Chapter 68 (Patreon)

I was hoping to hit you guys with a double chapter tonight, but it's not in the cards, unfortunately. Chapters 69 and 70 are going to button up the current story arc and the third floor. These last few chapters are going to be a bit bonkers.

 

Chapter 68

We waited until sunset before leaving our hiding spot atop the building. After the brief, chaotic fight on the street down below, the two guards remained in their position facing the fire. They did not move. They did not look up. Multiple NPCs, including Skyfowl came to inspect the burning building. Nobody paid us any heed. 

Ricky Joe sat cross-legged on the roof, sullenly clutching onto the remains of his severed limb and the twice-eaten corpse of his pet salamander, Benjamin. He’d screamed bloody murder when he learned we wouldn’t be able to reattach the arm, but Donut had talked him into sitting down and calmly waiting for night to descend. Once the building was fully engulfed, it appeared whatever spells protected the immediate area also fled, once again allowing Donut’s charm to be effective. 

“Hey kid,” I asked as we waited. “You know that wasn’t very cool, right? Tying the little lizard to the end of the stick? It’s pretty fucked up.” 

“You shouldn’t say bad words to kids,” Donut said. “But yes, Ricky Joe. You shouldn’t do that.” 

“At least I didn’t eat him,” Ricky Joe said. “And Benjamin liked it. Fathom dwarves strap them to their hats when they go into mines. He was in training.” 

A few moments later, the two guards abruptly turned and walked away. I watched them clank their way through the town’s streets. They converged with other groups of the swordsmen, and they all entered a building on the same street as the magistrate’s headquarters. 

“Hey,” I asked the kid, indicating the burnt-out husk of the temple. The child’s own home, which was attached to the building, had also burned to the ground. “Did you ever see anything unusual coming in and out of there? Or hear anything weird?” 

“Weird?” he asked. “They were always weird. One of them would cry for his mama every morning. We could hear it through the walls, we did. There were a lot of weird smells, too. My brother, Bubba Lane, said he saw something fly from the roof a couple nights ago. He said it was a krasue, but it was probably just that Skyfowl lady.” 

“What lady?” I asked. 

“I don’t know her name. They all look the same to me. But she visited a lot. She usually comes just before dark and then leaves right away, walking with a bunch of other ladies. She didn’t come today though.”

“Wait, what are the other ladies?” 

“Women, usually elves and dwarves and humans. They show up throughout the day. I don’t recognize any of them. I think they’re trying to join the church. They’re usually dressed like they’re about to go to the Desperado. Bubba Lane says it’s because women are stupid. My mama slaps him around some when he says that and then pinches his ear until he apologizes. Then she makes us all line up and call him stupid. He doesn’t like that much.” 

“Do you know where she took the ladies?” Donut asked. 

“No,” he said. “We’re not allowed to go past the street. Mama says it’s dangerous out there.” 

I looked at Donut. So a bunch of women from out of town were coming to this temple, and then they were led away by a female Skyfowl. Interesting. We needed to get moving. 

There was no easy way off the roof. Donut’s Puddle Jumper wouldn’t reset for another four hours, and we needed it for the next part of the evening’s investigations. I sighed as I pulled out my rope, reflecting on all that had changed since we’d woken up this morning. It had been a crazy long day, and it wasn’t over yet. We wouldn’t be able to casually walk around town anymore. We’d be fine at night, but while the sun was up, we’d be attacked by the guards, which really sucked. There were other nearby towns, but this was the largest one in the area. And with just about three days left until collapse, it was getting too late to venture far from the only exit we’d discovered so far, which was a half-day’s walk from here, in the ruins of Grimaldi’s circus. 

Donut pulled Mongo into the pet carrier and waited for me to climb down the rope. I had to carry the protesting Ricky Joe under my arm. I ended up accidentally dropping him the last ten feet, but he was mostly fine. He belly flopped hard onto the ground, losing his weak grip on the severed arm and salamander corpse. He started wailing. “Oh, you’re fine,” I called as I climbed the rest of the way down. His health had barely blipped. 

