Joy sat in his waiting room. It was a beautifully furnished room, with anything that any self-respecting competitor could want.

There were mats to stretch out on, contraptions that allowed the user to get a light workout in, tons of water and snacks, and even a single attendant to help them with any of their personal queries.

Joy had looked at all the stuff in the room and decided that playing card games with the attendant would be more fun than anything that the room’s amenities provided.

He had even learned some interesting things from the man in the white robe.

The most important thing he learned was that the salary for being a serving person here in the arena was enough for Joy to consider changing professions from being the prince’s little minion.

The worker’s name was Henry, and he had heard a lot of secrets over the years of the knight tournament. He knew that the brackets were seeded, and he knew that the officials tried to set up fights so that the knight that the officials wanted to win would reign victorious.

Fights with gifts were always difficult. Even if someone was incredibly powerful, there probably existed someone in the land with a perfect counter to their gift. So, the officials usually made their decision about who should win the tournament before the tournament started, then they seeded the brackets so that the winner would have all their possible rivals snuffed out in the early rounds.

Henry had even released an interesting tidbit of information that Joy was incredible unpopular with the organizers of the event because of the way that he had taken Ryan out of the competition.

The organizers had thought that Ryan was an easy pick for the ultimate winner and had been planning this entire event around crowning him as the greatest knight of the age.

And Joy’s removal of Ryan had been less than ideal for the story that the organizers wanted to tell. So, they had taken as many witness accounts as possible of Joy’s gift and the way he used it in the hopes of finding the perfect person to take him out of the running.

Henry said that he was not allowed to divulge any information about Joy’s opponent to him, but the twerp had a knowing smile on his face that said he was holding something back. It annoyed Joy, but he always shone best when the odds were not in his favor.

Joy had taken a good amount of information from Henry and a few gold coins as well before the man had wizened up to betting against Joy. Henry had left the room sulkily, only to be pushed back into the room and told to get Joy ready for his fight.

Joy had no pre-fight exercises to complete, so he simply stood up and started walking towards the entrance to the arena. Henry sidled up alongside him and asked a question, “should I bet on you?”

Joy let out a little giggle at that, “you should obviously bet on me; no one is better than me.”

Henry looked a little skeptical, but he ran off to find a bookie before the match started.

Joy walked into the final hallway that led to the arena floor. The cobbled stones had transitioned into the sandy pit of the arena. Supposedly, the later rounds of the tournament would have more exciting fields in play rather than just sand, but this one was supposed to be bland in hopes of getting the audience to focus on the competitors more.

The hall was devoid of decorations, but he could hear the underlying roar of the crowd. They waited for him, the beckoned to him, their voices were his call.

He was the center of this little world, and he was going to milk it for all it was worth.

An announcer’s voice drifted into the hall, “we have an unknown competitor entering the arena now. He had no known feats or accomplishments before entering the arena a few days ago, but he was a shining star from the first moment of his qualifying round.” Joy grinned, he could feel the audience’s curiosity and adoration come off them in waves. “He created the greatest upset of the preliminaries; he disqualified Ryan the Slayer before he even made it to the real competition.” They were doing an amazing job talking Joy up, maybe he would hire the announcer as his personal hype man someday. “He is Joy the Giggling Knight.”

Joy started laughing at the name. It was wonderful and beautiful; it was so perfect, and he wished he could capture this moment in his mind forever. He loved it.

He felt his slippers not quite getting the traction he wanted in the sand, so he disposed of them in the corner. Maybe his color blocking would go to waste with this outfit. But he didn’t care; he was a child playing on the edges of a beach and needed his toes in the sand.

With one final step Joy entered the arena. Feeling the gritty sand between his toes he stared at the enraptured audience. They screamed for him. Boos and cheers alike filled the stadium until all that Joy could hear was the roar in his ears.

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The people created a masterful melody, and the world created a harmony around it.

Joy took a sweeping bow and let loose his most devilish grin. The shouts grew even louder in response. Joy could get used to this.

“In the other corner we have a knight of such renown they barely even need an introduction.” The crowd quieted a little, but the incessant cheering never stopped, only waned for a moment to make the announcer’s voice audible. “She came in second in the previous knight tournament, and she was the bad boy of the knights for nearly a decade.” The crowd screamed even louder at the proclamation and Joy could see the announcer sit back down, taking a moment while the crowd did his job for him.

“Helen! Helen! Helen!”

A woman came out of the other end of the arena. She had shimmery armor on, it was form fitting and seemed to be made of silk. Joy would have bet his life on the fact that the armor was harder than steel though.

