The Gate of the Feral Gods

by Matt Dinniman

  He dedicated his life to hunting down long-lost treasures and artifacts. He prized one item above all others.

  The Gate of the Feral Gods. Said to be buried in the long-lost Necropolis of Anser.

  Chaindrive set out to find the tomb. He boarded his great submarine and sank beneath the waves, vowing to never surface again until he had his prize.

  It took the bugbear almost twenty years to find the tomb, poking up like a monolith from a desert island. Using his submarine, he docked it against an underwater entrance directly adjacent to the main chamber of the trap-filled tomb. He quickly learned that he was not the first to arrive. A young mage had recently landed on the island and was attempting to magically burrow into the tomb. A colony of dirigible gnomes were settled in the area. All sought the treasures held within the tomb. All had failed so far.

  Chaindrive unleashed his greatest weapon in an attempt to slow the efforts of his competitors. Ruckus had been stored in stasis in the hold of his great submarine. The self-replicating, spring-operated automaton was given the task to kill all who wished to steal Chaindrive’s prize.

  Now that the bugbear is long dead, the sentinel chicken hawk is content to spend its day circling around the island and being an all-around asshole. The regular residents of the island are smart enough to leave this powerful boss alone. The fact you’re reading this means you’re not one of the smart ones.

  “Strange,” I said to Donut and Katia. “It says the boss comes from the underwater guy, who is dead. I think the ‘castle’ is a giant submarine. Also, it sounds like there’s a hidden treasure in…”

  System Message: Please Wait.

  The world froze for about half of a second. It was like the beginning of a boss battle. But nothing happened, and the short glitch was over as quickly as it started.

  System Message: Thank you for your patience. You may now resume normal activities.

  “What the hell was that about?” I asked, looking around.

  “I don’t know. Weird,” Katia said.

  Carl: Mordecai, did you feel that? Also, do you know what the Gate of the Feral Gods is?

  Mordecai: I felt it. It happens. It’s usually not a glitch, but a gameplay timeout so dueling routines can clarify or reconcile rule conflicts. But no, never heard of the gate thing. But remember what I said about the word “feral?” Stay away from anything marked that. It’s always bad news.

  Carl: What about artifacts? It said the gate is one.

  Mordecai: Odd. An artifact is a legendary or celestial-tier item one may find sitting around the dungeon or as dropped loot. Like I told you before, most of the best items in the game come from boxes for the first several floors. After the sixth floor, dropped loot starts to get much better and more magical. Artifacts start popping up around the eighth or ninth floor. They’re usually very powerful items.

  Carl: Eighth floor, you say? I can’t help but notice we’re only on the fifth. It says it’s an item inside the necropolis under our feet. Do you think that had anything to do with that weird pause?

  Mordecai: Hmm. Maybe. I’m not surprised, honestly. This is like what we discussed a while ago. The showrunners control the storylines, but the AI picks out the specific loot. The AI can, and will, adjust aspects of the story to fine-tune the difficulty level or to keep the game “fair.” If you get what I’m saying.

  Carl: 10-4. Talk soon. We’re about to test the missiles.

  “Uh, Carl,” Donut said, pointing with her paw. “Ruckus is moving.”

  I leaned back into the eyepiece.

  Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was that weird glitch. Or maybe it was just the system being an asshole. But Ruckus, who had been drifting asleep just a minute ago, was now awake and looking right in our direction. He screamed loudly into the almost-night sky. He moved from the top of the dune and spread out his wings, which glittered. Flecks of metal intertwined with the feathers. It had a wingspan of three train cars. On the ground next to the massive bird, the line of buzzsaws started to spin up. The sound was goddamn terrifying. Even at a mile and a half away, we could hear them. The bird started to pump its wings in an attempt to take to the air.

  “Shit, shit, get ready to fire,” I said. I quickly pulled a missile out and jammed it into the launch tube.

  The world once again froze. Haunting, eerie music started to play, echoing across the desert.

  B-b-b-boss battle!

  The boss battle sequence played out with our portraits floating high over the desert. But when they played the description of Ruckus, it had changed.

