All racers proceed to the starting line. Heat three starts in five minutes.

“Yeah, bitch. Yeah, bitch. I’m ready. Let’s do this!” Gluteus Maxx shouted.

He was bouncing up and down, bellowing and revving the engine as he clapped his hands. He slammed the horn.

Make way for the big shot! Bawk!

“Can you not?” I said.

We’d picked the short, hairy stripper to drive this race because the kangaroo suit made it difficult for me to reach the pedals properly. Of all the strippers, he was the best at Mario Kart.

I could still taste the Harbinger guts. I’d been expecting Orren or Zev or even the AI to say something more, but we’d just teleported back to the garage, still covered in gore. We hadn’t heard anything.

It seemed so stupid, us having to still do this bullshit while all that craziness happened outside the dungeon. I wondered if the gods leaking would cause people to stop watching and focus more on what was happening out there, but based on my stats, our views hadn’t let up.

I inspected my furry kangaroo claws and sighed. At least the suit was clean-ish again.

All the occupants of the garage had just stared at us when we appeared, nobody asking what had happened. Mongo came up to me, sniffed, squeaked, and started furiously licking my leg before Donut shooed him away. We moved to the showers and cleaned all the gore off before we went back to work.

Now, several hours later, it was time to race. I examined Gluteus Maxx as he continued to vibrate with enthusiasm.

The hairy man had removed his gauntlets. He still wore his usual outfit, which was nothing except a Speedo, but he now wore a hockey helmet that he’d borrowed from the pile of discarded gear.

It was him driving, Donut in the passenger’s seat—secured in her new “chair”—and me crouched down between the two. This position was difficult in the kangaroo suit. The two ghouls were lined up behind me in the back of the truck, both situated in their cages, their teeth chattering.

“What’re you gonna do with that gun, you dragon bitch!” Gluteus shouted out the window at the APV next to us.

The Draconian mercenary sitting atop the APV for One Fine Pig said something I couldn’t hear. The dragon-faced mercenary manned a massive heavy machine gun. I eyed the gun warily.

I marked the Draconian with two denial-of-service missiles and the gun itself with two more of the same. I’d fire them as soon as we were free.

They weren’t our target for this one. I didn’t want to kill the vehicle, but I wanted to keep them from trying to kill us and hopefully slow them down enough that we didn’t have to worry about them.

I selected the four remaining missiles in my eight-pack launcher and programmed them.

By this point, all the teams would have shields. Direct attacks would likely do nothing. So we had to kill them in different ways. I just hoped these missiles worked as advertised. This was a Rosetta idea. It was a different recipe than what we had in the potion balls, but just as insidious.

Race starts in five minutes. Starting blocks loading.

That was told in the regular voice of the AI.

“Starting blocks?” I asked.

Dr. Metcalf beeped.

A new rule has been announced. Each team for this heat will be contained in a starting block shield that will provide invulnerability to your vehicle for the first ninety seconds of this race. This will not affect controls.

“Shit,” I said. “Dr. Metcalf, what sort of shield is it?”

How should I know? Have you upgraded me like I asked you to? I’d probably know if I was upgraded. But no. Instead, you let them pick that chair for your cat. It’s almost like you don’t care about me at all.

“What?” I asked.

The answer is no. I don’t know.

“Shit,” I said again. But then I thought this might actually be a good thing.

I started calculating how long the missiles would take to arc through the air. If I timed it properly, it’d keep the other teams from firing on us. Or each other. I could trust the bugbears and the razor foxes not to do anything too stupid, and the Lady Dominators were under the impression we were working together for this race, but we had to make sure both team Sparkles and One Fine Pig didn’t go on a murder spree.

Chiyome: Do we need to alter our plans?

Carl: It’s okay. I think we’re good.

Ahead, the asphalt track was straight and very wide. It had to be a hundred meters from side to side. It swept straight down like a ski ramp. On either side of the road was just lush green grass as far as I could see. A red alien sun crackled above. The temperature outside was nice and warm.

“My goodness,” Donut said, struggling to peer out the windshield. “I think I can see the finish line from here. The road really is steep.”

“Great observation, my precious princess,” her new chair said.

“Thank you, Dorota,” Donut replied.

The original voice was that of a creepy dude, but Donut had insisted it change to that of a woman “with a Polish accent.” I had no idea why, and I didn’t want to ask.

At first glance, the new chair on the passenger’s side of the van was just a regular bucket seat. You couldn’t tell there was anything different about it until Donut sat in it.

Apparently, this was a real product out in the universe. Rosetta said videos of these things had been going viral right before she’d come to Earth.

It was called a Smart Companion Royal Pet Throne. This was the Ultimate Diamond Pampered Pet Princess edition.

It was a pet chair designed for long road trips. It could be installed in cars, spaceships, boats, and more. It could be used by regular people, and nothing would happen, but the moment the chair’s assigned “princess” sat upon it, a small, fluffy, rectangular bed appeared. The chair adjusted like a gyro, and it would supposedly keep her safe in case of an accident.

But the chair did a lot more than that, too. It also monitored her vitals and offered her “relief” when she was stressed. We still didn’t know what that meant.

