It wasn’t that time stopped flowing in the green room, but the sunlight never shifted, the wind was always on the edge of rising, and the green grass remained soft underfoot. Zoe picked at a second slice of cake. Chocolate crumbs smeared her fingers. With a squeeze of her technique, Mirror gloved her hands, and the crumbs slid away onto the now-stained tablecloth.

“I didn’t want to kill Moth,” Zoe said as she finished recounting the events in purgatory — the desert, the labyrinth, and the swamp — that occurred before the tavern. “But it felt like the only option. Whenever I looked at her, I felt deep inside that she was a part of me. That I was incomplete without her. I shouldn’t have had to kill her… but I did.”

Bella dipped a slice of pepperoni pizza into a ramekin of ranch.

“Sounds like they set you up,” she said as she chewed. “They told you they would use you from the beginning, but they left out all the different ways they would take advantage.”

Anton nodded from the end of the table. Twelve different bottles and cans were lined up in front of him arranged in order of tastiness. He kept pulling different drinks from the bottomless cooler. So far, he had eaten nothing but a couple of slices of country ham.

“The choices are all rubbish,” he said. “Why put us in this room? Why make it a game? It’s all because they’re bored. You ever play with ants as a kid? Rip the wings off a fly? That’s all we are to them…”

“You’re drunk,” Zoe said.

“It wasn’t easy, but I finally got there.”

Zoe nodded and gazed out beyond the shade of the willow to where the other teams sat. Yvonne and the old married couple were sitting at their table eating seafood and drinking champagne. Losing hadn’t seemed to upset their mood, though the man, Mark, sent a few dirty looks in Zoe’s direction.

Team 2, however, hadn’t moved from the base of the tree. They didn’t eat. Didn’t drink. Just sat in the shade and spoke to each other. Xavier hadn’t stopped crying since they arrived.

“Why do you think the Gambler chose them?” Zoe asked as she gestured at the other teams. “I know he has a thing for Bella, which might be why he brought me here, I’m still not sure, but what do you think about the others?”

“Two reasons,” said Anton as he sat up straighter. “Levels, for one. You’re higher than Bella and I combined. I can feel your Skein from over here. And the other reason is stupid.”

“What?”

“Aesthetics. Xavier, Yvonne, and Zoe. X, Y, Z. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t, but that’s number two as far as I can tell.”

Zoe pushed aside her plate of cake.

“That’s dumb.”

“Yeah.”

Bella walked down the table to where a family-sized meat pie sat on a bed of crispy fries. She sliced into the golden pastry and deep brown gravy spilled out. Steam escaped the pie as a sigh escaped her lips.

“I can see myself never leaving here,” she said. “Is it supposed to make up for the depravity of the show? I wonder, I wonder…” She looked up at Zoe. “We found a fragment, by the way. There are two more hidden in the dungeon, but we’ll find them. Though it sounds like we should be worried about generating an incursion.”

Zoe smiled.

“It won’t be a problem, well, not like that. I produced an incursion from the other side and… how much are you going to eat?”

Bella piled her plate with pie.

“All of it,” Bella patted her stomach. “So, an incursion in the dungeon. What is that exactly?”

“It’s like a corridor between worlds… full of light and sensation… it hurt as I traveled.”

“Will the others you told us about make it through? Princh and Oriz and Trinch?”

Zoe shook her head as a coldness settled over her mood.

“Princh died,” she would tell the story of how she escaped, of the vault, of Trinch’s betrayal, but not now… “But I expect the other two to be there unless they figure out a way to leave.”

Anton shook his head.

“I can’t believe you had weeks of training while we fought invisible assholes in a haunted mansion.”

“Ghosts?”

“No,” Bella burped. “Invisible assholes is much more accurate.”

Zoe smiled as the conversation drifted away from purgatory and into what the others had learned in the dungeon. Once the Gambler’s game was over, they would return. Hopefully, with her levels, the dungeon would be a piece of cake.

She really shouldn’t let herself hope like that, but she reached for her plate and scooped up chocolate icing with her fingers. The rich flavor exploded on her tongue. The perfect balance of sweet and bitter with a hint of salt.

She would enjoy this while it lasted because she knew it would end.

###

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

All things end.

A blaring alarm concluded their time in the green room. The wind died, and the sky blinked red.

[Attention all contestants, please make your way to the glowing door for round 2.]

Zoe pushed back her chair and stood.

“Are you ready?”

The others nodded and joined her and they started walking toward the large glowing door in the center of the valley. Taller than a house, the rectangular portal sat an equal distance from all three tables. Yvonne’s team jogged down toward the exit point, but team 2 remained seated under the tree.

Zoe frowned. She made a beeline for Xavier’s slumped and defeated form. The sky blinked red and blue as she climbed the hill toward the oak and it blurred into a vague purple.

She stood taller than Xavier and looked down at him as he sat in silence. His muscles and scars came from the pre-system days. He looked rough, but like someone who enjoyed smiling. Though there was no trace of that now.

Trent nodded at her from the table. He was older than she thought, balding in the middle and trying to hide it, with a covering of freckles and a bony physique. He found a bottle in the cooler and poured vodka into a tall glass of crushed ice.

“We’re staying,” Trent said.

“Here?”

