing there, straining and grunting made her unreasonably angry.

“Watching you try to hold up the ceiling is irritating me. You’re not going to stop it, so don’t bother. Dig, if you must. Just don’t stand there like that.”

The other mercenary, a dwarf, was on his hands and knees, desperately sifting through the sand, looking for the key hole. Everly watched him work for a few moments, panting as he dug with his hands, digging and digging through the meter-deep sand, looking for the tiny hole. They didn’t have the key. They hadn’t found it on the floor above before they’d had to jump down or get crushed. It was pointless.

Still, he worked. Blood ran down the dwarf’s thick, callused fingers as he dug. Tears streamed down the mercenary’s dirty face.

He’s right there, Everly thought as she watched him, strangely fascinated. Unlike the ogre, this one didn’t annoy her nearly as much, and she wasn’t certain why. Right on the edge. He still held out hope, no matter how unreasonable that hope was, and he clung onto it with everything he had.

But Everly could see it, like water seeping from a punctured skin. The hope draining from him with each passing moment.

She pitied him. For the first time, the mantis pitied one of her mercenaries. How many had she hired over these last several floors? Two, three dozen? Some, she’d fired in a rage. Some had simply disappeared and still remained on her payroll, much to her annoyance.

The rest had died.

The Inevitable Ruin. That’s what their queen used to call this moment. The moment you realized there was no hope, nothing left to do, and all that was left was to die and reflect upon what you’ve already done while you waited. To ruminate on how you’ve helped the colony, and to beg forgiveness of God for not sacrificing enough.

When Everly was younger, she used to think she’d be like the dwarf if and when she faced this moment. The Inevitable Ruin. She would fight to the end, unable to accept it.

Yet, here she was. Sitting in the sand, doing exactly what her mother, the queen, said she would do. What all her kind did. She’d accepted death, and all that was left was to ponder.

She almost laughed out loud. The younger version of herself would be raging right now. It’s not over, she’d say. It’s not over until you’re dead. Get down there and help, damn you.

And by younger, Everly meant the version of herself from just before the demons had come to her world. It’d only been half a turn. Yet, it seemed so long ago. Lifetimes. She’d left the colony just a few days before that. Set out on her own because she couldn’t abide the rules, the lack of individualism in mantis culture. She’d become an outcast, left to wander the sward on her own.

This is it, she thought now, watching as the giant ogre also fell to his knees and into the sand. He dug with desperate eagerness, causing a great cascade to fan out into the air, like a mole excavating a new burrow. Half the sand the ogre tossed was landing in the hole the other mercenary was working on, who didn’t seem to notice.

Above, the ceiling groaned and cracked as it continued to lower. Lights dotted the ceiling, the only illumination in the room, giving it a yellow, sickly glow.

This eighth floor had been a strange world. A long, flat, grass-covered plane meant to mimic the sward. But hidden in the grass were thousands of round holes of various sizes, each one leading downward to a different area, ever going down and down like the labyrinth of a cavern wasp colony. The stairwells to the ninth floor were supposedly somewhere at the bottom.

But instead of going down through the holes, there’d been another option. In the very middle of the grassland was a tall, wide tower, rising about fifty levels into the sky. On the front door of the tower was a simple note that read Warning: If you enter the tower maze, you must proceed to the top before you’ll be allowed to go back down. No teleporting or phase allowed in the tower.

There’d been no other information than that. No indication if it was necessary to use the tower or not. The others debated whether or not to risk entering. It seemed like someone had to go in there and try it. For all they knew, it was the only way to open up the stairwells far below.

And then, Everly received the benefactor box from her sponsor, who so far had been quite generous with gifts. The sponsor’s name was Dictum Waystation Controls, Limited.

The item in the box was called Gordon’s Compass of Vertical Labyrinth Management. 49 uses.

It was a simple device, and it appeared it was going to be enormously helpful. It showed the bearer the “quickest and safest” path through a maze.

But there was a problem. The description specifically stated it wouldn’t work in subterranean mazes. It was clear that the compass was meant to be used to navigate the tower.

In addition, she’d received a notification that the AI had initially disallowed the compass to be awarded, but a lawsuit had been filed, and her sponsor had been victorious. And then a second lawsuit by a third party had also attempted to block the prize, but that attempt had been equally unsuccessful.

