Discount Dan

Six Aspirants to be exact.

All congregating around one of my third-floor doorway anchors. The one closest to my fancy new kiosk.

There was no doubt about who we were dealing with, since I could see them clearly on the CCTV screens in the security office. The whole lot of ’em looked like extras from a Mad Max flick—crude body armor, tacky mohawks, and leather studded with spikes. All of them were also missing wide swatches of skin along their hands and forearms. That marked them out as both Aspirants and members of the Red Hands. There were several gangs that called the top ten floors home, but Hudson’s Red Hands were one of the most powerful and numerous.

They also happened to be the same chucklefucks who’d nearly killed Temperance, not so long ago. Although, I had a deep-seated hatred for anyone who swore allegiance to the Flayed Monarch, I had an extra special dislike for those twatwaffles.

This particular group also had spectacularly bad timing.

The store was still filled with paying customers and my crew could barely keep up with the demand. Taylor and Stephanie, my two human employees, were running back and forth between the front check out and the concession stand, Princess Ponypuff had a line that stretched all the way down aisle five, and Baby Hands was busy moping up a carpet, bless his stupid heart. Thanks to the Blanket Fort’s “Admittance Credentialing System”—aka the Shithead Spam Filter—they couldn’t actually get inside, so under normal circumstances I’d probably just leave them alone for now and deal with them once things slowed down.

That, or I’d take my fancy new Doorway Sentinel out for a test drive. These mooks had the supreme misfortune to pick a door I’d replaced with one of my new Horrors and I was eager to see how it would hold up in combat. There was one minor hiccup, though.

The Aspirants weren’t alone. Because of course they weren’t.

They’d cornered a young woman who had the looks of a new Delver about her. I mean, I couldn’t tell for sure because I couldn’t see Delver tags through the CCTV footage, but it was a safe beat. She looked maybe twenty-five, was short and slender with long hair, braided and thrown over one shoulder. She wore an ankle-length dress that looked like a stage prop for a Shakespearean play, and unlike her would-be assailants, she didn’t have on armor and wasn’t carrying any kind of visible weapon.

Although I wanted to unleash my Doorway Sentinel and simply watch the carnage and mayhem unfold from a safe distance with popcorn in hand, I couldn’t risk it. The Sentinel’s were tough, but tough enough to take out six Aspirants? Yeah, that was a stretch. Plus, there was every chance that the girl would get caught in the crossfire and end up in a body bag. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing I’d let an innocent bystander die because I’d been too lazy to drag my ass to the third floor and take care of business.

So, much as I didn’t want to, I rounded up Croc and Temperance and we quickly made our way to the elevator.

I decided not to grab Jakob, even though leaving him behind was a risk.

He was busy in the pharmacy cooking up some new brews, and though he would’ve come if I asked, I didn’t want to force him into a compromising situation. The Cendral was more than happy to slaughter Dwellers by the truckload, but he wouldn’t kill other Delvers. Not even ones who clearly had it coming. He’d hurt ’em. Incapacitate ’em. Even maim ’em if there was no other option. But killing other people—even asshats like the Aspirants—was his line in the sand.

He was like Batman in that way.

If Batman were a thoughtful German biochemist, who liked to read poetry, and had access to a bazooka that fired sofas. So not really like Batman at all, I guess.

Still, I wasn’t too worried.

True, six against three weren’t great odds, but that was before considering all the extra help we’d have. Drumbo and Synthia 2.0 were good to go and since I’d upgraded Unhinged Taxidermist, both were now effectively at level 16. The Doorway Sentinel was just as powerful, which gave us even odds. Plus, Croc, Temperance, and I were all a helluva lot stronger since the last time we’d gone toe-to-toe with the Red Hands, and I had some extremely nasty new Relics in my arsenal.

Besides, if things did go sideways, which was unlikely, we could always retreat into the store, regroup and grab some reinforcements, then take another stab at it. I’m sure a few of the Howlers would be willing to lend a hand if we really needed the help. Most of them didn’t like the Aspirants any more than I did.

I laid out the quick and dirty gameplan and summoned my Horrors while the service elevator trundled toward the third floor. Temp and I would take out the Red Hands, while Croc’s job was to protect the new Delver and get her to safety. Once she was out of harm’s way, the mimic would circle back around to help us mop up whatever remained of the Aspirants—though I doubted there would be much left at that point.

It was a simple plan. Straightforward.

