The Gate of the Feral Gods

by Matt Dinniman

  “That was unexpected,” Donut said. Mongo screeched uncertainly, sniffing down into the darkness. Despite the man’s proclamation, I could see that the slime or ooze or whatever was slowly inching its way up the stairs. It’d take a while for it to get to us, but it was coming.

  We stood at the top of the landing. Katia placed the unconscious man on the ground. He’d wake up in 90 seconds. I hadn’t formed my gauntlet, but the punch had knocked him out cold. His health bar had gone down by 2/3’s. His dot remained white.

  “College? Where did that come from?” Katia asked.

  “Examine him,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said after a moment. “He’s from Larracos. That’s the big city on the ninth floor, right?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “The dude came here so his fictional girlfriend could be turned real.”

  Donut scoffed. “Can you imagine? You’re a famous, beautiful adventurer and suddenly you’re in some smelly scientist guy’s basement? Just bringing them to life isn’t enough. You’d have to make them like you. And let me tell you, if you’re the type of guy who is living in a putrid cellar trying to bring fictional people to life, making them like you is a tall order. It’s weird, and it’s creepy.”

  “So what happened down there?” I asked Katia as I opened up the leather satchel.

  “While you were looking through the peephole, the sand started oozing through the bottom of the door. It was moving its way up the wood when I noticed it. You cast the shell, and it pushed it back, blasting the door to pieces.”

  “If we actually went into the room, it’d probably have triggered a boss battle,” I said. “It’s almost identical to what happened in the air castle. There’s a boss and an NPC.”

  I peered into the bag. There were two objects within. Letter from the Council and Mysterious Box.

  I examined the winding box. It was a thick, wooden case with a glass window. It was heavier than it appeared it should be, and the dark wood of the box felt old. It reminded me of a humidor or a large music box. Inside were two little knobs and two round cutouts, one for each watch. I wasn’t exactly certain how these things worked. You placed the watch inside, turned it on, and it spun the watch, which somehow kept it ready to go. Or something.

  Mysterious Winding Box.

  This strange box hums with arcane power. There is space for two watches. What happens if you place the watches within and activate the box? You should try to find out!

  I knew this guy had figured out how to get the thing to half work without the watches, so I didn’t want to mess with it. I placed it into my inventory. The last watch remained inside the necropolis somewhere in the hands of Juice Box’s brother, Henrik. We should have taken it from him when we had the chance.

  I examined the letter. Donut read it from over my shoulder, gasping when she read the last part. When I was done, I handed it to Katia.

  Ghazi,

  We received your correspondence with no little amount of alarm. Upon looking up the creature you described, we have determined she is a banished lesser deity named Psamathe. She is the only of the listed banished who is accompanied by the ooze familiar you describe. Happily, your ineptitude whilst summoning the creature may be our saving grace.

  The scholars believe your failure made it so she was only corporeal long enough to gain a foothold, and the behavior you describe suggests she has not fully passed over. She will seek the most powerful sub-conscious entity in the vicinity and will occupy the creature. Thankfully, because of her non-physical form, she will only be able to occupy a creature equally between worlds. And it is clear who that will be considering your location.

  So in summary, the council believes Psamathe duped you. She pretended to be this Yarilo you so foolishly attempted to resurrect. She then likely took control of the ghost that is known to haunt the necropolis. Queen Quetzalcoatlus.

  You only have one choice. You must use the winding box to banish yourself and the entirety of the necropolis into the Nothing. You must not let Quetzalcoatlus gain corporeal form. If it were to happen, Psamathe will be fully resurrected, and the true gods would be forced to react. That would bring a level of chaos and death not seen for an age.

  Your failure has caused your name to be removed from the Tome of Scholars.

  May the gods have mercy on your soul.

  It was signed by a group of twelve different names.

  Below the letter, written in a different script was an additional note.

