Join us or perish. What a pair of options. I took Naginata’s hand in mine and placed my other hand on Kaiser’s neck.

[I do not like this one bit,] Kaiser thought to me.

Kaiser trembled under my touch, still shaken by Grendel’s attempted assault. [Nor do I, buddy.]

“I am Altessa, The Assessor of Conflict, dutifully appointed steward of the Alarendei Empire’s Contest of Valour. You should all be very excited at being selected for this opportunity to fight for the right to join our glorious, galaxy-spanning Empire. The rules of this contest are simple.”

Altessa motioned upward with their claw hands, and a grand map appeared in the centre of the atrium’s floor. The structure resembled a plateau ringed by mountains. The landscape looked like Earth, but I still couldn’t be sure whether they’d taken us off world.

“After I’ve explained the contest to come, you will form squads of five, and each squad will compete against the others in a cooperative conflict that will decide the fate of your planet and your people,” Altessa continued. “If you do not join a squad willingly, you will be assigned to a squad of our choosing.”

There was no question in my mind that Hikaru, Kaiser, and I would be on one squad. Bastard and Scythe were both known quantities, but they also had a third member in Shuriken. I doubted that they would want to be broken up either. This meant that we would need to choose two other members from this random assortment of spectacular weirdos to join forces with.

“Death is not the end, so do not worry if you fall on the first day of the contest. That is quite normal, and in fact, anyone who survives their first night on the Plateau of the Architects will receive a reward that the others will not. This contest will run for seven days, and if you die, you will not respawn until the following dawn, and you will rise again from your cradle here in the Temple of Awakening. There is one exception to this. Anyone who dies on the seventh and final day will not be resurrected at all.”

Nervous looks passed through the gathered crowd. Everyone was here now, and I counted twenty-five people total. So that meant there would be five squads of five people each by the time all of this got started.

If this place was the Plateau of the Architects, and the Architects had something to do with the reality crash… Wait, didn’t Altessa say something about a signal being detected ten months ago?

I stepped forward. “Excuse me, Altessa, I have a question.”

“Yes, Hatchet? What is it?” That damned smiley face felt passive aggressive in the worst kind of way.

“You said something about a signal your Empire detected ten months ago. How much time passed between when you captured us and now? It feels like it was just yesterday, but I’ve got a sinking feeling that’s not the case.”

“You are correct. The enormous burst of power came from an event you were a part of. As were Naginata, Kaiser, Bastard and Scythe. Oh, to be powerful enough to resist the corruption of Sare’zmei! Such power will be a boon to the Alarendei Empire, if you survive this contest.”

“If that happened ten months ago…”

“Yes, we have kept you all in stasis until such a time as the contest could be prepared.”

Rage boiled inside me. My Balaran Knight armour slammed around me as I stepped forward. I wanted to leap on the fucking robot and drain its power, taking it for myself.

But I stopped myself as it held a claw up in warning.

“You may be upset, but you will not raise a hand against me. You cannot until the contest begins,” Altessa said. “I was lenient with Grendel. That beast cannot control its impulses, but you? I will reduce you to atoms.”

“You and your fucking Empire took me away from my kids for ten months. They probably-” my voice broke as I said it. “-they probably think I’m dead.”

“Odds are that you will be dead by the end of this, so that is of no concern,” Altessa said. “Now, are you quite finished with your outburst? We have a lot of information to cover.”

Hikaru put her hand on my shoulder, and Kaiser nudged his way under my first.

[We’ll kill them all,] Kaiser thought. [But this is not the way to achieve that end. I can feel your hatred, your anger, your hurt. My heart echoes it too. They’ve taken us from our pack, but we’ll never stop until they’re all dead. I promise you.]

I nodded, then stepped back from the edge of the plateau hologram.

Altessa continued. “You humans are such an emotional race. That may yet prove to be your downfall, or it might be your reason for triumph! But that is to be decided in the contest, not to be speculated upon by me. You would do well to keep your emotions in check until this orientation has come to a close.”

I clenched my fists open and closed, trying to work off some of the anger boiling in my heart. Seth and Lorelei would have thought I was dead. My ex-wife Emily would have thought I’d finally abandoned my kids for good. I’d never even been given a chance to fight back against this.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Questions whirled through my mind. Had EDGE Force been able to complete their mission of spreading Balaur seeds across the planet? Would Balaur choose other knights to continue with our mission of safeguarding Earth from the reality crash?

It was now around the time that our universe was supposed to come to an end. This even, this Contest of Valour, had to play some part. If that was the case, then maybe all was not lost. Perhaps we still had a chance to set things right.

“There are three high profile targets that must be destroyed before the contest will come to a close, and humanity crowned as the victor,” Altessa continued.

Another hologram appeared above the plateau. This one showed a formidable warrior with the body of a pro-Wrestler. He was outfitted in heavy armour emblazoned with blue runes, much like the orbs that had captured us back on Mount Coot-Tha. His metallic armour was all smooth curves, with spikes at the elbow and knees. His helmet looked like something a dark lord might wear in an epic fantasy movie. The size of his formidable limbs made it plainly evident that he wasn’t human.

