by DoctorHepa
Nobody knows who they are or where they come from. Find out why.
The quest didn’t tell us to save the women. Or to kill who was responsible. We just needed to find out what was going on. We were almost there. We just had to get it out of this woman before the entire building crashed down.
“Okay,” I said. “So how did you get like this?”
“The elves had me go to their temple, and once I was there, Miss Quill came and got us. She asked us so many questions. I didn’t know why at the time. I thought she was going to take me to the club. Instead, she brought me to him.”
“To who?”
Below, something crashed. It reverberated throughout the entire floor. The smoke bomb had cleared, but the black smoke from the fires was now thicker.
“To her husband. He’s in another place. It’s across the street. It is where the swordsmen guards stay in the evening. He is on the floor above. The guards don’t know he’s there, or they don’t care. They can’t look up.”
“Her husband?” I asked.
I tried to remember what Miss Quill had said about him. It wasn’t much. She’d said he was dead. And that he’d been magistrate before Featherfall. That was it.
“Yes. His name is Remex. He’s doing something, casting a big spell. I don’t know what. He’s not alive, nor is he dead. He’s something in-between, something monstrous. He’s trying to bring himself fully back to life.”
Fuck. Another bad guy. I’d been hoping all the bosses were dead.
“But what does that have to do with you guys?” I asked.
“Do you know what I am? What I have become? I am a krasue. A woman who lived a life of sin. One who died in anger and pain, and returned from the dead. During the day we live and work in this building, working as assistants and in the shops below. Collecting. At night, we are his army, doing his bidding, helping the city elves, whom he has also glamored into his control.”
“Collecting what? And what about the women we find in the alleys?”
“Every time a new Skyfowl or Chickadee comes into one of the shops in the mall, we are to pluck a feather from their plumage. I do not know why. We give them to Miss Quill.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Donut. Mongo grunted in agreement.
“As to the women… they are those whose sins aren’t enough. They are women who have come to work at the Desperado Club, but when they are brought to Remex, when he twists them, when their heads sometimes fly from their bodies, they do not always turn into krasue. It is not a perfect thing, this transformation. Sometimes they simply die. When this happens, he allows us to feed upon them. Then one of his avatars picks them up and drops them in the alleys. Miss Quill says they have to drop them within a few blocks of his lair. He controls the avatars as if they are his own limbs, but they can’t go far. Not yet.”
“Avatars?” I asked. “Are they other Skyfowl? I don’t understand.”
Crack! The rest of the room slumped forward further. Burgundy’s body began to slide away. The roof above us started to crumble.
“Kill me, please!” she cried as the roof above her started to cave in.
Donut hit her with a Magic Missile in the moments before her body disappeared.
A note from DoctorHepa
So of the remaining chapters in the arc, this one is the least cliff-hangar-y. Chapter 70 and 71, however, both have doozies.
Anyway, I hope you guys had a great weekend. Over on Patreon, I just put up a poll for those with the $5 and up tiers where they are able to vote for the theme of the fifth floor. (Fourth is already locked and loaded). Also, all patrons will be able to vote for the contents of the next fan box, which may come sooner than you think.
Chapter 70
I pulled the rope back into my inventory while I still hung 15 feet off the ground. I was very happy I’d figured out that neat trick early on, before having to invest in multiple lengths of the stuff. Still, Donut was right. I needed a better method of going up and down.
I crashed heavily onto the debris pile, though it didn’t hurt like it would’ve before. I briefly wondered exactly how far I could drop before I would take damage. Above, the entire structure trembled. The whole thing was going to fall in on our heads at any moment. We had to get out of here. The X of Quill’s body was there on my map, right under our feet, enticing me. We’d have to dig for an hour to get to her and the neighborhood map, which would be super useful right about now. That wasn’t going to happen.
A sparkle of something caught my eye. A single, charred box sat half-buried in the debris. I picked it up as we fled. It was one of Miss Quill’s glass cases. It appeared unbroken despite being less than a foot from the explosion, which meant this thing was likely enchanted. The char rubbed right off. The plush creature within was an armored man atop a black horse. I peered at the tag, which said “Kimaris.” I pulled it all into my inventory.
The building rumbled as we cleared the distance. We stopped in the street and turned to watch as the rest of the gigantic building caved in. We’d gotten out of there just in time.
“We know what happened to the prostitutes now. We know why they were falling into the alleys,” Donut said, breathing heavily. “How come the quest didn’t finish?”
“We know how they got there,” I said. “We still don’t know why. We don’t have the whole story.” I eyed the dark warehouse across the street. It was a simple, square, two-level building. There were no lights with only a large pair of double doors at the entrance. I could sense him there, on the second floor. Remex. “If we want to finish this, we need to go into that building. That’s the quest.”
A crowd of NPCs watched the municipal building and mall collapse from a short distance away. I looked about in the air, but I didn’t see any Skyfowl. There had been dozens of them out earlier, but they were all gone. I had the impression they didn’t like flying about at night. Still, it was unusual.
A single blue dot of a Crawler stood there in the crowd. I met the player’s eyes, and he approached us. I focused on the now-familiar name over his head.
