Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #2)

by Matt Dinniman

Somewhere in there, deep, deep down, there is a spark of the old Heather. The beloved bear has moments of lucidity as she runs down her terrified prey. In those brief moments, she thinks: Good. I’ve always hated all you assholes, anyway.

Now, if you’ve never had a flaming, skull-faced bear on roller skates barreling at you full speed, you don’t know what you’re missing.

“Cats don’t drink cocktails,” I said. “Cats don’t shoot lasers from their eyes, either, but here we are, Carl. Mama needs a night off.”

Half-Djinns are common amongst the Hunting Grounds and other forested levels of Dungeon Crawler World. Nobody knows for certain why there are so many hybrid Djinns out there, but one theory suggests that a rather ill-timed expletive is the cause of the population explosion. It is posited that a person in control of a Djinn’s lamp and the resulting three wishes once exclaimed, “Fuck this forest” or “Fuck this level” or “Fuck you all” or some iteration thereof, and the enslaved genie took that as a challenge. As a result, thousands of half-Djinn, half-forest creatures roam the dungeon. Only a few are intelligent. Only a few are sane. They are all dangerous little fuckers. If you kill too many of them, rumor has it their daddy may come looking for you.

“Liches come in all shapes and sizes and power levels. You never know what they’re going to be,” he’d said earlier this evening. “But they all have one thing in common, each and every one of them.” “What’s that?” I asked. He looked up at the ceiling wryly. “They’re just like Odette. They never, ever shut the hell up. They are narcissists to a fault. And they are cowards. Now that they have grasped a handful of life, they will do whatever they can not to let it go again. That’s why they always have minions. They always have elaborate, grandiose plans.