Chapter 25 of 35 · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Chapter 25 — The Akula

Book: The Gate of the Feral Gods · Previous: Chapter 24 — Samantha · Next: Chapter 26 — Lusca · Floor: Floor 5 — The Bubbles · Series: the series

Opening

I opened the pocket watch and set off the alarm in hopes that Henrik would respond.

Summary

Henrik no longer answers the watch; Juice Box wants to go into the tomb after him. The tomb raiders finally move toward the water line, Bobby near breakdown. Langley's crew drag the severed top floor of the house — the stairwell — to Hump Town's edge so Chris and Maggie could be petrified and thrown through at the end, a plan Carl hates because it would only loose Maggie on the sixth floor; Imani insists. In Pandinus the Club Vanquisher is closed for cleansing: Miriam Dom's membership was revoked for vampirism, Prepotente loosed the hellspawn goat on the lounge, and a 'Holy Crusade Bounty' now sits on the trio. At the Death Stalker, over gelato from a scorpion's cart, the water quadrant's other survivors: Britney Proskurina, a Pit Fighter in a fur bikini who says 'I’d rather die than go back in that water', and Vadim Zbar, a gecko-like Kuhli Gut Rearranger covered in daggers — a Ukrainian cosmetic surgeon, per Langley (who is Ukrainian himself, living in Finland), famous for botched surgeries and fifty children. Vadim will go; Tran asks if he owns a red shirt. Katia: women cannot conceive in the dungeon and are told so; Rickard's note in the Cookbook says his pregnant wife vanished at the gate. Donut is stewing over a commenter named Shuruga36 who called Mongo a 'stupid dino-chicken'.

From the flying house: chum bombs — garbage bags of corpses with eighth-strength hob-lobbers on one detonator — draw the Concierge Sharks off, and Donut levels to 38 when they eat some early. Louis and Firas steer the balloon by riding air currents at chosen heights. Donut stays aboard with barrel launchers of depth charges she must not use unless told. Katia forms an open-topped diving bell with three poles and a ballast ring, and the party drops five hundred metres in a minute: the Akula, the size of a small carrier, its sail torn away, its nose jammed into the tomb's foot with its torpedo tubes pumping the sea in — 'The whole sub is the pump.' Big Boy Blue jellyfish, level 40, hang over the hull like sentinels, harmless unless touched; the white ones are the pain amplifiers. Katia spreads herself over the hull as camouflage. Inside, past a mess hall, Vadim's account: a gun outside the bridge blew up everyone but Chris, who was invisible to it, killed the head-in-a-jar alone, and lied about the escape tubes having no room. Hatches they left open are dogged shut. An airlock drains; they vomit the water out; the boss chamber's dead sentinel gun sparks in the ceiling, and its map comes from a fuse box under the grates (The Bugbear's Delight, 'Killed by System Deactivation') — the whole Akula lights up on the map, mostly flooded, and a red dot flickers between the bridge and outside the quadrant. A glowing green pterodactyl head leans through the bulkhead and screams: Quetzalcoatlus, an aural attack that drops Vadim to the red. Outside, Katia sees something bigger than the submarine, and the ghost smack it, turn around and fly back into the temple, and boss music she has never heard. 'GET OUT NOW.' 'It's reaching for the sub, Carl.'

Characters

• Carl — Chum bombs; an airlock; loots the sentinel's map; hears the ghost.
• Princess Donut — Shuruga36; depth charges aboard the house; level 38.
• Katia Grim — A diving bell on the fly; the hull's camouflage; 'Oh, god. It's reaching for the sub.'
• Gwendolyn Duet — The only one with a Vanquisher ring in Pandinus.
• Tran — 'Do you own a red shirt?'
• Vadim Zbar — A gecko surgeon with fifty children; leads the way; knows where the pump is.
• Britney Proskurina — Will not go back.
• Louis and Firas — Pilots by air current; six achievements for flying.
• Langley — Ukrainian, not Finnish; drags a stairwell across the sand.
• Chris — The invisible one who killed the jar; a liar about the tubes, says Vadim.
• Frank Q and Maggie My — Maggie, through Chris, took the borough boss alone.
• Prepotente — A goat in the Vanquisher lounge; a Holy Crusade Bounty.
• Miriam Dom — Membership revoked.
• Quetzalcoatlus — A green head through a bulkhead; a scream that wounds.
• Juice Box — Ready to go in after Henrik.
• Imani — Insists on saving Chris.

Locations

• Pandinus — The Death Stalker: a bar and a gelato cart; a Club Vanquisher shut for cleansing.
• The Akula — Five hundred metres down; jellyfish sentinels; airlocks; a fuse box under the floor.
• The water quadrant — Something bigger than a carrier under the hull.

Motifs

• Explosives — Chum bombs on one detonator; depth charges in barrels.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Rickard's vanished pregnant wife.
• The collapse dead — No pregnancies in the dungeon; what happens to pregnant crawlers unanswered.
• The show — The viewer needle spikes before the dive; a commenter's cruelty.
• Club Vanquisher — Closed by a goat.
• The gods — The ghost smacks a leviathan and flies back to the temple.