The Gate of the Feral Gods

by Matt Dinniman

  Nests dotted the side of the structure. Firas said that’s where the buzz-ards lived, but they were mostly gone now. We saw no mobs as we descended.

  As for the poor assholes stuck in the subterranean quadrant, they were all still hiding in saferooms at the very top. Two of them—Mike, the one dressed like a goddamned banana and Bobby the trap-finder—had gathered several water-breathing scrolls and ventured out. They ended up setting off a trap in a water-filled tunnel. Mr. Banana got himself killed when a tube shot from the wall, pierced his stomach, and filled him with “Finger-sized Flesh Weasels.” They ate the poor guy from the inside out. Bobby had quickly retreated after that. The others were now paralyzed with fear and were waiting for us to drain the place before proceeding.

  I examined the sandcastle as we approached. The dark building was huddled against the side of the necropolis, making me think of a scared dog cowering against a wall. The castle looked as if it really was made out of sand. It wasn’t as huge as I thought it’d be based on Gwen’s description, but it still had the look of a medieval-style fortress. Or maybe a small casino that was medieval-themed. It stood about three stories high with thin watch towers on either side of the front façade. It appeared the castle was actually guarding the entrance to the massive tomb beyond it, and I wondered if there was an entranceway there. Probably, I decided.

  Darkness spread across the landing zone. I caught quick sight of the receded beach. The exposed and dried coral reef looked like a forest of brambles in the darkening sky. It gave the O-shaped land quadrant a menacing, fairy-tale appearance.

  “Does anything come out of the water?” I asked Firas.

  “We see shark fins and the tops of giant, blue jellyfish, but nothing comes out. Not anymore. There were snakes for a while. Big ones that could go in and out of the water. Gwen killed the boss, and they’re gone now. The two other survivors from that water quadrant are here, and they do not want to go back in there. Vadim and Britney. They say there are horrors deep down near the ocean’s floor.”

  I had forgotten that Chris had not beaten that level alone. “Did you tell them about Chris?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Neither of them were surprised.”

  Donut stiffened at the mention of the water quadrant. She’d been relieved when we learned that it had been defeated. I knew the poor cat was terrified of the idea of getting wet. I hoped we could avoid it.

  We landed in a circle painted on the beach with red rocks. Two crawlers stood nearby waiting for us. Katia was one of them. She stood there in her seven-foot-tall warrior form, crossbow over her shoulder, grinning up at us as we disembarked.

  Mongo spied her and screeched joyfully, jumping off the still-descending platform to bounce all around her as she patted him on the head. Louis and Firas went to work securing the broken water main as Donut and I jumped down.

  “So you just thought you’d take a vacation?” Katia asked. “Next time you plan on getting away for a while, please warn me.”

  I patted Katia on the shoulder. We’d literally just seen her in the safe room, but Mongo was screeching and bouncing like he hadn’t seen her for a month. “So,” I asked. “How was the Dungeon Sidekicks show?”

  “Don’t ask,” she said. “They made me do karaoke with Miriam Dom.”

  “Firas was just telling me that she’s turned into a vampire.”

  Katia nodded solemnly. “She did. That was after. While she was on the show, apparently Prepotente had a panic attack and went berserk and went running off. When she got back from the show, she went looking for him, and that’s when she got attacked and cursed.”

  “Yeah, that goat guy is a weird dude.”

  “I liked him. I thought he was a gentleman,” Donut said.

  Katia grinned. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re back. We really need you for this next part.”

  I turned to face the short, chainmail-clad woman standing next to Katia.

  “Hello, Gwen,” I said.

  “Hello, bomber guy. Hello, Princess Donut. So you two finally fucking made it,” she said.

  Now that we were face to face, I vaguely remembered her from the previous floor. We’d exchanged fist bumps when Donut was collecting all the now-worthless engineer hats. The woman was about 45-years old and solid. She’d remained human and stood just about five feet tall. I knew from earlier conversations she was from Canada, and I realized now she was of First Nations origin. She wore a glowing, metal skull cap with a fur lining, but from what I could see of her dark hair, it was cut short. She had a no-nonsense metal spear slung over her shoulder.

