Things were not going well for Francis. The initial feeling of weakness hadn’t gone away, and he was plummeting toward the ground with no sign of stopping. But it was mostly the bombs that had him worried.

  The thunderbird eggs would explode on impact, vaporizing anything nearby. As someone who was hurtling down after them, and had no desire to be vaporized again (one time was enough), this made escaping the blast zone Francis’ number one priority. Unfortunately for him, Hades’ spell was making that almost impossible.

  Somehow it was sapping both his strength, and his magic. All his spells fizzled out before he could cast them, so teleportation was a no-go. His telepathy was also non-functional, which made it impossible to call for help. That just left one possibility. Francis closed his eyes, and prayed.

  Francis accepted the request, hoping against hope that Murdercube would summon some kind of glider or parachute to carry him to safety.

  As the ability activated, he felt something heavy materialize in the palm of his hand. The Marine opened his eyes to see what gift his god had given him, and swore when he realized what it was. Falling through the air next to him was a shrink wrapped pallet of C4, and in his hand, was the detonator.

  Normally, Francis would have given someone’s left nut for a pallet of high explosives. They made excellent stocking stuffers; and as far as he was concerned, there was no such thing as too much C4. But he was failing to see how this was supposed to help him with his current situation.

  The Marine looked down. Any second now the eggs would hit the ground and explode. He didn’t have time to think of a clever solution. So, instead of wasting time that he didn’t have, Francis decided to with his gut.

  “Here goes nothing!” the Marine yelled as he activated his Kinetic Strike ability and pressed the detonator.

  ***

  Normally when Francis got up to his usual shenanigans, System had to do some math. But System was still in his mortal form, Entity was busy digging his own grave, and AtropOS was stuck watching him do it.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  With the three primary candidates otherwise occupied, the duty fell to whoever was available. Unfortunately, that person happened to be Swift.

  As head of the Chaos Faction, Swift was dedicated to causing as much havoc as possible. Let the others worry about balance and optimization, his job was to keep things interesting. But in order to do his job properly, Swift needed to get the lay of the land first.

  Time froze as he used his considerable processing power to condense down layers of possibility into a cohesive tapestry. What he saw was promising. There was a new age of calamity about to arrive, orcs had made their way down to raid a major city, the gods were at each other's throats, and a hound was headed toward Brexis carrying a golden apple.

  Any one of these things could be a massive catalyst for change. But Swift wasn’t trying to destroy Vahnis. He just wanted to give it a little nudge in the right direction. He continued to search until his gaze settled on three awakened dire wolves. Against all odds, they had gotten lost in the forest. Swift wasn’t sure how that was even possible, but he knew better than to waste an opportunity.

  Swift measured the distance between the Marine and the three dire wolves. The math didn’t work out quite right, but that was fine. Swift was more than willing to fudge the numbers if it made something awesome happen. Life was a lot more fun that way.

  He entered in the new numbers and locked in the result. There was no going back now. What was done, was done. The others might complain a bit when they found out about his rule bending, but that was a problem for future Swift. Right now Swift had a job to do, and he was going to do it to the best of his ability.

  “Have a nice trip!” Swift called out as the pallet of explosives detonated, launching Francis into the stratosphere. The head of the Chaos Faction took a moment to admire his handiwork before focusing his attention back on the task at hand. He needed to move quickly if he was going to get anything done before the others found out.

  Swift summoned a bag of popcorn to snack on while he worked. But in his haste to get moving, he had managed to forget one very important detail. He was still incorporeal.

  “Oh, right,” Swift said as his snacks disappeared in the distance, “I should probably have summoned a body first.”

  ***

  The dire wolves were starting to get worried. They had been walking through the Dark Forest for hours, but still hadn’t managed to find a single familiar landmark.

  “Alright,” Wolfie said, “I think we should sit down and rest for a bit.”

  Not-Wolfie rolled his eyes. “Sure, because lying around doing nothing is much more productive than working toward fixing the actual problem.”

  Also-Not-Wolfie raised a paw. “Is that sarcasm, or an actual suggestion? Because I have problems telling the difference between the two.”

  “Take a wild guess,” said Not-Wolfie.

  Also-Not-Wolfie furrowed his brow in concentration. “I’m going to go with… sarcasm?” he said hopefully. Though it came out as more of a question.

  “And I’ll go with it being an actual suggestion,” Wolfie chimed in before Not-Wolfie could reply, “That way no matter what, one of us gets the right answer.”

  Not-Wolfie buried his face in his paws.

  “I think that means it was sarcasm,” Wolfie said, “Which is a shame, because it would be really nice if lounging around solved all of our problems. Actually, that would be more or less ideal. Imagine if food just came to you.”

  “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Also-Not-Wolfie looked around the clearing. To his disappointment, no food had magically appeared. “I suppose I could pray for Francis to show us the way out.”

  “Sure,” Not-Wolfie snapped, “And while you’re at it, ask for him to bring some snacks. There’s nothing to eat in this stupid forest, and I’m getting hungry.”

  “Oh! Good idea!” Wolfie tapped his front paws on the ground with excitement. “I’ll have a bag of that fluffy white stuff the bards had. It gets stuck in my teeth, so I know I shouldn’t eat any more. But it’s just so good!”

  “I dunno, it might be a bit of an imposition.” Also-Not-Wolfie frowned. “I think prayers are supposed to be single use. But I might be wrong, so I’ll ask anyway.”

  Not-Wolfie let out a groan. He wasn’t sure what he had done in a past life to deserve getting stuck with such a pair of knuckle-heads, but it had probably been a doozy.