The moment we hit the ground, Donut casually leaped off the building like it was nothing. I grasped the rope and pulled it into my inventory. 

“You need to work on your jumping, Carl,” Donut said as she released Mongo back onto the ground. “Or figure out how to fly.” 

An ear-piercing scream from within the next-door building reverberated through the street.

“That’s me mom,” Ricky Joe said. “She’s in labor again. She’s going to be really mad if I miss it. I’m in charge of holding her left leg. Bye, Princess Donut! Bye Mongo!” He rushed toward the door.

I exchanged a look with Donut and shook my head.  

~

We made a quick stop at the Silk Road before returning to the One-Eyed Narwhal. Our funds were starting to run low. I’d picked up three more boxes of hob-lobbers, all of them the impact-detonated version. Pustule had also brought a ten pack of the hobgoblin smoke curtains, which were round, fused bombs that would supposedly work much better than the goblin smoke bombs. I purchased all ten. 

Mordecai was already in the Narwhal when we arrived, which meant he’d walked there on his own from his guildhall. The recap show was about to begin, and he sat at the table chatting with a strange woman. A crawler, I realized, seeing the blue dot on the map. 

“It’s Hekla’s friend,” Donut said. “Yay! She found us!” 

Shit. I’d completely forgotten about that. As we approached, the woman turned to look at us, and I stopped in my tracks. She was… odd looking. I couldn’t tell her age at all. The blond-haired woman’s eyes were too big, too high on her face. Her nose was crooked and sideways, and her chin appeared to be… lumpy. Also, I could see that the individual hairs on her head were much too thick. She appeared to be wearing a poorly-sewn tracksuit and blocky snow boots. I examined her properties. 

Crawler #9,077,265. “Katia Grim.”
Level 9.
Race: Human.
Class: Monster Truck Driver. 

I blinked a few times, trying to wrap my mind around it. She clearly wasn’t human. And what the hell was a Monster Truck Driver class? 

My eyes focused on that level 9. She was 10 levels below me. She had a pair of stars by her name. A neighborhood and borough boss. Still, level 9. That was going to be a problem. 

“Hi Katia,” Donut said, jumping on the table. “Are you Hekla’s friend?”

“Hello,” she said shyly, nodding her head. “Yes. Thank you so much for meeting me. Hekla said you’d be here.”

Mongo approached her hesitantly, sniffing at her. Seeing that she wasn’t a threat, he made a few circles and then curled up right on the floor. 

“Hello,” I said. 

“Hello, Carl,” she replied. “Hekla told me everything that happened during your interview. It’s… crazy. She wants to talk to you, but in a minute. She and the daughters are fighting a boss right now. I won’t get any experience because I’m too far away.” 

When she talked, her mouth moved oddly, like her voice was overdubbed. Strange. 

I wouldn’t be able to talk to Hekla directly. I could talk to other crawlers over chat, like the way I talked to Brandon, but only after we both initiated the chat handshake, which had to be done in person. 

“Anyway,” she said when I didn’t respond, “Mordecai was giving me a few tips.” She smiled. “It’s much appreciated. My game guide isn’t very helpful.” 

“Hekla is so cool,” Donut said. “She’s like Xena Warrior Princess, but better.” 

“Yes, she is,” Katia said. “She’s amazing. She saved my life.” 

Mordecai: If you can train her up, she’d be a good addition to the team. Good enough to maybe poach her from this Hekla. But she is very, very far behind. Probably too far behind. 

Carl: Can we trust her?

Mordecai: I don’t know yet. She seems genuine. She’s also a bit of a trainwreck. 

Carl: What the hell is she? She’s not really a human, is she? 

Mordecai: Let her explain.   

“What sort of tips was Mordecai giving you?” I asked out loud.

She sighed heavily. “Bannon, that’s my game guide, talked me into picking this race and class, and I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

“What race are you? It says human, but you don’t look it.” 

