The Goddess Anahydra slapped him.

The sting of the blow was slight. She had dealt him far worse over the course of their relationship. But she slipped away from him, ascended to her throne with smooth steps, and there stood, chin raised, to glare down at him.

“You are a credulous fool. I expected better of you.”

“Did you now. I notice you haven’t answered my question.”

Anahydra visibly relaxed and considered him. “What did the Master of Ceremonies tell you, exactly?”

“The short version? That you go through Champions like a bouncer goes through cigarettes. You’ve burned four already this year and have seventeen more to come.”

Anahydra laughed, delighted. “Oh my, but that is rich. And - what? You no longer feel special, Abraham?”

Oh, but he knew that serpentine tone that she had slid into. The soft hiss that promised punishment.

“Guess I don’t.” He forced the words out, much as they hurt him. “Guess I never was.”

“Oh, but any mortal that draws my eye is more blessed than the billions who don’t. And no, my love. To answer your question, I don’t have other Champions, neither dead upon the battlefield nor waiting impatiently in line.”

She smiled, and the expression could have melted granite. “There is and only ever has been you.”

Oof, said Metacognition. Boss, she’s just kicking her way right past me. She’s not breaking anything, but she could. Boss? You hear me?

The worst part of it was how badly Stone wanted to believe her. To return to that state of confident bliss, willing ignorance, to just trust that the universe had brought this creature of pain into his life for a reason.

That he wasn’t just another bullet in her machine gun belt.

Her eyes narrowed. “You have Soul Integrity? This really does go beyond the pale. The Master of Ceremonies has gone too far.”

“Why?” Stone roused himself to life. “You try something and had it fail?”

“Oh no,” said Anahydra. “Your paltry defense is akin to a wall an inch high compared to my might. But I don’t want to tamper with your soul. You are my Champion. From hence forth you must serve me willingly or not at all.”

“That might be a problem, then.” His hands were shaking. He’d have done anything for a beer. A cigarette. “Seeing as this relationship has just gone and fallen apart.”

“Oh, hardly. Come, Abraham. You know of what I’m capable. Serve me willingly. Bend your knee. Don’t make me coerce you.”

Stone knew all too well. Her inventiveness, her cruelty, her diabolical inventiveness. Shaken, unsure, he held onto one last certainty: he’d not be her expendable Champion. “Guess you should go ahead and get started.”

Anahydra’s gaze narrowed with a flash of anger, but then her expression smoothed over once more. To Stone’s shock she visited no punishment upon him.

“This is all going completely wrong,” she said with an uncharacteristic pout. “Let’s try again, shall we? Hello. I am the Goddess Anahydra - yes, that is my name - and you are Abraham Stone, my Champion. This is the beginning of something glorious. You’re ranked Alpha 6. Together we can change the face of Rauthgar completely.”

“About that.” Stone suddenly felt weary. He wanted nothing so much as to get away, lie down, and stop the pain that was tearing at his heart. “What is it you want me to do in your world, anyway?”

“Bring peace to where there is only chaos. Bring devotion to my name and creed where there is only anarchy and heresy. To be my hand against the many fractions that squabble over the corpse of the Empire.” She smiled, but the expression was brittle. “You shall be my Champion, and my burning emblem shall hang over your head, announcing your fealty to one and all. You shall crush the Champions of the other gods and bring order to the land.”

“Hmm, sounds nice.” Stone pretended to consider. “No thanks.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You think you have a choice in this matter?”

Time for a gamble. “Go ahead. Force me.”

She laughed. “We should be past such games! Abraham, my dear, my chosen one, you are special. No Champion of mine has ever been as devoted to me as yourself. Alpha 6! Come. Tell me what you desire, and I shall make it yours.”

“I’m not devoted to you.” His words were like coffin nails being hammered home. “My devotion is to my fists, my ability to fight. Not you.”

She took a step back, then sat on her throne. “Not… to me?”

“No.” He hooked his thumbs in his worn leather belt. “That train has sailed.”

“But you are my Champion still.” She forced her smile anew. “We must work together. You will go to Rauthgar.”

“So I was told. But you…” Stone’s upper lip curled in disgust. “You used me like a dumb beast for over a decade, and the only reason I didn’t kill myself was because I thought there was a purpose to it. That I was special. What an idiot. I’ve seen the truth now. I won’t serve you or your purpose. Looks like you’ll have to tap one of your other seventeen victims.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Her hands clutched the arms of her throne till the knuckles went white. “You do not understand what you are saying. Don’t tempt me. Don’t force me to return to my old ways.”

“Go for it. I’m almost feeling nostalgic.”

Here it came. The whiplashes of agony. The torments. The nights of living hell.

Stone inhaled raggedly and waited.

Nothing happened.

She glared at him, impotent.

“You… can’t,” he said at last. “Hurt me. Can you?”

“It’s because I don’t want to, my love.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “I don’t want to poison this relationship forevermore.”

“Bullshit.” He felt himself on firm ground. “I know you. You’d have me screaming on my knees by now if you could. You… you just can’t.”

Her smile grew pained, and he saw fury burn in her eyes.

“Is it because I’m your Champion?” A guess. “Because I have to serve you willingly?”

“He told you, didn’t he. The bastard. I’ll make him pay. This level of interference can’t continue.” Her tone was venomous. “And you. You’re playing games as well. What else did he tell you?”

“Not much, but it was enough.” Stone raised his fist and considered it. Could he destroy her? The thought filled him with panic, made him want to run and hide. Could he dare turn against her? Was his power such that he could finally hurt her now?