The later rounds allowed more freedom to the contestants and their personal armors. Helen appeared to Joy like she was quite wealthy, and she used that wealth to give her the advantage of better armor.

Well, it wasn’t the first time he had beaten someone who had armor on while he was as defenseless as a newborn.

The air shook as the woman took her final step into the arena. He blonde hair shone in the slight breeze and her green eyes pierced through Joy. He shivered in one part delight and one part fear. She was an exciting woman.

She raised a single arm into the air and let the waves of adoration from the crowd wash over her. Her stature was not imposing before, but with the support of the crowd she seemed to grow taller and larger until she towered over Joy. She looked down on him, and her eyes declared that he was an unworthy challenger to her rightful throne.

“She is the Knight of Change! She is Helen!” The world shook as her name was called and Joy finally knew the opponent that stood before him.

Joy took a deep bow towards his opponent and flashed her a quick smile. A smile of respect towards a powerful opponent. Her eyes shone with annoyance and arrogance as she stared back down at him. But that was okay, Joy wasn’t sad or mad about it or anything… definitely.

The announcer started spewing out a litany of rules out to the audience but Joy and Helen both knew the simple fact that anything was okay if the crowd liked it. No matter what occurred here in this ring, anything would be forgiven if the crowd loved it.

A referee dressed in white floated down to in between both competitors. He looked them in the eyes and nodded at them. Joy would have preferred a verbal question, but he rolled with it.

Joy nodded back.

Helen nodded back.

The referee floated back up into the air and looking down upon the stadium he shouted, “begin!” As the sound left his mouth a giant set of letters spelling out the word in question. The letters impacted the sandy arena and indented the word into the sand beneath Joy’s feet.

Helen had seemed to metaphorically grow during their introductions. Her aura created an oppressive atmosphere that attacked Joy’s spirit. Once the match started, she did not metaphorically grow, she physically grew to twice Joy’s size.

Her cloth armor stretched along with her size increase and Joy realized that this was why the material was so flowing. If it had been too rigid the entire growing process would not have been as spectacular as it was.

From her new height towering over Joy, Helen smirked.

Joy didn’t allow this meager attempt at provocation to knock him off balance, instead he matched her smirk for smirk and took a provocative bow.

“Would you like to play a game?” Helen moved incredibly quickly across the arena, her bounds taking her an incredible length with every step.

Just as Joy finished speaking the magic words, her fist crashed into his shoulder. Joy was thankful that Helen’s aim had been off, and more importantly the punch felt somehow lighter than it should have been.

Joy had taken many punches throughout his life, winning every game of chance made him very unpopular, for some reason, and the punch should have hurt much more. Someone of Helen’s size moving at such incredible speeds should have knocked him flat on his back and knocked his lights out. But instead, it only made him fly back into the wall of the arena and crack his head slightly against the wall.

A sharp ringing filled his ears, and a buzzing filled his head after the blow his head had taken from the wall. He could feel blood trickling down the back of his head, and he knew that he must be wobbling on his feet.

But most importantly he smiled because he knew that he had succeeded. He wasn’t exactly sure what he had succeeded at, but he had accomplished something important. His head hurt and thinking about what he had accomplished was taking too much of his brain power.

In the back of his mind Joy was dimly aware of a voice speaking to him saying, “word hunt. Do any of you need the rules explained to you? Oh… poor buddy.”

But it all seemed so distant and far away from him.

He noticed the letters that had been engraved into the sand by the announcer starting the match, had now been erased and were replaced with many more letters. They seemed to be arranged in a four-by-four grid.

Joy knew it was important, but it all seemed so far away from him at that moment.

He bent down at the knees to look closer at one of the letters, hoping to glean a hint of what he was missing from the arcane inscription.

Just as Joy’s head bowed down to the ground a massive fist went hurtling through the space where he had just been occupying. Joy started laughing uproariously at the massive miss. He curled up into a ball and just started laughing.

A giant foot sent him rolling across the arena floor, dragging a line through all the beautiful letters.

The voice reappeared in Joy’s head. He knew that it was odd but was rather preoccupied with the searing pain of having a foot make direct contact with his ribs.

“Seen.” The voice spoke with the same amount of bored imperiousness as it normally did, but didn’t explain why it had said a single word and nothing else. It was something new.

The problem was that while the word was spoken, the word was simultaneously burned into Joy’s mind, and he could see. It felt like the first time that sight had truly made sense to him.

He could see the vectors of Helen’s movement and exactly how to move to avoid them. Everything made sense.

Joy laughed and started paying more attention. Even if his mind felt fuzzy beyond belief, he wasn’t going to lose this game.