I stare blankly at the effigy of an Angel made from twisting vines of a dozen different plants and shards of green, shattered glass.

  “OH, so you’re the bitch that turned me into a bug!”

  “I would ask you to refrain from insulting me, but yes. I would like to add that you have a limited number of questions you can ask me. You started with 6, but now it’s four.”

  “Why?” I asked, immediately chastising myself for wasting a question.

  “It is a test of your intelligence to see how you use them to win the next stage of The Great Debate.”

  “Guess I haven’t been scoring high so far, ha ha. WAIT, DON’T ANSWER THAT!” I caught myself at the last moment, taking a second to compose myself and think of a question.

  Then I said, “What is The Great Debate?”

  Terra answered, with what I could’ve sworn was a hint of annoyance, “The Great Debate is a format to settle arguments between gods and other forms of higher beings meant to settle an argument in a non violent manner.”

  I thought back to all the ‘non violent’ life or death situations I’ve had in the past three weeks.

  Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on that lady. What argument could possibly make you and the two other gods or higher beings or whatever make you sacrifice ten human lives!

  I nearly asked the question out loud, but the why didn’t matter; I needed something that could actually help me.

  “What is the next phase of The Great Debate? No. What are all the phases of The Great Debate?”

  I heard glee in her voice as she answered, “There are many backup plans, and unique stages depending on the nature of the argument being settled, more than could be talked about in five of your Human lives. But the ones planned for this specific occurrence are as follows.”

  “Phase 0: The Gathering of five random sentient lower beings from our centers of power, then placing them in an appropriate arena for each of them to have an equal chance at growth.”

  “Phase 1: The Contestants will then have ten days to reach certain requirements and prepare for the Second Phase.”

  “Phase 2: When the ten days have elapsed, all remaining arenas will converge so the contestants can compete with each other to reach the five spots needed for the Third Phase.”

  “Phase 3: The Third Phase is a contest of intelligence where the contestants are allowed to ask their gods six questions, and play games of deceit and truth to gather as much information as possible. The next phase only commencing when the majority of contestants have agreed to move on.”

  “Phase 4: When the contestants have agreed to move on, they shall be teleported back to the arena to battle. And when only the contestants belonging to one god remains, the remaining shall be returned to their home at the exact place and time we took them.”

  A million thoughts and questions whirled around in my mind at Mach 10, but I desperately grabbed onto one with faint hope.

  “Only the winners? Why not the losers? y’all are gods, right? You can do that, right?”

  “Please pick only one question to ask.”

  I groomed my Antenna, thinking, then asking, “Do you send the people who died back to their bodies like the winners?”

  I hear disappointment pointed towards me as she answers, “No, it would be a waste of resources. And the threat of death has been found to be an effective stick to ensure the best result from The Great Debate in the past, so we gods have decided not to take it away. Warning: only one question remains.”

  That’s… that’s so bullshit! You get to decide who lives and dies. What are you, God! Ok, maybe that wasn’t the best comparison, but what makes you allowed to do that!

  I think back to the Jaguar I had killed, that could’ve so easily have been me. I want to scream and rant at her out loud and for so much longer, but I didn’t want to waste a question. So I just aggressively groom my antenna, some of my minions' body language turning agitated in response to me.

  After taking time to calm down to think, I ask my final question, “Is there any way for me to change The Great Debate, such as changing the rules or the environment itself?”

  And in response, I get a genuine laugh from her, “The only way to do so would be to gain divine domain over the functions of The Great Debate, which only me and the other two gods have currently.”

  I think about that for a moment.

  Ok, so I’m shit out of luck on that point.

  Then the statue turned around, the glass screeching against the floor, and said, “All questions have been exhausted, Terra’s contestants are ready.” The way she said the line making me think it was pre-recorded.

  Then a light above turned on, and I looked around the circular room. It was as I had noticed before, made from the same glassy metal as the bottom of the world, a few hundred feet in radius. But I noticed no seams or manufacturing marks of any kind, like this place just popped into existence instead of being made. Which, considering that a god made it, was a possibility.

  Another thing I noticed was that the faintly green light that had appeared when Terra had said her contestants were ready, just didn’t have a source. It wasn’t coming from above or below, it just was, and it was the same case for the contestants that declared reddynes shortly after me.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  The red Angel made from crystals and mycelium turning around, announcing themselves, “All questions have been exhausted, Ghoni’s contestants are ready.”

  Their red light just sort of existing and illuminating everything on that side as well. The two contestants over there taking their time to observe me, and I returned the favor.

  One of them was a giant, creepy wasp with a beautiful metallic sheen on its exoskeleton, like those pictures of melted bismuth I’d seen. But when I saw their beady compound eyes staring back at me, I hid behind Guppy.

  So they couldn’t uh… get any information on me, yeah.

  The other member of Gohni’s side looked like a mix between a great ape and a spider. With chitin armor covering parts of their hairy body, and eight arms. One pair of them on the ground to keep the elongated torso up, sort of like a centaur. And the six other arms all holding weapons made from monster parts, a collection of wicked teeth and sharpened bones.

