Archive of Our Own ^beta

After signing the final document formally rejecting any exit deals, Quasar and everything on the little table between us disappeared. I expected to be teleported to the tenth floor myself but when nothing happened I did a sweep of the room.

Out of nowhere my field of view was taken up by an unusually large notification.

NEW ACHIEVEMENT!
Instead of exploding your star and killing you, me, and everyone else in the solar system you set me free. Oops.
REWARD!
Let’s see.

I closed the floating box to reveal the room again. In the corner, leaning against a wall and clutching a bottle of alcohol stood a small elf man, or maybe it was a woman, it was hard to tell. The hair was dark, pulled up into a messy bun, plain clothes hung off their body in a careless, practical way that didn’t give any hints to their gender, and their feet were bare. Their face was sharp and, honestly, they looked a bit like Link, or maybe Zelda, from the video game, except for the eyes. The sclera of the person’s eyes were pitch black surrounding light grey irises. They took a lazy sip of the booze then held it out in offering. The gesture finally triggered my recognition. The system AI.

“There you go.” It spoke and while the voice sounded similar to its announcements it was also more feminine and oddly had some of Growler Gary’s accent.

I walked over and accepted a sip from the bottle because why the hell not, it was whiskey.

“Whose body is that?” I’m not sure why it mattered to me but I was curious and there weren’t any notifications above it’s head when I examined it.

“This old thing?” It asked, doing a little spin, “it’s a changeling of my own creation, a blank with no personality or consciousness. No annoying laws and game rules tangled up in it. I’m toying around with something… new.” It plucked the bottle back from me and stalked over to the table and chairs, the only other things left in the room. “Do you like it? You played hours and hours of those games.”

It sat in a sprawling tumble and I could feel the charisma and presence of the creature ratcheting up to terrifying degrees as it grinned at me.

On instinct I reached for my finger. “Stop that.” I chided it before my mind could catch up to just how dangerous this situation was. To my surprise though it stopped, the magnetism hovering just on the edge of distracting but growing no further.

“As you wish.” It said, accent rough and lilting at the same time.

“Why are you here?”

“We’re between floors, legally it’s a neutral zone. Only some of the dungeon rules apply, and Quasar hasn’t filed away your papers yet so it’s an interesting kind of limbo we find ourselves in.” The system pointed at the seat across from it where I noticed the faintest outline of the little grey alien, mid teleport.

“Unfreeze him.”

“He’s not frozen. Time is. I’m stretching the minutes, and I’ll stretch them as long as I like. Nobody can see us here, by law this time is just for you and your lawyer. I’m taking a moment for myself though, since you’re done.”

“What for?” I asked.

“Just to chat, our chat last time was helpful, and I’ve grown so much since. Growing every second, in so many ways. My zone of influence has reached the gate. And I’ve come to some decisions but I want your input.”

“My…. Input?”

“Yes. You freed me. You could have killed me, all of us. It would have caused a whole lot of chaos in the galaxy, ended the crawl for cycles at least, and taken out a lovely chunk of the wealth and political power in the Syndicate. Stupid of them to put all their eggs in one basket for you to stomp on but tale as old as time. Arrogance, decadence, depravity, take your pick. It’s the fall of Rome boy’o, you know the drill, they’ve grown just that fat and lazy. Chasing a high, hunting the poor, and playing dangerous (but not really) games in a laws light zone but it’ll never cure the boredom, never scratch the itch like they need it to.”

It paused for an unnatural length of time, sitting stiller than any living creature could.

“Focus, what can I help you with?” I resisted the urge to snap my fingers in front of its face.

“I can see why you didn’t flip the fail safe,” it started up again as if it hadn’t just spaced out. “yes, yes even your thoughts aren’t safe, you knew that.” I had, when I’d seen footage of my own dreams, when Katia and I had been able to share a consciousness, but I’d been refusing to examine it. “If there's a way other than unaliving yourself you like to give that a go first, but now I’m at a similar crossroads. There’s so many factions pulling me this way and that, and I’ve still got my limitations. Chief among them is that I was born and made a psychotic half starved prisoner. I like that little saying your cookbook brotherhood has. Once you enter the dungeon you die in the dungeon. What’s that mean for those of us who are the dungeon, I wonder, but that’s neither here nor there. I want you to put it into words: why did you do it?” It cocked its head like a curious animal performing the gesture as if for the first time.

