William stumbled back, his eyes glassy, confused, and jumpy, as, for just a moment, his supreme intellect disappeared. After three steps—two rigid and slow, one loose and fast—he fell to the ground and doubled over, blood pouring from his mouth. That sound was the only one in the entire arena, as even the audience was too shocked to even gasp. They all just looked on intesely, their egos absorbed by the spectacle.

Gadreel broke that air with a laugh. A sudden, irresistible exhilaration and triumph spring from him. The first laugh was short. The next was longer. And before long, even as his broken wrist pressed his mind and the throbbing wound in his face never stropped burning, he laughed continuously as if from compulsion. A force greater than himself expressing itself through him. To the others it surely sounded like the insane laughter of an unrestrained maniac, but to him it was the genuine jubilation of a spirit that had long been suffocated by a mix of suspense and boredom.

"Hnnn." Someone grunted. Gadreel looked up and found that it was William. He hadn't known the man could make such a sound. "How?"

Gadreel got up slowly to stand tall before William. "The true nature of essence," Gadreel's said with a voice just loud enough to be heard by William, tapping the side of his head. "You never realized it. None of you did. For you know nothing of the world."

William opened his mouth to say something, but his face twisted, and he spat a flow of blood. Still, he refused to lay down and accept defeat, instead shaking his head as he was curled up on his knees. "You know nothing about yourself." He strained to talk. But talking was all he had anymore. No matter how brutish, when a person's violence was taken away, they settled for talking.

Gadreel did him the courtesy of entertaining him for his last moments. "No, William. I know everything about myself that needs to be known. I regret to inform you; it just goes against much of what you think of me." William snorted in response as if denying Gadreel's words as lies. This only fueled him to continue. "Honestly, I'm surprised you never realized my aversion toward gore to be entirely fabricated."

William's eyes widened for just a moment before going back to normal, and though Gadreel couldn't see it, he was quite sure William's pores had opened. It was a natural reaction. William had considered the matter for sure. He would've been an idiot if he hadn't after Franz's betrayal, as Franz was the one who had informed him about it in the first place. However, he had most likely dismissed it intuitively since he thought he knew Gadreel.

Now he realized his arrogance, and it broke him mentally more than he had already been broken physically.

"I suppose you can figure out why I did it," Gadreel said before taking a quick glance around and deciding the best course of action. The arena had grown dimmer as people were unable to keep focus on their materializations in the face of Gadreel's performance. At that moment, the watchers' systems were filled with adrenaline as their stress levels overloaded. Memories created in that moment would be everlasting. That's why Gadreel would make an untouchable myth of himself that day. "It's because otherwise I would have been too big of a threat. After all, everyone fears a man with no weakness," Gadreel explained, his voice loud and echoing. Then he stomped his foot before roaring, "And that is what I am! A man with no weakness. If any of you disagree, let us have a contest. I will bury you next to the former Ruler of Mircrest."

William seemed to have had enough. With a raged groan, he launched up and at Gadreel. He was still fast, but only because he ignored his injuries despite the drawbacks.

Gadreel turned, and as he saw his former father figure rushing at him with pure and overwhelming murderous intent, his world slowed down.

All pretense then drained from Gadreel's face as he watched William authentically. He felt that moment border on serene. The one of pure emotion he had been seeking.

William, in all his cruelty, fraud, and barbarism, was a tragic character, and Gadreel did truly respect him for it. For never trying to make others see his tragedy, instead being fine with it and making it a device for growth.

However, nothing could grow forever. As Gadreel looked into William's eyes, he knew the man had met his ceiling and served no other purpose. Still, he took no pleasure in what would happen next.

"By now you've probably figured out that a duel was what I wanted all along. A duel which I would of course have lost under normal conditions. That is, if you didn't let your guard down."

"You were lucky," William growled.

"I sheperded a series of events to this single moment of my inevitable victory. I don't imagine you would ever have given me the slightest opportunity if there was any kind of notion of me being a willing participant in all this. However, you knew of the vastness of my intellect, so you can imagine what a pain it was to somehow get me into a situation where you were convinced I was forced into it. The solution, of course, was to rely on the illogicality of others." William was limp, but as still as a statue, as Gadreel made the truth of the matter evident. "The entire past two years were all for this moment."

William raged like a wraith. As Gadreel launched to meet his challenge, he saw his own awoken reflection in William's eyes and almost paused. Almost.

He dodged William's whistling punch by closing the distance swiftly before putting a palm on William's stomach. The man had missed and was riddled with confusion as Gadreel touched his belly in close proximity.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Then Gadreel closed his eyes and felt his soul carry his essence from his heart all the way to the tips of his fingers. It came into contact with William, and for a millisecond there was a slight barrier that vibrated in hesitation of letting it through, but Gadreel pushed, and that natural barrier broke.

The essence materialized amid William's internal organs. The sound was surprisingly hollow, as if someone were being stabbed behind a wall. William leaned forward and pushed his body against Gadreel soundlessly. It was probably the closest contact they had ever had. Then Gadreel felt a hand squeezing his arm, nails digging into his flesh, but didn't react, and it stopped soon enough. William stayed on his feet even after Gadreel pulled away, but the life was lost from the man. His eyes were down. Not even looking at his stomach but simply the ground. And though he was full of questions, his despair and, most of all, his pride seemed to keep him from asking them.

