Joy had been having a rough time recently. Getting into a fight with a super powerful Fire gifted ended up giving him quite a few burns. It had been a miserably difficult game to play, evading all her attacks while also juggling the potato back and forth with Lillian.

After they had finally struck the decisive blow, Joy had been hit with the blast from his own throw, which sucked big time. And he hurt.

His eyes felt like they were going to throw themselves out of his head, while simultaneously his ears were ringing in a monotone symphony.

The worst part was his face though. He could feel that he had been burnt. His beautiful face, which brought so much happiness to everyone around him, was going to have blisters and be lobster red for weeks. It was a travesty to the world itself.

He laid on the ground, sitting with his pain and misery, waiting for the battle to end and one of the healers to come and fix him right up.

It was times like this where he missed the village healer back from his home. She was somehow always wherever she was needed. He remembered the times she had saved his life, and wondered what she would think of him here and now. Everyone back in his village, he wondered what they thought of him.

They would probably think he was stupid for punching above his weight class and tell him that he should’ve been content back on his father’s farm. ‘No one gets hurt out here in the backwaters of the kingdom,’ he could almost hear them say in his head.

But his inner reverie was rudely interrupted as all the random statues in the room exploded.

Joy had never been a real pyromaniac. A few of the older kids had gotten gifts from Fire in his little village and they had been his only true experience with fire.

There had been a whole crew of them that had wandered around the village, wearing lots of leather and lighting some random trees on fire.

He had thought they were so cool, and he had tried to join their little posse. But apparently, they had no use for little kids who didn’t know shit. He had only cried a little bit, and his mom had made him some amazing cookies to make him feel better.

Unfortunately, this explosion was of a caliber that was far beyond anything the little crew back in his hometown had ever made. And there were no cookies to make him feel better.

The initial wave of force blasted him away from Theo and Lillian. He was somewhat grateful to Fate or Luck since Theo and Lillian seemed safe. The massive wall that Theo had erected earlier would shield them from the brunt of the explosions.

Joy felt his body start to burn as he was carried through the room. The heat was abysmally hot, and the pain was excruciating. Joy was intrigued by this intensity of the pain he felt. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. His body was breaking apart and his flesh was melting, but it was oddly meditative.

Joy had never felt what death felt like before and it was a new experience. Enjoyable wasn’t the right word, but it was certainly new.

Happenstance and luck.

Those were the forces of Joy’s life. All life is incidental, a cosmic accumulation of probability and chance. But his life, Joy’s, had always seemed to work out. He was the beloved of the world. It loved him for the way that he loved it.

The explosions initially sent him flying towards the corpses of the inky monsters. The corpses themselves were not completely still during this explosion. They also were picked up and thrown around the room. Joy collided with one monster, then the next, his body cascading from one to the next. Bouncing back and forth in an unseen game of cosmic corpse tennis.

His trajectory was slightly altered by every strike, until his course put him into a place of safety.

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What was left of Joy landed in a spot where the explosions could not touch. He landed right behind the old sword master Ian.

Ian’s blade was drawn out of its scabbard, and he was doing the slowest cut Joy had ever seen. But the flames, the force, the very essence of the explosion was held at bay by his singular strike.

The red was split by his blade, the force, the heat. It all parted around Ian and the few people close to him.

Joy wondered if any of the healers had survived this explosion. If they had, he had a pretty good chance of surviving.

Then he passed out in a pool of his own yuck.

When Joy woke up, he realized two things. He had been healed and he was not in a comfortable little cot. They had rudely placed him on the floor of the cavern. Though, it was still warm from the explosion, and oddly comfortable. But it was more the sentiment that mattered, he wanted to be babied when he was near death, not treated like a ragdoll.

He peeled his eyes open to survey the carnage that had been brought upon them. Barely thirty people had survived this explosion. The lucky people and the people with defensive gifts were the only people to weather the onslaught.

Joy had known that death was a very real possibility on this adventure, but he had never been brought so close to it. Many of the nonessential crew were left behind in camps so they hopefully wouldn’t be gutted and forced to leave, but so many talented and strong people had perished in a moment.

It was all rather sobering.

People were milling around and grieving. Quite a few bodies were piled in the corners of the room, and people were paying respects to them. Wishing that Death granted them a reprieve from the pain of this life and that they could move on.

No one really worshipped Death in the ways that other gods were worshipped, but everyone respected them. Death was the end, and the end deserves respect, no matter what.

Joy wandered over to Lillian and Theo. They were sitting somberly in a corner. Theo looked like he was holding back some tears and Lillian looked on at the scene in a sort of detached horror.

Joy had been new to this whole gang. His galivanting made him forget that these people under the prince’s command all knew each other for years, they were a close-knit community that he was on the outskirts of. How could he understand his friends’ pain, how could he even console them?

Instead of getting hung up, Joy sat next to them and held their hands. A small gesture, but one that was appreciated, he felt. Lillian’s hand was limp and weak, so he provided support to her hand. Theo’s hand was shaky and gripped tightly, so Joy relaxed his own hand and let Theo squeeze as much as he needed.

Joy had learned that no one could give anyone else their answer to life. It was a deeply personal question, and that telling anyone else would ruin another’s understanding of the topic. So, he didn’t tell them about what life meant to him, about how he felt these lives weren’t meaningless, about the love he would show each of their memories. He let them come to those answers themselves, slowly.

Ian gathered the groups in mourning slowly. He was not a kind man, if anything Joy would call him callous. But he made sure to treat every grieving person with kindness and respect as he guided them towards the center of the destroyed room.

Ian looked deeply inn everyone’s eyes and said, “we lost the prince. There is no way we can go back to the mainland without him. The king would have a conniption if he found out that we lost his son, even though he isn’t the heir.”

He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, before continuing. “I cannot make you wade into these dangers with me, but we will need the extra manpower to save the fool. So, either leave now and help the cleanup crews we left behind or stand with me as we continue into this castle.”

“We will find the prince, and we will find his stupid treasure.” With that proclamation many of the grieving moved towards the exit. They wanted to leave, and Joy couldn’t blame them. They had all joined this adventure, enamored with the idea of exploring a new continent, and they had forgotten the mortality rate of these little expeditions. The reality had hit them here, so they left.

The ones who remained were a unique assortment. There were the people like Lillian, who felt so indebted to the prince, that they couldn’t imagine their lives without him. There were those who continued out of a need for revenge. There were those who stayed because they felt they could save more people in the coming battles. And then there was Joy.

Joy stayed because he wanted to see this story through until its end. He wasn’t some punk who would walk out of this just because it got hard. When the odds were stacked against him was when he did best. No one great gambler made their money without betting anything, and Joy was going to risk it all on this.

Ian looked at the motley crew who stayed and sighed. He was unimpressed, but this was going to have to do. Ian had a prince to save, and he needed help to do that.

]Everyone took one last look at the retreating forms of their friends and comrades who couldn’t do it. They were going to have to shoulder their burdens and carry on in this battle.

When the trickle of people leaving finally tapered off, Ian boldly started walking towards the other exit of the room.

The time for subterfuge and finesse was over, they had been doing it the prince’s and Sam’s way before. Now it was time for blood to be spilled, time for Bloody Ian to come back out to play.