Book Seven, Chapters 30 and 31 (Patreon)

What?? Another cliffhanger? You make me wait all this time, for another cliffhanger? Fuck you!

Chapter 30

<Note Added by Crawler Priestly, 14th edition>

In the heat of it... in the absolute, scorching heat of battle, one learns who they really are. What they really want. One faces their greatest fears, yes, but worse, much worse, one oftentimes also faces their greatest desires laid bare. For me, they are the same, and it is my devastation.

Stab, stab, stab.

~

Splash Zone, Doctor Bones, and several of the strippers huddled around the entrance to the castle as pulse rifle blasts thumped against our pop-up magical defenses. I couldn’t remember what these shield spells were called, but it was similar to Protective Shell. Instead of a bubble, it came in the form of large, fan-shaped screens. The shields had no time limit, but once cast, they could be hurt with damage, though they were effective against tech-based weapons. We only had one entrance to the castle, not including the now-blown-to-bits air hangar. This was where we were making our stand.

We’d been caught with our pants down. Tipid’s 104th Naughty Little Piggies were in charge of base defense, but they were currently spread to the wind, on assignment in the flat lands around the base in all directions, finishing up the scout towers and manning early-warning defenses several kilometers from here. The plan was to have several thousand defenders around the castle at any given time, but we hadn’t been ready. Now we were paying for it. Especially since our most crucial platoon of home defenders, the Beefy Boys SOF, were half dead. This was the squad which consisted of mages whose sole purpose was to make certain all the wall buffs and base shields were always topped off.

We had defenders racing toward us from all directions, but that did us no good right now. There were only a few hundred of us. I braced myself as a thrown grenade got caught in the One Way shield. The grenade hung in mid-air and detonated just twenty feet in front of our shield. It stopped the grenades, but it did nothing for the pulse blasts.

Literally dozens of buffs flowed over and into us. Every one of us now glistened with multi-hued shields, and the names over everybody’s heads was ridiculously long and ever changing.

But again, the damn pulse guns. They still did their damage. They still burned. Other than the shields right in front of us, all these buffs and protections did was dull the hit. Sort of. Most of these buffs were stat-enhancing. A non-magical blast powerful enough to punch a hole in a tank wasn’t going to be stopped by a 10% buff to dexterity.

“Oh, I simply cannot wait for the real magic to turn back on,” Doctor Bones rumbled. The former DJ of the Penis Parade was back in his skeletal form. “You heathens are dead. All of you!”

“We’re not going to survive long enough for that to happen if you don’t pick up that crossbow,” Splash Zone said as he popped up and fired a shot. The bolt cracked harmlessly against the building across the way: the newly built, mural-covered barracks.

We had three types of enemies in the camp. We had the Madness Monkeywrenchers, who were invisible. We had the Reaver paratroopers who were massing at the bottom of the hill, on the other side of the main barracks building. And mixed in with it all were a handful of our own mages who’d been assassinated and taken over by the gondii brain worms. If any worms were left in the castle, we didn’t know where they were. Rosetta was inside, hunting down any possible compromised soldiers.

And all of this was just the initial attack. They were softening us up for the main force, which was hauling ass toward us from the north.

They’d simply bypassed Florin and the 101st’s fallback position. The enemy had left enough troops to occupy our main forces, but the bulk of them would be on us in about half of an hour.

Carl: Louis, what’s your status?

Louis: We’ve finished the repair from the inside, but we gotta get outside to manually fix the portal, otherwise we’re gonna stay grounded.

Damnit. That wasn’t going to happen any time soon. The “door” to the hangar was literally atop of the castle, and anyone who went up there would be a prime target. I should’ve made Louis fly back to the other base.

“I didn’t know we’d be dealing with Valtay cheese sticks,” Tipid gasped from next to me. The crest had been hit in the shoulder, and the blast had almost taken his arm off. “Those fuckers are dangerous.”

“Splash, fill that channel with water!” I called as Bucket Boy cast Heal on Tipid. I held a banger sphere tightly in my right hand as more blasts peppered the shield around my head.

“There,” Donut called from next to me, peering through the translucent screen. “There by the entrance to the new barracks building! He’s standing right in front of the mural of the piggie face!”

