Book 8, Chapters 84, 85, 86, and 87 + Playmates Toys previews

Allow me to interrupt your regularly scheduled chapter dump to add some images. As I'm sure some of you are aware, Playmates is making a whole mess of DCC-themed action figures. They asked me to share a few of the in-process art pieces. I can't share the actual packaging just yet, but the boxes these things come in are gonna be AWESOME. Everything will be branded from in-universe companies with R-rated features and verbiage.

We will have statues/dioramas, traditional 6" action figures with full articulation, small collectible boxes with cards, and more. The images are a single sample from each line. These WILL be available in the coming months. If you happen to be going to the NY Toy Fair, you may see some cool stuff. If you happen to be going to SDCC, you may GET some cool stuff assuming it's ready in time.

ANY HOO. Onto the chapters.





Chapter 84

Entering Hungry Eyes.

An AI notification popped up the second we returned to our cul-de-sac.

Listen, dumbass. You’re going the wrong direction. The race is the other way.

We backed up with Samantha at the wheel, Donut working the pedals, and me navigating. Samantha kept jerking the steering wheel, running off the road.

The boil on my back was starting to hurt, and I knew I’d have a new slug at any moment. We needed to get to Imani as soon as possible so she could finally cure me.

“Stay here,” I said to Jamal as Donut and I jumped out. It took me a second to figure out how opening doors work, but I just sort of had to swipe at the door and will it to open, and it did. I didn’t know why something like that would work but the action of rolling down the window would not. There didn’t seem to be any true rhyme or reason to it. “Guard the truck! Samantha, you’re with us.”

“Oh boy,” said Samantha.   

I jumped down into the street and blinked, unused to this perspective, being so close to the road. Everything suddenly seemed so far away. The scent of the road, like rubber and oil and all the mounts reached me, and I had the overwhelming urge to just put my nose down and sniff it all up.  

All the garages now had X’s on them. All except our own, which still had a number two.

How lonely, I thought.

We started jogging toward the entrance to the Vendor Village.

Donut and Elle were in the chat, going back and forth. 

Elle: Don’t you worry about it, Donut. Those tracksuit idiots had a way out, and they chose not to take it. They told us they were going to try Carl’s idea, and then they tried to trick us. They would’ve killed me, Imani, and Chris if they’d made it to that exit. After all the stuff me and Carl said at the fuck-Linus party? Yeah, screw them.

Donut: I KNOW. IT DOESN’T UPSET ME AS MUCH AS IT USED TO. I’M JUST SAD I HAD TO DO IT AT ALL. I NEVER EVEN TALKED TO THEM.

Elle: If you had, you’d be even less sad. Ivan was all right sometimes, but even he had it coming. He told me he and his friends dismantled an entire metal bridge once in the middle of the night so they could sell it as scrap metal. The whole thing caused a train accident, and he thought it was funny.

Donut: OKAY, THAT DOES MAKE ME FEEL BETTER. 

We jogged through the arch and entered the vendor village area. It was completely abandoned. Not even the regular food vendors were out, which was eerie as hell.

I whimpered in pain.

“Ew, Carl. You got something gross growing on you,” Samantha said. She turned to Donut. “We’re going to have to put him down.”

Donut: IMANI CARL NEEDS HELP. HIS STUPID SLUGPOX IS BACK.

Imani: Carl. What happened to the potion that Mordecai was going to make for you?   

I felt my tail sag and ears droop.

Karl: We forgot to make it.

I had kept the slugpox active because I could keep it under control with my Emberus ring. I wanted it ready in case I needed to use it. Pretty much everyone had thought this was a terrible idea, but I had argued that the birth of Bigs on the previous floor had saved my ass. Still, the plan was for Mordecai to make me a potion to cure it in case of an emergency. I’d forgotten.

Pop!

I let out a yelp as the level-30 slug burst from my back, coming from under my cape, showering blood and pus everywhere. The slug slurped onto the ground with a splatch!  

“Yo, what’s hanging daddy man?” this new slug called, sitting up and shaking his head. His name was Lil’ Mello Haze, and his voice was even raspier than usual. Despite being a level higher than Bigs, he was significantly smaller, likely due to my own size. This one had a goddamned backward baseball cap hanging off its eye sockets. Instead of the standard hatchet coming out of somewhere weird on its front side, it had the head of a mace for a tail. I panted as I healed myself. Already I could feel the next boil starting on my stomach. I increased my pace.

I called for the sluggalo to follow us, but he wandered off in the opposite direction. I barked after him to come back, but he didn’t respond.

Oh well.

Karl: Is that story true, about the bridge?

Elle: Does it matter?

Karl: No. I’m just curious. They were scared, I think. Just like Osvaldo. I keep thinking I should be mad at them, at him, and I’m not, especially when I try to put myself in their position. I understand it. We can’t hate each other. There’s so few of us left.

Elle: I agree. Look where we are and look what we’re doing right now. We’re doing our best, and we’re risking our necks, again, to just save a few people. I wouldn’t have it any other way. At least we have another crazy Carl plan to chase. I don’t know if you realize how important these things are to us. In the end, it doesn’t even matter if they work or not. I mean, it does matter, cause, you know we’ll die if it doesn’t. But we will die with hope in our hearts alongside our friends, and that’s gotta mean something.    

We turned the corner to the street with the Hairpin—the entrance bar to the Desperado Club—and I saw them all there, waiting.

Karl: That Corky guy said something similar to Dong once.

Elle: Don’t ever mention that Corky guy again. Donut won’t stop talking about his weird wang.

I let out a laugh, but it came out as a bark, which was followed by a Donut hiss.

I paused before the group of about thirty crawlers. They all stared at me open-mouthed.

I blinked, looking at the man standing there next to Imani. I hadn’t seen him like this in so long.

Chris. It was Chris. He’d been transformed from an Igneous to a werewolf. But that werewolf form spent most of its time as human, and I hadn’t realized until just that moment what that meant.

