Using Unerring Arrow and the Variant Kiosk Network Map, it only took us a few hours to make our way toward the first entry point, which would bring us all the way down to floor nineteen.
I’m not sure whether it was the Barracuda in a Barrel title driving all the natives away or the fact that I floated a few feet above the floor and looked like I was itching to murder something, but we didn’t see a single Dweller along the way. Sure, there were a few mimics hiding in plain sight, disguised as mall benches or vending machines, but nothing that even remotely posed any sort of threat to us.
Not anymore.
That didn’t mean we let the mimics live, though. Although killing ’em didn’t grant us any additional experience, those incognito-mode murder machines were a deadly threat to any other low-level Delvers who unwittingly stumbled onto the third floor for the first time. Chances were, more would spawn over time, but that didn’t matter. With the exception of Croc, the only good mimic was a dead mimic. Plus, I couldn’t say no to free Relics, even if they were only common-grade. I always needed more fuel for the sacrificial fires of my advancement.
Our destination was a kiosk sandwiched between what appeared to be a knock off Brookstone selling a bunch of vibrating foot massagers and other, equally useless travel bullshit, and a retro comic shop called Time Warp Comics.
We were on a mission and the mission always came first, but I was sorely tempted to venture into Time Warp Comics just so that I could read up on the adventures of Captain Carnage or Blitzkrieg Steve. Obviously, those were twisted backrooms versions of real Marvel and DC characters, but they honestly sounded kinda awesome. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t morbidly curious about what I might find in a comic featuring a depressed billionaire named the Nihilist Knight.
Sadly, that would have to wait for another day.
The kiosk itself sold a variety of skin creams, face masks, and hand lotions, which didn’t come as much of a surprise. Those were among the most common types of kiosks located on the third floor and were almost always guarded by Sales Sirens.
Up until now, I’d given the things a wide berth because the Sales Sirens were notorious for their mind fuckery and early on, Grit had been my dump stat. But this was the only way down. I also wasn’t worried about anything on the third floor—not with the Crown of the Burger Baron on my head and the Kiosk Club Card Tattoo stamped prominently across the back of my hand. I was the monster these creepy fucks needed to fear.
I took point, preparing to blast anything unfriendly with either a concentrated dose of literal fire-water or slice ’em to pieces with one of the tools, slowly orbiting around me like tiny planets. Between the demolition screwdriver, my rip-claw hammer, and the Septic Shiv, which I’d looted off the Shart Golem, I was ready to slay some bodies.
As I drew closer, a storage hatch beneath the kiosk snapped open with a soft and eerie groan and a pair of lanky creatures unfolded themselves and scuttled out into the open. They were humanoid in appearance—one male, one female—but crawled along the ground on arms and legs that were too long and contained too many joints. It was like watching that weirdo from the Ring lurch out of the TV screen.
They moved with an unnerving grace, bodies twisting, knees and elbows popping as they finally stood. The Sales Sirens looked more or less human. I mean, they had the rough shape of people, but they were skeletally lean, almost emaciated, and each sported a black latex body suit that clung to every contour of their andronyms bodies. Both had the pelvic smoothness of a Ken Doll, which was something I was deeply thankful for. Seeing the latex imprint of a monstrous mooseknuckle was one thing I very much wanted to avoid. One had short hair and the strong-jawed face of a man, while the other had flowing brunette hair and the soft features of a woman.
There was something strangely plastic about their appearance, though. They were like celebrities who’d been injected with so much Botox that they couldn’t smile right.
Dweller 0.368B – Sales Siren [Level 8]
If the unholy union of a plastic surgery office and a used car lot birthed an eldritch lovechild, you’d get the Sales Siren. These horrors look like men and women, but their smiles are permanently plastered on, fake as the promises of a late-night infomercial, and their skin has the unsettling sheen of cheap plastic. Despite their appearances, there’s nothing even remotely human about them.
While Sales Sirens are formidable adversaries, their bodies are fragile by nature. A good, solid hit can easily punch through faux skin and shatter bone, but getting close enough can be tricky. They’ll lure you in with whispers of great deals and once-in-a-lifetime offers, but behind those vacant eyes lies a predatory intelligence, ready to strip your willpower as easily as they’d rip a discount tag off a sale item.
If you find yourself face-to-face with one of these plastic-faced nightmares, don’t engage. Run, hide, and for the love of all things sacred, never—never—accept their offers.
