Chapter 9 of 35 · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Chapter 9 — Ruckus

Book: The Gate of the Feral Gods · Previous: Chapter 8 — A yam from the pacifists · Next: Chapter 10 — Squeeze out the Juice Box · Floor: Floor 5 — The Bubbles · Series: the series

Opening

Part of me felt bad about stealing from little Skarn and his burgeoning charge-people-to-l

Summary

Carl tells Skarn to bring every changeling child to the Toe if the bombs fall — Donut offers the A.O., the Acrotomophilia Oasis in Weird Shit Alley and the only real saferoom tavern in town, but the personal space holds more, and 'Mordecai can suck it' — while Donut steals the FarSeerer off the roof in ten seconds and 'forgets' the thirty gold. Donut's D'nadia box was an upgrade to her goggles: precise surface and subsurface temperatures, the benefactor's economical way of building a Legendary item over five floors; at the gate she reads two guards as different from the rest. The Chariot now has a four-chamber missile tube beside Carl's swivel seat, fired by pulling a pin with a one-second delay and an exhaust that burns him. From a dune a mile and a half from Ruckus, through the clamped telescope: a house-sized steampunk chicken hawk with a brass helmet, organic wings threaded with metal, and a twenty-five-foot bar of ten buzzsaws on cables. Her card names the floor: Ruckus is a bereft minion of Shamus Chaindrive, a paranoid bugbear treasure hunter who crewed only with automatons and spent twenty years under the sea looking for the Gate of the Feral Gods, said to be buried in the Necropolis of Anser; he docked his submarine at an underwater entrance beside the tomb's main chamber, found a young mage burrowing in and a gnome colony already there, and loosed Ruckus on his rivals. Then System Message: Please Wait — a half-second freeze Mordecai calls a timeout for duelling routines to reconcile a rule conflict; an artifact belongs on the eighth floor, not the fifth, and the AI adjusts stories to keep the game 'fair'. Ruckus wakes, looks straight at them, and the boss card has rewritten itself: a security automaton that has regained contact with the Akula and 'been given new orders' — 'you […] are enemies of the captain.' Gwen reports the whole ocean frothing.

The first two-stage missile locks ('Target locked, bitches!'), lights its second stage, and detonates a few hundred feet short. Katia drives straight at the bird, growing a second face on the back of her head to argue; three missiles locked on the wing joint, the neck and the cable fire together, the wing blows off, the bird wraps in its own cable and breaks apart, and the buzzsaw bar buries itself in the rock of the tomb still running. Katia keeps the Chariot from flipping with a counterweight in her outstretched hand. The prize is the saw, which she will lift with the backpack. Then the world shakes: 'The Bridge of the Akula has been successfully occupied. The Water Quadrant has been liberated! […] All hail crawler Chris Andrews 2!' Chris is in their bubble.

Characters

• Carl — Steals a child's telescope; fires four rockets; 'I didn't want to damage the prize.'
• Princess Donut — Steals the FarSeerer; heat-mapped goggles; 'I feel as if I didn't do anything productive.'
• Katia Grim — A second face on the back of her head; a counterweight; drives at the boss.
• Mordecai — Feral: 'Stay away from anything marked that. It’s always bad news'; artifacts are for the eighth floor.
• Skarn — Told to bring the children to the Toe; his telescope taken.
• Gwendolyn Duet — The ocean frothing.
• Chris — Took the bridge of the Akula: the water quadrant's throne room.
• Shamus Chaindrive — The dead bugbear treasure hunter; Ruckus's maker; the submarine's captain.

Locations

• Hump Town — A gate with changelings among the guards.
• The bowl — A dune in the centre, five degrees hotter; the Bactrian ruins smouldering.
• The Akula — Named: Chaindrive's great submarine, the water quadrant's castle.
• The Necropolis of Anser — The Gate of the Feral Gods said to be buried in it.

Motifs

• Ruckus — A level-55 borough boss, killed by three guided missiles; the saw kept.
• The Gate of the Feral Gods — Named on a boss card: an artifact three floors early.
• The System AI — 'Please Wait'; a boss card rewritten mid-fight.
• The Royal Chariot — A missile tube on the seat; a two-stage rocket that blows early.
• Explosives — Full-stick warheads in a rocket; the fin charge or the second-stage propellant, Carl cannot tell which, blows it early.
• Loot boxes — Benefactors build an item over five floors.
• The changelings — Two guards at the gate read hotter.