This Inevitable Ruin, Chapters 16-19

what a series of like devastating moments. It's wild how many times I was just like, oh, this is really, this is this is rough first you know, it says chapter sixteen through nineteen. But the thing about this book is that it has been sort of peppered with these chapters that are more like sort of interstitial moments that

are not really their own chapters. So really we have first before sixteen, the chapter titled Everlely, and it is the you know this, this is the I keep wanting to say flash It's a weird thing though, because it's like, yeah, technically a flashback, but also kind of it doesn't count when we're not when that character is already dead and we're not even like with them anymore or you know

what I'm saying, And I think probably it does. It's just a weird There's there's a quality to it that I don't come across in many books, because usually when we're doing this, it's something that is directly like the history of the character whose head we're in, or the history of somebody we are about to meet, which has happened in this book a couple of times. So it's sort of a it's hard to say, and I feel like flashback is fine, but it just doesn't quite feel

right to me, if you get what I mean. So Everly, it's such a it's such a an series of really interesting things going on here. It starts with you, Everly hissed, pointing her leg at one of her two remaining mercenaries. Watching you try to hold up the ceiling is irritating me. You're not going to stop it, so don't bother dig

if you must, just don't stand there like that. And it's too This is the one guy trying and hold the ceiling up and the other trying to dig into the ground, because what it turns out is happening is they are being slowly crushed and they are trying to find a way out, and she's watching the dwarf who's attempting to dig, because that's what dwarfs do, am I right, And watching that he is really trying to hold out hope, but that it's obviously like beginning to fade every passing moment.

It's just starting to fade away. And we get some background here. The younger version of herself would be raging right now, it's not over. She'd say, it's not over until you're dead. Get down there and dig, damn you. And by younger everly meant the version of herself from just before the demons had come to her world. And this particularly hit me, this like there was a version of me at one time that would never have accepted this.

I feel like I run into this thought in my own head so often, and it's not even necessarily really

even true in the simplest sense of it. It's just that I maybe I feel that there had been a version of me, and you know, like, and maybe I'm wrong about that, but what it is is just really the sense of like I used to be different, and what has happened to me that I have come to a point in my life that I just don't believe in things working out like this anymore, or I don't believe in that good will prevail, or that I can do anything, or that there's pride or worth to fighting

to the last breath. There's a certain amount of ego involved in that, and I feel like when you use the word ego, it's always sort of heard as like an inherently bad thing. And I don't think it is an inherently bad thing, but I do think that it can be more of a driving force than we like to admit to our about a lot of stuff in a way that we should interrogate. And you must fight

until your very last breath. You know, I understand that feeling like you have making you feel as if you have more control over the situation as somebody who has dealt with being in control freak my whole life. But I don't know. This just sort of hit me. There comes this point where we get the real specific item and what happened here. Gordon's Compass of vertical labyrinthement Management forty nine uses. It was a simple device and it

appeared it was going to be enormously helpful. It showed the bearer the quickest and safest path through a maze, but the description specifically stated it wouldn't work in subterranean mazes. It was clear that compass was meant to be used to navigate Tower and some of her fellow mantises, which the fact that this is a mantis is really like another bit of a I know that this has happened to them, and that it's not even the same type of mantis. Nevertheless, they she refuses help, goes on and

sees that her like views or skyrocketing. She wondered what her mother would have thought. The center was watching her on a mission to save her fellow mantises. It was a good, unfamiliar feeling. And she comes to a dead end and then there is an announcement, never trust your life to Gordon Waystation outfitters. There's no safe or cheap path to safety. This dead end was sponsored by Dictum Waystation Controls Limited. Don't get caught with nowhere to go.

So this is just so hideous, guys, it's so rough. Man. I hated it so much, the fact that she got played like this, like there's just not words for how incredibly grotesque, you know, and every wondered if this would have happened if she'd allowed some of the others to go up to the tower with her. Maybe one of the others had heard of this Gordon Way Station company and would have figured out the whole thing was a trap. But she'd insisted on staying alone this whole time. She'd

wanted to work with them, they'd wanted to work with her. Still, she'd struck out on her own, determined to fight it all in her own way. And she says to herself, that's when it happened, wasn't it not now here in this damn tower. It happened when I abandoned the others so much earlier than I realized. And what she is saying is like, that's when it happened. Is the inevitable ruin of things falling apart and the ogre change changed. He falls down. There's a flash deep in the back

