Motif · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

The Gate of the Feral Gods

An artifact, celestial-tier by Carl's reckoning, in three parts — two pocket watches and a winding box — buried by legend in the Necropolis of Anser and hunted by a gnome commandant, a changeling principal, a glass mage and a dead bugbear. Dial a time on one watch and it mirrors on the other; times are places; wind the box and a one-way portal opens for twenty minutes, and when it closes the opening side stays open into the Nothing until a feral god comes through. Carl assembles it on the fifth floor and uses it to empty bubbles, and then to flood a city.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — Porthus; Welcome to Faction Wars
• Chapter 2 — Hosers and achievements
• Chapter 5 — Dante; Sir Rendlegore
• Chapter 14 — The flag room and the Ramp-Up
• Chapter 39 — Alliances break; Operation Snake Pit
• Chapter 56 — Justice Light; the Nest
• Chapter 57 — Thirty-two boxes; the last prisoner
• Chapter 59 — Operation Ruin
• Chapter 61 — The War Mage Rebellion
• Chapter 69 — Interlude — Several days earlier; Interlude — Rosetta; Zarogoths
• Chapter 76 — The Oak Fell
• Chapter 81 — Executive Order 11905
• Chapter 87 — The Nothing has been broken

Progression

Returned to a mailbox by liaison action (ch. 1, ch. 2); dead under the suppression field (ch. 14); in Elle's hands for the raid (ch. 57, ch. 59). It opens early when the winding box falls, births Yarilo, and is taken from Elle by Akuma (ch. 61, ch. 63); traded to Paca for potions and carried in her stomach (ch. 69, ch. 76); retrieved by Justice Light (ch. 81). Its broken, blood-soaked winding box becomes a permanent portal into the Nothing (ch. 87).