The Gate of the Feral Gods

by Matt Dinniman

  Caprid? Prepotente? That didn’t make sense. She had to be talking about another creature.

  Maggie suddenly shouted. “Fuck your warnings. If it’s legal to happen, then it’s legal to say out loud. Fuck all of you. What’re you going to do, accelerate me? Now?”

  I realized she was talking to the AI. Or someone else.

  “He’s a cleric. A goat thing. A liaison. He said I have to stop you, or…” She stopped talking.

  Carl: I think she’s lost her ability to speak.

  Donut: SHE’S STILL THERE. SHE’S GOING TO TAKE THE BOX.

  Carl: Katia, how much time is left?

  Katia: Ten minutes, give or take.

  Carl: It’s close enough.

  “Maggie,” I called. I edged closer to the box, positioning myself just behind them. “I hope you can hear me. I’m sorry it’s come to this. That doesn’t mean we can forget what happened, but I’m sorry how everything played out. You got dealt a shitty hand, and that really sucks. I’ll let you...”

  Chris erupted out of the ground next to the winding box. I slammed onto the phase potion. I rushed toward the lava rock creature as he picked up the box out of the ground, and he hurled it as hard as he could. It sailed through the air in the same direction I’d tossed the Samantha head. The door atop the box ripped open, and the two watches went flying in different directions.

  The phase potion made it so I could move through both lava and lava rock. I reached forward, fingers open, right into Chris’s head. I grasped until I felt it there, lodged in his brain. The worm was the size of my palm, the only part of his body that was solid, and it felt like an uneven, squirming sausage. I thought of that god crushing Slit the demon.

  I pulled. I was expecting it to explode in my hand. I was phased, but it wasn’t. But it didn’t die. Instead, it bit my palm and started to burrow even as I retracted my hand.

  “Gah,” I cried, pulling my hand to my chest. Chris collapsed in front of me. I reached to grab the tail end of the long, black worm with my left hand, but I missed, and it burrowed inside. I felt her there, in my arm, moving through my body, like a sub diving below the waterline. She disappeared.

  “Shit, shit,” I cried. I scrambled into my inventory. There. I waited the two more seconds on my potion countdown, and I slammed on the double-healing potion. The same one I’d used to cure my parasitic infection on the third floor. Mordecai had said this would work, but only if I drank it before she got to my brain. And she’d get there fast.

  The last time I’d taken the potion, I’d vomited out the parasites. This time, she came right out of my goddamn neck, bursting forth like I’d been shot by a sniper. Blood showered as she rocketed out of me. It felt as if I’d been hit with a hammer. She thrashed, her health in the red with Poisoned pulsing over her. Blood spewed from the hole in my neck. I moved to stomp her down, but before I could get her, Mongo jumped forward and grabbed her.

  “Chew,” I croaked as I clenched my hand against the massive neck wound. I tried to click Heal. You’ve been rendered Woozy! You ain’t clicking shit right now! Nighty-Night.

  Before I passed out, I watched Mongo gleefully crunch down on the form of the Scree worm, ripping the tiny crawler into mulch and thus ending the saga of Frank Q and Maggie My.

  I was only unconscious for about two minutes. Donut healed me using a scroll. I awakened to find her sitting over me worriedly. Chris sat nearby, hand on his rocky head. He, too, had been healed by Donut.

  “That hurt,” he said.

  “Ditto,” I groaned.

  Carl: Hey Imani. He’s safe. It worked. We’ll get him to you on the next floor.

  Mongo vomited the corpse of Maggie and then ate it again.

  “Wait,” I gasped. “We need to loot her inventory.”

  “I got it all the first time he barfed her up. She had a lot of stuff,” Donut said.

  “Give it to Chris,” I said, falling onto my back.

  “What do you mean? She has a lot of hats in here. Why does a worm need hats? What does Chris need with a bunch of hats? I collect hats. I feel strongly I should be able to keep them.”

  Carl: Time?

  Katia: Two minutes. Are you okay?

  Shit, shit. Showtime.

