Chapter 24 of 35 · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Chapter 24 — Samantha

Book: The Gate of the Feral Gods · Previous: Chapter 23 — The winding box explained · Next: Chapter 25 — The Akula · Floor: Floor 5 — The Bubbles · Series: the series

Opening

Before Katia could answer me, I was interrupted by a message.

Summary

Gwen's team enters the dug-out stairwell chamber and the crystallisation breaks: the Lika head is forcibly ejected from Carl's inventory as a latex sex-doll head with a chipped chin, fangs, white hair, gills and a barrette reading 'Wet for you' — and it talks. Its card: possessed by the Withering Spirit of Psamathe ('Samantha as her friends used to call her'), a minor deity banished to the Nothing by her father for 'kicking around with some ancient king guy'; the sand ooze is the cursed child of that union; the Celestial Ascendency on the twelfth floor is 'serious whackadoodle business'. Her first escape split her, and half of her took refuge in the nearest naiad vessel, a doll of the fictional Lika, who was loosely based on a garbled history of Psamathe herself. Mordecai: a withering spirit is a split soul whose halves failed to reunite in a proper vessel, mostly harmless, hard to kill, a common quest-giver; Remex was a nastier, purpose-built kind. Katia works it out: Psamathe in the doll talked Ghazi into opening the Nothing so her other half and her child could come through; the crystallisation trapped her half; everyone assumed she was in Quetzalcoatlus. Had the castle been saved intact, Carl realises, she would have woken as a full-powered minor deity — a trap Mongo foiled by knocking her over, though Carl is not sure they got lucky. 'on rails' Donut: Chucky; Katia: horcruxes.

Carl tunes her jaw like a radio until the words come: 'I'm going to kill your mother […] and then get a necromancer to bring her back […] and make you watch.' He calls her Samantha. Her body is shark food; her child is a grain of sand in the ocean; Tish 'almost ruined everything'. She wants her pieces, then to come along ('There's this naiad who lives in the Hunting Grounds who might be able to help me'). 'The inn is full.' Mordecai, against his instincts, wants her kept in the saferoom — a minor deity's potion knowledge — by hiring her as the personal space's trainer, a slot Donut can fill; mercenaries next floor ('CAN I HIRE SLEDGIE?'). She goes in a corner of the training room, turned to face the wall. Donut will never enter water again but likes 'death charges'. Zev's Stepford voice no longer worries Donut, and Carl cannot ask why. Powerful Strike is stuck at 8 unenhanced. Over Katia's flower-shaped map of the ninth floor, Mordecai lays out Faction Wars: Larracos an inverted dwarven cone with the castle at the bottom, nine petals, the King's Point pre-fortified for the previous winner; factions arrive on the third floor with fifteen thousand troops, buy gear from crawlers once the sixth floor opens, hire mercenaries in the deep city, and cannot fight until the crawlers arrive; the tourists cannot die there and respawn until then, the NPC troops die for good; a rich faction brings two hundred of its own people, the Blood Sultanate twenty. The sixth floor, the Hunting Grounds, is the only place the rich can truly die; hunters start at level thirty, may sign up until the sixth floor opens, and sell what they win to the factions. 'Why do I get the feeling you're about to do something really stupid?' 'Let's get the bubble popped first.'

Characters

• Carl — Tunes a doll's jaw; questions about hunters and sign-up dates.
• Princess Donut — Bea's drawer and Brad; Chucky; hires a trainer; the fan club.
• Katia Grim — Solves Psamathe's story; maps the ninth floor.
• Mordecai — Withering spirits; keep her for the potions; the nine petals and the King's Point.
• Mongo — Donut: 'Good boy, Mongo!'
• Samantha — Psamathe, half of her, in a sex doll's head; 'I'm going to kill your mother.'
• Ghazi — Talked into it by a doll.
• Tish — Samantha, of her: 'Almost ruined everything.'
• Gwendolyn Duet — Breaks the crystal spell by sending Tran into the chamber.
• Zev — The Stepford voice; Donut no longer worried, for reasons Carl cannot ask.

Locations

• The Royal Palace of Princess Donut — A training room with a head in the corner.
• Larracos — An inverted cone; nine petals; the King's Point; the mercenary market.
• The Hunting Grounds — Where hunters level from thirty and the rich can die.

Motifs

• The gods — A minor deity split in two; the Ascendency; withering spirits.
• The sand ooze — Psamathe's child by a king.
• Faction Wars — Mordecai's full account of the ninth floor.
• The hunters — Level thirty at sign-up; a deadline at the sixth floor.
• The System AI — 'on rails here, heading toward a manufactured confrontation'
• Elites — Remex recalled as a soul leech capacitor.