A thrown fist. A straight punch, right from the boxing handbook. A right hook, designed to take a person’s head off, or at least crack a jaw. A spinning backhanded blow. A flying knee straight from the beauties of muay Thai.

  Even with his faculties waning, Melmarc knew to stick to the basics.

  Every blow was powerful, threatening to send shockwaves through the house. The fight had moved him and Dorthna into the living room. The television had fallen casualty to their battle, if it could be called a battle.

  Dorthna ducked a blow seamlessly, coming up on Melmarc’s other side. His fist moved, a straight jab to the boy’s side. Melmarc staggered from the blow, brows creased in a show of pain.

  Dorthna acknowledged his perseverance.

  This was the fifth strike he’d given the child, and Melmarc still would not fall. It was commendable. Terrifying, too, if he was being honest. Then again, the boy was using all his skills, throwing out rings of pure mana with every chance he got.

  Twice, Melmarc had used [Mana dilation] on Dorthna. On both occasions, Dorthna had felt the pulse go through him, trying to do something. Whatever it was, it had no impact since he had no skill that was already on cooldown.

  There was one positive to the battle so far, Dorthna noted as Melmarc’s fist slammed into the wall where his face had been, sending shockwaves going through the house. The boy was beginning to show feelings. There was no awareness yet, but there was pain.

  And pain was a start.

  Evading a flurry of punches and low kicks, Dorthna kept him and Melmarc confined to the living room. It was his benevolence that kept them there, preventing further damage to the house. The building itself had enough spells and enchantments to restore it to its original form. The furniture and adornments, however, did not.

  Melmarc was proving an annoying child to stop. After another three hits, though, Dorthna felt like he’d gotten the hang of it. The aim, after all, was to render the boy powerless, not dead. But that was the trick with Mad gods, they had the ability to tap into a near infinite supply of pure mana—mana at its strongest and most original form. You did not tire out a Mad god because they no longer had the subconscious inhibitions that stopped them from tapping into that pool.

  So you had to put them to sleep.

  There in lay the reason Dorthna had been fighting for so long. Limited as he was, he remained a powerful being that had accomplished far more things than the years Melmarc had been alive. Each strike he dealt the boy was gauged, subdued. He had to count up from his weakest strike until he got to the one that was strong enough to achieve his goal without killing.

  Melmarc threw a combo, three well placed punches that switched into a feint followed by a high kick. It was a familiar technique, one that Dorthna had seen Aurora use once upon a time.

  He slapped the first blow aside, blocked the second, and stopped the third by allowing it roll off his shoulder. The feint was taken with all the pretense of an adult boosting the morale of an infant. Then the high kick came and Dorthna swept Melmarc’s single leg out from under him.

  He stepped back when Melmarc hit the ground and waited. The boy’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling above him and Dorthna wondered if the boy was in shock.

  He cocked his head to the side. “You can’t be done,” he said, curious. “Are you done?” he leaned slightly forward, looked Melmarc in the eyes. “Can you understand me?”

  Melmarc left the ground in a burst of speed so sudden that the force broke the surface level of the floor. His movements were getting faster and he took Dorthna in a bear hug.

  Dorthna halted his approach with a raised hand, palm flattening against Melmarc’s forehead.

  “I swear,” he grumbled. “I’m going to take a lot of [EP] out of you for this.”

  Melmarc, with his longer reach, grabbed onto Dorthna’s sides with both hands and squeezed.

  A touch of pain flitted up Dorthna’s sides and his jaw dropped in shock. It was more of discomfort than pain, but it was there. A hint of pain. A shadow. A promise.

  How?

  The word exploded in his mind, filling him with part confusion and a tingle of excitement that he hadn’t felt in a while.

  Calm down, Norath, he chided himself, reining in his excitement. He’s just a boy, not a real Mad god.

  Somewhere in the recesses of Melmarc’s mind where the madness had not reached he must’ve noticed Dorthna’s reaction because his grip tightened, squeezing harder.

  Dorthna did not stop him, not yet. Instead, he basked temporarily in the effect the boy had created. He sighed in the relief of pain. A simple smile touched his lips and his eyes softened.

  Finally.

  He shook his head when he realized that Melmarc wasn’t just trying to inflict pain. The boy was trying to lift him off the ground.

  “Alright,” he said, grumbling as he pulled his attention from the pain. “You don’t get to toss me around like a rag doll.”