  Ghazi you fucking idiot. I told you this was going to happen. The second I found you with that thing, I knew you were beyond saving. You have ruined everything. I hope it was worth it. Scolopendra will never be defeated now. We needed that artifact, and all you could think about was your cock. I will never forgive you. I was here the whole time, but I guess I wasn’t enough. Fuck you. I hope you die in pain. Do the right thing.

  - Tish.

  Jesus, I thought. If the changelings had managed to turn that ghost back into a physical creature, it would’ve been game over one way or another. Either the ghost would’ve gotten out of the necropolis or Ghazi here would’ve binned the whole bubble using his winding box.

  “This is distressing,” Donut said. “He had Tish all along, and he left her so he could pursue a fictional woman? I am appalled. This is just outrageous.”

  I grunted. “Donut, we don’t know anything about the story except what the description and the letter says. You’re reading too much into it. The important part is if Quetzel however you pronounce it gets out of the necropolis, yet another goddamn god is probably going to show up and splatter everyone in the area. But more importantly, it also confirms we can use this winding box as a weapon. And the artifact can be somehow used against the final boss.”

  “Maybe,” Katia said. “Or they just wanted to use it to run away.”

  “You’re not from the council,” Ghazi said, sitting up. The large mage’s robe opened to reveal a massive chest tattoo of Lika. He put a hand to his head. “You punched me really hard.”

  “How could you?” Donut demanded, jumping on the NPC’s chest. He started to scramble back, surprised at the cat’s vehemence. Donut hissed and spit.

  “What? How could I what?”

  “You had Tish all along, and you left her for Lika! And she’s not even real! Look what happened!”

  The man’s eyes got huge. “Tish? So you are from the college? How did you get in here?”

  We had approximately one hour before the sandstorm ended. When that happened, the glass halls would collapse and turn to sand, burying us. We didn’t have time for this drama bullshit.

  I grasped the confused mage by his bathrobe. “Okay, I am going to ask you a series of questions, and you are going to answer them. Do you understand?”

  “What is going on? What do you want?”

  “What is that thing down there? And how do we kill it?”

  “It’s… killing it won’t matter. I’ve killed it a dozen times. It just comes right back.”

  “What is it?”

  “She… it. It’s a sand ooze. The familiar of Psamathe. Psamathe is not a god, but a lesser deity. She, uh, escaped during my research. As long as Psamathe is in this world, the ooze can be recreated by a single grain of sand, so it is impossible to kill it fully. You can burn it away, and freeze it, or dilute it. Or shock it with electricity. It shrinks, but it never dies. To remove it, you’d have to remove all the sand from the world.”

  Damnit, I thought. We should’ve brought that electrical line in with us.

  “Okay, why is it in the room with you?”

  “Are you guys going to tell me who you are?”

  “No. Answer the questions. If I get even the hint of a spell being cast, that dinosaur behind you is going to bite your head off. I’ve seen him do it. Do you understand? Now why is the slime in the room with you?”

  “She’s… she’s my wife, and I think she’s in love with me.”

  “Your wife? The slime is your wife?” />
  “It’s an ooze. Not a slime. There’s a difference. And yes, the ooze is my wife.”

  Donut made a disgusted noise. “If Tish could see you now.”

  “Yeah, you’re gonna have to elaborate. But make it quick.”

  Ghazi looked back and forth between me and Donut, obviously bewildered. He focused on Katia, who stood at the edge of the stairwell, keeping an eye on the encroaching ooze. She shook her head, telling the man she wasn’t going to help him.

  “Look,” I said. “Let me speed this up. We know you came here to summon the lust god and have him turn some lady from a play into your sex slave. And you got tricked into summoning this Psamathe creature instead. And now Psamathe is inside the necropolis, hitching a ride within the body of that pterodactyl ghost. That seems to be the theme of this whole damn bubble. We know if she gets out, the gods who are now in charge might take issue with that. We also know that winding box I just stole from you can be used to suck all of this away, but you haven’t done it yet. And now you’re never going to get the chance because I have it, and I am not going to give it back. Right now, I don’t care about any of that. I just want to know everything I can about that ooze that is coming up the stairs, because I need to get rid of it long enough for me to occupy that small room in the back of your chamber. And I need to do it before the sandstorm outside ends.”

