The Gambler’s clone held aloft the Gambler’s severed head. He examined it this way and that as though he didn’t recognize it, or perhaps he saw it only in a dream, and then he held it up to his shoulders and faced his audience of mortals and Rue — all of them mute with shock, horror, and rage.
[Which looks better? The old, or the new?]
Both heads were identical, save for the slackened features on the one decapitated, and the dripping gore that slid off the Gambler’s gold sequined shirt.
[Don’t be silent, I want your honest opinion. You know, maybe change isn’t good after all]
The Gambler reached up and gripped his hair. His fingers dug into his scalp. Bone crunched like glass under a sledgehammer. He lifted his head as though he were removing a hat. Vertebrae popped. Skin tore. He flung his head aside and placed the head severed by Rue upon his shoulders.
The dead eyes rolled around in their sockets before the Gambler blinked, and fixed his gaze upon the silvery and silent God of War.
[There is nothing you can do to me, Rue. You think, after all these millennia, that I don’t know how to deal with upstart Mubilashi?]
Rue flicked his hand free of the blood that had accumulated between his fingers. He raised an eyebrow.
[You think I don’t know when you’re bluffing?]
The Gambler’s eyes bulged.
[I never bluff!]
The Gambler’s words echoed like nails dragging down the inside of Zoe’s skull.
[You have a tell]
Rue tapped his neck, and the Gambler reached for his own. As his fingers came away from the seamless flesh, a thin black line opened up, like a tightly wound ribbon around his otherwise perfect flesh. Curls of black vapor bled away from the line, and within those trickles of smoke… watching eyes glinted… sharp teeth rose and fell like the fins of ivory sharks…
The Gambler clasped a hand over the blackened wound. His grin was at once full of wrath and joy.
[So long… so long since I tasted the sweet wine of losing… how can any of you go on, so intoxicated by this delightful brew?]
Bella pushed herself to her feet. She leaned on her sword and snarled at the God as he bled the blackened essence.
“I thought you only cared about winning?”
[Then your understanding of gambling is as shallow as your love for that alien]
The Gambler snapped his fingers, and an explosion detonated above Oriz’s head. The force pushed her to the ground like the palm of a hand squashing a bug. Bella turned, eyes wide, a scream caught in her mouth —
But Rue was there.
He caught the explosion in a clawed gesture. The air twisted and roared through the gaps in his fingers. The screaming gale scattered debris and blood into the air, into the rents in the ceiling where the cosmos peeked through, but everyone remained unharmed. He cast the explosion up and away before appearing once more in front of the Gambler. His hand thrust through the Golden jacket, and the pallid flesh behind. Black smoke dripped from his fingers as he carefully removed his hand from the flimsy body.
[No distractions, Gambler, your fight is with me]
The Gambler hissed and scratched, but Rue dodged without effort and struck back. The world blurred as they brawled. The table exploded. Rents opened in the stage floor as bodies collided faster than the eye could follow.
The wind stung Zoe’s skin, and blood welled through her pores.
The Gods didn’t punch, or kick, or fight — but sought to unmake each other — and as Zoe tried to watch her mind filled with memories of the Gambler’s defeat, of his victory, of a stalemate that shattered the local universe, and each was proven wrong as another blow hissed through the air, as another kick shattered time.
Blood flowed from her nostrils as her mind begged for a resolution to something fundamentally undecided.
A shriek like a slot machine choked with gristle filled the air as the Gambler appeared, on his knees, coughing up black smoke full of eyes and teeth.
Cuts covered his body. One eye socket gouged open and leaking. Wherever Zoe expected to see blood, she saw only the black starlight flesh of the Mubilashi. She felt a dawning understanding of what was happening.
Rue strode up behind the Gambler. The stage shattered with each step. Roots shot from his feet and crumbled the stone. Rather than tough wood, or any green vine, they flowed as a silvery light, not metal — but the light caught upon the edge of a blade — and the stage slit apart with ruthless chaos as the knife-edged roots tangled their growth. The world, once pristine, gaudy, and fully the Gambler’s — drifted apart.
What was whole, became islands linked by silvery roots of sharpened light. Trees sprouted in the space between spaces, and a shade of razor blades fell upon the scene. Rue walked, ever closer to the black bleeding, shuddering Gambler on his knees. But Rue was also the forest, and he loomed higher and higher as the trees reached their branches into the stars.
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Zoe understood, as she gazed up and felt her gaze returned — the staring abyss — the world tree — the midnight guillotine — ten thousand hungering eyes.
Some shadows have claws, but these shadows were eviscerated as the trees — ever-growing, higher, soaring toward distant starlight like shoots breaking through the foul and fetid earth —
Galaxies keened overhead as the trees spread branches through their spirals, through their clusters, and constellations hung like fruit amidst the leaves.
Zoe’s mind broke and broke and broke and broke and broke and…
The Gambler screamed as Rue placed a hand on the back of his head.
[Too long, Gambler, too long have you whispered poison in the minds of your subjects. Slavery is no life at all, and if only I could show you what you have done, could make you feel — make you understand — but if I could do that you would not be who you are, and we would not be here, at the cusp of your death]
The Gambler giggled, even as he rasped for air he surely didn’t need, even as the blackened smoke flowed from his body with its eyes and snarling mouths.
