I’d thought living under the rule of the Mad God had been chaos, and it had, in its own way. But that had been subtle, patient chaos that waited a long time before it revealed itself to me. This chaos. It was different. Everything seemed to happen in distorted, choppy scenes like I was displaced from it, a mere member of the audience watching it all unfold. My head is splitting and my vision shuffles through a myriad of lenses – clear, blurry, dark – it can’t seem to pick just one. I don’t know how I got here or who all these others are. I think I’m still in the labyrinth but it looks distinctly different and I’m not sure if it’s me or the roiling crowd of strangers that makes it seem so.
 

And then there’s this mare and even through my haze I hear multiple references to her as a goddess but I can’t tell if the word is meant to revere her by the way it falls out of some mouths like a curse. From my position on the fringes I observe her and I know she’s not a goddess from the Rift. I’ve just about had it with all forms of deities no matter the land they come from – they’ve done nothing for me except push me around their playing board like a pawn. Even though she’s not from the Rift, this goddess doesn’t seem so different from the Mad God that made me. I hear numerous accusations from the crowd of the murders this she-god has committed and I’m taken back to the years I spent under the thumb of someone like her. I wonder darkly if she had the courage to kill her victims herself or if she, too, had manipulated the likes of someone like me into handling her dirty work.
 

The goddess seems disinterested in redeeming herself as she attacks a handful of her accusers, throwing them away or burning the hair from their bodies. I’m instantly filled with hatred toward her and I wonder what it might be like to sink my teeth into her throat in the way I never could with the Mad God. I’ve inched closer to her, relying on the distraction of the crowd to keep me covered and filled with the intent of tearing into this goddess. And then my stomach drops like a rock and a familiar sense of dark, ill dread consumes me. A grotesque wolf-like monster emerges and I can recognize the familiar stench of dark Rift god magic all over him. He engages the goddess and I hope to see them tear one another apart but just as quickly as the mutated canine lunged so, too, does the rest of the crowd.
 

It’s chaos, plain and simple. Everyone seems to fight for something different – the wolf-god, the murderous goddess, themselves, pure anarchy. I trust no deity and the goddess reminds me so much of the Mad God that I can’t help but hate her but I know that the wolf must die if I truly want to escape the Rift. I see a white, antlered mare who seems to hail from the Rift lunge in toward the wolf and I follow suit. I’ve killed dozens before and yet I feel out of place and out of touch in this battle. As she lunges in toward his ribs, I’m aiming my jaws for his hamstring, and I’m suddenly hungry to snap shut on his sick flesh and feel it rip beneath my teeth.
 

And then as quickly as I’d lunged in I fell back into the mad crowd, suddenly drawn paralyzed by the unfortunate tremors in my muscles. I cursed the Mad God that had made me and the wolf God that wouldn’t let any of us go. And through the crowd I searched for the goddess I didn’t know and I cursed her too.