“Mongo, I’m here!”
It took my brain several moments to register the scene before me.
Mongo had once again doubled in size. That roar had come from him. But more importantly, his health was deep in the red. He stood on the ground before the pile of garbage I’d erected around Donut, screeching in fury. Half of the defense was gone, scattered about the room, exposing the chair and Donut to the room full of monsters. Mongo stood defiantly in front of the hole, like a hockey goalie protecting the net.
Both Donut and Mongo had been transformed into pin cushions. Each of them were riddled with long, black spikes. As I watched in horror, one of the rolling black mobs threw itself at Mongo, who leaped painfully into the air and slashed at the creature with his feet. The monster spun away, trailing gore. Mongo hit the ground, but stumbled and fell onto his side, crying. Several new spikes erupted from the dinosaur’s feet. The sleek, black spikes were about 15 inches long, and some of them had completely pierced the bottom of the pet’s foot and spewed from the top.
I examined the properties of the mobs as I rushed toward Donut.
Street Urchin – Level 8
These pokey little puppies only come out at night. Long, long ago, some of the richest citizens of the Over City kept these things as pets. Their name—Street Urchin—was a source of great amusement of the privileged. They would often joke about keeping a street urchin chained up in their homes, only letting the nocturnal creatures out to feed. The small, mindless creatures could clean an entire living space in a matter of minutes. When the cataclysm came, the Street Urchins were transformed into what you see today. Larger, deadlier, and a lot spikier. And after they cleaned the corpses of their former owners, they moved into the ruins and resumed their duties as the janitor mobs of the Over City.
The ruin’s version of a Roomba, these things only have one purpose: to remove dead bodies and any other refuse left behind by inconsiderate crawlers. They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them. But you best not get in their way.
They can be very tenacious when it comes to taking out the trash.
Holy shit. These little assholes were here because of me. They were attacking Mongo and Donut not because they were aggressive mobs, but because of the defenses I’d erected around the cat. They were trying to get to the wood and metal hunks I’d stacked. And because Mongo was putting up such a ferocious fight, they were attacking back. And Donut was getting skewered in the process.
I read the Heal scroll, one of the ones I’d gotten from the Survivor’s Box, focusing on Donut. She glowed. The spikes squeezed out of her body and scattered onto the floor like pine needles. Then I tried a second Heal scroll on Mongo, but it didn’t work. Damnit. I couldn’t use a potion on the pet, either.
“Hang in there, buddy,” I said. I started throwing the hunks of wood and metal into my inventory. And when one of the street urchins approached, I’d throw a piece of metal at it. It’d make a chittering noise but stop approaching us. Instead, it’d roll over the refuse and start to devour it. As I worked, more and more of the mobs appeared, cleaning up the bodies of their fellows.
After I pulled the last of my makeshift defense into my inventory, I cleaned up the needles at my feet by picking them up and tossing them into my inventory. After that, the small, round monsters lost interest and wandered back into the street.
Donut remained asleep on the chair, but her health had been restored. Mongo lay on the ground, whimpering. His heath was deep in the red. Dozens of the black needles jutted from his body in various places. I didn’t dare pull any out.
Carclass="underline" Quick. How can I heal Mongo? The scroll and the potion didn’t work.
Mordecai: Take out a heal potion. You should have a cinnamon stick in your inventory. I also gave you a couple branches of thistle rot. Put the entire cinnamon stick in the potion. Wait five seconds and add the thistle rot. Put the cork back on and shake it. Then pour it down Mongo’s throat and try not to get your hand bitten off.
I did exactly as he instructed. Both the cinnamon and the thistle thing had come from the stuff Mordecai had stolen from the Belly Rubbed Pug’s kitchens.
A new recipe has been added to your crafting menu.
A pair of achievements appeared. Then another as I forced open the sharp mouth of the dinosaur and poured the now-brown potion into the pet’s mouth. The needles dropped to the ground. Mongo groaned and shook his head. He sat up, nudged Donut with his head, and then he shrieked, loud enough that my ears hurt. Then he started bouncing up and down, waving his arms and circling around me, hitting me with his head in joy, as if he’d just realized I’d returned.
“You did it, Mongo,” I said, petting the dinosaur, who made a purring noise when I patted him. “You saved Donut.”
Mongo had risen from level six to ten. Before, he’d been about the size of a turkey. Now he was almost as tall as my waist. Colorful feathers covered the creature. Donut could probably ride on the back of him now.
We still couldn’t move Donut from her spot, so I sat down and leaned against the chair, settling in. We still had several hours of night left. Signet had said Donut would awaken in the morning. I hoped she’d told the truth. Mongo, despite being much too large for this, curled himself onto my lap, hanging over both sides.
I found myself thinking about my mother, my father, and of Bea. Of my few friends from before, like Billy Maloney and Sam. Of my coworkers at the boatyard. They were all gone. All I had left in this world was right here.
Mongo soon started to snore. I could feel Donut’s warmth against the back of my neck. She breathed softly, oblivious of all that had occurred tonight.
This, I thought, this is my family.
Just before dawn, a brilliant light shone into the air from the direction of the circus. The world rumbled. The map was too far off my screen for me to see what had changed.
Signet never returned, but she was true to her word, and Donut awakened with dawn.
“Where are we?” Donut asked, stretching and looking around. Her eyes flashed, which meant she was looking through her menus. “What did you do to Mongo! How did you finish the circus…”?
Mongo bowled her over, squeaking with absolute delight, bouncing around.
Donut, despite having done nothing, had risen to level 15. The system had leeched enough of my experience from the evening into her. I suspected most of it came from completing the quest since she’d participated in quite a bit of the early part. She’d also received a loot box for it.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re getting out of here.”
“I am so confused,” Donut said, stepping onto the floor. “Did I do something? I don’t remember anything. But I had the oddest dream. Ferdinand came and visited me, and I ran to him, but he turned into a porcupine, and I kept getting his quills in me. It was quite unpleasant.”
I laughed and laughed.
I told Donut the story of the previous evening as we quickly, but cautiously, set out for the skyfowl settlement. She was oddly quiet about the whole thing. She still seemed out of sorts.
As we passed the circus, I wasn’t surprised to see that the tents were gone. The X’s of all the corpses were gone, too, unfortunately. I kicked myself for not looting the coins from all the dead. Even though I hadn’t killed the city boss, I’d hoped to return and loot whatever city bosses dropped, but there was nothing. I wondered if that meant he wasn’t dead.