“Don’t let him see that fallen oak bracelet on your back leg,” I whispered.
“Why?” Donut asked. “He’s not one of those elves.”
“He’s related to the dead crawler you took it from. He’s also the same guy that killed that boss in the swimming pool. The one that blew up. The Divider.”
“Oh, he’s disgusting,” Donut said as the man got closer. He walked slowly and deliberately. I could see he didn’t have shoes, though I suspected for him this was a recent development thanks to his newly clawed feet. “Someone needs to teach him about muted colors. He looks like someone took Jack’s hat and made an overenthusiastic furry costume out of it.”
“Be nice,” I whispered, trying not to laugh. Jack, the man who had peed on the wall and caused all the chaos on the second floor had been very fond of his orange Cincinnati Bengal’s hat.
“No, I’m serious, Carl. This guy could be the second coming of Chuck Norris, but we can’t have him in the party. People would laugh at us.”
“You know you’re a Persian cat, right?” I said.
“What is that supposed to mean, Carl?”
“Don’t worry,” I muttered. “He doesn’t look like he wants to join our party anyway.”
“Hey there,” I said as he came to a stop before us. The man paused, looking me up and down. I felt my eyebrow raise as he examined me for an extended period.
Crawler #2,165,570. “Daniel Bautista 2”
Level 18.
Race: Tigran.
Class: Swashbuckler.
He looked like a rejected character from Thundercats. He was a well-muscled, shirtless man, about six feet tall. He was furry and orange. Very furry. Very orange. He had the head of a human/big cat hybrid, with the orange, white, and black markings of a Siberian tiger. But unlike a tiger, his eyes had the vertical slits of a housecat. His nose and mouth were human, though covered with wisps of the orange fur. He also had a
long, absurdly shaggy, tail. The effect would be comical if the dude didn’t look as if he could rip me in half. He held nine neighborhood boss markers. He wore a belt with a curved sword hanging in a scabbard. The sword also glowed orange.
“Were you the ones who killed Miss Quill?” he finally asked. He had an Asian accent. I remembered the three corpses we’d run across several days earlier. Grace, Nica, and Lea. They all had the same last name. I assumed this guy was part of that family. They’d had someone with them who’d looted most of their gear. Donut had picked up that fallen oak anklet, and I’d looted two generic strength rings. If the man knew we had them, would he want the items back? That would be too bad for him if he did. I figured it would be for the best if we didn’t broach the subject at all.
“Yes,” I said. “I take it you’re the guy whose quest we fucked over.”
“I am,” he said. “I was supposed to break into her home and kill her. It would get me access to the Desperado Club. But when I went to her home, she rushed off. I tried to follow, but she can fly. She went straight to that building there, and a few minutes later came your explosion and her death.”
“Did she have more of the stuffed creatures in her house?” Donut asked.
Daniel grunted. “Yes. Her entire apartment was filled with them. Over a thousand of them. I have taken them all.”
I shrugged. “Well, sorry about that. Like I said, we also have a quest that involved her. It’s not quite done yet, either.”
He nodded slowly. He wanted to say something, but he was hesitating.
“A few nights back, I saw you on the news program,” he finally added.
“We’re on almost every night,” said Donut proudly.
“You fought at that circus. You killed the lemurs. Is there nothing left?”
He was trying to ask about his family, but he was having trouble getting it out. “No. They’re all gone. There’s a stairwell there now.”
He nodded appreciatively. “There is another three kilometers due east from this village. Crawlers have been writing notes with the stairwell locations and leaving them in the bars.”
“Good,” I said. I paused. “And yes, we saw them. The other Bautistas. We killed the lemurs responsible.”
His tail whisked back and forth. “Thank you,” he said. “They were my sisters and cousin. All five of them died in seconds. It happened so fast. I was with my other cousin, and we barely got away.”
I swallowed. There had only been three bodies, but I remembered thinking at the time that there’d been enough blood for more.
Daniel continued. “He died the next day. My cousin, I mean. He’d given up. I’m all that’s left of my entire family. I had four brothers and sisters. Fifteen cousins.” He looked off into the distance. “I don’t know why I go on. I wish I hadn’t chosen this body. I should’ve remained true to myself. We all die anyway. How can we make it to heaven if god doesn’t recognize us?”
I had no answer for that.
An awkward silence followed. I shifted uneasily. “Well I’m sorry for your loss. And I am sorry about screwing up your quest.”
He nodded. “It is no problem. I am happy knowing they have been avenged. I owe you a debt. Call me if you need me, and I will come.” He held out his fist, initiating the chat transfer. I hesitated, then reciprocated the gesture. His name appeared on my chat list. Then he turned and disappeared into the night.
“That dude is very intense,” I said.
“I would be too if I looked like that,” said Donut. “Their game guide let him pick that race. And one of his sisters or cousins had been that weird tree thing too, remember? It’s like their guide wanted them to look stupid. And Katia’s game guide won’t help her. And remember that floating brain thing we saw in the recap episode? The one for Frank Q and Maggie My? That thing was talking them into murdering people. I think most of these guides don’t like their jobs very much, and they take it out on the crawlers.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “Let me tell you a secret, Donut. Back before all this happened, it was considered a rare thing for somebody to find a job they truly loved.”
