by DoctorHepa
Holy shit this bitch was crazy. “What does the Water Lily spell do?”
“It puts you to sleep, of course,” she said. “And you don’t wake up until I cancel the spell. If I die, she dies, too.”
A new wave of fear swept over me. “What do you want me to do?”
She smiled. “Just fulfill your promise. That is all.”
“I promised you we would help you assault the circus. I can’t do that without Donut.”
“You’re going to have to try. This is my deal. My grace. This is how you win back your life.”
Shit.
~
The bottom floor of Signet’s building was an empty shell with broken walls on three of the four sides. Outside, the sun had made a full journey across the sky. It sunk now behind the distant buildings. Donut lay asleep in the middle of the room, placed upon a rotting, cushioned chair. It was the only thing in the room other than a large cage containing Mongo, who hopped up and down and screeched at my approach.
“Donut,” I cried, rushing up to the cat. I went to a knee and stroked her soft fur. I remembered brushing it earlier. It was hard to look at her like this. She’s so small, so vulnerable. She had Unconscious hovering over her body.
I reached over and opened up Mongo’s cage. The dinosaur jumped onto the chair and pushed his head questioningly against the cat, who did not wake up. He let out a worried screech.
Signet stood nearby, her hands clasped in front of her. Her small, bare breasts would’ve been a distraction at any other time, even with her ghastly face. Her tattoos seemed to congregate on her body, facing whatever direction I was in, all of them staring at me intently.
“We can’t leave Donut here,” I said, looking about the room. We were practically outside. Any wandering mob would find her. I worried about the janitor mob, whatever it might be.
“She will remain,” Signet said.
“No. Fuck you,” I said. I reached to pick her up. A health bar appeared the moment I lifted her. It started quickly falling.
“Carl. I would return her immediately to her place. A water lily must not be removed, lest it die.”
I quickly put her limp body back in the chair. The bar stopped moving down. A moment later, and it began to ease its way up.
“Come, Carl. It is almost time for me to cast my summoning. We have much to prepare before the assault.”
“Just a minute,” I said. “Watch out, Mongo.” I started pulling the last of the redoubt pieces from my inventory. I had multiple pieces of wood and metal in my pack. I erected an ugly, quick and dirty shelter around the cat, like a pyramid. I worked as quickly as I could.
“Carl,” Signet said. “Now.”
“Jesus, you’re worse than Bea,” I said as I put the last piece in place. The obstacle wouldn’t protect Donut from a determined mob, but this was better than nothing. Mongo jumped to the top of the neck-high, haphazard pyramid. He looked down through the jagged hole in the top and then back at me.
I put my hand against the side of the dinosaur’s head. He was still small, but at level six, he was now bigger than Donut. “I don’t know if you understand me, but you have to stay here, and you have to protect her. It’s the most important thing you’ve ever had to do. I gotta go now, but I will be back. Do you understand?”
Mongo screeched, looked down at Donut through the hole in the top of the pile of crap and screeched again.
I turned and followed Signet out the door. I was giving Mordecai a running commentary of everything that was happening. I had a plan. A loose plan I’d formulated on the fly. But I couldn’t do it on my own. I asked him what he thought, and he told me I was batshit crazy. I took that as a good sign.
Carl: Zev, are you there?
Zev: Hi Carl. I’m watching. The whole universe is watching. We’re all rooting for you.
Carl: That’s what I’m hoping for. I need your help.
Zev: You know I can’t interfere.
Carl: No, not like that.
I explained what I wanted her to do. She told me it was impossible. I told her to try anyway.
“I’m sorry it came to this, Carl,” Signet was saying as we walked. “You surprised me yesterday when you survived. I won’t make that mistake today.”
“Why are we doing this, Signet? Why do you attack the circus every day?”
“Of the entire crew, I was the only one who made it through the attack without being altered by the poisonous cloud. And the one who got the worst of it was Grimaldi.”
