The Joke

Aureli and Arachna engaged in a beautiful, tragic dance as Aureli summoned vines of thorns to block her strikes while Arachna countered with explosions of snow and ice, the two of them moving through the garden, participating in a lethal tango, destroying the statues, tearing up the earth and leaving a path of destruction in their wake.

Arachna was fast, but she was bleeding out from the earlier strike, slipping on the frost, her movements slowing. Aureli took fulll advantage of this and caught her wrist, twisting the rapier from her grip but he didn't strike her down, catching her as she fell to avoid letting her hit her head on the floor.

He lowered her gently onto a bed of white snow she had conjured, kneeling beside her before pulling her head into his lap as the grey sky loomed above them, indifferent to their ending.

"Did you have fun, Crimson?" Aureli asked, brushing a strand of hair from her face like a lover would as she looked up at him, her vision fading, choking out a delighted, wet laugh.

"The most fun... I've ever had," she whispered as her hand reached up and traced his jaw, pure joy embeleshing her face for the first time in the form of a genuine smile. "You're a liar, Aureli. You said you didn't love me."

"We can't have everything we want in this life," Aureli sighed as tears finally spilled from his eyes, landing on her cheeks.

"I'm glad..." Arachna breathed, her eyes losing focus. "I'm glad it was you."

Her hand fell and soon the light left her eyes. A woman who was always stern and serious, died with a genuine smile on her face.

Aureli sat there for a long time, closing her eyes with his thumb as he leaned down and kissed her cooling forehead.

"Sleep well, My Love." he whispered as sounds of battle continued to erupt from the ruins of the Colloseum.

Below the hovering God, the battle between Silver and Musashi had devolved into a brawl rather than a test of skills as the loss of light had weakened Musashi. His glass-shard haori, which relied on reflection to disorient his enemies, was now dull and lifeless in the monochrome world overshadowed by Malevolent's arrival. The 33rd degree mage was swinging his nodachi with imperfection, blinded into a frantic fury, losing the edge of his skills in the process.

"GIVE HER BACK!" Musashi screamed, slashing at the air where Silver had been a second ago, the latter finding it easier and easier to predict and dodge the attacks. "SHE WAS THE LIGHT! SHE WAS EVERYTHING!"

Silver ducked under his blade, his movements heavy as the drain of the Death Magic began to catch up to him, hoping to end the fight as soon as possible.

"She's gone, Musashi!" Silver shouted, driving a knee into the samurai’s stomach. "Look around you! She was the cause of this! The pope summoned this from her vessel! Open your eyes!"

Musashi stumbled back, coughing blood that looked like black ink in the color-drained world as he looked up at the porcelain-faced entity floating above them.

"No..." Musashi whispered "She promised... she promised we would rule the heavens..."

"Lies," Silver spat as Musashi’s face twisted, his grief fracturing into madness.

"If she is gone... then this world does not deserve to exist."

Musashi raised his blade, channeling his entire life force into a single, suicidal technique, causing the glass shards on his coat to shatter into millions of tiny bits that embedded themselves into his own skin, turning him into a living porcupine of agony.

"Glass Art: Mirror of the End."

He prepared to detonate himself, to turn the entire arena into a crater of shrapnel, to destroy the entire world along with himself, a world devoid of the master he had failed to protect as Silver braced himself, lacking the sufficient amount of mana to tank a suicide blast.

A hand, pale and elegant, rested gently on Musashi’s shoulder.

"You're too loud," it giggled. "You're ruining the show."

Musashi froze, attempting to turn his torso but his body refused to obey as gold dust, which was the only thing in the arena that still held its color, swirled around his feet, climbing up his legs, turning his flesh into heavy, immobile gold.

Ezekiel stood behind him and the Jester was smiling, a wide, terrible smile that stretched too far across his face, his grey eyes nonexistent, replaced by voids of swirling chaos. He wasn't looking at Musashi. To him, Musashi was just a roadblock, his gaze fixed only up at Malevolent with a look of pure, unadulterated adoration.

"Hello, Big Guy!" Ezekiel shouted, waving at the God with his free hand like a small child waving his father home.

"Ezekiel?" Silver lowered his daggers, confusion warring with horror. "What are you doing? Help me finish him!"

Ezekiel looked at Silver and tilted his head, like a dog listening to a high-pitched whistle.

"Help?" Ezekiel laughed. "Why would I help the audience? I'm part of the cast now!"

He turned back to Musashi, who was struggling against the gold transmutation spreading up his neck, seemingly agreeing with the request .

"You want to be a mirror?" Ezekiel whispered in the samurai's ear. "Well, I dont know if you know this but...Mirrors break."

