“One of the wheels broke, I had to fix it.” I could hear Zac speaking as he jumped down. I expected him to come to the opening of the cart immediately, but his voice was travelling further away the more he spoke. “I brought seven from the ninth ring. All clean deaths. Only one over the age of thirty-five—”

“Take it back,” the husky-toned man replied. “The Sacred Ones don’t like wrinkles. You know that.”

I wrapped a hand over my mouth, catching the derisive snort before it erupted out of me, and then eased up toward the still-open window, trying to peek out without being seen.

“I told them that,” Zac was replying. “His family. They insisted. These people think that I’m transporting the bodies to the cemetery caretaker, but someone started a rumour that my cart takes the bodies of the people that the gods have favoured, while the other cart from the cemetery takes the bodies that the gods have frowned upon.”

“They think the gods care about whether they are good?” The raspy voice sounded angry.

I could see him now, walking beside Zac. He was cloaked in heavy black cloth, the sleeves pushed up to the elbows, displaying long, pale arms. The hood was drawn over his face, but I wouldn’t have been able to make out his features anyway, because he was facing away from me, approaching another group of hooded people. They all stood gathered at the entrance to a worn-down temple, the stones cracked beneath the sweep of their dark robes. There were only three torches lit, set into brackets against the pillars out the front of the temple, so there wasn’t enough light to make out their features. I could only decipher the pale blur of their faces beneath the hoods.

Zac and the guardian were too far away for me to hear anymore, so I drew back from the window, staring down at the body on the floor of the cart. It was almost annoying, that these bodies were about to go exactly where I needed to go, whereas I would have to find my way back through all the rings to Emmy, before taking the cave entrance to Topia. Which would probably kill me, because I wasn’t attached to a god while entering.

Could I even be close to Emmy?

I had no idea what was happening with my Chaos, but it seemed to have an agenda. It had brought me to the meeting of Vice-Chancellors—probably because I hated the vice-chancellors—and then it had proceeded to burn down the building. Probably because there was some small part of me that wanted to burn down the vice-chancellors. Even though I now knew the real reason that Emmy was hanging around with the creepy sols, my Chaos had still taken matters into its own hands, intent on ending whatever was going on, once and for all.

Bad move, Chaos. Bad move.

I glanced out the window again, and then quickly slipped to the floor beside the body. I had no idea what they did with these bodies before taking them into Topia, but I was about to find out.

I was about to go and get my Abcurses back.

Unless they had already returned, and were currently scouring Blesswood for my whereabouts. In which case, I was going to find Cyrus and force him to fix this whole mess, because even if it wasn’t his fault, I still liked blaming him.

I started to unwrap the body on the floor, scrunching up my nose the whole time. There was another under-wrapping beneath the outer-wrapping, which was just fine by me, because that really wasn’t something I needed to see. I rolled the body away from the bench seat and felt around for a little handle, since Zac had told me to hide in there. There were two latches on either side of the front panel, and the panel fell outwards when I released them, revealing a small, dark storage space. I rolled the body into the space, accidently hitting the head once or twice—not that it mattered. The person was already dead.

When the body was nicely squished into the storage space, I quickly re-latched the panel and rolled myself up into the top sheet that I had taken off. It wasn’t a very precise job, and I was just laying there on the floor of the cart, one of my feet still poking out of the sheet … but I doubted that anyone really cared about how well-wrapped the bodies were. They were about to be turned into Topian serving robots anyway.

“Another four sun-cycles before I get back from the eighth ring,” I heard Zac saying, his voice becoming clearer again. “Do you have any you want me to take back this time?”

“No,” the raspy voice replied. “We have disposed of them already.”

Well that’s not creepy at all.

I tried to be as stiff as possible, playing dead. I heard the canvas being pulled apart, and then there was a hand on my ankle, right on the exposed foot. Whoever-it-was hauled me out of the cart and dumped me onto another hard surface—something that smelled like musty wood. The sheet slipped off my face, and since my eyes were still wide open, I ended up taking in the entire scene of one of the guardians standing at the opening to the cart and reaching in, while another guardian stood off to the side, watching. I could see his face clearly, and it was deathly pale. It had the same waxy quality as the Topian servers, though somehow less refined. Uglier. I was laying on another cart—open-topped, and considerably smaller. A common cart used to transport fruits and vegetables … and dead people, apparently. That didn’t seem hygienic. I quickly flipped the sheet back over my face and braced myself as a body landed beside me half a click later. The cart thumped several more times, with one of the bodies landing directly on top of me, and then it was moving.

