The Gate of the Feral Gods

by Matt Dinniman

  “Yeah, that’s safe,” I said as I collected the pieces. The controller core of the robot was a round, marble-sized metal ball. Like the last few times, the core itself had exploded, making it look a metallic piece of popped popcorn. “I can’t tell if these guys are a toy company or a weapons company. Either way, they’re terrible at it.”

  Mongo screeched in agreement.

  The real Donut jumped to my shoulder and sat with a harrumph.

  “They said this version was indestructible,” she said sadly. “Do you think the Kardashians had to deal with defective merch? This is most disappointing.”

  “I don’t think the toy people know what they’re doing,” I said.

  Loita: Carl, you know perfectly well that the real version of these toys can take much more stress. Your boosted strength is what’s causing the problem. The toy is meant to be played with outside of an enhancement zone by children, not survive within a dungeon environment.

  Carl: Hello, Loita. You should tell Donut’s sponsors that parents will shy away from toys that could potentially melt their child’s face off.

  Donut: ALSO, I DON’T SAY CREEPY STUFF LIKE THE DOLL DOES. IT’S REALLY WEIRD.

  Zev: The audience loves the strange vibe of the doll, but I tend to agree with the crawler. It does not sound like her. We put that in the notes, but Veriluxx hasn’t changed it.

  On my shoulder, Donut tensed up upon realizing Zev was a part of the conversation. I knew she was still worried about the kua-tin’s well-being.

  Donut: HI ZEV!

  Carl: Nobody is going to care about the toy’s voice if it keeps randomly exploding.

  Donut: HE IS RIGHT. IT IS NOT A CARL DOLL.

  Loita: After we realized you were going to fiddle with the toy, we started requiring the sponsor to make the doll self-destruct if it is sufficiently broken. We don’t want you unfairly getting your hands on the important interior parts. The real version won’t have that feature.

  Carl: So you’re the ones screwing the sponsor over? I bet they’re not too happy then. I’m no marketing expert, but I can’t imagine this thing is going to do well with how it’s being presented.

  Zev: You are not wrong, crawler. There are memes.

  Loita: That is not of your concern. You will be going on their program soon. They assure us that before that happens, you will receive a proper prototype.

  Donut: TELL THEM I NEED TO HAVE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE THE ROBOT’S NAME. CARL CALLS IT “ROBOT DONUT” AND THAT JUST WON’T DO. I HAVEN’T DECIDED ON CHARLIE OR IVY. WHAT DO YOU THINK, ZEV?

  Zev: It’s inconsequential, crawler.

  Donut’s claws dug so heavily into the side of my neck, I winced with the pain. Her entire body was rigid. I reached up to pet her.

  Loita: Very well. We are done here. Try not to break the next one.

  Zev: If you must choose a name, I would go with Ivy.

  Donut let out a very slight gasp.

  Donut: I THINK YOU’RE RIGHT. BYE ZEV!

  Donut did an excited little hop on my shoulder. “Okay, Carl,” she said. “Let’s go take out that castle in the sky.”

  The gnomish Drop Bear used actual gasoline for fuel. The abandoned biplane’s tank was almost dry. I still had plenty of the fuel in my inventory, all in metal canisters.

  I examined the vehicle as I filled the tank. I needed the plane as light as possible, so I was only going to fill it up a quarter of the way. It didn’t have any bombs left under the wings, which would help with the weight. The plane did not look real, like it was something a drunk dude had built in his backyard out of scrap metal. Not something that was supposed to actually fly. I took a deep breath thinking about what we were about to do.

  The airplane featured a frothing, rabid koala bear thing painted on the nose. There were also words in Syndicate standard stenciled onto the nose above the artwork. I wiped the dust off to reveal the plane’s name.

  “Wonderful,” I muttered.

  The plane’s name was Death Trap. It had four bombs painted after the tag. I took a can of spray paint and covered it up. I then wrote Nightmare II on the side. Donut objected, but only half-heartedly. She’d been oddly distracted since our discussion with Loita.