Hit fast and with overwhelming force. Use the element of surprise to take ’em down before they even knew how well and truly fucked they were.

The elevator finally came to a rumbling stop and as the doors slid open, Drumbo and Synthia charged out into the familiar courtyard where we’d previously battled the Kiosk crab and its offspring. Temp and I were right on their heels, with Croc not far behind.

There was no talking. No attempts to reason with these assholes. I was officially done trying to convince people to make good life choices. They’d made their bed and now it was time to lie in it. Now was the time for extreme and total violence.

I planted my feet the second I was clear from the doorway and thrust one hand forward, palm out, and activated Hydro Fracking Blast. Mana surged through my body and all the frustration and anger that had been building up inside me for the past few days came roaring out as a narrow beam of water, wreathed in a halo of flickering blue flame. I’d targeted a level thirteen Delver with a large mohawk and a machete in one hand. The man was wearing what appeared to be Motocross body armor, spray painted and covered with metal studs.

The armor didn’t save him.

My attack hit him square in the back, right between the shoulder blades, and drilled straight through his torso, then exploded out the other side. I cut the beam short, momentarily shocked by the sheer brutality of the Relic. Although the beam had only been the size of my pinky, it left behind a hole as large as my fist. I could literally see through him, though bits of stringy meat dangled down, partially obstructing my view.

Holy shit. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that.

Despite the devastating injury, my attack hadn’t killed the Aspirant outright. Though his health was pitifully low, he was somehow still alive, though he wouldn’t be for long. The man began to scream—a tortured, high-pitch keening sound—as roiling blue-white fire poured out of the jagged wound in his back and raced over the rest of his body. He dropped to his knees, weakly swatting at the flames in a fruitless attempt to put them out.

That lasted for all of five seconds, then he let out a final gargled choke and pitched over to one side, his corpse blazing like yule tide log.

I glanced down at my palm and stared at it for a moment in horrified wonder. I’d only hit the poor bastard for a second. Maybe two, tops. If that was what happened with a single stack of Scorching Erosion, I couldn’t even imagine what five stacks of Scorching Erosion would do to a person.

Probably turn them into a puddle of steaming goo, if I had to guess.

Off to my left, there was another roar of pain as Drumbo sideswiped a petite female Aspirant like a Mac-truck then drove his new angle grinder hand attachment directly into her face. As a contractor, I’d spent hours cutting tile, sanding wood, and sharpening tools so I knew exactly how dangerous angle grinders could be. They were versatile tools, and powerful, but I’d seen the aftermath of a shattered disk and the damage they left behind could be ugly.

This, though, was devastation on another level.

Skin and bone just vanished beneath the roaring circular blade and a fine mist of pink and red materialized above Drumbo while chunks of meat splattered the ground. The woman screamed, but it quickly turned into a wet gurgle as Drumbo effortlessly knocked her to the floor and shoved the grinder into what remained of her mouth. I had to physically suppress the urge to vomit right then and there. I’d seen a lot of horrific shit since noclipping, but that… That was next level.

The sound of crunching teeth would haunt me until the day I died.

On my right, Temperance had hurled her trusty ball of spider right into the face of a non-human Aspirant with delicate features and a pair of gossamer dragon fly wings jutting from their back. A prompt flickered to life above the strange Delver’s head.

Delver #05T - 01 - B07PMLKR4Y – Iride, Transmog [Level 17]

Meet the Irides, the prettiest little porcelain figurines in the Backrooms.

With their fine elf-like features and dazzling dragonfly wings, these magical powerhouses look like they belong in a fairytale. Not the nice kind, though. The twisted, fucked-up kind from Germany where the monsters win, and the hero gets chopped up into little pieces and eaten by birds. The Irides consider themselves ethereal beings of pure magic.

Honestly? They’re not wrong.

These glitter-skinned dickwads can blast out magic like a goddamned confetti cannon. But what they make up for in mana capacity, they lack in pretty much every other arena. They have the upper body strength of a seven-year-old and are complete glass cannons. Literally, since their bones are made from hallow tubes of crystal. It makes them light enough to fly, but the downside is that they’re about as durable as a soggy paper bag.

Have you ever seen glass bones punch through paper-thin skin? It ain't pretty, I can tell you that much, though they do bleed iridescent, which is kinda cool.

