Sometimes, a perfectly planned proposal goes south, but Noah’s would take a deep dive into insanity when the end of the world upstaged his attempt to get hitched.

Noah held the ring case in his hand, turning it around and around as he drove through the night. He was headed back home toward Kansas City, where he and his girlfriend, Hope, lived. And where she attended the University of Missouri-Kansas City as a pre-med.

Hope was perfect in every little way. At least, to Noah she was. She always understood all his gamer in-jokes and enjoyed helping him fix up old cars. Her homemade pizza was to die for. She even had a scar on her pinkie—which she tried to hide—but Noah wished she wouldn’t. She had loyally waited for him through his entire tour and two deployments. She was wonderful, flaws and all.

He couldn’t imagine marrying anyone other than his best friend.

Noah was proposing to her today because of the call he had received from her this morning. He had been helping his father with funeral arrangements for his mother when Hope had called, excitement in her voice, to tell him she was pregnant.

I’m going to be a father, Noah thought, again twirling the ring case in his hand. I have to do right by my love and future child. First step is getting hitched.

A car came up behind him on the freeway, swinging around a hill going over a hundred miles per hour with its headlights on bright. The car nearly slammed into Noah from behind, honking and swerving to the side into the oncoming traffic lane and then onto the graveled far side of the highway.

“Jesus,” Noah muttered. “What’s this guy’s problem?”

The vehicle slowed as gravel spewed from beneath its tires, managed to keep some traction, and then swerved back toward Noah. The car—a silver Tesla Model Q3—came so close that Noah had to turn his beat-up, twenty-year-old 2010 Ford F-150 truck hard to the left and slam on the brakes. He almost lost control and went off the 35 into the brush of the Flint Hills, but managed to stay on the highway as the Tesla screeched its tires on the road, gained purchase, and went flying off into the darkness.

“Son of a dog,” Noah growled out.

He had dropped the ring case. Noah leaned over, keeping his eyes on the road as he groped blindly around the floor till his hand closed on the felt-covered box.

After a moment, he mouthed a variant of his mother’s favorite phrase for drivers acting like utter idiots. “Well, have fun hurrying to your funeral.”

Although he envied the man his car. Despite vastly preferring to refurbish and mod out his own vehicles, Noah could appreciate nearly any good car. The Q3 was a well-made piece of machinery.

The night around him was dark, and his truck cold. Noah had been enjoying the drive before his encounter with the Tesla, although his anticipation of his proposal tonight had him anxious. He was ninety-nine percent sure Hope would say yes—she had been downright ecstatic in the morning when she had called to let him know she was pregnant. But even a one percent chance of failure, on something as important as proposing to the girl you loved, could make a man sweat.

As the brief adrenaline spike faded from his system, he settled back and tried to recapture his enjoyment of the drive. He immediately started thinking again about Hope again. Natural, he supposed, given he was about to propose to her.

Without any fanfare or warning, words appeared in front of Noah. Words that hovered in his vision like a heads-up display, moving with his gaze.

Denizens of Earth…

The gods of the Great Game have decided to transport your world to the surface of Arena. This is the grand world chosen for the next iteration of the Great Game, where you will compete with one another, and the denizens of nine other worlds, for power and place.

You must also survive the predations of an eleventh sapient species, whose turn it is to hunt mortals for their flesh… and their magic.

Because 1 in 100 members of your species will receive a deck of 10 magical cards from which to grow their power. 1 in 5 of those, in turn, will receive a god-gifted deck with more advanced and specialized cards in place of some of the base 10.

Those who receive a deck will also gain the ability to level, increasing their power in the Great Game.

If you aren’t selected, you aren’t out of the game—anyone who gains 10 cards will become a deckbearer.

This year’s card set is known as the Cycle of the Beginning, First Fall.

Cards may be gained every 10 years in another random distribution. Additionally, more—and better—cards may be acquired by slaying monsters, solving puzzle rooms, winning the competitive quests, and completing the great dungeons that will be placed throughout Arena, whose depths contain fantastic cards beyond imagination.

Withal, killing other deckbearers will allow you to take their cards, and make them your own.

