Chapter 224 + Title Reveal.

Chapter 224

<Note added by Crawler Azin. 17th Edition>

Spiders. By the gods, why? In our world, they only exist in myth, but apparently, they’re a real thing and are common in the universe. What sort of nightmare must the Creators have been having to design such a thing?  

<Note added by Crawler Tin. 21st Edition>

I don’t know. I think they’re cute.

<Note added by Crawler Tin. 21st Edition>

Never mind. Holy shit, never mind. Fuck spiders.

It took another half an hour to find the realm of Shi Maria. We didn’t have to look hard.

Donut found Samantha’s spot on the map just as we started to see the first remnants of spider web on the side of the road, glistening in the rain. Broken crab husks littered the area around the webs along with the bones of several creatures. After another quarter of a mile down the road, the entire north side of the road was filled with white web. A bit further, the web was strewn across the road. A single moped was caught and was inexplicably hanging upside down about ten feet off the ground.

The strands were everywhere, not in any sort of pattern, reminding me of white cotton candy. If we touched even a single strand, it would stick tight. Mordecai said the type of spider this was based on didn’t actually use webs that were adhesive, but they made the web sticky anyway because, well, fuck you. We had multiple methods of dealing with it. The easiest was Donut’s Magic Missile, which cut straight through the strands. They shrank away and shriveled from fire. We also had an anti-adhesive potion that would “probably” work according to Mordecai. I didn’t want to test it.

Instead of taking Samantha’s suggestion and fighting our way into the spider’s nest, we talked her into leading the spider to the edge of the road. After going back and forth a few times, she said the spider had agreed, and they were on their way.

Donut remained rigid on my shoulder, too nervous to complain about the rain. Mongo wasn’t protected from the blind and insanity debuff, and Donut had put him away.

“Do you really think we won’t have to fight her?” she asked. “Samantha says she wants to join the party. I don’t see how that’ll work. We can’t have someone with that sort of skin condition in the party. Plus, you know, that whole thing where she drives people insane. It would ruin Louis and Juice Box’s wedding.”

“We’ll see what she has to say, but you’re right. We can’t add her to the deck until her health is down to 5%. She’s probably going to pretend to be friendly but then will attack. That’s the vibe I get from her description at least.”

I paced back and forth worriedly as they approached. This was one of the most dangerous monsters we’d ever faced alone. We were ready for her if we did have to fight, but I still felt uneasy. “If she casts anything, we attack. If she retreats back into the web, we’ll let her go.”

“What if she runs, but she still has Samantha?” Donut asked.

“Uh, well, we’ll play it by ear.”

“And what if she’s really nice and just wants to hang out with us?”

“We’ll tell her we have to flag her, or she has to go away. We don’t have time for bullshit.”

“That might make Samantha mad.”

“I have an idea to deal with that.”

Donut let out a little gasp. “I see them! Oh, wow, that’s a big dot. It’s red!”

“Okay,” I said. We were expecting that. “Be ready.”

The spider only had a few spells we weren’t immune to, but she couldn’t know what would and wouldn’t work against us. I hoped she would go straight to her most potent attacks first. Even though we had the stats from the Bahamas book, Donut would take the Size-Up potion the moment she appeared.

“Yoohoo! Carl and Donut! Where are you?” came Samantha’s call.

I instinctively took a step back as the trees rustled. It continued to rain. All around, the pillowy mess of spiderwebs started to vibrate, as if they’d all suddenly been pulled taut.

Shi Maria appeared, emerging between two trees, walking sideways along the branches. An involuntary shiver coursed through me.

“Carl, look at her legs! They’re really long,” Donut hissed. Her voice was more panicked than usual. “Do you think she knows about all the spiders we’ve been killing for that god lady? Oh my god. What if she knows? What if this is a trap?”

“Let’s try not to mention that out loud,” I whispered.

The drawing in the book didn’t do this thing justice. She only had eight legs, but the way they moved gave the impression there were too many of the appendages, and they were much too long, too thin, too angled for the large body, the way they all fought one another as the bulbous abdomen bounced and twisted like a buoy. Somehow jerky and graceful all at once. As she skittered toward us, the legs occasionally bunched together above the main body, like the broken arms of a folded umbrella before popping out again to help her glide seamlessly across the trees. It was horrifying.

