“We have to run,” I said to the spokespigeon. I pulled a thick knife out of the back of a toga’ed ladybug man. The AI spoke up.
Et tu, Brute? That blade sure looks good at backstabbing. Are we foreshadowing a future betrayal?
I sprinted north, the pigeons followed. The speed and the rushing wind took me.
Ivan: Hey I just unfroze too! Where are you guys?
Carol: Follow the carnage and then keep heading north.
Ivan: Okay. Wait up for me.
Carol: We can’t. Earl would catch up. We’ll find some way to meet up eventually.
We ran north for miles. The pristine marble walls and white columns slowly began to show cracks. Eventually there would be a toppled column blocking the path that I’d jump over while the pigeons easily flew above. The world shrunk to the adrenaline of this moment. No thought beyond the insatiable revelry of speed.
After two straight hours of running there was not a single intact column. They were all broken with crumbled stone scattering the hall, the white weathered to dull grey. I slowed down before I lost my footing and rolled an ankle. Or worse. Through the cracks in the walls ivy invaded. Creeping upwards, snaking around broken columns as if to strangle them. Blue flowers the size of my hand sprouted on the vines. On the eastside an entrance opened bigger than the others. It opened to a large room the size of a Madison Square Garden if you took away the seating. In the center an extravagant stone church. A large steepled door was open. The stained-glass windows on either side held fish bowls. In the bowls devilfish adorning smiles full of sharp teeth. The four corners of the building had large gothic spires, in the center a spire twice as tall as the others.
As soon as we entered the chamber an iron gate fell behind us trapping us inside.
Time froze. We couldn’t move.
Boss Battle!
You have discovered the lair of a neighborhood boss!
Put your game faces on, ladies and gentlemen! Aaaand. Here. We. Go!
A huge Versus splattered into the air.
The Church of the Starving
Level 9 neighborhood boss!
“Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?’
-James 2:15-16
And who’s hungrier than a school of piranhas? Also known as the velociraptors of the waters, these little guys can strip a human body to the bone in five minutes. But something tells me they won’t need that much time. Hope you brought some sturdy chopsticks because this sushi fights back.
In two orderly lines, dozens of monks marched out of the church. Brown hoods covered their faces, the only thing visible was their hands. Each of them held a large fishbowl full of ravenous piranhas eager to escape and feed. Heads down as if in prayer, they sang some kind of Gregorian chant. Once they reached the bottom step, they broke off to either side of the entrance forming a large frontline before us.
Time unfroze.
I stumbled when free will reentered my body but caught myself before falling. The monks were unmoving but underneath their dark hoods the chanting grew louder. A single voice rising from two dozen mouths. The piranhas furiously circled in their bowls in a frenzy.
From the shadows within the church came a rhythmic clacking. Wood on stone. Then in the doorway appeared a man bearing sharp teeth dressed as the pope, white robes and a comically large mitre.
One hand held his weight through the cane. The left hand- hand sinister- shot to the sky. The water in the fishbowls rumbled and bubbled rising upwards past the lip but not spilling. Monks chanted louder.
Tendrils of water shot skyward. The piranhas frenzied in their freedom.
“Ha! Look at those tiny fish,” the spokespigeon said while settling on my shoulder. “We were raised on the edge of the Hudson River! Do you know how many whales passed up and down that waterway? And we’re supposed to be intimidated by puny fish.”
The upright tendrils then shot right at us. Not long enough to reach the full distance, they hovered roughly ten feet away acting as runways for the piranhas shooting through the water with uncanny speed.
I clutched my backstabbing knife not sure what to do with it. Hundreds of piranhas shot out of the tip of the tendrils like bullets chomping through the air looking to scour my flesh to the bone.
“Not coo,” the spokespigeon said taking flight off my shoulder.
I put on my ring.
My high dexterity threw the world into slow motion.
I took step forward staring the closet piranha in its beady eyes. I touched its gill with my left hand and put it in my inventory. It worked. As quickly as possible I repeated the process with as many piranhas as I could while the rest slowly inched closer and closer. Salivating.
I kept my inventory open watching the number go up out of the corner of my eye.
Piranhas x 12
Piranhas x 33
Piranhas x 57
Piranhas x 104
Then I reached for one, just when another bit down latching onto my hand. The world sped up drowned in my scream. I noticed my health for the first time as the green bar slowly depleted.
The spokespigeon held back but the others swooped in cutting into the piranhas. Pecking at their gills. When timed right, they grabbed them by their fishy tails, flew as high as possible and let them fall.
I writhed but they weren’t letting go. Teeth sunk deeply into my flesh.
The monks continued to chant. The fish pope maliciously chuckled. From my knees I released the piranhas from my inventory. Still possessing their original velocity, they shot back at the monks. Showing no loyalty, they chomped into flesh and robes. The chant stumbled breaking its rhythm. The tendrils faltered like a glitch in a game. I ripped piranhas off my arms tearing flesh. My health bar was below 50% by the time I got the last one off.
The monks were in disarray. Most were dead on the ground, a few still flailed. The pigeons took care of them. I focused on one monk and it said his name was Greg #17. Another was Greg #4. And so on. Which explains the Gregorian chant.
All that was left was the pope. Helpless, he tried limping away back into the church. With my dexterity, I rushed him. In the blink of an eye my knife was buried in his back to the hilt. In his death throes, with his weak raspy voice he uttered, “freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” He coughed up blood and fell over.
The spokespigeon inventoried the pope’s mitre, it immediately resized itself to his head.
And the winner is, a bad ass pigeon and some chick!
I was now level 8 and my experience bar hovered near the next level already.
Panting, nursing a dozen open wounds from chunks of flesh ripped off my arms and neck I thought about how less than six hours ago my biggest concern was worrying about by fiancé not being home yet.
Ivan: I just went up another level what did you guys do? Courageous and I just smushed a ton of three-foot-tall praying mantises. They were just praying. It felt wrong.