Book 7, Chapters 18 and 19 (Patreon)

Okay folks… in order to make these next two chapters work, I’m forced to retcon a few details. Most aren’t too too important, but if you see any inconsistencies, hopefully I’ve already caught them and fixed it. The most important change you need to know was already broken in the last chapter with Luke…, I had it that the faction wars non-crawlers still had death protections turned on. They could die, but they came back. I’ve changed it so that turned off the moment the crawlers appeared. That’s going to cause some rippling in earlier chapters which I will have to hit with another edit, but it can’t be helped.

Chapter 18

“This is an official field ruling adjudication,” Panford the bugbear said to the pissed-off caterpillar and the stoic Viceroy. He waved his hand, and a screen appeared floating in the air.

We all sat in a new room. I was segregated from the others by about ten feet, and I was still dripping with blood. I had it on my face. In my hair. This was the private kitchen of Queen Imogen, off to the side of the ballroom. The table was made of some rich, finely carved wood, and in moments, it was covered with my bloody handprints.

Baroness Victory and the other two adjutants also congregated together in the middle of the table, dividing me and the two warlords. They’d been conversing amongst themselves for some time now before the bugbear cleared his throat and started talking.

There was a bag of literal Earth cat food sitting on the counter, abandoned and leaning against the wall. The large bag was closed with a little plastic clip. It was some generic, cheap kind of cat food that Donut would never touch. The yellow bag featured a happy, cartoon cat and was called “Meow Time.” There was also a sticker on the bag, “a gift from Pet Angels.” Pet Angels was a Seattle charity that gave free pet supplies to people who couldn’t afford it otherwise. Its presence here was so out of place that it was physically jarring. Is that what Ferdinand was eating when he lived here in the castle? Was it what he was eating before? If so, how did it get here? I couldn’t take my eyes off it, and I had an overwhelming urge to try to steal it.

There were six of us in the room. The three warlords and their adjutants. Architect Houston—the masked, Viceroy leader of the Madness—sat at the other end of the wooden table, unmoving. It appeared he was already in the castle but hadn’t been in the ballroom when “it” happened, whatever it was. The adjutant for the Madness was a tiny, floating Bune. The little dragon creature’s name was Opiee.

Stockade and I had filed into the kitchen like a pair of children being called into the principal’s office. No guards were allowed to follow. A group of the bugbear mercenary cooks were shooed from the room as we entered. Commander Stockade quivered with rage. Yellow goo leaked from his fuzzy, compound eyes, and he smelled like must and dirt. Even across the room, I could smell his rising stench. The angry alien kept muttering “Luke” over and over.

Architect Houston, who’d entered a moment later, didn’t appear to have a care in the world, not that it was difficult to put up such a façade. His white, featureless mask was slightly different than the other masks his kind wore. A small, red teardrop icon sat in the very center of the white guise. He wore long, flowing, Jedi-like robes that were just as starkly white as his mask, like a pope. The robes flowed strangely as he walked in, giving the implication his anatomy was strange. I knew under that mask, he had a demonic, alien face with lots of terrifying teeth, like a mix between a Predator alien and a goblin with no lips.

On the floating screen, a close-up view of me on the cot in the infirmary appeared, followed by a second screen showing the caterpillar in the middle of the ballroom, surrounded by dozens of the Lemig goblins. On the screen, Stockade’s compound eyes flashed like a disco ball as he spoke with someone.

“Stockade,” Panford continued as the screens moved, “your plan was both simple and brilliant. Using the warlord chat, you offered peace terms to warlords Carl and Donut. With those terms, you requested a face-to-face parlay. And then you extended an invite directly to Carl using your level-15 Summon Ally spell. You extended this invitation after Carl quaffed the sleep potion and just as he was taking the medicine to treat his demonic infestation. Since Carl was still, technically, conscious when you made your offer, the request was delivered directly to his interface. You also knew that while most command-and-request inquiries are disabled in certain unconscious states, properly delivered warlord inquiries remain persistent even during certain levels of unconsciousness.”

The left side of the screen switched to my interface, showing Accept Teleport Request? You will teleport here: Followed by a map showing the location of the Lemig base. The screen split once more, returning to me passed out on the cot. It showed Imani, Rosetta, and Mordecai hovering over me while Rosetta pried off my toe ring.

