The corpse behind the steering wheel.
I was trying to stay confident, but thiswasa terrible idea. Since this was a summon, it skirted the rules. We were relying on voice instructions to drive. I was already second-guessing our decision to do it this way, but the alternative was worse, which was to have Mongo drive, which wasn’t really an alternative at all but a last-ditch Hail Mary.
Someone from Florin’s heat pulled up. It was a tow truck with a steering wheel on the right side, putting them right against Olga. The driver was a female troll with a high pink mohawk and a hook nose. A cigarette dangled from her lip. Her eyes first lingered on me, and she started to smile big, but then she finally noticed Olga after an especially big spurt of fluid. The cigarette dropped from the troll’s mouth.
Nobody else was on the line. I knew Jasha and Radoslav would be right behind us. They were frantically working on last-minute repairs for their van.
I went over what we knew so far about our new track, Satan’s Water Park. There were dozens of slides reminiscent of the Iron Tangle, though with a much easier-to-follow map. The problem wasn’t getting confused by the path, but making sure you tookthe correct path in the first place. If you took the incorrect path, you would end up... inside... the boss of the track.
Satan himself was a country boss, but he was invulnerable, and he wasn’t a boss that one was meant to fight. He was the owner of the water park, and he lounged near the exit, occasionally offering loud opinions on the things happening, occasionally poking at the racers.
Satan also wasn’t Satan in the traditional sense.
Satan was a hedgehog. A kaiju-sized male hedgehog. And now Donut knew this, she wouldn’t shut up about it. She, apparently, took issue with the entire species.
“Wannabe, effeminate porcupines,” she grumbled.
According to Prepotente and Louis, the hedgehog had spent most of the first half talking and commenting on the racers as they made their way through the waterslides.
“It’s unnatural,” Donut exclaimed upon hearing about it. “The waterslide ending up in the thing’s butt, I understand. Hedgehogs are notorious deviants. Louis didn’t say, but I bet it talks with a British accent. You know how I feel about fake British accents, Carl.”
“Wait,” I said now, suddenly remembering something. “Is this about that beauty-contest thing? How do you even remember that? You were a kitten!”
I vaguely remembered one of Donut’s early cat shows wasn’t at a dedicated cat event, but at a sprawling pet festival in Tacoma that included dogs and exotic animals with multiple competitive events going on at once. It was one of the few shows I’d actually attended because it had a beer garden. The winners of each category had a “Cutest in Show” showdown, and kitten Donut had been up against a few animals, including a Great Dane puppy with spots, a snake, a ferret, and a baby hedgehog named Jezebel, who was one of the most goddamn adorable things I’d ever seen.
Jezebel had won, which had put Bea into a funk for the rest of the day. Donut, of course, had been oblivious and had been happy to lick up my vanilla milkshake on the ride back to Seattle. I remembered she’d gotten it all over her face, and Bea had been pissed because she had another show the very next day in the Tri-Cities.
“That has nothing to do with it,” Donut snapped. “Even if that was fixed from the beginning. Who names a hedgehog Jezebel anyway? Doesn’t that mean ‘slut’? So it was a slut hedgehog? She was a baby! The owner should’ve been disqualified just for that.”
“She was from a hedgehog rescue,” I said.
“Of course she was,” Donut said. “It was hardly a fair contest. Of course the slut orphan is going to win.”
I reached up and gave Donut a few strokes. She was nervous, which was why she was lashing out.
“It’ll be okay,” I said. She leaned into my hand.
Next to us, Olga groaned.
While the tubes dominated the first half of the race, the ground-level challenges were more eclectic. Dr. Metcalf now had the map, and there were multiple paths, including the ominously titled toddler splash pad, the wave pool, and a massive loop-de-loop, which was the fastest path to the exit but was clearly the most dangerous. The giant loop dominated the bottom part of the park.
Ourpath was just south of the loop and was called the River of Sloth. This last one was clearly the slowest path. It was the water park’s version of a lazy river. This was deeper than the water in the tubes, and there were supposedly rafts, but we had plans to deal with it all.
Olga made a bubble-popping noise as more gore oozed from her ruined head onto the seat.
Dr. Metcalf beeped.
This is absolutely disgusting. She doesn’t have a head, and I can’t imagine that ridiculous spell is going to last long enough. We are all going to die.
“I’m going to castClockwork Triplicatebefore it times out,” Donut said, having composed herself. “That’ll give us about twenty more minutes. Don’t be such a Debbie Downer. It’ll work.” She took a breath. “Right, Carl?”
“Right,” I said as Olga continued to leak.
But why did you pick the one without a head?
“Finley’s remains don’t have legs,” I said. “I used up most of my good corpses on the last floor, but if she doesn’t work out, we do have a few more. We have a camel and a couple of NPCs from Faction Wars, and Elle lent us a ton of dead orcs.” I didn’t add that most of the orcs were also headless. Elle had gotten really good at some spell that froze the liquid surrounding one’s brain and then caused it to explode.
SHE DOESN’T HAVE A GODSDAMNED HEAD. HOW IS SHE HEARING YOUR COMMANDS?