A hand fell on Sparrow’s shoulder. Nola had a smile on her face.

‘Come, it is time for you to enter your new home.’

Sparrow looked from her to Frevenorth where the lonely vagrant called his name.

‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Whatever you want, you’re a god. You can help your followers, you can hurt them, you can punish them. You can make them fear you, hate you, love you.’

Rhino-xi laid a hand on Sparrow’s shoulder, ‘First, let’s finish the mission we came for.’

Piggy nodded, ‘We’ve got a God-Scientest to find, a war to win and ambrosia to eat.’

‘Ambrosia?’

‘Food of the gods,’ Piggy said, with a gleam in his eye.

As they stepped through the portal Nola bowed and a warm rush of air greeted them as one foot left the snow and landed in the padded glowing gold-red bushes that sent their roots down into the bright white clouds.

The rising sun warmed their backs and painted the sky a bouquet of golds and reds.

‘We’ll never see a sunrise quite like that again.’ Sparrow said.

The others just nodded. They walked for a while in silence, in front of them a city of white marble rose from the clouds. Dragon flags fluttered from the turrets that no human army would ever reach.

The whole way to the castle Sparrow chewed the inside of his cheek. His eyes grazed the ground. When they could see the golden characters emblazoned on the gates Sparrow stopped and looked at Rhino-xi, ‘Listen, what you did back there… with the whole god-thing?’

‘Pretty smart, right?’

‘Smart?’ Piggy kicked at a golden bush, ‘You almost got Sparrow killed.’

Sparrow nodded, ‘It felt like you were trying to take me down Rhino-xi, like you wanted me to rest in pain and suffering for eternity. Why?’

Rhino-xi’s face flashed through anger, hate, bitterness and sadness in a single moment. His nose curled like he’d been slapped with a rotten fish.

Sparrow and Piggy turned away from him and kept walking.

‘Look at me,’ Rhino-xi said from behind.

‘_’

‘No, really look at me! Look at what I’m wearing, look at the way I’m shivering.’

Sparrow’s nose wrinkled at the pitiful shivers and clenched hands of Rhino-xi, ‘Yeah I get that you’re cold but that doesn’t excuse the fact that-’

‘-It’s not about what I’m wearing Sparrow, it's about what you’re not wearing. Piggy and I are over here decked out in a hundred different layers while you’re wearing a piece of holey, threadbare cloth that could barely cover a rat’s ass. You don’t have to eat Sparrow. You don’t have to walk. You barely sleep. Barely drink. You seem to know what’s going to happen before it does and you’re a nice guy despite it all... I wasn’t trying to get you in trouble, I really, really believed you were a god and it turns out I was right.’

He looked from Sparrow, to Piggy and when they turned away from him he snarled, ‘Whatever, I don’t care. Let’s find this stupid god-scientist.’

****

There were no gates on the golden city of the gods. There were no rats in the streets. There was no graffiti saying ‘Patrik sucks ass’ underneath the bridges.

Everything glowed. Everything shone. Everything was so warm Piggy and Rhino-Xi had to start stripping their layers. Everything was free even the ambrosia which melted like sap from the trees that lined the roads.

Piggy filled his goatskin water bottle with the liquid and chugged it directly from the tree until he had a pink stain coating his mouth.

‘You having some?’ Sparrow asked Rhino-xi.

The cultivator shook his head and pointed down the main street to a large circular stone building, ‘Looks like everyone’s in the stadium.’

‘Hey, I’m sorry about what I said… look maybe you were…’

‘-Sparrow, shut up. I don’t want to hear it.’

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

‘-I’m sorry.’

‘And I don’t care, come on Piggy, let’s go check out the stadium.’

Rhino-xi picked up his pace, climbing the stairs that wrapped around the outside of the giant circular stadium. Sparrow looked at Piggy, who was still squirting the contents of his ambrosia-filled goatskin into his mouth.

‘Come on Piggy. There’ll be time for feasting soon.’

****

The arena was chaos. Gods of all shapes and forms sloshed giant mugs of mead and rice wine on eachother as they peered into the bowls of the arena where gods clashed in a frenzy of lightning, fire and ice.

In the centre of the arena a god made entirely out of Spaghetti was whipping a tortoiseshell god in the face with its long, dangly arms.

The two gods were fighting on the edge of a pool, a vast aquatic area the tortoiseshell god had emerged from. Beside the seats Sparrow’s crew sat on, a giant god with three arms and a beard shaped like a plank was shovelling popped pomegranate seeds into his mouth.

‘I’m putting ten gold sickles on Tortuga,’ The bearded man yelled Piggy.

Piggy looked at the burly, shouting, obviously very drunk god, then back at the arena where the turtleshell god was tearing bits of spaghetti from its opponent’s arms.