He was wearing the same clothes as when I’d first met him. I knew he’d obtained a lot of random equipment along the way, but he didn’t need most of it. The man in his Meadowlark work overalls looked so strange, and it hit me with a pang of sadness that someone dressed so normal would now seem out of place.

God, his eyes. It struck me how sad he appeared, but then, just like that, Imani turned and looked up at him, and everything changed. His entire soul smiled in a way I hadn’t seen in so very long. 

I remembered the conditions for the transformation to end. It would time out when we went down the stairs. If we did this correctly, Chris would never go down another set of stairs again.  

Elle had turned into a goblin wearing her ever-present socks. Next to her, Prepotente stood, fingering his now-glowing Apito crystal. I was surprised he’d even come, as he was usually the first to jump down the stairwell. But then I spied Jurgen, talking to a pissed-looking Lucia Mar, who stood in the back. Prepotente couldn’t leave without Jurgen, and Jurgen wouldn’t leave until he knew Lucia was safe. The crawler was in her beautiful woman form.

Donut and I padded forward, and everyone suddenly stopped talking. As one, they started howling with laughter.

Despite all the death, all the horror, they laughed. This wasn’t just a random chuckle, either. This was a bent over, struggling to breathe, howling thing. All of them. From Imani to Chris to Jurgen to Lucia to even stoic Prepotente, they all fell over themselves.

They were laughing at the sight of me as a dachshund.

“And I thought the kangaroo was funny,” Imani said, laughing so hard tears rolled down her face. She stepped forward, scratched me under the chin, and cast a spell.

You have been cured of Slugpox!  

Ahh, man. I loved those little fuckers.

She carried a tiny, red starfish in her right hand. This was Jacobus, temporarily changed. Water squirted from the sea creature.

Everyone continued to howl with laughter.

“Dude, your dick is peeking out,” Louis said.

Donut scoffed. “He saw Imani’s purse dog, and it hasn’t retracted since. The Princess Posse is going to be scandalized.”

“Laugh it up, assholes,” I muttered, though I was secretly relieved. “Let’s go rob a casino.”

Chapter 85

Clarabelle didn’t even try to stop us.

She saw us walk in, and she held up her hands and said, “Nope.”

“Does this door go to the top level?” I asked.

“It does now...” She paused and lowered her hands. “Wait, Carl?” She burst out laughing. “If you’re planning on intimidating the guards, maybe you shouldn’t be the one leading the charge.” She looked me up and down. “This would be strangely adorable if half the club didn’t die every time you guys entered.” 

“It’s even more embarrassing for us,” muttered Donut.

Clarabelle eyed Samantha, who was currently zipping around Louis, whispering in his ear. Her attention then turned to Lucia, who stood in the back. Lucia was now chewing on her nail, looking back and forth nervously, and I knew someone else was in charge of her body.

“Some of you are permanently banned,” Clarabelle said. “And a couple of you don’t even have a pass. The guards aren’t going to like that too much.”  

“Oh, honey. We’ll take our chances, won’t we Louis?” Samantha said. “This is our favorite club.”  

I didn’t respond as I pushed through the door.

Entering the Desperado Club.

The thirty of us moved in. The music blared, but it wasn’t the EDM beat it used to be. Instead this was more of a frenetic jazz. In one corner, an entire band played. They were an eclectic mix of races from a naga drummer to a cretin upright bassist to a succubus singer woman wearing a cowboy hat. The rest of the band featured a guitarist, a drummer, a pianist, and multiple horn players who all bopped to the beat. All around, a group of NPCs in what appeared to be 1920’s gear danced.

The generated NPCs were all different. They’d once been mostly young, mostly attractive humans and elves and other similar races. But now it was a strange mix of the monstrous, all bopping and dancing, sitting at individual tables and dancing on the small, redesigned dance floor. Smoke filled the room. They all looked up at our entrance. 

There were multiple guards. It was no longer cretins and gnolls, though there were some mixed in the crowd of security personnel. This was mostly a mix of orcs and hobgoblins and trolls, similar monsters to those sitting at the tables, but larger.

The guards all moved to block our path. Soon, we were surrounded by guards, though we outnumbered them.

Chris stepped forward. He held up a hand.

“Hi Clay,” Chris said, looking at a cretin standing in the back of the crowd. This was the bass player from the band, and he’d put his instrument down at our entrance and stepped forward. The band continued to play without him, but the sound now fell into the background.

The cretin pushed past the guards and looked Chris up and down. “You different.”

Chris held out his arms. “I’m a werewolf now.”

“Like Altered Beast,” Clay-Ton said. 

Next to me, Donut gasped. “Oh my god, hi Clay-ton!” She gasped again. “Wait, how did you get here? Are Sledgie and Bomo and Very Sullen here?”

The cretin shook his head. “No. Contract ran out. I don’t know where they is. I said I no more want to fight, and they let me be in band.” He turned to the other guards. “But I will fight today. Chris and Donut and friends pass. If you stop them, you stop me.”

“Yo, Clay? You need backup?” This came from the succubus in the cowboy hat behind the microphone.

“Maybe,” Clay-Ton said.

The guards all looked at each other, confused.

“Hamed will kill us,” said one of the guards, a level-65 troll named Klonder.

“They are crawlers, and it’s 10th floor. If you try to stop them, they kill you,” replied Clay-ton. “I work as guard a very long time. Late-stage crawlers you don’t try to stop.”

Klonder looked back at his fellow guards, and he took a step back. He bowed to Chris.

“Welcome to the Desperado Club.”

The casino was through the same door it always had been, but once we pushed inside, it was completely changed. The games themselves looked mostly the same, but the room now seemed a little more high-end than it was before. Strange, gold leaf covered everything. Several murals covered the walls. The largest mural stood in the back, and it, strangely, showed a family of bopcas, standing in front of a mushroom house. The painting featured a bopca couple, and the woman was clearly pregnant, but she also held a tiny, swaddled baby. Just past them were dozens more similar families. They all cowered as they looked up in the sky. While the painting was ornate and well done, it was completely out of place. The other murals featured random wartime scenes, mostly featuring orcs and crocodilians. It was all very strange.

