by Jesse Wilson
“Look at that a dishwasher gets to punch a god in the face. I bet this doesn't happen very often,” Shane said as he did just that. His left fist struck Torax in the side of the face. Torax's bright green blood came from the corner of his mouth but at the same time he managed to push Shane off to the side.
Torax scrambled and clawed at Shane's jeans trying to get something to hold on to but Shane kicked the god in the face knocking him back.
Torax recovered and stood up as Shane did too. The skinny god ran at him once again before Shane could fully regain his footing and punched him in the face with his right fist. Shane was surprised the blow didn't kill him, he felt like he was fighting an actual person and not a god.
The punch didn't knock him over but it hurt enough to make him consider giving up already. He really wasn't used to this kind of punishment. Shane recovered and charged Torax again, he didn't plan on letting up.
Shane grabbed the God by the shoulders and put his left knee into Torax's chest knocking the wind out of him but at the same time Torax was able to wrap his hands around Shane's throat and begin to squeeze. Shane tried to pull his hands off but his grip was suddenly stronger or he was getting weaker, he couldn't tell.
Knowing that he had to escape any way he could Shane punched Torax in the throat. That worked on impact the god rolled over and writhing in pain.
Shane was doing the same thing. Not being able to breathe for any amount of time he found was very panic inducing and he was glad that was over. His knuckles were bruised and face was cut but Shane rolled over and started to pull himself back to his feet. He wanted to talk to Torax but found that even attempting to start was going to make him start coughing so he stopped himself.
Torax was regretting this, it was taking longer than he thought and had no interest in losing like this. As soon as he formed half of a plan he was distracted by Shane who was half running in his direction. Shane punched Torax in the stomach with his right fist and Torax doubled over. Then Shane followed it up by bringing his Torax's face into his left knee.
The god stumbled backwards, bleeding bright green blood from his mouth and his face was cut up. Not interested in plans anymore Torax shook his head and limped back in Shane's direction. Shane couldn't believe either of them was still standing after all this.
Torax put both of his hands together and swung them into the side of Shane's head like it was a club. Shane took the hit and stumbled to the right a few steps but he refused to fall down. He shook his head, tried to wipe the blood off of his face but only managed to smear it instead, he didn't care about that anymore.
Shane couldn't feel parts of his body, the cold air was numbing the pain, at least that is what he was hoping.
“You need to fall, I can't let you win,” Torax said and limped towards him. Shane caught a glint in his eye and he didn't like what that meant. “Same to you, buddy,” Shane managed to say under his breath and limped towards him. Shane needed to end this as soon possible and he knew it. He clenched his left fist, took as deep a breath as he could as if to summon some kind of unseen energy to him.
He lunged forward and punched Torax in the left side of his face with a wild swing. The impact knocked Torax to the ground in a spin. He hit the ground with a groan. Shane expected him to get back up but he did not, instead he just rolled over on his back. “Give up yet?” Shane asked him between heavy breaths.
“You put up a great fight, but I'm sorry I have to do this, like I said I can't allow you to win,” Torax said weakly. “Do what?” Shane asked him. Torax raised his left arm. “Zoro Maskim,” he said weakly. All of the sudden the sky above him lit up and Shane looked up.
“No!” Sholtan screamed and shot as fast as he could to defend Shane from the lightning bolt from the night sky. Shane blocked his eyes from the light. Sholtan redirected the bolt from hitting Shane and forced it into Torax's body. The God screamed as the energy blasted him off of the ground and sent him rolling away on fire.
“You saved me,” Shane said as he fell to his knees. “You bet I did, no one gets to cheat and win at the same time on my watch,” Sholtan said to him and floated to his hand.
“Let me take over so you can rest,” he said as Shane lifted his arm slowly and painfully to grab the hilt of the blade. Instantly the massive form surrounded him. Sholtan stood up and walked to the still smoking body of Torax.
“It looks like we win this battle, he's not talking so he can't really say that he gives up,” he said to the Gods and was tempted to crush his head under his foot.
“That was one hell of a show, guys! Shane is the real winner here, but since he was on the blades team this counts as a win for their team,” Taro said with a smile and then realized that there was a problem.
“Because I didn't fight neither team will be able to get to five, and even if Prolexa wins her fight it still keeps the Gods down by one. So this means we lose automatically no matter how it turns out,” Taro said to everyone. “Does this mean it's all over, are we finished?” Pen asked him.
“It looks like the blades win by default,” Taro said with a smile.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“That's not fair, that's not even the rules we agreed to,” Elrox said to him and the other Gods were beginning to get angry too. “Don't be sore losers, at least you got to fight. All I did was stand here and watch,” Brule said and felt left out.
“Brule, let me let you in on a little secret, when I made you, you were the literal absolute least effort I ever put into making anything, you're the same as a crumpled up tin can on the side of a road,” Elrox said to him. Brule felt terrible when Elrox said that to him and looked down to the ground.
