The obsidian dunes beneath Beth's boots shimmered with heat, each step crunching like glass.
Above, loot crates screamed through the sky trailing rainbow fire, smashing into the biomes with shockwaves that made the whole stitched world groan.
Beth didn't hesitate.
She knew the score.
In a straight-up fight, she and Morty were meat for the grinder.
But with Rod's rule set?
With every half-baked mythological artifact from across dimensions raining down like candy?
That was her ticket.
She scanned the desert horizon with a hunter's eye, already triangulating.
High ground. Open sightlines. Closest loot drop, twenty degrees east. Possible cover: cactus-that-eats-birds.
She moved, fast and deliberate.
No hesitation, no whining.
Her boots slid across obsidian sand, her hair snapping in the heat.
A loot chest hit nearby with a BOOM, molten shards spraying out.
Beth ducked under the blast, then sprinted to the half-buried box, slamming her boot against its glowing latch.
The chest hissed open—inside, a gleaming bronze shield engraved with owl feathers and eyes that seemed to blink.
Beth grabbed it, hefting its weight.
"Neith's shield, huh?
Nice. Guess this place will have Egyption mythology's artifact."
She strapped it to her arm, teeth gritted against the heat radiating off the sand.
No time to admire. Another drop thundered behind her.
She turned, mind already running through scenarios.
Artifacts mean options.
Options mean leverage. Leverage means survival.
Rod's voice rumbled from above, smug as ever, "Ohhh, look at Beth, already scavenging the loot tables like a sweaty speedrunner.
Love the energy, kiddo.
Just remember—a shield doesn't mean shit if someone caves your skull in first."
Beth smirked. "Bring 'em. I'll cave theirs in faster."
- - - - - - - - - -
Meanwhile, Morty was in the upside-down jungle, flailing through dripping vines as he scrambled to keep his sneakers from getting sucked into carnivorous moss.
Loot crates dropped around him like meteors, but each one was guarded by shrieking six-armed apes.
He yanked on a vine, swinging clumsily toward the nearest chest.
"Okay, okay, it's just like Indiana Jones, just like Indiana—"
The vine snapped, and Morty face-planted into a puddle of purple sap.
Rod's voice boomed overhead, "And Morty Smith, everyone—already speedrunning the 'faceplant into sticky goo' category.
It's a world record!"
"Shut up, Rod!" Morty shouted, spitting sap.
He scrambled to the chest, popping it open with shaky hands.
Inside gleamed… a jar, polished gold with twin wings curling from the sides.
Morty blinked. "…Is this… a jar? It looks, uh, weird?"
Just when he held it. Instantly, his body vibrated with energy, the jungle around him blurring.
Morty gasped. "Holy crap—what's happening!? I feel like I just drank fifty cans of Red Bull!"
- - - - - - - - - -
Beth sprinted across the obsidian dunes, her new shield glinting in the blistering sun.
The desert shifted under her, sand cracking into molten glass with every step.
A geyser erupted nearby, spewing fire-serpents that snapped at her heels.
She slid under one, her mind cool, clinical.
"Alright… if this place is random mythos loot central, Egyptian relics should be—"
Her thought cut off as a shadow crossed her.
A massive crate hurtled from the rainbow sky and smashed into the ground ahead, half-buried in molten slag.
Beth skidded to it, the sand searing her boots.
She kicked the latch—hisssss—and it unfolded with a blinding golden light.
Inside lay a curved, wicked blade—black iron kissed with hieroglyphs, its hilt carved like the head of a jackal.
Beth's breath caught.
"An Egyptian khopesh… Set's blade?"
The weapon practically thrummed in her hand as she gripped it, sparks dancing along its edge.
The heat of the desert didn't just scorch her now—it bowed to her.
Behind her, the fire-serpents shrieked, lunging.
Beth pivoted with brutal efficiency, her khopesh slashing a fiery arc.
The creatures split into ash mid-air, dissolving before they even touched her shield.
Beth smirked, shield raised, sword gleaming. "Perfect."
Rod's laugh echoed overhead.
"Look at my little devil.
Already dual-wielding mythos swag like a boss fight.
Careful, sweetheart.
That blade's got a bad history of corrupting its wielders.
Then again, maybe corruption just runs in the family."
Beth sneered at the sky. "Better me than them."
- - - - - - - - - -
Morty stumbled through the dripping canopy, the jar buzzed his whole body like a caffeine overdose.
The six-armed apes weren't impressed.
