Chapter 5 of 35 · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Chapter 5 — Rapid Detox

Book: The Gate of the Feral Gods · Previous: Chapter 4 — The Royal Chariot; Ifechi · Next: Chapter 6 — City hall · Floor: Floor 5 — The Bubbles · Series: the series

Opening

The announcement came and went.

Summary

The announcement: bounties doubled, sponsorship bidding, and a rule about announcing bathroom breaks aloud in the open. In the Toe the eight other crawlers wait, Louis and Firas drunker than before with Juice Box on Louis's lap as a Chuck E. Cheese in drag. Mordecai, in chat, on shapeshifters: she switches to a stock race and dresses it up, which is how adult changelings work (doppelgangers form like clay, mimics change from the mouth outward, illusionists fade in); shifting on demand is a race skill worth level fifteen, every prostitute in town probably has it, and a changeling gains the abilities of what it mimics — gorgon, rocksling, forge ogre 'before you could say “Ouch.”' The Valtay are something else: Gondii, brain worms that reactivate a body within hours of death, read its memories and run it for centuries; Intellect Hunters hop between rotting bodies; Infiltrators are 'much more insidious.' 'So what you're telling me is to be nice to Juice Box.' Juice Box catches Carl's coin without turning her head, and takes a gold per outsider she reports.

In the Royal Palace, Firas puts his boots on the table and asks where the bell is; Mordecai lands on the table, shatters it, and threatens to have Donut use them as zombie meat shields. Louis: a 27-year-old from Miami who drove his mother's Chevy Astro, converted to a convertible for Instagram (the Tiddy Twister), down a stairwell on I-95 at five in the morning, and got a spell for being the first crawler to drive a vehicle into the dungeon: Cloud of Exhaust, level 11, a legendary-tier knockout spell with a ten-minute cooldown on his Pest Exterminator class — the same spell, Mordecai thinks, as Miriam Dom's — which he has used only to flee. Firas has Puddle Jumper. Mordecai's white potions are Rapid Detox: clears alcohol and most drugs, makes drinking violently sickening for the rest of the floor, 'used to treat alcoholism. And to torture prisoners,' disguised with sage beetle ichor so the description is blank (a hack that also gets potions past arena bans). Both men scream-vomit for minutes. 'It's all I got left.' Elle's report: Meadow Lark alone in a sea quadrant with a fish-rowed galley, against an orc oil rig that shoots fireballs, in a bubble about earthlings ruining their planet.

Characters

• Carl — 'Renegotiating my personal vow not to outright murder fellow crawlers.'
• Mordecai — Shapeshifter taxonomy; shatters a table; Rapid Detox with sage beetle ichor.
• Princess Donut — Called a long-haired dog; 'IF I MAGIC MISSILE HIM IN THE HEAD'
• Katia Grim — Suggests Wall of Fire on their breath; 'How old are you?'
• Juice Box — A Ratkin Brood Mother Attendant, then a Mouser Dame; a viper-fast catch; a gold per outsider.
• Louis and Firas — The Tiddy Twister; Cloud of Exhaust level 11 used only to run; sobered by force.
• Langley — 'Listen to Carl.'
• Elle McGibbons — A galley with fish-people rowers against an oil rig.
• Miriam Dom — Her spell, Mordecai thinks, is Louis's.

Locations

• The Royal Palace of Princess Donut — The scrubs' tour; a shattered table; vomit for the cleaner bot.
• Safe rooms — The Toe, no true saferoom: its barkeep feeds Mongo; the talk moves to the personal space, out of his earshot.

Motifs

• Race and class — Changelings, doppelgangers, mimics, illusionists; Gondii and Infiltrators.
• The Valtay Corporation — Gondii: brain worms that run a dead body for centuries.
• The dromedarians — The barkeep who likes the cat.
• The show — Dirty Shirleys as a bartender test, learned from the recap.