of his small black eyes. Maybe there's more to it than this, the ogre said, just as the slow moving ceiling kissed the side of his face. His body shifted and he was pushed into the sand. Maybe it's not inevitable like you say. I swear to God, you guys, that's just so Matt is very, very interested in community, and it's a really interesting thing to watch in a series that feels like it's not going to be about community at the start. It really it's just Carl with

his cat. That's how we start, and he's alone for such a while before they even run into other crawlers, and it just feels like this is about a guy who's going to do the thing and the way that he has subverted the expectation on that, and really like it's not that Carl isn't individually important, because there is exactly what it is that Surrendel Gore said about. He is the one who managed to become a warlord. He

is key. We need him to keep going like that is true, but he is the one that's like creating a path for everyone else to follow. And if they weren't there him creating this path wouldn't matter. It has to be everybody. And I am just extremely down with this messaging because we are so individualistic in the US,

and it is what is killing us. It is what is eating the heart out of our populace and what has poisoned the thought processes of everybody who thinks that we should all just be figuring it out for ourselves. It's toxic, it's extremely shortsighted, it's deeply illogical, it's wildly egotistical. It's just so flawed. And so seeing this like constant returning to there needs to be people, you need to

accept help, you need to work with people. I just really appreciate right now, especially where we're at, you know what I'm saying. So then we go to chapter sixteen, and this is when Carl and Kachia are about to undergo this weird thing that's like a drug induced state. For Katchya it's to treat her addiction to this drug that she took once that has like really affected her. And for Carl, it's supposed to possibly help him eject

the being inside him. She Maria. It's two basically two hits of Glory Bound, but compounded with a subdermal gel and mixed with a potion called Tough Love, kind of like that anti alcohol potion I gave to Louis and Farrah on the fifth floor. Remembering that Louis had been one of those like kind of hostile drunks. Is really weird. I just forget and like who he is now, Like what a change? I started making this on the previous and it has to sit nice and long before it

gains potency, and we're now in that window. It goes stale fast, so it's now or never. The dose I'm giving to you, Karl, I'm also going to combine with another potion called removal order that way we'll be visiting the Spider's memories instead of your own, he paused, swallowing hard. I hope. And the way that this winds up working actually is Karl and Katcha are holding hands, and so it kind of changes the way this whole thing works, which is, you know, this is part of the theming

of just we need other people. And so he is in her memory and gets to see what went down with her in a way that I don't think she has any issue with. She's holding his hand. They are meant to be like, we're going in to this together, and I think that him being there is actually kind of helpful, so she doesn't have to try and explain after the fact if she ever wanted to. He gets to see and like, there's something about this to me.

When you're near a divergent, you're often accused of being too preoccupied with like fairness with over explaining things because you're afraid of being misunderstood. And I definitely fall into this.

And there are so many instances in my life where I wish I could just go into a memory and bring someone with me so they could see what I mean, so that I don't have to explain what happened, because there's certain things, especially as a woman, when you deal with certain types of sexual harassment, trying to expressed to someone what creeped you out and what felt wrong about an interaction. When you say it out loud, it sounds like nothing, and it doesn't feel like enough to even

be sharing. Sometimes, like you're like, what am I even bringing this up for? But in the moment, it was unmistakably a threat that was happening and you fucking know it. But you also recognize that in words, there's no sense of that coming across. So the moments that I wish I could go back to and like pull somebody in

and be like, do you see what I mean? You know, that's like a dream, a fantasy to be like, I want your take on this, because this is how I feel, and I can't tell if I'm just bringing my baggage to it or what. So watch this and let's see, and like, it's not that he has the chance to really even interact with her regarding this by the end of this section that I read, but we know we're in his head. He witnessed it, and it's just like,

what an asshole about this guy? And I adore the fact that we have like an impartial observer who is fully on her side and who can look at her and be like, girl, you are right. That guy was a bastard and you got done wrong. And how validating that would feel, you know? So, uh Rosetta says Carl, if you're still under when Kaya comes back, I'll induce the wake up sequence. You should be able to initiate the ejection yourself. This all turns out to be unnecessary.

