Chapter 55 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
Chapter 55 — Survival Royale
Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Bedlam · Previous: Chapter 54 — Demon Eviction · Next: Chapter 56 — The Fumble · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series
Opening
<Note added by Crawler Porthus, Second Edition.
Summary
The epigraph, from Porthus, explains that a demon evicted into a shell is not possessing it — the shell is gone the moment it moves in — and warns never to teleport a possessed shell, which frees the demon in its true form. The old sponsor note suggesting Samantha could enhance Donut's Laundry Day spell, which she denied, was right: she can enhance spells, and greatly. Whether she augmented the recall, Ines's army was bound to her, or the AI was amused, the xistera brought everything: within a quarter-mile of Carl and Donut land the seals, the crabs, the zombies and a level-125 sea snake, all charmed by the poetry spell Ines was about to march on Havana, and the charm breaks. The demon-taken zombie corpses arrive as empty husks, loosing dozens of full-power Sheol demons on the beach miles away, while Eviction keeps turning the zombies here.
The snake is Madre de Aguas, a level-125 city boss, the batshit iteration of Cuba's boa, hunted and nearly flagged by the nun, then glamoured with skills to control every creature in earshot; the AI notes Carl has already met one of her kind, raised from the dead and sent to the Celestial Ascendency to assist a psychopath. Bitten by a zombie fish, she is in pre-zombism, and the AI wants to see a boss zombie during an Eviction. Ines rides her head. It is a Survival Royale Special Event.
Kevin and Magnificent Troy, drunk in orbit, interrupt a Lucia Mar slaughter in Beijing to recap: Ines's Book of Rhymes enhancing Word Weaver; Carl's punted zombie turkey biting a fish and a red tide across the globe; crab sperm ruled a mob as the physical resurrection of their ancestors, triggering the earliest Demon Eviction in crawl history; her sponsor the Nebulars. On screen in Sheol, the demon Yuguleth is sucked upward into a zombie seal while hundreds more rapture after him. Samantha, on tape, threatens a zombie's mother on a mission for Carl, and a hundred level-140 Petty Demon Pleasure Valets are left on the beach.
Eight combatants: the Royal Court, Sister Ines, mindless zombies, possessed zombies, crabs, seals, the Madre — and one more. Each allegiance is ally or enemy; choosing ally against an enemy gives her a ten-second head start. Carl has Donut pick ally anyway. Ines, from the snake: 'None of this is real […] There are no aliens. It's demons. It's always been demons. Hell has opened […] These are the wages of our sin, and there is nothing left for us but to burn!' Carl tells her she is right, but they are not real demons either, and asks her to pick them as an ally. The Book of Voodoo adds Quan Ch. Battle commences.
Characters
- Carl — Recalls a battlefield by accident; pleads with a nun.
- Samantha — Enhances a spell she swore she could not; 'Mr. Wishy Washy Carl.'
- Sister Ines — Word Weaver at 15 by the Nebulars' gift; laughing; 'It's always been demons.'
- Princess Donut — 'Hi Magnificent Troy! Hi Kevin!'
- Madre de Aguas — Cuba's mother of waters, uncharmed, pre-zombified, furious.
- Kevin and Magnificent Troy — Drunk in orbit with a microphone.
- Quan Ch — The eighth.
- Yuguleth — 'I hate this fucking place.'
Locations
- The Cuban coast — A quarter-mile of teleported war; the beach of freed demons beyond.
Motifs
- Demon Eviction — Shells and roots; a hundred valets freed; Porthus's do-not.
- Samantha's power — Spell enhancement admitted by accident; a paragraph nobody can read.
- The Nebulars — Ines's sponsor and patron; a Book of Rhymes.
- The show — Survival Royale; betting from a trapped booth; the AI making rules up.
- The Celestial Ascendency — Yemaya as 'one of them already', assisting 'a psychopath'.
- The gods — Ines's theology of demons and sin.
- The Filthy Little Crawler's Book of Voodoo — Entries for Ines and Quan as they come in range.