Chapter 122 (Patreon)

I stared up at the level 35 creature as the children all moved off. He towered over me, standing at least seven and a half feet tall. I examined his properties.

Crawler #324,116. “Chris Andrews 2”
Level 35.
Race: Igneous.
Class: Zulu Warrior.

Every time he moved, it sounded like rocks scraping together. I could feel the heat coming off him, like the center of his body was molten. He’d probably set Donut’s heat vision haywire. Chris returned my gaze, and I couldn’t read his expressionless face. His intense eyes were burning lumps of coal.

“How did you get here so fast?” I finally asked.

“I was in the water quadrant. There was a giant submarine called the Akula. We had to break in, and it was filled with robots. There was a bugbear head in a jar with mechanical spider legs, and we woke it up by accident.” He grunted. “It’s a long story. I smashed the glass, and that was it. We took the bridge, and it was over. But as soon as we did, the sub fired a torpedo right into the side of the mountain, and everything started getting sucked into the hole. Water started to fill the sub, so we had to run. We had three escape hatches. They were torpedo tubes, one leading to each of the other quadrants. The only other two survivors got in the tube that leads to the land quadrant, but I couldn’t fit with them. I didn’t want to go into the tunnels, so I came here. It fired me in the air, and I landed on a giant sand dune. It was wild. I thought for sure I was going to get broken into a million pieces. I landed here and I was heading toward this town when you—I’m assuming it was you—blew that giant thing out of the sky.”

I nodded. All of that made sense in the context of what I knew about the water quadrant. I wondered if that was the only feasible way to beat the subterranean level. To return to the ocean and then get into the necropolis from below.

I sent a quick note to Donut, Mordecai, Katia, and Imani, telling them what was happening. I told Donut to remain inside for now until I could get a sense of his state of mind. Katia and Mordecai were almost at the Desperado, about to purchase some supplies. We still hadn’t slept.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Odette’s cryptic warning.

Donut: MY VIEWERS ARE SPIKING REALLY HIGH. CHECK YOURS. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING.

I never actually kept track of what the average view count was, which, I was realizing now, was a mistake. Donut actually had the little needle up at all times on her interface. I rarely went into the relevant tab. I needed to stop being so stubborn about it because it was a good indicator that shit was about to go down.

Katia: I just received an emergency benefactor box. A silver one. We’re going to open it up in the other safe room. The one in Weird Shit Alley. It’s closer.

Carl: Is it from the Squim Conglomerate?

Katia: No. From Princess Formidable.

Mordecai: It’s an emergency box. She needs to open it now. That box probably cost the princess a sizeable chunk of her net worth. We’ll keep you updated.

A chill rushed over me. What was going on? This was Chris. Surely he couldn’t have changed that much. I was on full alert, but I didn’t feel ready. If something was about to happen, I wasn’t prepared for it. I’d already used up my daily Protective Shell while we were falling from the Wasteland attack. I hadn’t felt this tense about another player since we’d had the fight with Hekla. I hated this. I hated not being able to trust someone who was supposed to be my friend.

And what was worse, I didn’t know why. I had no idea what was happening.

“Chris,” I began. “I… why haven’t you spoken to anybody? Imani is really worried about you.” I didn’t want to bring up his brother now, but we had to get it out of the way. I needed to hear his answer. “And your brother. Surely you know what happened.”

Chris waved a big, rocky hand. “I take damage if I use the chat feature, so I do not waste time or energy using it.”

“What?” I asked. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s part of the system interface.”

He shrugged. “It comes with being an Igneous. I can’t pull things in and out of inventory or go into my health pie chart, either, without taking damage. I got it in exchange for having a very high constitution.”

“I’ve never heard of that. That can’t be normal. We’ll talk to Mordecai, our manager. We’ll see if we can figure out what’s going on and if there’s a way to fix it. I’ll message Imani, too. We’ll all figure it out together. Your friends and family are worried about you.”

“My family is dead,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Family and friends make you weak. Having someone to care over and protect makes you vulnerable. You taught me that.”

“I taught you? How?” Jesus. If he didn’t have the name floating over him, I’d never guess this was the same guy. Imani wasn’t kidding when she said the race change had affected his personality.

