It did not take long for the Heroes to realize what had gone wrong this time. Mere moments, in fact.

Metcenzern awoke to a beautiful Spring morning gone sour, plagued by the ghost of a splitting headache seeping down from the Circle Plane, and instantly noticed something... odd.

Odd was understating it.

“Uh...”

The bard, rarely at a loss for words, felt utterly incapable of even simple words for a long, long moment.

By every facet of the Circle Above... Teru... what have you done?!

She wasn't the only one.

~

Duke Elford could barely hear the complaining messengers over the maddening headache inside her head. Unlike those with a sensitive connection to the Circle, this was not an echo of a god-sized hangover, but simply the migraine of a mind finally incapable of taking any more.

At first, she had hoped it was an isolated incident, but then the King's messenger arrived. Her Majesty was livid. The other Dukes were livid. Everyone in the Kingdom was livid.

Solve this problem, they cried, but because the one responsible for the problem was a god, and therefore above complaint, they brought their cries to the one who'd been assigned responsibility to prevent the problem.

As if mortal man, or woman, could stop a god.

Men, become women. Women, turned into men. Elford could only pray that, like some of the other bizarre things brought about by Teru's madness, it wouldn't last. It couldn't last.

The Royal Army was threatening to disband. The Fortress was in chaos, the First Mare having isolated himself completely while the Children of the Fort tried to figure out how to continue their strictly structured lives with everything backwards. Elford's own maids had quit in-mass and marched out of the estate.

So Duke Elford lay on her desk, her head in her arms, and allowed the complaints to roll unheard past her ears. There was nothing more to be done. She'd sent the best of the worst, the people she thought had the best chance of success... and now they simply had to wait.

But though Duke Elford had succumbed to helplessness, there was another who was only emboldened by the dreadful new Teru Effect.

Duke Windlee of Southwindleton had spent every waking hour of the last two days devising the new plan, and today, of all days, a dramatic Teru Effect would only help that new plan. She walked into a room of angry, embarrassed men and women, eager for any hope of a solution, and sat easily at the head of the table.

“Gentlemen,” she began. “Ladies. I have brought you here to help me save the Kingdom.”

~

Metcenzerin actually found a positive fairly quickly. New, feminine lungs meant an exciting new set of voices to explore, and so she climbed up into a tree to be one with the birds and sang her heart out, all concerns about this new arrangement momentarily set aside. The others, of course, took everything significantly worse.

“It could be worse,” muttered Eany, hefting his greatsword experimentally. “My balance is off, of course, but I'll figure that out eventually.”

“Eventually?” hissed Daerth venomously, face pale with fury beneath her hood. “Eventually?! We are not going to get used to this. Teru has gone too far this time; he's crossed a line!”

“This is indeed a twisted fate,” muttered Kwanai. “Ku'eb, take me soon or spare me of Teru's madness...”

“Where's Raceel?” Daerth asked abruptly, completely ignoring Kwanai as a note of panic joined the anger in her voice. “Has anyone seen Raceel this morning?”

“She stormed off shortly after I first got up, before anyone else had awakened,” called Metcenzerin from her tree perch. “After all that fuss yesterday about women not being proper paladins and not trusting Eany, I imagine she's too mortified and embarrassed to face us properly.” She chuckled a little vindictively. “Serves her right. Eat your words, Raceel; Teru got you good.”

“No!” yelped Daerth. “No, this is in no way good. How are you sitting there acting like this is normal? We're done for, Quest over, end of the story. There is no way to fix what he's done this time, and none of your other so-called gods have stepped in to put a stop to it. Don't you understand the magnitude of this? This isn't some inconvenience that we have to work around – this changes our lives forever!”

The Stitchdoctor, quiet and easily overlooked as always, abruptly stood and marched over to Daerth. Teru's meddling had made her look even more off-putting then usual. With her heavy city coat hanging loosely around her narrow shoulders and thinner, almost bony fingers and limbs, she looked like a living scarecrow masquerading as human.

“Emotional breakdown,” she diagnosed after a moment, then turned to fix the others with her unseen gaze. “The rest... are alright to continue, but tread... carefully. We are all compromised.” She drew in a harsh breath. “Just waiting to snap.”

Eany gestured at the doctor curiously. “Is anyone going to explain the creepy raspy voice? I know city buildings can get pretty smoky, especially in the lower districts, but this is far beyond that.”

