Joy stared at the prince, and the prince stared at Joy.

“You can’t use it because you have to win it off me.” Joy sighed after saying it. The prince had been “studying” Joy’s artifact since the end of the excursion to the Frozen Continent. And after getting robbed and being assigned a new insane task by the man, Joy had had enough. He wanted his key to Game’s penthouse back.

“Can you just throw a game so I can take it?” The prince asked far too casually for Joy’s liking.

“As someone who was also given a useless gift would you ever give this to me if it was yours?” The prince’s face darkened at mention of his gift. He played it up a lot, but the fact that he was not blessed with a powerful gift like his sister truly stung.

“Well then, can I challenge you to a game with the winner taking the key?”

Joy liked this man, but this persistence was truly starting to annoy him. He understood where it came from, but this gift was his. No one could use it as well as him and the prince was a fool if he thought that Joy would let him have it. Something in Joy that regulated his kindness snapped and he felt himself become a much less caring person.

“You would normally have to put something equal up for grabs, but I am willing to take your pride this time.”

The prince recoiled at Joy’s words, there was an uncomfortable truth hidden beneath all the posturing and barbing that the two of them were doing, and it was something that the prince did not like.

With the two sides having agreed to the bargain they disappeared from the room they were sitting in in a flash of golden smoke.

The two of them appeared in Game’s penthouse. It was similar and yet different from last time. The vibes of the room always stayed the same, but it never quite looked the same.

The prince was shocked out of the stupor he had found himself in at Joy’s words and looked around the room in amazement. Of course, he had asked Joy what the metaphysical space looked like but there was no way to truly understand without seeing it.

It looked like it had been made by a child. The walls were covered in little stick figures, the games were all in assortments of boxes that were entirely without organization, and the color scheme, this time, was full of orange shades.

It made the god who had designed the place seem a bit smaller from the prince’s perspective.

Joy broke the silence between them, “normally, I would be allowed to choose the game since you are the challenger. But this is a special challenge, one that is all about making you understand something, so you get to choose, my dear prince.”

The prince chose a game of chess. It was a cheap shot in many ways. The game was not one the most people had played before, it was a pastime for the rich and elite, not for the hardworking salt of the earth people.

Joy crushed the prince.

Every move was countered in the most ideal fashion. Joy was economic and forward thinking in his tactics. No move he made was simply for the moment, he was always planning for later, always preparing for the next battle.

The prince had never been trounced before at the game, except when he was maybe a child and first learning to play the game. The entire charade felt like he was a child being schooled on proper strategy by a teacher who was unforgiving.

When the prince lost, he challenged Joy again. Then again, then again. He challenged Joy 167 times in a row, and every time the result was the same. No matter his opening, no matter the gambits he took, Joy beat him mercilessly.

At his wit’s end, the prince asked if they could change games. Joy told him that it was acceptable this time. So, the prince moved to more martial games. Things like tag, wrestling, and point sparring.

The prince had thought of himself as superior to Joy in terms of physical capability. The few times he had been able to catch Joy training he had always seemed so lackadaisical and bored.

The prince had always thought of himself as the stronger person, but he was outmatched even in pure feats of strength. Joy pulled an insane strength out of somewhere when a game was on the line that the prince could not match.

Joy was fire and the prince was ice.

The prince took his losses in stride, he was no stranger to failure, he just needed to find one game. A single game that he could beat Joy in, and this would all be worth it.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Eating competitions, table manners, and even trivia, nothing seemed to phase Joy. He would calmly agree to the game that the prince suggested and then he would demolish the prince. By all rights, Joy should not have known more about the politics of the noble families than the prince, yet somehow, he did.

Enough time had passed in the phantom world that Joy had regrown his hair to a respectable length, and he no longer looked like an ascetic monk who shined his head on a regular basis.

Joy looked down upon the mighty prince with something akin to disdain. The prince sat on the floor of the orange room grasping at the frayed ends of the rug.

There was something calming about running his hands through the old material. It felt loved in a way that was beyond the physical realm.

The blonde hair blue eyed prince was done. He had tried everything he could think of, there was no idea that he had not gone through. It had gotten to the point where he started making up games in the hopes that he could rig them in his own favor, but it never worked out.