He didn’t answer the question. “We are wasting time. You haven’t taken the castle yet. Is it still aloft? Where is the cat? We will go hunt it down together.”

“Donut is in the saferoom. Come on, we’ll go in together and talk.”

I needed to get him into the saferoom where I wouldn’t have to worry about anybody doing something stupid.

“I don’t like saferooms,” he said after a moment. He looked up into the air. “Is the castle still there? How are you going to take it out? Another missile?”

“No,” I said. “We’re going to fly up there and storm it the old-fashioned way.”

Carl: There’s something wrong with him. He’s acting squirrelly. I think he’s about to attack me.

Imani: He can fire lava out of his body. Be careful. Try not to hurt him.

I needed to keep him talking. “Let me ask you something, Chris. Why did you kill Frank?”

“You heard about that, huh?”

A human appeared and stopped between us, her hands on her hips. “Who’s the stud?” she asked, looking Chris up and down.

“Juice Box,” I said, “meet Chris.”

“You’re a big ‘un,” she said, practically purring the words. “Sexy.” She put her hand on his rocky arm, and then jerked it away as if she’d been shocked. “Hot, too,” she said after a moment. She took a step back and turned to me. “Well, you said you’d save the town. I guess you did. We lost some camels, but not nearly as many as I feared. The place is a mess, and my house is wrecked. But my people are mostly safe, and for that, I’m grateful.”

I nodded, not removing my eyes from Chris who was looking down at where she’d touched him. “You owe me a discussion about your fellow changelings. That was the deal. After I’m done talking with my friend here, we should sit down and go over what you know.”

“The Spit and Swallow is still in one piece,” Juice Box said. “We can all go in there and talk about Quetzalcoatlus and why my brother is so desperate to get his hand on the ghost.” She returned her gaze to Chris. “You can bring your two friends here. We can all party afterward.” She suddenly grabbed my hand. “Carl, let’s go now.”

Chris shook his large head. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Two friends?” I asked, confused.

“It’s funny,” Chris said after a moment. “When I first got here to this floor, I thought for sure I was dead. But it was easy, you know, to take out the submarine. I don’t think that flying castle will be so hard, either. I see all those airplanes parked over there. There are hot air balloons now sitting in the desert. I’m starting to think this whole floor is easier than it should be.”

“I’m glad you’re confident,” I replied, taking another step back. Juice Box’s grip on my wrist was like a shackle.

“But the more hope I have, the more conflicted I get. Seeing you… I think I finally made up my mind. I keep going back and forth, but all of a sudden I am resolved. I don’t want to get out of here anymore. Isn’t that funny? It’s like I have a choice now. I can choose to not live like this.”

“Chris,” I said. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Brandon left a message for you. Let’s go sit down and talk about it.”

“Come on,” Juice Box said, pulling. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

“I actually have two daughters,” Chris said. “You only know about the one, but there’s another. She’s older. From my first marriage. She was home, so she died in the collapse. Our game guide when we first got in here, he told us all about it. He said she might come back. People who die in the collapse aren’t really dead, but they’re put in storage. Only you can’t save them. I think about that a lot. They bring them out sometimes, but it’s never for good. They can be changed. They force you to kill them on the deeper floors. He told me about a crawler that was forced to face down his whole family. He killed himself instead.”

I felt a chill wash over me.

“I wasn’t aware you had any children, Chris,” I said. “And your game guide is a woman. Her name is Mistress Tiatha.”

“I can’t kill anybody else in my family, Carl. I can’t.”

It hit me, then. All at once. I cursed myself for not seeing it. This wasn’t Chris. This was Maggie. Maggie My. But how?

“You’re a changeling. Or a doppelganger,” I said, taking another step back.

“No,” Juice Box said. “She ain’t no changeling. She’s worse.”

“No,” Maggie agreed. She suddenly had a round, spiked ball in her hand. “I was waiting for the cat to come out, but she’s too much of a coward I guess. They promised me if I did it this way, they wouldn’t…”

The crossbow bolt slammed into Maggie’s head, and she dropped, crashing heavily to the street. The ball in her hand hit the ground and started to roll away. I dived for it, dislodging myself from Juice Box’s grip. It wasn’t a bomb. I didn’t know what it was, but I instinctively grabbed it and tossed it into my inventory before it could do anything.

