It is the divine right of gods and goddessess to play games with the lives of mortals, but all games must have rules. These may be bent or twisted, but great woe betide any who break them.

- The Lore, Verse 1

On the very edge of the multiverse, where magic and gods were commonplace, floated the universe of Above and Below. From outside it looked like a pearl, if pearls were impossibly large. Within it lay the world Below, seven deep blue oceans swirling around seven great continents cupped by a rim of impossibly high mountains so that, from a distance, the world looked like a shallow bowl. Hovering high over this world, invisible to mortal eyes, were the seven levels of heaven Above. The lowest level was half as wide as the world Below, but each higher level was smaller so that the seventh level contained only a single forum where the High Father sat. It was there that the gods gathered on special occasions, setting aside their duties and games to take up their places on the seven tiers of stone seats beside the throne of the High Father. It was there, at the end of the Age of Legends, that they met to judge and imprison Chaos, the firstborn, goddess of fire and games. They had imprisoned her in a stone heptagon, a cell not much larger than an upright coffin which stood behind the throne. A lot of time had passed since that day. Many of the gods and goddesses had more-or-less forgotten about their older sister in her prison.

Chaos, however, had not forgotten them.

“What are you idiots doing out there?” she said, pressing one eye against the crack in her cell in a futile attempt to see out. “I bet you’re messing everything up. I’m going to kick all of your asses once I get out. Do you hear me? All of your asses!”

But the gods and goddesses Above did not hear her. They couldn’t. Her cell had no doors or windows, the black stone only broken by the crack. The crack was very thin; not even sound could escape. Occasionally Chaos saw flashes of light as gods and goddesses passed by, but nothing more. She gave up, turning away.

“This is unfair! I’m innocent!” Chaos shouted at the seven black walls of her cell. She considered her words for a few moments before adding, “Of this particular crime! Come on, idiots, let me out!”

The seven black walls of her cell seemed doubtful. They had a point.

“Innocent of this particular crime,” she corrected herself. “I never killed Essence.”

Chaos was guilty of plenty else. Rebellion. Theft. Libel. Assault. Abduction. Seduction. The illegal creation of sentient species. Rabblerousing. Starting some wars and ending others. All of the classics. Most had been committed for a good cause, some had been mistakes, and a few, she would admit, were committed for the sheer fun of it. She was the goddess Chaos, after all. Such behavior was expected of her. The murder of the goddess Essence, thirdborn of the pantheon, was different.

“I never killed Essence,” Chaos repeated, struggling against the seven chains that bound her. They, too, did not believe her.

The first chain was pure magic, white and blinding, the second was carved from a kraken’s bones. The third chain was made of promises kept, the fourth of diamond links imbued with lawful spirits. The fifth chain was twisting paper on which words of great power had been written in a steady, neat hand. It looked like the most fragile chain but it was in truth the strongest, for on it was written all of Chaos’s weaknesses and failures. The sixth chain was vines, impossibly strong. The seventh chain was ice. Chaos hated this chain even more than she hated the others.

“At least relax these chains so I can scratch my nose!” Chaos screamed at her prison walls. Come on!”

Chaos had spent a great many years trying to break her chains when she was first imprisoned. She had managed to crack a few links, here and there, but not enough to free herself. After realizing that there was no escape, she alternated her time between screaming and napping before succumbing, eventually, to a great and powerful boredom with everything, even sleep. Time had passed slowly. She had given up on escape. She had given up on everything.

And then her nose began to itch.

It started as a tingle beneath her left nostril, grew to a prickle, and graduated to a full itch. There was no escaping it. The chains bound her hands to her side, and rubbing her face against smooth walls of her cell gave no relief. She tried to ignore it, but the itch moved under the skin as if it were an insect burrowing in her flesh, spreading up her nose, into her face.

The first year was terrible, torture beyond words, horrendous, and agonizing. The second year was far worse. That had been ten years earlier. It was driving her mad.

“Let me out!” she screamed at the walls of her cell. “Let me out!”

In the early days of the universe, before the Lore was written, a command from Chaos would have raised mountains Below and shaken the skies Above. Stars would have tumbled down, oceans boiled, and the ground split and reformed beneath her feet. The Lore had limited such extravagance, but even then Chaos had still been able to summon minions and monsters to carry out her will.

“And these days I can’t even scratch—"

She slammed her forehead into the wall of the cell with a loud thump.

“—my own—"

Thump!

“—nose!”

Thump!

“Ouch!”

Chaos leaned against the wall until the pain faded from her head. The walls were unmarked by her attempts at escape. The itch remained, as it always did. She screwed up her face and tried, as she had a thousand times before, to touch the tip of her nose with her tongue. She still couldn’t. Chaos sighed, then started her attack on the walls again.

Thump!

Thump!

CRACK!

The crack in her prison wall began to spread, widening, letting in a bright light that hurt Chaos’s eyes. Her prison cell shattered and she stumbled out into the throne room, tripped, landed face down, and struggled back to her feet. She saw a fragment of her prison beside her foot and stomped on it as hard as she could, reducing it to dust. Only when there was no more of her prison to destroy did she look around.

She stood beside the glowing throne of the High Father, the enormous and magnificent creator, who towered over the room, his wooden scepter alone as large as most gods. Order, god of water, stood scowling beside the throne, a great hammer in his hand. Chaos ignored them; it wasn’t her father or twin brother that she had missed.

Set perpendicular to this throne was a forum of seven tiers on which all the gods and goddesses of the pantheon sat in their court finery. On the lowest stone tier, closest to the throne, sat the Principles, the most important gods and goddesses in the universe. Chaos had sat on the lowest tier once, as had Essence, thirdborn of the pantheon. Their seats remained, unused. Empty too was the seat set aside for Form, fourthborn of the gods, who stoically refused to come Above for any reason. All the other seats on the first tier were occupied. The ebony and ivory spirits of Life and Death, conjoined twins, floated above the stone. Beside them sat Instinct, who wore the shape of a human and the head of a giant cobra, then Knowledge, cross-legged and reading a scroll. Next along the tier were Fate and Choice, both dressed in finery, neither willing to look at the other, then bark-skinned Nature and the whirling gears and venting steam body of Artifact. These were Chaos’s full siblings and her most powerful allies, competitors, and drinking buddies.

Chaos ignored them, too.

Above and behind the Principles sat the lesser gods. There were the Attributes on the second tier, the Dramas on the third, the Greater Passions and Lesser Passions on the fourth and fifth, and finally on the sixth and seventh tiers sat the little deities of various forms, weak and noisy.

Chaos ignored them most of all.

She stared at the crystal ground, her vision passing through the seven layers of heaven Above and all the way down to the world Below. It was night. She could see the twinkling of distant fires, some seemingly alone, others linked in constellations of cities. There were mortals Below, numerous and strong, spread throughout the world.

Chaos smiled.

Only then did she turn to address the High Father and the gods and goddesses of Above and Below.

“Hey, losers,” she said. “Did you miss me?”