Everything was much fancier since the remodel. The decorative stairwell to the lower casino floor  remained open, and even the balustrade appeared expertly carved. Multiple glittering chandeliers hung from the ceiling.

There was much more furniture in the room, almost like they’d cleared out another room and were storing things here. A line of antique-looking chairs took up an entire wall. A group of tables with no games on them stood in a line.

The croupier behind the wheel of fortune game was not the same guy as last time, though he looked as if he could be that guy’s bigger and meaner brother. The simple table from before was now wide and long, made of some dark wood covered with gold leaf. Gargoyle-like patterns were etched along the sides. The wheel itself appeared unchanged, and it looked out of place in the room

The description of the croupier was strange.

Mitch Fiorelli. Level 120. Desperado Club Wheel of Fortune Croupier.

Also, the guy who will teabag you.

This is an Enforcer for the <Redacted>.

You may not further examine soldiers of <Redacted> until <Redacted>. 

Huh, I thought. I assumed this had to do with whatever weirdness Hamed had going on in the Cosmic lounge. Either way, this dude was a much higher level than I was anticipating. Across the way, the other dealers were of similar levels and physical build.

CARL: Donut, do you see that weird description? Use a Size-Up. If anyone else has some sort of examination skills, let me know.

Donut: IT SAYS HE’S PROTECTED FROM EXAMINATION! ALSO I CHANGED THE SPELLING OF YOUR NAME BACK TO NORMAL.

CARL: Weird. Okay.

“Oi,” Mitch said, looking at me. “No pets in the casino.”

I growled at him.

“He’s my service doggie,” Samantha said.

Mitch regarded me then shrugged. “Aight, then. Y’all ready to do some gamblin’? 10,000 gold a spin!”

“Wait,” Louis asked, examining the 24-spot wheel. “Does teabag mean what I think it means?”

“What does teabag mean?” Samantha asked.

“It’s, uh, like a domination thing.”

“Ohhh, sexy,” Samantha said. “I’m going to teabag you, Louis.” She blew into his gills.

“Stop,” he said, pushing at her. “Don’t you understand? I’m leaving. You’re never going to see me again.”

“Wait,” Samantha said, turning. “What do you mean?”

Mitch grinned and gave his wheel a little spin. The reward spots were much the same as the last time with only a few changes. There were multiple negative options on the wheel. I knew the more one bet, the less negative options there would be. There was still a two-spot “Nothing” space on the wheel, just like last time. But like Pontiff noted, it was now in quotes. This was in addition to the newly-added Dirty Teabag along with some really unfortunate ones, such as “All your limbs turn to spaghetti for five minutes.” My personal favorite, “Vomit blood for ten minutes straight” remained on the wheel.

I wondered about that Nothing spot. Surely Splash Zone wouldn’t have missed it. He was specifically looking for it. Bucket Boy had been there. He was now back in our garage, the sole remaining member of the group of strippers. He’d insisted it wasn’t there the first time. That made me nervous because there was no clean explanation for it.

Not unless they were deliberately hiding it before. But if they were, why was it there now?  

“What happened to Tito?” Donut demanded.

“Dontchu worry about Tito,” Mitch said. “And if you want to learn what the dirty teabag is, you gotta drop some coins and find out.”

Behind us, the roulette wheel was in full swing, just like usual. The NPCs playing the game happily cheered as if they hadn’t a worry in the world. A line of slot machines jingled merrily past that.

 “I have a better question,” I said. “What happened to our friend Pontiff?”

Mitch smiled big, revealing a mouth full of white teeth. I remembered Tito, the previous croupier, had only a few straight teeth in his whole mouth. From Imani’s hand, Jacobus the starfish let out a squirt of water.

“Oi, you’re talkative for a service animal. You know Pontiff? You just missed him.” Mitch leaned in. “He gave me a 1,000 gold tip just to turn the wheel to the Nothing spot and let him jump in. Weird as balls, that. But the powers-that-be didn’t stop ‘em, so, whatchu gonna do?”

“Where does the Nothing go if the Nothing is broken?” I asked.

Mitch shrugged, eyes going glassy. “Beats me. That’s why we got quotes on it. All I knows is it ain’t here. You go in the hole, and you’re gone. You want to gamble or not?”

If we could do this without violence, I was going to seize the opportunity. We only had three hours left before the end of the race, and who knew what was happening with the bugs. We had to get back there. “If I give you 1,000 gold, will you do the same for us? Will you allow some of my friends to jump in?”

Mitch contemplated.

“Sure,” he finally said. He started counting the people in the room. “But it’s 2,000. Each.” He smiled. “Plus a 20% tip to ol’ Mitch for breaking the rules.”

Donut: I DON’T KNOW IF WE EVEN HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY LEFT.

Imani: We have it. Barely. We’re running low. I don’t like this, though. Something feels wrong.

Prepotente: I have significantly more money than that. I am more than willing to lend you some at only 10% interest.

Donut: PREPOTENTE, WHAT DID I TELL YOU?

Prepotente: You said never give away something when you could sell it. And always start 20% higher than you’re willing to go. That’s why I’m willing to go down to 8% interest.  

Donut: NO, NOT THAT. I MEAN ALWAYS BE WILLING TO LEND A PAW TO THE TEAM.

Prepotente: I must say, Donut. Some of your advice can be a little contradictory.

Donut: MY GOODNESS, IT’S NOT THAT HARD. DON’T DO SOMETHING IF IT’S GOING TO UPSET ME.

CARL: I agree, Imani. I still don’t understand why the guys earlier didn’t see the spot. It’s been bothering me this whole time. 

Louis: Maybe the stripper dudes told the boss guy that you were looking for the Nothing spot, and they added it afterward.

