Katia and I stood over the head, looking down at it. It continued to scream and holler. “Carl, examine its new properties. It’s been updated.”
Lika Love Doll Head.
This item is possessed with the Withering Spirit of Psamathe.
Psamathe, or Samantha as her friends used to call her, is a minor deity who was banished to the Nothing by her father after he found out she was kicking around with some ancient king guy. She’s usually accompanied by her trusty sidekick, a sand ooze familiar who also happens to be the cursed child of her union with the king. You know, typical god stuff.
And if you think that’s peculiar, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Those guys hanging out in the halls of the Celestial Ascendency on the 12th floor get themselves involved in some serious whackadoodle business, let me tell you. You ever see a guy give birth to a fortune-telling, snake-headed cow out of his thigh? Or a woman whose menstrual blood is sentient? That’s the sort of shit that’s waiting for you down there.
Psamathe is as intelligent as she is quick-tempered. Unfortunately for her, her first escape attempt from the Nothing resulted in a split, and half of her essence was forced to take refuge in the closest unoccupied naiad vessel she could find, which happened to be a sex doll based on the fictional Lika, who, oddly enough, was actually based loosely on an inaccurate history of Psamathe. She’s had to live in the doll for many years, unable to move until the rest of her spirit could be reunited.
The story gets kind of weird from there.
“All righty, then,” I said.
Carl: Hey, Mordecai. What’s a withering spirit?
Mordecai: Why?
Carl: We have a visitor.
Mordecai burst out of the crafting room and stopped dead, looking at the creature on the floor, his eyes wide. “By his left tit, where did that come from?”
“Carl had her in his inventory!” Donut exclaimed.
Mordecai moved closer to examine it. He bent over, moving his beak inches from the head. He tapped at her. “Sometimes the soul of a creature can get… split… into two halves. When a body is split, the two halves will always try to reunite, like magnets coming together. They have to do it in a proper vessel. But if something goes wrong during the reunification, what you end up with is a withering spirit. They’re not alive. Not dead. In fact, it’s kind of hard for them to die now, but they’re mostly harmless. The vessel has to be similar to their original body, and if it’s not, this happens. They haunt the object, but they have very little power. It’s a bit messed up. They use withering spirits as quest-giving NPCs a lot.”
“It sounds similar to Remex the skyfowl from the end of the third floor,” I said.
“Yes. Remex was a soul leech capacitor. That is a much more dangerous type of withering spirit, one purposely built by a powerful mage or necromancer designed to hold power and suck souls away from people. These are a more stable version of the same thing. It’s terrible for her, but she’s in no position to harm us directly. Several seasons back, they had an entire level where every weapon found on the floor was possessed by a withering spirit. She’ll need an exorcism to get free now. Plus she’s a minor deity, which complicates everything.”
“Does that mean she’s like a demigod? Half human or whatever?”
The head spit in anger.
Mordecai shrugged. “It could be, but probably not. She’s clearly not 100% ascendency material, or else she’d never have been cast away to the Nothing. Think of the pantheon like a rich guy’s country club. She might have a famous dad, but her mother was probably from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. We don’t want to get involved in her story. We avoid gods like we avoid dealing with factions outside the dungeon. We have enough of this bullshit to deal with already.”
“I know what happened,” Katia said, snapping her finger. “It said that when she escaped the first time, she ended up in the body of the love doll, right? It said it was the closest thing she could find to her real form. That means she was the one who talked Ghazi into coming here in the first place. She’d been lying to him the whole time about who she really was. She wanted him to open the Nothing. She told him it was to find that god of lust, but it was a trick. The moment the Nothing opened up, her second half flowed out along with the sand ooze. But something went wrong. Ghazi screwed something up during the process, and the love doll, the vessel holding her first half, got turned to glass. She had to use the ooze to keep him here until something came along and de-crystallized everything. Everyone thought she went into the body of Quetzalcoatlus but they had it wrong because they didn’t know she’d been split in two, and they didn’t know Ghazi had her other half on him the whole time.”
