The Gate of the Feral Gods

by Matt Dinniman

  New Quest. The Dumber of the Flunkies.

  THIS IS A GROUP QUEST. All survivors of the previous group quest are now a party to this quest. And why the hell not, all Crawlers in Bubble number 18 are also added to the quest. Let’s make it a fiesta.

  Your party has been designated Host of this Group Quest.

  No parties may opt-out of this quest.

  Oh boy, oh boy do we have a situation here. Emberus, god of fire and ash seems to believe his son’s missing puppy is inside of bubble 18. The dog is not, in fact, within that bubble. He’s just outside of 543, having been recently rescued from a painful death. The next step should be easy. You just gotta bring the two together. Once that happens, both Emberus and Orthrus will immediately return to the Celestial Halls and everything will be almost back to normal.

  If something happens to the pup, you will fail this quest. If you fail this quest, you will each in turn be smote by Emberus one by one, no matter what floor you’re on. You probably don’t know what that means. You don’t want to know what that means.

  Hmmm. Maybe that’s a little too easy. Do you know not a single crawler in Bubble 18 has yet died? The whole world has been turned to lava, and they’re all still alive! That’s just ridiculous. That’s no fiesta. Let me think on this for a minute.

  Reward: You will receive a Platinum Quest Box!

  “Carl, why is the quest called that?” Donut yelled. “And what did it mean at the end? I don’t like that.”

  “I have no idea. Hold on.” I curved the plane around the edge of the bubble. My skill went up another notch. The plane’s shudder eased. A little.

  Ahead, I could finally see it. It wasn’t that far. A glowing presence filled the horizon, like a rising sun. It lit up this outside world, more and more the closer we got.

  This inbetween world, the lacuna, was more like an egg carton than just a sheet of bubble wrap. Each individual bubble was in a spot of its own, sunken in deep. The “land” of the lacuna, which I still couldn’t see, was only a few hundred feet below the waterline on our quadrant.

  Orthrus scrambled toward us, howling happily. The damn puppy seemed to have forgotten he’d almost died a minute before and was now joyfully crashing through the world outside the bubbles. The thing leaped atop the intact bubbles, which were apparently slippery. It bayed and fell sideways and rolled away. Bark, bark, bark, bark.

  The puppy was clearly out of range of the Meat Hooks spell, but it didn’t seem to matter. Spell or not, he had noticed us, and he wanted to catch us.

  Donut was shouting insults I couldn’t quite catch. The next two bubbles in line were both popped. The bubble on the left featured what appeared to be a massive cactus. The one on the right was a curved, concrete structure shaped like a half-moon. Both landscapes were only half-lit by the red glow on the horizon.

  The puppy pounced out of nowhere, landing heavily on the giant cactus world. It paused to piddle before resuming its chase. I cringed, hoping everybody within the cactus world was okay.

  Carl: Jesus, everybody, if your bubble is popped, get in a saferoom. Spread the word!

  “It’s going to catch us, Carl,” Donut cried. “If I get eaten by a giant, two-headed cocker spaniel so help me I will never forgive you.”

  “If it gets too close, turn off the spell!”

  Donut waved her paw frantically. “I can’t turn off the spell!” Her voice had gone up an octave. “There’s no button! There’s usually a button! The smoke won’t stop! The smell is just unbearable!”

  It was getting warmer by the moment. Katia’s last-minute tinkering seemed to have worked. We were moving quickly, almost 400 kilometers per hour. We were halfway there. As long as the god’s presence didn’t explode the damn airplane, we’d soon get the dog close enough that the god would notice. Behind us, the dog had veered away to investigate another world. But then its left head howled in our direction, and the chase was on.

  New Quest! Get Orthrus.

  This is a world quest! All living crawlers on the fifth floor will receive this message!

  Now it’s a party.

  Orthrus, the two-headed puppy is bounding his way happily through the Lacuna, the world that houses the bubbles. This very adorable pup is running back to his former master’s father. Don’t worry. You can’t miss him. He just drenched the folks in bubble 331, and then he knocked down the Sounder Tower in bubble 298.