  The most distinctive feature on the woman was the forehead tattoo. It was old and weathered and faded, and it was obviously from a time long before she ever ventured into the dungeon. It was a double-v tribal pattern. The back of her hands and fingers were also covered with simple, straight-line tattoos ending in arrowheads. They almost looked like doodles.

  The woman examined me with hard, dark eyes. At first I thought maybe she was a little pudgy, but upon closer examination I realized my error. I recognized that look from my years working at shipyards. This woman had a body built on hard labor, a nose that had been punched so many times it likely crinkled when you touched it, and scarred knuckles that had probably finished just as many of those fights as they started. I guessed she’d been either a dock worker, a farmer, or in construction. Someone whose work required her to spend most of her days working at varying physical tasks and whose nights were likely spent at the bar drinking and fighting her paycheck away.

  I knew the type very, very well. I examined her properties.

  Crawler #1,293,776. “Gwendolyn Duet.”

  Level 34

  Race: Human.

  Class: Boring Ol’ Fighter.

  “Oh, I just love those tattoos,” said Donut. “What do they mean?”

  Gwen laughed. “They mean that we are wasting time, little princess. Now you two get your asses in gear. Your partner has been stalling me for almost a full day now, and that clock keeps getting lighter by the minute.”

  The weather down here was still warm, but it was much cooler than it’d been up above. It smelled like the beach, which was oddly comforting. The sand formed deep channels during the most-recent sandstorm, ringing the land quadrant with concentric circles, like lanes on a track. We walked in one such channel, approaching the castle.

  “Sorry we can’t wine and dine you first, bomber boy, but we need to get trucking on this bullshit your friend is making us do,” Gwen said as we marched toward the castle. “The storm that’s about to hit is the last one before the weather change, and we don’t know if that’s going to fuck us over or not. We can only do Katia’s electric door thing during the sand storm.” The ring of walls spread in front of us, each about twenty feet tall. Each had been breached, allowing for a wide doorway.

  We passed the remains of what looked like a siege tower made out wood and bicycle parts. I itched at the idea of just leaving all that good material just sitting there.

  “That mechanical boss bird trashed that,” Gwen said, seeing my interest. “When you killed the thing, it saved our asses. The walls were a real pain. Each one had to be picked apart in a different way. But we did it. Of course this was before you guys showed up with a flying house. And now you two, and that Arnaaluk of a friend of yours are going to go in there and try to kill the mage for us.”

  “And Mongo,” Donut said.

  Mongo screeched in agreement.

  “Just us?” I asked. I felt my eyebrow raise. I looked over my shoulder at Katia, who smiled sheepishly.

  “Oh, she didn’t tell you of the deal, did she?” Gwen made a clicking noise with her mouth. “Why does that not surprise me?”

  “She’s going to tell me now,” I said.

  I decided it was for the best that we have this discussion over chat.

  Carl: What are we walking into? Also, what’s the deal with you two?

  Donut: I LIKE HER. SHE REMINDS ME OF A MINIATURE-SIZED HEKLA.<
br />
  Carl: Yeah, because that turned out great.

  Katia: She is an amazing fighter. She’s fast, too. Her class trades fighting skills for no magic spells whatsoever. I watched her use that spear to pierce a pazuzu in the back, vault over him, and use the momentum to throw his body at another monster. The problem is she’s a real bitch. She is like Hekla in some ways, though instead of scheming in her head, she just says it out loud the moment she thinks it. And if she doesn’t like you, she will tell you. And then just to make sure you were paying attention, she’ll say it again, but in a different way. At least Hekla pretended to be supportive.

  Carl: I was actually surprised when Firas said you two were always fighting. I thought you could get along with everybody.

