The wedding of a Supreme was usually a grand thing indeed, but this was altogether a more… muted affair. This one had never cared much for pomp and circumstance, after all. He and his bride had secluded themselves away from the galaxy, found a quiet planet, and said their vows before only their closest friends.

But still, there were bells. They tolled.

Doom.

Bride and groom laughed as confetti rained down. You would never know from their humble attire that they ruled the Supremacy, that this man was the strongest -- the one closest to god.

Doom.

Drinks on the grass, a glass spilt. Red wine falling on white fabric. No horror at the ruined dress, no sadness -- just gentle laughter, as if nothing at all could ruin this day.

Doom.

His blood boiled.

Doom.

Plans made, heretical intentions behind closed doors. He lingered in the doorway, listening in, eavesdropping as man and wife discussed the unthinkable. A world he could not abide.

Doom.

His blood boiled.

Doom.

The body, so slight, broken on the floor before him. His hands stained in blood. His eyes wide, absurd tears flowing freely. Guards wrestling him to the ground. The woman had been vanquished in an instant, but now she would always be victorious.

Doom.

His blood boiled.

Doom.

Ice spreading over his vision, his limbs stiffening, his thoughts grinding to a halt. The last thing he sees before he is thrown into the future is the face -- the face of the man he called friend, the man he called brother. The man he betrayed and was betrayed by. The last growl crawls from his lips.

“Damon…”

Doom.

Before the dark claims him, the man closest to god speaks. His lips move, to be sure. But the thing that leaves his mouth makes no sense at all.

Doom.

“I hope you wake in a kinder world than this.”

Doom.

His heart froze.

Doom.

Mereloco snapped back to the present as he ducked underneath a kick from his opponent. As he moved, his dodges like a dance, he did his best to keep his afflicted arm at a distance. Vividly coloured flowers still protruded from the skin of the limb, blood dripping from their stems. The enemy's ability, without a doubt.

The growth of the flowers seemed to have stopped, but he couldn't risk the infection -- if it was an infection -- spreading to the rest of his body. As if the physical damage wasn't bad enough, he could barely muster any Aether in the arm that had been infested. Some kind of drainage.

Unchained.

Mereloco created a zone of redirected gravity around his body, pulling himself up into the air.

Unchained.

With that distance created, he commanded another zone -- but this one had gravity all but completely nullified. Unshackled by the laws of physics, he observed his enemy from above. His enemy did much the same, a dark smirk on his lips.

From the way this blue guy had been talking, it seemed like his ability had something to do with playing games. If he posed a challenge, and Mereloco lost, he'd be attacked by more of those flowers. The growth had been instantaneous, so it didn't seem to be something he could dodge. While the flowers themselves weren't that damaging, his reduced Aether would make him an easier target for physical attacks. If he got careless, he could very well end up broken on the floor.

The blue bastard didn't move to pursue Mereloco. He just continued to watch from below, that irritating smirk on his face. He was doing his best to keep still.

That made sense.

The guy had said that the next person to breathe was the loser. Since he was doing his best not to breathe, that meant he was vulnerable to his own ability too. It was the tradeoff for that unavoidable attack. Mereloco could use that.

He didn't have long to do it, though.

Breathing, beyond even eating and drinking, was the most basic and vital instinct for an animal. If you didn't breathe, you died. It was as simple as that. To consciously suppress that instinct went against the very rules of Mereloco's flesh. Even with Aether bolstering his body, he could only go for so long without breathing.

But that was enough.

Unchained.

Mereloco forced himself back down onto the ground, a crater forming in the floor from the sheer force of the impact. The moment he landed, he thrust his palm forward towards his opponent -- not to attack directly, but to target. It didn't matter if this bastard didn't want to breathe. He could control his own body, but he couldn't control the air.

Air, pulled by gravity, rushed towards the enemy's mouth -- and passed through his lips. A single breath had been forced upon him.

Mereloco smirked, taking a greedy gasp of oxygen…

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

…and flowers burst out of his other arm.

The pain -- much worse than the first time -- sent him down to one knee for a moment, his face contorted in agony. As he heard his opponent laugh mockingly, however, that agony was quickly converted into anger. He looked up with bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, apologies, apologies,” the enemy grinned, two hands on his hips. “It seems perhaps you've misunderstood my physiology, non?”

He opened his jaw -- and kept opening it, until Mereloco could see all the way down his throat. Right at the back, like some kind of airlock, was a secondary jaw -- teeth flat and fixed like those of a horse, preventing any oxygen from getting to his lungs. Damn Scurrants.

As he rose to his feet, Mereloco went to bite at the flowers infesting his arm, but his teeth passed right through them. Seemed they weren't completely physical objects, then. More a representation of the effect? Who gave a crap? The important thing was beating them.

Mereloco allowed his Aether to course around his body, testing it. The results were not promising. It was at about half its usual potency. If he kept getting hit by this ability, he'd be dead quickly. No more mistakes could be made.

He took a deep breath, adjusted his footing -- and deep within, his mind recalibrated itself…

…to become a murder machine.

Tealin hummed to himself as he circled his opponent, the caveman Mereloco, a spring in his step as he enjoyed the advantage.

How to finish you, then, mon ami?

