[ 24 ]
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?” I ASKED.
“Do not approach. No, no. Stay away. Do not blow me up,” Remex said.
His voice came out in rasps. “Please. Do not get closer.”
Confused, I examined the creature’s properties. Despite all of our preparations and Mordecai’s warnings, he was not a boss. Or a lich.
Remex – Soul Leech Capacitor. Level 1.
This is a Bereft Minion of Miss Quill Have you ever played with a Ouija board and realized that speaking with a lost loved one just wasn’t doing it for you anymore?
Perhaps you wanted to kick it up a notch? Maybe bring them back to life? And then maybe make them get a job? A Soul Leech Capacitor can do that for you.
These fragile, but physically strong undead creatures can only be created by a Necromancer or a Dark Cleric. The spell latches onto the most-loved soul of the spell’s target and yanks that creature back into existence. The resurrected spirit is forever attached to the loved one.
But the Soul Leech is like a nick in the plane between life and death, and they exist in neither. A simple scratch from this beast will rip your soul straight from your body. That soul power is stored in the capacitor, allowing the Leech’s owner to access huge reserves of mana points.
“You know,” I said to Donut, “every time I think these guys reach a new level of fucked-upedness, they surprise me. If he makes one move toward us, Magic Missile him.”
Remex looked much like Featherfall had, only this guy was alive. Sort of. He appeared to be a zombified, featherless skyfowl. His eyes were black, swirling orbs. Hazy black smoke rose from the body. Ethereal, worm-like wisps swirled about the creature, like a parody of the full wings he once had.
A thin, thread-like twist of golden light flowed into the creature’s chest, tethering him to a golf ball-sized, amber-hued jewel that floated in the middle of the room. A stalk of light flowed downward through a small hole in the floor. Additional tendrils of golden light whipped about the gem, flying in all directions, as if it was seeking further items to feed. I cringed as the light ripped across me, but I didn’t feel anything. It seemed the light was harmless to those who couldn’t use it.
The eagle huddled in the corner, gasping. He appeared to be in agony.
Carl: What the hell is a bereft minion?
Mordecai: It’s a minion who is still alive after their controller is dead. It looks like you killed the head bad guy when you blew up Miss Quill. It happens. Quests sometimes look bigger than they really are. I should have known since it was only a silver quest. Sorry about making you waste all that dynamite. Get the information out of him, put him out of his misery, and then get back here before the swordsmen wake up. Otherwise you’ll be stuck in that warehouse all day.
I quickly examined the jewel.
Soul Crystal. C-Grade.
Elf technology. It’s like a wireless charger. Instead of electricity, it runs on the soul power of everything killed within the area. And instead of charging your iPhone, this particular gem tops off the town’s Swordsmen guards each night. Some of that power is also leeching into something else.
If this crystal is physically touched by living flesh, it will shatter and cease to work.
Mordecai had already told us a bit about these things. They were indeed worthless once they were activated. Breaking it would stop the guards from charging up, but it wouldn’t otherwise hurt them. They’d eventually run out of juice, but it wouldn’t happen right away.
“Were you watching? Did you see what I did to the outside of this building?” I asked.
“I saw. I saw,” he said. “You gave your friend the remote. My wife cast the spell. She has a thousand eyes, all watching at once. Watching, tasting.
We see all. She cast the spell through me, and the vision comes through me and into her. But now she is gone, and it is building, building. There is nowhere to go. Her soul is lost now. With the sunrise, the release. The
release.”
He wasn’t making any sense.
“So Quill would cast the spells, but she would do it through you? Is that what it means for you to be a capacitor?”
“Yes. So much power, so much power. With the little ones. With the antennae. All of it is gathered. Gathering. She has to siphon it away. She is gone, gone. She is gone. No spell tonight. No siphon tonight.”
“Great, another loon,” Donut muttered .
I tried to make my voice soothing. He was still all the way on the other side of the room, but I didn’t want to approach him. “Tell us about the little ones. The girls. Tell us about Featherfall and Miss Quill. How you came to be.”
The creature blinked, as if seeing us for the first time. The swirls of light around him lashed about. The cloudiness of his eyes vanished. “Who are you? Where am I?”
