[ 9 ]
THE USUAL MUSIC AND BOMBASTIC, OVER-THE-LOUDSPEAKER announcement never came. The system was treating this just like a regular mob. But this clearly wasn’t just any old monster.
Heather the Bear!
Level 19 Neighborhood Boss!
Performing since she was a cub, Heather the Roller-Skating Bear was one of the longest-running attractions at Grimaldi’s Traveling Circus. Her retirement had been only weeks away when the cataclysm hit. Now the tired, old bear has been transformed into a monstrosity, barely recognizable from her former self. She lives out her days as a hunter for the circus, seeking out juicy mobs and unsuspecting crawlers. She finds and incapacitates her prey using her overwhelming speed and strength. Then she drags her quarry back to the circus so the clowns may feed.
Somewhere in there, deep, deep down, there is a spark of the old Heather. The beloved bear has moments of lucidity as she runs down her terrified prey. In those brief moments, she thinks: Good. I’ve always hated all you assholes, anyway.
Unlike most boss battles, it didn’t appear that I was locked into the area.
But I couldn’t run, could I? I looked wildly about. Behind me was a large intersection. A two-story building sat at each corner. It was already too dark for me to see inside.
Carl: Mordecai. Boss battle. Level 19 black bear with worms for claws and roller skates for feet. Tips?
Mordecai: Roller skates? Like those little shoes with wheels on
them? Are you serious?
Carl: Yes, I’m fucking serious!
Mordecai: Male or female?
Carl: Female.
Mordecai: Shit. Okay. What about your Protective Shell? Has that
reset yet?
Carl: Yes. It did about 15 minutes ago.
Mordecai: Black bears are the smallest of the bears, but they are faster and stronger than they look. Female bears are much smarter than the male ones. I don’t know what the worm claws mean. Don’t let her hug you. Use your shell.
Heather roared and stood to her full height, balancing on her two legs as she spread her two upper arms out.
“Fuck me,” I said, scrambling back. I’d seen plenty of black bears in my life, and they usually weren’t that big, most no larger than big dogs. Heather was an exception. She was huge. On her roller skates, she stood about eight feet tall. The pink clown hat sat cockeyed on her skull head. I could see where the cone of the hat was fused directly to the bone, like she was some sort of fucked-up bearicorn.
The worm claws came to life, dozens of little appendages wriggling and undulating. …And growing longer and longer. The bone-white worms ap peared to glow in the fading light as they spread to the ground, like pasta being made directly from the bear’s hands. As the swirling worms fell, I caught glints of actual bear claws at the ends of the paws.
Holy shit, I thought. That’s really fucking gross.
Where the hell was Signet? I looked about for the elite. My eyes caught movement, and I spied her through a hole in a building across the intersection. She was on the second floor, and her arms were raised like they’d been yesterday. Her strange tattoos twirled about her body the same as before.
I sensed the movement before I saw it. I’d only looked over my shoulder for a second, but the bear had halved the distance between us. She sailed across the wooden slats on her roller skates, gliding at me. The well- oiled skates made a whisk, whisk, whisk noise across the ground. She whipped her arm back as I twisted, pulling a pair of smoke bombs from my
inventory and tossing them at my feet. I pulled two more as I started to run.
I’d learned my lesson the other day not to use just one of these things.
Too slow. Heather swiped from fifteen feet away. The worms swept at me like a whip before I’d even realized what the hell was happening.
Dozens of worms rushed at me, slapping into me, and wrapping around me three quick times like a damn tetherball. The wet, cold ends of the worms hit the exposed skin of my upper legs, and I felt them start to burrow into my body. I need pants. I really fucking need pants. It felt like knives going into my skin.
Yes, yes, this is new flesh. Primal flesh. Delicious flesh.
Strong he is. Do we taste this? He will feed our clowns well.
The clowns hunger, Primal. They are ravenous. And now they know of your flavor.
I smashed down on Protective Shell as the smoke started to billow from the smoke bombs. The worms severed off the bear, cutting them in half and killing them. The ends half-burrowed into my skin dropped away. The bear, which had been almost on top of me, rocketed back, hitting the ground and rolling away. I’d blown it a good fifty feet back.
What the hell was that?
The worm things had entered my skin and immediately started talking in my mind. The words had come all at once, piling on top of one another. I couldn’t tell if it was one voice or a thousand voices. Male or female. It’d felt as if someone had taken their dirty fingers, sunk them directly into the meat of my brain, and dragged.
Fuck no. Fuck that. I would die before I let that happen again. I jumped into action.