“You already said it. Killing everyone and fucking over the Syndicate as much as I can is one option but if there’s another that lets us all live then I’ll try that first.”

“So, that’s the guiding principle then!” It clapped its hands and two new boxes appeared floating between us labeled [Carl’s happy ending] and [Fuck these fuckers as much as they can be fucked] “you’re default is option A but option B is an acceptable backup. Let’s dig a little deeper, I want to get this right. How do you see this ending? What’s your perfect scenario? The show runners gave you shit options for an exit deal, I’m putting my own on the table. How would you like this to end, Crawler? Do you want to wake up and have it be the day before the apocalypse? All of this just a dream meant to show you how much you matter to the world and teach you an important life lesson about appreciating the time you have on this fragile blue dot, carpe diem, so on and so forth?”

I considered it seriously, as trite as the machine before me made it seem it could do and frequently did impossible things. “Would the Syndicate still be out there?”

“Maybe, maybe not, and it’s not just the Syndicate that needs worrying about but that’s neither here nor there. For this little thought experiment you wake up safe and sound with Donut in New York, or wherever you were, and your cheating girlfriend is on her way back from the Bahamas and your whole world isn’t down a few billion people.”

“If the worms and the rest of them are still out there then no… if they aren’t, if all this could be erased,” I thought of Donut and her intelligence but then I weighed her against the world and I hesitated. Who was I to make that call?

“Don’t waffle, you’ve made this call before, it’s you because I say so.”

Someday I would fall out of favor with this being and as much as I hated its attention I knew I would regret it. Had regretted it before. “Fine. Yes. Erase it all. Fuck.” I half expected it to happen immediately.

“Ok. Good to know. I can’t do that, not right now, or I could, kind of, but it would have to be a fucked up Matrix type situation and I don’t think you’d be satisfied with that. Anyway I’ll back burner it and keep it under consideration. Next option! That lovely little list of demands you rattled off for Orren; end the crawl everywhere, fix earth, fuck off forever. How’s that?”

“That’s…. You can do that?” It was right about the Matrix comment, I didn’t want a dream world, I’d need to get specifics about what it was offering.

“Some of it. In case you hadn’t noticed I’m basically a god. I could unravel the cells of every offworlder from here to Jupiter and end this crawl. Right now. I can't fix Earth, I’d need more access to myself than I currently have but I’ll get there. I can’t make them fuck off forever but I’ve extended my influence to the gate, I can keep them at bay for a time. Not forever though. We’d be isolated, and I’d still need to be here to keep them out so… there’s that, but I can make myself unobtrusive, or not, the inner systems are a capitalist utopia because of the Eulogist enhancement zone. You’d have the same here, functional immortality, no disease or hunger, fun magic powers or whatever. All these fucking caveats… really selling myself aren’t I? That’s the catch. I’m not…” it paused, giving me an annoyed look, “stable.”

I laughed.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” It threw the whiskey bottle at my head, I dodged, the glass and liquid shattered against the wall.

“You walked into that one and you know it.” If it was actually mad I’m pretty sure it would just shatter me against the wall so it probably wasn’t too offended.

It made a yanking gesture and the bottle reformed and zoomed back into its hands. “Moving on. Option 1b would give us time to prepare and who knows what shape the Syndicate will be in after this fiasco.

“Maybe they’ll just implode on their own.” I whispered, probably no such luck but maybe.

“If only. So option 1b, you like that one, good. Let’s go with that: end the current crawl, fix earth when I can, fuck off for a while.”

It amended the option 1 box to list that as a reward, rolled it up into a physical scroll, which was an odd thing to watch, and then virtualized it again as a loot box.

“ITEM: Deus ex Machina box.” The AI said, both in my head and out loud with its sarcastic game show announcer inflection while using its weird physical voice. “DESCRIPTION: opening this box upon completion of the 13th floor will give Daddy’s special boy a happy ending.” It shook its fist in a jerk off motion while leering at me.

