In the end, he was forced to leave his phone in his car. Not long after exiting the dining hall, the notifications began again. The incessant dinging was loud enough that someone yelled at him to shut the damn thing up.

  In his defence, he did try. Vibrate, silent, do not disturb, off. No configuration seemed to quell the unending tide of notifications. His laptop wasn't any better. The second he turned it on upon arriving in class, his email inbox became inundated with messages. Each was labelled URGENT, and he knew without a doubt what their contents would contain. The school's Wi-Fi went down not long after, and his professor was forced to cut the lecture short, assuring them all she’d send a full copy of the slides when she got home.

  Sam wandered out of the classroom in a daze. What had started as a normal day was quickly unravelling into something out of a psychological thriller. He’d checked the last text before slamming his car door closed. It was a string of numbers, a countdown inexorably ticking down to zero hour: a new text every second.

  His gut reaction was that this was some kind of scam or attempted identity theft. Would they harass him until he finally caved and paid them? His family had money—both his parents were doctors—but there had to be better targets than some random university student.

  He wandered the hallways, unsure what to do, knowing that the countdown was drawing steadily nearer. He still couldn't figure out how he’d lost an hour during that bizarre phone call. The day seemed to be sliding out from under him, and the harder he tried to grasp it, the faster it slipped away.

  He had one final class, and if it hadn’t been with his thesis advisor, he would have skipped it. It was located in a tiny classroom in the chemistry building, and he was expecting to be the first person to arrive when he shuffled in thirty minutes early. To his surprise, a man was already there, scribbling away on the chalkboard.

  Sam stood at the back of the class, unsure whether he should just wait in the hall. The man seemed completely engrossed in his work, and it took Sam a minute to realize he was sketching a robust diagram of the Greek pantheon. He recognized most of the names, but there were others that were foreign to him, and some that didn't seem Greek at all. Apparently, Athena and Thor had a child, and that child went on to have a half-dozen of their own.

  The tangled web quickly covered the entire board, and after a few minutes, the man stepped back to admire his handiwork.

  “Well, what do you think?” He asked, his rich baritone voice easily carrying to the back of the room.

  “Oh,” Sam squeaked, freezing up at the sudden question. “I’m not sure. Sorry, I think I'm early for my class. I didn't mean to barge in on you.” Sam kept his tone as apologetic as possible, desperate not to get dragged into a discussion.

  “No, Sam, I think you're exactly where you’re supposed to be.” Sam’s eyes went wide, and the man turned to look at him, clasping his hands behind his back. He was older, probably in his mid-fifties, and sported a thick head of wavy silver hair. Despite his age, he carried himself with the confidence of a man in his prime. At a glance, he would have been unremarkable in a lineup of university professors; his tweed jacket even had patches on the elbows. Only his glasses—which were tinted despite the dim lighting—spoke of a life outside of academia.

  “So, I'll ask you again, what do you think?”

  It was the voice. Oh fuck it's the same voice. Sam's heart began to pound as the familiar cadence washed over him. The man on the telephone had been distinct, part carnival barker, part infomercial host. The current tone was more relaxed, but it was undeniably the same man.

  “Wait, what, how did you…” Sam's voice trailed off, and he instinctively took a step backwards.

  “There's no need to be alarmed, I couldn't hurt you if I wanted to. Rules are rules, after all. Why don't you take a seat, Sam? We wouldn't want you falling down and injuring yourself. Not yet, anyway.”

  Sam did, in fact, not take a seat. Instead, he spun on his heel and made a beeline for the door. A door which, for some reason, refused to open. He yanked on the handle, but the sturdy wooden slab didn't budge. There was another door near the front of the class, but getting to it would involve stepping within an arm's length of his would-be stalker.

  Sam gritted his teeth and dragged up a tiny kernel of courage from his usually empty store. “Why are you following me? Do you want money?”

  “What is it with humans and currency? No, Samuel, I do not want your money.” The man let out an exasperated sigh and flopped into the teacher’s padded office chair with all the airs of a bratty teenager. “As I said on the telephone, I am obligated by the Pact to ensure you truly grasp the reality of the situation. It's partially my fault; we tried something new this year, communicating in a way you'd be more accustomed to. Clearly, that was an error.” He reached a hand under his mirrored glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “I knew humans were stubborn, but I don't remember you being so determined to ignore reality. Back in the old days, all it took was a particularly large thunderstorm, and the mortals would be throwing themselves at your feet. Emails? Never again. From now on, we're sticking to the classics.”