So once Kachia is under, she's on her own. If we wake her up early, it could be fatal. But she's not on her own. As we see, Doughnut remained in the guild in her bathroom, taking shower after shower in a fruitless attempt to get the stench out of her, and Mango RND was with them, apparently a big fan of the shower, which I think is very funny for some reason, and she Maria is like whispering to him, trying to tell him not to do this and that

they're both going to die if he does this. He actually slaps himself in the head at one point to get her to shut up. So there's this bit where it says that she confesses, like, my worst memory is also my best memory, which I don't really understand how this works, but I guess it's getting to be with Annie at all. It's just life to be like that,

doesn't it. You know, a potion of somnoalin embrace. This won't remove your worries or your bad dreams for more than a moment, but it will ease them long enough to let you sleep. Sometimes this is all we can hope for. And I love when they take a sip and she goes, oh wow, this stuff is great. Oh girl, she do gotta have it. And as they're going under, Mordecai says, I don't have the fancy bed you guys have. It's what I use sometimes sometimes. Rosetta asked, what do

you know about it? Mordecai asked her, I saw a story about you the other way or the other day. Her what and we are out of there before we get to actually see that whole thing unfold, and Mordecai has got to be pissed. So somebody try to say, separate them, no touching you two, it will confuse the dream. But it's too late. It seems like the fact that

they touched the way they did was enough. Ah I briefly touched the minds of others nearby, and Moni, who was terrified, Mordecai equally weary, but also sad Rosetta, who just seemed so very tired yet filled with a deep familiar rage, Edgar, who was worried. These were just flashes, like my hand running through a flame. The moment only lasted micro seconds, yet I saw deeper and longer than

I should I shouldn't be seeing this. Katcha was the one I truly crashed against, and while it was still short, the glimpses I felt of her lasted longer told me more. She too was afraid, afraid that she was a burden, ashamed, ashamed that we were all doing this for her, and angry too, angry at herself, angry at the wor angry at me. Why would she be angry? With me. I quickly started to recede, and eventually it's her and she's saying, it's not that I'm angry with you. I'm just mad

that you let people hurt you. You meet someone, you start to care for them, and then it becomes and she gets interrupted by the notification, and I'm really wondering how this sentence was going to end, because it's almost like you meet someone, you start to care for them, and then it becomes clear that they just like, have been mistreated for so long that they don't know what being treated well is, or that they have the same kinds of baggage that you have, or I don't know,

I don't know, but angry and mad that you let people hurt you. I'm wondering if this is about his past, or if it's about what has happened since she's been part of the party, or what I blinked and I woke up. The Scavenger's daughter has been fed unleash her wrath, and y'all, I was so confused. I was just like, wait,

hold on, wait, hold on, wait, hold on. I was just like, did I I went and looked, I'm like, no, right chapter and he's looking around and he gets a quest failed bedlam Bride, and I'm like, oh shit, is she Maria like dead? And he's trying to find Katya, and we get him remembering the memory that he was in Annie, the little baby girl fan are the cancer diagnosis, after all those hoops, all she'd overcome, they'd caught it early, she'd be okay, but despite that, it had come with

a terrible price. I understood finally Kotcha's addictions. Fannar had told them. I didn't understand why she'd been cleaned for so long. And then a one two punch. I thought of the social worker coming to pick me up from the interrogation room. Come on now, she'd said, come on now. A minor setback, But to Kachia it had been everything, a shattering. It was almost by dungeon standers. All of this was almost nothing. So he wakes up, there's blood everywhere.

He's in a room and there's a goblin trying to pull a trigger on him, and goblin gets frozen up and I'm looking at this and I'm just like because my initial instinct was to think, oh, something went really wrong with the potion. And he has hurt members of

his party. But then it's like, obviously we don't have any goblins in the party, so right there, we have an issue with that hypothesis, the fact that the goblin is called naughty and kept from being able to fire on Carl, but Carl was apparently able to just like brutally murder a bunch of people, or she Maria was. I was like, how does that make sense? I'm just completely lost, right, so, a new gravelly voice. It's being ruled an AI action, not an attack. The ceasefire has

new rules against teammates fighting one another or monsters. You could have fought back against the unaffiliated NPC while he was under control of that thing, but you waited too long. Now that he's no longer possessed, you can't touch him while the ceasefire is an effect. The AI is claiming he had a notification over his head while he was vulnerable. And the person speaking is Panford, who's an adjutant for

the Democratic sortion a dreadnought. And there is this caterpillar creature named Commander Stockade, who is not reacting well to this news, to say the least. And what we quickly begin to put together is the fact that this is the fact that these guys were cheating and the cheating backfired on them quite spectacularly, and they are outraged at the way it went left because they hadn't seen coming

that particular way. But they were fine with the fact that, like potentially all of Carl's team could have died if things had gone a certain way, you know, just the usual like rules for me, but not for the sort of thing and the fact that the AI is like instituting a particular effect they seem surprised by in a way that surprised me a little bit, where I was just like, have you guys been here this whole time? How have you not spotted the way that the AI

has been behaving. You should have realized that this shit was like gonna not work out as tidily as you think. And it's a whole so this takes a while to sort of unravel. I'm gonna jump ahead a little bit because it's a lot of Carl like hearing them argue, and really we get much of this repeated later and explained a little bit more fully. So I'm gonna go over to the moment where Victory shows up, and I

love Victory is feeling pretty happy about this situation. And we hear that she told Mordecai what happened, and he started cracking up. Let's see, I'm trying to find this bit here. Oh right, We get the details on she Maria as well. I had no idea what had happened, how I got here. I remembered the dream. The spider, not she Maria, but a different one, A male she Maria had also entered, mocking me, telling me I'd be sorry. But then she saw the other spider and she changed.