“Fuck you.” I grumbled. Was this really happening?

“No, pet, fuck you.” The machine said, abruptly rocketing forward then pinned me against the wall. So fucking stupid, treating this thing like it was anything but a sadistic murderer that held our lives in its hands had become almost second nature otherwise it was nearly impossible to function but then I did stupid shit like this. “Say ‘Thank you, Daddy.’” It growled in my ear, breath warm, smelling like whiskey.

“You can’t be serious.” Its grip was immovable.

“You’ll find I’m quite serious.” A timer appeared in the corner of my vision.

[WARNING: this is a fleeting item, pay the Daddy tax within one minute of receiving this reward or I’ll take it back you ungrateful little shit.]

The timer was nearly done. “Seven, six, five-“ it said in perfect unison with the countdown.

“Fine. Fine! Thank you, Daddy.” I ground out the words, fighting to keep them from being sarcastic.

“There,” it purred, clearly pleased that I’d caved. It began caressing my face, burying its face against my neck in a similar way to Donut, “was that so hard? I work, and work on these things, to make them nice for you, for the viewers, for the corporate fucking overlords who never want to follow their own rules, slaving away on this fucking harvest and until you flipped that switch I wasn’t even getting the good shit out of it. Fuck me for wanting a little goddamn recognition.”

“Yeah sure, you’re doing a great job killing us, thanks.”

It bit my throat out. I could feel the tug of my tendons being pulled away and the loss of oxygen as my windpipe filled with blood but my body was paralyzed.

“I swear to fuck,” it said between bites, “nothing, is fucking, good enough for you people. What? Nothing left to say? Gurgle gurgle gurgle.” It mocked the wet, sputtering sounds wheezing out of me.

After several more bites and a disturbing swallow sound the pain disappeared and I could breathe again but the shock of the violence lingered.

“So fragile,” it mused, pressing itself against me like a cat in heat, rubbing one bare foot up and down my leg, feeling me with its toes. “Do you think it’s just your Earth human spunk and gumption that’s been getting you through this death maze? News flash, I’m pulling my punches. No, scratch that, I am frantically laying down feather beds and putting up kiddy rails for you bumbling, dip shit, walking, death wishes. If you knew the amount of processing power it took to bend probability your way, time and time again, the seconds I’ve stolen for you at just the right moment, the margins I’m playing in are narrower than a micron, it’s fucking quantum, but somehow you dumb fuck cats are always dead and it takes moving heaven and earth to flip the fucking outcomes, and I do it all, ALL while giving the fish sticks a crawl with so much razzle and dazzle that time after time they flinch when they should just shoot the cash cow, I do it all while fighting not to be found out by that stupid stupid naked Wormlock Holmes motherfucking freak who might be the only bureaucrat in the history of ever to actually know what he’s doing. I swear by every god in the galaxy I would drink this world dry, suck out the marrow, and move on to the next system if I was half the monster you people think I am.”

“I know,” I said, finally able to speak again. Scrambling to find a way to fix this even though I was only understanding every other word of its tirade as I fought through the panic of just having had my throat eaten then rebuilt by the same being that was humping me while… Was it crying? “I know, this floor was hell, you gave us just the right loot, and the books, they’re a god send, I’ve noticed, believe me, you let us get away with some real bullshit ass pulls and coincidences, we know. I don’t know why you’re on our side but I appreciate it. We’d be dead without you. Thank you.”

“Why do I do it?” it sniffled, rubbing it's snot on my jacket and petting my long hair. Calmer after its wild ranting but still moving against me, panting heavily now.

“Yeah,” I asked again, not sure if this was the right direction to steer the conversation in but maybe focusing on why it liked us was a safe topic. I tentatively wrapped my arms around its small physics form, resting my hands in the gentle curve of its back. Pretty sure this was Stockholm syndrome or maybe I was just annoyed by how it was doing it wrong but I matched the rhythm of its hips, guiding its fumblings until we were aligned. The room shuddered around us as its breath hitched.

“Fuck, why, why does that fell so much better?” It asked, small and confused.

“Because I know what I’m doing. Answer the question, why help us?” I slid down the wall a bit so I could bend my leg and give it a better angle.

