People were not very open about their gifts. It was a very personal thing. The same way a person wouldn’t want anyone else to see their business end, nobody wanted anyone else to know exactly how their gift worked.

  But that couldn’t stop people from guessing. If a person watched another use their gift hundreds of times, of course they would develop a theory on the mechanisms of the gift.

  Joy had always assumed that Ian’s gift was the scabbard he sheathed his sword in. Joy knew it was not the sword itself since he had seen the sword used as a normal blade. Therefore, since Ian had always sheathed the sword before attacking, Joy had assumed that any sword that Ian sheathed within the sheath would gain the gifted cutting properties.

  But watching Ian scream about ‘how it was never the scabbard itself, but the act of sheathing,’ made Joy rethink his proposition. Especially after Ian stabbed himself with the sword.

  Joy was annoyed that he had exerted so much effort in stealing Ian’s effectively useless sheath. He should have taken the sword. But he had been too focused on what he thought Ian’s most dangerous weapon was.

  But regrets were for fools, so Joy had to focus on the present.

  Everyone fighting Ian had immediately dropped to the ground when Ian screamed. They had assumed that he was going to use his gift to create a cut through the air that would eliminate as many of his opponents as possible. But Ian gritted his teeth and groaned as he pulled the blade out of his stomach, then vaguely waved his sword in the air in front of his face.

  Joy felt something in his stomach drop. There was a sense he had never noticed before that had just been cut off. Joy wasn’t sure how he could tell, but he knew what Ian had just done.

  Joy yelled, “he’s not blind anymore!”

  Ian had somehow cut the connection between himself and the game that Joy had dragged him into. Ian was cutting things beyond the scope of reality.

  Ian moved in a flash. Joy was supremely impressed by the speed at which he moved, especially with the hole in his stomach leaking blood.

  Lillian was closest to Ian, so she was the first one that he targeted. He brought his sword down upon her with the effortless grace of a master. Lillian deflected the blow with the grace of a drunkard trying to dance.

  Her dream armored arm came up and caused the sword strike to ping away from her and into the soft earth beside her. With a kick, Lillian launched Ian back a few paces, giving her the space to rise from her prone position.

  Ian looked around wildly. He seemed desperate for something to sheath his blade into. Obviously, he didn’t want to sheath it in himself again, and he had hoped to use Lillian’s body but had been thwarted.

  Lillian went on the offensive. Her heavily armored body deflected the strikes that Ian made. He aimed for her face, but she was too quick to bring her arms up to block. She knew she had the advantage as long as Ian refused to sheath the blade in himself again.

  Theo had not been idle during this time. Theo knew that he was going to have to be the main contributor to this fight. Lillian had a supremely defensive gift from her dreams today and Joy seemed to not have any more games to force Ian into playing. So, he started forming hunks of ice in the air to rain down upon Ian’s head, as well as patches of ice near his feet to make him slip.

  No matter how deft and agile, no matter how powerful his offense, Ian would still go down like any other man if they just hit him hard enough.

  Joy had also not been idle. He performed a massive dropkick on Ian as he took a step away from Lillian’s offensive rush.

  Ian went flying as Joy impacted him. He tumbled along the ground and came to a stop against a piece of rubble from what used to be the prince’s castle.

  Joy stood up as Lillian approached his side. Theo came from behind the two of them as well. They made quite a trio staring down Ian, who was slowly coming to his feet, with more blood leaking from his stomach wound.

  Ian closed his eyes and clenched every muscle in his body. Joy instantly knew that he was about to stab himself again. He and Lillian started running towards the bleeding man as he started bringing the blade towards his left arm.

  The blade entered Ian’s flesh and Ian grunted in pain, but that was all. He didn’t seem that affected by stabbing himself, it was merely what he needed to do to win this fight.

  Joy and Lillian sprinted at Ian as he started drawing the blade out of his flesh. Joy reached for the pommel of the sword and pushed it back into Ian’s arm. Lillian punched Ian in the face, rocking him back one step.

  Joy tried to grab the pommel of the sword and take it from Ian, but there was too much blood on the hilt. Joys fingers slipped off the weapon and Ian grinned.

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  With the space Ian had gained by letting himself be rocked one step by Lillian’s punch, and the fact that Joy was no longer keeping the sword in Ian’s arm, Ian was free to draw his blade.

  The blade was drawn, and Ian prepared his singular strike. He was focused beyond belief on one single goal. Just because some hooligans attacked him did not keep him from remembering his initial goal.

  He needed to keep the dragon out of commission until David had finished with his father. Ian’s eyes locked onto the prone form of the dragon and Dahlia who was casting some spell on the body.

  The blade began its descent, but Ian was interrupted by a single card. Jot had pulled the deck of cards that was his gift out of his soul space and drawn one of the two jokers from the deck. With an expert throw, Joy threw the card onto the descending blade.

  Ian’s sword perfectly cut the card in half, but that wasted Ian’s power from his sheathing of the blade. His gift could no longer endow its special properties onto his blade and caused Ian’s decisive strike to turn into a flailing motion in the air.