  Katia: I made a promise to myself not that long ago. I wasn’t going to take shit any more. When Gwen makes up her mind about something, it’s impossible to change her mind. And then she becomes a bully about it. I don’t like that.

  Donut: THAT MAKES HER SOUND MORE LIKE CARL THAN HEKLA. HE’S NOT A BULLY THOUGH.

  Katia: Agreed. Carl doesn’t insult you when you have a different idea.

  Carl: She’s exactly the type of person who would survive here. So what’s the deal with the castle?

  Katia: Okay, so here’s the problem. We’ve discovered there are two ways to take the castle. Easy way and hard way. Gwen wants to do it the easy way. But if we do it her way, I think we’re going to lose our chance at getting that winding box from the mage. Honestly, I’d also much rather do it her way too, but Zev has been unusually insistent that we wait for you two.

  Carl: So you told Gwen to wait for us. And now you’re fighting a lot.

  Katia: Bingo.

  Carl: Okay. Lay it out for me.

  Katia: The castle is made of sand. There are no tunnels or rooms or anything inside. It’s just sand with a stairwell buried in the middle.

  Carl: Wait, what about the mage? What was his name? Ghazi. That was it. The note I found in the air castle said he’d basically destroy everything before he’d allow the ghost in the last quadrant to escape. So we know there’s something going on in there.

  Katia: Yeah, so most of this information is from a drunk scorpion guy. He’s like this quadrant’s version of Juice Box. The Mad Dune Mage—Ghazi—turned himself into a sand elemental while trying to search for the Gate of the Feral Gods. That’s how he managed to get that one part he has, the winding box. He’s all mixed in with the sand now. There’s a magical door to get into the castle, but you can dig behind it. At first I thought it was a portal, but it’s not.

  Carl: So it’s just a door leaning up against a pile of sand?

  Katia: Sort of. I’ll explain in a second. After they breached the last wall, Gwen’s team found a secret drainage panel up against the side of the necropolis wall. If they turn it, it will release all the water inside the necropolis and shoot it back out into the ocean through the main drainage tunnel, which is what the sandcastle is built around. We wouldn’t even need to get through the magical doorway. It’ll just destroy the sandcastle, like we were hitting it with a water hose. Easy, though apparently it would only half drain the necropolis because the water is still being pumped in. So the water will be running in a loop. The pump on the submarine needs to be turned off in order to fully drain the necropolis. Our friend Maggie didn’t do that before she left which means no matter what happens, we’ll have to go back down there.

  Donut: NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

  I sighed. I could see the game design, the hands of the bubble creator in all of this. I had no idea how the math worked out, but there had to be at least two dozen different ways this could’ve gone depending on the order in which these castles were taken. Because the water quadrant had gone first, the subterranean quadrant filled with water. And since it was filled with water, it allowed for the easy destruction of the land quadrant. But we were still screwed, even if we did take out the castle the easy way.

  Carl: So if we blow it out with the water hose plan, we take the castle, but the mage guy gets turned to mud, and we’ll never find the winding box. What’s the hard way?

  Katia: You see those two towers on either side of the sandcastle? At the base of each tower was a coiled-up electrical line with clips at the end. If you attach the line to the tower and then to the door, when the sandstorm hits, lighting hits the towers, and they act like lightning rods. They electrify the doorway, and a glass hallway appears. If you examine it while it opens, the message says it only opens once per sandstorm. But the door closes really fast. There’ll only be enough time for a few of us to enter. I made a deal with Gwen that we would do it. She thinks we’re idiots for trying it this way when there’s an easier solution.

  Donut: WE NEED LIGHTNING? THAT’S JUST LIKE IN THAT TIME MACHINE MOVIE WHERE THE GUY MAKES OUT WITH HIS MOM.

  Carl: Jesus, Donut. How much television did you really watch? What happens after the door closes? Wouldn’t the castle turn back to sand? Also, what about Louis and Firas?

