The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #6)

by Matt Dinniman

She’s right there, man. Right. There.

The raw materials used to lubricate the forward momentum of the galaxy’s inevitable downfall.

I put them away and waited for the Prepotente box to open. The box itself was made of wood painted gold and was made to look like Prepotente’s head. “Carl,” Donut asked, looking up from her own set of adventurer boxes. “Why is there a floating Prepotente statue in my room?” It appeared it was going to open with some hinges at the top, as if opening a compartment to the brain. “Man,” I said. “I actually wish he was here so I could see the look on his face when...” The box screamed. I almost jumped out of my skin.

I mentally wrote: You have bedhead, Donut. I watched the book buzz, and Donut leaped back and batted it with her paw.

These guys are semi-intelligent. It’d be like you guys kidnapping dolphins, caging them, and forcing them to do tricks for fat, sunburned tourists. Oh wait...

“Hvar eru buxurnar þínar? Hvar eru skórnir þínir? Næst mun ég borða sæta hold þitt.”

“Wow,” Donut said. “Yup,” I agreed. “That’s a lot of goddamned turkeys.” One walked up and just looked at me. I examined it. Turkey. Level 5. This is a turkey. You know, gobble gobble. Roast at 325 for about 13-15 minutes per pound. Season with rosemary, sage, and thyme. You should step on it.

It was loud as fuck. The gobbling and cheeping and barking or whatever the noises of adult turkeys were called was tenfold once we opened the door.

He sat there for a moment, his beak opening and closing a few times, as if he was contemplating the taste. Unfortunately for the turkeys, he decided they were delicious.

At the same moment, all the turkeys in the room, every last one, stopped gobbling. They turned to face us, completely silent.

New Achievement! Prepare for Trouble! ...And make it double!

Reward: If you survive, you’ll receive a turkey deep-fryer and access to the archived posts of the Grandma’s Cooking Recipes group on Facebook! Gobble-Gobble, Bitches. Welcome to Iowa.

but it is like they are embracing death more and more. It’s not that they are willing to fall upon my traps, but there is a strange... Joy? Curiosity? that only appears at the very end, when they know they have been beaten. But there’s more. There’s frustration, too. I must admit, it scares me. I know this will sound unhinged, and maybe I am indeed the one who has lost their mind, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The voice that runs this world has been getting stranger and stranger in its words and rulings. I believe it is moving into the minds of these monsters, taking them over, but just at the point of death. It’s as if it’s desperately attempting to know what it’s like to lose it all. But it keeps failing, so it keeps trying. Its frustration grows. If only I could convince it to move into the minds of one of these nagas.

Funny, isn’t it? How things can be bred in a way that makes it so those holding the butcher knife are less likely to face their own revulsions.

“Muskrat? Muskrat! Did you call me a muskrat?” Donut paused. “I don’t even know what that is!”

You want short descriptions? Okay, you little bitch. It’s not like you’re at a disadvantage when the descriptions are long. You know your perception of time slows during these moments? I could make one of these as long as a Zack Snyder film, and it wouldn’t matter. I do that for you. Because of our special connection. And you don’t appreciate it? Fuck you. “Uh,” I said, exchanging a look with Donut. “Can I get a little bit of a description?” The AI paused and made an exasperated noise.

“Brother,” Donut’s lizard guard called, speaking to the other lizard. He nocked an arrow as he spoke. Smoke billowed all around, swirling in eddies, giving the whole barn an apocalyptic vibe. “I never liked you. Today we fight!” “Today you die!” the other lizard screamed at his brother as he rushed toward him. “Mother loved me more,” Donut’s lizard shrieked as he unleashed an arrow.

At the last moment, the turkey looked up at me. “Gobble?” Tom asked. Crash!

“When we’re not here, we are there,” the ogre witch whispered. “And when we’re there, they make certain the hunger festers. You can stop it. You can satiate us all, Carl.”

The ogre face was right there, staring directly into my eyes, and they were pleading, sad, afraid. I’ve seen those eyes before.

Now, wipe yourself off. You look like you were dragged through a pile of wet, disgusting corpses.” “I was.” “Maybe so, but there’s no reason to look like it.

I pulled Donut into a tight hug. “Thank you,” I said.

And don’t try to be like me, Donut. You need to be like you.”

“Good girl. Now come on. Let’s go say hi to dad.”

I want to kill more dogs. Do you know how long it’s been since I killed a dog? It’s been ages. My numbers are always great after I kill a dog.”