  Sam took a furtive glance around the room and slowly began creeping his way towards the door, trying to keep as many desks as he could between himself and the raving lunatic.

  “But as I was saying,” the man continued, head snapping up to fix on Sam. “What do you think?”

  Sam had no choice but to answer, eyes darting across the jumbled blackboard. “I mean… I think you’ve taken some liberties. Half of these gods aren't even from the same religion. Is this lore for the game?” At this point, he wasn't convinced there even was a game, but it seemed worth a shot.

  “I am truly astounded at where this ‘game’ notion came from, but no. You simply don't have the complete picture. This isn’t all of it, of course, but it at least gives you a general idea. Are you familiar with ‘mythology’, Mr. Lin?”

  Sam frowned, confused at the man’s inflection. “Well enough, I guess. Studied the Greek and Roman stuff mostly, but it wasn't really my thing.”

  The man leaned forward, tenting his fingers. “And why, pray tell, was it not your thing?”

  Sam stared at him for a long moment, wondering what on earth he'd done to deserve this. If there were a Devil, and he could conjure up personal hells, Sam’s would certainly look like this. He chewed his lip, wondering how to respond. In the end, he settled on honesty, not bothering to sugarcoat it. Anything to end the conversation as quickly as possible.

  “Well, they're basically all the same, right? They all start because Zeus couldn't keep his dick in his toga. From there, he fathers some demigod, and that guy kills some monsters. Most of them end tragically with some warning about hubris, but in reality, they're just thinly veiled commentary about how we shouldn't defy authority. I appreciate they were made by people trying to explain the nature of their reality, but I'm not sure why they needed to make the gods such assholes.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  At that, the man’s eyebrow twitched, his mouth creasing into a deep frown. “Would you call your father an asshole simply for trying to teach you a valuable life lesson? Or would you thank him for giving you the skills to see that you grow and thrive on your own?”

  Sam felt his face go flush, memories of his childhood rushing back. “Believe me, fathers can still be assholes. Lessons don't always need to be learned from abject failure.”

  “Believe me when I tell you that humanity earned every lesson, Samuel. Of the mortal races, your kind were the most prone to self-induced suffering. Our firm shepherding was more than warranted.”

  “Man, what the fuck are you talking about?” Sam could almost hear his frayed nerves snap, anger boiling to the surface. Weeks and months of stress came bubbling up in a torrent, words pouring out of his mouth before he could think. “Can you just fuck off. Seriously, why are you talking like such a weirdo? You harass me all day, you corner me against my will. What are you after, what do you actually want?”

  Sam’s words hung in the air, the echo lasting much longer than it should have. The man didn't move, but he seemed to grow larger, his presence expanding outward in a suffocating wave of pressure. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper, but it rang in Sam’s head like a gong, forcing him to cover his ears with his hands.

  “What I want, Mr. Lin, is to see you truly understand the depth of your failings. The immediate and catastrophic implications of such utter and complete insolence. Instead, what I am forced to want, is to make you understand that the War, is real. That in a matter of minutes, you will be swept off this insignificant rock and dropped into a battle for your very life. One for which you are woefully unprepared.

  “You are going to die, Mr. Lin. Painfully. Your presence in the war will be so short-lived that the Arbiter won't even note your passing. You are a blip. A meaningless scrap of matter in an uncaring universe. You could have gone quietly; instead, you chose to insult me.”

  The man stood, the air around him rippling with waves of heat. He reached up and casually removed his glasses, revealing two sparkling blue points of cold impossibility. They shone with a sapphire light so intense it could have been from captured lightning. The classroom faded into nothing, the brightness consuming everything around it, drawing Sam in like a moth to a flame.

  Sam stared into that azure abyss, at the eyes that blazed like torches, and at that moment, he realized what was so profoundly wrong with them.

  The eyes weren't human.

  The deep pools were overflowing with an ancient malice; a gathering storm of anger aimed directly at him. No person had eyes like that; no human being could possibly produce the pressure he felt crushing him into the carpet. The force behind those eyes had seen eons pass in a blink. Had seen empires rise and fall, and mountains form, then crumble into dust.

  They were the eyes of a god.

  Sam very nearly pissed himself.

  Suddenly, the emails, the texts, the phone calls, all fell into place. There had never been a game, never been a beta test. The War—was real. The gods—were real.

