Chapter 46 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 46 — Operation Snake Pit: the line of succession

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ramp-Up · Previous: Chapter 45 — Prepotente's rant · Next: Chapter 47 — Tattoos, and a flower offered · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

In order to save Donut and Katia from the Sepsis Whore issue, we first had to kill the ent

Summary

To lift the crown, the whole line of succession must die. Tipid and Rosetta came knowing who: of the eleven nagas in this season's game, four — Princess Vinata; two cousins with the title Ikbal, one of them married to Rishi the temple guard; and the head of her castle guard, another cousin, rumoured to be her lover. The other seven are friends, guards, generals and tourism-agency executives, not blood, and several are already dead by Pony. The plan as it stood: Florin's 103rd and 105th push north into the empty Operatic wedge as a distraction; Tran's 102nd feints south then west to the Shanty Town border to draw the naga army out, with Boomer's 106th hidden as the counter; Imani, Elle, Edgar, strippers and a metric fuckton of sluggalos in four carts under Invisibility and True Concealment reach the castle by Edgar's cleared route and send the slugs in face-first so that Vinata returns to a rampage; then Elle, Imani and the strippers go in. Group four — Carl, Katia, Bautista, Li Na and the 107th — waits in Shanty Town for the crucial part. The nagas are not fighters but clever, and will be ready; what matters is that her escape trigger fires on the Posse's schedule. Every season the stronghold falls lightly held, her tea still warm, the veiled Sultana and her six-naga honour guard gone through a door, and the feed floods with adverts for the exotic naga system, the ziggurats, the Great Consort War re-enactment, the Forbidden Bazaar; tunnel communities theorise for years about where she goes. Rosetta's theory, from the flag room days earlier: six seasons ago she never reappeared — the year Mazu razed the ring outside Larracos and buried the last temple entrance — and thirteen ago she was late with two guards missing, the year a demon eviction sat on that temple and a guard's necklace was found bloody nearby. Not the Desperado (no naga has ever had access), not the forests, not tunnels (they build on rock), not saferooms (blood bars; visible doors); the anti-teleport fields at various endings put her inside the Larracos area but not the city. Club Vanquisher — where blood bars do not drain, which is why Ferdinand lives at the bar ('What a wuss'). 'But where in the club? And how does she get there?' 'This is where it gets a little weird.'

Characters

• Rosetta Thagra — A theory from two seasons' evidence and the tunnel communities' work, and a bet on it.
• Princess Vinata — Four to kill; a guard, two cousins, and her.
• Carl — Lays out four groups and a hornet's nest.
• Princess Donut — 'Is that why Ferdinand is always at the bar?'

Locations

• Club Vanquisher — Where the Sultana must be hiding, every season.
• The naga territory — A stronghold on rock; a kicked nest.

Motifs

• The Crown of the Sepsis Whore — Four deaths to free two heads.
• The Blood Sultanate — Eleven players, seven not of the blood; the vanishing act as tourism.
• The blood bar — Full to enter a club; no drain inside.