Chapter 27 of 35 · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Chapter 27 — Leatherface

Book: The Gate of the Feral Gods · Previous: Chapter 26 — Lusca · Next: Chapter 28 — Emberus · Floor: Floor 5 — The Bubbles · Series: the series

Opening

“And here we go!” Kevin shouted just as the world unfroze.

Summary

In the dark of Lusca's mouth: Vadim runs up the stairs for the last escape pod ('Ooh, Vadim is running away, and Carl hasn't noticed yet'); torches show thousands of bicycle-wheel mouths on the porthole — Juvenile Octo-Sharks, lamprey-fronted, tentacle-backed, level 30, 'only one or two survive' of every two or three thousand because they learn their siblings are edible. Kevin narrates Carl's depth-charge design (barrels with holes dialled shut to set crush depth) and notes they are duds because Lusca is swimming away. Carl tapes a Potion of Bloodlust to a hob-lobber with a pus detonator, seals it in the captain's minifridge, and shuts everyone in the stateroom with the stairwell. Katia had already found, with two pieces, that the box sets a watch to its own coordinates — a reverse compass. Carl dials the first watch to the beach outside Pandinus, hating it: using the gate would loose a god on everyone in the bubble, and 'that, I knew, was exactly what they wanted me to do'; the game, Carl suspects, steered Henrik here to die and drop the piece. Donut and the pilots are blown off course toward Hump Town.

The window breaks, the bridge floods with babies, the wheel starts turning from the other side, and Carl detonates: berserk sharks in a feeding frenzy tear each other to pieces, thousands of X's in minutes. Oxygen runs out ('Plus you're just sitting there being all boring and shit'), and the three swim out through blood and body parts, Carl's Wisp Armor as the only light, Katia spearing the survivors. The babies retreat into slits in the roof of the mouth, not the teeth. 'Leatherface': Katia braces Carl and Tran to her back with a goblin steam-boiler torpedo and the twenty-five-foot buzzsaw; at zero, as Lusca lifts her head to swallow the Akula, Carl casts Protective Shell, and the immovable sphere stops an eighty-two-level city boss dead, peels her upper jaw back over her own eyes and crushes her into the sea floor. Ejected 'through the windshield', the trio pinwheel back and the saw cleaves through her exposed snout and brain like calamari until a tentacle slams them down; the saw buries itself and flies apart. Winner! Health falls two percent a second at 1,500 metres. Donut levels without doing anything. Vadim, sealed in the pod room, fires the last hatch through the dead shark's top and the jellyfish, and dies in the pod with a pain amplifier: 'Warning: This message is from a deceased crawler.'

Everyone reachable is in a saferoom (the tomb raiders do not answer; Juice Box, grieving Henrik, is being asked something by Donut and Mordecai). The Map of the Stars from the boss shows Quetzalcoatlus submerged by the exit, and the storm's lightning should hit the tower and shock everything in the flooded tomb. On the ocean floor Carl winds the box: Quest Complete. A twenty-foot portal sucks the three of them and a column of seawater onto the beach at Pandinus, flattening the town wall and a guard tower and spearing a door. Who Let the Gods Out? — 'dropping a grenade down your pants and shouting, “Yolo!”'; the other gods 'tend to react.' Into the pub, into the packed personal space; Carl vomits seawater at Donut's feet ('You have seaweed in your hair'), and outside, the world rumbles.

Characters

• Carl — A berserker bomb in a minifridge; Protective Shell as a bullet; opens the Gate.
• Katia Grim — A reverse compass; the torpedo and the saw; kills the last babies with a spear.
• Tran — Cannot get up; carried.
• Vadim Zbar — Runs, seals himself in, fires the last pod, dies with a jellyfish.
• Princess Donut — Blown toward Hump Town; a level for nothing.
• Louis and Firas — Fighting an early wind.
• Kevin and Magnificent Troy — 'Look how hungry those little guys are.'
• Gwendolyn Duet — 'Morbidly curious'; waiting in the pub.
• Juice Box — Grieving; asked for something.
• Mordecai — Relaying the ask.

Locations

• The Akula — Its stateroom the last sealed room; swallowed.
• The water quadrant — Lusca dead on the floor; thousands of jellyfish overhead; two percent a second.
• Pandinus — A wall and a tower knocked down by a portal's spray.

Motifs

• Lusca — Killed by a shield spell and a landscaping tool.
• The Gate of the Feral Gods — Used; the quest complete; a god loosed.
• Explosives — Depth charges narrated on air; a potion-bomb; a steam-boiler torpedo.
• The System AI — 'Exactly what they wanted me to do.'
• Achievements — Who Let the Gods Out?
• The show — Two announcers laughing through a massacre.
• Race and class — Katia's mass limits; a Pit Fighter's partner dead.