Joy felt the ground shake as he entered the castle. The roar of the crowd surged around him as they all charged forward. Feet crashed into stone or crunched on snow as they all started the invasion.
That was when the attacks started.
Joy wasn’t truly a powerful combatant. He knew he had some unique abilities and fantastic luck, but when it came to warfare, he knew he was out of his depth. This was not little individual battle pockets. It was mayhem, and Joy leaned on his luck to get him out of the scuffle.
Waves of fire engulfed a layer of the prince’s charging forces, but it all swirled and was eaten by a woman who let out a small belch and puked out some smoke that obscured the enemies’ vision.
The snow started forming golems under their feet. And Joy jumped to the side to avoid a menacing snowman that was rising out of a nearby snowbank. Someone else kicked the ground and tens of small golems made of stone started engaging the snow golems. Snow crunched and stone cracked as the white and brown forms collided, leaving nothing but dust and a dusting of snow.
A wave of monsters stood in front of the prince’s army. They were a beautiful mass of flesh and tentacles, made of an inky blackness that exuded a terrifying aura. Ian stood proudly in front of the mass of flesh; he positioned his sword to the side of his body. All the tension left his body for an instant, for one moment it was like a puppeteer had cut all the strings holding his puppet and Ian started to crash down towards the earth. Then in a flash Ian drew his blade and the mass of monsters was bisected. The top halves were separated from the bottom halves and a crack like thunder filled the room. Their inky black blood started pooling on the floor as the chaos continued to rage on.
The Freer Men in their black garb swarmed enemy combatants. Blades flashed, arrows were released, and punches thrown to incapacitate anyone who even looked in their direction. They moved with a suicidal fervor that was unmatched, every single one of the Freer Men were willing to lay down their life so that the collective could gain a single inch on their attackers.
Joy found the movement and skill of the Freer Men enchanting, while also being horrifying. They were the section that had taken the most injuries so far, and simultaneously refused to receive any gifted healing.
But none of that was Joy’s problem. He wanted to loot this castle rather than deal with a hectic violent battle.
Joy stopped for a moment as the battle raged. Someone behind him cursed up a storm, talking about someone’s balls and the undersized member to go with it before moving around him. He took a deep breath in and let his luck pull him.
He was ultimately the master of his destiny, but luck, with a lower-case l, had never failed Joy before.
On the edge of the room was a small doorway. Everyone was battling each other, trying to reach a set of massive double doors, but Joy took off towards the small unassuming door.
Behind him, Joy heard the two yelps of his two friends trying to follow him. But he was ducking and dodging through the vicious melee in a manner that seemed impossible to copy.
After jumping over one final snow golem that had been hiding in the banks of snow, Joy looked behind himself to observe the battle one last time. The prince himself was at the forefront fighting some native of the continent who had some gift from Strength or Power.
The prince’s form was elusive and mesmerizing. He moved like an illusion, always one step ahead of his enemy. Quick and calculated strikes mercilessly landed on vulnerable joints, eyes, and the crotch. The big man seemed close to tears as he wildly swung at the prince. With one final kick to the man’s temple, the prince moved on.
Prince David was not the most powerful person on the battlefield, he was limited to his personal skill and weapons, unlike the powerful gifts being thrown around. But he was always where they needed the help the most. Wherever a battle was going poorly, the prince would move over to them and provide the little extra guidance and help they needed to overcome their failures. It was a true display of leadership and skill that Joy was in awe of.
But Joy had places to be and things to do. So, he entered the small door and left his friends, comrades, and leader behind. His luck drew him there, but still it was a bit of a dick move.
Joy saw that the doorway led into a small dark hallway that went on for ages. The color scheme must have been beautiful at some point in time, but age had rendered all the colors mute.
There were a few branching pathways, but Joy always ended up choosing to go along with the muted hallway. It was frighteningly quiet in the hallway. He had expected heavy resistance or more of those inky black monsters to bump into him as he invaded the castle. But none of those things happened, instead he followed the path.
Eventually Joy stopped in front of one unassuming door. It was small and made of some wood Joy had never seen before. Either it was made by a gift, or an extinct species of tree that had only existed on the Frozen continent. Either way, Joy was going to take this door.
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But out of good courtesy Joy made sure to knock on the door one time before yanking the hinges off. He didn’t want to frighten anybody in the room too much once he had taken the door.
Joy took a deep breath, then yanked the door off its aging hinges. The whole thing creaked and moaned as it was shorn off the wall, however it came off without too much work from Joy.
A satisfied smile crept across Joy’s face as he examined his new prize. It really was a beautiful door, and he just knew that he was going to find the perfect place for it in his abode.
A small shriek tore through Joy’s reverie. Inside the room sat a boy with the palest skin that Joy had ever seen. He was small and thin, each of his ribs were visible through his skin. At that moment the boy, who couldn’t have been more than fourteen, had his shirt off and there were two standout features on his skin. Black inky chains surrounded his entire body like some of the other natives of the Frozen continent.