Everly had taken that as a good sign.

So, she and her ten mercenaries decided to enter the tower while several other crawlers waited at the bottom. Some of her fellow mantises had offered to go with her. She refused their help, like she always did.

Each stairwell upward ended in a landing that consisted of five one-way doors, with supposedly a different danger behind each one. Each time, the compass pointed to the “safest and fastest” path. Each time she opened the safe door, the other doors disappeared, revealing a small, empty hallway and another set of stairs, and that was it. No danger. The compass could only be used 49 times, and the tower was 50 levels high.

With the help of the compass, Everly and her team managed to carefully creep their way up the fifty flights of stairs in a matter of hours. When they used the compass the 49th time—to go from the 49th to the 50th floor—it pointed to a single door before shattering into a dozen pieces.

At the very top of the tower, they came to a large, round room. At this point, Everly had received multiple awards for viewership. She wasn’t one to feel much emotion other than annoyance, but she did allow a glimmer of excitement to creep in. A fan box. She’d heard of such things from others, but she’d never been the most popular. But now she was finally getting recognized. The entire center system was watching her, alone, traveling up this tower on a mission to possibly help save her fellow mantises.

That was a good, unfamiliar feeling, and she savored it. She wondered what her mother would’ve thought.

Sitting in the middle of the room upon a pedestal was nothing more than a folded tent of paper. She warily skittered forward and picked it up. It was a note, and the moment she touched it, the system read the note out loud.

The announcement came in a voice she’d never heard before.

Never trust your life to Gordon Waystation Outfitters. There’s no safe or cheap path to safety.

This dead end was sponsored by Dictum Waystation Controls, Limited.

“Don’t get caught with nowhere to go.”

“What?” she said out loud, not understanding. It took a moment for it to sink in.

It was an advertisement. The whole tower had been an advertisement. She’d seen a few of those throughout the dungeon. Traps that announced they were sponsored by so and so before they went off. The announcer man said it was a pilot program this season.

But this... this was something else. This entire tower had been built by her own sponsor, and they’d given her an item that deliberately led her here. An item, she now realized, that had been named after one of their competitors.

Humiliation. And then anger.

That anger washed over her. An anger so powerful that it temporarily blotted out the fear. An advertisement? They had used her for an advertisement? How fucking dare they?

There was a loud, grinding noise, and a trap door appeared in the floor.

You may now make your way downward. The path you used upward is no longer available.

She pulled up the scratchpad and scrawled an angry note, but she was interrupted by a new sound. The roof above them started to slowly crush down. Her mercenaries started to shout and point. They quickly turned, and they moved to the stairs, which led down to a landing with four doors.

Now, only ten flights down, and only three of them were left alive.

Everly wondered if this would’ve happened if she’d allowed some of the others to go up the tower with her. Maybe one of the others had heard of this Gordon Waystation company and would’ve figured it out.

But she’d insisted on staying alone this whole time. Even after she’d entered the dungeon and found thousands of her fellow mantises, all equally confused and afraid. She’d wanted to work with them. They’d wanted to work with her.

Still, she’d struck out on her own, determined to fight it all in her own way. Her only companions were the NPCs and the invisible words etched on her prayer mat.

The dwarf finally stopped digging. He rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. He reached up, almost able to touch it now.

“The Inevitable Ruin.”

She’d whispered it out loud.

That’s when it had happened, wasn’t it? Not now, here in this damn tower. It happened when I abandoned the others. So much earlier than I realized.

Next to her, the ogre, who hadn’t said a single word since she’d hired him, changed. He, too, had stopped digging and now lay prone atop the sand like he was going to sleep, his head turned toward hers. She watched the change happen. There was a flash, like a screen booting up, deep in the back of his small, black eyes.

“Maybe there’s more to it than this,” the ogre said just as the slow-moving ceiling kissed the side of his face. His body shifted and was pushed into the sand. “Maybe it’s not inevitable, like you say.”

She reached her arm out and touched the ogre just as it started to hurt.

