Now that the UTAS drivers who lacked true intelligence, capable only of following the rules of the road and honking mindlessly, had been replaced, the honks shared the soundscape with yells and shouts. “Woo,” for example. “Yeah!” also did well, better than “Come on!” and “Avaunt!” A few trial “On Dashers!” were derided as unseasonable, and nobody cared for “Into the valley of Death rode the one hundred!”

The outpost faded from sight, but a broad streak of red paint remained, an artery of exploration and conquest. The cavalcade widened for fear of missing options off to the sides, and observers climbed to the top of trucks and airships to spy out a volume slider or notifications on/off toggle. Some fell off, which made the paint idea look even smarter.

“Button to port!” Crusher Domingo shouted from a perch on the end of a sky-swatting fishing rod mounted on a boat rolling on tank treads. The land armada, or landmada, swerved left and converged on an unfamiliar set of buttons.

“Same groups as before. I don't know what game this is, but nobody can withstand us, n'est-ce pas?” The marauders, Marauder included, agreed with Quircy Rau that they believed that to be the case and jumped on the Back button five by five after roping up.

Hustle! Bustle! Outrageous characters giving battle to dire opponents! Satisfying events with cheap rewards and dialogue capable of eliciting a laugh or at least a snort from invested players! The game they entered then had none of that. The invaders saw no callow young men with oversized swords or heroines wearing clothes that were almost too much and definitely not enough. Swimsuits: Zero. Santas: Not present.

“This is boringer than the garden,” Crusher Domingo said, and if he escaped censure for saying “boringer,” it was because his comrades thought the word communicated the situation as they understood it. Officers taking their relaxation in Freegate's garden could at least hear the energetic sounds of Public Service anguish and excoriated Rares, as much as they wished not to. Darlotte Glofal wished not to all the time, though King Ostros and General Anstralia thought it was funny. There, they heard nothing, except for a soft shff, shff kind of sound. The visual aspect lacked nature's irregularity compared to the Commandment of Hero spawn point, since they appeared to have popped into an empty room, perhaps designed to store something in less supply than had been believed. The only excitement to be had came from speculating about what surprises the sole door might conceal.

“The possibility, not probability, exists than an ambush has been readied for us. This is unknown territory which might as well be Teutoburg Forest to us,” Gintus Pelluina said.

Fellow Strategist Smidgen invented potential threats. “The characters lost their latest fight maybe! They could be zombies now! Or an alien hunted them one by one and killed them! We're next!”

“Their power has become such that they notice us no more than does the bear the lice, or the moon the owls that hunt in its pale light,” Ecke suggested.

Those and other theories chilled the hearts of the invaders with cold terror. All those thrilling ideas, and none of them probable. Past the door, nothing but boredom would threaten them. So their fears said.

“Let's go if we're going,” Holy Legend Army's very own Common Sprite, Brownie, screeched with his tiny little lungs, and the power of that exhortation impelled the host through the door into the great hall beyond. Statues of marble, alabaster, and jade carved to emphasize the dignity of their subjects and the fineness of their features rather than the details of dynamic muscles in motion! A golden vault overheard where played the precocious lights born from flames confined below in braziers, lanterns, and fire pits! A haze filled the immeasurable chamber, and sneeze-inducing incense.

What artist dared to decorate that floor, so vast that one corner could not be seen from any other, with intricate designs, with ladders of ivy and leaves dancing through the sky in whorls, and the fruit of the fields, the gourds and the grain? What hand ground up the very matter of history to serve as paints and left not an inch uncovered of walls that measured in height three stumans stacked improbably? Here the creation of the world from the stuff of chaos, there its hatching from a great egg, and farther down, a cow. The rise of cities and their destruction at the command of the gods were recorded there alongside the deeds of heroes and the clashes of armies.

A civilization might well have constructed such an edifice and furnished it with nothing that the godhead might permeate the great space, but of a different purpose was this hall. An altar, two altars, a dozen, more. Not in rows and columns like soldiers ready to execute a drill, but arranged like constellations in the firmament, not uniform but each unlike the rest in magnitude and brightness. Some were of stone and others of wood; this one was round and that one rectangular. Most had been elevated a step or two above the ground that worshippers might rise to them, but flights of stairs or long ladders gave access to others which demanded more rising still. Though dissimilar as far as altar design, the aspiring desecrators who wandered among the sacred sites noticed consistent features that revealed much.

“This is a card game.” Solemn Declaration lived up to his name, unlike those Holy Legend Army poseurs. Each altar top included spaces for a playing field, a deck, and a discard pile on each of two opposing sides. Minds more reckless than Solemn Declaration's might have written and published a fiery article based on that evidence alone, but Society Page Lasva's next publication had no time to come out before the investigators discovered card games being played by invisible hands on those holy surfaces.

Zimley Boe popped her bubble and said, “Hey Quirce, can you check out those cards for me? If you see Gurberb and Tyrovius played it's Deck World, From Actium to Zama means Napoleon or Gustavus Adolphus, or Zeus and Amaterasu if we're in Divine Providence.”

“Can do! I know how absorbed you get when you see cards with numbers on them, and I need you at your sharpest. Perseus. Gigantomachy. Visvamitra. I see a Zeus!”

Divine Providence! Some of the interlopers had heard of that! They thought! Out of the wave of collectible trading printable cardboard-inspired math games, many had died, but Divine Providence had not. Wisp and Fairy could have sworn otherwise, which was no more than what one could expect from Rs, as noted SR Sprite Kobold grumbled.

“Who opposes us in the field of battle? Who would deny our overlordship?” Odo shouted. He waited. “Anyone?” More waiting. “Divine Providence has been subjected to our authority,” he announced.

The roars and cheers of the conquerors filled the chamber thicker than the haze, pressing the soft sounds of shuffling up against the walls and executing them. A chorus started singing Y***** opening themes, which was the cardiest thing most of them could think to do. To run through them all would take some time, given how releases in different languages inflated the number. Or it would have, had they known more than a few.

“My heart beats! Cool cool but . . . in hyperdrive! That's cool but we're supposed to loot stuff and I don't know what. Just let destiny choose!”

“Anything can be a trophy if you want it to be,” said Youl Sandshaker, whose nose already was sniffing the altars and whose fingers ran along the walls in search of secret passages or cubbies. Fafnir, Asmodeus, and Inorrea Vacationer engaged in similar procedures while Ivar and Reaver yelled at the cards. The Warriors demanded they reveal the hiding places of the chalices, their fists shaking and their horned helmets twitching.

Those cards played it close to the chest though. Worse, the building's budget had been expended on lavish ornamentation, leaving nothing for workmen to install secrets that could reward zealous wall-tappers and floor-stampers. A non-secret room opposite the place where they spawned held a few figurines of gods with heads of cats and nicer animals. Their places in the main hall had been usurped by larger, more majestic replacements, the looters hypothesized, and accordingly they had been placed in storage alongside some unused incense and a mop.

“The mop is a treasure if anything here is,” Skaya said. “Seeing only one of them, and measuring the size of the floor, I think it has to be a god itself. At any rate, it's better made than anything back home, including the Dungeon models.” That endorsement sufficed for the horde. Looters grabbed everything in the room, by no means excepting the mop, and tugged four times.