Important!: It took me forever to come up with this idea, but now, as I re-read it before posting, I'm starting to wonder if someone else has already done it. Stupid as it sounds, I really don't know if it's only in my head because I made it up, or because I read it before. That having been said, I'm feeling like it's at least mostly original, but if you have/know someone else has written something just like it, I TOTALLY apologize and if you let me know, I swear I'll take it down immediately. Please bear in mind that this is all pure stupidity, not thievery, I promise! Again, if this was someone else's idea, I'm really, really sorry and I will delete it asap.

And yes, I'm definitely having an off-day :P

Pairing: There's a tiny bit of Arra/Larten. You just have to squint a little...

Warning: Contains spoilers for pretty much everything :D

Fourth word: GAMES

Desmond Tiny loved games.

All his pieces were laid out in front of him, within his reach and at his whim. He could control them as much or as little as he wanted to. Sometimes he was a whisper on the wind, sometimes a voice in the weak-minded, and sometimes, he was himself, a strange little man in rainboots.

Of course there were rules, that made it a game as opposed to a free-for-all, but Des Tiny was a master rule-bender. He didn't have a preferred side, because he didn't look at it as good versus evil. He knew that within evil there was compassion, and within good there was corruption.

Most of the pieces, he didn't particularly care about, but that didn't mean they weren't useful. These non-essential pieces were his pawns; the first to move, the first to die, but also the first to affect the actions and reactions of the other pieces, the important ones, the ones he kept a very close eye on.

Sam Grest was a pawn moved early. Mr. Tiny had given him nudge his square and into the Cirque du Freak to stir things up a bit. If it hadn't been for the stupid Darren Shan and his aversion to blood, Sam Grest need not have gotten involved, and thus killed, but as was such in a game. The little touch-and-go, tense moments that arose when he moved Sam out were the moments he lived for. Death, guilt, and fear just added excitement.

Debbie Hemlock and Evra Von, those were pawns he used with a bit more intent, a bit more caution. They joined the fray early, but then he moved them to the side and out of harm's way, only to bring them back later to add to the epic ending.

Gavner Purl was no mere pawn - he contributed to the battle, had his victories, but eventually his part was not much more than that of Sam Grest's. His death, seemingly so unjust, added to the pain that would come in the end. It came down to the same for Arra Sails. He put her together with Larten Crepsley just so he could tear them apart, and like a piece of cloth, once it had torn, it could never be sewn together quite perfectly again. When she died so cruelly, so did a part of Larten, and he was a key player. Kurda Smahlt sat on the line of each team in an attempt to make peace. The players that fought for peace always fell the hardest when their time was over.

Larten Crepsley was perhaps the third most essential player of them all; he not only affected, but more-or-less shaped the kings on both sides of the board. In the end, even when his piece had long since been knocked to the floor, he would drive one king with their intense hatred and bitterness, and the other with their desire for revenge.

Whichever king would prevail in the finale of the game was a toss-up, but either way, it would be a messy, bitter end for both teams and any piece that had the misfortune to have survived to that point - sometimes dying sooner rather than later was the easier way to go.

Desmond Tiny was playing the game of life, and in his eyes, he was the unbeatable player, and this game he would never lose.

The best know that there is always someone better, who will control their pieces with greater precision, who will bend the rules farther.

I've never written anything quite like this before, so let me know what you think. You know that feeling when you're trying to write something deep, or serious, and all of the sudden you snap out of verbose-philosophical-mode and go, "My God, I'm a rambling idiot!". I kinda had one of those moments half-way through this, so we'll see if you agree with me :P.