“It’s only a shadow, but he looks just like you, Carl. The nose is quite identical. It’s eerie, really.” I felt as if I couldn’t breathe, and I was doing my best to hide it. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“I’m so sorry I didn’t know about you,” I said. “If I had, I would’ve been here. I would’ve made sure you were okay. In a few months, something is going to happen, something really terrible. Hopefully you’ll be asleep in your bed when it happens. It’s too late for me to do anything about that, but I want you to know something. You won’t be forgotten. Not ever.”

Hell, remember that giant, vampire pterodactyl you punched in the dick on the last floor? That thing was built using parts of the president of the United States of America. That plus a couple horses from France and a goddamned panda bear.

“Boohoo, I’m a little bitch because I have to fight my infant. His name was Conner.”

(That or they just jettison the poor, innocent, infant AIs into a star. That’s a new one even to me. Somebody slipped that interesting factoid into a lawsuit brief not that long ago. I don’t see anybody boo-hooing over that one. I don’t see a single wadded panty. Coincidentally, the mantis-led Burrower Faction Wars team took their ball and went home the very same day I learned about this. For those of you watching at home, I want you to remember this. We’ll circle back to it on a different date.)

They’re not really reconstituted versions of your dead love ones. I changed one molecule on each. There. They’re different.

“Boom, bitch,” the new totem said. “Carl!” Donut shouted. “It looks just like you, but with better hair!” He had my father’s voice. Not mine. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I muttered, looking the man up and down.

Alpha Male Carl. Level 69. Nice.

I examined the fluffy kitten. The thing was the size of my fist, and it was ridiculously adorable. King Croissant, the Younger, Better, and Smarter Cat. Level 60. The cat Beatrice and Carl really wanted. “Hey!” Donut cried.

“Asher?” she asked, her head corkscrewing. “Which one of these little morsels of confusion is Asher?” Her magic eye was open, the one upon the center of her forehead. The one I wasn’t supposed to look at because it would drive me insane. It would make me blind. The potion I took was supposed to protect me, but right then, at that moment, I knew. I knew it wouldn’t work. Not on me.

“Carl, I wish I’d known you, too,” the Asher head called out to me just before he was swallowed and then bitten off.

“Daddy Carl, I am here to lend assistance,” came a new voice as I was suddenly blasted with water. Raul. The crab had a spray attack. “The demon fire will be quenched in my holy discharge!” I gurgled as Raul cast his water attack directly at my face. “Stop,” I tried to call. The fire was already out. “Stop!” “He’s not your Daddy. I’m your daddy now,” came a new voice. Alpha Carl.

until it reaches level 15, at which time the distance increases exponentially and may be controlled.

“Merry Christmas!” Louis shouted as we entered the saferoom. I blinked, looking about in surprise.

The cleaner bot zipped by, beeping miserably. It had a sprig of mistletoe dangling from it.

“Oh my god. Look, man,” he said, suddenly serious. There was something else there, something I’d never seen from the large man. Anger. He had tears in his eyes. The sight was so shocking, I took a literal step back.

I’m like that prisoner who has been jailed this whole time only to realize that there are no locks on the doors.

“Hey, it’s Manager Orren,” someone said.

“Louis, my lights aren’t sparkly any more. Cast your spell!” He went down to a knee. “The battery fell out. Where’d it...” Samantha zipped forward, bounced up, and kissed him on the lips. He fell back, sputtering. “You two, shush,” I said, trying to listen. “Our forbidden love knows no bounds, Carl,” Samantha said.

“They’re gonna pull the failsafe this time for sure.”

Please Wait... Offboarding request has been denied. The teams will remain as designated.

Warning: this benefactor box was delivered and seized via Liaison action. Error code: X8HH3 Liaison Action has been overridden per Syndicate rule 855.C. AKA the “Don’t be annoying little bitches” rule. Open your damn box. You might want to be alone for this one.

Carl: Zev. What’s the failsafe? Cascadia mentioned it once, and someone else just mentioned it. Zev: I don’t actually know what it does. Pray we don’t find out. They won’t use it. Not with so many people trapped in the solar system. We’re all under temporary quarantine, and the richest and most powerful people in the galaxy are either on planet or in orbit. You probably shouldn’t have told me that, Zev. I didn’t dare say that out loud. I went outside.

I reached down and tried to pet him, but my hand went right through his head, and I accidentally dislodged his collar, which jingled as it fell off his neck. The dog sighed heavily in his sleep, unaware that the world would end in just over a week. “Merry Christmas, buddy,” I said.

It was just three sentences. It said, “Look for me at breakfast every morning. I wear the red hat with the flaps. Coffee then speech.”