Chapter 15 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 15 — The Rolling Battle Formation Ball

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ceasefire · Previous: Chapter 14 — The flag room and the Ramp-Up · Next: Chapter 16 — Everly; Glory Bound · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

» Time Until the Ceasefire Ends: 33 hours.

Summary

Thirty-three hours. At the new edge of the map, hunting one of the mob incursions, Carl, Donut and Chris (blended into the ground under their feet) wait with Jamal the hammerhead and three newcomers: Bodi, a level-60 Big Game Spear Hunter and Land War veteran of three words, elected battalion commander, famous to the others, with a boomerang spear; and Griffin and Morales, white-skinned, sharp-toothed underground elves and tenners who will not shut up, an Eviscerator and a Plumbing Specialist healer with a sabre, wearing fresh neck tattoos of a flaming cat-human skull drawn by a street artist named Meeps — 'Princess Posse or Death', 103rd Recon Legionnaires, the Tenner Wraiths. Battalions, squads and platoons have named themselves in hours; Donut is scandalised. Carl notes how human the galaxy's citizens turn out to be, and feels the Iron Tangle's sense of missing something. The AI has recycled old mobs at new levels for the enlarged plains — chilly goats, dingo-riding kobolds — and this one is the Rolling Battle Formation Ball, level 70, a bigger, reeking Ball of Swine that scribbles ovals through the trees. Jamal, a seventeen-foot air-breathing shark who once flew as Signet's tattoo, has broken the third voice-controlled eight-legged harness Carl built him by hopping again; Katia's version will read his thoughts. 'Stop Elmo-ing, Jamal.' Two hob-lobbers burst the ball into three dozen Skank Skunk Warriors, level 45, dazed; Rend, held like a food processor, chomps a neck on command and grows from meatball to softball to bowling ball; Bodi's spear takes three; Chris drags three underground; Bad Attitude at 15 turns the rest to flight. Donut claims Fancy Boy, a level-55 Skank Skunk Battle Wizard in a starry hat — weaker than his warriors and ruling them, the card says, the way leaders do — and knocks him out, which lifts his hold: every skunk sprays at once. Carl phases through four with Gloom Wraith Phase, unravelling them into ribbons the way the rage elemental did Yolanda, and runs up the air to a branch beside Bodi, who has paralysed the mobs. Mongo vomits from a tree; Donut puddle-jumps onto his branch; it breaks. Jamal berserks with Fancy Boy in his mouth; Rend, beach-ball sized and unaffected, bites one neck per skunk. Skanked: a three-hour stink, charisma down seventy per cent, no cure; Fancy Boy's wizard hat, taken as loot, 'unbearably putrid'. Rend is level 8, past the threshold. Elle, back from the naga side, has found the artillery and the reason the Reavers wanted pet levelling accelerated.

Characters

• Carl — First use of the demon's skill; flesh in ribbons; up the air to a branch.
• Princess Donut — Skanked for three hours; a putrid hat won; 'an idiot Labrador named Cletus'.
• Garret — Meatball to beach ball to level 8 in one fight.
• Bodi — A spear that comes back; 'Much suffering from our allies.'
• Griffin and Morales — Neck tattoos, no restraint, and three hours of vomiting.
• Jamal — A shark who yearns to hop.
• Chris — Underground; can smell it even there.
• Mongo — Sprayed, sick, and dropped from a tree.
• Elle McGibbons — 'I found out.'

Locations

• The plains of Larracos — The new forest edge, seeded with recycled mobs.

Motifs

• The Princess Posse — Battalions with tattoos and logos before their units are final.
• The mobs are victims — Skank Skunks are peaceful alone and ruled by tricks; their leader is the weak one.
• The stuffed figures — Jamal, the flying shark, now flesh and flopping.