Class: Explosives Engineer.
Race: Primal.
Birth Race: Sward Mantis.
Top Level: 62
Dungeon Exit: crushed to death on the eighth floor.
Author of the fifth edition of the Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook.
Current status: Dead.

Chapter 16

Time until Ceasefire Ends: 31 Hours.

“Okay,” Mordecai said as Katia sat nervously on the hospital cot. I paced back and forth behind them, equally anxious. I had a bed of my own waiting for me. “This is going to take aboot eight to ten hours for you, Katia. Carl, I’m not sure how long your session will take. It should be significantly less, but I don’t think anyone has actually tried this outside a drug den before, so who knows.”

He placed the fizzing, green jar on the counter. It looked like thick, carbonated slime. The concoction made a hissing noise. “This jar is enough for both of you. It’s basically two hits of Glory Bound, but compounded with a subdermal gel and mixed with a potion called ‘Tough Love.’ Kinda like that anti-alcohol potion I gave to Louis and Firas on the fifth floor, but with a long brew time. I started making this on the previous floor, and it has to sit nice and long before it gains its potency, and we are now in that window. It goes stale fast, so it’s now or never. The dose I’m giving to you, Carl, I’m also going to combine with another potion called ‘Removal Order.’ That way we’ll be visiting the spider’s memories instead of your own.” He paused, swallowing hard. “I hope.”

“Removal Order will work for such a powerful entity?” Bucket Boy asked. The crocodilian kid, a former attendant of the Penis Parade, stood in the room and somehow looked pale, despite being covered with scales. “Isn’t that for weaker possessions?” The NPC looked over at me nervously. He leaned in toward Mordecai and whispered loud enough for the whole room to hear, “Like, won’t his head explode if it doesn’t work right?”

“Wait, what?” I asked.

“No, his head won’t explode,” Mordecai said. “Not the way we’re doing it. Probably not.”

I sat on the cot. “Jesus,” I muttered.

We’ll both die. Don’t do this, Carl.

“Shut the fuck up,” I said, slapping myself on the chest.

Katia had only taken the insidious, addictive drug Glory Bound once, which had caused her to re-live her favorite memory. But the drug was terribly addictive and came with several nasty side effects, one of which was her losing her grasp on what was real or not. We’d only seen a few minor examples of this so far, but we needed to get this taken care of now before it got worse.

And that required her to take Glory Bound a second time but with a version of the drug modified by Mordecai. Katia would go under, but she would be forced to confront something from her past. I didn’t know what that was, and I didn’t ask. That was her business, and it was something she’d have to face on her own. Based on the hollow look in her eyes, I knew it would be something terrible. She trembled.

We weren’t inside of a saferoom, but in a newly-built field hospital at our base. Katia would be unconscious but constantly monitored, and saferooms had some strange rules about this sort of thing. Mordecai insisted it would have to be outside.

As for me, the treatment required someone to remove my new toe ring once I was konked out. That also required me to do this independent of the safety of the guild.

Outside, the clanging, pulsing sound of rapid construction continued unabated. The multi-layer, anti-magic shell was being erected over the base. They were behind schedule, and I could hear shouting from several directions. This new shield looked like a kid’s jungle gym, and it was designed so different mages could cast spells in different hexagons of the structure, like tiles, allowing for stronger protection and denying the enemy a single point of failure. Killing a mage usually canceled out any of their active protection spells.

“Carl,” Rosetta said. “If you’re still under when Katia comes back, I’ll induce the wake-up sequence. You should be able to initiate the ejection yourself, since it won’t be your own memory.”

“Even with the ring off?”

“Once you’re under, the ring shouldn’t matter, but we’ll make sure it’s put back on before you wake up. Imani will cast a protection spell on you, too, so that should bolster your defenses.”

“And if I am in one of my own memories?”

“Then it will probably be unpleasant,” Rosetta said.

“What about Katia?” I asked, looking over at the woman next to me. She was in her regular, human form, and she looked so small in the bed. She caught my eyes and smiled. She reached over to grab my hand, but she was too far away. Rosetta moved between us.

Edgar the tortoise appeared, walking slowly into the room. He made slow, painful progress toward Katia. “Even though you’re both getting the same drug,” Edgar said, “you two are undergoing two very different treatments. Once Katia is under, she’s on her own. If we wake her up early, it could be fatal.”