But the more interesting feature of the two were the scars on the boy’s back. They were intricate and horrifyingly beautiful, but more importantly they spelled out some sort of message.
On the boy’s back it read, “you are not forgiven, but you will be forgotten.” Shimmering blood seemed to ooze out of the words as Joy read them, but Joy was surprisingly unbothered. It was freaky, but he mostly worried about the mental health of the boy who had that written on his back; it seemed rather unhealthy.
“I’m taking this door. And you should have a doctor, or someone with a healing gift look at your back, that looks nasty.” Joy said as he fumbled with the door, trying to hold it as comfortably as possible before running.
“Huh, what? You read the words?” The boy recoiled, looking fearfully around the room. He shook a little bit as he watched, but nothing happened. Instead, he just stayed there looking shocked as Joy started running back down the hall with his new door clutched in his arms.
The odd event had already left Joy’s mind as he ran back through the oppressive hallways and reached the first door he had entered.
Joy wondered why his luck had pulled him to this door, of course he loved the new door he was holding and would cherish it, but normally his luck took him to places of importance, not just on flights of whimsy.
Well, it wasn’t really his problem, he was going to take his new door on a test drive. In the big room, he remembered that he had stumbled over a small snowbank to get to the door, and he was hoping that the people with fire gifts hadn’t melted the pile already.
Joy barreled through the door, plowing through the unfortunate man who had been standing nearby the door. Then he put his beautiful perfect door to the snowy floor, placed his body on it in a beautiful dive, and let the momentum carry him.
He started sledding himself across the room.
The door was beautiful, a true masterwork done in centuries gone by. However, it had not been made for the express purpose of sledding. In truth, it had been made to create little places of privacy within a large open castle and Joy using it as a sled was akin to using an artist’s masterpiece as a bowl for porridge.
But Joy felt the artisan must be long dead and couldn’t be bothered to care about his beautiful door in whatever place the soul goes after one dies.
So, Joy continued his tobogganing crusade through the knees of his enemies. No one was expecting the frontal assault from down low, and Joy clubbed groins and smashed shins as he skidded through the castle’s large entrance.
After several enemies had met the mean end of Joy’s door, the momentum started petering out. His wild ride turned into a luxurious crawl, and he stopped soon after. Joy was rather disappointed at how short lived his joy ride had been, but he figured he could just run back to the doorway he had started from and start again.
Joy picked up his door and waddled back up to where he had started, making sure to give all the foes he had felled on his way down a good thwack on the head. No one enjoyed the corner of the door smashing into their temple, and Joy did feel a bit bad, but hopefully they would stay down.
The ride continued. Joy would slide down the small incline on his little door, taking out any enemies that dared to stand in his way, then climb back to the top of the hill. It was an endless cycle, which only improved when the enemies realized that if they just stayed out of Joy’s way, he wouldn’t hit them.
But all fun eventually comes to an end, and the battle finished with the remaining inky monsters as well as the natives retreating behind the giant double doors near the end of the hall, then having someone collapse the passageway.
The halls filled with snow and the air filled with sighs. Everyone knew that the hallways filled with snow were not going to excavate themselves, and it would be them doing all that work. One by one, they filed up to Herbert, the man with who made their shovels, and started digging.
Herbert gave Joy a quick grin as he slid him a shovel. Herbert muttered something about, “good sledding and clobbering,” before wandering off to give out more shovels to the needy.
No one even chastised Joy for leaving in the middle of a heated battle. Lillian and Theo each gave him a good thwack over the head for leaving them behind. But neither Ian nor the prince came over to give Joy a stern lecture. Joy created an equilibrium of being useful and useless that truly kept all his masters at bay.
A small sigh did escape Joy’s lips as he started toiling away at the rubble and snow. Despite the brief moments of intrigue and danger, this entire adventure had seemed like more of a test of his patience. Such a boring task, digging away at snow for days on end, but he was getting paid well for it. Probably, now that he thought about it, he had never actually discussed his payment with the prince. A problem for future Joy.
Joy started singing a small song about the unpleasant nature of the god Lust, and some of their more sensitive stories. The tune was filthy and deranged, the rhyming scheme was nearly impossible to keep up with, and yet, little by little, person by person, the song moved from mouth to mouth and ear to ear. Shovels started moving in time to the song and every person hummed to themselves to some degree. Everyone except the prince and Ian, who both looked mildly amused and annoyed at the antics of their group.
No one had died, or even been injured in this battle, except for the Freer Men. The prince’s medical team, whose gifts could save anyone from anything short of death, had just stood around picking their nails during the entire battle. It had been an ideal victory, and everyone’s mood was rather joyous as the rubble was moved little by little. Small smiles and little laughs filled the cave.
Joy hoped this trend would continue; happiness lets kinder people flourish, while suffering forges them into something colder. Joy wanted more kindness in this cold place, so he kept digging through the ice, hoping for some more warmth.