“Easy,” Mordecai said. “She’s trying.” 

I finally sat down at the table. Over the bar, the recap show began. 

“What does that mean?”

“I’m a Doppelganger,” she said. “It says human when you look at me because that’s what I’m trying to emulate. Before Mordecai helped me with my ears, it said my race was ‘What the fuck?’ so we are making progress.” 

“A doppelganger?” I said. I looked at Mordecai. “Is that the same thing as what you are? A changeling?”

“They are similar,” he said, “But not exactly the same. A doppelganger is a very difficult race to master, and her guide should have talked her out of it. As a changeling, I can switch to any race that I have physically touched, with a few caveats. At least that’s how it works for crawlers. As you know I lost my ability to choose my shape when I became a guide. Anyway, a doppelganger is different. She is like clay. She once had a regular form, and she is wearing a certain amount of gear. All of that, her body and gear adds to a certain amount of mass. With that mass, she can shape her body into anything she wants of equal mass.” He looked over at her sadly. “She doesn’t gain the non-physical abilities of the shape she is forming, unlike a changeling. She just looks like it. The problem is for miss Katia here is that she can’t just say, ‘make me into a human.’ She has to shape it herself. And it takes time and energy to make the change.” 

“It hurts, too,” she added. 

“And it hurts,” Mordecai agreed. “She has to mentally chisel her appearance herself. And since she isn’t yet a master sculptor…” He let it hang, indicating her face. “But I have some experience in this subject, and I am helping her obtain a more natural appearance.” 

“It’s really tricky,” she said. “I only return to my regular appearance when I am asleep or in the bathroom. And it doesn’t let me shape myself when I’m in the bathroom. I’ve been using the reflection off a health potion as a mirror.” She waved her hand over her face. “With obvious results.”    

“Wait, this will help,” I said, rummaging through my inventory. I found what I was looking for and placed it on the table. It was a hand-sized chunk of broken mirror. I’d looted it on the first floor from the remains of the gym after our fight with the Juicer. I had enough broken glass in there to form a wall of mirrors. 

“Oh wow, thank you,” she said, picking it up. She had a timid way of moving. She reminded me of a rabbit. Skittish and furtive, like she would bolt if I raised my voice. How is this woman still here? How is she alive? 

She tentatively looked into the mirror. “One of those stores had a handheld mirror, but I couldn’t afford… Oh my god, I look like a Juan Gris painting.” 

I didn’t know who Juan Gris was, but I imagined he was someone who sucked at painting faces. 

As I watched, her face twisted and heaved, like something was underneath it, moving things about. Her eyes changed shape and moved into a more correct position. It was like watching someone model clay with invisible hands.

“I gotta do clothes, too,” she said. I’m wearing a magical leather jerkin right now, but once it’s equipped, it disappears and adds to my mass. The only thing that doesn’t disappear is my weapon.”  

“You’ll get better and faster at altering your appearance as you practice. It’s a skill like any other,” Mordecai said patiently. 

“So what’s with that Monster Truck Driver class?” I asked. 

Mordecai answered for her. “I can’t look these up any more, so I’m not certain on the exact details, but from what I can gather, it’s an earth version of the Staunch Barrier class mixed with a Jouster class. It’s a relatively common combined class called a Juggernaut. In other words, she’s a straight-up tank that gets an increasingly-massive Constitution bonus the faster she is moving. And based on her current Constitution while she is standing still, she is quite the powerhouse.”

“Wow,” I said. 

On the screen, the crocodilian guy with the shotgun had teamed up with a human who looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him before. They jumped off a burning building together while being chased by three-legged insect things. 

Carl: What’s the catch? 

Mordecai: Massive Constitution and good Dexterity. She sucks at everything else, especially Strength. She is not a fighter. And her level is low, so despite her ability to absorb a lot of physical and magical damage, she’s still far behind the curve. I once fought an indestructible wombat thing on the eighth floor. The monsters could absorb a direct hit to the face with a Celestial Warhammer. But they were small and weak. So instead we just picked them up and dunked them head first into buckets of water. They quickly drowned. 

