The Gate of the Feral Gods

by Matt Dinniman

  And what was worse, I didn’t know why. I had no idea what was happening.

  “Chris,” I began. “I… why haven’t you spoken to anybody? Imani is really worried about you.” I didn’t want to bring up his brother now, but we had to get it out of the way. I needed to hear his answer. “And your brother. Surely you know what happened.”

  Chris waved a big, rocky hand. “I take damage if I use the chat feature, so I do not waste time or energy using it.”

  “What?” I asked. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s part of the system interface.”

  He shrugged. “It comes with being an igneous. I can’t pull things in and out of inventory or go into my health pie chart, either, without losing health. I got it in exchange for having a very high constitution.”

  “I’ve never heard of that. That can’t be normal. We’ll talk to Mordecai, our manager. We’ll see if we can figure out what’s going on and if there’s a way to fix it. I’ll message Imani, too. We’ll all figure it out together. Your friends and family are worried about you.”

  “My family is dead,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Family and friends make you weak. Having someone to care over and protect makes you vulnerable. You taught me that.”

  “I taught you? How?” Jesus. If he didn’t have the name floating over him, I’d never guess this was the same guy. Imani wasn’t kidding when she said the race change had affected his personality.

  He didn’t answer the question. “We are wasting time. You haven’t taken the castle yet. Is it still aloft? Where is the cat? We will go hunt it down together.”

  “Donut is in the saferoom. Come on, we’ll go in together and talk.”

  I needed to get him into the saferoom where I wouldn’t have to worry about anybody doing something stupid.

  “I don’t like saferooms,” he said after a moment. He looked up into the air. “Is the castle still there? How are you going to take it out? Another missile?”

  “No,” I said. “We’re going to fly up there and storm it the old-fashioned way.”

  Carl: There’s something wrong with him. He’s acting squirrelly. I think he’s about to attack me.

  Imani: He can fire lava out of his body. Be careful. Try not to hurt him.

  I needed to keep him talking. “Let me ask you something, Chris. Why did you kill Frank?”

  “You heard about that, huh?”

  A human appeared and stopped between us, her hands on her hips. “Who’s the stud?” she asked, looking Chris up and down.

  “Juice Box,” I said, “meet Chris.”

  “You’re a big ‘un,” she said, practically purring the words. “Sexy.” She put her hand on his rocky arm, and then jerked it away as if she’d been shocked. “Hot, too,” she said after a moment. She took a step back and turned to me. “Well, you said you’d save the town. I guess you did. We lost some camels, but not nearly as many as I feared. The place is a mess, and my house is wrecked. But my people are mostly safe, and for that, I’m grateful.”

  I nodded, not removing my eyes from Chris who was looking down at where she’d touched him. “You owe me a discussion about your fellow changelings. That was the deal. After I’m done talking with my friend here, we should sit down and go over what you know.”

  “The Spit and Swallow is still in one piece,” Juice Box said. “We can all go in there and talk about Quetzalcoatlus and why my brother is so desperate to get his hand on the ghost.” She returned her gaze to Chris. “You can bring these two guys. We can all party afterward.” She suddenly grabbed my hand. “Carl, let’s go now.”

  Chris shook his large head. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”

  “Two?” I asked, confused.

  “It’s funny,” Chris said after a moment. “When I first got here to this floor, I thought for sure I was dead. But it was easy, you know, to take out the submarine. I don’t think that flying castle will be so hard, either. I see all those airplanes parked over there. There are hot air balloons now sitting in the desert. I’m starting to think this whole floor is easier than it should be.”

  “I’m glad you’re confident,” I replied, taking another step back. Juice Box’s grip on my wrist was like a shackle.

  “But the more hope I have, the more conflicted I get. Seeing you… I think I finally made up my mind. I keep going back and forth, but all of a sudden I am resolved. I don’t want to get out of here anymore. Isn’t that funny? It’s like I have a choice now. I can choose to not live like this.”

  “Chris,” I said. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Brandon left a message for you. Let’s go sit down and talk about it.”

