The Gate of the Feral Gods

by Matt Dinniman

  Carl: That is good news. Take care of yourself.

  Just before we entered the club, all three of us received a notification.

  Admin Notice. Congratulations, Crawler. You have received a second sponsor!

  Viewers watching your feed will now see advertisements produced by both of your sponsors.

  Sponsor’s Name: The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network, Intergalactic NFC.

  Additional details available in the Sponsorship Tab of your interface.

  My heart sank the moment I saw the word “Pacifist.” Who the hell were these guys? I sent a quick message to Mordecai.

  Mordecai: Never heard of them, but they gotta be rich. That NFC stands for Not for Conquest. That means they’re not sponsored by any system, and they are free from taxes. Like a non-profit.

  Carl: A goddamned charity? Like some religion?

  Mordecai: There’s no such thing as a non-profit religion. At least not in the legal sense. It sounds like one of the many groups out there that don’t support the crawl. They probably bought into your sponsorship so they can show commercials. I hope that’s not the case. If it is, you won’t be getting any boxes from them.

  I started to respond, but I was interrupted by Donut.

  “Carl, Carl, I got a new sponsor!” Donut said, hopping up and down on the back of Mongo, which caused him to also start hopping up and down with excitement. “They’re called, ‘Veriluxx RealPet Companions!’ Don’t they sound just awesome? I wonder who that is! Who did you get? What about you, Katia?”

  “I got the Squim Conglomerate,” Katia said. “I don’t know who that is.”

  “I do,” I said. “They’re the corporation who ran the crawl the last season. They’re a planet-mining company just like Borant. They do the battle royale style crawls. I don’t know what type of alien they are.”

  “Huh,” Katia said. “Interesting. You can see who else they sponsor, and the list has like 500 crawlers on it. I don’t recognize any of the names.”

  I remembered that was a thing, but the Valtay hadn’t sponsored anybody else. I checked now, and they still only sponsored me. My new one didn’t sponsor anybody else, either.

  “Hey, not fair,” Donut said, suddenly sounding dejected. “My new sponsor sponsors a bunch of other people. And Princess D’Nadia just sponsored five other crawlers, too.”

  “They must be pretty special if Princess D’Nadia likes them,” I said, reaching over to scratch Donut on the head. She harumphed.

  “Well I’m probably the best one,” she grumbled.

  Loita: Congratulations on the new sponsors. All three of you commanded very high fees. Both Carl and Donut had bidding wars that lasted until the final possible microsecond. Donut, you’ll be happy to know that you brought in the highest sponsorship bid in the history of the series, beating out both Carl and Prepotente.

  Next to me, all signs of dejection fled as Donut did another little hop of joy.

  Donut: THAT’S PRETTY MUCH WHAT I EXPECTED. HOW’S ZEV?

  Carl: Lucia isn’t commanding the most sponsorship money?

  Loita ignored both of the questions.

  Loita: Furthermore, Donut, you will soon be receiving a benefactor box from your new sponsor. It is a product sample. We are requesting that you take it out and interact with it a few times. Carl, feel free to make some of your famous comments about it. This will appear to be a regular benefactor box, but it is in fact part of their sponsorship contract. This box is a freebie for them. It is something new we are trying with some select crawlers to attract more possible sponsors. So try not to disparage the product too much if you want Veriluxx to send you a real benefactor box. In six or seven days, assuming you’re still with us, you two plus Mongo will be going on a program where you discuss the product.

  Carl: We’re going on an infomercial? Are you kidding me?

  Loita: I am not Zev, Carl. Do not speak back to me like that. It will not be tolerated.

  I almost told her to go fuck herself, but I held my tongue. Now was not the time to push it.

  Donut: WHAT ABOUT KATIA?

  Loita: Katia, I have you booked on a separate program around the same time. You will be doing it solo. This will be a one-on-one interview on a show called Dungeon Sidekicks.

  Katia: I can’t wait.

  Donut: HOW IS ZEV DOING, LOITA?

  Loita: Zev is still in treatment. We expect her return shortly.

