“Those who live are those who fight.”

Victor Hugo

Bethany stared at The Builder in the sky, fear and uncertainty clouding her thoughts. She could not simply stand there, waiting for something to happen. She needed to act.

“It's no different than escaping from home,” Bethany lied to herself. “It's a bad situation. Think it through, Bethany, and come up with a plan.”

She played the entity’s words through her mind, searching for hidden meaning. There was precious little guidance in those words. The Builder’s goal was to frighten the players and to incite chaos in the city below. No doubt it was more entertaining that way. But it had said two things that stood out in her mind.

“It said this contest would last months,” Bethany spoke aloud, staring at her Civic with its meager provisions. “Not hours. Not days. Months.”

Bethany spotted her diary lying on her grandmother’s suitcase. A simple plan was forming in her mind. She grabbed it and returned to the picnic table, opening it to the first blank page.

“Step one,” she wrote on the page, the act helping to keep her fears at bay. “Find supplies. Food, water, medicine. Step two, find somewhere safe to sleep. Step three…”

She tapped her pen on the table and forced her brain to think through her building emotions. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes and she furiously wiped them away, fighting the overwhelming urge to let her fears take over. She felt like she was sixteen years old again, desperately trying to find a fraction of control in a world where she had none.

In the distance she heard the screech of tires followed by a loud crash. She was sheltered in the park, but how long would that last? How long before someone, or something, found her here, alone and unprotected?

“Step three. Find friends.” Bethany wrote. Bethany had always been a pragmatist. She knew she was more vulnerable by herself than with allies watching her back. Yet she had not had a friend since elementary school. Would she even know where to start?

“You can figure out the details later, Bethany,” she told herself, writing ‘Step 4’ on the page.

This brought her to the second insight from The Builder’s speech. It was the same advice Diana had given her. She could not sit still. She must fight. She must explore. She must figure out how to win this contest. To sit still, to give into fear, would be the end of her.

“Step four. Explore. Fight. Win,” she finished simply, setting her pen down. It was not much of a plan, but it felt tangible. A foundation that she could build upon.

After placing the diary back in her Civic, Bethany spent a few moments reading the remaining descriptions on her player screen. Strength and agility were easy enough to understand, and she was slightly below average in both.

“I guess that's fair,” Bethany thought. She had spent her spare time in the school library, not in the gym.

She struggled to understand the magic attribute. According to the subscreen, magic was a measure of the player’s connection with the supernatural. But Bethany was not religious, even though her grandmother had dragged her to church every Sunday. Bethany had long ago given up hope that God would intervene in her life.

But all thoughts about her magic attribute fled her mind when she read the description of her Oracle Eye.

Invalid Entry. Oracle Eye is not included in the talent list for this God Contest. Please contact God Contest Support to report this error.

Bethany recalled what Diana had told her in her dream. That she had violated the rules of the contest. Had Diana done more than simply give her an early talent? Bethany did not know how to contact God Contest Support, nor did she intend to. If Diana had given her an advantage, she intended to keep it.

She held her ball-peen hammer up before her eyes, her Oracle Eye reflecting in its shining surface. She made a pledge to herself. She would be brave. She would survive this God Contest. And at the end of this ordeal, she would find her freedom once more, no matter what.

As Bethany started to put the hammer back down on the picnic table, she heard a frantic scream from the walking path along the river. A young couple dashed off the trail, cutting across the grass and running straight towards her. Bethany recognized the woman as the one who had called her boyfriend from the washroom.

The well-toned woman with shoulder-length blond hair with a strip of black that ran down the right side. The woman who thought she was crazy.

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There was a man next to her, tall and muscular, with short brown hair in a military cut. It must be her boyfriend. He wore short black running shorts and was shirtless. Hovering six feet above them and following at a respectful distance was one of the winged eyes.

The man looked Bethany in the eyes and shouted “Run!”

Bethany blinked. Surely, they had figured out by now that the winged eye would not harm them. She looked back at the one that had been following her, now floating higher in the air to get a better view of scene playing out before it.

“You don’t need to…,” Bethany started, then suddenly stopped. They were not running from the winged eye.

The creature that crashed through the trees had no equivalent in the natural world. It was a crystalline sphere the size of a basketball, hovering six feet off the ground and glowing with a pale white light, as if it belonged on a fortune-teller’s table. It had six smaller shards of crystal floating around it for protection, and beyond a swirl of leaves and branches were being drawn towards it from the park.

