Pure, unadulterated power flowed from the golden beetle before me. Hardly bigger than my thumb, it was hard to believe that it had once been a god with truly unfathomable power. It was even harder to imagine that simply swallowing the beetle would give me all that power and more, more power than any one being had ever had before. My lust for that power was almost overwhelming. I had never wanted anything more in my entire life.

But I wasn't the wisest of the Aesir for nothing. Simply taking the beetle without a second thought was something another god, Thor maybe, would do. The magnitude of my decision, though, weighed heavily on me. Whatever whim hung in my mind when I ate the scarab would be turned into reality.

The largest problem, too, still nagged at me. I didn't even know what I wanted to do with my unlimited power.

I had to do something, that much I knew for certain. The sacrifices that I had made, that every other god had made, to get here hadn't been in vain. The images that had haunted my nightmares, no longer visions but now memories, came back into my mind: ichor spilled on the forest floor, a roc egg cracked in two, a victorious god drinking the yolk, my sword entering Loki's side.

Opening my eyes again, I looked towards the beetle. As though the beetle itself was communicating with me, I remembered that it was a symbol of rebirth. As the sun set in the sky every night, and raised again every morning, the beetle died and was reborn every day. Death and rebirth seemed to be a common theme in this competition. From our powers, which were taken away and returned to us, to the forest, taken over by the city, then growing back in the city's ruins.

Naturally everything died and was reborn, the beetle seemed to speak to me. The gods may have once been forgotten, but they are already being remembered once more. There's no need to hasten the cycle, nature will provide a catalyst.

But what if I am the catalyst?

At first, the thought sounded selfish, like a pathetic attempt to excuse my own actions, no stronger than my excuse for killing. It wasn't my fault I had a sword that could only be sheathed once it took a life, never mind the fact that I was the one who chose to keep the sword. I was the one who unsheathed it. I was the one who had killed.

And helped them be reborn, the scarab said to me. It seemed that the scarab was even worse at excusing my actions than I was. Suddenly, I saw that the beetle, despite its power, was nothing more than I was. Simply a god drained of his power, weakened, ready to be used to fulfill the Fates' wishes.

There were many things that Balder Odinson was: the god of light, a good god, the wisest of the Aesir, a murderer, forgotten but still worshipped by many. But I was not a pawn in the Fates' plot to be remembered and worshipped once more.

Closing my eyes, doing my best to ignore the irresistible draw of power, I stepped forward, and closed my my fingers around the beetle. It squirmed in my grip, but I held it tight. I raised the beetle up to my mouth, closed my mouth around the beetle, and bit down.

All of the beetle's essence, all of the power that had once filled it, was now in my mouth. It tasted bitter, worse than the worst medicine I had ever administered in my day job. I forced myself to swallow, with only one thought on my mind.

Camazotz never started these Games.

*

A tap on the window broke me from my thoughts of my patient dying, and I turned to see a a bat resting on a branch, as undeterred from the sunlight as a little bird might have been. It tapped on the window again with its head, then, with a little shock, noticed that it had nothing in its mouth anymore.

I smiled. Immortal affairs, it seemed, could wait forever.