Both painters set their fists onto each other in a vicious clash. The sound of Adam's fists against Eric's flesh echoed across the desolate field, every strike singing a song of desperation and defiance. Adam pressed forward, delivering blows that tore skin off his knuckles and sent Eric's head whirling backward – yet while his own blood was pouring down from his hands, the Hangman's face was bruised at best.
We're closer in Talent now. I can keep him at bay!
Keeping him at bay was all he could do. The Painter's carefully-channeled fury was but a whisper compared to the Hangman's reckless indifference. Each exchange was met with the dull crack of bone, the wet splatter of blood hitting the ground, and the acrid taste of death filling the air.
Yet regardless of how hard the Painter struck, no matter how finely he perfected the art of violence...Eric shrugged it off. The Gryphon's body absorbed his blows like a canvas took to ink.
Every punch he threw made Adam feel less steady, draining the last dwindling reserves of his strength. Gradually, his vision darkened and his knees began to wobble. The outcome of their clash had already been decided; inked into the very reality of the Painted World.
But strangely enough, Adam couldn't quite bring himself to panic.
Wonder what's wrong with me, he mused. I should be despairing right about now. Bitterly accepting my own limitations. For some reason, though...even though it's absurd...I really feel like I can do this.
I feel like I can push myself just one step further.
Repeated usage of one's Talent would stain their Soul Canvas. Only the passage of time could wipe it clean. Were someone to forcibly activate their Talent before it was ready, the fortunate result would be abject failure. More likely, their rationality would be utterly torn to shreds, dooming them to a painful death before their soul crumbled to pieces.
Overusing a Talent felt as unnatural as stepping off a cliff, knowing death awaited below. Even if there were safety nets installed, that would do little to quell the primal urge commanding your body to back off.
Adam was no different. The mere thought of courting death in such a manner was like staring at a truck about to run him over. His survival instincts screamed at him, telling him to stop, to step away from that ghastly cliff.
And yet...in his mind's eye, he could still picture his friends encouraging him onward.
'Don't worry,' he imagined Tenver saying, the knight grinning as he attached bungee gear on him. 'You'll be fine.'
'We'll be right there if anything goes wrong,' Solara promised him, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. 'So just go for it.'
It was just wishful thinking on his part. Closer to a hallucination, really. Tenver and Solara couldn't communicate with him at the moment.
But if they could...
Adam drew his arm back for another punch, his fist bruised, bleeding – and resolute.
That's what both of them would tell me.
With a powerful jump, the Gryphon took to the sky. His winged boots flapped once to fly, then twice to empower his Talent of Hanging. Eric positioned himself above Adam before his leg fell downward like a shooting star, his foot extended and aimed at the Painter's neck.
His thunderbolt of a kick threatened murder – but when Adam whispered "Realm Reconstruction!", the air immediately shimmered with an eerie, blinding glow. For a single heartbeat, Eric's foot halted midair, as if banished by time itself.
Even that incomplete Realm had enough strength to evaporate the leather of the Plagiarist's winged boots, giving hope to a sudden thought. He won't be able to fly anymore!
Adam's hopes shattered the moment hawk-like talons sank into his shoulder. With a ghostly screech, the claws dug into him, tearing through muscle and bone. Red, human blood poured out – too much for him to convert to Stained Ink.
In the wake of Eric's attack, three separate, near-simultaneous thoughts arose within Adam's mind.
First: He, he can still fly. His wings are growing out of his feet, not the boots!
Second: My Canvas is too Stained right now. If I can convert my blood to Stained Ink, I can keep myself from bleeding out, but I won't last long if I continue losing blood like this.
Either of those two thoughts – just by themselves – would've been enough to bring anyone to their knees. Yet Adam's focus landed not on unbridled panic, but instead on the third, final thought. One that came to him with a sort of surreal tranquility.
Now...what's my next step?
"Did you think that shitty Realm was gonna stop me?" Eric taunted, sinking his monstrous feet deeper into soft flesh. "Don't you dare underestimate me, Adam!"
Haven't been. The Painter had never entertained any delusions about stopping Eric with a desperate Reconstruction. Even with Adam's abrupt burst of strength, all he'd managed was an incomplete, barely-functional Realm.
He was no genius, after all, and his Canvas was at its limit even before attempting such a thing. The fact that he could use Reconstruction at all was miracle enough. Producing a Realm without Walls was already more than he'd dared expect.
