"We have a problem."

Var, god of mathematics and symbolism, frowned down at the Searcher before them. "Aren't you in charge of monitoring that weird little fringe universe? What problem could possibly have arisen there that qualifies for Absolute status?"

The messenger, El Ray 7, was trembling as she spoke, which was extremely unusual for a trained Searcher. "One of the sealed chaos gods is breaking free."

The entire council, many of whom had been carrying on small conversations of their own, fell completely silent and turned to stare.

"That isn't possible," Cir, god of connection and memory, leaned forward. "The chaos gods have been subjugated and cooperative for millennia. We would know if any of them was being rebellious."

"This isn't one of the normal chaos gods." El Ray 7 swallowed and read out the error code. "This is an even older entity."

Silence fell across the chamber again as everyone looked up the code for themselves.

Var felt faint. "Impossible. The First Daughter of Chaos was destroyed. Nothing was left."

"Apparently not destroyed enough," Cir said. "This calls for immediate intervention."

"Not so fast," interrupted Nika, god of hunting and balance. "That universe is fragile enough as it is, if we go shoving our way in there, it could destabilize the whole thing."

"That's probably exactly what she wants," Var agreed. "If she could devour an entire destabilized universe, none of us would be able to stand against her."

"We need to send this up to the next level, then." Cir gestured to the blue button on the far end of the council table, by the empty seat at its head. "Direct oversight."

"Are we sure that's necessary?" choked the messenger. "If we get him involved..."

"Better to lose a few planets and a handful of timelines than the whole thing," Var snapped. "I know the calculations. Any chaos god would be cause for concern, but this particular one is beyond dangerous. Last time she was loose, we lost half the known universes and thousands of timelines before we were able to destroy her."

"Clearly we didn't do a good enough job the first time." Cir walked over to the button, but hesitated just short of pushing it. "Is anyone in opposition?"

The room was silent.

"Then I, Cir, decree that the emergency protocol must be invoked. A threat has arisen that is beyond us, and we must escalate accordingly."

Var nodded in agreement. Others did as well, some eagerly, others reluctantly, but no one objected.

Cir pressed the button.

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"I still can't get over the fact that you're here in person," Ivy told the shop's avatar. "I thought of you as this personless guy for so long, to see you as a girl is weird."

"I could be a guy if you prefer." Loke's form shifted, growing until she was a stately man wearing a suit that wouldn't be out of place in a black and white movie about the financial industry.

Ivy giggled. "You don't have to change on my account."

"But Co-Owwer Ivy is an important part of the shop's precious family. If you want me to change my clothes, why would I deny you?"

Ivy shrugged. "Right now, I'm some sort of alleged goddess. If you want to serve as my attendant, we can probably convince people to turn over their lifespan more easily. Though without Xian here..."

Xian was staring at the blank air, fingers twitching, fur on end.

"You can say 'Grant Wishes' and the process will begin," Ivy told him. "It's probably going to hurt though."

"I am satisfied to accept pain," Xian said distantly. "I do not know if I'm ready to accept this much change."

"It's not going to expire. You can dismiss the message and the wish will still be ready to activate whenever you're ready. Probably best to do it in private."

Xian nodded. "Thank you." He shook himself. "Ready to get underway, Your Glory?"

"Yes, lead on." Ivy had to crouch to follow him through the hall, but thankfully it was pretty short.

"Perfect. I'll become your glorious escort." Loke's form shifted and shrank until she was about ten inches tall, a three-tailed mouseperson whose fur glowed with golden light. "Look about right?" She turned herself this way and that, then nodded. "Pick me up, it isn't dignified to go scampering around on the floor."

Ivy shook her head, but picked up the small avatar and put it in her lap as she ducked into the curtained conveyance and settled in. "I still don't know what's going on here."

Xian hopped up in front of them and activated the carriage-like vehicle. It slid out onto a rail and zipped forward, curtains rustling in the wind.