I had a memory of Donut finding and eating several daddy long legs when she was still a kitten. She’d chow down on the small spiders and make a funny mewling noise as they wriggled in her throat, then she’d do it again. Sometimes she’d find the spiders and rip one or two legs off before I could stop her, and she sit there and bat at the disconnected leg as it twitched on the floor. I had thought it was kinda funny in a sadistic way at the time. I suddenly felt guilty for every spider I’d ever killed.

Shi Maria did a turn, almost like a barrel roll. She disappeared into the canopy of one tree right on the edge of the road and then appeared at the very top, looking down at us. Her body was upright, but the almost-human head was inverted. It twisted to face us, still upside-down. The head was attached to a long, puddy-like neck. That hadn’t been in the image, either. She made a clicking noise.

The description was similar, but not exactly the same as the one in the Bahamas book.

The Screamer. Reaper Spider Minion.

Level 140 City Boss.

This is a demi-god.

Warning: This mob inflicts Permanent Insanity.

Warning: This mob inflicts Permanent Blindness.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Reaper Spider minions are regular mobs one may find on the fifteenth floor, working as minions of something kinda fucked up we’re not ready to talk about yet. They have celestial blood. They’re scary as shit, and if you’re not prepared for their special attacks, you just be better off killing yourself instead. When one encounters them outside of the 15th floor, they’re usually working as traveling merchants, selling rare and valuable wares. Anything one buys from them is usually quite dangerous.

But not all of them are merchants. Some have escaped out into the lower levels and have found their own path. Some have grown in power beyond that of a regular Reaper Spider Minion. This particular one is special. She has had many names. She currently goes by Shi Maria, and her story is long and tragic and can’t possibly be fully told here. Once upon a time, she found herself married to a god. It didn’t go so well. It’s said she killed him. It was pretty much his own fault. Don’t stick it in crazy, and all that. The thing is, she doesn’t remember actually killing him. Honestly, it’s not really important. What is important is that she was kicked out of the celestial realm and banished to this swamp where she spends her days plotting on how to get revenge on everyone and everything who has ever done her wrong.

That list is very, very long.

Shi Maria continued to stare at us with her set of four, bulbous eyes. Her face wasn’t as burned and crusty as in the drawing, nor as old, but she still appeared to be covered with flaking skin. She had long, dangling black hair that looked greasy, unhealthy. A pair of long, hair covered fangs jutted from her mouth.

The creature made an angry, rapid clicking noise. Her dot remained red on the map.

“Hey, uh, Samantha?” I called. “Where are you?”

“Eyes down here, beefcake,” she said. “What took you so long?” I startled to see her at my feet. I’d been so transfixed by the spider, I hadn’t seen her roll up. The sex doll head was filthy. Mud and leaves and strands of spider thread covered her face and hair. She started snuffling around my feet, sniffing as she rolled around me. “You’ve been hanging out with strippers. I can smell them on you!”

“Why don’t you introduce us to your new friend?” Donut asked from my shoulder. She, too, had her eyes fixed on the massive spider.

Shi Maria clicked again. The sound was fast and disconcerting, like a faulty solenoid in an ignition switch. Or a woodpecker on cocaine. The rain continued to pelt into us. The woman’s head twisted a few times, turning clockwise. It made three full circles before settling right side up. A white fluid drooled from one of her enormous fangs. The large tree under her cracked and creaked as the spider shifted. One of the sharp, thin legs undulated up and down. It was long enough to reach us here on the street.

I took another step back.

“Oh, oh yes,” Samantha said. “Shi Maria, this is Donut, and this is Carl. Donut, Carl, meet my new best friend. Her name is Shi Maria, but she prefers to be called MaeMae. She is very shy, but is quite funny once you get her talking. Maybe tonight she can tell you the pachyderm story. I just laughed and laughed.”