I scrambled to my feet, fist forming.

The Chris/Maggie creature wasn’t dead. She had a strange status over her head. Petrified. There was a sixty second timer, counting down.

“What the shit?” I said. “What the flying fucking fuck?”

Katia came jogging up as Donut burst from the saferoom. I could see Mordecai down the street, also approaching. We all surrounded her. Him. Chris. Whatever he was. Multiple people from town came to surround the body. Several of the changelings reached down to touch the rock creature. One of the young changelings approached, but one of the older ones held the child back.

“I got it in my box,” Katia said, indicating her crossbow. She was out of breath. “A set of ten bolts of Petrify Rock Class.”

“Goddamnit,” I said, looking down at the prone form of the rock creature. Its eyes still moved back and forth. She was conscious, but she couldn’t move. What choice did we have? “We’re going to have to kill her.”

“Her?” Katia asked.

“It’s Maggie. Frank’s wife. The one that’s been hunting us since the first floor.”

“Why would they give me bolts to just petrify her instead of kill her then? Mordecai said these are more expensive than just the regular ones.”

“We can have Mongo kill her,” Donut said, jumping to my shoulder. “That way we don’t get skulls.”

“Wait,” Juice Box said, brushing herself off as she stood. I realized then I’d tossed her aside when I’d dived for the ball thing. “You don’t want to hurt him.”

Imani: Stop! Stop! I just got a message from Chris!

Carl: It’s not him.

Imani: No. It is! He’s petrified. He’s going to lose consciousness again when his body wakes up. He’s being controlled!

The timer was at thirty seconds.

“Boy, you do not know how to take a hint,” Juice Box said. She poked at the prone creature with her foot. “Next time I’ll just spit it out. You’re friends with the rock guy, right?”

“I’m friends with a guy named Chris,” I said. “Is this really him?”

“He’s right there. Don’t kill him. There’s also someone else in there. An Infiltrator. That’s who you need to kill.”

“What the hell is an Infiltrator?” I asked just as Mordecai approached.

“Oh, fuck,” Mordecai said. “He’s got a worm in his head?”

The timer was at ten seconds.

“Shoot him again,” Mordecai said. Katia complied, firing a bolt right into his chest. The magical bolt whiffed away in a puff of smoke a moment later, and the 60-second timer reset. “We got a problem.”

~

Mordecai leaned down to examine the Igneous. “I’ve told you about these guys before. There are multiple types of brain worms. The intellect hunters are the most common, but they can only take over corpses, and the bodies start to rot. The Valtay are similar, but they secrete a liquid that keeps the bodies alive. Their distant cousins are a race called the Skree, but they’re better known by a different name. The Infiltrators. They are parasites, and they take full control of bodies. Living bodies. A person is infected, and it takes a few days for the annexation to complete. They don’t even know they have the parasite. After a few days, the worm completely takes over. Once the switch occurs, the parasite gains power, and the host is locked out of their own body. The worm controls them. The host can do nothing but watch as they are moved like a puppet.”

“Holy fucking shit,” I said, looking down at Chris. “So he’s been awake this whole time, watching all of this happen, but he’s completely powerless?”

“That’s right. She’s in his brain. His body is her armor.”

“Okay,” I said. “So how do we get her out of him?”

Mordecai shook his head sadly. “Without killing him? We don’t. She can’t even leave until he’s dead. I can make an antiparasitic that will kill her, but I won’t have the materials until we hit the next floor.”

I felt a deep chill rush over me. Katia shot him again, using her third of ten bolts. We’d only be able to keep him petrified for seven more minutes. “There’s gotta be something we can do now.”

Everything suddenly made sense. Well, no, that wasn’t true. None of this shit made sense. But I now knew what happened. Maggie had chosen the Infiltrator race and had somehow managed to get herself into Chris. She’d been in him ever since the end of the third floor, and once she’d fully taken over, she’d separated out from the party and started hunting me.