“Grimaldi? So the guy who owns the circus? Last night you said you loved him.”
“I do love him. He is the love of my life. He saved me when I was a child. He took me in when nobody else would. He protected me from the high elves, took me from the Hunting Grounds, gave me a life. But most importantly, he gave me a family. As I became an adult, I grew to love him as more than just a father. We were going to share our lives together.”
“So what happened?”
“You have to understand how horrible it was, the cataclysm. Scolopendra’s poison cloud was a Nine Tier attack. It attacked you in nine different ways. The lucky ones simply died. The others were transformed, all in different ways.”
This was the second time I’d heard that name, Scolopendra. It sounded like this was the monster at the bottom of the volcano. I filed that information away.
She continued. “Grimaldi was more than just the owner. He was also the circus’s ringleader. We were nearing the end of a show when the cataclysm came. He stood in the middle of the center ring. The others were all out there, taking their bow.” Signet took a deep breath. “He transformed into the vine. All the others in the tent, no matter how they transformed, were soon infected with the mold-covered parasites. This put them under Grimaldi’s control. The lemurs, the clowns, almost everyone. They do as he says. And if they die, the spores return to the vine, and they are reborn the next day.”
“And that’s why you attack the circus every day? Why did you survive and the others did not?”
She didn’t answer my question. “Last night I cast my spell, expecting you to perish. Tonight I am putting my faith in you. You will have to be the one to defeat the sacrifice. I have captured Heather multiple times, but always for the purpose of killing the sacrifice. I have yet to use her blood to summon my team. I am trusting you tonight to kill Heather. While her blood won’t be as powerful as yours, it’ll be some of the most potent blood I’ve used.”
We rounded a corner and stopped. Laying asleep in the middle of the road was an unconscious… something. She was under the same Water Lily spell as Donut.
“That’s Heather?” I asked, feeling sick.
“Yes.”
“And you want me to kill her so you can take her blood and summon your people?”
“Yes again.”
I stepped forward. “Okay. Cast your spell before she wakes up. I’ll kill her now.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Carl. I can’t influence the battle, or the spell doesn’t work.”
“That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.”
“If it wasn’t like that, I would’ve just killed you last night.”
I swallowed. I examined “Heather.”
It—she—appeared to have once been a black bear. She wore a tattered, pink clown hat and a pleated, clown ruff around her neck, both of which appeared to be physically attached to her body. Like the lemurs, she had no skin on her face. Above her neck was nothing but exposed skull and a pair of round, red eyes.
The horrors didn’t stop there. Her two front paws had been transformed to white worms, like her claws had been replaced with mops. These were different than the worms that made up the lions’ mane. Even in sleep, they moved and undulated. I felt my gorge rise at the sight.
But most absurd of all was the bear’s two back legs, which had a pair of roller skates attached to them. She also wore a pink tutu.
Signet took a step back. “Okay, Carl. She’s going to wake up, and I will cast my
summoning spell. Then you go kill her.”
Admin Note: Boss Battles that arise concurrently with secondary productions or as parts of a Quest may present themselves differently. You will still receive awards commensurate with the boss’s proper rank. If you survive, of course.
“Oh fuck,” I said.
A note from DoctorHepa
Happy (checks calendar) Sunday! I hope ya'll had a good weekend. Stay safe! I am officially going stir crazy. I haven't had band practice/a show since early March. I've been nowhere except the store. I usually write in coffee shops, but I am now writing in the middle of the night because my house is full of squealing children and animals.
Anyway, (spam time!) If you like Audiobooks, my grimdark, horror LitRPG Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon is now out on audio from Tantor Audio. I haven't even had the chance to listen to it yet, but I hear it's awesome! At just over 20 hours, it's worth a credit. Or if your local library offers Hoopla access, it's on there for free!
Chapter 56
The usual music and bombastic, over-the-loudspeaker announcement never came. The system was treating this just like a regular mob. But this clearly wasn’t just any old monster.
