“That… that’s wild,” I said, “And it will be really helpful. But why is this a secret?”
“That’s not the secret.” She wrung her hands worriedly. It was something she did often, no matter what size she was. “Donut did something when she didn’t think anybody was looking. I talked to Hekla about this, and she thinks it was a setup. That you had her do it on purpose to test me. But I think I know you better than she does, and that’s not the sort of thing you’d do. Besides, you didn’t know about my third eye, so how would that be a setup anyway? Donut did it so nobody would see.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Katia?”
She pulled a little slip of paper out of her inventory and handed it to me.
“The other day when you got hit by the Nightmare and were gone, Donut and I went back out on the tracks to clean it. I saw Donut pull this from her inventory and then stuff it under the track so nobody would find it. But I was practicing with my third eye, and I saw her do it. When she wasn’t looking, I grew a new arm, slid it along the track, and I grabbed it.”
I examined the paper. It was a black ticket with a familiar, gold leaf skull embossed on it. I felt a chill rush through me as the description appeared.
PVP Coupon.
Ah, betrayal. Sweet, delicious betrayal.
If you have this coupon in your inventory, and you kill the crawler whose name appears on the backside of this coupon, you will receive the following rewards:
Gold Savage Box
Gold Weapons Box
Gold Apparel Box
Platinum Adventurer Box (This benefit may only be redeemed a max of 3 times)
+1 Player Level (This benefit may only be redeemed a max of 3 times)
I flipped the paper over. The slip read:
Crawler #4,122. Carl.
“What the hell?” I said. The sight of my name on the paper gave me a second chill. “Where did she get this?”
“PVP means player versus player,” Katia said. “I didn’t know that. Hekla says when someone gets one of those skulls next to their name for killing a crawler, and if they’re in a party, they get a Savage box, and it contains the coupons.”
“That means she got this after she killed that guy in the club, and she didn’t want to tell us about it.” I felt myself relax. This wasn’t a big deal. Was it? She had gotten rid of it. The system gave out the coupon to be a dick. I imagined in a less tight-knit party, the existence of such coupons could cause a lot of paranoia and damage. But the idea of Donut wanting to hurt me was ridiculous. It was a waste of a prize, and she’d gotten rid of it so she didn’t have to deal with having it. End of story.
Katia continued to wring her hands. “There’s more. I thought this was a good thing at first. But later, I told Hekla about it, and she said they don’t just get one coupon. They get one for every member of the party.” She paused. “This was the only coupon Donut got rid of.”
Shit, I thought. I could now see why Katia was freaking out. She thought Donut still had one of these coupons with her name on it.
“Maybe she got rid of your coupon at another time,” I said. “And how does Hekla know this anyway?”
“My friend Eva. I told you about her already. She was with me before. We went into the dungeon together. She has a skull. There was a man. We didn’t know him, but we met right when we got in. When we joined the daughters, Hekla didn’t want him coming with us. But he insisted. We told him to go away, but he wouldn’t. He grabbed me by the arm, and Eva stabbed him with her trident. I thought he’d be okay. She’d just stabbed him in the back of the leg. But he died, and she got the skull. She got the coupon book, though she never told me about it. She only told Hekla.”
“I’m sure Donut got rid of the other coupon,” I said. “Look, I’m glad you told me. But the last thing we need is to worry about each other. I’ll talk to her to make sure. I won’t tell her you found the one with my name on it.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice small. “Thank you, Carl.”
I pulled the coupon back into my own inventory. My mind raced. I’d have to ask Donut about it. I didn’t have a choice. But first I needed to confirm some of this info with one of the two other people I knew with a player killer tag.
Carclass="underline" Imani. I have a question for you.
She had been forced to kill several of the Meadow Lark residents when they’d first arrived at the dungeon, to save them from an agonizing death. I knew it haunted her.
Imani: Hello, Carl. We’re collecting carts so the team can ride the conveyor. It’s hard to get them off the track without breaking them. What can I do for you?
Carclass="underline" When you received your skulls, did you get a PVP coupon? I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.
There was a long pause. I thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer.
Imani: I did. I received something called a Savage box, and all it contained was the coupon book.
Carclass="underline" How many coupons were in it?
Imani: It had a coupon in it for every member of the party. I tried to burn them, but they didn’t catch on fire. I left them behind on the first floor. Brandon wanted me to keep them in case I had to, you know, do it again. But I could feel them sitting in my inventory, and I didn’t want them there. So I got rid of them. You should know Elle did not get them when she got her skull. I used to think people only got them on the first floor, but after Donut told me about the two she received, I now think only the first member of a party to get the player-killer skull gets the coupon book.
Carclass="underline" You talked to Donut about her coupons?
Imani: We talked about them when she received the box. She wasn’t too happy about them, and she was having a really hard time coping with getting that skull. I told her to get rid of them. She’s like a child, Carl. She doesn’t process things the way a person does. Talk to her about it. I gotta go. We’ll message you later.
I had no idea Donut and Imani had ever said two words to each other. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It made sense. Donut had done the same thing I just did, which was immediately turn to the person with the most experience in the matter. The coupons were designed to instill a wedge in a group, whether they were used or not, and Donut recognized that. It was a smart, mature decision. Still, it suddenly felt as if something had changed in the dynamic between us.