When was splitting up ever a good idea?

Joy hadn’t really thought about how absolutely idiotic this plan had been when the remaining people were brainstorming. Ian had said that they needed to cover more ground, therefore they needed to split up and discover as much of the castle as possible.

The real problem was that they had left Joy all alone. He didn’t enjoy running around the creepy castle pretending like nothing was wrong. He enjoyed going on peaceful walks in the park, or gambling with idiots who had more money than sense.

This entire operation was out of his wheelhouse. He was not a man of subtlety and disguise; he was a character full of garishness and clowning. But he hadn’t disagreed with them at the time, so now he was stuck running around like an incompetent ninja.

He had enjoyed seeing Lillian perk up though, hopefully the new ice and fire themed powers would serve her well while she was off galivanting on her own. Joy had seen her go to sleep on purpose next to the healers and had been a little confused, since there was no way, she was going to really dream in that amount of time, but she somehow had. His guess was that her gift somehow allowed her to enter the dreamworld at will, but that it never explained it to her, and it happened within her subconscious rather than the outermost thoughts.

But that was all tentative guesswork, Joy assumed some real creative minds would enjoy picking apart Lillian’s gift in an intellectual sense. But he was more inclined to just enjoy the benefits of her sweet powers.

Joy had decided to try and go as high as possible in the snowed-in castle. He knew they were looking for the prince, and he knew that it was a real super villain move to kidnap royalty. So, the next logical step would be that the nefarious leader of this organization was hiding out in the top of a high tower, with a chilled glass of wine, overlooking the snowy expanse.

Joy so badly wanted an arch nemesis. His abilities and gift were so ill suited towards true hero on villain battles, but he was hoping that if he kept searching for enough time that someone would appear with the skills to oppose him, and his gaming might.

In his epic quest for a nemesis, he had started climbing as high as he could within the castle. It was hard to navigate through a castle, there were many collapsed sections filled with snow and other problems, but Joy simply let his luck and fate guide him throughout the empty halls.

There were various inky monsters plastered throughout the castle. They seemed to be keeping a watch out for intruders like Joy, but Joy found that there were distinct types. And he could play to each’s advantages and disadvantages.

The more human that a monster seemed, the more aware of its surroundings it seemed. This fact caused Joy to get into a scuffle or two with the monsters. None of them were particularly dangerous to Joy, but their eerie voices carried throughout the halls, causing other monsters to come and join in on the fun if Joy didn’t run away fast enough.

The more monstrous ones all could do a singular task but had trouble coming up with new solutions. They had obviously been ordered to keep watch of this area, but whoever oversaw their directions was not creative nor particularly intelligent. The monsters would “keep watch” but do nothing about his presence occasionally, they saw him and that was that.

But even the more creative and humanoid monsters seemed to lack a real situational awareness. None of them slacked off purposefully, but it seemed like their minds and hearts were elsewhere. This was true for all but one monster that Joy saw. It was the most distinctly humanoid monster and when it saw Joy it immediately closed the distance to him.

Instead of fingers the monster had long chains that dragged against the ground, sparks flying wherever the chains impacted the hard stone beneath the snow. Its body had real features and Joy could almost make out the face of the man underneath. He was heavyset and mean, his voice carried through the halls with a vicious echo rather than the faint squealing of the less human monsters.

The chains moved like snakes. They were uninhibited by gravity or any other fundamental forces, they seemed to wibble and wobble in the air without any sort of logic. Which made it really hard for Joy to dodge.

He dipped, ducked, and dived, but none of his slick moves could truly get him around the nefarious chains. They clipped his arms and legs, leaving nasty gashes across his body or tearing up his clothes. Joy couldn’t decide which one of them was worse; he loved this set of clothes.

The chains had been circling him for a while, and it had only been a matter of time before they truly wrapped him up. When one strand finally caught hold of his arm, it was all over. Once Joy’s movements were restricted, he was unable to dodge in the same elegant ways he had been doing.

More and more of the chains circled him, until he was balled up. He could feel that the edges of the chains were incredibly sharp, and that the monster was slowly cutting him by having the chains lovingly caress his body.

Joy was forced to call out his most powerful ability. He started a game.

“Would you like to play a game?” He asked hopefully.

Joy never liked to discuss the weaknesses of his abilities with anyone since it was a taboo in Vena Cava society, but his ability only worked against things that could play games. They needed to have a baseline intelligence that allowed them to understand what was happening. The playing field needed to be fair, and one side being unable to understand that game made the entire affair decidedly uneven.

The air seemed to shimmer for a moment, and the world seemed to pause for a second. Even Joy was frozen within the momentary pause in existence, it sounded like a lot of typing and angry shouting was happening all at once in this voided space and time. Two main voices seemed to be instigating the whole conflict, while two other voices were the moderators of the conflict.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

The two moderators were uniquely trying to keep a hold of the situation, one seemed to be inexorable, and their voice carried to the ends of time. They kept the situation from devolving from mere shouting. The other seemed to be slow and fast at the same time, that voice seemed more content to complain about how the other voices had pulled them out of a wonderful game of squash they were having.

Finally, the two contenders who were shouting the most had childlike voices, one petulant while the other was full of whimsy. No one was backing down, but the inexorable voice told them to, “shut up and make a deal, we don’t have ‘all’ the time in the world.”

After an eternity of back and forth the petulant childlike voice made a concession and the world started moving around Joy again.

Joy would never know what had transpired in the events where time was stopped, however an instinctive understanding came over him. There was a baseline level of intelligence that his ability could work on, and this inky monster was barely above that level.

The game kicked into gear and a voice emanated into Joy’s head saying, “staring contest. Do any of you need the rules explained to you?”

“No?” Joy said. It seemed too simple, but who cared really, Joy really needed some help to get out of this pickle.