“This is Grishnak, the Runesmith. Master of the sacred runes wielded by the glorious Alarendei Empire! You will find him in the Runeforge, but you will need to overcome his runeforged constructs and devious traps to get to him.”

Bastard interrupted Altessa this time. “He looks beyond the power level of any of us. Will we have a fair chance at standing against these champions of yours?”

Altessa’s smiley face turned into a frown. “All will be made clear if you stop with these inane questions and allow me to continue with your induction!”

Bastard then gave a please continue gesture. Did I detect a satisfied smile in those eyes?

“Hmph. This is the second champion,” Altessa said, then waved away the hologram of Grishnak the Runesmith.

The next champion that appeared was as different as I could have imagined. This new hologram showed an old creature wearing a long, flowing robe. The tattered end of the robe moved back and forth as though it was floating. Two long, skinny arms gripped a staff tipped with endlessly warping geometric shapes. Great spikes of bone rose from the hunched back, and wisps of latent power encircled them.

“This is Orthrog, the Soulbinder. One of the oldest and wisest among us, he has ascended to a level beyond most others in the Alarendei Empire. After Grishnak, he will prove a formidable challenge. I will be astonished if you manage to lay a finger on Orthrog. When you inevitably fail this challenge, all souls of every living human will become slaves to the Empire, under the command of Orthrog. You will find him in the Crucible, should you ever reach a level to pass through the lands between here and the northern plateau.”

This Empire could harvest and enslave souls? If we lost this fight, my family and everyone I ever knew would end up as enslaved thralls to this evil Empire.

“Who’s the third alien arsehole we need to kill to end this bullshit?” An unfamiliar voice called out from behind me.

I spun to see a huge guy standing a little bit behind us. He was another Aussie judging from the accent and wore a white jumpsuit like the rest of us. This guy had tattoos all over the backs of his hands and all the way up his neck to his chiselled jaw. His nameplate labelled him as Macuahuitl, and I had no idea what that meant. But a single name like that… was he EDGE Force? Or maybe Edgebreaker, like Bastard and his friends?

“The third and final champion you must best in order to end this contest is me,” Altessa said, but this time smiley face they displayed came with devil horns. “My full title is Altessa the Worldbreaker, and yours will be the seven-hundred and twenty-eighth world I have harvested in the name of the Alarendei Empire. Should you best Grishnak and Orthrog, you will find no quarter when you seek me out in the Worldbreaker Scar.”

I could almost feel an air of collective dread settle over everyone in the room.

“The scar contains a machine that will begin the soul harvest of your planet in just seven days. This machine will be tied to my essence. If by some miracle you manage to destroy me, the machine will instead summon stewards of the Alarendei Empire to the planet’s surface to begin the integration.”

If we fail, everyone dies. If we win, everyone becomes a member of an Empire that holds contests like this on countless other worlds across the galaxy.

There was no good outcome in this situation. I suddenly wished for a simple mission like rescue someone from a cult or investigate a village that had gone missing. This was so far beyond any of us, was there any hope that we could pull this off at all?

“You will only have seven days to grow strong enough to oppose us,” Altessa continued. “The rules are simple. Grow stronger, seek out the three champions and slay them. Otherwise, the Empire wins, and your world becomes ours. You do have many valuable resources here in this solar system, so it would be much easier for us in the long run if you should fail. But you must be given the opportunity to prove your worth.”

“Why us?” asked another unfamiliar voice. This one belonged to a young person known only as X.

I couldn’t tell if they were a young man or a young woman, but they could be either or neither these days. My daughter told me that it was rude to assume someone’s gender. It’s a whole new world of things to learn, especially for old fogeys like me.

“Each of you was chosen for your unique gifts,” Altessa explained. “There are untold thousands of you across the planet who have been touched by the powers of pure creation and destruction, but we only had room for twenty-five champions in this Contest of Valour. I cannot reveal the exact parameters used, as this is a heavily guarded Imperial secret, but know that each of you has special talents that will allow you to compete. You all know what they are, and it’s up to you to choose how they are used.”

X nodded and said no more.

“More information will be available in the info stations that will populate this temple when I leave,” Altessa said. “From the time I depart, you will have half an hour to assemble yourselves into squads of five and give yourselves squad names. These names will be used to track the scores of your squads, and the scores you amass will either reward or penalise you depending on where you are on the leaderboard. Some actions will grant you points, such as killing a high value or notable monster or clearing out a dungeon. Others will detract from your score, such as dying, running from combat, or losing a challenge. A high score is important but living through each night will grant you a powerful reward. The more concurrent nights you survive, the greater your reward by the end of the seventh night. So keep that in mind.” Altessa’s smiley face head looked back and forth across the crowd. “Well, that’s all I have to say for now, but I’ll leave you with one last parting word of wisdom. Beware the Gargonath. You may slay the beast once per day, but like you, it will rise again on the break of dawn, and it will have learned from its defeat. Each subsequent kill will make the beast more deadly than its last fight. You do not want the Gargonath to become so powerful that you cannot slay it to face me on the seventh day. Fight well, people of Earth!”

With that last word, Altessa crumbled into motes of light, which gathered into a swirling helix, sped out through the temple’s front doors and into the crisp morning air of the plateau.