She burst into a rage. She killed him, her own husband. She devoured him while she sobbed. She disappeared and reappeared a few moments later. She curled into a ball right there in the hospital in Iceland. But then it got fuzzy. The husband had returned, hadn't he I have her now? He said, she's good and trapped. You can always set her free if you must, but do not unless all

is lost. So she's trapped in like an eggshell, is the way he says it later, that he can break it, but only once, and either she can take over his body or she can expel herself. But if he lets her out, it's a real gamble. What she's going to pick. There's an official field ruling education and Panford said. We all sat in a new room. There was a bag of literal earth catfood sitting on the counter, abandoned and leaning against the wall. The large bag was closed with

a little plastic clip. It was some generic, cheap kind of cat food that Donut would never touch. I am so curious about this. I couldn't take my eyes off it, and I had an overwhelming urge to try to steal it. When he gets that kind of like instinctual reaction, I trust it, and I am dying to know what the deal is with this fucking cat food. I don't know

what to think. If the cat food itself is valuable, if there's something in the bag that isn't catfood and that's what he's like sensing, or if there's something hidden in the cat food itself, or I don't know, but I really want to know. I'm excited, Stockade. Our plan was both simple and brilliant. Using the Warlord Chat, you

offered peace terms to Warlord's Carl and Dona. With those terms, you requested a face to face parlay, and then you extended an invite directly to Carl using your level fifteen summon ally spell. You extended this invitation after Carl quaffed the sleep potion and just as he was taking the medicine to treat his demonic infestation. Since Carl was still

technically conscious, the request was delivered to his interface. You knew that while most command and request inquiries are disabled in certain unconscious states, properly delivered warlord inquiries remained persistent, and we're getting like a replay of it as he's explaining all of this. You knew that while Carl was incapacitated, the plan for them was to allow Si Maria to

take over Carl's consciousness during the dream sequence. While in that state, the entity would have no ability to control Karl or inter with any of his systems, such as casting spells, sending messages, or interacting with his inventory. However, because of your brilliantly timed request, the entity controlling Carl could and indeed did, accept invitation to parlay. Are we agreed on those facts? So far? Agreed? Op The adjutant for Madness said, this was supposed to be a game.

This is bullshit. We're fighting for our lives you're pretending like nothing has happened. You're complicit in all of this. Luke is gone. He was real, Like, it's just insane. It's just insane how they can say right in front of his fucking face, I don't think that you're real. He's not talking about an NPC, he's talking about crawlers. It's just you know, fuck. So let's see, the entity

is a special Reaper spider Minion merchant. You knew the spider would jump at the ability to escape, which is exactly what would have happened if things had gone as you anticipated. So then we get an information from Mordecai about what summon ally is. At its most basic, it summons an ally, but it's not meant as an offensive spell. It puts control in the hands of the summoned and not the summoner. You have to be in each other's chat systems warlord chatwork. Second, the summon the summoned is

given the choice to accept. Third, the summoned cannot be teleported into a wall or anything like that. You were teleported into the castle, but you appeared as a non corporeal avatar. It was the system compensating for your unconscious state. This is actually intended to stop people from using the spell to remove friends from deadly situations, but in your case, it saved you. You remained in that state until you

started to wake up. I thought I'd killed you. It took some time to figure out what was going on. They wanted to at best ruin your treatment. At worst, they thought it would simply kill you or act like teleporting and demon possessed shell. Remember what happened on the last floor, they thought would happen here. They wanted to kill us using that crazy spider, So he goes on. Carl was teleported to the ballroom after she Maria accepted

the invite. However, they intended for him to fully teleport to the location and leave she Maria at the base for the princess posse. The spider would have slaughtered the entire room. What happened instead was that Karl was only partially teleported here, thwarting the plan. Let's say I'm trying to jump ahead, guys, cause there's lots of like chit chat across about it, but I'm trying to get to

like the basics of it. There was additional corruption in the procedure when call Crawler's Katcha and Karl touched hands during the start of the process. The consciousness jumping like that is still a mystery, OPI said, it's fascinating and it shouldn't have happened, and I'm really interested that there's something we can use that for. I don't know what

it would be, but hmm interesting. Uh. This is when he is watching the feed that they're scrolling through and he realizes they actually have footage of the dream itself and is really upset at the fact that they are able to observe something that is so deeply personal. So he and Katya are literally attached to one another as they enter this building, and she sees a man walking out of the hospital and says, what are you doing here? Telling them the truth? The man said, pushing past her.

