Chapter 11 of 35 · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Chapter 11 — The Vahana

Book: The Gate of the Feral Gods · Previous: Chapter 10 — Squeeze out the Juice Box · Next: Chapter 12 — Dolores Doesn't Splat · Floor: Floor 5 — The Bubbles · Series: the series

Opening

Once I was alone with Donut in the crafting room, I spent a quick minute to open my new lo

Summary

Ruckus's box: twenty-five more Surefires and a Jellyfish Salve for a Pain Amplifier Jelly's sting, which Carl hopes never to need. The fan box is an Enchanted Roll of Never-ending Duct Tape, fifty metres, regenerating a metre an hour ('Odds are good you know who Ted Bundy is. Odds are even better you don't know who Vesta Stoudt is'). With forty-five minutes left the party marches out: Louis driving the Chariot with its cart, Firas behind 'Henrik', the archers in a V, Donut on Mongo, Carl walking with the FarSeerer pointed at gnomes so they know they are watched, and on the raised back seat, duct-taped and hooded, a struggling Wynne. Thirteen mismatched warcraft spiral down and hold at five hundred feet while a ribboned, black-and-gold hot-air balloon lands: the Vahana, a Gnomish Legate Balloon, oldest craft on the Wasteland, from the days when the gnomes hoped to be neutral peacekeepers — until winged predators came through 'a mysterious portal' and the sky gardens were renamed dreadnaughts. Aboard: a pilot, a level-52 Sniper Captain in a black half-helmet like Carl's father's (a memory: the smashed fish tank, the mollies dying in a cup, 'I'm never getting a pet again'), and Leon, level-44 Negotiator and Commissar, who smells of perfume over a man rationed a gallon of water a week: 'Their ship is floundering.' Carl knows the gnomes are the constructed side of a constructed story, and that if this works every one of them will be dead in ten minutes.

The con: 'Henrik' is Katia's mass in Henrik's robe, Svern's corpse hidden beneath, with Katia doing his voice badly; Donut is 'the famed healer of Queen Anne', Carl her manservant and masseuse; Firas cuts the camel's throat on cue and stomps an empty robe. Wynne is Wynne's own head, retrieved from the flooding tomb by Morris's party, raised by Donut's Second Chance (now twenty levels up and half an hour, thanks to Glass Cannon) on a body of Katia, who is also the chair Leon leans on; when the spell runs out and the head turns to dust mid-inspection Katia grows a new one, and nobody notices. Leon's changeling spell passes Louis, Donut, Carl, Firas and the ghoul; the 'Healer's Respite' is a vial of Mountain Dew ('Holy shit who can drink this bile'); the missing watch is a thirty-second facsimile Carl holds up and puts away. Leon, finding Svern in the robes, concludes the changelings usurped the town's leadership, and remarks that the dromedarians would never resurrect 'their old slavemasters'. Deal: Donut and her manservant ride up with Wynne; balloons will fetch the rest. Carl shoulders a Wynne two feet too long while the Chariot's back seat is quietly gone. Louis: 'You know a plan is really desperate when it requires confidence in people like us.'

Characters

• Carl — Duct tape; a helmet like his father's and the fish; a forged watch; carries Katia up the sand.
• Princess Donut — 'The famed healer of Queen Anne'; Second Chance on a head; off-script about feet.
• Katia Grim — Henrik's voice, Wynne's body, the chair, and a fresh head when the spell dies.
• Mordecai — Three of the potion; resurrect-the-NPC as a quest trope.
• Mongo — Growls the gnome to the other side of the cart; fights the carrier.
• Louis and Firas — A throat cut on cue; the Chariot's driver; ground support.
• Langley — The archers in a V; 'Follow Langley's lead.'
• Leon the Commissar — Perfume over filth; the spell, the deal, 'their old slavemasters.'
• Wynne — His head, raised as a ghoul; his corpse from a flooding tomb.
• Svern — Playing Henrik's corpse.
• The tomb raiders — Delivered the head.

Locations

• The bowl — The parley on the sand; thirteen craft circling; the Wasteland lowering.
• The Wasteland — Fifteen minutes from the town; a rusting, flying oil rig.

Motifs

• The duct tape — Fifty metres, never-ending; the first use is a hostage.
• The Dirigible Gnomes — The Vahana's card: sky gardens renamed dreadnaughts after the winged predators came.
• The changelings — 'Rats'; usurpers of the town's leadership, Leon concludes.
• The mobs are victims — 'So easy to forget who the true enemy was' — and that it does not matter today.
• Bea — Donut, once her show cat: 'She's not a pet anymore.'
• Race and class — Glass Cannon doubles Second Chance's reach.