Unfortunately, his construction was as defenseless as it was small – even Eric's Genius Realm had been much larger. Adam's makeshift world protected no citizens and kept away no enemies. As such, it had almost no reach, severely impeding its power and preventing him from issuing Royal Orders.
This was a lawless, desolate kingdom he'd created.
"You should've known better!" Eric taunted. He flapped his wings low to squat down on the Painter's shoulder, landing on it as if he were a friendly sparrow. The weight nearly crushed Adam, his legs trembling and his knees threatening to bend. "Stop trying to pretend you're worth anything, will ya? Shitstains like you gotta know their place and like it."
"Then why are you acting so high and mighty?" Adam barked out.
"Wha–"
Adam called upon his Noble Guard.
The regenerative force within his Realm was functional, albeit delayed. It rapidly refilled the missing chunks within his bloodied shoulder, pulsing with such force that it pushed off the flying Hangman.
Eric, his face blank in confusion, needed to take a moment to compose himself. He alternated his gaze between the writhing flesh still captured by his talons – and the lordly blue light surrounding Adam.
New life beat within the Painter. It was in no way a perfect heal; too much blood couldn't be replaced, and the process left behind an inflamed, uneasy scar.
But it had worked. His arm's movement wasn't compromised.
He could still paint.
And if I can paint...all I need is to keep you busy long enough to finish this.
Purpose and desperation fueled Adam's swift punch, his shoulder whipping forward with his awakened Talent of Painting – only to halt its usage so that just raw force met the Gryphon's face.
The punch landed hard, breaking Eric's nose with a satisfying crack. The Hangman flew back, blood pouring down his face as flapping wings struggled to keep him airborne, barely managing to stop him from crashing into the burning ruins that he himself had devastated.
"Geniuses are surprisingly fragile, aren't they?" Adam remarked.
He allowed himself a sliver of gratification. Between his abstract self-portrait, the boost imparted on him by his shaky Realm, and pure, unyielding willpower, Adam had just the strength to inflict a minor injury on the higher-Ranked Hangman.
Which wouldn't be sufficient to win – a factor the Painter was well-aware of. Even this miraculous last-ditch Realm would only flicker for a few more moments. That wasn't nearly long enough for Adam to kill the living incarnation of death known as a Hangman.
And it wouldn't have to be. What the Lord of Penumbria had hoped for with this gambit wasn't for the Realm Laws, or even for the Royal Guard's immortality.
To paint your soul...I have to learn more about you. The things you would never tell me.
I need DIVINE KNOWLEDGE!
"Eric," Adam started, his voice taunting. "You're such a pathetic waste of Talent."
"Shut up!" Eric roared in response. He pushed the rubble off his body, more furious than wounded. "You don't get to say that!"
The Gryphon's mind wandered for only a second. Just one, single second. Yet this drop in the ocean, this barely-audible thought heard in a shattering Realm...it revealed more than the many years they'd spent together.
'YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THAT?'
Perhaps more accurately, it was those many years that allowed for that lone sentence to command such authority. Sudden understanding sparked in Adam's soul, shining a light that dispelled the shadows of doubt obscuring the Hangman.
Eric...you...
Adam's hand inched towards the tablet in his pocket.
"DON'T YOU DARE!" Eric cried out. Amidst fiery ruins, he surged forward with an even more fiery rage, his once-white wings now a soot-drenched gray.
The Hangman's talons snapped in a blur of motion as he lunged at Adam. Bladed edges cut first through the air, and then through the Painter's body, nearly slicing off his arm entirely.
NOBLE GUARD!
The incomplete Realm was just enough to keep Adam alive, though he felt none of the all-powerful invincibility that usually came with being inside his Lord's Realm. If Eric's strike had hit his heart, rather than his shoulder, then the small delay before healing could have proven permanently fatal. Two seconds passed until Adam's arm was whole again, this time with another set of scars, as if the Painted World had forcibly stitched the limb back onto his body.
Won't let you distract me. He fixed the Hangman with a piercing glare. I can see it now – I can see your soul, Eric!
And through that shaky Pillar of Divine Knowledge, Adam caught the slightest glimpse of what the Plagiarist had tried most to keep hidden.
