Three people sat at a table and held their heads in their hands. They had been men and women of renown when they were younger. They had been the shining stars of the order of knights, but the world is not made for the young and shiny, it tarnishes and blemishes a person little by little until they are unrecognizable.

These three people knew what the Knight Tournament was for. It was expensive to keep an entire order of knights operational, so they used these competitions - and the tickets that were sold from them - to raise money for the cause, and maybe to line their own pockets a bit.

They had long since abandoned the straight and narrow line of righteousness; there were only so many times a person needed personal experience with how fickle and unrighteous the world was before they realized it was a losing game. But they all still had a semblance of pride in their shining order.

The games were fixed; they always made sure to place people in the correct matches so that a beautiful story could be told. The theatrics and the struggle were real, but maybe a few competitors got an edge before the match started.

But the tournament so far had been a disaster.

The three of them had crafted a perfect tale. It was supposed to be a story touting the epic rise of Ryan the Slayer. He was supposed to have walked through the tournament like a breeze, but somehow, he had been beaten in the preliminaries.

And now they couldn’t even find him, so they wouldn’t even be able to tell a redemption story. That still would’ve sold tickets; the story of a man who had never lost being kicked out of the preliminaries, but then clawing his way back through to a victory. It would’ve been grandiose and epic, but Ryan had disappeared overnight with their chances.

Meridith spoke up first, “we have to consider taking princess Dahlia’s proposal.” She had been unrivaled in her time. The power of rocks flowed through her veins. She had been known for walking into great battles completely naked and walking off those battlefields with her enemies vanquished and her skin unblemished. But age was the great destroyer of the mighty, no matter how strong her bones were they still creaked when she got out of bed in the morning.

Her face was wrinkled with worry lines, her eyes were great pools of amber, and she held herself with a grace that would shame even King Renoir. But she still looked cowed in this moment. Her back was straight, but her spirit had been broken.

Gunther sighed, “I concur.” He was not gruff, but very brief. He was a wiry old man who had not been a particularly well known in the public circles. He was a secret weapon of the Order of Knights. Many covert missions needed a softer hand than the average knight. The night was his friend and his weapon, he would cover himself in a cloak made of the space between the stars and assassinate targets without anyone the wiser.

He was also old; his face was oddly smooth though. It was the face of a man who had not spent much time worrying in his life. He breezed along without a care, but this decision caused his stomach to churn and his face to scrunch up.

The final person at the table, Kiera, said, “I detest it. It takes an institution that has been sacred since the gods created this world and makes it part of a game.”

Gunther grunted, “but we were already part of the game; we just aren’t big enough players anymore to do as we please.”

Kiera scowled at her fellow council member. She was the youngest member of the Council of Knights, and she was only recently appointed after the previous member had died.

Her face had not picked up the years of stress that were sure to catch up to her yet, but she wasn’t in the prime of her life. She had roamed the countryside for years doing nothing except cleaning villages, even if it also meant cleaning out the marauders from the village. She had the ability to control brooms; everyone she knew as a child had thought she was going to be relegated to cleaning some noble’s house for the rest of her life.

But Keira had realized something amazing. A broom with a pointy end was still a broom, and her gift had left no upper limit to the number of brooms she could control. So, she walked into villages carrying hundreds of ballistae with broom heads attached to the back.

The fear that all of them shared was rearing its head. The Order of Knights was becoming irrelevant.

Of course, there would always be brigands and evil folk around, but the Order of Knights used to be a respected institution, they used to be on the same level as the kingdom itself.

The king may make the laws, but laws are only words. It takes people of action to turn those words into reality and the Order of Knights used to be the paragon of law. But now they were a relic.

Knights were a traveling show that teenagers watched with their amused eyes and jeering grins, they were not the virtuosic people of legend anymore. They were the people that were called when something bad happened, but very little bad happened on a large scale anymore.

There were no more lands to conquer or people to enforce justice upon, now there were just small problems for small knights. There were no more epic tales of knights, they were just a service rendered for most.

This led to what the three councilors were talking about - Dahlia’s proposal. Since they could not tell their own story in these epic matches, maybe they could tell hers instead and get paid handsomely for it.

“So, how do we make her knight win?” Meridith asked the hard question, authority dripping from her voice.

Gunther unsheathed one of his knives and started absently tapping the hilt on the table. “The knight is powerful; we just have to make sure that any hard counters to their gift get taken out of the equation earlier.”

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Meridith grunted, her opinions on power were unique. The woman had walked through armies unscathed, of course most of these young whippersnappers seemed foolish and weak to her.

Keira twisted her fingers through her hair, untangling knots as she spoke. “What about the randoms?”

A sneer crossed Meridith’s face while Gunther kept his neutral mask firmly in place. One of the randoms was who had messed up their entire plans for this tournament and forced them to take this deal with Dahlia.

“I still think it is silly that none of our powerful, young knights can vanquish these buffoons who use powers that they barely know. They get these randoms abilities and who is to say whether it will be perfect or useless, but anyone who can be outshone by a Random blessed is an idiot or a buffoon.” Meridith raged at her colleagues.

No one mentioned the fact that the inherent randomness of the gift meant that every battle just became pure luck, Meredith didn’t appreciate when people brought logic to her tirades.

“We have to take them out of the competition.” Gunther said while frowning. It was tournament policy that if someone was unable to defend their winner’s medallion then they weren’t worthy of having it in the first place. But that rule was mostly used to keep rabble rousers out of the tournament and help them seed it with swanky and powerful knights.

