Chapter 62 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 62 — Where the Sidewalk Ends

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Bedlam · Previous: Chapter 61 — Three out of four · Next: Chapter 63 — The doggie door · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

<Note added by crawler Herot, 16th Edition>

Summary

Herot's epigraph warns that the more unstable the AI, the more it grants what is said aloud: 'The AI is always listening […] That pliability can be an asset or an extreme danger.' Ines is located three floors under the snake in the FOSCA building.

Carl broadcasts the plan, his and Pony's idea: a way into the stairwell chambers without a key. Stop fighting; keyholders go now; the keyless isolate a chamber, blow away everything around and above it, Build Trench beneath it, and put the whole party underneath; Mordecai is to sell Carl's satchel bombs on the market for demolition. Amayon, struggling against the charm, curses a Ysalte he threatens to flay again — but Samantha feels no other gods present.

The message does not take at first. Prepotente, who once watched Lucia try to teleport a stairwell, puts the odds at fifty percent, then forty, then, after Katia's fumbled explanation and the problem of spin while being sucked upward, thirty-five. Yvonne Vu's stairwell lies under a hundred metres of subway rock; Jurgen breaks his door early to force Osvaldo's squad to dig with them. Carl: 'I will take a 50 percent chance to survive with all of you over a 100 percent chance to survive alone any day […] We will not die on their schedule […] I need you. So stop fucking fighting.' Elle, Li Na and a flood of others agree.

The AI confirms it with a two-hour timer and a regional quest, Where the Sidewalk Ends, hosted by Carl's squad. Amayon, level 250, was betrayed by a brother and expelled from Sheol, and clings on inside a lesser deity; since nobody rides the river for free, his tithe of souls is a wide-area portal to inhale all of Cuba — enough, barely — while other entities work to keep him from returning home. The options: let the portal cast and Cuba go up; free him into his true form and reset it as a World quest, an untethered invulnerable hell prince on a lower floor; a Celestial Hell Boon. Prepotente was right.

In the alley Donut warns that this might ruin their own chance at the stairs. The plan Carl will not spell out: kill Ines, free the prince from his shell, buff him as strong as possible so the spell covers the world, then get under a chamber with no time to dig one out. All of it, he thinks, has been manufactured to force this on them. Donut: 'If you don't go down the stairs, I don't go down the stairs. We are the Princess Posse, and the Princess Posse doesn't leave anybody behind.' Then they go to kill the nun.

Characters

• Carl — Sells a thirty-five per cent plan to the whole dungeon; hosts a quest to lift Cuba.
• Prepotente — Co-author; a discouraging statistician.
• Princess Donut — The Princess Posse doesn't leave anybody behind.
• Elle McGibbons — 'Cowboy'; demands a reason.
• Katia Grim — 'I'm with you, Carl.'
• Amayon — Betrayed by a brother; a tithe of souls; 'Ysalte, I will flay you again.'
• Imani — Slug logistics.
• Louis and Firas — Five skulls from one attack.
• Jurgen — Breaks a door to conscript diggers.
• Osvaldo — Stuck with Jurgen.
• Yvonne Vu — A hundred metres of rock.
• Rezan — Insulted in caps.

Locations

• Havana — An alley near the church; the FOSCA building under the snake.

Motifs

• The Missing Piece — A regional quest to be sucked into hell as a way out.
• Crawler on crawler — 'Stop fucking fighting'; a chance to show how hard we are to kill.
• The System AI — Herot: say it aloud and it happens; 'we might as well make it official.'
• Ysalte — A name a demon prince screams at his captor.
• The three phases — Under the chamber, everyone.
• Sheol — Betrayal among princes; entities keeping him from home.
• 'You're not going to break me' — 'I need you.'
• Found family — A cheesy line still in progress.