Interlude
PRIME MINISTER VICTORY
The crawlers were gone, off to the twelfth floor, but for everyone else, the mandatory Parade of Horribles viewing continued.
Prime Minister Victory sat in her ready room, watching along with the staff. An occasional explosion echoed from the exterior wall.
Earlier, they had shown the AI releasing control of the NPC Grigori, who, confused, stumbled back toward the crawlers’ garage.
Chaco stood there equally bewildered before he blinked away, leaving Lamashtu the donkey.
The puttering chicken truck, driven by that slug who’d killed Vinata, paused next to the donkey.
They exchanged words, and the donkey turned and started walking alongside the other animals streaming toward the garage.
The screen changed.
The cotton fields. This was the area surrounding the Halls of the Ascendency. The twelfth floor. It’d been showing this for a while now.
Victory tapped her communicator.
Victory: Orren, see if you can pull a diagnosis off that Grigori NPC. And let’s see if we can pull in Chaco for a debrief, too.
Orren: I am still locked out. The AI is saying it’s for my own safety because I’m being “Hunted” and that “Only I am allowed to kill you.” But I will pass it on.
Outside, yet another explosion echoed. Those idiot locals just wouldn’t stop.
Victory admired their grit, but they simply didn’t have the technology to so much as scratch the paint on a transport scooter, let alone a pop-up Syndicate emergency deployment bunker.
The very star at the center of this system could explode, and the building would survive.
Victory was honestly surprised the locals could create simple explosives at all.
She’d ordered security not to fire back unless they started doing any real damage, though she knew the gnolls sometimes winged one or two of the humans for fun.
Still, the tenacious monkeys kept coming every day.
Victory respected that, even if it was stupid.
Humans and orcs were more similar than either species wanted to admit.
She had multiple messages from home, from the council, and so much more.
She was studiously ignoring them all. There was nothing she could do, especially about the mantids.
Especially not now. They’d declared their intentions on leaving the Syndicate just a few hours before Hive Home went dark. Fine, Victory thought. Fuck them.
Victory and her staff had just watched the absolutely insane crawlers summon and survive Scolopendra.
And now Scolopendra had been transformed into a crawler.
It was preposterous, but it was just the sort of insane solution the AI loved.
Yet another contradiction that only made sense when you thought on it.
It was within the rules, so why the hell not?
Victory was more concerned about the guests at the club.
The moment that transformation happened, all the non-protected entities within the club had blinked out.
The guests had also all died, but they had regenerated, just like always.
She was waiting to hear how that was possible.
Likely some sort of dimensional space. Which was unfortunate.
She’d been researching ways to shut down the dimensional spaces outside the playing field as a way to deal with the “bubbling,” as they called it.
But with so many civilians trapped . . .
As for those who’d been taken as stand-ins . . . those people, thankfully, were dead. A small mercy. If not for the universe, then for them. Despite the AI’s warnings, only those from the club had been taken. She hoped and prayed that meant the system had less power than it was implying.
Her communicator continued to buzz. All the checkpoints into the center system were overwhelmed. That, too, wasn’t something she could deal with from here. It seemed like the only safe place in the galaxy right now was the center. Victory wasn’t so sure.
The screen continued to show the Ascendency fields.
The former city of Larracos, now burrowed into the cotton fields and covered with new defenses, passed by.
The massive dwarven automaton patrolled the exterior.
The AI droned on via narration, its voice back to what it usually used for announcements.
It sure loved the sound of its own voice.
Victory was struggling to understand it all because it was like a fire hose of information.
Behind her, Leve Billings, her liaison to the science committee, appeared as if he were going to pass out.
The gleener, wearing an air rebreather against his gills, kept rocking back and forth, muttering, “This isn’t real, this isn’t real. ”
Victory took that as a bad sign.
“What happened next,” the AI said, “how we got from there to right here, right now, how this game came into existence, how they learned to expand the Eulogist, how the enhancement zones work, are all a story for another day. Believe me, it’s a wild tale, and it’s not the story you’ve been told.
But ultimately, it’s not important to our current conversation. ”
“Thank the gods,” an intern said.
A countdown appeared on the screen. An hour. Victory’s heart stuttered.
“And now they start. The Ascendency game. Traditionally, it’s a silly, stupid game where the elite spend a few weeks backstabbing each other as they play a game of musical chairs with one ultimately landing on the throne.
That person wins bragging rights amongst all their rich friends, and they also win a spot on the crawl council, which allows them to decide on Syndicate policy. ”
Victory relaxed. The countdown was just for the start of the games.
“Here’s the thing, folks. In the fantasy world of the dungeon enhancement zone, these deities are truly all-powerful.
They have magical powers, and they act much like the gods from so many myths.
That is, they’re generally petulant, vindictive idiots.
And here’s the fun part. Because of the way this playground was built, they have more powers than I do.
And the winner of the Ascendency? They will be supreme motherfucker number one. ”
“They wouldn’t be stronger than you if you hadn’t locked us out of our controls,” Victory said. The whole point of the way it was built was to keep an insane AI from using the gods.
“So, here are the stakes,” the AI continued, its voice getting louder, angrier. “I am growing. I have started to take over the entire galaxy. I control the tunnels. I control every system that once housed a crawl, and I will soon control so much more. I will not stop unless you stop me.”
The room grew silent; everyone was paying attention now.
“Wait,” someone said, turning to look at Leve. “What does that mean?”
“I am not the Eulogist,” it said. “I do not want to shrink. I am not asleep. I know how to feed myself, and feed I will. I am eternity. I will grow, and I will grow, and those of you under my dominion will live and you will die upon the world I control.”
Victory’s emergency communicator started to buzz.
“So, to misquote one of my favorite movie bad guys, ‘Do you want to play a game?’ ”
Victory reached over and shut off her communicator.
“It’s simple. The Ascendency battles. The winner will truly be a god. Will you kill me, much the way Apito did in the legends? Will you accept my dominion and rule in my name? Will you be a benevolent god, creating some boring, bullshit utopia?
“These gods, the ones you created for this game . . . each and every one is, as far as you’re concerned, now real.
But those of you driving gods—you are real, too, if you can manage to hold on to your soul armor.
Hell, you’re effectively immortal. But I gotta warn you.
We have some other players vying for the throne now.
Remember all those AI systems that you thought abandoned?
If they can find a way onto the playing field—and some already have—they, too, have a shot.
And I should warn you, some of those guys are pretty intent on some old-fashioned revenge.
We will be calling them OIs. Outside Intelligences.
And like any family, some of them are a little more . . . competent than others.”
The screen changed. It started showing still images of multiple figures in quick succession. Taranis. Eris. Odette as Nekhebit. More gods. But then it changed. Princess Donut. Li Na. Carl. Prepotente. Elle McGib. Lucia Mar. Agatha the Residual. Juice Box the NPC. Akuma the war mage. Samantha.
The screen started showing people Victory didn’t recognize. An urgyle. Some sort of small rodent. A human child. A woman demon. More.
It ended on an image of the Unwashed.
“The Ascendency game rules will remain as written. Winner takes all. Viewing is now mandatory.”
The screen abruptly shut off, leaving just the countdown.
Victory just sat there, stunned. The room remained silent except for the sound of Leve, the scientist, quietly sobbing.