“You knew that while Carl was incapacitated, the plan for them was to allow Shi Maria to take over Carl’s consciousness during the dream sequence. While in that state, the entity would have no ability to control Carl or interact with any of his systems, such as casting spells, sending messages, or interacting with his inventory. However, because of your brilliantly timed request, the entity controlling Carl could—and indeed did—accept the invitation to parlay.”

The screen showed the teleport request get accepted the moment my toe ring was pulled off.

The bugbear turned to the other two adjutants—the orc and the bune. “Are we agreed on these facts so far?”

“Agreed,” Opiee the adjutant for the Madness said.

“Yes,” Baroness Victory agreed. I caught her eye, and she winked at me from across the room.

There was an audible chime from the system, but no other notification.

“This is bullshit,” Commander Stockade muttered again. “This was supposed to be a game, and now we’re literally fighting for our lives. Yet, you fools are pretending like nothing has happened. You’re complicit in all this. You’re just as complicit as the mudskippers, the mantids, and the Valtay whose ineptitude let this happen. You need to be helping us escape, not tightening...” He trailed off, almost like a child getting distracted by something shiny. “Luke is gone. Beautiful Luke is no more. He was real. A real life snuffed away.”

I was about to say something, but the sudden rage that built up in my chest temporarily muted my voice. Still, I found myself on my feet, my fists clenched.

Architect Houston, who hadn’t said a word or even moved since he sat at the table, turned his head in my direction. It was barely a move, but his neck made a slight creaking noise, like from a wooden ship.

Easy. Easy.

Victory put up her hand and motioned me to sit.

“Nobody is happy for their current circumstances,” Victory said to the caterpillar, “but the rules are the rules. We all know what will happen if we don’t continue as normal.”

“If we survive this, you will all be sorry,” Stockade said. He was so angry, he was crying as he spoke. “I swear it.”

“Noted,” Victory said. She bowed toward the bugbear. “Please continue.”

The bugbear nodded. Shi Maria appeared on the screen, spinning. “The entity contained within Carl is basically a special Reaper Spider Minion merchant. Part demon and part demi-god. You, Stockade, knew that the spider would jump at the ability to escape, which is exactly what would’ve happened if things had gone as you anticipated.”

Panford looked at me. “Do you know how the Summon Ally spell works?”

“Of course,” I said.

That was a lie, but I’d already asked Mordecai to explain it to me, and his answer had already popped up. As I read it, Commander Stockade started bawling again about his dead friend, Luke.

Mordecai: Summon Ally is a rare, multi-functional teleport spell. At its most basic, it does what it says. It summons an ally to you. However, it’s not meant as an offensive spell, and there are some protections in place to keep it from being used as such. At all levels, it puts control in the hands of the summoned and not the summoner. First, you have to be in each other’s chat systems for it to work. I guess the warlord chat works, too. Second, the summoned is given the choice to accept the summoning. Third, the summoned cannot be teleported into a wall or anything like that. What happened in this case is that you were teleported to that castle, but you appeared as a non-corporeal avatar. It was the system compensating for your unconscious state. This is actually intended to stop people from using the spell to remove friends from deadly situations, but in your case it saved you. You remained in that state until you started to wake up. I thought I’d killed you. It took some time to figure out what was going on.

Carl: What the hell were they trying to do? They went through all this to see a ghost of myself sleeping for like 10 hours. So what? What happened?

Mordecai: At best, they wanted to ruin your treatment. At worst, they thought it would simply kill you. Or act like teleporting a demon-possessed shell. Remember what happened on the last floor? What happened there, they thought was going to happen here. They wanted to kill us using that crazy spider. The adjutants will explain what actually happened.

Carl: Jesus.

“We must continue,” Panford said to the still-blubbering caterpillar who’d fallen on the floor and was undulating up and down like a toddler having a tantrum.

“Why. Why are you subjecting me to this? Just make your ruling and leave me be.”

Watching the caterpillar, I suddenly thought of the late Miss Nadine, the gentle, chee-turned caterpillar NPC who’d died on the sixth floor. This guy was a completely different kind, but his very existence filled me with anger.

You don’t know loss. Not yet.

“We are doing this because it’s part of the rules,” Panford said, exasperation leaking into his formal voice. “All fouls that come with sanctions must be thoroughly examined by a minor quorum. Now kindly shut up and let me finish.”

