The Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #4)

by Matt Dinniman

They started ripping at each other, causing a cloud of blood to bloom under us.

serious whackadoodle business, let me tell you. You ever see a guy give birth to a fortune-telling, snake-headed cow out of his thigh? Or a woman whose menstrual blood is sentient?

Ever since that first monkey looked up into the sky and saw something twinkling up there, you meat puppets have tried to force twenty pounds of existential meaning into a ten pound sack of chaos.

One of the greatest things about having a religion is the unshakeable certainty that you’re right and everyone else who doesn’t believe the same as you is wrong!

My safe word is, “Harder, Daddy.”

Larracos is like a dream. It is a living, breathing poem. A song. One that marks itself indelibly onto your bones the moment you experience it the first time. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s an inverted funnel of museums and galleries and colleges and of color. The NPCs live here. They have purpose and life. For the first time since we have been dragged into this horror, I feel awe and wonder and something other than rage. But it is a tainted and fleeting feeling. This city should not be here. It is too beautiful to be used in such a terrible, senseless way. I still don’t fully understand the fable with the volcano and the centipede at the bottom and what sort of metaphor, if any, it’s supposed to represent, but whoever designed this wonder at the center of the ninth floor was someone who appreciates fine detail and the art of turning the mundane into visual music. It is too beautiful, too real not to be a copy of someplace that truly existed, and it is difficult for my mind to make sense of it. For the first time, I don’t know where the real ends and the nightmare begins, and it has taken my breath away.

None of these buildings stand. It is all destroyed in the pursuit of an imaginary prize. This makes my heart hurt. This volcano world is obviously a fairy tale. But is this city real? It looks real. It smells real. There is history here. And if so, what’s the purpose of giving this to us? To show us a wonder that once existed, to remind us that they don’t care what they destroy? To beat us further into submission? And what of the NPCs? What of their suffering? I fear what will happen to my mind when I see it destroyed.