  Ruckus. Spring-operated Chicken Hawk Sentinel.

  Level 55 Borough Boss!

  It’s a bird! It’s a landscaping tool! It’s a goddamned death robot!

  Ol’ Ruckus is a left-over, anti-boat, anti-everything else security and scout automaton that has lost contact with the Akula. Lost contact, that is, until now. Having awakened and been given new orders, it is now seeking out enemies of the captain.

  And you, my soon-to-be-buzzsawed-to-death-friends, are enemies of the captain.

  “You woke it up, Carl,” Donut said. “The description doesn’t say anything about it being a bereft minion.”

  “What the hell happened?” I exclaimed as I aimed with the eyepiece. The description had changed quite a bit. Ruckus flapped its gargantuan wings a few more times and took to the air. The massive buzzsaw started to lift from the ground.

  Gwen: Hey bomber guy. Did you feel that weird glitch? Anyway, thought you might want to know. Something is happening in the water quadrant. The water is bubbling. The whole ocean is frothing like the mouth of a rabid weasel. Somebody is doing something under there. You guys find that giant buzzard yet?

  Carl: Looking at him right now. Talk soon.

  I put my hand over the back of the two-foot-long missile, and a tooltip popped up.

  Target missile?

  I mentally clicked yes.

  Designate target.

  Warning: Once locked, you may not remove this designation.

  It was awkward keeping my right hand on the back of the missile and my left on the controls of the telescope. It didn’t leave my hands free to adjust the chair. I focused on the center mass of Ruckus just before he flew out of the viewfinder and clicked Target.

  Target locked, bitches!

  The missile started to blink.

  “Fire in the hole. Watch your eyebrows,” I said. I grasped the pin on the back of the missile, and I pulled the tab.

  Whoosh.

  A gout of flames rushed from the back of the tube as the missile rocketed away, dipping slightly and then rising into the night air. My whole right side flashed with pain as I was burned by the exhaust. Donut yowled in surprise and scrambled to the left.

  “Goddamnit,” I growled at the pain. It hadn’t done any real damage, but it had hurt. We need a better way to do this. “You okay, Donut?”

  “What do you think, Carl? You know I’m flammable, right? Warn me next time.”

  “I did warn you. Stay to my left.”

  The bright, crackling exhaust lit up the desert momentarily, turning the deep dusk into day. I grabbed a second rocket and shoved it into the tube.

  “Go!” I said to Katia, who had already thrown the Chariot into gear and was accelerating down the back of the dune.

  I looked over my shoulder, watching the missile curve in midair and then swoop up toward the boss, who was still gaining altitude. The giant, multi-buzzsaw swung wildly back and forth in the air as Ruckus pumped its wings.

  We’d replaced the missile’s chemical propellent with one improved by Mordecai. When it burned itself out, the back of the rocket would, in theory, drop off and continue to coast for a few seconds. Then the second stage would light the back of the rocket, effectively doubling its range.

  The original rockets had a shitty payload. The warheads were the equivalent of a quarter stick of goblin dynamite, which was nothing. At first I hadn’t thought I could improve the design, but after recycling a
few impact hob-lobbers, I realized I could simplify the triggering device, which gave me much more room to add the boom stuff. Each missile now packed the same punch as a full stick of hobgoblin dynamite, which was enough to kill almost any regular mob.

  We needed these things to have a range of about three miles if we wanted to fire them from the surface and hit one of the knock-knocks they had parked underneath the gnome’s castle. But first I needed to see if the two-stage rocket was even viable. If this worked, and we got out of here, we could build a few slightly-longer missiles between now and morning.

  The missile zeroed in on the giant boss. The flames in the back started to sputter just before the missile reached the still-climbing target.

  Come on, come on.

  “Yes!” I said as I saw the first sparks of the second stage belch from the back of the now-distant rocket. I pumped my fist into the air.

  But then the missile abruptly blew. It detonated a few hundred feet short of the target.