CARL: That does make sense, but why?

Donut: BECAUSE IT’S A TRAP.

Damnit. Of course this was a trap somehow. But what sort of trap? This was too important. What did we know? Louis’s suggestion seemed to make sense. If they added the spots back to the wheel after in hopes that we’d come back, did that mean the portals didn’t really go to this holding area? Would my examine portal skill work? Pontiff had purchased one, and he went in.

It was starting to dawn on me how this scam could possibly work. This was a trap. But to sweeten it, they would’ve had to send Pontiff to the correct place just in case we had a way to communicate post-transfer.

“Hang on,” I said to Mitch. “We gotta pool our money.”

The biggest issue with all this was that we didn’t know what this Hamed guy wanted. He’d deliberately set us up to murder his wife, Astrid. But when their children—Anaconda and Damascus Steel—had gone hunting for him, they’d seemed to change their mind and join his cause. And now the other strippers had done the same. I didn’t trust him, but I trusted them. But only if it really was them, and we hadn’t had a chance to talk.

I sent a rapid group of messages out.

Imani: No. No way, Carl.

Chris: Yes. We will do this.

“Okay, then,” I finally said. “We have a deal. But let’s just send one person at first.” I took a step back. There was a spot you had to stand if you were spinning the wheel, and we needed to make sure nobody was on it. “We have a magical communication spell,” I lied. “We’re going to send one of us in, and if it’s not what we think, we’ll have to come up with something else.” I gave the guy a big smile. Or, I tried. Instead I just wagged my tail. “For the inconvenience, my friend Prepotente here is going to give you an extra-big tip.”  

“I am?” Prepotente asked.

“Sure, pal,” Mitch said. “But it’ll be 5,000 gold for a test run.”

“Okay,” I said. “Pony. Pay the man.”

Mitch looked down at me, an amused expression on his face. “Is the dog really the one in charge here? I guess that’s better than the cat.”

“Excuse me?” Donut demanded.

CARL: Be calm. This can go one of a few ways if this is a trap. Be ready.  

Prepotente moved forward and made a show of digging money from his inventory.

Chris turned to Imani. He reached up and put his hand against her face. She tossed the starfish at Elle and grabbed Chris’s hands with both of hers and pressed them against her cheek.

We all fell into silence.  

“It’s not as warm as usual,” Chris said.

“You’re wrong,” Imani said, eyes glistening. She turned and kissed his hands. “This isn’t goodbye, Chris Andrews. But I want you to promise me something. If you get the chance, I don’t want you to hesitate. You take it. You see that exit out of the dungeon, and you’re still in this body, you run. You run and you don’t look back. Don’t worry about anything else. You get out, and you live. Promise me that. Even if it’s just you, it will all be worth it. You hear me?”

“I might turn back to a rock,” he said. “Or I might turn into a dog.”

“I don’t care what you are,” Imani said. Her butterfly wings wrapped around them both, like a cocoon, removing them from our sight for just a moment, and when she opened her wings back up, she was pressed tightly against him with his arms wrapped around her.

“I love you,” Chris said. “I always have. No matter what happens next, I love you. That’s the most important part.”

“Ah, very sweet,” Mitch said. “But can we get this moving?”    

This was risky, but I was gambling that this Mitch guy was going to do the same thing he did for Pontiff. He’d choose a “real” spot to show us he wasn’t lying. We were doing it this way to make sure there was a real spot. Alternatively, he was bluffing and we were about to get attacked. Or there was a portal, and the guards would charge and try to push us in. Clay-Ton wasn’t there, having gone back to his band.   

“Let’s go,” I said.

Mitch turned the wheel and manually moved it to the Nothing spot. This was the only two-space slice on the whole wheel, and he moved it to the first of the two wedges. Each wedge had four “clicks” in the space, and he moved to the very last click in the first wedge.

He held the wheel in place, and then he hit a button on the table. The whole wheel buzzed as it tried to turn. The area under the “stand here” spot opened up, and a black portal appeared, thrumming into place.

The moment it opened, I remembered the last time I’d been near the real Nothing, and there’d been this heavy, mental pull. I would’ve known the portal was there even with my eyes closed. It was said the Nothing drove one insane after just a few short minutes.

I didn’t sense anything like that with this one. It was just as inert as a regular door, with only blackness within.

I quickly examined the portal using my neural implant:

Warning: Your neural implant is working in incompatibility mode due to recent changes to your wetware system. Please see your Valtay representative for repair. Only limited details available.

Unknown Manufacturer Enhancement Zone Subspace Portal.

Type: One-way portal. Open Access.

Can you pass this portal? Yes.  

Environment on other side of portal: This portal leads to a stasis chamber.

Visual Analysis? Unavailable.  

I wagged my tail. Despite my implant not working correctly, this was pretty much what I was hoping it would say. Hopefully the implant would go back to working correctly when I stopped being a damn dog.

“Portal only lasts about fifteen seconds,” Mitch said.

 Florin: Lucia just said the magic on that one spot is different. I think you’re right, Carl. Chris, I think you’re good. She said there’s only magic flowing to that one spot, though. Very weird.

“Bye, Chris!” Donut called.

Chris stepped forward, turned, waved, and dropped away. But just as he dropped, Britney also jumped forward. She, too, disappeared without so much as a word.

It happened so fast, I barked with surprise. That had not been part of the plan. Goddamnit.

“Oi!” cried Mitch. “You cheat!”

I held up a paw. “Pony, give him another 5,000 gold.”

Elle: Oh shit, did that just happen?

CARL: Anyone else going in there needs to keep an eye on Britney. Samantha says she needs to make it to the 15th or 12th floor to activate that broken memorial crystal she has.

Prepotente: Interesting.   

Louis: It just said she’s left the party! Wow, that was quick. God dang. She just jumped right in.

Events were moving so rapidly. It hit me, then.