Carl: Jesus, Mordecai. 

Mordecai: My point is that the strongest, most indestructible wall in the world isn’t that tough if you can pick it up and toss it aside. It’s just like with your shelf plan later tonight. 

Katia looked up. “Okay, Hekla is done with her fight. She says, ‘Hi Carl and Donut. I am glad you haven’t been assassinated. Please help Katia.’ That’s me. ‘I think it’ll be best if you let her join your party to get experience. The farther away they are, the less shared experience they get. Please keep her out of too much danger. I really appreciate your help, and I promise to make it up to you.’”

Carl: We letting her join our party? Won’t that dilute our experience pool too much?

Donut: WE HAVE TO WE PROMISED HEKLA.

Carl: No, YOU promised Hekla. 

Mordecai: As long as you button up this quest tonight, you can spend the last two days grinding, and you’ll be on track, even with her tagging along. Before you got here, I talked Fitz into letting me look at his herb stash, and I managed to steal last night’s newsletter. There’s something in there we need to talk about. But get her in the party first.  

“Tell Hekla we said that we’ll take it from here and to stay safe,” I said.  

We spent the next few minutes getting her to join our party. I took a look at her stats. 

Strength: 11
Intelligence: 8
Constitution: 51
Dexterity: 30
Charisma: 8

“How did you manage to get your Constitution so high?” I asked. 

“I have a ring that adds 15 to Constitution. I got it in a loot box when we first started. Then I got a couple other constitution buffs, and then when I picked that class it added even more.” 

“What else can you do?” I asked, examining her properties.

“I have an ability called Second Fuel Tank, which absorbs damage and reflects some of it back. It triggers randomly, but it’s limited to only one time a fight. I also have something called Pathfinder which helps me find stairwells really easily.” 

I exchanged a look with Mordecai. 

“I don’t have any useful spells. Oh, and I’m immune to wind spell damage. Also, I’m good at fixing engines.”

“Were you a mechanic?” 

“No. I’ve never actually fixed an engine before. But I got my Earth Hobby Potion. I am a ‘gear head.’ I was an art teacher before all this happened.”

“An art teacher?” I asked, looking dubiously at her poorly-sculpted face.    

She smiled sheepishly. At least I think that’s what she was going for. Instead, it looked a bit ghoulish. “What is the saying? Those who can’t do, teach?”

“Okay, listen up,” Mordecai said. “Now that you’re in the party, we need to have a discussion about experience and something I just learned.” 

“Hush, hush!” Donut said, pointing on the screen. “Look! It’s me!” 

“Oh fuck,” I said, looking at the headline. 

It was a graphic of Donut, her eyes slitted. It was an image from last night when she’d been drinking at the bar. A lightning bolt appeared, and on the other side of the screen an image of two rottweilers slammed into place. It was purposely reminiscent of the boss battle graphic. 

Princess Donut Versus Cici and Gustavo 3! 

“It’s a feud of epic proportions! Princess Donut has thrown the gauntlet down, directly challenging Cici and Gustavo 3, the two beloved pets of current front-runner, Lucia Mar!” The orange-hued lizard announcer breathlessly intoned.

“I have done no such thing!” Donut said, incredulous. “They’re lying!” She turned to me. “Carl, I do not like this. Since when has the news been allowed to lie?”     

Donut’s image appeared on the screen, her leaning over her cocktail. “Those dogs sound just awful. Bitch-ass rottweilers. Almost as bad as cocker spaniels. Think they’re so smart.”  

“Lucia Mar appeared earlier today on Knuckle Cracking, and this is what she had to say.” 

The screen flickered, changing to a shot of Lucia Mar. She sat on the couch next to a wolf-faced host. Lucia was in the strength-based, skull-faced cycle of her Lajabless form. She and the wolfman laughed cruelly as Gustavo and Cici ripped apart some small, fuzzy animal while the audience howled encouragement. 