Joy locked eyes with the shadowy monster as the chains slowly started ripping into his skin. He saw a shadowy tongue start to lick the lips of the monster in a truly gruesome way. It enjoyed his pain in a way that Joy felt was pervy, but it was a monster, so it probably wasn’t supposed to be cuddly and kind.

Blood was leaking out of the many small incisions that the chains had made, and unfortunately one of them was directly above Joy’s left eye. The blood started seeping down through his hair and pooled into his eye.

The pain was excruciating, but Joy never allowed himself to blink, even as he felt his eyes shrivel from being exposed to the cold air for far too long.

Joy took a moment to compose himself as he let the pain enter his body and soul. He reflected on this situation and asked himself a very important question. Had he ever seen one of these shadow monsters blink before?

He had always met them in the heat of battle, such a thing would go unnoticed, but looking at this monster in front of him, a sneaking suspicion bubbled up in his stomach. This dickhead didn’t need to blink.

New plans started forming in Joy’s mind as soon as he realized the harsh truth. It was a staring contest that ended when he blinked, but he could wink indefinitely. Normally Joy wouldn’t stoop to such low tactics, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

]The chains started cutting into Joy again as soon as he started his newly improved tactics in the staring contest, unfortunately there were bigger concerns for Joy than just losing the staring contest. This monster was going to bleed him dry if he didn’t get out of these chains quickly.

Joy knew he had only one weapon left in his arsenal. It was his most powerful and most deadly, he had never met a villain who it couldn’t vanquish.

Joy snorted in a loud and disgusting fashion, then launched the most rancid loogie he had ever looged.

It was the color of a swampy marsh, filled with snot that was a mixture of grey and sickly green. The glob arced in the air beautifully, a curve in the sky that slowly but inevitably landed directly on the inky monster’s face.

The monster may not have needed to blink, but it certainly was still human on some base level. Some of the instincts seemed to carry over, and it cringed away from the snotty disgusting thing.

The monster broke eye contact and rubbed the snot out of its eyes with its arm. Truly a disgusting gesture, but Joy was just glad that it had lost the game by looking away.

As soon as the monster had lost their little staring contest, the world had started to bend around Joy. He could feel his luck suddenly grow and permeate the world around him.

It felt like the world was his personal playground and he got to decide what to do with it.

So, Joy imagined the ceiling of the castle that was above the monster’s head collapsing. And it happened.

Winning the duel had given him nearly godlike luck for a brief moment. Anything he wanted to happen would happen during this miniscule stretch of time.

The monster let out a cry as the ceiling crashed into it. A squelch reverberated down the hall as the monster was squished. The shadowy chains loosened, and Joy started to remove himself from his bindings, carefully, to make sure he didn’t cut himself open on the sharp links in the chains.

The collapsed ceiling had created a slope upwards to the floor above. Joy shrugged his shoulders; he figured it was Fate giving him the path to what he wanted most. A true face off against his personal nemesis at the top of a snowy castle.

He scrambled his way up the hill in a truly unimpressive fashion. He looked something like a dog who couldn’t balance. But persistence won out in the end, and he stood atop the pile of snow and rubble that had created his walkway.

Joy was surrounded by tapestries and snow. A small hole in the roof had allowed snow to pile up in that one spot for centuries, and that had allowed Joy’s luck to pull the room down on the monster.

On one side of the room was a massive window of stained glass, it was a beautiful work of art that showed the ingenuity and skill of the people of this continent before disaster struck. Joy barely even glanced at it.

He was transfixed by a throne in the middle of the room. A person’s skeleton sat on the throne, covered in priceless gems and jewels. Gold seemed to be replacing the skin of the skeleton.

In one hand, the skeleton held a scepter of black glass. It was engraved with runes of power and the gems imbedded in the glass seemed to whisper secrets to Joy.

Joy walked over to the skeleton and slowly picked it up. Gently, the skeleton was raised out of the position it had held for centuries and put aside like a toy that a toddler had grown tired of.

Joy did make sure to treat the dead with respect, giving the skeleton a shallow grave in the snow near the throne with all its possessions.

But he brushed the accumulated dust and ickiness off the throne with one sleeve and sat down on the throne. Lounging like he was waiting for something.

Joy could feel it in his bones that this was the ultimate place for a confrontation with his nemesis. He could admit that lounging in the chair made him seem like the antagonist of this hypothetical nemesis fight, but he couldn’t help but bask in the melodrama. He was truly happy for a moment; he had found something so perfect for himself that he forgot the most important part of a nemesis fight.

He still didn’t have a nemesis.

Reality came crashing down on Joy as the terror of his situation sank in. He had found the ultimate spot for confrontation, the place where monologues would be shared between two opposing parties, the place where ideologies would clash. And yet he had no one to share it with.

Even if he waited until someone eventually came walking up those steps, it would just be some flunky. Not his enemy. Not his evil twin. Not his mirror image. Just some guy.

It broke Joy’s heart that he was unable to truly bask in the glory of this spot. He collapsed from the throne he was lounging on in grief. Tears streamed down his face, and he blubbered into the surrounding snow.

His arms wildly gesticulated to the Gods, in some feeble attempt for them to understand his pain.

His right hand slammed into the throne and a large stick magically popped out of the back of the throne.

It was not a fancy stick. The only notable thing about it was the ivy growing down the sides and a flower in full bloom at the top. Otherwise, it was a normal looking walking stick. Maybe a little tall, but a beautiful stick.

Immediately, Joy could tell that this stick was his prize. The Gods had seen his misfortune and given him this stick as repayment.

It fit his aesthetic perfectly.

He grabbed his stick, tears and melodrama now forgotten, as he started rolling down the hill of rubble and snow. Muffled giggles escaping his lips as he gained speed.