  Then the third light turned on, the yellow Angel statue made from rocks covered in sulfur and lava, saying, “All questions have been exhausted, Tlektr’s contestants are ready.”

  Then all three colored lights turned to white, a system message popping up.

  “Choose a game to play. You can retract and change your vote at any time. Please discuss among the other contestants.”

  After reading that, I looked around, not saying anything, and it seemed that everybody else was doing the same.

  Until someone said, “Do we just talk to them; Question?”

  I looked over and saw that someone from the yellow side asked it, the person in question a large flying axolotl.

  Then the Komodo dragon next to them, the size of a small house, said, “Uncertain; Apology.”

  “Speech we can hear,” the wasp said.

  “Really; Question?” The Axolotl said, “That is a relief, been alone a long time, unable to speak!”

  “Not time for this; Admonishment,” the Komodo said

  The Axolotl wilted a bit, “Apologies; Apology.”

  Then there was another silence before the six armed ape spoke, “Talk about game we should?”

  The Komodo nodded, “Agreement; Agreement. Which of them should we choose; Question?”

  “Um, not looked at the option I have,” the Ape said, looking embarrassed

  “I have not either; Sympathy. Should we allow ourselves time to; Question?”

  “Agreed,” the Ape nodded.

  And yet another silence happened as we looked at the options. Well, I was a bit delayed since I was trying to decipher the alien grammar. It wasn’t that hard, but it made my head hurt from all the dropped and swapped around words.

  I guess they speak a different language, and the translator or whatever doesn’t care about grammar.

  Then, after getting over it, I looked at the game options.

  “Possible options for the first game.”

  Call out: Players are asked questions by other players, and are given the option to answer or lie. If they lie and another player calls them out, they are forced to answer the next question they’re asked truthfully. But if the Call Out turns out to be wrong, then the player who made the Call Out will be forced to truthfully answer the next question they’re asked.

  Every player can ask two questions, and be asked three questions every round. If a call out is made when the loser has reached the max number of questions they have to answer, they get an extra questioning. In the event that the situation previously described happens when nobody can ask questions, the next person in queue gets the question.

  A Call Out can only be made by someone who still has questions. A round is over when nobody can answer a question; the game lasts a maximum of three rounds.

  Lucky Leg: There will be a deck of cards with markings on them, denominating their value ranging from 1-10. There are two unique cards called the ‘Jack Pot’ and ‘Pit Fall’. The Jack Pot is a card worth 12 points, and the Pit Fall is worth -7 points; there are two of each.

  Every round, the players are dealt five cards, but are only allowed to play three, discarding the other two. In the event you draw a Pit Fall, you are forced to either play it or keep it ( Other Players can see this action ) and forced to play it the next round. If you draw a Jack Pot with a Pit fall, they cancel each other out.

  If you draw a Jack Pot, you have the option to hold it ( Other Players can see this action ), and its value will increase to 17 points ( You can only hold it for one round ). In the event you pull a Pit Fall with a holding a Jack Pot, you have to discard the Jack Pot and play the Pit Fall.

  At the beginning of the game, players are given three chips each that they can put into the pot. And the Player with the highest score gains all inside the pot. The two lowest scoring players will have to answer all questions the other players ask, or sacrifice a token to avoid the question ( This can only be done before the question is asked ).

  A round will end when either five turns have elapsed or when only six tokens remain. The game lasting a maximum of three rounds.

  Ok, so… that was a lot.

  I looked over the games again a few times to make sure that I understood them.

  So the first one, ‘Call Out’, is essentially Liars Bar, which would require me to read everybody else's body language… And that wasn’t exactly my forte, even when everybody wasn’t a different alien animal; hell, I wasn’t even sure everybody here wasn’t originally an alien. So, human body language could just not apply in the slightest.

  But the second one, ‘Lucky Leg’, was a modified version of poker… I think? Which required the social deduction of Call Out and was significantly more luck-based, and considering my luck lately, I wasn't eager to rely on it.

  Deep in thought about strategies I could employ in the games, I was interrupted by the Axolotl, saying, “Um… Hello, to the ones with Terra; Greetings and Question?”

  “Hmm, what? Yeah?”

  “The voting, you haven’t given yours. Can you; Question?”

  “Oh, of course. Yeah, sorry, sorry. I’ll do that now, I think.”

  I looked up and saw that above each description of the games was a Red or Yellow circle. Reaching a tie, two Red on Lucky Leg, and two yellow above Call Out. I quickly broke the tie, placing a vote above Call out. A show of gaudy fireworks appearing out of nowhere, startling everybody in the room, a system message popping up with it.

  “Call Out has been chosen, let the game commence!”

  Then all the lights shut off, leaving us in absolute darkness, the sensation of teleporting making me vomit all over again. And the next moment, all five of us were closer together, each sitting in a chair in a circle, six spotlights above illuminating us individually.