I popped up, aimed, and I hurled the metal ball with the full force of my strength. There was a crack, followed by a blood splatter. His invisibility stuttered, and now his outline was clear. A moment later, and he was peppered with crossbow bolts. The form crumpled to the ground, and his Madness mask fell away, revealing him to actually be a soother mercenary, not a true viceroy.

I dove back under cover as more shots hit the shield, which was holding strong.

Next to me, Mongo squawked in outrage. He wanted to get out there. Rend sat to my left, bouncing up and down in anticipation. He’d been hit twice already by pulse blasts, and all they did was make the level-12 meatball creature fall backward and squeal.

We had anti-magic charms all over base, but apparently the Monkeywrencher’s invisibility was some sort of tech-based cloak, something even the veterans weren’t anticipating. The cloaks were high-quality. Something that existed in the real world, but were considered prohibitively expensive for all but the richest of soldiers. The anti-magic bubbles didn’t detect them. Luckily, Donut could still see them with her glasses. Sort of. She had to use the heat setting, and it took a moment for her to detect them. We had a few other defenders with similar abilities, as well, and we were picking them off one-by-one.

It’s not going to matter, I thought miserably. They’re just keeping us occupied. They just need to keep us pinned for a little longer.

Colonel Rosetta: I need backup! I need edifice explosion suppression inside the castle! Fast! They got to Lonnie! Who do we got? I don’t care if it’s not your specialty. To the saferoom exit!

From my left, a bune mage named Huey jumped into the castle, buzzing off on his small wings. Another mage, a human crawler, darted from behind his shield before he was hit with a pulse blast, which sent him spinning. I tossed a drop shield at him, but a second blast finished him off before the shield activated. His body sizzled like bacon in a hot pan before catching on fire.

Goddamnit.

Carl: Rosetta, what’s happening?

Rosetta: You need to find where Lonnie is and kill the worm fucker in his head. He’s not in the castle, but he’s systematically turning off the interior protections, one by one from afar. In any minute, that Reaver door is going to open, and their automatons will flood out and into the castle. Setting up defenses and flamers to stop them now.

Lonnie had been one of the more talented mage veterans. The head of the Beefy Boys, which he’d named as a joke after someone said he had to “Beef up the wall defenses.” The one in charge of shoring up the interior castle walls with spells. He’d been alive just a few minutes ago. They’d targeted him, got into his head, and used him to start turning off the stacked protection spells. If they were deliberately softening up the interior, that meant Rosetta was correct. The next thing that came out of that door in the situational hallway would be a bomb.

I thought of how we created utter chaos in Zockau using an inconvenient doorway. Someone from the Reaver team must have gotten through that bait shop door back when this space was still used by the mantis team.

Another mage, bleeding heavily from his forehead, jumped behind our shield, cast something to send it back up to 100%, and disappeared inside the castle.

I pulled up my map, looking for Lonnie. The former crawler was a half-elf, meaning he’d been from a relatively early season. There. His dot was moving away from a line of X’s in a bunker on the side of the hill. He was now in the mix of purple dots on the far side of the barracks, representing the Reaver paratroopers, who had set up a defensive position inside our own base. These guys weren’t eager to get themselves killed. Instead, they were content to sit there and hold open the door for the main enemy force.

My heart sank as a new realization hit me. Lonnie knew about Justice Light, and our last line of defense.

We had to get to him, and fast.

“How do the brain worms work?” I asked Tipid as I rapidly composed new orders. And where the hell was Tina? I sent a new message off to her handlers. “With the memories, I mean. Do they know everything right away?”

“The gondii worms can move into any dead form and take it over, and that includes learning their memories. But it takes some time to know everything. It takes some time before they know what to look for, and they’ll have big memory gaps for a while.”

I grunted. “We need to focus on the compromised mages. And we need to do it fast, before they figure out how to crack the throne room.”

“I could have told you that,” Donut said as she pointed out another Monkeywrencher to the crossbowmen. “You can smuggle them anywhere, and they can crawl in your ear, kill you, and take you over in just a few seconds. It’s absolutely disgusting, but they’re quite good allies when they’re on your side. You can fit like five of them in your mouth at once.”

