“Yeah, Mordecai is going to be mad. He said you needed to make fun of him a little. Not kill his wife.”
We still didn’t know all the details as to why Mordecai had suggested we needle at the king if given the opportunity. He never went into detail with this sort of stuff. He was always spouting off things for us to do and keep an eye out for. Monster types. Herbs. Loot. Ways to act if we came across certain types of NPCs. We’d started calling it the daily BOLO. Be on the lookout. Donut had come up with the term. She’d once watched a marathon of Law and Order. I suspected the thing with King Rust was long-term strategy, something to do with the ninth floor if we ever got there. Mordecai wanted us to insult the king so we’d stay on his radar, probably so it’d be easier to bait him later.
I meant what I said to Donut. I knew a random dude from the crawl spouting off about revolution wasn’t going to spark some great intergalactic crisis. Still, seeds. Mordecai had his plans. I had my own.
That said, there was something else going on, another, invisible player on the chessboard, so to speak. It’d been bothering me from the moment we listened to Prince Stalwart’s message.
Carclass="underline" We need to be careful. Never even hint of this out loud. I think we were set up.
Donut: WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
Carclass="underline" That Stalwart dude was too prepared with his statement. They had the camera all ready with the army right outside the window. Stalwart was planning on killing us from the start. I don’t think they were expecting my little speech there, but it played right into their hands.
Donut: BUT THEY MISSED.
Carclass="underline" Stalwart was being played, too. We were just the pawns, the bait. And so was Manasa. Whoever is orchestrating this knew the orcs planned on killing us. That switcheroo was either on purpose to get them to really kill their ally, or they quickly jumped on the opportunity. It humiliates them and damages their alliance with the Valtay. Who benefits the most from that?
Donut: MANASA HAD THE VOICE OF AN ANGEL. NOBODY BENEFITS FROM IT.
Carclass="underline" No, that’s not true. Borant benefits. Big time. If Valtay loses a powerful ally, maybe even goes to war with the Skull Empire over this, then they won’t have time to try to take over the Borant system. But I don’t know for sure. We have so little information.
Donut: OR MAYBE NOBODY ELSE WAS INVOLVED. THE ORCS WERE GOING TO KILL US, YES, BUT WE JUST GOT LUCKY.
Carclass="underline" Maybe. If so, that was really lucky for both us and Borant.
Donut: DO YOU THINK ZEV IS MAD AT US FOR WHAT YOU SAID?
Carclass="underline" Let’s find out.
“Oh my gods,” Zev said as we returned to the saferoom. She’d returned us to the same one we’d been in when we’d left, the one near the pool with the exploded boss corpse. She stood there in the middle of the room, wearing her ever-present spacesuit, having arrived before we did. Our HUD didn’t shut off like usual when she was in the room. I didn’t know if that was some sort of oversight or a bug because she’d arrived first. “That was terrifying. I thought you two were dead for certain.”
“What happened?” Mordecai asked, looking between us. Donut began to excitedly tell him the story, Donut-style. She started by explaining the cleaning mechanism in the trailer, going into extreme, unnecessary detail.
“How did they even know what trailer we were in?” I asked Zev as Donut continued to regale Mordecai. “I mean, they were wrong, but only because we switched at the last minute.”
“That stuff isn’t a secret,” Zev said. “Rental trailers throw their booking schedules out there for anybody to see so they can coordinate availability. Before today, there’s never been a reason to hide who is using what trailer. Nobody has ever attempted to assassinate a crawler outside the dungeon. What a nightmare.”
“Stop,” Mordecai said, raising a hand to Donut. “What happened?”
Donut took a deep breath. “Carl called the orc king a pussy, and his son’s spaceship lasered the production trailer from orbit. But we’d switched with Manasa, and she got blown up instead.”
Mordecai looked at me, horrified. “Manasa, the singer? She was killed?”
“She was so nice,” Donut said. “She said she thought Mongo was adorable.”
Mordecai: I distinctly remember saying you should be subtle.
Carclass="underline" I may have gone a little overboard. It gets worse.
“There’s more,” Zev said. “The Valtay responded by blowing the royal yacht into dust. The queen consort and Maestro were believed to be on board.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Mordecai said.
“Hey, all they asked me for was my opinion. It’s not my fault Prince pig face overreacted. It sucks the mom got killed, but if she’s the one who raised those two, it’s probably not a big loss.”
“The good news is that nobody is saying anything negative about Carl and Donut on the net. Prince Stalwart is the villain. Wow. Rust is gonna have to disown him, too. I hadn’t thought of that. That only leaves the sister as the heir. Our team is fielding a wave of interview requests, but Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette has the contract on your next interview.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m not too keen on going on any more interviews right now anyway.”
Zev left soon thereafter, leaving us in the empty saferoom. Mordecai indicated for us to sit down.
Mordecai: Okay, new rule. We are not meddling with, mentioning, or talking about any other entities outside of the dungeon from now on. We’re not going to mention King Rust or Prince Stalwart until after the sixth floor, if you two idiots make it that far. When Odette asks you about it, you say you have no opinion. You only talk about stuff happening in the dungeon.
Carclass="underline" So no more making fun of King Rust?
Donut: TALKING SMACK IS MY SPECIAL TALENT. MANASA AND PRINCESS D’NADIA BOTH SAID SO.
Mordecai: His wife is dead. He’s neck-deep in shit. It’s not your fault, but he’s going to see it that way. I wanted to make sure the Skull Clan targeted the Blood Sultanate once you hit the ninth floor. I don’t think that’s going to be an issue now. Let’s just hope he’s not too mad at you two.
Carclass="underline" Why? What can he do to us here?
Mordecai: Besides assassinating you while you’re on the surface? Nothing yet. That’s going to change very soon. We’ll deal with it when it happens.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about any of this now, is there?” I said out loud. “We still have daylight, and we have a ton to do. We need to get back into town. We have a militia to break up and a magistrate’s office to break into.”
One of the mysteries of the Sex Worker quest was how the city elves of the 201st Security Group figured in all of this. Assuming this Featherfall guy was the lead baddie, then their presence in conjunction with the random undead monsters made sense. The city elves worshiped the skyfowl as living angels, and this town’s lead skyfowl was a dark cleric who commanded the undead. The city elves were basically a free source of enthusiastic labor that Featherfall was using to help corral his undead minions.
We still didn’t know what the hell was going on with the dead prostitutes. That was okay for now. I didn’t need to know exactly what was happening to know the best way to weaken the head dude’s plans was to first knock out one of his support networks.