“What the hell is this bullshit?” I asked. 

“It’s an arena fight show,” Mordecai said. “I already told Zev to never let you on one. The fights aren’t real. It’s complicated.” 

The scene cut to Lucia Mar’s face, zoomed in super close. Her skull eye sockets teemed with bugs. 

“What do you say to the challenge? Will you come back to this show? We could make it a main event. Donut versus one or both of your boys,” the wolfman asked off screen. 

“No,” Lucia Marr said. “This show is a waste of time.” Her voice came out raspy with her thick, Spanish accent. “I will find this Donut in the dungeon, where her death will be forever. Cici and Gus will tear this puta apart. And then I will rip Carl to pieces and take all of his shiny toys.” 

“She seems nice,” I said. 

I had to remind myself that this was a little kid. What kind of fucked-up childhood did she have?  

“This is an outrage!” Donut said. “That wasn’t a challenge! Carl, we need to tell them that it was a mistake. I don’t want to fight those two stupid dogs. We’d kill them easy, sure, but I don’t want those ugly skulls after my name.” 

“Goddamnit,” Mordecai said, looking up at the screen. “Goddamnit to hell.” 

“They’re going to bring us together somehow, aren’t they?” I asked. 

“Of course they are,” he said. “But not yet. They’ll want some buildup first.” 

“Will it happen on this floor?” 

“No way. It won’t be until after the third round of sponsorships, so on or after the sixth.”

“Does that mean they’ll go easy on us until then?” 

“Maybe,” Mordecai said. “But probably not.”  

“So whatever happened to them trying to kill us off early?”

“They’re still trying to end as early as possible. But they need money, so you high performers are going to be treated differently. All of this ties in with what I need to talk to you guys about. Borant is warning the shopkeepers and pub owners to be extra careful not to anger crawlers. It doesn’t explicitly say this in the newsletter, but I can read between the lines. Some of you guys are getting much stronger than you should. That kid trashing the Desperado Club two nights ago is proof of that. Most loot boxes are controlled by the system AI, and it appears the system is attempting to compensate for the shorter time limits. Borant controls the mobs and the experience earned, for the most part, but the System AI is still the ultimate arbiter and is using that strength to even out the odds.”

“Is that why you didn’t have a fit when we decided to take on this quest?” 

He shrugged. “You were already snagged in that quest’s net. It happens. I could tell this was a good one from the get-go. Usually you have to just bring something from point A to point B, and it’s done. Or you just have to kill someone. These more elaborate quests are also a symptom of the shorter floors.” He paused as the announcement came on. It was nothing new. “Now, you two get a couple hours of sleep. Once Donut’s Puddle Jumper resets, you’ll go back out there. And since you’ve pissed off the guards, we need to make sure you finish this before the sun is up. In the meantime, I’m going to help Katia train her face. She’s not going out with you tonight. But when you’re done with the quest, you’ll spend the rest of the time on the floor grinding together.” 

Mordecai: Try to keep her alive. But if she does die, make sure you get those rings off her finger. 

Carl: You are stone cold, Mordecai.    

~

This late in the evening, the entire town was asleep. The pubs were all closed. Nobody walked the main streets. The only light was from the sign of the Desperado Club a few streets over, towering over the city. An eerie silence punctuated the night, broken occasionally by horrific, unearthly screams that seemed to come from everywhere. 

In order to break into the magistrate’s home, we first needed to get into an alleyway, scale the exterior of a small building we’d scoped out earlier, and then use the Puddle Jumper spell to hop over to the roof of the magistrate’s building. 