I repeated my question, but more slowly. He settled into the corner, wrapping his bare, emaciated wings around himself, like he was a scared child.
“You’re here for the story. I understand now. I have waited so long for someone to tell. All I had to do was tell the story, and I would be done.”
“Please,” I said. “Yes. Tell us, and we won’t hurt you.”
He nodded slowly. “Please, give me a moment. Don’t kill me before it’s done. I have practiced this. It’s a lot, but I gotta get it out. Here is the story.
He… Featherfall. He never liked the guards. He only held a small amount of control over them. He wanted more. He asked me, after I retired and handed the perch to him. That’s right. He asked me what must be done to control the swordsmen. To control them, I said, one must know what they are. How they are animated, how they came to be. Wait, don’t ask about that. That’s not important. It’s a tangent. We have to avoid tangents.
Featherfall was short-sighted. He had no ambition other than power over this small town. His kingdom. Skyfowl ruled this world. Did you know that? Before that demon destroyed it all. I like to think of it as a metaphor.
Some say the Primals… No. I can’t. That’s off script. Sorry, sorry. Please.
The skyfowl were once on top of the world. In control of the Over City. It’s important you know that.”
“What happened?” I asked. “How did he get put into that thing?”
“You are like him. You only care about what is in front of you right now. You don’t see the larger picture. I think that’s what I needed to say.”
Donut: Carl. Something is happening. Something weird. The counter is being slow as usual, but I think our views are going really high. I keep getting achievements for views and followers. You probably are too. I don’t understand why.
I ignored her. “Show me the small picture first. Then zoom it out for me.”
Remex shifted then continued. “Let me finish the story. Don’t kill me. I have to start over if you kill me. The orc, he killed me. Years ago.”
“I’m going to kill you right here and now if you don’t get on with it,”
Donut said.
He made a half whimper, half cheeping noise that sounded utterly pitiful. “I shall finish. After I passed, Featherfall approached my wife. Quill.
Miss Quill they say, but I don’t know why they added the Miss. He asked her to help him cast the spell. He knew bringing another dark cleric like myself from the dim would make an especially strong capacitor, giving him the additional soul power he needed to subjugate the swordsmen. He put himself into the Night Votive position, with my wife in the room to assist.”
I could barely follow his story. “Wait, so Miss Quill knew that you would be ripped from death and turned into what you are now? And she was okay with that?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “She’s not really… no, I can’t say that. Remex.
Think, think. Oh yes, she also knew Featherfall was making a grave error by casting the spell too close to the Amplifier.”
“Amplifier?” I asked.
“Oh yes. You are standing before it. The roof is the antennae, and the soul crystal stores the power. It captures the energy from the lost souls in the area. It is this that keeps the swordsmen animated. High Elf magic. They are the ones who… No, another tangent. Wrong path. At night, the swordsmen are recharged. But Featherfall’s quarters are right across the way. When he cast the spell, I was manifested and brought into existence.
But he was killed by the feedback. My wife, she planned this. She’d been
planning it all along, her entire life. It was exactly what was supposed to happen. I was damned the moment I became her husband. I was now a capacitor for her. She pretended as if the magistrate was still alive, and she took up the duties of running the settlement. She was a powerful mage. She had a forgery spell. It fooled everyone.”
Mordecai: You guys are running low on time. Finish this and get out
of there.
Carl: Almost done.
“And why did you bring the women in? The prostitutes?”
“Don’t… Don’t trip me up. You listen. We’re getting there. First, she took control of those fool elves. She cast an illusion, a resplendent skyfowl from legend to speak to them, pretend to be an angel, make them believe their tree god is coming for them. I could make them fly, manipulate things.
The avatars, I mean. She never liked getting her hands dirty. So she used them. For intimidation. Corpse removal. My avatars. One looked like my son. My boy. Lost in time. But they couldn’t move far from here. So my wife instead sent the elves about on her task, to bring the women to us.
These women just kept coming, searching for a better life. Over and over.
Sometimes, I could see it in their eyes. They were like me. A tenner. Don’t get undead, they told us. Don’t get undead. It’s not worth it. Wait, ignore that.”
Getting him to stay on the subject was like trying to steer without a rudder. “Okay, but why did she bring the women to you?”