Tipid nodded. Despite being healed, he still seemed to be in pain. Bucket Boy’s healing ability wasn’t all that great. “The Valtay charter requires they only take over the brains of people who were willing, but not all gondii live on the correct side of the law. I’ve heard rumors of such outlaw mercenaries. There’s a popular tunnel drama about a crew of them. Called The Maggot Squad. They’re some of the most expensive mercs in the galaxy. At least on the show. The Valtay government hates the show, but it’s really popular.” A blast hit the shield, and we all fell back. A moment later, Splash Zone and Doctor Bones high-fived as they took out another invisible merc.

“Are they good guys or bad guys on the show?” Donut asked. “There... in front of the X over the mantis face! Good shot, Alex!”

“Good guys on the show,” Tipid said. His eyes flashed as he spoke. He, too, was rapidly composing orders. “But there’s this other squad that are also gondii, and they are bad. I never got to see the season finale because I came here.”

“Spoiler alert,” Donut said. “The good guys win. That’s what happens on shows like that.” She suddenly hissed and cast Hole in a seemingly empty spot right in front of us. She cast and snapped the spell off. Half of a Monkeywrencher appeared on the ground. A grenade rolled away as he toppled over. We all ducked as it went off. The blast painted the ground with mercenary guts.

“Awesome, Donut!” I said, patting her on the head. She was absolutely rigid as she scanned for more enemies.

“I’m just glad I finally found a spell I can use,” she said. “On top of the building. Goodness! That one sure is fat for a mercenary.” A moment later, the form tumbled away backward onto the roof.

“That was a Dreadnaught wearing a Viceroy mask,” Splash Zone said as he rapidly reloaded his small-sized crossbow. “I haven’t seen a real Viceroy amongst any of the Monkeywrenchers. You’ll know them when you see them. They look like my mother-in-law before she gets her daily injections.”

“Wait, Splashy, you didn’t tell me you were married!” Donut exclaimed. “What’s your wife’s name?”

“Snail Trail,” he said. He popped up and fired, but he hit nothing. He hissed in frustration. “She works the early shift at Bitches in the Desperado Club. Her mom works with her, but the later shift. Her name is Grandma Sticky. I haven’t had the chance to talk to them since the club reopened.”

“Grandma Sticky?” Donut asked. “Your mother-in-law’s name is Grandma Sticky? And your wife is named Snail Trail?”

“You should see her pole routine. You wouldn’t think a goblin could move like that, but it’s pretty amazing.”

“Wait, are you talking about Snail Trail’s routine or Grandma Sticky’s? And are you telling me you’re married to a...”

“Holy shit, can we focus on the battle please,” I said.

“I am focused, Carl. I’ve never felt more focused on anything in my life.”

Warning: Walls numbered 17, 19, and 33 have lost all their protections.

Dozens of such messages kept appearing and then blinked away. It was like both sides had access to a bank of wall switches for the same lightbulbs, and we were going back and forth, flipping them all on and off. The moment enough of those bulbs turned off at the same time, I knew that door in the saferoom hallway was going to open, and it would be all over. That’s how I would do it.

Frustration overwhelmed me. For each moment that passed, the more the enemy would know about our interior defenses. I growled, looking at the map. “We need to move. We need to get to the compromised mages before they do more damage.” All of the mages were now in the middle of the group of paratroopers at the bottom of the hill. I sent another, angrier message about Tina.

“But if your wife doesn’t have legs, how does she do that?” Donut was asking, having ignored my admonishment. “There, peeking around the left corner!”

Tipid also continued to talk, and it took me a moment to realize he was still talking about the Valtay worms. It was just like Donut and Splash Zone. He was burning off nervous energy, or something. He talked with an almost manic ferocity. “And you really gotta watch out if they don’t care about the body they’re in. Once they’re in, they can take over a body in seconds, reboot it, and animate it long enough to repair whatever damage caused the death in the first place. But if they’re not planning on staying long, they can and do hop from host to host. They can ‘overclock’ the bodies, too. Make them do stuff they couldn’t normally. They’re much more dangerous than the scree, despite what people think.”

“Christ,” I said. “Man, are you feeling okay?”