It was shocking...for a brief moment. The road behind the two painters was so long and storied that the Hangman believed his next thought truly, even more than Adam himself:
'IF I LET HIM FINISH THAT PAINTING – I'M FUCKING DEAD! ADAM WON'T FUCK THIS UP!'
And so he continued to strike at the Painter, attempting to keep him from reaching his tablet by any means necessary.
It was that very desperation that gave Adam the confidence to turn his faint spark into a blazing confidence. He wasn't wrong. This is what lay at Eric's core.
"Tell me more!" The Painter demanded with his fists, knocking the Hangman aside. "What is it, genius? Scared I might be more talented than you?"
'If you were, I wouldn't hate you so much.' Eric thought internally. Externally, he shouted, "SHUT UP, ADAM! DIE! DIE SO THAT YOU NEVER HAUNT ME AGAIN!"
Adam refused to take even one step back. There were no tricks left. His crumbling Realm would shatter in less than a minute, and with it, so would his chances of surviving the Hangman's onslaught.
But with every strike he endured, the Painter's certainty was crystallized. Though Eric said no more, his frantic, deranged behavior spoke volumes. It was the answer Adam had been looking for.
An answer to the question he should have been asking all along.
The Gryphon lunged, his wings flapping – but the Painter caught his arm and drove his knee into Eric's stomach. Gasping for breath, concentration wavering, the Hangman's mental defenses lowered once again.
'Why did you have to be so greedy, Adam? I really loved you, man.'
The Painter narrowly blocked Eric's winged kick, countering with a wild punch to the ribs. He felt his own bones crunch under his fist, breaking faster than his Realm could heal.
'You just HAD to go and fuck everything up. Average wasn't good enough for you. Oh, no, no, no – you wanted to sit at the top.'
'Why, Adam? Did you want me to suffer?'
'Were you looking down on me?'
Adam's body screamed with pain, yet his art screamed with grief. His fanatical focus blazed with a singular thought – This is it.
Eric's body swayed, blood dripping from his mouth. His wings twitched, and for a passing second, the Hangman faltered. Adam's relentless assault had shaken him, striking fear beyond what a half-dead man should have been capable of.
And as doubt briefly flickered in the Gryphon's eyes, an intrusive thought crept inside his head.
'Am I...going to lose?'
'You already have,' Adam thought. 'You lost the moment you allowed yourself to think that. You lost the moment you allowed me to paint.'
The Painter's burning passion was half of what had brought him this far. The other half – the final key to victory – was Eric's hesitation. His long-practiced procrastination. His childish unhappiness when needing to suffer in order to complete a task. His vague wishing that his problems would disappear if he ignored them for long enough.
Adam knew those bad habits would flare up. He'd known that the Hangman would flinch.
This unusual pairing of obstination and laziness had birthed an unnatural opening. One no self-respecting Hangman should've ever given to any opponent; much less a weaker one.
And Adam had no intention of letting that chance be wasted. His resolve burned brighter than his wounds, higher than his Rank, hotter than the flames erupting around the battlefield.
NOW–!
Adam's broken fingers scrambled for the tablet within his pocket, redness dripping from his hands as they etched the Gryphon's soul. His vision blurred from the blood loss, but his pen danced across the screen with a precision he'd never felt before.
Eric's survival instincts flared up, his momentary indecision overwhelmed by a primal desire to live. Delayed as he was, the Gryphon launched into a frenzied, panicked flight forward. "I WON'T LET YOU, ADAM!"
The Painter and The Hangman's fated confrontation now came to an end. All strategy was abandoned, their Canvases too Stained to matter, as their Ranks mattered little. Whoever finished their last move would win here. Once more, as it had been so during their Realm Clash, the Goddess of Luck would decide the winner.
And in that desperate, fierce explosion of wills, the one she chose to smile down upon–
–was Eric, yet again.
His talons swiped at the tablet in the nick of time, flinging it into the distance, beyond the bounds of Adam's miniscule Realm. In that same motion, the Gryphon slammed his shoulder against the Painter. He was sent crashing down onto cold, gritty mud, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs and reviving the bleeding agony in his wounds.
Adam's Realm began to shatter. His Talent's departure was heralded by his wounds tearing wider, blood soaking the ground beneath him, his body failing under its own crushing weight.
"Oh man, that's gotta sting!" Eric crowed. "That's twice now you almost had me. Did everything right. But this fucking world just loves me too much! I beat you because of luck. Even the universe itself knows I deserve this more."