  Carl: Maggie is dead. Chris is safe. Make sure you’re anchored. How about Tran? Is he safe?

  Katia: He’s already away. He and Gwen’s team have gone down the stairs.

  Juice Box was back in human form and holding one of the watches that Chris had tossed.

  “What is this?” she asked, turning it over. “This isn’t my brother’s watch.”

  It was a facsimile, one of the ones I’d made long ago to trick the dirigible gnomes. Katia had actually made the facsimile winding box. She’d made it while pretending to learn how to use the engineering table. She was much better at fabricating shapes than I was. She’d made the box in pieces and had assembled it all within her own inventory. We’d exchanged the pieces, facsimile and real when we’d hugged at the Desperado Club.

  “Plan is changed,” I said to Juice Box, talking rapidly. I grabbed her by her shoulders. My head still swam, and my neck ached. “You need to go. Now. The gate will be open in a few moments, but it’ll only be open for twenty minutes. Don’t worry about bringing anything with you. We’re not sending a god to the ninth floor. Not this time. We’re actually keeping the gate. This isn’t going to be a one-time thing, not by a long shot. But I still want you to go to Larracos. You need to stay hidden, but you need to tell the others what you know. Do you understand? We’re not done with you yet. By the time we get there, I want all the survivors to know what they really are. Do you understand?”

  The changeling prostitute couldn’t find the words. “What?... Where’s the gate?”

  “You can emulate a shark, right?” I asked. “Turn into a bird, and fly. Fly as fast as you can, over the lip and then down into the water. The location will be pretty obvious in a few minutes. It’s on this side. Hurry.”

  She kissed me on the cheek. “Watch over my people. We have a deal. And keep him safe, too. I love him.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Louis,” she said. “We’re going to be married.”

  A few days back I had been chased by a massive, two-headed puppy. I’d crashed an airplane into the face of a god. I watched a talking goat snuggle up with a vampire after they killed the universe’s largest turkey. I’d just chucked a haunted sex doll head fifty kilometers in order to settle a girl fight between that same head and a makeup-encrusted demon the size of a small town. I’d just reached into the head of a rock monster in order to pluck a parasitic worm from his head.

  And yet, despite all of this, what Juice Box had just said was the most astounding thing I’d heard since this floor started. I looked at her like she had slugs crawling from her nostrils. “Louis?” I asked. “Our Louis? You’re in love with Louis? You’re getting married? Are you serious?”

  The scowl she gave told me she was deadly serious.

  “Remember your promise!” she said, not waiting for me to respond. She leaped to the air, and she formed into a skyfowl. She rocketed away. In seconds, she was gone. I rubbed my eyes, and I took a deep breath.

  “Louis?” Donut said. “Carl, the whole world has gone insane.”

  A groan turned our attention back to Chris, who was just sitting there in a daze.

  “Brandon,” Chris finally said, lowering his head. “Brandon.”

  That sobered me up. I kneeled down before the man, and I placed my hand on his leg, which was burning hot. “Your brother died saving the lives of a lot of people. We’ll do this next part in his honor, okay?”

  Time to level collapse: 21 minutes.

  Katia: The gate is open. Those timed charges you made got sucked in. I dropped the chum bomb nearby just before, and it worked really well. The sharks are also slurping right in, and they’re already in their feeding frenzy. Hopefully the bombs went off before the sharks got there. I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Some of those pain amplifier jellies are getting pulled in, too.

  Carl: Okay. Good job. Get to the stairs. Tell me when you’re out and away. Hurry.

  It was going to be tough for her to move through the water with the pull of the current draining into the lowest level of the city of Larracos, but she’d anchored herself to the rocky wall of the temple. She was going to use the subterranean stairwell to exit, as there was an entrance right there near the shelf where the Akula had been parked. This was the most dangerous part for her, and I was worried, but she insisted she’d be able to do it no problem.

