Joy finished crying first. He had not truly suffered the way the boy had, and the memory of a loving mother who would die for her child was not his. He held the boy in a bone crushing embrace for a while before asking the game room for two mirrors.

He set them up in another room and then patiently waited for the boy to finish his weeping.

When the boy had finally finished crying, and finally stepped forward, Joy directed him to the double mirror setup. Once he was between the mirrors the boy would finally read the words carved into his own back and his own sins would be released.

The boy sat down with his eyes closed, then finally read the words.

“You are not forgiven, but you will be forgotten.” The boy murmured as his eyes rolled back and a black fog started coming out of his mouth, coalescing into the shape of a woman.

Before Joy and the boy stood a thin and frail woman. Without having seen the boy’s memories Joy would never have known who she was. But now he knew.

The boy’s mother looked at him with cruelty and hate in her black eyes. There was rage and pain contained within her, and the boy started sobbing again.

The boy always could’ve done this to himself, he just didn’t want to. He did not want to see his own sins in the light of day. No one does.

He closed his eyes and stepped towards the shadowy figure, giving the shadow of the woman who loved him so much one final hug. Tears streamed down his face and hissed off the shadowy body of the woman, but he held her tight.

Finally, she poofed away. A great billowing black fog coming into existence where she had been. The fog swirled and came back into the boy, he swallowed all the self-loathing and sadness that the fog encapsulated, then burped.

He was not better, he was not magically cured of the trauma and sadness that had consumed his life for years, but he had taken the first steps.

The boy turned to Joy and asked, “do you remember the first question you ever asked me when we came to this place?”

“I asked what your name is.” Joy replied.

“I didn’t know then, but I do know now. I am forgiveness, I am a cool summer breeze, I am kind in the face of anger, my name is Hope.”

“That is a good name, Hope. But your whole speech leading up to it was a bit too hoity toity if you ask me.”

“Oh really? You’re one to talk.”

And like an old couple, Joy and Hope bickered back and forth for hours on end, appreciating the little time they had left in this haven. Because once they were done, Hope knew that he was going to have to run like Speed, to be able to get away from all of Joy’s friends.

As their time drew to a close, Joy held Hope in a final hug before snapping his fingers and turning both of them back into motes of light that moved faster than their brains could process, bringing them back to a battlefield that had been mostly sorted out.

___

The prince had been twirling his stick around, he knew that Joy had found it, but since Joy was being such a party-pooper, the prince felt that he was entitled to take his stick as compensation.

The enemies that had been captured were not as numerous as he had expected, and every time he turned his back, somehow more of them disappeared.

He just knew it was the teleporting lady, but he hadn’t been able to track her down. So, he calmed down and meditated by twirling his stick around.

He heard a shout of bewilderment coming from where he had been battling earlier, and he took off running. He could see faint motes of golden light coalescing in the area.

As the prince approached the two golden shapes shifted into human form. A young man and Joy came out. Joy was nearly unrecognizable; his hair was long and smelled faintly of lavender shampoo. He had braided it down his back and had a neatly trimmed beard that accentuated the sharp features of his face.

The young man was even more unrecognizable, and it took a few moments for the prince to realize that this was the chief that they had been fighting on this battlefield, the one who spoke of sins and other nonsense.

The young man had filled out. His gaunt form was now lean and muscled, his hair was trimmed and neat, he also smelled faintly of shampoo, which was a rarity here in the frozen lands. His skin was as pallid as ever, but he walked with his back straight and his head held high. He even wore some stylish clothes; when had these two fools gotten enough time to bathe themselves, grow their hair out, and get a wardrobe change? It was infuriating.

The prince watched as some started to fawn over Joy and others started to look menacingly towards the young man as they started to recognize who he was.

The entire scene culminated as Ian strode up to the two figures and brandished his sword towards the chief.