“It’s a side effect of the Extreme Focus buff,” a new voice said, settling next to me. Imani, but she, too, was talking faster than she normally did. Rend grunted and started pushing against her leg while giggling. “Its effectiveness just doubled when I landed in the castle. Everyone in this zone is given a buff to their dexterity, and it helps with multi-tasking. But when it’s a little too powerful, it makes chatty people, like Donut, extra chatty. It’s like we’ve all been given a dose of speed. It doesn’t seem to be affecting you. Probably because of your Mind Focus, but I’m not sure. You should copy your health screen and send it to me.”

“Imani! Where did you come from?”

A whole mess of crawlers were now coming from the castle, moving to the shields, casting new ones. Dozens of them. Good, I thought. We can move out.

“A group of us made a detour into Shanty Town and used the doggie door. Elle is in the hallway, waiting for the bad guys to come out. Florin and Katia are still with the bulk of the 101st. We gotta push these guys back, and then Louis and his gremlins can come out and repair the bomb bay.”

“All right,” I said. “Donut, how many are left? We gotta...” I paused as I finally received a response to one of my orders.

Kiwi: I’m sorry, Carl. It’s too dangerous. She will stay here, and that’s final. She’s just a child. You just ordered the gnome and the changeling children to stay out of the battle, so why is Tina different?

It was still bizarre to me that scarred, one-eyed, psychotic Kiwi the velociraptor was now a pregnant Ursine. Her personality had completely changed when she’d returned to her bear form. She’d gone from a dangerous, murderous pack leader to a soft-spoken, skittish woman who spent her day cooking food for all the troops.

The woman wasn’t wrong. It was hypocritical of me to use Tina. I’d been deliberately ignoring the issue. I’d ordered Louis to kick Bonnie and Skarn off Party Planner once we’d landed. Even though they were NPCs, they were children. They looked like children. They acted like children. All the kids in our camp had already seen and experienced more than any child should, and it was fucked-up to deliberately use them in battle. It seemed like a step too far.

But Tina was different. Wasn’t she? We needed her. Did that matter? Or did that make it worse? I’d killed hundreds of children by this point. I hadn’t done it on purpose. Children die in war. So why was I hesitating now? My hesitation didn’t even make sense to myself.

“Actually,” Imani said. She was still examining me. “It says the buff is active.” She shrugged. She turned to Tipid. “Oh my goodness, Bucket Boy. You have to check their pain levels after you heal them! I told you this already. If they’re outworlders, they heal differently.”

I ignored this as I thought of my brother. Of Asher. I thought of his mother, hugging him after she’d poisoned our father. I thought of Donut sobbing at the end of the Butcher’s Masquerade.

She’s a child, too.

We’re going to have to do some pretty horrible things just to survive.

I composed a message. Kiwi, she will be fine. We’ve buffed her up. We’ll all die if she doesn’t come out. I hesitated before sending it. And with pulse blasts peppering the shield all around me, with time running out, I sat there and contemplated what it meant to make such an order.

But at that moment, I realized something. Survival had more than one meaning.

No, I thought. It’s Kiwi’s decision. Goddamnit. I erased the message and started to compose a new order. We’d have to push without her. But before I could finish, Donut interrupted me.

General Donut: GET TINA OUT HERE RIGHT NOW. MY GOODNESS, WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG? DON’T MAKE ME SEND MONGO IN THERE TO DRAG HER OUT. DO IT NOW!

And before Kiwi could even answer, someone to my left shouted “duck!” as the giant doors behind us flew open all the way. Tina finally did come out, screeching and roaring with glee and waving her dead-again magic wand.

The effect was immediate. The bolts against our shields had already started to wane as the Monkeywrenchers died or fled back to the other side of the barracks. But now all the blasts focused on the giant dinosaur who, apparently, could also find the invisible enemies. She screamed with joy and chomped on something next to the barracks. Sparks flew as the enemy, who’d been setting up what looked like a heavy gun, literally exploded in her mouth. Tina shook her head as a multiple shield health bars appeared, but then refilled.

“I mean, really,” Donut muttered from my left as another enemy went flying into the air, guts trailing where he’d been ripped in half. “We really need to do something about these people not following our orders right away. We need more team-building exercises, I think. I think this will help.”