  “Come on,” Juice Box said, pulling. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

  “I actually have two daughters,” Chris said. “You only know about the one, but there’s another. She’s older. From my first marriage. She was home, so she died in the collapse. Our game guide when we first got in here, he told us all about it. He said she might come back. People who die in the collapse aren’t really dead, but they’re put in storage. Only you can’t save them. I think about that a lot. They bring them out sometimes, but it’s never for good. They can be changed. They force you to kill them on the deeper floors. He told me about a crawler that was forced to face down his whole family. He killed himself instead.”

  I felt a chill wash over me.

  “I wasn’t aware you had any children, Chris,” I said. “And your game guide is a woman. Her name is Mistress Tiatha.”

  “I can’t kill anybody else in my family, Carl. I can’t.”

  It hit me, then. All at once. I cursed myself for not seeing it. This wasn’t Chris.

  This was Maggie. Maggie My. But how?

  “You’re a changeling. Or a doppelganger,” I said, taking another step back.

  “No,” Juice Box said. “She ain’t no changeling. She’s worse.”

  “No,” Maggie-Chris agreed. She suddenly had a round, spiked ball in her hand. “I was waiting for the cat to come out, but she’s too much of a coward I guess. They promised me if I did it this way, they wouldn’t…”

  The crossbow bolt slammed into Maggie’s head, and she dropped, crashing heavily to the street. The ball in her hand hit the ground and started to roll away. I dived for it, dislodging myself from Juice Box’s grip. It wasn’t a bomb. I didn’t know what it was, but I instinctively grabbed it and tossed it into my inventory before it could do anything.

  I scrambled to my feet, fist forming.

  The Chris/Maggie creature wasn’t dead. The rock creature had a strange status over their head. Petrified. There was a sixty second timer, counting down.

  “What the shit?” I said. “What the flying fucking fuck?”

  Katia came jogging up as Donut burst from the saferoom. I could see Mordecai down the street, also approaching. We all surrounded her. Him. Chris. Whatever he was. Multiple people from town came to surround the body. Several of the changelings reached down to touch the rock creature. One of the young changelings approached, but one of the older ones held the child back.

  “I got it in my box,” Katia said, indicating her crossbow. She was out of breath. “A set of ten bolts of Petrify Rock Class.”

  “Goddamnit,” I said, looking down at the prone form of the rock creature. Its eyes still moved back and forth. She was conscious, but she couldn’t move. What choice did we have? “We’re going to have to kill her.”

  “Her?” Katia asked.

  “It’s Maggie. Frank’s wife. The one that’s been hunting us since the first floor.”

  Donut hissed. “Maggie My! The vile killer?” She jumped to the rock creature’s chest, but she howled at the heat and jumped over. “Where’s Chris?” she yelled at the prone form. “What did you do to Chris?”

  Katia looked perplexed. “Why would they give me bolts to just petrify her instead of kill her then? Mordecai says these are more expensive than just the regular ones.”

  “We can have Mongo kill her,” Donut said, jumping
to my shoulder. “That way we don’t get skulls.”

  “Wait,” Juice Box said, brushing herself off. I realized I’d tossed her aside when I’d dived for the ball thing. “You don’t want to hurt him.”

  Imani: Stop! Stop! I just got a message from Chris!

  Carl: It’s not him.

  Imani: No. It is! He’s petrified. He’s going to lose consciousness again when his body wakes up. He’s being controlled!

  The timer was at thirty seconds.

  “Boy, you do not know how to take a hint,” Juice Box said. She poked at the prone creature with her foot. “Next time I’ll just spit it out. You’re friends with the rock guy, right?”

  “I’m friends with a guy named Chris,” I said. “Is this really him?”

  “He’s right there. Don’t kill him. There’s also someone else in there. An Infiltrator. That’s who you need to kill.”

  “What the hell is an Infiltrator?” I asked just as Mordecai approached.

  “Oh, fuck,” Mordecai said.

  The timer was at ten seconds.

