Excerpt: Evil Overthrow (working title)

Suulemon crouched down in the path of the charging rhinoceros god, Nano, his arm-long knife his only defense. He was going to die. He was finally going to die! "Kill me, you filthy beast!" He braced himself for the impact, but it didn't do any good; when Nano crashed into him, the rhino tossed Suulemon thirty feet away, then trampled him before slowing down to turn and come at him again. Suulemon groaned, pain wracking his broken body. Bones grated beneath his skin, shattered ribs pierced his lungs, but he still lived. He screamed as he felt the bones realigning themselves within him just before Nano trampled over him again. His hand, still clutching the long knife, flailed up and scored the rhino god along the belly as he made another pass; Nano's blood washed over Suulemon, mingling with his own as the god bellowed in pain and rage.
Suulemon bellowed as well. "Damn you, Nano! You're a god -- you're supposed to KILL ME!" He pushed himself up from the ground, shaking his head in frustration and disgust. The rhino god trumpeted in anger and turned once again to charge Suulemon, who stood his ground until the god's horn impaled him. He was flung from side to side as Nano shook his massive head, until finally the god shook him free. Blood soaked the ground and covered Nano's hide, but Suulemon still lived. He reached into the gaping hole in his belly and pulled forth a stinking mass of ruptured intestines, flinging the offal at the ground. It never even hit the dirt. His wound healed up almost as soon as his hand was free. Suulemon looked up at Nano, huffing and pawing the ground, his tiny eyes burning red as coals in rage.
"All right, you lousy, no-good, useless excuse for an all-powerful deity," Suulemon said, stalking towards the rhino, his own ire stirred up to the boiling point. "You're gonna kill me now, or die trying!" He charged, knife held high, as Nano charged, too. They met in a shuddering impact, Suulemon's knife buried to the hilt in the shoulder of the rhino, Suulemon clinging to the hilt of his knife and the body of his foe. "At least tell me why you can't kill me!" He pulled the blade free and stabbed again and again, freeing great bouts of blood.
Nano, bleeding from several knife wounds Suulemon had managed to inflict, trotted to a stop at last, puffing like a bellows, and shrugged Suulemon off his back as if he were nothing more than a fly. "You ungrateful, idiot BRAT, you," the god said, his small ears flicking back and forth in annoyance. "I'm not the one who is to destroy you. I thought you had STUDIED that prophecy! Dolt! All those brains, and you haven't used them." Nano turned in disgust. "That's it. I'm not playing this game anymore. You wanted to rule the world forever -- well, you go right ahead." He started to lumber off, dust settling into the several wounds. Suulemon yelled out in his anger and frustration, a wordless cry to the universe, then he charged Nano from behind, leaping onto the god's broad back and slamming his knife down deep into the god's skull, right behind the ear. Nano dropped immediately, his body shuddering once, then rolling onto its side to lie lifeless in the dirt.
"Well, are you happy now?" a voice asked from behind Suulemon. He turned, brandishing his bloody blade and a toothy snarl for whoever it was. It was another of the gods, shaped like a human female this time, but glowing blue-white. "I mean, really, what did Nano ever do to you, that you had to pick on him like this?" The god pointed at the multiple stab wounds on the rhino god's carcass. "Stupid he might have been, with that tiny brain, but still, was that any reason to bait him and goad him like that? I'm disappointed in you, Suulemon." The god went over and stroked a hand over the wounds in Nano's hide; the holes closed up, leaving the body unmarked. "Now we'll have to find someone to take his place in the pantheon, and it's so hard to convince people to take on such a shape as his." With a flash of blue god-light, she had vanished, leaving Suulemon alone on the field with the corpse of Nano, the rhinoceros god. In the distance, he could see his bodyguards running over to him.
"Great. I still have to deal with these idiots," he muttered to himself. He briefly checked himself over. All his wounds were closed, the rents in his clothing mended, the stains gone. The bones inside him had already knit themselves together again. It was humiliating, really, that there wasn't even a sign of the struggle on him. Nor on Nano, actually -- just the one hole left in the skull, from the killing blow. "And now it looks like I've killed a god with one strike. More fame. Pathetic."
His men came up to surround him and the carcass on the ground. "Wow, that was some fight! And look at you! Not a scratch!" Another piped in to say, "I thought you were a gonner when he ran right over you, but you just got up and took him on again!"
Suulemon sighed. "No such luck," he muttered, then turned to walk away from what should have been his death scene. "Have that thing skinned," he said, motioning over his shoulder at the carcass. "I need some new boots, and I'd hate to think of all that hide going to waste." He stalked over to his carriage and climbed in with a barked, "Take me home."