The Only Game In Town [Adventure]

Joy had liked the wandering for the past few days. He and Sam would walk in some direction that only they seemed to know, and he would enjoy the pastoral beauty of a land devoid of anything.

There were no green grass pastures to look upon, but the varying shades of brown and grey started to appeal to his artistic senses after a while. There was a stark beauty that did not need color to be expressed.

That time was mildly boring, but very relaxing. Joy would have even said he enjoyed it. That had changed when the two of them had entered the city.

The lack of anything was haunting. There were structures that had eroded over the years of weather, but nothing had rotted, nothing had been demolished, it was simply empty.

A fine dust covered every surface, and Joy was haunted by the things he saw in this space. Children's dolls were in the street. Children had been playing outside before whatever Death had brought to this land had taken them.

It was frightening to think that people had just been living their lives and how it had all ended before anyone knew what was happening.

"It is horrifying, isn't it?" Sam said as the two of them walked by an abandoned building; this one still had hints of color on it. It was not the bright colors of a real home, but at least it wasn't another shade of brown or grey.

"It is truly cruel what the gods can do to us." Joy sighed lightly before taking a step back. Sam had abruptly turned to him with an annoyed look on their face.

"That is where you are wrong. The gods did not do this; they only gave people the power to do it to themselves. None of this devastation needed to happen, it was only the selfishness of one person that caused this entire calamity." Sam turned back from Joy and kept walking.

"But how can you say that the gods had nothing to do with it? People are selfish and the gods need to know better than us humans who is deserving of powers on this scale; was that not why the entire karma system was enacted, to stop abuses of power like these?" Joy knew the karma system better than most. He had been told when he went to the realm of the gods on his thirteenth birthday that he only had enough karma for a deck of cards to be his gift. His life was as meaningful as a deck of cards in the eyes of the gods.

"Maybe. But you are not allowing people to take responsibility for their actions. People are capable of tremendous good and tremendous evil; the gods simply give them ways to accomplish it." Sam finished their conversation. They turned their back and acted as if there was no more debate to be had.

Joy was going to counter this argument. He hoped he could come up with some clever argument to prove to Sam why they were wrong, but soon he stopped dead in his tracks. Sam had taken him to a massive temple.

The temple had been made of massive granite blocks, and so nothing had been degraded with the passing of time. The temple was the largest building that Joy had ever seen and that included the royal manor in Vena Cava.

It stood seventy men high and stretched for what seemed to be an eternity in all directions.

The front had a pair of doors that were beyond massive and were made of the same granite as before. There were massive stone pillars that surrounded the front doorway, and a small series of steps and ramps leading up to this incredible entrance.

Sam walked up to the doors and pushed. Joy nervously laughed, "there's no way you can move those doors. They are massive."

Sam just smiled at this and then knocked on the doors three times. After a moment, a much smaller set of doors popped open. They were molded into the much larger doors, and their hinges were hidden mechanisms, keeping their existence a secret from a casual observer.

"Big doors are cool but impractical. The people of this continent were never impractical." Sam casually walked into the temple and Joy followed behind them.

Joy's nose tingled as a waft of air hit him. It smelled ancient and the room inside was just as oppressive as the scent.

The walls were covered in ancient lettering that was vaguely familiar to Joy. It had been carved into the stone and must have taken years to accomplish. Joy was looking at someone's masterpiece, this single chamber was their legacy.

And yet, it was meaningless, because Joy couldn't read the lettering. Maybe if he had years of time to gain an understanding of this new language, he could see the masterpiece for what it was, but Joy did not have years. The end of the world was imminent with David's plans encroaching.

"Do you know what the words on the walls say?" Joy asked hopefully. He prayed that this achievement could be understood by someone, that someone could see the value inherent in the work.

But his hopes were crushed when Sam responded, "no."

Joy's attention waned from the walls. He moved on from them and the crushing bitterness that they created in him. Instead, he looked at the rest of the room. It was filled with stone altars and stone pews. Everything seamlessly flowed into one large piece of rock.

None of this caused Sam to pause as they continued onward through the chamber.

The large braziers were banal to them. The rotted books, mere curiosities. It was as if this monument of effort was nothing in their eyes. They were focused on some unknowable goal that took them through this monument of human culture without a backward glance.

Joy marveled but was reluctant to be left behind by his guide. So, he quickly jogged after them into the side passage they had just entered.

The hallway was a tad less magnificent than the temple area. Still austere and beautiful, just less showy about it. Fine details had eroded away over years, but there was fine craftsmanship in this hallway.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Sam walked up to one wall that looked no different than any of the other walls that Joy could see and pushed onto a specific patch of stone.

The area depressed into the wall and a pair of doors formed directly in front of Sam.

What was with this place and secret doors?

"Joy, you strike me as a curious person. Why have you not asked where we are or where we are going?"

"Because I am terrified." Joy shuddered as he looked into the new chamber that Sam had opened. It was empty, an endlessly stretching hallway. It had a slight curve downwards, and Joy could feel that an endless abyss awaited him on the other side.

"That's a good answer." Sam took a step back from the endless hallway and looked at Joy deeply in his eyes. "I am not on your side, and I am not on David's. You are both a means to an end for me. I am putting you on the path that will make my ideal world rise from the ashes of this one."

Joy took a step back, but Sam did not stop. "David reaches for godhood, but he doesn't understand anything about the gods. You will learn the secrets of godhood and make my dreams reality. Since the day I was born, I have dreamt of this, and I refuse to allow the ending of this story to be anything other than perfect. Do not screw this up, Joy."

