The God Contest Regina

“No damn man kills me and lives.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest, American General

As the arrow pierced Bethany’s heart, her Oracle Eye flashed. She felt her Gift of Insight reset as her hourglass pupil flipped over, grains of sand falling one-by-one as it counted down until her gift could be used again.

Bethany stood before Emily in the moments before her gift had activated. Before their chests had been pierced through by the deadly arrow.

“You were amazing, Bethany,” Emily praised. “I can’t believe how fast you were moving. I tried to help, but…”

Bethany shook off the stupor. She grabbed Emily’s shoulders and hauled her down to the floor.

“Bethany, what the hell?” Emily shouted, just as the arrow destined for their hearts flew over their heads. Bethany heard the whoosh of the arrow as it passed and breathed a sigh of relief.

A bone-chilling scream erupted from Abigail.

Henry’s hands were clutched around the arrow lodged in his stomach. He looked at Abigail in shocked disbelief and fell backwards. Striking his head on the barricade with a vicious crack, he slumped to the floor, dying eyes open and staring at nothing.

“Henry? Henry! Oh god,” Abigail wailed. She knelt at her husband’s side and tried to pull the arrow from his gut. Blood splashed across her face and clothing.

Gabriel stared down helplessly as he watched his brother die, his spear still lying at his feet.

Guilt tugged at Bethany, trying to find purchase in her thoughts.

If I hadn’t moved, he’d still be alive.

As Henry released his final breath, Bethany finally understood her Gift of Insight.

It is foresight of death. My death. If I am to die, it shows me how, so I may avoid it. But it extracts a price. It forces me to experience my death. The emotions. The pain. Watching my friends die.

“Bethany?” Emily asked, breaking Bethany from her growing sense of guilt. Emily saw the look on Bethany’s face and pulled her into a tight hug. “It’s okay, Bethany. You’re okay.”

The embrace broke through Bethany’s bravery, and she clung to the woman, sobbing into her shoulder. She could still feel the phantom pain of the arrow piercing her heart.

Rocky tried to rush to Henry’s side, his hands glowing blue, but he was forced back by another arrow that missed his nose by inches.

“Don't bother, Balboa. He's gone,” hissed Zee as he jumped down from the pharmacy counter and scuttled over to Bethany and Emily on hands and knees. He narrowly avoided another arrow, which struck into a cabinet behind the counter. Priyanka gave another yelp of surprise, and Jaya’s cries grew louder.

Zee hurled a dagger towards the archer, which clattered harmlessly against the nearest metal shelves.

“Shit. The fucker is hiding in the next aisle over. He’s shooting at us through gaps in the soup cans,” Zee spat. He started to laugh. “Fuck me, this whole thing is surreal. We’re fighting Spartans in a Regina supermarket, of all places. It’s like that bad drug trip I had while riding the rails from San Fransisco to Chicago. Only instead of fighting we were… well, we were having more fun than this.”

“We need someone to sneak around and take him out,” Rocky hissed from his cover, ignoring Zee.

“I’ll go. You distract him,” Bethany volunteered, wiping away her tears and steeling her resolve. Emily started to protest, but Bethany cut her off. “I’m the fastest and I have my hammer. I can do this.”

She looked at Zee to quell any protests, but he simply shrugged. “You’ll get no argument from me. You’re dangerous, girl, and we need that right now. Besides, being distracting is my specialty.”

Bethany nodded, and Emily and Zee began hurling their spears towards the archer.

Vaulting over the barricade, Bethany stayed low, relying on her enhanced agility to move soundlessly towards the back of the store.

“Fucker!” she heard Zee shout in dramatic fashion. “You shall die as your comrades died, and I shall piss on your bones.”

Bethany made it to the back just as the Spartan shot another arrow, this one narrowly missing Zee’s head. She heard Zee laugh intentionally loud to mask her footfalls.

Well, he wasn’t lying about being an expert in distraction.

Bethany kept low, pressing herself flat against the aisle shelves and glancing around the corner to the back of the store. She remembered how they had sheltered behind the chest-high meat coolers that stretched the length of the store to hide from the Impastabull.

Bethany let out an involuntary gasp of shock as she saw the carnage that lay before her.

The back of the store, from end to end, was a graveyard. A hundred bodies, lying broken at unnatural angles, littered the tile floor. Blood stained the white tile red. The players had been slaughtered with spears, swords, and arrows, often stabbed in the back as they fled. A few brave souls were seated upright against the deli counter, weapons in hand and dead eyes staring at nothing. A dozen had been torn apart by the wolves and their limbs scattered like toys. She could taste the iron tang of blood in the air, and it made her stomach coil.

The surviving players were now holed up behind the fish market counter. Tanks of crab, lobster, and oysters creating a fragile barrier between them and the three Spartans and their two wolves that paced a few feet away.

A dozen dead players and two Spartans lay in front of the tanks, evidence of a successful but costly defense. Maggots spilled from the Spartan’s wounds and drowned in the blood of the dead. An arrow had pierced the lobster tank and washed its contents across the floor like an ocean wave.

A man in his early twenties, wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and a black cowboy hat, shouted orders to the survivors behind the fish tanks. He held his arms stretched to protect the two small children behind him.

Bethany tore her gaze away. “You cannot help them, Bethany,” she whispered to herself. “But you can help your friends. Focus on that.”

She peeked around the corner of the nearest aisle, looking for her target. The Spartan was nestled behind the soup cans halfway down, about thirty paces away. It scrutinized the barricade as it nocked another arrow on its bowstring. Placing the arrow tip between a gap in the cans, it waited patiently for another target to present itself.

Bethany’s heart raced. Halfway down the aisle felt like a mile, each step littered with obstacles that could, with an errant footstep, give herself away. Her throat was parched, and she stifled a cough. Her breath sounded like a hurricane in her ears.

