When you are born into the world, the die is cast in your favour.
You know this to be true. The very fact that you are born is proof of this. Your existence is a gift, a blessing, another soul to walk the ground beneath you and bless it with your presence, your voice, your sight, your very being.
This is not exclusive to just you, but to every living being across all kingdoms, but you will never say it out loud.
You are born to be one of many, under a harsh mother and father in a harsh kingdom filled with harsh people. Strength is all they admire. Your kin possess strength of body. You have that too, but you have something that they lack.
You have strength of character, of will that surpasses them all.
It is not enough to take the throne of the harsh kingdom. Your older brother has secured that. However, it does grant you the loyalty of one whom you shall call your Sword, nay, your closest ally/friend/sister in all but blood. Your sword is almost brought low by a poisoned blow for you by your blood, but your blood is slain by you and your own, and your new bloodless kin is saved.
The world turns in your favour, and you relish in it.
You find another, a knight-to-be with only one arm and a blade that can cut down any foe that stands before you. There is more to him that you can sense, a chance within a chance within a chance within him. You take him as your own, your hidden blade, your dagger. He serves you well. You know he has and will. He is willing to pay an endless price for his service to you, and while you will never say your thanks to him, you are endlessly grateful for it.
You marry another, a whelp of a man whom thinks of you the same way. You and your dagger end him and his schemes and you are rendered a widow, though you are at peace with this.
Your older kin saves you by killing your old name. You take flight to a new kingdom with a new name and a new ambition.
Ambition is good for you. Ambition suits your designs, and your designs are to see the universe fold the winning cards into your hands and hand you all the winnings. Your luck at the game is staggering, outstanding. Your pride grows with your providence and your prominence grows with your accomplishments.
A game is in play. The prize is an entire kingdom, and you enter it and lay all your ambitions bare. You have no reason to lie, and no respect for liars. What you give respect to is those like you who carry through with their ambitions and reach for that which they cannot hope to obtain. Win it or lose it, it doesn't matter. The act of trying to accomplish the impossible is enough for you.
The game continues on. A city becomes the board and the players are an army of sinners. You cut them down with a blade won through blood before you hear your home calling to you. Your home is pointing a knife at its own throat. Another game is in play, and the prize is a throne. Your older kin is nowhere to be seen. You depart with your blade.
Chaos is what you find. Your home is wrapped in flames. Kin turns against kin. You find your mother wearing new skin and a vagabond knight trying his hand at surviving the madness.
There is something in him as well. Something like your dagger. A chance within a chance within a chance. You've only noticed it now, but he seems to carry the weight of a thousand lost souls and a million nightmares all wrapped up into one.
There is a debt to him that you feel must be paid. You are not sure what.
Nevertheless, the world continues to spin in your favour. A city falls before you, as does another. The final battle for your home commences, blinding and bloody and violent before it finally turns in your favour and-
Calamity.
Your kin are raised without souls and light in their eyes. A Witch pretending to be of Sin raises an army out of dead flesh and steals you away. Whilst your home and your kin and your blades are put to the torch through cold flesh and burning steel, you try to see where the world will fall in your favour to allow to escape and-
The die falls.
One chance.
Only one chance.
You remember a spell. There is only one winning hand here. The bet of all bets, the gamble to end them all.
Your luck has just run out.
There is only one way out of this, one way to save your home, your family, your daggers and blades and people.
And the cost is yourself.
You wonder if it was your luck that led you to this place. You have always believed in destiny. The world had tilted its axis to suit your needs, so you have, for all your life, assumed that your fate would be to have the whole world in your hand.
And yet now, here you are, in this dark place with a dark decision laid before you, the only winning hand in an impossible deck, and you realise that, in your arrogance, you were never to know what your fate was to be.
You weren't playing the game, the game was playing you.
You do not want to die. This much is certain. There is still so much for you to do, so much that you wish to do. You wish to see the world and all that it could be. You wish to see your ambitions be fulfilled, as do you wish to see the fruits of all the ambitons of those around you come to bloom.
And yet you realise that the choice in front of you, the only winning bet, is not truly a bet at all.
It is the only way forward.
You suddenly realise the debt of the knight. You don't think that it will ever be repaid.
You decide to try.
You take the bet.
You die.
You break free to your family and fell a giant. The Witch is brought low and the Calamity is ceased.
You spend the night with your dagger, your knight, and his brother in arms, a knight whom you see through the veil he covers himself in and catch only a glimpse of what he has gone through with your new clarity.
You understand the debt that he is owed, and you thank him for it.
You thank them both for it.
You begin to fade.
Your knight begs you to stay, pleads with you, pleads with him, and you wish to return this devotion, this love, but you know that the cost to do so will be too high.
You ask him to stop, to make peace, to see the joy of the world through his own eyes.
Maybe he will, maybe he won't. That is no longer your place to ask.
Now, all you can do is look out into the endless sky, and make a bet on one last thing.
The sun rises. It is beautiful.
You smile.
The world truly does turn in your favour.
You fade away, a smile on your face.
You are at peace.
"You flare, you flicker, you fade...
And in the end, all your tomorrows become yesterdays."
-James Roberts, 2018