Her headset appeared. She jumped upon Mongo’s back, and together, they leapt up in the air, jumping astonishingly high, landing atop the front of the castle behind us, just above the door.  She shouted loud enough for everyone to hear, even the enemies at the bottom of the hill.

“Comrades! There are over 100 bad guys on the other side of that building. They think they can just drop out of the sky and land in our base? Some of them are wormheads who killed our friends. Are we going to let that stand? I don’t think so. We gotta kill them, and we gotta do it fast! Alpha squad card reserves, to the roof! Everyone else with cards, save them for the main force. Let’s show these cheese sticks what the Princess Posse does to trespassers. Tina! Sic ‘em!”

All around me, cheers rose as everyone jumped to their feet and started to shout.

I exchanged a look with Imani, who was staring at Donut open-mouthed.

“Comrades?” Imani asked as I reached up and grabbed Rend. He giggled incoherently.

“She’s been hanging out with Rosetta too much.”

“This warlord thing suits her,” Imani said. She sounded a little sad. I felt it, too. A pang at what she’d become.

Tina finally noticed the mass of enemies at the bottom of the hill, who had started to panic fire their weapons at her. One of the shields on her fizzled out. Then another. The giant allosaurus waved her wand indignantly, let out a howl, and she surged down the hill, her pink tutu flapping in the wind.

“For the Posse!” Donut roared, and as one, we charged.

Chapter 31

We’d deliberately placed the barracks building on the lip of the hill so the enemy wouldn’t have a straight shot at the front door of the castle, but it also blocked our own line-of-sight to the bottom of the hill. Florin had seen this and demanded everyone with a crawler inventory system to have either a Jump scroll or a ladder ready to go in their inventory.

Donut, still astride Mongo, leapt from the castle to the top of the barracks, clearing the distance easily. On the ground, shouting defenders flowed around the colorful barracks building on both sides, but a group of us moved to the roof of the building so we’d have a clear view of the enemy’s position below us. I scaled the building, using my Climb skill, to reach the roof in seconds.

The dead dreadnaught remained up here, his invisibility cloak sparking, causing him to stutter in and out of existence. I scooped up his body and pulled it into my inventory. I took the strange, faceless mask as well.

I rushed across the roof just in time to see Tina angrily stomp into the mass of enemy soldiers. She’d gained momentum as she rushed down the hill, and the crowd of metal-covered mercenaries scrambled from their positions to avoid her charge. They poured fire into her from all sides as she reached down and chomped a soldier, sparks flying.

I skidded to a stop at the edge of the building, dropping Rend, who bounced and ran to my side. Mages on either side of me were casting new shields on Tina. It was a losing fight. They were going to overwhelm her pretty soon unless we got in there. I tossed a hoblobber toward a heavy gun position on the far side of their rapidly-deployed defense, but it got stuck in an anti-grenade, One Way shield, similar to the ones we utilized, and it detonated in the air over everyone’s heads. I changed to tossing smoke mantles as I examined the group below us.

Almost all of them were Reavers. Or, at least, mercs who were normally employed by the Reavers. These guys were different than anyone we’d seen before. They had no NPCs amongst them.

They were all heavily armored androids of some sort, and they were terrifying to look at. They seemed out of place here.

My first thought was “space marines.” Though not all of them had human-like heads. I thought of  the late, armor-covered Paz when I saw them, but instead of shining, plate armor, this was dinged and dirty, olive-colored armor mixed in with cybernetic enhancements. That, plus these guys were all carrying massive rifles.

I knew the real Reavers were all robot, with just a little bit of biological brain left over hidden somewhere inside their robot shells. And they could shapeshift, sort of. Something about nanobot-sized, individual machines all coming together to make one.

These mercenaries were somewhere between. More robotic than those weird Nebulars, and certainly a lot scarier.

In the moment before Tina chomped him in half, I examined one particularly large soldier with a human-like head.

Gunnery Sergeant X2. Reaver Security Force Cyborg Drop Trooper. Level 53.

