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June 13 - December 13, 2025
“I mean, really. I can’t be held accountable for everything I’ve ever said to a stripper. I also told Damascus Steel he was Mongo’s new daddy the last time I was there. Are you going to hold that against me, too?”
“So, what were you in for?” Donut asked Paz. The armored man clanged his way over the fence. He sounded liked a bag of pots and pans being shaken up and down as he moved. It would be impossible for him to sneak up on anybody. He grinned at Donut, revealing a missing tooth. “Sister Ines, what’s rule number one?” “Today is a new day,” Sister Ines said. “We don’t worry about yesterday because we can’t change the past.” “So, a weird sex crime then?” Paz laughed. Anton did not.
She suddenly reminded me of Miriam Dom, and an unexpected wave of sadness washed over me.
Donut: NO WONDER THESE GUYS WEREN’T IN THE TOP FIFTY. WHO WANTS TO LISTEN TO A FAKE CAT RECITE STUPID CHURCH POETRY ALL DAY? Carl: Yeah, it’d be almost as bad as listening to a real cat sing. Donut: THAT WAS REALLY MEAN, CARL.
War is brewing, as it often does in these parts. Every season, the land crabs emerge from their forests to attend their sex parties in the oceans surrounding these lands. The Monk Seals hold the ocean sacred, and the very act of spilling so much crab chowder into their holy waters is considered a sacrilege most foul. This is no minor inconvenience. And it’s not just a few little clouds of the batter, either. There are a lot of these crabs. Like, a lot. And when they let go... man. It’s like a category 5 jizz storm down there. Fish die. The food becomes scarce. The baby monk seals and their
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Donut did a little karate kick on my shoulder and made her wachow! noise.
I don’t know if any of them involve crabs jerking off all over baby seals.
I felt a little jealous, honestly, of their relative anonymity.
Carl, when you were 15 to 18 years old. So, the time when you were left without a guardian until your age of majority when you joined the Navy.
The AI’s description on the mobs was strange. It was unusually short. I examined the one in the boot. Mordecai. Duende. Level 20. Screw these guys. Kill them.
We watched a group of crawlers get attacked and gored by the goddamned Easter Bunny.
and assuming you have proper control over them,
Or that one with the guy with the spiky hair that didn’t make any sense. What was it called? Yugoslavia or something?”
“Carl, did you see that!” Donut exclaimed. “I think that was a Teletubby!”
“You know, I wonder if it’ll be something from another kids’ show. I’d really like the chance to eviscerate someone from Blue’s Clues. The only cast member of that show worth anything was Periwinkle, and they never gave him enough screen time. Plus Mrs. Pepper was obviously pulling a Miss Beatrice on Mr. Salt. How do you get paprika and sage from that combination?”
He waved his flippers, and I realized his body was making noises each time he moved. Wsshh, Wsshh, Wap. Kung Fu movie noises. That’s what it was. They’d added cheesy, Kung Fu noises to all of his movements.
“No,” Donut said, disappointed. “I guess it isn’t. It’s not that Magenta bitch, either.”
“I was talking to Osvaldo. He says they went into the room, and their first opponent was the Pillsbury Dough Boy. You know that little thing from the commercials? They have some lizard that breathes fire, and it literally cooked it.”
Or, who knows? Maybe they’ll all go berserk and try to kill you even harder. I don’t really know. I’m not nearly as omnipotent as those sadistic assholes think.
Quarantine? They already know it doesn’t work. Not when they want to keep their precious enhancement zones humming.
“Christ,” I said, jumping back. “No,” the monster said. “Not quite.” He stood right there, blocking the door, as if he’d been about to knock on it. His dot remained red on the map. He stepped right into the room.
“Oh, sweetie,” Donut said. “You think we care if you can kill our crops? Carl does that all on his own.” She looked up to me. “Do you remember the aloe vera plant incident? Miss Beatrice was most displeased with you. She was only gone for two days.” “That was you!” I said. “You knocked it over and pulled it out!” “Well, you should have watched me better.”
“Well, I hope she feels better soon,” Donut said, “and I hope she’s not on the path to being a super villain. Mongo really likes her.”
but she was the biggest thing we had to an actual pre-collapse celebrity in the dungeon. A fact someone made the mistake of pointing out where Donut could see. I’d had to talk Donut out of angrily listing all of her purple ribbons in chat.
“Oh hey,” Louis said, changing the subject. “Are you guys planning on rescuing Samantha any time soon? I made the mistake of putting her in my chat, and I don’t want to be a dick and block her, but she won’t stop messaging me. Earlier, she wrote ‘YOOHOO’ like fifty times straight in all caps until I answered, and when I did, she asked me what I was wearing.”
The pickles on Quasar’s tie started spinning in circles on their own. Donut couldn’t keep her eyes off of them.
“Look, you walking shawarma skewer.
He rubbed a hand along his bald, alien head. “Carl, how’s my hair look?”
<Note added by Crawler Rosetta. Ninth Edition>
According to Zev, the first thing Rosetta had done upon exiting the dungeon was make a documentary movie, program, whatever about her home planet. The movie was called The Other Side of the Glass.
“So, comrade,” Rosetta said to me. “Let’s talk about your dead mother.”
I was there all night, I remembered. He’d offered me a cigarette, trying to be my friend, to gain my trust. I’d taken it. My first. He brought me an entire pack. Cigarettes. I was fifteen years old.
I had wanted them to think I’d done something to my father. It was stupid, I knew now. But I’d desperately wanted them to see me, to understand me, to know me. I was here, goddamnit. I was real.
Donut, I realized, was on my lap. I couldn’t remember when she’d jumped there.
We have seen the specials about what happened to children left in India for obvious reasons, but your country, the United States of America, was on the other side of the planet.”
“If I knocked something off the counter, then it was placed too close to the edge. All the best cooks know not to place things next to the edge when there are cats in the home. That’s cooking 101, Carl.”
“Apparently Carl needs a proper recipe to do his best work,” Rosetta said.
“You should know, Carl, that I strongly believe you need to be removed from the crawl. I am actively working to have both you and the caprid disposed, and I will eventually succeed.” With that, he blinked and disappeared. “That’s nice,” I said.
I felt it, then. The river. It bubbled up a little here and then. It was growing. I could hear it now. Loud, screaming. I’m still here. I’ve been here the whole time. Patches, when applied improperly, never hold for long.
Comrade, I agree.
Comradeee called it
“Run little ones, run through the cities. Uhhh.” She whimpered uncertainly. “Carl loves a lady with really nice titties!”
Reward: We do not reward people who soil themselves in public.
He bent down to pick one up. And that’s when the music started.
She turned toward the newcomer. “Stop giving Carl an erection!”
“You have to break his finger!” Donut yelled. “Goodness. Carl, look at his erection! Good for you, Anton!”
Reward: In the immortal words of the luscious Bret Michaels, every rose has its thorn.
What you do next will change everything. The choice you make will reverberate not just through your own lives. Or this floor. It has the potential to change the very nature of the dungeon.
And you thought this eighth floor was just going to be filler until we go down to the ninth? We don’t do that here.
You will learn a level-15 Lightning spell if you repair it. You will gain the ability to train this spell to 20. Hint, hint that spell might come in handy later.
My mind raced. I didn’t know how or why or what this Yemaya had to do with the Crown of the Sepsis Whore. But I’d learned long ago to trust Katia, to trust her instincts, to trust her heart.