The Hangman leaned down, his mouth twisting into an ugly sneer. "C'mon, tell me – how does it feel? Is it worse than if you'd had no chance at all?"
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
This...this is bad, Adam thought. He wouldn't be able to heal his injuries without a Realm. And with his Canvas this stained, he also couldn't convert his blood to Stained Ink anymore to keep himself from bleeding out.
Face down, elbows sinking into the flame-baked mud, Adam started to crawl, using his head to stay upright. His knees had touched the ground – but even so, he refused to bow. The Painter's chest trembled as it seemed to hover off the ground, fighting against gravity's weight and Eric's taunts alike.
No matter if the rest of him was dirtied, he needed to keep himself from collapsing onto the mud. There was something there that couldn't be touched.
The final thing he needed to protect.
I can't...fall down... He crawled onward, the Hangman's manic laughter ringing in his ears. Not completely...can't give him the satisfac–
Adam froze. No. The hell am I thinking with that loser shit? The Painter grit his teeth. Have I forgotten already? I'm done worrying about just 'surviving'.
He summoned the last fading embers of his will.
I want to live.
In an instant, they had swelled to a roaring inferno.
I–want–to–WIN!
"Eric...think I owe you an apology." Adam peered up at the person standing before him, rather than the image burnt into his mind. "You...I never looked at you properly, did I?"
His voice was weak, and his body felt even weaker. Remember my original goal. Focus on that for now.
Dying can wait.
The Gryphon watched over in silence as Adam coughed up blood, choking through agonized words. "I think my biggest mistake was that...I respected you too much. Loved you too much. Admired you too much."
"About time you said that," Eric muttered, in a low, raspy voice. "If you'd realized this shit earlier, things wouldn't have gotten to this point. It's all because you never stopped to think about it – not for one fucking second."
Through the blood collecting inside his throat, Adam managed a gargled laugh. "Could've told me yourself, you baby. This was a choice you made."
"Choice?" Eric spat on the floor, disgust plain on his face. "Yeah, I could've told you...and looked like a miserable fucking loser. I had one thing I was proud of, Adam. Say I threw that away – the fuck would I have had left?"
"Me," Adam said weakly. "You'd have had me."
Silence ruled.
"You still don't get it," Eric began, shaking his head. "Not at all. I–"
"–Thought it wouldn't mean anything? Yeah." Adam cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. He cursed Eric for not talking to him sooner.
But most of all, he cursed the Hangman for caring about it at all.
"Eric, I should've thought of it...but you were just as friendless and miserable as I was when we met, weren't you?" Adam slowly asked.
"Shut your mouth," Eric snapped, in a low, angry voice. "Don't you dare."
Adam would have shrugged, were his shoulders still capable of the motion. He was too close to death for the threat to have any real bite to it. "You didn't think you had a place in the world. Just like me."
"–I was nothing like you," Eric hissed.
"I would've agreed with you until recently, you know?" Adam smirked, finding some dark humor in it. "But that's the thing. I assumed that because you had a nice home life, you were...happy. That I was the only one who found a sense of...I guess a sense of 'being human' in drawing. Practicing art made me feel like a person. It was something that gave my days meaning.
Eric's bird-like claws stepped onto Adam's back. They sank deep holes as he pressed down. Even so, the Painter refused to drop to the ground completely.
If my chest touches the ground...that's it. That's when this – when I – am finished.
"Come on, Eric!" Adam shouted, in a joyful tone that was ill-fitting for his mutilated body. "I'm dying right now. You already knocked my tablet way, way too far away for it to matter. If our friendship ever meant anything to you...let me talk, at least. I need to get this out of me before...before..."
Silence ruled once more, followed thereafter by the wet sound of the talons leaving his back.
"That's all you were ever good for anyway," Eric mumbled. "Fine. Yap to your death, if you want."
Adam took him up on his offer. "Years ago, when you insisted that you didn't want to be a fantastic artist – just an average artist who could make a living – I should've known what you really meant. Eric...for all your talent, you were deathly afraid of failing, weren't you?"
He said nothing.
"You were happy to ride your innate talent as far as it would take you, slowly cruising to a mediocre life. You never aimed for the moon, because your ego just couldn't handle missing it. So you aimed for the ground at your feet instead. Back when I saw you as a genius artist...you merely thought of yourself as an antisocial, friendless fuckhead who happened to be good at drawing."