"This ship is powered by a chaos drive built around part of my shattered substance," the shop's avatar explained while they traveled. "When the event happened, each piece of me was sealed somewhere different. I don't know where the pieces are, but when you came into range of its influence, you acted as a conduit. Like when someone brings up a memory you've forgotten for years, but their words bring it back fully to clarity."

"Should we be trying to take it back?"

"There is no need. The pieces are not scattered by their physical distance, but by being disconnected from me. By having traveled to it and renewed the connection, this ship serves as my domain as much as the shell we left on Euriste 3."

"And you still don't remember what the event is?"

"Vague impressions. I know it resulted in being broken apart. Each part was sealed independently. I'll need to spend some time integrating each back even once we find it. But having you come in contact with this piece gives me a much clearer idea of what it is that resulted, even if the incident itself is still unknown."

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Do you know how many pieces you were broken into?"

"More than three."

"That's not very specific."

Loke shrugged. "I'm struggling to integrate the amount of sealed knowledge as it is. A lot of it is mundane, but I can't just discard it as pointless. Who knows which part would end up being essential? Besides, it's all part of me. I want to have my whole self back." There was a hard edge to her voice, behind which was a deep wistfulness.

Ivy patted the avatar's tiny glowing head gently. "Don't worry, we'll find everything and get them returned to you."

"Thank you. You and your brother... I have had many owners over the years, but you are the first ones to genuinely care so much for me and my welfare. Everyone else saw me as a tool, or an obligation, or a chance to get out of what they didn't want to do. The level of personal interaction and responsibility you two have undertaken on my behalf are appreciated."

"You're welcome."

They sat in companionable silence for a minute, then Ivy remembered something else that required clarification.

"I promised their arbiter on the slave ship that we could make them a custom tiny planet. That is within your capabilities?"

"It is. However, they do not have enough lifespan among their entire species to pay for it."

"Can you take payment from future generations? If I front the cost now, and we add a, say, ten percent interest cost? They could thrive and grow, even if they have to surrender half their lifespan for each individual, their culture as a whole could benefit greatly from having a home instead of acting as scavengers."

"That would be a very large expenditure. Creating a viable planet is not a trivial task, even if it is one so small."

"But we can afford it, right?"

Loke sighed. "Yes. I do not understand this insistence you and your brother have on buying things yourselves and then allowing others to pay you back over the course of years or lifetimes. Why not give them the contract and wait for them to accrue the power themselves? The safety clauses you have will only result in you claiming ownership of their useless leftover existence. If they die without paying, it will not be enough to replace the lifespan you are spending."

"They will be in our debt for generations. It ensures a steady income over the long term instead of a single lump sum."

"But you are giving away the power you have now for a potential gain in future, with terms that favor the borrower if they are inclined to renege on the agreement. You cannot simply take back a wish without it costing almost as much as it did to enact in the first place."

"It'll all work out in the end. As long as we're charging interest, and have enough diversification to cover any individuals flaking out, we'll make more in the long term. Like insurance companies."

Loke bowed. "I will trust your wisdom, Co-Owner Ivy."

Eventually, the conveyance arrived at their destination.

"Where are we?" Ivy asked, as Xian held the curtain open for her. It was a reasonable sized room, as though built for people only slightly smaller than normal humans. The ceilings felt a bit uncomfortably close, making her want to duck even though she didn't need to. A huge gathering of the mouse-persons spread out before them, filling the other half of the room.

"The presentation hall," Xian said grandly. He gestured to a velvety black cushion set up on the slightly elevated platform upon which they'd emerged. "Your Glory's seat."

"I don't suppose you have a chair?"

"We do not have anything strong enough to withstand your weight, alas."

"Loke?"

"Do you wish to spend two points on creating a chair?"

"Yes please."

A chair appeared, patterned in gold and white. Ivy picked up the cushion and placed it on the chair, scooted the chair into place, and sat back in it. "Mm, perfect fit."