The rule was never intended to be used to forcibly eject powerful competitors that could ruin the plans of the council. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

Meredith scowled but said, “who should we send? Our strongest knights couldn’t beat them, who do we have that can take them out of the picture?”

Gunther laughed, “you misinterpret me. I mean that I have a friend that can steal almost anything, we will have him steal their medallions and distribute them to new competitors. Nothing so untoward as murder”

The moment caused a small chuckle around the table, but it was an awkward laugh of three people who realized that murder had become a common place topic between them.

Gunther left the table quietly to set his schemes in motion while Meredith and Keira sat quietly in contemplation at the table.

Loud’s name had originally been Grund, but his parents had given him this nickname for unimaginative reasons. As a child his parents had thought he wailed a bit too much, so they decided that he would be called Loud until he stopped being loud.

He had never stopped being loud. His jaw clicked when he ate, his joints creaked when he moved, he walked without grace, and his voice was always one level louder than it should be.

None of that had stopped him from becoming one of the least notorious thieves in the world. Notoriety was for suckers and chumps, the truly skilled in the dark profession of stealing things were completely unknown.

There was only one man in the world who knew that Loud was not who he masqueraded as, and that was Gunther. The only man to have ever caught sight of Loud in one of his heists.

Outside of his heists, Loud was the son of two unremarkable people. He played games at some local clubs and was a lazy bum that survived off his parent’s gratuity and kindness.

It was the greatest camouflage he could ever have. No one suspected that the bumbling oaf that was Loud could do the things he did. Until Gunther did.

The stars aligned and the Knight Commander caught him one night and the two of them made a deal. Gunther wouldn’t arrest Loud, and Loud would do a few favors here and there for Gunther.

Tonight, one of those favors had been cashed in. He was going to steal two of the participation coins from competitors in this silly knight tournament. He was a tad confused about why he had to steal something that Gunther had full control over, but Loud never sweated the details, he just went with the flow.

His two marks were out partying for the night; they had won big at the Knight Tournament that day and were going to be out in the outer rings mingling with the common folk.

Loud’s gift was given by Forethought, and it did one simple thing. Once he had a heist in mind, any information he could ever want about his targets would magically appear in a binder kept in his soul space. From the insane amount of information that his gift could gather instantly Loud would then form intense and bold strategies to rob various people. It was a magical system.

Gunther had given Loud his marks, and a plan had appeared in his mind instantly. It was stupidly simple, and he was suspicious of it, his gift had never been wrong before, but something seemed too easy about this heist.

Loud walked into the busy street, clicking his jaw as he munched on a meat pie. There were people dancing in the streets, reveling in the party. The music and booze flowed freely through the air and there was a perpetual smile on everyone’s face.

Loud saw a man wearing a duck costume quacking at the passersby. The man looked ridiculous and only the festive atmosphere kept the crowds from jeering at him. No one was in a cruel enough mood to really push the guy around.

A simple move across the street allowed Loud to catch a glimpse of the man wearing the suit. From the information provided by his gift Loud immediately knew that the man was Joy. He had been a winner at the tournament that day and he was not out partying with the high-class folk near the castle. Instead, he was standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by people who didn’t know who he was, quacking at them and giggling to himself.

It was the actions of a madman, but Loud would take advantage of the man’s insanity.

Loud walked up to the man in the duck suit and said, “Oh my!” He looked at the costume up and down while Joy preened inside of the feathery mess. “I don’t know why you’re wearing that suit,” Joy’s face fell as he realized Loud wasn’t enthused by the suit, “but you are one of the competitors for the Knight Tournament, aren’t you?”

Joy looked a bit annoyed but quite pleased. “Well, I am glad someone could recognize me. Do you want an autograph, or to discuss my magical performances?”

Loud hid a grin and put a sheepish smile on his face. “I have always been curious, what does one of the qualifying coins actually look like?” Loud was a bit worried, it couldn’t be this easy, could it?

Joy chuckled a little and with a great deal of effort, snuck one of his arms out of the massive duck suit. In his hand he held two qualifying coins.

“I would have had three, but Theo was paying too much attention to his own coin, and I couldn’t nick it off of him.” Joy started to do various tricks with the coins, rolling them up and down his knuckles, throwing them into the air and catching them with a flourish.

Loud looked at the coins, then back at Joy, then back to the coins.

The coins were thrown into the air in a beautiful toss. They arced over Joy’s head and landed neatly in his other hand, after the trick Joy waggled his eyebrows at Loud then continued his flamboyant gestures.

Loud took one step forward, and snatched the coins out of midair as Joy was doing a trick with them. Joy looked flabbergasted at Loud. Loud didn’t see that look though, because he had already turned around and started running.

The bulky suit that Joy was wearing meant that he was clumsy and unable to carry himself through the crowd. In a feeble attempt to catch up to the running Loud, he crashed into the ground, angrily quacking as people stepped on and ruined the feathers he had used in the costume.

Loud ran for another few streets, then walked to the side of the road to dry heave. He didn’t run often, but when he did, he made sure to cover the distance.

A small smile spread across Loud’s face as he looked at the two coins in his hand. He laughed at the ridiculousness of it, the heist could barely be considered a heist, it was just petty theft in the middle of a busy street. But he had finished the job and that was all that mattered.

With his hands in his pockets, safely concealing the coins, Loud walked down the street whistling a happy tune.