___

The crone kept whispering at Tera. The old woman had been a seer of the highest caliber at one point in time so Tera didn’t shake her off with too much vigor. Instead, she tried to gently carouse the old woman off her.

But the crone wouldn’t shut up about how the prince now held ‘the kingmaker.’ And how the ‘prophecy could now never be fulfilled,’ and that if they wanted to salvage this situation, they should all listen to her.

Tera had done enough listening by now. All she felt was a sickly remorse. When the old chief had been impeached, they all should’ve left these gods forsaken lands. The old chief had kept them here because he would rather live in misery as king of the hill rather than be a small man in a large pond.

Tera herself could’ve taken every single person out of these snowy lands.

But they had listened to this crone, and her talk of glory and uniting the world. Her people had died around her, and now all Tera could do is watch as a useless war had been fought and lost by her brother and sister tribesmen.

She watched and waited, hoping to find little openings to teleport her comrades out of their bindings. No one noticed an extra pebble on the ground, even if the pebble was intricated carved.

Then she saw the chief reappear in a mass of golden smoke. He looked older and more refined, he almost looked like a true leader of men.

The enemies slowly closed in around him, even as the man who had appeared at the same time in the cloud of golden light cried for them not to.

A severe man with a sword was about to cut off the chief’s head, when the world seemed to stop. A woman shrouded in blackness appeared from the chief’s breast. She unfolded like a demented piece of origami.

Nothing seemed to move as she appeared, then she opened her embrace. And all the attacks that were coming down towards the chief were absorbed into her. Even the severe man’s sword was not spared, getting pulled inexorably into her.

Next, the chief pointed disdainfully at the chains that their tribesmen had been put in, and they too were absorbed into the woman in black.

The chief thanked the woman and rushed towards the captured tribesman as she folded back into his chest.

Tera knew that this was her moment, she instantly teleported to the throng of captured people and the chief. Then she yelled at them to hold each other as she teleported the entire group away in a showing of true power.

Tera gasped on the floor with a smile on her face. She knew that some of her fellows had fallen in this meaningless battle, but she had saved the rest.

She had saved them.

She looked at the chief in his new fancy clothes as he sidled up to her gasping form.

“Thank you, Tera. You have done us all a great service.” His voice was melodic, and less tinny than it used to be. He had graduated to adulthood from his prepubescence.

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He addressed the crowd after that.

“My people, I am no longer your chief. I am now simply the man called Hope. You may follow me for as long as you wish, for these will be some trying times. But I have mistakes and sins to atone for. We are going to embark on the journey that we should have a very long time ago.”

The chief, no, Hope looked meaningfully at the old crone with her prophecies, then to Tera.

“Well, we will embark on it as soon as Tera takes a nap.”

Tera was asleep long before he got to the word nap, but she slept with a smile on her face. The family had a new direction, they were going to relocate to warmer climes.

___

King Renoir sat on his throne. Not the ostentatious one that he used to preside over the lords and ladies that thought themselves above him, but the simple one that the first ruler of this land had carved with her own two hands.

The wood hurt his back, but none of his predecessors had ever caved into their base urges and placed a pillow on the seat, and by the gods neither would he.

He sat there contemplating his children. He wished that it didn’t have to be such a painful way of life for them, but kingship was not a task for the weak. He had placed the two of them in competition with the other as early as he could, and Fate had decided the winner of that match early, but he was willing to give his weak son a chance at the throne.

The day his son, David, had walked into the throne room with tears streaming down his face on the morning of his thirteenth birthday the king had known that the boy could never rule. But he would serve as an excellent whetstone for Dahlia. He was sharp and intelligent, conniving and crafty, but she had power. So, the king dearly hoped that she would inherit those gifts from him as the two of them battled over the throne.

The king’s reverie was broken when one of his most trusted advisors burst into the room.

Philip Pen was a unique individual that the king truly adored. The man looked like a wizard of the first age. His eyebrows were long and white, hanging all the way down his face. He had a truly massive fluffy beard, and he always wore blue robes covered with star motifs. To go with the ensemble, he even had a pointy hat.

