Chapter 19 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 19 — The ruling; the ceasefire ends

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ceasefire · Previous: Chapter 18 — The minor quorum; code red · Next: Chapter 20 — Christmas Morning; the Ramp-Up · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

“Carl,” Panford said, bringing me back to the present.

Summary

Victory summarises for a toddler: an outside partner timed Stockade's teleport request, it half worked and split Carl in two, both sides tried to drag him whole, and Mordecai, realising he was being watched, announced a Shock Wake salve aloud while brewing something else to violently expel the spider — because if Stockade's spell and a real wake-up had landed together Carl's soul would have torn in half. Stockade: 'A spy! There's a spy in my midst!' Carl works it out: the Posse has no spies in the Lemig castle; Juice Box does, in every court, waiting for the ceasefire to assassinate warlords, and she played her hand early to save him. The replay: the salve, the spell, Carl convulsing and then, with no transformation, Shi Maria in the ballroom — 'I have always loved you' — her jaws still unhinged around her husband's leg from the dream, screaming that she never killed Hapanzi as she rips goblins in half; her eye opening on Stockade; every surviving goblin possessed and killing each other; Luke throwing himself in front of his commander and losing his legs, stabbed in the back by a soldier who then cuts his own throat; the spider collapsing, Carl standing in her silhouette of blood. Hapanzi's terms in the dream: Carl controls the eye and her containment, may summon her once, and she then chooses to take his body or expel herself — another bomb for the inventory, and she did not look as trapped as promised. Opiee notes Mordecai's potion should have severed the bond for good and did not. Elle, in position on the naga side, is told to move in. Panford names the leak: secured messaging to the eighteenth floor, relayed by a third party in the Celestial Ascendency, the party identified as Nurse Yugoslav of the Madness. 'Your mom? Your mom is here in the dungeon?' Houston says nothing; Victory and Opiee vote the Madness and the Posse not culpable, and Stockade has confessed. Ferdinand's emergency action item passes at once: a live-feed blackout for everyone in the dungeon, 'including those pricks partying it up in that centipede's asshole'. Houston in the warlord chat: mention his mother again and Carl and 'that animal companion' will spend their last thousand hours on the amplification table in his surgical theatre; 'You are in mortal danger at this very moment.' Stockade, with a delayed full dose of the Insanity spell, rubs and then smashes his face against the floor crying Luke's name — 'I loved your zomp-hued thighs!' — while nobody may interfere; Panford hurries the penalty (a quarter of the standing force and two tech slots, two mechanised armour units disbanded), Victory sees what Carl sees, and the caterpillar dies of his own skull. The Democratic Sortion is defeated; as the defeat was voluntary its assets go to the nearest ally, the Madness; ceasefire rule three, subsection six shortens the ceasefire by 23.33 hours, and it ends: 'All unaffiliated crawlers have been teleported from Larracos.' Houston throws back his robes — six arms, a bug's body — and shoots Carl through the shoulder as Carl dives, grabs the cat food and drops a hob-lobber. Teleported home into the empty field hospital, cat pebbles everywhere, a hole in him and no kill message: Houston sacrificed a world leader to get one shot. A sluggalo named Jason Manning FUCKS, dreadlocks like morning stars, tells him to quit bleeding. Weapons free.

Characters

• Carl — Shot through the shoulder by a warlord; holding a bag of cat food and a spider-shaped bomb.
• Architect Houston — Six arms and a rifle; a threat about an amplification table; a world leader spent for a shot.
• Commander Stockade — Insanity, delayed; dead by his own face.
• Shi Maria — 'I didn't kill you, Hapanzi!' — a massacre in grief.
• Juice Box — Burned her spies in the Lemig court to save Carl.
• Mordecai — Brewed one thing while naming another, for the watchers.
• Ferdinand — An action item in his own words, passed at once: a feed blackout.
• Baroness Victory — Votes not culpable; sees the danger a second after Carl.
• Panford — Names Nurse Yugoslav on the eighteenth floor.
• Jason Manning Fucks — A sluggalo with a war on.

Locations

• The Sugar Cube — The Lemig headquarters, now the Madness's asset.
• The base camp — The field hospital, empty, under the first rocks.

Motifs

• Faction Wars — A team eliminated by suicide; assets to the Madness; the ceasefire cut by a day; weapons free.
• The show — The feed blacked out for everyone inside the dungeon, by a cat's motion.
• The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Summon her once and she chooses; 'She didn't look nearly as trapped as Hapanzi said.'
• The Celestial Ascendency — A relay through a celestial player to the eighteenth floor.
• The Madness — Nurse Yugoslav, a mother, and a surgical theatre.