Place · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

The Bubbles

The fifth floor: 1,172 self-contained worlds, each a snowglobe with four quadrants — Land, Sea, Air, Subterranean — and a castle with a stairwell in each, all four of which must fall before anyone in the bubble may leave. About 150 crawlers to a bubble. Bubble 543 is a bowl on top of a tomb, an island in a ring of sea, a maze beneath, and a floating castle above; when it pops, only the top half of the egg goes.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — Hump Town
• Chapter 2 — The Wasteland through a telescope
• Chapter 3 — A goose from the sky
• Chapter 4 — The Royal Chariot; Ifechi
• Chapter 5 — Rapid Detox
• Chapter 6 — City hall
• Chapter 8 — A yam from the pacifists
• Chapter 9 — Ruckus
• Chapter 10 — Squeeze out the Juice Box
• Chapter 12 — Dolores Doesn't Splat
• Chapter 14 — Maggie
• Chapter 15 — The Gate of the Feral Gods
• Chapter 16 — Denise
• Chapter 17 — Jennifer and Dale's house
• Chapter 19 — Orren
• Chapter 20 — Gwendolyn Duet
• Chapter 21 — Ghazi
• Chapter 22 — Mrs. Ghazi
• Chapter 23 — The winding box explained
• Chapter 24 — Samantha
• Chapter 26 — Lusca
• Chapter 27 — Leatherface
• Chapter 28 — Emberus
• Chapter 29 — Where the Red God Glows
• Chapter 30 — Get Orthrus
• Chapter 31 — Emberus, summoned
• Chapter 32 — Acolyte of Emberus
• Chapter 33 — Phase three
• Chapter 34 — Seeding the pond
• Epilogue — Epilogue: the Walk-On List

Arc

The rules

Bubble wrap: a snowglobe each, four quadrants, a castle with a stairwell in every throne room, and no stairwell opens until all four castles fall (ch. 1). The order matters: the water castle first floods the tomb, which lets the land castle be washed away, which leaves the tomb needing the sub's pump off (ch. 20). Every quadrant has a cheat: the Knock-Knocks, the drain, the lightning tower (ch. 29). Bubble 543: 178,887 crawlers on the floor, about 150 here, three dozen in the air quadrant, most underpowered (ch. 1).

Popping

A fizz like a beer, ten seconds of wind, a cold constant breeze, a red sky, and only the top half of the egg gone (ch. 29). Half of them go dark; a god, Elle thinks, cannot see into a sealed one, but cooks it from outside; bubble 18 loses nobody until the end (ch. 28, ch. 30). The Gate empties the ones that qualify — a Desperado door and every survivor in one quadrant — and leaves a feral god in each (ch. 32, ch. 33). Each intact bubble at the end 'a tombstone'.