I skimmed the description but quickly dismissed it as I felt an outside presence brush up against my thoughts. It was a subtle thing. So subtle I was sure that if my Grit were lower, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. Thanks to my fancy new Crown, however, it was the equivalent of stepping face-first into a spider web. The strands of telekinetic power were gossamer thin, but they weren’t powerful enough to hold me. Although the wide smiles never faltered for even a moment, a voice whispered in the back of my head.
Come, they urged. Come and peruse our wares. We have such sights to show you, traveler. Such wonderous tonics for the flesh and the mind. Potions that will bathe you in glory. Elixirs and creams that will remake you anew.
“Yeah, cut the bullshit,” I said without batting an eye. “Your party tricks aren’t gonna work on us and we have every right to be here.” I raised my arm and showed off the tattoo branded against the back of my hand. The others mirrored the motion, showing off their own temporary ink.
Although those eerie too wide smiles never faltered, both Sales Sirens flinched back as though they were vampires and I’d just brandished a cross at ’em. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were afraid of the tattoo. Or maybe they were afraid of what the tattoo represented.
The Franchisor.
Either way, they moved away from the kiosk, bowed at the waists, then waved us toward the open cabinet door and made no further attempts to fuck with us. Hopefully, it would be that easy at every step, though somehow, I doubted it.
“Watch my back,” I growled over one shoulder as I dropped down onto my hands and knees and inched my way through the cramped cabinet opening, which should’ve connected to under kiosk storage, but didn’t.
Instead, I wriggled my shoulders through and suddenly found myself in a large cavern with rough, craggy stone walls that stank to high heavens. It wasn’t hard to guess why. Several butchered corpses lay in a large pile, the flesh moldering, the meat rancid and decomposing as flies buzzed about in lazy circles. Bones littered the ground, though many of those didn’t look entirely human. There were misshapen skulls. Arm and leg bones that were too long. Several mutilated skeletons that looked like they belonged to wolves or giant rats.
Maybe even the Mall Rats who so frequently haunted the open corridors of the third floor.
These things didn’t just eat Delvers, it seemed. They ate everything. It was a firm reminder that the Backrooms were a dog-eat-dog world, where only the strong survived. And the Sales Sirens, for all of their frail appearance, were clearly survivors. Hungry ones.
I stood and scanned the room for traps using Spelunker’s Sixth Sense but didn’t see anything out of place. Well, everything was sort of out of place and extremely disturbing, but nothing that was inherently dangerous. Other than the smell, maybe. I scrunched up my nose at the sour stink, then pulled free a small green container of Vick’s Vapor Rub, which I’d grabbed earlier from the store’s medicine aisle. I dabbed a dot or two beneath each nostril and breathed in deeply, filling my sinus cavity with the intense scent of menthol.
The stuff was so overwhelming powerful that it burned my eyes, but that was still way better than the alternative.
“It’s clear,” I called out through the tiny door as I stowed the Vicks.
Croc was the next one through, followed in short order by Temperance then Jakob. All three had odd expressions on their faces as they surveyed the room, which—like so many things in the Backrooms—was far larger on the inside than on the outside. Temperance looked outright disgusted, which mirrored my own feelings to a T, while Jakob cataloged every detail with the cold dispassionate eye of a scientist.
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Croc, on the other hand, looked like a hungry Marine pulling up to an All-You-Can-Eat buffet after a month of running field ops and eating tasteless MREs.
“Oh my god,” the dog said, practically drooling. “What is that heavenly scent?”
“It’s dead bodies,” I said with a grimace.
“Not just dead bodies,” Croc corrected. “Dry aged dead bodies. The age really bakes in the flavor, Dan. Gives the meat a sort of an oaky after taste.” The mimic glanced left then right, obviously searching for any sign that the Sales Sirens had followed us in. But no, they were still outside. “Do you think those fellas would mind terribly if I took just a nibble or two?” Croc asked in a low, conspiratorial whisper. “It’s been ages since I’ve had a really good dry aged corpse.”
“I don’t think they’d be happy about it,” I replied flatly. I couldn’t believe that this was the conversation I was having
“But, Dan, I’m so hungry,” Croc lamented, its googly eyes staring at me like huge moons.
I hated saying no to Croc, but I wasn’t really sure what the rules were for the Kiosk Club Card, and I didn’t want to risk violating some unspoken TOS and getting mauled by all the Dwellers inside the network.