The alley contained a group of level-14 monsters called Shadow Leaks. They were smoke-like, ghost-class mobs that swarmed at us as we approached the side of the building. They utilized a stinging cold attack. Thankfully my magical gauntlet was able to damage them just as easily as if they were made of flesh, and Mongo’s magical teeth caps could also hurt them. The ghosts gave off an unusually high amount of experience and were easy to kill. Mongo hit level 13 and got noticeably larger, rising to the height of my chest. He’d gone from dog-sized to pony-sized just like that. 

Donut jumped from my shoulders to the back of Mongo to see if she could ride him. But the dinosaur got so excited that he started jumping up and down, tossing Donut away. She poofed all her hair out in anger and returned to my shoulder. “We’ll work on that later,” she mumbled. 

This residential building was ringed by a series of conveniently-placed trellises on the exterior that made for easy scaling. Mongo went into the carrier as Donut leaped from window to window, quickly reaching the third-floor roof. I followed, scaling the trellis, which creaked ominously. But I quickly made it to the angled, shingle-covered roof, my heart thrashing. 

The long magistrate building spread before us. Earlier, we’d come in from another side, using a different building’s roof to enter through the main entrance and into the mall below. This building we stood upon now was a full story higher than the last one, and we were going to jump straight to the magistrate building’s roof.

That was assuming if anything was left after I blew the three sticks of dynamite. I had hidden them inside the shelves that held up Miss Quill’s beanie babies. When I’d reattached the shelves to the wall, I’d found that they were hollow inside. I’d placed three sticks and a glob of Hobgoblin Pus, the remote detonator, in the second shelf. We wouldn’t be able to blow through the magical door that protected the next room over, but just by knocking on the wall, I could tell we could easily breach directly through the wood.

I spent a moment examining our surroundings, searching the air for flying mobs. I didn’t see anything. Just one building over from this one, directly across the opposite street was the large, warehouse-like building that held all of the inactive swordsmen guards. I could feel it there, an ominous presence, sandwiching us between the equally-imposing magistrate’s building. I hoped the guards remained within like they were supposed to. Mordecai insisted they’d remain inactive all night, but I was worried. We were about to cause a very large, very loud ruckus. 

We’d originally had a different plan, but after my test earlier with the hobgoblin dynamite, we’d had to rethink how we were going to proceed. 

“Here we go,” I said to Donut. “Get ready.”

“Wait, I have to remember my lines,” said Donut. She shook her paw and cleared her throat. 

I sighed and pulled the Mysterious Letter from my inventory. 

It was Mordecai who’d figured out what the Mysterious Letter really was. We’d found it within GumGum’s inventory after she’d been killed. We figured it was something she’d pulled off the dead body of a prostitute. It turns out it was likely planted there on purpose in the hopes it would be picked up by whomever was in charge of investigating the deaths. 

Earlier this morning, as we stood outside of the Narwhal staring at the dead corpse with the words, “No you won’t” carved into her body, which had been a response to me saying we’d hunt down and kill whoever was responsible, I had been horrified. 

“Whoever this is, is listening to us talk. He can hear and see us,” I’d said to Mordecai. 

“That’s unlikely. You were in a safe room.”

“Yet, here we are,” I said. “He’d done it fast, too. She’d dropped just a few moments after I’d spoken.”  

“Tell me exactly what you were doing at the time when they dropped this girl on the building.” 

It was only then I realized I’d been clutching onto the mysterious letter as I’d told Donut that we’d get revenge for GumGum. 

“I should have realized,” Mordecai said after thinking on it for a moment. “It’s a necroscript scroll all right, but it’s also covered in blood. I thought that was from the dead body it was found on. But I think it’s actually the blood of the caster. The scroll has already been used. Scrolls usually disappear once used, but not always.” 

“Well, what is it?” I asked. 

“Suppurating Eye,” he said. “It’s a lich spell. It’s usually not in scroll form, but it’s not unheard of. The caster reads the spell then leaks a bodily fluid onto a surface. The caster can then see and hear anything happening near the spilled fluid. It’s like placing a spy camera. He spilled it directly on the scroll, which he knew would be picked up. So as long as it’s out of your inventory, he’ll know where you are and can hear you talk. You probably won’t be able to sell it to anybody, so you should get rid of it.”