I dismissed the Codex entry with a wave of one hand and it disappeared just in time for me to see Temperance run across the air itself and lunge at the winged spellcaster. The Iride Transmog was so busy trying to dispatch the horde of angry, scuttling spiders that they didn’t see Temp coming until it was too late. Temperance lodged her cleaver into the meat between Delver’s neck and shoulder. The blade sunk all the way to the collar bone accompanied by a splash of shimmering iridescent blood.

The Codex entry was right. It was kinda beautiful. Like watching a rainbow bleed.

Temperance yanked her blade free and drove it home again, this time directly into the Delver’s skull. The Transmog’s HP hit zero and her legs folded like a bad Poker hand. I pulled my gaze away from the grisly scene, scanning the field for another Aspirant to unleash my new war crime hand cannon on. I found one off to the left. A stocky, spark-plug of a man wearing what looked like a latex gimp suit with chrome chains draped across his shoulders and chest.

The bondage freak was currently squaring off against Synthia and the two seemed evenly matched.

He fought with a long meat hook attached to the end of a chain like some kind of cenobite reject straight out of a Hellraiser flick. He twirled the chain with expert precision, lashing out and tearing away chunks of meat with the hook end. Synthia did her best to fend off the blows with her crab arm, but it was a loosing battle. He was just too damned fast. And every time she landed a hit with her chainsaw, a rancid aura the color of an old scab would envelop his body like a second skin.

The magic, whatever it was, completely negated her attack damage. In fact, every time she hit him, his total Health Pool increased.

With a thought my demolition screwdriver shot toward the Aspirant like a javelin fired from the business end of a fucking Howitzer.

My screwdriver was inches away from punching through the guy’s throat when suddenly it hit… something. A force field was my best guess, though it was totally invisible to the naked eye. A bright lance of pain slammed into my skull and a sensation that I could only describe as psychic feedback ripped its way through my body, searing every nerve ending at once and chewing through a fifth of my HP in the process.

I’d never experienced anything even remotely like it. It almost felt as though some greater psychic force had neatly sliced through my telepathic link to the screwdriver. I dropped to one knee and reflexively clutched at my head as the world reeled drunkenly around me. Blood streamed from both nostrils and my stomach lurched, an angry army of butterflies dog fighting inside my belly. It was all I could do to keep my lunch down.

After a handful of seconds, the sensation began to fade, and I blinked away the dizziness. When I focused on the Aspirant in the gimp suit, I abruptly discovered that he wasn’t where he’d been just a moment before. Instead, he hung in the air, surrounded in an otherworldly halo of purple light. And not just him, I realized with a start. All of the Aspirants floated six or seven feet above the courtyard floor, their arms and legs stretched out so they looked like giant human X’s.

“Dan, help!” came the cry of an all too familiar voice. “They got me, Dan! Just like when Bella gets captured by the Volturi!”

I clumsily gained my feet and spun in a slow, unsteady circle. The breath caught in my throat when I saw Croc hovering in the air along with the Aspirants. The mimic wasn’t stretched out like the others, but the dog-turned-grizzly was surrounded by the same unsettling glow.

My mind raced as I considered my options. None of them were good.

The best I could do was trigger Neural Slip Stream, then hopefully get close enough to activate Sterilization Field, hopefully neutralizing the—

Before I could even finish the thought, the Aspirants started to scream, the chorus of shrieks accompanied by a terrible, wet ripping noise. I watched in shocked horror as Aspirant arms and legs were crudely torn away. The limbs dropped to the floor, leaving the wailing torsos alive and hanging in the air—though not for long. Wire-fine purple lines, which formed a grid of one-inch squares appeared on each Aspirant, as if cast by a projector. There was one final cry of agony and then the screams abruptly stopped, as though cut short with the edge of a knife.

What was left of the Aspirants simply fell apart.

One-inch cubes of skin and meat, hair and bone, tumbled to the floor forming three gory piles.

Croc was mercifully alive, though the grizzly dog still hung in the air, supported by the light. For the first time, I noticed that same violet glow surrounded the woman we’d come to rescue. The Delver with the long braid and the odd, Shakespearean dress. The one who looked like she’d stepped off the dusty streets of a county Ren-Fair.

A tag flashed above her head.

Delver #03V - 04 - B07J1R7885 – Human, Variant [Level ???]

Well shit. The fact that I couldn’t even tell what level this lady was, probably wasn’t a great sign. Chances were, this was a trap and we’d walked right into it.