“My friend Mordecai was once a frog creature like you,” Donut said as we entered Hungry Eyes Village. “He did this annoying croaking thing a lot, but you got used to it. You don’t croak so much. He was really good at picking things up with his tongue.”

“I’m a toad, not a frog,” Olga said.

“Isn’t that like the same thing? My other friend Prepotente said that while frogs and toads can’t have babies with each other and they look a little different, that toads are biologically the same despite what they teach humans in school. You’ll meet him in a minute. He says people have a lot of their facts wrong. Like blood in veins isn’t really blue that just turns red when it hits oxygen or that frequent self-abuse makes you blind. Carl’s vision has always been 20/20. It used to make Miss Beatrice jealous because she had to wear contact lenses.” She paused. “Then again, she did have that drawer that was not filled with cat toys, if you know what I’m saying.”

“What are you talking about?” Olga asked.

I was struck by how much emptier the streets seemed. The street vendors were all still about, but the number of racers walking around had clearly thinned.

I caught sight of Elle, Imani, Florin, and the others standing near the end of the street with the restaurants and the temples. Prepotente was there, too, but Jurgen wasn’t. Donut waved furiously, and we started walking toward them.

“I had a vision from our lord,” Quemada the fairy whispered to me as we passed the temple that led to Club Vanquisher. The fairy’s presence was hot on my shoulder and ear. Her wings were made of smoke. “He told me if I came across a fellow worshipper who was also a racer that I was to help him in any way I could. We have been tasked with slaying his brother. An impossible mission yet one we must strive to complete.”

I gave the fairy a sidelong glance. She was much smaller than Elle but larger than most of the regular fairies we came across. “If you’re so gung ho on helping, then why’d you raise the price?”

“Because I know we will be slain when we attempt to kill Hellik, and the fee will help keep Olga and Finley safe for some time. These races are much more dangerous with each heat. And since you can’t hire me more than once, we will need to make our attempt now, while we can. That fee will allow them to take a break, and perhaps they will survive this current challenge. I have already lost one friend, and I do not wish to lose more. This makes our martyrdom much more comforting, does it not?” She put her small hand on my shoulder. My cape started to smolder under her touch. “Prepare yourself, brother. The unappeasable fire beckons us.”

“Yeah. Right,” I said.

I was a little alarmed at this sudden turn, but this whole Kill Hellik quest had been festering in the back of my mind. I needed to make sure the god was dead before the end of the eleventh floor. And if the floor was truncated? That meant I should probably deal with this problem as soon as possible. I needed to plan and prepare something. We’d been so focused on just surviving this floor, I hadn’t been thinking of it.

That was a mistake, and I knew it. But even at our strength, it was, indeed, an impossible task.

My choices were to kill Hellik. Not kill Hellik. Remove myself from Emberus as a worshipper. Or kill Emberus.

None of the choices were good. If I left the church or if I failed the quest, I would receive a smite. That could take any form, but it usually resulted in death.

Emberus had told me directly that if I killed his brother, he would kill me for daring to complete the quest he gave me. So completing the quest was just as dangerous.

That pretty much only left me with one option. Kill Emberus. But how? Even if he wasn’t invulnerable on this floor and the next, I couldn’t even get anywhere near him without burning to dust. We had Katia’s bolt, which removed his invulnerability for a few seconds, but this was a particularly powerful god. And if I did kill him, I would be marked for death by all the other gods.

I was fucked no matter which path I took.

Still, we weren’t ready to deal with any of that right now. These races were hard enough just trying to survive. I didn’t need a religious-fanatic fairy pushing the inevitable along.

“We’re not ready to face Hellik,” I said.

Imani and Louis came jogging up.

I waved, but I remained distracted. I remembered my brief conversation with Hellik on the last floor. Other than maybe the true form of Eileithyia, Hellik was the most normal of the gods we’d met so far. He didn’t come across as completely psychotic and unhinged as his brother.

And there was Eris, who⁠—

Donut suddenly yowled and jumped several feet upward, all poofed out.

The world froze. Donut remained stationary in the air.

System Message: Eris has entered the Realm.

You are in the presence of a Deity. The Scavenger’s Daughter has opened her eyes. She fills with power.