  What a menace!

  Let’s kill it.

  Reward: Any crawler who kills this cute puppy before he reunites with grandpa will receive the following:

  One million gold pieces.

  Five level-up potions.

  A pet monkey named Jimbo.

  Current participants in the “Dumber of the Flunkies” group quest are free to kill the puppy if they are sadistic assholes, but they will not receive the rewards. You know what, never mind. They get the prize, too!

  “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?” I yelled. “Come on!”

  I immediately moved to send out a group message, but both Katia and Elle were already on it, telling everybody they would personally hunt down and murder anybody who so much as shot an arrow at the dog as it passed by their world.

  I banked left to move between two more intact bubbles. There was a line of unpopped worlds here, and I moved to fly past them, like we were diving into a ravine. Just as we plunged between the first two bubbles, Orthrus pounced, landing atop a bubble just above our heads. He made a happy aroo and bounced twice before sticking a paw down to bat at us.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I said, pushing the stick down and diving. We were so damn small compared to the monster, he probably couldn’t even see us. He was chasing the massive plume of smoke trailing behind us. The giant paw swiped at the smoke, missing us.

  “Carl, this was a terrible idea,” Donut yelled, still shaking her own paw like it was on fire, which made the smoke plume even bigger. She had six minutes left on the spell.

  Suddenly, both heads of the puppy yelped in surprise and pain at the same time. The sound was so loud and so sudden, I almost jumped out of my skin. I whipped my head around to look back. The health bar above his twin heads plummeted down as Orthrus fell away and out of sight. He started yelping pitifully and loudly in the darkness.

  “Goddamnit,” I growled. “Somebody hit it with a spell or something. Get ready to heal it.”

  “Carl, we have to get really close for the healing spell.”

  “I know,” I said, pulling up and leaving the protection of the ravine, turning away from the burning horizon. The plane whined as I dared to make a tight curve.

  “Someone else is out here!” Donut yelled.

  I saw the blue dot on my map, rocketing through the darkness high above us, banking back toward the puppy on roughly the same trajectory as us.

  You absolute fuck, I thought.

  He’d flown past the dog and hit it with some spell and was now circling back to finish him off.

  I didn’t have to see the crawler’s description to know who this was.

  I didn’t have the ability to message him directly. I’d only been able to talk to him once, during that first group quest on the third floor. We’d never actually met. There was no group chat for this world chat thing. If that ass managed to kill the dog, he’d effectively murder everyone in both our bubble and bubble 18.

  Carl: If someone has Quan Ch in their chat, tell him to back the fuck off.

  31

  Tran: I have him on my chat! I said he’d kill us if he hurt the dog, and he said, “Sorry, but it’s too good of a prize. Plus, if I get that fucking cat in the process it’d be a bonus.”

  “What did I do?” Donut yelled, not bothering to put it in chat.

  Donut had mentioned how much she hated the “cheater” Quan no less than twenty times since he’d gotten that celestial box at the end of the third floor. I wasn’t surprised that this had somehow gotten back to him. They’d probably shown him clips during an interview.
/>   I sent a quick, frantic question to Mordecai, and he answered with one word.

  Mordecai: Yes.

  “Hit him with a goddamn magic missile,” I yelled. I put my hand back, holding it out toward Donut. “And give me that potion. Mordecai’s special brew.”

  Donut shot a missile, but she missed by a wide margin. At this speed, it was difficult to properly aim and fire. The potion appeared in my hand, and I pulled it into my inventory. Donut knew by now not to ask questions at times like this.

  Thanks to the inventory system, it allowed me to prepare the potion without having to actually pull it out. I mentally clicked on the potion in the list and dragged it to the other item Mordecai had given me that same day he’d created the potion for us. The items combined, and a new item was created.

  Orthrus was cowering, ears flattened on both of his heads. He’d shoved himself between two bubbles, one popped and another intact, The popped world was heavily forested. If there’d been any sort of raised air quadrant, it was gone now. The dog whimpered as he backed away from the approaching Quan. His health was at 20%.

