Chapter 6 of 35 · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Chapter 6 — City hall

Book: The Gate of the Feral Gods · Previous: Chapter 5 — Rapid Detox · Next: Chapter 7 — The frog con · Floor: Floor 5 — The Bubbles · Series: the series

Opening

When the second, pale sun rose, it moved rapidly across the sky, closing in on the larger,

Summary

The second sun rises, the heat becomes unbreathable, the town sleeps, and outside the walls the thorny devils give way to swarms of Donut-sized dune scythes. City hall has two doors, twelve guards in pairs and an ID check; Katia watches the back door disguised as a pipe. Plan B, 'the frog plan': Firas's level-10 Puddle Jumper puts Carl, Donut, Louis and Firas on a second-floor balcony (Donut's Hole, stronger with Glass Cannon, reaches the bolt through a security door), Langley's archers cover the rooftops, and Mordecai spreads a story in the Toe about grulke soldiers in the desert. Down a hallway of bored camel portraits, at a fortified door with two guards behind it: a sparkler through the Hole turns their dots red, Louis's Cloud of Exhaust drops them, and when the lock turns out to need keys on both sides, Donut simply Holes the deadbolts out of the wall — and when she cancels the spell the bolts come back misaligned and the door shatters. A subway chock braces the wrecked door with fifteen camels outside.

The guards on the floor are not camels: faceless changelings with a sapphire glow in their heads, out for fifty seconds, one of them Svern, a level-49 Changeling Principal, whose card is an essay about an old widow's collection and the empty slot that eats at her. Mordecai: a rare, cultish sect obsessed with a full library of touched creatures; kill them untransformed and take the glowing head. Carl's Talon Strike does; Louis and Firas beat the second in the head for the experience and Donut finishes it with two point-blank missiles. Below a trapdoor, on hieroglyphs: the Map of the Necropolis of Anser (a maze that makes the Tangle look like child's play), a bowl of black mushrooms, and past the quadrant boundary, in chains, a starved gnome without a hat — Wynne, a level-50 Dirigible Gnome Flesh Mechanic, Commandant Kane's favourite uncle and the peace hostage, whom 'Henrik' has been drugging with mushrooms and impersonating his mother to make him cast a spell that would give flesh to Quetzalcoatlus. The gnomes' card: a peaceful race that took to the clouds to be left alone and was 'forced to choose between fighting or being wiped out.' Quest complete; a new one, Free Wynne from his bondage, promises easy access to the Wasteland — for the twenty seconds before five subterranean crawlers arrive (Low Thi, a level-25 D-Bag Geek; Tyler Storm, a Weather Engineer; Mike Barnes 3 in a banana costume; Morris Sp, a tarantaur Freelance Psychiatrist; Bobby), furious about the map, and Wynne begs to be killed for his temple map, and Low Thi spears him. Quest failed; Low Thi gets an achievement called Cockblock. Outside, a waster guard kills two real camels who wanted in and drags them inside. Carl orders the tomb party to the Desperado Club in an hour, to be beaten and given the map.

Characters

• Carl — The frog plan; kills a Changeling Principal with his foot; watches a quest die on a spear.
• Princess Donut — Hole through the bolts; 'I am Princess Donut, you buffoon!'
• Katia Grim — A pipe on the wall, calling the guard movements.
• Mordecai — Lying to a bartender; 'Ah, shit. Damn. I should have known.'
• Mongo — Squawks at the trapdoor.
• Louis and Firas — Puddle Jumper to the balcony; Cloud of Exhaust on the guards; two levels each.
• Langley — The archers on the roofs.
• Svern — A level-49 Changeling Principal, guard of city hall, killed asleep.
• Henrik — The camel who is a changeling; Wynne's torturer.
• Wynne — Kane's uncle, the hostage, a Flesh Mechanic; killed on his own request by a stranger.
• The tomb raiders — Five crawlers from the subterranean side, levels 23–26; Low Thi spears the hostage and gets Cockblock.

Locations

• Hump Town — City hall: twelve guards, offices, pneumatic pipes, a trapdoor over the tomb.
• The Necropolis of Anser — Its map, at last, and a maze under everything.
• The Wasteland — Out of sight: already at the outer ring.

Motifs

• The changelings — A sect that collects creatures; the widow's empty slot.
• The Dirigible Gnomes — A peaceful race that chose to fight; Commandant Kane; the Quetzalcoatlus spell.
• Quests — Stay out of city hall completed; Free Wynne failed inside five minutes.
• The two suns — Hellik up; the town sleeps through the heat.
• Race and class — D-Bag Geek, Weather Engineer, Banana Farmer, Freelance Psychiatrist.
• The mobs are victims — A starved gnome asking to die.
• Explosives — Sparklers: a wick and a fuse, sparks like hornets.