Random Effect! As Eris is the goddess of chaos, this effect will change each time you are in her presence.

Temporary effect from Eris:

A random temporary magical effect or item or aura from someone in your presence other than yourself will become permanent.

“What the shit?” I said upon realizing I wasn’t frozen. I sighed. “Eris? Where are you?”

The woman tapped me on the shoulder, and I jumped, finding her behind me. She was sitting on the cart of a food vendor. This was one of the guys selling meat on a stick. The gremlin proprietor was frozen like everyone else.

Eris looked the same as the last time I had seen her atop the tower. She was about my height. Swirl pattern on her lips. She held vaguely snakelike features. Her mouth seemed just a little too big, and she smiled wide at me and stuck out her forked tongue.

I blinked at her description. I noted a few changes since the last time I’d seen her.

Goddess of Chaos Eris. Level 251.

This deity has lost her sponsor and can no longer be sponsored this season.

This deity is invulnerable on this floor.

This deity has been summoned by <Error>

In addition to the weird error, she was a level higher than she’d been before, which I thought was impossible. This likely had something to do with what Orren had told me regarding the gods getting “loose.” They were just popping around wherever they wanted instead of following the rules. But it still appeared they were invulnerable.

“You summoned me?” Eris asked.

“I did not,” I said.

“Well, my ears were burning. I’m pretty sure you summoned me. I certainly feel summoned.”

I hadn’t summoned her. But I had thought of her. I felt a chill.

Next to her on the cart, the food storage bin popped up, and a small but familiar figure jumped out. He had a meat skewer in his mouth, and he grunted as he climbed up her dress to perch on her shoulder.

“What the shit?” I asked. It was a tiny Uzi Jesus. I was pretty sure it was an action figure. A robot, like robot Donut.

The robot took a bite of the giant meat skewer and then spat it out. He tossed the skewer on the ground. “This tastes like apostate ass.”

Eris giggled and gave the robot toy a little pat. “Say hi to Carl, my little pet.”

“Hi, Carl,” robot Uzi Jesus said. He had a single toy—at least I hoped it was a toy—Uzi in his hand, and he waved it at me. He looked about. “Oh, there’s Florin! Can we go kill him? He gave me up!”

“No, pet,” Eris said, also looking at the Crocodilian. “We need him alive. As soon as he cracks that mystery open, we’ll be done with him. Today we’re dealing with Carl.” She turned to look me up and down.

“How did you know I was married?” I asked. “And what’s the story with Britney and Ysalte?”

“I am all knowing,” she replied. “But we’re not here to talk about your wife. Or the pickaxe that may or may not eventually kill your friend and everyone you love. You have a more pressing problem, Carl, and once again, I am here ready to offer a solution.” She thumbed over at the large, now-lit C&W&U restaurant at the end of the street. “And also to give you a heads-up about that place.”

I eyed Donut, who remained hovering in midair. She had yowled just before she’d gotten frozen. She was wearing her kneepads, which meant she’d also received a notification that Eris had entered the realm. The last time she’d been unconscious.

“What does that temporary buff mean? What magical effect will become permanent?”

“Not on you, unfortunately, though you should be grateful this didn’t happen when you still had that costume on because I thought it was adorable. This effect is for someone nearby.” She tapped her lips, then pointed to Imani. “I think Imani will be able to explain it after I leave.”

“She’s pretty banging,” robot Uzi Jesus said, also looking at Imani.

Eris patted Jesus on the head. Unlike the “real” version, his halo was attached via a wire, and it bent under her touch. “We don’t judge on appearance, little one. We judge based on the amount of rot in their soul. Remember what I taught you? Look at the color of the swirls.”

“Her swirls are pretty banging, too,” he said.

“Okay, what do you want?” I asked.

Eris turned to me, her smile vanishing instantly.

She’s insane, I thought. Insane and endlessly dangerous.

“You’re running out of time, Carl. You need to deal with your Emberus problem. Ditch him, worship me, and I will protect you from his spite. We will kill him and his brother and my half brother, too.” She spun her finger in the air. Sparkles followed. “But not yet. We have plans in motion, and we need all three.” She paused. “Their mother, too, has gotta go, but she’s a special case.”

I took a breath. “Yeah?” I said. “And what do you get out of it?”