I rushed at the fallen bear, leaving the protection of the shield behind. I pulled nuts and bolts and barbells from my inventory as I ran, scattering them on the ground.
I was too close for a boom jar or a stick of dynamite. Instead, I pulled a regular jug of moonshine and tossed it at the bear as hard as I could. The jug shattered against the bear’s head. I’d thrown it significantly harder than I’d expected or anticipated. Wow. Even with my enhanced strength, I hadn’t been expecting the sheer violence of the toss. I skidded to a stop.
A health bar finally appeared as Heather screamed in rage. Moonshine splashed over the bear, who remained on her back, struggling. The pungent stench filled the intersection. The puddle highlighted itself in my vision,
and the word Flammable Liquid appeared floating over it. That’s new, I thought as I pulled a torch, lit it, and tossed it at the bear.
I didn’t wait to see what happened next. I turned and ran toward the still-billowing smoke plume. Like last time, it was an irritatingly-narrow cone of smoke despite the multiple bombs. It’d caught in the wind, swelling away from the bear. But the smoke cone was just wide enough to hide
within.
Whoosh.
I felt the heat of the moonshine igniting. I ran into the smoke and turned in time to see the bear pulling herself to her feet, her entire body aflame.
The red and blue flames rose into the night air. The billowing fire partially obscured Heather’s health bar. It moved down, but at a crawl. It wasn’t even in the red yet.
The on-fire bear shrieked and started roller skating at me. Whisk, whisk, whisk.
Now, if you’ve never had a flaming, skull-faced bear on roller skates barreling at you full speed, you don’t know what you’re missing.
She stumbled and fell, tripping over a dumbbell. When she rose again, half of her skin and fur remained on the ground, revealing an exposed ribcage, filled completely with worms, like a knot of ramen noodles. The worms burst forth from the flames, reaching every which way.
For fuck’s sake.
I’d been saving it for a dire situation, and I pulled it out now. The scratcher lottery ticket I’d received from that Lucky Bastard box. Fireball or Custard. I had a fifty/fifty chance. It would either fire a level-15 fireball, which would probably kill it immediately. Or it would splatter the thing with strawberry custard, which would heal it.
I awkwardly held the paper ticket in my left hand as I scratched off one of the five spots, revealing a little spinning circle. The tiny icon flashed back and forth from a red fireball to a pink glob. The skating boss was nothing but a skeleton now. Only the hat and the roller skates remained on fire. Even the round, bulbous eyes were gone. A mass of worms covered the
skeleton, as if it was wrapped in yarn.
The health bar was only half gone.
Hiding in the smoke seemed to do nothing. The arm whipped back once again.
The spinning icon on the ticket stopped.
Custard. Yummy!
The voice said it out loud, deep and bass heavy, like it was the announcer dude from that goddamned Candy Crush game. I had a sudden, inexplicable memory of Bea playing that game on her phone with the volume turned all the way up while I was trying to watch TV.
“Mother fuck!” I cried, jumping back as the beachball-sized custard ball burst forth and splattered against the bear, who staggered and—once again —fell on its back.
The skeletal bear roared in pain as custard boiled against her skin. Her skin and fur reformed over her body, spreading across her frame in odd, jerky clumps, like a stop-motion film. The bear struggled upward again.
The damn thing was like the Terminator. Her health bar started to ease back up.
But something had changed. The roller skates fell off the bear’s feet as she struggled. So did the hat. Both dissipated into dust. The skin on the bear’s face formed. She did not stand as she had before, but remained on all fours like a normal bear. Her tattered, black fur held a silver sheen, especially evident around her muzzle.
By healing it, I’d killed the worms. The bear let out a howl, mournful and afraid. She sat down and lowered herself painfully to the ground. The last of the boiling custard sizzled away. The bear looked at me, all of the fight out of her. This was Heather, the real Heather, free of the parasites that’d been controlling her. She looked at me with her newly-formed eyes.
End it, those bitter eyes said. I should never have lived this long. She made a quick, pained whimper, and her eyes closed.
I approached the bear. I kept a wary eye on her claws, looking for any sign of a trick. The bear sighed heavily as I approached. Her health bar, which had moved to the top was now falling again on its own. Without the worms and mold or whatever the hell magic was keeping this thing alive, her body was breaking down fast. This elderly bear, Heather, was not who I’d just fought. Not really. She was just the shell.
I was tempted to just let her die on her own. But only for a moment. I formed a fist, and I smashed her head in with two quick punches. Then I stood, and I finished her off by pressing my foot against her skull and crushing. Her skull caved in easily .
