Chapter 16 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 16 — Everly; Glory Bound

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ceasefire · Previous: Chapter 15 — The Rolling Battle Formation Ball · Next: Chapter 17 — Eleven hours · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

“You,” Everly hissed, pointing her leg at one of her two remaining mercenaries.

Summary

The Everly interlude. A sward mantis who left her colony because she could not abide its rules, and in the dungeon worked alone, is trapped with the last two of her ten mercenaries in a sand-filling chamber ten flights down a fifty-storey tower, the ceiling descending. On this eighth floor, a grassland of holes, her sponsor Dictum Waystation Controls sent Gordon's Compass of Vertical Labyrinth Management, which does not work underground, so she took the mercenaries up the tower, the compass choosing the safe door each time — until its forty-ninth use shattered it and the top room held only a paper saying the dead end was sponsored by Dictum Waystation Controls. The tower was an advertisement. She scrawls a note in the Cookbook, and the roof begins to descend. Her mother the queen called this moment the Inevitable Ruin; she wonders whether it began when she abandoned the others. The silent ogre changes — a flash like a screen booting behind his eyes — and as the ceiling meets his face says 'Maybe it's not inevitable, like you say.' Her card: Explosives Engineer, Primal, born Sward Mantis, top level 62, crushed to death on the eighth floor, author of the fifth edition.

Thirty-one hours. In the field hospital Mordecai has brewed a jar of green gel — Glory Bound compounded with Tough Love — for Katia's rehab, and for Carl the same with Removal Order added, so that he visits the spider's worst memory instead of his own and, if he reads the moment right, locks her in it. Edgar the tortoise warns that Katia, once under, is on her own, and waking her early could be fatal. Carl's coincidence rule: a potion this convenient means another hand at work; Glory Bound was once a training drug, abused, discontinued, and kept alive in the dungeon as a quest and a trap. Katia: 'My favorite memory and my worst memory are the same thing.' She takes Carl's wrist and her arm twists up his like a vine; Imani pulls them apart too late, and Carl's mind crashes into hers — he sees her, and in the backsplash Imani, Mordecai, Rosetta and Edgar. Katia is afraid of being a burden, ashamed, and angry at him for letting people hurt him. There are three presences behind, one well hidden. A warlord notification cuts in: the Lemig Sortion offers free passage to treat for peace.

Characters

• Everly — The fifth edition's author, crushed in an advertisement, touching an ogre who was not an ogre.
• Katia Grim — Rehab by reliving; 'My favorite memory and my worst memory are the same thing.'
• Carl — A drug to lock a spider in her own worst memory; a river that floods into Katia.
• Mordecai — A jar brewed since the eighth floor; 'Probably not.'
• Rosetta Thagra — Will induce the wake-up; has seen Odette's story about Mordecai.
• Bucket Boy — A crocodilian healer who asks the question nobody wanted.
• Edgar — A tortoise who says waking her early could kill her.
• Imani — Gloves on; terrified, glimpsed from inside.
• Daniel Bautista — Pacing; asked for.

Locations

• The base camp — A field hospital outside the saferoom; an anti-magic shell going up.

Motifs

• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Everly's last note, scrawled as the roof came down.
• Sponsorship — A sponsor builds a fifty-storey advertisement and kills the crawler in it.
• The river in Carl's head — Flowing out of Carl and into Katia's mind.
• The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — 'We'll both die. Don't do this, Carl.'
• Addiction — Glory Bound taken a second time to be cured of the first.