Sneaking away from a crowded camp while transporting two injured people turned out to be an impossible task. As soon as Joy started meandering his way out of the camp, one of the monks walked over to Joy and helpfully asked what he could do to help Joy.

  The monk wore robes of brown and stitched onto the back of the robe was a small insignia. It depicted a hand being cut off by a sword. The design was not very detailed, but Joy knew the signs of the Freer Men when he saw them.

  The Freer Men believed that the gods did not gift mankind with anything; the existence of humans was a pointless and meaningless game to the gods, and that all gifts given by them were filled with that hatred.

  One of the rituals of initiation for new members was to throw away (metaphorically, not literally) their gift. They had to rebuke the gifts given by the gods and limit themselves to the power of mortals.

  The monk started trying to grab one of the makeshifts sleds Joy had made for his friends the other day, and that started a small tussle between Joy and the “helpful” monk.

  Before two shakes of a lamb’s tail, Joy found himself on the ground wheezing from a particularly devastating kick delivered right into his chest. The monk was shaking his head and saying some nonsense about “trauma” and “he’s in shock.” Joy wasn’t particularly worried about it, there was no way the monks were going to bring him into the city after he had just tried to fight one of their members, right?

  Strong hands placed him into a wagon cart, and Joy knew that he was in too deep to escape now. There was no way that these selfless monks were just going to let him get up and walk away, especially when they saw that the two people he was trying to drag off with him were still in desperate need of medical attention.

  Joy sucked it up and let himself be carried by the monks.

  It was the opposite of the journey from yesterday. Now that there were no flying mouths coming to eat people off the street, it was just an exercise in staying away from any structurally unsound areas created by the chasm opening.

  The ride was bumpy and the aches and pains in Joy’s body were made worse as he sat unmoving in his cart.

  But eventually the cart reached the center of the city. There was nothing left of the castle where the king had used to rule. There were massive chunks missing from the earth and the remaining pieces were scorched.

  Joy looked in awe at the sheer destruction that had been wrought in this city he so loved.

  Apparently, a few people with gifts from Earth had survived though, because a minimalist structure had been erected near the ashes of the old castle.

  People were milling about in the area. Joy saw many of the monks and a few normal people here and there, but they were far and few between. Joy realized his group must be one of the first to bask in the new King’s beneficence.

  Joy was politely told to get out of the cart and that his friends were receiving the best medical care possible at that moment. He was told to make himself useful to some of the other refugees.

  So, Joy was tasked with fetching pails of water and bringing them from medical tent to medical tent. He brought food to some of the children who had played cards with him. He dug trenches for people to go to the bathroom in.

  Joy felt himself sink into the relaxation of a man who did not have to think for himself. He could just be a robot and not have to worry about the all-important “what next.” Now he could do as he was told and never have a stray thought.

  One peculiar thing happened that blipped Joy’s radar. One of the little girls who had played cards with him the last night told him that the King himself had been meeting people in the crowd of refugees. He had even asked the little girl’s parents if they wanted to have a one-on-one meeting later.

  Joy shivered at the memory. King David was walking through the camp and talking to people. What would Joy do if the king came up to him? Lie about murdering one of his most powerful allies? Run away?

  All these feelings were pushed down as Joy continued doing the easy things, the simple things.

  After a day of simple fulfilling tasks, Joy decided that he could bother to do a little bit of critical thinking and went to visit his two friends in the medical tent.

  The tent was packed with injured people. People had fallen and broken their legs. Others had fought other refugees to protect their items. But the worst of the injuries were the people with bites taken out of them.

  Not every person who had been attacked by the dark mouths had died. Some of them had pieces taken out of their arms and legs. They bled freely, but the most horrifying thing about the bites is that they were obviously human.

  Someone had a messed-up gift, and they had used it for evil yesterday.

  Joy found himself approaching the two cots with his friends in them. Beside the cots was the man who had saved him yesterday. Joy realized he didn’t even know his name.

  The man was taking a wet cloth to Lillian’s face. She was covered in sweat and new scratches had appeared on her face. They looked fresh and that could mean nothing good.

  Joy’s eyes were drawn to Theo next. He was sitting in his cot grabbing at his face. There was now a massive scar cutting across both of Theo’s eyes. It was no longer oozing blood and other fluids, which seemed to be a good thing to Joy.

  “Hey Theo! What’s new?” Joy sat down next to Theo in his flamboyant and rambunctious way.

  “My eyes… my eyes are…” Theo’s voice kept trailing off as he sat there clawing at his face, trying to bring back something that was already gone.

  Joy instantly regretted his cavalier attitude; he had just been glad to see that one of his friends had survived.

  “I’m so sorry, Theo. Please, let me know what I can do to help.” Joy grasped at his friend’s hand, trying to give him comfort.