Bethany watched in fascinated horror as the leaves and branches came together to form a humanoid figure around the crystalline orb, the orb hidden within. Its features were rudimentary, as if someone had constructed a scarecrow using only resources found in the park. Its face had only the slightest semblance of a nose and mouth, and its eyes were formed from two large pinecones, angled downward in simulated anger. The leaves that formed its outer shell swirled along its surface, as if its entire form was blowing in the breeze.

It did not look strong, but its featureless gaze spoke to Bethany a simple truth. It was the predator. And they were the prey.

The creature extended its left arm and a pair of foot-long branches, their ends crudely sharpened, appeared where its fingers should be. It pointed towards the backs of the fleeing couple, and the branches launched forward as if it had hurled twin spears.

“Watch out!” Bethany shouted, quickly closing the distance to the couple. Her charge caught the couple off-guard as she barreled into the them hard, shoving them all to the ground just in time. The spears narrowly missed their heads and struck the trunk of a nearby elm, and shattered on impact. Shards of wood rained down onto the prone players.

The creature extended its arm to the side, and two more branches floated from the nearby brush into its mass. Bethany could hear grinding from within as the shards of crystal within its form began to sharpen the branches in preparation for its next barrage.

Bethany quickly rose her to feet. She held her ball-peen hammer at her side as she faced the creature.

Be brave, little Bee.

“Step four,” she told herself, trying to sound confident. “Fight and win. You can do this, Bethany.”

“Girl, what are you doing?” shouted the man, still laying prone. “Get out of here, while you still can!”

“Quiet, Daniel!” spat the woman as she crawled away from the creature. “She’s the crazy one from yesterday. Let the creature go after her, so we can escape.”

Bethany spared a brief glance down at the woman. There was a callousness in the woman’s words, but Bethany could only see fear reflected in the woman’s eyes. The first minutes of the God Contest had already carved out the woman’s empathy and transformed it into a desperate need to survive.

The creature was still fixated on the couple. For the briefest of moments, Bethany wondered if she should adopt the woman’s advice and just run. She could dash to her Civic and leave them behind. Yet the thought stayed only for a moment before Bethany’s eyes fell back to the creature.

“Step four,” she repeated. She was tired of running. Tired of being the victim.

Anger boiling within her. A sharp, irrational, eruption of anger that had been building within her long before the Contest. And she let it fill her, so she could finally start fighting back.

Bethany planted her feet, raised her hammer, and stared into the creature’s empty eyes.

“I am not your prey,” Bethany challenged through gritted teeth.

The creature returned Bethany’s gaze and answered her challenge. It dashed toward her with clumsy steps, as if it were walking on unfamiliar legs. It stumbled and swayed, but it closed the distance quickly, its hand reaching out towards Bethany’s throat. The twin points of sharpened branches emerged from its arm, ready to strike.

Bethany ducked under its outstretched arm and dodged its thrusting strike. The creature swung with its other arm, and a shallow cut open on Bethany's forearm as a row of thorns along its surface scraped across her skin. It stung, as if she had reached her hand into the center of a rose bush.

Bethany moved on instinct, retreating four steps until her back rested against the firebox beside the picnic table. A welt began to swell on her forearm and knew she could not get close to the creature again. Not unless she had no other choice.

Her hand fell upon the firebox, wooden logs stacked inside, and she got an idea.

Bethany reached into the firebox and grasped the end of a half-burned log. A moment later, she hurled the log at the creature. It struck it in the chest and sailed through, landing with a loud thump on the ground behind it. But it left a log-sized hole in the creature’s form, and that gave Bethany what she needed.

The creature’s carapace of leaves swirled frantically, trying to fill the gap in its form. It was distracted, and Bethany used the opportunity to hurl a second, and then a third, and finally a fourth log in its direction, striking its shoulder, knee, stomach, and thigh. The leaves swirled around it to fill the gaps, growing thinner with each injury, Bethany finally spotted what she was looking for. The crystalline orb at its centre, its swirling form flashing red with anger.

“There you are,” whispered Bethany with triumph. The leaves and branches were just its protection, like a hermit crab living within a borrowed shell. She raised her hammer. “One good whack with this and…”

Bethany didn’t have time to finish her thought. The creature, sensing its sudden vulnerability, stretched out its arms and a whirlwind of leaves and branches struck Bethany in the chest, sending her flying backwards. She landed on her back and her head struck the ground. Her hammer flew from her hands and lay a few feet away, just out of reach. The world spun around her as she gasped for breath.

The creature marched towards her, the holes in its form closing, the orb hidden again beneath its shell. It moved with malevolent purpose, and Bethany scrambled backwards, rocks digging into her palms as her hands fought for purchase.

“Shit!” Bethany swore, breaking out in a cold sweat. “What do I do now?”