Donut: HER STATS ARE JUST LIKE IN THE BAHAMAS BOOK BUT SHE HAS SOMETHING ELSE. SHE HAS THE COCKROACH SKILL LIKE I DO. IT’S LEVEL 15!

Fuck, I thought. That saved her from a fatal blow. At level 15, it would fully heal her, and I was pretty sure it would not only activate twice in a single fight, but it’d give her a short shield in the meantime. An already dangerous fight just got a lot more difficult. If it came to it, we’d pretty much have to flag her and be careful not to accidentally pull her health too low.

Shi Maria suddenly hissed, the sound like gas leaking from a canister. The towering legs flexed. A pair of branches in the tree snapped. I had my mental finger poised on my Protective Shell barrier.

“Ha!” Samantha said to the monster. “I never noticed that.”

Donut: CARL IS SHE REALLY TALKING TO THE SPIDER, OR IS SHE MAKING ALL THIS UP?

Carl: I have no idea.

“Anyway,” Samantha said. “She’s going to go adventuring with us. I have it all planned. Okay, listen to this. MaeMae is going to cast the spell that moves me to the body. Then we are going to go kill lots of bad guys, and then after that, she’s going to travel to Larracos with us and help us fight against all those other faction wars teams while I reunite with my little baby girl. I will have a short, torrid sexual affair with Louis, but I will run away crying after our third or fourth date because I simply can’t anymore. After all, my heart belongs to someone else. Juice Box will forgive me, and she and Louis will babysit for me while I have a girls’ night out with Donut, and Katia, and Britney, and Li Na, and MaeMae, and Elle. Carl, you can’t come. Not Imani, either. I don’t like her. She wants to steal my man. It’ll basically be a bachelorette party, and we can all wear matching shirts. After that, we will go find my king, and I will marry him and have lots of weird sex for a week straight as a honeymoon. And after that, I promised MaeMae we would all find her missing husband. He might be in the Nothing, so that’s going to be a bit of a chore. Then after all of that, we will go back to the celestial realm, and I will kill my mother. Sound like a plan?”

“Wow,” Donut said. “You really do have it all planned out.”

“You have a lot of time to think when you’re in the stomach of a spider.”

“But how are we going to get matching t-shirts for all of us?”

Shi Maria clicked and hissed.

Samantha giggled. “Oh, don’t you know it, girlfriend. Donut, don’t worry about it. We’ll make it work.”

“Wait, isn’t your sand ooze daughter all grown up?” Donut asked. “Wasn’t she married to that mage guy? Why would she need a babysitter?”

“That’s the part of this plan you have trouble with?” I asked.

“Actually, no,” Donut said. “Samantha, I think you might want to skip the affair with Louis part. Juice Box has gotten really good at decapitating people. The last thing you want is to get your body back only to get turned back into a head.”

“I can’t skip that part,” Samantha said. “That’s one of my favorite parts.”

“Have you told Louis this?”

“Oh, yes, but he’s blocked me in the chat.”

As they went back and forth, I kept my eyes on the monster just sitting there above us in the trees. I considered our options. We could just straight-up attack the spider, but I feared Samantha would flip out and fight us. We’d have to go with my other plan. Samantha’s insistence that the monster cast the reanimate spell actually made this easy. If she saw the spider couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help, her attitude would change instantly.

Carl: Donut, get ready. We’re going to speed this up.

I pulled the body from my inventory. It appeared in my arms, rigid like a board. It was a full-sized, pure naiad. She wore a flowing dress made of seaweed, and she smelled of brackish water. Even though it was the size of an adult, the body weighed nothing. Her silky, white hair hung down, so long it hit the pavement. I gently placed the whole body down on the wet, black asphalt. She appeared as if she was sleeping.

This wasn’t a real person, but a tattoo made flesh by Signet’s final spell. A tattoo of Signet’s mother.

Princess Lunette. Incomplete Flesh Golem.

“Here it is,” I said.

Once a “fleshmancer” cast the proper spell, Samantha would zap into the thing, and she’d have a body again. The body of Signet’s mother. It wasn’t clear what would happen to the sex doll head.