  Katia: Uh, so I was thinking that too. I asked Mordecai while you were coming down here, and he thinks it’ll probably remain intact, but only as long as the storm lasts. So about two hours. The storm will last longer starting tomorrow, but we don’t know if it’ll still work when everything changes. We have to do this now. I told Louis and Firas to stay outside to make sure Gwen doesn’t get all Hekla on us and decide to flood the castle while we’re in it.

  Carl: So we’re just going to run inside the castle and then fight some crazy magic user guy who has the power to toss us into a different dimension? Do we have a plan other than that?

  Katia: You’re the one who wants that box.

  The doorway to the sandcastle of the Mad Dune Mage looked like any other regular dungeon door. Like Katia said, it was not a portal. Just a magical door. There was a small moat in front of the castle, but there was no bridge, and the moat itself was empty. Like everything else, it was just made out of hard-packed sand. I knew if we followed the moat semicircle all the way to the necropolis wall, we’d find the panel that would allow one to open up a large pipe that would quickly turn the whole castle into mud.

  A small group of battle-hardened crawlers watched us as we approached the doorway. The electrical lines that snaked from the bottom of the two towers were still attached to the entrance frame. One was pulled tight. The other hung loosely. The moment I saw that second wire I could hear the booming, teeth-rattling voice of my instructor at “A” school where I learned the basics of electrical repair. Loose wires cause fires! Loose wires cause fires!

  These were high voltage jumpers covered with plastic insulation. Each cable was as thick as my leg, though they were light, made of some alien conductor. The line on the north tower was pulled taut against the contact atop the left side of the doorway. The line on the south tower was ridiculously long and sat coiled like a snake.

  I looked up at the sky. The wind was starting to howl. There wasn’t any lightning just yet, but it would arrive at any minute. I also noticed another pair of cables high above, connecting the two towers.

  “Gwen, Katia. Have you seen any other contacts anywhere? Anywhere else where these clamps might fit?”

  “No,” Gwen said. “And we searched pretty good. It worked yesterday when the lightning hit.”

  “Shit, did we do something wrong?” Katia asked, looking nervously up at the sky.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “These two towers are already connected, so this second, long cable is redundant. We either need to bring it in with us or it might attach to something out here we haven’t found yet.”

  “There’s nothing metal to attach to,” Gwen said. She pointed at a human crawler, a level-28 human Swashbuckler. He was a tired-looking Asian man. That was the same class as Bautista. “Tran here has a metal-detecting ability.”

  “There’s nothing?” I asked the man.

  He shrugged. “Nothing except that wheel that opens the drainage pipe. Actually, you know what? There is a rin
g under the wheel. I thought it was a handhold.”

  I had a thought. “Okay. Disconnect it from the tower so you won’t get zapped, but I want you to grab the other end and pull it all the way to the wheel. Let me know if it reaches.”

  The man looked uncertainly at Gwen, who nodded. He ran off. We watched him disconnect the lead from the south tower and disappear around the side of the side of the castle, dragging the long cable behind him.

  I returned my attention to the entrance. “The door should still open with only one lead attached. Also, I wonder how much power it requires to activate. We might be able to hook it up to a dwarven battery or even the flying house and test it to see if there’s any reaction. Even though lightning carries a pretty big…”

  Bam!

  I felt the hair on my arms stand on their ends. I remembered the moment when Gore-Gore the mantaur had been electrocuted by the third rail in the tunnels. The ground all around us danced as the sand momentarily electrified. The painful tingle of a near miss washed over everything. Mongo yowled. Donut’s hair all poofed out as she hissed. A bolt cut low across the sky, and the two towers glowed.

  The door was only five feet in front of me. It also glowed blue, the door disappeared, and with a crackling noise that sounded like all the ice in the world breaking at once, a hallway appeared, leading off into darkness.

  “Let’s go!” Katia cried, bounding forward and disappearing inside.

  21

  Donut, Mongo, and I scrambled to follow Katia through the electrified doorway and into the hallway made out of glass.