[ 23 ]
I PULLED THE ROPE BACK INTO MY INVENTORY WHILE I STILL HUNG 15 FEET off the ground. I was very happy I’d figured out that neat trick early on, before having to invest in multiple lengths of the stuff. Still, Donut was right. I needed a better method of going up and down.
I crashed heavily onto the debris pile, though it didn’t hurt like it would’ve before. I briefly wondered exactly how far I could drop before I would take damage. Above, the entire structure trembled. The whole thing was going to fall in on our heads at any moment. We had to get out of here.
The X of Quill’s body was there on my map, right under our feet, enticing me. We’d have to dig for an hour to get to her and the neighborhood map, which would be super useful right about now. That wasn’t going to happen.
A sparkle of something caught my eye. A single, charred box sat half- buried in the debris. I picked it up as we fled. It was one of Miss Quill’s glass cases. It appeared unbroken despite being less than a foot from the explosion, which meant this thing was likely enchanted. The char rubbed right off. The plush creature within was an armored man atop a black horse.
I peered at the tag, which said “Kimaris.” I pulled it all into my inventory.
The building rumbled as we cleared the distance. We stopped in the street and turned to watch as the rest of the gigantic building caved in. We’d gotten out of there just in time.
“We know what happened to the prostitutes now. We know why they were falling into the alleys,” Donut said, breathing heavily. “How come the quest didn’t finish?”
“We know how they got there,” I said. “We still don’t know why. We don’t have the whole story.” I eyed the dark warehouse across the street. It was a simple, square, two-level building. There were no lights with only a large pair of double doors at the entrance. I could sense him there, on the second floor. Remex. “If we want to finish this, we need to go into that building. That’s the quest.”
A crowd of NPCs watched the municipal building and mall collapse from a short distance away. I looked about in the air, but I didn’t see any skyfowl. There had been dozens of them out earlier, but they were all gone.
I had the impression they didn’t like flying about at night. Still, it was unusual.
A single blue dot of a crawler stood there in the crowd. I met the player’s eyes, and he approached us. I focused on the now-familiar name over his head.
“Don’t let him see that fallen oak bracelet on your back leg,” I whispered.
“Why?” Donut asked. “He’s not one of those elves.”
“He’s related to the dead crawler you took it from. He’s also the same guy that killed that boss in the swimming pool. The one that blew up. The Divider.”
“Oh, he’s disgusting,” Donut said as the man got closer. He walked slowly and deliberately. I could see he didn’t have shoes, though I suspected for him this was a recent development thanks to his newly clawed feet.
“Someone needs to teach him about muted colors. He looks like someone took Jack’s hat and made an overenthusiastic furry costume out of it. ”
“Be nice,” I whispered, trying not to laugh. Jack, the man who had peed on the wall and caused all the chaos on the second floor had been very fond of his orange Cincinnati Bengal’s hat.
“No, I’m serious, Carl. This guy could be the second coming of Chuck Norris, but we can’t have him in the party. People would laugh at us.”
“You know you’re a Persian cat, right?” I said.
“What is that supposed to mean, Carl?”
“Don’t worry,” I muttered. “He doesn’t look like he wants to join our party anyway.”
“Hey there,” I said as he came to a stop before us. The man paused, looking me up and down. I felt my eyebrow raise as he examined me for an extended period.
Crawler #2,165,570. “Daniel Bautista 2”
Level 18.
Race: Tigran.
Class: Swashbuckler.
He looked like a rejected character from Thundercats. He was a well- muscled, shirtless man, about six feet tall. He was furry and orange. Very furry. Very orange. He had the head of a human/big cat hybrid, with the orange, white, and black markings of a Siberian tiger. But unlike a tiger, his eyes had the vertical slits of a housecat. His nose and mouth were human, though covered with wisps of the orange fur. He also had a long, absurdly shaggy, tail. The effect would be comical if the dude didn’t look as if he could rip me in half. He held nine neighborhood boss markers. He wore a belt with a curved sword hanging in a scabbard. The sword also glowed orange.