“Hey, it doesn't matter, he's still way better than you'll ever be,” Ventrix said to Elrox, coming to his defense. “Thanks,” Brule said, but still felt terrible. His creator just told him he was worthless and that was something his mind had some trouble getting around.
“Oh, don't feel too bad Brule, Elrox here is just too stupid to know when to shut up, he didn't mean it, I promise,” Prolexa said to him, feeling Elrox went too far.
Yes, I did,” Elrox countered her quickly. Xy just shook her head in amazement.
Torax started to lift himself off the ground, he was fully healed when he turned around and his staff flew to him. He leaned on it.
“You know. I think we should just take this world, we're gods, why are we playing by some stupid rules and a game?” he asked them. “Magic boy does have a point I mean, who cares about any of this,” Loa said to them.
The blade side of the ring was beginning to get very nervous about the way the conversation was going. Arket had still not recovered and this made Pen feel even worse. Before this was going to get bad he decided to try something.
“Tinea, we need Arket so I'm going to light her on fire, you managed to copy Loa's powers, right?” he asked her.
“You bet I did, you thought I'd miss a chance like that you're crazy,” she replied to him. Pen shot a blast of star fire and covered Arket with it without warning anyone. They all backed off in a hurry. “A little warning next time, Pen,” Shane said as he and Sholtan got away from the fire. “Sorry,” Pen replied.
Her body lit on fire and with that she started to twitch, returning to life slowly. “That's all she needed, good,” Pen said and turned his attention back to the situation at hand.
Taro was listening to them argue and convince themselves that following the rules was a stupid plan.
“Now it's time to tell people the truth,” Taro said and all of the Gods quickly shut up. “You wouldn't dare, you wouldn't do that,” Prolexa said to him in an instant. “I can and I will,” Taro said and turned to the others. The gods quickly becoming nervous, not sure what to do they looked to Elrox for leadership. The sea god was stunned into doing nothing at all.
“You want to know the truth of this world. Well, we tricked all of the races here,” Taro said and the people on the other side all the sudden lost all of their confidence.
“What do you mean tricked?” Yalen asked him. “When we came here to this world, you already existed. You were many races, many kinds of people with different ideas but you'd never heard of a God before,” Taro said and continued. “So I came up with the plan to convince everyone on this world that we had created you. It only took several thousand years to make people truly believe we were your gods. You killed in our names sometimes,” Taro said to them and his smile disappeared.
“Wait, you came here, where do Gods come from?” Pen asked him and none of this made sense. “Simple, A god is more like a race of beings like the elf or troll, human. We are just different kinds of life. Very elemental, we train in the center of the Omniverse and we are much like you. Some of us are special and can do many things. Most of us are usually only good at one or two things at most,” Taro answered him.
In this omniverse, there are literally trillions of universes. No one really knows how many for sure. They say it's infinite, most of them are empty. Playgrounds for ones like us, but even we have our creation stories,” Taro said and this information blew their minds.
“The eight of us are for the lack of a better word, failures when it comes to being gods. Each one of us had our own world, but being as obsessive as we are about our elements, the worlds we made all failed, we lacked the mastery of the best tool, the one the gods call balance,” Taro said with a laugh.
“All eight of us met at a gathering and we only had the one thing in common, that we had failed. So, we decided that all eight of us together could run a world, we were all pretty fast friends,” Taro said with a sad smile.
“And for a while it worked. But we don't know who made you, we never found any evidence of the one who did either,” Taro finished the story.
“So, what was the point of me, why do I exist, or any of us?” Tinea asked her creator. “Simple, the races of this world didn't need us before and even though for a time we were able to convince them worship us, the normalcy of this world returned and we began to lose our access to the world. You see we are not dependent on your belief in us, no god is,” Taro continued to answer.
“However, if you don't believe in us we lose our power to interact with the world on a direct level. So we crafted the blades to the world and gave them to the mortal races as our last act. We told them that the blades were keeping the darkness out,” Taro said and continued.
“We used our own creation story for this part, but the real plan was that the blades would wreak enough havoc for us to be needed again. Trouble was mortals are loyal and never unsealed any of them,” Taro said and crossed his arms.
“The only reason Pen was chosen was because his father found our secret and we couldn't risk him exposing the truth, so when he was in the Distance, we stole him. Who better to start the plan than the son of the one who threatened to bring it all down,” Taro said to Pen and Tinea.
“You ruined my life, my mother's life, you're all responsible and if there was a way to kill you, I'd kill you all,” Pen was angry and Tinea was holding him in place for now.
“I know you would, but this is why Tinea exists. I gave her two gifts, the power to mimic, and the power of heart. She knows the difference between right and wrong. Pen, you were originally chosen to get Ventrix, but I shifted the selection process a bit,” Taro said to him.
“No doubt I would have taken over his mind in a heartbeat, any one of us would do just what we did,” Ventrix replied to him. “But you and your friends have proven to come through for me, so I thank you,” Taro said to them.