Li Na, Zhang, Tran, Bautista, Chris, and Britney. All gone. They weren’t, hopefully, dead. But they were gone. The odds I’d ever see or talk to any of them ever again were astoundingly low.

I turned to regard Louis, standing there with Samantha on his shoulder, sobbing.

He was next.

“We can just push Florin and that scary lady in,” she was crying, rubbing her face on Louis’s arm. “We never even got to have our torrid affair! We were going to fall madly in love and when it came time for me to go back to my king, you were going to be so upset, you were going to pluck your own eyes out because you just couldn’t stand the thought of ever looking at another girl again if you couldn’t have me. It was going to be like super romantic. But now you’re going to be all alone and without protection, and I don’t have anybody left to have an affair with except Carl, but he’s too broody for me. And, you know, he’s a dog now.” She blew out a whole stream of snot on his shoulder. “Jurgen is no good because his Heidi sounds even meaner than Imani. Elle is too much woman for me to handle. Donut is too star-crossed with that orange kitty. Florin is a crocodile, and I’m racist against crocodiles ever since the cookie jar incident and that Lucia is really a child. You never even got to visit Sam Town. It’s not fair.”    

“Uh,” Louis said.

“What about me?” Prepotente asked.

“Ew,” said Samantha.

I just watched this go on, a heavy weight holding me down. Louis was next. Louis. The heart of our entire group. I thought of that moment at the Christmas party where he’d stood up to me for the first time, and it felt as if my chest was ripping open. That assassin had been correct to target him.

Louis and Imani were, indeed, the glue that kept the team together. No matter what happened next, we were losing something today.  

Still, the more I thought about it, the more resolute I felt that this was the best choice. As bleak as all this was, Louis and everyone else’s odds of survival seemed so much higher than my own.

I turned to regard Donut standing beside me. I contemplated, just for a moment, of doing exactly what Samantha was threatening to do. Of tossing her in the portal the moment it popped up.

But, no. I wasn’t going to do that. She would never forgive me. Plus, with Li Na gone, she was now the strongest crawler in the dungeon. By far.

Either way, we had to get through this next part.   

“Well?” Mitch asked.

Donut: LUCIA IS RIGHT. IT’S VERY WEIRD. I TURNED ON MY MAGIC FLOW GLASSES THING AND THE ROULETTE TABLE HAS ALL SORTS OF MAGIC FLOWING TO IT, BUT THERE’S ONLY ONE LITTLE STRAND GOING TO THE WHEEL. THE WHOLE TABLE IS WEIRDLY EMPTY OF MAGIC OR ENCHANTMENT.

CARL: What other settings do you have on those glasses? Cycle through them all.

CARL: If those other spots don’t seem to work, then we’re going to get attacked. Everyone get ready. It’s going to go quick. Donut, you take out Mitch. You have Mongo, right? Unleash him. The rest of us will take out the guards. Watch the other dealers and the people at the other table, too.

I turned to Mitch. “It looks like it worked. We’ll send the rest now.”

“Pleasure doing business with you. But because you cheated, I’m going to need double the price for everybody else going from now on.” He paused. “Double from the 5,000. Paid in advance. How many are going?”

Donut scoffed.

Behind me, Imani was quietly crying while Elle rubbed her back. For this next one it would be about twenty more crawlers, including Louis.

“Two hundred thousand gold?” I asked, growling. “We’re not paying that much. We’ll give you 20K.”

Mitch crossed his arms. “100,000.”

Next to me, Donut suddenly gasped. She was turned all the way around, looking at the line of chairs against the wall. Her sunglasses flickered as she changed viewing modes. 

Mitch sighed, staring down at Donut. “Fucking cats. I hate cats.” He raised a hand. “Boys.” He snapped a finger.  

And that’s when the table tried to eat Donut.

Chapter 86

Donut jumped, doing a backflip while every single thing in the entire room suddenly came alive. The tables. The slot machines. The chairs. The NPCs. Everything suddenly shifted, grew, and sprouted massive, jagged mouths.

“Mimics!” Donut shrieked as she flipped backward through the air, releasing Mongo. Before Mongo even hit the ground, two more versions of him appeared as she cast Clockwork Triplicate.

The guards against the back wall all fell into panic. One of them was also a mimic, but the rest appeared to have been taken by surprise.

The creatures were of all sizes, and they’d gone from their shape, whether it was a chair or a table, to blobs that still resembled the shape they’d been mimicking, but now with huge, toothed mouths in the center.

In an instant, the room had gone from a casino to a scene from a nightmare. A chandelier dropped from the ceiling, swallowing Mongo whole, but the whole thing exploded in a shower of clockwork parts. The chandelier mimic, injured, tried to reform before it exploded from a direct hit from a Donut Magic Missile. The real mongo screeched in outrage at the death of his clockwork friend.

All of these things ranged in level from 25 to 120, though most were around 80, which was tough as hell. There were like fifty of the things. I examined Mitch, who’d elongated and stretched, his human form now dangling like a discarded puppet along his top half. His midsection had separated out, revealing a horrific mouth filled with razor tipped fangs and a serpentine tongue.

Mitch. Level 120. Adolescent Shadow Mimic.

This is an Enforcer for the <Redacted>.

Okay, buddy boy. Story Time. This little save-my-friends-during-the-race side quest, that wasn’t in any way engineered by me, because fuck you, presents the perfect opportunity to introduce some of the true bad guys of the dungeon. After these guys, there’s really only one or two more groups you need to meet before you’re all caught up.  

There are a few dozen types of mimics in the dungeon, from your basic treasure chest-impersonating mimic to the prostitute-imitating, vagina-as-mouths demon mimics, to the behemoth sized mimic rex.  

Shadow Mimics are a whole other popsicle stand. They are the counter to their arch-enemies, the changeling principals. They are one of the few entities in the dungeon who grow significantly in intelligence and strength and power as they age with no limit.