“Oh, don’t be pathetic,” she laughed. “You’ve a modicum of power at Alpha 6, but I’m a Rank 47 deity. You’re still little more than a cockroach to me. But very well.” Her fury simmered in her gaze, but now she smiled cruelly at him as she leaned forward. “Shall we put all our cards on the table? You are going to Rauthgar. You have no idea what that entails or what forces are at play. The complex weave of politics, both temporal and divine. You are akin to a babe, a blind fool. If you descend into Rauthgar without my aid, you shall wreck damage on systems you understand nothing about, be taken advantage of, and eventually strung up and held forth as a warning to all idiots who think they can take on the world and win.”

Her eyes flashed. “Just as always, you need me, Stone. You need my wisdom, my knowledge, my counsel, and my guidance. Without it? Rauthgar shall be your living hell.”

She sat back, pleased with herself. “So. Are you done with these petty rebellions? Are you ready to get to work?”

Stone rubbed his chin and glanced around the room. “I am done. I want out of here. How do I get to Rauthgar already?”

“Fool!” Her voice was a whipcrack, and old traumas forced him to flinch. She bounded to her feet and blazed down at him, her form suddenly burning with gold and silver flames, her voice magnified so that it boomed, her presence crashing across him like a wave. “You are nothing without me! You shall be without purpose, without meaning! You need me, Abraham Stone! There is yet time. Bend knee and kiss my boot and I shall forgive you. But if you choose to defy me?”

Her voice dropped to a knife’s edge whisper. “Then I shall do all within my divine power to make your life on Rauthgar a torment. You think your time on Earth was bad? It shall be as nothing compared with what is to come.”

“You can’t hurt me,” Stone croaked, overwhelmed by the sheer potency of her divine power.

“Not directly, true. But I can make alliances with those who can. I can influence providence and fortune, I can hurt those you befriend and come to admire. I can ensure that everything you touch is damned and that you leave behind you a trail of broken bodies and shattered minds. You shall be a plague, Abraham Stone. Your name shall become a curse. Defy me, and I shall do all within my power to make your existence as hellish as it is short.”

She drew herself up, eyes glittering. “This I vow to you in my own name.”

“Right.” His mouth was dry, his heart hammering, but he clung to his resolve like a drowning man might a branch. “Got it. Now. About getting to Rauthgar?”

“Fool!” She flung up her arm and a wave of power washed over him. Three times in his life she’d attacked him thus, and each time before he’d been flung as if by hurricane winds, thrown against walls and through furniture.

This time, however, the winds blasted past him without effect.

Stone stood untouched. He sniffed, looked behind him at where her blast had cracked the distant marble walls, then glanced back up at her. “If you’re done?”

“Fool.” Her voice was quiet now, intense. She sat. “I have done what I can. You have chosen your path. I shall fling you down into Rauthgar now, and as you fall, remember that this calamitous start is of your own doing.”

She snapped her fingers.

Silver flames leaped up in a ring around him. They were without heat, but the room beyond their periphery was reduced to a dancing shimmer. Stone crossed his arms before his face and then the floor fell out from under his feet.

He plunged down into darkness.

With a hoarse cry he fell. Arms cartwheeling, clothing rippling as it was torn at by the wind, he plummeted into the void.

No, not quite - far below, a great gleaming gem.

It grew rapidly, expanding in size as if he approached it at the speed of light. One moment it was a fleck, then it was growing to fill the entirety of his field of vision. His descent slowed, became something akin to regular free-fall.

Eyes streaming with water, he gazed at the world below him. It was a globe, and he was falling toward a great continent. Mountain ranges carved it into three great zones, with the northernmost a land of thick, dark forests. The largest to the right was a huge and fecund expanse of farmland, prairies, rolling hills, bright rivers and small pockets of woodland. To the far left was the smallest, an arid region browned by the sun, bleak mountains reaching high and with the glittering ocean beyond.

Stone tried to take it all in. But it was mostly a smear of color, endless stretches of geography he couldn’t hope to memorize. He fell closer and saw that he was plunging toward the greatest expanse, the eternity of farmlands and small forests, cut through here and there by smaller mountain chains and rivers. Down he plunged, and now he could see cities, a score of them massive, and then smaller towns, hundreds of them scattered across the land.

Down he fell, and now that he could make out more detail, the speed of his fall became all too real, the land below no longer abstract. He screamed and flailed but there was nothing he could do.

Down he fell, faster and faster, toward an area where a great triangle of dark woods met at its northern point with a castle set upon a cliff face. Farmland extended around it, but it all looked abandoned or poorly tended. The air was thick with smoke from a burning town to the east.

Down, faster and faster, toward a field that rushed up to greet him, toward a small collection of ramshackle buildings and huts clustered together fearfully as if for mutual defense.

Stone screamed as he burst into silver flames and then smashed into the thatched roof of a long, low building.

Darkness, then impact.

Mud blasted up around him, wood shattered, and he heard the squeals of terrified pigs.

The impact should have killed him, knocked him out, but the silver flames protected him.

Even as he blinked and looked up from the bottom of the crater in which he now lay, the flames disappeared and cold, muddy water began to seep into his clothing.

“Fuck,” he groaned. Directly above him was a ruined roof. Broken boards jutted out into view. He’d blasted through a trough of some kind.

A moment later a curious pig stuck its head into view and peered down at him.

“Fuck,” he groaned again, and tried to lever himself out of the sucking mud. “Welcome to Rauthgar, I guess.”