Chapter 61 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 61 — Three out of four

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Bedlam · Previous: Chapter 60 — The last rampart · Next: Chapter 62 — Where the Sidewalk Ends · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

<Note added by crawler Milk, 6th Edition>

Summary

The epigraphs: Milk and Herot note that stairwells cannot be pocketed or destroyed, only gated; Rosetta records that after Faction Wars the winners took a portal to a victory party on another floor, and a crawler who leapt after them was cut in half at the threshold — 'the last crawler they killed, of the thousands'.

Carl and Samantha run for the church past the tower where Amayon fountains fire into a growing red cloud. Ines threatens the doorway, not the stairwell; in Turkey the former daughters killed for a key and lost it when their own battle broke the door; doorway-hostage threats are everywhere. Carl sees that the floor was designed to turn them against one another, and it is working. He knows the numbers: 38,000 alive at the floor's start; on average under 8,000 reach the ninth; fewer than a thousand the tenth; fewer than ten the eleventh — crawlers as sands in an hourglass whose last death starts the Ascendency game. Those without keys are all but dead.

Samantha reports that the prince is fighting the charm and casting a portal home in the sky, since big boys need big doors and lots of souls; she thinks Ines is not strong enough to be doing this without help, perhaps from another god, but Carl says Ines worships no new god. Imani reports the level-140 valets' ranged hell portal, a hole labelled 'Entrance to Sheol, Floor 15'; when a second portal reads One of Two, Carl works out that the big demons need two souls. Donut has seen no living NPC in the city, and Carl thinks zombies will not count. Rezan and Mandla report that Masoud exploded touching a zombie-demon's portal, his gear pulled through him, so they fight naked. Three of four teams have no key; Carl concludes that the game is balancing the broken doorways in a fucked-up way, which explains the Build Trench scrolls turning up everywhere. In Turkey the stairwell chamber is a sealed container that Hole and Phase cannot breach. The voice in Carl's head tells him to use his bone key benefit.

Imani has hundreds of Sluggalos in the arcade, mercenaries who die and regenerate in blood for a day: Doctor Bones's Super Spreader plus Conscript turns them into something like totems, the lowest to feed the demons at the church, the strongest an infantry if a barracks upgrade can be bought; Imani cured the men: 'I am a healer. It's what I do.' Mordecai's Sheol primer: a queen, four prince-sons as good as gods, a harem banished to the Nothing by one brother, a matriarchal demon culture never seen; Amayon should not be here this early.

From the Bahamas, Prepotente sees a red tinge in the sky coming from Carl's area and blames Carl. Carl answers that Prepotente is the smartest guy he knows: he does not want it to be local, he wants it to spread over the whole world, and he needs ideas.

Characters

• Carl — Does the arithmetic on keys and doors; decides on a worldwide idea.
• Princess Donut — 'Think faster!'
• Samantha — Explains the portal in the sky.
• Imani — Feeds slugs to demons; cures the strippers.
• Mordecai — Sheol in five sentences; the survivor count hidden.
• Prepotente — A red sky over the Bahamas; asked for ideas.
• Amayon — Casting a door home that needs many souls.
• Sister Ines — Stalled by chat; 'losing my patience.'
• Doctor Bones — Spreader and Conscript on his own colleagues.
• Rezan — Masoud in his teeth.
• Mandla — Fights naked.

Locations

• Havana — Two blocks from the demon's tower; a sky going red.

Motifs

• The three phases — Three squads of four with no key; doorways as hostages; a sealed chamber.
• The crawler count — 38,000 to 8,000 to a thousand to ten; sands in an hourglass.
• Demon Eviction — Ranged portals, two souls for the big ones, explosions at the threshold.
• Sheol — A queen and four princes; Amayon far too early.
• The bone key — 'None of this matters. Quit wasting time.'
• The Sluggalos — Sluggalos as infantry.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Rosetta's dream of lancing them from afar.