“For two reasons. My wife had grand plans, plans set forth long ago.
But she needed help, help that couldn’t be fully accomplished by the city elves. The krasue are easy to control. Easy to make if you have the correct materials. They fly, and they are intact and compliant during the day. Plus the act of generating them creates a powerful spike of soul power, adding to my energy. And since the raw materials come from out of town, nobody would notice she was collecting them.”
“Somebody did notice. Gumgum noticed,” Donut said.
“So, you power up every time something dies?”
“Yes. And my position here allows me to also leech off the souls flowing into the crystal. My wife knew this, but even she couldn’t predict the sheer amount of energy. I can feel it. It is so much. Mana points. That feeling when you drink the potion, of the mana points flowing back into you, but it never stops coming.”
I felt a chill. I was finally reading between the lines. We needed to hurry this along. “So, your wife was building an army? Why?”
“She was a granddaughter of the royal family. Ambition soared through her. She was going to reclaim it all. But you killed her, and you found me.
She dies, but I’m never found. But this time. I have been discovered. There was an orc, once. He found me. He killed me before I finished the story.”
“Focus, Remex. Tell me about Quill. When you say reclaim it all, what does that mean?”
“Oh yes, of course. The spell. I need to mention the spell. She was preparing The Final War. It is a three-part spell. Heirloom magic. First cast by her grandfather, then her mother, then she was to complete it. Like Scolopendra’s nine-tier attack that ruined our kingdom, she has prepared something that will reclaim the Over City for the skyfowl.”
“She was waiting to collect enough power before she could cast this spell, then?” I asked. “And she needed the army to do what? Protect her while she cast it?”
“That is correct. Before, during, and after. And the krasue would be her lieutenants, her eyes and ears for the battle. But she had enough power.
More than enough. She’d already started. She did.”
“Wait, what would have happened if she’d completed the casting?” I asked.
“Oh, it is a glorious spell. The third and final act of The Final War is a long, dangerous spell that takes three nights to cast. She’d done the first.
Was going to do the second tonight. Thousands. Thousands of mana points.
Once completed, the beasts she unleashed would sweep across the Over City and slaughter all but those whose essence she has protected, those she added to the spell. ”
“You mean the feathers?” I asked. “So, the skyfowl and midget skyfowl, whatever they’re called would be safe?”
“Chickadees,” Donut said. “I like those guys. They’re cute.”
“Yes,” Remex said. “Them and their entire families. Everyone else would perish.”
“Ahh,” I said. I looked at Donut. “Everyone would be dead except the flyers. We just stopped a genocide.”
“I guess that makes up for you killing all those baby goblins on the first floor,” said Donut.
“We’re not having this conversation again.”
Quest completed. The Sex Workers Who Fell from the Heavens.
“Hey, we didn’t even have to kill this guy,” said Donut. “And we didn’t have to blow up any more buildings tonight, either.”
Remex laughed. It was a dry, almost airless croak. “That’s it. That’s it. I did it. I did it!” The dry laugh turned to sobs.
“What is he talking about, Carl?” Donut asked.
“I’ll tell you later.” Pity swept over me. Jesus, I thought, watching the undead thing cry empty tears. “Remex. It’s done. You’ve told us the story.
Do you want us to kill you or to leave you?”
“Kill me, let me live, it doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter. With the sunrise, I will be gone. As you will be, too. Listen, boy. Don’t be sad. You didn’t know. It’s a lucky thing, a mercy to die here.” He pointed toward the ground with his wing. “And not make it down there. It is so much better.
Wait with me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The announcement wasn’t just in my head. It came over the loudspeaker, like the daily update.
New Quest. The Fools Who Broke the Glass.
THIS IS A GROUP QUEST. All Crawlers currently within the 45 square kilometer blast radius will receive this quest.
Your party has been designated Host of this Group Quest. As hosts, you will not be allowed to opt-out from this quest.
What the hell is going on? Am I glad you asked!
A while back a certain NPC started casting a very powerful spell, a spell so potent, that it had to be completed by a future generation.
Here’s the thing with old spells. They’re like trees. They grow. They get big. Sometimes huge. Bad shit happens when they get screwed up.
