Chapter 52 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 52 — The Temple of Khepri

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ramp-Up · Previous: Chapter 51 — Dark Purpose · Next: Chapter 53 — Super Heavyweight Temple Battle Grudge Match Extravaganza · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

I felt sick, but I didn’t remove the wire from my wrist.

Summary

Up blood-slicked stairs that bubble under Li Na's Bleeding Horror — it turns a bleeding enemy's blood against him and then against her enemies; mantaurs bleed when they extend their claws; 'I need to train, and I can't give up this opportunity' — past shops and guilds full of self-inflicted dead, Carl wonders how he never noticed how calm she always is, and remembers a mantaur cut down to a torso and rumours of Beijing. A ram drowning in his own mercury-like blood gets his skull stomped. The temple desk with its upside-down-tree door; Yasmine the wisp gone; Victory appears aghast — 'Don't start,' Carl tells her. A pool of blood slurps round a corner and elves scream. Prepotente bottles some of it into a pet carrier and reads the portal dial ('First we turn off automatic mode or Carl will end up at the Emberus temple, you'll be at Eileithyia, and I will be at the Epicure'); Rosetta: Khepri is 453 in the codex, one temple, an infinite table, move fast. The Analyze tool: a two-way portal gated by faith, and a screenshot — nagas huddled, and a robed figure whose head is an entire beetle. 'You are not allowed to open this door, heathen.' Temple doors open only for adherents or for the Damned, a status of universal church-shelter law that survives in the game, which Li Na has and which belongs to anyone who has entered the Nothing and survived. Li Na has moved to her last dread, Succulent Decay, untried. Prepotente mutters names — Miriam, Bianca, others, ending on 'Ragazzaccia'. Victory looks sad. 'It's this, or it is death.' Samantha, held like a football, bites the handle: the door opens, she rolls back toward the desk, and three go in. Frozen. 'You have been denied a table at the feast […] marked for death by Khepri.' The screenshot had not shown tags: Vinata wears the yellow Immortal tag, and the beetle-headed man is not a cleric but Khepri. Achievement: Charge of the Light Brigade, no reward — 'Even I'm not a big enough of a prick to give you a reward for this one.' The Daughter opens her eyes in a deity's presence. And the genuine temporary effect of Khepri, which the AI double-checks: 'You are immortal for the next 90 seconds.'

Characters

• Li Na — Bleeding Horror to 15; Succulent Decay next; Damned.
• Prepotente — Bottles living blood; reads the dial; a litany of names.
• Samantha — Opens a god's door with her teeth.
• Carl — Ninety seconds of immortality, walked into a trap.
• Princess Vinata — Immortal; the worshipper herself, as the next chapter shows.
• Khepri — Not a cleric: a god with a beetle for a head, in his own temple.
• Baroness Victory — Carl, to her: 'Don’t start.'

Locations

• Club Vanquisher — The temple desk and the tree door; blood on the walls.
• The Temple of Khepri — An endless table under a moving blanket of insects.

Motifs

• The Nothing — To have survived it is to be Damned, and Damned opens any church.
• The gods — A god in his own temple; 'gods can always appear in their own temples'.
• The Scavenger's Daughter — Eyes open, filling.
• Achievements — Charge of the Light Brigade, unrewarded.