Motif · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

The Gate of the Feral Gods

An artifact, celestial-tier by Carl's reckoning, in three parts — two pocket watches and a winding box — buried by legend in the Necropolis of Anser and hunted by a gnome commandant, a changeling principal, a glass mage and a dead bugbear. Dial a time on one watch and it mirrors on the other; times are places; wind the box and a one-way portal opens for twenty minutes, and when it closes the opening side stays open into the Nothing until a feral god comes through. Carl assembles it on the fifth floor and uses it to empty bubbles, and then to flood a city.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — The vice principal's office
• Chapter 3 — Quasar
• Chapter 58 — The last stall in the women's bathroom
• Chapter 69 — The prize counter

Progression

Taken, with a receipt for the ninth floor (ch. 1); not sold but lent, against collateral that regenerates only on the next floor (ch. 3).