Chapter 51 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 51 — Dark Purpose

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ramp-Up · Previous: Chapter 50 — The Temple of the Dagda · Next: Chapter 52 — The Temple of Khepri · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

From within Club Vanquisher, four mantaurs burst into the room.

Summary

Four mantaurs burst in, Grull-painted, bow-tied, level 75 to 80 — higher than Carl — and Joey, the level 80, extends his claws into the ceiling and gets stuck ('Joey, youth been told a thousand times not to shing in here'). Katia charges in as a mantaur drenched in chowder-style cherry cobbler and sausage — 'It is the end of days! Demons attack the temple behind me!' — and Bautista's stuffed Eclipse Pyxies, bat-winged guinea pigs, come alive on Joey's face; his blood smells of cheap beer. Mork bolts; Prepotente's smoke; Carl's potion of Inflict Black Nimbus hits the ram in the back of the head as he opens the club door: 'Ith says I'm trespassing.' Li Jun, Zhang and Bautista kill the four; the front room empties; three doors held open, two of them portals that die only when they close, and the capacitor wire — an antenna — runs from the clock tower into Club Vanquisher's lobby of leather, a garage-sized fireplace, a yeti rug with its head on, hundreds of trophy heads and a black dragon over the fire, 'incense and grandpas'. Li Jun climbs the bricks and ties wire round the dragon's neck. Carl's foot on Mork's chest, the Emberus quest's note staying his hand; 'Hellik, please. Please come back to me. I don't want to be alone.' Li Na's chosen dread, Dark Purpose — supposedly like Why Are You Hitting Yourself, touch-range, now amplified twenty metres round the wires, and not offensive magic. 'Li Na. Do it.' The guards pause, then advance; 'It's not working'; Carl reaches for the berserk alarm ball. Then the light dims, the smoke settles back down, the fire sputters, an elf screams somewhere. 'He doesn't see me anymore,' Mork whispers, and pulls out his own eyes and puts them back in backwards; a mantaur stabs himself through the throat; every stuffed head and every rug comes alive and screams without lungs; 'This spell seems especially powerful.' Mork tears open his own chest for a rib — 'He promised me I’d never be cold again' — and dies. Quest complete, ten seconds of Emberus's unhinged shrieking laughter, and a Celestial Boon: level-15 Heathen Scald on every punch for the floor, the tattoos on Carl's hands burning. Then ghosts rise from the dead, white chains snake up and drag them screaming into the floor — 'I've already died! Isn't that enou…' — Mork's lisp gone as a ghost, Prepotente notes; the trophy heads' ghosts too; frost on the walls; the fire goes out. 'This area of Club Vanquisher has been defiled.' A klaxon and an ogre-voiced woman: demonic activity, shelter in place, aura protections. Li Na, flat: Dark Purpose was level 4 and hit 15; she has moved to Defile Soul and will train Bleeding Horror next — power-levelling on a massacre. Samantha rolls in with stew on her face: 'Wow. And I didn't even do anything yet.'

Characters

• Li Na — Dark Purpose trained from level 4 to 15 on a club full of clerics, the other dreads next; 'Did it work?'
• Mork — Eyes backwards, a rib in his hand, chains for his ghost.
• Katia Grim — A mantaur in cobbler; the gore is real by the end.
• Carl — A boon from a laughing god; a foot on a dying ram; 'Jesus.'
• Prepotente — Tastes the frost; notes the lisp.
• Li Jun and Zhang — Wire round a dragon's neck; a door propped.
• Emberus — Laughs for ten seconds; Heathen Scald.
• Samantha — 'And I didn't even do anything yet.'

Locations

• Club Vanquisher — The lobby, defiled: frost, dead fire, screaming taxidermy.

Motifs

• The gods — Black Nimbus in a potion; a cleric abandoned by his god; chains for the damned.
• Staying human — Under Dark Purpose Mork pulls out his own eyes and a mantaur stabs himself in the throat; minutes later, at the temple desk, Carl tells Victory he did not know it was going to be that horrific.
• The mobs are victims — 'Please help me. Hellik, please.'