On the screen, the words came out garbled, but I could hear it. I could hear the panic in Kotcha's voice. His name was Fannar. He was a fellow professor and they were originally going to adopt together. He'd slept with a student and she'd reported him. Nothing had come of it other than the ruination of Kotcha's life. Matt Denneman, thank you for that. That's what happens, and anybody talking about cancel culture is a joke. Bad things do not happen to men who abuse women. It's just so incredibly

rare for there to be any actual consequence. The worst that can happen has been, like, I'm boycotting things that you're in or that you do. But they're not dropped by networks, by publishers, they're not made to make restitution in any way. And almost always the woman suffers the brunt of the rage of the people online who like the man, or friends that the man manages to mobilize who are in power. And it is simply clockwork. And you can point to a million examples of this, and

people will still say, why didn't she say anything? Why didn't anybody report it? We have pages and pages from the Epstein files, and tell me what has fucking happened? What show me anything? Ebstein being dead is even up for debate. There's a lot of theory that he was smuggled out and his death was faked. Sure, why not When you've got more money than God and this kind of dirt, I have no doubt you could basically make miracles happen. Sure you know, like this entire she reported him,

nothing happened except that it ruined her life. Is so correct. I cannot overstate it enough. It's like a whole that one sentence. It just kind of was a gut punch because it's just in summary, always the end of the story, that's always it. And we just love to act like men are being persecuted, and it's like, nothing happens to you, though, what do you even mean? Ugh, the scene jumped. I can take a cat, I can take a test, Kotya pleaded to the faceless woman. I haven't touched anything in

ten years. It was so long ago. It's not just that you're sick and you've been hiding it. With Annie's medical needs and with so little time left, we don't feel he had no right, Katya shouted. She screamed the words, and she swept everything off the woman's desk. He had no right, she'd said in unison with the ghost on the screen. The now version of Katya also had a crow on her shoulder, her card that she'd brought from the previous floor, a crow with the skull of an infant.

The crow's name was also Annie. I didn't know what that meant, but it seemed important. This is like that fucking pokemon that has his mom's skull on his head, like this is devastating. What what fuck? We were in a hospital room, Kitya standing at a crib, holding the baby the best she could. It was difficult with all the wires and diodes that attached to the nine month old who just started standing on her own in the crib, so trying to parse this. Kotya was sick with Annie's

medical needs and with so little time left. I had assumed that meant that Annie was dying, but I'm wondering if it's with so little time left before the adoption, and that they're saying that Annie is going to be too much for Katya to take care of because she is about to start undergoing her own treatment. And Annie is going to need somebody who is fully capable, alert and healthy because she's going to just require intense care. And they're basically saying, you're not going to be up

for it, and you should have told us. I think that's what's happening. So she wasn't able to adopt this baby because this dude threw her under the bus about her drug use and about her illness, which is so incredibly disgusting as a response to her outing him sleeping with a student. Is it's just like it's just so incredibly gross and like, look, I'm not even like trying to take cotscious side about adopting a child when she's

hiding things like this. I really don't know what the state is that she's in, but it just is it's just such a completely different moral situation. You know. Sorry, Michael says, did the AI use Annie's body to make the crow? And I that like that did occur to me if I recall correctly. Katscha is already finished with her treatment. She had presumably gotten addicted to some painkillers or something similar during her cancer treatment, but she had

eventually overcome them. Oh interesting, but they're saying you're sick and you've been hiding it, so it seems like this is still something she's dealing with. If she hasn't touched a drug in ten years and the drugs came after the treatment, saying you're sick doesn't really make sense. I don't know, it doesn't matter in the end. It's just, you know, the spider comes in and then PONSI her husband.

I just knew everything about him. Memories that were starting to flow back into me diluted and washed away into the stream. Worry not my children, the male spider had said. As we watched, he transformed into a large, dark skinned human wearing simple pants and a vest. His accent was like that of Asahano's worry. Not only then did the scene fade, returning me on the floor of the ballroom, still translucent and flickering weird like I'm assuming he is.