Tealin enjoyed games -- he always had. From simple playground fare to complex battles of strategies and wit, he loved them all. When you got down to it, life too was nothing but a game. Rules were imposed constantly by forces unchallengeable, creating the walls of the great labyrinth that all men must wander through.

In that sense, Garden Macabre was the perfect representation of life itself.

To use it, Tealin needed to do only one thing: propose a game between himself and his opponent. It had to be a game he himself could conceivably lose, and he couldn't use the same game type again until some time had passed. Apart from that, however, he was as free as a bird.

Each demerit his opponent suffered would reduce his strength considerably. After two more or so, Tealin would feel comfortable launching a more direct attack. These four arms of his weren't just for dancing, after all.

Well, there was no time like the present -- if Mereloco would let him get a word in.

The caveman clearly understood Tealin's ability now -- he was rushing in, hoping to stop him from getting the words out. A simple but effective strategy.

With his arms infested, Mereloco resorted to his legs -- launching a kick that would have surely broken a lesser man in half. Tealin raised all four of his arms and blocked, the fist slamming against his impromptu fortress of flesh. Tealin considered it.

Invader from days past,

O clashes against future at last,

What victory unaligned!

Unaware he -- already mine.

Tealin Jade

Once, a poet had been foolish enough to tell Tealin that his work was amateur at best. Tealin had forced him to eat his own arms in response. Perhaps he'd explore that conclusion for this battle as well?

As Mereloco kicked again -- this time aiming for the eyes coating Tealin's muscles -- he launched off the ground, flipping through the air majestically.

“Très belle!” he laughed, eyes on the foliage covering Mereloco's arms. “Let's see if we can enhance you further, shall we? Whoever can clap the most in the next ten seconds wins!”

Mereloco moved quickly, the little purple Aether he could muster struggling across his arms as he clapped and clapped and clapped -- even weakened, his clapping was fast enough that it couldn't be seen with the naked eye.

As he landed, Tealin went to clap as well -- but before his pairs of hands could meet, they were suddenly repelled from each other by an invisible force. He smiled. That was the way Mereloco liked to play then, eh?

It was obvious that this brute had some sort of gravity manipulation. He'd created an area of repulsion between Tealin's hands, to prevent him from clapping at all. Now he was getting it -- but he hadn't gone nearly far enough with his cheating.

Joints snapped as Tealin twisted his arms around in their sockets, such that they were now facing behind him instead. His hands were now in a position where Mereloco could not see -- and if he couldn't see them, he couldn't interfere with them. Tealin applauded his own genius without reservation.

Needless to say, he won.

This was what he lived for. Not just playing games, but winning them, humiliating his opponent, showing them that they were nothing but pieces on his board. He’d played such games many times. Sometimes he played with families. Other times, he drove friends to betrayal and depravity. Once, he’d even managed to form a cult of personality, filling their minds with whatever he pleased until he grew bored of them. The universe had no shortage of toys to offer.

The shape of the board itself was the only thing that changed -- and now Tealin had his eye on the entire Supremacy as his board. What kind of games could he play with an entire empire? He shuddered to imagine.

For the moment though, he just snapped his arms back into position, and regarded his victory with a calm smile.

Mereloco fell to one knee again as flowers burst out from his leg, blood splattering out and painting the floor. Still smiling, Tealin stepped back and sat down on one of the floating pieces of concrete, crossing his legs. It seemed a shame that they hadn't used the environment at all during the fight, but these things happened.

“For our final game of the night,” Tealin laughed. “Who can beg the other for mercy first? Whoever hears the other plead for mercy first loses.”

Did this fool think that Mereloco's pride was a chain?

To him, anything could be discarded if it resulted in victory. He would debase himself in whatever way was necessary to defeat his enemy. He would crawl through the mud as long and as far as it took to reach his goal. If he could destroy his opponent by shitting himself, he would shit without hesitation.

It didn't even take a moment to answer the fool's challenge.

“Please,” Mereloco said, his voice a dull monotone. “Have pity.”

This time there was no mistake. Mereloco had spoken first, and he had spoken correctly. He had --

“Have mercy upon me,” the enemy said, his voice strangely slurred.

Blood burst out of Mereloco's remaining leg as flowers burrowed out of his flesh like worms, opening their petals against the night. Immediately, he collapsed to his knees -- but he did not reach the ground. Instead, with blinding speed, the enemy rushed forward and seized Mereloco by the neck with one of his massive hands, holding him on high.

This wasn’t ideal. All of Mereloco’s limbs were covered now -- and save for the very tips of his fingers and toes, he couldn’t channel any Aether through them at all. He was almost helpless -- all he could do was watch as that massive blue face leered at him.

“I'm afraid I've had numerous adjustments made to my body,” the enemy purred. “There's a former Absurd Weapons Lab man who was only too happy to indulge my requests. My senses, for one, are manual. I can switch them on and off as I please.”

Doom.

He grinned with both sets of teeth -- within and without.

Doom.

“Now…” he leered. “I hope you enjoyed your Dawn Contest, fossil -- but I'm afraid it's come to an end. But I must say… you’ve made a very amusing toy.”

Doom.

“Merci.”

Doom.

Mereloco lunged forwards.