Chapter 15 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 15 — The Thorn Room

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: Havana · Previous: Chapter 14 — The gauntlet run · Next: Chapter 16 — Ogun · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

<Note added by Crawler Carl, 25th Edition>

Summary

'After all this time, it's still shocking to me how quickly everything can change.' 'Betrayal!' — In the Hall of the Mountain King in heavy metal — and a ghost in a yellow dress of light behind another shrine: Oshun, whose charisma is a hand on the shoulder, a whisper in the ear ('I must protect her'). Donut through the headset: 'Stop giving Carl an erection!' Wisp Armor is no help; Carl snaps his own index finger. Then Katia, to him alone: don't touch the shrine you meant to; fix the blue one, Yemaya's — 'I have the Crown of the Sepsis Whore on my head, but there's a way out […] first we have to resurrect the goddess Yemaya. They engineered it this way' — cut off. A Celestial Thorn Room: seven shrines, one Sun, one choice, each with a thorn. Ogun (no gift, a smite if not chosen, ascended already and wanting no rivals home); Legba, a fedora and a coin and a rooster (half chance to dodge smites, Confusing Fog); shy Shango (a lightning spell trainable to twenty — 'Hint, hint'); Oshun (five fatal blows survived, fifty per cent charisma, Heal Party); Asojano (win the quest, or fight a city boss and the ghommids surge); Inle, deaf and mute, a sea serpent round him, back from the Nothing and not all there (immunity to seeping conditions, fifty per cent constitution, then back to the Nothing, 'don't tell him'); and Yemaya the river mother, who almost made it on her own and whose friend Eileithyia misses her — a special card for each squad and a boon from a real god. Five seconds. 'But having to kill Katia, too?' Anton lurches to Oshun and hurls Ogun's piece out the door; Asojano attacks. 'Phantasm': Laundry Day on Bomo blows his Scrapheap armour — dozens of pieces sewn to a shirt, trash daggers in the gaps — across the room (one into Carl's arm), and Legionnaires of the Damned pours screaming ghosts into every piece: a tornado of metal the size of Bomo, a weed whacker of hornets, on the Lord of Smallpox. Bomo eats the soap. Legba offers Paz protection and a lay; Oshun and Inle speak inside Carl's head — 'How loud is it, Carl? How deep is it?'; 'She can’t heal a canyon that’s dug this deep. I can.' Sister Ines has done something to wake Anton; half his fingers are gone. Bomo assembles Yemaya's obelisk like Tetris. Asojano's goo hits Paz and Anton and kills the possessed armour; the closed door drains him; his skirts gone, a pale frightened man with boils, and Carl flags him at the blink — 'You have been infected with SlugPox.' The last daggers carry the skull-gem to the obelisk. The room freezes and remakes itself: tiles and blue tributaries, fountains, the roof healed, the ghommids outside cured and blinking; the Temple of Yemaya, a Club Vanquisher entrance; 'The Goddess Yemaya has re-ascended. She is welcomed into the family by all.' Carl's boil pops a toothed, talking slug ('Stay away from my daddy!') that bites Donut's nose; each next one a level higher. Paz and Anton bleed under a flaming-anvil mark. 'Ogun has made an appearance in the realm.'

Characters

• Carl — Breaks his own finger; chooses Katia's shrine on faith; flags a god; oozes slugs.
• Katia Grim — A private message: the crown is on her head, and Yemaya is the way out.
• Princess Donut — Laundry Day and the Legionnaires: a metal tornado; 'I still don't like that name.'
• Bomo — Exploded out of his armour; eats the bubbles; builds an obelisk.
• Anton Lopez — Charmed, then fingerless; throws away his god's shrine; weeps.
• Paz Lo — Tries to hold his cousin; smitten-to-be.
• Sister Ines — Wakes Anton the hard way; cannot cure a god's curse.
• Asojano — Brought to his knees by Bomo's scrap armour under Donut's Legionnaires, then drained by the shut door; flagged as he dies.
• Oshun — Charm as a voice in the ear; 'I can drain it all away.'
• Legba — A rooster, a coin, a fedora, a bribe.
• Inle — Deaf, mute, from the Nothing: 'You're just like me, Carl.'
• Yemaya — The river mother, re-ascended by a cretin and some daggers.
• Mongo — Snatches a level-two slug from the air.

Locations

• The Colón cemetery — La Iglesia de los Olvidados, then the Temple of Yemaya with a Club Vanquisher door.

Motifs

• The orishas — Seven shrines, one Sun of Reawakening, every choice with a thorn; 'We don't do that here.'
• The Crown of the Sepsis Whore — Katia's confession by chat; a plan that starts with a goddess.
• The river in Carl's head — Two gods offer to drain the canyon.
• The gods — A smite imminent: a flaming anvil over two heads.
• SlugPox — Boils that birth toothed slugs, a level higher each time.