Joy’s day started perfectly normal. He woke up in a chipper mood, ready to greet the dreary, gray sky that never let the sunlight shine on them. He walked around the camp, helping serve some of the meals. It was a disgusting sort of gray gruel, but it had a beautiful synchronicity with their surroundings that Joy touted to anyone who regretfully took a bowl from him.
These meals were nothing like the meals given by the chef back at home base. But she was needed there, for some reason, even though nearly everyone had complained to the prince and his underlings about the supply of food. Joy suspected that she was in charge of the whole expedition since it could never run without her. That was aside the point though, people complained about the food, but they still ate grumpily.
After that, he even helped some of the washers clean up the massive cauldrons they used for the gruel. He had been kicked out after a few minutes, since the work done by a single person with a water gift outclassed him and his sudsy hands easily. But the sentiment stood, and everyone appreciated someone trying to help a bit.
Next, Joy picked up his trusty shovel. It was exactly like all the others; Joy assumed that someone had some sort of shovel-based gift since all the shovels were identical. It seemed like a useless gift, however the prince somehow thought ahead and made sure to bring them with him on this journey.
Despite the identicalness of the shovels Joy always knew which one was his, he could feel the soul of the shovel, yearning to dig, and he let that desire drive him forward in his daily shoveling.
Joy then galivanted through the tunnels that were the progress of days of work. They were surprisingly well furnished, with supports and beams of ice holding up the ceiling. Since the material was so soft, it became quite challenging to keep the tunnels open through the weather. Even the prince had not expected it to be such a problem and had not hired someone with the perfect gift to curtail this dilemma.
The whole situation had been a fascinating reminder of how well Prince David had planned this out. Nearly every obstacle had been sidestepped from his preparations, and it showed he wasn’t pulling these people with niche gifts that solved his every problem out of nowhere.
But a solution eventually came after many of the earlier structures had collapsed and everyone had to start over again.
Anyone who had a gift centered on creation would make the ceiling and supports of certain tunnels. Theo had been taken off digging duty and usually spent his time making roofing and supports for the tunnels.
It made for an odd assortment of tunnels, a person could walk down the beautiful halls of ice that Theo made, and immediately turn into a shovel canopy, or just hunks of metal, or weird frozen plants, or any other assortment of odd things.
The whole experience was quite terrifying for most people, being surrounded by an assortment of odd items holding an immense weight of snow above their heads.
Joy loved the shovel tunnel though. Whoever it was who made Joy’s trusty shovel seemed capable of making different sized shovels, even creating a massive singular shovel that acted as the ceiling of one massive cavern, with a few load bearing shovels propping it up.
It was so whimsical. Compared to the whole somber nature of the expedition, it was invigorating to step into such a goofy spectacle. It was a perfect example of how insane some gifts could be used, but Joy mostly just liked how the ambient light reflected off the heads of the shovels.
Inside the cavern there was a woman Joy did not recognize. It was quite remarkable that Joy perceived that he didn’t recognize her. Everyone wore so many layers that distinguishing people was nearly impossible. Yet, Joy somehow knew that this woman was not someone he had met before.
He felt it was the way she held herself with a scrunched back. Her seemingly normal pose was cowering in fear. Joy had met quite a few eccentric individuals during the span of the journey, but not one of them was as cowed as this poor woman. She looked ready to bolt at the first sign of danger.
So, when Joy waved and walked up to her jovially, she started shivering.
“Who are you? I’m Joy, and I am not sure how we have not met yet.”
With a poof of smoke, the woman disappeared.
Joy looked at the spot where she had been in confusion, he wasn’t quite sure how he had scared her off, but maybe that was why he had never met her before.
Every trace of the woman was completely gone though. Where her feet had been, was a slight indentation of where her weight had rested upon the crunchy surface.
Could she teleport? Either that or she could make herself invisible and weightless. Well, with the myriad of gifts it could’ve been anything, but Joy felt that teleporting was the coolest answer to the conundrum of where the woman went.