You know, he handles her and trustes her up, but I don't know if he has something to do with like anything in Katcha's dream. So after some time, the Shi Maria consciousness was also pulled into conscious dreamscape. Meanwhile, the parties at both ends scrambled to find a way

to turn Carl's incapacitation to their advantage. Stockade plan on casting a spell to force Carl to completely form on your side, but you paused because you once again received outside information about how the Princess Posse team was planning to react. You once again needed to time your reaction to just the correct moment. Meanwhile, members of the Crawler team became aware of exactly what was happening, and they formed a plan to defend Carl, and the caterpillar just yells,

so they're cheating. Also, they also have someone watching from the outside, which is this Zood is not smart, Like they could have figured out what was happening, not with outside help, but with Doughnut having gotten the invitation as well, they could have begun to put tune two together. I feel now, is it possible they're getting outside help? Sure, but I don't know who it would be. I have to toss somehow, someone communicating with Rosetta. I don't know

how else this would really work. But yeah, So then we get a message from Prepatente. I am near the southern border with the Naga, surveying your defenses, and there is a great amount of enemy movement. They are attempting to be surreptitious, but Bianca and I are observing them from high above, and essentially they're behaving like the ceasefire is about to end any second, which is really weird

because that isn't true. What's going on. Let's see once the festivities begin, I have a specific score to settle with the lead producer of the Blood hunter program, and after that is complete, only then will I come to your aid and join in your military if you're still alive. So chapter nineteen, as they are continuing to debate exactly

what happened, Victory is the one who she chimes in here. Finally, when you tried to expel the Shi Maria presence, Stockade was using an outside the dungeon partner to watch the procedure. He timed it precisely because he's an idiot. It only half worked, and the system split you into because you were into places. Both sides then attempted to fully drag you into their presence. But at this point Mordecai became aware and knew he was being watched and formulated as subterfuge.

I'm going to pull him out, Mordecai said on the screen. I'm going to use a shock wave salve, but I got to adjust it to work on a non corporeal form, and it says well Mordecai brewed this. Stockade prepared a counter move to fully drag Karl into the ballroom. If the spell and the salve were applied simultaneously, Karl would have likely died, his soul being ripped in two they

can literally affect his soul. That's insane. But Mordecai, aware that he was being illegally observed, was actually creating a different potion, not a wake up salve, but something to violently expel the she Maria presence. How would they know if they weren't also observing us? Oh right, I forgot about fucking juice Box. Obviously, if they weren't cheating, how would they know, Paanford ask asked in Stockade, It's like,

oh my god, there's a fucking spy. And honestly, if they had just figured it out, it would have been amazing for him to be very paranoid that there's a spy, and there may be wasn't. But we get information from juice Box later that she has had to like kind of out a couple people who were on the inside by in order to save Carl, which worth it for sure, But uh, you know, nobody wants to burn up assets. I definitely understand that. Let see the scene change showing

Mordecai applying the salve to my translucent chest. I buckled as if in pain. At the same time Stockade cackled with laughter as he cast his spell. The cackling stopped a few moments later, the split screen turned to a full view of the ballroom, with me on the floor, convulsing, fully corporeal, And then just like that, I turned. There was no moment of transformation, There was a blink, and then I was she Maria. I have always loved you.

She Maria roared, her voice muffled. Her jaws were still unhinged. She was still in the midst of swallowing the human version of her husband in the dream we'd watched devour the man all all screaming that she loved him and would never hurt him. That got me. This is the thing that people don't understand someone so would never hurt them they love them. If you think that love and harm are mutually exclusive, you are out of your mind. Like,

what do you mean? Oh my god, I didn't kill you a ponsi, Maria screamed, I would never kill you. She skewered a goblin through the chest and picked him up with her arm. She shrieked at the goblin, I would never hurt him. How dare you? How dare you? She ripped the goblin into yikes. Oh, she didn't look nearly as trapped as a PONSI said still, I now had control of the eye on my chest. I could feel it there, clenched closed. In the dream, she'd returned

before before I had awakened. We left her in the room with Annie, and he's telling Katcha, it's okay, it's just a memory, it's not real, which I think is likely true. But I can see the potential where maybe he's wrong about something. I just don't know what. And then we see the eye contact. She opens her eye and the caterpillar makes eye contact, and the goblins do and begin to kill one another or themselves, and then suddenly she like falls and rolls onto her back. Blink,

there's Carl covered in blood. A silhouette of the spider remained, made of the blood that had been coating her body, and it fell over me like I had had a bucket dumped on my head, which is a wild image. Like I just picture like somehow managing to close an umbrella so quickly that the water doesn't fall at the same rate the umbrella closes, you know what I mean,