The bigger the spell, the badder the shit. And boy was this spell big. Not gonna lie. Your favorite AI was looking forward to it going off.
Oh well. This will be almost as good.
Shit is about to go down. For example, you may have noticed every Skyfowl and Chickadee NPC in the area has fallen ill. Most of them have already plunged into a coma, or death. It’s not their fault, but they were tied to the spell, and that’s just the way it is.
Just like it’s not your fault that you happen to be within 45 kilometers of the fallout from this failed spell. Again, not your fault.
(Well, unless you’re Crawlers Carl, Princess Donut, or Katia Grim.
Then it is your fault.) That’s just the way it is. Sucks to be you.
There’s going to be an explosion. The epicenter of the blast is marked on your map. Every crawler within the designated blast area is fucked.
The object of this quest is simple. Unfuck yourself. Don’t die.
Warning: This is an event quest. If you do not wish to participate in this quest, you will have sixty seconds from the end of this message to get yourselves into a saferoom. After that, all access to saferooms within the quest zone will be shut off until the event quest is concluded. All NPCs who remain indoors, saferoom or not, will remain safe. All mobs and neighborhood-level boss monsters within the blast radius subject to both physical and magical explosions will be killed.
Reward: All participants who survive will receive a Platinum Quest Box.
Oh, by the way. The explosion is coming in seven minutes.
Run.
“What the fuck? How is that a quest?” I cried.
Mordecai: Run. Desperado Club. It’s not a saferoom, but the second room is out of the blast radius.
Katia: I don’t have access to the club! I can’t go to a saferoom
because I’m a quest host!
Carl: Protective Shell?
Mordecai: Won’t work. Magical blast. Go.
“Fuck!” I cried. “We have to get to the club. Let’s go.”
“What about Katia?” Donut said. “That’s not fair. We promised we’d keep her safe. This is our fault.”
“It’s not,” I said. I didn’t bother going down the ladder. I just jumped all the way, hitting the ground heavily. Behind me, the guards stopped glowing.
An entire wall of white dots appeared on the map. I knew in a moment those dots were going to turn red once the Swordsmen noticed me here.
Donut hesitated and leaped to my shoulder. Her ears were flattened against her head.
Shit, shit, shit! I pulled up my map, looking for the fastest route. The Desperado Club was three blocks away. We could make it if we ran.
“Look,” I said. “This was going to happen one way or another. That’s why they tried to get that Bautista guy to kill Miss Quill, too. They wanted this explosion quest to trigger.”
I had a weird chat notification. I pulled it up, and the window said Quest Chat.
This was different than regular chat. This was like a Discord chatroom, with a whole group of crawler names on the list. There were about 80 names there.
Quan Ch: Thanks a lot Carl and Donut, you fucking assholes.
That was the only message. Oh fuck off, I thought. I clicked it away. But that list of names, all crawlers who were likely about to die, stunned me.
Eighty people.
I moved to also close the map, but I paused, seeing something unexpected. A tiny, round star appeared where the explosion’s epicenter would be. I zoomed in tight.
“Carl?” Donut said. “The guards are waking up!”
Carl: Mordecai, the soul gem is the epicenter. Not Remex. If I break the gem, will that cancel the explosion?
Mordecai: I don’t know. I don’t think it will stop it. Probably make it blow early. The quest is called The Fools Who Broke the Glass for a reason. They want you to do that. Get the hell out of there.
Donut: WE CAN’T ABANDON KATIA!
Katia: It’s okay. Thank you, Donut. I understand. I’m getting the NPCs back into their homes. Run, guys. Go.
Donut: WHAT ABOUT YOU, MORDECAI?
Mordecai: I’m in my room. I’m safe. Hurry the hell up!
“Fuck,” I muttered, looking up at the hole in the ceiling .
“Carl?” Donut asked.
“Donut, we have a choice. Save ourselves. Or we try to save Katia and those other 80 people. I have an idea, but it probably won’t work. We need to decide. Quick.”
“I, uh, I don’t know,” Donut said, looking about. She seemed to deflate on my shoulder. “We should try to save the others. It’s the right thing to do.”
I didn’t answer. I just reached up and scratched her. And then I ascended the ladder.
