Brash and the Schrodinger Snare Ch. 10

"Hi!" Brash shouted, waving up at them.

The four giants looked down at them.

"Who the fuck is that!?" the bull headed man snarled.

"I didn't invite him," the woman said, purring.

"Of COURSE YOU DID, YOU FUCKING SKANK!" The red skinned man bellowed.

"Hey, don't be disrespecting peeps!" Brash shouted - but then they were out of the chamber, leaving the argument behind.

Lady Darkeye whimpered. "Do you know who those were?" she hissed.

"Not even a little!" Brash sang cheerfully. "Do you think the beholders are still chasing us?"

"I...I don't know..." Lady Darkeye shook her head. "What is this place?"

"It's..." Brash skated forward.

And emerged into another chamber. But this one lacked any obvious tunnels. Instead, it was conical in shape, reaching outwards towards a broad, flat wall. That wall was dominated by a face - a face carved of metal and stone and bone, intermixing together as if each component had been carved out of a single piece, even if they shifted from material to material. The face was that of a ram-skull, with the gaping nostrils and the narrow ridge of bone and the curling horns. There was a rectangular recession on the forehead, and from that emerged a glowing red light. The rest of the chamber was dominated by vast, terraced steps. The walls were a glowing red and the steps reached down into a pit of bubbling, hissing lava.

Brash let his skating pause and his feet settled to the ground. He set down Lady Darkeye.

"Well, this looks like a last boss, definite!" he said, nodding.

Lady Darkeye's eyes widened.

"Brash, we need to go," she whispered.

"Why?" Brash asked, looking at her sidelong.

"That's..." Lady Darkeye gulped. "T-That's..."

"That's Chez'Hgol."

"Fedora!" Brash exclaimed, spinning around.

Trilby was standing behind them. He looked faintly insubstantial, as if he was only barely really there. His face was drawn and ashen, even without the translucent quality to his skin. He stepped forward, not removing his hands from the pockets of his trousers. "Brash, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid."

"Why? What's so big about Cheesehole over there?" Brash asked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the vast face in the wall. The longer he stayed in the room, the more he became aware of a faint...pressure. It was as if rubber bands were being snapped against his temples in a slow, continual cycle of pressure and release. Faint whispers clawed at the edge of his hearing and he tried to ignore them. Trilby's jaw tightened.

"I took this form," he said. "From your mind, Brash. This being, this fictional construct, was supposed to make communication easier."

"...you did?" Brash asked. "I've never seen this guy before in my entire freaking life."

"You haven't?" Trilby blinked. Lady Darkeye nodded.

"I haven't seen you before either," she said.

"Well, of course not, you're an alien." Trilby said. "But...I took this form! It fit all the narrative requirements for easy trans-medial communications. And I took it from your memory. You definitely played the game Trilby is from on the 2^nd of December this year, it should be a memetic concept fresh in your thoughts!"

Brash cocked his head, checking his internal clock. "Dude, it's the 20^th of November. December is next month."

"It is?" Trilby asked.

Brash and Lady Darkeye both nodded.

"...drat," Trilby said.

Brash reached over and squeezed his shoulder. "It's okay! Give me the skinny on this Cheesehole guy!"

The pressure was growing thicker on Brash's temples. He tried to ignore it as Trilby sighed and walked over to the edge of the first of the immense terraces. He looked over the edge, at the next level down. It was easily a ten foot drop. He frowned. "Okay. There exists two axis around which the multiverse pivots. On one end is the Night City. On the other is the City of O."

"Shouldn't be the Day City?" Brash asked.

"Don't be absurd," Trilby said, shaking his head. "The City of O maintains balance in the multiverse. There are some entities that should not be allowed into any particular universes. Chez'Hgol is one of them. He's the Lord of Fear."

Brash gasped. Then narrowed his eyes. "Wait, isn't that Diablo?"

"Diablo is the Lord of Terror," Trilby said, frowning.

"Oh, right," Brash said, rubbing his chin. "Wait, I thought the city at the center of the multiverse was Sigil."

"Sigil, O, Babylon, Centralis, Throne, the name doesn't matter. It's an echoing repeating meme, it has variations, damn it!" Trilby turned. "And I'm one of the Judges. I am supposed to maintain the balance. And you, Brash, are the key to Chez'Hgol conquering this realm!"

"Gaspiwhat!?" Brash asked. "How can Cheesehole escape? He's a big old dumb face!"