  The plane was half buried in the sand when we arrived. Thankfully, Langley had been smart enough to have it covered with a tarp before the storm. Those other guys all had gone off in search of downed balloons. They needed to collect five of the things to finish the “save Hump Town” quest. There were plenty scattered about the bowl. They had to fight off both gnomes and giant lizards, but at this point, the group of crawlers had enough experience with both that they could handle themselves. They were now on their way back to Hump Town to meet up with Katia.

  After we finished cleaning the thing off, I sat in the pilot seat and Donut took to the rear-facing gunner’s chair. I had to rip both of the arm rests off just to fit in the thing. As I settled in, Donut put her paws up on the large gun and started making shooting noises. There was no runway here, and we wouldn’t be able to take off. Not in the traditional sense.

  I started the engine to make sure it worked. Both engines spun right up. I flipped the switch and turned them off. I had no idea how to fly the thing, but the controls were similar to all the flight sims I’d played a dozen times. And they were simplistic compared to the original Nightmare’s controls. There were five gauges, two throttle switches that could be controlled individually or in tandem, rudder pedals, and a stick. That was it. Thankfully I only needed to “fly” the thing for a few minutes. And I didn’t need to worry about landing or taking off.

  “Ready for this?” I asked. The virtual sun had already fallen below the horizon, and darkness spread across the bowl like an inky stain. High above, our target glowed like a star.

  “Let’s do it,” Donut said.

  The emergency recovery balloon was deployed using a handle to the right of the too-small cockpit chair. The balloons did nothing but elevate the disabled vehicle to the top of the bubble.

  I pulled the lever, yanking on it like a car’s emergency brake. The twin balloons burst upward, hissing as they filled with… well I didn’t know what they were filling with. It was some sort of chemical reaction instead of a conventional balloon.

  The whole plane jerked, tail first. We started to rise into the air. Slowly at first, but soon we were moving faster and faster. I watched the needle indicating our altitude as we rapidly rose into the air.

  “Carl, Carl, there are still bullets left in the gun!” Donut suddenly exclaimed. “I can shoot stuff!”

  “Don’t you dare,” I called over my shoulder as we rocketed upward. We climbed straight up, caught a breeze and continued to rise at an angle, moving toward the very center of the bubble. I kept a wary eye out for the large birds that sometimes patrolled the skies.

  I didn’t see any enemies. Before the storm, there had been a handful of balloons up against the ceiling, but they’d all disappeared. I knew a few had simply fallen, crashing against the desert like meteors. Some had plummeted onto the land quadrant. Some in the ocean.

  All that was left was the target.

  It took us less time than I expected to reach the top of the bubble. We hit the ceiling with a bump, and suddenly we weren’t rising any more. I checked the altitude, and we were just about five kilometers above the bowl, which was already pretty high off the bubble’s sea level. This was much higher than we’d been last time. I didn’t notice any change in pressure or difference in oxygen levels. I pulled up my health pie chart menu, and it didn’t show any sort of oxygen deprivation. That was good.

  I formed my xistera, loaded it with a thumper, and I tossed it upward, just to see what would happen. Even this close, I still couldn’t tell if the bubble’s wall was transparent or just a screen. The metal ball clanked loudly against the glass-like bubble wall before falling away.

  Donut peered over the edge and watched the ball disappear into the night.

  “Really, Carl,” she said. “That�
�s going to land on somebody’s head.”

  I turned until I could see the distant light, about a half of a mile away, also pressed against the ceiling of the bubble. Damn, I thought. We were further away than I’d hoped.

  “God, I hope this works,” I said. “It’s about to get loud.” I reached down and flipped the two switches to turn on the plane’s engines. “Hold on!”

  I pushed the dual throttle switch and grasped the stick. I balanced my feet on the two rudder pedals and held the stick steady. The plane whined and jerked forward, pulling the balloons along the ceiling. I held my breath as we started to turn. Because we were still attached to the emergency balloons, I wasn’t really “flying” the plane. It was more like using training wheels on a bicycle and then pushing ourselves toward our destination by pumping the pedals just a few times.