  For the next twenty minutes, the inverted cone of the city of Larracos would be filled with a rush of water. The gate opened right inside the faction market. There was probably a drainage system, but it would be temporarily overwhelmed. The bombs would explode moments after they arrived, leveling the market and scattering the shoppers and shopkeepers. And then the sharks would come. If Katia’s math was correct, and the map she’d made was accurate, more than half of the city would be submerged by the time the gate closed. The only parts that would be spared were the upper levels, the NPC residences.

  The onslaught of water and bombs and sharks and other mobs would be sudden, violent, destructive, and nowhere near where they thought it would be.

  Zev: Oh my god, Carl. They are enraged. This is not what you promised.

  Zev had dropped any semblance of her good little citizen of the Party persona.

  Carl: I promised nothing.

  Zev: If you fill Larracos with water and mobs, it’s going to kill all the NPCs. The markets will be flooded. The mercenaries will be killed. If you kill the NPCs at the entrance bar, access to the Desperado Club will be cut off. The sponsors won’t have entry to the Club to gamble. They won’t be able to get to the markets where they can buy the magical gear. Borant depends on that money. The sponsors need that market to outfit their troops.

  Carl: Oh, I’m sure they’ll patch it. That water’ll drain right out. It might take a few days since there’s some sharks mixed in there, but it’ll be fine.

  Zev: No, Carl. You know this. We can’t add new worker NPCs once a level is created. Mobs, yes, but NPCs? That’s written into the rules. We can’t just replace the shopkeepers. The food market for the troops was down there, too.

  I did, indeed, know all of this. That was the point.

  Carl: Whoops. My bad.

  Zev: If they want to fix this, they’ll have to get the Syndicate to vote on it. And they won’t have the votes. And even if they did, they’ll have to get the AI on board, and that’s not going to happen. The whole system is already spiraling, and it’s the earliest this has ever happened.

  I’d killed people today, innocent people. A lot of innocent people.

  But they were all NPCs, and none of them were former crawlers, and that’s what mattered to me. Former crawlers with contracts like Mordecai were valuable. They didn’t waste them in a city that was razed every season. Still, there was no sugarcoating what I’d done.

  We didn’t have time for moral debates. I was doing them a favor. And while the emotional abuse of NPCs such as little Bonnie had been enough to nearly break my sense of resolve, the knowledge that I’d just saved those NPCs the horror of having to endure a bloody conflict that would end in their inevitable deaths anyway was enough to ease any concern at what I’d done.

  Priestly had fallen into that trap, caring so much that it had paralyzed him into inaction. It had finally broken him. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake.

  A distant part of me was alarmed at this attitude. But this was war, and there was no use pretending like it wasn’t.

  Zev continued to breathlessly rant. It was finally dawning on me that her astonishment and outrage was actually an act, and what she really was doing was relaying crucial information to us. She was practically giddy and was barely containing it. She and Donut were talking somehow. Likely via the social media board, but I didn’t dare ask, not even using the magical paper we had hanging in the bathroom.

  Borant’s outrage at what had really happened was testament to the idea that they hadn’t caught on to our method of communication. I’d been half certain that they’d known what Donut, Katia, and I had been meticulously planning for days. Even Mordecai didn’t know all the details.

  Zev: Half of them had their armies hidden in the city, so they wouldn’t get hurt by the god. I’m sure plenty will get out, but you don’t know what you’ve done. You’ve killed thousands. Tens of thousands. Who knows what the playing field is going to look like when it settles.

  Carl: I’m sure it’ll be wonderful for the ratings.

  Zev: There’ll be consequences.

  Carl: Probably. But tell them they approved this. We didn’t cheat. We used the tools they gave us. Also, say they’re gonna want to wait to see what happens next before they decide to, you know, accelerate me or throw me into the disposal unit or whatever. I know they’re in real danger of losing control of the season. Whomever ends up in control of the next floor is going to make a lot of money.

  Zev: What do you mean?

  Carl: Just watch.

  I closed out the message.

  Katia: I’m out. Going down the stairs now.

  Donut: BYE KATIA!

  Carl: Okay. I’m adding Chris to the party so he travels with us. See you on the other side. Good job today.