‘I’ll do ten on the spaghetti monster.’ Piggy said.

The gruff god grinned, ‘Easiest money I ever made,’ and shook Piggy’s hand.

‘What are you doing?’ Sparrow said to his friend, ‘we can’t afford to piss any gods off.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Piggy said, ‘I’m a gambler from way back. I don’t lose.’

‘Yes, but if you do… where are you going to get ten golden sickles?’

‘I don’t loose.’

Sparrow groaned and watched as the Spaghetti god’s leg was torn from its body and eaten by the tortiseshell.

‘Damnit Piggy, you should’ve chosen the other guy.’

The tortoiseshell reared up on its hindlegs and whipped its beak at the spaghetti god, catching hold of its centre and breaking it in half with a power crunch of its beak. Both halves of the spaghetti god flailed about trying to escape the turtle-god’s wrath. But the other god was quick. It stamped on the lower half, ripping bits of it to shreds, throwing it like confetti across the stadium. Tortiseshell picked up the front half of Spaghetti-god in its beak, and swung it in floppy circles before hurtling it against the edge of the stadium.

The Spaghetti god splatted on the wall, painting it in ten different shades of Spaghetti.

The crowd around the stadium cheered, and large piles of golden sickles and emeralds changed hands.

Plank-beard turned to Piggy with a giant greasy grin on his face and held his hand out, ‘Can’t win 'em all pal.’

Piggy sniffed, ‘The fight’s not over.’

‘Your champion Kolja is painting the wall with his face. It’s over.’

‘It’s not.’

The little straws of Spaghetti that coated the walls and arena started to shake. They vibrated violently as they leapt from the walls, all headed in one direction, towards the tortiseshell god.

The strips of spaghetti skewered right through the vulnerable parts of the tortoiseshell god, carrying cubes of flesh with them, the flesh splattered the walls of the stadium, were burnt to crisp in lamps that hung from the stadium and even landed in the turtle-god’s newly widowed bride’s mouth.

Completely stripped of its muscles and tendons the tortoiseshell god’s skeleton collapsed in on itself and a cloud of dust rose up.

‘Damnit,’ the plank-beard said, rubbing the side of his head, he pulled a stack of golden scyths from the inside of his cloak and tossed them to Piggy, ‘You wouldn’t be interested in double or nothing would ya?’

‘How’s the next challenger decided?’

‘If the god Kolja wants to go again, he can either call on someone or allow a challenger to come and face him.’

Sparrow looked over at plank-beard, ‘And if that challenger wins, they can call anyone out?’

‘Yep, anyone they want, and the person they call out has to fight them. That’s why we call this munted Mondays - because some god’s always gonna get munted.’ He reached into his beard and scratched, leaving a sticky coating of pomegranate seeds in his hair. He turned to Piggy, ‘Hey, where’s your hobo-friend going?’

Piggy grinned, ‘You still want to go double or nothing?’

‘Hell yeah. I need those sickles.’

‘Well, I bet you the next challenger is going to whip the God Kolja’s ass.’

Plank-beard showed the popped pomegranate seeds stuck in his teeth as he let out a loud, boisterous laugh, ‘After what he just did to the God of the Tortoiseshell? You’re on kid.’

****

Sparrow shivered at one end of a really, really long brick corridor. In front of him a steel gate separated him from the arena and all the bloodthirsty, screaming spectators it contained.

At the gate stood a guard wearing armour of pure platinum. The man ripped open a paper packet and spread a line of white powder on the table in front of him.

‘This is for you kid,’ he said, ‘get you into a bit of a frenzy before that psycho out there slits your throat open and makes pasta sauce with your blood.’

Sparrow shook his head, ‘I don’t need it.’

‘Sure?’

‘Sure. I need all the clarity in my head I can get.’

‘Well, suit yourself then,’ the man poured out the rest of the packet, covered one nostril and snorted the powder, ‘Woo-wee, that’s sweet.’

The guard bounced on the balls of his feet, gave the air a few shadow-punches, then turned to Sparrow, ‘You sure you want to do this kid? You’ve only been in here a few hours. Usually gods take time to settle in and enjoy the ambrosia a little before they get their heads ripped off.’

‘I’m not going to get my head ripped off.’

‘Suit yourself.’

A gong sounded above them and the guard pulled a rope that lifted the squeaking gate.

Sparrow walked out, peering through his fingers in the bright sunlight. The God Kolja was standing in the centre of the stadium.

Sparrow walked slowly towards the god - he’d seen what the pasta-based form was capable of - but how much did the god have in reserve?

The roaring around the stadium quietened for a moment, he and Kolja bowed, then raised their fists.