  Theo jerked his arm away violently and screamed, “CAN YOU BRING ME MY EYES BACK?” Spit dribbled down his chin as he violently gesticulated to Joy’s left. He tried to throw a punch at him but didn’t even come close, instead he just fell off the side of his cot.

  On the ground, Theo curled up into a ball and started crying. But no tears came out of his eyes. Nothing would ever come from those empty sockets ever again.

  On the verge of panic, Joy silently left his friends with the man who had saved them. Maybe he knew what to do?

  A sickly feeling crawled up Joy’s stomach as he walked through the medical tent, he could feel the hard parts of life calling for him.

  Theo had lost his eyes.

  Lillian wouldn’t wake up.

  Ian was dead… Joy had murdered Ian.

  They called him from the abyss of kindness. To be kind was to face your issues head on, at least that was what Joy had always believed. But it was easy to be kind when the biggest issue in your life was what outfit to wear for the day. Joy’s problems seemed bigger than he could handle; his choices no longer seemed so easy.

  Maybe life wasn’t beautiful when it wasn’t all just a game?

  A small tremor shook the ground, and Joy fell to his knees. He prostrated himself by accident and he prayed for guidance unthinkingly.

  “Why am I here? Why does the world hurt?” Joy asked the open sky and the fields of green. He asked the mountains and the oceans. He asked the world itself.

  For a moment, there was no response.

  Then king David said, “I don’t know, Joy. Why are you here?”

  A cold sweat broke over Joy’s body as he started scrambling away from the new king of the realm. But Joy didn’t make it far; teeth enclosed his legs. They were just low enough to be out of view from the rest of the camp, but just tight enough to keep Joy from running away.

  “Well, well, well…” the prince began to monologue. Joy didn’t hear a word of it, he was too busy looking at the former prince. His hair and eyes were blonde and blue. There were no tacky colors to make his enemies underestimate him anymore. Instead, Joy found himself being pierced by a more natural David.

  His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked tired. Joy thought that kings were supposed to be elegant and untouched by worldly things – Renoir certainly had seemed that way – but David was a different kind of king.

  The world seemed to rest on his shoulders, and David was crumbling, but he refused to drop it.

  David began to walk away with Joy in tow. Joy didn’t scream or resist, he now knew the most terrifying thing wasn’t that David was now king. It was that the mouths that had eaten people during the disaster were David’s.

  ___

  Jeremy was many things. He was a coward. He was foolish. He was unkind. But most of all he was lucky. But his luck had never been his own, it was a gift from Luck. Jeremy’s stomach ached as he felt the coin in his soul space begin to spin. The coin represented his luck in some “magic-doohickey” sort of way, and the spinning meant that something was beginning.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  It would be a chance to make it rich or die in a spectacular fashion.

  But Jeremy wasn’t too concerned with that. Instead, he kept dabbing the wet cloth in his hand onto the comatose woman’s head.

  Jeremy wasn’t sure what was going on with the trio he had found during the catastrophe. The man in the lead had been dragging the other two on makeshift sleds away from the center of the city, and Jeremy had been moved by the iron will of the man saving his two friends.

  It would have been easier and safer to leave them behind. But he kept dragging them away. It had forced Jeremy to wake up from the self-pitying blackness he had been engulfed in. How could he sit there and just watch?

  Jeremy had followed his luck blindly before. He let the flip of a coin decide his fate. It was he who had caused the massive chasm to open in the middle of the city. Hundreds if not thousands of people must have died. Yet, how could he be held responsible? He was just doing what his godly given luck told him to do.

  Yet he still blamed himself.

  Maybe that was the point. Luck was not a good god to put himself behind, something so fickle and cruel should never be worshipped.

  Jeremy felt the spinning in his soul pick up speed. Jeremy’s legs started taking up a life of their own, he started moving towards the exit and his body ran from the tented area, and the comatose girl, and the blinded boy, and all the other cruelties his actions had left behind.

  Each step he took made the uncomfortable sensation in his stomach lessen as he started getting further and further from the camp.

  Maybe this was for the best… maybe he just needed to run from all the pain he had caused. Maybe that would make it all go away.

  Through the veil of tears running down Jeremy’s cheeks he saw something odd happening. Nearby the medical tent the man who Jeremy had helped yesterday was being talked to by the newly crowned king. Furthermore, Jeremy saw two of the revolting mouths that had caused just as much mayhem as the chasm from yesterday holding the man’s legs in place.

  Jeremy’s soul screamed as he turned around. His luck started burning in his soul, the coin spinning wildly in every direction. His luck was telling him that everything would go wrong if he followed that duo.

  Jeremy followed them anyway.