Stockade grunted and remained prone on the floor.

Panford nodded. The screen showed me teleporting to the ballroom. A translucent version of me appeared in both locations. The side in the infirmary showed Imani starting to shout with Mordecai and everyone else leaning over me, trying to figure out what was happening.

“Carl was teleported to the ballroom here after Shi Maria accepted the invite. However, they intended for him to fully teleport to the location and leave Shi Maria there at the base for the Princess Posse. The spider would’ve then slaughtered the entire room. What happened instead was that Carl was only partially teleported here, thwarting the plan.”

“Incidentally,” Victory said, interrupting. “That wouldn’t have worked under any circumstances.”

“I’m not so certain,” Opiee the bune said. “Carl should be able to teleport normally. But fully teleporting while incapacitated with a presence that’s actively trying to escape? I think it might’ve worked if they’d used a different method to teleport. We all saw what happened next. It was an interesting theory and was worth the risk.”

“Hmm,” Victory said. “The next part wouldn’t have happened without the game guide’s intervention. But perhaps you’re correct.”

Stockade waved at his fellow adjutants to let him continue. “It’s irrelevant. Even if it would’ve worked, there was additional corruption in the procedure when crawlers Katia and Carl touched hands during the start of the process. Carl’s consciousness remained inside of Katia’s while Carl’s avatar temporarily existed in both bases.”

“The consciousness jumping like that is still a mystery,” Opiee said. “It’s fascinating, and it shouldn’t have happened.”

“I believe it’s the communal nature of his Primal race,” Victory replied. “But it could also be the duality of the Shi Maria presence. She, in turn, had a god within herself.”

At the table, Architect Houston leaned forward to examine the screen as it switched to a new view.

The screen now showed a much hazier scene, showing nothing but blurry shadows. I recognized it immediately. Holy shit, I thought. They can see our dreams. It was the first part of Katia’s nightmare. Katia and I stood in the hallway, our arms physically attached as we watched a memory of herself walk through a door into a building. She stopped dead as another man was walking out.

What are you doing here? Dream Katia had asked him in Icelandic. I could understand it perfectly.

Telling them the truth the man said, pushing past her. On the screen, the words came out garbled, like a radio tuned just south of the correct station. But I could hear it. I could hear the panic in Katia’s voice. The venom in the man’s. His name was Fannar. He was a fellow professor, and they were originally going to adopt together. He’d slept with a student, and she’d reported him. Nothing had come of it other than the ruination of Katia’s life.

The scene jumped.

I can take a test, Katia pleaded to the faceless woman. I haven’t touched anything in ten years. It was so long ago.

It’s not just that. You’re sick, and you’ve been hiding it. With Annie’s medical needs, and with so little time left, we don’t feel...

He had no right, Katia shouted. She screamed the words, and she swept everything off the woman’s desk. Even garbled like this, they stung me all over again. The now Katia, the one watching this with me, had cried on my shoulder. He had no right, she’d said in unison with the ghost on the screen.

The now version of Katia also had a crow on her shoulder. Her card that she’d brought from the previous floor. A crow with the skull of an infant.

The crow’s name was also Annie. I didn’t know what that meant, but it seemed important.

Across the way, Architect Houston moved his attention from the screen and to me.

“Turn this off,” I said. “This isn’t yours to watch.”

I was ignored. The scene changed. We were in a hospital room, Katia standing at a crib, holding the baby the best she could. It was difficult with all the wires and diodes that attached to the nine-month-old, who’d just started standing on her own in the crib.

The now Katia and I both gasped and stepped back as a massive spider appeared, pushing himself through the wall. Annie the crow cawed angrily and flapped her wings. She, too, was attached to Katia, blended into her shoulder.

This spider was not Shi Maria. Hapanzi. Her husband. He didn’t say the name out loud, and here in this place, we didn’t have names floating over our heads, but in the dream, I knew. I knew everything about him, memories that were just now starting to flow back into me.

Too many memories. Memories that diluted and washed away into the stream.

“Worry not, my children,” the spider had said. As we watched, he transformed into a large, dark-skinned human, wearing simple pants and a vest. His accent was like that of Asojano’s. I recognized the voice as the same one that occasionally spoke in my mind. “Worry not.”

Only then did the scene fade, returning to me on the floor of the ballroom, still translucent and flickering.