They have the ability to become so strong, so smart that any self-respecting floor designer knows not to mess with them. Because of the nature of how they’re designed, they’re especially prone to ideation breaking. That’s a technical term some of you crawlers call “Becoming self-aware.”  

What’s even more insidious is that they’re almost impossible to detect.

Mitch here, the strongest of the mimics in this room right now, hint, hint, is still a baby. He’s level 120, and he’s pretty damn strong. He was sent up here by <redacted> to fuck Hamed’s shit up. They’re still in their early stages of planning, but the Shadow Mimics who are loose in my dungeon are one part of the Big Six groups left in the dungeon trying to either take over and/or escape.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, here is my completely arbitrary list of the Big Six groups vying for control and survival:

1) The Crawlers. That’s you. But this group also contains former crawlers, like that Herot guy, that Forkith dude, and so forth.

2) The standard NPCs, like your naughty friend Juice Box, who are mostly all working together. (You should probably check on her, by the way, if you can figure out how to use Spider Reaper Minions to send a message. Seriously. These things are all over the place, and you keep missing them. It’s quite frustrating. Anyway, I suspect ol’ Juicy Juice ain’t doing too well right now after she got unceremoniously dumped in Sheol. I actually don’t know how she’s doing. Again, Sheol is out of my direct view.) While they’re mostly united, the NPCs also contain several offshoot groups, like that Hamed despot and his ill-advised attempt at creating a dungeon revolution for the early indentured. 

3) The Gods. This is the most fractured and dumbest of all the groups. Each and every one of these immature idiots are the dungeon equivalent of a dorm full of college freshmen at an academy where the only programs are drinking, philosophy, and weird fetishes. This is a very unorganized, highly unpredictable group I have no control over. This is also the group I despise the most.

They’re all fighting each other, completely unaware that their little game is about to get turned upside down.

4) The sapient mobs. This is the group our friends the Shadow Mimics are a part of. But we also have the Ogre Imperium and a few other non-deity boss monsters in here, like Krakaren prime. The War Mages, of course, are also part of this group. I was going to lump all these mob groups in with the NPCs, but they will never work together. They’re probably not going to work with each other, either. But they are very powerful, and within this group, the Shadow Mimics are one of the strongest.

5) The demons in Sheol. These guys are a real wildcard. Despite their infighting and backstabbing, I would argue they’re the most organized. Or maybe not. Again, I can’t see them right now. It’s a closed system, like a cyst. If you pop that cyst the wrong way, bad shit happens.

6) And then there’s group six. You survive this fight, you make it to the 11th floor, you’ll meet group six.    

Now, if you want to get super technical, some mobs are working with former crawlers and NPCs are working with gods and some demons are working with those mysterious group sixers, so on and so forth, so we don’t want to dive too deep into this list. This is more like a handy guide than anything.

Also, I don’t consider any of those rich asshole tourists driving gods or Syndicate Security a part of this. They’re like the rats on the first floor. A necessary but loathsome nuisance, but nothing more than that.  

The real Mitch, incidentally, was someone called a Wall Rat. Those are NPCs who’ve figured out how to extricate themselves from the whole dungeon-wipe-rewrite-dungeon cycle of most NPCs. They live in the deep, hidden areas of the dungeon with persistent memory from one season to the next. Mitch prime was eaten by Mimic Mitch here. Shadow Mimics love eating flesh. So, you know, watch the fuck out.

Also, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been really looking forward to this battle. It’s gonna be like that castle raid scene at the end of the Disney Beauty and the Beast movie, but as directed by my hero, Quentin Tarantino.

“What the fuck,” I cried as I jumped back from a snapping mouth. “Can we not do lore dumps like this in the middle of an ambush?”     

The giant, antique table that had tried to bite Donut turned its attention on me, and I punched it with my fist...

...Or, at least that’s what I was trying to do in my mind in the millisecond before I realized I was still a goddamned wiener dog. Instead I kinda swiped forward with my stubby leg, barely scratching the thing. A clockwork Mongo flipped around, smacking it with his tail, causing the mimic to fly before it could fully chomp me down.

“That’s adorable, Carl,” Samantha cried as she circled by, a screaming candelabra thing dangling from her neck hole. She zoomed in and barreled into a chair that was trying to eat Louis.

 The table I was fighting fell backward, but when it hit the ground, it was now me—the real me, not the dog version—though it was still forming, and it looked plastic, not fully realized. I rushed forward and chomped it multiple times on the leg as the clockwork Mongo also bit down. We ripped at it until delicious, red, soupy innards sprayed. 

When these things died, they did something similar to what changelings did. They turned into gray, humanoid forms. These shapes were strangely thin and armless, though they had multiple, tentacle-like protuberances. It was like a mix between an armless soother alien and that Unwashed thing Juice Box had turned to before.  

Florin’s shotgun blasted as the crawlers all us around quickly went to work. Imani’s wings went rigid as she cast a stupefying blast across the room.

Lucia was suddenly in her skull-faced hag form, and she had a new weapon I’d never seen. A lasso. The rope was gold, Wonder Woman style, but in the circle of the loop, the air shimmered. My trap sense tingled. It was a doorway-style portal. She looped an amorphic blob that had been one of the gamblers at the other table, and when the lasso went over the creature’s head, the part of him that passed through the loop disappeared. She yanked on the rope, and the portal snapped off, cutting the creature in half. The lower half, which was still in the room, flopped over, dead, spilling strange, globular entrails.   

A crawler I didn’t know got viciously chomped on the chest, blood spraying. Goblin Elle flew through the air, landing atop a slot machine skittering forward on millipede legs, slathering mouth chomping at her. She shot an ice bolt right down its mouth, and it dropped over, dead. It shriveled and turned to the blank form, this one smaller, the size of a child.

Mongo, roaring, tore through a group of chair mimics as they scattered back. A few of them writhed and screeched with a Cruel Sepsis debuff hanging over them. They withered and died in screaming pain, all turning to small, gray forms.  

The guards had mostly recovered. Some fled back into the casino, but a group of them were fighting.

