Chapter 7 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 7 — Donut Holes; the Semeru dwarf

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ceasefire · Previous: Chapter 6 — Party Planner · Next: Chapter 8 — Larracos, City of Dreams · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

» Ceasefire remains in effect for 56 hours.

Summary

Ceasefire: fifty-six hours. Leaving by the college's doggie door to recruit on the way down, Carl, Donut, Louis and Britney — Rend riding Mongo's back with his mouth open — pause over Louis's enchanted T-shirt from Dungeon Sidekicks: a cartoon of Donut's backside captioned 'Donut Holes', the fan club's licensed merchandise, with a small X under the tail. 'Unauthorized derriere porn.' Zev: they paid the licence fee, it sells well, and Donut gets nothing unless she reaches the tenth floor or crosses a threshold nobody, not Remex or Odette or Ntumba, has approached. Britney's panties are a pin-up of Elle, 'Stay frosty, boys', which Elle has not been told about. Outside, the Larracos College of Magic: alabaster and coloured towers like crystals growing from the ring three-quarters up the funnel, vines of white and yellow flowers over the smell of drained sea, an observatory, a stained-glass lecture hall — Priestly's city, which he loved so much its ruin drove him mad. On the balconies of the suburbs below a dwarf teaches a boy to stab and a bugbear woman mends chainmail; fairies set a red jewel on a tower; this time the NPCs are fighting from the beginning, in a city that is usually flattened by wayward spells and rampaging gods before the last two teams bulldoze down to the castle. Everything here is real, Carl thinks, as real as Havana. At the foot of the stairs, feeding jerky to Mongo and Rend, waits War Leader Arief, level 80, commander of the Larracos Defense Force Infantry: young, Asian-featured, in bell-shaped samurai-like armour and a feathered skull cap with a curling fern ornament that was his great-great-grandfather's, every feather enchanted, a sickle over his shoulder, Despondent because his goddess is dead. The AI's card tells the Semeru's history: a fertile paradise at the bottom of the volcano; a people who dug to know the gods and their goddess Ysalte; scholars and a city forming in the pit; roots instead of gods, the All Tree that connects everything, and a castle built on those roots as a monument and an apology — 'Some things should never be woken up'; Scolopendra's nine-tier attack, millions reduced to fewer than ten thousand, the city itself untouched and the survivors its stewards. 'It would sure suck if something happened to the city Arief loves so much.' Donut asks in chat whether he knows who flooded it, and who killed the goddess. He has come because 'We NPCs' want to talk tactics, Juice Box wants Carl alone first, and the truce should be solidified in the traditional manner: General Louis is to marry her, right away.

Characters

• Arief — War Leader of the Larracos infantry, level 80, in his great-great-grandfather's hat; Despondent.
• Louis and Firas — A Donut Holes T-shirt, and a wedding proposed by a dwarf.
• Princess Donut — 'AM I GETTING ANY OF THIS ILLICIT BUTTHOLE MONEY'; sunglasses on, watching for changelings.
• Britney Proskurina — Panties with Elle on them; a hard face Carl is used to now.
• Zev — Licence fees and a threshold nobody reaches.
• Carl — This is real too; as real as Havana

Locations

• Larracos — The College of Magic three quarters of the way up the funnel; suburbs of NPCs arming; the funnel seen from above.
• The all-tree — Roots under the pit; the Semeru castle built on them as an apology.

Motifs

• The Princess Posse — Officers recruited by touch on the stairs; sergeants who can recruit.
• Waking the NPCs — 'We NPCs' — the first time an NPC has said the word.
• The show — Dungeon Sidekicks prizes; a licensed fan club; a stipend only after the tenth floor.
• The gods — Ysalte dead, and every Semeru Despondent for it, unable to worship another.
• Scolopendra — The nine-tier attack, retold as the Semeru's catastrophe.