Ezekiel flicked Musashi forcefully on the forehead with his right index finger.

TING.

The sound was delicate, like a crystal wine glass being flicked as cracks spiderwebbed across Musashi’s skin, making their way down from his forehead, through his eyes, then his entire body while the strongest warrior of the Empire, the 33rd Degree Mage who had terrorized the kingdom for a decade, didn't scream. He simply fell apart, shattering into a pile of golden dust and broken glass.

Silver took a step back, his blood running cold on sight of the act.

He had seen Ezekiel kill before, knowing fully well how dangerous he was, but this? It was too casual. It was whimsical, horrifyingly so.

"Ezekiel..." Silver warned, raising a dagger. "Stand down."

Ezekiel’s smile faltered as he looked at Silver with a sudden, intense boredom.

"You're boring me, Silver," Ezekiel sighed. "You're all so... serious. Rules. Laws. Morals. Blah, blah, blah."

He raised a hand, snapping his fingers as a cloud of gold dust erupted beneath Silver’s feet, causing the death mage to react on instinct, using a burst of Death Magic to blast himself backward, narrowly avoiding being turned to a statue as well, landing next to Vanessa, panting.

"That's not Ezekiel," Silver said, his voice shaking. "Not anymore."

Vanessa stared at the man who had promised to protect her, the madness in his stance, the way he danced on the grave of a 33rd Degree Mage before turning her attention up at the Serpent God, the Scroll’s words echoing in her mind.

The Jester loves only the Goddess who left him.

"He isn't attacking the God," Vanessa realized, clutching Silver’s arm. "He's waiting for his guard to drop."

"Impressive," Malevolent’s voice boomed, descending from the sky, landing on the blackened roots of the Solspire tree. He ignored the Jester, Silver and everything else, his eyeless face turning toward the far side of the arena.

"Daughter," Malevolent whispered. "You look just like her."

He revealed as he raised a finger, a beam of pure, colorless energy shooting across the arena, aiming straight for Vanessa.

"MOVE!" Silver roared, shoving her aside.

But the beam wasn't meant to kill as it hit the ground between them, splitting the earth, the resulting shockwave knocking Silver unconscious, flinging him far away into a pile of rubble.

Meanwhile, Vanessa tumbled across the obsidian, scraping her hands as she looked up to find Malevolent was standing directly over her.

"She ran away," Malevolent said, tilting his head. "Solace. Because she was weak. She couldn't make hard choices. Are you weak too, little stone?"

Vanessa tried to summon her time magic, but the static in the air disrupted her focus, and, paralyzed by the sheer weight of his presence, she felt not only the magic but also the life draining out of her.

"Don't touch her!"

A vine, thick and spiked, whipped out from the rubble as Ken, bleeding from his head but still fighting, rode a massive root toward the God.

"Get away from my friends!" the jungle boy shouted but Malevolent didn't even turn to grace his presence, simply waving a hand in his general direction.

"Rot."

The green vine turned grey instantly, withering and crumbling, turning to dust mid-air as Ken fell, hard, crashing onto the stone face first. The life force of the forest was simply deleted by the God’s presence.

"Life is a disease," Malevolent stated as he reached for Vanessa. "I am the cure."

"Hey!"

A snowball of gold dust hit Malevolent in the back of the head causing the God to pause as he turned slowly.

"Snowball fiiiiiight"

Ezekiel stood there, juggling three grenades he had looted from a dead mercenary, grinning, his eyes manic.

"You're ignoring me," Ezekiel pouted. "That's so rude, you big oaf! I even killed the shiny glass man for you."

Malevolent stared at the Jester and for the first time, the God seemed... confused.

"You..." Malevolent murmured. "You feel... familiar. You reek of my own chaos."

"Do I? Oh you flatter me!" Ezekiel giggled as he pulled the pins on all three grenades and tossed them in the air, catching them with a fluid grace. "Maybe that's because I'm the only one here who gets the joke."

"And what is the joke?" Malevolent asked, floating toward him nonchalantly.

Ezekiel stopped juggling as he looked at the God, then at Vanessa cowering on the floor, then at the dead Queen, at his students, at Silver lying unconcious, at everything, and finally at the grey, empty sky.

"The joke," 

Ezekiel whispered, his voice trembling with a sudden, heartbreaking clarity, 

"is that we all thought we could be happy."

Ezekiel snapped his fingers causing the grenades to explode, but not with fire. Instead they blasted with gold as a massive cloud of transmutation dust engulfed the God.

"RUN, VANESSA!" Ezekiel screamed, his voice fracturing between the Jester’s madness and a desperate urge for protection. "RUN BEFORE I KILL YOU TOO!"