The Stitchdoctor looked at him for a long moment, tilting her head contemplatively, then replied simply, “Acid in my water.”

“In your... drinking water?”

“In a hot enough room... you will always drink. Eventually.”

Eany's brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed. “They weren't bluffing, were they?” he asked in sudden realization. “You're the real Stitcher?”

“Stitchdoctor.”

“Can we please focus?” cried Daerth. “What in the Outer Circles of Emptiness are we going to do now?”

There was no immediate answer. No one spoke, save Metcenzerin still testing her new range in song above their heads. Then,

“We continue as before.”

Raceel strode back into the camp, her dark eyes fierce and determined. Mercifully, Teru's nonsense had transformed the paladins' armor as well as... everything else, for though the black paladin was a somewhat narrower woman, she hadn't lost any of the height that had so intimidated Eany the day before. Nothing under the sun would have fit her properly.

Raceel crossed her arms, glaring in the group's direction but not at them. “After a great deal of thought, I have come to the conclusion that this is a test like any other. If we finish the Quest, Teru must relent. That was the implied deal. Of course we cannot trust him, but it is our only hope right now, and I'm prepared to follow it through to the end.”

Her steady, confident words seemed to work. Daerth visibly calmed down, though her face was still near deadly-pale, and Kwanai nodded in slow agreement.

“Then let's get this party underway again,” suggested Eany brightly. “Daerth, have you checked on your snares yet this morning?”

“N-no, I've had other things on my mind.”

“Do that now, and let's pray for some prey. Metcenzerin, get down here and help me refill all our water containers. You can practice those vocal cords while we walk.”

Raceel cleared her throat pointedly. “Eany, a word.”

Eany glanced between the Stitchdoctor and Kwanai, then gestured at Kwanai. “Can you help Metcenzerin instead?”

“If I must.”

“Good. Alright, Miss Black Paladin, your turn.”

“Was this your doing?”

They'd stepped aside into the woods, out of casual earshot, but Raceel still kept her voice low. Eany scoffed at the question, not bothering to do the same.

“My doing? What on earth do you think I am to have the kind of power required for this?”

He said it with a smile, the question almost a joke as if the obvious answer made the question itself absurd, but Raceel did not laugh. She didn't even crack a smile, but instead stayed silent for a long moment, pondering the response.

“Perhaps you,” she suggested finally and carefully, “are Teru.”

Eany's smile faded. “Are you serious?”

“Very.”

Eany didn't know how to proceed. The claim seemed obviously ludicrous, but Raceel looked, not only serious, but dangerously serious.

“I'm not Teru,” he said finally, “nor do I understand how you could even come to that conclusion. Teru is a god of the Circle, and I clearly am not.”

“Perhaps once that would be enough,” Raceel replied grimly, “but not now. We have entered an era, however brief it might be, where the rules of the lower earth are being broken. We are all playing a new game, a mad game, and Teru wants to play with us.

“And here you are, forcing your way into our group on the first morning after we escape from Teru's Dungeon. Here we all are, the day after I try to keep you from joining our group, the day after I express my distrust of you and my feelings about women becoming paladins, and fate just so happens to decide that today I am forced to confront that very thing myself?”

Eany closed his eyes, barely hiding a grimace. “Alright, I see where you're coming from, but I have nothing to do with this. Perhaps Teru is trying to make a point of some sort, or perhaps (and I think more likely) the Dice just... happened to land this way. I understand that seems like a weak response, but there is no other explanation.”

“Except that you are Teru in human guise.”

“I'm telling you I'm not.”

Raceel stared at him, as if she could pierce through his skin with her gaze and see the truth in his blood. After a long moment, “I sensed the presence of Teru the moment we encountered you, and it only strengthened as the day progressed. You are telling me that is a coincidence, bad luck, as well?”

“Teru's sense is everywhere here. I can feel it in your company, as well – does that mean each of you are some illusion of Teru's design?”

Another silence, another careful moment of consideration. Finally, Raceel looked away.

“Very well. We must continue if we are to find a solution, and at this point we may need you. But remember what I said, Cerethian. It hasn't changed. Whoever, or whatever, you are... I do not trust you.”

Eany caught Raceel's arm as she tried to brush past him and twisted her back around to face him. “Guess what, ex-Paladin? I don't need your trust. I just need the numbers, and I get that with or without you.”

He had to look up to met her gaze, but she broke away first.