“You don’t like fixing boats? Or being in the Navy?”
“Not really. And I was in the Coast Guard. Not the Navy. They’re different,” I said.
“Are you sure? Miss Beatrice always told people you were in the Navy.”
“I’m sure, Donut.”
“Well, what would you have done if you could do anything?” she asked.
I thought about that for a long moment. I thought of the college applications I started to fill out, but never finished. “I would work for the forestry service as a forester.”
“Doing what? Looking at trees all day?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve seen enough ocean to last a lifetime. I’d be happy alone in the woods, watching for forest fires. God, I would give anything. That would be beautiful.”
Donut grunted. “I know what I would do. I would write TV shows. Zev and I are going to start a television show writing team when we get out of here. We’re going to remake Gossip Girl but with an intergalactic slant.”
I chuckled. “Is that right?”
“Zev says the shows on Earth are better than anything she’s ever seen. We could make new ones and bring them to the universe. Maybe if the television shows are good enough, people wouldn’t be so interested in watching real-life people kill each other,” she said.
I didn’t say anything for several moments. “You surprise me every day, Donut.”
She didn’t give me the snarky response I was expecting.
“So,” she said. “We calling it a night or are we going to fight a lich?”
I sighed. We had about three hours until sunrise. “What do you think?”
* * *
The massive door to the Swordsmen depot was not locked. It sat ajar, and I kept a wary eye on it as I climbed the ladder up the exterior side of the building. I was ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. I was more worried about the suits of armor than the lich. If those guys in there woke up, we were fucked. Even though I was now the town’s magistrate, nobody seemed to acknowledge that fact. Before, Featherfall—or I guess Miss Quill—had a very small amount of control over the guardians. I remembered when she tried to have them arrest me, and it hadn’t worked. Something told me I was going to be chased out of my own town the moment they woke up no matter what I did.
Remex the lich had been quiet this whole time. Donut braved jumping to the roof, and she managed to get a hit on her map. She said it was something regular sized, like a normal Skyfowl. She said it hadn’t been moving, and she didn’t see anything else in the room. Her map’s ability to sense mobs was better than my own, but it was also famously unreliable when it came to hidden mobs, so I was cautious.
Earlier, I’d peered through the open door of the first level to get a quick view of what was going on in there and to gauge the height of the interior ceiling. Even in the dark, I could see them. The inactive Swordsmen guards. They stood in silent formation, hundreds of them, reminding me of the Chinese terracotta army. They didn’t have dots over them in my map at all. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
Their metallic bodies swirled with a yellow aura, all of it leading to a point in the ceiling. There would be a soul crystal up there somewhere. Mordecai said that at night, the guards were in “stasis” mode, and that they were invulnerable. I’d entertained the quick notion of locking them in their warehouse and just blowing them all to hell, including the lich, over and over again until they died, which would result in an obscene amount of experience. But it looked as if that wasn’t going to happen. Not tonight.
And I couldn’t just roll a bomb into the lich’s chambers, either. He appeared to be the last bad guy standing, so I needed to get the bad guy soliloquy out of him before we killed him. That way we could win the quest.
We determined that there was no mute spell in the area, or any other protections that we could see
. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a nasty surprise waiting for us, but at least we’d be able to rely on magic.
I placed the tenth and final stick of goblin dynamite on the exterior, exposed joist, using the sticky detonator charge to attach it to the structure. Each stick of hobgoblin pus allowed for up to ten simultaneous detonations with one button press. I was going to use all ten tonight if we had to. I hoped we didn’t.
Below, half the village stood on the street, watching. They held torches and scythes and other items of medieval weaponry. I hadn’t summoned them, but Fitz the tavernkeeper had raised the alarm after he overheard Mordecai and Katia discussing the idea of a lich in town. Even though it was the equivalent of 3:30 AM, he’d rushed out, shouting that the “night patrol” needed to defend the city. Since half the town was already wide-awake with the collapse of the municipal building, it didn’t take long for a crowd to form.
Before we knew it, we had a group of NPCs gathering around the warehouse. They ranged from orcs to humans to elves to dozens of other more obscure races. But no Skyfowl or the smaller Chickadees. It was as if they didn’t care of the plight of the city, as long as the damage remained on the ground. Across the street, smoke still rose from the collapsed debris of the mall and municipal building. The night smelled of dust and fire.
After all of our preparations, we now only had about forty minutes left before the armor suits would reanimate. The tops of distant buildings already glowed with the first signs of the faux sunrise. We had to move quickly.
“That’s the last of them,” I said, stepping my way to the ground. One of the rungs broke off, and I cursed. I spent a quick minute fixing it. I pulled the handmade ladder into my pack. I’d hastily built the thing with crap from my inventory. It was a rickety, slipshod combination of lengths of wood and metal weight bars that would give an OSHA inspector a coronary. It had taken me almost an hour to construct. If we survived past tonight, I was going to build another one of these, but one that was built properly.