  Something deeper and more primal than his soul broke through the surface as he rebelled against the gift that the gods had given him. There was no way of bending the laws of probability to make it so that he would come out on top of this escapade. His gift begged him to step away, to just let this happen and go on living his life somewhere else.

  Jeremy followed them anyway.

  His gift tried to help in every way it could. Carts moved in front of him to block his eyesight of the pair of men. His boots frayed at the seams and made him fall face first into the ground. Pairs of guards took notice and tried to drag him away from the man and the king.

  But Jeremy followed them anyway.

  Jeremy slid smoothly under the carts, he took his boots off, he brushed himself off. And he silenced the guards by slamming his fist into their mouths. Jeremy needed to see what his gift so desperately wanted him away from.

  The king and the man had walked at a leisurely pace, so Jeremy hadn’t lost them despite his small problems. He was still close enough to see them walk into the makeshift structure at the center of the camp.

  With one final push, the coin in Jeremy’s soul stopped spinning.

  It was disconcerting. Jeremy’s entire life for the past year had been dictated by the luck endowed by that coin. Now, he stood at a crossroads; for the first time in a year, Jeremy felt the power of choice was within his grasp.

  With deliberateness that made Jeremy prouder than he could ever put into words, Jeremy followed them into the building.

  The building was utilitarian, with none of the opulence that David was known for. It was bare earth with very little room to hide. Yet, Jeremy still managed to stay within the perfect skulking distance.

  Within the deepest chamber Jeremy followed the two men. Neither of the men were speaking as they entered this final sanctum. It was just as bare as everything else in the building, except for a small bone outcropping jutting out from the floor in the center of the room.

  The bones stood tall in the center, and they spoke of mad power beyond that which mortals were supposed to hold. Jeremy held his breath as he hid behind the doorframe, listening.

  “Joy. I have never disliked you. For all your showboating. For all your recklessness. For all your selfishness, I have never hated you. But you are the epitome of what the gods want us humans to be.” The king sat on the floor as more mouths erupted out of his ears surrounding the other man on all sides.

  “And I despise what they have done to us. We are their cattle. We were given life solely to bring them a small amount of enjoyment. We live our lives for their pleasure with nothing for us.” David shook as he spoke, the words were dragged out of his soul as he continued.

  “Did you know that there has never been a god of Humanity? Humans were created and not even allowed a say in the pantheon. Isn’t that unfair? They get to sit on their crystal thrones and wipe their metaphysical asses while we all suffer to alleviate their boredom.”

  “I refuse to be denied. I am going to strike back against the gods. I am going to create a god to rival all of them. We are going to create Humanity, here, in this room.” With an expansive gesture the king spun in a circle around the room.

  Joy finally opened his mouth to respond. “And how are you going to birth a god, David? They don’t just fall off trees.”

  David looked intently at Joy. “I want to combine all of humanity into one homogenous being. I want all of us to come together with the express purpose of destroying the gods, so we can create a new world where we are the ones who get to choose the meaning of life.”

  Jeremy also thought about it. It sounded nice. He had been a victim of the gods pointing every which way of his life. His luck had decided everything and left him with nothing.

  “But David,” Joy asked, “it’s not like you can merge all of humanity together into a mega-human. What are you really going to do to us?”

  “I will eat you.” David pointed at the ethereal mouths that surrounded the two of them in this inner sanctum. “These mouths will consume you and add your essence to my own. Your soul will be moved into my soul space, where I have created a paradise unlike any other, for you to reside in while I subsume the rest of humanity.”

  “You make a tempting offer. But what about the ego of all of humanity. The whole point of the game the gods created with us was that they created a species that could never truly agree on anything. So, how can you create a harmonious god from millions of different souls fighting for supremacy? You will not! You are going to take control of this vessel and become not a god of humanity, but simply a man named David with the powers of a god. This entire plan hinges on this pseudo god you’re forming to retain some of your ego and your will, but that defeats the purpose because if it retains your will. It is not a representative of humanity; it is still just you.”

  A long, meaningful pause filled the room between the two men. “I didn’t want to take anyone into the god without their permission. I wanted to spend the time explaining to every person why this is a good plan. I wanted everyone to believe this was a good plan.” David strode closer to Joy with his coterie of mouths. “But you’re making a convincing argument for just putting you into the god. So that maybe, you can understand from the inside why this is the best plan.”

  Jeremy knew this was the moment. This was the moment that his luck was trying to drive him away from. Something about the setting, the people, the actions; it all screamed that this was a momentous event in history.

  So, Jeremy decided to stop it. If his luck wanted to rule his life, he would show it who was the boss of Jeremy.

  A single golden coin flipped through the air and collided with one of the mouths that was holding Joy’s legs in place. Improbably, a tooth chipped on the pseudo godly material. The mouth flinched back in confusion, and Joy slipped his leg out of the vice.