Donut: IF SHE BECOMES A REGULAR NAIAD, DOESN’T SHE HAVE TO STAY IN WATER? WE DON’T EVEN HAVE A BATHTUB IN THE GUILD.

Carl: Something tells me that’s not going to be a problem. Not today.

Donut: IT WOULD RUIN THE BACHELORETTE PARTY IF WE HAVE TO DO IT UNDER WATER.

“Okay! Yay! Here we go!” Samantha said. She did a little hop and then rose off the ground, floating between us and the spider in the tree. She’d claimed she’d been unable to float once we hit this floor, but it appeared she’d re-figured it out. She was so excited, she was shaking. “Okay, MaeMae, do your thing!”

The spider clicked and gestured at the body. Leaves and branches went flying as her forward leg waved.

“What? I did too tell you it was a golem!” Samantha said, incredulous. “It was the first thing I said!”

More rapid clicks.

“Supplies? What sort of supplies? You said you could do it as soon as Carl got here!”

Click, click, hiss.

Carl: Here we go. Mute first, then Magic Missile.

“I’m going to kill your mother.”

Donut: CARL, CARL HER DOT TURNED WHITE!

At the same moment, the spider in the tree burst into tears. At least I was pretty sure it was tears. Her forward legs reached over and started to rub at her four eyes while the whole, colossal thing made a hiss-hissing sound. Actual, water tears flowed down her face. She click-hissed at Samantha.

The other legs all retracted, and the massive boss suddenly crashed to the ground, rolling as she did so. Branches snapped and cracked as she tumbled. Behind her, a tree fell over. She splashed into the marsh just off the road with a crunch, rolling onto her back. Her legs splayed up over herself and retracted, like a bug that had just been knocked off with a shot of Raid. She started to rock back and forth. Her head twisted on her swivel neck as the tears continued to flow.

I eased my mental finger off Protective Shell as I stared at the white dot on the map. What the hell?

Samantha let out a big sigh. “Oh, calm down, MaeMae. No need to make a scene. I swear, sometimes you are just like my child. I won’t kill your mother. Not today. Stop crying. Stop this instant.” She floated toward the sobbing city boss.

The spider continued to weep.

“No, no, it’s okay. MaeMae. Come on. It’s okay. We will go get the supplies.”

The spider, still on her back, clicked.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Samantha said. “I’ll forgive you.”

The spider gestured at me and clicked again, this time for longer.

Samantha: CARL YOU HAVE TO SAY SOMETHING NICE TO HER. YOU HURT HER FEELINGS.

Carl: How did I do that? I haven’t talked to her at all.

Samantha: YOU FORGOT TO TELL HER THAT SHE WAS STUNNING WHEN YOU FIRST MET HER. IF SHE’S GOING TO BE TRAVELING WITH US, YOU HAVE TO CALL HER STUNNING, OR SHE’LL OPEN HER FIFTH EYE AND FORCE YOUR MIND INTO THE DIMENSION OF UTTER, BLACKENED PSYCHOSIS FOR ETERNITY.

Carl: Samantha. She can’t travel with us.

Samantha: WHY NOT?

Shi Maria pulled her legs even tighter together and started to rock back and forth.

Samantha returned to us. She floated up to eye-level, which was creepy as shit. She had a leaf stuck to the side of her mouth, and I reached forward to peel it off. She growled and snapped at my finger and then continued talking like it was nothing. “She’s going to be like that for at least ten minutes. She gets panic attacks. The best thing to do is just let her work through it. Singing helps, if you want to serenade her, Donut.”

“Really?” Donut asked, perking up.

“Don’t sing to the spider,” I said. “Samantha. We need to get out of here. We can’t take her.”

Samantha made a little whimper. “But she needs to get supplies for my body. She says she needs something another spider like her sells before she can cast the spell, and they aren’t around until maybe the ninth floor or deeper.”

“So, she knows about the floors?” I asked.

“She knows everything,” Samantha said. “We’ve done a lot of talking.”

Even though this should’ve been obvious, I hadn’t realized until that moment exactly how much Samantha knew. It made sense. She didn’t seem to fully grasp it all, not if she was still gung ho on us trying to find her beloved king guy. I was pretty sure he didn’t exist. At least not until the system decided he did. That was a conversation for later.