“Were you the ones who killed Miss Quill?” he finally asked. He had an Asian accent. I remembered the three corpses we’d run across several days earlier. Grace, Nica, and Lea. They all had the same last name. I assumed this guy was part of that family. They’d had someone with them who’d looted most of their gear. Donut had picked up that fallen oak anklet, and I’d looted two generic strength rings. If the man knew we had them, would he want the items back? That would be too bad for him if he did. I figured it would be for the best if we didn’t broach the subject at all.
“Yes,” I said. “I take it you’re the guy whose quest we fucked over?”
“I am,” he said. “I was supposed to break into her home and kill her. It would get me access to the Desperado Club. But when I went to her home, she rushed off. I tried to follow, but she can fly. She went straight to that building there, and a few minutes later came your explosion and her death.”
“Did she have more of the stuffed creatures in her house?” Donut asked.
Bautista grunted. “Yes. Her entire apartment was filled with them. Over a thousand of them. I have taken them all.”
I shrugged. “Well, sorry about that. Like I said, we also have a quest that involved her. It’s not quite done yet, either.”
He nodded slowly. He wanted to say something, but he was hesitating.
“A few nights back, I saw you on the news program,” he finally added.
“We’re on almost every night,” said Donut proudly.
“You fought at that circus. You killed the lemurs. Is there nothing left?”
He was trying to ask about his family, but he was having trouble getting it out. “No. They’re all gone. There’s a stairwell there now.”
He nodded appreciatively. “There is another three kilometers due east from this village. Crawlers have been writing notes with the stairwell locations and leaving them in the bars.”
“Good,” I said. I paused. “And yes, we saw them. The other Bautistas.
We killed the lemurs responsible.”
His tail whisked back and forth. “Thank you,” he said. “They were my sisters and cousin. All five of them died in seconds. It happened so fast. I was with my other cousin, and we barely got away. ”
I swallowed. There had only been three bodies, but I remembered thinking at the time that there’d been enough blood for more.
Bautista continued. “He died the next day. My cousin, I mean. He’d given up. I’m all that’s left of my entire family. I had four brothers and sisters. Fifteen cousins.” He looked off into the distance. “I don’t know why I go on. I wish I hadn’t chosen this body. I should’ve remained true to myself. We all die anyway. How can we make it to heaven if god doesn’t
recognize us?”
I had no answer for that.
An awkward silence followed. I shifted uneasily. “Well I’m sorry for your loss. And I am sorry about screwing up your quest.”
He nodded. “It is no problem. I am happy knowing they have been avenged. I owe you a debt. Call me if you need me, and I will come.” He held out his fist, initiating the chat transfer. I hesitated, then reciprocated the gesture. His name appeared on my chat list. Then he turned and disappeared
into the night.
“That dude is very intense,” I said.
“I would be too if I looked like that,” said Donut. “Their game guide let him pick that race. And one of his sisters or cousins had been that weird tree thing, remember? It’s like their guide wanted them to look stupid. And Katia’s game guide won’t help her. And remember that floating brain thing we saw in the recap episode? The one for Frank Q and Maggie My? That thing was talking them into murdering people. I think most of these guides don’t like their jobs very much, and they take it out on the crawlers.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “Let me tell you a secret, Donut. Back before all this happened, it was considered a rare thing for somebody to find a job they truly loved.”
“You don’t like fixing boats? Or being in the Navy?”
“Not really. And I was in the Coast Guard. Not the Navy. They’re different,” I said.
“Are you sure? Miss Beatrice always told people you were in the
Navy.”
“I’m sure, Donut. ”
“Well, what would you have done if you could do anything?” she asked.
I thought about that for a long moment. I thought of the college applications I started to fill out, but never finished. “I would work for the
forestry service as a forester.”
“Doing what? Looking at trees all day?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve seen enough ocean to last a lifetime. I’d be happy alone in the woods, watching for forest fires. God, I would give anything.
That would be beautiful.”
Donut grunted. “I know what I would do. I would write TV shows. Zev and I are going to start a television show writing team when we get out of here. We’re going to remake Gossip Girl but with an intergalactic slant.”
