CHAPTER 147

"I see."

"I'm sorry if I've ever made you feel forgotten." He gave her another squeeze. "But I promise, I'm trying my best."

She squeezed him tight, which made his back pop.

They laid there for quite some time. When he decided to help her up, he discovered that the crown of flowers on her head had rooted itself into the ground. All around them, the clearing was now filled with wildflowers growing several feet high, many having burst through the snow. Abella marveled at the sudden change in scenery, but Mike was filled with an uneasy chill.

What was happening to him?

Pain rippled through Beth's entire body as she reformed in a golden blaze of light next to Murray. Already, the sensation of being hung from a tree was fading from her memory as if it was nothing more than a bad dream.

"Ah, there's our princess now!" War announced with a laugh. "How did you like the gallows?"

She said nothing. Instead, she closed her eyes and took several deep, cleansing breaths.

After being killed the first time, she cried hysterically while huddled in a ball. Murray appeared to her in a place full of white light and informed her that her reconstruction would be on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level. The angel explained that the purpose of doing so was to prevent a complete mental breakdown as a result of being killed repeatedly.

That, and it would disrupt the game.

While the memory of being cut in half remained, it now felt like little more than a distant memory or a bad dream. Every death afterward was brutal and terrifying to experience, but the angel made sure that all she retained from them was the memory rather than the trauma.

In a way, she was grateful to the angel for ensuring her mental safety. Given half a chance, she would pluck the fucker and cast him into the Void with Oliver. But seeing as how she was just a mere mortal, she would have to settle for dreaming about revenge rather than enacting it.

"And there goes Alaska," War declared. The territory Beth had held turned red. "North America is officially mine!"

Again, she said nothing. But she did look over at where Jenny was sitting. The doll had been unusually quiet, and it was taking everything in her power not to scream at the ghost.

The original plan had been for Jenny to manipulate her own die rolls using telekinesis. With three-on-three, even a slight manipulation in the odds would be beneficial, and allow their deception to go unnoticed.

Instead, Jenny was sullen. She had lost a few territories without so much as a fight, and had yet to win a single round. When a round started, neither side knew who won until the battle was over, and it didn't seem to occur to the horsemen that Jenny seemed to be exempt. On her turn, all the doll did was add troops and move them away from harm. Reggie would often move troops and try to bolster defenses for Beth, or at least discuss strategies between rounds.

It had effectively become three versus two, with Jenny barely spectating. The doll often wandered off during turns, and would look on in disinterest as the loser was shot, set on fire, or executed in whatever gory manner the winner preferred.

Beth particularly enjoyed her winning rounds. The horsemen didn't seem particularly creative with how they chose to kill her, so would often pick something quick and messy. She tried to rattle them with creative means of dismemberment, and was particularly proud of the time her elves had tossed Famine into a live volcano.

Reggie's unique brand of torture usually involved rats. He strapped a cage full of rats to War's belly and then put burning coals on the top so that the rats would chew their way through the horseman to get away from the heat. There was also the time Reggie dragged Pestilence into the subway tunnels of New York and creamed him with a subway train. It had revealed that the horseman was, in fact, composed of glowing insects.

None of this deterred the horsemen. They shifted troops around and would leave a single troop behind to be taken by their teammates so they could gain continent bonuses. It had pissed her off when the last battle between War and Pestilence had been a simple game of Pinball. War had given his sibling a high-five upon losing, which allowed Pestilence to gain control of Africa.

"Three territories left," War told her. "And then you're out of the game."

Still, she said nothing. Once she was knocked out, Reggie and Jenny would be on their own. Reggie almost had control of Europe, while Jenny had crammed almost all of her troops into east Asia.

It all came down to trust. She wanted to believe that Jenny had some sort of a plan, but she just couldn't see it. The doll's infamous outbursts hadn't shown up even once. They were ignoring her entirely, so it was likely that Reggie would be the next to go. The horsemen would come for Jenny only when she was the last one remaining.

The horsemen had learned some time ago how to stretch out their turns. What had started as hour-long skirmishes had become days, depending on the size of the defending armies. Losing Australia had taken almost a month from her perspective, but Murray had assured her that only minutes had passed in the real world.

The men and women of Middle Earth put up a brave fight over the next few rounds. Beth, fully on the defensive now, didn't make any attacks of her own and chose to bolster her defenses. Her brain compressed the last week of her battles into moments as her territories dwindled down to one final location.

She had taken Iceland on a lark and found it a fitting location for her last stand. Her troops managed to buy her another week of in-game time as War attacked her from Greenland with ships that fired missiles into the Icelandic countryside. While the city of Reykjavik burned, Beth's army was forced to retreat inland.