Special notification for humans: Your species was deemed too strong and numerous, so extremely powerful monsters will be appearing near major population sites. Additionally, due to shifts in the underlying reality of your world, electronics in their current form will no longer work. Furthermore, all weapons of mass destruction and heavy weapons will be eliminated from the world, as well as any vehicles whose primary purpose is military.

We aim for your numbers to be culled by over 90%. Be prepared.

Noah’s first thought at the arrival of the apocalypse, besides sheer disbelief, was selfish and narrow-minded frustration. Of course it happened on the night I was supposed to propose to Hope! His second thought was a deep, wordless fear for his girlfriend and their baby.

The mysterious words disappeared from Noah’s view.

Noah’s truck died.

“Son of a dog,” Noah muttered. He pulled to the side as his car bled speed, the moonlight barely enough to see by with his headlights out.

He kept half his attention on following the white line, trying to let the car’s momentum get him a few miles closer to Hope.

The other half of his attention was afraid for her. Frightened that he would lose her without even having the chance to try and save her. Hope was in a city with a metropolitan population of over two million. A city that would likely have a far greater than a ninety percent death rate if the words from the supposed gods were to be believed, since they said they were targeting population centers.

Assuming Noah wasn’t just hallucinating everything, of course.

“Damnit!” Noah forcefully slapped the dashboard of his abruptly useless car with his hand.

“I should have left earlier,” Noah said to the empty car, his voice filled with recrimination.

He’d had the afternoon meeting with the lawyers over some estate stuff. Then some of his dad’s old military friends had flown in and taken them to dinner to offer condolences. At the time, it had seemed worth it to delay returning home. But now Hope was in terrible danger, and Noah wasn’t there to save her.

The world seemed brighter again, and Noah glanced up, almost running off the highway in surprise. The three moons would have been shocking all on their own. But they paled in comparison to the source of the illumination. A ring of light, composed of thousands of small glowing points, arced across the sky, dominating the heavens.

Before Noah could think the utterly impossible situation through any further, more words appeared across his vision.

Congratulations! You have been selected to receive a god-gifted deck of cards.

A sense of infinite possibility ran through Noah. It coalesced into a ball in his chest as a sense of desperate determination, deprivation, and creativity that didn’t feel entirely his own.

The words changed.

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You may draw your cards by touching your chest for two seconds and willing it at any time.

In order to play a card, you must—

Mere seconds before he would have run into it, Noah noticed the damned Tesla Q3 ahead of him. He swerved and slammed on his brakes hard. His head hit the steering wheel hard just over his eye.

As he sat up and glanced out the window, shaking his head to clear it, he saw an impossible and terrible sight.

A giant brown and green banded snake with two fangs, one broken in half, was reared up in front of the Tesla. It appeared over twice the size, in every direction, of an anaconda, and must have weighed two tons—but its most shocking feature was that its fangs were covered in liquid fire.

A smear of blood and some scales strewn across the street caught Noah’s eyes in the dim light, and he saw that the snake was wounded in multiple places.

Did the snake get hit by the car?

Blood dripped from the cut over his head into Noah’s eye and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

As Noah stared, the snake struck down, sticking its fang into the hood of the Tesla. A pair of screams, one masculine and one feminine, emanated from within. The snake shook its head, closer to a cat or dog shaking prey than anything Noah would have associated with a snake, ripping the roof and toppling the vehicle onto its side.

Noah opened the side of his truck, trying to figure out any way he could help, still staring at the snake.

A shimmering, translucent stat chart overlaid the gargantuan reptile.

Goliath Firefang

Beast/Fire Creature

Overland Monster

Health 7/60

Attack: 15(13)

Defense: 10

Magical Attack: 6(4)

Magical Defense: 6

“The Goliath Firefangs are the single most dangerous monster in the upper World River. Usually, the only warning of an attack is a hissing and bubbling in the water around it as it opens its mouth to strike.”

It’s a monster like the notification said earlier!

The notification also said I’m a deckbearer and can play magic cards.