“And she would’ve gotten away with it if a certain little dinosaur hadn’t knocked her over and shattered her into a thousand pieces,” I said.
“Good boy, Mongo!” Donut said.
It’d been a trap, I realized. If we had managed to keep the castle intact and cancel out the glass spell, the sex doll would’ve woken up, but she’d have been a full-powered minor deity.
I wasn’t sure if we’d gotten lucky or not. Mongo had barely touched the thing when it’d fallen over and broken. I had an ominous feeling we were still on rails here, heading toward a manufactured confrontation.
And that was always a bad thing.
The head continued to muffle-scream at us from the floor.
Donut batted at the head, and it rolled. “Carl, I just realized something! This is just like the plot of those Child’s Play movies with that Chucky doll,” Donut said. “This Psamathe lady is Chucky, but she’s only a head, and she can’t move.”
“I was thinking it’s more like the horcruxes from Harry Potter,” Katia said. “But in this case, her soul was only broken into two pieces.”
“No,” Donut said. “Definitely Chucky. That lady who wrote that wizard movie stole all of her ideas from those ridiculous 80’s horror movies Carl always watched. I only saw one of those wizard movies, and it had a dog in it. Disgusting.”
“They were books before they were…” Katia stopped. She made the wise decision not to pursue it.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s probably batshit crazy by now,” I said. I went down to my knee and poked at her. She growled. “There’s only so many ways the game can tell us that spending time in the Nothing makes you insane.”
Donut nodded. “Yes, I supposed you’re right. Plus part of her was frozen in that doll all this time. That probably wasn’t good for her mental health, either. I’ve watched you abuse yourself more than once, and I know it wasn’t good for mine. I can’t imagine what it would’ve done to me if I’d been forced to actually participate.” She turned to Katia and lowered her voice. “He wiped his hand on me once. You know, afterward.”
“That is absolutely not true!” I exclaimed.
“What are we going to do?” Katia asked, changing the subject. “We can’t even understand what she’s saying. Do you think a real god is going to come down and try to attack her? That’s why those people from that college were so alarmed in the first place.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Mordecai?”
He shook his head. “You guys are blazing new trails with this one. I don’t know what in the hell is going to happen. I’ve never seen so many cross-floor storylines before. The fact they’re using Larracos and the Ascendency as a plot point on a fifth floor quest is just astounding to me. Based on everything I’ve seen, I suspect the moment she leaves the safe room, her presence might summon an angry god. But maybe not. After all, she’s not fully resurrected.”
“Let’s let Mongo eat her!” Donut said. “Or we can burn her away. Or we can just toss the head back into the Nothing. We don’t have to do it here. They have a Nothing gate at the casino, too. Remember?”
“We’d have to get her out the saferoom first before it’ll let us do anything to her,” I said. It was starting to dawn on me that her existence was going to be a bigger headache than I first thought. “We c
an’t stick her in a pet carrier. At least I don’t think it’ll let us.”
“Probably not,” Mordecai agreed.
“We can just dump her in the tavern,” Katia said.
I thought for a moment. “That’s not a bad idea, but that scorpion guy will probably punt her out the door, which might cause issues.”
“Then what? Keep her in the safe room?” Katia asked.
“Hang on,” I said. I picked the head back up by her hair. The jaw on the thing was posable. I pushed it closed all the way. She continued to wail, but now it was completely muffled. I grasped the chin and pulled down, moving in increments until I could understand what she was trying to say.
“…Going to kill your mother. I’m going to find where she lives and set her on fire and then kill her and then get a necromancer to bring her back from the dead and then kill her over and over again and make you watch while I…” She trailed off once she realized I’d moved her mouth to just the right position where she made coherent words, like I’d tuned into the proper radio station.