One dropped from above, snarling, and Morty panicked, zipping sideways in a blur.
"AHHHH!" Morty screamed, ricocheting off two trees, bouncing back, and accidentally punching the ape in the jaw at super-speed.
The creature crumpled, twitching. Morty froze.
"D-did I… kill it?"
Rod's echo boomed.
"Nah, just concussed. Congrats, Morty—first KO.
And it only took you what, thirty minutes? Baby steps!"
Another loot crate crashed nearby, cracking open against an enormous root.
Morty scrambled to it, fumbling with the latch until it popped.
Inside was a stone knife—jagged obsidian, smeared with dried crimson, its hilt wrapped in faded Mayan glyphs.
Morty blinked. "Uh… this doesn't look… safe."
The knife pulsed in his hand, a hungry vibration that crept into his bones.
For a moment, Morty swore he heard whispering voices, chanting in some ancient tongue.
Rod's tone dropped.
"Ooooohhh. Morty got the Xibalban sacrificial blade.
Careful, kid—that's some Mayan underworld-grade shit right there.
That knife doesn't just cut enemies—it demands blood to stay loyal.
Try not to trip and feed it yourself, huh?"
Morty gulped.
"Sacrifice and blood and—wait, what happens if I don't feed it?"
The jungle answered for him, vines twisted like snakes, grabbing at his ankles, thorns drawing tiny pinpricks of blood.
The knife shivered with delight in his palm, its edge glowing faintly red.
Morty's eyes widened. "Oh god, it's feeding already!"
He swung in panic, slashing through the vines.
The blade sang, the jungle shrieked back, and the severed vines fell twitching to the moss.
Morty staggered, breathing heavy.
"Okay… okay. Not freaking out.
Just gotta… gotta control it.
Yeah. I can totally handle a murder-knife that eats blood. Totally fine."
- - - - - - - - - -
The desert roared around her.
Heat shimmered in the air like liquid glass, dunes cracking with every geyser's eruption.
Beth adjusted her grip—Neith's shield heavy on one arm, Set's khopesh humming with a dangerous rhythm in the other.
The obsidian sand trembled. From beneath, something massive stirred.
The ground bulged, split, and a molten worm the size of a subway car erupted, its body plated with lava-crusted scales.
Its jaws split open with a sound like rock fracturing.
Beth didn't flinch.
The worm lunged, spraying shards of magma.
Beth rolled sideways, shield up, letting molten stone ping harmlessly off bronze feathers.
She pivoted, swung the khopesh, and carved a glowing scar down its side.
The worm shrieked, fire bleeding from the wound like molten blood.
Her eyes sharpened.
Tested the blade. Tested the shield.
The worm dove again.
Beth planted the shield, braced her stance, and let it slam directly against her.
The impact shook her bones, but the shield drank the force like water into sand.
The owl eyes carved into it flashed once, and the worm recoiled, dazed.
Beth moved. One clean slash across its neck.
The worm's head toppled into the glass dunes, where it melted into a smoking crater.
She exhaled once, slow. But with only this... it won't be enough to put me in the game.
Another crate landed not far, smashing into the desert with a geyser of smoke.
Beth wiped sweat from her brow, already moving toward it.
- - - - - - - - - -
Morty crouched in the tangle of vines, knife slick in his hand.
His hoodie clung to him, soaked in sap and sweat, his breath uneven.
The jungle dripped around him, every sound amplified—the buzz of insects, the creak of trees, the whisper of the knife in his skull.
Blood. Feed me. Cut them.
He swallowed hard. "N-no, you don't get to call the shots. I do. I do, okay?"
The jungle didn't care. The apes came again, three this time, swinging down with claws bared.
Morty panicked, but his jar's charge pulled his body forward like instinct.
He blurred, dodging the first, then slashed the second across the arm.
Blood sprayed, hot and vivid.
The knife drank it. Morty felt the pulse, saw the glow flare brighter.
His heart hammered.
The ape screamed, stumbling back, and Morty caught himself breathing harder—not just in fear, but in some sick exhilaration.
The third ape lunged. Morty spun on reflex, driving the knife up under its ribs.
The creature went still. Morty froze with it, staring into its fading eyes. His hands shook violently.
"I-I didn't… I didn't mean to—"
The knife whispered, warm and pleased. Good.
Morty dropped to his knees, chest heaving.
For a second, he thought he might vomit.
But then the rush hit him—speed still buzzing from jar's buff, blood still burning in the blade.
His legs felt like coiled springs.