It also talked. The thing clearly wasn’t a real intelligence like Dr. Metcalf. It was more like the robot Donut toys. It seemed its main goal was to keep Donut happy at all costs. It did that by agreeing with everything she said and randomly complimenting her.

I suspected it would quickly wear thin, but for now, Donut was pretty excited about it, especially when she discovered it could feed her snacks on demand.

I had no idea why she had named it Dorota. I did know that its very existence pissed off Dr. Metcalf.

“Your fur is quite luxurious today, Princess,” the chair said. “Your enemies will quiver with envy.”

Dr. Metcalf beeped.

Oh, do shut up.

“See what I mean?” the chair replied. “The jealously runs deep on that one.”

You want to know what’s going to run deep? My virtual foot up your ass if you don’t shut the fuck up.

“Stop fighting,” Donut said. “The race is about to start!”

“Very diplomatic, my princess,” Dorota said.

From behind, the two ghouls groaned.

Race starts in two minutes. Racers, start your engines or prime your mounts.

For this race, we were all lined up side by side with us on the end. To our immediate left was the large APV of team One Fine Pig. I couldn’t see any of the teams past them from my position, but we were in the order we’d placed in the last race. So it was team Sparkles, then the Jugglers, then team Free Love, then the Wild Hunt, then the Lady Dominators, then One Fine Pig, and us at the end.

“We need to be quick, but we gotta be careful,” I said to Gluteus. “That’s gotta be a 30-degree angle. We go too fast, we’re gonna flip.”

“Yeah, we’ll flip. We’ll flip into victory,” he said. “Man, I wish Steve was still with us. He’d love this shit. He wasn’t a pussy. He’d want me to go even faster.”

Even through the fur, I could see the veins on his arms bulging as he rocked back and forth.

Holy shit, this one is worse than the last one. Where’d you find these idiots?

“Actually, I don’t think that is the finish line,” Donut said, distracted, leaning in. She was using her zoom ability. “It’s like a big blue-and-yellow dome. It’s hard to tell at this angle.”

Gluteus turned toward me, and that’s when I noticed how red his eyes were.

Oh, fuck me.

“Gluteus, are you on something?”

He cackled and slammed the horn again. “Samantha found some outworlder uppers in that garbage pile from the snake guy. She said if one takes them before a race, one can taste time. It’s what she’s been taking to win at Mario Kart. And you know what? She’s right. That’s why I took two.” He leaned in closer. “The space between each individual second tastes like cotton candy mixed with the sweat dripping off the tits of a randy high elf priestess. It’s fucking delicious.” He then howled like a goddamned dog.

Shit, shit, shit. We were at the line. It was too late to kick him out. We didn’t have time to set up the Donut driving apparatus. I couldn’t drive like this.

“Donut,” I said, moving back, “get your Laundry Day spell ready! We don’t have a goddamned choice. You have to get this suit off of me!”

“Carl, no! Mordecai said it could really hurt you, even kill you! Wait, do you feel that?”

The ground rumbled.

Dr. Metcalf beeped.

We will be sharing the track with migrating Sugar Hermits.

The truck rocked as a wave of wailing, colorful Samantha-sized creatures rushed past. They started to tumble down the road, rolling and clicking and screaming. There were literally thousands of them. Tens of thousands.

“What the heck are those things?” Donut asked. “They’re like Imani heads! Why are they screaming?”

They were skulls. Dozens of types, all painted in festive colors, like Day of the Dead sugar skulls.

“Fuck yeah!” Gluteus shouted, revving the engine. “Let’s do this!”

One of the skull things pinged off the roof and rolled down the windshield. This one was white with orange highlights. It was the skull of a goblin. The teeth were painted in alternating colors. A dozen little purple tentacles reached out from the interior, leaving a slime trail. The slime hovered a good inch off the windshield. The invulnerability shield had already activated.

Each tentacle had a little barb on the end. Next to us, the Draconian shouted, but it seemed he, too, was protected. Still, one of the sugar skulls had attached itself to his head. This was a bigger skull, like that of an ogre. The tentacles wrapped around the neck of the Draconian, giving him a bizarre appearance. It appeared the creature was trying to rip the mercenary’s head off, but it gave up after a second and rolled away.

Despite being protected, the Draconian started shouting in panic. He went to his hands and knees and started banging on the roof of the APV to be let inside.

“Holy shit,” I said as I examined one of the skulls.

Female Sugar Hermit. Level 11.

These horrific little terrors feed off of two things. Brains and bones. And they are experts at extracting both.

They wear skulls like a snail wears a shell. They are agile, and they are fast.

Still, I thought they were kinda boring-looking, so I gussied them up. Yeah, yeah, cultural appropriation, this and that. Suck it. They look freakin’ badass!

The sugar hermits you see today are all female, and they are migrating. They’re migrating toward the kaiju skull that blocks the finish line. Why? Because I fucking said so. They’ll lay their eggs in it or some shit. It doesn’t matter. Hopefully they won’t get in your way. Or, worse, they get their little tentacles wrapped around that prime real estate y’all are carrying around on your shoulders.

The good news is this race is only twenty minutes long.

“Yeeeaaa-fucking-haw!” Gluteus shouted.