It seemed like it would be difficult to pull off a reproachful look as a rubber dog with googly eyes, but somehow Croc managed it anyway.
“You’re not sick,” the dog said, not a question but a cold, hard statement of fact. “And that was no run-of-the-mill spell you just cast, Dan. That was a sequester ritual.” There was no accusation in its tone, but I could see it carved into the lines of the mimic’s face. “I’ve never seen a sequester ritual in action before and that’s because all of them are Mythic quality and no one other than the monarchs and lords of the lower floors have ’em.
“You look like a simple newb,” Croc continued, “but things aren’t adding up. Your navigation abilities. The way you can spot mimics even faster than I can. Your ability to detect and disarm traps that even the most experienced Trapsmiths would readily avoid. It’s all coming together.” Croc nodded his head sadly. “You’ve been lying to me, Dan. If that’s even your real name. But maybe it’s not. Maybe you’re a Josh or a Steve. Could even be an Adam.”
“Of course my name’s Dan,” I replied. “I swear, it’s not like that, Croc—”
“Then what is it like, hmm?” the mimic shot back before I could finish. “Because to me, this feels like you’ve been lying to me from the get-go, even though I’ve been nothing but honest and helpful. Have you ever even gone to a water park? Because I just don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“My name is Dan,” I reassured the dog, “and yes, I have been to a water park. And I’ve been honest with you… mostly. There are just a few minor details I may have left out.”
“Lying by omission is still lying, Dan,” Croc said stiffly, its tail standing straight up at attention. “And this wasn’t just lying by omission—this was just lying by lying. You said we were friends. Friends might not eat each other, but I’m pretty sure they don’t lie to each other either.” It looked down and seemed to wilt like an old flower, too long without water. “But what do I know? I’m not a human like you. I’m just a dumb, soulless monster, not worthy of trust. That’s what Rashid told me.” The dog peeked up at me with one eye.
“What happened to Rashid?” I asked, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.
“Vivisected by the Arch-Surgeon of the Bloody Blades,” Croc said morosely. “Quite an ugly death, that one was. Maybe if Rashid had trusted me a little more, he would’ve listened when I told him to stay away from the CryptiCrabs that live in the wishing pond.”
I was silent for a long beat, not wanting to look at the dog that wasn’t really a dog at all.
I sighed, dropped down onto one knee, and placed a hand onto Croc’s rubbery shoulder. “We are friends, Croc,” I finally said, breaking the tension. “I wouldn’t be alive right now if it wasn’t for you—”
“Then why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Croc cut in, looking up at me. “I didn’t ask questions about how you managed to get a navigation Relic. But this? Keeping a sequester ritual from me.” It raised a paw and swept it out. “You just created your own personal pocket world. That’s something else entirely. That’s dangerous, and you should’ve told me sooner.”
“That’s precisely why I didn’t tell you. Because it is dangerous and complicated and I was afraid you’d abandon me if you knew the truth,” I blurted out before I could overthink things. “Like I said, we are friends, but in my experience, friendship has its limits. If I asked you to help me move a couch, that’s one thing. But asking you to help me wage a war against one of the most powerful creatures in the Backrooms? That’s a big ask, especially for someone you met less than a day ago.”
“I’m not a human and maybe things are different where you’re from,” Croc said, “but here, friend is an unconditional term. This is a hungry world, Dan. A place where everything is trying to kill you if it means surviving for another day. There are alliances. There are factions. Tenuous partnerships. Even kingdoms with hundreds or sometimes thousands of denizens. But that’s all about survival. Every relationship in the Backrooms is transactional. What can you do for me? How can you help me survive?
“But to me, friendship is about companionship,” the dog continued. “It’s about service and loyalty. About being there even when things get hard. That’s why I choose to pick the form of a real, human dog.” Croc paused again, staring deep into my face with its stupid googly eyes. It was like the mimic was peering right into the deepest part of my soul. “I’m not going to leave you, Dan. But if you want me to help, I need to know what kind of trouble you’re in.” The dog cocked its head to one side. “No, scratch that. I need to know what kind of trouble we’re in.”
I took a deep breath and braced myself, preparing for Croc to either run away as fast as its rubber legs would go or attack me on the spot. It was all well and good to extol the virtues of friendship, loyalty, and selfless service until you learned that you were suddenly hanging out with someone at the top of the Skinless Court’s Most Wanted List. Although I’d gotten comparatively lucky so far, having an enemy like the Flayed Monarch was almost a guaranteed death sentence and anyone who helped me would likely suffer fallout as well.
“It all started with a bachelor party,” I said, unspooling the story word by word, beginning with the night before, then telling the mimic about waking up in the middle of a raging battle between two beings of otherworldly power.
Croc asked a few questions while I spoke. The mimic seemed extremely interested in the trench-coat-wearing gunslinger who’d saved my ass with the Slammer of Shielding—though I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
When I finally got to the part about the gunslinger stabbing the hellish Monarch through the chest and knocking loose the Brass Compass that now resided in my Spatial Core, I expected the dog to freak out.