  The man looked at me, open-mouthed.

  “This is where you speak,” Donut prodded.

  “It’s halfway up the stairs,” Katia called.

  “Okay, okay. Lika isn’t just some lady from a play. She’s real. I wasn’t turning her into a sex slave. I brought her with me. It’s not like the others say. She’s trapped, frozen in her body. She speaks to me. She’s the one who told me to come here and do this. I’m trying to save her. Tish didn’t understand. Nobody understands. When I thought I’d summoned Yarilo, he made Lika real. He told me that I had to marry her for the magic to keep her alive, so I did. Right away. He performed the ceremony right then and there. It was only after the consummation did I leave the chamber and find that Lika was still in her cleaning pod. The entire castle had been crystalized when I used the spell to summon Yarilo, but it hadn’t been enough power.” He paused, suddenly sad. “I screwed it up, like I screw everything up. But that’s how I knew I had been tricked. Lika hadn’t been saved at all. She was still there, crystalized like everything else. And everything outside my protection spell was turned to sand. The deity I’d summoned made me a wife, but it was a wife of sand. That is why the ooze remains nearby. After consummation, it fell in love with me.”

  “Uh, Carl, does ‘consummation’ mean what I think it means?” Donut asked.

  Again, we were getting off track, but I now had more questions than when we’d started. “You banged the ooze?” I asked. “And you didn’t notice it wasn’t really the chick you have tattooed on your own damn chest?”

  “I was drunk,” he said sheepishly. “And really excited. Plus it was dark.”

  “Does it talk?” I asked.

  “Well, no. She takes the form of Lika when the sandstorm isn’t raging outside. When the storm starts, she… it returns to ooze form, but I turn to sand. You see, it required a lot of power to… you know what, it’s not important. I only return to my human form during the sandstorm, but she is in her Lika form the rest of the time, so the only real quality time we’ve spent together was right after the wedding. She remains buried in the castle, and she consumes me. Every day. She eats me while I am made of sand. That’s how oozes tell you they love you.” He shuddered.

  “What the fuck,” I whispered.

  “So that’s why you keep trying to kill her?” Donut asked.

  “A marriage built on lies can never last,” he said. “But I gave up trying to burn her away a long time ago. Now I just live with it. As long as her master remains in the necropolis, we are fine. I don’t age. I have this amazing magical panel with thousands of hours of programs on it, and I don’t know where it came from. But it keeps me entertained. I can only watch for two hours a day except during the red equinox, which is coming up soon. There’s this program called Inuyasha that I plan on finishing… Anyway, the ooze doesn’t allow me to leave the room very often. It’s jealous of the real Lika.”

  “‘Real’ Lika,” Donut grumbled under her breath.

  “Wait a second,” Katia said, interrupting. “When you say you found Lika in her cleaning pod, what do you mean by that?”

  Ghazi chinned toward the large chamber behind us. “She’s there, in that room. But the room only appears during the storm, and that’s the only time I can leave the chamber. But my, uh, wife doesn’t usually let me leave. I’m working on a spell that’ll reverse what happened. The castle has been crystalized. I made a protection spell, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t big enough, and it wasn’t powerful enough. Most of the castle is sand, but some of the interior turns to crystal during the storm. Both me and my workroom return to their real form during the sandstorm, but that is it. Once I undo the spell, I will have Lika back and we’ll try again.”

  “How are you going to undo the spell if you spend all of your free time watching nerd cartoons?” Donut asked.

  “Uh, so she’s in the fountain?” I asked. I exchanged a look with Katia. “We saw her before. We thought she was a statue.”

  “She’s a personal companion device made in the likeness of Lika. But she is real. There is a soul trapped within her, and that is how I came to be here.”