She burst out laughing.

From her shoulder, Jesus also laughed and fired his toy Uzi in the air. It made a tiny popping noise.

“I want the Ascendent throne, Carl. I’m just playing the game. But that doesn’t mean you can’t win, too. You are an agent of chaos. You need me. And I like you. You are unpredictable, and believe me, for someone like myself, it’s a joy.”

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing just yet. I’ll tell you when to make the switch. But for now, three things need to happen. You need to make nice with Akuma and his merry band of head-exploding mages. He really does have a way to crack open the Pineapple Cabaret. He thinks it’s his exit ticket. It’s so much more than that, of course. It’s a good thing, especially to all you crawlers. The war mages will turn on you at the end probably. But not right away. You need each other.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t care what happens to them as long as the path to the Cabaret is open. Just know it is a way for some of your friends to escape. When I win the Ascendency, I can do whatever I want. I can send you and all your friends there. I can take you to the surface. I can rebuild your world, if I want. All I ask is one simple thing. You worship me. And I mean truly worship. Not just go through the motions. Such a small price to pay.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “So you want me to do whatever this Akuma guy wants, and you want me to worship you. What’s the third thing?”

She grinned. “You need to allow me to score your surface a bit. You know, like how you sand a wall a little before you paint it? You strip off the old paint, rough it up a little. You gotta break things down before you can build them up.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She spat into her own hand, and a large coin appeared. “Ever seen one of these? It’s a five-sided coin.”

She showed it to me. It appeared to be just a regular coin. It was about the size of a poker chip but metal. It had her laughing face on one side and a swirl on the other. “This is the base form. But now we will reveal the five sides.” She turned it again, and words and an image appeared. One side showed Donut’s face with the word “RIP.” The other side read “Carl de-feeted” spelled “F-E-E-T” with a pair of bloody, severed feet. She flipped it again, and it changed to a pile of dead bodies with the caption “Most of my friends are dead.” She flipped it one more time. It showed me hanging upside down by one foot from the branch of a tree, though I had a smile on my face. The edges of the coin were filled with player-killer skulls. It read, “I become what they accuse me of.”

“Wait,” I said, panic rising. “What are you doing? What does that mean?”

“Before the Ascendent is chosen, one of these four results has to happen.” She handed the coin toward Jesus. “If you would be so kind as to flip this for me? We don’t want Carl thinking I had my hand on the scale.”

“Wait,” I said again. That rushing feeling had returned, only it felt like it was all rushing around me all at once. On my chest, the long-dormant Eye of the Bedlam Bride was open, burning a hole in my shirt.

I held out my hand. “Stop, stop! What the hell? What if I worship you? I’ll do it right now. Just tell me what to do.”

Eris laughed. “I told you already. I want a true worshipper. That’s the only way this will work. You already embrace the chaos, but it isn’t your religion. True faith first requires a crucible. Look at Jesus here. Your mythology put him through insufferable torment.”

“Yeah, it fucking sucked,” Jesus said.

“If you deliberately do any of those things, I swear I will end you.”

She cackled with laughter. “I know, right? I can’t wait.” To Jesus, she said, “Flip it, pet.”

The small robot shoved his tiny Uzi into his waistband and grabbed the coin with two hands. “Up you go,” he said. He heaved the coin.

“No!” I cried again, and I reached out and grabbed the coin as it flipped in midair. I grasped it and wrapped it in my right hand. The coin burned, but I didn’t let go.

Eris laughed and clapped with delight. “You picked the fifth side! Great! Chaos wins again!”

I felt the coin dissolve. When I opened my fingers, it was gone, but I now had a swirl pattern tattooed on my palm. The pattern spun on its own, like a slow-motion Signet tattoo. I tried to examine it.

I don’t even know what the hell this is. This bitch is coloring outside the lines.

I just stared at my palm for several moments. Jesus, bored, moved back to the food cart and grabbed another meat skewer.

“What is the fifth choice?” I finally asked.

Eris shrugged and then hopped off the food cart. “It’s one of the other four choices, or two of them, or three of them. Or all of them. Or none of them. Chaos. Random.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. “We’ll see what you get, Carl, my soon-to-be-favorite worshipper.”