“When we get to floor nineteen,” I said like a parent reassuring an anxious child, “I promise we’ll find you something to eat. A whole pile of bodies, if that’ll make you happy.”
“Promise, Dan?” Croc asked, wagging its tail. “Promise you’ll get me a whole corpse pile? Because friends don’t lie, Dan,” the dog added, its voice dead serious.
“Pinky promise,” I said, feeling a little grossed out by my own words. Sometimes it was easy to forget just how inhuman Croc really was, but reality always had a way of reminding me sooner or later. “If Jakob’s right, floor nineteen is gonna be a bloodbath. By the time we’re done down there, you won’t be hungry for a week.”
At the far side of the cavern was a pool of deep shadow, which concealed a jagged fissure gouged into the surface of the rock.
The passageway was so dark and well concealed, that I might’ve missed it on the first pass. Upon closer inspection, however, I saw that the crevice continued onward, quickly disappearing out of sight as it was swallowed by inky darkness. There was no telling how deep that fissure went or what might be waiting for us inside, but Unerring Arrow confirmed that was indeed the way forward. I fished out my Maglite with unsteady fingers and used a thin strand of telekinesis to keep it aloft directly in front of me.
The beam carved through the gloom, but there wasn’t much to see. Just gray stone walls and a low ceiling—though not so low that I’d have to crouch, thank the lord.
Once again, I opted to go first so that I could scan for traps, but almost immediately regretted it. The passageway was cramped, narrow, and claustrophobically tight. I’d never struggled with enclosed spaces before, but something about the fissure, cutting through the earth, left me feeling shaky and sick to my stomach.
I kept envisioning the level shifting positions and the floor opening beneath my feet. That or the walls crunching together, turning me and my friends into red smears and smashed intestines. Worst of all, I could easily envision poisonous spiders or cave centipedes with a thousand legs scuttling out of the hidden crevices and into my bathrobe. Even though I knew that was irrational, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something crawling along my skin or slithering through my hair.
“You okay, Dan?” Croc asked from behind, its voice echoing strangely off the stone.
“Yeah,” I grunted, even though I wasn’t really.
Truth was, I was scared shitless for reasons I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Sometimes fear could be good. It was a valuable survival mechanism honed through thousands of years of evolution. Yet those evolutionary instincts hadn’t really caught up to the modern world and as a result, they could end up getting you killed if you weren’t careful. Over the span of millennia, white tailed deer had developed the ability to go almost completely motionless when they sensed the approach of a dangerous predator.
That worked great against bears or mountain lions. It worked much less well against semi-trucks hauling ass along I-80.
This wasn’t so different. My instincts were screaming at me to stop. To turn around. To find another way. Any other way. My senses screeched that the darkness was dangerous and that bad things waited for me beyond, but my head knew this was the way forward. As counterintuitive as it felt, charging into the breach was the path toward survival.
So, even though I didn’t want to, I grit my teeth, sucked it the fuck up, and pushed onward. The earthen fissure zigged and zagged, rarely going in a straight line, though the floor gradually sloped downward as we moved. No one talked and the only sounds to be heard were heavy breathing and the scuff of boots along stone. We moved at a snail’s pace, but after half an hour or so, the fissure finally opened up, dumping us into a wider underground tunnel.
The tunnel was less claustrophobic, but equally unnerving in its own uniquely fucked up way.
The walls were studded with countless bones. Rows of yellowing skulls and aged bones were arranged into macabre patterns that yawned into the distance before disappearing out of sight. Unlike the fissure, which was deathly dark, a soft green witchlight seeped from the legion of skeletal eye sockets, casting the hallway with eerie shadows which seemed to dance and flicker in the corner of my vision. Although I’d never visited the catacombs beneath Paris, I’d seen pictures on the web.
This place looked identical.
Other than the creepy glowing skulls, of course, which made me wonder how much of this was real and how much of it was actually progenerated material, fabricated whole cloth by the God Box down on floor one-thousand.
Intellectually, I knew that tens of thousands of people had noclipped into the Backrooms. Maybe even hundreds of thousands of people. But what were the chances that each and everyone had ended up here, lining the walls of this obscure passageway in the kiosk network? That stretched the limits of plausibility, which made me think none of this was real. At least not real like me or Jakob or Temperence, or even the stupid ass bathrobe wrapped around my shoulders.