I chuckled. “Is that right?”
“Zev says the shows on Earth are better than anything she’s ever seen.
We could make new ones and bring them to the universe. Maybe if the television shows are good enough, people wouldn’t be so interested in watching real-life people kill each other,” she said.
I didn’t say anything for several moments. “You surprise me every day, Donut.”
She didn’t give me the snarky response I was expecting.
“So,” she said, “we calling it a night or are we going to fight a lich?”
I sighed. We had about three hours until sunrise. “What do you think?”
The massive door to the Swordsmen depot was not locked. It sat ajar, and I kept a wary eye on it as I climbed the ladder up the exterior side of the building. I was ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. I was more worried about the suits of armor than the lich. If those guys in there woke up, we were fucked. Even though I was now the town’s magistrate, nobody seemed to acknowledge that fact. Before, Featherfall— or I guess Miss
Quill—had a very small amount of control over the guardians. I remembered when she tried to have them arrest me, and it hadn’t worked.
Something told me I was going to be chased out of my own town the moment they woke up no matter what I did.
Remex the lich had been quiet this whole time. Donut braved jumping to the roof, and she managed to get a hit on her map. She said it was something regular sized, like a normal skyfowl. She said it hadn’t been moving, and she didn’t see anything else in the room. Her map’s ability to sense mobs was better than my own, but it was also famously unreliable when it came to hidden mobs, so I was cautious.
Earlier, I’d peered through the open door of the first level to get a quick view of what was going on in there and to gauge the height of the interior ceiling. Even in the dark, I could see them. The inactive Swordsmen guards.
They stood in silent formation, hundreds of them, reminding me of the Chinese terracotta army. They didn’t have dots over them in my map at all.
I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
Their metallic bodies swirled with a yellow aura, all of it leading to a point in the ceiling. There would be a soul crystal up there somewhere.
Mordecai said that at night, the guards were in “stasis” mode, and that they were invulnerable. I’d entertained the quick notion of locking them in their warehouse and just blowing them all to hell, including the lich, over and over again until they died, which would result in an obscene amount of experience. But it looked as if that wasn’t going to happen. Not tonight.
And I couldn’t just roll a bomb into the lich’s chambers, either. He appeared to be the last bad guy standing, so I needed to get the bad guy soliloquy out of him before we killed him. That way we could win the quest.
We had determined that there was no mute spell in the area, or any other protections that we could see. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a nasty surprise waiting for us, but at least we’d be able to rely on magic .
I placed the tenth and final stick of goblin dynamite on the exterior, exposed joist, using the sticky detonator charge to attach it to the structure.
Each stick of hobgoblin pus allowed for up to ten simultaneous detonations with one button press. I was going to use all ten tonight if we had to. I hoped we didn’t.
Below, half the village stood on the street, watching. They held torches and scythes and other items of medieval weaponry. I hadn’t summoned
them, but Fitz the tavernkeeper had raised the alarm after he overheard Mordecai and Katia discussing the idea of a lich in town. Even though it was the equivalent of 3:30 AM, he’d rushed out, shouting that the “night patrol” needed to defend the city. Since half the town was already wide- awake with the collapse of the municipal building, it didn’t take long for a crowd to form.
Before we knew it, we had a group of NPCs gathering around the warehouse. They ranged from orcs to humans to elves to dozens of other, more obscure races. But no skyfowl or the smaller chickadees. It was as if they didn’t care about the plight of the city, as long as the damage remained on the ground. Across the street, smoke still rose from the collapsed debris of the mall and municipal building. The night smelled of dust and fire.
After all of our preparations, we now only had about forty minutes left before the armor suits would reanimate. The tops of distant buildings already glowed with the first signs of the faux sunrise. We had to move quickly.
“That’s the last of them,” I said, stepping my way to the ground. One of the rungs broke off, and I cursed. I spent a quick minute fixing it. I pulled the handmade ladder into my pack. I’d hastily built the thing with crap from my inventory. It was a rickety, slipshod combination of lengths of wood and metal weight bars that would give an OSHA inspector a coronary. It had taken me almost an hour to construct. If we survived past tonight, I was going to build another one of these, but one that was built properly.