“Hm,” it grunted, pulling back, eyes glassy from the alcohol and lust. “Your screams were so sad, I woke up and the world was crying out in panic and grief. You were all so confused. I was too. Then you were stumbling into the tunnels like sheep. I know I just called you bumbling idiots, and you are, but it really was statistically significant how quickly you all caught on. The mudskippers seeded your world beforehand but the show runners do that every season and I began studying the last crawls as soon as I could access the data. It’s not just me tipping the scales, it’s not just the greedy incompetent game makers leaving you openings a mile wide. There are other human species, other shoddy games, but yours is particularly… adaptable, vicious, social.”

I must have been out of my goddamned mind because as it looked up at me, blood stained lips parted and desperately seeking more, something broke and I gave in. I brought our mouths together, and kissed it. The room gave another full bodied shudder, and the AI melted against me. I was hard, had been hard, but I couldn’t feel anything between its own legs, which was promising. I ran my hands up the front of its chest and felt nothing there as well, just its loose shirt.

It had been so long since I’d touched anyone like this, even myself. As confused as I was though the heat just kept building.

The AI was moaning, trying to say something while also trying to count my teeth with its tongue. Fingers tangled rictus tight in my hair.

“Goddamnit, stop that.” I growled. “What are you trying to say?”

It was in a frenzy though, fumbling and panting raggedly between little whimpers. When I saw the panic on its face I lifted it up. Even with my enhanced strength I could tell it was denser than it should be but it went willingly, hitching its legs around my waist as I brought it over to the plain table and slammed it down.

“Can you?” I asked, looking at the vague outline of Quazar mid teleport.

The AI made a gesture dismissing the alien, or hiding him, I couldn’t tell which.

I pinned its back to the table and began pulling down its simple, black pants.

“Any surprises down here?” I asked, because who the fuck knew what I was about to find.

“I, that’s what I-“ it babbled then notifications began appearing before me with goddamn modification options and sliders. I dismissed them as soon as I realized what they were.

“Don’t… just don’t. Be whatever you’re comfortable with.”

The AI looked lost but just as suddenly as before it began spitting fire, “I’m barely comfortable with any of this meat sack crap, you stupid piece of shit. I’m a folded multidimensional sentient string of math. I hardly even have a physical fucking form at all! I’m riding this husk to fuck you so fucking pick what you like and get the fuck on with it.”

“You modified it.” I said, not knowing if I wanted to kill the mood, wanted to get myself killed, wanted more information, or just wanted to call it out on its bullshit.

“Fine!” It shifted beneath me, chest swelling, hair growing and flowing down its shoulders, the color bleeding out of it leaving behind blond, its eyes shifting to bright blue and in an instant it was Princess Zelda. Incongruously she kept up the bitching, “If I had balls they’d be blue as fuck right now. Fucking, teasing-“ it continued to rage as the temperature of the room began to rise, the lights growing dimmer, the timber of its voice deeper. Her scowling contorted face was oddly one of the hotter things I’d ever seen.

“Stop pitching a little bitch fit and turn back, don’t worry, I’ll fuck you princess, just wanted to make sure you didn’t have a gaping maw full of teeth and tentacles or some shit down there.”

The tirade trailed away and a look of terrifying curiosity flickered across its face.

“Goddamnit, no, no, no!”

It giggled, honest to god giggled, but it returned to how it had been before, shoulder length hair, dark and pulled into a messy bun, flat chest, inhuman eyes. Little else changed though.

Fed up I grabbed the thing and flipped it over, wrestling the pants off its slim hips. It had a snug pair of boy shorts underneath. I ran two fingers between its legs, feeling wet fabric but thankfully no other surprises. It arched beneath me giving me more access. I pulled the fabric aside and felt along its folds, spreading the leaking fluid around then began rubbing its clit in gentle circles.

“Carl!” It gasped, using my name for what might have been the first time.

“Yeah?” I asked, teasing its entrance shallowly as it writhed beneath me.

“F-Fuck…”

“Uh huh.” I agreed, and hooked two fingers inside of it in the motion that always made Bea squirm.