That revelation robbed this place of a little of its creepiness, though that didn’t mean the things living here were any less dangerous. The mimics weren’t “real” in a materially significant way, and neither was Funtime Frank or the ghastly Hotel Lodgers on the fifth floor, but they’d all be more than happy to ripe me a new asshole given half a chance. It was important I remember that fact.
Complacency kills, I reminded myself for the thousandth time. That was an axiom I’d learned to live by during my time in Iraq and those who forgot it came home in body bags if there was enough left to come home at all. I suspected the same was true for the Backrooms. Those who grew comfortable and minimized the dangers of this place ended up dead.
Although there were several branching pathways that lead only God knows where, we followed what I’m come to think of as the central boulevard. That main pathway turned out to be circular—a giant corkscrew slowly but surely drilling down, down, down into the earth. The air grew noticeable cooler as we walked, and after almost an hour it was so cold, I needed to pull my bathrobe tight around my shoulders to keep my teeth from chattering.
Against my better judgement, I swapped out Existential Dread for one of the Uncommon-grade Erlenmeyer's Molotov Cocktail Relics I had sitting in my Superspace Storage. The Relic wouldn’t deal much damage against Dwellers down this deep, but it allowed me to conjure a small fireball, which floated above my palm. That wasn’t really what the spell was meant for, and under normal circumstances it would’ve been a huge drain on my Mana Reserves, but with Psychic Sovereignty equipped that wasn’t an issue.
The only saving grace was that whatever called this place home, stayed the hell away from us. And there were definitely things down here with us. We heard them moving along the side corridors. Things with too many legs and huge claws scraping against bone and stone as they trundled by. A few times, I caught glimpses of coarse fur and once I saw the chitinous scales of some giant bug, which sent a chill racing down my spine. Yeah, fuck that noise.
Thank the good lord, they seemed content to let us be, which was fine by me. I wasn’t sure if they left us alone because we had a Club Card or because we were all level twenty or above with titles that actively repelled lower-level Dwellers, but in the end I didn't have two shits to give.
The only thing I cared about was that we didn’t have to murder a bunch of cave-dwelling giant centipedes or deformed spiders made entirely out of human bones. I mean, I wasn’t sure that’s what was lurking down here with us, but if it wasn’t that it would be something equally horribly and traumatizing. The Backrooms never failed to deliver when it came to serving up mentally traumatizing horrors that defied the scope of human imagination.
Eventually, the endless corkscrew levelled out and the catacombs disappeared, replaced instead by a large earthen cavern filled with piles and heaps of literal garbage. We’d walked into what could only be an underground landfill—one overflowing with the ghostly remnants of American suburbia.
There were rusted bicycles and a solitary kid’s trike, missing one wheel. Used mattresses, ripped up and left to rot, alongside heavily stained couches and broken furniture. Piles of old clothing, busted toys, and equally broken dishware. Pots, pans, and kitchen appliances galore, plus a whole mess of As-Seen-on-TV bullshit. A derelict riding lawn mower with the engine ripped out sat precariously perched on a heap of discarded sheets and blankets. None of them were Artifacts, I realized after inspecting some of the larger items. They were simply the leftovers of modern living, which cluttered countless curbsides while waiting for a garbage truck to roll by.
We were getting close to the nineteenth floor. I could feel it in my bones.
A narrow pathway threaded its way back and forth through the teetering mounds of debris and came to an abrupt halt at a free-standing door. Not a normal door either. This was a slab of thick metal and instantly reminded me of the walk-in freezer I’d acquired from the abandoned kitchen down in Hotel Hell. I cast Unerring Arrow and it pointed straight at the door like a hound with the smell of blood in its nostrils. Although there was no sign of hostile Dwellers, a knot of worry formed in the pit of my stomach.
This was it.
We’d been playing on easy mode for the past three or four weeks, but all that was about to change. On the other side of that door lay death and lots of it. Hopefully we’d done enough to prepare.
I took a deep breath then took a final look at the others.
I saw my resolve mirrored in each of their faces. Well, except for Temperance. She looked like a kid, getting ready for a shopping spree in a candy store. She’d cranked the crazy all the way up to eleven and there was a hungry zeal in her eyes that was a little bit frightening. As for the others, whatever reservations they might have once had, they were gone. We’d made our decision and now it was time to kick ass, commit war crimes, and God help anything that got in our way.