This time, Eric didn't wait in silence. "Stop projecting," he growled. "I'm nothing like you."
"That's true – to a point. You never valued art the way I did. Not until you met me."
Adam paused there, his dark humor fading slightly as he confronted his old, uncomfortable reality anew. "You only started caring about it after I started following you around...telling you how great you were."
"That's..." Eric's gleeful taunting came to a sudden stop. When the Gryphon spoke again, it was in an even, almost human tone. "It was hard not to enjoy that."
"I see." Adam nodded internally at the thought, although his head was still unable to move, pressed firmly against the mud to keep his torso from touching the ground. "Things start to make sense when I look at it from that perspective. Despite your natural genius, you were terribly afraid of failure. You had self-esteem issues just like I did. After we met, you started basing your self-esteem around your art – but the fear of failure was still there."
Adam wondered why he'd never thought of that, why it had never occurred to him that he was having an effect on Eric too. Perhaps...I didn't want to be so conceited as to think I could.
"Then you had to go and fuck everything up." Eric's tone was disdainful, his voice as low as a whisper. "Why, Adam? Why did you have to try and get better than me?"
That was just the issue, wasn't it?
Eric had truly been friends with Adam, once upon a time. There was no trickery there – and that just made it all the worse. It meant that he had genuinely valued him as a person. He had sincerely liked him when they were younger. Throughout it all, he had appreciated Adam.
Yet while there was much about the road behind them to mourn, the road ahead of them looked so frighteningly short. Because no matter how much Eric had cared for Adam...his fears were far stronger than his love.
He had long since resigned himself to mediocrity, soothing his ego by avoiding putting in effort, telling himself he was all the more clever for not doing so. He could simply enjoy his genius and live with the satisfying notion of: 'No, I could've achieved much more if I'd bothered. I just didn't feel like it.'
For a lonely young boy, that would've been a fine future to imagine, wouldn't it? And it would have only gotten easier when he met Adam, who cheerfully reinforced his self-image of a genius. At that point, Eric had started to solidify how he thought of himself – how he believed his life held value.
"A large part of your self-worth came from viewing me as inferior, didn't it?" Adam said hoarsely, and not just due to the injuries.
Eric didn't reply. He didn't need to.
He'd already said everything back in the Imperial Capital, after the Emperor first killed Adam, and when Eric had eulogized the Painter's supposed corpse.
'Adam...I don't need to have everything. I just need you to have nothing.'
Adam knew that now. Maybe on some level, he had always known. You wanted me to be worse than you...so you could look down on me.
So you could feel better about yourself.
Things took a turn for the worse when Adam eventually caught up to him. Eric had started having more problems in art school than he cared to admit. He was much happier to pretend his laziness was at fault than confess that he was having trouble. Again he fell into his habits of diving headfirst into mediocrity, rather than attempting to climb to the stars.
When Adam arrived at art school, a year later, and suffered even worse setbacks...it was like a gift delivered from on high. While Eric might be struggling, at least he wasn't drowning. Had the situation stayed that way, everything probably would've been fine.
Except Adam refused to stay down.
He barely had the money to live, and his late start caused him to fall behind in every class. Time and time again, his circumstances brought him suffering – the kind that would have broken most others.
Yet whenever he sat down and began to paint, no one could deny the pure, uninhibited joy that shone through every stroke of his brush.
Oh, Eric...you hated that I still loved art at that point, didn't you? That I still dedicated every second of my free time to getting better, no matter how stupid I looked. That I was still aiming for the same top you spurned.
Although that alone wouldn't have been enough to earn the Gryphon's ire. Ambition is the most common trait shared by artists – second only to debt. Determination was hardly Adam's greatest sin.
His greatest sin, of course, was that he was far, far less talented than Eric.
"If I were a genius, the kind of guy that always looks cool even when it's his first time trying something...maybe you wouldn't have cared as much. But you also knew that I didn't have any talent to speak of. It would've fucking sucked if I of all people ended up being more successful than you, right?"
Eric was more than just afraid – he was terrified of failure. His genius could have invented mankind's first fire, yet his ego feared being burned too much to attempt it. Rather than bathe in glory, he preferred to sip at what-ifs. Why risk that rejection, that feeling of defeat, when he could settle for mediocrity and claim that he totally would've enshrined himself in the annals of history if he had just bothered to try?