Like that kind of thing, Opie says. Another oddity, Mordechai's potion only worked temporarily it should have permanently severed the bond, but in the end the spider was pulled back into Carl, which if it had permanently severed the bond, but Carl did become corporeal, she would have killed him in that room, So I don't I think Mordechai knew that and made the potion less intense somehow, unless it was an accident,

but the screen disappeared with a flash. We believe stock Hayden Houston both conspired to use the secured messaging system to speak with someone upon the eighteenth floor who was relaying real time info via a third party participating in the celestial ascendency, and he says, we have identified the party as nurse Yugoslav of the madness. I planted a fake grin and turned to Architect Houston, your mom. Your mom is here in the dungeon. I can't wait to

meet her. And later on he is very unhappy about this little threat, Houston's presence here in the castle and the possible collusion by a family member who is not bound by any such rules as circumstantial evidence. Quite damning circumstantial evidence, but I don't feel it's enough to officially charge him unless you want to confess. Do you wish

to confess? Architect Houston, the masked creature made no moves and said nothing, So Victory is like, yeah, well we all know he's guilty, but he was clever about it. There's no evidence, So I'm going to say not culpable. Because the other two adjutants are in agreement, I do not need to render a ruling. This minor quorum finds the Madness and Princess Posse not guilty of wrongdoing. The leader of the Democratic Soortion has admitted to has admitted

guilt to illegal information gathering Warlord Message. Sir Ferdinand of Team Retribution has proposed an emergency action item because then Alien cuts on the other floors of being little bitches and cheating. We propose that nobody in the dungeon, including those pricks partying it up in that centipedees asshole, be allowed to watch any outside feeds for the remainder of this little game, which I had thought was already like part of the way this worked that you couldn't watch

outside feeds. I feel like there's something about this that's like specific in a way that I'm not getting, so feel free to help me out with that one. So meanwhile, Stockade is getting worse and worse grieving for this guy Luke. And it's sort of interesting because it's like the way that she Maria was flipping out about somebody that she allegedly cared about and hurt. I'm wondering if it was like if it's affecting Stockade because of the emotional aspect

a little bit more. You know, I received a new message directly in the warlord chat. If you ever mentioned my mother out loud ever again, you and that animal companion of yours will spend the last thousand years of your existence upon the amplification table in my surgical theater. This is a promise, Warlord Carl. I'll fuck off, Architect Houston. You are in mortal danger at this very moment and you don't even realize it. I do hope you escape

so we can extend our play. But gracious pet owners accept the gifts their animals drop at their doorsteps, Warlord Carl, What the fuck does that even mean? I don't know. Gracious pet owners accept the gifts their animals drop at their doorsteps. It's like she Maria his pet, is that what he's saying that like she or is he calling Stockade his pet? Maybe? I don't know. I don't know. Let's see, I'm just trying to uh make sure that I'm fitting in everything, because there's a whole, obviously big

moment that happens here. Stockade is continuing to beat his head against the floor and nobody is actually able to stop him from doing this, and because it's a quorum, they can't let his guards in either. Let's see, if we stay for much longer, we'll have to deal with a new education Panford. Victory said, let's end this now. Wait what happens when this is done? How do I get back? Because the ceasefire is in effective because of the nature of your transport, You'll be teleported back to

your base. Shit, okay, I said, quickly end it. And I was like, hold on, why. What it is is that we're we're Stockford able to Stockade. I'm conflating Panford and Stockade. We're Stockade dead. Before they ended this, Carl would be fucking stuck here. And he realizes this a second before Victory realizes, and she's just like, yeah, yeah, finish it, finish it, finish it. So he does there's a pang and victory immediately. It's like I'm transporting Carl back,

teleporting in twenty seconds. Twenty seconds. It's quite a long time, actually, when you're dealing with what they're about to deal with. Stockade dies. System message, Commander's stockade of the Democratic Sortion has fallen. Credit for the kill has been ruled as a psychosic induced suicide. System message. The Democratic Sortion has been defeated. As this defeat was voluntary, the closest ally castle or roler to their headquarters will receive all their assets.

System message. All assets of the Limit Sortion have been awarded to the Madness. There was a pause. I felt a tingle of pre teleportation. System message. Due to ceasefire Rule three sub Section six of the Ceasefire Addendum, the voluntary withdrawal of a combatant squad has engaged. Accelerating acceleration Scenario two. The ceasefire will be shortened by twenty three point three three hours. System message. The ceasefire has ended.