Noah remembered the words about how to draw cards. He dearly wished he hadn’t had the entire rest of the description ruined by a damned prehistoric fire snake and some asshole driver. He touched his hand to his chest as the snake struck the Tesla again, exploding the windshield and pushing the roof of the car down in front.

Praying he wasn’t being a complete idiot, Noah rushed along the asphalt of the 35 at the ruined Tesla, hoping his new magic cards would make a difference—because he certainly wasn’t beating this thing without help.

He thrust his hand out, and four cards appeared in front of him, hovering in the air a foot from his face. Each was the size of a normal playing card, but two glowed with a gray light, and the third glowed tan. Those three were clustered together in front of him. The last card was further away from the three, off to the side, and had the same gray light around it.

Noah saw that the three cards closest had titles—one was named Scavenged Battle Bot, one was labeled Post-Apocalyptic Cyborg, and one was called Human Scavenger. The card off to the side was labeled Recovery and Enforcement Droid Seven.

Noah had no idea how to summon or play them, but the Goliath Firefang reared back again. In sheer desperation, he touched the card Recovery and Enforcement Droid Seven.

The card dissolved into gray motes of light and flew out in front of Noah, resolving into a six-foot-tall mechanical golem with glowing red eyes that appeared to be made of scrap parts. It was vaguely humanoid, and appeared hastily assembled.

A card appeared over it.

Recovery and Enforcement Droid Seven

Unique Rare equivalent, Tier-7 equivalent Golem Companion (Cyber, Scavenged)

0 Power

Health: 25

Attack: 5

Defense: 5

Magical Attack: 5 [Fire]

Magical Defense: 3

Special: Recover the Secrets: Whenever the deckbearer’s deck gains the death blow on a deckbearer that received their deck from the gods on drop night, while RED is out, the deckbearer gains a card of uncommon or rare quality that is cyber, scavenged, magitek, or of Mechos. If an overland monster drops a card, that card has a fifty percent chance to become a card of those types of the same rarity as the dropped card would have been.

Special: Cyber Urbanite: This card gets +1 to all non-Health stats for every Mortal, Golem, or Lightning building, and +10 Health and +2 to all other stats for every Mortal, Golem, or Lightning Realm, in the deckbearer’s deck.

Special: Geared: May use any equipment cards that a deckbearer could use, subject to all normal restrictions.

Special: Master Geared: May have a side deck that has up to five equipment cards. When summoned, he may immediately be equipped with one if the additional power can be paid. Any equipment he has stays out for his duration, ignoring normal time-in-play restrictions and card-in-play restrictions both.

Special: Recyclable: When this creature dies it becomes a Scrap Token.

“As an axiomatic statement, the recovery of what was lost takes precedence over any individual moral sensibilities, fleshloaf.”—RED Seven

The golem glanced up at the snake, then spoke in a synthesized electronic voice somehow still oozing with sardonic condescension. “This is how you want our relationship to start, fleshloaf? We’re going to have problems, you and I.”

It talks? Noah thought, startled.

Any further thoughts about his card, or discussions with it, was ended by the snake’s convulsive movement. The Goliath Firefang had shifted its facing as soon as the golem appeared, and now it slithered rapidly from the Tesla toward Noah.

“Oh shit!” Noah exclaimed, running and leaping down the side of the highway, sliding a few feet on the gravel. The cards stayed at the same point relative to him, a foot in front of his chest, even passing through ground or car as if they didn’t exist as Noah moved about.

The snake, however, had no interest in Noah. It reared up and then struck, slamming its fang through the golem’s torso. The snake carried the golem up into the air. The droid pulled a knife, the blade hissing and lit up with white fire. He slammed the knife into the side of the snake’s head repetitively.

In its odd electronic voice, without any hint of concern for the massive damage it had sustained, the Recovery Droid card called out, “This waste of meat should be nearly dead, fleshloaf. Finish—”

The voice cut off with a snarl of static just before the fire from the snake’s tooth burned the droid away and it dissolved back into the same gray motes of light from when Noah had summoned it, which flowed back into Noah’s chest.

