“It is a little funny,” Zev said. “But the Skull Empire probably isn’t going to find it amusing. They haven’t reacted yet, at least not officially. They’re not known for their measured responses to insults.”
“Is it an insult, though?” I asked. “I’m not gay, but does it matter? The tusklings seem to be very open with, you know, weird stuff. Do people really care?”
“It’s not that,” Zev said. “You’re right, most wouldn’t care. But this is a prince of the Skull Empire. And that video is both graphic and humiliating. You two… say things to each other.”
“Can we watch it?” Donut asked. “I want to watch it!”
“That sort of thing has to happen all the time,” I said. “That prince is such a cockwomble, I can’t imagine the intergalactic internet isn’t filled with stuff like that.”
“Oh, it is. This is different. The quality is so good, and it is just everywhere right now. Everyone is calling the Prince ‘Pork Boy’ and, uh, ‘Carl’s Naughty Little Piggie.’ You have to watch the video. Anyway, if the Skull Empire demands people stop calling him that, it’s going to be just like the mudskipper thing all over again. In the past hour, your appearance fee has doubled. You’re now equal with Lucia Mar. The fact this has happened at the expense of the Skull Empire has made the Party very happy with you.”
“Oh shit,” I said, any sense of amusement fleeing. “The last thing we need is some giant sponsor gunning for us. Any interview we do, they’re just going to ask me about it, and I can tell you right now, there’s nothing I’m willing to say to make those assholes hate me less.”
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” Zev said. “Borant’s official stance on this is that as long as you do not disparage the company, the party, or the Syndicate itself, any opinion you air about other governments will not be met with any sort of punitive action. Besides, there’s not much the other governments can do to you. Not until the sixth floor. Or if they spring for a deity sponsorship this season. But anyway, don’t worry about anything happening outside your floor. That’s my job. Now I gotta get going. Your next scheduled appearance is on Odette’s show. In the meantime, I’ll be available on chat. Bye to both of you.”
A moment later, she popped away, splashing water all over the floor.
“I’m glad she’s okay,” Donut said. “I feel bad we got her in trouble.”
I barely heard her. I couldn’t stop thinking about the video. This Skull Empire government had to know how much of an asshole that prince was. Plus they couldn’t blame me for something I didn’t make. Could they?
My HUD snapped back on. The first thing I noticed was that my followers had increased significantly in the past hour. With the combination of the recap episode and this stupid video, that feeling of loneliness I’d felt earlier was all but gone. I now felt like a bug under a microscope. I wondered how many people really thought that the snick was real. I always wondered that about conspiracy theorists. I always suspected most of them were just trolling. Surely the real number couldn’t be very many.
“Carl, darling. I can’t believe you hooked up with that guy,” Donut said loudly. She pushed at the door, heading out of the room. “He sure squealed a lot, though.” Her laughter trailed off into the hallway.
“Goddamnit, Donut,” I said.
45
Finding the boss chamber of the kobolds was easy.
Heavy, thrumming metal music blasted through the halls. It was a cacophony of sound with growling, deep vocals and guitars that were almost seizure-like. I couldn’t tell if the vocalist was singing in English, or if he was even human at all. The words sounded like deeply distorted barking. Considering the enemies of this quadrant, I wouldn’t be surprised if the singer was a kobold or a dingo.
We followed the sound, which grew louder and louder until it was physically painful. Donut and I couldn’t talk to one another, and we had to rely on the chat to communicate. We killed a half dozen kobolds and an equal number of dingoes along the way, plus a handful of the brindle grubs. Both of us hit level 12 by the time we approached the source.
Donut: THIS MUSIC IS MAKING MY HEAD HURT. WHY CAN’T THEY PLAY SOMETHING GOOD? LIKE OASIS.
Carclass="underline" Oasis? Where did you get that from? Even Bea didn’t listen to Oasis.
Donut: NO MISS BEATRICE LIKES COUNTRY MUSIC. THAT’S JUST AS BAD AS THIS.
Carclass="underline" Yeah, that should’ve been my first warning.
Donut: THERE IS THE BOSS CHAMBER.
The outer kobold boss chamber was set up as a giant dog kennel. The text on the walls was in Portuguese, indicating the place had been some sort of municipal dog pound. It was a group of three long hallways flanked by cages. There was a secondary, main chamber with a door at the end of the middle hallway, but we already knew from experience that whatever the boss was going to be, it would likely come out of that second room. That second door was huge, like the double doors of a barn. An ominous sign.
Most of the cages were empty, but not all of them. Each row had four or five locked pens with danger dingoes within. I didn’t see any signs of the kobolds. A handful of cages also contained the Xs of dead monsters. Here, in this context, the large dingoes looked especially dog-like, and I suddenly felt an uneasy sympathy for them. The monsters didn’t bark or attack the cages as we passed by them. They sat there, curled up, looking pitiful.
Their dots, however, remained red on the minimap.
Donut: SHOULD WE KILL THEM? WE SHOULD PROBABLY KILL THEM.
It would be easy, free experience. And I knew once that boss chamber opened, these doors would likely also open. But it felt wrong. I remembered Mordecai’s advice regarding the boss rooms. Look for the clues.
Carclass="underline" Hang on. Not yet. Let’s try to figure out what’s going on here.
I stopped at one of the cages. The dingo was on its side, breathing heavily, its back turned.
“Hey buddy, you doing okay?” I said, yelling the words. I couldn’t even hear my own voice.
The dingo looked up, turning its head toward me. He was missing an eye, a recent injury. His white face paint mixed red with blood. Then I noticed the injuries on his side, a mixture of old scars and new ones around his flank and along the side of his neck.
The song ended. A moment later, a new one started, just as loud and heavy. But in that brief moment of silence I heard something coming from the main boss chamber.
Cheering.
I knew, then, what this was.
Goddamnit, I thought. I hated this place. I hated it so damn much. I looked up at the boss room door.
I searched my inventory. I didn’t have any Scrolls of Heal Critter left, but I did have a ton of pet biscuits. Donut still ate them despite being classified as a regular crawler. But unless we were locked in the dungeon for fifty years, we’d never run out of the food. I took a single biscuit from my inventory and tossed it into the cage.
Donut: CARL WHAT ARE YOU DOING. THAT IS MY FOOD.
Carclass="underline" I’m trying something. Let’s see what happens.
Donut: THIS IS A BETRAYAL MOST FOUL.
Carclass="underline" You know the viewers can’t see this chat. Don’t be such a drama queen.
The dingo painfully pulled himself up, sniffed at the food, and he ate the tiny biscuit. He sat back down and turned his back.
The dot on the minimap blinked and turned white.
Yes.
We repeated the process for all the other dingoes in the cages. There was a total of fourteen of them. Most of them were in similar shape to the first one.