He looked at the ape corpses, then at the knife, then at his own trembling hands.
"This… this is what it's gonna take, huh?"
He swallowed the lump in his throat, stood, and tightened his grip.
A new crate cracked open nearby, spilling glowing obsidian shards carved into jaguar shapes.
Morty's eyes widened.
He recognized the glyphs from some museum trip ages ago. Tezcatlipoca. The jaguar god.
The shards hovered, circling him like predator eyes, and he felt the knife almost hum in approval.
Morty straightened his back, forcing a nervous grin.
"Alright. Fine. Let's see what you've got."
- - - - - - - - - -
The molten dunes shifted, glass cracking open as a radiant chest slammed into the sand.
Not gold. Not bronze.
But blazing white, like it had been carved from the heart of the sun itself.
Beth shielded her eyes, approaching cautiously.
The khopesh in her hand hummed, almost warning her. She kicked the chest open—
A beam of sunlight erupted, slamming into her chest like fire.
She gasped, dropping to one knee as her skin burned—not on the outside, but inside, as if her blood itself had been set alight.
And then the a deep, radiant, and unrelenting voice came.
"You are chosen to carry the fire of Ra. Do not wield it lightly."
Her mind split open with visions—
A chariot blazing across the sky, wheels of flame grinding stars into dust.
A hawk-headed god with eyes that burned like twin suns, staring into her as if judging her worth.
The weight of eternal war against darkness, fought every night, never-ending.
The light condensed in her palm.
But when she looked down, she wasn't holding anything.
She flexed her fingers—and fire gathered, not like wild flame, but disciplined light.
It didn't burn her, it obeyed her.
Beth clenched her fist, and the sun roared.
A lance of searing daylight shot across the desert, splitting a dune in half like it was paper.
Glass bubbled and hardened instantly under its heat.
Her chest heaved, but she smirked.
"Sunbeam laser cannon. Fuck yes!"
The voice of Ra faded, leaving only a warning echo.
"Do not let pride blind you. Even the sun sets at the end of the day."
Beth wiped sweat from her brow, exhaling slow.
She looked at the khopesh in one hand, shield in the other, and now—sun at her command.
For the first time, she didn't just feel like a scavenger in Rod's madhouse.
She felt like she had the spark of a god.
- - - - - - - - - -
The heat shimmered again, but this time the light wasn't golden.
It was ashen green.
A crate rose from the sand without falling from the sky, as if the desert itself had chosen to spit it up.
It wasn't radiant, but grave—like a sarcophagus half-buried in the dunes.
Beth hesitated, knuckles white around her khopesh.
Ra gave me fire. So what the hell does Osiris want to give?
She placed a hand on the stone lid.
Cold surged through her veins, freezing the fire Ra had ignited only moments before.
The lid slid open with a groan, and a shadow spilled out—not hostile, but heavy, ancient, inevitable.
A voice, deep and calm, like the grave itself.
"You seek survival. I grant you judgment. My scales weigh all—foe, ally, even yourself."
Beth gasped as a vision overwhelmed her:
A hall of endless black pillars, their tops lost to shadow.
A golden scale, one pan holding a feather, the other a human heart.
Countless figures kneeling, their souls judged in silence.
Her body trembled, then steadied as knowledge slid into her bones.
She raised her shield, and for a heartbeat it shimmered into something else—a scale, glowing faint green.
The worm's molten corpse she'd slain twitched on the glass sands.
Beth glanced at it, instinct guiding her hand.
She extended two fingers.
The corpse froze.
Its molten innards stilled, its soul dragged into visibility as a faint ember.
The scale flickered above it, measuring.
Too heavy that it collapsed into ash, utterly erased.
Beth exhaled, wide-eyed.
"...That wasn't resurrection. That wasn't necromancy."
She stared at her own hands, steady and pale.
"That was...both?"
The voice pressed into her skull one final time.
"Judge carefully. When you weigh another's heart… you offer your own."
Then silence. The sarcophagus crumbled into dust, swept away by desert wind.
Beth lowered her hands, her mind racing. Now she carried Ra's fire and Osiris' scales.
Sun and judgment.
Creation and the threshold of death.
She clenched her jaw, eyes burning.
Yeah. Gods or not… I will win this game.
The air cooled. For the first time since Rod's arena had unfolded, the desert winds carried not heat, but the faint scent of lotus and myrrh.
The glass dunes shimmered, refracting into prisms.
Beth froze.
This wasn't another crate.