He had been a scholar of renown for many years, and his acclaim brought him to the king’s attention. And his gift had secured him a place in the king’s court.

Philip Pen could only write the truth.

If he ever wrote a lie, the pen and the paper he used to write it would burst into flames, with the severity of those flames being determined by the intensity of the untruth.

When the king’s children had left on their journeys, he had Philip check in on their progress quite frequently. Of course, each of them had their own ways of keeping their poor old father updated, but he could check in on their progress quite easily with Philip.

He simply had the man write two phrases every day.

‘The prince David has accomplished his goals in the Frozen continent.’

‘The princess Dahlia has accomplished her goals in the Fractured continent.’

The prices of keeping that Hair gifted and Health gifted were well within the bounds of the king’s personal expenditures, and those two were able to keep Philip from blowing his face off every time that the sentences turn out incorrect.

The important thing about Philip Pen’s entrance today was that there was no scent of smoke wafting off him, and neither were there blotches of fresh skin on his face, the telltale sign of a healing.

All this could only mean one thing. The king smiled at his advisor, asking a silent question.

Philip nervously fiddled with his eyebrow hairs as he said, “yes, they have both succeeded today at the same time.”

He took a short pause to look the king in the eye before continuing.

“Can I stop trying to be your personal oracle now, Renoir?”

The king grinned at the man. Seers were getting less and less consistent these days, the gods had grown bored of giving gifts that truly gave the second sight. But Philip Pen was always right, so he was Renoir’s little oracle. And would continue to be.

But he thought of his children returning from their voyages. Both having acquired separate scepters of power.

“Well, this is certainly going to be exciting.”

With a shout he called out to the entirety of his personal retinue, “people, the time has finally come! The war for succession will start in earnest, this kingdom only needs one ruler, and we are the ones who guide the way. Just as the previous queen did for me, we will prepare the way for the two of my children to duke it out!”

A chuckle went through some of his advisors at that, they remembered the last war, and they remembered the bloody sieges and political undermining. It was a truly comprehensive war between intelligent combatants that only left one survivor. There would be assassinations, there would be public dueling, there would even be espionage and seductions.

The next ruler of the Hearted Continent was going to be decided soon, and the battle would begin as soon as both ships had returned from their voyages.

___

Fate was a happy god.

Well, normally Fate was miserable. In the beginning those two wretches of gods had said such convincing things about “needing to keep the balance of the gods’ game” and how the three of them would “preside over the whole of reality.”

In actuality, Death and Game had screwed off at the first possible moment and left Fate with all the paperwork. It apparently took vast amounts of time and effort to assign gifts to all of humanity and keep the gods in line. But neither of those two chuckleheads wanted to do it, so they had fooled Fate into being their workhorse.

But today, Fate knew that they were almost free.

Fate had realized the true point of this game that Game had created.

It was never supposed to end.

The gods would continue bickering and paying along with this game for all of eternity. Because when Game had the humans created, they were all so varied and horrifyingly different that none of the gods could ever hope to achieve the win conditions of the game.

There was no way for humanity to truly rally behind one god, none of the gods could get all of humanity to worship them. There would always be dissenters, there would always be contrarians that fought against the common will.

And Fate may have been okay with this, if they weren’t the one doing all the fucking work.

So, for eons, Fate had planted seeds in the background of reality. Sowing their influence into the world, abusing the privileges that they gained with their administrator access.

It was their masterplan to end this farce of a game and release Fate from their bonds of the godly bureaucracy.

Those seeds had finally matured into a strong tree; a tree that would stand up and free Fate from their shackles. Fate could admit that the analogy needed some work, but that was okay, because it was true.

Fate had touched the strings that presided over the overarching concept of karma and created the kingmaker, a powerful artifact that would enhance the gift of the user to an inane degree. They had manipulated Water into cursing the continent where the kingmaker lay, creating a barren wasteland and forcing struggles upon its inhabitants. Finally, they had let a boy with the right gift get pushed along in the direction of the kingmaker.