  “Shit,” I mumbled as we turned too much. I eased the stick in the other direction. I pushed the right rudder pedal, and we eventually lined up with the house. I eased up the throttle and we started skittering along the top of the bubble toward the flying house. I cut the power and let our momentum take us in.

  “Get ready,” I called to Donut.

  The house loomed. A massive, glowing balloon kept the home aloft. The balloon was huge, more than four times the size of the regular hot-air balloons used by the other flying machines. It glowed with magic and shone like a beacon, leading us in like moths to a flame.

  The “castle” itself was nothing more than a square hunk of land with a two-story home sitting upon it. The house looked like any regular house one might find in a suburban neighborhood. I realized with surprise, that was exactly what it was. It had a double garage, a porch, and even a little garden out front, though half of it was gone. The building was painted a dull beige and made of aluminum siding. There was even a basketball hoop attached above the garage.

  Still, the house hadn’t survived the crashing of the Wasteland unscathed. The top floor windows were broken out. and part of the chimney had fallen in on itself. The rain gutters hung loosely off edge of the roof. Christmas lights clung to the gutters, blinking.

  “Do you think they heard us coming?” Donut asked.

  “Probably,” I said. “So be careful. Do you see them?”

  “No,” she said. “I see the stairwell though. It’s on the second floor of the house.”

  The magical balloon was attached to the house with a massive net. The airplane eased in like a boat against a dock, coming to a stop against the edge of the colossal balloon. We were a good forty feet above the top of the house.

  “I’m going in,” Donut said. She jumped from her back seat to the net of the balloon.

  I held my breath, worried the magical protection would hurt Donut. Mordecai said she’d be able to touch it, and he was thankfully correct. I climbed up out of my seat, balanced on the nose, using the top wing to steady myself. I jumped over to the balloon, also clinging onto the net. Donut dropped to my shoulder.

  “You’re not scared of heights, are you Carl?” Donut asked, looking down. She had a death grip on my shoulder.

  “No,” I said as I started to scale my way down the net. The Nightmare II hung directly over my head, bobbing in the air. Once the escape balloon of the airplane touched the giant balloon, it also started glowing, like the balloon-protecting magic was contagious.

  “Are you sure? It’s really far,” Donut said. “Look, we can see the lights on the ground level. I think that’s the mage castle. It’s really far down there.”

  “We already fell once. There’s lots of shit that scares me, Donut. Height isn’t one of them.”

  “Well it should scare you, Carl. This is terrifying.”

  “Don’t look down.”

  “Where else am I going to look, Carl?”

  “You didn’t seem afraid earlier when we were in the other hot air balloon.”

  “That was before we fell out of the sky. I would like to avoid doing that again.”

  We quickly descended. The net attached to the house at the four corners of the lot. I didn’t want to risk jumping to the roof and sliding off the edge, so I climbed all the way to the dirt lot and jumped down.

  The ground felt unsteady. It wasn’t the same as being on water, but it was an odd, stomach-lurching sensation. We took a few steps toward the house. I moved slowly, wary of a trap or ambush.

  “You don’t see anything?” I asked again.

  “Nothing.”

  They had to have heard us coming. We approached the porch. A cockeyed “Welcome” sign hung from the center of the dirty, white door. The sign was hand-painted in blue and silver paint and had a star at the bottom, indicating the previous owners had been Dallas Cowboys fans. The doormat had a picture of a pistol and said, “We don’t dial 911.”

  “I’m getting mixed signals,” said Donut.

  She released Mongo, who landed onto the porch with a screech. He looked around, eyes going wide when he realized the ground was moving. He turned and looked up at Donut and let out a worried squeak.

  Donut leaped from my shoulder to the back of Mongo and gave him a little pat on the top of the head. “So, are we just going to stand here, or are we breaking the door in?”

  I eyed the doorbell and contemplated just ringing it to see what would happen. Probably a bad idea, I decided. “Okay, we’ll send Mongo and the clockworks through the upper window, and we’ll breach in through the front door. We’ll meet at the stairwell, but tell Mongo not to…”

  I didn’t finish. The front door opened, and a young, female gnome stood there, gazing at us.