Frank had said he didn’t even know what race or class she’d taken. She’d finally caught up with him at the Desperado Club, possibly looking for the ring he’d given me. She’d ended up killing him. Her own husband.

People who die in the collapse aren’t really dead.

I thought about the implications of that. There were hints of it in the cookbook, but nothing definitive. Was it true? That was a conversation for Mordecai. I didn’t have the luxury of thinking about it now.

Elle: Imani is refusing to send you this message, so I will. It is from Chris, and I am copying and pasting his exact words. I’m sorry guys. “Carl, Donut. Please. Kill me. It’s okay. I give you permission. You’ll be helping me.”

“Hey Chris, go fuck yourself,” I said. “We’re going to figure this out.”

Elle: I told him the same thing. But if we can’t figure out a solution, I don’t think you have a choice. If it was me stuck in there, I’d want you to pull the plug, too.

“Can we take him into the saferoom?” I asked. “Would that cure him?”

“No,” Mordecai said. “Not once she’s taken full control. The saferoom won’t help. We can’t tie him up and leave him there. It won’t let us.”

“Then we’ll tie him up and leave him out here,” I said. “If we can keep him contained until the next floor, maybe you can make that potion.”

Mordecai shook his head. “Sorry, kid. That’s not going to work. What’re you going to do? Pick him up and throw him over your shoulder while you go down the stairs? You’re in different parties, and you’ll be separated once you hit the next floor anyway. And even if he’s tied up, he has spells he can still cast.”

This was an impossible situation. I turned to Juice Box who was standing back, watching with her arms crossed. “You touched him. Can you turn into one of those worms? Go in there and take out the one in his head?”

“No,” she said. “They are too small. And I wouldn’t do it even if I could. That’s a pretty fucked-up thing to ask.”

Katia shot him again. Six to go.

Elle: He says, “This woman is overwhelmed with anger and despair, and every moment I share with her is worse than the last. You took the orb from her, but she can still hurt you.

“What’s the orb?” Donut asked.

“I have it,” I said. I quickly examined the object in my inventory. I was momentarily confused by the name. It hadn’t listed itself as an explosive. But then I read the description.

Celestial Grenade

These little balls of fun were developed by the nuns of Enyo during the first enlightenment, back when the gods had to compete for worshippers. The nuns would descend upon a village and proselytize to the people about why their goddess was the best. If the villagers didn’t immediately fall to their knees in veneration, the nuns would be forced to invoke a more aggressive campaign.

A nun would drop a celestial grenade, which would summon Enyo directly into town for a period of sixty seconds. That was usually enough to change the minds of the survivors.

Celestial grenades grant the following effects:

If the wielder of the grenade has pledged themselves to a specific deity, this grenade will summon their god for sixty seconds. In addition, the wielder will receive a 60-second Divine Intervention aura.

If the wielder does not worship a deity, this grenade will summon a random god. They will not receive the Divine Intervention buff.

Why was Maggie trying to summon a god? Just to kill me? That seemed a tad overkill. I remembered what she’d started to say. It sounded like she’d made some sort of deal. The fact Katia had received a countermeasure from Princess Formidable meant the grenade could’ve come only from one place. The Skull Empire.

“Chris, does Maggie worship Grull?”

While we waited for an answer, I examined the grenade in my inventory to make sure the pin hadn’t yet been yanked free. It hadn’t. I pulled it out and tossed it to Mordecai, whose eyes grew huge when he saw it.

“These are very expensive and rare,” he said. “You see ‘em on the ninth floor a lot, especially near the end. Someone paid a pretty penny to get this in her hands. This is just over the top. It’s like trying to kill a bug with a kinetic strike.”

“That’s what I was thinking!”

“You humiliated Prince Maestro and his family over and over,” Katia said. “They have to kill you to save face.”

“Well they’re very bad at it,” Donut said. “I mean, really. If they can’t even manage to kill one human who doesn’t wear pants, how can anyone expect them to control an intergalactic empire? No offense, Carl.”

I was about to tell Donut to shut the fuck up when Chris’s answer finally came in.