Heather the Bear!
Level 19 Neighborhood Boss!
Performing since she was a cub, Heather the Roller-Skating Bear was one of the longest-running attractions at Grimaldi’s Traveling Circus. Her retirement was only weeks away when the cataclysm hit. Now the tired, old bear has been transformed into a monstrosity, barely recognizable from her former self. She lives out her days as a hunter for the circus, seeking out juicy mobs and unsuspecting crawlers. She finds and incapacitates her prey using her overwhelming speed and strength. Then she drags her quarry back to the circus so the clowns may feed.
Somewhere in there, deep, deep down, there is a spark of the old Heather. The beloved bear has moments of lucidity as she runs down her terrified prey. In those brief moments, she thinks: Good. I’ve always hated all you assholes anyway.
Unlike most boss battles, it didn’t appear that I was locked into the area. But I couldn’t run, could I? I looked wildly about. Behind me was a large intersection. A two-story building sat at each corner. It was already too dark for me to see inside.
Carl: Mordecai. Boss battle. Level 19 black bear with worms for claws and roller skates for feet. Tips?
Mordecai: Roller skates? Like those little shoes with wheels on them? Are you serious?
Carl: Yes I’m fucking serious!
Mordecai: Male or female?
Carl: Female
Mordecai: Shit. Okay. What about your Protective Shell? Has that reset yet?
Carl: Yes. It did about 15 minutes ago.
Mordecai: Black bears are the smallest of the bears, but they are faster and stronger than they look. Women bears are much smarter than the male ones. I don’t know what the worm claws mean. Don’t let her hug you. Use your shell.
Heather roared and stood to her full height, balancing on her two legs as she spread her two upper arms out.
“Fuck me,” I said, scrambling back. I’d seen plenty of black bears in my life, and they usually weren’t that big, most no larger than big dogs. Heather was an exception. She was huge. On her roller skates, she stood about eight feet tall. The pink clown hat sat cockeyed on her skull head. I could see where the cone of the hat was fused directly to the bone, like she was some sort of fucked-up bearicorn.
The worm claws came to life, dozens of little appendages wriggling and undulating.
…And growing longer and longer. The bone-white worms appeared to glow in the fading light as they spread to the ground, like pasta being made directly from the bear’s hands. As the swirling worms fell, I caught glints of actual bear claws at the ends of the paws.
Holy shit, I thought. That’s really fucking gross.
Where the hell was Signet? I looked about for the elite. My eyes caught movement, and I spied her through a hole in a building across the intersection. She was on the second floor, and her arms were raised like they’d been yesterday. Her strange tattoos twirled about her body the same as before.
I sensed the movement before I saw it. I’d only looked over my shoulder for a second, but the bear had halved the distance between us. She sailed across the wooden slats on her roller skates, gliding at me. The well-oiled skates made a whisk, whisk, whisk noise across the ground. She whipped her arm back as I twisted, pulling a pair of smoke bombs from my inventory and tossing them at my feet. I pulled two more as I started to run. I’d learned my lesson the other day not to use just one of these things.
Too slow. Heather swiped from fifteen feet away. The worms swept at me like a whip before I’d even realized what the hell was happening. Dozens of worms rushed at me, slapping into me, and wrapping around me three quick times like a damn tetherball. The wet, cold ends of the worms hit the exposed skin of my upper legs, and I felt them start to burrow into my body. I need pants. I really fucking need pants. It felt like knives going into my skin.
Yes, yes, this is new flesh. Primal flesh. Delicious flesh.
Strong he is. Do we taste this? He will feed our clowns well.
The clowns hunger, Primal. They are ravenous. And now they know of your flavor.
I smashed down on Protective Shell as the smoke started to billow from the smoke bombs. The worms severed off the bear, cutting them and half and killing them. What the hell was that? The bear, which had been almost on top of me, rocketed back, hitting the ground and rolling away. I’d blown the bear a good fifty feet back.
