I was dead. Again. This was REALLY starting to get old.

When awareness came to me, I wasn’t surprised to find that I was in Maelyne’s den once again. Maelyne handed me a cup of tea without saying a word.

“Am…am I dead again?” I asked since the last thing I remembered was being caught in the crossfire from a couple gods fighting.

“No,” Maelyne told me with a faint smile. “Though I will admit, you would have died had I not interfered and protected you from further injury.”

I was a little startled at that. “Isn’t that against the rules?”

“Definitely,” Maelyne responded with another faint smile. “But as the game has been discontinued, there is no longer any reason to follow the rules.”

“Then things must be pretty bad,” I said.

“Indeed,” Maelyne admitted with a scowl. “War has come to my world, for the first time in thousands of years. My power and resources are stretched thin as I protect my home, my people, and my allies.”

I gulped at that. “Those gods are attacking us…”

“I know,” Maelyne said with a sad look on her face. “I am fighting with their alliance here, and do not have the resources to fight them on your world as well. I will protect you and yours however I can, but understand, the only way to defeat them is here...”

“They’re coming after us,” I said grimly. “All of us. They’re killing all the other champions…”

Maelyne nodded at that, and I could see the pained look in her eyes. “While occupying mortal bodies, they can only use a fraction of their true power. Unfortunately, even in those bodies, no mortal has a chance of truly defeating them. Your kind simply lacks the right kind of power.”

“I saw that,” I admitted, remembering how I’d blown Pfath in half, and she’d just reformed and acted as though it had been nothing.

“My allies and I will defeat them here,” Maelyne told me, “and that will stop them in your world as well. For now, avoid them if you can. If they attack you, I will…”

Suddenly, Maelyne cried out in pain. She jumped to her feet and looked around with an expression of surprise and even fear.

“What’s going on?” I demanded, feeling more than a little worried. If something could make a goddess afraid, I didn’t want to know how bad it would be for me.

“I am under attack,” Maelyne exclaimed, giving me a quick look and adding, “Take care, my champion…”

A moment later, I was torn from the dream in a way that almost felt like a physical blow to my entire being. It was jarring and painful, nothing like the way all my previous conversations with Maelyne had ended.

I woke up on the concrete floor of the warehouse. My entire body hurt like hell, and when I slowly sat up, I saw that my armor was burned and shredded. From the state of my armor, I was lucky to feel anywhere near as good as I did. Obviously, I must have been out of it long enough to have healed so much from that kind of damage.

For several minutes, I remained where I was, listening to my surroundings and trying to get a sense of what was going on. I didn’t hear any fighting. In fact, I didn’t really hear anything at all, which I took as a good sign. It was only then that I healed myself.

After getting to my feet, I slowly looked around. The entire warehouse was a ruin, with most of the floors, wall, and ceiling all being blackened, charred and straight-out shredded. About half the roof was missing, and a large section of the concrete floor had been shattered.

“Not a good sign,” I whispered.

There were also a couple cubes between me and where the main fighting had taken place, but they were blackened and cracked. My eyes widened at that. If those things hadn’t been there to shield me…

“This must have been one hell of a fight after I passed out,” I said as I looked around.

Then I saw Don’s body, or at least, what was left of it. For the most part, he’d been reduced to a skeleton inside his now crushed, burned, and twisted armor. I shuddered at the sight and even felt tears starting to form. I hadn’t known Don very well, but I’d liked him.

“You deserve better than this,” I said sadly. He deserved a LOT better than to be murdered by some asshole god.

Since Don’s body was still there and hadn’t vanished the way I’d seen other people’s bodies vanish, I could only assume that his patron wasn’t bringing him back. The Cleaner had warned us that those killed by the gods, probably wouldn’t be able to be resurrected.

“No more rezzes,” I whispered.

I stood there for a good minute or two, mourning Don and feeling guilty for his death, though I wasn’t sure why. Intellectually, I knew that I wasn’t responsible for his death, but emotionally… Some part of me still blamed myself.

Then as I was turning to leave, I saw another body that had been concealed by some of the debris and cubes. When I got closer, I saw that it was Mary’s body, which had literally been cut in half. There were also severe burns as well.

“I guess your patron didn’t last against them either,” I said, a little surprised by that. Then again, she’d been one god against four. “At least you took one of them with you…”

A short distance away was Harker’s body. It had been torn to pieces, by what I suspected had been icicle projectiles. I didn’t feel bad for Harker or her patron. As far as I was concerned, both of them deserved worse.

When I looked around the rest of the place, I found no sign of March, Nadine, or Robe’s bodies, much to my disappointment. It looked like those three had probably all walked out of there.

“Where’s the Cleaner?” I mused as I looked around. I hadn’t seen any sign of his body, though I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad.

Since the warehouse had been abandoned, and seemed to be safe, I switched out of my armor and back to my normal clothes. Then I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket so I could call home. Unfortunately, there was no signal.

“Just great,” I grumbled to myself. “This time I bring a cell phone, and I can’t even use it.”

With a snort of disgust, I put my phone back into my pocket and switched back to my armor. At the moment, I’d probably need that more than a phone with no signal. Once my armor was back, I noticed that it was fully clean and repaired again.

“That is definitely useful,” I mused. “Now, if only I could do that with the rest of my clothes.”

I carefully left the warehouse, only to see more abandoned warehouses nearby. This was definitely the same place where my first competition had been held. I could even see some of the damage caused by the various fights in that competition.

Going into the next warehouse over, I saw that it had taken a little damage inside as well, but nowhere near as badly as the one I’d just been in. This damage had been caused by the competition, not by a group of gods fighting it out with each other.

“I wonder if there are any bonus prizes left behind,” I muttered. However, I seriously doubted that there were.

After the cancelled competition, the Cleaner had recovered all those prizes and gave them to me. There was no reason to think that after a completed competition, that he wouldn’t recover any unclaimed prizes as well. Still, it didn’t hurt to keep an eye out, just in case.

I went through several warehouses but found neither bodies nor prizes. I even checked my phone a few more times and saw the same thing as before. No signal.

Eventually, I came to a warehouse where I could hear talking from within. I froze at that since I recognized the voices as belonging to the hostile gods.

“Crap,” I whispered, unsure of whether I should turn and run away, or get closer to find out what they were up to. My curiosity got the better of my good sense.

I slowly crept towards the voices, using the cubes as cover, and keeping far enough back that I’d be harder to notice. I knew that Cassandra had an amazing sense of awareness over her surroundings, and I didn’t want to take any chances that these guys might be the same.

Kr’aethar, Arakthiel, and Pfath were there in their borrows bodies, but they weren’t alone. The Cleaner was there as well, though it was obvious that he wasn’t there by choice. He was laying spread-eagle on the ground, with his hands and feet being tied to the ground with bands of red energy.

I gulped at the sight, feeling worried about the Cleaner. I didn’t know why they wanted him, or why they were keeping him alive, when these same gods had previously tried to kill him along with the Coordinator and the Referee.

“It is unfortunate that Br’ieze has lost her pawn,” Pfath commented.

“It matters not,” Arakthiel responded. “She will enter this world soon enough. As will we all…”

“I care not for this world,” Kr’aethar said. “The true challenge will be in conquering our own… In defeating those weaklings who relied on that foolish game to protect them…”

“Regardless,” Arakthiel told him. “We must still open the veil between our worlds…and this mortal will help us with that…”

“AWAKEN!” Pfath commanded, putting a flaming hand onto the Cleaner’s chest.

The Cleaner screamed in agony and I bit my tongue to keep from screaming in sympathy, because I knew exactly what that felt like. He fought against his bindings, to no effect. I had a feeling of horrific deja-vu as I watched this.

“Your patron has escaped our grasp,” Arakthiel told the Cleaner, “but you hold a fraction of her power, perhaps even enough to do what we require…”

“What do you want?” the Cleaner demanded with a look of terror on his face.

Pfath stood over him with a sadistic grin her face…on Nadine’s face, which I was quite familiar with. “Open the veil,” Pfath commanded.

“There is a veil between our worlds,” Arakthiel told the Cleaner. “One put in place by the Arbiters, including your patron Emnyle, goddess of memory and gates. The way between worlds has been locked, and Emnyle is the only one who still possesses the power to travel the worlds. You possess a fraction of that very power… Now, open the way…”

I remained where I was, biting my hand to keep from yelling out. I wanted to help the Cleaner, but I was under no illusions about my chances. I couldn’t fight those gods, and certainly not by myself. My strongest attack had only annoyed Pfath, and my shields would only slow them down for a couple seconds at most. If I tried to do anything right now, I’d only get killed before I could do anything.

It didn’t take much more ‘convincing’ before the Cleaner did what they wanted. A portal rippled and opened up in the air in front of them. It was only about five feet across, quite a bit smaller than the other portals I’d seen the Cleaner open, but it looked a bit different and radiated an eerie power that I could feel in my bones.

“It is too small,” Pfath exclaimed. “And not strong enough to withstand the power of my true body…”

“Make it larger,” Arakthiel commanded. “More powerful…”

“I can’t,” the Cleaner gasped tearfully. “This is the largest I can make it…”

Arakthiel stared at the Cleaner for several seconds before announcing, “The mortal speaks the truth… He has not enough of Emnyle’s power to do more…”

“So, we find Emnyle,” Kr’aethar said, “and force her to open the portal from our own side…”

The flames around Pfath became more intense for a moment. “Emnyle is too powerful and well-hidden to easily capture, which is why we targeted her champion instead…”

“Then we must return to our original plan,” Arakthiel said. “We must acquire Fraethe, god of keys. If we cannot access a gate to pass through the veil, then we force Fraethe to unlock the bindings that prevent us all from passing on our own…”

Kr’aethar laughed, though it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “That task should be much easier now that Maelyne is no longer able to protect him.”

Those words immediately caught my full attention and filled me with dread at the same time. Maelyne had told me she was under attack…

“Fraethe is weak,” Pfath said with a hiss. “It will be easy to make him do as we wish…”

“And this time, he will be unable to hide behind Maelyne,” Arakthiel added with an evil smirk.

“We should have killed her,” Kr’aethar exclaimed in obvious frustration and annoyance. I felt a surge of hope at hearing those words.

“Maelyne is trapped and imprisoned,” Arakthiel told him. “She can no longer interfere in her plans… Once we have Fraethe, we can destroy her at our leisure…”

Pfath laughed, though it was a cruel laugh that promised nothing but pain and suffering. “She will pay for standing against us…”

“Then,” Kr’aethar added, “we can seize her territory and use it to attack her allies… Those weaklings will fall before us…”

Pfath looked down at the cleaner and sneered. “This one’s portals are too weak for our purposes, but we can still use him to harm Emnyle.”

“We can also use him to find the remaining champions,” Arakthiel pointed out. “Once they have all been destroyed, then we can use him against Emnyle.”

“Crap,” I whispered, shaking as I did so. This was bad. This was worse than bad.

I tried summoning Matt and Teri, just so I had some backup. However, neither of them appeared. I had no idea how far away they were, but it was obviously out of my range. It looked like I really was on my own.

My eyes went back to the Cleaner, who was being held prisoner much the same way I had been. I grimaced at the sight and silently promised myself that I’d find a way to help him. And then, I’d help Maelyne.

Maelyne had saved my life, and had helped me escape from Nadine. If she was being held prisoner, I owed it to her, to help her escape too. I had absolutely no idea of what I could do, but I had to try.

“As Matt would say,” I quietly told myself, “there is no try. There is do…or do not.”

A minute later, the three gods slowly walked away, leaving the Cleaner behind. It was obvious that they weren’t worried about him escaping, which may have been confidence in the power they were using to hold him, or simply arrogance. They were so-called gods, so it was probably a bit of both.

Once I was sure they were gone, I made my way over to the Cleaner who was moaning in pain. I healed him several times. Then his eyes opened and he gave me a look of surprise and gratitude.

“How are you still here?” the Cleaner asked me, looking a little confused.

“You left me behind when you evacuated everyone,” I quietly explained. “Again.” Then I pointed to the glowing bands of energy holding him to the ground. “Let’s get you out of these…”

If he’d been chained up with cuffs the way I’d been, I could have simply picked them, courtesy of my latest skill. Unfortunately, these chains were made of energy, and I had no idea how to deal with that.

“Can you transport yourself out of these?” I asked cautiously.

“No,” he responded with a scowl. “Their power prevents me from transporting myself…”

“I…I might be able to get you out,” I warned him. “But it may hurt like hell.”

“Do it,” the Cleaner told me without hesitation.

I nodded at that and then held out my spear. Between all the damage that my shields had soaked up, and the damage that I’d taken while the gods had been fighting, I had quite a bit of damage buff stored up.

“I have two shots at this,” I said, considering my options.

With that, I slammed my foot down on the ground as hard as I could, activating the damage buff that shattered the concrete around the Cleaner’s arm. Enough shrapnel came up to tear into his arms and maybe even break a bone or two. However, the glowing energy band vanished, leaving one arm free. I went to the other side and repeated the process, jamming my spear into the ground instead.

“Sorry about that,” I said as I healed the Cleaner.

With two of the bands destroyed along with much of the concrete floor beneath the Cleaner, the two remaining bands faded away. He slowly got to his feet, though he looked physically and emotionally exhausted. I could sympathize, having been there myself not so long ago.

“We need to go,” the Cleaner said with a shaky voice. “We need to get away from here…”

He opened a portal and stepped through, vanishing from view. That portal began to shrink and fade, as did the other one which the gods had force him to open. I glanced back and forth between the two for a couple seconds, before doing what I always did when in doubt. I charged forward.