Elle: He started talking, but he got cut off. It now says his messaging privileges have been suspended for thirty minutes. He says, “It’s not Grull. She worships another god called Algos. Maggie’s first sponsor is Prince Maestro and her second is Crown Prince Stalwart, his brother. I have the same two sponsors. They gave her a scroll that let her choose a god to worship. I received a box with a picture on it of Algos, and that’s how she knew who to pick. She got the grenade when we hit this floor. We got approached by this weird guy in a saferoom, and he told us…” That was the whole message.

“Jesus,” I said as Katia shot him again. “Maggie has double sponsors, and all four of them are the Skull Empire.”

I quickly related the message to Mordecai via chat.

Mordecai: This doesn’t sound official to me. Someone probably bribed someone to allow Maggie a one-on-one in a saferoom. It happens, but don’t talk about it out loud. I’m thinking Maggie’s race can’t worship Grull, so they had to find another god to do their dirty work. Plus they likely didn’t want Grull to screw it up again and further embarrass the family. Algos is the god of pain. He would kill everyone in town in seconds. He’s a good god to choose if you want your target to suffer.

“Double sponsors? Also, that Maestro guy is letting you live rent free in his head,” Donut said. “It’s quite pitiful. I’m starting to think he really is in love with you.”

“His sister is spending a lot of money to stop him,” Katia added, looking down at the prone form of Chris.

“I never liked my brother, either,” Donut said. “He always thought he was better than the rest of us.”

“Your brother sold for over ten thousand dollars,” I said.

Donut made a spitting noise. “I don’t remember seeing him win any championships.”

Katia shot Chris once again. We were almost out of time. The enormity of our problem was getting heavier on my shoulders by the moment. I felt the desperation rising. “I’m going to flip him over, break open the back of his head, and dig Maggie out with my bare hand.”

“Carl,” Katia said. Sounding alarmed. “That’s not going to work. You’ll kill him.”

“You’re not getting in there anyway,” Mordecai said. “His head is solid rock. The parasite is in his brain. Not riding it like a backpack.”

“Goddamnit. Why am I the only one trying to come up with a solution? What the hell are we going to do?” I said.

But I knew. We all knew. And that weight was getting heavier by the moment.

You can’t save them all.

Carl: Imani, I’m sorry.

She didn’t answer, which made me feel even worse. I put my hand on his back. It was hot, but not unbearable.

“Hey, Chris. I know you can’t respond anymore, but your brother wanted me to tell you that he loved you, and he regretted not telling you that. He died protecting his friends. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.”

“Carl,” Katia said, putting her own hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have a skull yet. I do. Let me do it.”

“No,” I said, forming my fist. “Everyone get back.”

“Be careful,” Mordecai said. “Once he dies, the Infiltrator will still be alive. She’ll burrow out of his head. She’ll try to get into someone else.”

“Okay, everybody back up,” I said again. The small group all took several steps back. It was just me and Donut standing over the prone form of Chris. We had twenty seconds left.

“Carl?” Donut asked from my shoulder.

“What?”

“Don’t be mad at me.”

A large hole opened up in the street, revealing a shimmering force field that separated this quadrant from the next. The form of Chris plummeted through the hole and disappeared, landing loudly into the dark chamber below. There was a splash.

I only fell about a foot, landing on the shimmering air. I stood upon the forcefield like it was glass, looking down upon it with surprise.

“You best step out of the hole, or your feet will get chopped off when I turn the spell off,” Donut said. “Daddy wouldn’t like that very much.”

~

“Goddamnit, Donut. What the fuck?”

“You’re not a killer, Carl,” Donut said as the spell snapped off. “Not a person killer, at least. You get all weird about killing NPCs. How do you think it’s going to affect you to kill one of your friends? I’m not going to let it happen. I can’t have you being all mopey.”

“He was asking for our help, Donut. Now she’s gotten away and Chris is still… Goddamnit, you shouldn’t have done that. That was a mistake.”

“Look at the map. He’s not getting out of that room. And if they do get out, we’ll be prepared for them. Katia has the find crawler skill. She’ll see them sneaking up on us. Maybe.”

I took a deep, angry breath. I was angry with Donut, but I was also angry with myself for being so relieved at what she’d done.