I felt bad for Zac. He was going to discover the body stuffed in the storage space at some point, and probably freak out—but as bad as I felt, I knew it needed to be done. I had to get into Topia. I had to find either Cyrus or the Abcurses, and I had to figure out what the hell was happening to me.

As soon as the thought entered my head, I started to feel dizzy again; the same kind of dizziness as before. My hands were tingling and dark spots were starting to flash behind my eyelids as I screwed them shut. The heat inside of me flamed to scorching levels. I could feel bile rising to the back of my throat, and I curled my hands into fists, my nails cutting into my palms.

This cannot be happening right now!

When I opened my eyes again, the white sheet over my face had disappeared, along with the smell of musty wood and the feel of bodies stacked around me. Instead, I was staring at a rough, stone ceiling, and the surface beneath me was cool and hard.

“Have all the bodies been collected?” a voice asked, sounding close-by.

I turned my head, taking in the rest of the room. There was a row of cupboards beneath a work bench of some kind—one of the cupboards hanging half open. Other than a wash-basin in the corner and the steel bench that I was lying on, the room was bare. A curtain over the doorway was the only thing hiding me from discovery. I started to slip off the bench when the other voice answered.

“One of the bodies is missing. Summon each of the guardians tasked with transforming a server tonight, and figure out who hasn’t submitted yet. Staviti will not want to be kept waiting any longer.”

“I will summon them immediately.”

I froze, halfway off the table, and glanced around again.

What the hell had I done with my guardian? No—scrap that. What had my evil, Chaos alter-ego done with my guardian?

The guardian on the other side of the curtain was still referring to the dead people as bodies, and not servers, so I assumed that Staviti would be needed to put life back into the them. That was an important thing to know, because it meant that I couldn’t just get off the table and start walking around. I would need to figure something else out.

I shivered when my bare feet hit the stone floor, glancing down to find that I had been stripped to my underwear. My guardian had definitely been here. He had started the process—but he hadn’t gotten as far as putting one of those creepy bodysuits on me, so that was a plus. Reaching up, I brushed my hand across my hair, relieved that it was still there. I skirted around the room, trying to find something that I could maybe use as a weapon, just in case I would need to fight my way out of the temple. Not that I’d be any use in a fight, but I could always practise positive thinking.

I grabbed the top of the cupboard door that had been hanging open and pulled it out further, bending down to peer inside.

“Holy gods in hell,” I gasped, falling back onto my ass.

There was a pale face staring back at me, eyes closed, a small trickle of blood leaking from a gash in his forehead. A bloodied object had been stuffed into the cupboard with him—it looked like a small, stone bowl, and the unconscious guardian had been made to look as though he was cuddling it to sleep, like a stuffed toy. I didn’t even pause to think about the fact that evil Willa had gone ahead and stuffed another body into another tiny storage space, as though taking cues from me. The good Willa. I simply reached in and wrangled the hooded cloak right off his back, standing and pulling it around my shoulders before re-arranging him and closing the cupboard door.

I’d feel bad about that later, but for now, I had to sneak into the land of the gods. Again.

I had taken two steps away from the cupboard when those voices floated in through the sheeted door again. “The guardian must have fled. We have no time to hunt him down now, we need to catch the next transport to Topia. But he will be disposed of as soon as we find him.”

Disposed of? They were definitely taking their employment termination advice from Staviti. Speaking of … I needed to be on that transport. I had to get to Topia. Who knew what would be left of Minatsol if my Chaos was left to its own devices for much longer. That was the real reason I was in such a panicked rush: I was worried about the good of the worlds. Yeah, that’s right. I wasn’t needy and pathetic and missing my Abcurses.

I was a heroine.

I needed to save the worlds.

Both of them.

Sneaking to the door with as much stealth as I could muster, I managed to not make a single noise. To be fair, it wasn’t hard to avoid the single, steel-topped table that I’d been lying on after somehow beating my guardian senseless. Maybe this Chaos thing wasn’t so bad; it had already kept me from one of those skin suits, and I still had my hair.

Making it unscathed to the curtain, I quickly peered around one of the edges to find at least a dozen cloaked individuals. They were busy carting the dead out of a large doorway. Red dirt was visible in the distance. No one noticed me, and since most of them kept their cloaks right up over their heads, I hopefully wouldn’t stand out.

With a deep, fortifying breath, I slipped out from the curtain and hunched myself over as I walked purposefully to the door.

