A lashing tail wrapped around my throat like a garrote, cutting off my already dwindling air supply. Seconds later, a decapitated monkey head rolled across the floor and latched onto my right bicep while another head bit down on my calf.

I struggled to get up. To pry the grasping limbs from my body. They were strong and surprisingly nimble. It was like fighting an army of Things from the Addams Family.

The bigger issue was the tail squeezing my neck like a boa constrictor. I reached up with my one free arm and tried fruitlessly to jam my fingers in between the tail and my neck. It was useless. My HP was steadily plunging. Cold, cruel realization washed over me. I’d come all this way just to get choked to death by a disembodied monkey tail. That was the biggest load of bullshit I’d ever heard in my life.

Then I felt the tremendous thud of a colossal approaching footstep.

Darkness was creeping in at the edges of my vision, but I still managed to catch a glimpse of Funtime Frank stomping toward me. The shadow of the creature stretched across me, and Frank raised his foot high. He was going to crush me like an insolent bug.

Somehow, I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than getting choked out by a monkey tail. It seemed a little more dignifying, but only a little.

I bucked and kicked, doing everything in my power to break the stranglehold of the grasping limbs, but they had me dead to rights. I braced myself, preparing for a quick and brutal end—

A trio of ghostly blue chains erupted from the ground, wrapping around Franken-Kong’s leg. Two more snared the creature around the throat, tugging tight as though Frank were a dog on a leash being brought to heel.

Temperance’s Puritanical Chains.

The spectral chains started to pop and snap. They wouldn’t be able to hold the creature at bay for long. But long enough.

A pair of hands slipped beneath my armpits, roughly yanking me backward. Then Croc was in front of me, its jaws yawning wide. Fleshy blue tentacles pulled the simian limbs free like giant leeches, slurping them down.

“You okay, Dan?” the dog asked as the last of the monkey parts vanished down its throat.

“Glad to see you guys,” I said. My voice was hoarse, and my throat felt raw. Bruised.

Croc looked more or less the same as ever, but Temperance and Jakob had both donned rather curious attire over the top of their regular armor. Thick yellow rain jackets, with the hoods up. Heavy-duty rubber waders—looted from Open Sky Outfitters—covered their legs and feet. Yellow, Rubbermaid cleaning gloves protected their hands, and black plastic bandanas covered their noses and mouths. Both had on a pair of thick safety goggles to safeguard their eyes.

It looked for all the world like they were wearing makeshift hazmat suits, which wasn’t far from the truth.

“We all know what to do here,” Jakob said. “I’ll draw his attention. Temperance, you get close. Focus on tendons, wires, ankles. Break its mobility. Dan”—he glanced toward me—“death from above.”

“And what should I do?” Croc asked.

“Keep Dan safe,” Jakob replied solemnly. “None of this will mean anything if he dies.”

The Cendral turned on a heel and bolted away from us. As he ran a terrible blaring siren emanated from his chest, ber-ber-ber-ber-ber. It was the sound of a broken smoke detector, wailing at full blast. The racket was like nails on a chalkboard and made me irrationally angry and irritated for reasons I couldn’t quite explain. That was one of Jakob’s Relics, I knew. It was literally called Faulty Smoke Detector and its sole purpose was to draw and hold the attention of hostile Dwellers.

Annoying as fuck, and so loud it was impossible to ignore. It was the perfect aggro ability and it worked like a charm.

The chains momentarily restraining Funtime Frank finally vanished. But instead of lumbering toward me or Temperance, the giant gorilla focused entirely on Jakob, hate and rage burning in the creature’s eyes. Arcs of blue lightning flashed from the ends of Frank’s fingertips, but Jakob easily absorbed the damage on his glowing shield.

The monster was so thoroughly distracted, it didn’t even notice as Temperance darted between its malformed feet. The killer furry immediately went to work with brutal efficiency, her meat cleaver carving deep, gruesome furrows in Frank’s skin.

Meanwhile, Croc’s form shimmered.

The mimic looked more or less like a bear. A bear drawn by a four-year-old, sure, but a bear all the same. Before I could do anything, Croc lumbered over and scooped me up in its arms then pulled me tight against its rubbery belly. Blue flesh crept over me, forming… a giant baby holster. My arms and legs protruded from the bottom.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled, feebly kicking my legs.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Protecting you. You know what they say, Dan. Keep your friends close and your best friend in a Baby Bjorn made of flesh. Besides, you can barely stand. So, I’ll be the legs, and you just focus on spell casting.”

This was easily the most demeaning thing that had happened to me since Noclipping into the Backrooms. Maybe the most demeaning thing to happen in my entire adult life. Almost being strangled to death by a rogue monkey tail didn’t even come close.

But, I had to admit it was surprisingly comfortable.

“Fuck it,” I said, shaking my head. “Let’s Baby Bjorn this bitch!”

Legs dangling down like an overgrown toddler, I activated StainSlayer Maelstrom for a second time, raining down corrosive death from above. Fat droplets of super bleach drenched Frank, melting through his fleshy exterior and dealing a devastating amount of damage while simultaneously eating through the monster’s Mana and Stamina. The super bleach puddled on the ground, splashing onto Temperance, but between the waders and the raincoat, she was fine.