“Hello,” I said. “My name is Carl. Can I call you Samantha? I’m going to call you Samantha. Your real name is a little too weird for me.”
“Where’s the rest of my body?” she demanded. She could move her lips. Sort of. She sounded as if she was talking through clenched teeth. “Do you know how long I worked to reunite myself? Do you know what I had to do?”
“Oh, honey,” Donut said. “We were just talking about it. It must’ve been awful.”
I adjusted her chin slightly. “Yeah, so your body got shattered into dozens of pieces and then swept out into the ocean. I would guess at least half of you is currently being digested by a very large shark.”
I couldn’t read any emotion on the head. The eyes were unblinking, and it kind of freaked me out. “My child. I can feel her. She’s alive, but she’s unable to reform. I only had moments, and I made her marry that idiot. He’d used too much power and flash-froze everything, including the vessel. I only had a few minutes. That’s the last I can remember. My child. My child. Oh, my sweet child.”
She was talking about the sand ooze, I realized.
“She’s probably in the ocean. She’ll eventually end up back on shore. Her husband might be a little dead, though.”
“I’m going to kill your mother.”
“Uh,” I said. “Look. What do you want us to do with you? I can’t take you with me. Do you want us to toss you back into the Nothing?”
“No. Please. No. Not that. I want you to go find my pieces and put them back together. I worked so long to escape. I need a physical form.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said.
“So you tricked that guy into coming here?” Donut asked. “I must say, I am impressed. Men are so easily tricked, but still. Bravo. I’m always tricking Carl here into doing things for me, but you talked him into opening a different dimension for you. I do feel bad for Tish, however. She really seemed to like him.”
“Tish? Tish almost ruined everything. Take me to her. I’m… I’m…”
“Going to kill her mother?” I asked.
Samantha started bawling.
“All right,” I said, standing up and dropping the head back on the floor. “This isn’t going to work. I’m either going to toss you out the door or risk letting Mongo eat you or something. What’s your pleasure?”
She stopped crying just as quickly as she started. “Take me with you,” she said. “We can go on adventures together. There’s this naiad who lives in the Hunting Grounds who might be able to help me.”
And there it was. This was how they were going to write this goddamned talking sex doll head into our story.
“I already have a talking cat, a dinosaur, a Katia, and a grumpy eagle guy in my party. The last doll we had didn’t work out. I mean no offense, but the inn is full. Especially for a creature who is probably going to get us murdered by an angry god at any moment.”
“I’m going to kill your mother.”
Mordecai: I know I’m going to regret this, but I have an idea. I think we should keep her. We can keep her in the saferoom, so she can’t hurt us. If she doesn’t leave, she won’t summon a god. This is a minor deity, so she may have some valuable knowledge. She’s probably the one who taught Ghazi how to cast all of those spells. If I can get some potion knowledge out of her, it would be worth it.
Carl: She’s a talking sex doll head, and she keeps threatening to kill my dead mother. Besides, how can we keep her? Won’t she disappear when we go down a level?
Mordecai: Like I mentioned before, we can hire a few NPCs. It only lets you do it to certain kinds, but I can guarantee it’ll work on her. Donut can hire her using the personal space menu. You have a slot for a trainer and a cook right now. Hire her as a trainer, and she’ll live in a corner of the training room. On the next floor, we can get a new module that’ll allow us to hire mercenaries and additional staff. We can stick her in one of those slots.
Donut: I LIKE HER. AND I DIDN’T KNOW WE CAN HIRE MERCENARIES! CAN I HIRE SLEDGIE?
Katia: I think it’s a terrible idea, but if keeping her in the room keeps us safe, then we can give it a go for a little while. The game obviously wants us to keep her.
Carl: Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about.
I picked up the head, pushed the mouth all the way closed, and I strode to the training room. I rolled her inside and closed the door.
“We’ll deal with her later. We have four and a half days left. I want to get that fourth castle taken care of as soon as possible because as soon as that’s done, we’re going to start rescuing as many people as we can.”