  “Shoot him again,” Mordecai said. Katia complied, firing a bolt right into his chest. The magical bolt whiffed away in a puff of smoke a moment later, and the 60-second timer reset. “We got a problem.”

  Mordecai leaned down to examine the igneous. “I’ve told you about these guys before. There are multiple types of brain worms. The intellect hunters are the most common, but they can only take over corpses, and the bodies start to rot. The Valtay are similar, but they secrete a liquid that keeps the bodies alive. Their distant cousins are a race called the Scree, but they’re better known by a different name. The Infiltrators. They are parasites, and they take full control of bodies. Living bodies. A person is infected, and it takes a few days for the annexation to complete. They don’t even know they have the parasite. After a few days, the worm completely takes over. Once the switch occurs, the parasite gains power, and the host is locked out of their own body. The worm controls them. The host can do nothing but watch as they are moved like a puppet.”

  “Holy fucking shit,” I said, looking down at Chris. “So he’s been awake this whole time, watching all of this happen, but he’s completely powerless?”

  “That’s right. She’s in his brain. His body is her armor.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So how do we get her out of him?”

  Mordecai shook his head sadly. “Without killing him? We don’t. It’s next to impossible. She can’t even leave until he’s dead. There’s only one thing I can think of. An antiparasitic that will kill her, but I won’t have the materials until we hit the next floor.”

  I felt a deep chill rush over me. Katia shot him again, using her third of ten bolts. We’d only be able to keep him petrified for seven more minutes. “There’s gotta be something we can do now.”

  Everything suddenly made sense. Well, no, that wasn’t true. None of this shit made sense. But I now knew what happened. Maggie had chosen the Infiltrator race and had somehow managed to get herself into Chris. She’d been in him ever since the end of the third floor, and once she’d fully taken over, she’d separated out from the party and started hunting me.

  Frank had said he didn’t even know what race or class she’d taken. She’d finally caught up with him at the Desperado Club, possibly looking for the ring he’d given me. She’d ended up killing him. Her own husband.

  People who die in the collapse aren’t really dead.

  I thought about the implications of that. There were hints of it in the cookbook, but nothing definitive. Was it true? That was a conversation for Mordecai. I didn’t have the luxury of thinking about it now.

  Elle: Imani is refusing to send you this message, so I will. It is from Chris, and I am copying and pasting his exact words. I’m sorry guys. “Carl, Donut. Please. Kill me. It’s okay. I give you permission. You’ll be helping me.”

  “Hey Chris, go fuck yourself,” I said. “We’re going to figure this out.” Then I told Elle what I said.

  Elle: I told him the same thing. But if we can’t figure out a solution, I don’t think you have a choice. If it was me stuck in there, I’d want you to pull the plug, too.

  “Can we take him into the saferoom?” I asked. “Would that cure him?”

  “No,” Mordecai said. “Not once she’s taken full control. The saferoom won’t help. We can’t tie him up and leave him there. It won’t let us.”

  “Then we’ll tie him up and leave him out here,” I said. “If we can keep him contained until the next floor, maybe you can make that potion.”

  Mordecai shook his head. “Sorry, kid. That’s not going to work. What’re you going to do? Pick him up and throw him over your shoulder while you go down the stairs? You’re in different parties, and you’ll be separated once you hit the next floor anyway. And even if he’s tied up, he has spells he can still cast.”

  This was an impossible situation. I turned to Juice Box who was standing back, watching with her arms crossed. “You touched him. Can you turn into one of those worms? Go in there and take out the one in his head?”

  “No,” she said. “They are too small. And I wouldn’t do it even if I could. That’s a pretty fucked-up thing to ask.”

  Katia shot him again. Six to go.

  Elle: He says, “This woman is overwhelmed with anger and despair, and every moment I share with her is worse than the last. You took the orb from her, but she can still hurt you.

  “What’s the orb?” Donut asked.

  “I have it,” I said. I quickly examined the object in my inventory. I was momentarily confused by the name. It hadn’t listed itself as an explosive. But then I read the description.