More disgusting monkey balls peeled away from Frank’s body—each one depleting a small portion of the creature’s overall Health—and rushed toward us.

“Don’t worry, Dan,” Croc called. “I’ll take care of them.”

The mimic surged into battle. Tentacles kept the monkey balls at bay and huge feet and hands crushed anything that got too close. I trusted Croc completely and focused all my effort on Frank.

I let Pressure Washer rip at full blast, the lance of water cutting through the creature’s hide even more effectively than Temperance’s meat cleaver. At the same time, my hammer sailed through the air, held aloft by a strand of telekinetic force. I pumped extra Mana into the weapon until it swelled to the size of a sledgehammer and burned with ghostly blue light.

I brought the hammer screaming down in a wicked arc right into the side of Frank’s hideously deformed face. The cooldown timer on Gavel of Get Fucked had reset, so I triggered the effect again, burning 20 Stamina in the process. Frank was well above sixty percent Health, so there was no chance Killing Blow would activate. But that didn’t matter. The blow still landed for a total of 190 points of damage, knocking him down below 50%.

Frank spun around, ignoring Jakob, and focused on me and Croc.

The gorilla let out a thunderous roar and slammed a foot against the floor.

A huge fissure zigzagged toward us—the attack identical to the one that Drumbo Chumbo had used earlier. Despite being the size of a bear, Croc was both fast and agile. The mimic easily danced away from the edge of the growing chasm while I continued to chip away at Frank’s Health, smashing him in the face with my hammer and spamming Pressure Washer—garnering additional stacks of Water Erosion with each passing second.

Temperance had managed to climb onto Frank’s back and was currently riding him like an angry rodeo bull and not a twenty-five-foot-tall, reanimated cyborg gorilla. Her cleaver fell in rhythmic series of wet thwacks, each blow eating through a sliver of the creature’s total HP.

Burning green orbs of power shot from the gorilla’s eyes, zipping toward us—

There was a thunderclap off to the right as Jakob summoned what appeared to be a black hole. The swirling black vortex was about the size of a manhole cover and hung, unsupported, in the air. The green orbs immediately veered off course, sucked into the black hole. The black hole vanished with a pop and Jakob surged forward in a nimbus of golden light—his Cow Catcher Charge, at work.

The Cendral raised his blue shield up, then brought the burning edge straight down, slicing through one of Frank’s toes. The shield cauterized the wound in passing.

Frank howled in rage and spun like a top, one giant foot mule kicking Jakob in the chest, launching the lizard man across the room. He landed in a boneless heap, his HP bar critically low. He wasn’t dead, but unless I could spoon-feed him a healing elixir, it looked like he was out of the fight for the time being.

Then, to make matters worse, Funtime Frank reared up and huge earthen spikes erupted from his back. An army of spears, all identical to the earthen spike that had impaled my foot. In an eyeblink, he’d transformed into a giant porcupine. And Temperance never saw it coming. Spikes pin cushioned the murder bunny in half a dozen places. She tumbled off Frank’s back and landed in a spreading puddle of red—blood hemorrhaging out at an astounding rate.

She took a long, wheezing breath, her arms flopping weakly beside her.

She was still alive, but for how much longer?

Frank’s HP was lingering just above twenty-five percent, and suddenly it was down to me and Croc. We needed to end this thing and we needed to do it yesterday if we had any chance of saving our friends. There was a good chance it was already too late.

“What do we do, Dan?” Croc yelled as he squashed another monkey ball with one foot, splattering bits of fur across the hay-covered floor.

My mind raced but nothing was coming. My Mana was low. I had enough juice to cast one more StainSlayer Maelstrom but that wouldn’t be enough. It might knock Frank below twenty percent, but then I’d be running on empty. I was sure I could get Wild Surge to proc again, but even if I did, so what? Every spell in my arsenal wouldn’t be enough.

It was too bad I’d destroyed all of his stupid barrels. If I had one of those explosive barrels, I could’ve lodged the damn thing in Frank’s throat and turned his head into pink mist.

I froze…

Wait. That’s the answer.

Although I didn’t have a barrel, I had something else in my inventory that might do the trick.

“We need to get him to face us!” I bellowed. “I just need a clear shot at his mouth.”

Before the words were even out, Croc was already on the move.

The mimic raced around the circus ring, straddling environmental hazards and leaping over scurrying monkey balls. The mimic skidded to a halt a handful of feet in front of Jakob—still down for the count—then wheeled to face Frank, who was staring at us with hate etched into the lines of his deformed simian face.

I raised a hand and activated Pressure Washer, this time aiming right at Frank’s… frank and beans. The blast of water hit for 15 points of Slashing Damage, which barely moved the needle on Frank’s HP bar. But getting blasted in the junk by a stream of water with 90,000 PSI of force behind it had to hurt like a bitch. Funtime Frank threw his head back and roared, which is when I acted. I reached through a jagged tear in the fabric of reality and pulled an Artifact from my Storage.

It was small enough to fit into the palm of my hand.

It wouldn’t stay that way, though.

I wrapped the object in a thread of telekinetic power and sent it flying with all the accuracy of a sniper round straight for Frank’s yawning, cavernous mouth.

The object glinted as it flew, flashing in the circus lights.

It was a bright orange, die-cast, 1972 Ford Pinto. It looked like a Hot Wheel car.