“Are you fucking kidding me?” I cried.

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

Temporary effect from Grull: All four-legged creatures in your presence, friend or enemy, are temporarily given 2× power to their most powerful attack.

“He’s behind us!” Donut shrieked.

Prepotente: Carl, this is most inconvenient!

“We don’t have time to deal with him right now,” I yelled. The end of the room loomed. “Donut . . .”

“I’m on it!”

I turned to see the giant bullheaded centaur creature with the enormous axe standing in the midst of the molten steel.

The god cackled with glee.

“What do we have here?” he called, his voice shaking the walls. “Carl, where are you? I’ve been waiting for your dumb ass to accidentally summon me.”

We exited the room, and the track abruptly ended. The next ceiling over was even higher, and I hadn’t prepared the spider legs. So instead, we just drove right off.

“Hang on!” I shouted. “We’re gonna . . .”

We flipped violently like a buoy. From behind, everyone cried out and fell heavily to the floor. Donut yowled, getting smushed between Corcunda and Dong.

Bubble Buddy activated. We continued our forward trajectory, now slowly falling through the air like a glider coming in for a landing.

This room was another big one, and it was filled with thousands of crates.

The cars that were ahead of us rocketed toward the distant exit, which appeared to be just a single door.

I kept the Limbo upgrade activated as we slowly dropped, occasionally hitting the rocket to cover more distance.

Warning: Race ends in 5 minutes.

“Hail! Grull has come for me,” Corcunda groaned as he helped Dong up. His voice remained the same as before, though his mannerisms were suddenly much more mantaur-like. “I thought I was free of the vile god when I split, but the moment I came back together, he sent me a message and told me I was to be punished for not being troo!”

“Not being what?” Donut asked.

The giant wall behind us exploded outward as the god crashed through. Molten metal started to spill into the room. There were cars and mounts everywhere falling and spinning, ignored by the god.

“I can feel you, Meat! You can’t hide from me. I made you a friend of my temple. Do you know what that means? It means I can find you even faster!”

“Oh, yes,” Grigori said from the floor. He’d banged his head and bled profusely from a scalp wound. “I should have asked if you worshipped a deity before you split. I apologize for my oversight.”

We were still in midair, gliding downward like a slow-moving paper airplane.

“He’s going to smite me,” Corcunda said. He turned to Dong, and he grabbed the old man’s hands with both sets of arms. The naked mantaur had a bright red jagged scar right down the middle of his face and chest. He wasn’t perfectly aligned. Little bulges appeared here and there along the seam.

The man shook his mulleted head. “Fellow warrior, I fear this was all for nothing!”

“He’s not coming for you. He’s coming for Carl!” Donut cried, scrambling up. She was absolutely soaked in red gore from the joining. “We need to get out of here before⁠—”

“There you are!”

Slam!

Grull swung his axe, and a wave of wind hit us just before we alighted, and crunched us heavily to the ground. We all stumbled anew. The roof crumpled in. The shield overloaded and winked out. One of our tires broke off and spun away. We spun out on the ground, turning sideways, and we would’ve flipped without the gyro. The slow-moving wave of molten metal lurched toward us, overtaking the automatons. And walking in that wave were literally hundreds of the elementals. They roared as one and started charging, quickly outpacing the angry god.

Grull stood only ankle deep in the molten metal. It didn’t seem to affect him. Donut shouted an order, and Dong pushed open the back door.

I caught sight of Sweety, far to the side, still high in the air, gliding on wings, feet flaming and trailing smoke, trying to get past all this.

“As tall as a mountain,” Corcunda muttered, looking up at the god.

Grull raised his axe over his head. “I’m gonna enjoy this, Meat!” Bubbles started to form around his shoulders. “After all this time, and you’re going to die like the little bitch that you . . . Gah!”

Donut finished casting Laundry Day.

The orc was ejected from the god’s chest. He dropped like a rock into the river of metal below.

“We don’t have time to kill you now,” Donut shouted. “Maybe next time!”

The Maestro was not, unfortunately, dead. The orc, while not invulnerable like the god itself, could not die here on the tenth floor. He could only be killed on floors where the rules stated outside tourists could perish, and there weren’t any of those left. He could still get splattered, but he would just regenerate a few minutes later.

Still, it probably hurt a whole lot, and for that, I was glad.

I knew from my discussions with Mordecai that he would appear in his quarters on the twelfth floor. But because of the AI’s new rules that everyone had to be wearing their soul armor no matter what, he’d come back to Grull, probably in just a few short minutes. This would be a problem if we ever made it to the twelfth floor—though that floor had some interesting rules regarding soul armor—but for right now, it gave us a few minutes before the Maestro would be back.

The god, however, was still here. And Corcunda was still marked for death.

I activated the spider legs, and we skittered off toward the exit, running as quickly as we could.

Grull snorted indignantly and looked about as we started to pull away.

“Corcunda,” the god roared, his voice deeper and much more terrifying now, “you have failed in your faith, and now you must be punished. You cannot hide. You cannot flee. Accept your punishment like the warrior you once were.”

