He took the final swig of the brandy sent to him by his wife and threw a few red chips into the pot. "I'll take you all in if I have to, Rivi!"

Rivi, the youngest person on the crew of the Furious Monkey, stared him down with eyes cold as ice. "It's your funeral," she said, pushing her entire stack of chips into the middle of the table. "All in!"

The other three players had already folded. They oohed and ahhed as Harold and Rivi's banter continued.

Harold leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and opened them again. His eyes were glowing green coals.

Rivi raised an eyebrow at him. "Hey, dude, why are you doing that? Trying to intimidate me? It's not going to work!"

He laughed at her as he pushed his chips into the pot. "I'm raising."

"You don't have anything left to raise, you've already gone all in, Harold," Vic, who had folded, explained to him.

"I have at least one more thing." Harold stood up and pulled a knife off of his belt. It had a fixed blade and was meant primarily for fighting instead of deconstructing boxes or cutting cord.

"Loser dies," Harold said, tossing the blade on top of the pot.

Rivi studied the knife. "You're just kidding, right? Like this is a joke, right? You just don't want me to take all your money. Well, I'm not going to let you intimidate me out of this one, Harold. So fuck you, I call."

Rivi took her knife off her belt and placed it in the pot.

"Show 'em!" Harold laid his cards flat on the table. As he had said, he had a straight.

Rivi revealed her hand: a full house, queens and threes.

"Fuck!" Harold yelled.

He grabbed his knife and took it out of its sheathe, tossing the leather cover across the room. Vic grabbed his arm. "Hey dude calm down. It's just a game."

"What the fuck, Harold? I thought you were just kidding. I don't expect you to kill yourself over a fucking game," Rivi tried talking him down.

"A deal's a fucking deal, Rivi! If you wanna forfeit, then fine, but then I win."

"The hand's already over, Harold, you lost!" Rivi explained.

Harold looked at the blade of the knife. In one swift motion, he impaled it into his gut. Everyone in the game jumped on him, but were too slow. Instead, they restrained him from trying to hurt himself more.

His eyes were no longer green. Smoke billowed out of his nose and mouth. Harold screamed in pain. Rivi took the knife out of his gut and sliced one of the players in the arm with it before forcing it into her own stomach.

Vic contacted security. "We need a doctor in the mess hall, now!"

Captain Dobbs was on his way back to the bridge with Red when he received a page from a security officer informing him of what happened. Rivi and Harold were in critical condition, everyone else only suffering from minor cuts and bruises from the scuffle. They immediately ran across the ship to the infirmary. Harold was put into a coma, but Rivi was still conscious.

"What happened, private?" Captain Dobbs asked after introducing Red.

"We were playing a game. Harold's eyes started to glow and he started talking crazy, about raising the stakes. He threw his knife into the pot. I called him, because I didn't want to lose..."

Captain Dobbs looked at Red, who nodded. "Thank you."

He walked out of the infirmary and instructed security personnel to go to red alert. "We've got an intruder aboard."

They made their way to the bridge, where Captain Dobbs issued orders that all non-essential personnel were confined to quarters. There was to be no risk-taking behavior of any kind while on red alert, and anyone acting out of the ordinary was to be reported to security personnel immediately.

"Okay, Red, you got us into this shit. How are we going to get out of it?" Captain Dobbs asked them once the security plan was in place.

"We have to get her real name."

"Well, how the fuck are we supposed to do that? I thought you already had her fucking name! Who the fuck did we kill?"

"Another god of luck, I guess. They seemed to be related." Red tried to avoid the fact that it was their failure that had endangered the Furious Monkey.

"And you weren't aware of this entity beforehand? How the fuck am I supposed to believe that? You've been following this god for what, months? Where the fuck did you train?"

"Sirius, Sir."

"I can't believe a wanderer from Sirius could make such an astounding fuck-up." Captain Dobbs, furious, sat down at his desk.

"The intel we had, Captain, suggested that she worked alone. There was no reason to believe otherwise."

"You're young, so you haven't come to understand just how crafty those fuckers can be. Let me guess, you've never encountered a trickster before? I wanted the Order that this kind of scenario was likely. Shows how much they were willing to prepare for it."

"Captain Dobbs, I'm afraid you've lost me," Red admitted, holding back their tears from getting chewed out.