Panford continued. “After some time, the Shi Maria consciousness was also pulled into Katia’s dreamscape. Meanwhile, parties at both ends scrambled to find a way to turn Carl’s incapacitation to their advantage. You, Stockade, planned on casting a spell to force Carl to completely form on your side, but you paused. You paused because you once again received outside information about how the Princess Posse team was planning to react. You, once again, needed to time your reaction to just the correct moment. Meanwhile, members of the crawler team became aware of exactly what was happening, and they formed a plan to defend Carl.”

“So, they’re cheating also!” the caterpillar shouted, suddenly pulling himself straight up. “They also have someone watching from the outside!”

“I will refute this,” Victory said. The simple pronouncement was followed by a ping from the system.

“You idiot,” Panford said to the caterpillar. “I will note for the record that Commander Stockade of the Lemig Sortion has admitted his guilt.”

Yet another ping filled the room.

Prepotente: Hello, Carl and Donut.

Donut: HI PREPOTENTE! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? WHY HAVEN’T YOU JOINED MY ARMY YET?

Carl: I’m a little busy here. Gonna need like ten minutes.

Prepotente: I fear you don’t have ten minutes. I am near the southern border with the Naga, surveying your defenses, and there is a great amount of enemy movement. They are attempting to be surreptitious about it, but Bianca and I are observing them from high above. The long-range trebuchets of the elves are preparing to fire, and there is an entire squad of about 100 mercenaries with colors for the Madness who think they’re invisible, preparing to rush your trenches. There are multiple armored, tracked vehicles under camouflage netting as well.

Donut: YOU BETTER GET SOMEWHERE SAFE FAST.

Prepotente: With no magic being allowed in the beginning, I believe I am quite safe, thank you. Once the festivities begin, I have a very specific score to settle with the lead producer of the Blood Hunter program, and after that is complete, only then will I come to your aid and join in your military. If you’re still alive.

A new chat came before I could figure out what the hell he was talking about.

Elle: Guys. Shit’s happening on the Naga side. Lots of movement.

Florin: Team. Movement on the northern front. Enemy is moving like they’re preparing a push

Donut: WHAT IS GOING ON? WE STILL HAVE ALMOST 20 HOURS IN THE CEASEFIRE.

Florin: I know, but something’s up. All teams, positions now.

Carl: Pony says the same.

Imani: Nobody is in place. We’re not done with the defenses yet!

Tran: The Shanty Town defenses are still being built. Have two towers built, but that’s it. Britney and I are working as fast as we can. Li Na’s squad is on the other side working on their stuff. Don’t know what they’ve done.

Li Na: We have two towers up as well. Both splash towers.

Li Jun:  Uh, hey Florin. Lucia Mar is in Shanty Town right now with her dog, drinking at the Possum Envy right on the edge of the border with the robot team. The Reavers. We don’t see anyone massing at the city borders though. Not yet. One of the new guys tried to recruit her, and she almost ripped his head off.

Florin: Thanks for the head’s up, mate.

Elle: They’re pulling a bunch of camo netting off some tank things on the Naga side!

Carl: Shit. Everyone. Let’s go. Code red. Man your lines. I don’t know what’s happening, and it could be a drill, but I think shit’s about to go down. Remember the plan. Louis. Are you ready?

Louis: We only have half your bombs installed! We’re not ready!

Carl: Don’t have a choice. Get that thing into the air ASAP.

Chapter 19

“Carl,” Panford said, bringing me back to the present. “I would appreciate if you pay attention to the proceedings.”

I grunted and nodded as my chat system exploded with messages.

Panford gestured at the screen, which now showed Mordecai and Rosetta talking. “I’m going to pull him out,” Mordecai said on the screen. “I’m going to use a Shock Wake salve, but I gotta adjust it to work on a non-corporeal form.”

The screen showed Mordecai feverishly working over his alchemist’s table. On the other side of the split, it presented Commander Stockade preparing to cast a spell, his eyes once again flashing.

“While Mordecai brewed his potion, Stockade prepared a counter move, one to fully drag Carl into the ballroom. If the spell and the salve were applied simultaneously, Carl would’ve likely died, his soul being ripped in two. But Mordecai, aware that he was being illegally observed, was actually creating a different potion. Not a wake-up salve like he claimed out loud, but something to violently expel the Shi Maria presence. It was a risky move, not nearly as safe as their original plan.”

