I’d been expecting the ocean to drain away, but it didn’t. I realized that only the top part of the bubble had disappeared, like the top half of a plastic easter egg, leaving the water and the island intact. Choking dust still filled the air, not yet settling because of the new breeze.
But I could feel it. That sense of claustrophobia I hadn’t even realized I was suffering was now gone.
Donut: CARL, HIS HEALTH ALMOST WENT TO ZERO WHEN YOU DID THE BIG LIGHTNING THING. I HEALED HIM. THE LIGHTNING IS GONE, BUT HIS LIFE IS STILL GOING DOWN. THE STUPID DOG DOESN’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO NOT DIE. I THINK THE SHARKS ARE BITING HIM.
Shit. This wasn’t over yet. We had to get him out of the water.
I was pretty sure that we could probably now flee down the stairs, despite the bubble quest. But that would mean abandoning everyone else. Plus Elle now had the gate of the feral gods thanks to Donut, and I needed it back before we left the floor.
Louis: We’re gonna have to land to fix the net. Can’t keep it stable in these new crosswinds. Don’t have a choice.
Carl: Come to me. Stay behind the dog so he doesn’t see you. Maggie is loose and up on the bowl somewhere. I don’t want you near there. Everybody else needs to stay in the saferoom until we deal with her. But we gotta do this first.
Katia put her hand on my shoulder. She was drenched in blood. I suddenly felt as if I hadn’t done anything in this fight, even though I’d been juggling a dozen things at once. I sent those guys to their deaths. I knew they were probably going to die, but I sent them anyway. Christ, what gives me the right?
“Should I tell the others to wait?” Katia asked.
“Yes. We still have three days. We need what? Four and a half hours for the last thing?”
She hesitated. “That’s right,” she said, finally. “If you’re sure. Plus maybe an hour for the portal to the sixth floor.”
It was going to be close. “Tell Elle to wait until this dog quest is done, then we start with the rescues.” I swallowed. “If every feral god we summon also summons a real god, it’s going to get crowded out there.”
Above, the Twister appeared. The net holding the house was ripped to pieces. I caught sight of Donut on the edge, hopping up and down. The yard around the half house had literal holes in it. Water arced from a severed main.
“Jesus,” I muttered. “They’re lucky that thing didn’t fall from the sky.”
I looked up at the whimpering dog. We weren’t directly under it anymore, but I still couldn’t see it very well in the darkness. I re-read the winning condition of the quest. He had to survive the lightning storm and escape the sharks. The problem was despite the bubble being popped, the dog wasn’t making any moves to leave the water. The fire god didn’t seem to be aware he was here. I had no idea what was outside the bubble. Was it like a bottomless pit? Probably not. It was too dark to see.
We jogged up to the house as it landed. Louis and Firas were crawling over it like a pair of worker ants. Donut leaped down and straight to my shoulder. Mongo appeared, still on the house and howled at me.
“Carl, we don’t have time. That smelly dog is going to die soon. What are we going to do?” Donut asked.
“This thing is going to fall straight out of the sky if we don’t fix this,” Louis called down to me from the roof of the house.
I moved my eyes to the attached garage. The garage door remained closed. I sighed.
“Donut, do you still have that Meat Hooks scroll we got on the third floor?”
30
I now worship the goddess Kuraokami. Worst decision ever. The goddess is sponsored by some male soother twat who is treating it like I really worship him. They made this whole system more complicated than it needs to be. If you see a god or if you find a temple or if you find a scroll of prayer, you’re given the option to worship a god. Once you do it, there’s a pawful of benefits but also a bunch of rules you gotta follow. For Kuraokami, if you kill something, you have to touch the corpse with ice at least once a day. Why? Who the fuck knows. I don’t have an ice spell, so I need to go back to safe rooms and get more ice every day.
If I do the ice thing once a day five days in a row, I get a boon. Only you don’t know what the boon is going to be. I haven’t made it five days yet. If you miss a day, the goddess “turns her back,” and you stop getting any of her benefits. If you miss two days, you receive a debuff. If you miss three, you fall from grace and can’t worship them anymore. There’s a 50% chance you’ll get “smited.” I don’t know what that means, but it ain’t gonna be good.