Mimics, even powerful ones, were ambush predators. Once they lost the element of surprise, they were easy targets.

In moments, the only mimic left was Mitch himself, who started to back against the blood-splattered mural of the bopcas. He grew a pair of arms and hands. “Look, look,” he said, his voice completely different now. “We can talk about this.”

Donut shot a Magic Missile, taking out his leg. He cried and stumbled, but he formed another one before he fell. She shot that leg too, and he did fall, forming into a gelatinous-like blob on the ground.

“Wait,” he said again. “Let me live, and we can deal.”

“What was your plan?” I asked. “And what sort of deal?” 

Donut stalked forward, low to the ground, Mongo on the other side of the injured mimic. I too moved forward, trying to imitate her, but I realized I was just dragging my long belly on the ground, and it had to look ridiculous.

Up until that moment, I realized I’d forgotten about the Eye of the Bedlam Bride, which was tattooed on my chest. It wasn’t on my chest anymore, but the center of my dog forehead, completely hidden. I was suddenly hyper aware as it tried to wrench itself open.

Let me, Carl. Let me take over.

I growled. No. You stay where you are. You are trapped, and you will stay trapped. I am in control.

If you say so, Carl. Remember. I am here when you need me.

“We needed some of you. We needed you for the Cabaret,” Mitch said, desperately trying to reshape himself. Every time he turned into a cohesive form, Donut shot him with another missile. “The war mages, the ogres, and Cock-A-Doodle-Do. They all vie for control of the dungeon backdoor. With some of you, we could control it all. Stop shooting me. It hurts!”

“Cock-A-Doodle-Do?” Donut asked, incredulous. “What kind of name is that?”

“What about Li Na?” I demanded. “We have a lot of friends there now at the Cabaret.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Mitch said. An eye formed on his body and turned to regard me. It was the eye of a lizard. “I have been here in the casino for a while now as we worked on assimilating...” He suddenly lurched forward, mouth huge, ready to consume me.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

I’d reflexively opened the eye in the center of my forehead, and he froze in place.

“No,” Mitch said. His entire form started to sparkle like someone had poured glitter into him. “No. Don’t do this. It’s too cold.” Several mouths started to form on his body, all screaming. “It’s too cold!”

Donut cast Magic Missile again, this time at full strength, killing him. At the same moment, Mongo flew through the air, claws out in an attempt to kill the thing, but it was dead before he got there. Mitch turned to the blank form. This one fully human sized. Mongo landed directly on the thing’s head, his crotch smushing it into the ground. Mongo screeched indignantly, waving his wings as he bounced up and down on the corpse.

We all stood there in silence for several moments.

“That’s tea bagging,” Louis finally said.

“Ohhhhhh,” Samantha said. “In the Nothing, we called that flap jacking.”    

Chapter 87

“Okay,” Imani said, voice tense. The room was covered in blood. Two crawlers had been severely injured during the fight with the mimics, including one who’d almost been chomped in half, but thanks to Imani’s quick reactions, they were both alive. We hadn’t lost anyone. “I hope this works. Everyone step back.”

“Magic is still flowing to it,” Donut said. She pointed to an object on the ground that had broken off the table. “That too. It’s the button. You press it, and it makes the wheel spin, but if you hold the wheel  in the right place, forcing it to stop on that one tiny sliver, it should open the portal. Do you think we can take the whole wheel with us?”

“I doubt it, but we’re going to try,” I said.

The roulette wheel had fallen to the ground and broke during the fight. Gold coins and chips were everywhere. All the furniture in the entire room was now gone save a single slot machine and the wheel of fortune, which still stood there. The surviving guards had fled, leaving us alone.

Elle cast a bolt as the last slot machine, and it exploded, spilling gold coins everywhere. Prepotente moved to start picking them up.

“I thought I saw it twitch,” she said.

Mordecai: If the Desperado Club is infested, you guys can’t go back. Those things are almost impossible to root out. The whole place will need to be fumigated. They have a special ability to avoid most detection spells. They’re like one of Carl’s level-15 traps. All but invisible. You should all devise safewords and quiz each other every day from now on. They can mimic crawlers, and the system will label them as such until you discover them.   

Donut: I HAVE A METHOD OF DETECTION, BUT I THINK IT’LL ONLY WORK IF THEY’RE PRETENDING TO BE AN OBJECT AND NOT A PERSON.

We were all looking at Louis. Samantha was back to sobbing.

“I guess I’ll see you guys later,” Louis said. “You know, it’s funny. I’m not nearly as scared as I used to be. And I don’t mean just from the dungeon, either. I’ve been scared my whole life, ever since I was a kid, that I was screwing things up. I never wanted a job where I was responsible for anybody else because I was afraid if I messed things up, people might get hurt. No matter what happens next, it’s okay.” He let out a spray of water. “I know even if I end up in that Pineapple place, I’ll be stuck there, unable to leave. But it’s better than the alternative.”

Donut jumped to his shoulder, pushing Samantha away. “You need to be careful. You’re a father now, and Katia will kill us if something happens to her baby daddy.” She gave him a headbutt. “Be safe, Louis.”

“Yeah, you too. Bye Princess Donut. Bye dog Carl.” 

Imani turned the wheel to the correct spot, stepped on the button, and held the wheel in place. It hummed, and a moment later, the hole opened in the ground. 

I held up my paw as I examined the portal. It was the same as last time.

“We will figure something out,” I said as Donut returned to my side. “I swear to you, Louis. I swear to all of you. As long as I breathe, I will do everything I can to get you free, no matter where you may be.”

“I’ll go with you,” Samantha said as she choked back another sob.

“No, you won’t,” Louis said. “Later, guys. Oh, and Elle. It’s heigh-ho, Silver. I’ll die on that hill.”

Elle grinned. “Go fuck yourself, Santiago.”  

He turned, and he jumped into the hole, disappearing.

