Either I mistimed my activation of Skippy’s ability to escape the black watery dimension, or my aim had been off from the start, but regardless of which it was, we ended up inside one of the large monsters that roamed the Singing City.
Skippy flopped out of the black pond and landed atop several piles of treasure with enormous golden organs around us. For some reason there were jewel-encrusted slot machines all over the place, as well as ivory and gold roulette tables.
“Where are we?” Bee asked as Skippy timed out and started to sink into his own shadow.
“Help!” Chris exclaimed from where he was still bound to the back of the eldritch whale by its tentacles, but Bee was quick to free him with a couple slashes of the mushroom cleaver she was still carrying for some reason.
As Chris slumped to the ground, clearly regretting having gone with us, Bee started chopping into Skippy’s body before it disappeared. She managed to cut off one of the fins on his left side, as well as getting a few pounds of blubbery flesh.
“Stop that!” Panda told her, although it was already too late to give it back since Skippy had fully vanished.
“Hold on!” I said as I looked up at the coiling intestinal tract made of solid gold that snaked through the large cavity we were in. “I think we’re inside Gargalob!”
Panda frowned. “I unfortunately think you’re right about that…”
“We’re inside a demon?” Bee asked.
The ground shook and many of the large piles of gold coins, jewels, and golden casino chips tumbled down, threatening to bury Chris where he’d collapsed onto his back exhaustedly. With a punch, I generated enough air to knock one of the golden waves aside, saving him just in time.
But the trouble wasn’t over, as suddenly a golden die hit me right in the head, leaving an imprint of four dots.
“Imps incoming!” Panda yelled.
I looked up and saw a swarm of gold-winged lesser demons descending towards us. They all reminded me of Mammon when I’d first met him, though they were slightly bigger and could obviously fly.
Despite his exhaustion, Chris got to his feet, quickly picking up armfuls of treasure to hurl at the imps that flew down from the area up by the stomach sack to get us.
Bee was already airborne and swatting through the swarm of imps with her Stinky Fish, knocking them into each other and sending them hurtling down towards Chris and I, where they were quickly beaten and stomped to death.
I started picking up coins as well, using Brock to finger-flick them up at the imps. Each hit made the imps pop like balloons, but instead of blood and guts, they were filled with golden confetti.
It made quite a mess.
“Uh, Gambit?” Chris said, tapping on my shoulder just as I was about to hurl back a die I’d caught before it’d hit my face.
“What?” I asked and turned to look at him.
But he didn’t need to tell me what was wrong, because I could see it clear as day.
The vertical pond we’d created when we’d entered into Gargalob’s body was growing rapidly. Already several meters of golden intestines were being pulled into it, shuddering as something deep inside the black water was trying to drag more of it in.
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The world suddenly started to tilt as Gargalob began to stumble, and to make matters worse, my goddamn Schmonic Boots were turning golden.
“We need to get out of here!” Panda exclaimed. “Just being in the presence of a powerful demon like Gargalob is enough to turn you into golden statues if you stick around for too long, and touching anything he created with his demonic powers speeds it up!”
“Now you’re telling us!?” I exclaimed and let go of the roulette table I’d been about to throw.
Chris dropped his handful of treasure as well.
“Ah shit, he can hear me,” Panda muttered.
“Your fur is turning gold as well,” I told Panda.
He started to aggressively brush himself off, but to no avail. It was kind of scary to think that he wasn’t beyond the reach of a demon either.
“So this is the Panda you were talking about,” Chris muttered.
“What’s your insanity meter at?” Bee asked as she floated back down.
All of the surviving imps had evacuated since it was clear that the black pond would soon be the size of a lake and devour everything inside Gargalob.
“I’m at 80%,” Chris said.
“That’s too high,” Panda muttered.
“Forget about that right now!” I exclaimed. “We need to get out of here before my prized shoes turn fully gold! It’ll ruin the resale value!”
“How are we going to get out?” Bee asked. “Can you punch a hole through his body? I think it’s too dense.”
“I know of a way,” Chris said and pointed to an open tube next to us. A large portion of what should have been connected to it was missing, devoured by the black water, and it provided us a way to enter.
But we could all tell what its purpose had been and where it would lead out.
I frowned. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’d rather take the golden turd slide than go back into that black water,” Chris said bravely and jumped into the tube.
“Do you think it smells? You know, since everything is gold and stuff?” Bee asked philosophically.
“Only one way to find out,” Panda said with a grin.
My frown deepened.
I blacked out the following 20-second long tube slide ride to freedom, and I only came to when I landed on the ground next to Chris.
He was covered in a sheen of oily-looking spray-on gold. I hadn’t thought that gold could ever look so disgusting up until that very moment.
“FYI, you’re also covered in it,” Panda said.
A deep shudder ran down my spine. “I need a shower.”
We were shaded by the enormous body above us, and when I heard the sounds of Bee coming from above, I made the mistake of looking up.
A large gaping orifice stared down at me like an evil eye, recessed into two sagging buttocks that glistened with oily gold on its already-golden surface, and there were angry-looking sores filled with precious crystals dotting their surface.
As Bee landed next to us carrying a mushroom sack, the giant above us staggered, dragging his left foot towards us.
I quickly scooped Chris up into my arms while summoning my sentient longboard, and Bee raised up into the air with her wings and followed after us.
“What took you so long?” Panda asked her as we escaped the large lumpen foot of the demon, moments before it stepped down on where we’d been standing.
“I had to collect some more materials,” she said, hefting the sack made from a mushroom and inside which was whale flesh and golden materials.
I frowned at the thought of what she might’ve gathered from the cursed tube slide of gold.
“It was actually kind of fun,” she then added.
“I thought so too,” Chris said from where I held him in my arms.
“You guys are crazy,” I told them as we completely left the shadow of the gigantic golden body of Gargalob.
I spun around on the board to take a look at him, but he really just looked like a naked and overweight Italian guy in his fifties, except he had luscious red-brown hair spun into curls, golden skin, and two stubby black horns.
He turned towards us as though he knew we were there, and as he made a full rotation, I saw the extent of the damage inflicted onto him by Skippy’s ability.
Gargalob’s entire right side was just a vertical portal of black water. It had taken away his right arm and was rapidly devouring his leg and half of his torso. Within minutes, the giant demon would be completely gone.
Which left the question, what would happen to the black portal to Nwetrou’s abyss?
“Whatever,” I said and shrugged. “Fuck this city.”
“Are you talking to yourself?” Panda asked.
Gargalob roared, his voice shaking the city underneath our feet. It almost sounded like he was screaming my name.
“I see the central tower that Billee told us about,” Bee said.
“Let’s go there,” I replied.
“I’d like to go back to our base,” Chris interjected.
“We’re just gonna briefly say hi,” I told him.
“Wait, who’s Billee?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” I said.
