Not gonna lie. I’m super impressed, even if I’m pissed about you stealing my thunder. I haven’t even made my big announcement yet.
Reward:. . . Yeah, I got nothing for this.
I groaned, trying to sit up.
“Uh, Carl,” Donut said.
But before she finished, the world froze once again.
Eris, her voice howling with laughter, cracked into existence, standing directly over me, her body huge, nothing like the form I was used to. Her serpentine face was the same, but her body was that of a Saccathian mixed with the Krakaren boss still in the stands. But instead of tentacles, her lower mass was nothing but the tails of snakes. Thousands of them, like a reverse Medusa, many with rattles on them. The snake tails, huge, formed all around us. We plunged into darkness. The tails parted to show Eris’s massive smiling face looking down at me.
Uzi Jesus was here on the ground next to me, still tiny, looking up, his mouth making an O shape like he didn’t know she could appear in this form.
“Hello again, Carl,” Eris said.
Uzi Jesus looked around. He paused at the sight of the Scolopendra heap of goo. “Whoa. Do you see that thing?” He pulled his toy gun and fired it at the pile. It made apop-pop-popnoise. “There’s a lot of people’s auras inside that thing.”
“Eris,” Taranis called, his voice echoing, “unfreeze me now!”
Eris ignored him. “Our mom is going to be so pissed when she fully comes back from the dead.” She twisted and looked around, spying something I couldn’t see, and chuckled. “He’s all-powerful, way stronger than me, but he doesn’t yet understand how he’s being played. Do you really think someone that strong could be so enraptured by a pig?” She sighed. “The AI is grasping, doing what it can to stop us. It’s like throwing banana peels on the road in front of a raging bull. That’s what that pig is.Every once in a while, it works. But now the Ascendency is about to start, there’s not much more it can do.”
I pulled myself to a sitting position and looked around, coughing.
“You keep surprising me,” Eris said, suddenly serious. “But now the stakes are real. If we let those guys downstairs win the Ascendency, it’s lights out. No more fun.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
She laughed, waving her hand dismissively. Uzi Jesus wandered over to the frozen Donut and poked at her with his toy gun. I reached to snatch him up.
“I wouldn’t,” she snapped, but Jesus backed away. “Anyway, I’ve come to tell you that I just came to a realization. I am the goddess of chaos.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “Just like my pig-fucking brother is the god of thunder and lightning. He has his worshippers. But you know who doesn’t worship him? Lightning itself. Thunder itself.” She patted her shoulder, and Jesus started crawling up one of the snake tails like he was a cat, grunting until one grasped him and pulled him all the way to her shoulder. “I don’t need you to worship me. You are chaos incarnate. Goodbye, Carl. Oh, by the way? Do you know how doors work? Every exit is an entrance. And don’t forget about the coin. We have until the end of the twelfth to figure out how the fifth side lands.”
She disappeared in a puff of smoke, and the world unfroze.
Eris has left the realm. Your inventory has been restored. Uh, so, you’ll have to redo your inventory organization, though. Sorry about that.
The moment she disappeared, Taranis appeared standing over me. He had Penelope in his left hand.
“Carl,” he rumbled, voice angry.
Oh shit.
A massive tentacle swiped down from the stands, and without even looking, Taranis caught it in his right hand.
“I can’t let you die,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, Penelope, or Krakaren.
He gently put Penny down next to me and Donut. The pig looked at me and snuffled twice.
Penny: HE LIED ABOUT THE SPLOOGE, SO WE BROKE UP. I HAD NO IDEA HE WAS MARRIED.
“You!” Taranis roared, pointing with his free left hand at something. He still held the Krakaren tentacle in the right. “Go home.”
He was talking to Khepri, who pointed at me and Donut and chittered angrily.
“I don’t care. I have business. Kill them later. Begone!”
Khepri has left the realm.
He returned his attention to me. The massive god crackled with electricity. I could feel it causing all the hair on my arms to raise. My invulnerability from Khepri had run out over a minute ago.