“That’s a cheerful thought,” Katia said.

In the room was Edgar, Mordecai, Rosetta, Bautista, Imani, a few former crawlers I didn’t know, and Bucket Boy the crocodilian strip-club attendant NPC, who was also a low-tier healer. He was present to assist Imani, and once the fighting began, this field hospital would be his domain along with some of the other healers.

Bautista remained in the back of the room, pacing back and forth, chewing on one of his finger claws. I wasn’t too clear on the state of Bautista and Katia’s relationship, but she’d asked for him to be here. Based on the flashing of their eyes, they were talking privately.

Donut remained in the guild, in her bathroom, taking shower after shower in a fruitless attempt to get the stench out of her and Mongo. Rend was with them, apparently a big fan of the shower. Donut had sent no less than two dozen messages in the past ten minutes, demanding to know what was happening.

I took a long breath. I touched the tattoo on my chest. The eye was open and blinking, angrily looking back and forth, desperately attempting to cast this or that. I had my Wisp Armor spell active, which added extra protection against Shi Maria’s attempts to take over my body. Despite that, she’d just been able to talk in my mind. We had to do this now.

We had several options on how to deal with the spider’s presence attached to my body. All were dangerous. None were guaranteed. This particular method was ensured to be painful whether it worked or not, but it came with the benefit of having to use a powerful potion that Mordecai had already made.

I worried about that. Whenever there was a coincidence or a convenience—not that anything about this was convenient—I knew that there was another hand involved in all of this. Whether it was the show runners or the AI or some combo of both. And that always meant some sort of unwelcome fuckery was about to go down.

But what other choice did I have? This was our only opportunity to deal with this problem before it was too late

According to both Mordecai and Rosetta, this particular drug—Glory Bound—was based on a real-life, outside-the-inner-system medication originally designed to help train people to do various, difficult tasks. It was a two-part process that first involved subliminal conditioning over a long period of time. And then the trip portion of the drug was used to unlock the knowledge. But, as with most drugs that could do such a thing, it started to get abused before the whole process was replaced by some other technique.

But the drug and its effects persisted in the dungeon, used for literally dozens of quests over the seasons, or as a sort of trap, which is exactly what it had been for Katia. Sometimes the drug’s effects were tweaked to fit into a particular storyline. But more than once, there had been “possessed” quests that required the victim to find the drug den in the Desperado Club to get themselves cured.

In order for Katia to clear the physical effects of this addiction, she needed to re-live this experience, whatever it was.

For me, it was more complicated. I needed to enter the memory of the spider, who also would experience her “worst” memory. I would not be a memory ghost in the reminiscence. I could—and probably would—be injured. I could feel pain. My memory body could die. But I would reconstitute each time. And as long as I kept my wits about me, my real body would be fine. I would have to witness this dream, whatever it was, and because of the drug Mordecai added to the mix—Removal Order—I could choose to lock Shi Maria in the memory at the end. She would remain forever trapped.

The tattoo would remain on my chest, but I would have control over it. I would gain a skill or two, if I did it properly. And that’s what worried me. There were no specific instructions on how to “lock” her in the dream. It would manifest itself in a different way each time. Mordecai said it would probably be clear.

But if I failed to properly trap her, I’d wake back up and would have to deal with a very pissed-off entity inside of me. We’d be back to square one.

“Here we go,” Mordecai said as he slipped on a glove. “This potion is a gel I’m putting on your skin.” He took a handful and started to rub it on Katia’s neck. He then added another potion to the jar of goo and moved to me, slopping a cold blob of the green stuff on me. It fizzed and kind of tickled. “It’ll take about five minutes to start working, but it’s safer and more effective if you’re unconscious when it takes hold. So wait until your potion cooldown has passed, and then I’m going to knock you both out.” He pulled off the glove with a deft finger and dropped it into the jar as Imani handed each of us a potion.

“Drink these as soon as you can,” Mordecai said. “This will help the sleep come fast. The potion will make you a bit loopy. You might see some weird shit, but it won’t last long.”

Potion of Somnolent Embrace.

This won’t remove your worries or your bad dreams for more than but a moment. But it will ease them long enough to let you sleep. Sometimes this is all we can hope for.