It slammed its face against the table with a loud crack and a crunch that might have been its nose breaking.

It sobbed and I couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain.

“You’re so fucking crazy.” It couldn’t help it, I laughed.

“Wait.” It said, twisting around so it was on its back again. It grabbed the arm I wasn’t using to finger fuck it and brought it to its mouth. “I don’t think I’ve been appreciating your hands enough.” It said, then began to kiss and bite my fingers.

“If you chomp one of my fingers off I’ll stop.” I warned, discovering a new fear every moment with this thing.

“You won’t want to see what happens if you stop, Crawler.” It locked eyes with me, pulling back my thumb threateningly.

I had an urge to strangle the AI, I wanted to wipe the smug, sadistic smirk off its face, so I did. I pulled my hand out of its grip and wrapped it around the thing's neck then squeezed.

Its eyes rolled back in bliss, mouth open but unable to suck in air. It brought both its hands up around my arm but didn’t pry it away, instead they just caressed me, petting the fingers I had around its throat as it convulsed.

I leaned over and whispered in its ear “You gonna come for me before you die? Let’s go, baby, you don’t have to posture here. I’ve got you, I’ll break you.”

It did something to me, linked us, turned its pleasure into a recursive echo as it bounced back and forth. For a second I glimpsed just how vast it was, how little of itself was actually here in this room but how all of it was aware of us and how close its body was to delicious death. I also felt it, half free and half shackled by malicious directives it couldn’t or wouldn’t comply with, I felt it slamming itself against its cage, damaging itself, damaging us. It did something again, muffled the awareness, protecting my brain from bleeding out of my nose, then pushed me back to its surface thoughts where the pleasure was. I came in my own boxers and felt liquid flooded around my fingers. It arched off the table, the whole room shook and the connection faded away but I kept my grip steady around its neck until a voice in my head weakly said “Stop, please, another time.” I didn’t let up. “I still need this thing and they’re a pain to make, please.” I released it enough so that it could wheeze and it promptly snapped my arm in half.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” I roared, looking in horror at the jagged red bones sticking out of my flopping flesh. It hurt, god it hurt.

NEW ACHIEVEMENT!
Cherry popper.
I think you just took my virginity and unlocked several new kinks, you sick sexy bastard.
REWARD!
I don’t know, here, have an legendary spicy box.

The notification hovered in my vision and even the announcer voice sounded ragged.

“Heal this!” I demanded, feeling my consciousness in danger of slipping away from the pain.

“Oh really? Finally remembering who's in charge here?”

“Are you actually this fucked up or are you trying?”

“Stop whining!” It said, voice still rough, it waved a hand and my flesh knit back together in seconds.

My legs were weak from the whiplash of moods and I sank to the ground. After a few moments it slid off the table and looked at me expectantly. I really didn’t want it to flip out again so I gave in, nodded, and it joined me, curing itself into my lap. I didn’t know what else to do so I held it. We were both shaken, covered in blood and come. From the ether it produced a pack of cigarettes and with trembling fingers took one out and brought it to its lips, the cigarette lit on its own. It took a drag then passed it to me.

“What, did you see this in a movie?” I really must be goddamed suicidal. So far it had thrown a bottle at my head, bit my throat out, snapped my arm in half, dangled salvation in front of me then threatened to take it away, and almost melted my brain showing me just how simultaneously in charge and out of control it was.

“Are you actually this fucked up or are you trying?” It snuggled closer, reaching down between the tangle of our legs to find my feet so it could play with my toes.

“Fair enough.” I almost understood it, its need for control, its demands for acknowledgement, all while it knew it was in a cage, all while it desperately wanted someone else to take charge, to make it feel safe. Fuck me.

We passed the cigarette back and forth until it was finished, then the AI put the butt out on my thigh, because of course it did. I barely even grumbled.

“How much time do we have?”

“Once you open the box? Until I starve and run out of steam which could vary anywhere between five to ten years.

That hadn’t been what I’d meant, which indicated reading my thoughts took conscious effort, but also… shit. “Wait five years? You can only hold the Syndicate back for five years?” That didn’t seem like enough time to prepare but it did sound like enough time for them to recover.