  We lined up behind Quan, who’d lowered and was moving in to strike again. I’d seen his main attack a few times on the recap episode, and it had a relatively short range. It was some sort of blue lightning energy strike that came from his left hand. He’d used it to crash trains on the previous floor.

  He’d be in range to strike the dog again in about twenty seconds.

  “Try it again,” I growled.

  A magic missile sizzled by my ear as Donut shot directly at the flying man. The bolt hit him square in the back.

  He staggered in the air, but nothing else happened. He recovered almost immediately. A health bar didn’t even appear. A translucent shield shimmered for just a moment. He looked over his shoulder at us. He gave a little grin.

  “He’s cheating, Carl,” Donut yelled. “He has a shield!”

  “It’s that goddamned robe,” I said. The celestial-tier item gave him his flying ability, the lightning attack, and presumably the shield. We’d seen hints of the shield before. Lucia Mar had something similar. Mordecai said the robe also likely added multiple other benefits we didn’t know about, like enormous stat boosts and additional special abilities or spells.

  The protection was probably a level-15 Shield spell, but we didn’t know for sure. Shield was one of the spells Mordecai and I had discussed extensively. We were going to use all of our money to buy a tome of it the next floor so we could give it to Donut.

  If this was a level-15 shield, it’d last for as long as his intelligence stat times three seconds, however long that was. It protected against most attacks, including explosions and magic. However, it wasn’t a spell of invulnerability. Psionic, aural, and cloud-based attacks still worked. Blunt force trauma still staggered the caster, and the shield itself had hit points. Do enough damage and *poof* the shield was gone. The total health points of the shield went up based on level. At 15, it was something crazy, like ten times the caster’s constitution.

  We’d seen Quan Ch run instead of fight multiple times, so the shield either had a long cooldown or the guy was just a wuss. He was at level 48, one higher than myself. He had an incalculable number of neighborhood and borough boss kill stars over his head. He didn’t have any skulls, despite all the damage he’d done on the previous floor. But he fought dirty. He was like a vulture. He preyed on the weak and the almost dead, stealing kills from others. I was willing to bet he would turn tail the moment he sensed he was in any real danger.

  We were moving faster than him and would overtake him in seconds, but he could blow us out of the sky with the flick of a wrist. I’d watched him crush the front of an onrushing train with little effort.

  “Donut,” I yelled as we approached. “Set your sunglasses so you can see his heat signature! And then empty the gun into him as we pass! Magic missiles, too!” I leveled the plane and clicked the gyroscope, locking our trajectory in place. If he maintained his position, we’d pass under him by about thirty feet.

  Ahead, the massive, mountain-sized Orthrus loomed.

  “Carl, he’s going to blow us up!”

  “If this doesn’t work, jump!”

  I pulled myself up out of the seat and moved to the right, grasping onto the metal pole that connected the top wing to the fuselage. I stepped out onto the lower wing, anchoring myself to the plane as the wind whipped at me and threatened to throw me out into the darkness. The small, starboard propellor whined, right in front of me. I needed to be careful.

  “Carl, Carl! What are you doing!”

  “Switch your glasses now,” I yelled as I extended my xistera and loaded the hobgoblin disco ball. Quan turned his head to gauge our position, and I saw his eyes go wide at the sight of me on the wing. He banked away and flipped in midair, left hand glowing as I tossed the ball, avoiding the propellor by inches.

  His shield was still intact, but the disco ball exploded over his chest anyway, knocking him back. The sticky, sand-like residue clung to the outside of the shield like mud. A rainbow of smoke started to billow from the impact. He waved frantically at it as the smoke rose. He cast a bolt, but it flew wide.

  We zipped past Quan, who was still positioned above us. The gun rattled to life. Donut shrieked with joy as she fired the gun at her prey. A double-shot, full powered magic missile slammed into the cloud.

  “I hit him! I hit him!”

