Chapter 14 of 35 · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Chapter 14 — Maggie

Book: The Gate of the Feral Gods · Previous: Chapter 13 — Gerbils · Next: Chapter 15 — The Gate of the Feral Gods · Floor: Floor 5 — The Bubbles · Series: the series

Opening

I stared up at the level 35 creature as the children all moved off.

Summary

Chris, level 35, Igneous, Zulu Warrior: seven and a half feet of hot rock with coal eyes, who took the Akula (robots, a bugbear's head in a jar on spider legs) and was fired out of a missile tube onto the dunes; whose sub torpedoed the mountain and flooded the tomb. He says the chat costs him health, that 'Family and friends make you weak […] You taught me that,' and that he does not like saferooms. Donut's viewer needle spikes; Katia receives an emergency silver box from Princess Formidable that, Mordecai guesses, cost the princess a sizeable chunk of her net worth. Juice Box arrives, touches Chris, recoils, and tries to drag Carl away ('You can bring these two guys'). Chris talks about two daughters, one dead in the collapse, and a game guide who said the dead 'aren't really dead, but they're put in storage' and are brought out to be killed on deeper floors; his guide is a woman, and Chris has no children. 'I can't kill anybody else in my family, Carl.' It is Maggie My. A spiked ball appears in her hand — 'They promised me if I did it this way, they wouldn't…' — and Katia's bolt, from the emergency box, puts a sixty-second Petrified on the rock body. Ten Bolts of Petrify Rock Class; not kill, Katia notices.

Mordecai: the Scree, better known as Infiltrators, are brain parasites that take a living body in a few days and lock the host inside to watch; Maggie chose the race, got into Chris at the end of the third floor, and killed her own husband. Chris, who has been awake for all of it, messages through Imani and Elle: 'Please. Kill me. It's okay. I give you permission.' Carl: 'Hey Chris, go fuck yourself.' No antiparasitic until the sixth floor; no saferoom cure; no way to carry him down. The ball is a Celestial Grenade, a nuns-of-Enyo device that summons the wielder's god for sixty seconds: Maggie's is Algos, the god of pain, chosen from a picture on a box; her sponsors are Prince Maestro and Crown Prince Stalwart, both of them, and she got the grenade when they reached this floor; a 'weird guy in a saferoom' approached them, and there Chris is cut off. Formidable's bolts are her sister's countermeasure. 'We were being used like pawns in a royal pissing match between a brother and sister.' Carl tells the petrified rock what Brandon wanted him told, forms his fist over Katia's offer to take the skull instead, and Donut Holes the street: Chris and Maggie fall into a sealed chamber of the tomb with a splash, and Carl stands on the quadrant barrier. 'Not a person killer, at least. You get all weird about killing NPCs […] I can’t have you being all mopey.' Both can breathe water. Carl is angry at her and ashamed of his relief. Imani's plan: take the castles, bring them through the portal, brew the potion. Carl puts a viewer needle beside his altitude gauge and tells Mordecai to buy the social feed after all. 'We can sleep when we're dead.'

Characters

• Carl — Works out who is speaking; delivers Brandon's message to a rock; relieved and ashamed.
• Princess Donut — The viewer needle; drops the problem into the tomb; 'Daddy wouldn't like that.'
• Katia Grim — Formidable's emergency box: petrify bolts, seven of ten spent.
• Mordecai — Infiltrators explained; no cure this floor; Algos, the god of pain.
• Chris — Locked inside his own body; asks to die; his message cut off.
• Frank Q and Maggie My — Maggie, an Infiltrator in Chris's brain; Frank's killer; a grenade for a god.
• Juice Box — Feels the heat; 'She's worse'; her brother is 'desperate to get his hand on the ghost.'
• Imani — 'Try not to hurt him'; refuses to relay his request; a plan for the sixth floor.
• Elle McGibbons — Relays what Imani will not.
• Princess Formidable — An emergency box against her brothers' assassin.
• Prince Maestro — Maggie's first sponsor; 'letting you live rent free in his head'
• Prince Stalwart — Maggie's second sponsor.
• Brandon — His message delivered, to a petrified body.

Locations

• Hump Town — A street with a hole in it; the Spit and Swallow still standing.
• The Necropolis of Anser — A sealed, flooding chamber under the street, with two people in it.
• The Akula — Robots, a head in a jar, three missile tubes as exits.

Motifs

• The Infiltrator — The Scree: a body as armour, the host a passenger.
• The Skull Empire — Four sponsorships on two crawlers; a grenade; a sister's bolts.
• The gods — A Celestial Grenade; Algos; 'the nuns of Enyo.'
• The collapse dead — 'Put in storage'; brought out to be killed; hints in the Cookbook.
• Staying human — 'You can't save them all' — and Donut's answer to it.
• The show — A needle for viewers; the social feed bought.
• Race and class — Igneous: lava, heat, breathes water; the chat costs health was a lie.