The Only Game In Town [Adventure]

"We must save the gods. They made us and so we must protect them from the scourge that is my brother." Dahlia gave her speech to a crowd of five – Joy, Lillian, Ramses, Julia, and the unwilling listener Rose.

Joy assumed that it had been a moving speech since Julia and Ramses seemed ready to go out into the streets and start fighting the Freer Men with their fists. He was less convinced. For all the pain and misery that their actions caused, Joy could see a perverted justice in what David and Rose were trying to do.

He worried that Dahlia was preaching to the choir. Dahlia, Julia, and Ramses had all been blessed by the gods and had led lives that were conducive to thinking that the world was a perfect place for humanity.

It was a self-selecting prophecy. These people thought that the gods were good because the gods had been good to them specifically. Furthermore, because the gods had only ever been good to them, they placed the bad that was in the system directly on the people, explaining that the gods were good and they only had themselves to blame for their misfortunes.

Maybe they were right, maybe they were not. The gods were unfair, but at the end of the day, the humans still made their own choices.

Regardless, Joy pushed these thoughts out of his mind and went along with the moment. He was glad to not have to think anymore. He liked seeing the mantle of leadership taken on by someone else.

"My plan is simple. We will force my brother to release all the souls he has trapped within himself as well as the god that has been subjugated within his soul. Once these pieces are eliminated, he will be a weakling again and we can crush him easily."

Joy's brow furrowed. "No offense, but it's not like we can just ask him nicely to give up all his power. What's our leverage?"

Dahlia turned to him and then pointed to their prisoner, Rose.

"My brother is a fundamentally selfish creature. This idealistic world he preaches on about is a selfish construct for him. He will be unable to create that world without his people. We have captured one of the most important people in the world to him. He cannot create his own personal paradise without Rose, so we threaten her life."

Joy's face didn't relax with her explanation, instead he said, "this feels awful. How can we save the world by threatening to kill someone important to someone we disagree with?"

"We do what we must. If you don't have the stomach for it, jump into David's mouth like the rest of the weaklings." Dahlia dismissed his worries and went about talking logistics with Julia, Ramses, and Lillian.

Joy watched the four of them as he sat down next to their captive Rose. The four of them were powerful. Each of them had powers that were reaching towards the divine. Ramses had mastered his power over Love and now was no longer limited by creating things in the form of his lost lover. Julia could transform into a massive dragon. Dahlia was one of the only people who had a gift from Magic in their generation, and it allowed her to do some truly ridiculous things with enough preparation time. And Lillian had turned herself into a semi-divine being by connecting the dream world where she was a god into reality.

These people didn't need him to attack David. David was becoming a god and if they expected to fight him, Joy would only get in their way.

But Joy remembered that he wasn't as weak as he was making himself out as. Who had defeated Ramses? Joy had done that, with a little trickery and panache. Some would say it was unfair, but no one should ever fight fair.

Who had run away from Bloody Ian while Joy had bashed his brains out on the ground? Julia and Dahlia had flown away while Joy needed them the most. They had turned tail because the biggest and baddest man in the entire world had brandished his sword at them. Joy, Lillian, and Theo had protected them from his wrath and once the dust had settled they had run away rather than face the blood.

Joy turned away from his scheming comrades and faced their prisoner. "Rose, do you think that David would be a good god?"

Rose replied, "no. Thankfully, our goal isn't to make David a god. We are making him the focal point for all of humanity. Whatever that god does should be the collective will of humanity."

"Do you think that will work? People can be stupid and cruel."

"I believe people are good. We will save ourselves from the injustice of our existence."

Joy hoped she was right. He watched the pinnacle of human power sit there and discuss how to beat a man who had already surpassed the pinnacle.

Joy was not a defeatist, but somewhere deep in his heart he worried that it was too late. They would have had to have defeated David before the bones of a god had been transplanted in his soul.

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His allies had not realized that it was too late, that their plan was doomed to fail.

He could see two paths that their actions brought them down from his viewpoint. One path was simple. They were defeated by the overwhelming force of the god king and brought into the nascent god. This was definitely possible. He had seen Lillian completely fail to break out of a stalemate with David, and he would only grow stronger. The other possibility was that they killed Rose as part of their plan.

Joy was uncomfortable with that solution on many levels. However, the important issue with that solution was that it effectively did nothing. If they killed Rose, then David would simply continue as before, except he would probably torture them for all eternity. At least that was what Joy imagined.

He couldn't see a world where this plan worked. David was just too powerful in all regards to not try to save Rose. And if he tried to save Rose that called Dahlia's bluff, which cascaded into Joy being tortured for all eternity.

So, were they destined to lose?

Did none of his actions truly matter?