  One hand still holding Melmarc back, he slapped him with the other. An increase in how much force he had been using led to a different outcome from the past. Melmarc didn’t stumble into the wall. He went straight through it.

  Dorthna grimaced as he stared through the hole in the wall and into the kitchen.

  He’d just sent a maddened child into the place where they kept the domestic house weapons. He’d sent Melmarc to the cooking armory.

  Look on the bright side, Nosrath, he told himself. At least, it’s not where they kept the demi-god weapons he came back with.

  The last thing he needed was Melmarc getting his hands on anything with a hint of broken divinity in his current state.

  Then again, Dorthna found himself wondering just how much chaos the boy could cause if he got his hands on—

  His hand snapped out in front of him and grabbed the knife by the blade before it stabbed his eye. Bringing his hand down, he dropped the knife to the floor.

  A surprised yet impressed sound left his lips in the form of a grunt. “You’ve got good aim,” he commented.

  Inside the kitchen, Melmarc stood like an angry bulwark. His size definitely made him look intimidating.

  “Meh.” Dorthna shrugged to himself. “I’ve seen bigger.”

  When he really paid attention to Melmarc, he found the boy with the house’s largest cleaver in his hand. He was bleeding from an injury that was hidden under his hair and one of his legs was bent the wrong way.

  Dorthna grimaced at the leg. He didn’t know which was more disturbing, the way the leg was bent or that Melmarc still stood on it as if there was nothing wrong with it.

  “Alright, alright.” Dorthna stepped through the wall that was already reconstructing itself. “I’m trying to knock you out not damage you. It’s time we end this.”

  Flinging the cleaver right at Dorthna’s face, Melmarc rushed him. Both actions were executed almost perfectly. Dorthna moved his head to the side, dodging a cleaver that had been perfectly aimed at his eye, again, and raised his palm to deflect Melmarc’s blow.

  Guiding the first blow to the side, he struck Melmarc in the chest. The force sent Melmarc staggering back and Dorthna captured the surrendered space by stepping forward. Melmarc rushed forward again, throwing a new combo.

  Dorthna’s raised palms moved each blow aside and he struck Melmarc in the chest again. Melmarc took two steps back, gasping from the impact of the blow, then dropped to his knee.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Dorthna captured the new relinquished space again with a few steps. Melmarc raised his head, looked at Dorthna. The rage in his eyes was unhidden. That was good, emotion was some form of reason.

  But Dorthna wasn’t looking for some form of reason. In fact, he wasn’t looking for reason. He was looking for the absence of anything. He was looking for an unconscious boy.

  Melmarc moved again as he stepped forward and Dorthna frowned. It was taking everything he had not to just hit the boy with what he got.

  Why won’t you just stay down?

  A massive fist came flying at his face and he dodged it. Melmarc moved past him as if he had never been his aim at all. He ran for the wall.

  Dorthna realized a bit late that Melmarc was making a run for it. The level of stupidity he must’ve possessed to not consider that the boy would run did not escape him as he turned and gave chase only to find Melmarc soaring through the air, right back at him.

  Eyes widening in surprise, Dorthna realized what had happened. Melmarc hadn’t been running. He’d thrown himself into the wall and jumped off it. It was a difficult thing to envision a person as tall as Melmarc doing anything acrobatic.

  But here he was, flying through the air, about to slam into him with his entire body.

  Dorthna sighed. Why did he have to develop the Oath of Madness first?

  Melmarc landed into waiting arms as Dorthna caught him horizontally. Then, like the famous wrestlers Ark loved watching as a child, he turned and slammed Melmarc into the ground. Then he got on top of him.

  “Let’s try to keep you in one piece,” he muttered, grabbing the boy by the neck with one hand. Then he squeezed.

  Melmarc struggled beneath him. But for all the force the boy had, Dorthna did not budge. Failing to throw Dorthna off, his hands came flying. Fist after fist slammed into Dorthna’s face. He felt the discomfort, the shadow of what pain might feel like. He ignored it.

  After three blows, Melmarc’s fists lost the strength that they’d had. By the fifth punch, he was only throwing one arm.

  The eighth punch didn’t cross half its distance before the arm fell limp to the side.

  One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three. Dorthna released Melmarc’s neck.

  Closed eyes stared back at him. The boy had lost consciousness but Dorthna needed to be sure.

