The Only Game In Town [Adventure]

Joy was sitting in a tavern, betting hundreds of gold coins on a rumor.

The tavern was like many of the other taverns he had been through over the past weeks. He had made a pit stop at his parents' place to drop off his friends and pick up some fresh clothes, but he was back on the open road now.

The hard part was that he had an underlying purpose now. He wanted to stop the prince's scheme to create a new god; but he was having trouble finding the motivation and direction to stop it.

He was not really an ideas man, nor was he a man of real direction. He had his wants in life, but he mostly just went with the flow of things. He had never found himself being the driving force in the defining moments of an era before.

So, Joy had decided to do what he did best. He wandered from town to town. He had learned from the mistakes he had made the first time he underwent a journey of this magnitude.

He had learned to never stay in a town two nights in a row if he was gambling. People didn't like to see the money he had won from them being spent around their own town.

He had learned to never win too much. If he got on a hot streak, he fumbled a few rounds to make sure everyone left the night reasonably happy.

But most importantly, he had learned to keep himself groomed. His hair was now short to prevent all Hair gifted related attacks from affecting him.

He had followed these rules, and they had slowly led him to this town. The little town had the quaint name of River's Bend, because it was right on a river's bend. The town itself was just like every other town that Joy had ever visited except for one important thing. The town had a soothsayer - a gifted who could see a little into the realm of Destiny.

Joy had placed his bets on being able to find a little divine guidance that would bring him to where he was most needed.

But the soothsayer was an evil old woman who apparently didn't like strangers showing up at her door unannounced in the middle of the night. Joy would admit that knocking on her door at midnight had not been his brightest idea ever, but the old lady could sure hold a grudge.

Joy had decided to take his despair to the local tavern. There he could at least be making gold and be sad rather than just being sad. As he had been wiping the floor with some amateur card players he had heard an interesting tidbit of information.

The old crone loved pumpkin pie more than anything in the whole wide world. Joy had circled around this fact and despaired since it was not pumpkin season, so he couldn't even bring himself back into the old woman's good graces with a gift.

But he had heard that there was one man in town who had a gift to make pumpkin pies appear out of thin air. It was a gift from Autumn and had apparently served the man quite well over the years.

So, Joy had found the man in the tavern and asked if he could get a pie from him. But the old man had looked Joy up and down and then named an exorbitant price. A price that would even make a king shudder for a single pie.

But Joy had never let that stop him before. He knew he would have to gamble everything to even have a chance of getting enough gold to pay the old man.

So, here he was, hundreds of gold pieces bet on a single round of blackjack.

But Joy never felt the rush of the gamble, because he knew that he was going to win. He could feel the luck in his bones sing that he had an 18 in his hand, but his opponent only had 17 in theirs.

He grinned as the cards were shown to be exactly what he had predicted, and Joy slid the shining gold pieces back towards him. Now he had a nice chunk of change in his pocket, and he could approach the old man at the counter.

Joy was unnerved by how relaxed everyone in the bar was about losing this amount of money. A deeper glance made him notice that the clothes everyone wore were fine, most certainly not what someone who worked every day would wear.

The old man was weathered by time. He was clearly the sort of man who had used to work hard in his youth but was now relaxing in his old age. He had a large white moustache covering his lip and he looked about as nice as a bull.

"What do you want?" The man had a gruff voice the reverberated down Joy's spine.

"I want to buy a pumpkin pie?" Joy raised a handful of gold. The old man's eyes shined, and his grin grew predatory.

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"Well, I hope your fortune gets told just the way you want it, young man." With a flourish the old man made an entire pumpkin pie appear with a beautiful dollop of cream on the top.

Joy nearly cried in relief, maybe the old lady would take his peace offering.

The next morning came quickly, and Joy was patiently waiting outside of the soothsayer's home.

The old crone opened her door and looked deeply into Joy's eyes and saw his pumpkin pie. Her eyes did not gleam, and she did not seem all that excited about the pumpkin pie.

Joy was worried. He had hoped for a more exuberant reaction from the old woman.

"Come inside." The old lady tapped what seemed to be a solid gold cane in front of Joy, indicating that he should come into her abode.

Joy was floored by the splendor of her home. Everything was made of gold and silver. Diamonds and rubies floated in the air via some gift-related nonsense and Joy tried to pick one up, but it floated away from his fingers. It honestly didn't even feel like a real home. It felt more like what a teenager would spend a fortune on.