  Celestial Grenade

  These little balls of fun were developed by the nuns of Enyo during the first enlightenment, back when the gods had to compete for worshippers. The nuns would descend upon a village and proselytize to the people about why their goddess was the best. If the villagers didn’t immediately fall to their knees in veneration, the nuns would be forced to invoke a more aggressive campaign.

  A nun would drop a celestial grenade, which would summon Enyo directly into town for a period of sixty seconds. That was usually enough to change the minds of the survivors.

  Celestial grenades grant the following effects:

  If the wielder of the grenade has pledged themselves to a specific deity, this grenade will summon their god for sixty seconds. In addition, the wielder will receive a 60-second Divine Intervention aura.

  If the wielder does not worship a deity, this grenade will summon a random god. They will not receive the Divine Intervention buff.

  Why was Maggie trying to summon a god? Just to kill me? That seemed a tad overkill. I remembered what she’d started to say. It sounded like she’d made some sort of deal. The fact Katia had received a countermeasure from Princess Formidable meant the grenade could’ve come only from one place. The Skull Empire.

  “Chris, does Maggie worship Grull?”

  While we waited for an answer to filter through Imani and Elle—which was the only way we could talk—I examined the grenade in my inventory to make sure the pin hadn’t yet been yanked free. It hadn’t. I pulled it out and tossed it to Mordecai, whose eyes grew huge when he saw it.

  “These are very expensive and rare,” he said. “You see ‘em on the ninth floor a lot, especially near the end. Someone paid a pretty penny to get this in her hands. This is just over the top. It’s like trying to kill a bug with a kinetic strike.”

  “That’s what I was thinking!”

  “You humiliated Prince Maestro and his family over and over,” Katia said. “They have to kill you to save face. If you die before they get a chance to do it, it’s probably just as bad.”

  “Well they’re terrible at it,” Donut said. “I mean, really. If they can’t even manage to kill one human who doesn’t wear pants, how can anyone expect them to control an intergalactic empire? No offense, Carl.”

  I was about to tell Donut to shut th
e fuck up when Chris’s answer finally came in.

  Elle: He started talking, but he got cut off. It now says his messaging privileges have been suspended for thirty minutes. He says, “It’s not Grull. She worships another god called Algos. That’s who the grenade would’ve summoned. Maggie’s first sponsor is Prince Maestro and her second is Crown Prince Stalwart, his brother. I have the same two sponsors. They gave her a scroll that let her choose a god to worship. I received a box with a picture on it of Algos, and that’s how she knew who to pick. She got the grenade when we hit this floor. We got approached by this weird guy in a saferoom, and he told us…” That was the whole message.

  “Jesus,” I said as Katia shot him again. “Maggie has double sponsors, and all four of them are the Skull Empire.”

  I quickly related the message to Mordecai via chat.

  Mordecai: This doesn’t sound official to me. Someone probably bribed someone to allow Maggie a one-on-one in a saferoom. It happens, but don’t talk about it out loud. I’m thinking Maggie’s race can’t worship Grull, so they had to find another god to do their dirty work. Plus they likely didn’t want to rely on Prince Maestro again. He’d probably just screw it up and further embarrass the family. Algos is the god of pain. He would kill everyone in town in seconds. He’s a good god to choose if you want your target to suffer.

  “That Maestro guy is letting you live rent free in his head,” Donut said. “It’s quite pitiful. I’m starting to think he really is in love with you.”

  “His sister is spending a lot of money to stop him,” Katia added, looking down at the prone form of Chris.

  “I never liked my brother, either,” Donut said. “He always thought he was better than the rest of us.”

  “Your brother sold for over ten thousand dollars,” I said.

  Donut made a spitting noise. “I don’t remember seeing him win any championships.”

  Katia shot Chris once again. We were almost out of time. The enormity of our problem was getting heavier on my shoulders by the moment. I felt the desperation rising. “I’m going to flip him over, break open the back of his head, and dig Maggie out with my bare hand.”