Chapter 26

Carl and Donut return to the land quadrant to rejoin Katia and the others, who have prepared an assault on the sandcastle of the Mad Dune Mage. They discover two possible strategies for breaching the castle—an easy flooding method or a difficult lightning-based door opening—and Katia has chosen the harder path to preserve a chance at obtaining the mage's winding box. As a sandstorm approaches, Carl solves an electrical wiring puzzle, and the group enters the castle through the magically activated hallway.

The chapter opens with Carl observing the balloon carrying the flying house descending toward the land quadrant. The house's top half has been violently removed to allow Katia to store it in her inventory, with water pipes damaged and a chainsaw buzzard responsible for the chaos. Firas and Louis brief Carl on developments during his absence: Katia successfully transported the house and breached the castle's magical door, but has been waiting for Carl and Donut to return. The stairwell from the master bedroom is now stored a half mile east of town, to be protected during the incoming Red Equinox weather change. Carl reviews updates from other bubbles via chat—Bautista has cleared his quadrant, Li Jun and Li Na are storming an underwater castle, and various other crawlers face their own challenges, including Lucia Mar suffering a psychotic break and Miriam Dom being cursed into a vampire form. Upon landing, Carl reunites with Katia, who greets him warmly, and meets Gwendolyn Duet, a level-34 fighter from Canada with tribal tattoos who has been helping assault the castle and is frustrated by delays. Through a chat conversation, Katia explains the strategic situation: the sandcastle contains only sand with a buried stairwell, and the mage Ghazi has transformed himself into a sand elemental to search for the Gate of the Feral Gods. Two approaches exist—Gwen's preferred easy method involves opening a drainage panel to flood the castle, but this would destroy the mage and the winding box. The harder method requires using lightning during the sandstorm to activate an electrical door that opens a glass hallway into the castle for approximately two hours. Katia promised Gwen they would attempt the lightning method to obtain the winding box. As the storm arrives, Carl examines the electrical cables attached to the two towers framing the doorway and discovers one cable is disconnected and too long. He instructs a crawler to drag it to a drainage wheel. Lightning strikes the towers during the sandstorm, electrifying the doorway and revealing a glowing hallway leading into darkness. Katia rushes inside, and Carl prepares to follow.