When the droid died, however, it left behind two separate piles of scrap metal and other components on the ground, and when Noah looked at one, a card formed over it.

Scrap Token

Golem Material

0 Power

Material: Golem, Metal, Machine, Scrap, Scavenged traits

Special: In addition to being a material, this token may be sacrificed to generate a single Golem Power.

A notification also appeared, with complicated numbers and charts, telling Noah that the Recovery and Enforcement Droid had inflicted a mere four points of damage before being vanquished by the giant snake. The monster still had three health left. The snake pulled back, casting its head around for a moment, its tongue flickering in and out.

The doors to the Tesla Q3 wrenched opened, and a man in a rumpled suit came crawling out the driver’s side, his face bruised and bloody. On the other side, a woman in a slinky and short black dress managed to push herself out of the crumpled car, her feet bare, cradling one hand in her other.

Noah had little idea on what to do, beyond try another card. He’d gone further than the basic military training during his time in the military. He had even joined some local MMA gyms. But the idea he could fight this snake with his fists, the only weapon he had, was ridiculous. The cards hadn’t switched, and he seriously doubted he wanted a ‘scavenger’ to fight. He hit the Post-Apocalyptic Cyborg. I probably should have used this card first.

Words appeared in his vision. You must wait 15 seconds before playing another card. 4 seconds remaining.

“Damn!” Noah yelled, his heart going a thousand miles a minute, his veins icy with dumped adrenaline.

As if taking the exclamation as a challenge, the snake turned toward him.

Noah scrambled back along the side of the highway, toward his truck. He scrabbled up the small gravel side of the tiny embankment and ran for his vehicle at a dead sprint.

The giant reptile slithered rapidly after him, so close Noah could feel hot breath—or maybe the heat of the burning fangs. The snake reared up to strike again, but Noah rolled under his truck just before the Firefang struck. The monster slammed into the pavement, chin first, right where he had been, and its head hit his truck, knocking it slightly.

Then the damned thing turned and struck its remaining fang into the Ford. The snake ripped its head up, tipping the truck over, revealing Noah.

Noah stood up as the snake reared back again, his eyes wide as the monster struck down. Noah lashed out at his deck in sheer desperation and managed to hit the Post-Apocalyptic Cyborg card again.

It worked this time, with a notification of the Scrap Token being consumed to cast it. But instead of a creature, the gray light flowed into and over Noah himself.

A suit of technological armor formed near-instantly over parts of Noah’s body, including his chest and arms.

It was just in time for the snake to slam into him fang first. Despite what it had done to the car, it didn’t completely punch through Noah—his new armor protected him to a degree, as did his fighting instincts. Noah turned just enough to let the fang scrape off the armor and catch his side and arm instead of puncturing his torso.

He was still bowled backward, but he managed to catch the remaining full tooth and ripped, yanking it from the snake’s mouth. Blood and liquid fire, which ignited in the air, poured from the snake’s mouth, but Noah was only lightly burned.

The Firefang reared back again, hissing, and Noah saw on the snake’s overlay that it now had a mere two health.

Ironically, the Goliath Firefang had no fangs left. A normal snake would almost certainly have given this up as a bad job, but this one lunged forward again, in the exact same attack pattern it had used every other time.

Noah had expected it, and matched the snake’s lunge desperately with the fang he had stolen held securely in two hands. The snake slammed into him, mouth open, shoving the tooth point-first into its own tongue and lower jaw. A notification of damage inflicted appeared, but Noah couldn’t read it as he was hurled backward a good six feet, hitting the ground and rolling.

He leapt to his feet despite the armor he was wearing, ready for another round even with his own collection of wounds.

Noah stood, his arm screaming in pain but his newly armored fists held high. The snake sank to the ground, twitching, and Noah briefly lowered his fists, only to raise them in shocked surprise when the snake popped and turned into brown and red energy before dissipated to nothing.

That was a bit of an anti-climactic end, Noah thought, despite his own racing heart.

A new notification appeared in front of Noah. Goliath Firefang slain. Card gained. This creature was equivalent Level 12. Level 5 made, and 40 additional experience gained. Check your status sheet to level.