“Yeah,” Trent sipped, made a face, and poured in more vodka. “No reason to continue.”

Zoe crouched beside Xavier.

“I’m sorry about Stella,” she said.

Xavier looked at her for the briefest moment — his eyes brimmed with anguish — before he looked down at the grass between his feet. Trent walked over and placed a drink beside Xavier.

“Thanks for coming over, but there’s nothing to say. We’re strangers. The only thing we have in common is a planet we lost.”

“You think they’ll let you stay here?”

Xavier coughed up a weak laugh.

“What’ll they do? Kill us?”

Trent rubbed his shoulders.

“Best you leave,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”

Zoe wanted to say something, but she couldn’t figure out what. There was an emptiness inside that only grew when she looked down at Xavier’s strong, but defeated form.

“You must be at a high level to be here. I know I am. We’re the ones who can make a difference on the outside. We need to fight for the rest of humanity.”

The words sounded cheap to her ears, and she regretted them when Xavier looked up at her as he cried.

“You know how I got my levels? I rigged a parking garage with explosives — it was my job — and then the system arrived and filled the building with giant bugs. One click of a button and I was level 20. I met the Smith. I met the Witch. And now, I’ve met the Gambler. Forget Earth. Forget Humanity. There’s no place for us in the stars.”

He got up and walked over to the table, hand hovering beside the opened bottle of vodka before he kept walking out from under the tree and away down the hill. Trent sighed and stood.

“I appreciate you trying, but this is the end of the road for us,” he clapped her on the shoulder. “Good luck.”

He set his drink down on the table and walked off after Xavier. They headed away from the glowing portal, toward the edges of the green room. Already, those edges seemed closer. With each blink of the red sky, the world shrank. Soon, it would be gone, and with it, those men would vanish.

Zoe could probably drag them through the portal. Save them by force. She looked at her hands for a moment. Flesh, Metal, Mirror… which one represented who she was?

She turned and walked down the hill, to where Bella waited beside the large glowing doorway.

“You tried,” Bella said.

“Sure.”

“What did they say?” Bella asked as they walked through the portal together.

“They wished us luck.”

###

The portal was quick and clean and deposited them on the sandy stage. Zoe leaned against the podium as her stomach settled. Bella and Anton leaned against her. Maybe eating all the cake wasn’t the best idea before teleporting, but she didn’t know if she would ever eat cake again.

No regrets.

Yvonne’s team emerged and walked over to their podium. The older people looked unsteady, but they were all straight-backed and serious. What had they done to earn their place here?

Zoe waited, eyes gazing at podium 2, but nobody else arrived.

“That’s disappointing,” the Gambler muttered. “I didn’t realize they were so attached. How will we continue now?”

The audience murmured amongst themselves. The strange shadowy figures in the stands sounded… disturbed.

“Does it matter?” Anton asked. “They didn’t have any points so —”

“It’s the rule of three!” The Gambler snapped his fingers and Anton’s face split into three versions of itself. “Do you understand now? The beauty? The sheer necessity? Do you?” He leaned into Anton’s pale, quivering trisected face and screamed until spit flew from his open mouth. “Does your monkey brain understand numbers and odds and stakes or do I have to scoop it out and replace it with a calculator?”

The audience, the contestants, remained dead silent as the unhinged god took a deep breath and stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” he looked at Bella. “That was unbecoming and extremely unusual. I’m never like that.” He snapped his fingers, and a healthy flush returned to Anton’s singular face. “Needless to say, the game cannot continue until I replace team 2. There were only three viable teams to begin with…” he bit off his temper. “None of you can see me like this. The game will resume in one week. Do me the courtesy of staying alive until then. Goodbye.”

He snapped his fingers, and the stage vanished.

The world vanished.

Zoe vanished.

###

The mirror-lined yacht sailed between the mirror-tiled houses. Bloody water lapped against the hull. Zazzatha stood in his place, feet firm upon the planks, the only place he stood for centuries now. Ever since the system tore him from the land he conquered. Turned his followers into monsters. Sealed him in a dungeon for adventurers to come and raid over and over again.

He smiled at the silence. The only sound was his boat cutting through the water. He could smell the lack of humans. The lack of adventures. Soon, his world would reset, his ear would heal, and his earring would return. He didn’t enjoy these moments of lucidity. When the adventures took days, or weeks to close the dungeon, he started remembering…

Remembering the looks of betrayal on his followers. The look on his face as he gazed up at the displeased heavens as they shattered his unholy bell. Grey fingers stroked the fragment around his neck.

Soon it would all reset and his mind would run smooth once more like waves lapping at footprints in the —

A blue and pink gash split the sky. Two figures tumbled out. One hulking and coated in green hair. The other was slender, grey-skinned like him, and broken by immeasurable sadness.

The dungeon groaned at their presence. It rumbled with displeasure as it shifted. These people were not new; they had been here before, and they dragged with them an unbroken quest like a length of barbed wire flossing the dungeon’s teeth. Zazzatha felt the agony as his own. For this world was his shell and he the pearl. Something would have to be —

A heavy chain splattered his brains upon the deck of his boat. His headless body twitched, staggered, and tumbled overboard. The corpse sank beneath the bloody water as the dungeon rumbled and rearranged.