Chapter 10 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 10 — Pueblo de los Olvidados

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: Havana · Previous: Chapter 9 — The Mock Battle Arena · Next: Chapter 11 — Asojano · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

“We did it three times,” Paz said as we walked toward the nearby park, which turned out to

Summary

Practice-arena reports: a fox with a gem that wets itself and teleports, a Chinese chimpanzee Yago beat, Osvaldo's fire lizard cooking the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Katia's teddy bear and flying piranhas — 'anything from TV or videogames.' Sister Ines, angry all morning: 'It's all blasphemous […] they see the surface, steal it, and use it to make something shiny and pretty and completely devoid of its meaning.' Even the T'Ghee cards were sacred to the people they were stolen from. Florin hunts something blasphemous in Ecuador; the Lis hunt a real dragon; Katia hunts a Christmas cat and asks Carl not to tell Donut. The Colón Cemetery — one of the largest in Latin America, streets and monuments, 'full of life', Anton's Tito buried there — is fenced in black spikes and fog nobody remembers. Sister Ines strides for the gate ('We can handle it if you're afraid'), Anton after her ('Don't be such a woman', to Paz), then relents: circle first. From a levitate potion the mobs drift aimlessly; a Club Vanquisher spire and a bathroom mean it is not a boss chamber but a town — 'Entering Medium Ghommid Settlement', corrupted, unclaimable until the rot is gone. A Santero's presence aggravates the unsettled dead, who will only attack Paz, whose holy armour is for exactly this; the gate locks. The quest, Pueblo de los Olvidados: ghommids are 'your regular, run-of-the-mill other-realm creature', a settlement where the veil is thin, turned ravenous by one spirit; find and eradicate the source — and a paragraph about quarantine and enhancement zones, 'They're in for a big surprise one of these days', that vanishes when Carl pastes it into his notes. Spirit Box traps everywhere: rooted, possessed. Three level-30 unsettled ghommids: a man made of mouths, an elf with a chin to his navel, a blind belly with one withered arm — Kipper, the Dirt Nap's dishwasher. Then a horde. Carl punches an owl-ghommid without his gauntlet and his arm freezes in its beak, a health bar over the arm, drained; Mongo's magic teeth save it and Sister Ines thaws it. Tripper sets off every trap; Wall of Fire fiercer with the ring; holy goopers and infused smoke curtains; Puddle Jumper to a crypt with a neon sign, The Yellow Zone. At the door, walking, not shuffling, a barefoot man in a straw headdress to the waist with a fat wand and black tendrils in the ground — level 130. Combat ends inside; Sister Ines says open the door, he cannot hurt them here. 'Christ.' 'Not quite.' He walks in.

Characters

• Carl — Reads a town where others see a boss room; an arm nearly shattered.
• Sister Ines — 'It is all a mockery of our faiths'; angry, and unafraid of a horde.
• Paz Lo — Holy armour for the aggro of the unsettled; 'Not again'
• Anton Lopez — 'Don't be such a woman'; a monkey crossbow; his Tito's grave.
• Princess Donut — Psionics useless on the dead; Puddle Jumper to the crypt.
• Mongo — Magic teeth caps against ghosts.
• Asojano — Level 130, barefoot, a straw headdress and a wand, not yet named (ch. 11); walks into the saferoom.

Locations

• The Colón cemetery — A Ghommid settlement behind a fence of spikes: streets of tombs, a Club Vanquisher, the Yellow Zone.

Motifs

• Earth mythology — Sister Ines names the theft: surface without meaning, myth mixed with fiction.
• The System AI — A paragraph about quarantine and enhancement zones that erases itself.
• The Scavenger's Daughter — Black souls mixing with green.
• Quests — Pueblo de los Olvidados, compulsory.