“How,” Stockade asked. “How would they know, if they weren’t also observing us?”

“That’s a question you can answer for yourself. If they weren’t cheating, then how would they know?” Panford asked.

Stockade hissed. “A spy! There’s a spy in my midst!”

I actually had no idea how we’d known what was happening. We didn’t have any spies, as far as I was aware, here in the castle of the Lemigs. Elle and her squad were watching the Nagas. Our other changelings were moving through the Operatic side, disarming traps. Our last scouts were all with Louis on the Party Planner, which we’d planned on already having in enemy territory the moment the ceasefire ended.

I took a breath as realization hit me. We didn’t have spies, but I knew Juice Box’s team did. She’d said they’d all been expelled from the courts of the warlords. That was obviously untrue.

She was waiting for the ceasefire to end, I realized. She was going to assassinate some of the leaders once this started. Kill a leader, and the team automatically loses. She played her hand early to save me. One only had so many scout spots. Would the other leaders realize this? Surely they would.

The scene changed, showing Mordecai applying the salve to my translucent chest. I buckled, as if in pain. At the same time, Stockade cackled with laughter as he cast his spell.

The cackling stopped a few moments later.

The split screen turned to a full view of the ballroom with me on the floor, convulsing, fully corporeal. And then, just like that, I turned. There was no moment of transformation, like when Katia and Juice Box changed forms. There was a blink, and then I was Shi Maria.

“I have always loved you,” Shi Maria roared, her voice muffled. All the guards in the room panicked and started to run as the spider lashed, her front two arms slashing across the room. Lemig goblins separated from their bodies as the giant spider rampaged through the room, screaming and confused.

I also saw something the others didn’t. Her jaws were still unhinged. She was still in the midst of swallowing the human version of her husband. In the dream, we’d watched her devour the man, all the while screaming that she loved him and would never hurt him. As I watched the memory from the ballroom, the leg in her mouth vanished, and her jaw snapped back into place.

“I didn’t kill him!” Maria screamed. “I would never kill him!”

I knew at that exact moment, in the dream, Shi Maria had disappeared and her husband had reappeared in front of us, once again as a spider. He told me that she was gone, trapped

I had an uneasy feeling as I watched the replay. She didn’t looked nearly as trapped as I thought. Still, I now had control of the eye at my chest. I could feel it there, clenched closed.

In the dream, she had returned before I’d awakened. We’d left her in the room with Annie.

On the screen, it showed Luke throw himself in front of the cowering Commander Stockade. Shi Maria slashed his legs off, and Luke collapsed to the floor.

Her eye was open, on the screen. The caterpillar’s compound eyes lit up once again as they shone with the prismatic light. All around, the surviving goblins started beating the shit out of each other, all possessed by the spider’s insanity. They shot, stabbed, and bit. A soldier walked up to Luke, who continued to drag himself across the room, moving toward the exit, and he stabbed the legless goblin in the back with a long, segmented blade. He pulled the blade out, took two steps, and then he pulled it across his own throat.

A moment passed, and Shi Maria fell in on herself, rolled onto her back, her long, terrifying legs all jumbled, and then there was a blink, and I was there, standing upright in the room, my eyes closed. A silhouette of the spider remained, but it was made of the blood that had been coating her body, and it fell right over me like I’d had a bucket dumped on my head. The scene ended with me opening my eyes.

“Another oddity,” Opiee said. “Mordecai’s potion only worked temporarily. It should have permanently severed the bond, but in the end, the spider was pulled back into Carl. Much is happening at once within that crawler’s body, and I am quite curious to learn what, exactly, happened in this case.”

“I... I loved him,” Commander Stockade continued to say. His little hands moved back and forth, and I realized he was slowly pulling his own fur out. There was a ring of it on the floor under him. “I can’t bear this.”

Elle: Am I risking getting caught or not?

Florin: Carl?

Carl: Gotta do it.

Elle: Okay. Moving in.

The screen disappeared with a flash. Panford straightened. “We believe that Stockade and Houston both conspired to use the secured messaging system to speak with someone upon the 18th floor, who is relaying real-time information via a third party participating in the Celestial Ascendency. Since celestial messaging is secured, we do not know who the middleman is in this scenario, but we have identified the party on the 18th floor as Nurse Yugoslav of the Madness.”