I noticed a body stretched out across a slab of timber as I passed. It was a female: she was dressed in a skin suit, her head shaved, her eyes wide open and glassy. I tried to breathe through my mouth as I hauled her into my arms, since the scent of some sort of embalming fluid was strongly emanating from her. I grunted as the solid weight fell against me. Of course I would pick the dweller who lifted weights and broke in wild bullsen with pure muscle and strength of will. Her will was so strong it was almost sinking us both into the ground.

Staggering slightly, I hurried with a few others to the doorway.

“Where is my body?” I heard a low, confused-sounding man ask from somewhere behind me. “Did someone else move her?”

There was no answer and I didn’t bother to look back. Stepping outside, there were still a few rays of sun left in the sky, so I could see everything clearly. I looked around for the cart, because random carts seemed to be the story of my life lately, but there was nothing like that in the area. Instead, the plain housed a dozen pantera, all kicking up the red dirt in a restless, irritated manner. I should have guessed; nothing but the best for Staviti and his creepy little server-creations.

The Jeffrey concept was starting to make me ill. Dwellers were treated like shit in life, and now I find out that in death they got an even worse lot. They were wiped of all free thought, relegated to slaves, and then, when they displeased a god, they were dropped in the banishment cave to waste away as trapped spirits.

Wow. Put so succinctly, it was horrendous. How could Staviti do something like that? I thought he was supposed to be a wonderful, benevolent, creator-type god. Nope. He was an asshole, just like the rest of the gods. He was the king of the assholes, actually. Just a stupid creator asshole who had made some asshole minions to serve him and his asshole imaginary friends in their asshole floating platforms.

A shove from behind cut off my internal ire, and I started shuffling along again. I bumped into more than one guardian, but when they glared at me, I only mustered up a raspy voice and snarled, “Learn how to carry a dead body! What is this, apprentice-sun-cycle?”

I was sure that I was getting a few confused glares beneath those hoods, but they were too busy to stop and question if something was amiss—which was lucky, because I was ready to bring out all my skills. I had clumsy and Chaos on my side. Ten tokens said I could take them all out in one well-timed blackout.

From the few hood-free faces I could see, it didn’t seem as if any of the guardians were nervous as they approached the panteras, despite the truly intimidating aura of the creatures. I remembered the way I’d had to meet and be accepted by Jara before I could ride her, and yet the guardians were almost dismissive of them. It struck me as wrong on so many levels. I focussed on a black and white pantera, about five yards away. I could see that it was yet to have a body placed in the roped harness across its back. It was smaller than the others, which was why I was heading right for it. Smaller seemed safer.

When I was at her side—braced for a kick to the gut, because that’s what I would have done if someone was trying to put a stinky dead body over me—I finally noticed the collar around her neck, standing out starkly against her white. It was a thin piece of wire, silver and slightly barbed, twirling and twisting around. I could see old scars where she had clearly rubbed against it, along with a few fresh marks.

“What the hell?” I murmured under my breath. The pantera turned and faced me, intelligent eyes locking onto me.

I waited for a voice in my head, but none came.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, leaning forward and draping the heavy weight across her. She was still staring at me with eyes far too wise. “Why are you helping these guardians?” I murmured, as I adjusted the ropes. I had to take a few sneaky peeks at how the guardians around me were securing their corpses, but I eventually figured out what I was doing.

The pantera started making a low humming sound, from deep in its throat.

“You can’t talk to me with that collar on, can you?” I let my hand brush just over the top of her throat, not quite touching it, as a terrible thought struck me. “You’re a prisoner?”

The Abcurses had spoken with such reverence about the panteras, as though they were old and magical, and should be respected above all others—and yet here they were, collared and stripped of their voices. I was really starting to hate the fucking gods.

As my anger rose up in a blinding force, I felt the dizziness creep across my mind.

No, not now. I don’t have time for you now.

I tried everything I possessed to shut it down, even reaching up and clutching my stone necklace which had not been removed, thankfully. But nothing was stopping Chaos when it was ready, and apparently it had something to say.

I came back to myself at the sound of a shout; my eyes snapped open as I was awkwardly crouched behind a pantera, my legs aching only a little, which meant that I must not have been there for long. As my head cleared further, I realised that the pantera before me was the black and white one I had been placing the body on.

She adjusted her position as I moved, like she was protecting me from sight. I straightened from my crouched position, shook off the dust, and tried to get my bearings. When I felt more stable, I peered around my new friend.

Chaos had struck again.