  He patted his face, tapping it lightly. Melmarc’s head turned but that was all. He was definitely unconscious.

  Right?

  Dorthna frowned. He has to be.

  Somewhere in his mind, he wanted to call Ark to take his younger brother upstairs. But he couldn’t. That would put Ark at risk. Potential risk, at least.

  Dorthna groaned. “This is why I hate fighting people like this.”

  The thing about Oaths of Madness was that sometimes, in their madness, they could pull off the most complex and amazing plans. Only someone that was mad enough would stop fighting back in the middle of being choked, pretend to pass out, and allow themselves to be choked for an extra three mississippis. That was why he’d waited a little longer. Long enough to make sure the person was unconscious but short enough to not kill them.

  And Melmarc definitely had enough madness in him to fall under that category.

  Alright, Dorthna told himself. One last check.

  He leaned forward slowly, still straddling Melmarc, and brought his ear to the boy’s nose. The breathing was at a steady rhythm. Dorthna sighed. What he had beneath him was a perfectly unconscious bo—

  Warm air tickled his ear and he shot back in the blink of an eye just before Melmarc’s teeth clamped down on the air where his ear had been.

  Dorthna punched him in the face before he even knew what he was doing and Melmarc’s head hung limp to the side.

  “What the fuck!?”

  A few seconds later, maybe a minute or two, Dorthna was standing at the kitchen sink washing his hands. There was no blood on him and his hands weren’t stained in any way. There was just something cathartic about the action, like drinking hot water. When he was done, he turned and leaned back against the sink, staring at a definitely unconscious Melmarc.

  The fight had been interesting as far as spars against young kids went. A Mad god at an age younger than eighteen was definitely a new occurrence in his experience. In the wider reach of existence, he was sure Melmarc wasn’t the first, but Melmarc was his first.

  All his skills deactivated, apart from the ones that were never inactive, Dorthna took Melmarc by the leg and started pulling him along the ground. The path they’d made to the kitchen through the wall had been sealed off so he’d had to take a roundabout route through the door.

  Only when he got to the stairs did he release Melmarc’s leg. Lifting him by the fabric of his shirt that covered his chest with one hand, Dorthna carried him upstairs, allowing him dangle uselessly.

  He found Ark quietly standing at the top of the stairs, waiting impatiently. His eyes were bloodshot from crying and guilt had never looked heavier on a child.

  Dorthna sighed as he passed him, patting him gently on the arm. “Not your fault,” he told him, even though he knew it would take more than that for Ark to believe him. “Personally, I’d say we were lucky it happened now.”

  “Why is that?”

  Dorthna paused to look back, but Ark hadn’t turned to look at him.

  “The living room’s a heavy mess,” he answered. “And we broke a lot of things that have fixed themselves. Imagine if this had happened in front of one of your weak therapists.”

  Ark stiffened abruptly and he knew the boy had just imagined it.

  “Will he be fine?” Ark asked.

  Dorthna shrugged. “I can’t give you the answer if you don’t look at me, kiddo.”

  Ark hesitated, standing in place for a while longer. He was a stubborn child when compared to Melmarc.

  When Dorthna thought Ark wouldn’t turn, Ark did. He had tears running down his eyes. But they didn’t stop him. He looked at Dorthna and met his eyes.

  “Will he be fine?”

  Dorthna smiled. “Nothing a good rest won’t fix.”

  Ark’s gaze went downwards and Dorthna followed it. Both pairs of eyes settled on Melmarc’s badly twisted leg and Dorthna grimaced.

  “Trust me, it’s not as bad as it looks,” he said in a hurry. “I’ve got a spell to fix that right up.”

  Ark nodded, looking away from the leg. But rather than look away completely, he returned his eyes to Dorthna.

  Sometimes being stubborn had its perks.

  Dorthna carried Melmarc the rest of the way, into his room, and onto his bed. The demon, Spitfire, watched him drop Melmarc. When he moved to tuck Melmarc in as he’d often done with him and his siblings when they were younger, he paused.

  Even now, with all their size and ability to string words and sentences together, they still felt like nothing but children in his eyes.

  He smiled softly. You’ve grown soft.

  The children were no longer children. But what was a measly decade or two in the face of the wider cosmos. Dorthna had probably seen more than any of them ever could. He had seen worlds die, watched world be given birth. He had once been a myth in the eyes of the now mythical observers. He had fought devils and made angels kneel.