The old woman sat Joy down at a table that could've seated forty, and a cup of tea mystically appeared in front of him.

"You are the first person to ruin my con." The old woman had pulled a pipe and started smoking as Joy slowly sampled the tea. It was a wonderful fruity type of tea and Joy would be sure to ask her where she sourced it.

"You see, I am a soothsayer. I just don't like working very much. So, I settled down in this here town thirty or so years ago." The woman took a deep drag on her pipe before continuing. "But I realized that people had followed me, and I had kind of ruined the small-town nature of this small town."

"So, I concocted a scheme. I would make people complete some little tasks for me. The tasks would always involve one of the members of my little town getting rich for some reason or another. Sometimes it was a pie that could only be summoned by someone in the village or clearing out a magical infestation of unending rats summoned by another villager."

Joy enjoyed a monologue as much as the next person, but he voiced the question that had been on his mind this whole time. "Why are you telling me this?"

The woman huffed, letting a plume of smoke escape her lips. "Because I am annoyed. My system had worked to bring prosperity to this town for decades, and you are the first twerp to ever break that system."

"Are you still going to tell my fortune?" Joy asked tentatively.

"Of course. I just want to know what flaw in my perfect plan you exploited. That is my price."

"Deal." Joy said. He was beyond thankful that the old woman hadn't just denied him instantly. But he was worried, he hadn't really exploited anything about her system, it seemed like a foolproof system. It self-selected rich people who were too rich to care about doing some stupid tasks and would just default to getting it done through sheer investment power. Thus, they would be the only people spending the ludicrous amount of money. Anyone else would just wait to make a pie later in the year or give up.

The old woman grabbed his hand and blew a cloud of smoke into his palm. The smoke didn't feel immaterial as it normally would. Instead, the smoke coalesced into a figure that resembled Joy.

"Oh… oh my." The old woman looked off into the distance, obviously seeing something in Joy's fate. "You know what the worst part of being a soothsayer is, young man?"

"No, what is it?"

"Everyone comes expecting that they will finally be the exception. Everyone thinks that their fate is beyond mortal comprehension, but most lives are boring. There is beauty in that boredom, but lives are filled with lazy afternoons in the sun and spending time with loved ones. No one is special."

"But I am the exception, right?" Joy tried not to sound too pleased with himself.

"You could do nothing and be as boring as everyone else. That is always an option. But… yes, there is something incredible awaiting you in the future." The old woman paused, thinking about how best to explain it.

With a wave of her hand the smoky Joy started walking in place.

"First, you will travel north until you find the land of the free."

The little Joy walked and walked until he seemed to arrive at a smoky settlement. Smoky people walked around the village he had come to and a few of them approached the smoke-Joy.

"There you will find the path to the truth of death and the truth of the world."

A stairway appeared in the middle of the village leading upwards to some unknowable secret.

"Once you know the truth you will never lose and yet you will also not be able to win."

The little Joy ascended the stairs and at the top found an unending battle. Forces pushed and pulled in this space above the smoky clouds but none of them ever won the engagement. The little Joy walked into the middle of the battle and found himself being pulled into thousands of pieces and reforming repeatedly.

"Finally, you will be able to say the truth of life and will declare it to all people."

The smoke Joy shouted something to the fighting crowd and the entire illusion evaporated into the air.

"That's it? What about stopping the king's plan to become the god Humanity? What about our epic battle? That's what I need to know about, not any of this philosophical crap."

The old woman rapped Joy on the forehead. He yelped in surprise, and she spoke, this time in a much less imposing voice, "I can't tell you the future you want to know. That would be called lying."

"But, but, but…" Joy hung his head in defeat. Maybe this was his path forward, no matter how unsatisfying it seemed.

"Now for my payment?" The old woman leaned towards Joy. A sparkle in her eyes filled the room as she waited for Joy to tell her the secret of how he had bested her scheme.

"Your plan is perfect. The world is not. You never considered randomness; nothing is allowed to be perfect in this world." Joy felt the truth slip off his tongue without even actualizing the thoughts. But he could feel the truth in the air as he spoke them.

"That's not right. Please, tell me what your scheme was that was able to beat mine."

Joy stood up and bowed to the old woman. "I have told you the truth of your scheme's failure." As he walked away, he winked and said, "goodbye madame. I cannot tell you what you want to hear because that would be lying."

With that, Joy scampered away, heading due north. He was looking for the land of the free.