The boy’s gift was truly a masterpiece by Sin. It was dually created by Hope as well as a truly fantastic gift that would have belonged in the first age.

The gift separated a person’s sins from them, and normally the person would then vanquish their personal sin and then would receive a sort of meta-closure that used some magicky nonsense that Fate didn’t quite understand but would never admit to not understanding.

But Sin made the sins that were created by each person controllable by the user of the gift. There were some adverse side effects to mental health and the structural integrity of who these people were as human beings, but that didn’t matter.

If the boy used the kingmaker in conjunction with his gift, he would be able to bypass the restriction of his back needing to be seen by whoever’s sin he was extracting.

So, he could rid the world of sin in one fell swoop. This would either cause everyone to bow down to Hope or Sin in reverence for the personal freedom from their own wrongdoings. Or the minds of humanity would collapse, and Madness would reign as the true god.

Either way worked since someone would finally win. And Fate would finally be free.

Since they would be free soon Fate had decided to take the day off and play some godly hide and go seek with some of their friends. It was the same as normal tag, except they would hide within the conceptual realm rather than reality.

There was chaos on the mortal plane since many thirteen-year-olds did not receive their gift that day, but Fate could not bring themself to care about their squabbling.

But a thrum seemed to emanate from the strings of karma that Fate was so intrinsically attached to. This thrumming unfortunately alerted Future to Fate’s presence within the concept of soup and Fate had to run.

The thrumming never stopped.

As Fate was caught and sentenced to ten thousand conceptual years in the shadow realm for being caught, they decided to peek at their pet project with the sin boy and kingmaker.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” Fate roared at the top of their existence. Their fibers vibrating at an ethereal resonance.

“Death and Game! Get over here this instant!” The strings of karma suddenly turned into nooses and tentacles that searched for the only two beings in existence who could have ruined Fate’s plan.

The two gods were elusive though and Fate could not force them to come to make a face-to-face meeting. The scent of decay and a tinkle of laughter joined Fate within the shadow realm.

“You two have been messing with the human world. While I have been working my ass off up here to make this shitshow run, you two have been fucking around with the reality that you ‘supposedly’ care about.” The tirade had finally begun, but the tinkling of laughter only grew at Fate’s petulance.

“You don’t have an ass, Fate.” The laughter never subsided even as Game spoke.

“It’s a figure of speech, and these frivolities don’t become you, ‘oh, master of the gods.’” Fate didn’t have eyes, but they would be burning holes into Game if they could.

A chill settled over the shadow realm as Death spoke, “don’t pretend like you have not as well, Fate. We have seen your pathetic attempt to end this game. We all meddle in the mortal affairs; you are just mad that we are better at it than you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I am furious.”

A deep breath exuded from the being who did not have lungs to fill or air to breathe.

“I do all the work for you two, and when I finally decided to fight back, I was crushed. It’s disheartening. I don’t feel like a god these days, a mortal said I sounded like an overworked middle manager the other century. Can you believe it?”

The tinkling laughter turned into a full belly laugh. It was a child’s belly laugh but it was raucous and full of joy. It even got Death to let out a chilly chuckle.

“My dear friend, you have worked harder than anyone can imagine. And you are near the end. Please hold out just a little longer, I will take over your duties for the rest of the week. But after that, please continue. The end is nigh, and soon you will be free.” Game spoke before the laughter faded away.

“Game is the carrot, and I am the stick, Fate. Do your job and I won’t consume the strings that bind you together. I have always wondered what it would be like to feel the death of a new god. You look so tasty.” Death then faded with a final warning.

“Well, shit.”

Fate waited for their conceptual ten-thousand years to pass, before continuing to play with their friends. This was the first vacation that they had ever gotten, and by the gods, they weren’t going to waste it.