The light before her folded itself into a figure — a woman cloaked in midnight-blue linen, her headdress crowned with a throne symbol.
Beth raised her khopesh instinctively, but the figure didn't threaten.
Instead, it pressed a palm to her forehead.
A voice, layered with warmth and steel.
"Strength and judgment are pillars. But without wisdom and cunning, pillars crack. I grant you the weavings of Isis — magic, and the art of shaping what cannot be struck by blade."
Beth's vision swam.
A mother cradling her son, mending wounds with whispers alone.
Spells woven like threads, turning words into chains, lies into truths.
Wings unfurled, shielding, healing, protecting — yet capable of suffocating just as easily.
The knowledge sank in, subtle and alien.
Beth staggered, gripping her head as glyphs spiraled across her vision — not random symbols, but equations.
Spells as formulas, illusions as logic puzzles, every piece a trick waiting to be solved.
She gasped, and her body reacted.
The khopesh in her hand shimmered into two blades—an illusion.
When she blinked, there was only one, but she knew she could weave dozens more if she willed it.
Her shield, too, flickered—then duplicated itself around her in a ring of phantom barriers.
Beth smiled, a sharp edge in it.
"Illusions, huh?" She flexed her fingers, and one of the phantom shields split off, floating forward.
The sandworm's ash stirred, as though fooled by the illusion's presence.
But there was more.
She looked down, and for a moment, the burns and cuts on her arms sealed shut, skin knitting clean. Healing, born from Isis' blessing.
The voice lingered, softer this time, but with a razor edge beneath.
"Protect. Heal. Deceive. Bend the hearts of others as a mother bends the will of her child. This is your sorcery. But remember — what you weave, you can be tangled in."
Beth breathed out slowly, raising her eyes toward the fractured sky.
With Ra's fire, Osiris' judgment, and now Isis' weavings, her arsenal wasn't just growing.
It was diversifying.
She smirked.
"Alright, gods. Keep the loot coming. I'm building a damn Egyption build!"
- - - - - - - - - -
The lotus-scented air faded, the desert's heat returning — but now, Beth walked lighter, shadows bending just a little when she moved.
The desert wind shifted, sharp and cutting.
Shadows stretched unnaturally long, as though something immense had spread its wings across the sky.
Beth squinted upward—And there he was.
A hawk-headed silhouette etched against the fractured heavens, its eyes burning like molten copper.
Beth's chest tightened. Every instinct screamed she was prey.
The voice struck her mind like a blade:
"To fight gods, you must see as gods do. Take my sight. Take my sky. Let no battlefield hide its pieces from you."
Pain lanced behind her eyes.
She gasped, clutching her skull—then her vision tore itself open.
The desert around her wasn't just dunes anymore. She saw everything.
Heat signatures under the sand where more molten worms writhed.
Currents of wind, their speed and direction, mapped in glowing lines.
Even faint glimmers on the horizon—where other gods scoured their biomes, chasing loot.
Beth staggered, overwhelmed—until the vision focused.
Her breathing synced with the wind.
Her heartbeat matched the pulse of the sky.
She blinked, and suddenly she was above, hawk-eyed, surveying the entire desert from a vantage point no human could claim.
Every enemy was a piece.
Every dune, every chest, every hazard—laid bare like squares on a chessboard.
She clenched her jaw, steadying.
"This… this is insane!"
Her feet left the ground, just slightly.
Sand whipped around her ankles as invisible wings spread from her back—golden, radiant, but translucent like heat mirages.
Not true flight yet, but mobility sharpened.
A leap carried her higher, farther.
Beth landed, breathless but grinning.
She swung her khopesh, and her strike was guided—not by brute force, but by precision.
She knew, without thinking, exactly where to cut.
The hawk-voice echoed one last time.
"With my sight, you cannot be ambushed. With my wings, you cannot be caged. But beware—those who see too much may forget what is worth seeing."
The presence faded. But Beth stood taller, eyes sharper, her stance brimming with confidence.
She raised her shield, her blade, and let the invisible wings flare once, scattering sand in every direction.
For the first time, she didn't just feel like she was playing Rod's trial.
She felt like she was winning it.
- - - - - - - - - -
The desert trembled. At first, Beth thought it was another worm.
But then she looked up—
The sky itself was folding inward.
The outer horizon cracked, chunks of terrain dissolving into prismatic static.
Mountains, oceans, even stars beyond the fractured dome were being erased piece by piece.
The world was shrinking.
