Chapter 21 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 21 — The southern trenches; rot stickers

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ramp-Up · Previous: Chapter 20 — Christmas Morning; the Ramp-Up · Next: Chapter 22 — Colonel Boomer · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

The Dream’s artillery started pounding our defenses at the southern front just as we arriv

Summary

The Dream's artillery is pounding the southern front as Carl's party arrives: no physical cover, but thousands of protection mages, three pages of active shields, fog and counter-fog that make no-man's land roil like a sea. The north is a stalemate of mercenary waves; here there are already dead — a Fill Hole spell cast from afar suffocated veterans, a Prism scout (a saccathian prince, one of D'Nadia's relatives) loosed an Instant River scroll in an escape tunnel and the men who jumped out were sniped, then he stepped on a landmine. Orders: captives kept unconscious, NPCs turned by spell, mercenaries with 'another purpose', bodies looted safely and kept. The Posse's traps still glitter under Justice Light's concealment; the trench labyrinth built in a day from thousands of Build Trench scrolls has bunkers, hospitals and fall-backs. Spider Tank S4 is destroyed; there are fifty in pieces and ten slots. The 102nd Bulwark holds; the 106th Bloody Leeches are ten minutes out under a colonel named Boomer. Twelve-foot trenches with scaffolding and a fabricator's magical periscopes; red mud; Rend is knee-high now. Then the enemy guns stop and a thousand orange dots come fast: Dumplin', Juiced Rot Sticker Behemoth, level 40, with the Gurgles, Insanity, Eat-Your-Face-Off-Rabies and a Truck Stop Boner Pill, pet of Cybernetician Yeller of the Reavers. The card explains: male rot stickers raised as loving pets to level 40, then caged, injected with steroids, infected with contagious debuffs, taken off the medicine that stops them detonating, and released as biological seeking missiles the size of Mini Coopers. 'There's an irony there if you look hard enough.' Dynamite over the lip; a spine of dirt raised by mages; the Frothing Tunnel Moles, a gnome special-operations squad, blow a buried line and the sky goes black with held-up dirt and gore. The Gurgles gets in anyway — ten veterans with blood from their eyes and mouths, walled in with dirt and burned by Kristen Cronin's flamethrower, who sits and sobs. Victory, teleported into the trench: an exploit, infected before the ban, allowed before; the Gurgles is a non-curable contagion the factions once agreed never to use. Tran's new body: a mechanical crab that climbs walls and, in battle mode, an exoskeleton of full plate like Paz's, no ranged weapons or the system would call him Armor. 'Now it's our turn.'

Characters

• Carl — Dynamite over the lip; soul poisoning held back for the right moment.
• Tran — Crab legs and an Iron Man shell of Katia's making; 'I need my moles!'
• Baroness Victory — Into the trench to rule the Gurgles an exploit.
• Kristen Cronin — A Crisper who burns her infected comrades and sits down to cry.
• Princess Donut — 'None of my spells work! Wait, Love Vampire works!' It doesn't, on pets.
• Garret — Knee-high, splashing in the slop.
• Ryan Smogo — A Blood Swimmer on the line who notices the guns stop.

Locations

• The southern front — A kilometre-wide corridor, 250 metres of no-man's land, a labyrinth of trenches.

Motifs

• Faction Wars — Spider tanks in ten slots; the Bulwark and the Leeches; Build Trench scrolls by the thousand.
• The mobs are victims — Pets loved to level 40 and turned into bombs.
• The Reavers — Cybernetician Yeller's pets; the Gurgles as an exploit.
• The Scavenger's Daughter — Too dangerous to discharge in a trench.