“Or we can use it!” Donut said. “We can talk to him and tell him what a jerk he is, get him mad enough to come to us.” 

“That’s actually a great idea,” I said.     

“Of course it’s a great idea, Carl. I always come up with great ideas.”   

I now gingerly placed the scroll on the roof tiles. 

“I still don’t know what this is,” I whispered. “When we’re done here, we need to sell it.” 

“Do you think there’ll be more scrolls in there?” Donut asked. She was overacting, but it was too late now. “It looks valuable. We should find one without blood on it.” 

“After we finish looting that filing cabinet in the reception area, we can look through the office for more scrolls.” 

I added, “We should probably steal all of those stuffed animals on Miss Quill’s desk, too. Especially those ones on the top shelf in the little cases. I bet those are worth something to somebody. And if they’re not, we can always use them to light campfires.” 

“It’s a good idea. Plus Mongo needs a chew toy.” 

“Okay, we’re going to wait another minute to make sure nothing is flying around above us, then we’ll zap over to the roof, hammer our way through the ceiling, and drop into that office. The key to that door has to be in there somewhere.” 

“It’s a full-proof plan,” Donut said.

I put the letter back into my inventory.  

~

“There!” Donut said, pointing into the sky. A group of four krasue emerged, coming from underneath the building. It appeared they’d been on the first, unoccupied floor, waiting for us. They emerged now, heading toward our position on the roof.

“Go,” I whispered. 

Donut zapped Mongo back onto the roof. Before the dinosaur could screech, she hissed, “quiet!”

The dinosaur grunted angrily, then realized he was on an angled roof and started scrambling. Donut quickly cast Clockwork Triplicate on the dinosaur and then pulled the original Mongo back into his carrier. We’d need him again in a minute, but not right now. 

The two clockwork Mongos both squeaked with disappointment as Mongo disappeared. I pulled the lit Hobgoblin smoke curtain into my xistera and tossed it onto the opposite roof. I then lit a second one and wedged it into a roof tile at our feet. 

Donut gave a quick set of instructions to the two dinosaurs, and they both howled as the heavy smoke started to billow into the night air. I quickly pulled the mysterious letter out.

“We’re jumping onto the roof now,” I said. I crumpled up the letter and tossed it up in the air. One of the Mongos grabbed it and swallowed it whole. They then turned and leaped from the roof to the top of the magistrate building, soaring up through the air and landing easily. One of them howled, the sound carrying heavily into the night.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “You were right. I didn’t think they’d be able to jump that far.” 

“Mongo has the same pounce ability as I do,” Donut said. “And he’s a lot bigger. When he hits level 15, it’ll be even better.” 

“Maybe I should ride him instead of letting you have all the fun,” I said as the smoke completely filled the night air. Pustule had been correct. These things were much better than the traditional goblin smoke bombs. It was like a heavy fog had filled the entire area. The two pets disappeared from view. 

The swarm of red dots indicating the krasue turned back toward the roof of the building. The dinos had jumped before the fog had completely filled the area, and the floating women heads had seen the motion. I hadn’t been certain the fog would work on ghosts. Mordecai said it wouldn’t on most of them, but it would on these guys because something, something corporeal form. I still didn’t know how he kept all these rules in his head.  

My attention moved to the map. “Okay, the clockwork Mongos are on the roof right over that office.” If the guy was listening in, hopefully he’d been fooled into thinking we were now on the roof, and his crew had moved to the office to intercept. “Get down.” We moved to the back of the roof, crouching down. We should be plenty far away at this distance, but every time I said that, I was proven wrong. 

“I feel bad about ruining Miss Quill’s collection,” Donut said. “She really loves those things.” 

“Something tells me she’s not going to care anymore.” 

I pulled the hobgoblin pus out and jammed on the detonator. A clockwork Mongo howl filled the air in the moment before night turned to day.