But, still. Herot’s hypothesis that self-aware NPCs were highly contagious seemed to be true. None of that mattered right now.

“Look, Samantha,” I said. Behind her, the spider was making little hissing noises. “She’s too goddamned dangerous. I was going to try to flag her for our deck, but if we don’t have to fight her, we should avoid it. We’ll find another mage for you. Okay?”

“Wait. Did you only come here because you wanted to add her to your stupid card deck? You didn’t come here to save me?”

I thought about that. Mordecai had certainly wanted us to abandon Samantha. I’d been saying we needed to come here and flag the spider. Rescuing Samantha was always, ostensibly, a part of it, though of secondary concern. Would we have come at all if the flags hadn’t been a thing?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I would have come. That surprised me. It wasn’t an unwelcome realization.

I reached forward, and I put my hand on Samantha’s cold cheek. She instinctively reached over and chomped down, but she didn’t bite hard. She kept her mouth closed onto my hand, and I met her eyes.

“Samantha. You are crazy. Nobody knows why or how you’re getting all these new powers, and it kinda freaks me out because we don’t know where it’s going to stop. But on the last floor, we couldn’t have survived without you. You are part of our team. So, yes, I would’ve come save you.”

“Really?” she asked, mouth still full of my hand.

“Really,” I said.

She gently removed my hand from her mouth, and she looked at me, eyes shining. She took a moment to compose herself.

“I’m not going to fuck you, Carl. You need to stop trying.”

I smiled and patted her. “Let’s get out of here while we can.”

“No, Carl. I can’t leave her. She’s my best friend.”

“But she ate you,” Donut said. She lowered her voice further. “Plus, look at her face.”

“Oh, don’t I know it. We’ve had the moisturizer conversation, but she doesn’t know what that is.”

“We can’t take her,” I said. “Not unless she’ll let us turn her into a card.”

“Yes, yes, Carl. We knew it might come to this.”

“She knows about the cards?” I asked.

“Of course. Elle told me all about it, and I told MaeMae all about it. MaeMae said you’d probably want to turn her into a card. She’s very smart. She made me ask Elle a bunch of questions about how the cards worked. MaeMae says once Donut has all six cards, she can just pop out whenever, and she’ll be immortal just like me!”

“Uh, that’s not exactly how it works,” I said.

“Elle?” Donut asked. “Since when have you been talking to Elle?”

“Oh, Elle is just a delight,” Samantha said. “At first I thought she wanted to move in on Louis, you know, because she messaged me to tell me to leave him alone. I was ready to pull her fairy wings right off. But it turns out it was just because I was making him uncomfortable, and she was just being protective. Not because she wants him for herself. She says even though her garage has recently been refurbished, it’s still closed to business and filled with dust. So I forgave her. She’s asking me questions about the story of the Fourth Season, and she’s been telling me about that card game. That’s why she’s invited to my bachelorette party. I like her.”

I had no idea what the fourth season alluded to. I filed that information away to ask Elle later.

If this spider willingly allowed us to flag her, that would be great, but it felt like a trap. The book and description went out of its way to tell us how cunning and smart she was. She had to know that we wouldn’t be able to keep the cards once we left the floor. If so, what was her plan?

I remembered something Cascadia had said at the beginning. We would be able to keep a single card at the end of the floor.

It wasn’t clear how that would work, but that had to be it. I eyed the “sobbing” spider. This was all an act. It had to be.

I gently pulled Donut off my shoulder and put her on the ground.

“You two stay here.”

“Carl,” Donut said, but I held up my hand.

If Shi Maria was angling toward getting us to bring her down to the tenth floor, that was fine for now. That meant she wouldn’t deliberately kill us.

It was an opportunity. A dangerous one.

I was Wisp Armor on myself. I took several steps toward the crying spider. I formed a fist, and my gauntlet appeared. I kept Protective Shell at the ready.

“Listen up,” I said. “Shi Maria, whatever your name is. I’ll get you to the next floor, or however deep you need, if you help us. But we gotta do the card thing.”