Winner! Appeared in my interface. That was the only indication I’d just finished a boss battle. A few achievements came and went into the folder.
I’d gone up to level 15. I was pushing 16 already. Donut was going to be pissed.
The bear’s body shuddered. A line of red rose from the corpse, even through the flames. The blood flew through the air, angling upward toward Signet’s now-glowing body.
Mordecai: Congrats. You just won your first solo boss battle.
A black, crackling shell of smoke surrounded the building where Signet cast her spell. Mordecai said he knew exactly what spell this was, and it’d likely take a good ten minutes for it to finish. In the meantime, I figured I’d better stay the hell away and just let it happen.
Carl: Not gonna lie. I’m surprised. I thought for sure she wanted me to die and that she’d cast that sacrifice spell on me again.
Mordecai: She probably did. Like I said, the system lets them fudge with reality when you’re dealing with elites. Which is why we stay away from them. Have you heard back from Zev yet?
Carl: No. Donut is still okay?
Mordecai: Yes. I get a warning when her health is down to 20 percent, but that’s all I have. Her status hasn’t changed.
Carl: Did you learn anything for me?
Mordecai: I visited my old friend Eklund. He’s the only game guide in this town I know. He’s too smart for his own good, unfortunately. I couldn’t get him to look up the cure for the Water Lily curse, but I am headed to the town alchemist now to see if he has a clue. Eklund did, however, tell me the name of the program.
Carl: And?
Mordecai: I think your hunch is correct. It’s called Vengeance of the Daughter.
Carl: Oh, thank god. Okay. Thanks, Mordecai. Keep looking.
I looted the remains of the dead, bloodless bear. Like with any other neighborhood boss, I received a map upgrade. I grabbed it, and the neighborhood came alive with dots. At this distance, I couldn’t see Mongo and Donut, but I could see the entirety of the circus a few streets over.
Hundreds of red dots surrounded the edges of the circus like before,
waiting. In addition, dozens of other red dots spread around the map, some of them moving, some sitting still. These were the night denizens of the ruins, and I needed to stay away from them all.
A group of white dots centered around Signet. As I watched, another appeared. Then another.
I felt a stab of concern. While it was a lot—there had to be at least thirty of them—it wasn’t nearly enough to take on the sheer numbers of that circus.
The smoke cleared, and just as it faded, Signet appeared, followed by her summoned minions.
“Wow,” I said, taking in the sight. I took a step back, almost tripping over the splattered remains of the dead bear. I didn’t know whether to be in awe, to laugh, or to cry. I am so fucked.
The smallest of the monsters, a floating head thing, was about ten feet tall. The largest, a twisting, undulating sea serpent, was as tall as a three- story building. The three-headed ogre was the second largest of the motley collection, wielding an enormous saber. He stood behind Signet as she approached me. The ogre crossed his arms, and his saber caught the wind, flapping.
The others crowded into the intersection and flowed into the streets around us. A hammerhead shark floated in the air above me .
“Can these things actually fight?” I asked as Signet came to stand before me.
The tattoos were all gone from her skin. Her white flesh glowed, her nakedness starker now that her only adornment was the thong. I detected a very slight blue shimmer to her skin, almost as if she was covered with very fine scales, too small to see with the naked eye. Her face, without the constant, swirling lines, was easier to discern. While still strange-looking, Signet wasn’t nearly as repugnant as usual. Now I could see the half sea creature that she was. But I only had a moment to ruminate over her appearance. My attention was focused on the “army” that towered behind her.
While all the tattoo monsters were huge and fearsome, they were not what I expected. Not at all. They were still… tattoos. Drawings. While absolutely huge, the monsters were barely three dimensional. Reverse Shrinky Dinks. Each one was like a paper cutout of a monster, blown up to
massive proportions and then cut out with scissors and left to flap in the wind.
Every one of them was a deep red outline, with a white, translucent substance between the lines, like wax paper or maybe onion skin. The backside of the paper monsters was blank. I had the sense I could easily punch through each one. If I looked upon them at any direction other than straight on, I could see them for what they were. A paper army. The monsters moved and blinked and roared, but all of it was confined to the
plane on which they had been drawn.
I examined the three-headed ogre: Blood and Ink Elemental – Summoned Minion of Tsarina Signet – Level 50 Created by a combination of sacrificial blood magic and an artist’s imagination, these short-lived elementals vary wildly in their strength and abilities. Their potential relies heavily on too many factors to list here. Kind of like humans. If you have to guess, odds are good the one you’re looking at right now is probably hot garbage .