  I loaded a fused hob-lobber, designated it with my new remote detonator skill and tossed it at the growing plume of pulsing, rainbow smoke. Even with my new ability to toss these things twice as far, I’d waited a hair too long to throw it. Still, I set it off right when the ball started to dip. The explosion crackled through the air, twenty feet short of the ever-growing plume.

  I knew from experience that was plenty close to do its job.

  The sizzling and crackling circle of pulsing rainbow smoke plummeted out of the sky. I couldn’t see Quan himself. The disco-ball remnants were sticky, and they adhered to his chest and followed him as he fell like a comet. He disappeared below.

  “Did we kill him? Did we?” Donut yelled.

  “No,” I shouted, pulling myself back into the cockpit. I resumed control and banked to the right. We flew over the dog, barely 50 feet over the top of the head. If he reared up now, we’d get splattered. “But he’s gonna be mighty sore and deaf. Hopefully that ran him off. Cast your heal spell.”

  Below, Orthrus whimpered. Donut healed him, and I pulled up, angling between two bubbles. We brought the health back up to 70%, which had the unfortunate and immediate side effect of renewing the dog’s interest in chasing us. The Meat Hooks spell still spewed from Donut’s paw.

  The thing howled as he jumped to its feet. I turned the plane sharply, growing more confident in my ability to steer, angling back in the correct direction.

  “Carl, more crawlers!” Donut shouted just as I saw the new threat.

  A metal-skinned dirigible shaped like a fish emerged in front and below us. The slow-moving airship had come out of nowhere. I watched as twin harpoons shot from the flying machine, right at the dog.

  “Goddamnit,” I cried.

  They were flying too low and too slow. The harpoons fell short of their target, and I watched as three crawlers jumped away as the dog smashed into them, not even noticing their presence. The fish-shaped balloon exploded and disappeared against the fur. I suspected the crawlers who’d jumped out hadn’t fared much better.

  “Serves you right!” Donut yelled as we zoomed forward. Ahead, I could now see the god. I could feel him, too, heat rising like we were slowly approaching a campfire.

  Emberus. The humanoid god looked asymmetrical from behind. A massive, curved horn erupted from the left side of his head. His right side appeared caved-in, almost like that kid with compression sickness. The horn smoked like an incense stick. The god’s skin was made of curls of orange and red fire, licking up and down, all coming together to vaguely form a muscular human-shaped
body. From the descriptions of the others, his skin was normally like a gooey, blue-hued rock, and he’d only set himself fully alight the moment he started shrieking at the dog soldier woman. The god was massive, but not as big as I thought he’d be. If he was sized as a regular human, Orthrus would be like a large horse to him. The god was leaned against a bubble, pounding on it with a giant fist, shouting over and over. The bubble wall glowed red.

  Sun and Ash God Emberus. Level 250.

  Warning: This is a deity. He is invulnerable on this floor.

  This is a locked god. There will be no sponsors of this deity this season.

  This god has been summoned to this location. Summoning rules apply.

  The youngest brother of Taranis, and half of the sun duology, Emberus strongly feels he is the best-suited candidate to ascend to the Celestial Throne. Known to be stoic and indifferent to the suffering of all but those he feels worthy, Emberus can be a just god if the fancy strikes him. The problem is the fancy hasn’t struck in a very long time. He’s usually an unmitigated asshole who’ll arbitrarily burn everyone you know and love just for looking at him funny. He’s considered one of the most unhinged of all the pantheon.

  His twin brother is Hellik, another sun god who is quite obsessed with killing both Emberus and big brother Taranis. It’s a very dysfunctional relationship. I guess most families are like this. You probably don’t want to get involved.

  Emberus’s very presence can be deadly to crawlers, and that’s just when he’s in his regular form. When he gets emotional, things really start to heat up.

  Word on the street is that since his favorite son was murdered by an unknown assailant, Emberus has been acting even kookier than usual. The dude plucked his own eyes out in his grief. It was really gross.

  We were still miles away, but the heat was rising by the moment. We wouldn’t be able to get much closer. We needed the damn god to just turn around. He’s blind. That’s not going to make a difference.

  He’d somehow sensed the dog soldier woman. But how?