Instead, Croc threw back its head and roared with… laughter. The mimic had a deep, full laugh that resonated in my bones. The sound was so happy and infectious, I found myself grinning from ear to ear, even though I wasn’t quite sure what exactly was so funny.
“So wait…” the dog gasped in between chuckles. “You stole a Mythic Emblem from the Flayed Monarch?” It paused. “Just picked it right up off the floor and stuck it in your core?”
I nodded, sober as a judge.
Croc laughed even harder, falling onto one side, then rolling and thrashing across the linoleum. That went on for so long I began to have legitimate concerns that the mimic was having an epileptic fit. Finally, after what felt like an obscenely long time, the dog’s laughter tapered off. Croc righted itself and swiped a tear from its eye with one paw.
Why or how a googly eye had tear ducts was beyond me.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever heard,” the dog said. “I’ve had dreams that weren’t half as satisfying as this. The Flayed Monarch lost one of the most potent Emblems ever to exist to a brand-new Delver. The irony is, in a word, delicious.”
“I’m so confused,” I said. “To me this all sounds like bad news. I’m level twelve and I basically robbed a supernatural warlord with unspeakable godlike powers of a priceless treasure. The Flayed Monarch Marked me for Death and anyone who serves the Skinless Court is obligated to murder me on sight. Could be I’m missing something, but I’m having a hard time seeing any upside here.”
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“I’m going to be honest, Dan, there aren’t a lot of upsides. This is either the best or worst thing to ever happen to anyone, and I’m not sure which it is. The Flayed Monarch is…” Croc paused, tapping one paw thoughtfully against its chin. “Well, powerful beyond the scope of human imagination, certainly. He is arguably the oldest of all the great monarchs and rules the 999th floor in its entirety. But the Flayed Monarch is also not well loved by most of the other denizens. Even better, you personally met and assisted the Boundless Wanderer.”
Croc’s eyes seemed to shimmer with a new reverence as they looked at me.
“First time I’m hearing that name,” I replied slowly. “Should it mean something to me?”
“Not at all,” Croc said, shaking its head. “You’re as fresh and green as spring grass, but the man you helped—the one who gave you the Slammer of Shielding—he’s a folk hero on pretty much every floor. Except, of course, on the 999th floor, where even whispering his name can earn you a death sentence. See, there are a handful of monarchs that occupy the lower floors, and they’re all perpetually at war with each other. Most of the folks above floor one hundred try to keep their heads down and stay out of the politicking and machinations of the great monarchs below, though sometimes their conflicts spill over even here.”
“What’s this have to do with this Boundless Wanderer guy?” I asked, feeling even more confused than I was before. “Is he one of these monarchs?”
“Yes,” Croc said, before shaking his head, “but actually no. He has the power of a monarch, but no kingdom. He’s a wanderer, like the name implies. But he’s also more than that. The Boundless Wanderer is a traveling monster hunter who prowls the floors, helping people while eternally searching for a way back to your world. He is venerated by most of the humans who call the Backrooms home, and his conflict with the Flayed Monarch is legendary and spans centuries. The skinless nightmare killed the Wanderer’s daughter nearly a century ago, and things have been a bit dodgy ever since.”
“So helping him was a good thing?” I hedged, feeling a little better.
“That depends, doesn’t it?” Croc said. “Mostly on who finds you first. I doubt the Flayed Monarch was able to kill the Wanderer, but he’s still only one man. The Flayed Monarch has the sworn loyalty of most of the Dweller factions that exist within the Backrooms—not to mention several human warbands, including a few that operate in this area. Hudson’s Red Hands work the third through fifth floors, and if any of them find you first, a quick death is the most you can hope for and far more than you should expect.”
“And what about you?” I asked. “You said most of the Dweller factions are loyal to the Flayed Monarch. Does that include the mimics?”
The question hung between us like an ominous storm cloud. Now that Croc knew the truth, where would the mimic stand?
“Yes,” Croc finally said. “Most of the sentient mimics are Aspirants of the Skinless Court. But not me,” it continued reassuringly. “Do you know much about the mimic procreation cycle, Dan?”
“Why in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph would I know anything about the mimic procreation cycle?”
“Well, I know all about human procreation,” Croc replied, “what with the storks and the gnomes and the baskets that you leave under the chimney—”
“I am truly fascinated to hear how you think human procreation works,” I muttered.
“—so I just figured you might have some of the basic facts about mimics,” Croc continued, unabated, “seeing how we are the most common species in the Backrooms—and because we’re best friends and all. We mimics are born in clutches. Mature mimics can lay upward of a hundred eggs at a time, but our parents aren’t exactly the nurturing sort. They lay the eggs and then leave the younglings to fend for themselves. Survival of the fittest, and all that.
“Thing is, I was born premature and defective. I was smaller and weaker than all of my kin and had an internal deformity, which prevents me from perfectly mimicking... anything, really. I can take many forms, but—and this might come as a shock to you—all of them are subtly wrong.” Croc stole a sidelong glance at me, as though admitting some dark and terrible secret. “The truth is, I couldn’t make myself look like a dog, even if you showed me a picture of one.
