Chapter 67

Carl and his team infiltrate the Madness castle while Donut distracts Harpocrates with a humiliating PA announcement and battle music playlist. Using invisibility potions and enhanced speed, Carl, Dong, Jamal, Bigs, and Rend breach the castle's hidden door and begin clearing it, discovering that several crawlers—including the dead Zeynep and the living Burcu—are trapped inside, some conscripted into the Madness forces.

Carl's team moves toward the Madness castle as Donut shepherds a massive ball of flesh-crawlers toward a corpse field, hoping to separate them from Harpocrates. Carl doses himself, Jamal, and Gonk with invisibility potions, discovering the effect extends to mounted allies but inexplicably affects Dong as well. The team races toward the castle while Louis secures explosive weapons from the Reaver castle and Samantha pursues him. Donut uses the PA system to psychologically attack Harpocrates by mocking his severed genitalia and broadcasting "Lollipop," which successfully distracts the god long enough for their plans to advance. Carl reaches the Madness castle, a supermarket-sized rectangular building, and disables traps on a hidden garage-style door to enter. Inside, he casts Ping and discovers approximately twenty soldiers, three of whom are offworlders. His Book of Voodoo updates with three crawler entries: two conscripted crawlers mixed with guards, one living crawler named Burcu (a badger-headed porsuk swashbuckler) in an operating theater with Architect Houston and a now-dead Team Retribution NPC, and the corpse of Crawler Zeynep, whom Carl had encountered during the Astrid assassination. Burcu attempts to communicate via the Book of Voodoo, drawing a map showing fireball traps in the surgical theater, but the book closes before Carl can read her full message—the system prevents them from further collaboration. The soldiers suddenly move toward Carl's position, launching psionic attacks that fail to affect him or his team, setting up an imminent confrontation.