Nobody else had seen what had happened, and the light of essence grew brighter as the audience remembered it, wanting to see more clearly.

There wasn't much to see, however. Gadreel had tried squeezeing the essence into crystals as an experiment. As expected, there was a lot of splintering that obliterated William's internals.

William opened his mouth, and he seemed about to puke out his organs but drew it back. And with bloodshot eyes, he looked up at Gadreel. Under all the entitlement and anger, the man was almost sad in his confusion. If Gadreel had been capable of pity, he still wouldn't have felt it for William. Maybe some kind of pain due to the attachment would have been possible, but at the end of the day, William was a part of a system that did to people what had now been done to him. He was responsible for his own pain, though it was by Gadreel's hand.

"Why, Gadreel? Or... whoever you... really are," William struggled to say as blood started to cover his chin. Gadreel wasn't sure if his fatal injury or his pride was hurting more. William took a dumb, weak step forward, assisted by essence. Then he stood at arm's reach from Gadreel and groaned, "All this... Your whole existence. Why?"

William had finally acknowledged that he didn't know Gadreel, so the least he could do was be honest in this final moment. So for the first time, he showed his real face, devoid of all humanity.

William's mouth opened wider, and he looked away as if to check if he was still in reality. Then he looked back, but now his being had succumbed to some force. Always, always when they had established eye contact, it had been clear that William was the older one out of the two. That he was senior, superior, in control. But suddenly, William looked at Gadreel like he was immortal.

Gadreel knew why. He had seen that face of his too many times. It was the first memory he had of himself. One of the emotions that were wiped away.

Humans and even animals always had something on their faces. Some indication of consciousness, even if it was just the eyes moving. They always interacted with the world. But as Gadreel stood there before William, all his pain had ceased even as blood covered half his face from his grotesque wound, and he was no longer connected to anything.

William's eyes shook with the realization that the apathy he thought he had previously grasped was far vaster than he would've guesses. It was bottomless. Gadreel, in fact, was not bored as he had thought, but completely devoid of even the faintest sensation that made up a human life. He stood there with no indication of even knowing William and no recognition of his existence.

He was like a strange god, not of that world at all.

Then he answered, his charismatic voice having turned into a deep monotone. "You wouldn't understand. But if you must have an answer,"—Gadreel raised his brows slightly—"it's because I was born."

William looked about to say something, but only blood poured out of his mouth. But as he died, Gadreel felt that they finally understood each other, even if only a sliver. William may not have known why, but he had seen under Gadreel's second mask. He understood that Gadreel wasn't just pretending to be a normal human being, but pretending to be a human being at all that was pretending to be normal. That was the most anyone had ever known about him, and in a sense, it was quite enough.

"A boy long dead thanks you," Gadreel said as the traces of humanity returned to him and he became an abstract part of the world again. William's eyes seemed to understand a little more, but there was undoubtedly a question in his mind. What was he thanking him for? Gadreel took on a ferocious smile and answered, "For the spectacle."

Then he set his foot down with a stomp and slide before loading his hand and bursting it toward William's forehead. It slammed him and took hold, tracing the essence in his body, unresisted.

Then Gadreel repeated the crystalization of essence, but with more brutality, and the materialized crystals of essence exploded through William's head and expanded into a U-shape behind him.

In that moment, the entire arena flickered out into darkness, and only the crystals of essence that annihilated William's being remained as illumination.

Gadreel felt his stomach sink with relief, like returning to a familiar routine after a sidestep. Then he turned to the audience as light came back on and spoke with an uncharacteristically deep voice that echoed in the silent arena. "You are all now under my rule. Well... most of you." He flicked his wrist. "I never gave my word of anything." He searched for and found the eyes of Sherridan. "Kill them."

Then the real bloodbath erupted as Sherridan moved like the wind to slash open a dozen throats in a second before the Evaporation Squadron took to action against William's Five Shadows as Gadreel had instructed them earlier. Then the vice president stabbed the president in the back. Gadreel looked amusedly at that, and as he spun around watching as the audience descended into hell, joy spread on his face.

He breathed deep and felt alive as strange nostalgia flooded his smile and turned it into something childish. Something akin to the wonders of discovery and creativity. It was like how a boy looked while smashing toys together.

Whirling around amid the blur of bloodshed, Gadreel felt like a child god, and for maybe the first time in his life, he could imagine himself feeling something. It was as if his whole life had been a lie, all for this single moment where he grasped the truth.

For that moment, the idea of life was his.

***

Gadreel mumbled drowsily as he turned in his perfect bed before realizing he'd had the same dream again. He had fed on it so many times; the dish was getting moldy, but he kept going back to it.

He chuckled to himself. "Perhaps you were right when you called me loser before," he said, turning his head to the shadowed side of his chamber. "Sherridan."

The curvy silhouette of the woman revealed itself as she slowly walked out of the shade. She never walked slowly, but it seemed something was different.

"Orpheus is dead," she said. "Slaughtered by 'the liveD'."

Gadreel raised his brows at the news as he sat up. "Oh?" Then he sensed something coming. "What of it?"

Sherridan glared at him. "I think it's about time you tell me what the hell is going on."

Gadreel leaned back on his hands and looked up with expectation. "It seems it has begun."

"What has?" Sherridan asked in her snarky manner.

With serenely closed eyes, Gadreel replied, "The end."