Joy shrugged. He wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but he wished that this person would teleport him around. The long treks through the snow were so very enjoyable, but he would’ve loved to hitch a ride with whoever this was.
So, Joy decided to play hooky. It wasn’t like his work with a shovel was so revolutionary, it was just another body in a sea of adequate shoveling skills. No one would miss him for a single day.
He paced around the shovel cavern, waiting for the enigmatic figure to reappear. Honestly, him staying in the same cavern was fraught with assumptions. He was assuming that she would return to the same place, and that she wouldn’t just teleport somewhere new.
But Joy could feel it in his bones. The woman was coming back to this space, and he just needed to wait for her.
Joy had always known he was lucky. He hadn’t been blessed by Luck way back during his karmic bestowment, when he was given his gift. But Joy had always felt that everyone had luck in their bones. He was especially lucky to have never broken a bone. As soon as a bone is broken luck will start to seep out of a person.
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So, Joy trusted his gut and his luck and waited in the same spot for the woman to reappear.
A few people passed him in the cavern, a few shovelers, and a few reinforcers. But no one bothered Joy because he simply made it seem like he belonged. No one wants to question anyone else, especially if the whole situation is awkward. Therefore, Joy was left alone to his waiting.
Finally, after Joy had waited the entire day and even skipped dinner to wait for this person, she reappeared.
Joy heard a soft crunch as a pair of feet magically reappeared over the divots in the snow, she had made earlier that day.
“Aha! Who are you? I’m Joy nice to meet you.” The woman let out a soft shriek as she saw Joy still standing in the cavern.
“Why’re you still here?” She said in a meek and exasperated voice.
“Because I wanted to meet you, teleporter lady.”
“Why am I so unlucky?”
After her declaration the woman disappeared for a brief moment. Then reappeared with two monsters.
Joy had encountered these sorts of monsters two times in his life by now. The night of the untimely demise of Robin Red was quite a memorable one, filled with the power of these monsters and their cunning. However, he had also seen these sorts of monsters doing menial labor for the small community of native people he had found earlier on this very expedition.
He had known something was up after he had visited the community, but now he was faced with the truth. The natives were somehow linked to this warlord that the prince was going to fight over the kingmaker with. At this point, Joy felt it was fairly obvious that this lady was not part of the prince’s forces, and there were only three types of people on this forsaken continent: the prince’s people, the freer men, and the natives. She used a gift, so she wasn’t a freer man, leaving only one option left.
The two monsters began charging, the woman disappeared, and Joy struck a pose. He spread his arms with a sad little smile and asked to his mindless audience, “Do you want to play a game?”
A voice resounded in two heads. Joy heard it, and the teleporter woman heard it despite the distance between herself and the beginning of the game. It said in an androgynous voice, with a little bit of attitude, “snowball fight. Do any of you need the rules explained to you?”
The two monsters kept mindlessly charging toward him, their bulky bodies causing small cascades of snow to slough off the ceiling.
Joy squatted down and grabbed a handful of snow, spending the time and effort to craft a spherical ball of snow. Then he made another.
With two balls in his hands, he turned to face the oncoming threats. Both were bulky targets; one was in the shape of a dog-like being. It had two mouths, neither quite where one would expect them to be. And the other looked more like a fish that had grown a pair of human legs and some razor-sharp teeth.
Throwing is an art. There are so many different types of throws with varying usages and needs. First there are speedy throws, only the true elites of specific sports and talented people can truly aim these sorts of throws. They leave the hand with a scream and tear their way across a field with reckless abandon. In opposition, there are the lobs, one where the thrower simply lets gravity do the work for them. The ball goes up, and glides down. Spinning throws add a layer of complexity and make the impact much more devastating.