"You're infused with abyssal energies!" Trilby said, a sweeping gesture taking in all of Brash. "Ever since you dove between that damned Warsphere and the Earth, enough energy to rip open several thousand portals into the Abyss have filled you. Chez'Hgol could use that to bring himself into your universe. And so...he risked drawing the attention of the judges with a preemptive intrusion into this dimension. A single tendril of fear, which reached right into the mind of a single dwarf." He leaned forward. "Kira."

Brash gasped.

"All he had to do was make her nervous about her future. Her father expected her to get married, to bring fame and power to the Diamond Asteroids. And so, she pushed herself to find a way to do it..." Trilby said. "The quantum hoard. Which is nothing more than a...a trap! A deterministic quantum-state ready to collapse into the most horrifying possible place for anyone who arrives. Say, a dragon infused with Abyssal energies."

Brash looked over at Cheesehole. The vast face was seeming...more...

Out. The wall seemed more and more three dimensional with every second, as if the vast ram's head was pushing itself forward more and more. A nervous frisson ran through his spine and he gulped slightly. "Okay, uh...what do we do?" he asked.

"I don't know," Trilby said. "He's already feeding on your energies. I can barely reach you for communication."

Brash rubbed his chin. "Breath weapon?" he whispered.

"That'll just piss him off," Trilby said.

Lady Darkeye grabbed onto Brash's hand. "Maybe we should run? Down the tunnels?"

"And go right back into the..." Brash blinked. Then he beamed. "Lady Darkeye, Trilbs, wait here!"

He sprang up, clicked his heels, then shot off. He skated away as fast as he could, his limber body moving into the perfect posture of a high speed roller derby girl. He vanished into the tunnel. Lady Darkeye put her hand to her chest, biting her lower lip - a strange nervous rumble shooting through her belly. Trilby arched a sardonic eyebrow at her. Lady Darkeye glared at him.

"What?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," Trilby said.

Lady Darkeye glared at him.

In the distance, they heard rumbling. Then a roar. Then a bellow of pure fury. Lady Darkeye tensed, ready to fling herself out of the way. She saw Brash, emerging from the tunnel, his face and body soaked with what smelled like an immense amount of beer. He waved at them, then skidded to the side - avoiding at the very last second an immense red hand that shoved through the tunnel. It groped around, trying to grasp at Brash...before the tunnel snapped shut. The hand was severed with a spray of blood, blood that splashed over Lady Darkeye and Trilby, ruining his shirt and hat in one single, grotesque move. As the two stood in frozen, mute horror, Brash landed on the hand, rubbing his belly. "Turns out those beer cans were delicious!" he said, cheerfully.

"Beer cans?" Trilby muttered.

"Yeah! At the poker game! Can't have poker without some beer!" Brash said, rubbing his belly even more.

"...delicious?" Lady Darkeye asked.

A slow, rumbling laugh started to grind out of the wall. It echoed off the walls and Brash turned to face it. The immense face off Cheesehole was now out enough to open the jaw and close the jaw in slow, grinding movements. The rectangular hole in the forehead was shimmering and crackling with a mixture of red and green lightning, the two strands wrapping around one another in writhing, wriggling displays of arcane energies. Brash smirked slowly.

"Do you know how I got my full load out the first time?" Brash asked, cheerfully.

The lightning stabbed out. Again and again and again and again, Chez'Hgol used the abyssal energies it had been siphoning off Brash - that faint pressure at his temples. With each stabbing impact, the abyssal energies were used to drop T'narri into the chamber. Demons, that is. Lots. And lots. And lots. Of demons. There were spined demons and chained demons and bone demons. There were drooling ugly looking beaky demons, multi-armed groper demons, and more than a few sexy demons. All of them looked more than a bit confused to be suddenly dropped down in this extraplanar arena.

Brash smirked.

"Cheesehole...is looking a bit afraid. Almost like he realized I remembered that I can eat some raw materials...and make..." He flicked out his wrist.

He hadn't had time to digest properly chunky materials. People didn't make beer cans - even beer cans for strange extradimensional beings - out of radioactives and exotic metals. He didn't have much to work with.

But you know what was simple?

A double barreled shotgun.

Brash grinned and snapped the shotgun closed, resting it on his shoulder as the demons started to crawl up and off the level that they had landed upon. They crested the ridge of the terrace that Brash stood on. He cocked his head. "Lets put on some good music!" he said, mentally scrolling past Metallica, Municipal Waste and Hatchet and instead went right to the appropriate demon killing music.