You can also voluntarily leave the faith, but it comes with an automatic smite.
But worst of all, while you worship the god, the god can sometimes send you messages. The description says it’s rare, but my goddess won’t shut the hell up. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who worships her, and this rat asshole is bored or something and sends me message after message. The last note I got was, “You need to say I’m the prettiest goddess out loud.” I finally told him to fuck off. But now the twat is swearing at me in my messages. I don’t know if they have any real power over me unless he somehow gets summoned or I get smote. As soon as I get to the stairwell station, I’m going to leave the faith and then jump down the stairs. Maybe that’ll save me.
This is Sinjin’s last entry. A person in my party was smote by his god, and it made his blindness debuff permanent.
Stay the fuck away from gods.
“Carl, the balloon escape hatch thing is gone. If we want to land, we’ll have to actually land it,” Donut said as we prepared for flight.
As I made sure the gas tank was topped off, Katia leaned over the engine, frantically tightening bolts.
She smashed her wrench on one of the cylinders of the radial engine over the left wing. “It’s no wonder these things have such low power. Some of these pistons are completely gummed up. This one wasn’t even attached. It’s a miracle it even flies. This is a terrible idea.”
“They’re always terrible ideas,” I said.
Above, Orthrus whimpered again. We needed to get up there and heal him as soon as possible. I really hoped this worked. We were going to have to worry about silly little details such as landing later.
Since there was nowhere to properly take off, I talked Louis and Firas to temporarily fly the house, which would allow us to drop off the edge of the Twister and hopefully pull up in time. We decided to move out and over the ocean, away from the dog and close to the edge of the bubble.
“I can’t see anything down there,” Firas said, leaning over to peer down. The water quadrant just ended, and the shimmering bottom half of the bubble rose another forty or fifty feet above the top of the water. Beyond it was nothing but darkness. I could see the blurry hints of something glowing not too far away, and I was pretty sure it was the edges of another bubble, but it was hard to see.
“This is probably high enough,” I said. “We need to figure out where the fire god guy is.”
“He’s that way,” Donut said, pointing due east. “The air temperature that way is much higher. And I can see heat wave things coming up from the distant horizon when I turn my glasses to that weird setting where everything goes dark.”
“All righty,” I said.
Down on the land quadrant, I had Gwen and Tran turn on the drain and keep it on, which would hopefully fully drain out the necropolis. I sent them back to the saferoom after that.
“You’re gonna have to do it here,” Louis called from the roof of the house. He was desperately mending the net of ropes together. “The wind is picking up, and this patch isn’t going to hold.” He tossed the empty roll of magical duct tape back to me. He tossed it high, and I had to jump to grab it. I caught it. Barely. I would’ve throttled his ass if it had fallen off the edge. I returned the roll to my inventory to allow it to regenerate.
Carl: Hey, is that fire god dude still melting your w
orld?
Tserendolgor: JESUS CHRIST YES.
Carl: Okay. On our way to help. I hope.
“Louis, get this thing on the ground right after we take off.” I looked over at Donut, who was playing with the gun on the back of the drop bear. I lowered my voice. “Uh, first make sure we don’t, you know, go swimming. We might need you to pick us up out of the ocean.”
We pulled the drop bear out of the large garage, positioning it facing the wind. Louis lowered the balloon, catching onto the new breeze coming from outside the bubble. The balloon sped up. I sat behind the cockpit, and we spun up the engines, which roared. I barely knew what the hell I was doing. There was the yoke, the pedals, a fuel indicator, a gyroscope thing which I did not understand, the twin throttles, and that was it. Above, I could see Orthrus’s health, and it was deep in the red. Donut remained in the seat behind me.
She cast her Torch spell and somehow plastered the light to the underside of the top wing so it lit up the interior of both of our cockpits, solving an issue I hadn’t even realized we had.