None of these thoughts went through Joy’s head, since he barely had to aim. The two monsters were nearly on top of him. The snowball in his left hand impacted the creature and illogically sent it flying across the cavern. The snowball in his right hand impacted the second creature with less of a throw, and more of a smush. The second creature also was sent flying from the weak impact.
Both large impacts caused the shovel ceiling to quake precariously. Joy righted himself before looking fearfully at the massive shovel that held an unfathomable amount of snow.
At that moment the woman reappeared back in the same spot, with two new creatures in tow. These two were more humanoid than the last pair, but one had scissors for hands, while the other was very short and bald.
The woman didn’t even pause to look at the scene, she just disappeared again, leaving Joy with two new problems.
Joy decided that he needed to get his hustle on at that moment. The woman seemed inclined to continue bringing more of these monsters into his little cavern, and he only had so many snowballs to throw at them.
As his hands shook, he made more snowballs. At the same time, he walked slowly backwards out of the cavern. He held onto his balls as long as possible, waiting for the new monsters to catch up to him before losing another set of balls.
Again, they were inexplicably flung back much further than his weak throw would have normally allowed. But with four monsters now in the cavern, his throw only gave a slight reprieve as the fishy monster and the dog monster were now closing the distance to Joy again.
But Joy felt that the cavern’s stability was getting rather precarious. Little bits of snow had fallen after the impacts of the two monsters had rocked the whole structure. He only needed another couple good strikes before the whole thing would collapse. Hopefully without him in it.
Joy had never been much of an elaborate plan person though. So, he just kept backing up, making snowballs, then chucking them at the monsters who got too close.
The shaking only got worse as more and more impacts caused debris to fall and the structural integrity of the cavern slowly degraded.
The woman reappeared with another set of monsters in tow. At this point Joy was quite cross with this woman. She was just causing him endless work and making him ruin his favorite passageway in their entire excavation.
So, he threw a snowball at her. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the vicious battle going on between Joy and the monsters between her jumps. Thus, she wasn’t all that worried by a single thrown snowball. She scoffed at the thing, and in a stroke of luck for Joy, but a foolish moment of arrogance for the woman, she let the snowball clip her.
She went flying. An incredible amount of force was magically transferred into her and before she could even scream in surprise, she hit the far wall.
Joy snickered at her predicament, before realizing he needed to book it. That final hit had been the last straw. The shovel cavern simply couldn’t keep up with the impacts.
Joy’s legs nearly flew as he escaped. Slipping meant a nearly certain demise, as his gift was not particularly geared towards being crushed by a massive amount of snow. So, he kept the pace as moderate as he possibly could. It looked like he was speed-walking his way out of the cavern.
But his heroic exit was met with a shrill cry from inside the cavern.
“Shiiiii…!” The voice abruptly cut off, as if the person making the noise had stopped existing in that space.
How convenient, that they could just leave behind this problem to Joy. Now he had to waddle at an ample speed to escape the collapsing cavern while the lady just got to disappear, it didn’t feel quite fair.
With one final push, Joy leapt out of the collapsing area. The snow crushed the space he had just occupied as well as a few of the scary monsters that had been hot on Joy’s tail.
A whoomph travelled throughout the hollowed-out corridors and Joy let out a sigh of relief. He figured that he didn’t have to worry about the rest of the cave system collapsing; there was no evidence contained in that thought, just a can-do attitude and a healthy dose of optimism.
But good work begets more good work and Joy knew that he wouldn’t be able to just skedaddle his way out of it this time. He was going to have to give a full debriefing to the prince about what had gone down here in the cavern, as well as giving a full cost benefit analysis about why it was worth it to have collapsed the tunnel.
Maybe he should just lie and say that the woman’s gift had been location based and that he collapsed the cavern to remove the threat of her teleporting enemies directly into their base. That sounded intelligent.
Joy kept thinking to himself as he trudged down the corridor, no shovel in his hand. It laid forgotten underneath the layers of snow. Hopefully it would forgive him as he left with more important things on his mind.