The My Little Pony Soundtrack!

Winter Wrap Up started just about when he stuck the shotgun through the mouth of a huge, bull-like demon and painted the face of a demon behind it with brain and bits of skull. Brash twisted to the left to avoid a spiked chain, leaped above a scything bone arm, then snapped his shotgun open. Two spent casings, perfectly aimed, stabbed into the eyeballs of a skeletal demon, who jerked back with a screech and started to rattle around like he was a pin ball machine. The demon coughed those casings out when Brash slammed his elbow into their ribs and flicked his fingers apart. The casings fell between the fingers and he slammed them back into the shotgun, which had already re-primed.

He, after all, was an ammo producing machine. Even without shapeshifting, his cybernetic prosthetics were designed to be able to rearm and refit him in the middle of battle. And Brash's creator had simply shut down the most obvious, overt forms of shapeshifting abilities. This let Brash blow the head off a bird-beaked daemon before sprinting away from the gathering mass. He kicked on his roller skates, skidded into open air, swung around, and clothes lined a chain-demon. The blue skinned, chain wrapped monster struck the ground like a whole heap of chain mail smashing into slate.

Brash stood on the chain demon's chest, slamming in another two rounds. His eyes tracked left and right, making lightning fast assessments. And those assessments were not great. His shotgun's reload speed was too slow, and its ability to kill was too limited, compared to the number of bad guys coming at him. And what was worse was that the demons were coming at him with a chaotic profusion of attacks, which meant dodging all of them would be nearly impossible.

The Smile song started as Brash sprang to the left. Two chains shot through where he had been, flung by chain-demons. Brash slammed his left leg into the air, the gravity-blade kicking on and stopping his progress mid flight. Then he lashed out with his right, kicking the chain that had just barely missed him. The chain, carried by momentum and his strength, wrapped around his ankle, the barbed tip biting against his tougher than normal skin. Brash gritted his teeth, then flung himself into a twisting motion, the gravity blade slicing a curling corkscrew of blue light into the air beneath him. The motion ripple flew along the chain and struck the shocked chain-demon in the arm like a pivoting wrecking ball.

The chain demon flew into the mouth of a bull-demon, who bit down reflexively.

"What an asshole!" Brash shouted, doing his best to speak Abyssal.

The bull-demon blinked its piggish eyes, even as thick, gooey, greenish blood dripped around its muzzle. One of the other chain-demons snarled in fury and threw its barbed chain at the bull-demons belly. The chain struck, bit, and the bull-demon roared. It charged towards the chain-demon, its thick, clawed paws slamming into the ground as it sprinted forward. Brash, meanwhile, had jerked his ankle free and was running himself. Other demons gaped, watching in confusion and excitement.

Brash tackled the chain-demon out of the bull-demon's way, just in time for the bull-demon to close its jaws down. But rather than hitting open air, it gulped up a bird-demon's face and beak with a hideous cracking noise. The bird demon squalled in horror and Brash sat up, calling out in Abyssal: "Did you see that!? Chainey poo got bird-face all chomperated!"

The bird demons were rather clannish, even by demon standards. They chittered and hissed furiously, their wings flaring as they conferred with snarls and clicks. They started to advance on the still prone, still confused looking chain-demon. Brash scrambled to his feet as the bird demons charged, their wings flashing as metallic feathers glittered and became sharper. Brash subtly slipped behind a incubus. "Sorry, bro," he whispered, then shoved the incubus between the bird demons and the chain-demon.

The incubus, as it turned out, was mostly unharmed, actually. His skin was magically toughened and the bird-demons were several levels lower on the pecking order. This pun set Brash to giggling, but he managed to cry out: "The chain-demon just used horny as a demonic shield!"

The bird demons squalled. The bull-demons rumbled. The incubus growled. "You asshole!" he glared at the chain-demon. The chain-demon pointed at Brash, but before he could so much as stammer a word in edge wise, the incubus hauled off and punched him in the jaw. The chain-demon barely budged, so the incubus looked at one of the acid-skeleton-scorpian demons and fluttered his eyelashes at him.

The acid-skeleton-scropian demon, who had been watching all of this with a very poorly disguised expression of absolute glee, took the invitation and charged, his tail whipping around wildly, spraying acid indiscriminately. Most demons were essentially immune to acid damage, but several of them were wearing rather nice clothes, which melted off. This meant that the acid-skeleton-scorpian demon was soon buried under an avalanche of imps and quasits, who chomped and claws at it, even as it stomped the chain-demon under its massive clawed foot.