  The revelation hit him like a flood that almost bowled him over. His knees trembled and gave out, and he clumsily caught himself on a desk, slamming his arms into the plastic. The shock helped snap him out of his panic, but every fibre of his being was telling him to run. This was not an enemy he could fight. No one could.

  “Well, finally. I see we’ve had a breakthrough. That took far more effort than you deserved.” The man slid his glasses back on, and the pressure dropped to a reasonable level. Sam let out a breath, his eyes bulging. He felt lightheaded, and the classroom spun around him. This man was a god. Somehow, the myths were true; the Pantheon was real. The stories, the legends, they’d actually happened.

  Some small part of him wanted to believe he was merely having some kind of psychotic episode, but he was pretty confident that there was no way he could have come up with this. The texts were real; other people had heard them. He wasn't crazy. Somehow, impossibly, this was actually happening.

  Oh, fuck. Oh shit. Oh shit, ohshitohshitohshit.

  He’d gone and told a god to fuck off. He’d crashed out on some kind of divine entity. Oh, he’d really done it now.

  The man checked his watch and gave a small grin, one devoid of all good humour. “It seems my job here is done, and with only minutes to spare. Normally, you'd have the opportunity to say goodbye to friends and family and complete your culture’s rituals of ascension. However, I really don't think you have time for that. If there's anyone you want to speak to, I'd recommend you go now.” He stood there expectantly.

  “Run, Mr. Lin.”

  Sam was out the door before he even processed that he’d moved. The hallways seemed to stretch and warp as he bolted down them, strangely empty despite the time of day.

  He needed to get to his car, needed to get to his phone. The parking lot was all the way on the other side of campus, and the strap of his bag nearly choked him as he bolted out the door and into the evening gloom.

  His chest burned as his lungs heaved, mouth bitter with the acrid taste of copper. The only thing he could do was put one foot in front of the other and hope to make it to his car before the timer ran out.

  He has to try to call his parents to tell them what happened, to tell them he hasn't just disappeared. He knew they wouldn't believe him; he knew he’d sound insane, but he had to try. Maybe they'd think he was kidnapped and send a search party after him. Either way, he had to tell them. It was vital to him to make sure they didn't think he just ran away.

  They'd sacrificed so much to make sure that he’d had chances, opportunities. Sure, he'd worked hard, but he couldn't shake the image of his father getting home from the ER after a sixteen-hour shift. Couldn't forget the fatigue in his eyes that went far beyond the physical. He couldn't leave with them thinking it had all been for nothing.

  He dashed around the corner of a building, the parking lot coming into sight. He let out a triumphant yell that was immediately overwhelmed by a torrent of sound.

  DING!

  The notification seemed to come from the sky itself. It reverberated in his bones, and he nearly lost his footing on the damp grass.

  DING!

  It came again, louder, the timer ticking down inexorably to his doom.

  He wasn't going to make it.

  His cry of victory turned into a wail as the world around him shifted. The once-calm skies grew dark, clouds rushing in like a time-lapse video. The earth beneath him shuddered and bucked, and this time he did lose his balance, crashing down onto the pavement of the parking lot.

  DING!!

  The boom struck him so hard he vomited blood, dark spittle coating the asphalt. He was being crushed by the sound, driven into the ground, which cracked beneath him like chipped paint. The concrete in front of him split, and from it rose a jet-black obelisk covered in indecipherable runes. The sight of them caused his head to spin, the world pulsing and heaving with their primordial glow.

  I’m not going to make it.

  The thought awakened a desperate beast inside him. He clawed his way forward like an animal, hands scraped bloody on the jagged rubble. He had to tell them, had to make them understand it wasn't his choice.

  He didn't hear the final toll. The sound of the bell transcended what he was capable of perceiving. He felt it, though. Felt it in his soul. Up until that moment, he hadn’t even been aware he'd had one. He knew now without a doubt that he did, and it screamed in torment as the ground beneath him imploded.

  Great fissures opened up, revealing violent streams of orange light. Vents of steam scalded his skin, and he knew in his heart this was a portal to Hell. He could see his car, only a dozen feet away. The distance taunted him. It was so close, but it may as well have been on another continent.

  The earth rent and gave one final shake before giving out entirely. He flailed, trying in vain to hold onto something, anything. Instead, all he could see was the outline of a man standing next to the great obelisk, and hear the distant sound of laughter as he plunged into the abyss.