“Man always dies before he is fully born.”

  Erich Fromm, Psychologist

  “You dare, Ah Puch? You dare violate the rules of the God Contest? The laws of Authority himself?”

  “Violate? I have no idea what you mean, Omoikane. Such a serious accusation to lay at the feet of your fellow god. Surely you must have proof to back up such a radical claim.”

  Their words were faint, as if carried on a dream. At first, their argument didn’t register with Bethany. Her mind was clouded with fog, and there was a stabbing pain in her chest. Yet a cool, almost pleasant, sensation seeped into her being – an energy she had felt before.

  The energy that fed the gods.

  Bethany slowly opened her eyes, and the mental fog began to lift.

  She was in her void, lying on the surface of the metaphysical pond. Tiny specks of firefly light drifted across her body, and where they touched her skin, she felt a tiny infusion of lifegiving energy.

  I remember… shadows. The wolves. The man. The god. My hammer… shattered. Its remains pierced my chest. I… I think I died.

  The realization shattered what remained of her mental fog, and Bethany sat up in an instant, her hands probing desperately for wounds.

  I’m… I’m okay. No, I’m not okay. My mind is in the void, but my body is still in the arena, torn and broken.

  “Proof? You cut me off from my own Arena,” Omoikane accused, the elderly god’s words a mix of astonishment and unbending rage. “Those shadows – I don’t know how you did it, but you sent them into my maze, didn’t you?”

  “And why would I do that, dear Omoikane,” Ah Puch replied. Bethany could hear the sneer in his voice as he taunted Omoikane to act rashly.

  Bethany slowly got to her feet and tiptoed to the crack in the door that led to God Home, as if her silence footsteps in the void would attract the gods’ attention. She looked beyond and saw the two gods arguing across what looked to be a library.

  This door led to a hallway last time I stepped through it. This time, it seems like I’m looking from inside a wardrobe. Does the entrance move around?

  “You know why, death god. You seek to bypass Authority – he who gifted you your immortality – by siphoning energy straight from the God Contest. Fuel for your rebellion,” accused Omoikane.

  “Rebellion? Now here I was, believing it to be Oracle who was the rebel. It is her, after all, who hangs in the cage above the abyss, not me,” mused Ah Puch. “Perhaps your once-sharp mind has dulled, Omoikane.”

  Omoikane scowled, and Ah Puch smiled – a broad, malicious smile that so closely resembled the Shadowman’s grin.

  “Mark my words, Ah Puch. I’ll…”

  “You’ll what?” interrupted Ah Puch, his words slow and suddenly drenched with threat. “If you had any proof, you’d have told Authority – the slave desperate to suckle at his master’s teat. But you don’t have proof, do you? Now, I’ve endured enough of your accusations.”

  Ah Puch pushed past the Omoikane and strode for the library door, his rats following in his wake like a drifting plague.

  “If I were you, old man,” Ah Puch advised softly without looking back. “I’d be careful how far you push me. After all, everyone dies eventually. Even Authority is not truly immortal.”

  He opened the hefty wooden door and strode into the hall, leaving Omoikane alone in silence in the midst of the endless tomes of the library.

  Omoikane removed his spectacles and rubbed his forehead, leaning against a simple, worn writing desk. He took a deep, calming breath as he tried to get control of his anger.

  There came a tentative knock on the library door, and a bespeckled man with a green ibis head poked his head in.

  “Ah… Omoikane, I thought I heard shouting,” Thoth said tentatively, as he strode into the library. Bethany saw a tiny, pulsing pearl in his hand, which he slipped into his pocket before Omoikane could see it. “Are you alright, my friend?”

  Omoikane glanced up at his fellow knowledge god and let his shoulders sag. “Just a… malfunction… with my Arena, I’m afraid. And an argument with Ah Puch.”

  “Yes, the death god can be trying even in the best of times,” Thoth comforted. “I hope your arena isn’t voided. I was watching its progress with the other knowledge gods, but the broadcast was suddenly severed.”

  Thoth’s anxious, but he’s trying not to show it. He didn’t find his way to this library by accident.

  “It is still viable. I lost contact for a few minutes and had to put it in a time dilation to do some… minor repairs, but it’ll resume in a few moments. Will you be watching once it does?”

  Omoikane isn’t being forthright with Thoth. Does he not trust the god? Or is he intimidated by Ah Puch’s threats? Perhaps both.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I’m afraid not, Omoikane. I came by to do some research for my own Arena in the mountain quadrant,” Thoth said apologetically. “I’m sure the rest of your Arena will go well. I know the others are looking forward to learning the fate of the refinery team.”

  Refinery team? I knew they were watching us – Jitters broadcasts my every move for their amusement – but it’s strange to hear them talk about it so casually.

  “That’s right. Three of the players participating in my area were also contestants in yours. What were their names? Rocky… Emily… and… Brittany?”

  Brittany! As if.

  Thoth shrugged. “I try not to remember their names, Omoikane. It makes what we do to them all the more heart wrenching.”

  Omoikane nodded his agreement and placed a comforting hand on Thoth’s shoulder. “It’s for the greater good, my friend. Now, I’ll cede the library to you and resume my challenge. Best of luck in your research.”

  “To you as well, old friend,” Thoth replied, and Omoikane left the library.

  The instant the door clicked shut, Thoth rushed over to the wardrobe and threw open the doors. In her shock, Bethany tumbled out of the void and onto the library floor.

  “Bethany, why are you here?” Thoth said with a fusion of surprise, annoyance, and apprehension. “And why are you hiding in a closet?”