Brash sprinted over to the biggest demon - a huge, cybernetically augmented, rocket launcher armed (literally, its arms had been hacked off and replaced with rocket launchers) creature with ram horns and flaming spheres for eyes - and grabbed onto the side of one of its hydraulic legs. He got to its shoulder just as May the Best Pet Win started to play. He whispered, softly. "Uh, just so you know, the succubi over there? She's totally into you."

Said succubi was clinging to the arm of a buff looking skeleton demon, who was kicking a quasit in the face repeatedly.

"She told me she wants to break with her biffer, but only if someone proves how much more macho and explody they are!" Brash said, nodding cheerfully.

The cyber-demon rubbed its chin with one rocket launcher arm, looking unconvinced. "Really?" it asked in Abyssal. Brash shrugged, then jumped down, landing on the rocket launcher arm. He opened his mouth and breathed a spray of electrical energy into the limb, his throat buzzing and his tongue tasting of ozone. The lightning slammed home, set off the cybernetics, and fired a rocket into the cyber-demon's jaw. An explosion of red mist flew outwards and Brash flipped away, landing next to Lady Darkeye and Trilby, who were both standing off by the corner, watching with eyes wide and jaws agape.

"Hey guys!" Brash said. "Popcorn?" he asked, miming holding up a carton of popcorn. Then he remembered he didn't have shapeshifting and so could not actually replicate popcorn. "Dang it..."

Meanwhile, the headless cyber-demon's secondary command brain had clicked on and gone to fucking kill everything mode. Rockets sailed through the air, followed by body parts and squalling imps. Succubi flew around, firing darts of greenish energy, while chains whip-cracked through the air, and the only thing that flew more often than blood, bile and bits of brain was severed limbs and shockingly inventive Abyssal.

"Where did you learn to do that?" Trilby whispered.

"High school!" Brash said, patting his pockets. At last, he beamed and pulled out a single foil wrapped golden coin. "Chomp!" He bit down and started to chew, foil and all.

"Uh, Brash?" Trilby asked, looking away from the demonic free-for-all to Brash.

"Yes, Trilbs?" Brash asked.

"There is one flaw in your otherwise exceptional plan to pit demon against demon," Trilby said.

"And that is?" Brash asked, ducking a severed limb that smacked into the wall, leaving behind a black smear of ichor. The Laughter Song had started to play. He started to hum along, wiggling his pointer fingers in time with the music. "Giggle at the ghostie. Crack up at the creepy..."

"Chez'Hgol is still powering up," Trilby said, pointing at the far wall.

By now, Cheesehole's face had fully emerged and his arms were starting to show. They had pushed out far enough that his immense, skeletal hands were gripping onto the lower terrace. His maw was opening wider and wider, in a silent roar of exertion. Brash rubbed his chin, thinking to himself. But before he could come to any decisions, a sudden explosion of furious light caused every demon to stop - save for a single skeleton demon who had an exceptionally annoying imp by the throat. That guy kept punching the imp in the face five more times before he too stilled into immobility.

The far wall of the room had exploded open, leaving a smoldering hole and a pall of smoke. Brash gasped, excitedly. "Alex?" he whispered, stepping forward. His hope soared up-

And then the pall of smoke swirled aside.

And Brash pouted.

It wasn't Alexandress, the Vampire Princess. It was Brunt the Beholder. The dwarven-beholder combo created from the depths of Lord Darkeye's nightmares looked as if he had gone through hell. His charming eyeball had been ripped off, leaving a jagged stump, while his death ray eye still had a chunk of barbed wire stuck into it. His beard was ragged and smoking, and huge raking claw marks slipped along his side. But he floated there, panting heavily, and Brash saw that his disintegration and petrification eye were definitely working.

"Where...is...DARKEYE!?" Brunt the Beholder shouted.

The demons all pointed at Lady Darkeye.

"Dudes!" Brash exclaimed.

Brunt the Beholder charged forward, the demons scrambling desperately out of the way. He didn't use any of his eyes - but then again, the worst nightmare that Lord Darkeye had ever had was being eaten alive. Lady Darkeye had the same fear, since she was cowering next to Brash, scrabbling at the wall. "No, no, no, don't let him eeaaaat meeee!" She wailed. Brash scowled...and remembered his theme song.