“Well if story time is about over I think it's time to kill all of them and get this show on the road,” Elrox said to them and his hands lit up with blue energy to attack. “This world doesn't belong to you. You have no right to take it. You never did,” Arket said weakly as she stood up, her body lightly glowing.
“Damn straight, you made us into weapons and now were going to kill you,” Zolar replied to Elrox. “Oh, this is not turning out like I saw it going down in my head,” Taro said to no one.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Me either. I thought it was going to be a much smoother transition, more forgiveness and less anger,” the girl with the blue eyes was standing right beside him. Taro along with everyone else was shocked at the new voice and everyone turned to pay attention to her.
“And who are you?” Taro asked her, she smiled. “Pen, Shane and Melissa know who I am, she should be awake by now,” she said to them.
“You're the shopkeeper from before,” Shane said and Pen's blood almost froze as she took two steps forward, a black mist surrounded her and revealed the form of the store owner stepped out of it.
“Yeah, I am Bob, nice to meet you all,” he said, calmly, and right now he was the only one who was calm.
“What is the meaning of this, who are you and give me one good reason not to kill you right now,” Elrox said angrily as Bob shot his icy blue gaze in his direction. “You know why you never found any evidence of who created the people of this world. Well, it's because I didn't leave any behind,” Bob said and Pen took a step backwards.
“You're not real, you're just a character in a book, not even that good of a book,” Pen said and Bob smiled. “These gods know me by a different name I am known by a billion different names across billions of worlds. In some worlds, some creative people catch a spark and write me in, in others I am all too real,” Bob said with a smile and the Gods took a step back.
“You can't be, you're just a story the elder gods made up to scare kids. I remember stories,” Xy said with a hint of emotion in her voice finally, fear.
“Every story comes from somewhere. you know who I am,” Bob said to all of them in a deeper voice than before.
“What do you plan to do?” Pen asked him, but wasn't sure if asking was such a good idea. “Well, imagine coming home after a long vacation and seeing your house filled with people you didn't know trying to wreck the place. Does that sound like something any of you would put up with, of course not. So, I am going to dispose of these teenage gods here and clean house,” Bob said with a smile.
Pen was conflicted on one hand he was going to solve a big problem, but it turned out that these Gods were practically still just kids themselves and still learning. That explained their behavior and methods almost completely.
“Damn it, I can't let you do that Bob,” Pen said reluctantly. “Yeah, wait, why not?” Shane asked him.
“I think these gods here aren't so different than us when we were teens, they are just teenagers even. I mean really look at them. They aren't even related, just a bunch of failures with who got in over their heads. They did something stupid, we can all relate to that I suppose,” Pen replied to him.
“Children, I am the abyss. I make gods tremble just by showing up. Maybe you should rethink this plan of standing against me?” Bob said to them, but the gods now stood with the blades, beside them in a flash of sudden unity.
“You might be, but we still have to try and beat you, this is our world now and you can't have it,” Prolexa said to him with a shaking voice. Bob sighed and cracked his neck. “Alright, do you all plan on fighting me at once or should we do it one at a time, either way I don't care,” Bob said to them and crossed his arms.
“If we live through this we really have to talk about your planning skills, but for now we are all on the same side,” Pen said to them.
“Agreed, but I don't think we'll actually live through this,” Loa replied to him.
“Great, it's been decided, you all die together. I'll make a nice monument to your death out of what remains of this world when I finish with it,” Bob said to them with a smile.
Tinea rushed forward first, but Bob didn't move in the slightest kind of reaction. Tinea slammed into an invisible wall and bounced back to the ground. Bob didn't even register that she did anything at all as he began to walk forward.
“So, does anyone have any great ideas?” Sholtan asked as Bob approached them. “Yes, scramb
le, split up,” Nolber said to them, none of them could argue with that logic so they ran in all directions. “You run like roaches when someone turns on a light, I guess that makes sense considering what you are,” Bob said to them as a stream of white fire engulfed his form. Loa and Arket blasted him at the same time from opposite sides in the sky.
“Toasty, I like it,” Bob said and wasn't fazed about any of this in the least. Bob flew through the fire and grabbed Arket by the throat faster than she could react. “Don't you know that if you play with fire you get your neck broken?” Bob asked her when Elrox slammed into his side, taking Bob with him. Arket barely had time to register what was going on.
“Are you alright?” Loa asked her as she was at Arket's side almost instantly.
“Fine, let's not worry about it right now,” she replied to her.
Brolox drew his fist back and slammed it into Bob's upper body with all the force he could summon, the shock wave cracked all the pillars and sent wave of air in all directions on impact. Bob only slid back slightly, grabbed Brolox's middle finger and threw the giant with terrifying ease. Brolox sailed into the night, smashing into unseen things as he disappeared.
Ventrix fired his beam from his blade into Bob's chest, he took the hit and slid back an inch but didn't appear to be affected by the thing at all as he started to walk forward while it was still hitting him.