  “How did you know I was in there?” Bethany asked, avoiding his questions as she picked herself slowly off the floor in a vain attempt to preserve some semblance of dignity in front of the knowledge god.

  Thoth held up the small, pulsing pearl.

  “After your last visit to God Home, I thought it best to create a device that would alert me if you were to show up again,” Thoth explained. “A handy creation of my own design. But that’s not important. What happened in Omoikane’s Arena?”

  Bethany hesitated.

  Thoth – he’s part of this game that’s trying to kill us. But he saved me before, when I first found myself in God Home, by ensuring Authority and Omoikane didn’t find me. What side is he on? Can I trust him?

  “I think I… died,” Bethany said simply, her hand clutched to her chest.

  Thoth considered the woman carefully and reached his hand out towards her. She could see fear half-hidden behind his eyes, and it made her stomach lurch. “May I?”

  Bethany nodded, and Thoth’s hand glowed brilliant green as he rested his fingers against her heart.

  “Your heart stopped in the fraction of an instant before the time dilation was activated,” Thoth said with deep sympathy, though Bethany couldn’t tell if that sympathy was directed at her. “I’m afraid once Omoikane resumes his arena, you’ll only have a few minutes before your life comes to an end.”

  “I might have less time than that,” Bethany muttered, the sight of the Shadowman looming over her square in her mind.

  “Is there anything you can do to survive?” asked Thoth skeptically.

  “I…,”

  She wanted to stay defiant – to tell Thoth she would resist death itself and defeat the Shadowman. Only it would be a lie.

  “I… I can’t do anything to stop it. I’m all alone, and it’s too strong,” Bethany whimpered, as the reality of her situation hit her like a ton of bricks. She felt helpless – a prisoner being walked down the hall to the execution chamber.

  Thoth turned away from the player and stared out the window into the nothingness that existed beyond God Home, contemplating.

  Bethany peaked over his shoulder. What lay beyond the window resembled her void, but without the faint life that teemed below its dark surface. If her void was a hidden sanctuary, this one was a graveyard.

  It chilled Bethany to her very core.

  “Do you want this to be to end?” Thoth finally asked, never taking his eyes off the dead void. “Many players who find themselves in the God Contest are unable to cope with the horrors that we unleash upon them. They give up and let themselves wither away. There is no shame in doing so.”

  “No, I’m not going to give up,” Bethany replied right away, defiant even in death. “If I was going to give up my life, I would have done so before I ever stepped foot in Regina.”

  Thoth gave her a thoughtful, understanding nod and reached into his pocket. He drew out a small golden disk.

  “Oracle was always an insightful woman. You know, most gods – those who didn’t know the woman behind the goddess – assumed Oracle’s foresight was her godly gift,” Thoth disclosed wistfully. “But that’s not the case. Even before her ascension, Oracle had a knack for observing and extrapolating patterns in the world that others couldn’t see. Her ascension simply allowed her to expand her view of the world.”

  Thoth sighed – a deeply vulnerable sigh that tugged at Bethany’s heartstrings. “She is a dear friend, and I trust her with my life. So I need to trust her now.”

  The god pressed the golden disk into Bethany’s hand. The disk wasn’t physically heavy, but it carried with it an immense psychological weight, as if a great burden had been placed on her shoulders.

  The surface of the disk was carved in the image of an immense abyss – an endless prison – within which flowed a vast kaleidoscope of starlight life.

  “Before her imprisonment, Oracle gifted you her eye,” Thoth said as he rested a finger on her temple. “And she entrusted to me this disk, to be given to you in a time of great need. It seems like that time has come.”

  “What does it do?” Bethany asked in awe. She could feel the power emanating from within the image of the abyss, longing to be released.

  “I have no idea,” chirped Thoth with a mixture of amusement and irritation. “But I dare say you’ll find out soon enough. Now, you should go, before Omoikane resumes his Arena. Can you make it back on your own? I’m not sure your heart can take another of my more extreme way of waking you up.”

  Bethany remembered the sensation of his beak piercing her heart last time they met.

  “I have been practicing with my Eye, and I think I know how to get back,” Bethany answered as she opened the wardrobe. She could feel her void waiting beyond – its comforting vastness calling to her. The golden disk in her hand seemed to pull towards the void, as if it recognized what lay beyond.

  “May you survive to darken my home once more, Bethany Fox,” Thoth said as Bethany climbed through the door and stepped into the void.

  Bethany gave Thoth a gentle smile as she closed the wardrobe doors behind her.

  The light of God Home disappeared, and Bethany was once again alone in her void.

  She sighed, clutching the golden disk in her hand. “Let’s do this.”

  The golden disk dissolved into dust, and Bethany felt its power seep into her skin.

  “Wow, that’s…,” Bethany started, until she gazed upon the void and her words died upon her lips.

  A great rainbow of cosmic light flowed in a river across the darkness, and thousands of thin, golden threads – the energy of her fellow players – weaved their way dynamically across the void’s great expanse. The flickers of light in the distance were now vivid stars against the night sky. Where once there was emptiness, she could now feel a kaleidoscope of life all around her, teeming just below its surface.

  The essence of creation itself.

  It was the most beautiful thing Bethany had ever seen, and it brought her to tears.

  She felt a tug in her mind. A warning that Omoikane’s Arena was about to resume.

  With profound difficulty, she forced herself to block out the beauty all around her and focus inward.

  It was time.

  She clenched her fist and steeled herself for what was to come.

  “I won’t die. I won’t let this God Contest beat me.”

  Taking a deep breath, Bethany closed her eyes.

  And opened them again in the Arena.