Joy’s face scrunched up as he looked down upon the broken prince. Joy had won and he had stripped the prince of his pride in many ways. The prince had fallen for the greatest trick of them all, his own hubris. He had grown so full of himself that he had forgotten that he could lose.

Something bitter seemed to be worming its way up Joy’s throat as he finally spoke to the man playing with the rug, “do you know why your followers respect you?”

“Because I pay them so well.” The prince chuckled self-deprecatingly.

“No. It is because you are stronger than any of them.”

The prince looked up at Joy incredulously. His eyes spoke even though his mouth did not move. It was an accusing glare, one full of reproach and a seething hatred. His eyes said, ‘how dare you mock me.’

“You and I both know that once someone is given their gift their station in life is determined forever. The strong rise to the top, gaining titles and more power as they go. The weak fight for the scraps on the bottom, unable to rise. What can someone whose gift is changing the color of hair do against someone who can throw bolts of lightning?”

Joy ran his hands through his new hair. His brown eyes bore into the prince’s blue ones in an intensity that the prince had never seen before.

“You were given nothing. And yet you stood tall in the face of overwhelming odds. You spit in the face of karma and the gods who declared you as meaningless and decided that you would grasp meaning from the world with your own power.”

A pause filled the air as Joy crouched down and grasped the prince’s hand in an embrace.

“You are not beholden to any god for your strength. You are the might of humanity. You are the strength that we all have inside but never use. Every one of your followers believes in you, because if they were in your place, they would have accepted their lot in life long ago.”

“You struggle for life and that is what makes you worth following.”

The prince was shocked by this display. Joy had started this whole fiasco by stripping the prince of his pride, but now Joy was trying to explain to him why he mattered, why he was worthy of the people who followed him.

The prince took a long breath and closed his eyes as he fell back into himself.

“I am prince David. I was not given a gift that made me powerful. I was not a chosen of some god and given their pity. I stand as the pinnacle of what a human can reach on their own.”

At the last comment, Joy smacked the prince over the head.

“You are not the pinnacle; you are strong and always improving, there’s a difference.”

The prince laughed a bit at the interruption but conceded the point.

At the laugh, the world around them seemed to shatter and the two men reappeared back in the real world.

Joy took the key that they had been playing for and dropped it in his mouth, swallowing the key whole. It was a symbolic gesture but still one that Joy felt was necessary, he wanted the prince to feel empowered, but also understand that boundaries had been set in this confrontation.

The key was his, and it would be more trouble than it was worth to take it off him.

Just as Joy was about to walk off, the prince asked, “why do you follow me, Joy?”

“It’s not for the money or the adventure, I just cannot picture myself away from you.” Joy said as he walked off.

The prince pondered on the implications for a while, but found that on some level, it didn’t matter. Joy was here and whatever karma or Fate had brought him there was not what was important.

After the prince finished his contemplation, he noticed Sam the seer sitting in the corner of his study, observing him with an amused expression on their face.

“You knew this would happen, didn’t you?” The tone was accusatory, but still grateful somehow. The prince was like a child who had just taken their medicine and was feeling better. They were unhappy to have taken it but conceded to their parents that they now felt better.

“You are the embodiment of humanity in so many ways, David. You exist at the pinnacle and the nadir simultaneously. And man’s greatest folly has and always will be their pride.” Sam’s voice was melodic and held the prince in a trance as they continued.

“We are entering a battlefield where your pride has no place, your sister is a deadly enemy and you must rise to the top no matter what, you have bigger goals than just overthrowing your sister after all. And wouldn’t it be a shame if all those goals were unrealized because of your foolish pride.”

The prince nodded. Pride and honor were for the strong, but he had always been weak. The power of strength is the right to choose to be honorable and prideful, the weak were given no leeway. They either drained the world around them dry or they were crushed beneath the proverbial boot of life.

“How goes our little side project?” asked the prince.

“The prisoners are still under lock and key. As per your suggestion we have emptied your father’s personal dungeons with promises to give these worst of the criminals the retribution they truly deserve.”

“And Ian?”

“He says that he can feel it. He just needs one more push, just as we expected.”

The prince looked out over the city of Vena Cava from his office window. His eyes glazed over the innermost circle, the king’s palace.

Soon, the prince would have the right to become honorable and prideful, just not yet.