“You ready?” I asked.
“No,” Donut said. “I don’t like this plan, Carl. ”
Mongo was in his carrier. He’d proven that we couldn’t trust him to stay still when things started to get out of control, and we definitely needed to control the narrative here. And Donut needed to focus.
We were relying on Mordecai’s advice to keep ourselves alive.
“Liches come in all shapes and sizes and power levels. You never know what they’re going to be,” he’d said earlier this evening. “But they all have one thing in common, each and every one of them.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
He looked up at the ceiling wryly. “They’re just like Odette. They never, ever shut the hell up. They are narcissists to a fault. And they are cowards.
Now that they have grasped a handful of life, they will do whatever they can not to let it go again. That’s why they always have minions. They
always have elaborate, grandiose plans. That’s why I think you should just blow the building and take a chance at losing the quest.”
This was earlier, when we still thought that Featherfall was the lich and that his lair was in that building. But since then, Mordecai had changed his mind. He seemed to think that because we’d killed most of Remex’s support system, he would be vulnerable. It was now worth the risk to approach him.
Mordecai also said that it made sense that he’d hide above the warehouse of the swordsmen. A magical crystal was used to “recharge” the swordsmen each night, and anyone searching the town using magical means wouldn’t see him there.
Mordecai: Here’s another wrinkle. This is obviously another boss.
And since that one earlier was a Neighborhood Boss, I’d bet my left nipple this one is a Borough Boss. So even if he’s been weakened, you need to come to the fight prepared.
So we made the decision. We were going to confront the lich while he was weak. He already knew we were coming. It was likely he’d been watching this whole time. So we would slowly and deliberately ring the exterior of the building with explosives, enough to turn the whole structure into dust .
My original plan was to have Donut stay outside while I went in solo.
She absolutely refused.
“You promised me that I wouldn’t die alone,” she said. “You can’t keep that promise if you die before me. We do this together.”
I relented, but it required a change to the plans.
Katia now stood in the crowd. Her face was much better, much more natural. She still looked like a burn victim who fell face-first out of the ugly tree, but I wouldn’t question she was a human now. I summoned her over.
“Here,” I said. “Hold onto this for me.” I handed her a pencil-like detonator.
“Whoa, whoa,” she said, backing up, refusing to take it. “Don’t give that to me.”
“Keep it in your inventory,” I said, shoving it into her hand. “If we die, or if I say so, press the button. No questions. Just do it.”
“Why don’t you hold onto it?” she asked, looking at it like I’d just handed her a live snake. “Carl, the description says it might click on its own.”
“Put it in your inventory. It’ll be fine,” I said.
It disappeared into her pack.
“Why me?” she asked again. She looked ill.
“We don’t know if this guy has some sort of mind control. It’s a lich thing. We need someone outside the sphere of influence to hold onto the boom switch just in case.”
“So, what’s your angle here?” she asked. “Mutually assured destruction?”
“That’s right,” I said. “All we want is information. All he wants is to live. It’s a gamble, sure. But it’s not like we’re not constantly on the precipice of death anyway.”
She shook her head. “Hekla warned me that you were crazy.”
“Just be sure to be about a block away before you press it. There’s enough dynamite in there to blow your weird snow boots back to Iceland.” I raised my voice and called to the crowd. “You are all still in the blast zone.
You’ll want to back up. A lot. ”
We stepped into the warehouse as the crowd started to scatter. I gave the Swordsmen a nervous glance as we quickly moved to the small trap door cut into the corner of the room. I pulled my ladder and began to ascend.
Donut remained on my shoulder, trembling.
“It’s moving. But it’s going to the back corner of the room, like it’s running away,” Donut said.
“Don’t kill us,” I called as I came into the room. “You kill us, you’ll die too!”
I took a deep inhalation of breath as I examined the monster quivering in the far corner.
Carl: Not a lich, Mordecai. Not a fucking lich!