“Of course, they can fight,” Signet said. “Do you think Grimaldi would prepare such a defense each night for something other than a real threat?
Now we must hurry. Heather’s blood was powerful indeed. I have summoned my entire retinue, but I decreased their longevity in exchange for more strength. We have but a short amount of time.”
How can paper fight? I wanted to demand, but Signet strode forward before I could ask. As she walked away, I caught sight of one last tattoo on her shoulder blade. It was of a tiny figure, too small for me to see clearly. It was a fish of some kind. The tattoo faded away, like a sea creature diving under the waves.
The monsters rustled past me, marching and floating toward the circus.
The long, sea-serpent monsters floated sideways, so they always faced the circus. I remained, gawking up at the menagerie. The three-headed ogre turned, his entire body folding over as he glared down at me. “Follow or you get the smash,” the middle head said in a deep, rumbly voice.
“You can talk!” I exclaimed.
“I can smash, too,” he said.
I followed. I ran to catch up to Signet, who strolled toward the circus as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
“I honestly don’t know what the hell you want me to do here,” I said.
“I’ve never participated in anything like this. I have shitty armor and all I do is punch stuff.”
“You are more than that. I believe you actually freed Heather tonight.
For two centuries, she’s been caught in that loop, and you freed her. She was a grumpy old bear, and I told Grimaldi more than once that she was going to snap and try to eat a spectator if we didn’t retire her soon. But she was family, and you freed her. Thank you.”
“Yeah, thanks for the warning, by the way,” I said. “That was a one-on- one fight. I won’t be able to pull any fancy tricks in a giant battle.”
“Just don’t die,” she said. “We usually push through the defenders, and this is the strongest we’ve been in a while. It’s the final defense I need help with.”
“There’s like a thousand of them!” I said.
I pinged Mordecai, and told him everything. I told him I didn’t think these elemental things were a real threat.
Mordecai: Don’t worry about that. If they’re as big and as numerous as you describe, it means her skill in that spell is likely over 15. They can fight. They’re gonna put on a hell of a show.
Carl: What is that spell anyway?
Mordecai: Ink Marauder. You draw something on paper, cast the blood sacrifice, and it animates the drawings. Certain classes can tattoo the monsters upon themselves. By doing it that way, her own blood powers the minions, keeping them alive on her flesh. They can leave her body when she casts the sacrifice spell. They take on a 2D appearance, but it’s been long rumored that certain sacrifices can lead to the minions being complete, fully-realized renditions of the monsters they depict. Assuming that is her most powerful spell, I don’t see the producers allowing her to blow that wad this early in the story.
A distant cry filled the night, followed by the thwump of a magical mortar. The projectile sailed into the night sky, bouncing off the ceiling into a neighborhood one street over. More mortars started raining down. I tried to stick as close to Miss Plot Armor as possible.
The floating head and several dragons circled around us, moving ahead.
One of the elementals—an octopus—caught a mortar round directly in the chest and burst into flames. If Signet was controlling these things, she wasn’t doing it out loud. Dark shadows filled the air. Lemurs, I realized,
seeing the dots on the minimap. They were being flung by the artillery giraffes. I could hear the distinctive roar of mold lions, as well. They moved fast, streaking down one street over as paper monsters moved to intercept.
We were only one block from the circus now. The haunting calliope music rose into the night, mixing in with the roar of the lemurs and clowns.
More lemurs burst into the air, this time aimed directly at us.
The ogre leaped forward, sailing over the top of me and Signet, and landing on the ground. All I could now see was the back of the flat elemental. He swung his paper saber in the air at the line of lemurs.
Dozens of the skull-headed monsters screamed as they were flung away, but a moment later, I heard the thwap, thwap thwap of knives embedding themselves into the giant ogre. Despite the paper appearance, the knives slammed into the elemental like he was made of plywood. He took no heed of the damage. He swung again. And by swung, I mean his paper arm folded over on its own and kind of waved at the mobs.
There was something I was missing about the ogre’s attacks. He’d swing, clearly miss, and yet dozens of lemurs would fly away. He had some sort of area attack I couldn’t see from behind.
I did, however, see the eel’s lightning attack. A pair of long moray eel- like creatures swept down and shot lightning from their mouths, turning the red dots of mold lions into X’s.
Next to me, Signet fired a yellow bolt into the air from the palm of her hand. It arced over the shoulder of the ogre and hit something distant.
Dozens of voices cried out in pain. Behind me, an entire building exploded as the mortar fire resumed.
“Jesus Christ, lady,” I said, ducking. “You do this shit every night?”
She fired two more of the arcing, yellow bolts. “This is what you do for family,” she said.
Mordecai: I know the recipe now. It’s just Satch Toad extract mixed with a standard healing potion. I should have known. Negates all naiad
sleep effects and curses. Simple.
Carl: Do you have any of that stuff?
Mordecai: Not in this town. But it’s common enough. I can buy it at the alchemical market in a medium or large town.
Fuck. That wasn’t going to help us now.
Carl: Okay. Plan B it is.
I dove to the ground as another building exploded. We were only fifty meters from the picket, and the clowns were starting to throw rocks at us.
The largest of the serpents swept down and exhaled a stream of water, blasting hundreds of clowns and lemurs in all directions. I dove behind a low wall as more mortar fire sailed overhead. A shark twisted through the
air above me, howling as it burned.
Carl: Zev. You talked to them yet?
Zev: I messaged the producer, but he didn’t want to speak with me.
He’s waiting to see how this plays out, I think. My boss made me run your request by the Syndicate AI referee, and it said they’ll only allow this under very strict circumstances. I can’t, and they can’t, give you any help whatsoever. Believe it or not, though, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. In fact… Carl: Later, Zev. Stay tuned. I’ll need you in a bit.
Despite my earlier reservations, the clowns and circus creatures were no match for the tattoo monsters. The defenders soon fled, falling back to the massive, triple tent. The ogre elemental swiped his saber and the defensive wall shattered. Hundreds of lemurs and clowns and the thin mortar acrobats lay dead. It’d happened so fast. My entire map was awash in X’s.
There were still hundreds of the monsters left, but they were all now inside the main tent. The paper army flapped their way onto the circus ground, pushing through the barbed wire fortifications like they were nothing, surrounding the massive pavilions. All of the secondary tents, including the freak show tent, soon fell. I noted the elementals were simply pushing the small tents over, as if they were being careful not to tear the fabric. All that remained was the big top. Only a few of the elementals had been destroyed. An octopus tattoo had returned to Signet’s skin, along with a few of the sharks. They swished about angrily.
The music was coming from a large, coach-sized contraption sitting just outside the big top. Steam rose from the humming, spitting instrument. The long, brass tubes hissed out the slow-motion music. The ogre moved to smash the machine, but Signet raised her hand.
“This music hurts my heads,” the knife-riddled monster groused.
“I know,” Signet said, “we go over this every time.” She stepped forward and turned a dial on the machine. It wheezed once and the music stopped, plunging the night into silence. She lovingly stroked the fire- scorched wood.
Signet then pointed up at the giant sea serpent, which floated in the sky above the brightly-lit tent. The circus’s spotlights remained lit, and they arced back and forth, adding to the surreal vision. The behemoth was almost as large as the center big top. The tattoo monster folded back on itself and then fired a blue waterspout. I cringed in anticipation, but the water dissipated before it could touch the colorful top. The world around me filled with a fine mist, and I suddenly found myself soaked.
Signet hung her head low. “Damn,” she said. “Damn, damn, damn. I’d hoped, with the power of Heather’s blood that we could overcome the protection this time.”
“Why didn’t that work?” I asked. In the distance, something howled in the night.
“This is where our fight usually ends,” Signet said, indicating the tent.
“There is magic here, protecting the exterior. Ancient magic. I have been banished, so I can’t go inside. My minions can’t go inside. The outside is impenetrable, but not the interior. If we break down the tents, the spell will disperse, and we can finish this.” She pointed at the piles of dead bodies.
“Some of these clowns will carry big top tickets. Find one and brandish it.
It will allow you to go inside. The tickets are magical. They will promise you safe passage within the tent as long as you don’t enter one of the three rings. You need to go in there and collapse the tent. There are three poles.
You must break each one in turn.”
I looked at the tent dubiously. “I take it these three poles are in the
middle of the rings?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“What about the vine thing?” I asked.
“Also in the ring. The center ring.”
This setup was designed to be completed by a group of at least three crawlers, not a solo player. There was no feasible way I could do this. Not with a straight-up fight.
I pulled one of the tickets I already had from my inventory. I’d already
examined it, but I looked at it again.
Big Top Ticket.
Lucky you! This ticket admits one adult into the Grimaldi’s Traveling Circus Big Top Show.
The holder of this ticket is guaranteed Safe Passage through the public areas only. Grimaldi reserves the right to rescind this safe passage
guarantee to drunks and purveyors of violence.
Guaranteed good time or your money back!
Something told me I wasn’t going to be having a good time.