Gently brings you to rest until you fall asleep.

Katia looked at the potion, gave me a quick, nervous smile, and then shrugged. “Skál,” she said, drinking the potion manually.

A moment later, she added, “Oh wow, this stuff is great.”

“I don’t have the fancy bed you guys have,” Mordecai said. “It’s what I use sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Rosetta asked.

“What do you know aboot it?” Mordecai asked her.

“I saw Odette’s story about you the other day.”

“Her what?”

I drank the potion down, and I instantly felt a warm tingling rush over me. I turned my head toward Katia. She had a golden, glowing halo over her. The others in the room were still talking. Mordecai was growling something at Rosetta, but all I could hear was Katia.

“Do you want to hear a secret?” Katia asked me as her eyes got heavy. Her voice was loud and clear.

“Sure,” I said.

“My favorite memory and my worst memory are the same thing. I’m going to the same place I was last time. I hope that doesn’t mess this up.”

“Katia,” I heard myself say. “Quick. Grab my hand. We can do it together.”

“Okay,” she said, reaching out. Her arm stretched and grasped onto my wrist. She started to twist and twist, like a vine growing up my arm. She started to pull me from the table.

“No,” someone shouted. “Separate them!” Edgar. His voice was distant. Not nearly as clear.

Imani was there, unravelling us. “No touching, you two,” she said, her voice surprisingly gentle, yet so far away. She was wearing gloves. Why was she wearing gloves? “It’ll confuse the dreams.”

“But we’re still touching,” I whispered as my consciousness fled. I could feel it, the river, flowing from myself and crashing against the rocks of Katia’s mind. There was no purchase there, no permanent path back to me, but still, my thoughts crashed into hers, like a tsunami, and for a moment, I flooded onto her, overwhelming it all.

I heard her gasp, and I could see things there. I saw her mind.

And with the backsplash, I briefly touched the minds of others nearby. Imani, who was terrified. Mordecai, equally wary. Rosetta who just seemed so very tired. Edgar, who was worried. Just flashes, like my hand running through a flame. The moment only lasted microseconds.

Katia was the one I’d truly crashed against, and while it was still short, the glimpses I felt of her lasted longer. Told me more.

She, too, was afraid. Afraid that she was a burden. Ashamed. Ashamed that we were all doing this for her. And angry, too. Angry at herself. Angry at the world. Angry at... at... Me? Why would she be angry with me?

I quickly started to recede.

Would I get away in time? I could feel the event horizon looming. The precipice of the dream rushing up to meet us. And behind me, another presence menaced. Two presences. Three presences, but one well hidden. I tried to retreat, fleeing away from Katia’s dream. She needed to do that alone. I needed to turn around and face this, whatever it was.

Katia stood beside me, her arm still twisting like a snake around my own as the two sides crashed toward us, like a pair of hands clapping together in a clumsy attempt to capture a bug.

“It’s not that I’m angry with you,” she said in the microsecond before the two hands joined. “I’m just mad that you let people hurt you. You meet someone, you start to care for them, and then it becomes...”

She was interrupted by a warlord notification. The sound was distant and hollow, yet it was enough to cut her off completely.

The Lemig Sortion has offered you free passage to their headquarters in order to treat for peace. They are offering...

Slap.

Chapter 17

I blinked, and I woke up.

The Scavenger’s Daughter has been fed. Unleash her wrath.

I wasn’t in the Icelandic hospital anymore. My mind reeled.

Is this still the dream?

I slowly looked at my hands, confused.

I was covered with blood. What the hell?

Quest Failed. The Bedlam Bride.

Katia, I thought. Where was Katia? I thought of the memory, of the dream we’d just shared. Of Annie, the little baby girl. Of that prick of an ex... boyfriend? Husband? Fannar was his name. Of the cancer diagnosis. After all those hoops, after all she’d overcome. They’d caught it early. She’d be okay. But, despite that... it’d come with a terrible price. I understood, finally. Katia’s addictions. Fannar had told them. I didn’t understand why. She’d been clean for so long, struggled so long, so hard to stand on her own feet. And then a one, two punch. By dungeon standards, all of this was almost nothing. Just another one of life’s shitty events. A debuff. A minor setback. But to Katia, it had been everything. A shattering.