The main building was on fire: it was clearly a specialty of mine. I was trying to figure out what else I had done when I noticed a glint on the ground. I quickly dropped back down to examine the object, and then shot back to my feet to examine the pantera’s neck, because the collar looked exactly like the collar that I had seen just before blacking out again.

The pantera’s neck was now bare—the collar having been flung carelessly into the dirt, and I could see how the two ends joined. There was a small clip that could be flicked across to release the contraption.

You saved me.

I jumped at the voice, before my head darted widely around.

My name is Lucille.

Common sense returned, and I realised that it was the pantera, finally able to speak with me. If you want me to take you to freedom, you need to get on my back. I can take you to Topia.

My heart sprang in a hopeful way. Thank you, I tried to project back. But shouldn’t we free your friends too?

Lucille just shook her head, pawing a hoof through the dirt, stirring up dust. You have done all you can, now it is time to find freedom.

I was figuring out how my Chaos worked. Sometimes it was for me, sometimes against me. But it seemed that in a roundabout way, it was almost always working in my best interests. The building being on fire was a distraction for the guardians, during which I had managed to unlock the collar. Without it killing me.

I’d been afraid to touch it earlier, but Chaos apparently didn’t have the same worry.

“I know you have no idea who I am, but I have some powerful friends. I’m not allowed to make promises on their behalf anymore, but just know … I will do everything in my power to save the rest of your kind.” My whisper was made against her side, as I got into position to pull myself up.

The body was gone from her back. The harness was still there, but no body. I didn’t even want to think about what Chaos Willa had done with her—no doubt it involved a tight space and squishy body parts. Luckily, this one had already been dead, because it didn’t seem to matter to Chaos. Dead or alive, if it could squish, it could fit.

Being as gentle as I could, I lifted my leg and hooked my foot into one of the side ropes, using it as leverage to clumsily sprawl across Lucille’s back. Thankfully, I didn’t kick her wings. They stood out in strong, wide fans on either side of her back, and were patterned in black and white to match her pinto colouring. No doubt she wouldn’t appreciate me crushing those feathers.

The fire was just starting to die down when I finally got seated on the back of my second ever pantera transport. Hold on, was my only warning before her wings beat against the ground, and her powerful legs launched us upward.

Wind gushed around us, forming giant clouds of red dirt. I heard shouts, but couldn’t see anything. I imagined that the guardians were scurrying around like shweeds, prepared to bring the panteras back into line.

“Good luck with that, assholes!” I called out, not even bothering to contain my gloating, even though it would have been the smarter move … just in case Lucille had a flight malfunction and sent me crashing back to the ground.

That would be embarrassing.

I might have even fist-pumped when the dust cleared and I noticed that we were already ten feet above them and still rising.

“Oh my gods!” I exclaimed, as the other panteras also started flapping, each of them shaking their heads and flinging the collars free. Guardians pulled little boxes from their cloaks, aiming them at the creatures. One or two, who hadn’t managed to shake their collars free, let out a high-pitched shriek before they collapsed on the ground in convulsing spasms.

Those bastards.

I must have projected my angry thoughts, because the pantera answered me. They just have to shake the binding free; you unclipped all of them already.

Panteras rose around us, the sound of flapping filling the air. Guardians were converging on the few who they’d managed to zap with their collar buttons, but before they could do anything to contain them, bodies started falling from the sky.

Literally.

The dwellers, who had been strapped across the panteras, were being dropped onto the guardians below, each one landing with a thump, and eliciting a muffled groan from beneath a cloak.

“Ten points!” I chuckled as a pure black pantera managed to knock down two in one shot. “Bonus points for you,” I added, pointing at him.

As the guardians started to run around like crazy people below, the few panteras on the ground were given time to shake their collars free and launch into the sky. Soon, the guardians were forgotten as the entire herd rose. I couldn’t do anything but hold on for the ride and hope that I wouldn’t get dumped somewhere even worse than the dead zone. The harness was still across Lucille’s back, so I quickly looped a few of the straps around my legs, just for extra protection against the possibility of falling to my death. I then slumped forward and let the soothing rhythm of her wings calm the erratic tic in my mind. The Chaos was growing stronger, I could feel it roaring inside of me … trying to get free.

I didn’t want to fall asleep, since I couldn’t be sure I was out of danger yet, but it was hard to keep my eyes open. Despite the numerous amount of times I had lost consciousness over the past few sun-cycles, it felt as if I had not had any decent rest.

I was exhausted.