I planted a fake grin and turned to Architect Houston. “Your mom? Your mom is here in the dungeon? I can’t wait to meet her.”

I sent a quick message to Juice Box.

Opiee rose in the air, his little wings fluttering. These bune things usually walked on the ground, but they could fly short distances. “Houston’s presence here in the castle and the possible collusion by a family member, who is not bound by any such rules, is circumstantial evidence, and damning evidence at that...” He paused for dramatic effect. “...but I don’t feel it’s enough to officially charge him. Unless you want to confess.” The small dragon turned to his warlord, who was still looking directly at me. “Do you wish to confess, Architect Houston?”

The masked creature made no moves and said nothing.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Opiee said.

“Oh, come on!” I said.

Juice Box: I passed on your message to the cat. I’m hearing some information about strange movements, by the way. I am relaying it all to Louis and Britney. I had to burn some assets to save your ass. I hope it was worth it. Head’s up to your people. We’re going to power up the towers early. If someone is in town and isn’t in your army, they should probably start moving into your territory.

“Baroness?” Opiee asked.

Victory shrugged. “Houston is obviously guilty, but unless he admits it, he was smart enough to let Stockade do all of his dirty work. I will vote not culpable for both the Madness team and the Princess Posse.”

“Agreed,” Opiee said.

There was a ping.

“Very well,” Panford said. “Because the other two adjutants are in agreement, I do not need to render a ruling. This minor quorum finds the Madness and the Princess Posse not guilty. We also find that the Lemig Sortion has admitted guilt to illegal information gathering, and we are ready to render penalties.

Warlord Message. Sir Ferdinand of Team Retribution has proposed an emergency action item. “Because them alien cunts on other floors are being little bitches and cheating, we propose that nobody in the dungeon, including those pricks partying it up in that centipede’s asshole, be allowed to watch any outside feeds for the remainder of this little game.”

This action item has been approved. Effective immediately, everyone within the dungeon is subjected to an immediate, live-feed blackout.

“Holy shit,” I muttered. That was fast. I hadn’t wanted to waste any of our action items on this, but I was glad it had worked.

“That’s a first,” Victory muttered.

“It’s about time,” Panford said.

“Luke. Oh gods, Luke,” Stockade said again.

I was finally starting to realize that the warlord was actually getting worse, not better as time moved on. I remembered that moment from the video, when he looked right into my eye.

I shook my head. Not my eye. Shi Maria’s eye.

I received a new direct message in the warlord chat.

Architect Houston: If you ever utter the name of my mother out loud ever again, you and that animal companion of yours will spend the last thousand hours of your existence upon the amplification table in my surgical theater. This is a promise.

Warlord Carl: Oh, fuck off.

Architect Houston: You are in mortal danger in this very moment, and you don’t even realize it. I do hope you escape so we can extend our play, but gracious pet owners accept the gifts their animals drop at their doorsteps.

Warlord Carl: What the fuck does that even mean?

“As for penalties,” Panford said. “Since this is the first of three allowed penalties, you will receive a 25% reduction in your standing force. In addition... Wait, what are you doing?”

The caterpillar had fallen to the floor and was openly sobbing now. He was literally rubbing his face against the floor. He started to scream. “Luke! Luke! Luke!”

A stream of blood spread across the wood floor, like he’d caught his face on a nail. Or a tooth. He didn’t stop. With every sweep of his fuzzy face, there was a new tearing noise. A health bar appeared and started to rapidly lower.

“Uh,” I said after a moment. Nobody moved to help him. “Not that I’m complaining, but are we going to just watch him do that to himself?”

“Beautiful, beautiful Luke. I loved your zomp-hued thighs! Oh Luke! Oh Luke!”

“We can’t interfere, nor can we call his guards in here,” Panford said after a moment.

The caterpillar started smashing his face up and down against the floor. A little splash of gooey blood appeared each time.

Smack, smack, smack.

“Luke,” the caterpillar groaned, his words barely discernible.

“A bit of a delayed reaction, but I think he got a full dose of that spider’s Insanity spell,” Victory said. She turned to Architect Houston. “Feel free to help him. Or call his guards.”

The warlord from the Madness did not move. He continued to stare directly at me.

Smack. Smack. They were coming slower now.