  “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck me, fuckity fuck,” I yelled, turning my fist into a middle finger. Ruckus, still climbing, flew over the explosion, unharmed. The buzzsaw cleaved the newly-formed cloud in two.

  We used a tiny charge to drop the back fin of the rocket. It appeared that explosion was too powerful. Or something in the second-stage propellant caused the warhead to blow prematurely. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t know until we tested it. But that did us no good right now. I had three missiles left. Three missiles that all of a sudden had a much-shorter range. We’d never be able to hit the Wasteland from the ground. Not with these things.

  “New plan,” I said. “Turn around and drive straight for it.” I pulled the third and fourth missiles and loaded them into the launcher. I wanted to avoid storing explosives outside my inventory if I could, but I needed all three of them now.

  A second pair of eyes and mouth appeared on the back of Katia’s head. The eyes protruded from her scalp on a pair of little stalks.

  “Are you crazy?” she demanded from the second mouth as we hit a bump. The Chariot sailed into the air and crashed hard into the ground. The back tread whined, blew up sand, and continued on its way.

  “Holy shit, Katia,” I said, recoiling at the sudden appearance of a second face. “That’s really fucking weird. Do it.”

  She grumbled but started the wide turn. If she turned any tighter, the whole thing would flip. Ahead, Ruckus screeched into the dark. The buzzsaw swung back and forth, a pendulum of death. We watched as it cleaved a thorny devil in two. Blood geysered across the desert as the massive bird zoomed toward us.

  I quickly went through the three remaining rockets and locked all three onto the boss. One on the joint of where the left wing met the body, one on the exposed neck of the creature, and a third on the lower area where the cable extended from the creature and attached to the buzzsaw.

  The monster aimed right at us. It loomed like a tidal wave. The buzzsaw was impossibly loud. It’d be on us in seconds.

  “When I fire, bank left and floor it,” I yelled. “Donut, watch out. I’m firing now.”

  The screaming blades lined up with our path, waving back and forth. The damn thing was huge. Each blade was the size of a truck tire. The acrid stench of overworked machinery filled the air.

  I pulled all three pins at once. All three rockets burst from the tubes. They dipped, arced, and then all corkscrewed through the air. All three hit the boss at the same moment as we turned away. The boss exploded high over our heads. The Chariot rocked as we turned too sharply but Katia held out her arm in the opposite direction, and a heavy weight appeared in her hand, causing the vehicle to right itself. She dropped the extra mass, and we zoomed away.

  Nice, I thought.

  The buzzsaw swung wildly as Ruckus tumbled. It flew into the air, arcing in our direction. Fuck me. Donut fruitlessly shot a magic missile at the approaching blades.

  Just as the triple explosions rocked the creature, its left wing blew off right at the joint. Metal showered. It screeched as it spun, wrapping up in the cable for the saw. The screaming weapon suddenly jerked away and then pinwheeled through the air with the momentum of the plummeting bird. The momentum of the swinging weapon caught the wreckage and pulled it along, flying in our direction. They overshot us and hit the ground with a mighty crash as Katia slammed the gear into reverse.

  Ruckus broke apart in a shower of blood and mechanical parts. The giant buzzsaw, suddenly free of the bird, continued to whine as it hit and bounced on the ground. The front of the weapon bucked against the rocks and sand, still buzzing. Still cutting. The whole thing spun several times then stuck itself sideways into the rock of the tomb. The two front blades on the weapon stopped spinning, but the rest showered dirt and debris twenty feet into the sky, like a truck stuck in the mud.

  The Winner! Notification appeared. I assumed the music stopped, but I couldn’t hear it over the whine of the buzzsaws. Ruckus had splattered all over the desert. There was metal and machinery and thick, sticky blood everywhere.

  “I feel as if I didn’t do anything productive in that battle,” Donut said as we watched the buzzsaw. “Mordecai says I need to be doing more, not less. I’m already two spots behind you, Carl. I don’t want to fall off the top ten like Katia did.”

  I reached up and scratched her on the head.

  I turned to Katia, who was staring at the shower of dirt and rock only twenty feet in front of us. “That was pretty slick what you did there,” I said. “With the counter weight to keep us from flipping.”

