Roman Miller stood in his corner of the ring, wondering what, exactly, was in those caffeine pills he took earlier.

As the bizarre text scrolled through his vision, he realized that time itself appeared to have come to an end. Nothing moved. No wind brushed against his skin, no breath animated his chest. True stillness was impossible to comprehend for a person who had spent his entire life drifting through the currents of temporality. It felt incredibly wrong.

He had never put much weight behind concepts like meditation or mindfulness. His frantically overactive mind responded to them like a rabid beast that just found itself trapped in a cage. Once, a rather inebriated Roman agreed to lay inside a sensory deprivation chamber; when the lid slid shut above him, trapping him in the void, he truly did go feral for a few moments before managing to escape.

This was far worse. Some fragment of his subconscious screamed for his heart to beat, his eyes to blink--anything. Adrenaline and perhaps the world itself being frozen rendered the world around him in perfect clarity. Like he was floating in the vacuum of space, observing stars millions of light years away, or suspended in the waters of the purest sea.

From his vantage he could see the heads of a few people in the crowd, as well as the upper body of his opponent caught in the middle of ascending the opposite steps into the ring. Oscar Martinez Garcia’s eyes were cold and hard, the glare of a warrior moments from defending his honor, but his lips were slightly parted, his brow furrowed, as if he had just begun to sense the impending disturbance in reality.

[ Welcome, Roman Miller, to the Greatest Game in the Cosmos. You have been selected as a player! ]

[ Warning! ]

[ Refusal will result in the complete deconstruction of your organic matter, and your soul will be recycled to best contribute to an unparalleled kino experience. ]

[ Do you accept the challenge? ]

Roman had a front-row seat to experience a preview of this gruesome fate. Oscar Martinez Garcia’s face sloughed away in a flood of reddish-brown gore. The vitreous humors of his eyes leaked down his exposed cheekbones like tears.

The rest of the world remained still as the transformation progressed. Rivulets of liquefied flesh ran down his frame until only a bare skeleton remained, sickly yellow in the faint moonlight. Somehow, absurdly, his glittery red shorts still clung to his pelvis. Perhaps most disturbing of all, his mandible slowly pried itself open wider than any human skull should be capable of, and Roman had no doubt the man was silently screaming.

The spectators underwent a similar transformation. Their suffering was the only motion approved in that forsaken dimension. No sane person would have refused the same offer Roman had received; based on the earlier text, they must have been part of the 95% of sentient life the text considered unnecessary.

He found it remarkably easy to analyze the situation. Adrenaline and an undercurrent of panic colored his thoughts, but no more than when he first stepped into the ring. A prisoner to time, his brain could not dump its neurochemical payload and open the synaptic floodgates of true terror.

What is this? This has to be a bad trip, right? Someone dosed you with some new synthetic shit from hell, so give it a few minutes. Hour, tops. It’ll wear off and then you kill every last person here with your bare hands. No one should do this, go this far. Not to me, not to any one.

Oscar’s fleshy sludge floated upward in loose swirls, as if buoyed on currents of air. For a few seconds it swirled about his ribcage, coalescing into a broad ring. Then, bit by bit, streamers of organic material drifted back to his skeleton, reshaping his original mass into something different, something blasphemous.

The abomination functioned only as a mockery of the natural human form. No resemblance remained between it and the proud warrior who had stood in its place. Most of its bulk was contained within its appendages, bulbous pillars of flesh-and-blood putty. A thin layer of connective tissue stretched over the rest of the skeleton, and its head was a tumorous growth that wept blood.

Roman knew the sight should sicken him, but he could still only muster a cold, anticipatory rage. These monsters would learn that he was absolutely, under no circumstances, to be fucked with. In a way, he was glad to have his emotions so limited. Without the distraction of fear or disgust, the path forward was that much clearer.

[ Do you accept the challenge? ]

Roman mentally gritted his teeth. Despite the overwhelming desire to ignore the repeated prompt, he had no desire to become one of those things. He had to live, because these bastards had to die.

…Yes.

[ New player accepted. ]

[ Welcome to the Chaos Playground. ]

* * *

Winston Jones hated Vegas almost as much as he loved gambling. It was all so garish, so fake. They didn’t even bother to paint a thin veneer over a steaming turd nowadays. No, they displayed it proudly, in neon colors--or at least with apathetic confidence, knowing full well the amount of greedy fools out there eager to chase their ruin.

Things used to be better. Or maybe he was just younger back then, blinded by the twinkle in his eyes. He was only thirty-nine now, but he woke up feeling fifty and went to bed feeling a hundred. On top of that cruel joke, everyone nowadays just seemed…worse than before.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The blackjack dealer was sluggish as she dealt the next hand, not bothering with eye contact or small talk. Working on autopilot, lost in her own little world far from the inconvenience of people like him. Which was a shame, since she was kind of attractive in an austere type of way, even if she had completely ignored his flirting earlier.

Can’t even have a nice conversation these days, especially with a girl who knows she looks good. Winston glanced down at his cards and snorted: six of clubs, seven of hearts. Classic, really.

He shook his head and sipped his fourth bottom-shelf whiskey of the night.

At least they still tried in places like Macau. Even the Philippines provided some sort of memorable experience, despite the poorly-masked distaste from most of the women he met there. But this was his ‘big bachelor party’, and few of his so-called friends nowadays had the means or the desire to travel across the world to blow a wad of cash. It was barely nighttime and already the others had turned in, promising they’d all have ‘tons of fun’ tomorrow.