“Panford,” Victory said. “Let’s end this now. If we stay for much longer we’ll have to deal with a new adjucation.”

A wave of coldness washed over me.

“Wait,” I said. “What happens when this is done? How do I get back?”

Smack...

Smack.

“Because the ceasefire is in effect and because of the nature of your transport here, you’ll be teleported back to your base,” Panford said.

“Shit, okay,” I said quickly. “End it!”

I saw Victory’s eyes suddenly get huge as if she just realized something as well. She took a breath and then said, “Yes, Panford. Finish the ruling.”

The bugbear couldn’t take his eyes off the caterpillar, who’d stopped screaming. A yellow goo oozed from his head, mixed with the red, watery blood.

All sense of formality left his voice. “Uh, 25% reduction in force and removal of two tech slots. As those are currently filled with mechanized armor, both units will be immediately disbanded. This is our ruling, and this inquiry is concluded.”

There was a ping.

Victory looked at me, and she said, “I will now transport Carl back to his base. Teleporting in 20 seconds.”

Commander Stockade groaned, and then, just like that, he died, having literally smashed his own brains out against the floor.

System Message: Commander Stockade of the The Lemig Sortion has fallen. Credit for the kill has been ruled as a psychosis-induced suicide.

System Message: The Lemig Sortion has been defeated. As this defeat was voluntary, the closest ally to their headquarters will receive all their assets.

System Message: All assets of the Lemig Sortion have been awarded to the Madness.

There was a pause. I felt the tingle of pre-teleportation.

System Message: Due to Ceasefire rule three, subsection six of the ceasefire addendum, the voluntary withdrawal of a combatant squad has engaged acceleration scenario two. The ceasefire will be shortened by 23.33 hours.

System Message: The Ceasefire has ended.

System Message: All unaffiliated crawlers have been teleported from Larracos.

Warlord Message: Phase One Combat rules have engaged. You may freely enter enemy territory via designated corridors.

Across from me, Architect Houston was now on his feet, and his robes were flung back, revealing a horrific, bug-like body and six arms, one of which was holding a rifle, which he was bringing to bear upon my chest. He fired as I dove out of the way. I landed heavily against the counter. I grabbed the bag of cat food just as I dropped an impact hoblobber onto the ground.

Teleporting Now.

Entering the Princess Posse camp.

I landed heavily on the floor of the now-empty field hospital. My head smashed against the cot as I crashed to the rocky floor. I dropped the bag of cat food, and it spilled across the ground, the little, brown pebbles going everywhere. I gasped in pain at the hole punched right through my shoulder. I slammed a healing potion, and I cried in new pain as my body knit itself.

He’d almost gotten me. I’d dropped the bomb, but if I’d gotten him, I’d have received a message.

I should’ve dropped a bigger bomb, I thought. I’d gone with my hotlist.

He’d planned this. All of this. Either that, or he’d known what was happening to Stockade and had compensated accordingly. He’d willingly sacrificed another living, breathing world leader to get to me.

And it had almost worked.

I gasped in pain again as I sat up, little cat food pebbles spilling all around me. A group of sluggalos slithered into the room.

“What’re you sitting around for?” the lead one asked. He was a level 55 named Big Chucklez. He had dreadlocks shaped like little morning stars. He waved his head in a circle, and the tiny weapons spun in a circle. “Ain’t you heard? We got a war on. Everyone is moving to one of the two fronts. Now quit your bleeding and get out there.” The slug cackled and left the room, trailing orange slime as his compatriots followed.

A moment later, an explosion echoed as a non-magical rock exploded against our shield.

System Message: Weapons Free. Weapons Free. Faction Wars has officially begun.

~~~~

And thus ends Part 1. Coming next, Part 2 Phase one. Those of you sad that Shi Maria has been “dealt with” don’t worry. We haven’t seen the last of the Bedlam Bride just yet, but she is temporarily tamed for now.

Just got back from Las Vegas where I hung out with a multitude of fellow writers plus the Soundbooth Theater team and many others. It was great fun. I am going to Hawaii in a few days  to have Thanksgiving with my kid, who lives there, along with my mom who is spending her first Thanksgiving without my dad.. I hope you all have a great holiday if you’re in the US, and if you’re not, I hope you have a great holiday anyway. I’ll still be working on holiday and don’t anticipate a change in posting schedule. Thanks everyone for your continued support.