Beth hissed, scanning with her hawk-sight.
The lines of collapse raced toward her like a devouring storm.
No outrunning it—only staying one step ahead.
"Zone mechanics. Great. Rod, you son of a bitch," she muttered, tightening her grip on her shield.
She moved fast, wings carrying her in long leaps across glass dunes.
Her calculating eyes flicked constantly.
Every crate mattered less now—the real threats were converging.
And that's when she saw her.
Perched on the ridge of a dune like a wolf on a cliff, bow in hand, eyes glowing silver under the false moonlight.
Her form was lean, feral, wrapped in green furs that shifted as if alive.
A crescent-shaped diadem gleamed at her brow.
Artemish.
The hunt goddess sneered, pulling her bowstring back.
The arrow shimmered—not wood, but pure lunar light.
"You reek of arrogance, mortal," she said, her voice sharp as a cold night.
"Playing dress-up with borrowed relics.
Do you think the hunt spares prey because it scavenged better tools?"
Beth grinned, twirling her khopesh, her shield raised.
"Cute monologue. You always open with that, or am I just special?"
The arrow flew.
Beth pivoted, wings flaring, and the shot tore past her shoulder, slicing a dune clean in half.
Sand cascaded like an avalanche, glowing under moonlight.
Artemish leapt after the arrow, moving like a blur, already drawing another.
"Run, little prey. Makes the blood sweeter."
Beth's eyes sharpened.
Her hawk-sight painted the battlefield in glowing trajectories—each dune, each wind current, each arrow's path before it was even fired.
She smirked.
"Run? Hey Grandma, I'm the one doing the hunting!"
She slashed the air with Ra's sun beam.
The beam tore across the sand, blinding white, forcing Artemish to twist mid-leap.
The goddess landed gracefully, bow never lowering, but her snarl showed she hadn't expected it.
Beth's shield shimmered into scales of Osiris, faint green judgment glowing.
"Your tities's lighter than air, isn't it? All air, no fucking weight."
Artemish drew back another moon-arrow, teeth bared. "You dare judge me?"
Beth raised her hand. Illusions flickered—five Beths splitting in all directions, each armed with shimmering blades and shields.
"Try to hit the real one."
The desert became a chessboard.
Moonlight and sunlight clashed, arrows hissing through illusions, beams scorching sand into glass.
The collapsing world roared closer, forcing them both into the center of the battlefield.
The hunt goddess was fast — faster than most mortals could blink.
Her arrows split the air, moonlight trails hissing through Beth's illusions one after the other, dissipating copies in bursts of glassy shards.
But Beth was faster where it mattered.
Her hawk-sight tracked every bowstring twitch, every subtle shift in Artemish's stance.
Ra's fire lit the desert like daylight, scattering shadows.
The scales of Osiris flickered in her shield, weighing Artemish's heart with every motion.
Isis' sorcery hummed in her veins, threads waiting to be woven.
"Let's make this quick," she hissed, lifting her khopesh.
The blade ignited — not just with Ra's sunlight, but woven with illusions from Isis, splitting into a storm of fire-tongued blades circling around her like hawks.
Each was real and unreal, weaving in and out of existence, impossible to track.
Artemish snarled, drawing three arrows at once.
"Tricks. You hide behind tricks!"
Beth laughed sharply. "Tricks are what you fall for."
She slammed her shield into the sand.
The scales of Osiris flared bright green — and Artemish froze mid-draw.
Her heart weighed, judged, found lacking.
For just a heartbeat, her body faltered.
That was all Beth needed.
She leapt forward, wings of Horus kicking up a cyclone of sand.
Ra's fire condensed in her outstretched hand, not as a beam this time — but as a searing orb, threaded with Isis' spellcraft.
A miniature sun wrapped in illusion, its heat hidden until it was too late.
Artemish raised her bow, panic flashing.
The arrow she loosed burst harmlessly through a decoy Beth, while the real one slammed the burning orb against her chest.
The goddess screamed.
Fire and judgment roared together — sunlight consuming, scales condemning.
Her body convulsed as the orb detonated, shredding her form into shards of moonlight.
When the smoke cleared, nothing remained but a smoldering crater and a shattered bow half-buried in glass.
Beth landed hard, exhaling, her illusions fading.
She twirled the khopesh once and slung it over her shoulder, picking up the broken bow as a trophy.
"Moon goddess down. Who's next?" she muttered, eyes narrowing toward the collapsing horizon.
She was killing gods.
- - - - - - - - - -
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