At CrawlCon, Carl is sent from his green room to a virtual judging table for a children’s art contest. Carl quickly learns the setup is simple: each judge scores each entry from one to thirty. Carl’s fellow judges are Hurk, a gleener designer who is chatty, theatrical, and obviously intoxicated, and G’valt, a camel-like playwright whose fame has faded enough that his name badge now includes the title of his old work, Session of Love. While the contest begins, Carl asks whether either judge knows what happened between Donut and Lucia Mar, but Hurk only says he follows highlights and offers no useful information.

The judging itself is absurd, hostile, and occasionally disturbing. A human boy named Keith H. presents a crude drawing of Carl being eaten and repeats insults he has heard from his father, so Carl gives the entry the lowest score he has used. Other children are stranger or sadder: Buttercup Divinity shows Carl a striking portrait of her smiling mother, then casually says the woman is dead. Meanwhile, G’valt stops participating and falls asleep, after which an unseen person in his room begins casting votes in his place.

The most unsettling entrants are three goat children from the Plenty, who have no visible artwork and simply ask to be judged themselves. Hurk explains that the Plenty are always unnerving and reminds Carl how alien they are. Because Carl knows the Plenty are linked to the tunneling system and to the Apothecary, the encounter makes Carl feel briefly as if everyone might be in danger. Soon after, Carl notices a young gnoll named Lix waiting in line and asks Hurk to give her a high score. Carl does this because he believes Lix is the security chief’s granddaughter and wants the promised favor of being allowed to loot his green room. Lix presents a simple black drawing of her pup-pop beating tax evaders, and both Carl and Hurk give her perfect scores.

When the contest ends, Lix wins with a perfect ninety because the substitute voting for the sleeping G’valt also gave her a thirty. Keith finishes last. Hurk mentions that another child, who had drawn Donut, usually would have won, and he expects that child’s faction to be furious. As Carl leaves, Hurk grows more serious and warns Carl that he is the kind of crawler people truly notice, which makes him vulnerable. Hurk then reveals why Carl’s next panel is so anticipated: it will be moderated by the mother of one of the hunters Carl killed, and the convention audience is eager for a public clash.