“Ready?” I shouted over the roar of the engines.
Donut grumbled something I couldn’t hear. I gave Katia a thumbs up, and I pushed the throttle, trying to get as much speed as possible. The small biplane rumbled forward and then promptly rolled off the edge of the yard, dirt showering around us.
We dropped like a rock, but flying into the wind like that kept us from going into a full nosedive. I pulled up on the stick as the ocean reached up to us. My stomach lurched like we were on a roller coaster. I held on for dear life as we angled downward. We evened out, and then I felt us starting to rise in the air. I adjusted the rudder with the rocking foot pedal, and we stabilized. I pulled up further. Holy shit, holy shit, it’s working.
Donut: DON’T FLY LIKE THAT. YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE ME VOMIT.
We banked toward Orthrus as I ascended. I moved in a slow and steady curve, overshooting the dog and corkscrewing upward, not wanting to do anything that I couldn’t recover from. I caught sight of the Twister quickly descending back toward the pazuzu village.
Even the slightest movement of my hand or feet had a massive impact on how the plane moved, and a lot of it was counterintuitive. The whole plane felt as if it’d break into a million pieces if I pushed the stick just an inch in the wrong direction.
My Biplane Pilot skill suddenly rose to three. These skill levels didn’t come with any new knowledge, but the stick suddenly felt less tight. Still, the whole plane vibrated ominously.
As we ascended, I could finally see the twin crowns of the enormous dog. They were like the heads of wolf puppies but with larger ears. The ears on the right head were both perked up, and on the left, one was up and one was down. A massive tongue lolled out of the left head with the floppy ear. Jesus, that damn thing is adorable.
Its health was at about 10 percent. It’d go unconscious soon. We needed to hurry.
As I carefully lined the plane up for a flyby behind the twin heads, I caught another glimmer of distant light beyond the edge of the bubble. The landscape beyond the borders of our world was like a sheet of bubble wrap. Half of them were popped, but an equal number were fully intact. This was the opposite direction from the fire god. The line of bubbles disappeared off into the darkness.
I remembered where we were, which was under the surface of our planet, which meant even though I couldn’t see it, there was a roof up there somewhere. We needed to be careful and not go too high. Ahead, Orthrus’s first mountain-sized head loomed, bobbing back and forth.
“I need to get closer,” Donut called.
I gritted my teeth and kept our current trajectory. We were small and hopefully unnoticeable. “Okay, hold on!”
I finally realized that if I put the dot in the middle of the weird, spinning gyroscope thing, that meant the plane was completely level, neither pulling up or down and straight. There was a little lock on the gyroscope. Out of curiosity, I clicked it. Nothing seemed to happen at first, but then I realized the yoke was locked in place. It was a rudimentary autopilot, designed to keep us stuck on the current trajectory. Huh. It unclicked itself the moment I pulled on the stick.
We approached the back of the dog, perilously close. I could see the individual hairs, like a forest beneath us. The world smelled of wet dog.
“Casting now!”
The whole creature glowed as its health zoomed up about 50%. Donut cast a second time just as we rocketed out of range, bringing it up to 100%, though it immediately started to dip. Both of the heads howled, and I had to jerk on the stick to avoid a collision, causing the whole plane to shudder like a bike rolling over rocks.
The damn thing was hard to fly. It always felt like it wanted to nose dive, and since there was no definitive horizon, it was hard to tell if the plane was even level without looking at the gyroscope.
“Okay, you ready?” I called.
“Don’t do the bumpy thing, Carl,” Donut said.
“Let me circle around. Get the scroll ready.”
We’d received the scroll of Meat Hooks way back on the third floor. A city elf had used the same scroll to lure Mongo away from us and into an alleyway. We, thankfully, didn’t have to be nearly as close to cast this one. The problem was once it was cast, the dog’s attention would suddenly be fully on us. I hoped we could move fast enough.
Before we’d taken off, I’d re-read the scroll’s description.
Scroll of Meat Hooks.