  We’d all connected the dots, but Donut was the first to say it out loud. “Oh my god, she was a sex doll? You had a sex doll tell you to come here? And you stuck her in the fountain to… clean her? And that’s what…”

  “Is in the fountain right now?” I interrupted.

  The shattered pieces of the apparently possessed Lika sex doll were scattered all over the other chamber’s floor, though I had the head in my inventory. We needed to keep this guy out of that room until we finished this.

  “Again, we’re getting off track,” I said. “Tell me how you killed your wife the last time you did it. I only need her dead for a few minutes, then we can get the hell out of here.”

  22

  I peered down the stairs, and I examined the slow-moving ooze. The closer it got to the top, the slower it went. I realized the thinner it stretched itself, the more difficult it was for it to move.

  The thing looked like a god had sneezed over the stairwell, and the mucus pile had rolled in kitty litter. Some of the magazines that Donut had knocked off the table along with some other junk items from the lab were mixed in with the creature, hitching a ride up the stairs.

  The voice of the AI’s description of the ooze was different than usual. There were no stupid jokes thrown in there, and it seemed more morose than normal, which probably was the joke. I just didn’t get it.

  Mrs. Ghazi

  Sand Ooze

  Level 52 Borough Boss!

  This is a minion of Psamathe

  Every living creature seeks the same thing. A sense of contentment. No matter what their origin story is, no matter what they are made of, the moment they first exist, no matter how dumb, how smart, how confused, they seek a place of comfort. What that comfort looks like to them can vary wildly, even amongst creatures of the same species. Oftentimes, that journey to felicity is what defines their entire lifecycle. When that creature crosses paths with another, it is inevitable that the weaker of the two will fall further away from their goal.

  This is the sort of thing that might go through Mrs. Ghazi’s mind as it spends its day watching over a man it has grown to love at the behest of someone more powerful than itself. The knowledge that the man’s feelings are not mutual is like a dagger in its heart, if it had one. It wrestles daily with this realization, teetering on the edge of indecision. Do I protect him because I love him? Do I kill him because he doesn’t love me back? Do I continue with my duty? What would become of me if I simply disobeyed?

  It’s a lot of str
ess for a creature not used to having any emotion. It’s almost too much. But even if this creature wanted to end it all, it couldn’t. Its master has the ability to bring it right back, over and over again.

  “I think the AI is smoking weed,” Katia said.

  “This tells us absolutely nothing new about the creature,” I said, irritated at the description. “Except that it’s a borough boss. But the music didn’t start.”

  “I think we broke it when we didn’t go into the room,” Katia said.

  “Are we sure it was actually talking about the ooze?” Donut asked.

  Killing the sand ooze, even temporarily, was going to be impossible from where we stood. Without a sufficient burst of electricity, I was going to need to burn it. And while I had plenty of materials to make an ooze scald hot enough to shrink it away, we’d screwed ourselves by running up the stairs.

  According to Ghazi, I had to drop the fire on the ooze’s core, which was always kept in the same place: directly under the recliner that sat in front of the flatscreen television nestled in the corner of the room.

  We couldn’t use regular fire, either. We could tell that the ooze had already snuffed out the flames leftover from Donut’s spell, so the creature wasn’t completely fire averse. We needed something that’d burn hot. I had two boom jugs left, but I feared those would burn a little too hot. I had a better idea. Earlier, I prepared some of the “burn gel” at my crafting table. I had the recipe already from my cookbook. I’d forced a conversation a few days before that with Mordecai by telling him about how I used to set hand sanitizer on fire. He’d responded with a way to make a flammable gel that would burn better, longer, and hotter. We found when we used moonshine in conjunction with some paste he could easily put together, the resulting gel burned hot and bright with little smoke. It wasn’t too useful in combat situations because the stuff had the consistency of toothpaste and took a while to apply, but it would work here. I had a plastic shopping bag full of the gel in my inventory, already shoved into a funnel so I could apply it like a giant piping syringe for a cake decorator.