I thought of the social worker, coming to pick me up from the interrogation room. Come on now, she’d said. Come on now.

But this time, when I remembered it, she said something else in my memory.

The inevitable ruin. I heard it clearly in her clipped, matter-of-fact voice.

I knew that phrase. I knew what it meant. Paulie had said it was of Mantid origin, a phrase meaning the point of no return. But what the hell did it mean in this context? The altered memory came unbidden. The words appeared and disappeared in my mind, like smoke.

There was screaming.

I was still groggy. A lot of screaming. What was going on? Where was I? I was standing. Standing in the middle of a room. Standing in a circle of blood and corpses.

My eyes focused on a goblin thing. He was in the familiar, cavernous room with me, and he had a gun in his hands. He aimed it right at my head and pulled the trigger. The goblin froze, and the gun didn’t go off. The word Naughty appeared over the goblin’s head. There were multiples of the creatures in the room. Most were dead. One was on the floor, sobbing as he dragged himself away from me. His legs were gone, and he smeared bright, bright blood on the tiled floor.

I know this place, I thought.

And the goblin, too. The one screaming with no legs. I recognized him as well. His name was Luke. He was a representative from the Lemig Sortion. As I watched, he groaned, and then he died.

Corpse of Luke. Level 64 Lemig Goblin.

General in the Democratic Sortion.

Killed by a fellow soldier under the control of Shi Maria.

I... I was in the high elf castle. The castle from the fifth floor. We were in one of the ballrooms, but the walls were cracked all around. I shook my head. This didn’t make sense.

“Sorry,” a new, gravelly voice said. “It’s being ruled an AI action, not an attack. The ceasefire has no rules against teammates fighting one another. Or monsters. You could’ve fought back against the unaffiliated NPC while he was under control of that thing, but you waited too long. Now that he’s no longer possessed, you can’t touch him while the ceasefire is in effect. The AI is claiming he had a notification over his head while he was vulnerable.”

I turned around to face the voice. I blinked a few times, still completely disoriented. There was something wrong with my eyesight, and it was making me dizzy. There were two aliens standing there in the midst of all the carnage. God, how many dead were in here? It looked to be fifty, or more.

The one who’d been speaking was a tall, purple-skinned creature. A dreadnaught. The notice over him said his name was Panford. Adjutant for the Democratic Sortion. The alien he was speaking to was a giant, fuzzy thing. He was a good seven feet tall and looked like an upright caterpillar. Commander Stockade. Level 76 Phase Sorcerer. Warlord of the Lemig Sortion.

“An AI action?” Commander Stockade shouted. He was screaming at the dreadnaught. The caterpillar’s voice surprised me. He had that same, weird accent as the rest of their kind, even though the rest were mostly goblins. He sounded like an aged surfer dude straight out of southern California. “He walked right into our throne room and killed half of my family, and it’s considered an AI action? This is utter, complete bullshit. I want to file an immediate appeal.”

I continued to look around. I was starting to realize this wasn’t a dream. Was I really here? How in the hell had that happened? The entire ballroom was filled with blood. It looked as if someone had set off a bomb.

Also, I realized, this wasn’t the same goodwill ballroom I’d been in for the Butcher’s Masquerade. The exits were in different places. I suspected this was the third one. The one near the top of the castle. Queen Imogen’s private ballroom. When we’d transferred this castle to the ninth floor, I knew it’d landed in the territory of the Lemig Sortion, and they’d started using it as their headquarters.

“You can’t file an appeal,” Panford the adjutant said. “They’re all dead. You can’t appeal them back to life. If you had informed me of your ill-conceived plan, I could have told you why it wouldn’t have worked. That entity is a demonic demigod. Not a full demon. Carl was not possessed in the traditional manner. You planned on turning Carl into a vegetable and having the spider kill everyone in the room back in the other base. Instead, Carl is safe, and now your throne room is destroyed.”

“This is cheating! He turned into that thing and killed the entire room in seconds! That’s not how this works! The AI changed the rules.” His voice was starting to crack. “Luke, oh gods, Luke is dead. My beautiful, beautiful Luke. Reeves is dead. They’re all dead.”