“I’m broken on the inside, Dan. My siblings saw that and cast me out, fully expecting me to die within days or weeks. But even though my magic is broken, I was always smarter than the others. I could think and talk, which are normally abilities that don’t develop until a mimic reaches maturity, around level twenty. That didn’t help me hunt, though. The truth of it is, I was helpless and would’ve died within weeks if not for the kindness of a human who found me.
“Her name was Gertrude. Gertrude Evans. She was a seventy-two-year-old grandmother who Noclipped into the Backrooms from a laundromat in Madison, Wisconsin. Her husband had died three years before and she lived at home alone with her seven cats. But the cats didn’t come. It was just her, and she was alone and scared. But she was also a survivor. Gertrude served during the Second World War. She said she was a WASP, you know, which is a type of pilot, and not a bug as I originally assumed.
“Anyway, the important thing is that Gertrude was fierce. But she was also kind and sweet and generous. She found me curled up in one of the service corridors. I was level one and so weak from hunger I could hardly move. She was lonely and missed her cats. I was dying and roughly cat sized. It was a match made in heaven—though, admittedly, her poor eyesight might have also had something to do with it.
“When she started calling me kitty, I assumed the rough shape of a cat. Thanks to my defective genes it was a truly terrible mimicry. It was only good enough to fool someone half-blind and mostly senile. Fortunately for me, Gertrude was both. She adopted me. Fed me.” Croc smiled, unshed tears in its eyes. “She would carry me around inside this enormous tote bag and would pat my head as we walked. At first, I considered eating her, but before long I realized I would live longer helping her than I would consuming her delicious flesh. She was my first friend. Really my only friend until you, Dan.”
“What happened?” I asked. Of all the Delvers Croc had told me about so far, this was the one I wanted to hear about the least.
“She lasted four months,” Croc said evenly. “Survived longer than any of the other Delvers I’ve ever been with. She made it down to the twelfth floor, which is when she ran across an Aspirant of the Court…” The mimic faltered, as though trying to find the right words. “She didn’t make it,” the dog finished simply, though what he didn’t say spoke volumes. Croc never shied away from all the gruesome ways other Delvers had perished but was silent about Gertrude. “As for me, I was branded as an Outcast for helping her.”
Croc’s form blurred until it was a writhing mass of tentacles and teeth. The mimic slowly turned, and I saw a mark burned into its rubbery skin. The brand looked like an angry red welt in the shape of an eye with a jagged crown floating above it.
“I’d reached level three by that point and though I was still weak and small and defective, I was strong enough to fend for myself. There wasn’t enough left of Gertrude to bury, so I figured the best way to pay her kindness forward was to try to help other new Delvers. Because that’s what she’d done for me, and I figured that’s what she would’ve wanted me to do for others.” Croc once more resumed the form of a dog, then dropped its snout and curled in on itself. “Despite my endless list of failures, I’ve done my best to do right by her.”
I scooted over so I could sit beside the dog that wasn’t a dog, then slung an arm around its shoulders. “She sounds like something special.”
“She was,” Croc agreed, leaning its weight against me. “She was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a mother, and the Flayed Monarch took her from me.” There was an uncharacteristically deep rumble of anger in Croc’s chest as it spoke. “We’ll probably both die in rather excruciating ways, but if there’s even a sliver of a chance that we can hurt the Monarch in the process, then it’ll be worth it.”
“Whoa, let’s rein in all this gruesome death talk,” I replied quickly. “I have no intention of dying as a martyr or some sort of hero. I want to live a long, full life that involves lots of casual day drinking. And, maybe someday, I’d like to find a way out of this twisted funhouse of tomfuckery. I know the odds aren’t in our favor, but I also don’t think this is a lost cause. Not completely. It’s gonna take a truckload of elbow grease and more than a little luck, but I’ve got a plan to keep us both alive and maybe we can continue to honor Gertrude’s memory while we do it.”
I described the Emblem’s manifold abilities and how I planned to use those abilities to make a lot of friends and get my hands on enough rare Artifacts and Relics to give us both a fighting chance against the Flayed Monarch and his army of bootlickers. By the time I was finished, Croc was practically spinning in circles out of sheer excitement.
“Where do we start?” the mimic said as I finally picked myself up off the ground.
I surveyed the store, which was a chaotic mess from our battle against the Harmacist and the crow-faced Lab Techs. There were supplies strewn across the floor, and whole sections of shelving had been blown to pieces. A lot of the structural damage was already starting to repair itself, just as I’d suspected would be the case, but the boxes weren’t gonna pick themselves up, and there were still bodies that needed to be disposed of.
“We’re gonna start with a mop bucket and a little bit of light reading,” I said, reaching through the fabric of space to retrieve one of the new items that had been deposited into my Subspace Storage System. It was a fat three-ring binder, with a cheaply laminated cover that read Blanket Fort DIY Operations Manual.