Chapter 61 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 61 — The War Mage Rebellion

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: Open Hostilities · Previous: Chapter 60 — Meatus; the King's Point erupts · Next: Chapter 62 — A non-team entity · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

The mountain exploded, and suddenly, we were spinning, cartwheeling through the air.

Summary

Party Planner cartwheels off the eruption's blast, bounces its propellers off the level's ceiling and loses one; Skarn as an octopus holds Bonnie in; her broken arm heals as Carl watches, and Skarn's eyes have tears. Carl warns Florin and Elle of the shockwave. Donut's Magic Missile cracks across the field — with the tiara she needs only line of sight, so the Nest's synergy was given instead to Atrocity-class spells: War Crime, 'the one part of today's plan I prayed we wouldn't have to use'. Ash and more lava than promised. Elle: the winding box fell, the watches spilled, the primed gate opened early, twenty minutes; 'I went through this back in '80.' Carl tells Skarn to take the children into Larracos, not Shanty Town; Samantha kisses Louis ('nothing turns me on more than mass, faceless slaughter from above'), her forehead now reading 'Fuck Cheese'; Carl reads Controlled Feather Fall and jumps. Falling: the battlefield conditions spontaneously summon Eris; demon eviction at several sites; Florin's missiles have stopped the scorpion tank but not its teeth and Stalwart's teleport is caught in a net; Team Retribution occupies the Bone Clan's and the Dream's throne rooms; Ferdinand's rambling action item is split — gods staying past their time denied; but approved: Ascendency players may no longer refuse to pilot their sponsored gods when summoned, may no longer appear as themselves, and any summons where the pilot 'was being a cowardly little chicken' are corrected. Nobody planned any of it. Victory, grim, in the burning woods: the adjutants learned five minutes ago and the AI says it is out of its hands. Stalwart breaks the net and teleports — Donut may have winged him, and he was fighting his own men — to Elle's clearing, where Elle is thrown unconscious into a tree. Four dead war mages, killed by Donut's shots before the teleport; three chanting round the kneeling king; a fourth aside whose colonel's mark fades as all their dots turn white with a brownish-orange glow no army owns. Akuma, War Mage, level 100, 'Leader of the War Mage Rebellion': the card explains war mages as true dungeon-born — nobody made them; a corpse's skin becomes a flesher that re-sleeves a living being and casts Boned on its skeleton; re-sleeved a dozen times the magic itself goes sapient and the three fuse; they know hundreds of spells, are 'complete dicks', are rarely recycled so may be seasons old, are wiped and reused for Faction Wars — 'maybe you should ask that pissed-off changeling army […] why you should probably keep an eye on the things you unleash' — and their heads explode ten minutes after death into a Sapient Moment of Destruction. The three chant and the king's flesh tears. 'My sister was right,' says King Stalwart, and bursts. They do not attack Carl. Akuma holds the Gate of the Feral Gods, taken from Elle, looks at Carl's bare feet — 'Nice shoes, asshole' — and the four teleport away.

Characters

• Akuma — Leader of the War Mage Rebellion, level 100, twelve times re-sleeved; takes the Gate.
• Prince Stalwart — 'My sister was right' — torn apart by his own war mages.
• Elle McGibbons — Opened the gate by accident; thrown into a tree; robbed.
• Carl — Jumps from a bomber into a summoning and a regicide.
• Princess Donut — Four war mages dead by Magic Missile; Atrocity synergy in reserve.
• Skarn — An octopus holding a gnome; tears.
• Baroness Victory — 'We only learned about this like five minutes ago.'
• Ferdinand — An action item that forces sponsors into their gods.

Locations

• The Reaver territory — Burning woods by an open gate, ash falling.

Motifs

• The war mages — Fleshers, Boned, sapient magic; 'nobody made them'; the Rebellion.
• The Gate of the Feral Gods — Stolen by a war mage; a feral god still due where it stands.
• The Celestial Ascendency — Sponsors may no longer hide from their summons.
• The Skull Empire — King Stalwart dead; the throne room an asset in open air.
• The changelings — 'That pissed-off changeling army' cited by the AI as a warning.