Chương 48: It just doesn’t get grosser than that guy.

"The ten-minute negotiation round begins now," Razza said and then silently waited for one of the players to start talking. For a long moment, no one did. George looked up from his conversation with Nod and stared around the room. He noticed changes in a few others he had not noticed since returning to the voting room. There were only two women with Carthage now instead of three. One of the remaining women was crying.

There was a red stain that looked like blood on one leg of Carthage's pants, but he looked unharmed. Until this point, the woman called Misco Narisco had been still and quiet in her enclosure, only turning her head to listen whenever anyone spoke. Now, however, she was standing just as calmly on the ceiling of her enclosure as if it were the floor. Her hair and long cloak were not hanging toward the floor but settled on her shoulders like normal, even though she was upside down.

It was almost like the gravity in the enclosure had been reversed. The only exception to that rule were the red flower petals slowly raining down from her body like snow. A small pile of them had collected on the floor below her head. She was one of the players TLX had identified as being on the red team with its ability orb. The slime had filled the entire floor of its enclosure. It looked like a kiddie pool of bubbling, green goo that might take half your leg if you stepped in it.

Urdo, the giant living suit of armor, clanked and rattled as it paced through its cell. Every time its armor shifted, purple light shone out between the gaps. The Gnacker had most of its hair burned off on one of its flanks. George could see bright red skin that was blistered and oozing on one side. Tycho was kneeling in front of his large backpack, peering down into it. He reached in to get something, and he put his whole arm into the dimensional bag up to the shoulder to get what he was after.

He withdrew a shiny, rectangular box, set it on the ground, and opened it. He took out three cards and then added them to a smaller box in his shirt pocket. Then, he snapped the box shut and put it back into the backpack, once again reaching deeper than the physical size of the backpack would seem to allow. The faerie Tinntannabel spoke first.

"What happened to your leg?" she said. She was looking across the room at Carthage's enclosure. <Name: Tinntannabel Race: Faerie Level: 111, D-Grade Class: Dreamweaver Abilities: Lover's Hypoxia; Wardrobe Malfunction; Panama City Beach, Spring Break 2002; Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik House: Outer Rim Pact Guild: Rambalore Metadata—Encyclopedia Esoterica: The Outer Rim Pact is a conglomerate of lesser races, guilds, and the entourages of standout individuals.

It lacks the structure and hierarchy of the other top houses, yet in recent cycles, they have appeared for the first time at the bottom of the House Ranking, displacing the Saar in the eleventh spot. They draw on a wider variety of skills, experiences, inclinations, and predilections than other great houses. In this, their motley composition belies their true strength as it hides their power inside their seeming weaknesses. > Carthage looked at Tinntannabel and then pointed at Murdge.

"He can control the Vordigans somehow. We found a big cathedral, and it was crawling with the little bastards. Then he showed up and started conducting them like a fucking orchestra. We had to drag Lillian through the portal and lock it down. She died in my arms." The whole room looked at Murdge, and his only response was, "Oops." Murdge's body was enormous, bloated, and pock-marked. He was tall, and George thought he would only have come up to his elbows if they had stood side by side.

His arms and legs looked more like they belonged on a pink elephant than a man. His flesh hung from his frame in baggy folds, stretching tight in some places, and in others, it hung in limp wattles. His whole body was crisscrossed with scars, and the skin where the scars met was of different colors; it was as if his body had been patched together with skin from several different people. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Can you control the Vordigans?" someone said. Murdge turned to Razza and asked, "Moderator, does your vote remain if you die after you cast your vote?" Razza said, "No." Murdge nodded and smiled. His smile stretched impossibly over his too-wide head until it ran nearly ear to ear. His mouth yawned open, revealing the nubs of round teeth stuck into his gums at random intervals. >>Well, that is ominous as hell.

"Vote him out," this was from Carthage.

"He'll be able to send the Vordigans crawling through every room in the hunting maze."

"Yeah, he's a goner," Top said.

"Let's totally vote him out. If we don't, it'll be like he has his own army, and we can't vote them out because they stay in the hunting maze. That's bullshit."

"Murdge and the Vordigans can be killed," Ezra said.

"But the slime is already all over the maze. I've seen it in at least six rooms. Unless any of you have fire attacks, it is just going to keep growing. It will press us together, and we'll start killing each other off while it grows. If we kill it in one room, it will just keep growing in all the others."

"The slime is barely sentient," Carthage said.

"Who knows how many people are controlling that fat psycho's body." >>Point of order. Murdge's name was mentioned and now the discussion is swirling around him. >>Actually, let's remember that trick. A little misdirection could go a long way. >>Other than that, our whole strategy for voting rounds should be to lie low and hope no one notices we are in the room. >>Watch Neco. I don't want to get neurotoxin-ed just because we missed some signal from him. >>On it.

"I will be voting for the Cipher this round and every other round until he is voted out," Lady Greesh spoke for the first time since she chose her ability orb.

"Voting for anyone else while that creature remains in the game is folly." The bald man with the strange name made no indication he had heard Greesh's accusation.

"Agreed," Pine said. A few other players nodded. >>OK. There it was. Neco just looked at us and gave a little nod. I guess those are our voting instructions for this round. Ephemeral Flower of Not-Going-To-Be-In-The-Game-Very-Long it is. A message from TLX once again appeared in George's vision. [Do not vote against The Ephemeral Flower of Victory. —TLX] >>I wonder how many other people our frenemy TLX has tagged with his little messaging system. >>We need a spam filter on this thing.

>>In other news, I've been doing some back-of-the-napkin calculations and here is where we stand… >>Greesh, Pine, and Neco together represent 18 votes. If those votes go to the Cipher, they represent 30% of the possible votes. >>Sarala is a Rook, too, so I bet wherever the prince goes, she'll follow. >> Murdo also said that two people, in addition to us, have been made offers they couldn't refuse. That means that Neco might already control up to 15 other votes to add to his own eight votes.

>>The Cipher has already revealed that he's on the red team, so our friend TLX won't vote for him. >>Carthage will go for Murdge. >>We'll see where the groundlings go, but the odds don't look good for voting Murdge out this round… which is where I'd put my vote if I had my druthers. >>Because it just doesn't get grosser than that guy. >>Out of 61 total votes, iron rankers currently control almost half of the votes, but there are more of them, which means they're less likely to be organized.

>>As soon as more people climb higher up the ranks of the leaderboard, being in the iron rank will mean diddly squat. The high-rankers are going to control all the votes. If they can band together, they won't even need to talk about who to vote; they'll just pick people off one by one. >>We need to get our hands on some prestige tokens. One or two other people say things, but most people seem content to stay under the radar. The discussion continued to circle around Murdge and the Ephemeral Flower of Victory.

Then Razza lifted his hand and said, "Cast your votes now. You have 60 seconds. After the voting phase, the resolution phase will begin." A screen with all the players' names appeared in front of George, and he selected the Cipher. After 60 seconds, Razza said, "I will now reveal the votes, and the two-minute resolution phase will begin." Blue lines suddenly appeared between all the players and the person they voted for. A notification popped up showing the current standing of the vote.

Resolution Phase—Vote Ranking Murdge the Auctarium: 29 The Ephemeral Flower of Victory: 25 Dragonmaw: 3 Pine: 2 Then all hell broke loose in Neco's enclosure, and George's new combat log activated for the first time.