  “A goddamned infomercial?” I said.

  “I wonder what the product is,” Donut said as she dismounted Mongo. The dinosaur whimpered as he went into the carrier, but he obediently allowed her to store him. She jumped to my shoulder as we entered the Desperado Club. Donut gasped with a sudden realization, putting her paw on the side of my head. “Do you think there’ll be a script? Do you think I’ll get lines? Like a real actress?”

  “Penis Parade? Really?” Katia said, looking about the room. We sat at our regular booth. Bomo and the Sledge stood guard nearby. With Katia’s acquisition of the Desperado Pass, we decided to add a third regular bodyguard to the team. This new guy was also a cretin. A rock creature. His name was Very Sullen.

  “I like the Penis Parade,” Donut said. “They give out hats if you tip them a gold coin. Sledgie likes it too, isn’t that right?”

  The Sledge rumbled.

  “Where are those assholes?” I said, looking about. The club wasn’t very full. I saw only a handful of crawlers, and most of them were going straight for the Silk Road or the guild hall. Nobody had any leisure time any more. I also needed to go to the market and stock up.

  A pair of crawlers entered, and I turned to see Morris the spider creature and the other human. They spotted us and hesitantly approached. I remembered I’d told them that I was going to kick their asses the next time I saw them. I waved them over and told the bodyguards to stand aside.

  The first thing I did was exchange fist bumps with both, adding them to my chat. I examined them each in turn.

  I’d already examined Morris Sp. His half human/half tarantula race was called an Arachnid, and he was level-23. His class was something called a Freelance Psychiatrist. It was a psionic class. Those with psionic skills had excelled on the previous floor, but Morris here didn’t seem to have leveled much.

  The other was a human, early twenties with dark hair and tan skin. He had a Mediterranean look to him. Bobby D.J. He was a level-24 Spy. That was a rogue class, and the guy looked a little frazzled around the edges. He had an eye twitch, and his left hand never stopped trembling. I knew their quadrant was covered in traps. If Bobby was the only rogue in the party, he was probably their first line of defense. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.

  “Tell me about your quadrant,” I said after they got their drinks. The only one of the group who didn’t have alcohol was Donut, who was instead sipping on a regular Shirley Temple, chatting away with the Sledge, who grumbled happily in response to all of her declarations and observations.

  Morris did not fit in the booth, so instead the spider stood over the table. Katia didn’t say anything out loud, but she shivered every time the arachnid moved. I wasn’t a huge fan of spiders, either.

  “Our quadrant is terrible,” Morris said. “The whole place is a maze. A big, fuck-you-you’re-going-to-die maze. We start at the top, and the Crypt of Anser is at the bottom. That’s where the staircase is. We start in the village, which is really a cavern filled with these things called Nude Glabers. They’re undead mole rat creatures, but they’re naked with almost-human anatomy, and they’re hard to look at. That’s where we are now. There are dozens of paths away from town. Some of them are tunnels so tight I have to be pushed to get through. We got a quest to find one of the two maps, but we failed thanks to you.”

  “I only took one of the maps,” I said. “You failed because you were set up to fail.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Tell me about the other map, specifically the place where you were supposed to collect it.”

  Morris shr
ugged. “The other was a similar set up, but instead of a dirigible gnome, it was a pig. We thought it was a mob. It wasn’t until after we’d filled it with ‘nanas did we realize it’d been an NPC.”

  “‘Filled it with nanas?’” Katia asked.

  “We have a guy who shoots banana tree seeds from his hand. Yes, I know how stupid that sounds. But he’s a druid, and he causes the seeds to sprout really fast. They work great, but the range is really low.”

  “A pig? I knew it was a pet!” Donut said proudly.

  “Yeah, so we killed it. The map was in the same room, but out of reach. It was in the air quadrant. We were building a tool to take it. You can throw something through the quadrant barrier, but you can’t hold something like a giant stick or grabber through the wall. You can’t cast spells, either.”