System message. All unaffiliated crawlers have been teleported from Moroccos. Warlord message Phase one combat rules have engaged. You may freely enter enemy territory via designated corridors. No offensive magic may be used during this first ramp up phase. No combatants may cast teleport based spells across from me. Architect Houston jumped to his feet and his robes flung back, revealing a horrific bug like body in six arms, two of which were holding a rifle, which he brought to

bear upon my chest. He fired as I dove out of the way. I landed heavily against the counter. I grabbed the bag of cat food just as I dropped an impact hoblobber onto the ground. I love that he prioritizes getting the cat food. It's just such an insane move. But like I'm glad because I want to know what the fuck? And he teleports to the Princess Posse camp and like just barely, just barely, the fact that it's

twenty seconds. I can't help but wonder, did the AI really stretch out all of those system messages to like fill time before they were able to move, And that way there was only like one chance for him to try and shoot Carl before Carl got transported away. Like I don't know, I don't know, but essentially what's made clear Architect Houston set Stockade up knowing that this thing wasn't going to work. I believe he knew that Carl was going to wind up here and that this would

end the ceasefire. I believe that there was going to be like something, unless it's just a like happenstance, because I don't know how you guarantee. She Maria opens her eye and that Stocky kills himself. But it feels to me like he did somehow put this together. Otherwise, how would he be so ready? You know what I'm saying? Anyway, it's uh, I should have dropped a bigger bomb. I thought I'd gone with my hot list. He'd plan this. Either that or he'd known what was happening to stock

Kayden had compensated accordingly, which is certainly possible. What the fuck, let's see what are you sitting around for? The lead one, asked the slugglows. He was a level fifty five named Jason Manning. Fucks. He had dreadlocks shaped like little mourning stars. He waved his head back and forth. The tiny weapons spun in a circle. Ain't you heard? We got a war on Everyone is moving to one of the two

fronts now, quit your bleeding and get out there. The slug whooped loudly and left the room, trailing orange slime as his compatriots followed. A moment later, an explosion echoed as a non magical rock detonated against our shield system. Message weapons free weapons Free faction Wars have officially begun, and that is the end of the chapter. Yeah, so

pretty dope, terrifying, really clever. I am always a fan of when the villains are as clever as the good guys, and the way that they shook out and the fact that architect Houston understood the timing of it all and was like figuring it out while Carl was as well. I just it's like simultaneously I love it and I hate it. You know, I want my villain to be clever and not just powerful and able to influence absolutely everything, but also like smart, But also I don't want them

to be smart. I hate this, you know what I'm saying. So like the ramp up ending or starting early. Also like I was already so anxious about how little time we had to get so much done, and I am assuming whatever like soldiers they weren't able to get from the crawlers are now susceptible to conscription right, which fucking sucks. I don't know if there's something that we can use to count or that, if there's like a spell or

a potion or what. But like, uh, we just had so many things that we wanted to finish before we reached this stage that we are not going to get to do now, and that as somebody who like really takes comfort in plans, bums me out. So yeah, sorry, Jeff says, this is all much too confusing. I feel you on that, Jeff. I actually like mostly followed, but I get what you're saying. Michael says, I didn't know zomp was an actual color before. Apparently it is a

teal green color. Why did that come up? Michael? Zomp was in the book with the train. I can't remember the name now which one it was, but uh, all the lines were named after colors, So yeah, we had like found that out at during that book. Sarah m says, I don't think it was. He knew as much as he had plans for ever, every eventuality he could think of might be. Yeah, I gotta say that. On each subsequent read through, the Caterpillar's death gets a little harder

to read the caterpillar was screaming about Luke's zomp hued thighs. Okay, I did not remember that, but it is funny that they're referencing a color that I had never heard of until these books, and then we're bringing it back up again, like why not? Yeah, so I'm really worried. I'm very relieved. The next session section is titled Christmas Morning, y'all? When is he going to open the fucking Christmas present? When is Zach? I want? Please? When are we gonna find

out what happened at Christmas? Is this? It? Is? This? It? Because like we're in a different POV. We're not in Carl's POV as I'm seeing with just the opening sentence. So now I don't know, but we'll see anyway. Okay, I gotta wrap up. Oh man, I pushed my third recording to tomorrow because I had a migraine this morning and I was sort of like I might be fine though, and I'm finishing my second recording and I am drained.

Good thing I did it, I think, But yeah, thank you guys so much for coming hanging out with me. Definitely going to be reading the next section immediately. I'm so curious and looking forward to coming back Thursday. So until then, to Loo motherfuckers. That was an unspoiled network.