The worm things had entered my skin and immediately started talking in my mind. The words came all at once, piling on top of one another. I couldn’t tell if it was one voice or a thousand voices. Male or female. It’d felt as if someone had taken their dirty fingers, sunk them directly into the meat of my brain, and dragged.
Fuck no. Fuck that. I would die before I let that happen again. I jumped into action.
I rushed at the fallen bear, leaving the protection of the shield behind. I pulled nuts and bolts and barbells from my inventory as I ran, scattering them on the ground.
I was too close for a boom jar or a stick of dynamite. Instead, I pulled a regular jug of moonshine and tossed it at the bear as hard as I could. The jug shattered against the bear’s head. I’d thrown it significantly harder than I’d expected or anticipated. Wow. Even with my enhanced strength, I hadn’t been expecting the sheer violence of the toss. I skidded to a stop.
A health bar finally appeared as Heather screamed in rage. Moonshine splashed over the bear, who remained on her back, struggling. The pungent stench filled the intersection. The puddle highlighted itself in my vision, and the word Flammable Liquid appeared floating over it. That’s new, I thought as I pulled a torch, lit it, and tossed it at the bear.
I didn’t wait to see what happened next. I turned, and I ran toward the still-billowing smoke plume. Like last time, it was an irritatingly-narrow cone of smoke despite the multiple bombs. It’d caught in the wind, swelling away from the bear. But the smoke cone was just wide enough to hide within.
Whoosh.
I felt the heat of the moonshine igniting. I ran into the smoke and turned in time to see the bear pulling herself to her feet, her entire body aflame. The red and blue flames rose into the night air. The billowing fire partially obscured Heather’s health bar. It moved down, but at a crawl. It wasn’t even in the red yet.
The on-fire bear shrieked and started roller skating at me. Whisk, whisk, whisk.
Now, if you’ve never had a flaming, skull-faced bear on roller skates barreling at you full speed, you don’t know what you’re missing.
She stumbled and fell, tripping over a dumbbell. When she rose again, half of her skin and fur remained on the ground, revealing an exposed ribcage, filled completely with worms, like a knot of ramen noodles. The worms burst forth from the flames, reaching every which way.
For fuck’s sake.
I’d been saving it for a dire situation, and I pulled
it out now. The scratcher lottery ticket I’d received from that Lucky Bastard box. Fireball or Custard. I had a fifty/fifty chance. It would either fire a level-15 fireball, which would probably kill it immediately. Or it would splatter the thing with strawberry custard, which would heal it.
I awkwardly held the paper ticket in my left hand as I scratched off one of the five spots, revealing a little spinning circle. The tiny icon flashed back and forth from a red fireball to a pink glob. The skating boss was nothing but a skeleton now. Only the hat and the roller skates remained on fire. Even the round, bulbous eyes were gone. A mass of worms covered the skeleton, as if it was wrapped in yarn.
The health bar was only half gone.
Hiding in the smoke seemed to do nothing. The arm whipped back once again.
The spinning icon on the ticket stopped.
Custard. Yummy!
The voice said it out loud, deep and bass heavy, like it was the announcer dude from that goddamned Candy Crush game. I had a sudden, inexplicable memory of Bea playing that game on her phone with the volume turned all the way up while I was trying to watch TV.
“Mother fuck!” I cried, jumping back as the beachball-sized custard ball burst forth and splattered against the bear, who staggered and—once again—fell on its back.
The skeletal bear roared in pain as custard boiled against her skin. Her skin and fur reformed over her body, spreading across her frame in odd, jerky clumps, like a stop-motion film. The bear struggled upward, again. The damn thing was like the Terminator. Her health bar started to ease back up.
But something had changed. The roller skates fell off the bear’s feet as she struggled. So did the hat. Both dissipated into dust. The skin on the bear’s face formed. She did not stand as she had before, but remained on all fours like a normal bear. Her tattered, black fur held a silver sheen, especially evident around her muzzle.