My eyes caught the timer in the corner of my vision. We had 20 hours until the ceasefire ended. I’d lost 11 hours.

“What happened is exactly what always happens when you attempt to improperly extract an entity that powerful. This is your fault. This very thing happened three seasons ago,” the dreadnaught said, jabbing a finger at the caterpillar. “I asked you where you got your information, and you refused to answer. All spies must be disclosed to adjutants. You know this, and you have made no such declaration. Unless you can prove you have a mole in the Princess Posse camp, I am going to assume you have an external influence assisting you, which is clearly cheating. You and Architect Houston both planned this using someone observing the feed from outside the dungeon. I’m afraid I’m going to have to call a foul.”

“On us? You’re calling a foul on us? We are fighting for our lives here, and you’re worried about the rules? When I get out of here, I will make you pay.”

“Both the Lemig Sortion and the Madness will receive heavy sanctions for this stunt. The specifics will come down shortly. In addition, threatening your adjutant comes with additional penalties.”

“What the hell happened?” I asked, coughing the words.

“You,” Commander Stockade said, waving one of his short, caterpillar arms at me. “You planned this! I don’t know how you did it, but you planned it this way!”

I was going to vomit.

Donut: CARL, CARL. WHERE ARE YOU? KATIA IS STILL HERE, BUT YOU DISAPPEARED. YOU TELEPORTED AWAY, AND NOBODY KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED. OUR ADJUTANT LADY SAID YOU KILLED A BUNCH OF LEMIG PEOPLE IN THEIR OWN CASTLE, BUT IT’S THEIR OWN FAULT. SHE’S NOT MAKING SENSE. MORDECAI AND ROSETTA ARE BOTH LAUGHING LIKE THEY’VE GONE CRAZY.

Carl: I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m okay for right now.

Baroness Victory: Hold tight, Carl. They’re asking for a minor quorum. I am coming to you. Don’t make any rash movements or actions. You’re safe if you don’t move.

There was a flash, followed by a second flash and a notice.

A Second Adjutant has Entered the Room.

A Third Adjutant has Entered the Room.

A Minor Quorum has been achieved. All hostilities must be paused while a field ruling is considered.

There was new shouting all around me as mercenaries entered the ballroom from all the doors. A second and a third mercenary—these were large, bugbear-looking things I’d never seen before—attempted to fire their weapons at me. All got paused. There were no chairs here. I had to sit, so I sat on the floor, in the midst of all the carnage. I had no idea what had happened, how I got here, or what had happened while I was under. My head continued to swirl. I remembered the dream, how it started. I remembered the spider. Not Shi Maria, but a different one. A male. Her husband. I remembered how, near the end, Shi Maria had also entered the room, mocking me, telling me I’d be sorry, but then she saw the other spider, and she’d changed. She burst into a rage. She killed him, her own husband. She’d devoured him while she sobbed. After, she’d curled into a ball, right there in the hospital in Iceland.

But then it got fuzzy.

I’d failed the Bedlam Bride quest. The quest to bring her to Larracos. Did that mean she was gone? If so, how had she killed the entire room?

And how the hell had I gotten here? I was now on the other side of the map.

I hoped Katia’s treatment had worked. I suspected it had. That was the impression I had from the dream. My treatment had also worked. Sort of. It had worked according to her husband, who’d reappeared at the end. The order of what happened was a jumble, just like a real dream. What was his name? Hapanzi? He’d been a god.

I have her now, son, he’d said. She is good and trapped. You can always set her free, if you must. But do not unless all is lost.

I could now see from the eye on my chest. It wasn’t a tattoo anymore, though it still disappeared when it was closed. I could feel it. I had to make a conscious effort to keep the eye closed. Another wave of nausea flooded me.

Katia: Carl, where are you?

Carl: I think I’m in the high elf castle! I have no idea what the hell is going on.

Katia: They’re saying you teleported away right when it started, but you remained translucent, like you were in two places at once, and at the end, you completely disappeared. And now your adjutant is saying you killed a room full of the Lemig goblin guys. She said something to Mordecai, and he fell over laughing and hasn’t explained why. Donut is here losing her mind. The Lemig guys knew the precise moment you went under, and they attempted something to ruin the procedure. Something using the warlord chat I don’t understand. That in itself wasn’t against the rules, but them using outside information is. The fact it backfired on them is irrelevant.