  I remembered it’d let me roll a ball through the barrier, but the clockwork Mongos couldn’t get through, nor my hands. Mordecai had explained that the barriers wouldn’t allow anything under our direct or indirect control through.

  “But before we could figure it out, a two-humped camel thing, a Bactrian it was called, came in and saw the dead pig and freaked out. He upset the table with the map, and it fell to the ground, blowing closer to us. Then he ran away. We spent hours trying to figure out how to get it. But before we could, the damn room just blew up. And it said the map was destroyed. So we moved to the second map.”

  “But I beat you to it,” I said. “Have you seen the castle or crypt or whatever yet? The building you need to storm?”

  “No,” he said. “We need the map. It’s impossible to navigate without. Every new hallway has a different type of trap. Bobby here is good at disarming them, but it makes us slow. We just barely cleared the halls at the top, and we need to work our way down. It’s going to take a long time.”

  “Do you know who Quetzalcoatlus is? Wynne—the gnome you guys killed—mentioned him.”

  “Yeah,” Morris said. “I guess Anser was the emperor. He died, and when he did, they built this tomb for him. They threw his entire court and his wife in here even though they weren’t dead. Then they sealed it all up. Quetzalcoatlus is his wife, and she’s somewhere in here still. She’s some undead thing now. She’s non-corporeal. A ghost. She can travel through walls within the tomb. And I think she’s really pissed off. Every once in a while we can hear her, screaming. She sounds like a bird. After we failed the quest to get the map, we all got a quest to find and kill her. Nobody knows how to kill a damn ghost.”

  “Weird,” I said. “You need magic to kill ghosts.” We’d learned that from the krasue creatures on the third floor. In addition, there were extensive instructions on how to kill ghosts in the cookbook, including bomb types that would do the trick. “There are creatures here, on our level. They are trying to resurrect Quetzalcoatlus. They’re trying to get a spell that will give her flesh. They want to be able to physically touch her, I think. So they can gain some of her special powers.”

  “She’d probably be easier to kill if she had physical form,” Morris said.

  “Probably,” I agreed. “Too bad you killed the guy who knew how to cast the spell. So here’s where we stand. We have the gnomes floating over the entire world, and they bomb the shit out of everybody. On top of the temple, we have a few groups. The camels and the changelings. The changelings are pretending to be refugees, but they have some plan of their own that involves resurrecting the guardian of the subterranean level. On the ground we have somebody called the Mad Dune Mage, and we don’t know much about him yet. And then there’s one more castle in the water. From what little we know, it sounds like it’s underwater.”

  “Yeah, we-we keep getting water breathing scrolls and scrolls of d-d-disarm trap, which are useless unless you know for sure a trap is right there,” Bobby said, speaking for the first time. He had a stutter to his voice.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here’s the deal. I can see the map, and you’re right. It’s insane how complicated it is. There are tunnels. Rooms. Dead ends. Pits with spikes. It’s nuts. Katia here brought paper and a pencil, and she’s already started mapping out a path to get to the bottom. You two sit with her and Donut. It’ll take a few hours, but she will give you the map when she’s done. I highly suggest you try drawing it in your scratchpad while she maps it out, just in case you lose it. We need to work together. I will help any way I can. If you need something built, let me know, and I will make it happen.”

  Morris turned to Bobby and smiled. “And you said he was going to murder us.”

  “The d-d-day isn’t over yet.”

  I said my goodbyes to Donut and Katia, and I hit the Silk Road. I topped-off my explosive supplies and bought a few newly-available toys. From there, I exited the club and headed back to the saferoom. Outside, the wind whipped at the town’s covering. The storm was here. As I walked back, I received a pair of notifications.

  You have received a Bronze Benefactor Box from the Valtay Corporation.

  You have received a Silver Benefactor Box from The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network, Intergalactic NFC.

  8

  Time to Level Collapse: 13 days, 13 hours.

  The first thing I did when I returned to base was open my two new boxes. I also had a fan box coming, but it hadn’t come in yet. Mordecai came out to greet me.