"What will I learn about the gods?" Joy was scared. He had never seen an intensity this bright from Sam before. In his mind, Sam was boring and dour, but here Sam was focused and intense in a way beyond Joy's comprehension.

"You will learn about the first and of Death. Good luck."

With those cryptic words, Sam disappeared. They didn't jump into the shadows, or teleport. Joy didn't feel the telltale gust of air that comes from a person moving themselves via teleportation. It was simply as if they had never been there.

Joy looked down into the passage and wondered out loud, "I hope it's a story told in pictures. Because I can't read the language."

With a forced chuckle, Joy started walking into the endless labyrinth.

Joy was pleasantly surprised when he saw the first words written on the side of the wall. It read "the cult of the end." Joy wondered if there was a gift at play, translating the words from the wall to him or if there had been different dialects and this one had been shared between the Hearted Continent and the Dead Continent.

Joy didn't think he would ever get an answer to that question, or to why the upper level had words he did not understand. It was one of the many unanswered questions he had walking through this endless cavern.

There were torches that burned without fire, providing only light, throughout the passageway and this made it easier to read the words on the walls and try to understand them.

There was a carving of a snake eating its own tail. It was not a realistic drawing, but more a representation of the beast.

Below the drawing a sentence was carved – If gods are the ideal manifestation of a concept, what was the first god?

It was a good question. Not one that Joy had spent any time pondering, but this question came up quite frequently in religious debates. Usually, religions claimed their god was the first god and so they were deserving of winning the god's game with humanity.

Joy had no clue what the true answer was. But he believed that he would find it out if he kept walking.

A few hundred paces away there was no drawing but a small paragraph.

he first god was a concept unlike any other. We are familiar with gods like Blood, Life, and Pain; these are familiar. The first god was alien; their concept encompassed The Endless Void, The Ever Expanding, and most importantly Eternity. The first god was Eternity, a being that personified the undying and unending nature of the gods themselves.

Joy pondered this. Maybe the first god was Eternity, but what could it even represent? There was nothing eternal in their plane of existence. Everything came to an end eventually. Joy thought of the magnificent carvings adorning the chambers above him and shook his head. Maybe the gods were eternal, but nothing else could possibly last forever. All things fade.

Joy walked through the endless halls filled with these torches without flame and pondered why Sam would bring him here. It was confusing and seemed to make no sense, but Joy knew that seers worked on a different plane than most people. Their reasons were unknowable and mysterious.

Joy paused his thoughts as he looked at a new inscription.

A picture showed a single blob pulling apart into two blobs.

Endless could not feel, for those emotions did not exist yet. But Eternity cannot exist unless something is happening. It made itself games to pass the eternity of its existence. Thus, Game was born.

Game was not the first god, but people around the world agreed that Game was the king of gods, their crown ruler. This was because they were able to alleviate the boredom of these omniscient all-knowing beings. They created games and pleasures that the other gods could never fathom in a millennium. Game filled the other gods' existences with something other than their own concept.

It was nice to know that Joy's personal benefactor had such an important place in the theogony of the world. Joy felt a kinship with Game. He lived his life as a game, full of the hedonistic pleasures and high stakes of any casino. And what was life other than a series of games played for higher stakes than imaginable?

After Game was born, new gods popped out like flies from a corpse. These beings breathed existence into the universe by simply playing.

These sentences had been accompanied by a small statue of a deer's corpse covered in little creepy crawlies. It was not the image Joy had imagined when thinking of new life being born, but who was he to judge this ancient cult.

Eternity was a god far beyond human comprehension. But it could not handle existing forever. They hated the idea of forever, they hated their own integral concept. This hatred for forever, and the need for an ending created the greatest of gods - Death.

Joy wasn't sure that he would consider Death to be the greatest of gods. Sure, they had a powerful domain, but Death did some horrible things to people's complexions. This cult seemed a little off their rocker.

Gods are manifestations of concepts. Death is simply our interpretation of what Death's domain holds over us humans. A more apt name for this being would be The End. This god represents an ending, a finite time and a finite life.

Joy had felt like he was walking through a passageway made by a few guys who had smoked a few too many plants, but that line had struck him a little. He knew that gods were manifestations of concepts, and he had never thought of Death in such a broad way before. What would the death of a mountain look like? What about the ocean? Was it true that Death's domain covered these inanimate objects. What about something more?

What would the death of a god look like?

An image of a battle covered the next wall. There were forces beyond Joy's puny human mind depicted and they fought in the endless expanse of space.

The birth of The End heralded the end of Eternity. The two gods could not coexist. Eternity perished and its body was repurposed.

The next wall showed figures surrounding an unidentifiable body and ripping pieces off. Each piece was fashioned into something new. Some became the sky, some became clouds, some became the earth, and the most central piece was turned into the shape of a man.

We are living on a dead god. We are a dead god. We are what is left of Eternity.

These were the final words in the hallway. Joy saw a bright light in the distance, beckoning him to leave this underground world of truth.

What did it mean? Why did it matter? Joy needed to think, he needed to discover why he had been shown this glimpse. So, Joy pulled the deck of cards out of his soul space.

Sometimes he forgot about the cards. His ability to challenge people to games was his power, but there was always a voice in the back of his head telling him to remember his humble roots. He was nothing more than a deck of cards.

And yet, he was also a piece of a forgotten god.

And yet, he was so much more than a single deck of cards could ever contain.

The gods of this world were fickle and cruel. They treated human life as if it was meaningless. Why did David want to become one of them?

Joy walked and thought. He hoped he could come up with a good enough answer.