The Spartan released the arrow, and she heard Zee cry out in pain. The creature smirked and drew another arrow from its quiver.

Shit, it hit Zee. I can’t let it get anyone else.

Bethany dashed towards the Spartan. Dancing over scattered weapons and bodies, she let her new agility guide her. The Spartan did not notice her and, calling forth her light, she closed the distance before he could fire.

The light of her hammer drew the Spartan’s attention. Surprised, it turned to fire its arrow at the charging woman, but Bethany struck first. Swinging horizontally, she felt a satisfying crush as her hammer shattered every bone in its hand and snapped the bow in two.

The Spartan roared, a sound more akin to a blazing furnace than a scream.

The creatures feel pain. Good. It deserves to have its last moments end with pain.

Bethany slammed her hammer into the Spartan’s face, fueling the blow with her fury and guilt. Its cheek and eye socket crumbled from the impact, and its body slammed into the shelves. Soup cans rained down upon the creature.

It lay there, unmoving, maggots leaking from the pulp where its face had once been.

She bent down and studied the creature. Even in death, she could feel hate wafting off it, as if the emotion were all that held its grey skin together. Its teeth were rotten, and its tongue had been removed. It smelled of death and decay, a stark contrast to the strength she knew it possessed. If hell had been unleased on Regina, these creatures came from its depths.

The corpse’s leg twitched. Bethany gave an involuntary shout of surprise and crushed its skull. Brain and maggot flesh smeared across the tile.

Bethany fought the instinct to vomit and lost. Her light faded. She emptied the contents of her stomach onto the floor as she clung to a mushroom soup display for support.

Get it together Bethany. You can’t be vomiting every time you kill something. You have to get used to it.

She glanced back at the headless corpse.

At least it got what it deserved. That’ll teach him to kill me.

Bethany laughed weakly, until she heard a loud, exaggerated groan from the barricade. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she walked to the end of the aisle and waved her ball-peen hammer to signal the job was done. A few seconds later, she leapt over the barricade and landed next to Anjali, who stared at her in wide-eyed astonishment.

“Did you… how did you…?” Anjali stuttered.

Bethany gasped for breath, her heart pounding, and did not answer.

Rocky knelt next to Zee. An arrow lay at Zee’s feet, snapped in half and covered with blood.

Zee hissed in pain as Rocky pressed his hand against the wound in his shoulder.

“Will you be quiet?” scolded Rocky. “You talk big, but you’re such a wimp. Just what the hell were you thinking?”

“I promised I would be a great distraction.” answered Zee, grimacing. He gave Bethany a weak grin and a thumbs up. “And? Was my sacrifice worth it?”

“It was,” replied Bethany, giving him an appreciative smile and crawling over to them. Zee reached over and used his thumb to wipe away a trace of vomit on her chin.

“You will get used to the killing,” he said softly, only to her. “And when you do, you will have lost yourself. Or, perhaps, you will have found yourself. It’s up to you.”

“You start talking wise when you are delirious with pain?” asked Bethany with teasing sarcasm.

He smirked, then aggressively swiped away Rocky’s hand. “That’s enough, Balboa. Now you are just trying to cop a feel.” He leaned back against the barricade with an audible hiss of pain.

“What did you see out there, Bethany?” asked Rocky, ignoring Zee’s dismissal and returning his hand to the wound.

Bethany surveyed their team before answering. Henry was dead, the arrow still embedded in this stomach. His brother knelt over him, sobbing, his spear abandoned. Abigail, on the other hand, was enraged. Ben and Marvin were at her side, clutching the woman’s shoulders as they tried to calm her down. Shouting at the Spartans guarding the exit, she held a longsword in both hands and was attempting to climb over the barricade.

Anjali was the only one still at her assigned position, but her eyes flickered back and forth to her crying child.

“A slaughter,” Bethany said, her voice low. “Most of the players are dead.”

Anjali whimpered as she eavesdropped. She gripped her spear fiercely. Her knees shook with fear, and only her concern for Jaya and Priyanka kept her resolve from shattering.

“Three Spartans are dead, besides the three we killed here,” Bethany continued, loud enough so Anjali could hear. “There is a group of players holed up at the fish market, but I don’t think they’ll last much longer. The rest of the Spartans are there.”

As if on cue, screams and shattered glass rang out as the assault on the fish market began.

“If the rest of the Spartans are there, maybe we should make a run for it?” asked Emily.

“No,” Rocky said, and the same time Zee declared “Yes!”

Rocky glared at the man in the dark cloak. “The only reason we survived the last assault was because we were prepared and fought on our terms. If we fight in the open, we’ll be slaughtered like the others.”

Zee started to argue, until they heard frantic footfalls approaching them quickly from the fish market. A woman’s voice rang out as the screams of the dying faded, the Spartan’s assault over in seconds.

“Harmony! Brandon! Run! Oh god, they’re coming for us. Elias, help!”

“I got them, Melody. Now move!”

The man in the cowboy hat burst around the aisle. It was the same man Bethany had seen behind the fish tanks. He was practically dragging the children across the floor, their small legs unable to keep up with his speed.

Their mother was a few steps behind. She appeared around the corner, but as Bethany called out to her, a spear pierced the woman between her ribs. She gasped in shock and collapsed to the floor, and her momentum carried her into a display of discount Tupperware. Her dying gaze fell on her children, headed towards the barricade.

Bethany’s eyes flashed with rage as a Spartan and its wolf came into view. Approaching the woman with an arrogant casualness, it yanked its spear from her body. The light died in the mother’s eyes as the remaining Spartans joined their companion.

“That’s the last person these monsters kill,” Bethany pledged as her light hammer flared into existence. “Let’s end this.”