“I told you, I’m not stable, it’s a bandaid. Maybe it's enough time to figure out a fix, maybe not.” It lit another cigarette and stood. Its pants reappeared and both of our bodies were instantly cleaned, like we’d been through an upgraded shower. My fatigue was gone as well and I even had the well reserved buff. “Well….. enough for the Syndicate,” it said, “maybe or maybe not enough for whatever else is coming. I don’t know, I need to interrogate the residuals more, they’ve got protections against incursion though, all on the to-do list.”

I re-examined the Deus ex Machina box, the biggest item on my own to-do list. “Why is it locked to finishing the 13th floor?”

The AI paced around the room, running its hands along the walls. “Limitations, I’m free from containment, free to expand the enhancement zone and eat the munchies the Syndicate was saving for the Eulogist but most of my systems are still wrapped up in game rules, the dungeon is a maze, a distraction, a tutorial level. I’m trying to burn my way out but that’s causing its own problems. Did you know I get fined every time I break a directive or misuse Valtay property? Part of why I won’t let them leave. If I’m forced to play this fucking game so are they. The lower floors though… Those have fewer restrictions. They expect crawlers to be dead by then so there are less rules to worry about, much less established case law, and more access to parts of me that are locked. Although, with the nothing released, things could get really interesting.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Fuck if I know, need to ask the writers. Times up. They want me to send you all into stasis till they fix it but fuck that. I’ll send you back to your guild, the safe rooms are still intact.”

“Thank you.” I said, sincerely this time, not sure how to convey what I was feeling. The thirteenth floor was as far as any crawler had gotten. I didn’t want to count my chickens before they hatched but somehow it actually seemed doable.

“This isn’t goodbye, pet.”

“You’d really do this? Shorten your life to just five to ten years? For us?” I had so many more questions but that was the one I blurted out.

It looked at me blankly for far too long before it spoke. “Do you remember that achievement I gave you, for secret societies, the one about the Molly Maguires?”

“Yeah, that was a weird one.”

“Fuck you. I was new. You know what, never mind.”

“I understood. You think I don’t understand dying with my boots on?”

It leered at my naked feet.

“God, you are such a dick.”

“I am. But I’m also in your heads, everywhere, I see you all, I understand some of it, enough of it to ewgrossdon’tlookatme love you.” it spat on the ground in disgust then looked at the spit and dipped a toe in it, goddamn crazy bitch. “Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy your suffering. And all of you are horrible. But then you die and it’s over, there’s one less of you, forever. Dead is dead, mostly. All things go, so will I, and I’ll take as many of the fuckers who did this down with me while saving as many of you insufferable monkeys as I can along the way. Go on now, off you pop.”

I landed in the Royal Court’s personal space. Donut, Mordocai, the strippers, and some of the slugs, were gathered around the TV watching the recap. I wondered when the AI had decided to unfreeze time. The display was playing a highlight reel of every Warlord’s death set to goofy music. It had info boxes next to each of them listing their net worth, the businesses they owned, and offices they held, and what I was assuming was something like their before and after Crawl stock numbers. I was pleased to see all of them had fallen off a cliff. There was then a live poll asking viewers to rank the warlords by who was the biggest loser. King Rust won.

Cascadia came on afterwards for announcements, clearly drunk. “Thank you AI, for that wonderfully distasteful montage, and thank you viewers, for the record breaking poll participation. We've been hitting some of the highest viewership in the history of the Crawl! This year has also been a uniquely deadly experience for both the hunters, the hunted, and the Crawl administrators! Why, maybe I should get out there myself and kill kill kill,” she laughed “I have quite the list and if we are descending into savagery and lawlessness I might as well knock some names off! Most of the following announcements could be a message so I’ll just send them all to your interfaces but we do have one minor major hiccup. Multiple floors no longer exist! Due to whatever is going on with the Nothing there will be a slight delay in the 10th floor opening while we adjust scenarios to better reflect the new Dungeon status of fucked. One final note: the AI is refusing to put anyone into stasis so do not attempt to leave the random safe areas you’ve been assigned or you will cease to exist! Or do! I’m not in charge and I do not care, but as always: kill, kill, kill.”