But then...
But then Adam dared to reach past him.
Adam, whose inferiority had fed Eric's sense of self for so long. Adam, whose home life barely allowed him the opportunity to try in the first place. Adam, with his paltry talent, who was now working desperately and more capably by the day.
Eric had been born with a ladder that stretched to the heavens of victory. Climbing it would've been risky, but he still had the chance to do so. Adam was born with no such tool. Instead, he slowly, painfully constructed his path by piling up his mistakes one atop the other.
That was just the problem, wasn't it?
Eric was fine with staying where he was. But if Adam were to reach past, well...then he would have to give chase.
He couldn't justify his fragile ego if the person who he'd looked down on – the person who they both knew was much less talented than him – ended up standing taller in the end.
"You didn't give a shit about the prize," Adam muttered. "You stole my painting because you didn't want me to win."
There was another long, harrowing silence.
"It's all your goddamn fault," Eric grunted, his fists trembling. "If you had just stayed in your fucking lane, then–"
"I couldn't...I could never–"
Adam's protest was cut short by a violent spasming inside of his chest. He was on death's door now, the agony in his body surging up, pushing him to take a long, long rest.
NO. I WILL SEE THIS THROUGH! "I could never have done that," Adam declared. "Talent, genius – all that bullshit can go to hell for all I care!"
There wasn't an ounce of hesitation in his voice as he locked eyes with Eric. "I REFUSE TO SETTLE FOR BEING ANYTHING LESS THAN THE BEST!"
Eric spat on him. "Why? You a masochist?" he cried out. "Is this shit really worth it, man? Even if you have to suffer – even if you have to look like that?"
A faint, broken, mocking laugh escaped past Adam's bloodied lips. "Yes. Even if I end up like this." His torn muscles and failing organs burned. "Even if I lose to you a thousand times..." Every contest, from their childhood art to their recent Realm Clash, flashed through his mind. "Even if I...have to crawl in the mud..." He felt his body convulsing, his knees and elbows sinking deeper into the dirt–
Before rising once more. "I'll still come back and beat you."
"There's no coming back from this," Eric promised him, in a solemn tone. "Only one of us is walking away today."
"Yeah," Adam whispered. "On that, we agree."
Memories, souls, hopes – they all mixed into one dying surge of energy, empowering Adam's final attack...if it could be called as such. He threw his weight to the side and allowed his body to collapse in earnest, laying down right next to where he'd been crawling.
Right next to what he'd been protecting underneath.
"Adam, did you–" Eric's last words started.
Adam wished that his drawings were sharper. He wished that he could've inked the aching in his chest with greater finesse, that he could've done more justice to his tears and anger. But art – he had once heard, and now knew – was more than just a product of skill.
Art was about conveying emotions. And in this moment, he was both baring the canvas of his soul...and using it as a weapon.
It began within his mind, when the words came to him–
You cared for me in days gone by,
Yet fear was in your every sigh.
You helped me when I stood alone,
Without you, I'd have never grown.
I loved you once, I hate you now,
I wish that time would shift somehow.
But lines you crossed, they stay the same,
I'll think of you without your name.
Though never shall I grant you grace,
You're but a shadow, not a face.
–And it ended on the ground, where his words took form.
Beneath where Adam had previously been holding himself up, where the blood from his injuries had pooled and gathered...was a trail of Stained Ink. Adam's Canvas was already stained; he couldn't summon Realms, heal his wounds, or convert much blood. Instead, he had focused on using the space hidden under his body for one purpose:
To paint the ground in his own Inked blood.
And on that near-abstract portrait were two joint lines that shot upward, side by side...until one of them stopped suddenly, and the other continued on down its unknown path.
His eyes were gazing deep into Eric's the exact moment it all ended. Everything seemed to happen so quickly. In the blink of an eye, a now-familiar flickering line of blue, electric light had formed between the art and the Gryphon.
There was so much more Adam wanted to say. So many things stuck in his throat.
Even so, he managed to force out two short sentences. Two sentences that encapsulated the sum of his feelings – and at the same time, couldn't come close to expressing everything in his heart.
They were the title of his painting.
"Thank you, my best friend.
Farewell, my worst enemy."