"When I was much younger, I was a wanderer. However, I immediately noticed that the Jhikae Order had established a kind of... rapport with gods of certain ilk. And it was those gods that entire training regimes were built to defeat. However, if one were to discover a loose cannon, such as this Lady Luck, or the one I discovered on Stillwyrm, they were basically better off alone. After a grueling battle that lasted several years between me and Isabelle... Well, it's all ancient history. Nevertheless, I gave my recommendations to the Order many years ago, when I was promoted to captain, and they apparently never heeded it. And now, here we are, playing cat and mouse with a god that gets her kicks gambling with people's lives. You should have just left her alone, Red."

"But she was dangerous. It's our job to protect people from gods like that."

"Some gods are more trouble than they're worth. What would she really have done? Made a few people rich? Given someone a black eye? Killed a few folks? You don't see us hunting down every serial killer, even though many of them act within the same parameters."

It dawned on Red that their involvement was primarily responsible for putting Carlyle in danger in the first place. They could suddenly run the calculations that Captain Dobbs proposed and see things from his point of view. They sat down in the chair facing his desk and started to cry.

"You really are just a kid still, huh."

Captain Dobbs ignored them as Red worked through their emotions. After a few minutes, they had pulled themselves together and addressed the captain. "So, how do we solve this situation, sir?"

"I spent the past few minutes trying to find a spell that I remembered using a long time ago. The basic idea is, you trick the god into giving up their name. I couldn't find it though, so we'll have to recreate it another way."

"We could always challenge her to a game," Red suggested.

"Do you think that will work?"

"I'm certain of it! If there's anything that gets her interested in us, it's playing a game. It has to have real stakes though. I suspect she only attacked the poker game because she was drawn to the high-stakes nature of the hand, if they were playing for chump change, she would never have shown up. In all of my experiences with her, the stakes were relatively serious. Life-changing, at least."

"So how do we create that kind of environment and flush her out?"

"If we're too obvious, she'll never come. I think I know what to do, but I think I have to do it alone. Can I use the ritual space we already set up to do it?"

"Be my guest. Do you need anything else?" Captain Dobbs asked.

"No. I've got it. I'll inform you when she's dead. Until then, keep the crew safe. I won't fail you."

"Once you get her name, please at least let me know, in case I have to clean up the mess."

"Will do, sir!" Red saluted and left his office.

They made their way to the ritual room. The entire floor was locked down in order to protect the crew from accidentally stumbling upon the corpse of the dead god, Zlittra. They opened the door.

Lady Luck squatted over the corpse of her sister, petting its face. She didn't seem to notice Red's entry, or else she just didn't really care. Lady Luck whispered something into the corpse's ear and then thrust her hand into its chest, cracking the ribs and causing a spurt of blood across the room.

Lady Luck violently removed the heart and bit into it. She turned to Red and smirked widely. "You want some, too? It's only fair! After all, you're the one who killed her."

"Who was she?" Red asked.

"My sister. She was a much nicer woman than I, much more willing to help those in need. I tried to be like her, you know. But it just wasn't as much fun."

"So now you're just terrorizing people? is that really better?"

"It's better for me. Maybe not for people like Harold. How's he doing?"

"He's gonna pull through, I think."

"Damn it! I knew I got it wrong. A deal's a deal, but I'm still not used to these ridiculous material forms. I can't believe I messed it up."

"Are you sure you just didn't really want him to die?" Red asked.

Lady Luck filled the room with laughter. "Like I said, Red, a deal's a deal! That's what I'm all about. That's my domain, as it were!"

"Would that even be true between us?"

Lady Luck looked puzzled. "Are you finally coming to your senses, Red? Finally ready to play a game with me?"

"What do you want to play?" Red asked.

"What game are you best at?" she asked.

"Something simple. Played quickly. I wanna get it over with. I have stuff to do."

"How about something incredibly easy? Like rock, paper, scissors?"

"Okay. That works for me. These are the stakes I want: your name for my life."

Lady Luck laughed. "My life is worth hundreds of you. Do better."

"Fine. Your name for my life and Carlyle's life."

Lady Luck exclaimed in pleasure. "Mmmm, the life of a lover is quite a thing to put on the line. Okay! But if I win, I'm also going to destroy this ship and kill everyone aboard. Just to make it even."

"There's nothing I can do to stop you, especially since I'll be dead."

"Okay. But first, take a bite of my sister's heart, you're going to need it."

Lady Luck offered the heart to Red. They were uncertain at first, but Lady Luck thrust the mass into their mouth, causing them to instinctively bite down. It was tough and weird.

They felt luckier.