Loke bowed. "Of course."

Ivy supposed trading two years of her life for a single chair would be kind of silly if the situation were different, but she and James had so many points built up from their previous planet that there was no point in hoarding them.

It was one thing to earn her card powers by herself, and another to go without basic amenities.

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Legendary protective totem. Epic elemental summoning totem. Rare storm blast totem. Uncommon Magestrike. That left the stranger’s common class card unknown, assuming he even had one. Every time he'd fought as he rampaged through Ascension for the past days, he'd used the same combination. Elemental summoning, storm blasts, magestrikes, and that golden shield.

Laril wondered if anything would be left of Ascension by the time the man was finished, then went back to planning to take him down. Who knew? If he stopped the man, maybe Ascension would reward him, right before he helped finish what the man started.

Now, Legendary protection was hard to crack, but not impossible. It just required incredibly precise timing.

A standard protective totem worked on a pulse system. Every thirty seconds, the shield would 'pulse', renewing its strength to full. If it was shattered before the pulse refreshed, then there was an opportunity until the next pulse to beat up on the unfortunate shaman trying to hide behind his pretty bubble.

The higher it got, the less time between pulses.

Ten seconds, five, one...

And they weren't just coming faster, but each pulse was stronger too. Taking advantage of the split-second timing between refresh pulses of the Legendary protection required insane coordination and even more insane damage output.

Landing multiple shield-breaking strikes within the space of a fraction of a second and then following up on them with a shaman-smashing spell…

Not easy.

Fortunately, the weaknesses of such protections were well documented. They prevented attacks, not damage. If you could slip in a lingering damage attack, poison, slow, drain, chill, those would stay around even after the protection went back up.

Wearing down an Epic shield shaman was a matter of chipping away at them ever so slowly and ensuring you didn't die in the meantime. A Legendary one would be the same, only even harder.

Their campaign wouldn't begin immediately. They contracted their entire team for three full months before their planned attack date, keeping them fully in the dark as to what they were training for until the time came to strike.

They brought them into their secret training room, practiced with their timing of strikes and attacks, and coordinated their rhythm until it was flawless. Burst damage from twenty strikers at once, followed by rapid barrage of damage over time, debuffs, and poison, all of them enhanced by Epic enhancement group buffs.

It was an attack sequence that would take down an Epic shielder in ten seconds flat. Against a Legendary, it would probably take at least half a minute. They were planning on sustaining it for two minutes just to be safe, but none of them really thought it would take that long.

Finally, when their timing was flawless and their coordination unshakable, they announced their intention to the Tower, and the fourth leaderboard was added.

Retribution.

Laril Patine was only seventeenth ranked, even after withdrawing his inherited deck and integrating them, and he would not be personally involved in the attack. Even among so few of them, there were some true powerhouses.

Though he would have liked to personally put down the intruder who'd destroyed his chances at the ELS program, he was well aware that he was too young and inexperienced to be able to sustain the kind of rhythm necessary for the strike team.

This was not a job for someone just beginning. This was a job for seasoned masters.

But what Laril would be doing was watching the entire thing from his mother's monitor cam and cousin Resh's Overhead ability that would relay a battlemap-like projection of the entire region from above. Even if he couldn't participate, he could witness the whole thing. Be part of the history he was helping to reshape.

And he could keep an eye out privately for any backstabbing. If his family's entire contingent was annihilated, Overhead would continue to function for a full hour after its caster's demise, allowing Laril to fully observe whoever ended up being the traitors.

He had such a strong uneasy feeling. But he'd gone over all the numbers, all the formulas, he'd double and triple checked the plan, the people, the damage outputs.

It was all perfect. The only possible flaw was betrayal from within.

Laril was just too suspicious. He tried to tell himself enough to convince himself that he was being overly paranoid. It wasn't going to go wrong. He didn't have to worry.

But still, he worried.

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