  Katia: Good luck with class selection.

  “I’m sad we’re not going on Odette’s show this time,” Donut said as we walked to the stairwell. Chris walked ahead of us, head down. Mordecai was ranting and raving at me over the chat, but I tuned him out.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “If I know Odette, she’ll probably have us on in a day or two.”

  “Do you think Juice Box made it?” Donut asked. “It didn’t let me add her to my chat like it does with Sledgie and Mordecai.”

  “She made it,” I said. “She’s had a hard life, and she’s a tough lady. Plus, she’s in love. That gives people strength.”

  Mordecai: And I don’t care how much that ring is valued at. Time is up. I want you to toss it before you go down the stairs.

  Carl: Mordecai, you really need to chill, you know that?

  Mordecai: Carl. Son. You don’t know the forces you’re dealing with. You can’t tempt fate like this. You only made it this far because you’re making them a lot of money. But you just kicked them in the financial balls. Do you think that’s going to stand?

  Carl: Hey, I got my sponsor to purchase that box, didn’t I? I think they got a deity sponsorship, too. That has to be worth something.

  Mordecai: You can’t fight a war like this and expect to win.

  Donut: DON’T BE MEAN TO CARL, MORDECAI. HE DIDN’T DO IT ALONE. WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

  Donut didn’t know how correct she was. I wasn’t nearly as alone as I once thought I was. I pulled the xistera extension from my inventory, and I examined it again. I ran my finger over the wicker-like substance, rubbing the tiny inscription on the side.

  Made for Crawler Carl by the Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network, Intergalactic NFC with design approval by CEO and president of Outreach Operations, Dr. P. Hu.

  I put the head-tosser away, and I pulled the Ring of Divine Suffering out of my inventory. I held it up to the meager light. It was one of the most sought-after items by the treasure hunters.

  “Are they still going to hunt us if they can’t sell on the market?” Donut asked.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “They’re going to want everything we have. Not just the ring, but the gate, too. Can you imagine how powerful that’ll be on the battlefield? There’s two different marketplaces. There’s the Desperado Club market where the hunters sell their wares, and there’s the online one where the crawlers sell using the kiosk. The kiosk ones are trashed. Crawlers use the interface, but the faction wars guys have to actually go down to a merchant and buy it. We just killed all those merchants. So no more buying from crawlers.”

  �
��But Zev said they can’t get into the Desperado Club anymore, so they can’t buy from the bounty hunters, either.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “It’ll probably be closed for a while. But what I’m guessing is going to happen is that each of the factions are quickly deciding whether or not to send someone down to the sixth floor to collect stuff manually and buy stuff from the other hunters while they’re there. We didn’t wipe out all the armies, but we wiped out most of their ability to get more gear, and we upset the power structure. They’re scrambling now, wondering how they’re going to outfit their soldiers. There’s only one feasible way. Either they don’t outfit them, or they risk sending their own people down to the sixth floor. I could be wrong, but I suspect it’s going to be crowded down there.”

  We paused at the entrance to the stairwell. Chris entered and didn’t look back. Poor guy. There were five minutes left. I looked about one last time. A few hundred meters away, Dromedarians continued to fix their city. I sighed.

  “So we’re just going to have more hunters down there,” Donut said.

  “Donut, have you ever heard the term, ‘seeding the pond?’”

  Donut wasn’t impressed. “The kill, kill, kill lady said the hunters can also collect bounties, and you’re worth a lot now. Everyone is going to be coming after us.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m hoping for.”

  “I don’t like people hunting us, Carl.”

  After the last recap episode, Lucia Mar had finally fallen off the number one spot. The top ten list hadn’t changed too much, but there were a few notable differences:

  1. Carl – Primal – Compensated Anarchist – Level 47 – 1,000,000 (x2)

  2. Lucia Mar – Lajabless – Black Inquisitor General – Level 48 – 500,000 (x2)

  3. Prepotente – Caprid – Forsaken Aerialist – Level 55 – 400,000 (x2)