Grull started casually walking toward us. The slag elementals were faster and would be on us sooner. The spider legs weren’t nearly as fast as the now-useless tires, and the howling monsters slowly gained on us. Ahead, all the survivors were attempting to queue up at the single exit to the room. This doorway, only wide enough for two, already had a wreck right at the entrance. A bulldozer-like vehicle was pushing it all through, but everyone was stopped, trapped, right in the path of the god and the elementals.

Many had clearly lost their containment, and multiple vehicles were on fire. Everyone was bunched together.

“Go, go, go!” Donut cried. “I’m going to cast⁠—”

“No,” Corcunda said, putting a hand on Donut as I swerved around a broken crate. The box was filled with screws. There were thousands of them, tens of thousands, millions, and they were just spilled everywhere in the chaos. The spider crunched over them like gravel.

“No,” he repeated. I watched over my shoulder as the mantaur reached down and encompassed Dong in a hug.

“You worried if I would no longer love you once I returned to this form. But how could I not? Even if you and Porky hadn’t made amends before we joined, how could I forget what we had? You have been nothing but a shining light in my life, and I want to thank you for always holding true. But now I have to go to Grull. The only way he will leave is once I am properly smitten.”

The naked mantaur removed the scarf from around his neck—the only thing he was wearing—and put it around Dong’s.

Warning: Race ends in 3 minutes.

The elderly stripper, whose health was almost all gone, reached high up and put his hand against the cheek of the mantaur. “My love,” he said, “do you really think I will ever leave your side again?”

He held his other arm out, and he pulled an item from his inventory.

The massive lance, which I hadn’t seen since the day I’d given him that damn sock, appeared in his hand. The man held it steady, straight with just a single hand, pointing it out the back of the open door of the truck.

Pointing it directly at the immortal god of war.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve tilted a giant,” he said.

“Wait,” Donut began. “Dong, no. Maybe we can . . .” But she trailed off. She looked back at me, eyes shining.

We had completed the quest, but we weren’t out of this yet. Grull would leave once Corcunda was gone. And if we waited too long, the Maestro would return.

The elementals were now much closer than Grull, who continued his matter-of-fact walk toward us. They had all left the slow-moving wave of molten metal behind.

“Hail, my love,” Corcunda said. He turned, faced the open exit to the truck, and fell onto his middle arms. His whole body glowed. “It will be an honor to be ridden one last time.”

What the fuck is even happening right now?

“Shut the hell up,” I snapped at the GPS.

Dong, still holding his lance, hopped easily upon the back of Corcunda.

Despite us going at full speed, the elementals would be on us soon. There were thousands of them stampeding in the room by now, with Grull pacing along behind them, patient, determined, inevitable. Nothing like the creature who normally controlled him.

“Wait, Dong, wait,” Donut said. “Let me cast this. It has to be cast on an object! I will cast it on your lance. It will activate right away, but it will increase in intensity for about fifteen seconds after I place it, so make sure you’re far away from us or else the lance will get ripped from your hand! It will help you get through the elementals!”

“What is it?” Dong asked.

“It’s called Big-Ass Magnet. It’s the spell we were going to use to capture Genesis and Rapture’s car.”

Corcunda snorted. “Poseurs,” he said.

We would have to slow down in a moment. The bulldozer had pushed a hole, and vehicles and mounts were streaming through.

“Casting now,” Donut said as we approached the exit.

“Goodbye, Carl. Goodbye, Princess Donut,” Dong said. “Please tell the others that I will miss them, but I will see them again on the other side. Tell them it was my pleasure to serve with them. Vale to you all. Vale.”

Warning: Race ends in 2 minutes.

And with a terrifying, in-unison roar, Corcunda and Dong jumped from the back of the truck and galloped directly at Grull just as the magnet spell activated.

Every screw within two hundred meters of the lance jumped into the air and rocketed toward the charging pair.

But first the screws had to travel through the slag elementals.

All it took was a small handful of screws to stagger the creatures. A few more, and they collapsed into puddles of molten steel.

And through it all, Dong and Corcunda charged.

They charged, and they charged. Riding into battle one last time.

Dong Quixote, now with his lance lowered, now getting peppered himself with dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of screws, roared in triumph as the weapon made contact with the god of war.

“A good death,” Grull rumbled before he vanished, going back to the twelfth floor. “A good death indeed.”

We traveled through the Hole someone had cast, and we skittered through the last room, not saying anything as we struggled to the finish line, passing a few other vehicles desperately moving toward the exit, all of us exhausted, terrified, and filled with rage at this damn place, which was slowly killing us all.

We passed the finish line with only fifteen seconds to spare. I couldn’t stomach looking back to see those who didn’t make it in time.

Despite all that, I finally breathed a sigh of relief. We were alive. We had survived. But most importantly, we had won the quest.

Heat Five. Results.

First Place: Team Sparkles.

Second Place: Team Free Love.

Third Place: Team Flamengo.

Fourth Place: The Royal Court of Princess Donut.

Eliminated: Lady Dominators and the Gimp.