Let’s be real. Every pet owner already has this spell, at least when it comes to their own pets. Sometimes it’s the sound of a can opener. Or a command, such as “chow time, Fido!” Sometimes it’s the wisp of a jar of peanut butter being cracked open. No matter what the trigger is, the effect is the same. You do something, and your pets come running.
Meat Hooks works on the same principle. You cast, and pets come to you. Except in this case, the resulting stench of black smoke that emanates from your hand smells like the rancid remains of the bloated corpse of a leprotic muskox after it was repeatedly violated by a randy hyena. In other words, it stinks.
But pets love it. They love it so much, they just come barreling in.
This spell attracts all carnivorous pet-class mobs, whether they are bonded or not, to the source of the stench for a duration of 30 seconds plus ten seconds per point of intelligence of the caster. This spell has a range of 100 meters plus 20 meters per point of Charisma.
Donut’s current intelligence sat at 53, but it was really more than ten points higher than that with the temporary buffs imparted by the good rest bonus and the shower. The system was still “bugged” and didn’t display the proper number, but it would apply it when the spell was cast. Sometimes. Assuming her effective intelligence was about 64, that meant the spell would last just over nine minutes. That should be plenty of time to entice the puppy to get out of the damn water and out of the bubble. That’s all we needed to do to win the quest.
Donut’s charisma was a whopping 120. With the bonuses, the spell would have a range of almost three full kilometers. That seemed like a lot, and it was under normal circumstances, but this monster was just massive. A single leap, and it could likely cover that distance in seconds. If we weren’t careful, we were toast.
I arced around, so I was back over the water and behind the puppy. I was continuously ascending, wary of a potential invisible ceiling. The icy wind whipped at my face. It was goddamned freezing. My new jacket was shitty protection against the cold. The plane sputtered a few times, and I feared we’d reached the plane’s height ceiling. I leveled out, praying the drop bear would hold out just a few more minutes.
“Read the scroll,” I called.
The pungent stench immediately started to trail behind the plane, like we’d just blown an engine. Behind us, the enormous puppy stopped whining. We buzzed straight out of the bubble and into the blackness, the smoke trailing us like a train.
“Carl, Carl it smells really bad! Oh my god, I’m going to vomit all over again.
Why did I have to cast the spell? I don’t know how this ever attracted Mongo.”
Entering the Lacuna.
“Is it following?” I yelled.
“It’s looking at us, Carl,” Donut said. “Go faster!”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I called.
A mighty thrashing noise filled the world behind us as the puppy pulled itself off the top of the necropolis and slammed down into the ocean on its back. I looked over my shoulder to see the creature as it howled in indignation. Rocks showered off the top of the necropolis. Paws waved in the air. Water splashed in every direction. The puppy twisted as it turned to face us. The dog yelped as it tipped over the edge of the bubble and tumbled out.
“It’s out!” Donut cried. “We did it!”
I’d been half-expecting the puppy to plummet away and disappear. Instead, it fell, landing on a floor that was much closer than I thought. When the puppy scrambled to its feet, it was actually taller now than it had been before. Both heads howled. A happy tongue continued to loll out of the left head. It made an arooo noise and scrambled after us, awkwardly bounding. The thing was terrifyingly fast.
Quest Complete! Where the Red God Glows!
You removed the puppy from danger! Hurray!
For everybody who was involved in this quest who actually didn’t do anything, shame on you. The next time you’re in mortal danger, I hope you remember this moment when nobody comes out of nowhere to save your ass. At least you all get the same reward.
Reward: You get a new quest!
“Oh fuck me,” I muttered.
Two bubbles loomed in front of us. We traveled at about ¾’s the bubbles’ height. Both domes remained intact, meaning the residents hadn’t yet completed their tasks. The impenetrable walls were opaque, though one of them glowed like a frosted lightbulb. I angled the plane toward the space between them. At the widest part of the bubble, there was about a quarter mile between the two. Plenty of space to fly, but a struggle for the giant dog.
The Gate of the Feral Gods Page 45