“What I’m saying is you take two sometimes three showers a day. That’s water. I don’t understand how that’s any different than going into the ocean.”
“It’s not going to happen again, Carl. No. Take Katia. Or Louis. Or Gwen. Or Samantha the love doll for all I care. It is not happening, and there is not a thing in this world you can say that will get me to change my mind.”
I reached up and scratched her. Her entire body was tense. “It’s okay. I’m just teasing you. You won’t have to go into the water this time. I will need you to float over it in that house, though. You’ll be in charge of the depth charges.”
She sniffed. “I do like the death charges.”
We’d taken a nap, spent some time in the craft room, and reset all of our buffs. Zev had messaged us earlier and reminded us that our normal appearance on Odette’s show was canceled. Zev still spoke to us in her robotic, Stepford Wife voice, but Donut had greeted her cheerfully and no longer seemed concerned about her condition. There was more going on there, but I couldn’t ask her about it.
I’d gone into the training room to work on my Powerful Strike. It was currently at 14 with my gear, but only eight unenhanced. We needed to find a guildhall for it. It was one of those stubborn skills that didn’t like to move up no matter how much I trained. We really needed to find a place to just grind and kill mobs without gods or quests or distractions.
Mordecai said the sixth floor would have plenty of that, but I already knew if we made it down there, we were going to be very, very busy.
I’d taken the Psamathe—Samantha—head and placed her in the corner. She started squealing at me while I trained, so I turned her around and threatened to stick her in the bathroom or seal her in a bucket if she didn’t shut up. She stopped after that, though I occasionally heard a few random growls from her.
Afterward, it was time to start planning our next move in earnest. The first step was we needed to get to the submarine, get inside, and figure out the pump system. Gwen was going to meet us with the two other survivors from that quadrant in an hour. In the meantime, they turned the drain back on. I sent a message to the tomb raiders and told them they really needed to start carving a path down to the water line.
If those assholes refused, and I feared they would, we’d have to spend a day or two grinding traps, and nobody wanted t
hat.
Outside, we were hours from the start of the equinox where the sandstorms would last twice as long, and the days would be mostly dark.
“You know what,” I said to Donut. “When was the last time you checked your social media board? You know you can do that now again since Zev has gotten her job back.”
Donut lit up. “Carl, you are a genius! Mongo, come on, let’s see if Fleek-Otter12 got people to sign up for the unofficial fanclub!”
Katia watched her run off. “So she really can’t swim?”
“She sank like a rock.”
Katia laughed. She was, on my direction, leaning over a piece of paper and drawing out a map of the ninth floor. Mordecai wandered into the room, muttering something.
“Hey, Mordecai. Come here a second,” I said.
He seemed distracted. “I think I need one more ingredient, but I don’t know what it is,” he grumbled. He was talking to himself. He did that a lot while he worked at his table. “What do you need?”
I pulled the map from Katia’s hands and flipped it over. The map looked like a flower with the large city in the center. I already knew some of what I was about to ask, but I didn’t know everything, including one crucial piece of information.
“Is this an accurate depiction of the ninth floor?”
“Guys,” he said. “Do not worry yourselves about something that is very far away.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’m curious. Especially since the sixth floor is coming up. They’re all part of that weird volcano storyline, and I just want to be prepared.”
“You’re not going to get to the sixth floor if you spend all this time worrying about what’s not right in front of you.”
“Indulge me, please,” I said.
He sighed and hopped up onto the table. He picked up a pen with his talon and drew lines on the map, creating nine petals for the flower. “This is pretty close. Larracos is in the middle, and the nine faction areas surround the center. You have the diameter of the city a little too big, I think,” he said. He drew a smaller circle. “There’s an NPC shanty town, but it’s not part of the city. This is Larracos here.”
The Gate of the Feral Gods Page 36