  “Hello,” she said. She wore an oversized Dallas Cowboys jersey as a dress. She had brown pigtails peeking out from under her red, conical hat. The front of the jersey was smeared with blood.

  “Have you come to kill my father? You’re a little late. He’s already dead. Do you want to come in? I’m making lemonade!”

  16

  I quickly examined the small girl’s properties. Her dot was white on the map.

  Bonnie – Dirigible Gnome. Juvenile. Level 5.

  Little Bonnie only loves two things in this world. Her pet pig Sausage and getting what she wants.

  The only daughter of Commandant Kane, a case can be made that she’s the true leader of the Wasteland. It is said that when Sausage was captured and held as ransom by the Bactrian camels, the young woman threw such an epic temper tantrum that the only thing that calmed her was watching her father order the bombing of the neutral changeling settlement.

  That’s the rumor, at least. The truth is, nobody knows much about the shy child. As such, do not judge her too harshly. She is but a spoiled, rich kid. If she’s evil, she doesn’t know any better. If she’s not, it’s a tragedy that you’re probably gonna have to kill her.

  Life’s a bitch.

  Carl: She’s not a changeling is she?

  Donut: I DON’T THINK SO. HER BRAIN ISN’T HOTTER THAN IT SHOULD BE.

  Carl: Same plan. We’ll follow her inside, but as soon as we’re in, send Mongo and the clockwork dinos through the upper window. Tell them to be quiet.

  Donut: THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE QUIET.

  I hesitantly followed the young gnome into the home. The power was on, and the home was well-lit, though the lights were constantly flickering.

  Even with the hat, the child was barely taller than Donut. The place stank like a mix of cigars and that lilac-scented, bargain deodorizer one would get at the dollar store. A line of framed photographs of smiling human children sat on the floor, propped up neatly against the wall. The portraits had once been hanging on the now-bare walls, but they’d fallen off. In fact, the entire interior of the home had clearly been upset by the recent tumult. I spied broken glass on the floor and bricks scattered about near the fireplace. A large flatscreen television lay on its side in the living room.

  Carl: Donut, you do the talking.

  “I’m setting up a lemonade stand,” the girl said as she walked toward the kitchen. I could see the lar
ge, magnet-covered refrigerator at the end of the hall. “I was going to open it up tomorrow. You guys can test it for me. My name is Bonnie!”

  I cringed at the loud crash that came from upstairs as Mongo and the two others jumped through the second-floor window. The girl turned and looked upward. “What’s that?”

  “Bonnie, what happened to your father?” Donut asked, trying to distract her. A line of blood ran from the kitchen area to the front door. The entire front of her oversized shirt was stained red, like she’d been lying in a puddle of blood.

  The child shrugged and turned back to the kitchen. I hesitantly followed. We passed the stairwell. Mongo and the automatons appeared at the top of the stairs, looking disappointed they hadn’t found anything to kill. Donut waved at them to stay put. Bonnie didn’t notice or acknowledge the dinosaurs. Instead, I followed her to the kitchen. A pitcher filled with yellow liquid sat upon the counter. A bag of sugar and several cut up lemons lay nearby. Next to the mess was a sign that appeared to be hand-painted in blood. It read “The Sausage Memorial Fund Lemonade Stand. One gold piece a cup.”

  And there, draped across the small kitchen table, was the bloody, dead body of a dirigible gnome.

  Lootable Corpse. Commandant Kane. Dirigible Gnome. Level 55. Ripped to shreds by Denise.

  I couldn’t tell what had happened to the gnome. He looked half eaten.

  Bonnie hummed a little song as she pulled herself onto a chair and then hopped up onto the counter. She poured a glass of lemonade. The pitcher was almost as big as she was, but she handled it easily. She pushed the glass across the counter and toward me.

  “Both of you, take a sip! Tell me what you think. But if you like it, you have to pay me a gold coin.”

  “Bonnie,” I asked, not taking the glass. “Who is Denise?”

  “Oh,” she said, looking up. I realized the kid’s eyes were completely dilated. She’s under a spell. “Is she back? She went out to get some food.”

  I looked around nervously. “Who is she?” I asked again. She didn’t answer.