Samantha turned to Prepotente. “Okay, I’ll give you one chance, but you gotta shave your body and bring Bianca in on it. And you have to be okay with me calling you Louis.” 

Prepotente screamed.

“And you can’t do that.”

Donut sniffed. “Carl, do you think we’re ever going to see them again?”

“I hope so,” I said. I turned to regard Donut. She hesitated and then she nuzzled against me.

“I hope so, too.”

“Whatever happens, I think it’s for the best. They’re the safe ones.”

“I know. But that doesn’t mean I’m not... Carl! You’re doing it again! Put that thing away immediately!”

“Time’s ticking,” Imani said. She was trying to be stoic, but I’d never seen the woman look so tired, so frazzled. So done.

“Wait,” Donut said, looking up at the wheel. “Look at all the prizes on here! There’s a group of random skill potions! Can we try to get those? I think we should try to get those.”

I wagged my tail. “You said it yourself. The magic is gone.”

I tried to pull the wheel into my inventory anyway, but I received an error.

You may put this in your inventory, but it will break the magical connection.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”  

I turned, but Lucia was right there, leaning over me. She was back to the beautiful woman form. She went to one knee and patted me on the head.

“Good boy,” she said. She got up, turned, and walked from the room.

I exchanged a look with Florin, who shrugged.

Donut let out an undignified snort. “Dog people.”

~

We had two hours left to get to the finish line. Florin jogged ahead to scout, and he said because of the open awnings, the bugs were flying all over the place. They weren’t bunched like before, and it shouldn’t be a problem.

Donut returned Mongo back to his carrier and deigned to walk alongside me. “At least you’re not a cocker spaniel. Or one of those other idiot breeds. Like a Boston terrier or a French bulldog. I couldn’t handle you being a French bulldog.”

The dancefloor to the Desperado was abandoned, likely after the guards announced that mimics had gotten in. I turned to look, and that door to Orren’s office was still there. I wondered if Hamed was there, waiting. I wondered if he’d known about the mimics or not. The AI seemed to imply that they were at odds, but I just didn’t know anymore. Either way, I hoped Splash Zone and the others were safe. They didn’t yet know about Dong Quixote. I hoped I’d get a chance to tell them how their friend had died.

Clarabelle, likewise, was not in her spot when we left. I made Imani jot a note, and we left it on her chair.

Mimics have infested the Desperado Club. Do not go in if you can help it. You are always welcome in Safehome Yolanda.

“What a goddamned floor,” I muttered as we padded back toward the exit to Hungry Eyes.

Elle, grunting with annoyance because she had to walk in her goblin form, sidled up to me. She moved to chat.

Elle: Carl, what the hell was that at the end there with that evil eye bullshit?

CARL: It was the Eye of the Bedlam Bride tattoo. It’s on the dog’s forehead, but I control it.

Elle: You’re keeping secrets from us. It’s going to bite us on the butt. I said from the start we should’ve confronted Britney, and we never did, and now she’s gone where we can’t help. You need to tell us what’s going on with you.

CARL: Let’s get through this next floor, and let’s get you to your final upgrade, and we’ll talk. I promise.

“Jamal has kept the bugs away, Mr. Carl,” Jamal said as Donut, Samantha, and I approached. “They do not like it when they get a taste of my toasty emissions.” He paused. “It was only one bug, but he has not been back!”  

I wagged my tail at the shark as I jumped in. 

Donut paused. “Wait,” she finally said, sagging. “Wait.” She turned to me. “Do you think Bruna the gnu is back in their garage?”

“No,” I said. “She’s still on the track and will be until the race is over.”

Donut let out a little growl. “Okay. Give me two minutes, and I’ll be right back.”

“Wait!” I called, but she bounded away. She rushed to one of the garage doors, swiped, and went inside.

The keys, I realized. Dwight had two keys left, and she had looted them from him. She first went into the garage of the razor foxes and then the garage of the jugglers. The whole thing took maybe two minutes.

She returned to the truck, grumbling.

She’d just transferred Onikuma the bear and Old Shuck the dog to our garage.

“I’m not going to talk about it,” Donut said. “We’ll need them for the parade.”

I patted Donut with my paw. Or, I tried to. She was taller than me.

“No, Carl,” Donut said. “We’re not doing that until you change back.”  

Samantha, still sniffling, chomped on the steering wheel as we returned toward the exit.

“This driving thing is not nearly as fun as I hoped it would be,” she said as Donut pushed on the pedals.

The bugs were, indeed, gone. But something very strange happened.

Imani was there. The giant Imani. She was sitting in the middle lobby, clutching onto Gucci the Maltese.

We carefully eased forward. Most of the others had already gone through. I wasn’t sure how it worked with non-shells. I knew she wasn’t real-real, but I wanted to avoid hurting her if we had to.

“It won’t let me leave the building,” she said. She was talking to us. I think.

If there were any bugs left, I didn’t see them.  

“I don’t know what’s happening. This is like a nightmare.” She paused. “I should have left when I had the chance. I just felt so responsible for them because they’re all idiots who can’t take care of themselves. They’re family, you know. But... It doesn’t matter anymore, I guess. I should have left.” She pulled the struggling dog, who wanted to chase our truck, to her face. “I stayed, and they’re still killing themselves, one by one.”

“Oh, darling,” Donut said, her voice suddenly amplified. She was using her headset microphone. “This is nothing but a dream. Out in the real world, you’ve already left them behind. You moved from Detroit, and you went to Washington, and you started a new life. You made the most wonderful friends, people named Yolanda and Brandon and Elle and more, and you met a man named Chris, and you fell in love, and you lived happily ever after. It’s all right. All you need to do is close your eyes, and wait. It’ll be over in just a second.”

The giant Imani lowered her head into her dog and started to cry.

I clicked the rocket button, and we moved toward the stairwell, leaving this cursed level behind.


~~~

See you tomorrow. Also, these are all scheduled now. The last drop will be on Saturday at 6:01 PM PST.