Carl: Holy shit.

Katia: Carl, we left her there. We left Shi Maria alone in that room with Annie.

Carl: It’s not real. It was just a memory. The spider is trapped, and she’s not trapped in you. Her husband said so. But your Annie. The real Annie, she’s gone. They can’t touch her.

Katia: Carl...

Carl: It worked, right? Did they say it worked?

Katia: I think so. It’s not like a switch that one flips on and off. We won’t really know right away. But, yes. I think it worked.

Carl: Then that’s all that matters.

Shi Maria wasn’t truly gone, but she was trapped. I remembered now. She was like an egg inside of me. One I could break at any time, but I had to do it myself.

That should’ve been an enormous relief. It was not.

I tried opening the third eye, but I clenched it shut a moment later. I had to close it. There was power there. So much power. I had to keep it closed.

The inevitable ruin.

~~~~~

Can you guess what the title for the next one is? It's not 100% set in stone, but as of right now we are going with Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 7. The Inevitable Ruin.

Okay, folks. Happy Halloween! So a couple notes about those previous two (three, really) chapters. This was tough because it was something we always had to tackle. First off, I’m not a huge fan of these weebly-wobbly, is any of this even real? sort of chapters, but sometimes they’re absolutely necessary. And when you’re in the first person POV of someone who shouldn’t be privy to it al, it makes it even more difficult without being hackneyed. I'm probably still going to tinker with these chapters more so than any others so far before we get to the final product.

Katia’s backstory isn’t really anything super cataclysmic. But it is sad and frustrating and all too common, and I’ve been kinda worried for a while now that by making it so mysterious that the actual reveal would be kind of an anticlimactic. My first attempt at these chapters included the dream itself, and Katia revealing the exact timeline of her circumstances. Instead I’ve left it a little more nebulous, though the facts are now on the table.

Combine that with an equally nebulous way for Carl to temporarily(?) sew-up the Bedlam Bride storyline without completely closing it, and it makes for a weird pair of chapters. .

(And I managed to sneak in a third reference in there from another ill-defined scene from the last book we’ll eventually get to. That one is a doozy.)

As to what actually happened, and why it happened, outside the dream. That will be made crystal clear next chapter, so don’t worry about that.

ANYWAY!

Three news items.

1) Part II of the eight-part Dungeon Crawler Carl, book one audiodrama is now available over at Soundbooth Theater! From now on, all the parts will release every two weeks. This really is something else, and if you haven’t already, check out the first few hours for free. https://soundbooththeater.com/shop/audiobooks/dungeon-crawler-carl-book-1-episode-2-ayudame-immersion-tunnel/

2) The Kickstarter has three days left! Holy shit! Thanks for all your support so far. My wrist is going to hurt more than it did after I first saw the movie Career Opportunities.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dinniman/dungeon-crawler-carl-v1-hardcover-editions?ref=5qmotz

3) I will be at the 20Booksto50K conference next week in Las Vegas. I am having dinner Sunday night with some of ya’ll. If you expressed interest in meeting with me in the comments last time, I should have sent you a message regarding the dinner plans.

4) Bonus news item. There are so many HOLY SHIT things I wish I could tell you right now, but I just can’t. Either way, this... the story itself is the single most important of all this, and I want to thank all of you for sticking it through with me. Every one of these books is an order of magnitude more difficult to write than the previous, and your support means the world to me.

Okay, one more thing.

One of the reached stretch goals for the kickstarter is a pair of full-color endpapers plus several full-color drawings of scenes from book one. The backers get to vote on what they want, but I'm asking you for your input on what scenes you'd like included for the poll. Luciano, who does the regular edition book covers is doing the front and back endpapers. I kinda want the first one something from near the beginning of the book, like the scene of Carl going down the first set of stairs and approaching the giant doorway, and the end scene all the cages from when Donut and Carl get to pick a pet. But ultimately it's up to the backers.So my question is, what scene from book one would you like to see made into art? Think outside of the box.