  He had lived. A gentle hand moved to his side, the first place he had felt pain since being cursed to becoming nothing more than a mere [Mage], and a weak one at that.

  His hand flattened against his side. His mind tried to recall the feeling of discomfort. It touched on the edges of a mere whisker of it.

  Oh, he had lived.

  His smile softened some more, grew fond as he watched Melmarc’s blood-stained face. So, no matter what happened, no matter how old the children of War and Madness grew, weathered and frail and strong and powerful, it mattered not. They would always be children to him.

  Even if they were often annoying children.

  He covered Melmarc with his duvet and tucked him in.

  Can you tell me about the star of Tereton?

  It was a question from many years ago. A request. It was the type of bedtime story Melmarc would always ask for. Tales of worlds beyond the stars. Worlds hidden behind portals. Of Impdits and Nenits. Of half-men and fallen gods.

  And Dorthna would always tell him stories. He would fill a child’s mind with words of boring tales and complex worlds with complex designs until he fell asleep. And he would take those times to reminisce on the life he had lived.

  “Thank you,” he found himself saying to the unconscious child. “Thank you for giving me hope.”

  It had been very little, almost nonexistent. But it had been there. The whisper of pain. The promise of possibilities.

  Dorthna got up and walked out of the room, giving Spitfire a scratch behind the ear as he left. The demon shivered at the action as surprised by it as Dorthna was.

  Outside, Ark stood as if protecting the room from intruders.

  “How is he?” he asked when Dorthna came out.

  “Fine,” Dorthna told him. “I’ll heal his injuries when he wakes up.”

  Ark turned his gaze to the ground. “Thank you.”

  “Tar’arkna.” Dorthna placed his hand on Ark’s shoulder, forcing the boy to look at him. “When you show gratitude, you do it with a grateful smile on your face, and you look the person in the eye so that they know you are not ashamed of it.”

  It took a moment, but Ark obeyed. Rheumy eyes met Dorthna’s.

  “Thank you.”

  Dorthna nodded. “You’re welcome. Just remember that you tried to help. You did nothing wrong.”

  With those words, Dorthna went down the stairs. Only when he got to the bottom and saw the mess waiting for him in the living room did he stop.

  “Ark,” he called up.

  “Uncle?”

  “Get your ass down here. we have a mess to clean up.”

  Cleaning was a quiet task. Ark seemed to take it as some form of punishment for what he did and Dorthna allowed him do so. Sometimes, to make a person feel forgiven for a wrong they did or thought they had done, convincing them that it was fine was not the answer. Sometimes, making them feel like they were being punished for it was the answer.

  So Ark took his punishment quietly and with a sad look on his face.

  As for Dorthna, he doubted he’d ever stopped smiling. Each time he cleaned a specific section, he touched his side. It was a reminder of the gift this family had given him through Melmarc.

  After countless years of throwing himself of skyscrapers and getting into meaningless fights with meaningless opponents since his curse, he had finally felt something akin to pain.

  Melmarc had granted him the gift of possibility. It was minute and insignificant in the larger scale of things, but it was something in a world where he had had nothing. It was a potential promise.

  If he could not lift the curse placed on him, then that was fine. Because there was a new possibility. A possibility that could one day become a certainty.

  Maybe not today or tomorrow or a year from now. But some day.

  The thought of it brought calmness to his mind. For that, he had only one response.

  Thank you, Melmarc Jay Lockwood.

  In a vast cosmos as wide as existence, a boy not even twenty had been the one to give him hope. The gift of possibility.

  The possibility of death.

  …

  Elijah sat in his place at the table. He sat in his capacity as an Oath. The Oath of Desolation.

  After the Oath of Life’s story about what had happened to one of the previous generations of Oaths a few days ago, he had chosen the chair he sat on intentionally. Why? Because it was directly opposite that of the Oath of Madness.

  Today the man didn’t play with pens, he played a video game on a handheld console. A man with a broken mind and too much power. Only two Oaths had survived the battle against the Oath of Madness that had killed her entire generation of Oaths.

  War and Desolation.

  He was new, but Elijah knew what he had to do. He was the only one with the promise of achieving it. No one knew it better than he did.

  Elijah Olsen, the Oath of Desolation, was going to save the Oaths.

  He was going to kill Madness.