Joy didn't know and he kept his mouth shut about his misgivings. He saw the end coming and put his head in his hands, waiting for its approach.

___

David could feel the end coming.

The world was so much brighter than it had been when he was merely human. The air tasted sweeter. The ground beneath his feet vibrated in a most pleasing rhythm.

With these post-human sensations came an overwhelming dread that the end was coming.

He hated not knowing what the future held for him, and he sometimes desperately wished that Sam had not disappeared into the night. Benny had later told him about Sam's machinations behind the scenes, but David wondered if he even cared about that betrayal because he was so scared of the future without them.

David had known that Sam was a major advantage but losing them near the eve of victory was a blow, nonetheless. Suddenly, Dahlia's crazy plot to kill Rose had more merit than he ever would have given it before.

He was terrified of losing his best friend in the entire world to some delusional fools who could not see the majesty of what they were doing.

Poor spoiled Dahlia, ruining things for him again and again.

He wanted to be a good person. He had been willing to bide his time. With the increase in power he gained from absorbing others' souls he had become effectively immortal. So, he had been willing to spend centuries convincing each person one by one to join him in his eternal paradise. He was even willing to let the fools who didn't believe him live out their lives in peace.

That had been the plan. A peaceful conversion over centuries. His goodwill and kindness towards humanity would sway them one by one to join his god and finally once every human had either died a peaceful death or been entered into his halls of eternity he would rise to godhood and destroy the evil that lived in heaven, freeing humanity once and for all.

Everything had now changed. The capture of Rose did something unfathomable to his plans; he was now in jeopardy of losing his ideal eternity. David couldn't imagine eternity without his best friend by his side. So, what could he do to expedite his godhood?

He was going to eat everything on the face of the world.

Every person, plant, house, animal, and artifact left on this wretched plane of existence would get shoveled down his maw and forced to reside in eternity with him.

Power begets power, and he had been slowly accruing it for several months now. The stockpile of souls contained within him nearly enough that he could send a wave of mouths out of himself which would consume everything in their path. With those mouths consuming even more, he could then send out a new wave. This process continued eternally until he had consumed everything there was.

He just needed one final push.

Unfortunately, today was not the day for him to sit quietly in his chair, plotting how to get the last bit of juice he needed. Instead, a frightened young woman ran into his sanctum.

"Dragons! Two dragons are descending on the castle."

David sighed at Dahlia's tactics. One dragon hadn't even been close to enough to take out Ian. What did they think two dragons were going to do against him?

David stomped on the ground; cracks appeared around his foot and mouths started crashing through the crumbling pieces of flooring. The mouths surrounded him and consumed him.

Soon, David stepped out of a different mouth. That mouth was directly facing the two dragons and David shaded his eyes from the sun's glare as he looked up at the majestic beasts.

They were beautiful, but still below humans, nonetheless.

David summoned up thoughts of Rose and his endless love for his best friend in the world. He couldn't imagine eternity without her. This want, this need, coalesced in his soul.

David screamed at the top of his lungs, "DAHLIA!" And a mouth started crawling out of his throat. The mouth was larger than should be possible to fit inside of David. It was so large that once it escaped David's gullet it blotted out the sun.

The mouth was larger than the city itself. And its slobber started cascading down over the newly constructed buildings of David's wretched city.

The mouth was poised to eat the dragons and the city in an attempt to save Rose from Dahlia's evil schemes. At least that was what he told himself he was doing. Maybe he just was angry and wanted to take out his inner rage.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Surprisingly, Dahlia was not up on the dragons. Instead, she had somehow teleported directly in front of David himself.

Behind Dahlia were her cronies. Ramses looked strong and confident. Even further behind those two were his former cronies, the turncoats Joy and Lillian. Joy looked sheepish and was holding some ornately carved rock. However, the most important person in the crowd of people was Rose. She had her hands tied together, but obviously Dahlia was not worried about her running away.

"And why wouldn't I do that." David made the mouth start to slowly inch downwards, its shadow casting further and further as it approached the city.

"That's because I would kill Rose before that mouth even got close to swallowing me." Dahlia gave him a devilish grin.

David loved his sister for all her charm and the simplicity of her life. He so badly wanted her to believe in him and the cause he was fighting for, but she didn't, and there was nothing he could ever do to change that.

She believed in the gods, and it broke David that she couldn't even fathom why he hated them.

"And how would you do that. I don't see any handy dandy spells to save you from my wrath."

"See that rock in Joy's hand," Dahlia gestured vaguely towards Joy who shivered under the scrutiny, "it is tied to Rose's life. If that rock touches the ground, then Rose will perish. So, Joy has one simple job here – drop the rock if he even smells you planning something."