First off, I’d like to apologize for these guys being here. Frankly, I’m just as disgusted as you are that we’ve allowed this Spelljammer/Warhammer bullshit to infect our good, old-fashioned dungeon crawl. Some of it’s pretty damn cool, yeah, but what about consistency? You don’t expect Yorbish Gut Parasites to suddenly appear in the middle of a Shakespearean play and lay their eggs in Lady Macbeth’s eyes, and there’s no reason for you crawlers to have to deal with this stuff here. But what are we gonna do? Compromises had to be made. Don’t worry. This is the last floor we’ll let it get this far. I’ve already informed the Valtay I’ve rejected their updated plans for the 11th floor.

Also, just FYI. These guys are all wearing the “light” version of their armor. If I’d allowed them all to come in here with their heavy duty, Cronus-class power armor, they’d already be putting those collectible, heart-covered boxers on clearance in all waystation gift shops across the galaxy.

Anyway, to understand why a perfectly normal person would want to slowly turn himself into a robot whose sole purpose is to invade planetary colonies, shoot innocent civilians, and spend all day believing he’s a fascist-fighting patriot of industrial capitalism, you have to first understand where these guys come from. Blah, blah, blah, tough childhood in the pollution-choked shadow of the behemoth, Reaver moons where most of the physical goods in the galaxy are manufactured. Blah, blah, drugs, street gangs, 80% taxes, boo-hoo, my mommy is a hooker, no way out, etc. You know the story.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That’s a common theme amongst these misguided souls. Not all of them were bloodthirsty nutjobs when they stepped into the recruiter’s office. Most were just hungry and without hope or direction. Or court-ordered.

That’s not to say you should feel sorry for them. Not these guys, as these are all members of Warlord Fang’s personal defense deployment.

Rule of thumb. If they have more than two or three cybernetics installed, you know they’ve voluntarily re-upped at least once. You only get one free upgrade a deployment. Or more, if something on your body gets shot off.

Gunny here was once known as Mr. Illos Klondike. His name changes each time he’s deployed. At this moment, seconds before his 400-cycle journey to gain Reaver citizenship comes to a permanent and abrupt end at the jaws of a pissed-off, confused child soldier, he is known as X2. He has 23 enhancements to his body.

And since this is the first time you’ve bothered to examine someone from the Reaver system, we might as well add a bit of context to all of this.

If you’re not a vat-born progeny of the Initial, gaining Reaver citizenship, which comes with profit-sharing and a whole lot of additional financial benefits, is an epic pain in the ass. First of all, you have to lose your biological form to get your foot in the door. That first “upgrade” is free. Anything else, there’s only two ways to do it.

One, you can pay for all the upgrades yourself. That’s usually pretty difficult ‘cause the only companies smart enough to hire a moron who allowed the Reavers to cut off a perfectly good hand and replace it with a grasping claw that needs thousands of credits a cycle in upkeep are the space equivalent of a Wendy’s or the interstellar carwash. Nothing wrong with such jobs, of course, but they ain’t paying enough to pay for no cybernetic upgrades, that’s for sure.

So, the second way to do it is to work for the Reavers. For free. They’ll feed you, house you, and you get all the healthcare you want. That plus one more upgrade in exchange for a three-cycle deployment worth of work.

The work ain’t easy. These guys get thrown feet-first into the fire. They’re dropped onto land leases to evict the current settlers so the Reavers can expand their factories. People, like they always do, fight back of course. Such is the way of the universe.

All of that is to say these guys have been fighting a lot longer than you have. This isn’t their home turf, and they’re not used to Option-three enhancement-zone fighting techniques.

But they should not be underestimated.

I shook my head, and I stopped myself from uttering a complaint about the extra-long description. The last thing I needed was the AI throwing another temper tantrum right now.

X2 the mercenary disappeared in a mist of sparks and blood.

The robots—cyborgs—had formed a semi-circle defense, including shields with several heavy guns. While most were focusing their fire on the rampaging dinosaur, others were finally noticing that Tina’s charge was followed by a wave of defenders. And a second wave was descending from the other side of the building as well. They started lobbing smoke bombs of their own, and in moments, the battlefield was once again a mess of smoky chaos. I itched to jump down there—and I would in a minute—but we’d agreed ahead of time in situations like this I needed to remain where I could keep an eye on the battle as a whole. More of the fan-shaped shields started popping up in front of me as I tried to see what the hell was going on. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Victory had appeared, standing on the far corner of the building, quietly observing. A moment later, and she was joined by a second adjutant I didn’t recognize. This was a strange, antlered alien type I’d never seen before.