  With one leg free, Joy ducked low and punched the King so hard in his stomach that he vomited out his lunch.

  Struggling against the remaining mouth, Joy was able to free himself from its enamel white clutches. The vomit coming out of David’s mouth slowly stopped being his lunch and started becoming a tidal wave of new mouths. Hundreds of new shiny mouths screamed into existence around the two men.

  Jeremy walked into the room. A lightness filling his step. He felt good. He had taken back something he didn’t know he had lost, and he felt powerful.

  He watched as Joy stood next to the king. Stuck in indecision, Jeremy felt that the other man was having trouble coming to some decision. So, he decided to make that decision for him.

  “Run.” Jeremy spoke to Joy as he strode towards the king. His step was full of a swagger that exuded confidence. Joy watched in awe as bits of the ceiling started to collapse for no discernable reason. Each part of the ceiling collided directly with a different mouth, crushing it beneath the weight of the rubble.

  Joy took one step. The he took another. He ran away as fast as he could from whatever was happening here. Jeremy smiled as Joy passed him, there was something in the other man that brought Jeremy so much happiness.

  When Jeremy had been at his lowest (only the day before), he had seen Joy live selflessly, saving his friends from their impending doom. And that gave him the hope to try and be better.

  There were no cosmic scales of karma. He would never undo all the evil he had done when he had swung the Scepter of Calamity. But he could save one person, right now. And maybe it wouldn’t make a difference to the gods or the beings who saw thousands of years into the future. But it made Jeremy feel a little better, a little stronger, a little more hopeful for this world and his impact on it.

  The king swung up from the ground where he had been dry heaving for a moment to look at the young man entering the room. He was small, and young. He was oh so young compared to the king. David could’ve lived a thousand lifetimes before this child could understand the meaning behind life.

  Jeremy watched as the king pointed one crooked finger at him. An explosion of the remaining mouths attacks Jeremy like vultures on a corpse. But he would not be so easily vanquished.

  The bites slipped off Jeremy like water off a duck’s back. The teeth gnashed on nothing as they engulfed him, and Jeremy was unscathed. Nothing could touch him. For a few moments, Jeremy knew he would be a god in this room.

  Jeremy pointed one crooked finger of his own. But this time he pointed to the sky, where a sudden thunderstorm could be seen to be brewing. The wind and rain sluiced down into the chamber that was now open to the world outside.

  Defying every law of reality, hundreds of bolts of lightning came down from the sky and struck down the mouths that surrounded Jeremy. Then they struck down the mouths surrounding David. Their enamel blackened under the onslaught of nature and Jeremy felt his luck, not the god’s, never the god’s, start to sing.

  Hail struck down the teeth, followed by gusts of wind that forced the mouths to collide into each other. The collisions caused some infighting between the mouths and through it all, Jeremy walked towards the king.

  The king’s eyes were filled with sadness and awe at Jeremy’s showing of power, but Jeremy didn’t worry. He was in control for this small moment.

  One final step took Jeremy into the eye of the storm of mouths; he stood a few steps away from David and no mouths separated the two of them.

  In an unexpected blitz, Jeremy ran up to the king and punched him in the face. Jeremy had never punched anyone like this before; he was scrawny and weak.The king’s head barely turned from the attack; and a horrible crunching sound followed by a wave of pain told Jeremy that he had just broken some fingers.

  The wall of mouths stopped moving and they all turned to face the center of the room. David touched his face where he had just been hit. A pin dropping could’ve been heard the room was so quiet.

  Jeremy’s luck petered out. The waves of lightning had stopped. The hail and thunder died down until it was just two men in a room, surrounded by mouths.

  Jeremy smiled and said, “eat me.”

  The king paused as he stared at this man. He was not even a man, just a kid pretending to be an adult. He stood in the middle of the room shaking from fear.

  “It really will be wonderful in there. You won’t have to be afraid.” Jeremy giggled a little bit in response.

  “I’m so scared I can barely breathe. My hand hurts so bad, I’ve never been in a fight before, and I think I broke something. But I think I’m out of luck, I don’t think there’s anything that can stop you from eating me now, just like all those people during the day of the chasm. Maybe this is my punishment for swinging that scepter.”

  The king walked up to Jeremy and lightly grasped his hands. “You fought well; you are the pride of humanity. And it will be safe in there, you will be forgiven for all your mistakes and all your sins. Inside of me, there will be no right or wrong because you will leave behind those worldly concerns. Please, don’t be scared, you’ll be happier.”

  “Maybe that’s why I’m scared?” Jeremy said before a mouth opened beneath his feet. The darkness swallowed Jeremy whole and David sat down in the middle of the room to create a proper space for the new soul residing in him now.

  One down, thousands upon thousands to go.