We returned to the room. Remex remained in the corner, his eyes closed. He appeared to be fading.
“You returned,” he said. He didn’t open his eyes. “Welcome to the end of days.”
The soul gem hovered in the room. The entire crystal vibrated. The tendrils of light had stopped shooting from it, including the large river down into the room below and the golden strand leading into Remex.
A red timer counted down over the gem. It was at four minutes and thirty seconds.
I pulled Miss Quill’s beanie baby from my inventory. It wasn’t hard to find. Kimaris, the stuffed horse-riding soldier was the very top item when I sorted my current inventory by value.
The second item on the list was the protective carrier it was stored in.
The door to the small, glass case wasn’t locked. It was a small, hinged flap held closed by a cheap-looking hook and eyebolt. I opened the little door and pulled the stuffed animal back into my inventory.
I gave the glass case a quick examination.
Sheol Glass Reaper Case.
Forged in the fires of Sheol, the mysterious 15th level of the World Dungeon, these protective, expensive artifacts are built and sold by traveling Spider Reaper Minions. They also sell lollipops, which are said to be out of this world.
When you absolutely, positively want to keep something safe, put it in this box. It will protect against most—but not all—forms of abuse.
Warning: Every time you open this case, there is a 1.5% chance you will be blasted with the Sheol Fire spell. That’s not a good thing. The item within the case will remain protected.
I swallowed. I probably should have read that description before I’d opened it to pull the beanie out. I kept the door open now.
I remembered that moment we’d jumped from the civic building and landed in the debris. There’d been a flash of light. Looking back now, I realized it’d been deliberate. The system had brought my attention to the case. It was just like any regular game. Seemingly random objects were sometimes placed there intentionally, just to keep the game fair. That’s what this was.
I held the case in my hand, and I approached the pulsing gem. Careful not to touch it with my hands, I closed the case around the floating gem, like I was catching a firefly with my two hands. I shut the door, and I gingerly hooked it closed.
I tried to pull the whole thing into my inventory, and I received an error.
Yeah. Nice try, asshole.
“Oh, fuck off,” I said. I hadn’t expected that to work. After taking a deep breath, I let go. I cringed as the case fell a couple inches, clinking to a stop as it fell against the gem floating within. But it remained there, floating. The gem itself was starting to vibrate faster and faster, with little cracks forming along the edge. The glass case’s description, that it protected against “most” forms of abuse, did not give me confidence. A magical explosion that was going to flatten 45 square kilometers of dungeon seemed like it would probably be pretty high on the shortlist of attack types that would break this thing.
We still had two and a half minutes on the countdown. Not even close to the amount of time we’d need to get to safety.
“Oh my god, Carl. Is that going to work?” Donut asked.
“I don’t know. I doubt it. But it’s worth a try.” I paused. “I’m sorry, Donut. I should have told you my idea before forcing you to choose.”
She made a grunting noise. “You always pretend like I’m the stubborn one, but once your mind is made up, Carl, it’s impossible to change it.
There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
I sat on the ground, exhausted. Donut jumped into my lap, and we stared at the floating glass case.
Remex rocked back and forth in the corner, muttering, “I’m coming, son. Any minute now. I’m coming. I missed you so much. I’m coming.”
“What is he talking about?” Donut asked.
“He was a crawler,” I said. “He called himself a tenner. I reckon that means someone who got out on the tenth floor. I think he might’ve been famous once. It explains the views.”
“Carl, I don’t want to become an NPC,” Donut said. “I guess it won’t matter if we die.”
I reached up and scratched her head. Forty-five seconds. “I’m proud of
you, you know that?”
“Why?”
“You’ve grown. You being worried about Katia? You don’t even know her, but you’d promised to keep her safe. My first instinct was to abandon her.”
She laughed. “I just don’t want Hekla mad at us. We already have that Lucia Mar after us. And Maggie My. And the Maestro’s dad.”
I chuckled. Fifteen seconds. “Can’t say we didn’t try, that’s for sure.”
“Carl?” she asked.
I looked down into her large, glowing eyes. “Yeah?”
“I’m not as dumb as I pretend to be. I know she’s dead.”
“I know.” I wrapped myself around her. We both closed our eyes and braced for the end.