  She nodded. She looked like she was about to throw up. “Why did you make me drive toward it? The missiles worked. They would’ve worked if we kept going in the other direction. The second stage doesn’t work, but the first stage still has a really good range.”

  “I wanted to make sure they hit accurately,” I said. “Mordecai said sometimes they’re not all that precise. I didn’t want to damage the prize.”

  “Prize?” she asked. But I could tell she knew what I was talking about. The still-chugging chainsaw rumbled on the ground. The thing had to be 25 feet long.

  “Get your backpack ready. We’re going to bulk you up so you can lift it and stick it into your inventory.”

  “Carl, you know how you’re always complaining that they portray you…”

  She didn’t finish. A mighty rumble filled the world. An earthquake. I thought at first we were being bombed, but this was something different. Something deep in the bones of the world. I looked worriedly at the buzzsaw, but it remained firmly dug into the ground.

  Bubble Notification. The Bridge of the Akula has been successfully occupied. The Water Quadrant has been liberated!

  All give congratulations to the crawler who successfully took the throne room. All hail crawler Chris Andrews 2!

  All crawlers who originated in the Water Quadrant may now freely travel to the other quadrants.

  The world rumbled again as Donut and I looked at each other.

  “Chris,” I said. “Chris is in here with us.”

  10

  Stage 2 of 4. Still on the gnomes.

  “So Chris is from team Meadow Lark?” Katia asked. “He entered the dungeon with Imani and Elle?”

  “Yes,” I said as we drove back to Hump Town. We’d looted everything we could from the wreckage. It was a lot, including almost a ton of dwarfish aluminum, which was a light but strong metal. The giant buzzsaw was powered by the same type of dwarfish battery that ran the Chariot. I pulled the battery, and the whole thing shut off. There was a cable that attached the saw to the chicken hawk, but it appeared the weapon worked if it was attached or not. The thing was lighter than it looked, and Katia managed to pull it all into her inventory.

  We’d also obtained the field guide from the borough boss corpse. We could now see the level and description of all the mobs in the area. The guide covered the entire bowl. Right now, in the dark of night, multiple, fist-sized monsters called Night Frights were emerging from the sand dunes. They were ever
ywhere. They were similar to the rot sticker mobs we faced on the first floor. They ran, attached themselves to you, and exploded. Katia and Donut sniped at them as we drove, but we didn’t stop to engage.

  “When Elle and the others were still old,” I continued, “there were four people taking care of them. There had been more, but we never met the original crew. They were Imani and Yolanda, who were nurses, and the brothers Chris and Brandon who’d both been maintenance guys at the old folk’s home. Yolanda died protecting us from the rage elemental, and Brandon died protecting the team from shade gremlins.” I swallowed, remembering that last note Brandon had sent. I had it saved in my scratch pad, and I often found myself pulling it up and reading it. He’d written it after he’d gotten into a fight with his brother, and his brother had left the team. I thought of one passage in particular:

  He was never much of a talker. Mom said there was something wrong with him, maybe he was slow. But he ain’t slow. And even if he was… I said something stupid, and he got mad. He left, and now it’s too late to tell him I love him. I never said it. I’m about to die, and it’s all I can think about.

  I’d promised myself I’d give the message to Chris if I could, but there was obviously something going on with him. He’d taken a race called an Igneous. A rock creature similar to the Sledge and Bomo. He’d stopped all communication with Imani, and Odette had tried to send me a warning about him.

  He’d also killed Frank Q soon after Frank had given me the Ring of Divine Suffering. According to the Sledge, Chris had sat next to Frank at the counter of the Desperado Club. They’d talked, and then Chris had reached over and crushed his head. He’d simply gotten up and walked out after. He was now banned from the club.

  That was not the crawler I remembered. I remembered him as a quiet man, dedicated to protecting his friends and brother. He’d sobbed after the boss battle with the tuskling knights. There was no way the old Chris would’ve done something like that. Imani said his personality had changed soon after he’d chosen his race.