The spider moved one of her legs, which had been covering her eyes. She stopped crying and regarded me. The change was instantaneous.

I continued. “You turn any of my friends blind or insane or otherwise hurt anyone we’re not already fighting, and the deal is off. I will rip the card. But if you help us, you have my word we’ll help you. Do you understand? Click once if you do.”

She undulated, unfurling her long, terrible legs. She turned, righting herself, keeping her mass low. She did it in such a way that her head did not spin or move at all. She kept my eyes the whole time. As I stared at her, I saw it, the closed, fifth eye in the center of her head. It was small. The size of a marble. That was how she cast her spell. She opened that eye, and all who regarded it would be blinded or driven insane.

Even though that eye was closed, I felt it, too. It’s right there. I remembered my mother, standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Do you remember the circus, Carl?

And then, the spider talked.

“I understand the bargain, worshipper of Emberus,” Shi Maria said, her voice a sultry and perfectly clear whisper.

A deep chill washed over me.

“So, you do talk,” I said.

“That fool Samantha says you keep your promises. I could devour you now, but if I am to leave this horrible place, I must trust in you. I must find my husband and prove I didn’t kill him. In order to do that, I must first get to Larracos. I have no quarrel with you. Once the city is reached, I will tell you how to undo the card magic, and you can set me free. In the meantime, I will help you. It is an easy bargain for you. While I am trapped as a card, I would be at your mercy. No?”

“Can you really help Samantha get her body back?”

“I don’t have the proper magic, but I know of a master pulpmancer in Larracos,” she said. “This same mage would be able to set me free from the card prison you would put me in. Expensive, but it’s possible.”

Mordecai had said something similar, when I asked him about the possibility of saving Paz. He knew exactly where that pulpmancer’s shop was, but it was in the bottom levels of Larracos. The mage was most likely dead. Shi Maria didn’t know this. I hoped.

“You’ve been lying to Samantha,” I said. “How can I possibly trust you? I will never believe a word that comes out of your mouth.”

A small grin played across her disturbing face. With her upper lips wrapped around the strange, hairy fangs, the expression was terrifying. “You don’t need to trust me, Carl. I will be at your mercy. You know what I want, and that gives you power over me.”

I swallowed. That reminded me of Odette’s first piece of advice to me.

She was emulating me. She was trying to act like I would act, if I was in her position. She’d done the same thing with Samantha. This one was smart. There was no way we could ever trust her. But I did believe she wanted to get off this floor.

The spider cocked her head to her side. “What is it you want, I wonder? I could look upon you with my eye. We would both know, then. Samantha told me of your troubles with certain deities.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but I was stopped by a notification.

New Quest. The Bedlam Bride.

An escort quest? Really? Psshhh. Piece of cake.

The problem is, you’re the cake.

The Screamer. Shi Maria. The Bedlam Bride. It doesn’t matter what her name is today. Get her crazy ass to the city of Larracos. That’s it. That’s the quest.

Reward: A simple prize for a simple quest.

The monster looked upon the gauntlet on my right hand. She then rolled over onto her side, exposing the bottom of her mass. Her legs on one side arched up into the air, claw-like, hanging over me like a row of sharp teeth. Her belly was almost translucent, like frosted glass. I could see hints of organs throbbing about within her.

“Injure me just enough to cast the card magic. Do not attempt to slay me, Carl. Many have tried. All have failed. I have more tricks than your mind can imagine.”

“That, I do believe,” I said as I punched her in the stomach.

~~

Hey everyone!

And now, they have their team. Expect a poll soon. Yes, it involves that Combo card they got.

So. I’ve been going back and forth on this for a bit because I wasn’t certain about something plot wise, but with this chapter, it’s pretty much locked in place. As of right now, book six is tentatively titled The Eye of the Bedlam Bride. I’m still a little hesitant on going with a B-centric name since the last one was Butcher’s Masquerade, but I kinda dig it. I was also considering just the Bedlam Bride, but the eye part is important in the scheme of the overall naming convention of all the books.

The different stages of Brindle Grubs: