Chapter 6

2 Elements, the superior spiritual world, could take on any of a myriad of forms depending on its rulers, the gods. When Fay emerged from his dive through the Divine Gate, he discovered… “Huh?” …a very familiar city—the Sacrament City of Ruin. He’d walked the same streets on his way to the Arcane Court that morning. “I thought we were supposed to be in Elements,” he muttered. “Fay! Over here!” called a voice from across an open plaza. It was Leshea, waving to him, her vermilion hair fluttering in the wind. “I can’t wait! What kind of game do you think we’re going to play?!” “No idea,” Fay answered. “You’re the former god. Any chance you know the deity around here?” “Nope,” Leshea said, shaking her head. “Humans think of ‘the gods’ as if we were all one thing, but that’s not true at all. It’s like how cats and whales are both animals, but that’s about all they have in common.” “So you’re not, like, friends with this god or something.” “That’s right. And I doubt it knows who I am, either.” Leshea made this all sound as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, but to a human like Fay, none of it was obvious at all. He’d never had a chance to interview a god about their peers. He was sure the researchers from the Arcane Court would have given their right arms to listen in on them. I guess no one really interviewed Leshea over this past year. Probably too frightened. I wonder if that made her a little…lonely. Leshea’s eyes were already sparkling, and the game hadn’t even started yet. “Okay, Leshea, so we’re definitely in Elements, right?” Fay asked. He looked around at the scads of buildings. It was twilight, the sun glinting off the silver skyscrapers. The whole place was a perfect recreation of the city Fay had walked through that morning, right down to the subtle discolorations on the stoplights. “But why would a god live in a human city?” he asked. “Hmm… I can’t really guess what other gods might be thinking. Look over there—there’s a group of other humans. Let’s go ask them.” Leshea pointed to the center of the plaza, where sixteen people had gathered. A team, presumably. When the apostles, dressed in their ceremonial outfits, noticed Fay, they suddenly all turned toward him, and a collective murmur broke out. “Is that him?” “Fay?! What’s he doing here?” It was understandable why they might be surprised—the most celebrated rookie of last year was suddenly with them in the game. “Fay? What are you doing here? I thought you were on sabbatical!” “Oh, hey, Asta. Sorry for not staying in touch. I actually just got back this afternoon.” Fay bowed politely to the other apostle. He knew her—Asta Canarial. She’d come in three cohorts before him—a long-haired woman who’d just turned twenty. They’d found themselves together in the gods’ games twice before. “You just got back, and you’re already in here? What about retraining? Even you must have lost your edge at least a little bit after all that time away.” “Yeah, that was my plan, to try and get back up to speed and stuff, but I sort of got dragged in here…” “Let’s have a good game, kids!” Leshea said, popping out from behind Fay. The other apostles gave a collective cry and backed away. “The Dragon God?!” someone moaned. “L-Lady Leoleshea! Wh-Wh-What are you doing here?!” “Being part of the game. Don’t worry. I’m on your side.” That was when they heard it. “Hello and welcome! Yes, welcome to my god’s Elements!” Directly over Leshea’s head, a small, light-green creature descended, flapping a pair of gossamer wings. “I, the venerable presence you see before you, am the meep of this territory, wherein lives my master, the god Titan. I have no name; you may refer to me simply as Meep.” The gods did not speak. Instead, proxy spirits called meeps informed players of the game rules on their behalf. “The moment has come—no further participants in the game will be admitted. Ahem! So we have a total of eighteen partici— Hm? You there, your hair is a very unique color.” Meep came to rest on Leshea’s shoulder. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been surprised that the servant of a god would sniff Leshea out from a crowd of humans almost immediately. “Who are you, exactly?” “I’m a former god. I can still play, right?” “Certainly. We welcome all players! All right, thank you for your patience, and welcome to my god Titan’s game!” “Yeah, yeah. We know it’s a battle game.” The apostle captain took out a small electronic device—an intranet application known as Biblio, or the Encyclopedia of the Divine. It was a data file containing all the information the Arcane Court possessed on the games humans all over the world had played with the gods. “Every past encounter with the Giant God Titan has been a battle game. The eighteen of us just have to bring down Titan to win. Am I right?” Battle games were a relatively common form of competition in the gods’ games. They were, in a word, a free-for-all, a slugging match between the humans and the deity in question. Even with their Arise powers, the apostles were still hopelessly outmatched by the gods, so often these games had specific stipulations about how the humans could claim victory, such as by bringing the god to its knees or by flipping it on its back or something. “The Giant God, Titan… Let’s see… You’re right, Captain, here it is!” said a female apostle, consulting Biblio. “R-Right, this is it! Titan has been encountered twenty-three times globally in the last thirty years. Win percentage is…with a party our size, it’s calculated at fourteen percent.” The average human win percentage in these games was around 3 percent, so in terms of both the type of game and the chances of victory, Titan was a plum draw. “This is great news, Captain. We’re going to be in a battle, and we’ve got the Dragon God Leoleshea on our side! We’ll have a literal god fighting for us!” “No, no,” Meep said before the young woman could go any further. “My master claims to be sick of battle games.” “What…?” “If I may finish what I was saying…” Meep began. “The name of the game is Divinitag!” The eighteen people in the square fell silent. What’s that? they seemed to be wondering. Fay and Leshea were as perplexed as the rest—they’d never heard of any such game as Divinitag. “Welp, have fun!” “Huh?! H-Hey, hold on! Titan always does battle games…” “Not anymore. My master wants to try something different.” “What the hell?!” The captain, standing there holding his Biblio, paled. What a moment for Titan to act on a whim that turned a hundred years of the Arcane Court’s records and calculations on their head. “Any other questions?” Meep asked. “I have one,” Fay replied. He pointed to the area around them, the Ruin cityscape. There wasn’t so much as a wad of trash littering the streets, but the buildings were there, lined up in neat rows. “Can we essentially treat this as a game of tag?” I think I see it, Fay thought. We’re supposed to run down the street, using the buildings as obstacles. That was the point of re-creating a human city here in the superior spiritual world. “We have to flee from Titan, within the zone defined by the buildings. That’s why it’s not just tag but Divinitag. Right?” “You’ve hit the nail on the head!” Meep pointed to the horizon where a curtain of blue light formed a barrier. “The play area for this game is limited—you can’t go beyond that light. The light forms a square field you’ll need to stay within while running from Titan.” “All right. I think I get it,” Fay said. But that was only the beginning. The rule he really wanted to understand came next. “So if this is a take on tag, do we lose if we all get caught?” Meep didn’t say anything immediately, only grinning. The proxy spirit waited until every eye was looking at it, then laughed uproariously. “That certainly is one of the lose conditions!” The human responses to this fell into two groups. Most of the apostles’ eyes went wide—but Fay and Leshea both immediately lapsed into thought. “Hmm. I think I see,” Leshea said. Surprisingly, there was a smile on her face. “That means there’s another way to lose besides everyone being defeated. It must be possible to lose even if Titan doesn’t catch all of us. Any ideas, Fay?” “I’ve got nothing,” Fay said earnestly, shaking his head. It seemed like Divinitag was basically just regular tag—everyone had to run away and not let Titan catch them. This thing about the lose conditions bothers me, though. Is there a way to lose without being caught in tag? Does that ever happen? So you could be defeated even if you fled successfully. Turn that fact around, and… “It means our win conditions aren’t as simple as they sound, either,” Fay said. He looked up at Meep, who was floating in midair. “So we have to escape Titan to win—but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” Meep nodded. “Yes. Forgive me for repeating myself, but while it’s true that running is going to be key to prevailing in Divinitag, you can still lose even if you successfully avoid Titan.” Then the spirit added, “As my master Titan is merciful, however, I am told that once the game begins, you’re to be given a 300-second head start. I suggest you use it to run as far away as—hm?” There was an earthshaking boom, followed by several giant, stomping footsteps. Meep turned. “What? But I’m still in the middle of explaining…” From between the twenty-story buildings in the direction Meep was looking, they could see a massive, lava-colored creature emerging—the Giant God Titan. It was the first time Fay had ever seen this deity in person. “I guess Lord Titan just couldn’t wait! Okay, no head start, then. Let the game begin!” “Oh nooooo!” cried the apostles—including Fay and Leshea. An instant later, Titan raised a tremendous arm and smashed one of the steel skyscrapers into dust. And that was the signal. Vs. The Giant God Titan Game: Divinitag Win Condition(s): ???? Lose Condition 1: All players are tagged by Titan Lose Condition 2: ???? (Players may still lose even if they escape) The game was on. With the force of Titan’s blow, the walls of the building were transformed into thousands, or maybe tens of thousands, of steel bullets that came raining down. “Eek!” one of the apostles shouted. “Take cover! Hurry, or we’ll be crushed by the debris!” another yelled. The shouting and shrieking echoed around the city. The first to act were the apostles with Superhuman Arises. With speed and strength far beyond that of an ordinary human, they kicked aside the incoming chunks of steel. Then it was time for the apostles with Magical Arises. “Konoha! Kyrgis! Set up a magical barrier!” “R-Right!” Konoha answered. “Activating now!” Kyrgis added. One of them was a wind mage, the other a gravity mage; one female and one male; and Fay judged them both to be about his age. They thrust their hands out toward the sky. There was a boom of tearing air, a gale-force wind smashing the incoming debris to pieces. That was the power of an Arise, strength that was crucial if one intended to square off against the gods. With enough Arises in one place, it was more than possible even to take on the gods in a battle game. Fay was the only exception here—and not in a good way. “Oh crap!” He tried to dodge out of the way as quickly as he could, cold sweat running down his back. His Arise wasn’t made for inflicting violence. He didn’t have the enhanced physical capacities of most Superhuman Arises, nor a mage’s ability to stop the incoming projectiles in their tracks. “You have to get out of here, Leshea!” Fay cried. “It’s too dangerous to—” “What’s dangerous?” Leshea asked. The vermilion-haired girl turned calmly, lashing out with an almost careless backfist that smashed a chunk of debris to smithereens. Fay could feel the shock wave tickle his skin. “Uh… Nothing. Never mind.” He watched the chunks of rubble scatter along the ground, feeling a bit petrified himself. Leshea hadn’t only smashed the steel—the debris looked as if it had melted, like chocolate in the sun. All simply at the touch of her fist. A former god, huh? Wow! She said something about being the incarnation of fire. I guess she wasn’t kidding. Just as pressingly, Fay had no doubt Leshea could do the same thing in the real world. His stomach flipped over as he realized what Chief Secretary Miranda had meant about not making her angry. The destructive former deity in question, though, was grinning from ear to ear. She looked at Fay. “Hm?” “That grin is really unsettling. What’s the story?” “I just thought you can be surprisingly cute. You act so cool most of the time, but now I know you have it in you to panic once in a while. And maybe it was me, but you seemed worried about me for a second. You thought that debris was going to hit me, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” She pushed her face right up toward his. Fay wasn’t sure what she was getting at, but he knew he felt a little embarrassed. “I didn’t have to worry—I get that now. Anyway, let’s get out of here. We’ll start with the premise that this is basically a game of tag.” He set off running out of the open space and toward the buildings. If this was tag, he wanted to be as far away from “it”—Titan—as he could get. They could see the sixteen other apostles running ahead of them. “Looks like everyone else is doing okay still,” he said. It wouldn’t have been surprising if at least one of the others had been knocked out by that smashed building, but it looked like everyone was in one piece. Nice work. I guess that was just Titan’s go signal, though. This is where it gets serious… Fay glanced back. As if on cue, the apostle at the end of the line ahead shouted, “Captain! Titan is on the move!” Another building smashed. From amidst the smoke and dust emerged the gigantic, rock-like god, who stood nearly as tall as the nearby skyscrapers. Titan watched the humans on the ground, studying them closely with dully glowing eyes. Then the god was running, making a beeline directly toward them, each footstep producing a shock wave like a bomb blast, the asphalt crying out and cracking beneath the steps. “D-Damn, that thing is fast!” someone shouted. “We can’t keep this up, Captain. Even with Superhuman speed, we’ll never win a foot race with Titan! Maybe if we had a mage with flight powers… N-No, even that wouldn’t be enough!” “Don’t forget we’re in the middle of a city!” The captain pointed at the main thoroughfare. “Everyone, scatter! Split up and hide behind the buildings. We must look like ants to that thing—so let’s do like ants and hide in the grass.” “Right!” The apostles ran in all directions, making for different buildings. Fay and Leshea followed suit, ducking into the shadow of one of the skyscrapers with four other apostles. One of them was Fay’s older colleague, Asta, who pressed herself against the side of the building. “Huff…huff… Tag, with a monster like that?” she gasped. “I don’t think a mage like me is going to have much to do here!” Asta had a Magical Arise. Unlike with Superhuman blessings, she had the physical capacities of an ordinary person—just running this far was already a challenge. “They might call this a game of tag, but for us, it’s a lot more like hide-and-seek, don’t you think?” a male apostle said, peeking out from behind the building at the main road. Fay didn’t recognize the guy, but suspected he possessed a Superhuman Arise, given that Titan had chased them all this way and he wasn’t even breathing hard. “Even a Superhuman like me couldn’t take that god in a straight fight,” the apostle continued. “Titan’s just too big. Hiding here was the right choice. Think we should go inside?” “Y-Yeah, that’s a great plan, Vice Captain! Titan might not notice us if we use the back door.” “Bad idea, Asta,” Fay said. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” “Wha?” Asta, about to dash for the door, stopped and looked at Fay, the golden hair she was so proud of whipping in the wind. “Wh-Why not, Fay?” “We can’t go inside the building. It’s more than a little dangerous, for one thing.” They heard another footstep, thoom! Titan seemed to have slowed down to a walking pace, but it was still getting closer. Fay couldn’t see the god, but suspected it wasn’t far away. “Our opponent has a general idea of where we went,” Fay said. “That’s why we have to get inside! Okay, so…so Titan can smash a building to pieces if it wants to, but if we just keep running, we’re going to get caught eventually!” If Titan found them, they would be captured—that is, they would lose. So why not grab the one thin ray of hope and duck inside a building, then pray that building didn’t get demolished? In a normal game of tag, it might have been a reasonable choice. “I still don’t agree. One thing we can guarantee is that we won’t win that way.” “Why not?!” “Because—watch out, Asta! Run this way!” “Huh? What’s gotten into you?” Asta was just standing there—totally oblivious to the fact that behind her, the Giant God’s face was looming over the building, looking down at them. How’d Titan find us so fast?! Our voices? Our scents? Maybe both? There was no time for self-recrimination, though. “Asta, run toward me! Don’t look back!” the Vice Captain shouted. “What? What’s the matter, Vice Captain?” Don’t look back. Was there anyone in the world who wouldn’t look behind them when you said that? Asta reflexively turned around—and screamed. “Ah—Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” Titan stepped on her, a gigantic foot squashing the golden-haired apostle with less fanfare than if she were an insect. “Asta?!” The other apostles paled. Their friend had been crushed under a body that must have weighed thousands and thousands of tons. That was instant death if anything was. In the gods’ games, being rendered unable to act was equivalent to being “out.” Injuries sustained in the superior spiritual realm didn’t carry over to the real world—they knew Asta was already gone from under Titan’s foot. She’d been sent back to the real world, out of the game. At least, that’s what they thought until they saw the supposedly flattened Asta rise from the cracked pavement unharmed. “Huh? Why am I—?” she said. She should have disappeared out from under Titan’s heel, but instead, there she was, looking like she couldn’t believe it herself. “Asta… You’re alive?” Fay asked. “Y-Yeah, it looks like it. I’m sure I should have been—oh! Oh no!” That was when things got weird. The upper half of Asta’s body suddenly appeared to be dyed the searing color of lava, as if she had been drenched in paint. It was the same color as the god Titan. “Asta?!” Fay cried. “F-Fay, what’s going on?! Something’s happening to my body! Wh-What? My magic—it’s just—!” Asta, with her orange torso, thrust out her hands. Oh no. Tempest! Fay just managed to dodge Asta’s wind assault, the gale blasting past inches away from him and slamming into the apostles who were still standing there. They were thrown against the side of the nearby building, hard. “Hrgh! A-Asta, have you gone insane?!” the Vice Captain managed. “N-No, Vice Captain, I swear! My body’s moving on its own!” Asta was screaming. She still had a mind of her own—but her body wouldn’t listen to her, and her magic was out of her control. “So Divinitag was more than just a name.” Fay looked up at Titan, who loomed triumphantly over them, and gritted his teeth. “A hidden rule. Of course. There would have to be at least one. This is about matching wits with the gods, after all!” When you got caught in tag, that made you “it.” But what if there was more than one “it”? What if the people Titan tagged in this game became the god’s servants? Hidden rule number one: players who are tagged by Titan become Titan’s agents and attack the other players, Fay realized. In the board game Shogi, pieces you captured could be deployed on your side. This was no different. “You probably already know, Leshea—in the gods’ games, the chances of the humans winning normally go up the more people there are.” “But it looks like it’s a liability this time, huh?” Leshea said with a shrug. In Divinitag, tagged apostles didn’t go out; they became enemies instead. That would create a geometric progression in Titan’s fighting strength that would turn the humans’ numbers spectacularly against them. “V—Vice Captain! Run away! Please!” Asta cried. “You’re the one flinging wind magic at me—yikes! Shit!” Asta, now under Titan’s control, let loose another gale. The force of the wind sent the Vice Captain tumbling backward, where he couldn’t avoid the god’s descending heel. Smoosh. Just like that, the Vice Captain began to turn the same color as Titan, just like Asta had. But that wasn’t all. “Wha?” Leshea said, her eyes widening as two more apostles started shouting. It hadn’t stopped with the Vice Captain—the two apostles standing near him, a young man and a young woman, turned lava-colored as well. “N… No…,” the young man moaned. “But why? Titan didn’t even touch us!” the young woman said. Titan had only made physical contact with Asta and the Vice Captain. Yet two apostles next to the Vice Captain had been tagged, too, like a curse jumping from one person to the next. What’s going on here?! They didn’t touch Titan or even the Vice Captain! So maybe it had to do with the definition of touch? Perhaps the god didn’t have to make direct contact with you; maybe just being in the vicinity was enough. But if that was the case… “Fay, I think we might be in trouble,” Leshea said. “Yeah. Keep your distance, Leshea. In fact, let’s get some more of it!” The four apostles now under Titan’s control—Asta and the Vice Captain, along with the two others—chased them as they raced among the buildings. “So I guess this means four people on the god’s side,” Fay said. “Five, if you count Titan, too. That makes it a fourteen-on-five contest,” Leshea replied. From eighteen humans versus one god to fourteen against five. And they’d barely gotten started. The tide was turning so fast that it looked like the apostles might all be eliminated within an hour. It’s rough that Asta was the first to get tagged, too—her magic was perfect for slowing Titan down. The more powerful an apostle was, the more dangerous an enemy they became when tagged. And Asta, with her wind magic, was among the most threatening people here. Titan looked soundlessly down at the ground. For a moment, the deity watched Fay and Leshea, but then it suddenly turned and stared off into the distance. “Is it changing directions? Found a new target?” Leshea asked. “Saving us for later—that’s my guess,” Fay said. Titan must have realized that Leshea, the former god, was nothing like the other players. “If it can take out everyone else first, then it’ll be two versus seventeen on the god’s side. Titan plans to assemble an overwhelming force, and then let its goons do the dirty work.” “Who’s a goon?!” cried Asta, who was already on the god’s side. Her torso might have been the color of lava, and her actions beyond her control, but it seemed her mind was still free. “I mean, aren’t you? I can’t help noticing the lower half of your body hasn’t changed color. It just looks off.” “Oh, be quiet! How can you banter at a time like this, Fay? I’m telling you, you have to run away! Even if my body will chase you…” “Don’t worry, we’re gonna run.” Fay darted out from the shadow of the building, heading directly east across town—the exact opposite direction from Titan. The god must have found some other apostles, because Fay could hear its footsteps crashing away, smashing buildings as it went. “Has that thing never heard of overkill? It’s crushing those buildings like pick-up sticks!” “Fay, I think things might be worse for us than we realized…,” Leshea, running along beside him, said. She turned and looked back down the sidewalk. “Doesn’t that human seem…weirdly fast to you?” “Yeah, Asta doesn’t normally move that quick. Must be a side benefit of being under Titan’s control.” Fay was running as fast as he could, yet he wasn’t dropping Asta—who didn’t look like she was even breathing hard. Maybe she had infinite stamina now. “Shoot. At this rate, we’ll run out of breath before she does,” he said. “Fay, listen—I’ve got a great idea. A trick to help us crack this game.” Fay glanced at her as if to say, What is it? Leshea pointed back at Asta. “I annihilate that human. I burn her to ashes so that her body doesn’t even exist anymore, and then she’ll have to be out! That means fewer people on the god’s side!” “Yikes! You scare me.” It was true Fay would never have come up with that tactic—it was literally inhuman. He did believe that if Leshea really wanted to, she could reduce the apostle to cinders, even with Titan’s blessing upon Asta. But there was still a problem. “I like that you’re trying to come up with fresh approaches, but we can’t do that.” “Why not?” “Partly because I’d feel bad for Asta, but mostly because it’s not fair.” Leshea looked perplexed. Fay pointed straight down the main avenue. “It’s always more fun to play a game the way it was meant to be played. If we’re going to do this, I’d like to do it right—as a battle of wits with the god.” “Oho?” “What?” “Just thinking that’s a very Fay answer. Okay, then. Let’s do it!” Leshea sped off—so fast that she was soon way ahead of Fay. “C’mon, Fay, this way!” “Hey, you’re too fast for me… Oh, hey, Leshea? What about Asta?” She was the only one of the Titan-controlled apostles around; the others were nowhere to be seen. “Titan is controlling her, but that’s within the rules of Divinitag. In other words, she isn’t out yet. Sound right?” “I think so. Since we gods usually pitch anyone who’s out straight back to the human realm.” “All right. In that case…” Even as Fay ran, a possibility began to present itself to him. “I think there’s another hidden rule to this game.” They ducked behind some kind of commercial building. Fay signaled to Leshea with his eyes, then slipped among the shadows of the structure, trying not to breathe. Asta came flying after them. “Huh?” She looked around, unable to find them. The humans she’d been chasing until a moment ago were suddenly gone in this trash dump. “Sorry, Asta, you’re gonna have to take one for the team! Here goes!” Fay suddenly appeared from the shadows and flung a trash can at her. “Heek?!” His aim was true; the can landed over Asta’s head, effectively blindfolding her. “I told you you didn’t look very balanced. If you’re going to turn the same color as Titan, why only the top half of you?” “F-Fay, stop—what are you talking about?” “Leshea?” “Yep. One touch, coming up.” “Eeeek!” Asta cried, leaping into the air. You couldn’t blame her—while the trash can still blinded her, Leshea had grabbed her bottom. It would be surprising. “Now just a second, Fay! You can’t go throwing trash cans over people’s heads all of a sudden…” “There, Asta. Now you’re back on the human side.” “Huh?” Asta finally managed to get the can off her head, to discover the lava color receding from her torso as quickly as it had come. “Wha? What? I… I can move again…” “You were on Titan’s side, but you weren’t out. Your legs hadn’t turned Titan’s color, see? I figured that meant there was probably a secret rule that said you could be brought back to the human side.” “Oh! Huh! That makes sense!” Asta exclaimed. Hidden rule number two: if you touched the “still human” part of one of Titan’s captures, they returned to the human side. Tag, tag back. You had to be careful to distinguish between the person’s torso, which was Titan’s color, and their legs, which weren’t. We couldn’t have tagged Asta’s torso. That would probably have caused us to be considered tagged, and we’d have become Titan’s players. Humans couldn’t lay a hand on the god, but instead, they could bring people back to their side by touching the part of them that was still human. “Anyway, we’ve got to alert the others to the hidden—” Fay was interrupted by the sound of Titan roaring from beyond a nearby building. “Well, that doesn’t sound good. Is it after us again?” “Do you think Titan sounded happy just now?” Leshea asked, peering through the haze of vaporized skyscraper. So it hadn’t been just Fay’s imagination that the roar had sounded gleeful. “Titan is saying it’s glad you figured out its game, Fay. Even the gods have more fun when we find humans who are worth competing with.” “So that’s why it’s after us. Okay, Leshea, time to run.” “F-Fay, wait! You’re not going to leave me behind, are you?!” “You stay here and hide, Asta. Titan’s after us—if you’re with us, you only get yourself stepped on again.” “Aye, sir,” Asta replied, and promptly made for a dark shadow of the building. She would be safe for a while, Fay suspected. She didn’t have a gigantic god coming after her. No, that was him and Leshea. Titan’s got the right idea going after us. It can’t ignore us now that we know how to get people back on the human side. Titan could tag people and make them its servants, but as long as Fay and Leshea were there, they would just tag them back. “From Titan’s perspective, if it can tag us, that’s almost a guaranteed victory. That’s why it’s coming at us at full speed.” “Faster, Fay! Titan’s catching up!” Leshea said, glancing back. Fay could barely gasp out an answer: “Believe me…I’m going as fast as I can…” Fast or not, Fay was ultimately only human. He was never going to win a race with a god the size of a skyscraper. “Considering Titan’s speed, I wish we could go about 550 miles per hour,” Leshea said. “Faster than a jet fighter! Sure, why not?” Leshea might have speed to spare, but not Fay. His Arise was simply this: he didn’t die. It didn’t give him any other physical enhancements. When it came to running, he was utterly ordinary. They needed a plan, and they needed it now. “Think weaving through the buildings would throw it off? You might be able to make it, Leshea, if you left me behind,” Fay said. “No point,” Leshea responded, shaking her head. “Running away isn’t enough to win the game. Meep told us, right? You can avoid getting tagged and still lose. Makes you wonder how that works, doesn’t it? What do we have to do to win this?” Yes—that was the great mystery at the heart of Divinitag, the one no one had solved yet: What were the win conditions? Running away from Titan was the first thing. But what came after that? “So figuring out how to win is part of the game, huh? If the goal was to take down Titan, then this would be a simple battle game, so that’s not it. Maybe we win if we keep away from it for a certain amount of time?” Fay suggested. “It’s possible, but we don’t have any proof,” Leshea said. “Yeah, and there’s nothing suggesting how long we have to keep running, either. Okay…” Suddenly Fay noticed something: Leshea, jogging beside him, was grinning at him. Positively beaming. She looked very, very happy. “Hee!” she giggled. “He-hee! Ha-ha-ha-ha!” “What’s so funny?” “You’re exactly what I expected.” The former god made no effort to hide the smile on her face—in fact, she seemed to lean toward him as they went, as if to make sure he saw her expression. “We can genuinely talk to each other. You get what I’m trying to say, and more importantly than anything, you put your whole heart into playing. Even if it’s only a game.” “Huh? I mean, sure I do. Look how thrilling this game is.” “That makes me really happy. Look, I’m a god myself, even if I’m a former one. It’s just fantastic for me to see someone taking the gods’ games so wholeheartedly.” Games existed to be enjoyed—if the humans had fun, that had to make the gods happy, too. That much was obvious from the tone of Leshea’s voice. “It stings to lose, though, so I’d rather win,” Fay said. “Well, sure!” “We have to narrow down the possible victory conditions. We’re gonna be in real trouble pretty soon.” He could practically feel the massive presence behind them. He didn’t have to look back to know that the clattering he heard behind them was bits of pulverized glass and concrete from the buildings Titan was destroying. For Titan, a few skyscrapers are hardly more than an obstacle course, Fay thought. Titan doesn’t have to leap tall buildings in a single bound… It can just knock them over. The buildings did, at least, get in its way. It had to smash through them if it hoped to catch up with Fay and Leshea. “That means that as long as we stay among the skyscrapers, we can at least buy ourselves a little time…” Fay said. “But Meep implied that there’s more than one way for the humans to lose the game, right?” It was time to take stock. There seemed to be three win/lose conditions and two hidden rules in Divinitag. Win Condition(s): ???? Lose Condition 1: All players are tagged Lose Condition 2: ???? (Players may still lose even if they escape) Hidden Rule 1: Players immobilized by Titan’s attacks become Titan’s servants Hidden Rule 2: By touching one of Titan’s servants, they can be returned to the human side Could there be more rules besides those? Of course. But if they hadn’t stumbled across them this far into the game, then it was probably safe to ignore them for now. The real danger for us is Lose Condition 2. If there’s a way we can be defeated even if we escape getting tagged, then we absolutely can’t ignore it. While Fay tried to concentrate, Leshea shouted: “Fay! Get down!” She spun like a top, one long leg whipping out and kicking away a piece of debris flying straight for Fay’s head. “Thanks, Leshea. I guess Titan’s not going to give us time to think!” It was like a sniper attack; it had come from more than three hundred feet away. And it was more than just dumb chance—Titan had clearly thrown the debris hoping to hit Fay and Leshea. “Titan is nobody’s fool…” Fay felt a bead of cold sweat; he could hear his heart pounding in his ears as he spoke. Pounding with shock. “I was sure we had a little longer till it caught us—I underestimated it, and it used that against me to try a long-range attack. Man… These gods are really something.” Titan was so much more than just a big, violent lummox. It was as clever as it was powerful. Intelligence and strength combined: certainly, a being worthy of godhood. “Which way next?” Leshea asked. “Let’s hang a right here… No, wait, it’s the next block up. Too many streets that all look the same…” The Sacrament City of Ruin was laid out in a grid, with streets running north-south and east-west at regular intervals. Even the buildings were positioned at roughly the same spots on each road. It made the place seem nice but similar everywhere you looked, which left Fay confused about precisely where he was. “I haven’t been here in six months, myself. I feel like I’m getting lost. Uh… I think it’s this way!” They darted behind another building, hoping that if they stuck to the shadows, Titan wouldn’t be able to find them. I’ve got to think! How do we win this game? We know Titan is highly intelligent, so the rules should be polished. They’d probably been given hints, too. Likely, they’d already encountered them. “I’m almost sure there must have been hints along the way here,” Fay said. “If we haven’t spotted them, that’s on us.” He didn’t have long to think. It would only be moments before Titan knocked over another building and was after them again. Then he heard footsteps—someone wearing shoes. Fay could tell someone was running across the asphalt toward them. “I don’t get it. There can’t be that many of them, right?” He stopped, his heart racing. He paused in front of a dual-tower-type building for several seconds—and a crowd of apostles came bolting around the corner. “You’re kidding…” Fay groaned. They were all Titan’s servants, their torsos lava-colored. There were fifteen of them. Way too many. Fay wore a troubled smile, and even Leshea couldn’t resist a half-grin. I don’t see Asta—she must still be hiding. Otherwise, that looks like everyone. Now it was three humans versus sixteen (counting Titan) on the god’s side. While Titan had been chasing Fay and Leshea, the Vice Captain and the other tagged apostles had been off capturing everybody else. “Think you can bust right past them, Leshea?” “Can I incinerate those people?” “Forget I asked.” Injuries sustained in this realm didn’t follow you back to the real world. If Leshea annihilated the fifteen apostles, they would merely be dumped out of the spiritual realm. But what had stopped Fay in his tracks was the notion that the second loss condition was forcibly removing a player under Titan’s control. He couldn’t discard the possibility. If an apostle deliberately took out another apostle—basically, player-killing—that would be against the spirit of this game. Deserving of divine punishment. There was every chance that it was a trap, waiting to be sprung. Behind them was the Giant God Titan. In front of them were fifteen of Titan’s servants. “Sorry…” the captain said, his teeth gritted, clearly speaking on behalf of them all. “Titan got us all…” “Sure… I mean, I can see that.” “But you can’t give up! The two of you can still escape—you have to!” “You could just let us go.” “My legs are moving on their own!” The apostles charged at them. Fay and Leshea weren’t going to break past fifteen people at once. “This way!” Fay signaled to Leshea with his eyes, and they were off and running, heading for the first-floor display hall of a department store. “Perfect. It’s all here, just like I’d hoped,” Fay said. He’d gotten the idea when he’d seen that all the lights were on—everything in the building functioned exactly the way it did in real life. The automatic doors really worked, and so did the alarms and security cameras. “Looks like the elevator’s down in the basement right now. No time to wait for it—better take the stairs.” “Fay, the humans have reached the hall already!” Leshea called. “Emergency stairs, then!” He threw open the emergency exit door at the end of the hallway, and they ran up the spiraling staircase as fast as they could, heading for the third floor. The other apostles followed them onto the staircase, pursuing them by the sound of their footsteps. Until… “A foot chase? How cliché,” Leshea said, and then she stomped on the stairway landing as hard as she could. There was a distinct metallic crack as it gave way. The destructive force in the foot of the Dragon God smashed the support struts, sending the apostles on the staircase tumbling down. “That’s only going to buy us twenty or thirty seconds at best,” she said. “Any of those apostles who have Superhuman abilities are going to be able to jump right over that little gap.” “Yeah. Let’s hurry!” Fay agreed. They emerged from the stairwell and into the department store proper. At the moment, here on the third floor, they happened to be in a corner of the children’s clothing department. “So this is where the hidden rule about becoming the god’s servant comes in. Titan can’t get into a building with its size, but fellow humans can still chase us down. And then there’s—” Boom. A tremendous shock wave ran through the building. Titan had to be close—and when it arrived, it would reduce the department store to a pile of rubble in a single swing. We’ve got our backs to the wall. We have to get out of here, or we’ll be blown away along with the whole building! Getting out was easier said than done, though—a stairwell full of apostles would be trying to prevent their escape. They were completely cut off inside the building. “Fay, isn’t there another emergency stairwell somewhere else on this level?” Leshea asked. “That’s one idea. Otherwise, maybe we could break through the glass and jump down…” They still had ways of getting away. But that wasn’t enough. They could keep running from Titan, but they still wouldn’t know how to claim victory, and eventually, the god would have them cornered. “Darn it! As if it wasn’t bad enough with everyone chasing us, we still don’t even know the rules of this game!” Fay exclaimed. “Yeah, I wish we had more people on our side. Asta’s the only one, and she’s hidden in a building way far away.” Leshea shrugged and gave a little smile. She took a strand of vermilion hair that had caught on her cheek and twirled it around her finger. “For all intents and purposes, everyone’s been wiped out except us. They’ve all flipped over to Titan’s side now.” She sighed. Fay turned to Leshea, and for a very long moment, it almost felt like he wasn’t breathing. Then he said, “That’s it!” “Fay? What’s it?” “You’ve got it, Leshea! They’ve all flipped!” When Titan tagged an apostle, half their body turned the same color as the deity’s. It all made sense. The god had layered tricks upon tricks. However, those deceptions also contained the hint Fay needed to achieve victory. “I knew it. I knew we were missing something, Leshea!” “Eep!” she cried as he grabbed her shoulders. Her face flushed for a second, but Fay didn’t notice. His head was too full of the possibilities. “We thought Divinitag was basically a combination of tag and hide-and-seek,” he said. “Yeah. So?” “That was our biggest misconception.” Titan hadn’t said a word about the game being tag. “But if it was a combination of tag, hide-and-seek, and another game, it would explain why there are two lose conditions!” There was only one way to win, but there were two ways to fail. The rules seemed complicated, but it was all perfectly logical. “Leshea, give me your ear,” Fay said. “Y-You mean like this?” she asked, putting her ear close to his mouth. She moved awkwardly, unaccustomed to this sort of thing. And then suddenly she burst out: “Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” “What’s going on?” Fay asked. “Your…your breath! It tickles!” “You make it sound so…naughty! Well, anyway, I’m just as glad you’re taking it easy around me. It really inspires confidence.” “It’s all right. Just leave it to me.” Leshea clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s split up. I only need to draw off the humans downstairs, right?” “Yeah. Exactly half each. Then we both do our own thing.” “I’ll be outside,” Leshea said. “And I’ll be up,” Fay responded. They nodded at each other, and then they were off like shots. Leshea smashed through the window glass, leaping outside. There were fifteen apostles following them—and just as Fay had expected, half of them went after Leshea, following her outside the building. “Please, just be in time…!” Fay mumbled. He didn’t have a spare second to watch Leshea go. He had to make his way to the other emergency stairwell on the far side of the floor. The entire time, Titan’s footsteps continued to shake the department store, closer than ever before. “And that’s not to mention the other half of the apostles. They must be trying to follow me…” He dashed up the stairwell. The sound of crumbling buildings met his ears—Titan was destroying the structures around them. It must be assuming that I’ll try to follow Leshea out of here, and it’s trying to deprive us of anywhere to go. It’s perfect. Titan would smash all the buildings in the area, ending with this department store—checkmate. It was a brilliant strategy, the same thing Fay would have done in Titan’s place, and an almost painfully perfect play. “I’m begging! Please let us make it in time! Leshea—and me!” One more play. One more move. It would be enough. “Here we are!” Fay cried. He kicked open a heavy door and ran out onto the roof, where the wind whipped at him. That would give him some time while the apostles worked their way up to him. “Wha—?!” Any frail human hope Fay might have harbored was blown away when he saw the eye of the massive Titan waiting for him. Its head was almost level with the roof of the building, and it was watching him. A human and a god locked eyes. “It was a trap, and I walked right into it!” Titan had been waiting for him, using the other apostles to lure the last of them, Fay, up onto the roof. Titan would deal the final blow itself, ensuring the job was done right. Fay was alone on the roof, but it no longer mattered where Leshea was. Whatever she was doing, wherever she had run, the game was about to end. Titan raised its fist, the fist of a god, up to the heavens, and smashed the department store into a zillion pieces. Fay, a mere human, was blown away like dust. Under the rules of Divinitag, a human who could no longer act on his own initiative wasn’t out, but became the god’s servant. Finally, the game was all over… “Game over, on account of you smashing all the buildings. Right?” Fay said. Titan gave a confused roar. The human it had blown away began to burn. Titan looked up in the sky, where bright, shining flames surrounded Fay’s flesh, and the young man was reborn. The gods had granted Fay a Superhuman Arise. It was called May Your God, representing the divine love he’d been gifted. It brought Fay back, allowing him to shrug off scratches, mortal wounds, ill will, curses, fate, and even the gods’ own attacks. It was the ultimate in regeneration.