  I handed him the batch of mushrooms I’d taken from the desk in the basement. He looked at them and frowned. The system called them Mairmei Mushroom – Alchemy Material. All the description said was: These little guys are quite the trip. I assumed they were some sort of psychedelic. The cookbook had very little information on mushrooms. Mordecai was intrigued because he’d never seen this particular strain before. I gave him the batch so he could study it further.

  But first he wanted me to open the benefactor boxes in front of him so he could see what I’d received.

  “I’ve never heard of an anti-crawl group giving a benefactor box. I’ve known a few to sponsor crawlers over the generations, but that’s usually just to get people talking about their cause. They have no real investment in the crawler himself. A silver box, too. So whoever these guys are, they either have an endless supply of cash or they’re gambling a lot on you. Especially if you’re the only one they’ve sponsored.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. I wasn’t optimistic. I was in kind of an odd position. If they really were a pacifist, anti-crawl group, then I supported their cause. Sort of. Being a pacifist was one of those things that looked and sounded great when you were trying to get laid. Not so much when you were literally fighting for your life. I needed bombs and weapons and armor and shit that would help me kill as many of these fuckers as possible. I wasn’t going to get that from a goddamned group of hippies, no matter how sympathetic we were for each other.

  I started with the bronze Valtay box. The intricate box whirled and twirled as it opened with great fanfare.

  It was another pill. It looked identical to the last one they’d given me. I examined it.

  Valtay Corporation Neural Enhancer #275. Variant 35.j

  This item is compatible with your Morphology and Interface.

  Warning: This pill will cause a permanent change to your brain. This item cannot be unequipped or undone once installed.

  Warning: You do not have a Valtay Corporation Neural Interface installed. While your current wetware system is compatible with this Neural Enhancer, it is recommended you visit a Valtay Corporate Outreach Center to discuss upgrade options. Payment and Legacy plans available. Keeping the Best of You alive.

  Current wetware: Syndicate Crawl Version 47.002b.Human.

  Taking this pill will install the following upgrade to your interface:

  Current elevation and airspeed.

  That’s it? I thought. I didn’t dare say it out loud. I felt disappointment, but then I remembered how damn useful that last upgrade had been. Hopefully its utility would become self-evident. I popped the pill, looked up at the ceiling, and said, “Thanks, brain worm dudes.”


  I opened the next box. The first one had contained the logo for the Valtay. This next one had a spiral galaxy symbol with some alien lettering on it. Mordecai peered at the logo and shrugged.

  The box opened, revealing what looked like a sweet potato.

  “What the hell, man,” I said, picking it up.

  Toraline Root Vegetable.

  Alchemy Material.

  This rare tuber only grows in dirt that has been covered by lava. They are very rare. Nobody ever goes digging them up, either. You know why? Because they taste like dogshit, that’s why. They’re pretty much useless. In fact, fuck you for wasting my time with this.

  “What the hell is this, and why is it in a silver box and not a bronze one?”

  “Its origin and value and rarity and a hundred other factors determine the required box type,” Mordecai said, snatching it from my hand with a talon. “I’ve never seen this before. I’ve seen potions that require a similar vegetable. Most are salves for scaled creatures. Specialty healing.”

  “You think they want me to make a potion with this?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Or maybe an explosive. Or maybe it’s an inside joke,” Mordecai said. He passed it back to me. “Some aliens have really weird customs. For all we know, it’s a traditional marriage proposal. Still, I have… a lot… of potion recipes in my scratch pad. I’ll search through them and see if I can figure anything out. It’ll give me time to look for information on these mushrooms, too.”

  I nodded. I would do the same thing with the cookbook. There were pages and pages of potion recipes. I’d already read through the names of the potions and what they did, but I hadn’t committed the ingredient lists to memory. I tossed the toraline into my inventory. It was listed as Very Rare, but it had low value, equal with some of the unenchanted clothing items I hadn’t yet sold.

  I returned my gaze to the ceiling. “Thanks for the yam, mystery aliens. I’m more of a mashed potatoes guy, but this’ll do. I guess.”