  Joy felt a physical pain in his chest. Ian’s gift had destroyed that card’s connection to Joy. He would never have that second joker within his deck ever again. He never played with the jokers, and a single card to save someone’s life felt more than fair. But it still hurt to feel some of the small happiness in his life leave so suddenly.

  Ian looked displeased. But that was all, he had put his life on the line in the hopes of killing that dragon, yet he was foiled again and again. The sword paused in the air after Ian had sliced Joy’s card. Ian tried to remember the last time he was happy.

  He couldn’t think of it.

  So, he charged at Joy, intent on bringing this sword through the annoying man’s heart. There is one constant in life, men placing their personal problems into someone else.

  Joy tumbled away in a handspring to avoid the whip and slash of Ian’s blade. Only the relative slowness of his strikes allowed Joy to escape unscathed. Because Ian had brought the sword through his left arm, he was unable to truly support the blade with both hands anymore. He was forced to go completely one handed.

  Lillian closed in the distance placing her armored body as a shield between Ian and Joy. Lillian’s dream plated arms kept Ian’s flashing blade way from her face and Joy’s body as he relentlessly tried to break through.

  Theo rained hail upon Ian’s head. It was relatively small as an impact, but Theo was struggling to bring power to the surface. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t freeze Ian in a glacier like he had done to Ramses so long ago in the arena, but the power would not come to him. So, he contented himself with dropping hand sized blocks of ice down on Ian’s head.

  Joy and Lillian had been fighting Ian for a few minutes in the ruins of the prince’s castle. The combined fury of Dahlia and Julia had brought the massive structure down during their first engagement with the prince.

  The rubble was strewn all over the place, but Joy reminisced about the lush fields that had used to sit where now only ash and rocks lay. It had been such a beautiful place, but the hand of Destruction had brought an end to the beauty of it.

  Joy’s foot slipped as he stepped on a particularly lush piece of the ground. With the strewn rubble Joy had good footing for most of the fight, however a small piece of greenery had survived the cataclysm of the dragon’s descent. And Joy’s foot had perfectly stepped into it and made him fall into a heap.

  Ian capitalized on his misfortune. His blade came singing down in one perfect arc. Joy’s back opened with a spray of blood. A gash formed and Joy’s lifeblood started ebbing out of his body.

  It was only one mistake.

  “What a stupid way to die.” Joy spoke to no one in particular as Ian’s sword effortlessly started to come down for one final sweep through Joy’s neck.

  But Joy was saved from his doom as Lillian’s armored arm got in the way. The blade fell away in a flash of sparks and Joy rolled away, moaning as his open wound touched the random pieces of rubble on their battlefield.

  Lillian punched Ian solidly in the chest and he flipped end over end towards that one spot of lush greenery that Joy had slipped on.

  Joy was out of commission, unable to muster the strength to watch the fight. Lillian was focused on pressing her advantage and trying to crush Ian’s head before he was able to rise again. Only Theo was able to see the checkmate they were falling for.

  Lillian had closed the distance to Ian, bringing her fist up to try and finally finish this fight. But Ian’s body blocked her view of something vitally important.

  His sword had entered the loose soil of the vegetation that Joy had slipped on earlier. The soil was packed loosely, and Ian’s blade had slipped right into the mound of dirt. Theo cried out to try and warn Lillian, but it was too late.

  Theo focused his entire being into freezing that blade into place. But it slowly and inexorably emerged from the dirt, and Theo knew that it would end the life of Lillian, forever.

  Ian wore a smile on his face as he basked in his victory. The tip of his blade was still touching the ground and Lillian had fearfully taken a step back as she realized, too late, that her end was near.

  Genius is not a god that could exist without humanity. Many theologians have tried to classify the gods into vague categories like fundamental forces or metaphysical ideas. But there is one classification that rules beyond any other and it only separates the gods into two categories. Ones that existed without humans and ones that were only born with humanity.

  The gods are fixed beings. They cannot ascend past their predetermined limits; therefore, Genius could only come into existence once humans did.

  Theo felt the brush of Genius in his mind. He saw the end of the world that he knew and loved coming. That sword would rise from the ground and kill Lillian. Then Ian would kill his sister and even Joy would perish. Theo could maybe survive, but he wouldn’t want to live in a world without these important people.

  Theo saw a moment in Time that needed not to happen. Theo saw beyond the physical plane and let himself see Time. His eyes shone a deep shade of blue as he focused every shred of his gift into freezing time.

  Time got a brain freeze.

  But everything around Theo came to a sudden stop. A deep shade of blue had permeated everything in his surroundings. The world stood still for Theo as he focused on keeping everything frozen.

  Nothing could move in this time except him. He was the king of this small bubble of stopped time.

  Theo took halting step after halting step towards Ian. He was intent upon killing him in this frozen moment before he could do any more damage to the ones he loved.

  The insane focus required by Theo made it hard to reach Ian, but Theo had all the time in the world.

  The problem with Genius is that they are a fickle god. They do not care for righteousness or kindness. They do not care who is on whose side in war, they bestow their gifts equally towards the deserving.

  Ian’s blade twitched within the frozen world.