I looked at the map for the subterranean level. Sure enough, there was a honeycomb system of rooms directly below the streets. The entrance to the catacomb wasn’t a level plane, but it went up and down in a toothed pattern. Chris and Maggie were stuck in a bubble. They had solid rock all around them. They could go back up through the street. Or they could go down, though that looked like another sealed off chamber. They’d have to break through two walls to get to the closest walkway—a walkway that was likely filled with water.

“Mordecai, can he get out of there with his race abilities?”

“Maybe,” he said, shaking his head. “He can excrete lava, but it cools rapidly. It’s not effective against rock. There are spells like Donut’s Hole and dozens of others that help people make their way through rock. I don’t know what either of them have. He’ll be able to use both of their abilities and spells. He might be able to smash through with time. It sounded like there was water in there. He can breathe underwater, but if the chamber fills, it’ll hinder their progress.”

“Wait, really?” I said. “He can breathe underwater?”

“Yes. Both of them can, actually. Infiltrators are aquatic like most brain parasites. An Igneous can survive in most environments. They’re very hardy.”

“If there’s water, there’s steam,” Katia said. “He might be able to blow his way out.”

“That doesn’t sound very safe,” I said.

“If that crazy lady is suicidal, then maybe it won’t matter,” she replied.

I felt relief at the idea, of Maggie somehow killing them both. Then I felt shame for feeling that way.

While we talked, Donut was giving a running commentary in the chat to Elle and Imani.

Imani: Thank you, Donut. Once you defeat all four castles, you can go back, incapacitate them again, bring them through the portal, and then your game guide can make a potion to save Chris.

I took a deep breath. That was… a very dangerous idea. It was a dumb idea. Katia only had three of the paralyze bolts left, which meant we’d have three minutes to get them to the stairwell. That simply wasn’t going to happen. Maggie had just tried to unleash the god of pain on me. She was too dangerous to let free. We were being used like pawns in a royal pissing match between a brother and sister, who in turn were being exploited by the whole system while the entire universe laughed their asses off at everybody.

Yes, being in the spotlight was good. But we needed to break ourselves free from this Skull Empire bullshit. It would catch up to us sooner rather than later.

“Mordecai,” I said. “We have to find a way to separate him from the worm before the floor ends. Go to the market and see if you can find those potion supplies now. I’ll put the word out and see if anybody has what we need.”

I went into my interface. I found the little needle that indicated the current stream watchers. I cycled through a few views and settled on one that didn’t show actual numbers, but it ticked the needle up when more than average were watching. I placed it in the corner right about my airspeed and elevation tickers. I had another thought.

Carl: Also, Mordecai. I was wrong before about something. I want you to take some money and buy Donut that environmental upgrade. The one that shows us a running commentary of our social media comments.

Donut: YAY!

Mordecai: You know it’s heavily moderated by the AI, right?

Carl: That’s okay. The more information, the better.

I pointed to Juice Box. “You,” I said. “Let’s sit down right now and talk. But we gotta make it quick. We’re going to take out that last castle before nightfall.”

“We still need to sleep, Carl,” Donut said.

“We can sleep when we’re dead.”

***

Hey folks, sorry for the unexpected week off. It's been crazy. Covid daughter. Two vehicles went out at the same time, both with catastrophic issues. (One the transmission went out. The other the timing belt went prematurely and took out half the valves with it.) But despite all that, life could be much worse. Daughter is feeling better, but man, it was pretty rough on her. It's crazy how some people feel nothing and others just get sicker and sicker until they die.  I hope ya'll are doing well. Things are a little wild out there in the real world. Hopefully things are much calmer for you at home.

I promise chapter 123 will appear much more quickly than this one did. It's almost done, but I didn't want ya'll to wait any longer.

The audiobook for book 1 is sitting at Audible right now, waiting to be approved. Book 2 is now live on Amazon. If you haven't already, I would appreciate a review. http://mybook.to/dungeoncrawlercarl2

We'll have a poll coming up soon, but I don't want to give away what the poll is because that will be spoiler-y.  This isn't set in stone yet, but here's a hint: you'll have a similar choice that Dan Akyrod once had to make in his most famous movie role.