General Carl: Find the compromised mages, and kill them. Get the worms! Don’t let them get away!

“Alpha cards, deploy!” Donut shouted from my right. She looked at me. “Should I send him out?”

“Save him for the main force. How many card carriers do we have in camp right now?”

“A lot now that Imani brought all those crawlers back. I do wish I could use Fireball right about now. Or Minion Army.”

“Save the other auxiliary card carriers. And make sure we have someone looting our fallen crawlers!”

She nodded. All I could see was Tina’s head popping up from the smoke, and her shield going up and down, just like the wall protections of the castle behind us. For a moment, three Tinas appeared, someone having cast an illusion, but it was immediately dispelled.

Several of the soldiers around us swept their 8th-floor cards out into air, and all manner of monsters appeared, including a minotaur; a griffin thing; a terrifying, owl-faced, robed figure with claws. There was a glowing god-like thing riding a giant peacock. There was what I thought was another form of Jesus, but he was just named 1970’s Death Cult leader. That one started loudly complaining his spells weren’t working the moment he was summoned, and the crawler who summoned him started yelling back, as if they’d been in mid-argument the last time he’d been summoned. His voice was similar to Uzi Jesus’s voice as well. All the rest jumped from the building and into the battle below.

I hurled a banger sphere at a spot where I thought one of the mages were, but I didn’t hit home.

“Kamal is here!” a voice shouted, somehow rising out of the chaos. The hammerhead shark appeared as he first rolled, then tumbled, down the hill. He didn’t have any of his spider legs installed. He was still waiting for Katia to get a chance to build them, but he rolled down the hill all the same, shouting and flopping. He disappeared into the chaos, only to appear a moment later, rising out of the smoke like he’d somehow managed to jump without legs, a squirming mercenary in his mouth, before disappearing again.

My trap sense suddenly tingled, and multiple lights appeared, glaring through the smoke from the far, right corner of the chaos. Thanks to my advanced Find Trap skill, info boxes started popping up one after another. Someone was arming a ton of automatons, all with equipped satchel explosives with a proximity trigger trip.

I checked my map, making sure this wasn’t one of our guys. It wasn’t. That half of the battlefield was all purple dots along with a few of the reanimated mages.

I scoffed.

You motherfuckers might be experienced. You might be battle hardened, I thought. But you’re in my playground now.

General Carl: Fire in the hole! Everybody brace!

I cast Tripper.

The explosion, when it came, was bigger than I was expecting. One moment, my map was a convoluted mess. And then we were all knocked off our feet. Everyone but me and a few others with Steady buffs. Still, it felt as if I’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. I took a blast of heat damage, but not much. Donut howled as Mongo stumbled back. Rend blew across the roof like he’d been punted, disappearing back behind me and over the far edge. The building itself, which was still heavily protected from blasts, shuddered, and for a moment, I feared it would collapse.

I, like always, was temporarily deafened. My ear drums were blown out, and even though I didn’t want to admit it myself, I was getting used to the feeling. There was something comforting about that specific kind of pain.

The smoke that covered the battlefield seemed to get sucked into the explosion, and in the moments after, everything suddenly in view, it seemed the world was paused. A still life of a battle’s aftermath.

But then, movement. All of the cyborgs, every last one of them, were on the ground, overwhelmed and struggling. The entire area where the automatons had been gathered was nothing but a crater, and all the cyborgs in that area were just gone. A sizzling, metallic torso landed heavily on the roof behind me. I couldn’t hear it, but I could feel it. Most of the veterans were also on their backs, though, miraculously, my feed said none had died in the blast. Tina was on her back, health in the red, all her shields gone. I could see she was crying out, but I couldn’t hear. I imagined she was crying for her mother.

But the current crawlers, along with a few of our NPCs, like Doctor Bones and Splash Zone and Bomo and Sledge, they were the first to get themselves to their feet.

And in a situation like this, he who recovers fastest, wins.

They moved to finish off the defenders. Our men and women crawled over the remaining cyborgs like an army of ants. In moments, it was done.

General Donut: Get the mages! Watch for the worms coming out of their heads!