Right. Sure. That group’s idea of fun was paying their taxes. They were more Carolyn’s buddies than his, anyway.

That left Winston at a table with a grouchy old woman and a couple of guys in their mid-twenties who looked like brothers. Great company. Great times.

He took another foul sip of his drink as he waited his turn.

Back in his heyday, he had been a real charming bastard, dominating one table after another. Always surrounded by at least a couple drunk fools eagerly yapping at him for advice. Not to mention a gorgeous woman rubbing his shoulder, shouting in joy after each glorious hand as if she was somehow winning too.

Winston’s hair had gone gray real quick, but damn if it wasn’t fun: home poker games in Hollywood mansions; highroller tables on the top floor, observed by hulking bodyguards that never seemed to blink; even a little casual blackjack and few whiskeys straight in a dump like this, with a periodic break to powder his nose in the bathroom.

He used to love it all.

Now, the old bag to his right kept sneering at him. The brothers barely understood the basic etiquette of the game. Moving their active chips around, trying to play out of turn. Twenty years ago they would’ve been thrown out of the casino for less. Hell, some thugs probably would’ve roughed them up in the back before tossing them out. Granny, too, if she kept acting like that.

When his turn finally came, Winston tapped two fingertips onto the velvet tabletop to hit a card.

Queen of hearts. Busted.

The dealer, of course, did better. Her expression remained neutral as she revealed her second card. “Blackjack.”

Winston snorted, one-handedly shuffling his dwindling stack of black chips with casual grace, their familiar clinking a welcome distraction from the loss.

Had the casinos gotten bold enough to straight up cheat, or was that little bastard called Luck just having another laugh at him tonight? The other players surrendered their cards in silent annoyance as well. Completely dead table. Time to move on to another, and soon.

Still the irascible gambler in the back of his head demanded the next hand.

Nothing about this was fun for him anymore. He shoved half of his remaining chips into play. The whole pathetic stack was the last of his money besides what Carolyn had squirreled away for their wedding. Lose it in one hand or ten, it was all the same.

To his delight, he was actually dealt the six of hearts and five of diamonds. A familiar thrill ran down his spine. He grinned after noticing the dealer’s seven of clubs. While he couldn’t work out all the probabilities in his head quite like he used to, it was an easy enough play.

He doubled up, sliding in the last half of his stack. The dealer peeled a card off the top of the deck and slid it his way. Nine of diamonds. If Winston lost with a twenty, there could be no doubt that the gods of fortune cursed his name.

He observed with glee as the dealer busted. She finally glanced up and made eye contact, though there was almost a note of derision in her gaze. With an expert flick of her wrist, the dealer spread out his chips to get a proper count before sliding an equivalent stack next to it.

“Wow, man,” said one of the brothers, displaying his gap-toothed smile. “That’s big. Send some of that luck my way.”

Winston managed not to sneer as he looked at the little imbecile. The two brothers had no more than a smattering of low-value chips left between them. More to slight the dealer than anything, Winston flicked a black in the brother’s direction. He nodded without bothering to look as the fool babbled his thanks, as if a hundred dollars actually meant something to him.

Only the next hand mattered. Maybe the one after that, too.

A gold coin spun in his mind, a shining sun within his imagination that spread warmth wherever it touched. He frowned at the strange vision and shook his head. The image cleared, and once more he was sitting in the casino.

Though everything looked much the same as before, it felt different, somehow. The harsh fluorescent lighting was now a soft, golden glow that soothed the eye. The sneering old woman now appeared elegant and at ease, like some sort of distinguished matriarch presiding over a family dinner. A little smile tugged at the corner of the dealer’s mouth as she looked at him, and she shyly tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

The foolish brother Winston had tipped clapped him on the shoulder. His voice was deeper, more confident. “You’re a good man. A good man.”

Winston sat there in mute incomprehension at the drastic difference in the world around him. At first he suspected maybe he had been severely depressed and the fugue had somehow lifted all the sudden. Or tipping the brother had opened his eyes to the true beauty that was around him, suppressed all this time by his negative outlook.

But no, the changes were too absurd to be some trite self-help revelation.

He remained silent as the dealer distributed the next hand. This time he had shoved his newly-doubled stack all-in from the beginning. Enthusiastic claps rang out about him in unison when he revealed his cards: ace of diamonds, ten of diamonds.

“Blackjack!” everyone but Winston called out.

Not just the people at his table, either. It sounded as if the entire casino was congratulating him, the frantic, meaty sound of their applause like some morbid orgy all around him. Slot machines throughout the building struck Jackpot and added their own cacophony of cheery whistles and strobing lights.

Between one blink and the next, the casino changed once again. All the ambient warmth vanished. The lighting remained golden, but its radiance felt corrupted, sinister.

The most striking difference was the people, who could no longer confidently be called human. Their laughter exposed vicious fangs, and their pupils were so dilated their eyes appeared entirely black. Winston couldn’t shake the feeling that their fervent appreciation was less a celebration of his winning hand, and more the eager madness of a group of starving cannibals presented with a rather plump meal.

His mouth opened slightly as dark words burned themselves across his vision.

[ Realm analyzed. Parameters determined. Sul’gurrath claims the neutral galaxy colloquially designated ‘Milky Way’ as a Chaos Playground… ]