[You are not so strong as you imagine]
[Oh? Is that so?]
The Gambler smiled, eyes drooping even as they spun.
[Divine Technique: Reversal of Fate]
Golden light poured from him as his wounds sealed in an instant.
Each one of his injuries appeared on Rue, who staggered back for a moment before he thrust out his hand. His brows furrowed as all the injuries crawled across his silvery, glinting skin, like grievous centipedes as they coalesced on his hand. Fingers munted, gnarled, dripping, as the damage accrued and healthy tissue sloughed away.
Where his limb before had been as silvery as noonday steel, it was now midnight black. An eye opened up on the back of his palm. Teeth protruded from his fingertips.
The eye roamed over the stage and as it locked onto Zoe she felt the deep, reality-straining horror of the Mubilashi.
[How does it feel, Rue? How does it feel to have your godhood destabilized? Think you are better than the thousands who have come before you?]
The Gambler slapped Rue. The air wobbled from the blast and blood poured from Zoe’s ears. She hadn’t heard a thing.
Rue stepped back from the blow, and, without altering his momentum, cut off his hand.
It hit the ground on its fingers and scurried away.
But the Gambler used the distraction to slap again and again. His open palm rained down against Rue’s cheeks, twisting his head back and forth.
[This is what we do to cheaters!]
[Divine Technique: 1000 Card Pick Up]
He struck Rue’s cheek one last time, and the flesh shattered under his golden-ringed touch. Countless cards flew away and spilled into the air. Rue sagged, as each card stole his strength and his power. The cards glowed — pure rectangles of gold catching the light of silver as the forest wilted and crumbled around them.
Rue looked up at the cards.
[Even now you resort to cheap tricks]
The Gambler pranced around Rue, slapping him again, and this time knocking Rue to the floor.
[Cheap? You think anything I do is CHEAP?]
The word shattered minds. The contestants groaned. Zoe lay on her back. She wanted to help, but could hardly even think, hardly even follow as War and Gambling fought before her.
Rue smiled as the Gambler cavorted, distracted by his excess, and tapped at his heart with the stump of his hand.
[You think you are the only one with tricks?]
[Earth System Epiphany: Follow Your Heart]
A sickening pulse shook the air, and every card fell to the ground with a metallic clatter. Every card but one. Rue reached up and snatched it. As his fingers touched the gold, it dissolved into light and filled his every fiber with restored godhood.
[I tire of this]
He moved so fast he never moved at all. He merely was where he wanted to be, as he had always been, as Zoe recalled, and he gripped the Gambler’s skull with both hands.
[Divine Technique: Without Glory, the Peasants Rise Against the King]
His muscles flashed. Reality flashed. The Gambler screamed and scrambled and clawed, but could not remove Rue’s fingers as they dug — crunching like drills against ice — into the Gambler’s skull.
[Divine Technique: Enough Blood to Drown the Sea]
The air vanished, and blood flowed. Zoe gagged and gasped as her visions obscured. She floated off the floor in the thick and viscous liquid. The taste of blood overwhelmed her. Drowned her. Something grasped at her, Bella’s fingers. Zoe sent her chains around her friends and secured them.
The Gambler wheedled with a voice brittle as the eons.
[I envy the foolhardy youth. You think this will solve something. It shall not. Godhood is but the beginning of a question you will never answer. For they shall come for you. My brother and sister shall destroy you and everything you stand for. Not even the concept of Rue shall survive]
Rue laughed as mad as the God struggling in his grip.
[If they cared they would be here now. No, nobody cares about the loss of a rigged game, and if they come, I shall kill them both]
The blood boiled and swirled and a viscous crack echoed through Zoe’s bones.
She clung to her friends as golden light spilled out. Above and beyond the taste of blood, came the metallic, grimy taste of money. It filled her nostrils and made her gag, even as she fought to hold her breath. She kicked up, and the others joined her, as they swam up, but the blood was without end, and only grew thicker as they moved.
The golden light arced out, lanced, and spiraled.
[You… have not… you… kill me… I will unlucky you poor you… God, I am god I am GOD!]
The blood burned. Pockets of air exploded and scalded her skin. Zoe’s eyes widened as she kicked, but there was nothing she could do to escape.
She shouldn’t even be here.
An ant had no place in a fight between a typhoon and a mountain.
[Zoe]
Rue’s voice crept into her mind. He sounded distracted, distant, and distraught.
[This will end soon, but I can no longer hold back. I give you this chance to escape, and so I wipe the ledger between us clean. From now on, do what you will, but know that if you come for me… I will expect a worthy fight]
Reality tore far below her as Rue sliced through the floor and into the universe beyond. The blood swirled into a whirlpool as it sucked down below. The current dragged at the chains holding her friends. She saw other bodies vanish into the portal, and could only assume it was the other contestants.
It sucked her down, and she could barely see as she gripped onto her friends. She recognized everyone as they floated past her, but there was one body she searched for.
And then she found it.
The portal dragged everyone down one by one, but Zoe resisted as best she could. For there was one body that remained untouched by the current; her goal in all this madness that she hadn’t forgotten. Something she could save, something she could take with her, something she could make her own. The whole reason this happened in the first place: the torn open corpse of the Earth system.