The death cult leader guy totem stood next to me. He hadn’t entered the battle at all, nor had he been affected by the blast. The crawler who summoned him was sitting on the roof, holding his head.

My ears rang as they healed, the sound slowly coming back like I was coming up out of water.

The totem stood there with his hands on his hips, looking at the carnage. He said something to me.

“What?” I asked.

The long-haired man grinned. “I said I could really use a nice, refreshing drink right about now. Want to join me?”

I laughed, but I was interrupted by a notification.

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

At the same moment, Donut messaged in the war chat.

General Donut: Stop that mage! He’s fleeing! That’s the last one!

I looked, frantically. There. Lonnie the mage. He was running. Up the hill, back toward the castle, moving supernaturally fast. I wasn’t sure what his plan was, or if he had a plan at all, but the fact the dead mage was still moving meant he still had a worm in his head.

I activated the Daughter’s Kiss skill, and I jumped off the second story, landing right atop the fleeing mage.

~

Rosetta: That was all of them. The door disappeared. But that doesn’t mean they can’t use the doggie door again. We’re going to have to separate the safe room from the castle and keep up a permanent guard. Or we need to just kill the entrance all together. That might be more safe.

Carl: I was thinking the same thing, but we need to talk about it because I don’t want to lose easy access to Mordecai and the saferoom. Since they can only bring a limited number of NPCs into their own safe room, they can’t do a full-scale invasion through that door. But we do need to isolate it for certain. We need to get on that now while we decide what to do. None of that is going to matter if we don’t beat these assholes back. But for the next few minutes, focus on helping Louis to open the roof.

We were cleaning up after the attack, resetting our defenses and looting the bad guys before the main force would be on us in ten or fifteen minutes. They probably wouldn’t march right into us now that their beachhead was closed off, but we had to be ready. We had more defenders appearing by the moment, including Boomer’s 106th Bloody Leeches along with the scattered 104th members of the Naughty Little Piggies who’d come running the moment we were attacked.

In addition, the 105th Scream Warriors were harassing the backside of the enemy approach while helping to break Florin’s 101st from the stalemate that had kept him buttoned up in the fallback trenches.

The enemy’s attempt to soften us up and give themselves a funnel into our base hadn’t been successful, but it had left us bloody and limping. We could expect more paratroopers right when the main enemy force arrived.

This next fight was going to be a rough one. They had their armor with them. They had their numbers. It would be the first time I would be facing orcs in battle.

Prince Stalwart of the Skull Empire was with them, leading the charge.

I looked over at Donut, who was still on the roof of the barracks behind me, talking with Victory. The other adjutant was gone.

In some ways, I wished we didn’t have these pauses between fights. These ups and downs felt too jarring. I didn’t like having to think about what was going to happen next. I just wanted it to happen.

Samantha appeared, floating into the camp and coming to hover next to me as I helped set up another anti-air gun. She was completely covered with leaves and dirt. She spit, expelling dust and dirt from her mouth. She appeared as if she’d been rolling along and then had flown in the rest of the way.

“Louis accidentally dropped me out of his airplane,” she said. Behind us, Tina had recovered and was chomping on one of the dead androids, grunting angrily and spitting out the metal bits. The sound was like that of soda cans being flattened. At her feet, Rend and Mongo were doing the same, digging out the meat from the androids like they were at a crab bake.

Kiwi was there, hands on her hips, yelling up at Tina to come inside. Tina was ignoring her.

Samantha looked around camp. “Did you guys have another party without telling me?”

I grunted. “That was just the preview. The big fight is about to begin.”

~~~~~~

Sorry for the slowness of this one. Lots of rewrites + traveling is never a good combo.  It's a pretty important set of chapters, but in a really subtle way for Carl's state of mind. The numbness of war is battling with his humanity, and he needs those breaks even though he's pushing back against them. Trying to add that numbness to prose while keeping it compelling is pretty tough. This next scene definitely is gonna need a map or two, but I probably won't have them in time for the next chapters.

If you're seeing this just as I post it, I'll be going live in about an hour with Soundbooth Theater to talk about their Audio Immersion Tunnel, AKA the audiodrama which is now done with season one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMMY7v44UZ4